Broken Read online

  Copyright © 2013 by CJ Lyons

  Cover and internal design © 2013 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover design by Eileen Carey

  Cover image © Rob Webb/Getty Images

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published by Sourcebooks Fire, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-3900

  Fax: (630) 961-2168

  teenfire.sourcebooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file with the publisher.

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Monday

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Tuesday

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Wednesday

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Thursday

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Friday

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Q & A with CJ Lyons

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  To Abby.

  Despite Long QT, your heart is too big and generous to ever be broken.

  Monday

  1

  If you want to get noticed fast, try starting high school three weeks late as the girl who almost died.

  Unfortunately, attention is the last thing I crave. Give me anonymity anytime. Every time.

  I just want to be a normal girl. No one special.

  Saw a movie once, don’t remember what channel, but it was in the dark hours of the night when it was just me and the TV. My favorite time of day.

  It starred John Travolta back when he was young. The kid was so sick he lived in this plastic bubble and he was so excited when he got to leave it.

  Me? When I saw the boy leave his bubble, I wanted it for myself. Coveted it.

  God, how I’d die for a cozy little bubble to live my life in, safe from the outside world.

  Only I’d paint my bubble black so no one could see me inside.

  2

  There are two metal detectors inside the main doors of Smithfield High and 337 students plus one trying to crowd through them. I’m the plus one. Not sure which line to stand in or if there’s even a real line at all hidden somewhere in this mass of humanity. It’s the largest crowd I’ve ever been in.

  The school lobby echoes with voices and the stamping of feet. We’re herded like a bunch of cows headed for slaughter. All that’s missing are the cowboys and the branding irons.

  No one else is nervous about this. They don’t care about the metal detectors or what’s in their bags or even the two guards manning the operation. They’re not worried about being trampled or that there isn’t enough oxygen or how many billions—no, trillions—of bacteria and viruses are wafting through the air, microscopic time bombs searching for a new home.

  All they care about is me. The stranger in their midst. They shuffle around me uneasily, quickly sniffing out that I don’t belong.

  A girl with a pierced nose and heavy eyeliner looks at me like I’m a tacky rhinestone necklace on display at a pawnshop counter. She hides her mouth behind her hand as she whispers something to her friend with the purple streak in her hair.

  A guy wearing a white and orange Smithfield Wildcats letterman jacket trips over the backpack I wheel behind me, almost smashing into a wall before he catches himself. “Out of my way, loser.”

  His snarl is accompanied by a sneer. He stares down at me—he’s huge, at least six feet tall, with shoulders that block my view. “I said, move it.” I try to steer my backpack, but his feet get tangled as he zigs the same direction I’m zagging. “You don’t want to piss me off. Understand?”

  The crowd pushes him even closer so all I can hear is his voice. My heart booms in response, sending up its own distress call. His name is on his letterman jacket, embroidered above the wildcat with the long, sharp fangs. Mitch Kowlaski. Football. I shrink against the wall, making myself even smaller than my usual five feet two, and pull my backpack between my legs, giving him room to cut in front of me.

  He joins a cluster of football players and continues to stare at me. His look is easy to read: what kind of loser brings a wheeled backpack to high school?

  Not cool. Neither are my virgin-white, just-out-of-the-box-this-morning sneakers that a guy in a pair of work boots stomps on. And why didn’t I think to put on at least a little lip gloss this morning?

  I scan the crowd, searching for the normal kids—and fail. Seems like being normal is out of style this season. You have to be “someone,” create an alter ego: a jock, a church girl, a rebel, a loser.

  Even I understand the danger of that last label.

  I’m too skinny, too pale; my hair’s all wrong; I should’ve tried to figure out makeup (as if Mom would ever let me!), shouldn’t have worn this jacket (but I love my faded, soft, frayed denim jacket; my dad gave it to me). It
’s out of style and doesn’t go with the new-blue of my jeans that everyone can tell are a last minute buy from K-Mart, because who needs clothes when you live in a hospital and—

  An elbow nudges my back. My turn at the metal detector.

  I roll my backpack—heavier than any other student’s—over to the guard. He hefts it onto his examination table and zips it open. “What’s this?”

  “My AED.” I try to sound hip and casual, like doesn’t every kid carry their own advanced life support resuscitation equipment?

  The guard snatches his hand away from my bag. “An IED?”

  Now everyone is staring. At me.

