Olivia flung the doors open and pulled Lucy into an enormous room with a high domed ceiling, dimly lit by a dozen Moroccan-glass lanterns. Huge windows lined the back wall, draped on each side with yards of printed silk. There were people in the room, a few dozen maybe, lying across couches, seated on silk pillows, standing in front of the giant fireplace, drinking from silver cups.
“Ignore them.” Olivia waved her hand. “We’re trying something out here, and they were all already coming before I knew about your . . . situation.”
Olivia pulled Lucy through the room, and out a side door. And then they were in an enormous backyard edged in twisted, towering trees.
“We’re over there.” Olivia pointed toward a gazebo in the grass, in the center of which was a small flickering light. She started to pull Lucy forward again, but Lucy’s feet refused to go.
“Who is we?” Lucy’s voice came out quiet, more scared sounding than she’d wanted it to.
Olivia shook her head, as though this should have been obvious, but by the light that shone through the door, Lucy could see that she was smiling. “The Secret Sisterhood of Heartbreakers. We’ve been waiting a long time for you.”
“Wait,” Lucy said. “What?” She stopped, suddenly dizzy. “For me?”
But Olivia didn’t answer, just pulled Lucy out into the lush grass and toward a large gazebo. Two girls were already inside, a white candle flickering between them.
Olivia sat down on the floor and motioned for Lucy to follow.
“Well, here we are,” Olivia said. “Your heart is really, truly broken. Congratulations.”
The wind blew. Lucy could see the other two girls’ eyes shining in the dark. “Then why are you congratulating me?” she said quietly. “I feel like I’m dying.”
Olivia shrugged. “Of course you do. Most peoples’ hearts could never break as deeply as yours has, honey muffin. But you should be grateful for that. There’s . . . potential in that.”
Lucy raised her hand up to her chest and pressed against her ribs where that chunk of mangled meat was barely beating.
“Do you know why you’re here?” asked Olivia.
“Because I read the message on the scarf.”
“And do you know how that message got on that scarf?”
Lucy shook her head.
Olivia just smiled and held out her hand. “I’d like it back now, please.”
Lucy removed the square of crumpled silk from her pocket and handed it to Olivia, who placed it in her lap.
“We’re about to give you the greatest opportunity that you’ll ever have. We can make it so your broken heart heals back like that.” Olivia snapped her fingers. The candle flickered. “And then it will be so strong it will never be broken again.”
Lucy wanted to say something, but her brain wasn’t giving her the words. “I . . . ,” she said. “What?”
“And then you’ll be one of us,” Olivia went on. “Part of an ancient secret sisterhood. And the entire world will open up to you, full of possibilities . . .” Lucy could hear Olivia starting to smile. “And magic.”
“But . . .” The words came slowly, dripping from Lucy’s lips one letter at a time. “I mean, that’s not . . . possible.”
“Why?”
“Because . . .” Lucy stared at her. Was she kidding? Was she crazy? “Things don’t work like that.”
Olivia let out a laugh. “What do you know about the way things work, kitten? You believe what you’ve been told. But what if the people who told you about the world only understood part of the story?”
This was absurd, Lucy knew that of course, but she found her mouth opening in spite of herself. “Tell me how it works then.”
“It’s simple, really. You make someone fall in love with you sometime within the next seven days . . .”
“In seven days? That’s ridiculous.” She tried to make her voice sound tough, to keep herself from crying. But all she could think was that she’d been alive for more than fifteen years, and in that time she hadn’t gotten a single person to fall in love with her. Not one single one.
“Oh, sugar pie,” Olivia laughed. “A person can fall in love in an hour, in an instant. Haven’t you ever seen a movie or read a book or even looked at another human being? Everyone is desperate to fall in love. It’s quite sweet really. Just give them a tiny push at the edge and they’ll go hurtling into the depths of it. It’s easy. Of course”—she smiled—“it certainly helps if you have magic on your side.”
“Right,” Lucy said. “Magic.” She couldn’t believe she was even having this conversation. But then again, she couldn’t believe much of anything that had happened that day.
