Notes from Ghost Town Read Online Free PDF Page A

Pratt
wishes
. I wouldn’t get close to him with someone
else’s
hand.”
    “So you’re a prude, then?” he whispers, right up close to my ear, grabbing the drink, suddenly, from my hand and taking a drawn-out chug. He hands me back the empty glass, a wicked smile on his face. “That’s disappointing.”
    I
really
want to punch him. “I’m not a prude,” I say.
    He laughs. “Care to prove it?”
    I see him exchange a look with the rest of Finnegan Prep conglomerate across the room—Bryce quickly sets the steak knife he’d been holding to Mitch’s neck back on the table when he catches me looking.
    Suddenly, I can’t bear to be in this room a single second longer, everyone’s gaze flitting on and off me, trying not to look, unable to resist—like I’m a roadside accident and they’re slowing down traffic just to see how ruined I am.
    I wait until the bartender’s looking the other way and then reach behind the bar to swipe a full bottle of the first thing that comes into sight: Grey Goose. I turn on my heels and start walking away.
    “Hey—Prudie. We were in the middle of a conversation,” Austin calls out.
    I pause, turn briefly back to him. “I’m going to the beach.”
    “Oh. Really?” He sounds disappointed.
    “Follow me if you want.” I don’t know why I even offer; I don’t care whether he comes. I don’t care whether he
drowns
.
    He hesitates.
    “And you call me the prude?” I say. Then I turn back around and slip through the entranceway, back outside, into the thick heat.
    Seconds later, the doors
whoosh
open again and he’s standing on the concrete beside me.

three
    W here’s the freaking fire?” Austin calls. He’s walking several feet behind me along the shore.
    I don’t answer. Austin Morse deserves to suffer a girl’s silence once in a while, as far as I’m concerned. The farther out we walk, the more the fist-like lump in my throat grows. We’re getting close to my rickety old house—the one Dad built himself, which Mom painted vibrant purple—raised on stilts like some awkward, discolored pelican. Oh Susannah.
    “Do you know where we’re going?” he asks. I glance back at him but don’t answer. “It seems kinda sketchy over here.”
    “Trust me,” I say, “I know this place better than you think.” Ghost Town is so close. So freaking close to Oh Susannah it kills me. Before it was erected, we had a clean-sweep view of the city. Afterward, just shadows cast long off its massive face.
    The bottle is cool beneath my armpit, the vodka a sloshy whisper against my ribs. I can’t tell if it’s schizo-tendenciesor what, but I swear I can
hear
her—Mom—in the
hush-hush
of the ocean. The waves, rising, receding, are her long, bony fingers, crashing along the keys, lifting briefly as though to take in another breath.
    “Let’s sit here,” I finally announce, throwing down my purse and plopping myself on the cool sand in front of the stretch of abandoned piers that have, for years, been deemed unsafe and off limits. The wood is salt-eaten and rough, slick with algae and studded with rusty nails. One old pier snapped in half when I was in sixth grade and a couple standing on it ended up with spinal cord injuries that left them waist-down paralyzed.
    Austin squats beside me. “Pretty dead out here,” he notes, sifting the sand through his fingers and eyeing the bottle between us. He raises his eyebrows. “No chaser?”
    “Don’t need a chaser,” I answer as I grab the bottle up from the sand, tug the smooth cork from its mouth, and take a long-ass swig. It burns, hard, leaving my esophagus and belly buzzing and warm.
    He stares at me, stunned. “Man. I’ve never seen a girl do that before.” He sounds genuinely impressed. Boys like Austin are always impressed when they meet girls like me—girls who didn’t come from money, girls raised skipping shoeless through sand and swampland. He adds, “I don’t think I’ve seen many guys do it, either. Except for