Broken Compass

Dunno what I’d do without them.

Don’t wanna find out.

I know relationships often fall apart over grief and sorrow. Happened to classmates. Hell, my dad went off the rails when mom died. I remember when it happened, all those years ago, and how he changed. I remember when he stopped being my dad.

When he started seeing Jane, started fighting with her, when she turned to drugs and became the ghost of the woman she’d been.

When I started hiding in the bedroom with her some nights when dad’s buddies came over, knowing he wouldn’t let them into the room with her. Fights or not, he wouldn’t let them touch her, unlike me.

Relationships fall apart because the people in them change, bowed and distorted out of shape by pain, so that they don’t fit together anymore.

And I know Kash is gone, but I can’t lose this, too, this new family I’ve found. I’ll fold over my broken edges, try not to hurt Syd and West, and hope they’ll still keep me.

I don’t wanna ever let go.

It’s Sydney who finds the piece of paper tucked inside the leather cover at the back of the journal. The paper is yellow with age, and on it is the crude drawing of a compass.

Which doesn’t point north.

There’s also a phrase in Russian written below, and we sort of translate it with Google Translate. Apparently it says something in the lines of, “The difference you make is the key to everything.”

A Russian saying? A random wisdom bit? A line from a book?

“If his dad wrote it there, it has to be important,” Syd says.

“Like the compass is? We don’t even know that the compass means anything.”

“Nate! How about some positive thinking, huh?”

Okay. Not my forte, but I can try. I study the goddamn compass, wondering what I’m missing. It only has the letters for the cardinal points, and that phrase below.

I give up. “Fucking thing isn’t even pointing north.”

“Yeah,” West says. “It’s a broken compass.”

Broken like us.

“It’s pointing to the south-west.” Syd taps a slim finger on the hand of the compass. “Why? Kash comes from the north. How is this connected?”

“Maybe it isn’t. Remember, his dad told him his uncle had his family killed and gave him this compass. A direction wouldn’t be useful.”

“Okay, then. What?”

“Wait, I have a compass app.” West pulls out his phone, taps something on the screen. “It’s a deviation of 129.39°.”

“Wait,” Sydney frowns, “wasn’t there a difference between true north and magnetic north? At school—”

“I doubt this is what the drawing is about,” West says. “It’s so simple, basic. Just giving us…”

“A number. The degrees of the deviation.” I stare at the compass. “But a number of what?”

West’s face is now flushed, his eyes bright and alive. “What sort of numbers are important?”

“Passwords?”

“To a computer?”

“Or a safe,” West says. “A safety deposit box?”