What about her sister? Why was she in that weird, shitty cottage? Why have they beenstarvingher?
Wait a second. Where the hell are her parents?
There’s a lot to think about here, but I intentionally ignore the bombshell so as not to draw attention to it. “Right,” I say, “so, you’re proving my point—”
“Hiiiii, Rosabelle No-last-name! Rosabelle, Rosabelle, Rosabelle!”
I hear him before I see him, looking up just as the next-door shithead slams his tray down on our table.
My first instinct is to be angry, but when I get a good look at his face I realize there’s something wrong with him.
He looks—drunk?
That can’t be right. Alcohol isn’t allowed here.
“My beautiful rose, I’ve been looking for you. I wanted to see you,” he says, slurring a little. “You’re a rose, my rosy rose.” He drops himself into the chair next to Rosabelle, then lunges at her so quickly I only have enough time to jump out of my chair before I hear his bloodcurdling scream.
Rosabelle pulls her fork out of his neck, carefully wipes it on a napkin, and picks up her apple.
Shithead is gurgling blood. He’s grasping at his neck, pawing at the wound, and I can see that she didn’t just stab him with the fork, she ripped his throat open a little, too.
“What do we do with our trays?” she asks, pushing away from the table. She’s giving me that look again.
Happy cat, sleepy eyes.
James
Chapter 30
“So, what have we learned?” says Kenji, tugging a pair of sunglasses out of his pocket. He flips them open with one hand, balancing a to-go mug in the other.
“Nothing,” says Winston, looking more irritable than usual, dragging his feet down the sidewalk. “We’ve learned nothing.”
“That’s not true,” says Kenji, pausing to nod good morning to someone he knows, then promising to stop by a bakery later. He glances at Winston as we walk. “We’ve learned that you shouldn’t be allowed to meet new people on your own.”
“We already knew that,” I point out. “We’ve known that for years. Why did you let him go out last night?”
“Lethim go out?” Kenji whips off his sunglasses, immediately regrets it, then shoves them back on. “The man is a hundred and fifty years old—”
“Forty-one,” Winston says miserably. “I’m forty-one.”
“Like I said, he’s a thousand years old, nose practically crumbling off his face, and it’smyjob to keep him from going out at night?”
“I don’t like people,” says Winston. “I know this about myself. It’s just that I forget I don’t like people until I actually meet people,and then I remember why I never meet people. It’s because I don’t like them.” He rubs at his eyes from underneath his glasses, the action setting them off-kilter on his face.
“God,” he says, groaning. “I’m too old for this. Brendan told me to my face I was too old for this.”
“He did not say that.”
“He implied it.”
“He wanted to see the world!” Kenji says, forcing enthusiasm. “He didn’t want to settle down—he wanted to do young-people shit, find his inner star, swim in the radiation-infested waters of life—”
“I’m going to die alone,” says Winston.
Kenji claps him on the back. “C’mon, man. Grandpa Winston has at least five good years left in him before the arthritis takes him out.”
“Fuck you.”
