Amity by Micol Ostow Read Free Book Online

ripe like moss and overgrowth. And the way the leaves jittered on their branches, well … it sounded like they were whispering little messages to me.
    As I squinted through the windshield, gripping the steering wheel so hard my knuckles were bone-white, I had a flash of that face again, that gaping, empty gaze from the night before, and I nodded, like I was answering those whispers myself. That shuddery feeling I kept getting around Amity swelled up in my stomach, light as air. Then it was gone, a soap bubble popped, and I nodded again, like I was reassuring the house and her … well, her tentacles , that’s how those snarled, ragged branches felt right then—reassuring everything that was connected to Amity … that I’d be back.
    And when the leaves rustled again, they told me they knew that I would be.
    I thought then that Amity was already all mine. I didn’t realize it was actually the other way around.
     
     
     
     
     

I FOLLOWED THE MAIN ROAD TOWARD TOWN , the roadside trees thinning out some, and the voices and the whispers quieting, too, the closer I got. But that soft hum, which felt so right, so welcoming, it was slowly getting replaced, like drowned out, I mean, with a popping loop of static. No matter how hard I listened, I couldn’t make out whether the static was inside my head, or outside of it.
    That happens to me sometimes. I don’t worry too much about it.
    The dirt road gave way to blacktop, although the pavement was patchy and maybe even tougher on the car’s suspension than the dirt was. After a few more miles, a dotted yellow line, fading at some spots, appeared, telling me that people were here, that Real Life was up ahead. The static was suffocating now, like the knob on my mental radio had been turned all the way up.
    There was a small convenience store kind of grocery up ahead, with a neon sign burned out black in three places. Two battered-looking cats padded around the parking lot, suspicious, hovering a couple paces away as I pulled in. As I made my way to the front door, they glared at me, wary. I kicked a leg out in their direction and they broke away.
    I thought: Weak . All of them.
    The door stuck when I pushed on it, and then the rubber tread on the floor gave a little coughing hiss when I leaned further. I watched the man behind the counter watching me, looking a little doubtful—challenging, even—while I shoved up against it. He gave a tiny jut of his chin when I stumbled in.
    There was one other person in the store, a fat, bearded guy in a T-shirt pulled tight over his sagging beer gut. The top of his head was bald, with a semicircle of grayish fuzz hanging on for dear life, tracing a scraggly path from one temple to the other. The dull fluorescents overhead bounced off his bald patch. He flicked his eyes in my direction, then shifted a little. It wasn’t like he had his back to me, completely, but there was an angle to the way he was standing. It wasn’t friendly.
    That was fine. I’m not always too friendly, either. It depends on the situation, you know? What the situation calls for.
    Anyway. There was something I needed. For Jules. So I figured: Who cares ? Just get in and get out. Get it done.
    The man behind the counter plucked a toothpick from somewhere up alongside the register and popped it into his mouth, rolling it around on his tongue real energetic, keeping an eye on me the whole time. His friend still wasn’t turned my way, really, but I could see his shoulders creep just a little bit higher toward his ears, his shirt catching on his belly and rolling up over itself.
    “Do you know where the nearest hardware store is?” I asked, thumbs hitched into the pockets of my jeans. Through the angry fuzz of my headspace, I could hear how my voice sounded in the cold, stale fortress of the store, all flat and closed and not trying to make any good impression. I had a feeling that these guys, they wouldn’t appreciate my tone,the way it was so clear, how I