The White Devil by Justin Evans Read Free Book Online Page B

on his bed, spilling crumbs on the scratchy wool blanket. He knew that he should tell someone what he had seen, crazy as it was. Maybe information about a vanishing, skeletal, strangling figure could help the detectives. Or the family. Or someone. But he also knew the most likely outcome was that he would be branded mentally ill, or fatally damaged by the shock. So rather than speak out and add to the chaos and fear, he isolated himself. He did not call his parents. He did not check his email. He plunged into his lessons, abandoning TV and hallway chatter. His class on Roman Britain became, for him, an addictive serial; he wrote a five-sided essay on Camulodunum, Fortress of the War God . He read Chaucer for Mr. Montague and whiled away hours training himself to read the lilting, alliterative-inflected Middle English. From his window he watched the rain beat down on the Hill.
    ONE NIGHT AT dinner he found himself sitting across from Vaz. The table seemed tensed, poised.
    “Hello,” said Vaz pointedly.
    “Hey,” he replied.
    Forks clinked on plates, but all eyes were on Andrew. Flickering between him and Vaz. It seemed that the house had something to say to Andrew and had appointed Vaz its unofficial spokesman.
    “Everything all right?” asked Vaz, almost chummy, a little too loud.
    “Not really,” said Andrew.
    “It’s a tragedy,” agreed Vaz.
    “Yeah, it is. Theo was an awesome guy.”
    “People are saying he died of drugs,” said Vaz. “That he got from you.”
    Andrew’s stomach dropped. He forced himself to swallow. The table fell quiet. “Why would anyone say that?” he asked.
    “You were caught with drugs at your old school. They wouldn’t let you into university in America, so you came here.”
    “What?” objected Andrew, weakly.
    Vaz’s eyes narrowed. “I know Theo would never take drugs.”
    “Not in a million years,” piped in St. John.
    “So either it’s a lie,” continued Vaz, “or you pushed them on him.”
    The food in Andrew’s mouth turned to cardboard. He glanced around the table. All the faces—Oliver, Henry, Roddy, Rhys, Nick, Leland, names he had struggled to learn—turned to him, watching for his reaction.
    “I don’t do drugs anymore,” he said. “I was never that into it. Just a couple of times. I don’t see how you know this anyway.”
    Vaz regarded him coolly, confidently. He definitely knew something. Andrew recalled that tableau: Vaz. Macrae. The others. Macrae would probably know the background of how Andrew got to Harrow. Andrew grew angry.
    “If it wasn’t drugs,” sneered Vaz, “then what happened up there, with Theo? Why isn’t anyone saying?”
    “If he died from drugs he got from me, you think I would still be sitting here?” Andrew countered, finding his voice.
    Vaz, undaunted, shrugged. “What is it, then? You were there.”
    The boys leaned in, watching Andrew.
    He opened his mouth. The image of the pale face rushed at him. That baying gurgle. Andrew blanched. He pushed away from the table, infuriated and humiliated by Vaz’s ignorant, implacable fat face, those black eyes that stayed locked on him—amused. Andrew stood. He walked away from the Sixth Form table, shaking.
    Psycho he heard someone mutter.
    Nothing like this happened till he came.
    Don’t mind us we’ll clean up after you called Vaz, shoving aside Andrew’s plate in a gesture of disgust.
    THE SIXTH FORM table at the Lot was not the only place where the absence of facts, and the ominous rain, led to speculation. It was a murder. A drug overdose. A murder by a drug gang. A mysterious illness.
    These rumors led to calls home. Calls home produced parents’ calls to the school. These calls fed indignation—boys’ and masters’—about the unexplained situation, leading to talk of little else. In Ancient History: Sir, was it drugs? In Maths: Sir, is the school hiding something? In French: Sir, were Kevins—sorry, the local townspeople—involved? The masters bumbled. They