Zachary sniffed the air for the signature Sonic drink flavor—Blue Coconut or Blue Raspberry. Indeterminable.
“Sorry!” The man was in his mid-twenties and wore tortoiseshell eyeglasses. “Oh my God. I’m so sorry.”
Katie’s cheeks flushed as she wiped the ice from her blouse. “It’s okay.”
The man tried to help her brush it off, but his touch made her wince, and he immediately backed off, looking even more chagrined.
Raspberry. For some reason, that was the wrong flavor. Zachary inhaled deeply and widened his chest. And he was already a big guy. “What the fuck, Glasses? Why don’t you watch where you’re going?”
“I—I was looking for my cousin in the band, and—”
“Really,” Katie said. “It’s okay.”
“He should have to pay for your shirt,” Zachary said.
The man went for his wallet, but Katie stopped him. “There’s no need. These things happen.” When Zachary puffed up again, she added, “I’m fine, Zach.”
His father called him Zach. His real father. Zachary didn’t let anyone else call him that, but with her coppery hair and leggy tallness . . . yes.
Zachary was tall and broad and fat. His ex-stepfather used to tease him about his weight. The bastard had known what he was doing—he’d known those jokes hurt boys as much as girls. Zachary had tried to deflect them, but the snide comments had landed anyway. He was perfectly aware that his thoughts were both corrupted and misguided, but tall girls made him feel like the right size. They made him feel like less of a freak.
His chest deflated. He let her Zach slide. The man with the glasses scurried away into the crowd.
Katie sighed. “I should go.”
“Right. Gotta hand out the rest of those candles.” But when Zachary peered into her cardboard box, it was empty.
She smiled. “You were my last stop. I just need to get home. My mom’s leaving for work, and I have to watch my brother and sister.”
“Do you need a ride?”
“Nah.” She said it lightly, but she hugged the box against her chest. His question had made her uncomfortable. “I live nearby. I walked here.”
“How old are your brother and sister?” Zachary had to keep the conversation going, if only to prove he wasn’t that guy. He wasn’t a threat.
“They’re twins. Six. Do you have any siblings?”
“Nah,” he said, echoing her earlier nah.
Katie smiled again, but this time it was tinged with something else. Sadness, perhaps. At least it wasn’t pity. “Stay safe, okay? Find someone here to hang out with.”
As she walked away, he changed his mind. It had been pity.
“Fuck you,” he said. Louder than his normal voice.
Katie stopped. She looked over her shoulder and met his stare. “I don’t think you mean that.” And then she vanished in the crowd.
Maybe he’d been wrong about her.
Maybe he was just an asshole.
Zachary shoved the candle into his pocket. He leaned against the bridal shop and closed his eyes. His head swam. A drum began to beat, and his eyes popped back open, paranoid that he was about to see David—that David was about to attack Katie—when he caught a flash of camouflage in a window across the street.
“Oh, shit. Shit!” He glanced wildly around, but she was gone. He knew she was gone. He was really, really stoned. After all, he’d stolen Terry’s good shit. He closed his eyes again. Opened them. Stared hard at the grocery store’s dark windows.
Nothing. There was nothing there.
Caleb retraced his path to the dusty break room, but the plume wasn’t there. The stupid feathery pipe cleaner wasn’t anywhere. Had he missed it outside in his panic? Wherever it had fallen, it no longer mattered. The drum cadence had begun. The sharp rap of the snare reverberated off the thin walls of the empty store. The band was on the move.
As Caleb rushed into the back room, his face warmed with premature humiliation. Arriving late. Not properly dressed. Footage broadcast around the entire country, capturing my incompetence for all to see.
Stop it, he forced himself. This isn’t about you.
He hurried past the cardboard boxes and reached the exit.
And then, suddenly, it was exactly about him.
“Zachary! Zachary! Zachary!”
