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  At four months, Deli was getting around again, not laid up in her bed where I brought her all three meals of the day and played guitar to entertain her. I was an oldies person when it came to music, a guy who could always count on the classics, but Deli loved the modern pop songs, the kind sung by boy bands that had more talent prancing around stage in their choreographed dances than they ever would carrying a tune. I’d refused to learn the songs she loved before the accident, but afterwards I learned them all just so I could see her smile. I never knew if she was smiling because she loved the song, or if it was because she was laughing inside to hear me sing them.

  Pop music and I did not get along.

  After those four months, money was tight and there was nothing I could do to get more money out of Jack’s family. I’d wanted to sue, wanted to hurt them for everything they’d taken from me, but lawyers are a nasty bunch, which can make life convenient for the rich while singlehandedly destroying the poor.

  The paid off cops lied and claimed my car was blocking the road. Jack’s attorneys were able to suppress the drug evidence. Jack walked away with a slap on the wrist for speeding, while Deli received what was left of the insurance money from my parents’ accident. Unfortunately, that was just enough to cover the medical bills and money to live on for a few months because my parents had run a red light trying to get to me.

  When our money ran out, I’d set out on foot on a clear night that quickly crumbled, rain pouring down, drowning me as I sludged through a shortcut in the strip of woods outside my neighborhood. I’d crossed the tracks and walked up the main drive to apply at the diner. Water was dripping from my hair, my boots squeaked on the clean linoleum floor, my black t-shirt and black jeans clung to my body.

  Angela had looked up from where she was standing behind the counter and tsked at me in disapproval. “Look what the weather dragged in. What can I get for you? Something to eat? To drink? A blow dryer and a towel? Don’t you have enough sense to carry an umbrella?”

  It didn’t matter if you were a patron or employee, she told you exactly what she was thinking regardless.

  “No, Ma’am,” I’d answered with chattering teeth. ”I’m here looking for a job.”

  Her eyes had narrowed on me, she tsked again, and then snatched an application from beneath the counter. While I was filling out my personal information, she watched me closely, questions lingering between us that took three minutes for her to ask.

  “I don’t mean to pry, young man, but aren’t you the boy that just lost his family?”

  My teeth grit together, but I nodded. It had been all over the news, my face, Delilah’s and my parents’ plastered on television and on the front page of the paper, a tragedy worth the pens and voices of their highest paid reporters.

  She’d snatched the paper away from me. When I looked up in question, my heart sinking because the diner had been the only shot at a job I’d had, she’d said, “You’re hired. When can you start?”

  The rest was history, and during holiday and summer breaks when the kids I’d known were back in town from college, Angela made sure to tuck me in back just so those people couldn’t heckle me, shout insults, or cause problems. Tonight was one of those nights, the rich and entitled returning home to brag and compare notes about the next step in their lives that Deli and I had never taken.

  Knowing they were out there didn’t bother me much, as long as I didn’t have to see them, but when I heard Angela come running back into the dish area, her steps hurried, her hands waving to get my attention, I had a feeling something bad just happened.

  “Holden, make sure you stay back here and out of sight for the next hour or so, okay? There’s some people in the dining room you won’t want to see.”

  She might like hiding me in back, but she’d never asked me to stay put before. Which meant...

  “Jack Thorne is here, isn’t he?”

  Angela nodded. “Him and Michaela Paige. I love you, Holden Bishop, but I don’t need trouble in my diner, so I want you to promise me you’ll stay back here.”

  Her words hurt. I thought I’d proven myself over the last two years, that I had shed the reputation of being a crazy freak. “I won’t do anything to him.”

  Something in my voice must have given away the hurt. Angela’s expression softened, her hands coming up to rest on my shoulders as she craned her neck to look up at me. “I don’t think it’s you that will cause the problems. He’s the problem. I have no love in my heart for that boy out there, and if it did come down to a fight in the middle of the diner, I wouldn’t stop you from beating him senseless. He deserves it and much worse. But I don’t need that, you understand? I can’t afford it.”

