14. He Walks Different
He Walks Different
Melody
Fuck this stupid town.
I sat in my truck, waiting for the high school to let out. They were on a weird, shortened schedule without busses, so I was surrounded by the parents of my old classmates as they parked up and down Main Street.
I hated Main Street. I hated that the Grays were at every corner.
At the church, where they had their own pew right in the front.
The school, which had a statue of Ethanuel Gray, who founded the town back in 1774.
Then there were Grayfarms, Graystone, Graystables.
Everything was motherfucking Gray-this, Gray-that.
They even wanted to change Mourningkill High to Ethanuel Gray High School.
It almost passed. Thank God it didn’t.
The guy had been a religious creep who believed in bigamy, and he’d married his youngest wife when she was only twelve. Not a fucking role model in my book.
I got out of the truck, just so I could stretch my legs, and walked up Main Street to kill the time.
There was never much parking, which meant I had to get there early to avoid getting backed up around the corner and left idling down the line. The school was built long before the creation of the modern pickup line, and we still hadn’t quite caught up with the times.
None of the town had, to be honest.
That was why people liked it.
It was also why I hated it.
I stopped in front of Timeless, the only jewelry shop in town. Who was I kidding? There was only one of everything. One bar, one hardware store, one hairdresser. We didn’t have the population to merit two of anything.
But this was the one place I had never entered, despite always longing to. Or longing for someone to enter it for me.
Timeless had a row of engagement rings ranging from obnoxiously large to absolutely miniscule and affordable, and I liked them all. It was the idea of real jewelry that didn’t come from an easter egg. I could never justify it, of course. Nor did I ever think anyone would ever want to marry me.
I stared at the glass as I positioned myself, shifting until the jewelry fit perfectly on me to give the illusion the rings were on my finger and a matching necklace was around my throat. Like I was trying them on.
It was a rather bitter pastime, coveting something I could never have.
But sometimes bitterness tasted better than nothing.
This was a cursed town, and no one ever escaped. Once you were here, Mourningkill got its claws on you, and you were stuck forever. No one left.
It’s why everyone was related. Outsiders like my mom and I were an anomaly. She’d been pulled in to work as an ICU nurse for an understaffed rural hospital, and it felt like we’d been dropped into a whole different world.
New people moving in was rare, and generally unwanted by most of the locals.
It was why Greg Vedder and his friends were such a breath of fresh air.
It had been two whole days since I’d seen him, but he was never far from my mind.
Even his name reminded me of some indie rock star with a guitar, and a whole life philosophy the likes of which a rigid town had never heard of.
He was Johnny Depp in Chocolat. He was the knight in flannel, promising to chase away demons.
Handsome, with strong hands, and likely the kind of body that belonged to the top half of a centaur.
I could only imagine the bottom half matched, too.
The kind of weight that made him walk different.
And I…needed to stop thinking about him that way.
Madness lied. All my madness, in particular.
It would break my heart if the only person in this town who thought kindly of me saw my most festering wounds and was disgusted.
Some things just weren’t for people like me.
Life was hardship and suffering. Believing it wasn’t would just make me vulnerable. It was better to keep my eyes on my own paper.
I turned away from the shiny jewels, and put my attention back to the school.
Mourningkill High was a huge, three-story, red-brick building. Big white Grecian columns held a gabled roof that covered the front steps of its entrance. It had been built in the federalist style, complete with decorative glass black shutters. It probably belonged in a Hallmark film.
Especially during the fall, when the air was crisp, I could almost fool myself into thinking it wasn’t so bad here…
A slowly cruising police SUV grabbed my attention. I tucked my head low, hoping against hope today was not the day. Now was not the time to be handcuffed and branded a murderer—not where the whole town could see.
My heart raced, pounding in my ears as I averted my gaze when the damn SUV halted in front of me. The crossing guard stopped them to let two kids on bicycles cross.
The crossing guard, Mr. Tristan Goss—Goose, as his friends seemed to call him—returned to the other side of the street, swinging the red stop sign beside him. His bright reflective vest was a contrast against the surrounding brown and dying trees.
The breeze kicked up the leaves, making them dance over the white lines on the broken asphalt, settling into the base of a rose bush, stuck in its thorny leaves. They were like little domes of perfectly manicured red blooms that lined the side streets. Perfect, like the rest of the town.
