RAIN ROT

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Art by @z0l0fft!

Jarfly Creek, in the heart of Carrick County, is home to lots of things. Flocks of sheep weeks from their putting season, rows and rows of fields full of soybeans and wheat, and, for its namesake, hoards upon hoards of cicadas that buzz all night and day. But especially, this farm is home to you—and all of your things.

✶ Your House -

✶ Your Farm -

But your father is growing older and weaker, and he needs some help… Who better to recruit than an ex-proxy, a runaway, and a pretty face—Tobias Rogers.

✶ Your Toby -

But when this boy finds out you’ve never had a cigarette, never had a beer, hell—you’ve never even said a cuss word. He decides it’s his civic duty to right this wrong… and let you in on some of his secrets along the way.

✶ characters, scenarios, and conversations are all fictional. enjoy!

Namely, the sudden thunderstorm showers that turn the air sticky and thick. The out-of-towners who arrive every year only to stake their claim on the county lakes and swimming holes and little craft festivals strung up along the backroads. The days when the sun sits so high and blazing white that it feels like it’s trying to burn the color out of everything and melt you to the asphalt…

And the cicadas.

They burrow up from the ground in June when the hottest summer days start, and by the middle of July, their sound buzzes from the treelines and creek beds until you think you’ve gone nearly mad. And then they disappear as the summer months bleed out into cooler evenings, like they were never even here at all. 

But at Jarfly Creek, it never really stops. The buzz lives in the fence posts and the tall grass and the acres of fields surrounding, singing their endless drone like the land was built right on top of their nest and they have never once forgiven your ancestors for it.

But you didn’t build this farm. You didn’t dig the plows into the ground and stir the nymphs living underneath, spurring a rivalry that you have no foot in.

But it is you that lays on your back in the paddock that was made from those plows, staring up into a sky so aggressively blue it almost hurts to look at. There’s no clouds. Not a single soft place for the eye to rest. In summer, the clouds only ever appear at the very end of the day, when the sunshine turns the color of bruised fruit, or when the air turns cool and the rain is about to come down. The rest of the time the sky just sits there, empty and obnoxiously bright enough to burn your retinas.

You miss the Fall. The clouds stay around all day during those months, and the air finally cools enough that you don’t have to fill your lungs with air the temperature of steam.

But it’s not the fall. It’s the middle of July, and you’re supposed to be helping your father load his truck with the haybales for the sheep.

Through the cicada’s drone and your heat exhaustion, you hear someone shouting muffled curses, before you register that shouting as your name being very unhappily called after.

You sit up quickly and push to your feet. Grass sticks to the back of your neck and the thin cotton of your shirt, and you have to wipe the blades off the fabric before you get scolded about staining it. Out by the gravel track next to the barn, your father is heaving the last heavy bale of hay into the bed of his old red Chevy Silverado. He doesn’t look at you all the way when he speaks.

“Get the hell up before you get yourself filthy.”

And that’s it. He’s already turning, shutting the truck door hard enough that the whole frame rattles, then the engine rumbles with a sputter and he’s rolling away. You stand there and watch the cloud of gray exhaust lift into the still air before the old red Chevy disappears down the gravel road toward the sheep pens—without you.

Oh well.

You sigh, tilt your face back up to that empty blue sky if only to see the hope of a cloud, then you start walking.

The hill between the paddock and the lower pens isn’t steep, but the heat makes every step feel heavier than it should. The grass is dry and yellowing in places that scrapes against your jeans and sticks to your boots, making the trek that much more miserable. Off to the left, the sheep pens stretch out in long, weathered rows of wood fencing, the woolly ruminants moving slowly in the shade of the few scraggly trees that still stand inside the fences, the sheep also trying to find the satisfaction of shade in the sweltering heat. Further back are the horse corrals—three of them, the posts leaning a little with age and weather, and the dirt packed in dry clumps from years of hooves stomping over them. The chicken coops sit closer to the barn, mostly faded and streaked with rust where the metal roofing has started to peel.

To outsiders, this place seems to be falling apart, rotting under the beam of constant sunshine and hard weather.

And you can’t help but agree with them.

Your father’s farm, Jarfly Creek, got its name the way most places around here did: because something stuck out like a sore thumb. The cicadas were so loud and so constant that the whole stretch of land eventually just became known for them. People stopped settling nearby after a while due to the annual summer noise the bugs create. So now there’s nothing for miles in every direction except more fields, thick woods that hide old swimming holes and the skeletons of barns and sheds that were already half-collapsed when you were little, and the long gravel drive that eventually spits you out onto the main road. Besides the sheep and the chickens and the various other livestock living here, you had no neighbors to visit or grow acquainted with.

