Page 114 of The Influencer

I laugh self-consciously. “What? Is that a crazy question?”

“No, I just… it’s nothing. I’m from West Virginia.”

“Excuse me?”

He squints. “What?”

“You’re not lying?”

He shakes his head.

“West Virginia doesn’t exactly have a reputation for putting out many people like you.”

“No, it doesn’t. I was a mutant.”

“I don’t think I can name a single town in West Virginia,” I say. “Not even the capital.”

“Charleston.”

“And where did you live?” I ask, my curiosity hitting a fever pitch.

“The middle of nowhere. A very small town. It was ugly. Depressing. A lot of drugs.”

The flat tone of his voice as he half-heartedly describes his hometown kind of says it all, which tells me I might want to change the subject.

“Did you just leave there and come straight to LA?”

“I tried New York first, but I don’t know. Maybe I was too young to appreciate it. The city kind of chewed me up and spit me out. LA is more my speed.”

I can’t see him anywhere besides California. Let alone West Virginia. I have so many questions. “How long were you in New York?”

“Maybe nine months? Not very long.”

“Wait—how old were you?”

I didn’t mean anything by the question. I certainly didn’t mean to make all the light in his eyes go out. As he opens his mouth to answer, I cut him off. “You can tell me to mind my own business. It’s fine if you don’t want to talk about it.”

His chin tilts up slightly. “I was fifteen. I turned sixteen while I was there.”

“Oh,” I say, the sound not much more than a breath.

“My dad kicked me out my freshman year of high school. I didn’t have any friends, I didn’t have any family that wanted to take in someone like me. My mom was so high all the time, I think it was two weeks before she even realized I was gone. Anyway… I made it to New York, I just couldn’t make it in New York. At the time,” he adds. “I’m sure I’d be a smash there now.”

I want to smile at that remark, but I can’t. The rest of what he just revealed is a lot to take in. Too awful to contemplate, especially when I consider how good I had things at fifteen, comparatively speaking. I mean, I was miserable in a first-world problems kind of way, but I wasn’t homeless.

“I don’t mind talking about it,” he says. “Much.”

“I feel like I can assume a few things,” I tell him.

“Am I that much of a cliché?” he asks, batting his lashes up at me.

“Nah, I think you were just too pretty for your ugly little town. And ugly people are mean.”

He giggles. “What are you even talking about?”

“I don’t even know, I just want to tell you that sucks, and for whatever happened, I’m sorry.”

He leans close to me, and I suck in a breath when our noses touch. “Where did you think I was from?” he asks, barely loud enough to be heard over the surf.

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