Page 2 of Together We Rot

“Go home, Wil,” he orders.

I huff and shove my phone deep in my pocket before Vrees can confiscate that, too. With a dozen eyes searing into my skin, I storm my way toward the frozen hellscape outside.

“And, Greene,” he calls, his voice more grating than usual. “Consider this a warning. Next time I see you bothering anyone in this town, there will be hell to pay.”

I freeze with my back to him. My fists clench the door handle and I fear any more pressure will have it ripping right off. Beyond the window, the snow has made the evergreens in the forest twice as vibrant. Just like how your eyes get brighter after you cry. Not in spite of the pain but because of it. I swallow back tears. “Don’t worry; I’ll do this on my own from now on.” The door slams hard behind me.

Naturally, my bike is buried beneath a mound of snow in the parking lot. It takes several minutes of yanking it free before I’m able to mount the slippery seat, but then, with a shaky start, I’m off.

The roads aren’t quite treacherous at this hour, but riding in this weather is hardly pleasant.

The storm has bleached the blue right out of the sky. Pine Point is always dreary, but the lack of color makes it worse. It is a ghoulish sort of gray, dismal and infectious; it soaks into my skin, magnifying my bad day until it feels like the entire world has been thrown off-center. Like I might never be happy again.

Get your shit together.

I pedal faster on my bike. I should be going home—warming myself up before my nightly stakeout in front of the Clarke house—but home is the last place I want to be right now. So instead, I veer toward one of the only people in this town I still care about. Ronnie Clearwater is in the middle of her shift at Earl’s Diner. I might’ve been fired from the same place, but Earl has yet to outright ban me, so I loiter there on the regular.

It serves as a neon-red beacon in the distance, Earl’s Pasties shearing through the soupy stretch of white. I have to hand it to Earl. The rest of his food might be school-cafeteria grade at best, but his signature meat pies are surprisingly good.

The diner is small and severely outdated, but it’s got a roof and a heater, so it’s fine with me.

It’s also got a million of those little scented pine tree air fresheners in the window, so that’s an added perk. The real pine trees outside aren’t quite as fragrant.

Even in December, the Morguewood forest reeks to high heaven. The stench of decay wafts from the forest’s soil, tickling my nose. The nasty, lingering odor lasts all year. The first frost subdues it, but it still looms like bile caught in the back of my throat.

Creatures die in droves out there. Deer stiff with frost. Bears with their eyes trained upward, past the starving flies and swirling maggots, up to the grimy gray sky above. Winter keeps their bodies fresh, and their carcasses thaw in the spring, decomposing with the wet slide of summer.

I rip my eyes away from the trees as I reach Earl’s.

I swing the door open after kicking my bike to the curb. I don’t bother locking it up. It’s a rusted, ancient thing that no one in their right mind would steal. If someone needs it that badly, they’re in worse shape than me.

It’s important to mention that Earl’s isn’t one of those cute small-town, fifties-style diners.

There are no trendy black-and-white-tile floors or glossy red chairs, no teens sipping milkshakes at the counter while someone punches in an Elvis song at the jukebox.

Instead, we’ve got ugly-as-sin wood paneling and an overwhelming number of deer heads and taxidermy fish on the wall staring at you while you eat. A local station plays from the radio. Some twangy country song about a wife who wants to commit a felony on her husband.

I shake the snow off on the grimy mat and step into the sickly white glow of the fluorescents.

There are generations of dead flies trapped in them, and when the lights crackle, it sounds like pattering wings. Typically, this would be the point where I’d slump into one of the worse-for-wear booths and smear the last guy’s crumbs off the table. Ronnie would hand me a leftover basket of greasy fries, and we’d gossip back and forth until her shift ends.

Not today. She’s busy being held hostage at someone else’s table. From the tremble of her fists and the grit of her teeth, I can tell she’d rather run a mile in the cold than talk to this booth right now.

I know who it is before I even look. Ronnie’s ex, Lucas Vandenhyde.

There are less than a hundred students in the entire Pine Point school district, but Lucas Vandenhyde has made it his mission to be the most annoying one. He’s a walking, talking migraine. Five seconds with him and I need an Excedrin.

Everything about him is too manufactured. Too put in place. His straight white teeth are the product of years of orthodontic work and every word out of his mouth feels like it’s been fed to him by a corny eighties high school flick.

“Vee, I only want to talk.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Ronnie snips, and I’m proud of her for it. She’s taken notes from my daily “How to Be a Bitch” TED Talk.

“Please—”

“Fine, fine. You want to talk?” Ronnie echoes, her voice lowering into a sharp whisper-growl. Not much of a whisper, since I can hear it from across the restaurant. “Okay, let’s talk. Let’s start with how you’ve been flirting with Leah Westbrooke all semester. Is that why you’re here now? Because she’s got a boyfriend? You’re wasting your time crawling back to me.”

I know she’s seething, because she’s got a strand of her hair curled around her finger. Some people twirl it like that to flirt, but it’s Ronnie’s alternative to yanking her hair right out of her scalp. I scowl at its color. Her harpy of a mother was quick to cover the blue. In less than forty-eight hours, she’s already driven her daughter an hour away to a salon to fix it. It’s no longer virgin blond but a brassy imitation of it.

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