  My eyes darted to the window looking out over the main floor from the kitchen, my fingers curling into my palm as I breathed deeply. Hatred coursed through me, my shoulders tense beneath Angela’s nervous hands. But I wouldn’t cause trouble.

  I wouldn’t.

  I would just watch. I would listen. I would stay out of Jack’s way as long as he didn’t cause trouble first.

  Those are always the famous last words, aren’t they?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Michaela

  We hadn’t been in Tranquil Falls longer than an hour before Jack was itching to get his night started. Arriving a few minutes after two in the afternoon, Jack and I had gone to his house first to say hello to his family and chat about college. Jack lied about everything, claimed he was studying all the time, which was why his grades were so high. The truth was I was writing his essays and other written requirements while he’d found a way to obtain all the tests prior to class, and after I was finished figuring out all the answers, he would cram that information and waltz into class like he was a genius.

  The truth also was that Jack had developed quite the drug problem, and on the four hour ride to Tranquil Falls, we’d stopped three times so he could use the bathroom, each time returning with a sniffle and some white powder beneath his nose. I’d kept quiet, but I could tell when he was getting itchy again, could see the small tremors in his hands or hear the way his words slowed down like he would pass out without another bump. After the third time, I’d offered to drive the rest of the way, but Jack refused because nobody touches his baby.

  His baby was another two-seater sports car much like the one he’d used to destroy the lives of the Bishop family. I hated the thing, wished his parents would buy him a tank just so I would feel safer when he was driving fifty miles over the speed limit and weaving between cars.

  After leaving his family’s house, we went to mine, my parents delighted to see us while my siblings just nodded their heads in our direction before running upstairs. My brother and sister were twins that were born two years after me, and they were now the kids to know at Tranquil Falls High, the top of the food chain, the opinions that could make or break another student’s reputation on a whim. I didn’t know either of them very well, and I regretted that they’d turned out to be more like Jack than me.

  Not that I was someone to be admired. My life was a sham, a pretty picture painted with blurred lines between right and wrong. People loved to look at me and covet my life, but if they looked deep enough they’d discover I was spineless and empty. There was nothing there worth coveting, nothing to desire or want.

  Giving my family only a third of the time, he’d given his, Jack started itching again, his red rimmed eyes glassy when we made the drive to the servants’ quarters to find Jack’s new friend. Walking into the abandoned house, my nose wrinkled at the smell of piss and mildew, my head throbbing after breathing in the haze of smoke that lingered like low lying fog throughout the house. The sun was setting outside the dirty windows, streaks of it breaking through the grime and thin, ragged curtains to paint the inside of the house a putrid orange, the same shade as nicotine residue that stained the walls or a person’s fingers.

  Taking a seat on a couch, I groaned at a wet spot that soaked into my jeans, not heavy or flooded, just slightly dam
p like someone had passed out here recently and drooled. A disgusted shiver coursed up my spine as Jack disappeared down a hallway in search of the man with his next fix.

  I never knew what types of drugs he was doing, and most of the time I didn’t care. But I hated the uppers the most, especially now that Jack’s mood changes were coming on faster, especially now that his violence wasn’t just reserved for strangers. It shamed me to know he’d hit me three times and I still didn’t have the strength to walk away.

  That’s the problem with lying and telling yourself that you somehow caused the violence. After a while, you begin to believe it.

  Noise crept out from the back of the hall, deep laughter, a high pitched voice, the slap of skin as hands met for a high five, or some other greeting. The chemical smell came after, floating on a cloud of noxious fumes that mingled with the lingering cigarette smoke in the living room. Willing myself not to throw up, I breathed as shallow as possible hoping to avoid a contact high.

