Summer Sons(28)

no don’t you have it?

no

shit i don’t know. i can ask sam

no. thanks

Andrew collapsed onto the bench seat, legs hanging out the side of the car, and stared at the dome light. If he asked Del, she’d tell him the cops might’ve missed Eddie’s phone in the woods, hidden in some tree-hollow, simple to brush past and buried there where he’d left it. She’d say the password change was another sign of him moving on, or some shit like that. She wouldn’t see a pattern, only a collection of little hurts adding up to something bigger, another painful coincidence. And it did hurt, make no mistake.

Though he thought he’d been sure of Eddie before, and had defended that certainty in his arguments with Del, finding a real sign of outside interference made him realize: he’d begun to doubt. A thread of fear wound across the evidence of Eddie’s secrets and lies, compounding from each day to the next. If he was wrong about so much, he thought with a gulping, panicked breath, what else might he have missed?

But the phone—that was a trail he could chase. He pressed his fists to his temples, willing himself to drop the bleaker line of suspicion he’d just unearthed. The laptop might be brushed off as more of Eddie’s secret-keeping, but a missing phone felt like purposeful interference, covering tracks. If Eddie’s phone—his whole life inside it, his book of numbers, names, photos—was missing, maybe something worse had happened to him than Andrew’s current unspoken guess, a confrontation gone wrong in a split second. If someone had taken his phone, maybe someone planned to take his life. Once his breathing calmed, no longer wheezing through stuttering bursts, he read the most recent text, from Halse: Answer me man, are you coming? I need to plan accordingly

He typed, yeah

And hit send. If something had been done to Eddie, he had an idea of where to start asking: Sam Halse’s arrogant, dangerous, seductively entertaining fiefdom.





8


“Riding with me tonight?” Riley called from his bedroom. “The place is kind of the middle of nowhere, so that might be easiest. It was our grandparents’ house. I lived there with Sam till Ed asked me to come out here, be closer to campus for work and all that.”

Andrew turned off the electric razor and ran a hand over the remaining stubble on his jawline. The bristle of it shaded out his cheeks, made the thinness of his face less delicate. He’d also shaved his undercut, setting the tousled, reckless disorganization of his ever-lengthening, increasingly wavy hair in a more purposeful light. His reflection stared at him, sunburn turning to a light tan that set off the muddled blue-grey of his eyes—the unwelcoming color and intensity of a winter lake about to suffer through a storm. When he moved down, he’d intended to stick around the campus and its city-ness, pretending the fresh buildings, bustling human life, and neat streets could be located anywhere in the USA. Crossing those borders to pass into the hungry hollers of his worst dreams was both inevitable and cruel.

Oblivious, Riley thumped into the hall in his boots and shrugged a jacket on over his tank top.

“Sure, I’ll ride along,” Andrew said.

“All right, good. I’ll stay kinda sober and drive us back, so get as fucked up as your heart desires. Sam will provide. Ed was getting to be one of ours, so he’ll treat you like you are, too.”

Riley checked his product-styled hair in the bathroom mirror with a critical tilt of the chin, left and right. He crinkled his nose and shrugged, so Andrew supposed it passed inspection.

“He doesn’t know me,” Andrew said.

Riley grinned at him and said, “I dunno, you’ve gone head-to-head now. That counts for something.”

On the way out, Riley snagged two beers from the fridge and passed one to Andrew. He cracked the pop-tab as he got in the Mazda. Riley took a few big swallows and started the car. In unspoken accord, both rolled their windows down. Andrew settled in with a gut-stretching breath. Hot asphalt and dirt, exhaust and old weed. Riley fiddled with his phone for a moment. The portable speaker stuck to his dash turned on, trying its best to blare MCR’s first EP.

“Got no sound system, sorry. Money’s under the hood,” Riley said.

Andrew sank into the seat, stuck between the cold can in his fist and the heat of another boy’s arm shifting through gears at his elbow. Good-natured, that was the phrase that kept popping into his head about Riley. Hard to square that nature with the conflict between him and West, his nonchalant acceptance of Eddie’s eldritch obsessions, his uncritical kinship to his firebrand cousin.

The neighborhood transitioned to a familiar rural highway before Riley cleared his throat for Andrew’s attention. After he grunted acknowledgement, Riley said, “Awkward question.”

“What?” Andrew asked flatly.

“Household bills.”

“What about them?”

“Eddie let me handle the electric, but he paid … legit everything else. I don’t know how you’d want to handle that.”

Andrew watched Riley’s fingers drum on the wheel. He wasn’t surprised. Eddie was generous with his cash, given that he had more of it than he needed and friends who could use it better. He responded, “We split the utilities, split the groceries. He already bought the house, so who gives a shit about rent.”

“Okay.” A notch of tension eased from Riley’s shoulders. “I don’t want you to feel like I’m taking advantage. I’ll pay my fair share, whatever you think that is.”