Broken Compass Read online

  “What for?”

  He smokes quietly as we walk toward home. He puffs out a white cloud of smoke. “Anxiety.”

  “Like earlier today?”

  He glances at me, quirks a half-smile. “Yeah.”

  Vowing to Google the long-term effects of marijuana, I skip alongside his tall, lanky form, trying to keep up. “You should quit.”

  “Lots of things I should do.” He puffs out another cloud of sweet smoke. “But that’s how things are right now. What about you? Tell me about your mom.”

  I lose my smile. “Not much to tell.”

  “Humor me.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you. We moved around a lot. From town to town, from neighborhood to neighborhood.” I chew on the inside of my cheek. “I guess that’s another reason I want to stay here, apart for waiting for her: it’s the first time I have stayed in one place for so long. I made friends. I got to know the neighborhood. I feel… like I found a home. You know? I don’t want to give it up just yet.”

  He nods. “And your dad?”

  “Never met him. Mom likes men. Way too much. She dates a different guy every month. Some last longer. Not that it’s a good thing.”

  He frowns. “Did her boyfriends hurt you?”

  “No. Some were creepy though.”

  “Creepy how?”

  I kick at a pebble. “Sometimes they peeked in when I showered or changed clothes. Stared at my legs when I was in shorts. That sort of thing.”

  He curses under his breath. “And now? Where is she?”

  “I dunno. She was seeing this guy from out of town. She said something about going with him on a trip for a week. She just… never came back.”

  “What the hell? She left without even telling you she was going?”

  I like his anger on my behalf a bit too much. “No. She never answered her phone or the texts I sent her. She has… she has done it before.”

  “You serious?”

  “She never stayed away for so long before, though. The longest was a month. Now she’s been gone for much longer.”

  And I’m afraid… afraid she’s not coming back. The fear hits me in the dead of the night when I can’t sleep, or when I stand alone on the balcony, gazing at the city below. In those unsuspected moments, when everything around me seems normal, that’s when I feel the enormity of her absence. The void she’s left behind.

  Even if we weren’t all that close. She’s still my mom. My only family in the world.

  “I don’t know how to help you,” he says as we reach our street. “Syd. Know what I mean? I can’t help you find your mom. And I won’t be here forever. You need to decide what to do. Okay?” He stops, takes my hand and tugs until I’m facing him. His pale eyes are serious. “You’re too young to be living alone. You should tell someone, an adult.”

  “I’ve told you. You’re an adult.”

  “No, that’s not…” He sighs. “That’s not what I meant. A social worker. Someone at school.”

  “No. I can’t. They’ll take me away. I can’t.”

  “Okay.” He nods. “You don’t want to leave West and Nate. I get it. You’re in love with them. I wish… I wish I had what you have.”

  “No! No, it’s not like that, it’s… complicated.”

  “That’s a pity. They’re in love with you.”

  “They are?” I stare at him. “How would you know?”

  But he doesn’t seem to hear me. “I still wish for it, you know,” he whispers. “Even unrequited love is better than no love at all.”

  That night, when I enter the living room, I notice an envelope sticking half under the apartment door. I pick it up, open it.

  It’s a wad of cash. No card, no name, no nothing.

  Dizziness hits me. Who could have done this? Who knows that I need money? Is it from Kash?

  Kash leaving me cash. That’d be funny.

  Okay, think, Sydney. Is it Mom? Has she somehow sent me money? That would be… that would be so awesome, and I want so hard to believe it.

  I count the bills. There’s enough for the rent. Maybe she’s thinking of me, wherever she is. Maybe she’ll come back.

  The bills pressed to my chest, I sit down hard on the floor. Looks like I don’t have to go away yet. The relief wrenches a sob out of me.

  I can stay.

  Chapter Eighteen

  West

  “Have you seen Syd today?” Nate asks.

  “No, but you should have. Isn’t she in your bio class?”

