No wonder everyone left you like they did.” She hadn’t sounded angry as much as sad, which had made it difficult for Selevan Penrule to counter with anything abusive. He’d have liked to fire a verbal missile in her direction and, with the satisfaction that comes from long experience in the field of vocal warfare, to watch it hit its mark, but there was something in her eyes that prevented him, despite the pain that her parting shot caused him. Perhaps, he thought, he was losing his touch. Either that or the girl was getting under his skin. He hated to think that might be the case. He’d confronted her when they were on the road to Clean Barrel Surf Shop, and he had been quite proud that he’d mastered in himself the compulsion to tackle her on the previous afternoon. He didn’t like secrets, and he hated lies. That Tammy possessed the first and acted on the second disturbed him more than he wanted to admit. For despite her oddities of dress, behaviour, nutrition, and intention, he liked the girl, and he wanted to think her different from the rest of the world’s furtive adolescents, who had clandestine secondary lives that appeared to be defined by sex, drugs, and bodily mutilation.
