Page 114 of Killing Me Softly

“Tell you what?”

“Anything you want.” She peeped sideways at him. “I mean, I think I alreadyknow, but you cantellme. Hunter or Jet?”

Kenny didn’t answer immediately.

He just walked beside her, listening to the rustling branches, the distant hum of a car passing on the main road, the rhythmic crunch of their shoes on the path.

Then something inside himpulled.

As if an invisible hand gripped his ribs, shoving the words up his throat, an urgency so strong he couldn’t ignore it. A voice, his own voice, whispered,Say it now. If you don’t say it now, she might never, ever know.

He swallowed.

Then, because hehadto, he said, “Both.”

Jessica stopped walking but Kenny kept going. Until he noticed he wasn’t in sync with her anymore. So he stopped too. Turned around. “What?” Fear crept into his throat.

“You like boys?”

Kenny shrugged. “Yeah.”

Her face lit up with a grin so wide, so full of delight it knocked the air from his lungs. She squealed, stamping her feet into the dirt, bouncing as if she couldn’t contain it. “I knew it!”

Kenny’s ears burned and he shifted on his feet, shoving his hands into his pockets. Was it such a big deal? “I like girls, too.”

Jessica cocked her head. Then she reached for his hand, squeezing it tight. “You can like whoever you want to like. It’s okay.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah!”

Kenny smiled, but then a completely different fear tap-danced down his spine as he peered up ahead. A man, skinny and pale with shadows cupping his eyes like bruises, headed their way, calling out a frantic, “Rover! Rover!”

“Oh no.” Jessica pouted. “I think the man’s lost his dog.”

The man reached them. “Have you seen a puppy? Tiny little thing. He ran off. Probably so scared.” He stepped closer to Jessica as if Kenny wasn’t even there. “Little thing, white with a brown ear. I think he went toward the woods.”

Kenny’s stomach turned to ice.

“I can’t get over there with my bad leg,” the man said to Jessica. “Could you look for me?”

Jessica’s kindness, herinnocence, made her linger.

But somehow, Kenny knew better, and he yanked her, dragging her away under duress. “Run!”

They legged it. This time, it wasn’t a race against each other, butforeach other. And they didn’t stop until they burst through the front door of their house, panting, chests heaving.

Inside, the scent of freshly baked cupcakes filled the air, with soft, ghostly piano music floating in from the sitting room where their mum was teaching a small child Debussy’s‘Clair de Lune’.

Jessica slapped his chest. “What thehell, Kenny?”

He couldn’t explain it.

Couldn’t explain the dread curling in his ribs, the way his instincts hadscreamedat him to pull her away, toget her away.

He shrugged. “That man gave me the creeps.”

Jessica shook her head with a fond smile. “You’re so paranoid.”

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