“You just pay attention to the road and not the crowds,” Seth told him.
They drove for a while, Addison paying so much attention to the road as they headed into his neighborhood, that he paid no attention to Seth, dropping what he dropped into his drink. It wasn’t anything serious, just a sort of.... help.
EDGARALLENPOET: I have a confession to make.
CHICAGO: Should I put on my Roman collar?
EDGAR: No, I’m not sure that I want to be absolved.
CHI: What’s up?
ED:I am officially and totally gay. Gayer than ever.
CHI: You used to have a boyfriend, right?
EDGAR: Yes, but that’s over and I thought it was a one time thing.
CHI: And then?
EDGAR: And then I’ve been looking at this other guy.
CHI: Yeah?
EDGAR: He’s the school fag. Only, now I guess I’m the school fag. His name is Justin.
CHI: Justin?
EDGAR: Yeah, drama club and stuff like that. I saw him in the pool room the other day.
CHI: Naked?
EDGAR: Yes. I went back to look again. I actually was almost late to my friend’s house for dinner because I went back to check this guy out in the shower.
CHI: And?
EDGAR: And what?
CHI: Did you get in trouble?
EDGAR: No.
CHI: He didn’t see you?
EDGAR: Like… he saw me. He looked at me looking. He’s caught me looking twice. But... I don’t know. I guess I’m not in trouble. Mom’s harrassing me about my last guy. Why I don’t hang out with him anymore.
CHI: She doesn’t know he was your boyfriend?
EDGAR: No, she thinks we were just really good friends. I’m hanging out with my real best friend. And his friends now. I guess they’re my friends too. I don’t think she approves.
CHI: She sounds interesting.
EDGAR: She really isn’t.
CHI: That’s kind of what I meant. Only I was being nice.
EDGAR: lol.
CHI: You know I hate that.
EDGAR: lmfho
CHI: Why do people do that?
EDGAR: Don’t change, Chicago.
CHI: I gotta sign off. It’s late.
EDGAR: I know.
CHI: I waited up for you.
EDGAR: I know. Thanks.
CHI: Goodnight.
“So your parents aren’t here?”
“They’re here,” she told him, passing him the joint. “They just don’t ever come into this part of the house. It’s like mine. It’s my personal play place.”
Seth snorted the coke and Bonnie offered it to Addison.
“No,” Seth said. Wiping his nose with the back of his hand.
Addison looked at Seth. The music was throbbing through his ears. Was Seth being protective?
“Seth....” Seth melted into the shadows. Bonnie felt so good, sitting here, giggling next to him, passing him the joint.
Seth, who was nearly completely in his right mind, didn’t know what cocaine would do mixed with everything else. He wasn’t sure if it was a depressant or a hallucinogen. He needed Addison to remain right where he was. Letting Bonnie kiss him and flirt, Addison giggling a little stupidly. He needed that.
“I feel—” Addison stood up. “Ohhh.” he said, and prepared to sit back down. But Bonnie caught his hands.
“Come here,” she told him and began to pull him out of the den. “Come here.”
They were in a quieter room. He had to get away from the party. No, but they were at the party. No, it was just Seth and Bonnie, and now it was him and Bonnie and the music on the other side of the wall. Loud music, the cops would come. No… they wouldn’t. No. It wasn’t that loud. Why was he thinking this? When Bonnie was kissing him, when her hands were on his belt.
“Bonnie...” Addison started.
“Com on.” She pulled him to the floor. He couldn’t get up. He was on top of her.
“Add,” she said. “Add,” she said it again. Then she laughed and muttered, “Substract.”
“Wha…?” he giggled. They both started laughing and then, suddenly, he kissed her. He kissed her deeply, with her face in his hands. He pulled away. He said:
“I had a girlfriend.”
“So did I.”
“What?”
“I mean a boyfriend. I mean... It’s over now.”
“But we—”
Bonnie put a hand to his mouth, and it slipped on his lower lip.
“It’s over now,” she said, sounding slightly drink. Her voice grew more aggressive, slightly angry as she worked with his belt, as his pants fell down.
“It’s.... all… over… now.”
She pulled down her panties. Addison was hard. His dick was in her face. He wasn’t even aware of it, kneeling in a basement with his pants down, his hard dick and in a girl’s face.
“It’s over,” Bonnie was saying. This time her voice was a little sad. “All there is is us.”
