Burn(17)

“I don’t think my dad would complain. He likes your dad.”

“No one likes my dad. They tolerate him.”

“My dad respects him.”

“Does he?”

Sarah shrugged. “He never talks bad about him.”

“Which for this town is something like respect, I guess.”

“I always thought it was your dad who’d have a problem.”

“He would. A big one.”

“Well, there you go. That’s why we keep it a secret.”

“But why should my dad having a problem be something that stops us?”

“Because we’re young. Because he runs your house. Because he’s got the power to send you to prep school.”

“You haven’t said you’ll miss me.”

“You haven’t said you’ll miss me.”

He sighed slow and long. She was surprised to see he was holding back tears. She moved into the space under his arm. The smell of him now wasn’t exactly nice—it was sweat and hamburger grease and whatever it was beneath that was Jason’s own individual smell—but she liked it. It was a place to rest. Safely.

Plus, he could kiss her—as he did now—with a softness that made her toes wriggle.

“Don’t you feel like there’s two reasons to keep a secret?” she said. “Because on the one hand, it would get you into trouble. But on the other, if it’s secret, it’s valuable. It belongs to you and not anyone else.”

“So you want to keep this a secret still?”

“Want? I want a world where my mother is alive and where we’re not going to lose our farm and where nuclear war isn’t a daily threat and where no one will hold us down because of the color of our skin or because we’re so poor we had to hire a dragon. That’s what I want.”

He sniffed. “Point taken.”

She moved out from under his arm, missed it, but started buttoning up her coat anyway. “Plus, dating is one thing, but neither of our fathers would have anything positive to say about us meeting like this.”

“My father would kill me.”

“Oh, you,” she said, a bitterness in her voice that surprised her. “I’d be ruined. The town harlot. You’d just be—”

“Regularly beaten up by local police officers?”

She looked at him. At his short hair, cut brutally up the sides, at the lanky arms, at the few hairs that sprouted where a moustache might theoretically be. He was right. She was right. And there was nothing either of them could do about it.

“Secret because it’s valuable,” he said.

She let her silence be a yes, then she said, “We should get going.”

She opened the back door of the office, the one that led into the small alley behind Al’s where the dumpsters were, where there was only a distant streetlight to cast any illumination.

It was still enough to see Deputy Kelby waiting there for her, his police baton out, and a smile on his face that would haunt Sarah Dewhurst for the rest of her life.

“Slut,” he said. His first word. A word that told her everything she needed to know about how this was going to go.

“Sarah—” Jason said, following her out, stopping when he saw Kelby.

“Everyone knows your kind are whores,” Kelby said, with a calm delight that was more unnerving than his stupid rage could ever have been. He glanced over to Jason. “But doing it with the Yellow Peril? That’s gotta be the lowest of the low.”

“And you’d know, would you?” Jason said.

This time, Sarah didn’t even try to warn him. Nothing was going to happen now that could possibly be made worse.

“Slut,” Kelby said again, still with the smile. “Your daddy is gonna love this.”

“Stop talking to her like that,” Jason said.

“And who’s going to make me?” Kelby stepped forward, tossing the police baton up in the air with a spin, catching it like he was playing a game.

“We weren’t doing anything wrong,” Sarah said, her voice shaky.

“Then why were you hiding it?” Kelby sneered.

“Why do you do this?” she whispered as he approached, backing her up. “Why are you like this?”

“I don’t have to have a reason,” he said, “not for a filthy whore like you.”

“Don’t call her that,” Jason said, stepping between them. Kelby’s baton lashed out so fast Jason didn’t even have a chance to duck. It hit him on the throat, and he fell to his knees, coughing as if to choke.

“Stop it!” Sarah yelled.

Kelby turned back to her. “Or you’ll what?” He advanced on her again, until she felt the dumpster at her back. He came uncomfortably close. “Hey,” he said, whispering now, “maybe we can come to some understanding. Maybe you could give me a little of what you give him.”

He moved even closer. She could smell his rank body odor, see the way his hungry, weasly eyes darted in the streetlight. He moved the baton down to the hem of her skirt and started to raise it.

“No,” she said.

He didn’t listen.

“No.” But he kept pushing up the fabric. In her terror, she said something, too quiet for him to hear.

“What did you say?” he whispered.