All the Inside Howling (Hollow Folk #2)(10)

It was all over her face: the drifter boy. That cocky piece of—

“What did he do to you?”

She shook her head. “It’s not—”

I must have tightened my grip without realizing it, because she winced and pulled away. Some color drifted back into her face, and her cheeks tightened as she took a long draw on the cigarette, massaging her forehead with one fist.

“What did he do? I’m not going to hurt him,” that part was a lie, “but you need to tell me.”

Still rubbing her forehead, Becca cocked one eye at me.

“What?” I asked.

“You’re a terrible liar.”

“If he—”

The smoke and the conversation seemed to have helped, because Becca had straightened up and pulled at her shirt—and only now did I notice that she was wearing a very low cut blue blouse, studded with little rhinestones across the chest, and very, very, very tight jeans.

“Don’t,” she said.

I raised both hands.

“You are not my father, Vie. So just don’t.”

“I didn’t even say anything.”

“I need coffee. Do you? Yes. Yes, let’s get coffee.”

Without waiting for an answer, she climbed back into her car, and after a bewildered moment I followed. When I tried to talk, Becca shook her head and turned on her music. She drove back into town, crossing the Bighorn River and heading away from the old downtown. When the tires thudded across the old bridge, my heart did this funny flop the way it had for the last week or two every time I saw the bridge. Part of that was the memory of falling: the despair, the momentum, the cold black of the water. And part of it was Emmett.

Emmett Bradley, who steamed like sex over an open fire, had pulled me out of the river. He had saved my life, in more ways than one. He had gotten me to open up, to share parts of my life with him that I hadn’t shared with anyone: not Gage, not Becca. Not Austin. And Emmett Bradley, even after insisting he didn’t want to date me, had gotten so angry when Austin kissed me that he had cut all communication. I hadn’t heard a word from him since that last day at his house, when he told me never to talk to him, never to call him, never to come back. At school, he looked through me like I was a window pane.

Forget him, I told myself for the millionth time. Forget him, because he’s selfish and because he’s cruel and because he didn’t even want to date you in the first place. But I couldn’t help thinking about him, and about the cracks I’d seen in his armor, and the person—the remarkable, wonderful person—underneath. The wonderful person, I reminded myself, who hated me now.

As we pulled to a stop in front of The Big Swirl, Vehpese’s local donut shop, I looked at Becca. Her hands drifted over the steering wheel, tracing the bumps in the molded plastic, and her eyes stared out vacantly.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” I asked. “He didn’t hurt you?” Something percolated in my still sleepy brain, a remote possibility, but why else would a girl act like this? “Are you . . .”

It took her a moment. “You’re kidding, right?’

“I mean—”

“It’s not like you can tell right away. It takes weeks.”

“That’s not what I was—”

“And do you think I don’t know anything about protection?”

“Becca, you’re—”

“And even if there were the remotest possibility, would I tell you like this? Would I tell anyone like this?”

“Probably not, but—”

“So, to sum up: do you know anything, even the smallest, tiniest thing, about pregnancy?”

“I, um. What goes where?”

She made a throwing-up noise and got out of the car. Face red, I trailed after her into the donut shop. At eight o’clock, a steady crowd filtered through the store without making the place feel crowded. In an hour, maybe less, the building would be packed as late-risers decided to indulge in a calorie-and caffeine-heavy breakfast. Becca pitched herself into a booth at the back, slumping against window and leaving a long, greasy mark where her forehead trailed across it. It was, I realized, up to me to order. I bought two cups of coffee and a bear claw, and by the time I got back to the booth, Becca’s head was on her arms. Asleep, I thought, but her breathing didn’t sound like normal, sleeping breaths: they were shallow, and she twisted and burrowed her face into the crook of her arm. She didn’t say anything, but tiny whimpers came from her throat.

“Becca,” I whispered. “Becca, wake up.”

But nothing. Nothing but the rapid rise and fall of her chest, and the darting movements behind her closed eyes, and the whistle in her throat that sounded like a train getting closer and closer, this whistley screech that scared up the hairs on the back of my neck.

“Becca.”

Still nothing. There was something I could try, something that I had learned about myself in Vehpese—something that Emmett had taught me, and the thought of him tangled up everything inside me again. For most of my life, being psychic had been a pain in the ass. Worse than a pain in the ass. When I touched someone, or when I looked them in the eyes, I saw things and felt things: sometimes it was a snatch of a song, sometimes it was a memory, but it was always unfailingly awful, exposing me to the most brutal, the most horrible depths of the soul.