Under My Skin (Wildlings) by Charles de Lint

Hudson, a blonde surfer girl that Desmond met in Pages Café & Used Books over on Main Street.
    We're laughing and joking as we make our way to the skate park, but when we get there, nobody's on their boards. The place is silent. Everybody's standing around like they're in shock—the way it must have been when John Lennon or Kurt Cobain died.
    "What's going on?" Desmond asks Kevin Blain, who's just sitting on his board, staring at nothing.
    Kevin doesn't answer, but his older brother David does.
    "You know your buddy Mike Castle?" he says.
    Desmond frowns. "Castle the Asshole's no buddy of mine."
    Last summer we were hanging around at the end of the pier when we saw Castle hassling Clarence Dooley—this old guy who likes to walk his cat along the boardwalk in a baby carriage. He might not be all there, but he's harmless. Castle had taken the carriage from Dooley and kept pushing him away from it. Dooley looked like he was about to cry by the time we got over there.
    "That's enough," Desmond told Castle. "Leave him alone."
    "Why? What are you going to—"
    He never got to finish. Desmond just hauled off and punched him in the face. Before you knew it, he had Castle on the ground and was pounding away on him until me and a couple of guys pulled him off. I'd never seen Des lose it like that before. When I asked him what happened, he could only shake his head.
    "Dude, I have no idea," he'd said. "I just saw Castle pushing Dooley around and I saw red. I mean, everything really just went red."
    "So what did he do?" Desmond asks David now.
    "He took his dad's .22 up under the freeway with Brian Canfield and they killed Laura Connor with it."
    " What ?"
    "The cops showed up because somebody'd complained about hearing shooting. When they got there, they found the two of them standing over Laura and she's lying on the ground with a bullet in her head. And get this. She was naked."
    A couple comes up while he's telling us this. Todd Copley and Juanita Herrera. I know them from school.
    "What I heard," Todd says, "is that they were fooling around trying to shoot birds, then he shot a rat up on the embankment, but when it fell back to where they were standing, it was Laura."
    Juanita's got a tight grip on his arm.
    "Jesus," Desmond says.
    Marina and Elzie are white with shock. Marina's trembling. I put my arms around both of them. I want to say something comforting, but I feel sick myself. Desmond holds Cindy, who's starting to cry.
    "Man, I knew her," Kevin says from where he's sitting on his board. "I used to think about asking her out ..."
    We all knew her. Everyone kind of knows everyone around here—in a town of twenty thousand people, that just happens. Not that we knew her really well, but she was on the girls' volleyball team and she often came down to the pier when we were all hanging around. A tall lanky girl with a bright smile and a big laugh.
    David shakes his head. "I can't believe Laura was a Wildling."
    "If she even was," Desmond says. When everybody looks at him, he adds, "Come on. This is Mike Castle we're talking about. I wouldn't put anything past him. And Canfield's not much better."
    People start talking about stuff Castle and Canfield have done in the past, and how well they did or didn't know Laura, and how if you're going to be a Wildling, it's pretty lame being stuck as a rat. I feel Elzie's shoulders stiffen under my arm.
    "I'm out of here," she says.
    "Yeah, can we just go?" Marina adds.
    I nod. "Des?" I say.
    "On it," he says.
    He takes Cindy by the hand and we leave. The others are so busy with what they're talking about I don't think they even notice us going.
    "I didn't mean to set that off," Desmond says when we're walking away.
    "You didn't," Elzie tells him. "It's just the way people are."
    He looks at his feet. "Guys like Castle really push my buttons."
    Elzie nudges Des with the tip of my spare board.
    "We're cool," she says.

    "I can't stop thinking about Laura," I say later that night.
    We gave up