Untouchable (Untouchables, 1)

Well, good. I didn’t mean it anyway. Out of my league or not, Carter Mahoney is a predatory ass, and I don’t want anything to do with him and his dark, messed up games.

After school, I head straight to work. Money is tight at my house, always has been, so I don’t have anything like a college fund. My mom opened a savings account for me when I was 8, and it has $100 in it. Or, whatever $100 plus 10 years of interest on $100 is, which still isn’t much. Saving for college became entirely my problem, so I took a part-time cashier job at a discount bookstore. I enjoy reading, so I’m tempted to spend all my paychecks there. To compromise, I allow myself two books per biweekly paycheck, then I give myself a small allowance, but I save most of my money for tuition and books next year.

Unless I’m able to get a free ride at one of the schools I’m looking at, my first stop will likely be community college. Since I’m paying for everything myself, I have to make my dollar stretch as far as it can, and that means forgoing the typical college experience and commuting to a nearby school for the first two years. Definitely not what I want, but I have to be realistic.

Whatever I end up doing, I eventually want to get out of this town. I love my family, I’m sure I’ll miss them once I’m gone, but I’ve never lived outside of Texas, and I want to see what else is out there. When my mom and Hank first got married, we took annual vacations to Missouri for a week during the summer, but once they had my little brother, money got tighter. The vacations stopped since they had to buy things like diapers and formula, and we haven’t had one since.

Someday I’m going to live somewhere with burnt orange foliage every fall, with snow every Christmas, and I’m going to be able to afford to go on vacation somewhere different every single summer.

“What’s that dreamy look on your face for?”

My eyes widen and snap to the roguish smile of Carter Mahoney. “Seriously?” I ask. “What are you doing here?”

“There are three bookstores in the area. I’m almost disappointed by how easy it was to find you.”

“Stalking is illegal, you know?” I tell him.

“But shopping isn’t,” he states, slapping a book down on the counter.

Before I look, I guess at what it will be. Maybe a well-worn copy of Tales of Ordinary Madness. Carter seems like a Bukowoski kind of guy. Not the kind who buys it just to put on their bookshelf so they’ll seem edgy and interesting, but the kind who would actually consume every page and appreciate the madness, relate to the filth.

The first time I tried to read Bukowski, I ended up red-faced and grimy with such a thick coat of shame, I felt like people could see it on me. Carter doesn’t know shame, though. He would be able to enjoy Bukowski the first time through.

I realize my own thoughts sound a lot like admiration. Like there’s some part of me that revels in his brazen depravity. Come to think of it, my first bout with Bukowski made me feel a little like I did when I read the “notes” Carter wrote for me in class. They were more explicit, less openly twisted than Bukowski, but that’s because we live in a more casually vulgar time than Bukowski wrote in, and Carter couldn’t reference his actual crime. Besides, it wasn’t the dirty words so much as the mind they came from that made Carter’s note so depraved. Even though I knew it was sick and twisted, I felt that same faint stirring of curiosity, just like when I read Bukowski that first time.

Forcing myself to focus on the book he’s actually buying instead of trying to guess at his literary tastes, or how his degree of madness relates to a controversial poet’s, I take in the cover and immediately realize he must be fucking with me.

The book he placed on the counter is a kid’s book with a glittery unicorn on the front cover.

My eyebrows rise and I pick up the book to show him, as if he somehow confused it for Kerouac. “In the mood for a little light reading tonight?”

Before he has a chance to answer, an adorable little girl with hair as dark as his comes running up and puts a mermaid plush with pink yarn hair on the counter. Her dark eyes match his, too, and she has his air of tacit authority as she turns to look up at him. “And this, too.”

My eyes widen as I take in the mini-Carter. “There’s a tiny, adorable version of you?”

“Baby sister,” he explains, cracking a smile as he looks down at her.