The Lies we Steal (The Hollow Boys Book 1)

Briar

“So come on, spill it. Tell me what I need to know about this place. Where to avoid, secret societies.” I ask Lyra as we start picking at our lunch. 

The weather was nice enough to eat outside, no sunshine of course, but there was no rain and I needed to give my allergies a rest from all the dust inside the building walls. 

I stab a tomato with my fork, popping it into my mouth as Lyra starts tearing the pits out of her black cherries. The dark juices staining her fingers. Today had been a mandatory orientation for all students. Classes started tomorrow and I wasn’t sure if I was excited or wanted to throw up on my Chucks. 

Orientation was a snooze fest. Teacher after teacher, then the dean expressing his need for obedience and excellence. Teachers enforcing rules that had been here longer than most of us had been alive. I’d barely listened, I didn’t plan on doing anything too scandalous that would even require me to know the details of their authority. 

“What do you want to know?” She answers, tucking one of her chunky black Doc Martens beneath her. 

“Everything, anything.” I shrug, “Is Kennedy Hall really haunted?” I raise an eyebrow with a playful smirk. 

Lyra laughs a little, “Who knows? Story says there was a girl who was sleeping with one of the English professors, back when the school first opened. Apparently he tried to end it and she was so broken-hearted that she jumped right off the edge of one of the colonnades openings. They recovered her body at the bottom of the cliffside, stuck on one of the jagged rocks. Rumor says that if you walk Kennedy Hall past midnight, you can hear her screams as she fell.” 

The wind brushes my hair behind my shoulders, a thought brewing in my head. What is it about love that makes people want to die if they can’t have it? I’d heard once it was a chemical in your brain and I was beginning to think I lacked the biology to feel that way. 

“Crazy how people love that deeply, isn’t it?” I say aloud. 

Lyra bites into her pitless cherry, chewing softly, “That’s not love. It’s obsession. Two very different things.” 

“Yeah? You don’t think that’s the same thing?” 

“No,” She shakes her head, “Love is real. A tangible thing you can run your fingers over, warm and safe. Obsession is living a fantasy in your head, over and over again. Obsession is living in a nightmare, but never wanting to wake up.” 

I squint my eyes, suppressing a smile. Her face is so serious, staring down at her cherry soaked fingertips, like there is something staring back at her. I’m aware there are skeletons in my roommate’s closet, everyone has them. 

Something that makes them tick. A core secret that motivates their every move and when she’s ready, she’ll tell me. But a part of me thinks, this is a clue into who Lyra Abbott really is. 

“Whoa, that’s deep.” I mutter sarcastically. 

She snaps back when she hears my voice, shoving my shoulder playfully, “I’m serious. It’s a thin line between the two, but there is a line nonetheless.” 

Cracking open my juice I peer to my left at the sound of loud noises, seeing a small group of guys playing tag football in the middle of the commons. We’d picked one of the tables that was nestled beneath a tree, away from the busy areas because as we realized the other night, socializing was something we were going to have to learn. 

One of the players breaks through the rest trying to get to him, crossing their agreed line for a touchdown. Raising his arms above his head, his dirty blonde hair dusting the top of his forehead. The kind of boy built for attention. 

His long sleeve white shirt leaving little to the imagination, its see-through material allows a direct view of the deep-set torso muscles that contract as he laughs and cheers with his friends. 

“Easton Sinclair.” Lyra whispers, “Dean Sinclair’s son. One of the most beloved sons in Ponderosa Springs. Athlete, student body president, volunteers at the local animal shelter. A perfect human if there ever was one.” 

I chew the inside of my cheek, having a problem not looking at him. You couldn’t blame me though, we didn’t have guys like that back home. One’s that look like Abercrombie models. 

Pretty sure that my staring is burning holes into the side of his head, he turns his face in my direction, eyebrows furrow on his handsome face as he searches for the eyes looking at him. 

I quickly turn back to Lyra, face flaming a bright red. 

“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. 

“People joke that the match is there to light his short fuse. Last year he burned down the town’s oldest Willow tree. No reason behind it. Just did it because he likes to watch things burn. Every fire, every arson crime, everyone knows it’s him. But that’s just what I’ve heard.”

I wanted to roll my eyes. Tell her she was being dramatic, silly even. But I could feel how feral he was, it was in his eyes. The way they flared and crackled like a forest fire, just waiting to tear down anything in his way. 

“A lovely welcome home, I believe.” The person behind him, his voice echoing like screams in an empty cave. It bounces off the inside of my chest and his ice blue eyes sting everyone in front of him, including me. They are the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen on a human. He’s the tallest and skinner than his counterparts, but by a longshot I think he might be the most intimidating. 

