Page 56 of Gave Proof Through the Night

“Do you mind,” I say, finally looking up, aiming for bored instead of murderous. “I was at a good part.”

It’s been six years, and Dennis Hobbs still hasn’t figured out that a comb-over fools exactly nobody.

“Oh were you?” He flips it shut with theatrical flair.

“Hey. You lost my place.” I lunge for it but he just holds it higher out of my reach, like a bully on the playground.

“Hello, America,” he simply says.

“You’re not allowed to call me that,” I say, standing up slow, buying myself a second to think. “Only people I trust get to call me that.”

Like a hockey player I barely know, apparently. One very dashing hockey player who almost kissed me last night.

“You didn’t seem to mind it when you were eighteen,” he says, with a creepy grin sliding along his face. Then tosses my book onto the sidewalk, where it lands spine-up and splayed like roadkill. So Gaston-coded but without the muscles.

There goes my booster. Excellent. Wonderful. Love this for me.

“Erica? Erica, what’s happening?” Zoe’s voice, sharper now, right in my ear. “I’m losing pass twenty. Signal’s weak. What’s going on out there? Who’s that guy?”

I don’t answer her. I can’t, not with Dennis Hobbs standing eight inches away, tracking every twitch on my face like it’s evidence.

“I minded a lot of things when I was eighteen,” I say. “You couldn’t read the room.”

The way I can fake vibrato astounds me. Inside, I’m still that eighteen year old studying for midterms on my bed when a man ten years my senior walked in and shut the door.

“Oh, please.” He steps closer, and I make myself hold my ground instead of backing up, because backing up is what he wants. “All those times you asked me for help with Art History.”

“That was not an invitation. I was a teenager.”

“You were legal.”

“And you were already showing signs of male pattern baldness.” I give his hairline a slow, unbothered once-over. I don’t let the shudder show.

“Your dad ruined it. You know that. And it was all your fault. It didn’t have to be that way.”

Something in my chest goes very still and very cold. “I wasn’t interested when I was eighteen. I’m not interested now.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” His mouth curls. “The only thing I’m interested in is seeing you behind bars.”

“Too bad for you.” I lift my chin. “We just celebrated this being a free country yesterday, and I’m minding my own business, reading a book. In this free country.”

“You’re up to something. I’ll find out soon enough.”

“Hope you like waiting.”

He’s in my face now. “That necklace is guarded twenty-four seven. Even more now than when your father tried for it.” His eyes flick over me, cataloguing. “You think you’re going to get close?”

“You know what I want, Dennis.” I keep my voice level. “And it’s not the necklace.”

Something flickers behind his eyes, quick, involuntary, gone almost before I catch it. He doesn’t know what I know.

“I suppose you’re referring to some imaginary letters.” He laughs, an ugly little bark. “They don’t exist, sweetheart.”

“I’m not your sweetheart.” I snap, moving left, toward the book on the sidewalk.

He steps into my path before I get there, and the space between us shrinks fast, and I have to tip my head back to keep looking at him instead of his collar.

“You’re just one little slip-up away from landing ten to twenty in the federal pen,” he says, low, right up in my face, close enough that I get a full, unfiltered hit of his breath. Coffee and something sour. Ew. Ew, ew, ew. “And I will be right there. Enjoying the show.”