9 #2
After a bite—chicken salad on a croissant; insanely good—Jem said, “He’s young.
He’s dumb. He had to pretend not to be who he was for a long time, and now he gets to be himself.
A little, anyway. And that means he’s also testing boundaries.
He’s pushing his parents. He’s pushing you.
He’s pushing me. And that means doing some epically dumb shit.
Which, as far as I can tell, is pretty standard teenage behavior. ”
“Flirting with a man four times your age isn’t standard teenage behavior.”
Jem shrugged and took another bite. “He won’t do it again.”
He didn’t add—out loud—Not with Wendell, anyway.
Tean still hadn’t started in on his sandwich. He was staring morosely at the gym floor, where men were dragging mats around, and a boy was doing cartwheels that made the stand erupt in cheers, and a woman with a medical bag was making another boy flex his knee.
“It’s all part of the same deal,” Jem said. “Tean, come on. This is what kids do. They sneak out. They wear stuff their parents hate—makeup, clothes, accessories. This one girl I lived with, she took a different set of clothes to school every day in her backpack and changed in the bathroom.”
Tean whipped his head around. “Do you think he’s doing that?”
“The real thing you should be worried about,” Jem said, wagging the sandwich for emphasis, “is if he’s going to get his nipples pierced. That was the next thing she did.”
Tean’s jaw dropped.
“Oh my God, I’m joking. Well, not about Beth, but I don’t think Daniel’s going to do that.” Jem took a bite, chewed, swallowed, thought about it. “That’ll be some college shit for him.”
Tean rested his elbows on his knees. “I can’t do this.”
Jem rubbed his back.
“I can’t,” Tean said again. “I’m not his dad. I don’t have kids. I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“What is a dad,” Jem said philosophically, “except the man who takes you to the drag store?”
Tean shook his head and dropped his gaze to the bleachers.
“Daniel loves you,” Jem said. “He trusts you the way he doesn’t trust anybody else in his life. Maybe not even me, after the shit I pulled last night. You’re going to be fine. Plus, I’m going to help you with the fake titties and stuff.”
A woman in the row below them twisted around to look back.
Jem waved.
“I’m having an anxiety attack,” Tean said. The words were clinical, like he was documenting an animal. Jem wanted to say an owl. “I’m having a massive anxiety attack right now.”
Jem waited a beat, and then he realized Tean wasn’t joking. “Oh shit. Okay. We can get out of here—”
Tean shook his head. He closed his eyes and breathed for a few moments. Jem didn’t know what else to do, so he went back to rubbing Tean’s back.
The buzzer was still going off.
The boy doing cartwheels fumbled, fell, and sprang back up again.
More cheers.
A coach was blowing his whistle like it was time to get out of the pool.
When Tean opened his eyes again, they were wet. He blinked to clear them. “Okay,” he said. “Sorry about that.”
Jem shook his head. “Do you want to go?”
“No.” Tean drew a breath. “It’s a lot, that’s all. Daniel.” He stopped. “I know it’s different for him. The world is different. His situation is different.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you don’t remember how shitty it was for you.”
“Very shitty,” Tean said. And then, so quietly Jem almost couldn’t hear him under the noise, “Very scary.”
Jem nodded.
“I just don’t want—” Tean started to say. And then he smiled and looked down at the sandwich he was still holding as though he’d only just seen it. “I was going to say I don’t want anything bad to happen to him.”
When more didn’t come, Jem said, “Things are different, for sure. But you’ve also got to remember that Daniel is different. Like, when you were a teenager, how many beetles did you have in your beetle collection?”
Tean blinked. “Zero.”
“But you had, like, one of those cases with a million different little boxes, and you labeled each box, and you could put a beetle in each one.”
“No. Why do you think I collected beetles?”
“It’s better than spiders. You didn’t collect spiders, did you?”
“I didn’t collect anything.”
“Not even coins? Oh shit, what about stamps?”
“Okay, yes, you’re right. I was a very different child from Daniel. I was still closeted, obviously. I was much quieter.”
“I bet you loved you some rules.”
Tean laughed. He played with the sandwich’s waxed paper. “I did love rules.” And with a pointed look for Jem, he added, “Rules are important.”
“Hey, I know!”
In a different voice, Tean said, “I didn’t want anyone to notice me. Which, I suppose, is why it’s so scary when I see Daniel being—being so outrageous. That sounds judgmental, though. Being so brave.”
Jem nodded.
“So, I guess I’m going to have to work on that,” Tean said glumly. “Add it to the list.”