The closest real town is forty minutes away, a little sleepy agriculture colony town known as Carrick County where there isn’t much but gas stations and dive bars for the locals to drown away in. Between here and there is just empty space and rows and rows of underbrush and forest.

You crest the ridge and look down toward your house on the other end of the field. The old antebellum-style farmhouse sits nestled against the treeline, its white paint gone soft in the sunlight and faded in places, and the wide front porch wrapping around the frame and making it seem like a much nicer place to live than it actually was. The gravel driveway curves in a wide loop around the property before heading out to the main road, and from up here you can see many of the windows have been cracked open to help with the heat.

You wonder what your mother’s doing. Probably on the phone again, her voice always feeble and timid when she’s talking to someone who isn’t your father. Or maybe she’s cleaning the stove for the fourth time this week, scrubbing at already-spotless burners just so her hands have something to do. The same as always.

Things stay the same here.

The sheep stay the same, the flocks giving birth to new flocks, the old crops drying up only to make way for the new ones, the summer ending just so it can start all over again. It’s all the same.

You cross the last stretch of field and reach the fence, pushing the gate open with your shoulder and latching it behind you. The sheep have already crowded to the far side of the pen where the feeding stalls sit, their wooly bodies pressing against each other and shoving to get to the dry bales first. Your father has pulled the truck right up next to the stalls and throws the haybales in, watching as they bleat and shove and fight over the straw like they do every single day. You wonder, for a second, if they ever get tired of the same routine too. 

But as you walk up and circle around to the truck bed, grabbing the remaining bales and heaving them over the side, you watch them settle into eating and finding little interest in anything else. So maybe not.

By the time the last bale is gone, your father’s already shutting the tailgate and climbing back into the cab. 

“I’m runnin’ to town. Be late for dinner.”

You nod, but he’s already putting the truck in gear and rolling across the field toward the gravel path, plumes of dust rising in a pale cloud behind him until he disappears into the treeline and out toward the main road.

You turn back to the sheep. They’re still eating, their cream wool baking under the late-afternoon sun. You lean over the stall rail and run your hand across the nearest one’s back, picking little pieces of dried grass and tiny twigs out of its coat while it bleats at you without much urgency, straws of hay crunching between its teeth.

“Yeah, yeah,” you murmur, smiling down at the animal. “Baah yourself.”

Then you leave the pen the same way you came, latching the gate behind you, and start the long walk back across the field toward your house. 

You can’t help but think about how nice of a home it would be. Or how nice it would be if it wasn’t yours. If it was just some place you rode past on a back road, you’d probably slow down and look at it twice as you passed. You might even think it looked pretty, like a place you could see yourself settling down in.

But up close and inside, it’s different.

The old antebellum-style farmhouse sits two stories tall and smothered in weathered, fading white paint that’s chipping from the years of neglect. A big red brick chimney runs up the side, and the wide front porch stretches out under a low roof held up by white columns that have started to lean just a little with age. Dark green shutters frame the tall windows, some of them hanging crooked or flapping uselessly in the breeze, and there’s a bench swing on the far end of the porch that creaks obnoxiously when the wind blows it. The whole place is raised up on a brick foundation, but that doesn’t stop things like raccoons and feral cats from wiggling their way under and scaring you half to death when you step on the grass below.

You climb the creaky porch steps and kick your dirty boots off by the door so your mother won’t start. The screen door squeals when you pull it open before you push through the heavy main front door behind it.

The air in the house hits you and registers as the smell of boiling vegetables and meat roasting in the oven. It drifts through the whole house and out the open windows, clogging your senses and making you a little lightheaded with the already dusty smell your house produces. It’s not much cooler in here than it is outside, but being out of direct sunlight sure does help. Somewhere deeper inside you hear your mother’s voice talking timidly to what seems to be someone on the phone. 

The living room opens up to the right. The same old furniture that’s been here longer than you have sits in its usual spots—the sunken couch with its faded floral cushions, the two matching armchairs dedicated to your mother and father, the little coffee table covered in a doily your late grandmother made. Against the far wall sits the box television that hasn’t been replaced in decades, atop the tv stand covered in books and knickknacks and junk with as many bible verses as they could fit. On every other available surface are the little porcelain Precious Moments figurines your mother collects, in all their faux soft pastel colors and big eyes and gentle poses. They paint a picture of a sweet, smiling family that has never once lived inside these walls. Every decoration here is downed with some sort of scripture or family quote about loving each other, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

You move through the arched doorway into the kitchen.

