AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Mom,” I say.
“Oh, honey,” she says. “The doctor wants to see you to make sure you don’t have the same thing that killed your brother.” She turns to Ms. Logan, who looks scandalized by the whole encounter. “These things can run in families,” she confides.
“You’re afraid I’m going to come down with a bad case of getting two in the chest?” I say. “?’Cause you might be right about that running in families.”
Mom purses her lips in disapproval.
Barron claps me on the back hard. “Come on, funnyman.”
We walk toward the parking lot. I shove my gloved hands deep into the pockets of my uniform. Barron is keeping pace with me. He has left the top couple buttons of his crisp white shirt undone, enough so that I can see a new gold chain slide against his tan skin. I wonder if he’s wearing charms against being worked.
“I thought you wanted us to come get you,” Mom says as she lights a cigarette with a gilt lighter and takes a deep drag. “What’s the matter?”
“All I want is for Barron to tell me where the bodies are,” I say, keeping my voice down as I walk across the lawn. Having them here is surreal. They don’t belong at Wallingford, with its manicured lawns and low voices. They’re both larger than life.
They exchange a look brimming with discomfort.
“The people I transformed. Where are they? What did I turn them into?”
I don’t know exactly what Barron remembers about the disappearances of Greco and Kalvis and all the rest. I have no idea how many of Barron’s memories are missing, how extensively he’s damaged himself with blowback, but if there’s a record in his journals, then maybe he knows something. Yeah, sure, I changed his journals so that he forgot that he wanted to use me to kill Zacharov, forgot that he wasn’t on my side against Philip and Philip’s buddy, Anton. But I didn’t change anything else.
“There’s no reason why you need to know that,” Barron says slowly. Which sounds promising.
“Let’s just say that I do.” I stop walking, forcing them to either stop too or go on without me. They stop.
“Don’t argue, boys,” Mom says, blowing out a cloud of smoke that hangs in the air. “Cassel, come on, baby. Let it go.”
“One,” I say. “Give me one body.”
“Fine.” Barron shrugs nonchalantly. “Remember that chair you hated?”
I open my mouth and then close it, like a fish. “What?” I say, but I know which chair he means. The one I almost threw out when Grandad and I cleaned the house, because the thing always creeped me out. It was a too-exact replica of one I’d seen on television.
He laughs and tilts up his sunglasses, so I can see him raise his eyebrows at me. “Yep.”
I root my keys out of my bag. “Thanks for signing me out, Mom,” I say, kissing her on her powdered cheek.
“I thought we were going to have lunch,” she says. “Whatever you’re thinking of doing—”
“I’ve got to go,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry nothing,” Mom says in a syrupy voice, grabbing hold of my upper arm. “You can come to lunch with us or I can call that nice lady at the desk and tell her that your appointment got canceled, I brought you back to school, and won’t she be a dear and make sure you’re where you’re supposed to be?”
“Don’t threaten me,” I say, which makes Barron look at me like I’ve gone crazy. Telling Mom what to do is never a great idea.
Her hand clenches tighter around my arm, nails biting into my skin through the white dress shirt. I look down; somehow she got her glove off without my noticing. If she slides her fingers lower, she could touch my bare wrist. Or she could go higher and grab for my neck. “A mother shouldn’t have to threaten her son into wanting to spend time together.”
She’s got me there.
* * *
Mom slides into the booth at Toriyama’s and plunks down her purse next to her, leaving Barron and me to use the chairs. Her gloves are back in place. When I study them to figure out how she rigged things to remove one so fast, she gives me a pointed look. I study the framed kimonos hanging above us and the pale bamboo table instead.
The waitress comes, dressed all in black, and pours us tea. She’s pretty, with supershort bangs and a nose ring that glitters like a single drop of absinthe. Her name tag says Jin-Sook.
Barron orders one of the big platters of sushi. “It comes on one of the boats, right?” he asks, pointing toward a shelf of lacquered wooden ships, some of them with two masts, that rests above where the chef carves fish. “Because one time I ordered it and it just came on a plate. But on the menu it says boat, so I just want to be sure.”
“It comes on a boat,” Jin-Sook says.
