He turned, a surprised look on his face, which, combined with the freckles, struck Lilly as young looking. His eyes were bright blue. Ugh.
“Sorry.” She dropped her arm.
His expression remained unreadable.
“I just, um, wanted to catch you.”
His eyes darted across her face like he was trying to connect the dots and figure out what her problem was. It made her blush, which was annoying.
“I mean,” she stammered on, losing her rhythm, “you never replied to my note. From math.”
He licked the corner of his lips and she wasn’t sure if he was preparing to say something, so she paused. He shifted his weight, still studying her like she was a bug on the wall and he wasn’t sure whether he should squash her or set her free.
“Anyway,” she went on, unable to stand the silence, or the awkwardness blooming from her chest to her face, “I was asking for a friend. Melissa. The one with the dark hair who I was sitting with earlier? She wants to know if you’ll go out with her. I told her I’d ask you, so.”
Was Boyd watching? She hoped so.
Patrick cracked a smile at last. Relief flooded her. But it was replaced almost instantaneously with a flurry of other sensations, not entirely unpleasant but still destabilizing, as though she’d just touched an electric fence.
He still didn’t say anything.
“So?” she prodded, starting to get annoyed.
“So what?” His voice wasn’t deep and low like some guys’ voices, but it had a bit of gravel to it. Maybe this was his strategy—making people so desperate to hear his voice that when he finally spoke, even just two words, you savored them like two SweeTarts (Lilly’s favorite) dissolving slowly on your tongue while you wait for a movie to start.
“So what’s your answer?” she said more slowly. She was beginning to feel sidetracked.
“Oh.” He bit his lip and shifted his backpack. “No.”
She stared at him, trying to read his expression, still half a smile lingering there like he’d meant to remove it but got distracted halfway through. “No, you don’t have a girlfriend, or no, you don’t want to go out with Mel?”
“Both.”
He turned and walked over to where a motorcycle was propped near a sign in the student parking area. She watched, brow furrowed and jaw hanging slightly open, as he put on a helmet, hopped onto the back of the bike and revved the engine, then drove off the school lot.
It was only after he rounded the corner and the bell rang loudly, signaling the start of sixth period, that she closed her mouth and turned to walk back to class, realizing that it was still the middle of the day and Patrick was apparently cutting the rest of school, just like that.
It wasn’t, obviously, proof that he was a criminal, but it was enough for her to know she didn’t want anything to do with him, and his maddeningly cute grin and his rudeness and his . . . no.
Chapter Six
Before
HIS FAVORITE FLIP KNIFE. Boxers. Deodorant. A handful of T-shirts.
People were, inherently, assholes. This was what Patrick Donovan was thinking as he slammed his belongings into the ripping army duffel his uncle Mike had given him, sometime before going on a thirteen-day bender that ended with his jaundiced body found plastered to the floor, half behind the old plaid couch in his work shed. Liver failure.
People just blatantly sucked. They were self-serving, always, even when it seemed like they were doing a nice thing. “Patrick, why don’t you get a break from all this drama?” his mom had said before shipping him off. “It isn’t healthy,” she’d said.
Right, but sending her son away to the home of obscure relatives (because her first husband had split, her parents were dead, now her brother was dead too, and she didn’t even speak to either of her sisters) was totally healthy. Even Uncle Liam (great-uncle, technically) and Aunt Diane had dished out plenty of BS about wanting to “reconnect.” Sure, if by reconnect they’d meant take on a free house servant.
He was sick of it. It wasn’t that mowing the lawn or cleaning out the garage or doing minor car repairs was so horrible in and of itself, it was just the fakery behind it all that pissed him off. It was fine if no one wanted him, but the pretending killed him. And anyway, he was just along for the ride. He hadn’t asked to be taken in. And he’d be fine when he was gone.
It had to be better when you were on your own. No one to disappoint. No one to disappoint you.
Rain fell quietly on the attic roof—tick-tick, tick-tick, tick-tick. Outside, the leaves, just starting to fall, would be matted down into the grass. Someone would have to rake them after the storm, into sodden, heavy piles, to be bagged and set on the street. It was the first bad weather they’d had in Devil’s Lake since he’d moved here in August.
He sighed, picking up the Cubs hat his dad had given him way, way forever ago. He stared at the faded C. He wasn’t sure whether wearing it would fly in these parts or if he’d get the shit kicked out of him by a bunch of jacked-up Tigers bros.
He scanned the attic room to see if there was anything he’d forgotten—not that he had much stuff to begin with. It was a mistake to even come here. He should’ve taken off on his own before it ever came to this—moving to a new town, trying to start over at a new school, meeting a whole new set of people with their own histories and expectations and assumptions. In the city there were always a million people everywhere and a million things going on, constant lights and honking horns and angry landlords and distractions. But out here in Devil’s Lake, it was dead silent at night, and he hated it. Hated how alone it made him feel, all that quiet. All that haunted, swaying grass on the side of the roads—made him want to flick a lighter to it and set the whole town aflame.
For some reason, this made him think of the Malloy girl.
It was true, he didn’t have to be such a dick to her. She was a redhead, he’d noticed, just like his last girlfriend, Sari, pronounced like “sorry,” which she hadn’t been when she’d taken off, too. He didn’t really know anything about this redhead other than what he’d overheard in gym the other day—some douche lacrosse player saying he wanted to bang all three Malloy sisters and one of his bonehead friends saying he didn’t even have a chance with one. Apparently, the redhead had a couple of older sisters who were just as hot as her. Patrick actually knew that the oldest one came by on her volunteer route, leaving groceries. Supposedly she was super smart, advanced classes and all that. He hadn’t interacted with her, though. He’d been standing in the shower when she drove up the last time, savoring the hot water, which there always seemed to be a shortage of back at his mom’s apartment, so he didn’t even see the supposed beauty in the flesh.
Patrick had pretty much tuned the jocks out after that one conversation, sticking to the corner of the weight-training room where he could focus on push-ups and sit-ups and other workouts that didn’t involve fancy machines covered in other people’s B.O.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to talk about—or think about—girls. He liked them and the things he had occasionally been given the opportunity to do with them behind closed doors and in the back seats of cars, but he wasn’t into the whole culture of conquest bragging. It just reminded him of the crap boyfriends his mom used to bring around, and generally grossed him out.