The Truths we Burn (The Hollow Boys Book 2)

Rook

Homecoming.

Where the entire town comes out and watches high school students drive around downtown on excessive floats. Sports teams, homecoming attendants, local businesses, school clubs, anyone and anything involved with the school sits in these and waves as they pass.

I wonder if they know how stupid they look from the outside.

To each their own, but I can’t find the fun in sitting on the side of the road to watch teenagers wave and smile. Just say you peaked in high school and stay home.

All it’s doing is boosting the already colossal egos of my peers and their infatuations with their own image.

Music blasts through my headphones into my ears, the current song bouncing around violently in my head. My throttle hand tightens, pulling back a little more, spurring my bike forward with a sharp whine of the engine.

Wind pushes up my black hoodie, and the world outside is tinted light brown from the matte-black visor that is technically illegal to use on the road, but I doubt any police car would be able to chase me down on this thing.

Riding is a blank space. Even when I’m high, I’m still filled with thoughts and memories. But when I’m riding, everything is gone. I’m a complete white sheet with nothing scribbled on me.

It’s the nearest thing to flying unaided that anyone will ever know.

The speedometer’s hand ticks past eighty-five, climbing higher every second. There’s a thrill in knowing if I tilt the wrong way by even an inch, I’ll become another piece of the pavement. Nothing but a road-burnt pancake.

That’s the thing about fear. At the root, it’s just the fear of dying, right? You’re not scared of the actual experience, just the aftermath.

So fear doesn’t work for me. We found out early in our lives that fear doesn’t work on any of us. Not when you’re already dead on the inside. When you’re racing the Grim Reaper to the grave. When you could not care less if the world ever saw your existence ever again.

Adrenaline junkies on an intense scale.

For me, any chance to either hurt myself or put myself in a situation that would increase my epinephrine levels, I would do in a heartbeat. There is just something about that natural high that makes me feel electric. It makes me feel like my body is on fire, and I love that feeling.

My body leans with a curve, emerging through the soaring pine trees and heading into the town of Ponderosa Springs. It’s a square of sorts, and right now everyone and their mother is on the east side of this shit swamp.

The parade lasts right until dusk, meaning we have another thirty minutes to do what we came here to do and leave before anyone else sees us.

Like ghosts, you could feel us in the air, but you’d never be able to prove it.

Or demons that hide inside your closet, only coming out when we want you to see us.

I drive through the empty street towards the town hall. Confetti, balloons, and candy cover the asphalt, a clear sign that this side has already been passed through.

My bike skids to a halt when I pull in front of the building. What used to be a Catholic church had been turned into the town hall. It had been here since the founding of the town, upgraded to stand the test of time. It’s where my father worked fifty percent of the time.

I hit the kill switch, my toe kicking the stand, and I slowly ease my way off my bike. Removing my helmet and setting it on the seat, I pull out a cigarette and sit on the concrete steps below the fountain in front of the building.

Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I see a message from Silas.

Passing the pharmacy now.

That was three minutes ago, so we have roughly twenty minutes before the entire town makes their way back to where I’m currently sitting. The parade always starts and ends in the same spot every year.

Halfway finished with my dart, I see the lights of a brand-new Range Rover coming towards me. My leg begins to bounce, and my fingers hum with anticipation.

Welcome to the gates of hell. The show is about to begin.

“I hate homecoming,” Alistair says, hopping out of the front seat of a car that does not belong to him. The control freak inside of him wouldn’t let me and Silas handle this on our own.

Plus, we have a mob mentality. You hurt one. You hurt us all.

I scoff at the cheesy white words written on the windows, things like, “QB1” “State!” “#7 Sinclair”

Never understood the obsession people have with high school sports.

“What don’t you hate?” Thatcher replies, sliding out of the passenger seat. I’ve known him a long time, and I know he’s petty, makes jokes, plays piano, and enjoys pissing people off.

Yet there are pieces of Thatcher I’ve never understood. Parts of him that are darker than my own. It’s when he gets quiet that the world needs to fear him.

The day he finally gives into his heritage is the day the world will pay for what they made him into.

Even I get goosebumps thinking about it.

“Hitting people.” Alistair smirks, bumping shoulders with Thatch as they make their way in my direction. The two of them had been tasked with jacking Easton’s car and meeting me here, while Silas is keeping an eye on the traffic.

“False,” I start, tossing my cigarette to the ground. “You hate the town’s homecoming. Ours is always fun.”