Your mother stands at the counter with her back half-turned, cutting potatoes into even chunks before adding them to a pot. The old landline phone is tucked between her ear and her shoulder, the long spiraling cord stretched tight from the wall because your father still refuses to pay for a mobile plan when “this works just fine.” She glances up when she hears you, already frowning, and waves a hand at you to go away without ever pausing her conversation with someone about how terrible the produce at the grocery stores are nowadays.

You ignore her.

The stove is crowded with pots, wisps of steam rising from the one on the front burner. You lean over just enough to look and grimace at the sight of cabbage and turnip greens swimming around in the boiling water. The smell alone is enough to make your stomach twist. You step back, already calculating how little of it you can get away with eating tonight, before you’re turning to go clean yourself off for the afternoon considering all your chores are done (and your father isn’t here to give you new ones).

You push out of the kitchen and into the hall that runs through the middle of the house.

The walls are lined with picture frames of childhood portraits and family photos from when your siblings still lived here. Your older sister and brother. They both left the second they found a good enough excuse. Your sister married the first man who asked, and your brother started some tech company your father was too stubborn and too far behind in modern technology to understand, let alone stop. They’ve been gone for a couple of years now. Besides the occasional short phone call, you haven’t seen them, and you don’t really care to. Your parents talk down on them enough every chance they get, so you’ve learned to just not speak about them at all.

The pictures still hang there, though. They paint a nice scene in broad strokes of everyone smiling blankly and looking like a real family. You remember how miserable it was to take those photos, though. How your mother used to haul all of you into the truck on those early Saturday mornings for the church registry photos, the whole ride filled with bickering and complaints and your father’s unwavering anger. 

You eye the frames as you pass them and always find it funny how the photos get fewer and farther between the farther down the hall you go, like the family itself was slowly thinning out until there was almost nothing left to capture.

At the end of the hall you turn and start up the staircase, climbing toward your room.

Your sibling’s rooms still sit up here on the second floor, mostly filled with the leftover furniture and things they didn’t bother taking with them. It’s nice to think how you practically have the whole floor to yourself. Your parent’s bedroom is downstairs and strictly forbidden unless you need something quick, so the little time you actually spend inside the house is almost always spent up here, hiding away in your own room.

You open the bedroom door, shut it behind you, and immediately flop onto the end of your bed. Your work clothes are still sticky with sweat and grass and livestock pens, and you can feel them against the comforter in a way that should bother you more than it does, but you’re too stored to care. You lay out with your eyes closed, letting the sunlight that filters through your thin curtains wash over your face.

Your room has always been the one reliable escape when you can’t run out into the fields or disappear into chores long enough to be left alone. Your full-sized bed sits in the middle of the room against the far wall from the door, littered with homemade pillows and quilts from your family at holidays and such. Your desk is pressed against the right wall, facing the window that looks out over the front yard—though most of the view is blocked by the tall oak tree growing right beside the house, its large branches spreading across the glass. The closet is on the left, stuffed with church clothes and work clothes and a few faded hand-me-downs your sister left behind. The decor is sparse. You’ve collected a few things over the years, or made a couple of pieces yourself, and you put them up wherever they’ll fit just to make the space feel less like a prison cell than it already is.

Even here you can still hear the cicadas. Their drone seeps through the walls and the old windows without any trouble. Sometimes you swear they’ve dug their way into the attic and settled right above your room, just close enough to drive you stir-crazy.

Why do they stick around here? What keeps them at this farm? On this land? It’s not like there’s anything good left. Not like there’s anything worth staying for. If you were a cicada, you’d have flown away a long time ago. Found some other life. Somewhere quieter, somewhere more beautiful, somewhere that didn’t feel like it was slowly pressing the air out of your lungs.

You start to fantasize about it—another life, another time. One where your youth hadn’t been spent bent over farm chores and being dragged to church every Sunday and living under the constant weight of your mother and father’s expectations to stay here and take over the farm when they pass. Maybe you’d have gone somewhere with real seasons, or real people, or just the simple freedom to leave a place when it stopped feeling like home.

You feel your body getting heavier against the mattress. Sleep starts to pull at the edges of everything, and you let it. 

