Hemlock Grove by Brian McGreevy Page B

soda. He’d caught that one.
    “Well, are you?” she said.
    He looked at her. What do you think?
    “You know, you really scare people,” she said.
    He shrugged. He was darker and poorer and had conspicuous style. People didn’t need their little girls to be found in pieces to fucking hate that.
    “What are you doing with my cousin?” she said.
    “What needs to be done,” he said.
    “You know we’re in the cafeteria and not a Clint Eastwood movie?” she said.
    “When you go to the bank do you ask for twenties or wheelbarrows?” he said.
    “Lazy!” she said. “Money doesn’t make you dumb.”
    Peter did not disagree—it just made you used to people caring what you think.
    “Do you want my help or not?” she said.
    “If things keep going down this road, someone very important to me is probably going to get hurt,” he said.
    “Who?” she said.
    “Me,” he said.
    She was annoyed to find she couldn’t dispute the logic; she had already decided she was in, as if exclusion was even an option, but had been looking forward to making him work harder for it.
    “Well, I’m glad you’re friends, anyway,” she said. “Roman doesn’t have enough friends. I mean, there’s those people.” She nodded her head toward Roman’s lunch table. “But all they care about is the name. Nobody really knows him. Least of all, Roman.”
    She leaned in with a confidential aspect and looked at him intently, and Peter saw now with clarity. Her soul’s light, the wide-eyed mysticism that set her apart from the rest of these dipshits. Right. The thing Roman didn’t know it but he was really in this for, Order of the Dragon my ass. Good to know, unless it wasn’t.
    “Promise me something,” she said. “Promise you won’t let things go too far. Promise you’ll keep him from doing anything stupid.”
    Peter made a solemn face and smiled inside: he enjoyed the ceremony and impressiveness of making promises completely irrespective of his intention of keeping them.
    “I promise I won’t let that happen,” he said.
    They were quiet within the cafeteria babble. She shifted one leg over the other under the table intentionally grazing his shin, for which she falsely apologized but he paid no heed at all, filling her with the surpassing desire to give it a sharp kick. Then she realized it was the table leg she had artlessly footsied and projected on her face the exact opposite of how much dignity she felt.
    “Can I ask you something?” said Peter.
    She consented.
    “What can you tell me about Roman’s mom?”
    “Aunt Olivia? Why?”
    “Curious.”
    She bet he was. “What do you want to know?”
    “What do you know about her?”
    She thought, and shrugged. The truth was, nothing. No one did. In the ’80s JR had seen there was no way to compete realistically with the Chinese and decided to move from industry into biotech. He went abroad to inspect some facilities and came back engaged to the most beautiful and despised woman in the town’s history.
    “Where did they meet?” said Peter.
    “England, I think.”
    “Is that where she’s from?”
    She was not sure.
    “What about her people?”
    She shrugged.
    “Do you think there’s any chance your dad knows more of the story?”
    “Maybe. He was her shrink.”
    Peter’s expression did not change but there was no hiding the crafty crackle this inspired.
    “I don’t suppose you might be able to fish around and see if you can fill in some of the holes,” he said.
    “Mixed metaphor!” she said.
    He gave her a look that somehow made her feel dumb even though he was the one who went around mixing metaphors. This boy!
    “Well, I don’t suppose life was getting interesting enough already,” she said.
    “Life is always interesting,” he said.
    “Did you steal that from a movie poster?” she said.
    He opened a box of Cracker Jacks.
    “Ooh, let me find the prize,” she said.
    He held the box out, widening the opening between his grip, and she rooted with