The Smaller Evil by Stephanie Kuehn Read Free Book Online Page B

That’d be fine with him, Arman thought. It was Beau he’d come for.
    Nothing else.
    But when he and Kira walked inside, no one was sitting anywhere. Instead the place was jammed wall to wall with people standing in small groups and clusters. They laughed and talked and milled about, like it was the easiest thing to do. Like this was a cocktail party. Or a fun night out. Or anything but what it was.
    But what was it?
    Kira took Arman’s hand and pulled him through the crowd. Winding through strangers, with everyone so tightly packed, the panic creep of closeness came over him. It knotted his throat and watered his eyes. Made him feel light-headed. Music was playing, something upbeat with a swing to it, but Arman didn’t know where she was leading him. He squeezed her hand and tugged, wanting her to slow down, but she tugged back harder, pulling him deeper into the throng. Arman held on, feet lurching forward in the proper way, but he let his head fall back. Let himself stare at the ceiling. The dome roof was vaulted, towering skyward, and built by interlocking wood beams, an intricate cribbing that formed a dizzying geometric pattern. Between the beams was negative space, open to the outside. Moonlight and cool air drifted down from the heavens.
    â€œKira,” Arman tried to say, but his voice couldn’t be heard over the crowd. They moved deeper into the hall. His shoulders and hips bumped against strangers. His forehead grew wet. He was trapped, he realized, in a crush of friendly humanity. He couldn’t escape if he wanted to.
    Kira, on the other hand, was clearly in her social element. She greeted people with an openness Arman couldn’t help but envy. She made it look easy, being among strangers and being noticed; she waved and hugged and spoke with people she hardly knew.
    Snippets of conversations swirled around Arman’s head as they cut across the room. He couldn’t catch everything he heard, but what hedid sounded weird, unnervingly so—bizarre stories about past lives and encounter groups and strange somatic practices like craniosacral massage and some sort of energy transfer that required knowledge of auras. Arman was baffled. Living in Santa Cruz, he was used to a lot of fringe types and their New Age ideals, but that wasn’t the kind of stuff Beau was into.
    Was it?
    Finally they reached the dome’s center. Here, a stone fireplace roared with flames, sending plumes of smoke up a narrow chimney that vented through the very top of the structure. The fire’s heat warmed Arman’s legs, his chest.
    He looked at Kira.
    â€œI don’t feel so good,” he said.
    â€œShhh.” She let go of his hand and put a finger to her lips. Arman opened his mouth to say more, like how he might faint, right here in front of everybody, and how that would embarrass him, so maybe he should go do his wilting outside, be separate, be the way he always was. But he realized the whole room had fallen silent. Everyone was turned toward a side entrance, on the opposite side of where they’d come in. Arman turned, too.
    It was Beau. He was here.
    He stood on a chair in order to be seen.
    â€œHello,” he called to the crowd, and when the murmurs of return greeting died out, he said, “Nice night, isn’t it? Why don’t we go for a walk?”
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    Trudging back outside into the cool breeze and heavy blackness of night, Arman felt sicker. Sick enough that he fantasized about slipping away to find a bathroom or a secluded spot in the woods where he could bend over, stick his fingers down his throat, and be done with allthe food that churned inside of him. Be done with whatever was making him feel so awful.
    It was actually something Arman was doing semi-regularly of late—the making-himself-puke thing. It wasn’t a good habit, obviously, but he only did it because he got so many stomachaches, not because he wanted to be skinny or