Page 18 of Succubus

“That’s enough. You’re not funny.”

He crams something into his mouth.

I sigh. “Is that candy corn?”

He holds up what seems to be a sack of it.

“Since you’re literally always eating, you could maybe rotate in something other than processed sugar.”

“Insatiable appetite was a curse. Demeter cursed Erysichthon, poor dude, and he ended up eating his own skin off or something. Maybe I have that, too.” He pivots instantly back: “But seriously, this Brooklyn guy was workin’ it. Some big-deal producer was giving him gigs; someone filed a complaint because they were ‘romantically involved.’ Like, everyone was in love with him even if they weren’t gay before.”

“Maybe they were, though?”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s a spectrum. But Lorelei, for real, this is sus. And he was, like, so full of himself. There’s no way it was suicide.”

“You’re making a lot of assumptions. Did it look like suicide?”

He scrunches his nose.

“Grub.” I’m stern.

“Fine! He jumped off the Williamsburg Bridge. Doesn’t mean anything.”

I raise my eyebrows, resting my case. “Kid, you can’t research every single untimely death in the tristate area. You’ll find ways to connect them all. It’s not good for you. Can you get outside into nature a little bit?”

“You sound like Bill. He got me a bike. Like I’m gonna put on that spandex stuff that has, like, a boner pill logo on it and one of those dickhead helmets— ”

“That was nice of him,” I say of his stepdad. Bill was institutionalized for a while when Grub began to like him. That was half a year after his mother got remarried. Grub was seven. No wonder eight was rough.

Grub has learned to keep everyone at a distance, for their own protection. It’s a delicate balance. His mother, he says, doesn’t try as much anymore. But Bill hasn’t given up.

I hear Dee getting home. “I should go.” She’s always a little weirded out by my relationship with Grub.

“The kid?”

“Dee.”

“Say hi for me.” They’ve met on video chat, and he instantly developed a crush on her.

But I don’t say hi for him or even for me. I stay in my room, repicturing the helpless way Joel looked at me. Like a door blown open by a strong wind. I am almost certainly a reckless criminal of an idiot for letting it go this far. But for an ephemeral midair moment, I let myself think of nothing except the sound of his voice on my name.

CHAPTER 7

It’s Monthly Moms’ Malaysian. Only Alice calls it that. Only one of us is not a mom. Guess who.

Tonight the attendees (all of us from Blossom and Twig, the homeschool group) are me, Alice, Harini, and Molly. Sometimes there are eight or nine of us, but it’s better when it’s small and we get to really talk. Except that Molly is crying right now. The half a roast duck that Alice and I always share is mostly eaten, and it’s challenging to look properly sympathetic while I’m chewing around tiny bones, hoisin sauce smeared on my cheek. Alice, wings of eye makeup dramatic under the fuzzy dome of her head, has a spot of sauce on the tip of her nose.

Have I not described her yet? My closest friend, Alice Choi: full-sleeve tattoos, buzz cut, gentle-but-in-charge momming skills, feminist rage, and homemaker proclivities. She still takes a few domestic violence cases a year.

“Sorry, sorry.” Molly pushes wisps of reddish hair back from her face. She is very pale, the chunky purple frames of her glasses the boldest thing about her. She’s just finished telling us about the stressful new job that is depressing her husband.

“It sounds like he’s under a lot of pressure,” says Harini, graceful in her bright kurtis. Her ornate gold nose ring glints in the low light of the hanging basket lights in our favorite strip mall restaurant.

“Maybe you could do some kind of a sex ambush,” Alice muses. “Like, catch him off guard? Just— ” She mimes a tearing off of clothes in the crotch region.

Harini rolls her eyes. “Okay, the sex will happen as your relationship heals. . . .”

Molly and I nod, and I tap my nose to show Alice where the sauce is. She taps her nose back, adding grease to the sauce.