The Brokenhearted Read Online Free PDF

dilapidated townhouses and brick apartment buildings that line Feverfew Street to the south. There’s graffiti everywhere, scrawled over the bricks and fences, JUSTICE and THE SOUTH IS NOT AFRAID . And over and over again, a million different tags: SYNDIC8. Living in Syn. Synlife.
    Gavin guides me down a narrow dirt path toward a thin footbridge jutting into the river, marked by a rusted metal archway that reads BRIDGE NINE in gothic script. At first, I wonder why I’ve never seen it before. But then I take a closer look and see that after a hundred feet or so, the bridge just . . . stops. It ends in the center of the river, as if someone sliced half of it off. Boards have been nailed haphazardly across the bridge’s abrupt endpoint. “What happened?”
    “We call this the bridge to nowhere. When I was six or seven, they blew up the north half of it. This is what’s left.”
    “They?” I ask.
    Gavin shrugs, the light in his eyes flicking off the way it did just before the party ended the other night. “People who didn’t want South Siders walking to the museum district and scaring the tourists. Same people who killed The Hope, maybe.”
    I shoot him a dubious look. The last time I heard anyone mention The Hope, I was in the seventh grade. He was a crusader for justice who supposedly almost ended the crime wave just before the South Side Riots started. Most people believe he was just an urban legend. At least that’s what I’ve always learned in school. He was killed before I was born, if he ever existed at all.
    “But couldn’t it have been an accident?” I ask. I don’t want to suggest the other scenario that floats through my mind: that South Siders blew it up themselves during the riots.
    Gavin stares out over the river. “Maybe. But then why didn’t they ever rebuild the thing?”
    The path spirals past the bridge and slopes downhill, opening up a moment later into a circular courtyard with an ornate stone fountain at its center. It must have been beautiful once, with three mermaids at the center, their tails flung gorgeously into air. But their faces have crumbled, the stone chipped away. One mermaid has only a chin. Gavin puts a hand on each of my shoulders. “Turn around.”
    In front of us is a curved wall, about ten feet tall and thirty feet wide, encircling the courtyard. A mural covers every square inch of it. Layers and layers of spray paint, but also oil paint, judging by the level of detail. The bottom half is all blues and grays, a mob of angry police, hundreds of them receding into the background, an infinity of cops. So much like my doodle in class today, it’s uncanny. But here, they’re looking up into the sky, at . . .
    My hands cover my mouth as I take it in. A ballet dancer stands on one arched foot atop a raised police baton. She’s midturn, with one slender leg bent and her arms clasped above her. Her hair is red. She wears my Juliet costume.
    And her face, slightly tilted and fierce with concentration, is mine.
    Unconsciously, I’ve walked up to the mural to study it up close. I reach up and touch the hem of the ballerina’s tutu— my tutu. The paint is dry. There are at least four shades of gray layered together to form the folds of glittery tulle.
    At last, I turn to Gavin, my face hot. “You painted this?”
    He shrugs. “I was looking for a way to finish the mural. Once I met you, I knew how to do it.”
    “Nobody’s ever done anything like this for me,” I say.
    “Oh, I’m sure you’ve inspired a lot of admirers on the North Side.”
    “Not exactly.” I turn away from him, hiding my blush as I gaze at the painting. Will once gave me a pair of earrings with a silly little card: You’re my Anthem, and you make me want to sing. But Gavin’s painting took hours of painstaking work. I turn around to face him.
    “I need to tell you something. My last name isn’t Flood. It’s Fleet.”
    He raises one thick eyebrow, pulling a hand through his hair. Then he