  He shrugs. “I skipped it.”

  It shouldn’t come as a shock, and yet it does. I look at him and don’t know what to say.

  Not sure I know him anymore.

  It’s been months since we last played video games together. The summer break went by fast. It’s been at least three months since our big fight and the godawful night at that party when we had to get him home and watch over him all night as he alternatively puked his guts out and curled up moaning.

  He’s had many more migraines since then, even if he tries to hide them from me. He’s changed. He’s lost weight.

  And Kash is still here. When I asked him about it, he said Syd convinced him to stay. He often waits for her at school to walk her home. I dunno why. Nate and me, we take care of that. I told him as much, but he just shrugged, grinned, and kept at it.

  Just as well, since Nate often skips school these days. I’m worried about him, but he won’t tell me what’s wrong.

  “I haven’t seen her,” I mutter as we enter our building. “But she seems happier.”

  “And prettier,” Nate mutters.

  I say nothing. I thought we weren’t touching that. Her. “Maybe she’s happy we’re back to school?”

  “Yeah, could be that. With her mom not around anymore, it has to get lonely.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Fuck, West. You serious?” He tosses me an incredulous look. “You haven’t figured it out?”

  “Figure out what? I met her mom when they first moved in here. I thought she was just working weird hours?”

  “No, man, she’s not here. Didn’t Syd tell you about it?” He leans on the stair banister and closes his eyes, looking exhausted. “Fuck. She told me, and Kash. I thought she told you too.”

  I’m so fucking stunned I don’t want to sit around and talk, push him to tell me what’s going on with him. It’s a fruitless exercise anyway. He talks less and less, and never to me.

  Like Sydney, from the looks of it.

  “How about eating something?” he mutters. “I’m starving.”

  “I’ll make sandwiches,” I say automatically. “I’ll just… shit, Grandpa. I need to fix him lunch, or he’ll be pissed.”

  That’s a good enough excuse for escaping Nate’s concerned gaze and taking a moment to gather my wits. I enter my apartment, close the door and lean back against it, my heart hammering.

  Why didn’t she tell me? Why won’t she talk to me? Why won’t Nate let me in about his problems? Or Kash?

  I thought I had friends. I thought not talking to Syd about wanting her was what I had to do to keep these friends, and here I am: the idiot who’s left outside.

  And then Grandpa stands hollering from his bedroom, and for once I’m grateful for the distraction.

  “Where’s the food?” Grandpa yells as I busy myself in the kitchen. “You want us all to starve, is that it?”

  “I just got back from school.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Always late. Always with that boy, what’s his name. The faggot. Always knew there was something wrong with you both.”

  “I’m not… what the hell are you talking about? Nate and me, we’re friends.”

  “I’m old, not stupid. And look at this place. All filthy. Do you even wash your hands after touching his dick? This is disgusting.”

  “God, stop.” I drop the dishes on the table and storm out of the kitchen. “Make your own damn food.”

  “I’m paying for everything, boy,” he yells after
me. “For the food, for the apartment, for the clothes on your back. You think you get to walk out of here just like that? Get back here.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Della is coming to eat. Won’t you have any food for her? And me, an old man. You’ll let me starve? Always unreliable. Almost getting your sister killed once wasn’t enough. Now you want to get rid of me too.”

  I stop halfway through the living room, my fists clenching. “I was only a bit late.”

  “Like you were a bit late that day? Almost too late.”

  I freeze, turn around to look at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “You know very well what I’m talking about.” He jabs his big, bony finger at me. “You know what you did.”

  Yeah, I do. But still I fight it, fight the guilt, the fear. “I was just a kid.”

  “You were old enough!”

  “I didn’t know what to do. And you left us in that filthy place to die.”

  Vomit, piss, rats crawling over my legs, roaches running on the walls, over us.

  “You were supposed to call me if she wasn’t well. You wanted her dead, didn’t you?” He sneers, his wrinkles deepening around his mouth, like cracks. “So you could have all my attention. Little bastard.”

