The Storm King(21)

Kindness is Spackle. Tragedy, a chisel. The shape that’s left is who you are.

This made Nate wonder what kind of people June and Strong had been before the Night Ship. It made him wonder what had turned them into the Lake’s most celebrated monsters.

“Come on, tell me, O,” Johnny said. “Why’re you hiding? What does she do?”

Nate sometimes possessed searing focus; at other times his thoughts wandered landscapes of circuitous paths. His consciousness occupied more than one time and space, as if the accident in April had hammered more than his ribs and arm into shards, as if more than just his shoulder had been dislocated. Sometimes he had near-impossible insight, while other times he missed things that were right in front of him. Perhaps that’s why he only now became aware of the change in the room’s weather.



When he glanced at Johnny, he didn’t recognize the look on his friend’s face. This wasn’t some trick of the alien lighting. His irrepressible friend was gone. Someone else was in his sodden clothes.

“Tell me what she does,” Johnny said again. He put his hands on Owen’s shoulders.

“?‘What she does’?” Owen frowned.

“To hurt you,” Johnny said.

“It’s just she cares a lot about what people think, you know?” Owen said. “And—” He hesitated. “Forget it, you wouldn’t get it, anyway.” He turned back to study the floor, but Johnny used his palm to force Owen’s gaze back upward.

“Oh, you think my dad likes toting around the only kinky-haired kid at the club? You think this black mark that stares back at him from every family photo warms his ice-blue blood?”

“Johnny—” Tommy said.

But Owen nodded. “I guess it’s sort of like that.” His head bobbed faster as he chewed it over. “Yeah, I mean, not exactly, obviously, but—you’re right.” In the odd light, his blush was orange. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that you wouldn’t—”

“It’s fine, O. But since I do get it, you gotta tell me what she does.”

“Everything’s just so beautiful at the Empire, you know? So at home everything’s got to be exactly right. She spends every weekend on her rose garden because she knows the neighbors are jealous of it. She takes her dogs to the groomer once a week.” Once he’d started, it poured like water through a crumbling dam. “Everything in her life is perfect. Everything but me. The Porker. She likes it when I’m not around,” Owen said. “Then she can pretend she’s got the life she wants.”

Nate waited for tears to pool Owen’s eyes, but the boy’s gaze was dry. The weight Owen carried in his face gave him a cherubic look, but in the strange light, it looked like a mask.



Owen’s story was unpleasant, but that wasn’t what hooked Nate’s attention.

“Why, Johnny?” Nate asked.

Johnny talked about movies and video games. He lived for sneaked liquor, prurient humor, and basement parties that ended in a closet with a girl and a stopwatch. He didn’t assail acquaintances with soul-baring questions. It wasn’t who he was. Something was wrong, and it had nothing to do with Owen or his mother.

Johnny’s face clouded with something. Doubt. Fear. Whatever it was, Nate didn’t think it would last. The thing about secrets is that most of them want to be told.

“Show me.” Sometimes Nate understood things he couldn’t possibly know. He’d never claim the ability to read a person’s mind, but sometimes he thought he could feel its texture.

Johnny didn’t say anything, but when he grabbed the hem of his soaked scrubs there was already something like relief in his eyes. He pulled his shirt over his head and stood bare-chested before them. He hugged his shoulders in the cold and looked at the floor before turning around.

Tom gasped.

Though Johnny stood in the full illumination of the glow stick, Nate first thought a shadow had fallen across him. Three black stripes divided his back. The space between them was mottled, its true colors impossible to discern in the tinted light.

“I came home Tuesday and found Dad in the kitchen,” Johnny said. He kept his back to them, but turned his head to speak. “He’d pulled everything from the fridge onto the floor, and he was rooting through it, looking for something. The mustard, he said. What did I do with the goddamned mustard? I don’t even eat mustard, but that doesn’t stop him. He starts ripping into me. The usual stuff: I don’t respect his things, I’m an ungrateful cockroach. The worst thing that ever happened to him. Possibly second only to my whore of a mother. I know—no one ever accused him of originality. I try to walk out, but he doesn’t like that, either. He pulls me back, and I shove him away. I shouldn’t have done that. He’s wasted, obviously, and falls right over. He gets lo mein on his suit. He throws me against the counter. I try to run and he hits me with a kitchen chair.” Johnny started to slip his shirt back on. “I slammed into the wall headfirst. The chair broke, but a new one appeared a couple days later. The wall was patched up, too. Maya cleaned up the mess, like she always does.”



“Johnny.” Tom’s hands were clasped over his ears as if what had been said could be unheard. As if forgetting could make it untrue. “You know you can sleep over whenever you want, right? With Nate, too,” he said, looking over at Nate.