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“I couldn’t let you eat alone. Don’t worry. Everyone will warm up to you,” she assured, setting her tray down next to mine. “Plus, everyone is just a little on edge.”
“First day stuff?” I asked, pinching off a piece of pizza and turning my body toward her.
“No.” She moved closer to me, leaning in. “About a week ago, Pastor Hugh’s daughter, Amber, went missing.”
I felt a chill but pushed it away. I didn’t know that girl. It didn’t matter. “Runaway?”
Kyrie shook her head. “I don’t know. It wouldn’t be the first. It’s like I said, people don’t come here. They leave. It’s just … weird, and it has my daddy watching me like a hawk. Like if someone took her, they must be after Pastor’s daughters or something.” Her laugh was shaky.
“I’m sure it’s just a dad thing,” I offered, like I knew any fucking thing about the way dads weresupposedto act with daughters in the real world.
“You’re sure, or you know?” Kyrie’s brown eyes could draw you in. I would remember that later when she was gone. And that day, she looked at me like I was a shiny new toy, a pet she wanted to adopt.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Which one?” She smiled.
“If you’re looking for something wrong with me, yeah, my parents are dead.”
Her brown eyes softened. “Well, you told the class you moved here with your aunt, so …”
“So you were fishing?” I would have bumped her shoulder or touched her if I were a normal person. I would have flirted with her, eased her. But I wasn’t a normal person. And how Kyrie couldn’t see that like a blinding neon light, I would never know. Or maybe it as that she could see something was off about me, and that’s what drew her in.
“Maybe,” she said, reaching for a piece of her pizza. “Why did you move here?”
“I don’t know.” I sighed. “Not really my decision. I just go wherever my aunt wants to go. She said she wanted to move to the middle of the US, the middle of nowhere. So, here we are. The middle of nowhere.”
“Have you lived in many places?” Kyrie asked.
“We tried out a few places before landing here,” I said.
“Think you’ll stay?”
“Maybe.” I shrugged. “My aunt got a job at the café down the road.”
“No way! My family and I eat there every Tuesday night and on Saturday morning. Is she a waitress? I haven’t seen anyone new there.”
“No, she’s a cook. She loves cooking, so maybe we’ll stay. She likes it. Things are slow here.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“No,” I said, meaning it. After two years on the road with no proper home, I was happy to settle down. I liked that Hart Hollow was in the middle of nowhere. It felt like I could hide away. I was wrong, but that feeling of being slightly off-balance that first day of school was everything I needed for a moment. “So, are you one of those people who’ll leave this place behind?”
Kyrie smiled around a bite of pizza. “Yes. I don’t want to marry someone I’ve known since we played on the merry-go-round and have babies here in Hart Hollow. I want to leave as soon as I graduate.”
I don’t know what came over me then, but I put my finger in my apple sauce and smeared a bit on her nose.
“Oh my God, why did you do that?” Kyrie shrieked and pushed my hand away.
WhydidI do that? I felt warm all over and … buzzing. I didn’t touch people. I didn’twantto touch people. It was a rule. And there I was, touching this girl. Just her nose, sure, but something wasn’t right. The off-balance feeling from earlier was more pronounced, more vivid in its wrongness.
Kyrie pretended to be disgusted by the applesauce on her face as I looked around the crowded lunchroom, the buzzing in my ears growing louder.
My eyes stopped wandering when I saw blue eyes and red hair. Sorina was leaning against the wall on the opposite side of the room, arms crossed, jaw up. She was watching us, and I felt her everywhere. I felt her in my head, in my chest, down to my dick. I shook my head a little, seeing the ghost of a smile on her lips. She blinked, and I did too. Then, when she pushed off the wall and took her eyes off me, I felt like a cold bucket of water had been dumped over my shoulders.
The warm feeling I had moments before was gone. My desire to lean toward Kyrie was gone, and I found her high-pitched laugh grating.
She could tell something was wrong and looked around, following my gaze. A trail of red hair was all she caught as Sorina left the lunchroom.