People were shouting his name, and an instant later—before he could figure out who or where or why—three figures bombarded him, buzzing with suppressed energy. His eyes widened before narrowing again, lazily. Suspiciously. Makani Young, Ollie Larsson, and . . . Darby. He just went by Darby now, he remembered. They were anxious and expecting something from him.
“What?” he said. Not politely.
“You shouldn’t be here.” Makani’s face was partially concealed by the hood of her hoodie. “You shouldn’t be standing by yourself.”
He couldn’t remember the new girl ever speaking to him before. When she’d transferred here last year, she’d seemed sullen and hurt, and her hips moved through the halls with a fuck-you energy that had intrigued him. He thought maybe she’d find her way to his group of friends, but she’d made Darby and Alex a trio instead.
Zachary pulled out his smokes and put a cigarette between his lips.
“Didn’t you talk to my brother?” Ollie asked.
“Your brother, the cop?”
“He’s the only brother I have.”
Zachary lit the cigarette. He took a long drag. “No.”
The three friends exchanged worried looks. “Chris said he spoke to you,” Ollie said. “He told me he called your house.”
“Maybe he called my house, but we sure as hell didn’t talk. He probably talked to Terry.”
Ollie frowned. “Who’s Terry?”
“My mom’s boyfriend.” The shittiness of this person was implied in his tone. “What’d you do to your hair?”
“Dyed it,” Ollie said with a straight face.
Ollie was good at that, at being expressionless. Zachary couldn’t hide his emotions if his life depended on it. “I know that. Why?”
“Literally nothing could matter less right now,” Makani said.
Ollie’s mouth twitched unexpectedly with a smile. Something she’d said.
“You two,” Zachary said, gesturing between them, “are fucking.”
Makani flinched. Ollie’s smile went cold.
Point, Zachary. And that’s what you get for disturbing my solitude.
“You know,” Darby said, “if you weren’t maybe about to be killed, we’d walk away right now.”
Zachary raised his eyebrows. “Fightin’ words.”
A few feet away stood a large family with several children. The dad glared at Zachary over his shoulder. They hadn’t realized that the crowd had stopped talking to watch the band file down the street. But then an odd thing happened. The dad saw Makani and did a double take. He nudged his wife and whispered into her ear.
Zachary gave him the finger.
The dad turned away quickly. But then he glanced at them again, and Zachary had the craziest feeling that a murmur was traveling through the crowd.
Makani stepped closer. She was so focused on Zachary that it seemed like her eyes were avoiding someone else. That dad? “Listen,” she said quietly, “we have reason to believe that you’re David’s next victim.”
“Not likely,” Zachary said. “Me and David go way back.”
She looked surprised. Until she registered the smidge of doubt that he was unable to mask, and then her friends were pressing up against him, too, hissing about some lunatic theory that David was murdering everyone who’d been a bully.
Zachary stomped out his cigarette to push them away. “Well, if that’s true, it won’t be much longer until David kills himself. Problem’s gonna sort itself out.”
Makani grimaced—and he remembered. It explained why all these people were staring at them. It explained why the murmur was becoming a small furor.
“Oh, shit.” Zachary finally lowered
his voice. “You were the one attacked last night.”
Her eyes widened with annoyance.
“So . . . wait. If your theory is correct, that makes you an asshole, too.” He paused for a fiendish grin. “What’d you do, Young?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Makani rolled up her left sleeve. A bandage was wrapped around her arm, as high up as he could see. “All you need to know is that I earned this.”
Her friends tried to protest, but she interrupted them. “We’re worried for your safety. This Terry guy doesn’t sound great, but can you trust him? When this is over, can you go home and stay with him?”
“No,” Zachary said to the first question. He stared at her forearm, which she’d already covered back up. “But, yeah. I can stay with him.”
“Good,” she said.
Zachary didn’t like the catch of fear in his chest. He side-eyed Ollie. Their classmates were always comparing them, lumping them together. “What about you? You’ve done some shit.”
“Yeah,” Ollie said. “But the only person I’ve ever hurt is myself.”
“And your brother.”