“Getting someone to love you is only the first part,” Olivia said. “Once he loves you”—her voice was calm and smooth—“you break his heart.”
“I don’t understand.”
“In order for your heart to heal, you have to find a heart to break. A Chrysalis Heart.”
“What’s a Chrysalis Heart?”
“It’s the one that changes you. The one you break so yours can heal. Keeps things in balance.”
“So I’m just supposed to go out and break a heart?”
Olivia nodded. “Of course in order to break a heart first you have to win it. . . .” Olivia turned toward the other two girls. They were farther from the flame, and Lucy couldn’t make out their faces. She could see the outlines of their bodies. They were leaning back, stretched out like cats. Olivia smiled a sly smile. “And winning hearts, well, that’s something we happen to be experts at. If you want to become a Heartbreaker, we can teach you too.”
“But why?” Lucy’s voice said. “Why would you do that?”
“We have our reasons,” Olivia said simply, finally. Then she reached behind her and lifted up a small satchel and out of it took a delicate gold chain with a small gold vial dangling from it. It looked familiar. “You can collect his brokenhearted tears in here.” She swung the necklace back and forth. “They’re so powerful, one is really all you need.”
“Need for what?”
“To power the potion that will fix your heart, make it unbreakable, and make you one of us. You came here because you thought we could help you, right? Well, this is how.”
Lucy stood up. This must be some sort of really messed-up joke, and a video of the whole thing would appear online tomorrow. No one could actually believe this, could they?
“So break a boy’s heart and bring us his brokenhearted tear and then”—Olivia’s eyes flashed—“you’ll see.”
“But that’s so cruel! Even if I believed anything you’re saying, which I don’t, I wouldn’t want to do that.” What was she even doing here? Coming had been a mistake.
“Well, it’s your choice. And your loss. But this isn’t cruel.” Olivia wasn’t smiling anymore. “It’s natural. Nature is dark and light, birth and death. Everything and its opposite. And in nature there are predators and prey. The hunters and the hunted. The heartbreakers and the heartbroken. The beautiful thing is that Nature lets us choose which we want to be. Most people never make the choice though because they don’t even know they have it.”
The candle flared up and Lucy could see their faces then: their smooth skin, their plump lips, their shining eyes. They were luminous.
“We are not indiscriminate when choosing hearts to break,” Olivia said. “We only break the hearts of those who deserve it, and those who could benefit from it.”
“Benefit?” Lucy said. “How?”
“Pain softens us and opens us up. To have one’s heart broken is to be connected more deeply with the earth; it is to experience life. To be more fully human.”
“Well, if it’s so great, then why would I even want an unbreakable heart?” Lucy’s voice cracked. “Why would anyone?”
“Having a broken heart makes you human. But there are better things to be than that.” Olivia looked down and for a moment her face registered a flicker of an expression Lucy couldn’t place.
 
; “Oh, so you guys are like witches or something?” Lucy half meant it as a joke.
“Not exactly,” Olivia said slowly. “Then again . . .” Someone let out a laugh. “Not exactly not.”
Olivia reached down and picked up the silk scarf. She pinched it between her fingers and held it over the candle. The orange flames reached up and licked it. She held on to it for one second more and then tossed the flaming fabric into the air. Lucy watched as it rose up above their heads, tiny embers raining down. The scarf vanished in a puff of smoke.
But in that smoke, Lucy saw something that she could not possibly have seen yet somehow did: in that smoke was Alex’s face. The sweet line of his cheek, the beautiful hollow of his eyes, the unmistakable curve of his mouth, right there in silver, white, and gray, hovering above their heads. Lucy gasped and raised her hand to her lips.
Then the wind came and swept that delicate smoke away.
Olivia leaned forward and blew the candle out. “Now if you’ll excuse us.” She stood up. “We have a party to get back to.” She motioned toward a low iron gate. “If you walk through that and follow the slate path around the house, you’ll find your way back to the road.”