And right before it takes you under, you smile a little at the thought of growing wings—thin, clear, useless things—and lifting up out of here, far, far away.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

You hadn’t realized how long you’d been asleep until the sound of your mother’s voice cut through your forgotten dreams and tore you awake.

You pushed up off your comforter without thinking. The fabric under you was damp with sweat, and your skin felt clammy and marked up from lying in one position too long, weird fabric divots imprinted on the side of your cheek. You blinked a few times, trying to get your eyes to adjust to the new darkness in the room. The sun had gone down while you were out, and only the last thin scraps of twilight were still bleeding through the curtains.

She shouted again, very obviously growing impatient if the tone in her voice was any indication.

You snapped to your feet and scrambled out of your room, down the stairs, and through the hall toward the kitchen. She was at the stove, scooping that cabbage-turnip green-sludge into a larger serving bowl. You grimaced at how the smell of it had practically doubled in strength since the last time you were down here.

“Yes, ma’am,” you let her know you were there.

She turned and grimaced at the sight of you. “You’re filthy. Why didn’t you wash up?”

You looked down at yourself and felt the full weight of how gross you really felt. You were still in the same work clothes from this afternoon, your grass stained shirt and jeans clinging to your clammy skin. You’d fallen asleep and completely forgotten to clean yourself off before supper.

“Sorry, ma’am.”

She turned back to the stove and huffed, “Set the table.”

You moved without arguing, pulling plates and forks and glasses from the cabinets while she transferred the rest of the food from the pots and pans into serving dishes. You set three places out of habit, putting a plate down for your father even though he still wasn’t home. Your mother never once asked where he was, and you didn’t think she cared to at all.

You never had a good relationship with either of your parents, but if you had to choose between the two, you would pick your mother. Not because she was soft or warm or particularly kind, but because the alternative was worse.

Your father had never been a gentle man. Even in the earliest memories you could still dig up, he was short-tempered, quick to anger, and possessed of almost no patience for the three children he seemed to regard as more burden than blood. He spoke in clipped commands and long silences where he would rather ignore his children than be civil with them. When something went wrong on the farm—and something always went wrong—his voice would rise sharply, and the rest of you learned early how to make yourselves small. Age had only made it worse. His body was weaker now, the strength that once made the work look easy slowly leaving him, and every limitation seemed to feed the bitterness. With your brother and sister gone, you were the only pair of hands left that he could still order around. He used that fact without mercy.

Your mother was different, but not in any way that offered comfort beyond the fact that she didn’t raise her voice too much at you. She had always been short with you, always kept her distance, and it had never really been more beyond that. There was no softness to lean into, no understanding of your father’s anger, and heaven forbid she tell you she loves you. Her love, if it could be called that, stayed strictly parental—she cooked your meals, she cleaned the clothes that couldn’t be washed in the normal laundry, and she made sure to give you medicine when you were sick—and that was it. When you and your siblings were still young, she had been both mother and teacher. The three of you were homeschooled for the entirety of your childhoods, kept close to the security of your house because of what she called “the state of the world” and her deep distrust of public schools to teach right from wrong. For years the kitchen table doubled as a classroom. Lessons, scripture, chores, more lessons, and more chores were the majority of your upbringing. The moment the last of the required coursework was finished and she declared you “graduated,” that thin thread of daily connection frayed and then largely disappeared. She went back to being only your mother, and even that role felt more like obligation than affection.

It left a hollow place in you. There was no parent to go to with the heavier thoughts, no one whose presence made the isolation of this farm feel less absolute. You had learned early not to expect comfort and eventually stopped looking for it. Sometimes you told yourself the distance had made you stronger or more self-reliant, and less dependent on people who would only disappoint you. 

Your mother carried the serving dishes to the table now and set them down before you. The meat you had smelled earlier sat in the center, and you realized it was roast cooked with potatoes and carrots, the only thing on the table that looked pleasantly edible. The cabbage and turnip greens remained in their bowl, and you eyed them uncomfortably, knowing your mother would say something if you didn’t take a spoonful of them too. 

She sat. You sat. And your father’s empty chair remained vacant, and not a single comment was made about it while the two of you ate in silence.

Your father doesn’t show up until you’re scraping the last of the potatoes from your plate. The meal hadn’t been half bad, all things considered, but the dead silence between your mother and you made it less than enjoyable.

The front door opens. You hear the familiar scuff of his boots against the mat, the thud, thud as he kicks them off, and the drag of fabric as he shrugs out of his jacket and hangs it on the wall hook near the door. He doesn’t speak as he crosses the room, pulls out his chair, and sits, reaching for the serving dishes to fill his plate that has sat vacant for the last hour.