“All there is is us,” Addison repeated, still kneeling, still discovering this as she played with his dick.
Her hands were cupping his ass. He looked down at her, but could only see darkness.
“It is all over,” he agreed. “All there is is us.”
All alone we go day after day
All alone we suffer
Oh to steal your heart away
It’s the same old thing in the same
Old way
All alone we suffer
Oh to steal your heart away….
And then she pulled him down.
And pulled him in.
ADDISON CROMPTLEY WOKE UP NAKED, splayed across the floor of a laundry room. He expected his head to hurt, but it didn’t. He thought he should be disconcerted, but he wasn’t.
It was dark, but only a little. It must have been five o’clock in the morning. A long time ago his grandfather would take him hunting, before he died, and the trips in the woods taught him to tell the time by the sun, directions by moss. He would tell Addison how they were Norman English, and his grandmother had been an Indian. Lakota.
Funny how things that were beside the point crowded in when you should be getting to the point, when you should be figuring out what was going on.
A girl, Bonnie, was naked on a beanbag. He must have covered her up in his clothes. He must have been gallant to her. He could just barely remember having sex with her. He knew he must have. He was naked, so he had to have. He had to pee. Addison walked around the basement in a dream state. This was not his house. It could not possibly be his life. No one would come down and find him here. Past the curtain, in the room where they’d had the party, so to speak, Seth was curled up in his plaid shirt and jeans asleep. There was an ashtray with burnt out roaches in it. There was a bag of cocaine. For some reason Addison wanted to sniff it. But he was afraid. He had taken a half disintegrated aspirin once and somehow the contents had gotten into his throat and nostrils. It had burned and choked. Addison was afraid cocaine was ground up aspirin. That it would feel like snorting Tylenol. That’s what kept him away from the stuff.
There was a little bathroom off to the side, he remembered this and peed for a long time. Then he washed his hands, and came back through the room, past Seth. Back into the semi-laundry room that was filling with blue light. Bonnie was waking up.
She was standing up.
“I’m sorry about last night,” Addison told her.
She shook her head.
“I’m not. The only thing I’m sorry about was that it’s hard to remember. That I wasn’t totally sober.”
“Neither was I.”
“You’re a nice guy, Addison.”
He didn’t say anything, “You’re a nice looking guy.”
She stood right across from him, almost breast to breast. They were both naked.
“Don’t you want to remember it?” she said. “Don’t you think we should remember it? I think we should.”
“Huh?” he said, but he was already getting an erection.
She took him there. She started to stroke him.
“Na...” he was trying to say “Now?” His knees were buckling.
He just let her do it to him, sighing and then she stopped and he caught his breath, but he didn’t want her to stop. He really wanted to fuck her. Last night was coming back to him.
“Now?” he said. “We need a con—”
Bonnie put a hand to his mouth. She leaned forward and whispered something, cradling his scrotum in one of her hands, letting him grow larger.
“Seth always used rubbers. He was always so fucking afraid. You know what he’s afraid of? He’s afraid of touching. He doesn’t give a shit about getting me pregnant or not. He just doesn’t want to touch anyone. Not really. I want to be touched. I want to feel you in me, Addison.”
Her hands came up and kissed him and they were in his hair, sucking on his lips. He was bending down, craning his neck, kissing her, wanting her badly.
“Me and my ex-girlfriend...” Addison began.
“She probably used a condom all the time,” Bonnie said, still kissing him. “She was probably frigid and shit. She probably got knocked up.”
Before Addison could pull away, she was still kissing him, still pulling him down.
“That’s not me. I know how I work,” she told him. He was on top of her, they were weaving together arms and legs, but he wasn’t in her yet.
“I bet you don’t have any diseases,” she told him. “I know I don’t.”
Addison kept kissing her, sucking on her throat, sucking between her breasts, he brought his face up. She touched his cheek. She held it.
“You’re so pretty,” she told him.
“No,” Addison said. He knew he was long and skinny, funny looking with a wide mouth.
“Yes,” she told him. “You’re so pretty. I’d want every part of you. I wouldn’t throw any of you away. You’re so innocent. You’re...” her voice died out. She opened her thighs.
