Page 26 of The Corruption of Hollis Brown

Hollis didn’t know how that made him feel. It was one thing to be flirted with in the hallways at school, by a girl who was confusing his standoffishness with being mysterious.

It was another to be looked at—beneath hungry lowered eyelids—by a boy who was visibly running out of options.

Accepting affections like that was for bad people.

Hollis wasn’t a bad person.

“You don’t have to do that,” he said.

Walt immediately rearranged his face. “I thought I might,” he admitted, wary.

Hollis frowned. “Not with me. You want something from me, you just ask.”

“Okay,” Walt said, his eyes darting to the ground. “Okay, fine.”

He looked up quick—so quick it startled Hollis a bit. Then he stuck out his hand.

“I’ll stick around and put you on the straight and narrow. All you gotta do is feed me and find me shelter. Six months and I’m out of your hair. Permanently, if that’s what suits you.”

Hollis looked at Walt’s palm.

He was just another kid out in the snow. Desperate.

Hollis could bring Walt home; his ma would know what to do. If that didn’t work, there were houses, abandoned and viable. He’d have to suss out the extended family of the people who once owned them, but they’d do. Food he had plenty of; he could swing by in the mornings and after dinner. An extra portion wasn’t going to break the bank.

It was fine. It was going to be fine. He even had a week to work on it.

“Okay.”

Walt grabbed his hand tight before Hollis could finish offering it.

Flint

It was like falling down a hole.

The vertigo was there, the overwhelming and immediate awareness that he’d made a terrible mistake was there. The dark rushing up at him, warm and quick.

The echo of his own scream.

Light, limited.

And there was despair.

Deep as genetic memory: Paleolithic.

Human beings had been afraid of falling in holes for as long as there had been holes and human beings.

Gorgeous

Hollis saw Walt in front of him. His eyes rolled back in his head and the color drained from his face completely. He saw Walt’s body fall to the ground and it was suddenly so obvious that this body had been dead all along.

His vision was . . . disorienting. It felt like he was looking through holes in a mask instead of through his own eyes. Black and fuzzy around the edges. It took even longer to figure out what that meant.

Because of the body.

Hollis couldn’t stop staring.

Its hair was so brittle now that the wind was starting to blow it clean off Walt’s skull. And suddenly Hollis was close enough to see pores, even though he didn’t feel himself moving.