Page 93 of Skalterra By Nightmare
“Don’t worry, she wouldn’t poison your food if there was any chance I might eat it on accident.”
I jolted my head up to look at him through the mirror, and he laughed.
“I knew it. She doesn’t like me.”
“Sabrina doesn’t like most people. Once you’ve made an impression, it’s hard to change her mind about you.”
“Oh.” I looked back down as Liam lifted the razor again. Jonquil bumped against my arm from her perch on the counter, but I suspected she was searching for Liam’s attention rather than mine.
“But it’s not impossible to win Sabrina over,” he assured me.
I wouldn’t get my hopes up, not when I was the one who had originally taken down Riley’s posters and had only replaced a fraction of them. If she ever did find out it had been me, she was sure to tell Liam. He was kinder than Sabrina, but he would never forgive me.
He gave my neck a final brush and turned off the razor.
“If architecture doesn’t work out, maybe I’ll be a barber.” He grinned at me in the mirror. I ran my fingers over the shortened hair at the back of my head. Even if I couldn’t see the haircut, it at least felt the same as when Mom would shear it down.
“I’ll have to take your word for it.” As genuine as my next words were, they still took an embarrassing amount of effort to summon forth. “Thank you, Liam.”
Liam backed out of the bathroom and scooped the plastic bag up from the floor. Jonquil bounded off the counter to give chase, chirping as she landed on the tiled floor.
“What do you say?” He shook the bag at me, and Jonquil wove between his ankles. “Dinner on the back deck?”
Gams’s warning from earlier in the day echoed at the back of my head. She’d been right. A friendship with Liam wasn’t sustainable, and he deserved better.
But the burgers did smell good, and he was kind, and as terrible as taking Riley’s posters down had been, I felt like I deserved at least a little bit of kindness.
The sun sinking over the harbor was still warm. We sat at the edge of the shop’s back deck with our legs through the railing to dangle over the high tide. Liam was back in his Von Leer hoodie, and I watched him eat his burger, thinking of the way I’d stolen his face and clothes in Skalterra to escape arrest with Orla.
Orla had called his face and clothes hideous, and while I disagreed, the memory of it made me smile.
“What?” Liam asked through a mouth full of burger.
“Nothing.” I ran my fingers over the fresh undercut again. “Sabrina did a good job on the burgers.”
“You think so?” Liam surveyed his half-eaten burger. “Riley always liked them too. Siobhan’s going to cater his memorial free of charge.”
“Memorial?” My appetite ebbed, and I lowered my burger. “Did they find something?”
Liam sighed, and set his burger aside on the to-go container between us.
“No, but he’s probably not coming back.” He kept his eyes on the water beneath us. “Everyone knows it.”
“Nobody knows anything,” I said, too aggressively.
“It’s not the first time this has happened, you know.”
My stomach churned, and I set my burger down next to his.
“I know. I heard about your parents. Liam, I—”
“I told my aunt and uncle about those girls today,” he said. “They were going to keep looking for Riley, but after that… They want it over.”
I dug at my undercut, wishing there was still something there for me to pull on. None of this was normal. It didn’t make sense, and maybe it wasn’t my mystery to unravel, but I hated the look on Liam’s face.
“People don’t just disappear,” I said. “They have to go somewhere, even if they’re dead. Why does it keep happening here?”
“It happens everywhere, Wren. All the time.”
