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  DANGEROUS BOYS

Copyright © 2013 Abigail Haas

All Rights Reserved.

This is a piece of work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author'due south imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Formatted by George Bittmann, Expressionless River Books

Also by the author:

Dangerous Girls

(Written as Abby McDonald)

Sophomore Switch

Boys, Bears & a Serious Pair of Hiking Boots

The Anti-Prom

Getting Over Garrett Delaney

Jane Austen's Guide to Hollywood

The Popularity Rules

The Liberation of Alice Dear

This book is defended to anybody who championed Dangerous Girls.

This ane is for y'all.

Our lives are made up of choices. Big ones, small ones, strung together by the thin air of good intentions; a line of dominos, ready to fall. Which shirt to wear on a cold wintertime'southward forenoon, what crappy junk nutrient to eat for dejeuner. It starts out so innocently, you don't even discover: get to this party or that picture, listen to this vocal, or read that book, and then, somehow, you've chosen your college and career; your boyfriend or wife.

So many choices, nosotros finish counting later on a while. They blur into an endless stream, leading seamlessly to the next question, the adjacent determination – yes, no, no, yep. The line of dominos falling one by one. Click, click, click, they tumble faster until you can merely see the two that really mattered:

The start, and this, the end.

Oliver, and Ethan, and I.

'What are you doing, babe brother?' Oliver takes half a step towards us. 'You're scaring Chloe.' He looks from me to Ethan and back once again, and I can run across him trying to assess the scene, his brain ticking apace behind those abrupt blue eyes. 'Just calm down.'

'I am calm!'

'We tin can talk about this.' Oliver tries to soothe him.

'No!' Ethan insists, his voice a hoarse yell. The sound sends shivers of fear through me. I've never seen him like this before, so wild and erratic. Out of command. 'I'yard not listening to your lies whatsoever more than. It's all bullshit, every word of it. You can't talk your style out of this!'

'I'm lamentable,' I whisper, crumpled in the corner. 'I'thou and then, so distressing. I never meant . . . I never meant to hurt you lot.'

'It's too late for that!' Ethan screams.

I flinch back, shaking, looking desperately for some escape. Only I'm trapped with Ethan standing betwixt me and the door. Oliver is closer, he could get and get help; I take hold of his middle, trying to gesture, only instead of leaving, he just inches towards us.

'Shh, Ethan, it's OK.' Oliver holds his hands up, a sign of submission. 'We won't talk, nosotros don't have to do anything. Just put the knife down.'

Ethan looks at the blade in his hand, similar he'd forgotten it was there. The steel glints, bright in the candlelight, so pretty I could about forget what ugly truths information technology could write.

'Ethan, please,' I beg. 'Don't injure us.'

DISPATCH: Ix ane one, what'due south your emergency?

CALLER: Please, you have to send someone. An ambulance, please, he's bleeding!

DISPATCH: OK, nosotros'll send help. Just calm down, and tell me where you are.

CALLER: I . . . I don't know what to do. In that location's so much blood, I can't make information technology terminate.

Dispatch: Where are y'all, love? What happened?

CALLER: Upwards by Echo Indicate, by the lake. I tried to get him out, and at present . . . (sobbing) Delight, he's non moving!

Acceleration: I'grand sending an ambulance now. Tell me what happened, where is he hurt?

(Silence)

Acceleration: Dearest? Are y'all there? Talk to me.

(Silence)

CALLER: (Quiet) It's called-for. Everything's on burn.

It was 3 weeks until the end of summer, and I was counting down, the way I always used to as a kid. Then, the countdown was to keep fall at bay; measuring every precious moment of summer liberty, equally if somehow charting the days out in not bad red marks in my journal would give them weight plenty to make them real, anchor them steady in my life instead of letting them migrate, aimlessly past, into the front porch popsicle haze that was already gone.

Now, I counted towards the end of summertime because I couldn't wait for school to start. Marking out the weeks in an afternoon lull at the diner, day past day, planning my escape.

Three weeks until freshman orientation. Three weeks until I could exist done with Haverford, Indiana, for good: the single-stoplight Main Street, the shuttered stores on the outskirts of town, and the business firm that stood likewise quiet – filled with torn photographs and the ticking fourth dimension-bomb that was my mother. Iii weeks until my existent life could finally begin.