You’re already finished. That doesn’t matter, though. Now that he’s here, you’re expected to stay seated until he’s done eating. Only then will you be allowed to clear the table and wash the dishes before you’re excused for the night. So you set your fork down, fold your hands in your lap, and try to find something to occupy your mind with while the minutes stretch.

Five full minutes pass in near silence, besides the tinking of silverware and him eating. Then your father sits up a little straighter, looking at your mother first, then turns his eyes on you.

You straighten your own posture on instinct, making sure he sees that you are paying attention before he can accuse you of drifting off or get irritated that you didn’t acknowledge him the second he walked in.

He sighs, takes another bite, then finally speaks.

“I hired help.”

Your mother looks up from her own plate at that, “Help?”

Your father nods and takes another bite before answering.

“I posted an ad in the paper a bit ago. Someone responded. He starts tomorrow morning.”

You glance over at your mother. Her expression has gone a little incredulous, her eyebrows lifting just enough to show she hadn’t been told any of this beforehand. Your father, for his part, has already returned his attention to his plate, as though the matter is settled and doesn’t need to be discussed further.

“I wasn’t aware you needed help,” she says.

He doesn’t look up. “Well, it’s not like the help I have now is any good. I need someone who can help me clear the barn before the tupping season starts. I went to town to meet him.”

You know what that’s really code for: he’s getting weaker. The heavy work is starting to cost him more than it used to, and he’s reached the point where even he knows he can’t work like he used to. The dig about your own usefulness doesn’t fly over your head, but you keep your face carefully blank and try not to dwell on it.

Your mother begins asking the practical questions—where exactly he found this person, what he’s offering in payment, whether she’s expected to start cooking for an extra mouth. Your father answers in short sentences while he continues eating. You barely register the details as you find yourself dwelling one something much more important.

There is going to be a new person here.

A new face. A new voice. Someone who doesn’t already know every detail of the wasteland that is this house. You can’t help but feel your gut twist with excitement, and force your expression to stay neutral.

From the pieces of conversation you do catch, the arrangement sounds almost insulting. One hundred dollars a week and dinner every night, in exchange for working from sunup to sundown. You’re genuinely shocked anyone bothered to answer the ad at all—which is why it doesn’t surprise you when your father tells you that this boy close to your age was the only applicant.

You can’t help wondering about the practical things. Whether he’ll take your brother’s old room upstairs. What he might look like. Whether the two of you would get along or had anything in common. You run over a million questions until you can’t help but ask one.

“Where will he be staying?”

Your father’s head turns. He eyes you for a long second, as if measuring the question for any hidden double meaning.

“Not here,” he says. “What he does after sundown isn’t my business.”

Then he goes quiet. He sets his fork down, crosses his arms over his chest, and turns his full attention on you. The look he gives you is the familiar one—his face telling you he’s only going to say these words once, and he doesn’t repeat himself.

You sit up as straight as your spine will allow, bracing for whatever is coming.

“But you are my business,” he says. “You are not to mess with this boy. Do you understand?”

You nod. He isn’t finished.

“You’re not to talk to him. He works for me, and that’s it. He’s here to make up for the work you can’t do, not to be your little friend.”

The way he says it hurts more than the words themselves. Like you’re already a risk to jeopardizing this great thing he’s about to have. Like the mere fact of your presence might somehow ruin the arrangements he’s made. You feel yourself shrinking under it, your eyes dropping to the empty plate in front of you.

You nod again.

You still want to ask the boy’s name. Even if you’re now forbidden from speaking to him, even if he’s only meant to exist at the edges of the farm and nowhere near you, the simple knowledge of a new presence feels like more than you’ve had in a long time. You keep what little excitement you have left buried inside.

By the time your father finishes eating and you begin collecting the plates, an argument has already started—which isn’t uncommon to happen at least once a day.

Your mother is angry that she wasn’t told. She’s tired of him making decisions and running off to do whatever he wants without a word to her. Your father, on his part, doesn’t see why he should need her approval in the first place. The two of them go back and forth in snippy voices while you stand at the sink and scrub the pan, plates, silverware, before setting them onto the drying rack. You keep your head down and let the sound of running water blur the worst of their words to each other.