“Please,” she said. She pulled him in and gathered her thighs around him. Addison pushed inside of her, he pushed. They pushed together, their thighs and groins pumped. She shouted out a little. They moved together in the grey-blue light, on the beanbag, legs twined up, Addison pushing her more and more into a ball, pressing himself harder and harder into her. He’d never pressed so into Becky like this, Becky hadn’t been like the wet mossy earth. Bonnie was like it, how when you pressed your fingers deeper into it you wanted to press deeper and deeper, to never stop.
Seth woke up on the couch, hearing struggling and gasping, bits and pieces of what he’d heard before. He woke up with a boner thinking of fucking Bonnie, thinking of fucking Becky, and how Bonnie had taken Addison into the room last night. Seth stood up and went to the curtain. He pushed it aside.
He never thought of himself as a voyeur. He was just there too. It was like they were trying to move furniture only.... like they really, really needed to move it, the cursing, the gasping, the struggling breath. He could see in the grey blue darkness, Addison’s white body pushing harder and harder, Bonnie’s legs waving, sent back with each pressing effort from Addison, her arms in the air in surrender. The grasping, the sounds, Seth slipped his hand in his jeans unconsciously.
Addison, in a rapture, turned his face toward Seth. But he couldn’t see Seth. Seth was in the darkness of the curtain and Addison’s eyes were glazed anyway, his mouth slack. He kept looking at Addison without seeing him, sounds escaping his mouth, Seth’s body moving like he was fucking, hearing Bonnie gasp out, her voice increase in the rhythm, and then she pulled Addison down into the darkness and the sounds came quicker and quicker. Seth walked backward from the curtain when he heard her come, when he heard the more ghostly, strangled note from Addison, heard his best friend come. Felt the coming, the release, the rushing of slick salt seed through his own hands, dribbling on the floor of Bonnie’s basement.
In the next room Bonnie gave a tired scream, like she was letting something out. There was the wet sucking noise of kissing. Seth looking at the floor, past his stiff dick in his hands muttered, “Fuck.”
“It won’t be a problem,” Addison said in a quiet voice beside Bonnie. They pulled the dirty blanket over them and lay together in the beanbag. “I only live two blocks away. I’ll just tell my parents I was with Seth.”
“Which you were,” she laughed.
“Which I was.”
Addison sighed and sank into the blanket, “Shit,” he said.
“What?”
“I never... I feel like I was probably a virgin until just then. I never knew it could be like that. What time is it?”
Bonnie looked at him and laughed. “I never knew it could be like that, what time is it?”
“Well, I mean, what time will your parents be up and I need to get to school and—”
Bonnie put a hand to his lips.
“Can you be naked awhile?” she said.
“Uhh...?”
Bonnie pulled the blanket around her and climbed off of the pile of beanbags, leaving Addison naked for awhile. She went into the laundry room and said, “Seth. Wake up, sleepy head. You’re not asleep. You’re only fooling! Guess what? We’re not going to school today!”
Bonnie came back into the laundry room and collapsed onto the beanbag winding herself up with Addison.
“We’re going to have a day out. How’s that?”
Addison grinned at her and she said, “You’re so cute! Really, you are. I’m going to take that as a yes.”
On their way to afternoon classes, Mason and Balliol heard Jeremy Tepper running toward them, calling their names.
Jeremy wore purple whenever her could, and so Mason thought of him as Mr. Purple, even in the Saint Vitus navy blue pants and blazer. His eyes were narrow behind his glasses, under his soup bowl haircut.
“We’re leaving,” he told them. “Me and Adam Wiekamp. We’re leaving. Addison and Seth just showed up asking for you all.”
“Asking for us...” Balliol and Mason began at the same time. They’d both wondered where Addison was. And then when Seth hadn’t appeared either they didn’t know what to make of things.
Jeremy was excited, though, and he was gesturing for them to follow and so they did.
They went out to the parking lot and followed him across it to Seth’s truck where a girl was waving from the inside and Addison caught Mason’s hands and then Balliol’s.
“Where the fuck have you been?” Mason said.
“Out,” Addison said excitedly. “All day.”
“Who is she?” Balliol gestured to the truck cab.
“That’s Bonnie.”
“Bonnie?” Mason raised an eyebrow.
“Bonny Metzger. We’ve been out all day.”
“The three of you?” Mason said.
“Yes.”
Balliol guessed: “More like the three of you, a bag of cocaine and a sack of weed. Or am I wrong?”
“You’re a little right,” Addison said. And then, “Well, yes, you’re mostly right. But now it’s the three of us and you and you and Jeremy.”
“For what?”