  “God. Fuck. I didn’t.” Black dots spangle my vision. “You know I didn’t.”

  “Liar.” He spits at me. The spittle lands on the carpet at my feet. “Well, I’m going out to eat. You’d better do something about all this filth you’re sitting in.”

  The moment he’s out of the apartment, I stagger into the bathroom and throw up. Then I grab the torn rubber gloves, the bleach and the brush and get to work.

  This place is dirty. It will always be dirty in my mind.

  Just like me.

  Nate isn’t at school again today. Though it’s nothing strange anymore, him missing classes like he doesn’t care. He won’t answer my calls or texts either.

  We were supposed to study for a test together, and last thing I want is to go home and face my grandfather or my sister who came back home only to tell me I’m such a fucking disappointment and leave again with her friends.

  Which only got Grandpa even more furious at me. Apparently, her roaming the streets with her friends instead of keeping down a job is all my fucking fault.

  The past week has been hell, and I’m done.

  So this is what I blame for what I’m about to do. I mean, fuck this. Fuck Nate. I’m all out of patience today.

  Pulling out my ring of keys, I find the spare key Nate gave me years ago and pray the lock is still the same.

  The key turns, the lock clicks, and I’m in.

  I haven’t been in Nate’s apartment in so long, and yet it feels like yesterday. The living room with its checkered furniture is familiar like the back of my hand.

  “Mr. Brady? Nate?” I step further inside, but I’m greeted by absolute silence. “Kash?”

  Nothing. I open Nate’s bedroom door, but it’s empty. His bed is a damn mess, the covers twisted up, his nightstand lamp on the floor. There’s a funky smell—like urine, and decay.

  I shiver. “Nate? Where are you?”

  He’s not in the kitchen, or the bathroom. I find his phone in the living room, beside the sofa, as if he dropped it there and left it.

  A prickling feeling at the back of my neck has me going through the rooms again. But he’s nowhere to be found.

  I stop in front of a closed door. This is his folks’ bedroom. I’ve never been inside. Why would I?

  Now I knock on the door, then turn the handle and push without waiting for a reply.

  It whines as it swings open into the dimness. In here the stench is even worse and I gag, taking a step back.

  What the hell?

  I’m about to turn around and go, when I hear a faint sound. Someone’s panting. The hairs on the back of my neck lift.

  Stepping back inside, I glance around and find a boy-shaped shadow by the window, curled into the corner.

  “Nate.” My heart stops, then starts again, trying to pound its way out of my chest. “Holy hell, man, you scared the shit out of me. What are you doing in here?”

  “West.” His voice sounds rusty, rough.

  He’s only dressed in boxer shorts, and shit, he’s so skinny I can count his ribs. A quick scan doesn’t show any bruises or wounds, though, so what the hell’s going on here?

  “Is it a migraine? Are you in pain?”

  He says nothing.

  “Come on. Let’s get you to your room,” I say in the voice I use for my sister when she’s half out of it. “Up.”

  I end up hauling him upright, and he leans into me, face turned away, twisted into a grimace. He seems to be in pain, but I don’t know what’s happening.

  “Dammit, talk to me, Nate.” I pull him along, relieved to be out of that room. “I’m your friend. Tell me what’s going on.”

  Nothing. He’s silent, letting me sit him down on his bed, check him over once more, but there is no sign of violence.

  “Nate…”

  He shakes his head. I sit down beside him, put my arm around him and hold him.

  He allows that, too.

  “You have to talk to me,” I say after a while. “Are you even listening to me? Let me fucking help, Jesus Christ.”

  “West.” His head is bent, hair falling in his eyes. It’s grown too long, I think randomly. “You can’t.”

  “You don’t know that. Just let me try.”

  His breath hitches. “You don’t get it. Would you ever go away? Leave your granddad and your sister?”