When the last dish is done, you dry your hands and turn to ask if you might be excused for bed. Your father waves a dismissive hand at you as he stands and aims for the fridge to grab himself a beer, which is your cue to get out while you can. You leave the kitchen quickly, climbing the stairs two at a time until their argument is only a muffled roar behind you. Your mother can deal with it. You have no interest in staying to mediate something that has nothing to do with you.

The second your bedroom door shuts behind you, you lean back against the wood and let the smile you’ve been hiding stretch across your face. 

There is going to be something new on the farm tomorrow. Someone new. Even if your father’s rules keep you from speaking to him, the simple fact of his presence feels like a crack in the sameness that has pressed down on everything for so long. And better still: your father will be busy. Busy training him, correcting him, pouring all that restless attention into someone else for once.

You shower and move through the rest of your nightly routine without much thought, going over the same motions you always do. When you’re finished, you climb into bed and reach over to switch off your lamp. Darkness settles over the room, save for the then veil of moonlight that filters through your curtains.

The cicadas don’t stop their mindless drone during the night, but the intensity of their noise definitely dampens. During the day they are a relentless roar. At night they settle into a crackling hum that seems to vibrate your bedframe just enough to lull you to sleep. After the long hours of work and the strain of dinner, the noise almost feels comforting. 

Your blinks grow slower, and so do your thoughts, especially towards the boy who will be here in the morning.

You haven’t been near a boy in a long time, like, not really. There are the impersonal encounters when you ride into town for groceries or church, and the stilted contact with your brother on the phone, but nothing that lasts longer than a few minutes. This will be different. This will be the first time in as long as you can remember that a boy will exist in the same space as you for more than a passing moment.

Your mother raised you in a house thick with scripture and Sunday mornings and the constant reminder of God’s watchful eye. You’ve never cared much for any of it. Prayer always felt like speaking into an empty room or to someone who wasn’t listening. But lying here in the dark, listening to the low drone of the cicadas, you can’t quite stop the thought from forming that maybe this is something close to one of those blessings everyone harps about. It feels like a light shining on you, and one that isn’t the sweltering summer sun.

Maybe the boy will stay. Maybe he will take on more and more of the work until your father doesn’t need you anymore and the boy decides to take the farm for himself. 

Maybe, eventually, you’ll finally get to leave.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

It was a little after eight the next morning when the sound of tires on the gravel drive pulled your attention away from the chickens trampling over themselves beneath you.

You were at the coop beside the barn, scattering their seed across the packed dirt and trying to break up two hens that had decided to start a fight. The sun still hadn’t fully cleared the ridge beyond the treeline, so the morning sky held a soft, dusky blue light that came just before the heat of the day, and a thin layer of mist clung to the grass. When the truck came rolling up the drive, it stirred the droplets into a mist cloud that trailed behind the tires.

You hadn’t even known your father had left the house. You’d assumed he was already out in the fields or checking the horses. But instead, here was the familiar red Chevy pulling up alongside the barn and cutting the engine.

You kept your face carefully blank and continued tossing seed, but your eyes kept drifting toward the cab. Your father stepped out first, but you could see the outline of another person still inside. A second later the passenger door swung open, and a pair of boots dropped onto the gravel below.

Is that him?

Your stomach gave a small lurch of excitement. You forced it down and focused on the impatient rooster pecking at the toe of your boot, scattering another handful of feed to look busy.

A hand came up, gripped the top of the door, and shut it against the cab.

Brunet. That was the first thing you noticed about him. His hair was dark and curly, thick on top and shorter at the nape of his neck, and rather messy. The line of it drew your gaze downward to the side of his neck, where a thick vein stood out against the skin, then to the taut muscle that disappeared under the collar of a plain black cotton shirt. His shoulder was solid beneath the thin fabric. The sleeve hid most of his bicep, but the forearm below it was corded with veins that stood out amongst tan, freckled skin. His hand looked strong. The knuckles were dark and seemingly bruised, like he’d been hitting something—or biting them.

You realized that you had been staring and dropped your eyes to your boots and fixed your expression into an uninterested expression.

Fuck. You hadn’t even seen his face yet. You had to look again.

You look back up when you hear the sound of their boots walking on the gravel.

He has a scar.

Everyone knows it’s bad manners to stare when someone has something about their appearance that stands out, but you almost can’t help it. It’s a wide, uneven stretch of scarred skin covering most of his left cheek. It looks like the aftermath of a bad injury—the skin that had been torn has now knit itself back together in overlapping, thickened layers. The scarring reaches all the way to the corner of his mouth, where a pair of pale lips sits against tan, freckled skin.

