Bleeding Violet Read Online Free Page B

I am!” Like a little kid? I just stared at him.
    Cowboy punched the final digits, eyeing me warily the whole time like he thought I was playing a tasteless trick on him.
    “Is this Miz Rosalee Price? Oh!” He snatched the cowboy hat from his bald head and held it to his chest. “Ma’am, there’s a young’un here claiming to belong to you.” He looked me over. “Yeah, that’s her. Look like somebody drownt her, though.”
    I wanted to snatch the phone away from Cowboy so I couldhear what Rosalee was saying about me, if she was telling him to lock me in study hall and throw away the key; anything to keep me from coming home. But I restrained myself, marveling at how taking my pills at least made resisting silly impulses so much easier.
    “You can go ahead and fax ’em over,” Cowboy was saying. “No, thank
you
.” He hung up and replaced his hat, tugging it down to just the right angle. “That’s one kick in the head, all right.”
    “Is it?”
    He looked me over again in disbelief. “What’s your name?”
    “Hanna Järvinen.”
    I spelled it for him and he began to peck at his computer keyboard, searching for each letter like a participant in the world’s slowest scavenger hunt. The
ä
, in particular, gave him a run for his money. I gave him my vital statistics, and he had just given me a number of forms to fill out when the door to the office swung open.
    A pale, exotic girl strode up to the counter—no, not a girl; she had too much self-confidence to be in high school. She wore skinny green pants and a matching tank top; old scarscrisscrossed her bare arms. Her long hair was the bitter black of licorice.
    An annoyed-looking boy trailed in her wake, tall and fit like her, but only his T-shirt was green. Aside from me, they were the only two people I’d seen so far wearing color.
    “Wyatt!” As he had done while speaking to Rosalee, Cowboy removed his hat. “Ain’t we glad to see you! And you brought reinforcements?” He smiled, flashing his big, fake-looking teeth at the green woman. “Sure nice of you to take time out—”
    “I’m not here to be nice to you!” The green woman spoke with such force, it drove Cowboy back a few steps. “Neither is Wyatt.
We
need his services for the rest of the morning, so your little project is gone have to wait.
Indefinitely
.”
    Cowboy’s face fell. “But …” He turned to the scowling boy, eyes pleading. “But we was counting on you to—”
    “What can I say?” The boy, Wyatt, lowered his head at the green woman in this strange, animalistic way, like a goat before it rams the hell out of something. “Apparently, it’s
not my job.”
    “That’s right!” The green woman gave Wyatt a heated look that he turned away from in disgust …
    … and then he looked at me.
    He was clean-cut: neat clothes, ramrod posture, his dark hair shaved close to his scalp like a Marine. The kind of boy who would happily volunteer his services to a decrepit office worker at his school. One of those high-minded types.
    Much too high-minded for a girl like me.
    I looked away from his pretty brown eyes and went back to my forms.
    “But what’re we s’posed to do now?” Cowboy was saying. “I’m about sick of these things.” He tossed a set of red earplugs onto the counter; one almost rolled onto my form.
    “Put those back in!” the green woman snapped.
    “Oh. Sorry.” Cowboy did as she said, not caring that the green woman was young enough to be his great-granddaughter.
    But as he reinserted the earplugs, I noticed that red jellied blobs plugged everyone’s ears—the office workers, the green woman, Wyatt. Everyone.
    “Thing is,” Cowboy said, “I wouldn’t wish this mess on a dog I hated. A body can’t even look out the window without—”
    “Don’t whine to me about it,” said the green woman. “Thesituation here is isolated; that means it’s not a town concern. Besides, Wyatt’s already contained the problem. Against all sanction, as