Save Yourself Read Online Free Page A

doughnuts.
    “Let’s start over,” she said, smoothing her already impeccable black hair. “My name is Layla. Like the song. You know: you got me on my knees .”
    This girl. This little high school kid with her stupid boots and her Addams Family wardrobe and her skin as white and floury-looking as unbaked bread. Pillsbury goth girl, just out of the can. He wished she’d go cut herself or snort Ritalin or do whatever the hell goth girls did when they weren’t blocking his counter and saying things like It’s not your fault Ryan’s dead. You didn’t kill him .
    He sold five dollars’ worth of gas to a kid in a Slayer shirt and then there was nobody left in the store but the two of them. The girlleaned her elbows on the counter and said, “I looked your yearbook picture up in the school library. You had a really dumb haircut back then.”
    Patrick cashed out the register, taking the keys to the storage cabinet from behind the bill tray. He unlocked the cabinet, pulled out a carton of low-tar menthol something-or-others, tore it open, and started stuffing the packs of smokes into the overhead racks. “Why?” he said.
    “I wanted to see what you looked like in real life. I have kind of a thing for monsters. Are you going to drink your coffee?”
    The paper cup with the Starbucks logo sat on the counter where she’d left it. “I don’t drink coffee.”
    “Oh.” Her face seemed to fall. “Do you want something else? Gin and tonic?”
    Patrick finished the cigarettes and slammed the cabinet door closed. “I want you to leave me alone.”
    “People think I’m a monster, too. Zombie Girl, Freakshow, Bride of Dracula—your friend yesterday wasn’t exactly the first person to come up with that one, you know.” She shrugged. “I don’t really care. If they didn’t call me Zombie Girl they’d call me Geek Girl, or Blow Job Girl, or whatever. I used to be Jesus Girl, if you believe that.” There was a display on the counter of plastic toy cell phones filled with gum. Picking one up, she pressed a button on the side, and the toy went Brrreeeep . “Hey, are you doing anything this afternoon?”
    “Why? Do you have an open slot in your stalking schedule?”
    She laughed. “Funny. No, monster, if I was stalking you, we’d be having this conversation in your living room. I just thought maybe if you weren’t doing anything, and you wanted some company, we could hang out, that’s all.”
    Patrick stared at her, incredulous. Before he had time to say anything the bell over the door jingled again and this time it was Caro. Her unwashed hair was pulled back in a messy knot. Mike’s Penguins key chain dangled from the front pocket of her cutoffs. She pointedtoward the back of the store, said, “Coffee,” and disappeared behind the Hostess display.
    The goth girl lifted one perfectly penciled eyebrow, her white-powdered face faintly amused. “Busy after all, are we?” she said, then lifted the toy phone up, hit the button— Brrreeeep —and dropped it into her army-navy bag.
    “Hey,” Patrick said, but she had already turned and walked out of the store. Caro emerged from between the aisles with a large coffee in one hand.
    “Your store does not have good coffee. I ate a doughnut back there.” She yawned.
    Patrick bit back his annoyance. “That’s cool. People have apparently given up paying for things around here, anyway.”
    “Don’t get snippy. I didn’t say I wasn’t going to pay.” Caro handed him a five. “Who was your shoplifter, Marilyn Mansonette? You didn’t try very hard to stop her. Do you know her or something?”
    Through the window, he watched the goth girl climb into her big shiny car, one of those new round retro-modern things that looked like a cartoon hearse. As the driving lights came on, a pounding bass line kicked in. Nu-metal techno shit. “Not even a little bit,” he said, and made Caro’s change.
    “That’s some car she’s driving,” she said. “Somebody is