“You got cigarettes?”

I reach into my pocket, tossing the pack at Alistair, his leather jacket shifting as he catches them. My part of this begins now as I open my black book bag, the inside filled with everything you need to be thrown in prison for an arson charge, and pull out two empty bottles of whiskey, ones that I’d taken from the trash can in my own home.

“Lighter?”

I raise my eyes to my dark-headed friend, Alistair.

“You want me to smoke it for you too?” I joke, tossing him my Zippo. “Don’t fucking steal that one. It’s my favorite.”

He inspects the front of the lighter, arching an eyebrow, and lights his smoke before throwing it back to me. “Your favorite Zippo out of that entire massive collection is the one with your initials on it? A little fond of yourself, aren’t you?”

I roll my eyes as I squirt isopropyl alcohol into the inside of the whiskey bottles. “Says the one who likes leaving imprints of his own initials on people’s faces.”

We share a laugh while I work my pyromaniac magic, soaking a few rags in the alcohol before shoving them into the tops of the bottles, leaving a few inches hanging out of them.

“Look at him, our little chemistry nerd.” Thatcher rubs my hair, and I refrain from smacking the shit out of him.

“This has absolutely jack shit to do with chemistry. You can literally Google this. Four-year-olds could do it.”

“Well, let’s speed this process up. They’re headed back, and I want to get a good spot to watch Easton’s face when he shows up.”

I nod, heeding his warning and working quickly. Taking both bottles, I pull out my matches, striking one and watching the orange burst from the stick. My blood boils as I touch the flame to the rags hanging from the neck of the bottles. As I light them, I hope every time Sinclair sees his car he’ll think back to the words he spat at that diner.

He’ll think twice about pushing me too far next time. He’ll watch his mouth when it comes to Rose, when it comes to my friends.

This is a warning.

I’m consuming his car now, but the next time, it will be him I watch burn.

With agile movements, I rear back and chuck one bottle at a time through the Range Rover’s windows. One lands in the back seat and the other in the front. It won’t be long before the real action begins.

Two loud cracks like a whip against wet skin spark into the air as the glass bottles explode inside the car, swarming the vehicle in an inferno of retribution.

“Let the show begin, boys.”

My mouth begins to water as I move my bike up the hill past the town hall, a small knoll where we won’t be seen but has the perfect view of the disarray we are about to cause.

My foot bounces as I reach into my pocket, grabbing another cigarette to smoke while we watch. I watch as the entire town rolls in front of their star quarterback’s torched car.

The entire vehicle is completely up in smoke, covered from back to front.

Goosebumps race down my spine as I watch the flames dance, swirl, and spin with fascination, seeing every single sin I’ve ever committed inside of them. The embers floating off into the open air remind me of the tiny pieces that are left of my soul.

There were times when I was young, I would hear fire trucks pass my house, and I’d desperately try to chase them, running behind their sirens so I could see what it was they were racing to put out.

I’d only successfully made it to three, but every time, I was jealous that I wasn’t the creator of that blaze. It was beyond my control sometimes.

A sickness.

One that rushed through my veins and spun around every cord of my DNA. It infected me all over. A sickness that I refused to cure.

My heart pounds in my chest, my palms sweaty as I grin from our spot on the hill, looking down at their horrified faces. Easton is losing his fucking mind as people desperately attempt to dull the fire.

It’s total mayhem.

Parents gathering their children.

Students yelling.

The football team using their letterman jackets to swat at the sea of flames.

And then there is her.

Pretty poison in her tight cheerleading uniform that wraps around her like a second skin. A long-sleeve top that squeezes her perky breasts and leaves her diamond belly ring glinting in what’s left of the sunset. The forest green of her outfit is the complete opposite of her curled, red hair, only making her stand out more.

I sink my teeth into my bottom lip, dying to know what’s underneath that skirt.

By nature, she is seamlessly made.

Designed for deception.

You are taught to steer clear of beautiful things in the wild. Exquisitely colored frogs with neon patterns, stunning jellyfish that glow with their bioluminescence, exotic caterpillars that seem friendly enough to pet—they are all designed to bring attention and ward off danger.

Other creatures know to steer clear of the pretty things of the world. Humans feel the need to ignore those warnings, feel the need to touch even when we shouldn’t.

Leave the beautiful things alone, they tell you.

They speak the same things about fire.

And, well, we see how well I listened to those tales of caution.