  My chest grows too tight. I think of my sister, and our secret. “They wouldn’t make it without me. Why? What are you thinking?”

  “Doesn’t matter. You can’t help me, West.”

  “Listen.” I tug him closer. “What’s going on? You said it’s not your dad, then who is it, Nate? What is it? Is it drugs? Tell me.”

  But he pulls away from me. Shutting me out again. “Go back to your family, man. I’m all right.”

  Nate never lied to me before. He didn’t always tell me everything, but he never lied.

  He is lying now.

  Nate won’t talk to me. The days pass, and with every new day the distance between us seems to grow vaster. He’s been withdrawing more and more over the past few months, and this last bit was like a door slamming in my face.

  Leaving me outside.

  Leaving me alone.

  I thought I had a brother who’d be beside me at all times, but I was wrong. Not that I think he’s trying to hurt me, not on purpose. But he is. I don’t know what’s going through his mind, why he thinks keeping me in the dark is the best way.

  Best way to kill a friendship. I’d tell him, if he talked to me at all. But even at school he avoids me, avoids everyone. Syd says he avoids her, too.

  Then I think about him huddled in his parents’ room, about the vacant look on his face, and I shiver.

  All sorts of terrible scenarios go through my head. He has a mental disorder. He’s hooked on meth. He’s sick and dying and doesn’t want me to know. Cancer. Leukemia. AIDS.

  I’m driving myself fucking crazy with the possibilities.

  But I’m distracted by Grandpa having some nasty days with his bad heart and Della making cryptic comments about death that have me scrubbing floors and bathrooms like crazy in an effort to get my racing heartbeat back under control.

  She’ll try it again. I can feel it. She got dead drunk a couple of times over the past few months, but nothing crazy. Nothing too worrisome.

  It won’t last. Not when Grandpa is demanding all my attention, when I bathe him and cook for him and check his meds. When I sit by his bed.

  My sis is an attention-whore. But also sick. She’s so fucking sick. Depressed. We’ve taken her to shrinks, to psychologists. She plays along, and then spirals down and out of control again. Maybe it’s drugs, maybe it’s her friends, maybe it’s a chemical imbalance in her brain.
/>   I dread the day when I come home too late. The day I repeat my mistake, the one Grandpa will never let me forget about, and this time fail.

  Fail the test.

  Lose, like it’s a fateful game. Lose the battle.

  Lose everything. Because if I do, who would want to keep me? And yet I can’t lie, like Nate can. Not even to myself. That day will come, and it will break me like nothing else could.

  I walk Sydney home a few days later, and we’re both so lost in thought we make our way in silence through the city.

  So she shocks me into a stumble when she turns to me and says, “Are you the one leaving me money every two weeks?”

  “Money?”

  “Yeah. Under the door? No?” She sighs. “It’s not you. Gotcha.”

  I’m frowning, trying to figure out what she’s talking about, to read between the lines. Not my forte. “Do you need money?”

  “No. I’m good.”

  “Look… Nate told me about your mom.” I scowl down at my dirty sneakers as I step over a hole in the sidewalk. “Sorry about that.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything? You doing okay?”

  “Yeah, thanks.” She flashes me a quick smile.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about it?”

  She shrugs, hops off the sidewalk, then back on. “It didn’t come up.”

  “And it came up with Nate and Kash?”

  Her mouth twists, and she shoots me a guarded look. “They asked me. I told them.”

  Fuck. So this is on me. But I did ask Nate, many times over, and he never replies to my questions. I know practically nothing about Sydney, or Nate, and let’s not even mention Kash.

  “West…” She has stopped and is making puppy eyes at me.

  “What?”

  “Don’t be mad at me. I couldn’t stand it. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I just… wasn’t sure I wanted anyone to know.”

  “Why not?”

  “I thought… if I didn’t tell anyone, it wouldn’t be real, you know? That she isn’t coming back. That I’m all alone.”