The Truths we Burn (The Hollow Boys Book 2)

Rook

It’s an entire month before my path crosses with Sage Donahue again.

The seed of curiosity had been planted in her brain, and I knew when the right time came, she was going to crack and come running to find the excitement her life lacked.

Underneath that exterior, I know there’s a girl dying to escape. I could see it in the way she treated Rose, in the way she turned green with envy. She wants the freedom her sister has but for some reason is too afraid to chase after it.

I’m walking to class, my lip throbbing from the new cut it had received before I even touched my oatmeal, when I hear a voice bounce off the lockers.

The halls are empty, students already at their desks for class, leaving me alone with the voice.

Normally, I would continue walking, go to class, and get the staring over with. Continue my day as if it had never happened.

But something about the soft yet firm tone has my ears peaking with familiarity.

I follow it all the way to the end of the hall. My hand presses into the door of the auditorium carefully. These old fuckers creak when you breathe on them.

Several rows of empty red cloth seats fill the theatre. All the lights that normally light the stage are off except for one single beam.

It glares from the balcony onto the dark wooden stage, allowing nothing but what hits the light to be seen in any direction.

There is only her.

She stands alone, just her and the light, wearing this plaid school skirt number that makes her legs look like they travel for miles.

Quietly, I slide into one of the seats in the back, leaning back and plucking my freshly rolled blunt from behind my ear. I use my match to light it, making sure my movements don’t disturb this little actress.

“Gah, I’d almost forgot how strong you are, John Proctor!” she says confidently, her eyes wide and sorta dreamy, like a woman with an infatuation.

Calling her a good actress would be an understatement, because I thought it was impossible for Sage Donahue to look this smitten.

She pauses for her imaginary co-star to say his line before her body shifts and she continues.

“Oh, she’s only gone silly somehow,” she giggles—literally fucking giggles.

Smoke rolls off my lips as I watch her move across the stage. Gilding, like she was a swan born on water.

Graceful, comfortable, belonging.

It almost makes me forget what she said the last time we talked or how close I was to showing her what it’s really like to piss me off.

“Oh, posh.” She waves her hand, stepping closer to the man I’m assuming she’s talking to. The wickedness in her body language makes me smirk. “We were dancin’ in the woods last night, and my uncle leaped in on us. She took fright, is all.”

She mumbles the next few lines, both hers and her partner’s, pacing back and forth in the spotlight like something is building inside of her.

I’m not one to be interested in things that don’t excite me, but something about how real she looks up there is fucking with me.

“She is blackening my name in the village!” She says the words as if she’d swore. “She is telling lies about me! She is a cold, sniveling woman, and you—” Her eyebrows furrow, sadness creeping up her throat. “You bend to her!”

I hate theatre, and I think I’ve been inside of this one maybe twice, but there wouldn’t be much that would move me from this seat.

She shakes her head aggressively, like her partner had said something she couldn’t stand to hear. I lean forward in my seat, squinting as I catch the tears that glisten off her pale face.

“I look for John Proctor who took me from my sleep and put knowledge in my heart! I never knew what pretense Salem was, I never knew the lying lessons I was taught by all these Christian women and their covenanted men!” she spits, her voice sizzling with emotion, like a betrayed woman in pain.

“You loved me, John Proctor.” She steps closer to the front of the stage, eyes begging without even saying the words. “And whatever sin it is you love me yet!”

I inhale, the smoke trying to make me cough, but I hold it in, resting the blunt on my lips as I raise my hands.

“Bravo!” I shout, clapping my hands slowly, echoing in the room that is otherwise filled with silence. “What a performance.”

She freezes, busted in the act of being something other than queen bee by the one person she can’t boss around.

I push myself out of the seat, making my way down the aisle towards the front of the stage with heavy footsteps.

“What was that?” I plant my hands flat on the stage, vaulting myself up so that I’m standing in the shadows while she continues to gawk at me from the spotlight. “Romeo and Juliet?”

It takes her a moment to realize what is going on. The vulnerable girl who seemed to be enjoying herself on this stage retreats, and out comes her protector. We all become something scary in order to protect our true selves and the ones we love.

I see her mask. And I’m tired of her keeping it on when she’s around me.

I want to see the ugly pain beneath. The secret scars she covers, the monsters eating at her flesh. Those are real, and life is too short to focus on the fake.

“What are you doing here, Rook?” she says, folding the pages of the book in her hand until they are closed, waving it around to sweep the smoke away from her. “You can’t smoke in here! It’s a freaking fire hazard.”