Ollie flinched. Not so stone-faced, after all. Makani glanced at him as if she were trying to figure something out.
Two points, Zachary.
“In the movies, it’s always the kids who have sex and do drugs that are killed, right?” Zachary forced another grin. “I guess that means we’re both gonna die.”
“You aren’t supposed to be here.” It was the first coherent thought that Caleb could complete.
The hooded figure was blocking the exit. In one hand, he held a plume. In the other, a knife. “Where should I be?” David asked. His dull monotone matched his colorless appearance. The emptiness of humanity shook Caleb to the bones.
He took a trembling step backward. “In the fields. Or in somebody’s barn.”
David took a measured step forward. “I’m not.”
“H-how did you get in here?”
“Why would I answer that?” David let go of the plume. “What if you escaped?”
The band started to play, but something about the music was strange and off-putting. They stopped bickering. Zachary frowned. “What is that? Why do I know that song?”
Darby looked stunned. “It’s the graduation song. ‘Pomp and Circumstance.’”
“Jesus,” Makani said, as Ollie said, “Christ.”
“I guess they didn’t have a go-to funeral dirge in their repertoire,” Darby said.
Zachary listened to the swell of rising pageantry. With each refrain, the march grew more disturbing. “You know, this is the only time this song will ever be played for them.”
“This is so messed up,” Darby said.
“This is gonna get old,” Ollie said.
“This might be worse than if they hadn’t played at all,” Makani said.
The crowd progressed forward. It felt like everyone was staring at them, waiting to see if Makani would join in. She seemed resigned by her despair. Like she didn’t have a choice anymore. Even though there was still an hour before dusk, the townspeople lit their candles. Zachary wasn’t sure why they didn’t wait until they reached the memorial. In the afternoon light, their flames looked weak and silly.
Makani, Ollie, and Darby removed candles from their pockets.
“Coming?” Darby asked.
Zachary pulled out his lighter and candle. “What the hell.” He uncrumpled the candle’s flimsy paper ring. He lit his wick first before touching it to Makani’s.
It blackened. And then it sparked into flame.
Caleb tore out of the back room and into the store, knocking over glass jars, towers of canned goods, and racks of cheap clothing printed with the words LION PRIDE.
David dodged the mounting chaos with alarming ease. Caleb shot past the produce, battering down a carefully constructed pyramid of butternut squash, but David still reached him just before the entrance. David stabbed him in the back. Ripped the knife downward.
Caleb screamed, but no one could hear him over the sound of the band. He flattened against the cold floor. The drum line was poised in front of the doors—the last in line and the last to march away. Caleb pounded on the glass, stamping it with bloody fist prints.
David dragged him out of view.
“What are you gonna do?” Caleb was crying. Haley’s throat. Matt’s brain. Rodrigo’s ears. “What are you gonna do to me?”
David straddled Caleb’s body and stared down at him.
He didn’t smile. He didn’t scowl. He just finished his work while the people of Osborne marched to the school in their parade.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Makani and Ollie walked back to Main Street. If the mood weren’t so subdued, it might have even been called a stroll. The sun was setting, the candles had melted, and the memorial was over. Zachary had been escorted to his car, and Darby had been dropped off with Alex. They were meeting back up with Chris. Their brief time alone was dwindling to an end, and they were trying to make it last.
Makani didn’t feel like Ollie was judging her, or even looking at her askance, but there was something new—faint but solid—wedged between them. They didn’t hold hands. Their hands were tucked back into their pockets, unsure again.
As they turned onto Main Street, only a few short blocks away from Greeley’s, where Ollie’s and Chris’s cars were both parked, she spoke out of last-ditch desperation. “Thanks for listening earlier. In the hospital. And for not judging me.” She paused. “You aren’t judging me, are you?”
Her directness loosened him up. He shook his head with a smile. “No.”
The road had been reopened, and a tailgating stream of cars and trucks were heading home in both directions. Compelled to keep filling the space between her and Ollie, Makani kept talking. “It’s just I never thought I could be that type of person. But I am.”
