Page 27 of People Like Us

He whirled on me so fast it made my stomach jump. His face was drawn hard with anger, eyes sharp and bright in a way I hated. For one strange second I thought he might yell.

Then he stopped. His expression changed mid-breath, eyes lifting to something behind me, making me turn. Shannon O’Kinzy stood near the door, halfway through stepping around us.

He moved with the careful awkwardness of someone trying not to startle a wild animal. He held up a composition notebook, four leaf clovers in different shades of lifeless green taped all over the cover.

“Forgot my survival guide,” he said. His voice carried that excited edge, like he knew something the rest of us hadn’t caught up to yet.

He looked at me then. “You good?”

Before I could answer, Andy barked, “We’re fine, O’Kinzy.” Shannon didn’t move. He just kept watching me, waiting.

I gave him a small nod. “I’m fine.”

He studied my face one second longer than comfort allowed, then dipped his chin and slipped past us toward the door as he muttered, “See you later, Sinley.”

Andy rolled his eyes dramatically. “Freak.”

I turned on him with a look sharp enough to cut. He exhaled through his nose, shoulders dropping. “Sorry,” he muttered.

Some of the tension went out of me. I stepped closer and rested my hand on his arm, feeling the firm muscle there, the pulse beneath the skin.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on,” I asked softly, “or am I going to have to work it out of you?”

My hand slid upward, smoothing over the sleeve of his t-shirt. Andy softened the way he always did under gentle touch. It was one of the first things I’d learned about him before I was even old enough to understand the reason. He looked suddenly younger than he had in weeks.

“My dad’s just been on my ass about picking a school,” he said. “And Coach is on my ass about giving my all this season.” He kicked lightly at the leg of a chair. “And kids like that piss me off.”

“Like Shannon?”

“Like all of them.” He gestured vaguely, meaning boys with strange hobbies and no fear of ridicule, boys who dressed wrong and talked back and seemed immune to consequence. “They don’t know what it’s like to be under this much pressure. They get to do whatever they want with their lives. And they assume I’m an asshole because I play football, and my dad’s a pastor. But I want to get out of here just as bad as they do. It just costs me more.”

I thought of August in the parking lot, all dry eyes and careless posture. He does his stereotype justice.

“Is that why you dislike August?” I asked. Andy’s face tightened again, but only briefly.

“I don’t like the way that kid looks at you,” he said, sounding exhausted.

My stomach dropped so fast I felt it in my knees. I wrapped my arms around his neck before my face could betray me.

“I’ve never noticed,” I said sweetly. Inside, panic skittered through me like mice in walls.

Andy smirked against my cheek, pleased by my answer, and slid his hands to the backs of my thighs. Before I could protest, he lifted me. I laughed automatically, clinging to his shoulders.

“Andy! Put me down.”

“Nope.” He carried me toward the door while I squirmed uselessly, the keys jangling in his pocket.

Outside, the night had turned soft and warm. Crickets sang from the ditch line. The church steeple rose against the stars—a beacon for hypocrisy.

Andy hauled me toward the pathway in the treeline we used to get to the small clearing in the cornfield where we usually hooked up as if I weighed nothing at all. I clung to him because there was nothing else to do. Because I knew that letting him have these few minutes where he could feel like he was in complete control was often the only relief Andy Spires ever got in his life.

Over his shoulder, I looked back at the empty church windows glowing pale in the dark and thought how strange it was that a place so full of God could feel so haunted.

Chapter Twelve

Istepped out of the shower onto the cool locker room floor, wrapping a towel around me. My lungs were just beginning to expand again after inhaling the hot steam following my run in the cold air.

I always tried to leave the house before my father made his way to the kitchen on weekdays. So after my run and shower, I still had another forty minutes before the first period started.