His fingers flex on the knife, and I spring to my feet, bolting for the door as he jumps down from the counter and blocks my path.
“Uh-uh,” he says, wagging the knife from side to side. “I’m not leaving until we show them.”
His knife slides back to his side, and I brace myself for an attack, but it doesn’t come. Instead, he sets the weapon down on the counter, halfway between us. The instant he withdraws his hand, I lunge for the blade; my right hand curls around the hilt, but before I can lift it Owen’s fingers fold over mine, pinning me to the counter. In a blink he’s behind me, his other hand catching my free wrist, wrapping himself around my body. His hands on my hands. His arms on my arms. His chest against my back. His cheek pressed to mine.
“We fit together,” says Owen with a smile.
“Let go of me,” I growl, trying to twist free, but his grip is made of stone.
“You’re not even trying,” he says into my ear. “You’re just going through the motions. Deep down, I know you want them to see,” he says, twisting my empty hand so the wrist faces up. “So show them.”
My sleeve is rolled up, my forearm bare, and I watch as six letters appear, ghostlike on my skin.
B R O K E N
Owen tightens his grip over my knife-wielding hand and brings the tip of the blade to the skin just below the crook of my left elbow, to the top of the ghosted B.
“Stop,” I whisper.
“Look at me.” I lift my gaze to the mirror and find his ice blue eyes in the reflection. “Aren’t you tired, M? Of lying? Of hiding? Of everything?”
Yes.
I don’t know if I think the word or say it, but I feel it, and as I do, a strange peace settles over me. For a moment, it doesn’t feel real. None of it feels real. It’s just a dream. And then Owen smiles and the knife bites down.
The pain is sudden and sharp enough to make me gasp as blood wells and spills over into the blade’s path, and then my vision blurs and I squeeze my eyes shut and grip the counter for balance.
When I open my eyes a second later, Owen is gone, and I’m standing there alone in front of the mirror, but the pain is still there and I look down and realize that I’m bleeding.
A lot.
His knife is gone, and the drinking glass is lying in glittering pieces on the counter, my hand wrapped around the largest shard. Blood runs between my fingers where I’ve gripped it and down my other arm where I’ve carved a single deep line. There’s a rushing in my ears, and I realize it’s the sound of the bathwater shhhhhhhhhhing in the tub, but the tub is overflowing and the floor is soaked, drops of blood staining the shallow water.
Someone is knocking and saying my name, and I have just enough time to drop the shard into the sink before Mom opens the door, sees me, and screams.
SEVENTEEN
GROWING UP, I have bad dreams.
My parents leave the lights on. They close the closet door. They check under the bed. But it doesn’t help, because I am not afraid of the dark or the closet or the gap between the mattress and the floor, places where monsters are said to lurk. I never dream of monsters, not the kind with fangs or claws. I dream of people. Of bad people dropped into days and nights so simple and vivid that I never question if any of it’s real.
One night in the middle of summer, Da comes in and perches on the edge of my bed and asks me what I’m so afraid of.
“That I’ll get stuck,” I whisper. “That I’ll never wake up.”
He shrugs. “But you will.”
“How do you know?”
“Because that’s the thing about dreams, Kenzie. Whether they’re good or bad, they always end.”
“But I don’t know it’s a dream, not until I wake up.”
He leans in, resting his weathered hand on the bed. “Treat all the bad things like dreams, Kenzie. That way, no matter how scary or dark they get, you just have to survive until you wake up.”
This is a bad dream.
This is a nightmare. Dad is speeding, and Mom is sitting in the backseat putting pressure on my arm and I’m squeezing my eyes shut and waiting to wake up.
It was a dream. I was dreaming. It wasn’t real. But the cut is real, and the pain is real, and the blood still streaked across our bathroom sink is real.
What’s happening to me?
I am Mackenzie Bishop. I am a Keeper for the Archive and I am the one who goes bump in the night, not the one who slips. I am the girl of steel, and this is all a bad dream and I have to wake up.
How many Keepers lose their minds?
“We’re almost there,” says Mom. “It’s going to be okay.”
It’s not. No matter what, it’s not going to be okay.
I’m not okay.
Someone is trying to frame me, and they don’t even have to, because I’m not fit to serve. Not like this. I’m trying so hard to be okay, and it’s not working.
Aren’t you tired?
I squeeze my eyes shut.
I don’t realize until Mom presses a hand to my face that there are tears streaming down it. “I’m sorry,” I whisper under the sound of her noise against my skin.
Fourteen stitches.
That’s how many it takes to close the cut in my arm (the marks on my right hand from holding the glass are shallow enough to be taped). The nurse—a middle-aged woman with steady hands and a stern jaw—judges me as she sews, her lips pursed like I did it for attention. And the whole time, my parents are standing there, watching.
They don’t look angry. They look sad, and hurt, and scared—like they don’t know how they went from having two functioning children to one broken one. I open my mouth to say something—anything—but there’s no lie I can tell to make this better, and the truth will only make everything worse, so the room stays silent while the nurse works. Dad keeps his hand on Mom’s shoulder, and Mom keeps her hand on her phone, but she has the decency not to call Colleen until the nurse finishes the stitches and asks them to step outside with her. There’s a window in the room, and through the blinds I can see them walk away down the hall.
They’ve made me wear one of those blue tie-waisted smocks, and my eyes travel over my arms and legs silently assessing not only the most obvious damage, but the last four years’ worth of scars. Each one of them has a story: skin scraped off against the stone walls of the Narrows, Histories fighting back tooth and nail. And then there are the scars that leave no mark: the cracked ribs and the wrist that won’t heal because I keep rolling it, listening to the click click click. But contrary to Colleen’s theories, the cut along my arm—the one now hidden under a bright white bandage—is the first I’ve ever given myself.
I didn’t, I think. I don’t—
“Miss Bishop?” says a voice, and my head snaps up. I didn’t hear the door open, but a woman I’ve never seen before is standing in the doorway. Her dirty blond hair is pulled back into a messy ponytail, but her perfect posture and the way she pronounces my name send off warning bells in my head. Crew? Not one I’ve ever met, but the ledger’s full of pages, and I only know a few. Then I read the name tag on her slim-cut suit, and I almost wish she were Crew.
Dallas McCormick, Psychologist. She has a notebook and a pen in one hand.
“I prefer Mackenzie,” I say. “Can I help you?”
A smile flickers on her face. “I should probably be the one asking that question.” There’s a chair beside the bed, and she sinks into it. “Looks like you’ve had a rough day,” she says, pointing to my bandaged arm with her pen.