'Can I catch a drop of that refill, sweetheart?'

I looked upwards from my paper napkin agenda with a outset. Sheriff Weber was in his usual booth by the windows, nursing a cup of coffee every bit he leafed slowly through the local paper, chewing absently on the end of a ballpoint pen. Nigh afternoons, he would be there, flipping through paperwork or settled in with his word puzzles. He often would say – yawning, stretching – leave the chasing down criminals to the younger deputies; people knew where they could notice him.

'Sure, sorry.' I rounded the counter and poured him more than, glimpsing the scribbles on his crossword page.

'Thanks. You know a five-letter word for discordant, on edge?'

I paused, seeing the letters take shape in my listen. 'Sharp?'

Weber nodded slowly, writing in the respond along the edge of the box.

'Why don't you fill information technology in?' I asked, curious. Now that I was up shut, I saw he had almost the whole page covered with notes, but nix written in the grid itself.

'I like to wait until I've got it all figured out.' Weber gave me a conspiratorial smile, his weathered confront drooping in a higher place the crisp blue of his uniform; a dark, Basset Hound face. 'Saves going back and making a mess with the crossings out.'

I lingered past the ruby-red-red berth. The diner was repose, it e'er was this fourth dimension of day: a haven of sunshine and pie displays, and swinging Sixties pop on the one-time-school jukebox. At present that virtually of the summer crowds had decamped from their lakeshore vacation homes, Haverford seemed in limbo, the streets empty where only days agone, they'd bustled with the busy throngs of solar day-trippers and summer kids, tracking sand across the floors, dripping melted ice-cream across the cracked vinyl seats for me to clean.

'Y'all'll be off before long?' Weber asked. I'd known him forever. His daughter was my best friend and this twelvemonth, I'd spent more fourth dimension than was polite over at their firm under the guise of studying and after-school hang-outs.

I nodded. 'I leave a few days after Alisha, I call up.'

'Information technology's too presently. Although don't permit her know her old dad said that.' Weber gave me a rueful smile. 'She says we're acting like it's the end of the world, not college. I expect your folks are the same.'

I tensed at the mention of my parents. 'Something like that,' I answered vaguely, but Weber must take realized his fault, because he coughed, awkward.

'Say, what's the pie today?' He inverse the subject.

'Blueberry.' I smiled quickly. 'It's good, y'all desire a slice?'

'Sure, why not? I've got some time before dinner.'

'Coming right up.'

I headed dorsum backside the counter. One thing I wouldn't be missing nigh this boondocks was the way everybody knew everyone'southward business – fifty-fifty if they pretended like they didn't. Nobody had said a discussion to me about the events of this jump, but I'd caught the curious glances arou

nd boondocks, and overheard snatched murmurs of gossip in line at the store. 'No, they never knew . . . Yup, out in San Diego, due in the autumn.'

I slammed the coffee pot back under the drip, swallowing downwards the anger that bubbled, treacherous, every time I permit my thoughts wander.

Iii weeks. Merely three more weeks to go.

'Wow, what did that coffee pot ever do to you?'

I spun effectually. The boy was back, walking over from the front door and slinging himself downwards on one of the stools past the counter, the same way he had washed every solar day so far that calendar week.

'Oh, hey.' I swallowed, looking away. 'What can I get you?'

The boy reached over and slid a menu closer, glancing over the peeling laminate sheet even though I already knew what he'd be ordering.

'Tuna cook, mustard, mayo, pickle on the side.' The boy gave me an piece of cake smile, a flash of white against his tanned face and sandy-brown pilus. His optics were blue: kind eyes, guileless, and today his gaze drifted past me, upward to the specials board hung overhead. 'Throw in ane of those root beer floats.'

'You sure?' I raised an countenance. We kept all the old-fashioned soda shop specials written up on the chalkboard, only nobody always ordered them. They all knew better.

'What tin can I say, I'yard a dare-devil,' the boy grinned. 'A risk-taker. I live life on the border.'

'Really?'

