Thirsty Girl

Thirsty Girl

Harden, Minnesota, October 1952. A silent new boy arrives at a small-town high school and immediately becomes the subject of rumor and fear. Tommy Odessa keeps to the walls, speaks only when forced, and disappears every afternoon on a bus headed beyond the edge of town. Most people decide he’s dangerous. Cindy Deltanna decides he’s interesting.

Cindy is a Roddette—rebellious, sharp-tongued, and never without a straight razor. Drawn to trouble and bored with rules, she ignores the warnings and follows Tommy home. What she finds inside the isolated farmhouse is not just a lonely boy, but someone running from something far worse than gossip.

As night falls, paranoia and real danger collide. Tommy claims there are creatures roaming the countryside, hunting him. Cindy must decide whether she’s fallen for a harmless outcast—or stepped into a fight for survival. With gangs closing in, secrets in the basement, and monsters on the roads, trust becomes a matter of life and death.

Thirsty Girl by Jack Harrowsmith is a gritty, pulpy tale of rebellion, forbidden love, and survival, blending 1950s youth culture with raw horror and dark romance.

Discover Thirsty Girl and step into a small town where danger waits just beyond the last streetlight.

Excerpt from the book

Harden, Minnesota, September 1954

I didn’t really see what happened.

Some of the guys were giving the new kid, Tommy Odessa, a hard time. I was lighting up a smoke, taking that first, long, after-school drag. There was a shout. Then Ripper was on the ground with Tommy on top of him, the other guys crowding around. I’m snapping my Zippo shut, and just like that, it was over. Tommy walking towards the street, everybody moving out of his way.

By the time I strolled up, Ripper was dusting himself off, doing a lot of yakety-yak.

“He’s a psycho, man, a certified s-e-y-e-c-o. I saw it in his eyes,” he said.

“Why didn’t you take him?” Digger asked.

“I told you, man,” Ripper said, his voice low and dangerous, looking around the half-circle, tapping his finger against the side of his head. “S-e-y-e-c-o, the genuine article. You don’t handle a creep like that in the schoolyard. We got better ways to deal with his kind.”

“Yeah, man. Oh, yeah.” All the cats and kitties were hissing and nodding, looking at each other, snapping their fingers.

“Hell Night’s a month away,” I said.

“Well, maybe we’re gonna have a little warm-up this year.”

Ripper thought because Munchie, the boss chick of the Rodettes, was his big sister, that he had some kind of authority.

I blew smoke out my nose. “You ain’t got the juice to call a rumble,” I said.

“Once I tell Munchie…”

I tuned him out and watched the Number Three bus rumble past the schoolyard gate. The Number Three went way out past the city limits, all the way to Knots Corners.

“What do you think, Thirsty?” Flip Doll, Fast Kitty, and the other chicks were looking at me, some of the guys too. Since so many of the older Rods got slaughtered last year, us girls had a lot more say about what went on around here. Truth was, Munchie was running the whole show these days.

I flicked my cigarette butt at a high angle off towards the swing set. “I say, let’s see what Munchie thinks about us havin’ a brand-new psycho in town.”

People had been talking about Tommy Odessa.

They said he came from California; nobody knew for sure. He was a big guy, had a serious, grown-up look about him. He hardly spoke a word, didn’t try to make friends. At lunchtime, he kept to himself, and after school, he hustled out the door and jumped on the Number Three bus. People said that he rode it all the way to the end of the line and walked from there.

Nobody knew what his family was doing in Harden. Flip Doll said that he lived at the old McPhee farm with his mother, who was a nut job. Slasher, who worked at the Texaco out at the end of Division, said a strange woman had started coming around last month. She drove an old Ford Deluxe with California plates, wore big sunglasses and a headscarf, like a Hollywood star. Said she went to the general store across the street a couple times a week and came out with some groceries and a sack full of hooch. That made my ears prick up. If his mother was a lush, there would be booze laying around his house. I liked the sound of that; they didn’t call me Thirsty Girl for nothing.