Page 31 of Evil All Along


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I tightened my grip on Fox, not that it would do any good.

“Do you mean,” Fox asked with poisonous sweetness, “caricatures?”

“Dude, you’re going to make so much money.” And then Louis looked up and shot Fox finger pistols. “You owe me a commish!”

If acommishconsisted of being shot, Robin Hood-style, then I thought Louis was likely to get his commish sooner than he expected.

“Let it go,” I whispered to Fox. “He’s trying to be nice.”

“He called me a sidewalk artist,” Fox snapped. If they’d had a cape, they would have been flinging it back dramatically, but they settled for stomping one of the dragon-tipped boots. “That is an insult that cannot be ignored.”

“Well, ignore it,” I said. The sound came of the front door opening, and I added, “For at least five more minutes.”

Bobby poked his head into the hall and gestured to me. I released Fox’s arm—not without some misgivings—and started to excuse myself, but Louis was laughing at a video he was watching on his phone, and he didn’t even seem to notice when I walked away.

“Is everything okay?” I whispered to Bobby. “How is he?”

Bobby sent me a level look, but he didn’t answer the question. Instead, he said, “He doesn’t want to stay here.”

“What?”

“He didn’t want to come with me. And then he tried to get out of the car twice at stoplights.” Frustration tangled Bobby’s usually even tone. “And he won’t say anything.”

Sure enough, as we stepped into the vestibule, Keme was unlocking the front door.

“Hey,” I said. “Where are you going?”

He shot me a look over his shoulder.

It was hard to remember the boy from a few weeks ago, the one who had challenged me to a Sour Patch Kids-eating contestand who had laughed when I’d panicked because my mouth got too tingly after approximately eight hundred Sour Patch Kids. The same Keme who had given me a wedgie in front of Bobby. (Bobby had tried not to laugh. Notice the wordtried.) The same Keme who had fallen asleep with his head propped against my knee after six and a half hours of Naruto. This Keme, the one in front of me, stared through me with dull, dead eyes, his face blank with a kind of directionless hostility. He wouldn’t make eye contact, and it made me feel like I was invisible. (Invisible, but still somehow managing to piss him off.)

So what? It didn’t mean anything, I told myself. He’d been through a terrible experience—something most people would never have to deal with. He was scared, and he was hurting, and he was barely more than a child. A lot of adults wouldn’t have handled themselves as well as he had. If anger was the best way for Keme to protect himself in this moment, then that was okay. I could deal with Keme being angry at me. Right then, he needed someone to remind him that he had people who loved him and cared about him. And even though our last encounter hadn’t gone so well, even though it had left me with doubts about how much of my relationship with Keme I had misunderstood or projected or simply imagined, I still wanted to do the right thing for him.

I walked forward, speaking softly as I closed the distance between us. “Why don’t you come in and clean up? Take a shower, change clothes. Indira’s making you something to eat, and I bet you need a good night’s sleep—”

I reached out to touch his shoulder. He moved so fast he was a blur, slapping my hand away. Then he drew in on himself. He wrapped his arms around his chest, and his shoulders curved inward. He still wouldn’t meet my gaze. My hand stung, and the sting was already growing into a throbbing pain that told me Keme had hit me as hard as he could. It ran up my arm, into mybrain. For a moment, I stood there, my hand still outstretched. Then I drew it back toward me. I realized with something like shame that my mouth was still open.

“Keme,” Bobby said, and it was about as harshly as I’d ever heard him speak to anyone. “What was that?”

“It’s okay,” I said, but my voice trembled. “I shouldn’t have—”

“It’s not okay. You can’t hit people. And Dash is trying so hard to be kind to you. What’s wrong with you?”

Keme didn’t look at either of us. I thought, if he’d been able to, he would have run out the door right then, but he only shrank in on himself more.

“It’s okay,” I said again, a little more believably this time. “That was my fault. I shouldn’t have gotten in your space. Listen, I know it’s been a hard couple of days for you. Why don’t you stay the night? If you still want to go somewhere else in the morning, Bobby or I can give you a ride.”

He didn’t relax, not exactly. But some of that wire-tight tension loosened, and when I nudged Bobby toward the hall, Keme followed us.

Fox saw us first, and they let out a gasp that from anyone else would have been way too dramatic. They reached Keme before I could stop them—or warn them—and opened their arms for a hug.

Instead of the whip-crack blow I expected, though, Keme stood still and let Fox embrace him.

“My dear, dear boy,” Fox said, and to my surprise, their voice cracked. “It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay now.”

It should have sounded trite. Or melodramatic. But instead, it sounded like heartbreak, and like someone who was too old and too wise to believe what they were saying—and yet, somehow, still hoped it might be true.

When Fox released Keme and stepped back, Louis looked up from his phone. “What up, killer?” he said with a grin. And then he held out his fist. “Dead man walking on the green mile. Did you get any prison tats?”