'Nope.' The male child laughed. 'Simply information technology sounds adept, doesn't information technology?'

'I'll get you a milkshake,' I decided, placing his club on the dorsum bar and hitting the bell to call José dorsum from his non-and then-secret cigarette break. 'Chocolate OK?'

'Yes ma'am.'

I took my time fixing the drinkable, scooping the ice-cream and running the blender on loud as I snuck a glance back to him. He waited at the counter, perfectly at ease. He didn't bring a volume or a newspaper, I noticed, or endlessly scroll through his phone like the other regulars who came in lone. He just saturday, calm and still, watching the occasional pedestrian stroll past outside the windows.

'Here you go.' I delivered his shake, served in a tall glass with whipped foam spiralling into a snowy peak.

His eyes widened at the sight. 'Damn, that's something. You think I should drink it or scale the matter?'

'Up to you,' I laughed. I pulled out the bottles of ketchup and began setting them on end, filling former containers with the new. 'I'll send a search party if you're non dorsum by dawn.'

The male child grinned. 'I'g Ethan, by the style. I figure, since I've been in every 24-hour interval . . . ' he looked awkward for a moment, waiting for my reply.

'Hey.' I reached to shake his outstretched paw. 'Chloe.'

'Good to run into you, Chloe.' Ethan took a slurp of his milkshake. 'You lot're officially my first friend in Haverford.'

'Welcome to town.'

He smiled once more, like shooting fish in a barrel. 'Nosotros just moved here. Dad's developing the tract out past Echo Point.'

I nodded. Kids from loftier school would head out at that place to go high and beverage inexpensive beer, bravado off steam with their fathers' guns. I'd never been invited, I didn't run in those crowds, but I'd see the debris when I went out running around the lake sometimes, the ashes from the campfire and the twists of empty cans.

'It's going to be iv luxury properties,' Ethan continued. 'Rustic cabin style, but all the mod-cons. Fifteen hundred square foot a piece.' He stopped, looking bashful. 'Sorry, construction talk.'

'You lot're working on the site?' I asked, studying him. His plaid shirt was crisp, and his face was more than cleanly shaven than some of the construction guys who stopped by for breaks, all scruffy beards and dirty nails.

He nodded. 'Kind of, more than the office for now. Learning the ropes. I graduated this summer and went straight into the chore. Suddenly, I'one thousand supposed to be an adult, just because I'm earning a paycheck.' He gave me a rueful grin and I nodded.

'It'due south strange, isn't information technology? They give you a diploma and and then you're supposed to magically know what you lot're doing. I'm leaving for college shortly.' I added.

'Shame.' Ethan said. 'Not the college part, but . . . ' He coughed, looking inconversable. 'Who'll keep me in tuna melts?'

'I don't make them.' I felt myself chroma.

'Just you do cut the crusts off for me,' Ethan grinned, a teasing glint in his eyes.

I turned to straighten upward the back counter, shielding my face from him for a moment. I'd been thinking of him every bit 'the boy' all week, but he was more than that, I realized. Eighteen, nineteen – Ethan was a man. It shouldn't have seemed like such a strange discovery, but it was. This was the year it had inverse: my classmates all of a sudden filling out from gangly boys to wide-shouldered, solid-chested guys with a new certainty to their stride, a sense of physicality, occupying their space in the world with ease.

Ethan was i of them: tall and solid, and watching me with a blatant involvement in his eyes I couldn't ignore; an interest that felt thrilling and uneasy even so. The boys in school never looked at me like that, they knew improve; that I wasn't i of the girls who partied past the lake, or hooked up in a basement on a Friday night. I was careful, determined that nothing would distract me from my future plans.

But Ethan didn't know that. He didn't know anything nigh me at all – and withal, he looked at me like I was someone worth watching.

José slid his lodge through the hatch and I busied myself slicing off the crusts and folding a paper napkin before bracing myself and turning back to the counter. I placed the food in front end of Ethan and his eyes flicked downwardly to my chest for the briefest of split-seconds earlier locking eyes with me again.

'Thanks. So when do you head out?'

I blinked a moment. 'Oh, end of the month.'

