The Broken Ones

CHAPTER 9

GWEN

"Ma'am," the boy says again, "are you okay?"

"I don't know," I whisper.

I feel skeletal, a brittle husk. It is difficult to tell beneath the layers of cloth and muscle and bone if there is still anything inside, or if I have been left hollow and pitch black.

Without looking back, I walk out of the bookstore.

I walk and walk, and at some point, I reach a park. I am no longer walking, but running; slipping and tripping across roots and through sharp grass, and sobbing as I run. I keep running until my heart is pumping and my breath painful, and I have to slow to a trot. The wind whips my hair around my head. The walk has exhausted me physically, if not mentally. You were my friend. More than a friend. The sister I never had. I trusted you. Loved you.

I see the two of them, hear them in my head. Moaning. Moving. Thrusting. And laughing. At me. The images run like a broken reel, playing over and over in the back of my mind --- Howcouldyouhowcouldyouhowcouldyou ---Itrustedyoutrustedyoutrustedyou ---

In my bathroom, I lean my forehead against the glass mirror.

The woman in the mirror stares back at me. She looks impossibly fragile, almost breakable. Her eyes are hollowed pools of pain. I want to reach in and hug her.

Her mouth opens.

"I hurt," she whimpers, "So much."

The betrayal burns under my skin, like acid. I taste blackness in my mouth. White-hot fury seizes my body, slams it so hard I can't breathe. My vision swims. I am filling up with rage, running over with rage.

I roar, my hands pounding the glass, making it rattle.

I pick up my phone, tap out a text with trembling fingers. He's all yours. Press SEND.

An hour later, the door bell rings.

It's Noah. A dishevelled, visibly upset-looking Noah.

I stand, barring the doorway so he can't come in.

"May I come in? Please, Gwen?"

"No," I say. "You belong outside, you maggot. With the trash."

"Gwen, listen to me," he says hoarsely. "Simone called me on the phone. "That book. Gwen, it isn't true, what you're thinking. You know how much she hates me, she's trying to drive us apart --- she's a spiteful bitch --- "

"Why would you fuck her then?"

"What?"

"So you didn't?"

"What?" you say again.

"Fuck her?"

"Fuck your best friend who's a spiteful bitch?" He says it like it's a joke.

I don't answer, and after a long, strained silence, he mumbles, "Come on, Gwen. She was just provoking you --- and me --- and hoping for a reaction. You know the kind of woman she is. It's a game with her. Testing you. And me. We're just lab specimens to her. Fucking experiments. Material for her book. Doesn't mean what she wrote in there is true. Jesus, it's just a fucking story, it's bloody fiction, Gwen --- she did this on purpose --- to mess with your head, mess with our lives --- she's doing this to get back at me, that bloody viper --- "

"So you're denying that you fucked her?"

"Yes." You wouldn't look at me.

"You're a terrible liar, Noah," I say. "Just go."