Hilltop House

Cora, One

In any case, whoever lived in those places, none of them were out and about. Cora felt a slight intrigue, wondered if any of those inhabitants were weirdos, people hiding things. Well, everyone hid things. But she could see someone in one of these houses totally hiding a kidnapped person in their basement. One house in particular, about three down from where she stood, looked smaller and a bit more run down than her own, but clearly someone lived in it; there was a beat-up, rusty white truck in the driveway, full trash cans at the curb waiting for pickup. Cora noticed none of the other houses had their cans at the curb, so either those people were off on the day or the others were. She guessed the former was the truth.

The other houses were nicer, though none were particularly nice. They were fully aware, it seemed, that their street was a back-alley frequented only by residents or accidental turns, and so none of them put out much as far as appearance. That was the sort of street it was. Definitely something dreary about the whole set up.

Cora meandered around to her backyard, a small, sad triangle of grass and dandelion weeds truncated by the privacy wall, but it did push back into some woodsy little area. She approached the trees, tried to tell how far back they went, but was distracted by a tingly sensation on the back of her neck, the one that told her someone was watching . . . Turning slowly, the girl faced the back of the house, its concrete patio and semi-rotted painted wood steps leading up to the back door, and she saw nothing at first, just the stone facade and a distinct lack of shrubbery or flowerbeds, things normally under the windows and along the walls of houses. But then Cora looked left, saw the shadowy image of her mother looking out at her, and quickly left the back yard to return to the front.

She hated how anyone they met told Cora she was the copy of her mother. The two of them looked nothing alike. So they both had deep almost-black hair, and they both had a particular shape to their annoyingly cute noses, a sort of tip down at the corners near the nose and a tip slightly up at the corners above the cheeks. And maybe they both had rather oval faces, but beyond that, they little resembled one another. Cora's eyes, foremost, couldn't be any less like her mother's; the woman's were close and doe-ish, while the girl's were more wide-set and angular. Cora was also fair to her mother's tan and thin to her mother's curves. She had literally no figure to speak of and was perfectly happy covering it in layers of dark band t-shirts and black skirts and fishnets and chunky shoes. She was perfectly fine with her nose ring and plugs, even if they were fake (who need know?). And she was perfectly fine trying to be exactly what her mother least wanted her to be—hard, cold, and dark. Especially now, after this stupid move.

Morosely plodding around the side to the front, noticing the movers momentarily paused in their moving to work some legs off a couch they couldn't get through the front door, Cora pulled at the long sleeve of her mesh shirt to detach it from a bracelet it'd caught on. She was busy fussing with the thing when she noticed another living soul those few houses down, exiting the particularly rundown one, heading to the white pickup truck. He wasn't particularly tall or particularly attractive, from what she could see where she stood, but something about him possessed her for a brief moment, and she stood still on her hilltop and forgot about her sleeve.

Whoever he was, he was surely close in age to or a bit older than she was, longish dark blond hair, jeans and boots and a flannel tied around his waist, a tank exposing his relatively well-formed shoulders, and Cora found herself watching him with a sort of weird fascination. Why, she couldn't say; hadn't she seen a ton of and a lot better looking guys than him? Ben was fifty times better looking, she thought, though she couldn't clearly see this boy's face.

When he reached the driver's side door of the rusty truck, he suddenly did that thing where he looked up and caught Cora watching, and a sudden mortification overcame her. But she wasn't one to run away, no matter her discomfort—she was used to making others feel uncertain and wasn't going to show her own uncertainty, especially to some boy she didn't even know. So she continued to stand there, continued to look at him, and she thought she saw, even from her distance, a sort of smirk on his face. How she saw that and not really his actual features was unclear, but he continued into his truck, started the engine, and pulled away before Cora decided to actually move again.