Son of the Enemy by Ana Barrons Read Free Book Online

another. Fighting, usually. Throwing punches, getting his ass kicked—that was the form of self-medication that worked for him at fifteen. Yeah, he got drunk occasionally with his friends, but rather than make him feel powerful, alcohol made him sad, which was exactly how he didn’t want to feel. Anger was a much cleaner, more manageable emotion. If he had given in to his sadness, he might have ended up like his mother.
    He gestured toward an empty gray desk chair. “I’m glad for the company.”
    He had turned a storage room in the basement of Grange Hall into a makeshift office by stacking some boxes in a corner and arranging the odds and ends from the drama department—cast-off clothing, lights, two gorilla suits, a fake rubber tree, and some stage flats with palm trees painted on them—so he could cram in a beat-up desk, two padded office chairs on rollers that nobody was using and a standing lamp that saved him from ever having to turn on the fluorescent lights. A couple of high windows let in sunlight filtered through thick azalea bushes, which softened the unglamorous surroundings and made his visitors feel less exposed.
    Ty sat down, straddling the padded seat, and immediately began to spin around. There was something both incongruous and fitting about this boy/man with his dark blond curls, big paws like a puppy, reeking of cigarettes and cologne, pushing off with his feet and then lifting them and staring at the floor as he spun. John crossed his arms behind his head, stretched out a bit farther and let him spin.
    “What do you do down here?” Ty asked when he stopped.
    “Look through old files. Yearbooks. Back copies of the school paper. Stuff like that.”
    “Sounds boring.”
    “What was the class you were sleeping in?” John asked, smiling. “Math?”
    “History. Like I give a shit about the Civil War.”
    John nodded. “Do you dislike the teacher or just the subject matter?”
    Ty shrugged his bony shoulders. “Aaron’s okay. I just don’t see the point of studying stuff that happened so long ago. Who cares? It’s over. The north won, no more slavery, case closed.”
    “You know what they say about history, don’t you?”
    “Yeah, yeah. If you don’t study it you’re bound to relive it or some shit like that. But I really don’t think slavery’s coming back, so I’m not going to have to relive it whether I study it or not.”
    “How about your personal history, Ty? Your own family. Does that interest you?”
    Ty snorted. “My family is about as fucked up as they come, that I do know.”
    “Ever hear of Tolstoy?” John asked. Ty nodded. “He said, ‘All happy families are alike, but unhappy families are each unhappy in their own way.’”
    “I don’t know any happy families,” Ty said. “And all the unhappy families I know are more or less the same.”
    John sat up and reached for the box of tangerines that took up one corner of his desk. He tossed one to Ty and peeled one for himself. “How are they the same?”
    Ty popped a section in his mouth and talked while he chewed. “The parents are never around, and they don’t give a shit about the kids until they get in trouble. Then they send them to shrinks and pump ’em full of meds so they’ll behave and not embarrass them.” He dumped the peels in the garbage can and gestured that he wanted another tangerine. John threw him one.
    “So that about sums it up?”
    “More or less. I mean, yeah, some parents, like, beat on their kids and stuff. I guess that would be worse.”
    “What about your parents?” John started on another tangerine. “They don’t beat you, right?”
    “I live with my dad.” Ty crouched over, resting his forearms on his thighs. “He’s a prick, but he doesn’t hit me or anything. That would require him to actually be around.”
    “Does he travel a lot?”
    Ty looked up. “You know who he is, right? Big-shot Thornton Bradshaw III, local fucking hero.”
    “I know he’s building a science