All the Inside Howling (Hollow Folk #2)(6)

Dressed in a denim jacket and a pair of faded jeans, he managed to show off an impressive build while still looking like he’d spent the last month homeless. Curly blond hair, tucked behind his ears, made him look young—he was nineteen, maybe twenty, I guessed, but he could have passed for sixteen. The set of his chest, the lines of his chin, the smirk that flickered on his lips like cable TV cutting in and out—it all sent a clear message. This guy was hot stuff, and he knew it, and he was fairly sure you wanted to know it too.

And Becca kept staring at him. Not that I wasn’t looking too, but couldn’t she show a little discretion? I was going to have to sponge her drool off the counter when this guy left. She had this stupid, simpering smile on her face, and her laugh was too high, and she was playing with the strings of her apron. She’d done that before, back when she’d had a crush on me. Right then, I wanted to whip them out of her hands. So he was cute. So what? Have a little self-respect.

“No, man,” the guy was saying to her, his voice dripping with California chillax so thick it made me gag. “I’m just seeing the country. Couch-surfing, you know, kind of like a gap year. I really want to find myself before I start at Berkeley. I want to be totally, you know, centered. I just think that’s really important.”

“Definitely,” Becca said.

“Oh my God,” I said, unable to contain myself.

Becca spun on me, her mask slipping a fraction of an inch to show her rage. “Vie, why don’t you go see if they need any help in back?”

“Sara asked me to work the counter.”

“I’m working the counter,” she said like she wished she had a rifle and it was open season on me. “Go back there and see how they’re doing.”

“Sure, man,” I said, imitating that surfer drawl. “I’ll see the sights, try to find myself. I just think that’s really important.”

Becca didn’t scream. She didn’t throw anything at me. But, I was pretty sure, she was planning how to kill me in my sleep, and she probably was going to get away with it. As I left, she said to the guy in the denim jacket, “Sorry, he’s being bitchy because he’s jealous.”

It was true, but not in the way Becca meant it, and instead of feeling better when I went through the swinging door, I just felt worse. I pushed thoughts of the hot drifter boy and Becca out of my head and focused on Austin. It was Austin’s fault for not telling me. It was his fault for not saying, outright, “It’s my birthday today. Want to do something?” How hard would that have been? How fucking hard? It was his fault for not telling me weeks ago. It was his fault for worming past all the walls I’d put up, for finding a weak spot, for getting inside where he could hurt me.

I’d seen oil fires on TV, thousands of barrels of oil burning on top of the ocean, and that’s how I felt right now: an inferno up top, all over my skin so that every inch of me hurt, so that my breath couldn’t come fast enough or deep enough, but below that was cold, bitter fear, dropping darker and deeper: it was going to be like Gage all over again. The pain, the pain that worked its way through me like a dull pair of shears, snipping and sawing from the center of my chest out in every direction until I wanted to die. And the loneliness. And the certainty that I had done it: that I had fucked everything up, that there was no one else to blame.

Well, I wouldn’t let that happen. I wouldn’t get hurt like that. I just wanted it over with. I grabbed a paring knife from the prep table and, when Joel and Miguel launched into an argument with each other, I slipped out the back door. The buzz of the sodium lamp filled my head and shook all the other thoughts to pieces. The only thing that made it through was this low, cruel voice: he’ll leave, he’ll leave, he’ll leave, and it’s your fault. Moths skittered near me, brushing my faces, and they felt like paper kisses.

Taking a breath, I cut. A long slash opened the back of my hand, running from my base of my thumb almost to my pinkie. Pain rushed in, filling my skull with cinders, and I gasped for breath. This was mine. This was something I owned, something nobody could take away from me, not even Austin. He could leave. Screw him, that was fine, let him leave. He was probably right to drop me, tonight, right now. But when he left, he couldn’t take this away from me. I lifted the knife again for another cut.

“Madre de Dios,” Joel said from behind me. Pulling the knife away, he dragged me back into the kitchen and towards the sink, shouting at Miguel. Miguel swore and darted out of the room. As Joel set to work rinsing the wound—sending another flash of pain through me—he kept up a litany of what I guessed were Spanish swear words. Then, looking up at me, he spoke very clearly. “This,” he said, lifting my hand, “muy estúpido.”

All of the sudden the fire inside me collapsed, burned out in an instant, and all that was left were the hot line across my hand and those green-black waters, deep and cold. “Yeah,” I said, squeezing my eyes shut. “Muy estúpido.”

Joel must have seen something on my face because he squeezed my shoulder. “Is ok. Is ok.”

Then Sara burst into the kitchen, waving away Joel. Through the doorway, Becca peered at me, her face pale and pinched.

“Oh God, Vie,” Sara said, squeezing her bulk between me and Joel until Joel launched away like a pinball. “What in the world were you—how bad is it?”