Unexpectedly, her voice cracked like a mirror. Before the incident, she hadn’t believed that she could be capable of cruelty. Now, she knew that she was.
Ollie stopped. His expression was serious. He waited to speak until she stopped, too. “Everybody has at least one moment they deeply regret, but that one moment . . . it doesn’t define all of you.”
“But it does. It ruined my life. And I deserved for it to be ruined.”
“Makani. Makani.” Ollie repeated it, because she was walking away from him.
She halted. Kept her back to him.
“I’m not trying to absolve you from your sins,” he said. “But the person I know? She’s a good friend. And a good granddaughter.”
Makani crossed her arms. Her uninjured arm pressed against her bandage, and she winced and uncrossed them. “I don’t know. I’d like to think I’m a better person now, but for the rest of my life, I’ll always have this question in my mind. I’ll always have doubt. Something could trigger me, and I might snap or freak out again.”
“Well, I know that our regrets change us, and that’s how we grow—for either better or worse. And it seems to me, you’re growing better.”
Makani wasn’t sure what to make of this.
“Hey.” He gave her a small smile. “I’m still here, right?”
“Well, yeah, but—” She cut herself off.
The smile twisted into a knowing smirk. “Ah. But I’m a fuckup, too.”
Makani looked away quickly. He shrugged like it didn’t matter. But he wasn’t looking at her, either. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“It’s fine.” He started moving again. “It’s not like this town can keep a secret.”
She frowned. Stayed put. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I disagree.”
Ollie glanced back over his shoulder, a disbelieving eyebrow raised in her direction. But her expression made him falter.
“I mean, I’ve heard rumors,” she said, “but not even real rumors. Like, rumors of rumors. And I have no idea what’s true and what’s not, so I assume most of it is not.”
He grimaced. “Some of it�
�s true.”
“I wish you’d tell me.”
There. Another confession. Now that she’d started, she couldn’t stop.
Ollie’s gaze fell to the sidewalk, and the hard exterior cracked, revealing some of the damage underneath. “I’ve wanted to say something, even more since you told us about what you’ve been through, but . . . I didn’t want it to seem like I was comparing my situation to yours or like I thought mine was worse. Or even equal. But I don’t mean to not talk about it. And I know everybody talks about me, anyway.”
“I’d like to hear your version of the story,” Makani said. “Whatever it is.”
Ollie nodded, accepting her confidence. He gestured toward a neon sign behind them, at the opposite end of Main Street from Greeley’s. “You know the Red Spot?”
She did. It was technically a greasy burger joint, but its regulars used it as a bar. And if you weren’t a regular, you didn’t go. The rumor was that you could buy anything there—as long as you were looking for illegal drugs or sex workers.
“After my parents died . . . it messed me up for a few years. When I turned sixteen and got my license, I started hanging out down there. I should have driven somewhere better—somewhere out of town—but there was this girl who worked there. Dark hair, bleeding-heart tattoo. You know, those little pink flowers? Only these were actually dripping blood. I kinda had a thing for her.”
Makani felt a sharp pang of jealousy.
“Everybody there knew who I was. They felt sorry for me, so most of them left me alone. I was like their depressed kid brother. It took weeks of relentless flirting, but I finally got her attention.”
“How old was she?”
“Twenty-three.”
Not as old as the rumors. But way too old for someone who was barely sixteen.
“I guess she pitied me, too.” It seemed to hurt him to admit it. “We hung out at her trailer sometimes and got high.”
“What happened?” Makani asked.
They started walking again. Dried leaves crunched under their shoes.
“Chris found out that we were sleeping together. He was furious. He wanted to arrest her, but . . . words were exchanged first.” In his pause, Makani understood that Ollie’s fight with his brother was still too raw to be spoken aloud. “It was just this whole big, stupid mess. He was still trying to figure out how to be a parent, and I was—I’m not sure what I was trying to figure out.”
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