The Storm King(27)

I pull my face back into a scowl and try to rediscover the person I’ve been. Furious and forbidding and casually cruel. I jut my chin to Adam. Anything but anger or its close relations might as well be weakness.

I check the traffic before crossing the street and that’s when the engine roars. I’m sure the surprise was all over my face. Adam lurches the car from its spot and tears across the lanes, cutting a turn only inches from me. The tires spin on the asphalt as he floors it. The smell of burning fills the air as the Mustang speeds away.

What I’m trying to say is that it’s been bad, these last couple months. Really, really bad. But seeing Adam peel away like that made me realize that things can still get worse.





WHILE CLEANING HIS breakfast dishes, Nate looked through the window into another gray morning. Ashen skies lanced by withered trees. Lawns of dead grass spotted with rotting leaves. The desolation of December without the consolation of snow.

Behind him, he heard the answering machine kick in. He must have missed the phone ringing. He picked up the handset midway through the machine’s recitation of their number.

“Dude, you got to get to your computer,” Johnny said.

“What is it?” Nate kneaded his bad arm. It’d been hurting all weekend. Low barometric pressure was no good for it, and the skies had been heavy for days.

“This’ll change your life.”

He started up the stairs as call-waiting pinged in his ear. “I’ve got another call.”

“It’s probably just Tom.”

Nate knew it then. The pain in his arm sang with the weather, and something new was in the wind. “What’s going on?” He jogged to his computer.



“Picture’s worth a thousand words. You gotta check your email.”

“Working on it. How about you give me a hint?”

“Ugh. You want spoilers? Come on, man.”

“The modem’s dialing in.”

“Yeah, I figured you didn’t have a dying dolphin in your room. Is there anything on the planet more annoying than that sound?”

“One thing springs to mind.”

“You in yet?”

“Email’s loading.”

“How about now?”

“Dude, shut up. Okay, I’m in.”

Nate had gotten thirty messages since checking his inbox that morning.

“Do you see it?” Johnny asked.

Nearly all of the messages had the same title: FWD: Guess whos back on the market?

“Open it,” Johnny said. “And get ready to pick your tongue off the floor.”

A series of photos were attached to the end of a long chain of forwarded messages. He clicked on the first one.

It was the nude chest of a girl. The image captured her from her waist to her chin. Her right arm was crossed over her left breast, but the other one was entirely exposed. Her breasts were smaller than the kind you’d expect to find on the Internet. The image was more artistic than erotic. Not the usual kind of pornography at all.

“Okay…” Nate said. He scanned the names of the email’s other recipients and recognized most of them from school.

“Keep going,” Johnny said.

The next photo was cropped to show a single nipple and the bottom half of the girl’s profile.

“You still with me, buddy?” Johnny asked.

The last image was from behind. Just the swell of her hips and a tease of breast were visible here, but the profile was as unmistakable as was the flash of auburn hair that cascaded around her shoulders.



“Maybe it’s Photoshopped,” Nate said.

“No way, man. This is the genuine article. Lucy Bennett’s gone viral.”

Nate scrolled down to the original message and saw that the pictures had come directly from Adam Decker. Along with the images, the blond bully had sent his friends this message: Thats right guys, I’m a free man again so you got some real competition now. Think I can do better than this last piece? Game on. The email had been sent the night before.

“Adam did this?” Nate said. He was irritated to hear surprise in his voice. Nothing should shock him anymore. He’d been paying careful attention to Adam Decker since Halloween, and he knew what the hulking teen was capable of. He’d learned that being a real bully required a skill set beyond physical strength and the willingness to use it. It demanded relentless cruelty and the belief that no line existed that couldn’t be crossed.

“Yeah,” Johnny said, “and his friends forwarded it to more people, who forwarded it to even more. Like twenty people sent it to me.”

Call-waiting sounded again in Nate’s ear.

“Couldn’t have happened to a nicer girl, huh?” Excitement thrummed through Johnny’s voice. It was like Romans cheering in the Coliseum as people exactly like them were cut to pieces on the bloody sand below.

“I’ve got another call.”

“Come on, don’t hang up,” Johnny said. “I mean, I get why she’d be upset, but she looks kind of amazing. I think she has some pretty freaking great—”

Nate switched calls.

“Did you see it?” Tom asked.

“Yeah.”

“I was hoping to catch you first. Getting pictures of her by email—especially pictures like those. I didn’t know how you’d take it.”