“We were thinking,” Addison said, “About Andy. We want to go see Andy.”
“What?” Balliol began.
“I want to see his grave. I need to see it. I’ve never seen it.”
“Mason! Balliol!”
Mason jumped out of his skin for a moment.
“Shit,” he hissed to Balliol. “We’re not supposed to be in the parking lot. We’re not seniors.”
But Balliol just laid his fingers on Mason’s shoulder and said, “It’s only Mercurio.”
“Wha?” Mason murmured.
Matt Mercurio in navy slacks and white turtleneck was running across the parking lot toward them.
“What’s up?” Mason said. Really what was up?
Matt looked at them strangely, and then said, “I dunno. I just felt like...” He cocked his head. “Are you guys ditching school?”
“Yes” Addison said.
Bonnie leaned on the car horn and said, “Let’s goooo!”
“Where are you guys going?” Matt asked.
“Apparently,” said Balliol,” to pay our respects to Andy Rathko’s grave.”
“Oh,” Matt said, sounding entranced as he moved to the car door.
“What the hell are you doing?” said Balliol, who certainly was not entranced, and had put up with one too many crazy white people in a single day.
Matt looked at Balliol strangely and said, opening the car door, “That must be why I came out. I’m going with you.”
Matt climbed into the car. Mason looked from him to Balliol. To Seth whose eyes were wide open.
“We got ourselves a football player!” Jeremy Tepper rejoiced and Mason said, “This is going to be weird.”
“Oh, yes,” Balliol agreed. “Oh, yes.”
“So this is it,” Matt said, standing beside Balliol, his hands folded.
“It looks like a grandma grave. It’s not right,” Matt said. “It isn’t right that if you die at sixteen you get the same kind of grave that your grandma would get. Same stone. Same... I hate graves! I don’t care what the Church says I want to be cremated. I...”
Grass had begun growing. It was under a tree in a long line of graves. It was pink granite, a low stone with roses carved into it. ANDREW JAMES RATHKO. The dates of his life, sixteen years.
“Oh, that’s horrible,” Bonnie said out loud. She sounded truly horrified.
A little picture of Andy was in the corner, over a sign that said, “Beloved son.”
“It’s not right,” Matt’s voice quavered. He shook his head. “It’s not...”
He knelt down and then Mason watched as Matt Mercurio put his face to the grave, his cheek against the three foot stone. He was… hugging the stone. His eyes were closed.
“I’m so sorry,” he was saying, “that you didn’t get to live... That you’re not here. I didn’t know you.”
“He’s something else,” Jeremy murmured, sounding a little jealous as he watched Matt.
Surprised to find his breath shallow, his eyes stinging, Balliol rubbed the bridge of his nose and said, “Yes... He is.”
He must have forgotten the rest of them were there, or either he didn’t care. He looked like he was breaking down. But not quite.
“I’m so sorry,” his voice was hushed. Not like he was crying. No, like he was trying to comfort a child. “We didn’t even know where they’d put you. We just found you. We’re so sorry.”
“We’re sorry,” Bonnie murmured, though she didn’t even know the boy. Mason privately though this girl was certifiable. Who the fuck was she?
Tears were going down Bonnie’s cheek. Something grabbed Mason in his center and squeezed and squeezed and wouldn’t let go. It was surprise. He didn’t remember actually ever crying about Andy. Please God, not here. Not now. Not...
Seth was the one crying.
They turned, but only for a second. Seth was giving great, thick, heaving sobs. His voice was like a cow bellowing. He just kept sobbing. It was the most terrible thing Mason Darrow had ever heard. All of a sudden, his stinging eyes filled up with tears. It didn’t matter if they fell down his face. Not any more.
Matt was still on his knees in the grass and dirt, holding the grave, saying over and over again, gently, “We’re here now. We’re here. We’re sorry.”
When Seth walked into the house, Joel rose up from the couch and stood there, arms folded over his chest, looking defiant.
Seth’s mind was filled with so many things, one of them being Andy’s grave, that he didn’t even register Joel’s mood until he’d gotten to the kitchen and greeted him from behind. But Joel just stood there, and when Seth put two and two together and he turned around and said, “What?”
Joel looked stricken and disgusted. His hands left his sides and he whispered: “Don’t you dare ‘what’ me.”
“What’s up with you?” Seth slammed the milk carton down. “What the hell are you so bent out of shape for?”
