All the Inside Howling (Hollow Folk #2)(105)

“What’s wrong?” I said. “I need to know what’s wrong so I can—”

“Don’t.” Strings of saliva glistened between his lips, and his words were thick, almost unintelligible. “Did you mean it?”

“Did I mean what?”

“Don’t fucking lie to me. Did you mean it?”

Did I mean—oh God. I hadn’t been alone when I’d been thinking about Emmett. I had been inside his head. And somehow he had heard me. Somehow he had—

“Oh my God,” Emmett said, wrapping his head in his arms. “I can’t be in here.” He sprinted to the door, threw it open, and disappeared outside.

I ran after him, barefoot and without even the minimal protection of River’s denim jacket. The wind hit me like a blade, and my feet went from painfully chilled to agonizing after a dozen steps. By the time I reached the bottom of the steps, Emmett was almost halfway down the block. I dashed after him.

Fortunately for me, Emmett was barefoot too, and after another two blocks, he began to lose steam. Eventually he slowed, settling onto a retaining wall that had been tagged Los Vicios and burying his head in his hands. I approached him at a walk.

Denver might have been a beautiful city in some parts, but this was not one of them. Tall industrial buildings from the seventies lined this street, a mixture of narrow red bricks and lustreless concrete paneling. Weeds grew thick and brown, outlining the cracks in the sidewalk and along the retaining wall where Emmett sat. His bare feet brushed a rusty washer and sent it scraping along the cement into the dirt around a fire hydrant which was, in its own way, something of a monument: it had at least a half foot of dog crap mounded up around it.

Emmett’s legs continued to kick, his soles rasping against the sidewalk, as I approached. After a moment, when he didn’t run again, I settled onto the retaining wall next to him, wrapping my arms around myself. Another gust of wind picked up, whipping my hair. I’d forgotten to tie it up again, and now I was blinded as the locks tangled in front of my eyes.

When another minute had passed, I said, “Kind of cold.”

He laughed, and it sounded like someone squeezing out a sponge.

“I—” I stopped, unsure of how to proceed. Another minute whistled past, with that freezing wind cutting us both. “I guess you . . . heard some of that. What I was thinking. About you.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose, still not looking at me. “It wasn’t like hearing. Not exactly.”

I waited for more, but that was all he said. “Oh.”

“It was like I could feel it. Exactly what you felt. It was like—” He shivered, and I shifted, not even thinking about it, to put an arm around him. As soon as I moved, though, Emmett scooted down the wall, putting another foot between us. “It was like, well.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

He gave me that wet-sponge laugh again. “Jesus, Vie.” He shook all over, and after a struggle, he seemed to get himself under control again. “Of course it matters.”

“You don’t have to tell me.”

“Of course I do. That’s the whole point.”

“Emmett—”

“There’s this church. Not in Vehpese, back in California. Before we moved, we would drive by it, I don’t know, maybe ten times a week. We never went to church. Not once, not in my whole goddamn life. I wouldn’t even know what to do if we did. I mean, I guess you pray. Maybe you kneel.” He wiped a shaky hand down his face and laughed again. “My brain feels like it’s been shook up in an empty tin can. Anyway, there’s this church, and on the front, they’ve got this big mural. It’s Mexican, I think. The mural, not the church, but maybe the church too. And in this mural, there’s this tiny white lady wrapped all in blue and white, except you can see her heart. That always seemed so weird that you could see her heart, but it had a big halo around it, and it was right in the center of her chest. And right there, smack dab in the middle of her heart, was this arrow, and the arrow was on fire. I remember I told my dad she had heartburn.” He wiped his face again. “That’s what it was like. It was like . . . it was like being shot in the heart with a burning arrow. That’s what it was like.” He took a breath. “So now you know.”

I waited a minute, and then another, waiting to see if there were more, but he stayed silent. He was shivering harder, though, and I could feel myself starting to shake too.

“Is that how you feel about Austin?” Emmett asked, but he almost immediately shook his head. “Don’t answer that. I’m shit for asking that, so don’t answer it. It’s just . . .” He trailed off, seeming to fight with himself, and the next words exploded from him. “How can you feel that much all the time? How can you not go crazy, or crawl out of your skin, or jump off a skyscraper?”

“There’s no skyscrapers in Vehpese.”

“We don’t have to—” I paused, trying to think of a way to say this. “If it’s too much, I’d understand if you—”

“Let’s go back,” Emmett said, getting to his feet. He dropped his hands, but he still wouldn’t look at me.

“I’m sorry,” I said again.

“For what?” Emmett said. “Giving me indigestion?” Then he laughed, and he sounded a little more like himself, and he took off back towards the hotel.