Burro Hills
Julia Lynn Rubin
Copyright
Diversion Books
A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.
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New York, NY 10016
www.DiversionBooks.com
Copyright © 2018 by Julia Lynn Rubin
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
For more information, email info@diversionbooks.com
First Diversion Books edition March 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63576-193-1
Carve your name into my arm
Instead of stressed, I lie here charmed
—Placebo, “Every You Every Me”
1.
Show-off. That was the first thing I thought about Connor Orellana. Fucking show-off.
But it paid off for him.
Connor came to Burro Hills the spring semester of my junior year, transferring in from a school about an hour south of here in a little town called Creek Way. It was the year Mom lost her job as a movie theater ticket taker, the latest in a long succession of odd jobs, and the year that my father said he’d finally stop drinking and succeeded for more than a month. It was a spring of intense heat, fires burning a hole through the forested mountains, trailing plumes of heavy smoke into the white-hot sky. Looking back now on that time, the smoke seems like a signal, a warning or an omen of some kind. I knew Connor would change the game for me; I had no idea just how much.
It was late April. I was squinting through my sunglasses from my usual spot on the steps out front after school, waiting for my boys to finish fucking around at their lockers so we could ride home together, like we usually did. That’s when I spotted him up close, and something changed in the air as I watched him. Something sparked. There was this bold new kid with an expensive-looking skateboard, doing ollies and slick freestyles in front of a gathering crowd. And it kind of pissed me off. It was hot as hell that day, but this kid had just turned up the heat a notch higher than it rightfully should’ve been.
Connor was an instant hit with some of the cutest girls at school since he’d arrived back in January. But now that the weather was growing warmer, the wildfires increasing in intensity in the hills and the mountains, he was outside more often, showing off for them. Those same girls got moony-eyed and giggly when he’d swerve around a group of them on his board, turning around to wink at them and hear them squeal. In the halls, freshmen girls talked about how they loved the way he spiked the front of his jet-black hair, and how lean his body looked when he took off his shirt in the sun.
He was a show-off for sure, and rumor had it he was a criminal.
I heard it first earlier that year from Jess between snaps of her bubblegum. He’d been to juvie apparently, kicked out of St. Francis High School in Creek Way for punching the principal and breaking his nose. Smoked a lot of weed, slept with a lot of nearly unattainable girls—or so that was his alleged resume. I brushed it off at first. It was Jess. She ate up Bigfoot specials and ghost hunter shows. As much as I loved her, she wasn’t always a credible source and neither were the dumbass kids at our school.
But the more I saw of him that semester, the more those urban legends seemed like they might have some truth behind them. Only a few months had gone by, and already it seemed like his name was on everyone’s lips, or at least the people that ran in my circle. Connor Orellana, his imagined deeds ingrained into Burro Hills High School lore. The rest of them either whispered about him in the hallway or blew him off as another loser, a junkie or a deadbeat’s son like the rest of us. I was hopelessly intrigued.
He was in my math class for a few weeks until he was transferred into the Honors section, and this one time, I watched him slide a note to one of the hottest girls in school, some bleached-blonde bimbo named Maggie Turner. She’d wrinkled her nose and opened it carefully, like it was full of anthrax, then rolled her eyes and passed it to her girlfriends and some of the football team assholes in the back of the room. They’d thought it was hysterical, laughing and making comments like fifth graders, saying “fucking faggot” and that kind of thing. Someone had rolled the note in a little ball and tossed it at Connor’s head. I watched to see what he’d do, if he’d get pissed or something, but he just sat there grinning like an idiot, like he was the only one really in on the joke. Then he caught me looking at him and held my gaze for a second too long. I remember the warm rush I got, like I was in on the joke now too. And as the football assholes eventually simmered down and went back to talking about sports and all their bullshit, Connor pulled a pair of Ray Bans from his bag and slipped them on, slouching in his chair. Goodnight, assholes.
He didn’t mind eating alone for the first few months or so—seemed to view it as some rite of passage—or walking to class alone through the sea of blank faces, earbuds lodged in his ears, snapping his fingers to an invisible beat. He spotted me in the hallway once and grinned that ridiculous grin of his. I’d nodded and tried to keep a straight face, but after he’d passed I couldn’t stop smiling to myself. I didn’t fully understand at the time what
