I sighed again and shrugged. “Fine, you got me. And it was my dad, actually—huge classic rock fan. I don’t know if you remember him very well.”
“He left when we were little, right?” Brooke had lived two doors down from me since elementary school. “I liked him.”
“Most people did,” I said. “People who didn’t live with him at least.” I heard a car behind us and turned to face it, sticking out my thumb to try to hitch a ride. The car ignored us, not even slowing down. I faced forward again, but Boy Dog had flopped down in the dirt by the side of the road, taking our brief pause as an excuse to rest. I gave him a moment.
“I don’t know why I bother keeping up the pretense with you,” I said softly. “You know everything about me.”
“I don’t think anyone knows everything about you,” said Brooke.
“But you know that I’m … different,” I said. I don’t know why it was so hard to say; I used to wear it as a badge of honor. “I’m sociopathic. I don’t feel things the way you do, the way anybody does. Everything I do is fake, to make people think I’m normal. This morning I lied to the motel clerk, trying to convince him we came to town on a bus. He doesn’t care how we came to town. Some of the lies were to put him at ease and get info out of him, but even after he gave us the info I didn’t want him to know we were drifters. I wanted him to think we were normal.”
“You just want to fit in,” said Brooke. “Everybody wants that.”
“I never used to.”
She shrugged and started walking again. Boy Dog heaved himself to his feet and started following. “People change,” said Brooke. I caught up with her in a few long strides. “And circumstances change. When you were a kid you lived in a nice little house full of nice little people, and it was all nice and little and normal, and you wanted to stand out.”
“I lived in an apartment over a mortuary,” I said. “My dad beat us and then left.”
“So why you’d pick his favorite music?”
I thought about it then shook my head. “I don’t know.”
“Either way,” she said, “your old life was pretty friggin’ normal compared to your current social circle: a possessed girl and a dog with the dumbest name in the history of dog names.”
“A demon named him,” I said. “So to be fair, that name is not the worst thing it’s ever done.”
Brooke laughed, and I couldn’t help but smile at the sound. We walked for a while longer, listening to the wind rustle through the trees. After a minute or two Brooke spoke again. “What do you think my favorite song is?”
“I don’t know.”
“How could you not know? We lived next door to each other for sixteen years.”
“Since we’re being so open and honest,” I said, “let’s get this out of the way and say that I did, in fact, stalk you for several months—”
“That’s creepy.”
“Compared to what aspect of our current situation?”
“Fair point,” said Brooke. She took a few more steps, then asked, “Because you liked me?”
“I told myself I was protecting you.”
“Were you?”
“Well, you’re not dead.”
“I did get kidnapped because of you, though.”
“And rescued.”
“And possessed.”
“Are you going to hold that against me forever?”
“I’m just teasing,” said Brooke. “There’s, like, a million girls in here, and you only ruined one of their lives.”
“Listen,” I said, “I am doing everything I can to—”
Brooke burst into laughter. “I’m just teasing!” she insisted. “Come on, John, you know I love you.”
“And we know that that’s, like, the worst thing that’s ever happened to you.”
“You’re my best friend,” said Brooke. “You’re literally the only person who knows me—the real, current me, I mean. My family just remembers Mary.”
“You mean Brooke.”
“I mean all of them,” said Brooke. “Mary and Brooke and Katherine … honestly, like at least a hundred Katherines. They’re all gone—even Brooke—but whatever I am now, some kind of messed-up, emotional Voltron made out of old, discarded daughters, you’re the only one who knows that me. This me. And I know you don’t love me, but you like me. And … that means a lot.”
“Well,” I said, not knowing how to respond. “There you go.”
She raised her eyebrow. “Very romantic.”
“But my point is,” I said, “that despite stalking you, I never paid attention to the music you listened to.” I paused. “I remember hearing a Pink song once.”
“How can a song be pink?”
“Pink was a singer,” I said. “Well, still is, I guess. Sometimes I feel like we’ve left the world, but we’re still in it, just … on the fringes.”
“What was the name of the song?” she asked.
“I don’t really know music,” I said, feeling guilty that I couldn’t tell her. “Sorry.”