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When I looked at our trailer, I saw a light on in the living room. The last thing I wanted to do was face Valerie, so I walked past my back window, to the woods. I closed my eyes, listening, not sure who I wanted to hear.
Sorina leaving the school?Keep dreaming.
The cicadas sang on, and then I heard a voice that was not from my dreams.
“What are you doing, sniffing me out?” a voice said from behind a tree to my right.
I turned, seeing a guy around my age in a white T-shirt, jeans, and scuffed-up boots. It was the guy I’d seen with Jessica and Nicole at the Raven’s Nest. I’d seen him around the trailer park but never at school. He took a long drag, and I smelled the inviting pungent odor of a joint in the air.
“What’s your name, new kid?” he asked.
I walked to a headstone, glancing at Sorina’s house through the trees.
“Nicholas.”
“Nice to meet you, Nicky. I’m William the Third.” He bowed, a cocky grin on his face. “Lord of Steele Heart trailer park since … I’ve been here since I was nine so”—he squinted his eyes, maybe doing math in his head—“since 1982.”
When he smiled at me I saluted him.Fucking awkward.“Nice to meet you,Billy.”
He laughed at my reply, then stepped forward. “You know it isn’t safe to follow strangers into the woods around these parts, right Nicky? Or was it all rainbows and glitter where you came from?”
I raised an eyebrow, pulling my leg onto the headstone. Billy looked like Jessica and Nicole. Acted like Jessica. “Hardly. But I’m not a teenage girl, and that seems to be who’s in danger around here, right?”
I thought of the thing in the road at the Deacon’s house earlier in the night. The screams sounded like a woman—a siren. Not a beast laying in the road, writhing. Something inhuman but also not of this earth, more like the monsters and animals I’d read about in Stephen King books. But what did I know? At that point, I was playing catch up in real-time, the real world confusing and blinding but far brighter than the nightmare world I had lived in.
Billy laughed. “Yeah, and godly girls. I’m neither, so I think I’m safe.” His voice was joking, but something melancholy lived there. I liked him already.
“So, what’s the deal with this town, anyway? How often does this … runaway thing happen?” I was eager to hear someone else talk about it. Kyrie was my sole source of information on Hart Hollow, and I needed a fresh perspective. And I didn’t want some bullshit answer like the one I got from Deacon Rex.We should pray for her.Fuck off.
Billy took a long drag. “Would you wanna stick around this hellhole? God’s hand is mighty, blessed be,” he mocked. “Look at us heathens, walking over graves,” he teased and gasped. “We must bathe in the blood of a virgin next. You a virgin?”
I shook my head. What the fuck was with that question being thrown at me tonight? “No.”Yes, if it was my choice. Does it count when it’s taken from you? Taken in the name of God?
Billy smiled wide, running a hand over his stubble. “I saw you with the Davis girl. Don’t go down that road, buddy.”
I eyed him. “Why not, buddy?” I didn’t know why I was mocking him, maybe I was still being a mirror. Something told me he wouldn’t mind though, and I could be myself with him.
He pointed at me. “I, William Clement, once loved a godly girl, a lamb of the lord. And lo and behold, she ran away from his town. Which makes no sense, since living out her life here was all she ever wanted and preached to me.”
“When was that?” I was relieved his reasoning for staying away from Kyrie wasn’t something that would force me to punch him in the face.
“Oh, about four years ago. We were fifteen, in love, asecretlove, mind you. Couldn’t let daddy Payne know about her fucking the trailer trash who snored through Sunday service when he showed up. Which, I only showed up to so I could see her in her pretty dresses, but that should count for something, right?”
I shivered. “Which church was that?”
“It’s about ten miles out, the Little Creek Baptist Church on Highway F. They’re gone, though. Her parents left. Couldn’t handle lying, I guess.” Billy took another drag, and I wanted to grab it from his hand, take it for myself. I stamped down the urge, my adrenaline from earlier waning.
“Lying?” I asked.
“Yeah. Smiling, lying, pretending life was fine and dandy when their precious daughter had ditched the town and theirblessed behome.”
“Oh.”
“I mean, if you believe she ran away, anyway.”
At this, I hopped off the grave. A flash of red caught my eye, and when I turned, I saw nothing. But I knew that didn’t mean Sorina wasn’t there, listening. “What do you mean?”
Billy walked to me, offering me a drag of his joint.Finally.I took it, inhaling slowly, trying not to seem too eager and green. It felt good but not as good as what Sorina had given me.