  “New kid has a bomb in there,” Mitch, the guy I accidentally tripped earlier, shouts in mock dismay. His voice booms through the crowded space louder than a real IED going off.

  Not everyone thinks it’s a joke. A gasp goes up behind me, traveling down the line of waiting students faster than a roller coaster. I’m imagining that last part—I’ve never been on a roller coaster. Their stares push me forward.

  “No. It’s an AED.” Sweat trickling down the back of my neck, I rush to explain before I’m branded a terrorist or, worse, a freak. Too late. Mitch and his group of football players are snickering and pointing at me. “Automated External Defibrillator. I need it for my heart.”

  Actually, I hope I never need it, but even though the school has an AED in the gym, Mom convinced the insurance company that I should have my own, smaller model to carry with me at all times. Just in case.

  Story of my life in three words: Just In Case.

  Just in case my heart does a backflip at the sight of a cute guy and lands on its ass, unable to spring back on its own.

  Just in case the fire alarm goes off and startles me, releasing adrenaline, shocking my heart into quivering, cowardly surrender.

  Just in case I’m too hot or too cold or eat the wrong thing or forget to take my meds and my heart decides today is the day to go galloping out of control, leaving me lying there on the floor for guys like Mitch Kowlaski to walk over while everyone else points and laughs at the girl who finally died…

  Mom has a thousand and one Just In Cases. Like she keeps reminding me, if I were a cat, I’d already have used up more than nine lives.

  Swallowing my pride and the chance that I’ll ever be accepted here—who am I kidding? I never had a chance, only a hope—I pull my Philips HeartStart AED free from its case and show it to the guard.

  He stares from the AED to me, taking in my way-too-skinny frame, paler-than-vampire complexion, sunken eyes, and brittle hair, and nods wordlessly. “Humor the girl-freak before she does something crazy” kind of nodding.

  “See? Here’s how you use it, it talks you through everything,” I prattle on, trying desperately to sound nonchalant. Normal. I call the defibrillator Phil for short. The perfect accessory for any fifteen-year-old girl, right? The bright-blue plastic case matches my eyes, can’t you see?

  “Aw, look. Freakazoid has a broken heart,” Mitch says. “Waiting for Dr. Frankenstein to shock some life into you, sweetheart? I got everything you need right here.”

  “Shut it, Kowlaski,” the other guard yells at him. He turns to me. “You must be Scarlet Killian.”

  I now realize that the second line has also stopped to witness the end of my short career as a normal high school sophomore. Everyone now knows my name. Knows my heart is broken. Knows I’m a freak.

  “Your mom told us to be on the lookout for you. Go ahead through.”

  Our hands collide as we both reach to return Phil to my pack. He jerks away. Reluctant to touch the complicated machine—or the girl whose life it’s meant to save?

  Why does everyone assume dying is contagious?

  I shove Phil back in, zip the pack shut, slip through the metal detector without anything exploding, and bolt.

  The football players, including Mitch, are crowded together on the other side, forcing me to push past them. “Must be tough having a heart ready to go tick, tick, boom!” Mitch laughs. His friends must think it’s funny because they join in.

  Totally embarrassed and certain everyone is staring, I keep my head down and walk away, hauling Phil behind me. My heart is beating so fast spots appear before my vision. Not a Near Miss, just plain, old-fashioned, let-me-crawl-in-a-hole-and-die mortification.

  Time spent in high school: three minutes, forty-two seconds. Time spent as a normal sophomore girl before being outed as the freak with the bum heart: fifty-five seconds.

  Time remaining in my high school career as a freak: 5,183,718 seconds.

  Maybe less if the doctors’ predictions are right and I get lucky and drop dead.

  3

  So this is high school. I stroll down the hall, pulling Phil behind me, taking in everything. Feeling a bit like a kid at the zoo—only I’m the specimen on display.

  There are large banners plastered onto the walls above the rows of lockers, exhorting us to “Chew up the Raiders!” We have a home football game on Friday against the Bellefonte Red Raiders. The Wildcats lost the first two games of the season—I actually listened to them, one from my hospital bed and one from home. It was so cool to have a team of my own to cheer for. Especially since, around here, people live and die for high school football. There’s just not much else to do in a small Pennsylvania town like Smithfield, not since the steel mill shut down.

