The White Devil by Justin Evans Read Free Book Online

hands pressing on Theo’s face.
    We’re through with you , his father had told him. You make this right or we’re through with you.
    DAD
    DANIEL
    He lifted his thumb from the phone.
    No, he could never tell his father. Because of the incident at FW. It had destroyed what little was left of their trust.
    This was not Andrew’s first time in the acrid presence of death. It had brushed him once. He had peered into its fog and shuddered. That time it had been a disaster. That time it had ruined everything.
    You cannot tell about the white-haired boy.
    He drew up onto the bed. He curled into a ball. He stared at the blue wallpaper striped with brown.
    HE IS IN another dormitory room in country Connecticut, where the roads spin and dip and each village boasts its own whitewashed Puritan church. Where Frederick Williams Academy keeps you safe with its black iron gates and attenuated brick dormitories and groomed grounds and acres of trees and playing fields. Andrew is sitting on the floor, his legs splayed. There is a small glassine bag beside him with a ridged top. The word FLATLINE is stenciled on it, a kind of perverse brand name. Across from him is Daniel Schwartz. Daniel sags. Andrew struggles with himself, trying to stir, wait , he is saying, wait , then shaking his friend, because this doesn’t look right, but his friend is no longer there, his friend is turning blue, his mind has been kidnapped, carried off on a gypsy adventure on sunlit hills while Andrew is fighting struggles of his own against the drug fuck how much did I do this must be lots more potent than the last bag we tried because Daniel seems to be left alone there on the ground while he, Andrew, rises aloft, he is standing in the giant wicker sun-warmed basket of a hot air balloon, and up here, God is talking to him in great silent lightning flashes, showing him he has wasted everything, showing him his life is an empty lunchbox. Andrew vomits, vomits from the self-disgust and the loss, from the dead serious fear Daniel looks really fucking BLUE and he takes his cell phone from his jeans pocket. Andrew punches the three numbers and then SEND and lies back gazing at Daniel and idly wondering what the paramedics will think when they see him with an overdosed teenager at his feet and vomit on his legs.
    WHEN HE HEARD months later, he was comparatively calm. He was in his room, at home, in Killingworth. There was a lawn mower buzzing nearby. And it was just a phone call. No one implicated him. He was just . . . informed. He was able to hang up the phone quite calmly, roll over in bed, and begin, in private, the long, slow process of feeling his own guts corrode.
    “ARE YOU ALL right, man?”
    Andrew turned his head. Roddy recoiled. He was standing in the doorway, holding a long black umbrella.
    “You gave me the shivers. You look like a dead thing lying there. You coming?”
    “Coming where?”
    “To dinner! God, you don’t look well.” Roddy shook his head. “Come on. I’ll wait for you.”
    ANDREW RECOVERED SUFFICIENTLY to pad behind Roddy to the dining hall and he stood in a half stupor in line. As he made his way through the tables, he caught the first wave of sidelong glances, the whispers behind hands. Boys’ faces lifted and stared. The younger ones openly curious; the middle forms furtive; the Sixth Formers awkward, as if Andrew were the bereaved. Andrew attached himself, with Roddy, to the least objectionable group, the house squares, Henry and Oliver and Rhys. Conversation stopped when he sat down at the table. Henry defensively admitted, “We were talking about Theo .” When dinner was over Andrew trailed behind them to the house, passive, listening with detachment as they tried, alternately, to process the death and distract themselves with their ordinary chatter.
    FOR THE DAYS following, the rain continued, dull, pounding, remorseless as a headache. The Hill came to resemble not so much a proud crest, the highest point south of the