Read Online The Night House by Rachel Tafoya - Free Book Online

this hungry in my life—only I know I ate this like a week ago, the last time I had a night off.
    Most of my meal is spent gazing out the window. I order hot chocolate. When she brings it to me, it has whipped cream on it. She has this cute motherly smile, and I remember how young I seem to strangers. She must think someone is coming to pick me up.
    There’s a rock in my stomach. I want to tell the waitress to stop treating me like I’m a lost little girl because I’m not lost. I just don’t have anyone waiting for me.
    Immediately, Jeremiah comes to my mind, and I clench my hand around my mug. My thumb stings. I’ve been chewing my cuticle down to the nail.
    I find my sketchbook in my bag, mostly to appear busy, but also because I need something else to think about. When a blank white page is staring up at me, my thoughts tend to sharpen a little. That boy’s face is what comes to me. I realize how badly I want to draw it. It’s been stuck there like a thorn, and I want to banish it from my head by putting it on paper. His hair and jaw are easy. I even get the mouth fairly quickly. But it’s his eyes and the nose that give me trouble. Those damn eyes. Thinking about them makes me feel like I’m being pulled under water.
    With a ragged breath I peer up from the page. Two teenage boys with baggy clothes and shallow smiles sit across the aisle. They keep stealing glances at me, and every time I feel like they’ve actually taken something from me. They don’t deserve to look at me, to make jokes about me, even to even pretend they’re happy around me. Not when I feel like this, like something’s chewing on my brain.
    Snippets of their conversation reach me. I force my gaze back on my sketchbook, and I realize I’d scrawled a jagged line across the blank space where the boy’s eyes should be. Now there’s nothing but eraser marks to meet my gaze back at me.
    “Total babe…”
    “…too skinny for me.”
    “…still a chick…”
    I shouldn’t have come here. It’s just making me feel worse. All these people are staring at me and my flaws. All I want to do is just scream at all of them—
    “Stop staring at me!”
    I clasp my hands over my mouth. Then I start gulping down hot chocolate, to feel its warmth, but nothing gets through. A little bit splashes onto my book. I curse and try to dry it off with my sleeve. Instead, water starts pouring out of me, soaking into the pages of my sketchbook. I claw at my sleeves, trying to figure out where the leak is coming from.
    Then reality snaps back into place. The diner has gone quiet. I feel everyone staring at me. Fight or flight instantly takes over, and I shove all my things into my bag, throwing money down, and I flee.
    I have to get out of here. Out of the diner, out of the city, out of my body. I need to find a bench and curl up and close my eyes and feel the night air again, so I can feel something .
    This is Jeremiah’s fault. He did it so I’d want to see him. He’s a controlling freak, but he’s smart. The Night House is so inviting right now. I can’t go back or I might do something stupid. We’re absolutely forbidden from interrupting each other’s appointments, but sometimes truly desperate girls do it, without thinking, if it’s been too long…
    I’m not that desperate. I can hold it together.
    I can hold myself together. Just a little longer.

James
     
    Ally and Shiloh follow behind me as if they expect me to collapse at any moment. I don’t do this very often, so I guess I can’t really blame them. Still, it’s not exactly confidence inspiring.
    Philly breathes down my back. I’m trying to focus on this girl, to feel who she is, what she’s doing, where she’s going. I haven’t had to do this a lot. I need to feel every molecule of her being before I can find her.
    Sometimes when I feel a person in my head, I can visualize this thread leading me to that person. It starts in my chest and winds out of me, threading through the city.