Broken Hearts, Fences and Other Things to Mend (12 page)

had just received a good review. I hadn’t realized it was code for

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being a plagiarist.

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Over the next week, I watched in horror, feeling increasingly

sick, as things for Karen went from bad to worse. Bloggers were

going out of their way to fi nd passages in her novel that were simi-

lar to other books. Every day, it seemed like a new sentence was

found, a new passage that was similar to something else, no mat-

ter how thin the evidence. Bookstores were returning her book in

droves. She was a cautionary tale on the publishing websites. Her

career as a novelist was over.

Karen had refused to speak to my dad ever since it came out

that he was the one who’d started all this, and she and Hallie

stopped coming by the house. And I came downstairs for a drink

of water one night to fi nd my dad hunched over the kitchen table,

his face pale and dotted with stubble.

“Hey, kid,” he said, and I heard just how tired his voice sounded.

“Can’t sleep?”

I shook my head and stayed where I was. I didn’t want to join

him at the table. I was afraid that if I did, I would confess, it would

all spill out of me— everything that I’d done.

“Me neither,” he said. He rubbed his eyes and I felt a sudden

stab of guilt, knowing that I had caused this. “I should tell you

something, Gem,” he said, looking over at me as I shifted my weight

from foot to foot and didn’t meet his eyes. “I fi red Stu.” I opened

my mouth and closed it again, at a loss for words. “I’m not going

to fi nish the book,” my dad continued, looking down at his hands.

“I’m done with novels. I don’t want to be a part of a business that

would treat someone this way.”

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I just stood there, feeling myself shiver, even though it was a

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warm night. I tried to, but I couldn’t get my head around it. My

dad not writing was like my dad not having eyebrows, something

I couldn’t even fathom. What he’d just said threatened to upend

everything I had ever known as normal. And it was
all my fault
.

My stomach churned again and I wondered if I might be the fi rst

eleven- year- old in history to develop an ulcer.

O O O

The last time I saw Hallie that summer was a few days later.

I was sitting in the car as my dad stood by their house, hold-

ing a box of Karen’s things he’d brought back to her. Karen, her

face drawn, packed up her car. As a result of all the controversy,

she had been fi red from the summer writing workshop. Hallie

was sitting on the front steps, her head down. My dad was trying

to talk to Karen, but she just shook her head and walked back

inside, slamming the door behind her. My dad followed her into

the house, carry ing the box, and then it was just me and Hallie,

separated by a car window.

It occurred to me that I was fi nally getting what I had wanted,

what I had been working for, all summer— Karen and Hallie were

leaving. Things were over with her and my dad. I waited to feel

happy, victorious . . . but nothing happened.

And just like that, it was like the evil, goateed version of me

vanished, and I was left to see clearly the ramifi cations of what I

had done. And I didn’t feel happy about it. I didn’t feel anything

except sick with guilt and fi lled with remorse. This wasn’t at all

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the way that I had wanted any of it to happen— or how I thought

I would feel when it did. As I looked at Hallie, her face pale and

her shoulders hunched, I fi nally realized the extent of what I’d

done to her, and to Karen.

Hallie looked up and met my gaze, and I could see that her

eyes were puffy. I reached for the door handle, then paused. What

would I say to her? What
could
I say?

I opened my mouth, but then closed it again. Hallie looked

right at me for a long moment, then turned her head away. I knew

this was my chance to apologize, but how could I even begin?

Also, I knew if I did confess, I would be in
so
much trouble. But

should I just own up, now that I’d realized how empty this vic-

tory felt? Before I could make a move, my dad pushed open the

door and walked down the steps between us, his face pale and his

eyes red. He gave Hallie a quick hug, then got into the car.

He started the engine and backed down the driveway, and I

felt like I was fl eeing the scene of the crime. Hallie glanced back

at us, and she seemed incredibly small, sitting on the steps of her

rental house. She looked at us— it seemed like she was looking right

at me— until we turned the corner and she disappeared from view.

O O O

I knew what I’d done to Karen and Hallie— but it wasn’t until a

few days later that I saw what I’d also done to my father. The

happy, ice- cream- eating, novel- writing guy was gone. He now only

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left the house to go teach his workshop classes, spending the rest

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of the time either in bed or staring out the window.

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His computer sat untouched in the study, which made it eas-

ier for me to go in and take back my notebook. But when I opened

the drawer where I’d hidden it, the notebook wasn’t there.

I didn’t let myself panic at fi rst, just made myself methodi-

cally search the desk, then my room, even though I knew the note-

book wasn’t there— I’d shoved it into the desk after sending the

fraudulent e-mail. I knew I had. Inside the notebook was every

detail of a summer’s worth of plots to make Hallie miserable.

Every terrible thing I had done was inscribed in it.

So where was it?

I suddenly remembered my dad carry ing the box of Karen’s

things to give back to her. He might have found the journal and

thought it was Hallie’s; after all, it was the same as mine. Had I

just accidentally told her everything I had done to her this sum-

mer? Had I just inadvertently confessed everything?