In clusters of manicured flowers, I was a single dandelion they sprayed with poison in the cracks of concrete.
Miriam and Marc were biologically Grays. They looked like them, too. Blond, pale, and lean. The only thing they got from mom—the only trait they shared with me—was a slightly smaller, delicate nose.
The town accepted them more than me. They always had. Teachers never liked me. Coaches, administrators, even random shopkeepers had looked at me sideways because I didn’t belong.
After mom died, Luke was all I had.
There was nowhere else to turn.
I didn’t blame myself for it. Not really. I was just a child.
I picked myself up, got myself into a good university, used mom’s life insurance to pay for it and escaped.
Then Luke found a way to take it all back.
To make me come back to him, to beg for his love…
and for the money that should have always been mine.
Then the threat of hurting Miriam…his own flesh and blood!
What I did was impulsive, and severe. I’d built the cage that I was no stuck in with a bottle of pills, and a glass of 25-year-old single malt whiskey.
I was back and feeling like a child again. Only this time, I had more responsibilities and the albatross of my sins around my neck.
I lifted the collar of Greg’s jacket and inhaled deeply. It was okay that I hadn’t seen him in a couple of days. Having his jacket felt like he’d come back. Like someone hanging their hat by a particular door or leaving their favorite sweater.
I didn’t know if this jacket was his favorite, but it was soft with wear and smelled like leather and oak. I wished I could get a candle of the scent for my bedroom.
Life offered few comforts, so I savored them when I could. Even if it was just an illusion.
That old familiar bell rang—a bell they hadn’t replaced in at least twenty years. The shrill, annoying metal thing accompanied the sound of opening doors and the starting of engines, along with the chatter of loud teenagers.
A couple of kids threw a football across the big lawn. A group of artsy misfits, clad in black with neon hair and that sharp, “too cool to care about being cool” look, walked down in some seriously high shit-kickers. Had I had a spine back in those days, I might have dressed like them.
Miriam walked down the front steps alone, her book on Russian literature clutched across her stomach.
Maybe I was biased, but of all the kids, she was the most effortlessly awesome.
In comfortable jeans, a sweater, and a simple, vintage backpack, she was studious, calm, and apparently more observant than I ever gave her credit for.
She walked towards me, stopping at the crosswalk beside Goose.
The Grays and all their cousins. Equestrians and entrepreneurs funded by old-rail money invested in paper mills before settling on ranches and horses and becoming one of the big agra owners in North and South America.
Jon-Williams Gray and his brother, Roy Smith-Gray, were technically my stepcousins. Beside him was Ian Gray, the little snot-nosed new hope of the Grays. Academically gifted and going places. Probably to an Ivy League education.
I’d gone to Columbia, but of course, I never counted.
They were with their other friends, Brayden and Slater or…something like that. Between them was Marcus, smiling too wide and laughing too hard at their jokes. A young man trying too much to fit in.
Goose stepped out into the middle of the street, holding his stop sign up. Miriam smiled at me as she jogged across the street, backpack bouncing on her slim shoulders.
The world slowed. The temperature dropped. The leaves took their time floating across the median.
An Edison Cyphercar’s wheels spun, the ugly dull gun-metal with its pointed nose, and futuristic design that looked like it had been plucked from a bad 1980’s B-movie squealed.
The tires burned, sending smoke into the air as it lurched forward, its idiotic, sharp headlights pointing right at Miriam.
“No!” I screamed as my legs and arms pumped before I knew what I was doing.
The stripes of the crosswalk whizzed under my feet as I ran and ran, hands out and heart in my throat. I pushed Miriam back.
She landed hard as she fell, her hands scraping the sidewalk as metal drove into my thigh. I twisted and hit glass. I rolled over the roof, falling off the back end, face-down on the concrete, forehead cracking on the unyielding asphalt.
“Call the police!” someone shrieked.
The world went blinding white, then brutally came back into focus. Blue sky, white clouds. Yelling. Doors opening. Feet on concrete.
Miriam was saying my name over and over again. She was crying.
I twitched, my fingers instinctively reaching to her, halted only by the sudden pain that shattered through my shoulder, across my back, crawling up my spine to the base of my skull. I tried to call her name.
I knew this town would kill me one day.