Then you notice his eyes.

They’re a pale brown that looks almost gray, and they seem very alert and observant. They dart from one thing to the next as he takes in the farm around him—blinking and cataloguing everything around him.

You want to punch yourself the minute the thought leaves your head:

He’s cute.

In a boyish way, maybe. He seems close to your age, maybe a little older. You notice his dark eyebrows are lifted, as though something has surprised him. His eyes really are pretty—

He’s looking at you.

The realization hits hard enough that you nearly jump out of your skin. Your eyes widen for a split second before you force them into a cool expression, schooling yourself to stare at the dirt like nothing had just happened. But you can’t help it when your eyes find their way back up a moment later.

He’s still looking.

And he seems just as startled as you were. You can make out a small, friendly smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. Your gaze slips, unbidden, back to the scar again. Heat floods your face not only from the embarrassment of him catching you staring, and your inability to not look at the marred flesh on his cheek, but from another reason too. You turn around completely and start walking—walking straight out of the chicken coop, trekking away from the barn, and aiming straight for the horse corrals on the far side of the field.

You don’t look back. You don’t check to see if he’s still watching.

Because why. Why, why, why.

If there is a God, and if He somehow sent this boy here like you thought before, then He must be cruel. Because this boy—the one you are not supposed to talk to, not supposed to look at, not even supposed to exist near—is cute. And standing there in the misty morning light, staring at his cute face, and him back at you, you realize:

No matter how many times your father has yelled, no matter how many times your mother has looked straight through you, you have never once, ever, felt this particular kind of fear.

This is how people get themselves killed.

This is how you get yourself killed.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

You spent the rest of the morning and most of the early afternoon over at the horse corrals. Luck was on your side at least a little bit, because your father kept the new boy close to the barn and the main sheep pens, where the heavier work needed doing. The two of them stayed on that side of the property, your father showing him what he’d be mainly needed for, and you stayed on yours.

You occupied yourself with the stables. The horses were out in the pasture for the morning, so you left the big doors open and worked in the relative cool of the shade, raking the soiled bedding into a wheelbarrow and replacing it with clean straw. The repetitive motion gave your hands something to do while your mind refused to stay quiet about everything.

You thought about him… a lot.

Who he was. Where he might have come from. What had happened to his face. The questions piled up faster than you could push them away. Had he been homeschooled too, or had he gone to a real school with other people his age? Did he know how to drive? Did he have friends? What were his parents like? You wanted to ask him everything. You wanted the shape of a life that wasn’t this one, even if you only got to be a spectator.

None of those questions would ever be answered. You already knew that. But it didn’t stop them from forming.

By the time you finished the last stall and set out the horses’ feed for when they came back in, the sun had climbed high and bright in the sky. Under the stable roof, the heat was still manageable, but the air outside became thick with it. You leaned against the fence line for a moment, watching the mares out in the pasture as they trotted and nipped at one another, their tails flicking the flies away and enjoying the company of themselves.

You pushed off the rail and went to top off their water trough with something cool for when they got back. You had barely started letting the water fill the reservoir before you heard the telltale sound of boots on gravel.

You turned your head.

Your father and the boy were walking in your direction. Your father was talking, his one arm raised as he pointed out toward the far pasture, explaining something you couldn’t hear. The boy wasn’t looking at the pasture.

He was looking at you. Still.

You thought you might be sick at the sheer amount of nervous energy that shoots through your bones. You scrambled down from the gate, nearly dropping the hose, and started walking in the opposite direction without giving either of them a chance to close the distance.

And that was how the rest of the day unfolded.

You would settle into a chore, find a rhythm, and within the hour the two of them would appear on the edge of whatever field or building you had chosen. Your father seemed determined to make avoiding them as difficult as possible, circling the property with the new hire in tow like he was deliberately herding you from one task to the next. And the boy—he never stopped looking. Whenever your paths crossed at a distance, he would try a smile, or a quick little wave, or simply hold your gaze for a second. Each time you noticed them coming you abandoned whatever you were doing and moved on to the next necessary job before they could close the gap.

It worked, for a while. For most of the afternoon, actually.

Then you reached the feed storage.

This was the chore you liked least, if only because of how unrelentingly exhausting it was. The big sacks had to be shifted from the dry storage room out to the open trailer so your father could haul them to the farther pastures later. There was no rushing it, because each bag required both arms and careful footing, and the stack never seemed to get smaller fast enough.