“You didn’t come home last night.”
Seth looked at him strangely. “I don’t come home a lot of nights.”
“Were you out having sex?”
Seth snorted and drank from the milk carton. “No,” he said. “I wish I was. But no, Dad, I wasn’t.”
“Or using drugs, or getting drunk or—”
Seth shook his head out. “Wait a—wait a fucking minute—”
“Don’t swear in my house.”
“Waiting a fucking minute!” Seth snapped and threw the carton down.
Joel blinked and his fist balled. He reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out a baggie.
“What’s this?” he challenged, putting it beside the milk.
Seth blinked a couple of times before looking at his father and saying, “Gee, Dad, it looks like bud.”
“Wha—”
“That’s what all the cool kids call marijuana, Dad,” Seth said. “Kids like me.”
Joel walked away and Seth followed him. They went into the living room and Joel picked something up off of the steamer chest they used for a coffee table.
“And these are sugar cubes!”
“I see you’ve been talking to Sidney,” Seth remarked.
“Don’t!” Joel snapped. “Don’t stand here in my house and disrespect me.”
“Oh, so now it’s your house and nobody else’s?”
“I pay the bills!”
“And I lay out your clothes and cook and clean and practically wipe your ass so you can get that uneducated ass up everyday to drive that fucking bus all over the city.”
“You will not—”
“THAT—FUCKING—BUS!”
Joel repeated in a quiet, reflexive voice: “That fucking bus?
“That fucking bus?” His voice rose high and maniacal. He was a little shorter than Seth so he kept looking up gesticulating in his face. “That fucking bus puts clothes all over your pretty back. That fucking bus pays for the school you don’t bother to do half decent in. That fucking bus pays for that truck you drive to do your little drugs with your little friends. That fucking bus pays for all the things you do—”
“Whaddo you know about the things I do?” Seth said. “And quit cussing cause you sound like a moron. You’re not cool, Dad. You never have been, so stop trying. You don’t know a goddamn thing about my life. You couldn’t. You and your... rosary, and your going to church and saying grace—”
“Don’t you say a word against the Church,” Joel warned. “Don’t you say a single word. I put up with your... disrespect all the time. I shouldn’t have. If you actually set foot in God’s house every once in a while your life wouldn’t be such a shamb—”
Seth started to laugh and Joel shut up. Seth’s laugh was so low and nasty and now he folded his hands over his arms.
“Don’t do that,” Seth said. He seized his father by the arm and suddenly power drained out of Joel, looking up at his larger, more enraged son.
“Don’t,” Seth hissed, “even use the word shambles. Next you’ll be pulling out all the old words and telling me how I lolligag. You wanna know what I do?” He dragged his father across the living room. “You want to know what the fuck I do since you’re so fucking free now that you have time to loot my room?” They were in Seth’s room now. “Com on, old man, I’ll show you the right way to do it.”
He was on his knees and he began to pull away a little wooden board. It took some yanking. It was a system he had invented in case Joel ever became nosey. It came from the days when they had lived in a house and Seth had a waterbed. The platform under the mattress became a wall of protection on four sides where all of his secret stuff was hidden. He pulled away one board and it came swarming out. Stolen porn mags, bags of drugs, dirty movies. And while they were rolling out, Seth stood up and opened his drawers. So Joel could see their contents. Then he went into his closet and pulled out a pink bong like a jinni bottle and another one Joel couldn’t describe. And lastly he pulled out a little pipe.
And then he stood there, considering and said, “Let’s see… What else? Ah.. yes.”
Seth opened the last dresser drawer, the one Joel had opened the night before. He handed Joel a pack of condoms and said, “That’s for the next time you and Shelley want to have a little get together.”
Joel’s mouth opened.
“See, you talk all about your holy church, but I know what you really do, Dad. The difference between you and me is that I’m not pretending to follow some religion I don’t even believe in.”
Seth looked at Joel’s face and then said, “Yeah, Dad. Chew on that for a while. Chew on it now, for that matter. I gotta go.”
And he walked out of his filthy room, leaving his father standing there with a package of condoms and a stricken expression on his face.
I WISH I’D GONE,” Tommy said collapsing on the bed.
“But then you would have had to cut school,” Addison pointed out.
“Well, yes,” Tommy agreed. “I don’t want to miss school. I mean I do, but... I can’t cut out. Maybe next year I’ll do it though.”