I tried to fi ght back my rising panic and tell myself that it

didn’t matter. The damage was done— did it really make a differ-

ence if Hallie knew it was me who was behind it?

As I shut the drawer of the desk, I made a promise to myself. I

would apologize to Hallie and Karen. And I would work as hard

as I could to keep this monstrous, evil side of myself— a side I had

never before fathomed the existence of— at bay. And that some-

how, someday, I would make things right.

O O O

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I looked up at the moon over the beach and hugged my knees

to my chest. Much as I might have wished for one, the story

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didn’t have a happy ending. When I returned to Connecticut, I

found out that my mom had met Walter over the summer, and

they were already pretty serious. As soon as I heard my mother

going on about Pacifi c breeding grounds and the different kinds

of casting techniques, I had a feeling there was no chance my

parents would get back together. I was right, and their divorce

was fi nalized by Christmas.

Karen’s name was cleared, slowly, as bloggers began to retract

their earlier feeding- frenzy claims of plagiarization. But she never

published another book.

And though I hadn’t believed him at fi rst, my dad, true to his

word, stopped writing novels. He moved to Los Angeles that fall

and began his new career as a screenwriter specializing in mov-

ies about time- traveling animals.

The extent of what I’d done— and how many lives I’d inadver-

tently wrecked— still kept me up nights.

I started letters— to Hallie, to Karen, to my dad, all full of re-

morse and apologies— but never sent them. I tried to begin the

conversation with my dad a few times, but it soon became very

clear that he didn’t want to talk about the Bridges, or that sum-

mer, and started to get upset whenever I brought up either of

them.

I spent the fi rst few years actively searching for information

about Hallie and Karen online, always hoping that good news

would appear— that Karen had cleared her name and gone on to

bestsellerdom, that she and her kids were happier than ever. But

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nothing ever came up. As far as I could tell, scouring Google with

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my heart sinking, she never wrote anything else or even held an-

other teaching position.

I also couldn’t fi nd out much about Hallie. She showed up on

Friendverse when everyone joined, of course, but her profi le was

private and I could get only the most cursory information from

it. I tried to tell myself, as I looked at her profi le intermittently

over the years, that she looked happy. That maybe I hadn’t done

irreparable damage after all.

I never told Sophie what I’d done, and when I started dating

Teddy— who was pretty much the embodiment of goodness— I

couldn’t help but hope that some of it would transfer to me, and

keep the evil side of me away for good. But mostly, I tried not to

think about what I’d done. And memories of the Bridges, and that

summer, had only come up intermittently, and in my darkest

moments.

Until today.

But as I looked out at the water, I realized that I was getting a

second chance. It was an opportunity to make up for what I’d done.

After all, Hallie wouldn’t see me as Gemma Tucker, the girl who

had been cruel to her, deliberately, over and over again. If Hallie

had read the journal, I knew she would never give me,
actual
me,

a chance to make things right. She wouldn’t believe me for a sec-

ond. I wasn’t even sure if she’d be willing to listen to me explain

how sorry I was.

But if she saw me as Sophie Curtis, friendly stranger, it could

be the opportunity that I needed. I would get to show her that I was

a good person. And then I would fi nally be able to apologize.

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I pushed myself up to standing, brushed the sand off my hands,

and walked back to Bruce’s house, feeling a lightness that I hadn’t

felt for a long time. Even though it was fi ve years later, I was fi nally

going to make things right. And if it didn’t work, I’d be in the

same position I was now, but at least I’d have tried.

And after all, what did I really have to lose?

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“Name?”I froze as I reached for my wallet. I was at Quonset Coffee,

where I’d gone after hanging around the house for the last

two days. Since Bruce had dismantled his espresso machine

(cavemen, after all, got their energy from escaping near- maulings

by woolly mammoths, not cappuccino), I had fi nally been driven

into the world by my need for an iced latte. But I hadn’t expected

to be so immediately confronted with the realities of the situa-

tion I’d landed myself in. I tried to take a subtle look around the

coffee shop, to see if there was anyone I recognized, as that would

determine how I should respond to this question.

The bored- looking barista sighed. “Name,” she repeated, louder

this time, her marker poised over the cup and eyebrows raised.

“Nombre?”

“Um . . . I guess . . . Sophie,” I fi nally said after a moment’s con-

sideration, the name feeling unfamiliar in my mouth. The barista

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rolled her eyes, scrawled the name on the plastic cup, and rang

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up my drink. I paid and then stepped aside to let the other cus-

tomers in the tiny wood- paneled store make their way up to the

register, wondering for the hundredth time in the last few days

if this was really such a good idea.

The trip to the coffee shop was my fi rst time out on my own

since I’d arrived in the Hamptons. I had hung out with my dad,

when he could get away from Bruce, who was reporting the de-

mands of the studio executives, who always seemed to have new,