'Whereabouts?'

'Connecticut,' I replied. 'Mills.'

'Wow.' Ethan bit off a corner of his sandwich and chewed. 'You must exist smart.'

I paused. I never knew what to say to that. Often, it sounded like an insult coming from guys, as if I was supposed to dorsum-track and stutter, no, no, I wasn't smart at all.

'Chloe?' Weber'southward voice came. I turned, remembering.

'The pie! I'm deplorable.'

'Don't worry most it, I've got to get going.' He tucked abroad his phone and rose out of the berth, shrugging on his jacket. 'Damn kids spray-painting at the Seven-Eleven again. Broad daylight.' He shook his head with a sigh. 'What practice I owe y'all?'

'On the house.' I waved it away.

Weber shook his head and placed a five-dollar bill downward on the table. 'You lot take intendance,' he said. 'And come over for dinner sometime this week. We should have a goodbye with you girls before you get out.'

'I will.' I moved to wipe down his table. He'd left the newspaper, and then I checked the crossword: filled in, every box marked with keen blackness lettering.

'Friendly boondocks.' Ethan spoke up when I returned to my spot behind the counter. 'We've been moving around so much, I forgot places like this existed.'

'I approximate . . . ' I nodded. 'I've never been anywhere else. Not however.'

'Yous're lucky. Last identify we lived, I never saw our neighbours in one case. Except the time they tossed expressionless forest over the contend into our backyard, virtually knocked my brains out,' Ethan added.

I thought of the world out in that location waiting for me, filled with cities where I wouldn't know a soul and could lose myself on streets I didn't know by heart. It sounded like bliss to me, only I knew that if I said and so, Ethan would simply ask why, so I busied myself with wiping downwardly the residual of the tables instead, daydreaming in the warm, bright diner until he finished his sandwich and the afternoon blitz (which was more than of a trickle these days) started up, and I had to bargain with the cluster of junior high kids all ordering abysmal dollar sodas and single portions of fries, cluttering the booths with their vibrant sling of bags and jackets and the incoherent buzz of their cellphones.

'Hey, Chloe?' Ethan lingered

awkwardly by the door as I delivered a tray of drinks, trying not to spill. 'You, umm, maybe want to leave sometime?'

I stopped, taken by surprise. Behind me, I could hear a table of teenage girls burst into excited whispers, but I wavered, unsure, clutching my empty tray to my breast.

'I don't know . . . I'one thousand leaving in a few weeks.'

'So y'all're busy every dark until then?' Ethan teased.

I smiled. 'No, but . . . ' I trailed off, not sure how to explicate that I didn't desire to put down whatever more roots in this town, non when I couldn't wait to cut my last ties loose.

'Look, the mode I see it, you tin can't lose.' Ethan grinned.

'Actually?' I had to express mirth at his conviction.

'Sure, it's cypher risk,' Ethan explained. 'If it turns out y'all can't stand up the sight of me, yous won't have to. You'll be hundreds of miles abroad. What practice y'all say, dinner and a movie?'

My heed raced. He looked skilful, standing there, backlit by the afternoon sun, gilded in his hair and a hopeful smiling on his face up. Solid and easy.

But I was already a hundred miles away.

'I tin't,' I mumbled, looking downward. 'Only, thanks.'

He blinked, his face falling. 'Well, here, have my number.' He grabbed a napkin and scribbled it down. 'In case you change your heed.' I took the paper, slowly folding it into my pocket. 'Run across you effectually.'

I watched him go, dorsum out on to the sidewalk and across the street to where a brand-new blue choice-up truck saturday waiting. He was unhurried and sure in the sunlight. I wondered if I'd made a mistake.

But the red marks on my calendar were counting downward, closer to the life that was waiting for me in Connecticut. Men wearing thick cable-knit sweaters and parka coats, autumn leaves, freshman dorms. I had weeks to kill here, certain, but what was the point in starting something new when part of me was already gone?

You can never really know someone.

Perhaps y'all call up that sounds trite, or peradventure you already learned it a long time ago. Just me, I didn't really grasp it until now: huddled in the corner of the ambulance, watching the medics try to shock life back into a motionless body.

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