A Place So Wicked by Patrick Reuman (life books to read txt) 📕

kiss. Her tongue found its way into his mouth, which he would have enjoyed under normal circumstances, except her mouth tasted very strongly of alcohol and something else he couldn’t place. After a few seconds of kissing and her hands moving about his body in ways no one had ever touched him, she pulled away as if a sudden realization had come over her. She stared at him for what had to be one of the longest minutes of his life and then walked away without a word.

The following Monday, he didn’t even want to go to school. He was afraid. It wasn’t like he saw Kelly often. They shared no classes together. He only knew her because, well, everybody knew her. She was easily one of the most popular girls in school. But, somehow, he knew without a doubt that he would bump into her because that’s just how the universe worked.

He did.

There were two options. One, she didn’t want anybody to know of the social crime she had committed by kissing him, or two, she didn’t even remember what had happened. Because that Monday, when he walked by her in the hall at school, she didn’t say a single word to him. Toby leaned further toward the theory of her not having remembered the incident at all, because not only did she not say a single thing to him, but she hadn’t even looked at him with the threatening “don’t tell a soul what happened” look he would have expected had she remembered.

In fact, it was never brought up by anyone, ever. And he never received another kiss. That was, until that day when Addison kissed him. Many things separated their kiss from the others, one being that it wasn’t a dare. But, perhaps most importantly, she was the one that kissed him—on purpose.

Not only did she kiss him, but she did it twice. His thoughts were racing now. What exactly did this mean? Were they dating? Was she his girlfriend? Was he supposed to call her “babe,” which seemed to be what everybody referred to their girlfriends as?

Or did it mean nothing? They hadn’t known each other that long. But that didn’t mean anything. She herself said there was just something about him and that she felt like she could really be herself around him. Those words had to mean something. They definitely meant something to him.

He was overthinking things. The smart thing to do was to just let things roll, to allow the world to work out how it was supposed to. He didn’t believe in fate, or destiny, or anything like that, but what were the chances that they would move into this specific house, across the street from that specific girl? He wasn’t sure. But whatever it was, he didn’t want to mess with it.

He stared to the window, through it, to the house across the street. He couldn’t see Addy’s window from where he lay, so he scooted closer to the edge of his bed. He wasn’t doing it because he hoped to see her naked again; at least that’s what he told himself as loudly as he could. He just missed her and that’s where her room was.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d stared at Addison’s window, but at some point, he fell asleep. Time skipped. He dreamed about a woman. She was in the attic, and she was trying to get the window open, to get out of the house. Before, he had been so stunned that his mind wasn’t functioning correctly but then, there in his dream where he didn’t know he was dreaming, he wondered why in the world the window wasn’t opening. He hadn’t touched the latch himself, but he couldn’t imagine why it would be refusing so adamantly to open. All the windows in the house seemed to work just fine, them all having been open most of the day to filter out what they could of the putrid basement air.

What was she trying to get away from? He knew, despite any hard evidence, that she was definitely trying to get away from something. It was the look he saw in her fading eyes that told him this fact. Whatever it was she was trying to escape, it had her in a state of fear, a horrible state of pure terror.

Cold gripped his body, and he jerked awake. He looked around the room for a second, making sure he was truly in his bedroom, in his bed, not in the attic where the girl had been and where that terrible cold was. What had woken him? Was it the cold?

He found his eyes drifting back to the window, across the street. He wondered what she was dreaming about. Was it him? Whatever it was, it had to be better than his dreams. He didn’t even want to go back to sleep. A strong feeling told him he would return to the attic in his sleep and see that woman and feel that icy chill down to his bones.

There was a creak. He nearly leapt from his bed. His heart pounded in his chest. He didn’t know what caused the sound, only that it came from by his window. There was another crack, only this one was quieter, and he thought he saw what caused it. Something had hit his window from the outside, maybe a stone. He wasn’t sure. He was surprised that the old glass hadn’t shattered.

He hurried to the window, lifting it before whoever it was could throw another rock and get less lucky the second time. Addison was there, standing in the yard below the window. She smiled at him; her face just barely lit in the light of the streetlamps.

“I thought you would never wake up. I was about to give up!”

He didn’t say anything in return. He wasn’t even sure he was awake. Part of him