Porcelain skin, paired flawlessly with his charcoal topcoat, an ironed black turtleneck and plaid slacks, I was envious of how well he was dressed. Everything about him told me he cared about how people saw him. Making sure every cotton blonde piece of hair was in place at all times.

“Thatcher Pierson. Death manifested into one perfectly made human.” Lyra breathes the same way she does when she’s admiring one of her dead bugs. With excitement. 

“Capable of choking you with his bare hands and not feeling anything in his cold, dark heart. He is incapable of feeling anything. Which is why, it’s believed the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. His father was Ponderosa Springs’ one and only serial killer.”

“You’re fucking joking. A serial killer?” I hiss. I thought my parents were fucked up. Psycho dad beats broke parents in fucking spades. 

“Do you—” I can’t believe I’m actually asking this, “Do you think he’s like his father? Does he ya know, kill people?” I whisper because I’ll be damned if he hears me. 

All she does is shrug, watching him walk every step of the way to the cop cars. 

“I don’t know and it’s not a theory many have tested out. So until then, no one will know.” Still moving her eyes with him, even when I ask her about the others. 

“Uh, Silas Hawthorne.” She nods, “Heir to a technology empire. Diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was twelve. Of course his parents tried to cover it up, but there is nothing that stays quiet in Ponderosa Springs. Not forever, anyway. He never used to talk much, but now, since Rosemary, he’s practically a mute.” 

I fan my eyes across the golden skinned one. An outside appearance designed for sunlight that carried eons of darkness on the inside. Pretty golden, brown colored eyes that were supposed to carry warmth, but I had a feeling they only harbored demons.

“Rosemary?” I question, feeling like I was being caught up on the local workings of a gang or some killer club. 

She nods, shushing me, wanting me to keep my voice down, “Rosemary Donahue, mayor’s daughter. I’m not sure what exactly happened, but everyone else says she overdosed. Silas was her boyfriend. They’d been together since I think middle school. He is the one who found her body. They all did.” 

It made sense. I could see the wrath that sat upon his shoulder. The reason darkness pooled off him in waves. The loss of someone he loved had turned him into something else entirely. 

I had so many questions. So many feelings. There wasn’t enough time to clear up my thoughts. 

It was then the clouds began to cry, heavy, wet tears that splashed on my thin gray, cloth jacket. It would be doused soon. The cheap material didn’t hold water well.   

We needed to get inside before the rain came full force, but I stayed sitting in my seat. Because the last member filtered down cobblestone steps and I wasn’t sure he needed an introduction. 

I knew him. 

I’d remember those eyes anywhere. 

The other boys had been dressed sharply, designer clothes, wearing their wealth as a badge of pride. But he was sporting a worn-down leather jacket that molded to his powerful shoulders. A gray Henley underneath and simple jeans. 

The same feeling I’d had the other night slithered up my legs, in the dark he was alluring, but in the light of day he looks so striking it takes the breath out of my lungs. 

“That’s Alistair Caldwell. They’d never say it out loud, but everyone knows he’s the one calling the shots. His family owns half the town, one of his great- grandparents founded Ponderosa Springs. He fights at The Graveyard every weekend, and he’s never lost. I doubt anyone has even laid a hand on him.” 

Alistair. 

So that’s the name of the mysterious guy I’d seen at the party. 

My breath comes out in visible puffs, the chain on his waist, the rings on his fingers. It all worked so well to fit this image of an angry boy. An angry god. Not a single emotion registered on his face except rage. 

I could feel it even from over here. 

“The sons of the torturously wealthy. Ponderosa Springs’ worst nightmare. They are the Black Death of this town. Not because they are popular, but because they have the power to scare people. Legends. Pretentious and they own every single bit of it. I just, I don’t know why they are here.” Lyra says confused. 

They were enjoying this. Each of them. Evoking terror and questions. The student body so concerned with what it was that required them all to be led out in handcuffs. They were loving the fear. Like hungry monsters and it was the perfect meal. 

“They live here, why wouldn’t they come to Hollow Heights?” I somehow find my voice enough to ask another question. 

“They hate it here. All of them. They were supposed to leave after senior year. I thought… I don’t know. They just aren’t supposed to be here.” 

The wind nips at my exposed skin, sweat pooled on my palms, and a shaky breath escaped me. The rain comes down harder, yet we sit there watching them get shoved into the back of the black SUV’s. 

The adrenaline I felt near him, Alistair, rivaled any crime I’d ever committed. My heart pummeled my chest cavity. As they were tucking his head inside, his dark eyes pierced mine all the way over here. 

I knew he saw me. Just like he did at the party.

The corner of his lip twitched and I sucked in a breath. Slowly, he winked before the door was completely closed and they were headed to the police station. 

That day there was a dark cloud following me, even after I’d shed my wet clothes and stood underneath the warm shower. I stood there, this feeling looming over me that Alistair wasn’t done with me, yet.