AllFreeNovel
Share Us
We’re at the rickety dining-room table with his phone between us recording.
I can’t help staring at the neon green graffiti on the wall:We Are All In Hell Here.The Wallace place, once a pretty and cozy home, had become the default teen hangout since Mrs. Wallace finally left town five years ago, abandoning the structure. It doesn’t seem like that much time, but the destruction of the place is as total as if it had been abandoned for a hundred years.
How many times had I sat here—eating with the Wallace family, or doing homework with Ainsley and Sam? It feels like I have wandered into some netherworld, the dark, ugly flipside of the place we inhabited as kids.
My whole body is tingling, sadness living in my throat, all my words lodged there.
“Yes,” I manage. “That’s the first time I saw him outside of school.”
“What were you thinking? Feeling?”
“Well, he was right. My dad didn’t like him.”
Harley looks down at the table, traces a grain of wood with his finger.
“But what about you?”
“He was different than other guys. Easy, talkative. He paid attention. Hesawme.”Like you, I want to say but don’t.
“Explain that.”
“Other boys only seemed to notice you through the filter of themselves. Like, were you hot or not, did you please them, did they want you? But with Evan it was different. I felt like he was interested in who I was beneath the surface, that he was trying to tease that out.”
“You liked him.”
“He was intriguing.”
“Even with all the rumors swirling around that he was a bad guy, had done bad things? Or maybe because of it?”
I shrug. “It’s a small town. Most of the kids I went to high school with I’d known since kindergarten or before. He was new, different. He was hot, rode a motorcycle, came from the city. Of course, I was interested.”
“The bad boy.”
“It didn’t fit—what I’d heard and who he seemed to be.”
“What happened with your dad after he left?”
“He told me that he didn’t like Evan. That there was something off and I should limit contact with him. He wasn’t allowed at the house when my dad wasn’t home.”
I remember standing at the door, watching Evan ride away on his motorcycle. When I turned around my father was standing there, gave me a little jump scare.
That kid is a problem, Maddie. Stay away from him.
You talked to him for one minute.
Trust me. He’s not for you.
“You fought.”
“We argued. But eventually I agreed to his terms, figuring someone like Evan could never really be interested in someone like me—a nerd, bookish. I’d never even kissed anyone yet.”
“But he was,” says Harley. “Interested in you.”
I reach over and turn the phone off.
“I don’t know if I want to be a part of this,” I tell him.
“I’ll respect that,” he says. “Like I promised. I won’t include our conversations if you don’t want me to.”