“Let’s be honest, Sage. I’m a fire hazard,” I joke, but it doesn’t land the way I want.

Tough crowd.

“Let’s pretend you didn’t see me here,” she mutters, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear and moving to leave.

“Ah, ah, ah,” I start. “Not so fast. What were you doing?” My body blocks hers from the steps, keeping her from leaving.

“Performing open-heart surgery,” she deadpans. “What does it look like, idiot.”

I click my tongue, taking in another deep inhale of the weed before putting the cherry out on my jeans. “I wouldn’t have taken you for a theatre geek.”

“Do not call me that,” she hisses, pointing her dark red nails at me. “If you tell anyone what you saw, you will regret it, pyro.”

Testosterone fills me up. The challenge she is presenting is almost too much to handle. Is she threatening me? Thinking she can do to me what she does to everyone else? Cut me down with menacing words?

Apparently, she has not learned who she’s working with here.

“Yeah? What are you gonna do about it, TG?”

TG. I like it. Theatre Geek. It feels like a little secret on top of a secret that I could dangle above her head.

She pauses, trying to think of what she could possibly say that would scare someone like me into silence. I enjoy watching her scramble for something, anything to use against me in this situation.

“That’s the problem. You have nothing on me. You have no rumors, no secrets, nothing to spill about me. And that’s your only power in this place. Without that, you have absolutely nothing.”

All of which is true.

How do you scare the guy with no fear?

I’ve taken away her only bargaining chip. This is how she keeps people at arm’s length, because she has the power over them. No one knows anything about Sage except what she wants you to.

Now, she’s caught in my web.

“Rook, listen—”

“Oh, it’s Rook now? What happened to pyro?”

Frustration rattles her, but beneath that is fear.

Her anxiety-riddled, flushed skin makes her cinnamon-colored freckles even darker. I had held a hot match to her neck last month. With her fragile neck in my grip, I could’ve killed her, but she didn’t so much as blink. It wasn’t fear that day, it was excitement.

They are two different emotions, and you can feel the difference. It’s in the way her heart fluttered against my palm and her eyes stayed wide.

I know fear, and I know exhalation.

But right now, she’s afraid, scared I’ll tell people about her in the theatre. Something that up till now I wasn’t aware was private.

“Stop being a jackass. You think I like asking you favors?” she snaps, pressing her fingers into her eyes before sighing. “Just,” she breathes, “just please don’t tell anyone, okay? It’s not something that everyone knows.”

I pause, tilting my head, waiting to see if I should push her any further or let her have this one.

Her eyes do that thing they did on stage earlier, where they soften and the blue color isn’t so harsh, but they still burn bright like gas flames. The trick is figuring out if this is all a show or if she’s being honest.

Either way, I’m not leaving until I get some form of leverage over her.

“I’ll keep my mouth closed, under one condition.” I offer, stepping closer to her. The smell of her perfume mixing with my marijuana creates this sort of fever dream aroma that makes my high feel more intense.

She touches her tongue to her upper lip. “What is it?”

I bend down to her height, my face level with hers, our eyes creating one direct line. “Tell me the truth. Why do you care?”

“About what?” She’s stalling, trying to avoid the question.

“Don’t play dumb, Sage. It’s not a good look on a girl like you. Why do you care if people find out about your hobby? It’s not something that would be frowned on or taint your image, so why do you care?”

My eyes flick to her body, seeing her fists clenched so tightly that her hands are ghostly. Even so, she stands her ground, keeping her eyes on mine. Like she’s so confident that I won’t see through her, into her.

“Because when you give the people here genuine pieces of who you are, they blend them up and drink it down with their morning breakfast. They will stomp out every hope you’ve ever had. When Ponderosa Springs learns your secrets, it holds you captive forever. There is no getting out, and I am not letting that happen.”

I’d be lying if I said her answer didn’t shock me.

It makes me wonder if Sage has already seen the wicked ways of this town up close and personal, if the sweetheart everyone knows is harboring something disastrous and twisty within the walls of her mind.

“What happened to you?” I ask accidentally, meaning to say it in my head.

“Enough to know better.”

A bell rings abruptly, the sound of students filling the halls, and all authenticity disappears. She picks her bag up off the stage, moving past me and down the steps.

It makes sense now, how she starred me down when I threatened her on the side of the road. How she was so unafraid.

There are only two people who can look the pits of hell in the eyes and not flinch.

Those in Hell and those who already made their way out.