The Brokenhearted Read Online Free PDF Page A

late to look up and notice me. When the doors slide shut behind them, I finally ask the obvious. “How did you find me?”
    “I asked a few friends where the best dancers in North Bedlam practiced. All roads led to Swans.” Gavin’s cheeks turn the faintest hint of pink. “I hope you don’t mind.”
    “No, I don’t mind.” I look up into the glass-walled third floor of Seven Swans, where nine bunned heads tilt in unison above nine pairs of shoulders. Nine bare, sinewy arms reaching gracefully up, bending toward the windows, then up again. Like the legs of a giant, graceful caterpillar.
    “ They’re starting practice without me,” I murmur, transfixed for a moment by the scene. In thirteen years, I’ve never watched this ritual from the outside.
    “Take a ride with me,” Gavin says. “I want to show you something.”
    My mind whirls with a million reasons I should say no, the main one being that I never, ever miss ballet. Two more: My parents would kill me if they found out I was on a motorcycle with a South Sider, and Serge picks me up from ballet every night at seven. A sharp gust of wind hits my back, as if urging me toward Gavin.
    His voice is gentle. “Don’t think too hard.”
    I squint up at the studio one last time, at the girls at the barre, a lifetime of routine beckoning me back into its safe embrace. I think of my parents, of my homework, of ballet, of Serge, of Will. And then I stop thinking entirely.
    “Let’s go.”

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HarperCollins Publishers
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    CHAPTER 4
    I ignore the alarm bells going off in my head and tell myself to focus on the little details: the thrum of the bike underneath me, the wind in my face, the way my stomach flutters when Gavin’s warm back is pressed against my chest.
    We hurtle through Bankers Alley and the Bank of Bedlam rears up before us, its mirrored façade slicing our reflection into dozens of tiny triangles. The downtown office of Fleet Industries is only two blocks away—my parents could be anywhere among the suited businesspeople bustling down the street.
    We pass a cluster of twenty tents and my gaze fixes on a sign that says EAT THE RICH , a huge pair of garish lips around the words. Another sign reads THE REAL BEDLAM WILL RISE UP AGAIN . The protest encampment has been a fixture here since before I was born, its scruffy members chanting about justice and equality. Every couple of weeks, the police come and break it up, but the protesters always reappear the next day, stoic and bruised, with new signs that say things like COPS ARE NOT ABOVE THE LAW . When I look up again, we’re about to ride across the Bridge of Forgetting and enter the South Side.
    “You okay?” Gavin yells over his shoulder as the bike idles.
    “Yeah, I just haven’t been over the bridges in a long time,” I yell back, the wind sucking the words out of my mouth. Or ever.
    “It’s safe, I promise,” he yells. “At least when you’re with me.” He guns the bike, and we take off across the bridge.
    Hundreds of locks hang from the balustrade’s filigreed stonework, left by couples who have walked this bridge, locked padlocks to it, and tossed the keys into the river to symbolize their unbreakable bond. I wonder how many keys are at the bottom. Hundreds? Thousands? How many romantic declarations have been made here over the years?
    Once we’re off the bridge, Gavin pulls the bike over to the curb and cuts the engine. “Let’s walk from here.”
    The slate-gray sky is beginning to fill with faint streaks of pink and orange. Unlike in the north, with its industrial wall along the river to prevent flooding, the South Side is lined by a grassy embankment that slopes easily down toward the rocky shore. Circus birds, Bedlam’s neon-red-and-yellow finches, hop about on the ground, chirping and joyful.
    As we travel along the sidewalk bordering the river, I take a closer look at the