A Cup Full of Midnight by Jaden Terrell Read Free Book Online

hymns and a sermon, we followed the shivering procession across the parking lot to the cemetery for the graveside service. The grave was a frozen gash at the top of a short slope, where the family sat in folding chairs beneath a canopy. The rest of us stood at the bottom of the slope, shuffling our feet for warmth and wiping sleet from our eyes.
    “Do they always go on and on like this?” Josh whispered. When I put a hand on his shoulder, I could feel him trembling. Maybe from cold. Maybe from grief. Maybe a bit of both. It pissed me off that Razor still had a hold on him. “How can they stand it?”
    I shrugged off my coat and slipped it around his shoulders. “Delaying the inevitable,” I whispered back. “They don’t want to put him in the ground.”
    I flipped up my collar and tucked my hands under my armpits to keep warm. While the preacher droned on, I scanned the crowd. Nobody looked out of place. Nobody stood up and confessed to Razor’s murder. Then Josh nudged me with his elbow and nodded toward a blond boy at the back of the crowd. “That’s Byron. Byron Birch. He and Razor were . . .” He rubbed his hands together and blew on them to warm them with his breath. “You know. After Razor and I broke up.”
    I remembered Byron’s name from the police report. He’d worked out at the gym, gone to a movie, picked up a sack full of Krystal burgers, and come home to find a bloodbath in his living room.
    The kid was about Josh’s age, blond as an Aryan wet dream and with the kind of looks that draw predators out of the woodwork. His navy blue suit was too short in the sleeves and too tight across the chest, and his eyes were bloodshot and swollen.
    “He’s not Goth,” I said.
    “He’s a jock,” Josh said, as if that explained something. Maybe it did.
    A man in a long wool coat, open to reveal a tailored black suit, stood beside Byron, a proprietary hand on the boy’s shoulder.
    “Who’s that?” I asked Josh.
    “Alan Keating. A friend of Razor’s. From before.”
    “Before?”
    Josh looked uncomfortable, and I knew what he meant. The only thing that really mattered. Before me. “Back in the old days,” he said. “I think they went to school together or something.”
    Even with his suit damp and his dark hair stiff with sleet, Keating looked like he’d stepped out of a magazine. Sun-bed tan, conservatively styled hair, gold tips attached to his starched white collar. His tie was lavender, the tie tack embellished with a loop of gold chain. He looked to be in his late twenties, which should have made him too old for Razor’s taste. Certainly, he was too old for Byron.
    My fists clenched at my sides.
    Josh said, “It’s not like Byron was some little virgin or anything, anyway. Angel Face was hustling tricks way before he took up with Razor.”
    The minister finished his speech and the mourners fluttered into bunches like a flock of half-frozen but well-dressed ravens.
    I made my way toward Byron, catching snippets of conversation as I passed. Josh trailed along behind me.
    “. . . his poor mother . . .”
    “Maybe now she’ll give Heath the time of day . . .”
    “. . . Sebastian . . . freakish, last time I saw him . . .”
    “. . . so very sorry for your loss . . .”
    “. . . so sorry for your loss . . .”
    “. . . so sorry.”
    I caught up to Byron and touched his sleeve just as he and Keating turned away. Byron looked blankly at my extended hand for a moment before clasping it in his own, and his smile flashed half a beat too late. His eyes were glazed. I thought of the pharmaceuticals found in Razor’s house and wondered if Byron had been medicated. If Keating had medicated him.
    “Byron Birch?” I said.
    “Do I know you?”
    “This may not be the best time, but—”
    “I still can’t believe it.” His hands were trembling, and he jammed them into his pockets when he realized I had noticed. “He’s the most . . . alive . . . person I ever met. How can he just be