“Wait!” Lucy pointed straight up, where only the faintest wisp of smoke remained. “How did you . . . ?”
Olivia laughed a sweet, tinkling laugh. It sounded like a set of bells, the ones that jingle when a door is being opened.
“Good night,” Olivia said. “Oh, and honey cake.” Her voice was pleasant, soft, soothing. “If you tell anyone anything about what you just saw or what we just told you it would make us very, very unhappy. And trust me, you don’t want to see us unhappy. So . . .” She raised her finger to her lips, her mouth spreading into a slow smile behind it. “Ssh.”
Olivia and her two friends walked toward the house.
Chapter Six
Lucy stood there in that big, open space as the three girls disappeared inside, jaw slack, eyes wide, pupils the size of pinpoints even in the almost dark.
The wind blew, but she could not feel it. She was aware only of the dizzying sense of floating and spinning, of suddenly not understanding anything. Or maybe just beginning to realize just how much she hadn’t understood all along.
Lucy raised her hand to her lips.
What the hell was that?
There had to be a logical explanation. It was a clever illusion of some kind, a projection from a mini–movie projector perhaps, or a hologram!
There was probably an explanation, there probably was.
But what if . . . ?
Lucy tried to laugh at herself for even entertaining something so absolutely ridiculous. She shook her head hard. But she could not shake out what she’d seen.
She walked toward the house, toward the large windows, lit up red from inside. She pressed her face up against the glass where one set of curtains was parted. Lucy had the funny sensation, then, of being trapped in a made-up world, as though only what was inside that house was actually real.
Lucy scanned the crowd; the people seemed to be around her age, maybe a little bit older. She didn’t recognize most of them but there was a girl on the couch who went to Van Buren. She was also one of the girls in the gazebo.
This information came to Lucy in a flash. And, she suddenly realized, she’d seen Olivia, this girl, and another girl together at Van Buren many times.
This girl’s name was Gil and she was a junior. She and Lucy had been in the same American History class when Lucy was a freshman. It was the class where Lucy first met Alex.
They’d never really talked, but staring at her now through the window, Lucy felt a rush of warmth and friendliness toward her. First the rush, a second later the memory of why:
The moment after Alex had first asked to take her picture, on that day five months and one week ago, before Lucy realized what exactly had happened, she was met with not joy but a sudden wave of terror. Heart-stopping, pupil-shrinking, stomach-tightening terror. Somehow she’d managed to nod a yes to Alex’s invitation. But when he left the room on his way to his next class, Lucy had stood there not smiling but shaking.
A shock is still a shock, even if it’s a good one.
Lucy had looked up and locked eyes with this sweet-looking girl. The girl had smiled at Lucy and nodded ever so slightly. This is good, the nod had said. This is real. She’d done it at the exact right moment in the exact right way to help bring Lucy back to earth.
When what had happened finally hit her, when her disorientation morphed to giddy, blushing joy, Gil was still there. And her smile was so genuine and warm and full of understanding, as though somehow without the two of them having spoken, Gil understood absolutely everything. Lucy had had the sudden urge to reach out and hug that girl. But, of course, Lucy didn’t. And she’d forgotten that she’d even wanted to until that very moment standing outside Olivia’s window staring in. Gil was sitting on a green velvet couch, her legs tucked under her. As Lucy watched Gil, Gil was watching the room with calm interest.
She was not beautiful, or sexy, or even that pretty. She was clean and wholesome looking, like someone who used a lot of soap. She was a few inches taller than Lucy, with narrow hips and a flat chest. She had very normal features and brown hair in a pixie cut. Something about her eyes seemed warm. Off to the side five guys were staring at her, each with a look on his face that Lucy understood perfectly because it was the way she'd always looked at Alex.