Mason turned from his computer and shook his head. “I don’t think you have enough of the criminal in you to do that, Tommy.”
Tommy shot up and said with mock ferocity, “I can be just as criminal as the worst of them.” Then he added. “Why, once I stole a roll of toilet paper out of the school bathroom, and you know how hard those things are to get off.”
They all laughed and Balliol said, “Why did you steal a roll of toilet paper?”
“Because we didn’t have any at home” Tommy said baldy. “Mom couldn’t afford it.”
“Oh,” Balliol said, suddenly ashamed.
Tommy picked up on this and said, “It’s not your fault we couldn’t afford toilet paper.”
“No, I suppose not,” Balliol sounded like he didn’t quite believe that.
“You mustn’t do that again,” Mason said, seriously. “I mean, if you have to steal then steal fun things for the fun of it. But if you’re in need, Tommy there’s no need for you to be when you have friends.”
Mason was very serious here, and Tommy nodded.
“Now I feel stupid for—” he began, “for not coming to you in the first place.”
“Well don’t feel too stupid,” said Addison. “Most kids would laugh at you if you told them you couldn’t afford to wipe your ass. The truth of the matter is all of our lives are so... laughable. There’s something in all of them that people could make fun of.”
“If they’re not your real friends,” Mason said
“I guess.”
“If they’re not your friends,” Mason finished indomitably from the computer. “I believe in real friendship.
“Speaking of, who the hell is that Bonnie girl?”
“Did you like here?”
Mason raised an eyebrow and cocked his head at the way Addison had asked and said, “I don’t know her... Why?”
“She goes to Magdalene. She lives down the street from me. I think I’m sort of seeing her now. We hung out last night. Her me and Seth.”
“Really?” Mason said, looking at Addison, saving none of his attention for Tommy or Balliol.
Addison met his eyes, “Really.”
They looked at each other and then Mason said, “I’m going to ask you more later.”
Addison turned away from him and reached into his breast pocket for his cigarettes saying, “I had that feeling.”
“Matt Mercurio,” Mason went on. “I never knew he was a nut job.”
“He’s not,” Balliol said, somewhat more heatedly than he’d intended, and Mason picked up on this too.
“I never thought we’d come to the day when you defended someone from one of my insults,” Mason said. “And Matt Mercurio no less.”
“Matt.…” Balliol began, “just did what I think we all wanted to do. He did it naturally. You have to admire that. The person he’s turning into—”
“He’s turning into a freak,” Mason said implacably. “I don’t even recognize him.”
“He actually came out of the school today,” Addison told Tommy, “asked us where we were going and then when he found out we were going to visit Andy’s grave just invited himself along. It was so weird. He just got in the truck with us and came... No questions, no nothing. Just like he was one of us.”
“I like him,” Tommy said decisively. “He’s gotten really nice in the last few months. I’m really starting to like him.”
“I like him too,” Mason said. “I never said I didn’t. But sanity isn’t a requirement for being likeable, or nice. Something else... I think he’s a hell of a lot nicer than he used to be. He used to sort of... I used to feel like there was probably a good person underneath all the meanness. Because he was mean. Not to me, but he was mean. And that’s gone now.”
Balliol blinked at him.
“What?”
“You were complimenting him,” Balliol realized. “By calling him crazy... Because you’re crazy too.”
Mason smiled genially and said, “I pride myself on being the craziest person I know. Except for Tommy I think. And now, possibly Matt. You really don’t know what the hell he’s going to do.”
“Your mom and dad are kind of crazy too,” Addison noted.
“And my aunt. The whole family. But I was thinking about crazies in our immediate age group.”
“Contemporary crazies,” Balliol supplied.
“That’s right.”
There was a ring at the doorbell. Mason stood up to get it in case Sidney was deep in his art.
When he came back, Addison noted: “Seth fell apart too.”
“Yeah,” Mason noted. “But I think it’s more than Andy. I think Seth has been ready to fall apart awhile now.”
“Who’s at the door?” Tommy said.
“Of all the people in the world, Seth McKenna’s father. Speak of the devil.”
“Speak of the devil’s father,” Balliol corrected.
“He was talking to dad. He doesn’t look all right.”
Addison’s brow knit together. Mr. McKenna had always been good to him.
“What’s wrong with him?” he asked.
Mason shrugged.
“I don’t know... But he looks like he just found out he is the devil’s father.”