  The other students, even the freshmen, already know where they’re going; they’ve had three weeks to practice. They walk down the corridor in pairs or triads, the occasional singleton or clump of four or five. I’ve studied online maps of the school and try to look like I know where I’m going as I translate my mental image into reality. But it’s hard not to be distracted. The vast majority of my social interactions have been me and Mom facing a doctor or nurse, with the occasional intern or med student thrown in.

  Nothing in my life has prepared me for this. The hallway becomes claustrophobic, crowded by the frenzied movements of the students, studied glances and postures, scented hair products that tickle my nose…and the noise. Voices high and low, loud and gruff, shrill and dour—everyone seems to have something to say, but I’m not sure if anyone is actually listening. They just keep talking, like a machine-gunner hoping the more bullets he fires the more chance of hitting something sooner or later—whether or not it’s his target.

  The first bell rings and the hall is flooded with a sudden influx through the front doors. I’m shoved and jostled by kids long gone by the time I look around. People swear as they trip over Phil and I try to keep him closer to me, but it doesn’t help.

  They’ve given me an upper locker in the main corridor. No way am I going to be able to ditch Phil in there. I twist the combination open and peer inside. Not that there’s any room. Whoever I’m sharing it with has already made himself at home.

  I’m guessing “him” since it’s crammed full with a gym bag that reeks of Axe and sweaty socks, a very large pair of soccer cleats, plus a teetering stack of notebooks and ragged paperbacks, mostly way-old science fiction with covers of busty blonds and lusty monsters, all guarded by a picture pasted to the inside of the door: something ripped out of a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition. Minus the swimsuit. The girl is naked from the waist up, hands strategically spread over her breasts, mouth half-open in a sultry pout.

  Narrowly avoiding an avalanche of books and papers, I shove my jacket in. By the end of the day, it’ll stink of Axe and testosterone. The smell makes my head swim, but isn’t as bad as I first thought. Kinda nice, warm and spicy, like a guy’s arms wrapped around you. I glance at the picture again, a surge of jealousy filling me. Which is silly. How can I be jealous of a model?

  Even more irrational is the sudden fantasy of wanting a guy I’ve never met to put his arms around me—based solely on his scent. Hormones, pheromones, frontal lobe excitation. That’s all it is. No guy would ever wa
nt me, the half-dead girl.

  But I’m only fifteen and never been kissed and have no defense against hormones. Or hope.

  Angry at myself, I slam the door so hard the metal rings out like a call to prayer. Or maybe a prayer answered.

  Because there he is. Very real, very solid, very GUY.

  He slouches against the wall of lockers, his gaze directed at my feet. His eyes, the color of the burnt coffee that somehow makes hospital cafeterias smell like home, roam slowly up my legs, taking in the “skinny jeans” that hang loosely on my bony-thin hipless frame.

  A blink and the jeans are whisked away, leaving a red-hot trail behind as his gaze continues ravaging my body. Another blink and the vintage Nirvana tee I’d hidden from my Mom under my denim jacket and Bongo cardi vanish as well. But somehow I’m not wearing my cotton sports bra and panties anymore. Instead I feel as naked as his swimsuit model, and my mouth opens and closes as I try to figure out how to pout like she does.

  And end up burbling like a fish snared on a hook. At least that’s what I imagine as his eyes finally make it to my mouth and sunken cheeks and barren, naked eyes. My ears pop as my fantasy bursts.

  Suddenly he’s just a guy, shoulders and neck hunched as if he isn’t sure how tall he’s meant to be, navy T-shirt with a frayed collar revealing chiseled arms, single zit marring the perfect line of his jaw, dark eyes staring at me with the same morbid curiosity everyone else has—judging me a freak.

  “That’s my locker,” he says, not moving anything but his lips.

  It must take a lot of energy to stand that still, look that nonchalant. Then I realize: the word has spread. Everyone’s heard about me and my broken heart. He’s afraid to get too close. I might be contagious.

  “Mine too, I guess,” I stammer, hormones fanning warm embers in my stomach. “They assigned it to me. I’m Scarlet Killian.”

  Infinitesimal nod. The movement releases a lock of his hair and it falls into his eyes. He doesn’t shake it free or even blink as strands curl across his impossibly long eyelashes. I can’t stop staring. My fingers itch with a desire to reach across the space separating us and brush it back.

  “Jordan. Summers.” He adds the last like I should already know his name. As if his reputation had preceded him.