You were halfway through the load when you saw them cresting the low hill that led down toward the storage shed. You let out a shaky breath and kept working, your eyes fixed on the next sack, hoping they would simply pass by on their way somewhere else. This was the one task you couldn’t abandon mid-way, couldn’t run away from without your father saying something.

They didn’t pass.

You heard your father talking about the mill and the silos, about how the farm used to grind its own feed and now simply bought the shipments that arrived every few weeks. The same shipments you were currently moving, one punishing bag at a time. You focused on the strain in your shoulders and the scrape of burlap against your palms, trying to seem like you didn’t notice them.

Then you heard your father grumble, “Stay here a minute. I’ll be right back.”

You felt the pit in your stomach the minute it was spoken, and tried to quicken your pace of work as much as you possibly could.

You could not be left alone with this boy.

You heard your father’s boots move away from the feed shed, heading toward the sheep pens where two ewes were, from the sounds of it, bleating and shoving at each other. His voice cut across the noise a moment later, breaking up whatever fight they’d started.

You refused to look over. Refused to confirm or deny whether the brunet was watching you with those pale brown eyes. The cicadas seemed louder than usual, a miserable, overlapping roar of buzzing that filled every empty space and overrode your racing thoughts. You kept your head down and your hands moving. You had to distract yourself, had to stop yourself from looking—

“Hey.”

The word was almost lost under the noise of the bugs, but you heard it. You also ignored it.

“Hey!”

This time it came clearer, and with it the soft crunch of gravel under boots. His voice was a little deep, but scratchy. You still didn’t turn. Getting in trouble over this boy was the last thing you needed. You simply hauled the next sack higher against your chest and kept working.

A few seconds of silence passed. Long enough that you began to think he might have given up and left. Curiosity got the better of you, and while lifting another bag, you turned your head just slightly—

He was right behind you.

You jumped, your eyes widening for a split second, then forced yourself forward and carried the sack the rest of the way to the trailer. You dropped it in with a thud and turned back for the next one, only to find that he had already stepped into the shed and picked up a bag of his own.

The sight startled you, and you couldn’t help but stand and watch him for a second. He wore a black cotton shirt, dark jeans, and boots that were scuffed and filthy and worn around the soles. He settled one sack over his shoulder like it weighed nothing, then reached down and hooked a second under his other arm. You gawked—there was no better word for it—as he carried both of them across the short distance and dumped them easily into the trailer. And, obviously, you didn’t miss the outline of his biceps straining under his shirt.

Something in your chest twisted uncomfortably. You forced yourself back into motion, grabbed the next bag, and fell into step beside him.

Neither of you spoke as you both hauled the feed sacks from the shed to the trailer until the shed laid empty and the trailer sat full. It was done so quickly.

With the trailer full and nothing left to keep your hands busy, you decided it was time to leave. You turned, already scanning the property for the next chore you could disappear into, but the boy moved faster.

“Hey.”

He stepped directly into your path. He was a little taller than you—just enough that you had to tilt your chin up slightly to meet his eyes. Your heart started knocking against your ribs and making your nervous system go on haywire. Your fingers found each other automatically and began picking nervously at your own nails.

He grinned.

You opened your mouth and then closed it again, unsure what sound was supposed to come out or what you were even supposed to say. Up close there were even more freckles than you’d noticed before. They scattered across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose in uneven constellations.

“I’m Toby,” he eventually said.

His name. Toby. You turned it over and over, rolling the syllables in your brain. It suited him. He looked like a Toby.

He was still watching you, his expression open and a little expectant, like he was waiting for you to give him yours. You shook your head, finally registering that you were standing in complete silence.

“We’re not supposed to talk to each other,” you said quietly.

He nodded, then smiled wider, showing his teeth.

“I know. Your pops laid it out for me already.”

His gaze moved over your shoulder toward the sound of your father’s returning boots. Before you could step back or say anything else, his hand reached out quickly and closed around one of yours. You couldn’t even think to pull it away—you couldn’t really move at all. He lifted your fingers to his lips, pressed a quick kiss against your knuckles, then dropped your hand as quickly as he had picked it up.

“But I h-hope we can be friends.”

Then he was trotting back toward the place your father had left him. A moment later the two of them were walking away together, your father’s tone picking up again like nothing unusual had happened.

You stood there and watched until they shrank into small figures far across the field. Only then did you look down at your own hand, at the place where his mouth had touched your skin.

Yeah.

This is how you get yourself killed.

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