All the Inside Howling (Hollow Folk #2)(13)

She gave a little crying laugh and waved the cigarette like she was trying to start a forest fire, little embers cascading between us. “Me. Ok, yeah. Just great. You, on the other hand, you look like shit.”

“Feel like shit.”

“My dad’s going to kill me,” she said, taking another long drag on the cigarette. “Just kill me when he sees what I did to the car. I’ll never get to leave the house, not until I’m forty. Nobody wants to date a girl who’s forty. I mean, maybe they do. What do I know? And you, you’re never going to talk to me again, and oh fuck, I’m such an idiot.”

I glanced at the car. It sat with one tire on the sidewalk, its front driver-side wheel-well crumpled against the cement barrier that marked the edge of a vacant lot. The engine still purred, and the ding-ding-ding warning came from inside, so I climbed across the seat and turned it off. When I handed Becca the keys, she gave another of those hiccupy laughs that was more like crying and said, “Thanks.”

“Becca, what happened last night?”

“That.” She dropped the cigarette and ground it out. Her hands were shaking, and when she noticed, she clasped them together. She had the look, just a little, of a girl wandering in off the street, into a church, maybe, or a shelter. There was something unsettled about her, something terrified. The look of a girl who’s had all the pretty skin of life peeled back from the bone. “It takes a car crash for me to stop thinking about it, and the first thing you do is bring it up.” She rubbed her arms. “I’m freezing. Are you freezing?”

I nodded.

“Let’s go. You drive.” She dropped the keys into my hand and climbed into the passenger seat.

I didn’t have a driver’s license, and most of my time behind the wheel had been for driver’s ed, but, with a great deal of scraping and grinding, I managed to get us off the curb and back into the street. With every rotation of the tire, the brown Ford screeched. Instead of heading home, though, I drove east, towards the mountains and the blue thistledown shadows ruffling their bottom.

“He never showed up.” The words slipped out of Becca, pitched towards the floormat, so low that the whoosh of the heater almost swallowed them. “River. That’s his name.”

I swallowed the nasty comment I wanted to make. “Ok.”

“I had his number—”

“What?”

“It was only, I don’t know, just to text him. If he wanted to. So when you said you didn’t want me to take you to the hospital, I asked him if he wanted to meet up. Just until the bus left. We were going to meet at the station.”

“So he ditched you.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense.” Staring out the window, Becca curled her feet under her. “I knew it didn’t make sense, even at the time. Why tell me he would meet me and lie?”

“He got busy, something came up,” I shrugged. “He’s a guy.”

“You mean he changed his mind about me.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“But even if that were true, he still wouldn’t have missed his bus. You heard him. He’s traveling cross-country. If he missed the bus, he’d be stuck here at least a day, he’d have to get a hotel, all of that.”

“I know he was cute, Becca, but don’t you think you’re overreacting? So he didn’t show up. So what?”

“That’s what I said. No big deal. Plenty of fish in the sea.” Becca pulled her lip between her teeth, and tears ran down her cheeks. “I was walking home, and—” her voice break. “And he called me.”

“What?”

“I shouldn’t have answered. I was mad at him, but I thought maybe—” she shrugged, and more tears spilled. “He was screaming. No words, but the noises he made . . .” She wiped her cheeks with the heel of her hand. “Vie, you were there. In that dream. You saw what happened to him. How could you be there?”

“I—”

“Don’t lie to me. Please don’t lie to me.”

This time, I was the one who needed to swallow. Becca was right: at the end of the dream, at the very end, I had seen the drifter boy—River—in the Dumpster. I had seen the horrifying torture inflicted on him, seen the mutilation of his body, especially his face. It was so severe, I wouldn’t have known who it was except for the bloodstained denim jacket beside him. Whatever sick person had killed River, he had done it for pleasure and had taken a long time doing it.

I had told Emmett and Austin about what I could do, but only because I had used my ability to sift through their memories. Would it really be any different if I told Becca?

“I can just—” I paused. “I can, well, do things.”

“Like what?”

“God, Becca. I don’t know.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t—I mean, just little things. Pick up on people’s emotions. Their moods. Their—”

“Dreams?”

“I guess.” She didn’t answer, and when I risked a glance, her face was thoughtful. “You believe me?”

“You were there, Vie. In the dream. I know you were there.” She chewed her lip again. “I never saw River’s body. Not . . . not awake, I mean. All I had was that phone call, and I spent the rest of the night looking for him until I drove to your place this morning. Seeing him, his body, in that Dumpster. Why would I dream that? It was so vivid. And at the end, that—that thing. Behind the door.”