Page 19 of The Lies We Steal

“Yeah,” Lyra giggles, “He tends to have that effect on girls. Let’s see, who else… Oh! Scottie Campbell,” She points to our right,

“His parents own a bunch of steel mills, and he poured his entire tray of food on me the first day of fifth grade. Then he fell down an entire flight of steps at school the next day, I started believing in karma after that.”

The guy is tall, lanky, and looks like the kind of guy who picks on other people until someone bigger comes around.

Not being able to help my curiosity, I turn my head back to Easton, just enough to catch a glimpse of a pretty brunette tossing her arms around his shoulders and placing a kiss on his lips.

“What about her?” I ask, slightly envious of the way her plaid skirt fits her shape. A pretty little cardigan dressing her shoulders and a headband holding back the flyaways. Poised, elegant and stunning.

All things I am not.

“Mary Turgid, parents are owners of chain stores. One of the most academically competitive people in our grade. Double major, with goals to be a defense attorney for one of the biggest law firms in America. Driven, pretty, and the master of killing people with kindness.”

Yeah, definitely the opposite of me. They make a cute couple though. The young John F. Kennedy and Jackie O.

I wonder what it’s like to be that girl. Miss Americana, the one everyone loves, who thrives in the spotlight. I’d been here a week and I was already thinking about things I know I’ll never be.

Even if Hollow Heights was foggy and a little mysterious. It had something Texas never did.

Hope for a better life.

A frigid gust of wind flips the pages of Lyra’s book violently, it howls between the trees making them groan and sway. The once silent sky, cracks with thunder. A warning for a storm brewing. There goes our lunch outside.

I start to pack up my things, not wanting to get caught in this downpour when I hear Lyra inhale deeply, like someone had punched her straight in the gut.

“Why are they here?” She croaks out, her voice sorta trembling with fear. Pressing her book into her chest like it was going to protect her.

I look around quickly, noting the murmurs and whispers spreading out across the common. All of them either glancing or staring in the same direction. I can feel the mood shift in the air, like a dark force had just swept across everyone.

“Who? What is going on?” I furrow my eyebrows, looking towards the main hall, the door open as a police officer walks out. Was there a drug bust already? Why is everyone so freaked out?

I’m answered by the doorway giving way to a tall body that made a small flash of something a lot like fear zip down my spine. The light of day illuminates their bodies, one by one as they appear, hands cuffed behind their backs. They couldn’t have been twenty feet away from me.

Even bound by metal bracelets, the hysteria erupting throughout the students around me told me the handcuffs did little to restrain the power they reverberated.

“The Hollow Boys.”

It’s spoken like a satanic cult prayer. I half expect the ground to start shaking and hellfire to start raining down with the weight of her tone. It was obvious, for whatever reason, this wasn’t the first time these guys had done something like this.

People were afraid of them for a reason.

Four of them in total.

And it was hard to deny how attractive they were. Beautiful enough to pull you in but the air that surrounded them made you want to take a step back. Multiple steps back.

They walked out, one after the other like demonic dominions, falling in perfect alignment. Each of them so different, yet they look like they meshed so well. Like knives and blood.

The sound of someone sucking their teeth vibrated through the area,

“Couldn’t start the year without some type of chaos, isn’t that right, boys?” He howls loudly.

The students physically shivered, the hair on the back of my neck stands up straight painfully aware of the uneasiness coursing through my body. I prided myself on being afraid of nothing, but there was something contagious about fear. Once it grabbed ahold of one person, it rubbed off on the ones around them.

The first one, stood with his shoulders back, bearing a wolfish grin while a single match sat on his red lips, like a warning. Every time his mouth moved, he would roll it to the other side of his mouth.

“Is that a match?” I ask, ridiculously.

Lyra nods, “His name is Rook. Rook Van Doren. Son of the district attorney. He’s the most…approachable of the four. You’d think his boy next door features would make him the sweet one. But the match is there for a reason,” She mumbles like she’s telling me a spooky story around a campfire.