Just then, a flash of black and white passed in front of the window, and Lucy leaned back. This was the other girl Lucy had seen the first two with, the one from the gazebo. She had dark brown hair streaked with gold, almond-shaped brown eyes with thick lashes, a slightly-too-big mouth set somewhere between bursting out laughing and telling you to go fuck yourself. She was five-nine or five-ten, all sleek muscles and flawless skin. She was wearing a black-and-white-checkered dress like a mom from the fifties, except it was way shorter than a fifties mom would have worn, and instead of teetering little heels she was wearing the world’s most broken-in cowboy boots. She was gorgeous but somehow unstable looking, like a fast-moving roller coaster about to careen off a too-small track. Lucy watched as the girl threw her head back and took a shot of something. The ends of her hair reached all the way down to the top of her butt.
Lucy stood there staring at the three girls, feeling an itch at the base of her skull, as she tried to pull up memories of the other times she’d seen them together. What had they been doing? Walking toward a beautiful light blue antique convertible. Laughing, their heads tossed back. Had there been any indication of who they were? She thought maybe she’d had a feeling about them, but that the feeling had been so slight that only now in retrospect was she aware of having had it.
In the room, someone flipped on a light and everyone turned toward the oak doors that were now open. A guy marched in. Lucy could hear his muffled voice through the thick glass. He was tall, broad shouldered, suede jacketed. He had a big, square head, face contorted with pain.
Lucy recognized him too: this was Ethan Sloane. He was a Van Buren junior famous for being crazy, but not in a social outcast way, more like in a hot-bike-messenger-on-a-rehab-reality-show sort of way. He’d run for student council president the year before and his campaign speech consisted of him playing a song on the guitar and then, at the end, shouting, “Don’t vote for me, politics is bullshit!” Afterward, everyone had cheered for a full two minutes and forty seconds, which Lucy knew because Tristan had timed it. There were a million rumors about Ethan Sloane. According to one he’d had an affair with the beautiful new just-out-of-college English teacher and was the reason she left in the middle of the year. According to another he’d once gotten caught cheating on his girlfriend with two of her friends at the same time. His excuse had been that he was so high he thought both of them were her.
But the Ethan Sloane who was marching toward Gil at that moment did not look like the kind of guy who’d once been arrested for smoking pot in the parking lot of th
e police station and got himself released by flirting with the cop, as he supposedly had. This guy looked like he was barely able to stand, barely able to speak. He was sinking in on himself.
Lucy watched as Ethan crouched down, grabbed Gil’s hand, and pressed it to his chest. His lips were moving; it looked like he was saying, “Please, please, please.”
But Gil shook her head again, slowly, blinked her warm eyes. She looked sorry when she yanked her hand free. But not as sorry as Ethan did.
It hurt Lucy to look at him. She could feel his breaking inside her own chest, feel the crumbling of his heart in her heart. He tried to reach for Gil once more, but that big, beautiful girl stepped between them. She stood with her hands on her hips, then pointed toward the door, and opened her enormous mouth. “GO.”
Ethan stood up, made his way toward the door, bumping into people as he went, like he was drunk, or sick.
Gil looked up then, glanced toward the window right where Lucy stood. And even though it was dark outside and light inside and therefore the window glass should have been a mirror to Gil, Lucy felt their eyes meet, felt a flash of something.
The wind blew then. The trees said ssh.
Everyone was watching Olivia, as though looking for a cue of what to do next. Someone lowered the lights. She picked up a small remote from the mantle and music started. Lucy could feel its rhythmic beating through the windows, like the house had turned into a heart. Olivia began to dance, hips swaying, arms raised up over her head. The tall girl joined in, and then Gil did too. Everyone watched them and one by one began to dance until the entire room was a pulsing mass of arms and legs.
Lucy put her hand on her heart and pressed where it hurt the most. She felt something happening, there inside her chest: a sliver of space was opening up, and the thinnest beam of light was peeking through.
Lucy walked through the creaking gate.
She followed the slate path in the silver light, down under the dangling branches of the weeping willows. She made her way across a small clearing, and down more stairs. And she felt a strange calmness come over her, as though what had been moving very fast in her was slowing down now. The moon seemed brighter then; she could feel it shining through her clothes and skin, making its way toward her heart, and sinking in through the cracks.