  The voices died off, but came roaring back a few minutes later, the thud of footsteps approaching from the hallway. Jack and the man who’d replaced Jimmy turned the corner to stand near me. One look at Jack told me he was high enough to touch the moon as he floated past it, his friend who I wanted to call Jimmy, Jr., tracking his eyes over my body like I was some prize to be won at a used-car lot or a county fair. He had the carnie motif just right with greasy brown hair and beady brown eyes, stained clothing, and fingers that wouldn’t stop drumming on the side of his thigh. He didn’t smile so I couldn’t see if his teeth were rotted too. With a simple stare, he conjured a need in me to get up and run, the intuition that what looked at me was an abyss of sorrow, slow death and pain.

  This guy would probably die just like Jimmy, which meant it was a waste of time to learn his name. Thankfully, Jack was too high for introductions.

  “Let’s go. I need food.”

  His bark of a command was enough for me. Moving fast, I pushed up from the couch, twisted my body so as not to brush against Jimmy, Jr. and half walked, half ran to the front door. The wind slapped at my face as soon as I stepped outside, but I gulped it down because it was fresh and clean, not a swirling mass of smoke and chemicals.

  Tucked inside Jack’s car, I wasn’t paying much attention as he flipped through songs on his iPod, chose one and blasted the volume. The car lurched when he hit the gas pedal too fast, the engine roaring but not loud enough to drown out the music. Leaving the servants’ quarters, the train tracks bumped below our tires, my head snapping left when Jack turned the music down and said, “Did you know Clive stopped into that all night diner yesterday?”

  Hesitation filled my gut, a sharp concern of why he’d mention the diner, and dread to think I knew the answer. “Why would I know that? I don’t talk to Clive.” My voice dropped lower, my eyes turning away to look at the holiday decorations flying past. “Why would I even care?”

  Jack’s voice was strained, more curt and broken, the drugs taking effect, wrapping their claws into his brain so they could dig deeper. “Because your freak lover works there. Clive saw him.”

  The dread rolled and stretched, filling me with urgent concern. Not for the fact he was talking about Holden, but because he’d found him. In Jack’s current state, there was no telling what he would do. I needed to diffuse the situation. Needed to cut it off before Jack did something stupid. “Who cares? He was a loser in high school, and I’m sure he’s even more of a loser now. He’s crazy. Why are you wasting your time thinking about him?”

  “I went through a lot of shit because of that crazy fuck. Don’t you care about that? Or are you too in love with him to think about me?”

  A lot of shit? He was fined, given a few hours of community service and forced to take a driving course to knock the points off his license. If anything, Jack lost a few hundred bucks and twenty hours of his life, while Holden had lost his family. “Yes, I care. Which is why I want to go somewhere we can have fun and not stop at that grease-pit. Let’s go to McDougal’s instead. Their burgers are better.”

  “Oh, we’ll have fun here,” Jack murmured, his expression tight as he cut a quick left into the diner parking lot.

  Driving past the building to find a spot, I glanced inside those large windows to see the place was busy, almost every booth filled as light spilled out to bathe the parking lot in yellow. A neon sign beaming OPEN just beside the set of double doors leading you in, a counter with stools in the back, while on the main floor of the dining room there were tightly packed tables surrounded by the booths. I didn’t see Holden. I prayed he wasn’t here, that Jack would get bored quickly and want to leave.

  Finding a spot, Jack threw the car in park, the chassis rocking as he climbed out and bent over to look at me where I still sat on my seat. “You coming or what? Afraid to see your crush?”

  “He’s not my crush.”

  “Whatever you say, freak fucker,” he mumbled back, slapping his palm on the roof of the car before slamming his door shut. Mine was jerked open a second later, his fingers bruising my bicep as he yanked me out. Following behind him, I tucked my hands into the pockets of my jacket and let my long hair fall forward to hide my face. I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want trouble.

  I’d be a liar to say I didn’t want to see Holden. That I didn’t want to confirm he was in one piece. The last time I’d laid eyes on him, he was broken atop a hospital bed, his little sister red faced as she demanded I leave.

