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

Although maybe that last part wasn’t quite true. People still watched me the way people in the wild watch a dangerous animal—a bear, or maybe a moose. When they saw me, some of them stopped, frozen in the middle of shoving books in a bagpack, or with a pen dangling from their lips, or once, the first day I was back, a kid who froze with his hand on his fly and stared at me until I decided I could hold it and left the bathroom. It was the watching that made my heart begin to pound, that made me sweat, that made the walls creep closer and closer until I had to get out, I had to run. And some of them did more than watch. Some of them followed me. Some of them planned ahead and sat and waited for me. And maybe they thought I didn’t notice, but I did.

And, of course, so did Austin. Austin noticed everything, or at least everything that had to do with me or with him or with us. Us was a dangerous word. Us was a messy, complicated, ball-of-yarn-after-a-passel-of-kittens tangle. I hadn’t asked Austin to come out for me. Hell, I hadn’t even thought he was interested in me. But after that night in the cabin, he’d told the whole world, and apparently he was interested in me. And since I was plenty interested in him, I didn’t have any objections. But Austin still noticed, he noticed every time someone looked at me, or at him, or at us. Us. There was that word again.

Today, the watching was worse than usual. Or maybe I was just worse than usual. With every tick of the clock, the rooms shrank, the air grew scarcer, the desks pressed together closer. At the back of my head, throbbing like a neutron star, was Mr. Big Empty and the dream and the greeting card and those two words: Missing you. When the bell rang, I shouldered my bag and raced towards the closest door. As long as nobody tried to talk to me, as long as nobody came too close to me, as long as I could get one breath of air—

Less than ten feet from the school’s front doors, someone grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the stream of students. I struggled for a moment before realizing that it was only Austin. Blushing so hot he could have melted steel, he still managed a grin as he tugged me into a doorway. His eyes flicked towards the rushing kids, and his face got hotter, if that were possible, but he didn’t let go of my hand. I clung onto him. A storm battered me, a storm of panic that had nothing to do with the students rushing past us, and if I let go, if I slipped even a little, I’d be swept away for good.

“Hey,” he said, his smile melting into a look of concern. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re white as a sheet. What’s going on?” Austin Miller, with his sandy-brown hair that was always messy, with his blue-green eyes the color of the ocean in a beer commercial, had the sort of rugged good looks that were going to get better with age: the jaw and the shoulders and the confidence that—until he’d started dating me—had made him seem extra solid, real in a way that demanded everyone’s attention. He still had all of that, but it was indistinct now, like I was seeing it from fifty yards and had to squint to make out the details. Like he’d lost focus of some vital part of himself.

If I let him see what was going on, if I let him see the cracks running through me, what would happen? If he were smart, if he had any brains at all, he’d run. And then it would just be me and the storm and Mr. Big Empty. So I took a deep breath, scrounged a smile from the bottom drawer, and said, “Nothing. Just late.”

“Want to come over for dinner?”

I shrugged. “Work. Sorry.”

“Sara will let you off,” he said. His aunt was my boss, and Austin was probably right: if I pressed hard enough, and if I told her I was spending time with Austin, she would let me skip work. “Come on, I want you to get to know my family.”

“I’d better not start that. I don’t want special treatment.”

“Why not? You are special. You should take advantage of it.” His grin flashed like lightning, lifting the hairs on my arms. “And you should also spend more time with your awesome boyfriend.”

That word made my skin tingle in a totally different way, more of a prickle, like I’d stepped out in front of a bus and it was coming at me, headlights blazing. You know, that general feeling like you’re about to get hit by fifteen tons of glass and steel. Because, a little voice said, as soon as he knew the truth, he’d run.

“Another day.”

“Vie,” he said, his voice dropping into a mock command. “Dinner. Tonight.”

I pecked him on the cheek and disentangled my hand. “I’m going to be late.” I turned to go. The flood of students had ended, and the only traffic now was a girl—a freshman, to judge by how young she looked—who was staring at us, her eyes so wide they were about to roll out of her head. Fighting the urge to flick her off, I met her gaze. She kept walking, so shocked or horrified or whatever it was that these rednecks felt at the sight of that kiss that a moment later, she walked face first into the door. Tumbling backward, she sprawled across the linoleum, blood trickling from her nose. And she was still staring at us.

“Christ,” I said.

Still blushing and looking half like he wanted to laugh and half like he wanted to cry, Austin fought to keep his grin pasted on. “Good thing you didn’t do that on Main Street. Imagine the pile-up.”

“Christ,” I just said again, shaking my head.

“You all right?” Austin asked the girl.

One hand cupping her nose, the girl flailed her legs like she was in skates on fresh ice, and it took ten painful seconds before she got traction and managed to hurtle away from us, heading back into the school.