“Better work fast,” Jem said. “The show is this weekend, and you know the drag stores close early.”
A surprisingly boyish grin slipped across Tean’s face. “Oh my gosh, when he said that, I actually thought I was going to die.”
“I know. It was awesome.” Jem cocked his head. “Want to know the really scary thing?”
“Please, Jem. I can’t talk about nipple-piercing any more tonight.”
“Oh no, this is way worse.” Jem leaned in and whispered, “What was Ammon like as a teenager?”
For a moment, Tean’s face was blank. And then he groaned. He sank down in his seat. If his bones had cooperated, Jem was pretty sure he would have melted under the bleachers. “Oh my gosh,” Tean whispered in total horror.
“That bad?”
“You have no idea. He thought he was so cool.”
Laughing, Jem nudged Tean. “Eat your sandwich. At least half. And then you’re officially off duty, and you’re not allowed to worry about Daniel for twelve hours.”
Tean made a face, but he did take a bite of his sandwich. As soon as he swallowed, though, he said, “How did we not know Kai’s mother was still alive?”
“Well, we didn’t investigate Kai, for one reason. After the shit went down with Rydel, the police took over. It wasn’t our job.”
Nodding, Tean picked at his sandwich. It was one of the things he did to make it look like he was eating, and even though he was perhaps the smartest person in the world, he somehow still hadn’t caught on to the fact that it didn’t fool Jem. “Do you think the police talked to her?”
“I’m sure they talked to her at some point. How long ago is a different question. What I want to know is if River talked to her.”
Tean nodded. “I thought about what you said. I agree that it seems like too much of a coincidence that Diane Winfield suggested River talk to Kai’s mother, and within a short time, both River and Kai’s mother are dead.”
“So, the obvious thing that one of us needs to say: Kai’s mom told River something that Kai didn’t want her to know. Kai found out, and he killed River. Then he killed his mom to keep her from telling anyone else.”
“That seems plausible. But what did Kai’s mom know that was so threatening? And how did Kai find out that she told River?”
Jem shrugged. “Either way, we should take a look at the house.”
“Yes, I think so too.”
“Look at us: soulmates.”
Tean cocked an eyebrow at him.
“But you’re going to be in serious trouble, mister, if you think you can keep poking that salami and I won’t notice that you’re not actually eating it.”
The outrage on Tean’s face was too good.
“Also,” Jem added, “if you want to talk more about poking the salami—”
Tean shook his head frantically and took a big bite. Then he frowned. Mid-chew, he stretched behind Jem and picked something up.
The donor packet from Rainbow House, the one Jem had shoved in his back pocket after his little fun run through Wendell’s house.
“Is this yours?” Tean asked.
“Oh. Yeah, did that fall out?”
Jem reached for the packet, but Tean already had it flat against one knee as he turned the pages.
“Is this for Rainbow House?”
“Yep.”
“Oh my gosh, he looks so happy.” Tean hovered a finger over one of the pictures of Daniel. “Where’d you get this?”
“There was a stack of them on Nasha’s desk.”
Tean made another soft sound as he continued to turn the pages. “We should ask her for the photos.”
“What was all that business earlier about ‘I’m not his dad’ and ‘I don’t know how to raise a teenager’?”
Tean took an emphatic bite of his sandwich.
“Fine,” Jem said with a laugh. “I’ll ask her.” As casually as he could, he dragged the packet off Tean’s knee and folded it up again. As he got to his feet, he shoved it into his back pocket. “You good here?”
Tean turned his head up. He moved on to his fourth and probably final bite of the sandwich, but he didn’t say anything.
“I’m going to do a quick sweep,” Jem said.
Tean nodded.
“Call me if you need anything.”
“Be safe.”
Jem threw him an okay sign and made his way down the bleachers.
At the door that they’d come in through, he stepped to the side and scanned the gym.
There was only one other exit—a pair of doors on the far side of the room—and that one was always off-limits to parents and spectators.
A quick check showed him Daniel sitting near the other South Jordan students.
Not with. Near. The boy was looking at something on his phone.
Probably trying to find the closest drag store.
In the lobby, the volume dropped significantly, and the air was cooler.
A woman in a lacy red top that was way too dressy for a high school wrestling meet was manning the ticket table.
She was laughing, her head thrown back, as a dad type with hair plugs leaned over the table to look down her shirt while he talked to her.
Jem knew the layout of the building by now; he’d spent too many nights here doing the exact same thing. He started down the closest hall and went looking for wolves.