  Jack opened the door and strolled in ahead of me as a waitress with blond hair in a braid down her back peeked over and held up a finger to tell us to wait a minute to be seated. Glancing around without making it obvious, I breathed out a sigh of relief (and disappointment) to find that Holden was nowhere in sight. Hopeful that Clive had been lying, that he was just going along with the rumor of Holden working here to have something to say to Jack, I smiled politely once the waitress approached us, the name tag on her shirt reading Kaley.

  An older woman watched us from behind the counter, her eyes widening in recognition just before she ran off and disappeared around back.

  “Table for two, I assume?”

  Kaley’s voice wasn’t friendly. Curt and professional, the words were a touch sharper than they should be, like hidden razors that nipped at your skin to slice you apart slowly. She recognized us too, and she didn’t like what she saw.

  Jack nodded his head, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. He was probably angry that the waitress hadn’t dropped to the ground to kiss his feet. She showed us to our table, swiped a pen from behind her ear and stood ready to write down our orders. “What can I get you?”

  “How about a menu since this is the first time I’ve stepped foot inside this rundown grease trap, and a little bit of respect for your betters would be nice, too.”

  My eyes darted to Jack where he sat glaring at Kaley, a sheen of angry red staining his skin. Embarrassment and revulsion flowed through me.

  “My betters?” she mumbled, more to herself than us. A bark of humorless laughter shook her shoulders, her eyes darting to the back of our table. “Your menus are right there. I’ll return in a few after you’ve had a chance to look them over.”

  Spinning on her heel, she marched through the main dining area and stalked into the same hallway the older woman had run down earlier.

  “Why do you think they keep running around back? Think the crazy freak is behind there spying on us?”

  Keeping my voice low, I groaned, “Just leave it alone, Jack. You’re being rude.”

  Jack wasn’t as discreet in the voice department. Instead he spoke loud enough for everyone to hear. “I’m being rude? What the fuck ever. These fuckers should learn whose ass to kiss. If it weren’t for our families, this town wouldn’t exist and this shithole for a diner wouldn’t be here.”

  Other patrons turned to look at us, but they were mostly kids who lived on our side of Tranquil Falls. Laughing at what Jack had said, they returned to their own conversations,
the buzz of noise more excited than it had been a few seconds ago.

  “Let it go. He didn’t do anything to you.”

  Wrong words. Damn it, I couldn’t have spoken worse words, even if they were true. Jack’s eyes narrowed into slits, his jaw ticking as he ground his teeth. The drugs were taking hold and his anger was drifting to the surface.

  “He didn’t do anything?” he asked, keeping his voice low for once. “How about breaking my nose, huh? How about that? How about costing my family money?”

  “You hit him with your car,” I hissed, too pissed off to do the sensible thing and agree with him just so he would calm down and shut up.

  God, I hated it when Jack got high.

  The waitress returned, her pen poised over her pad of paper, her expression politely professional. “Have you decided?”

  Jutting his chin toward the hall, Jack grinned and spoke loud when he asked. “Yeah. Why don’t you tell the crazy freak in back to come out and talk to me? We’re old friends.”

  Laughter burst from some of the tables, naked anger filtering through Kaley’s brown eyes as her lips pulled into a thin line. “I’m sure you were.” Pointing between us with her pen, she said, “You two need to leave. As in now. As in right this minute. We don’t want your kind of trouble in here.”

  Jack was growing louder, angrier, his eyes bloodshot so badly that the green shone neon. “We have to leave? Why? Because you have a crazy freak in back? You need to do you job and serve me, you understand? I was just trying to be friendly by inviting him to my table-“

  “Kaley is right, Mr. Thorne. You need to leave my diner right now and without another word. Nobody is going to be serving you here.”

  Marching up to the table, the older woman looked as if she would pick Jack up herself and toss him out. Murmurs burst through the room, the patrons turning in their seats to watch the show. Just as quickly as the noise level grew louder, it quieted, everybody’s eyes turning to the back hallway as those murmurs turned to faint whispers.