The Storm King(29)

“We don’t want trouble,” Nate said. Trouble was, of course, exactly what he’d come here for. This just wasn’t the kind he’d expected.



“Well you got it anyway, McHale.”

Nate and his friends outnumbered the seniors, but the older boys had lacrosse sticks and weight-room bodies.

“Funny how things work out,” Adam continued. “I was just thinking about how we were overdue to pay you back for Halloween when we happen to run into your buddy here.” He pointed to Tom.

“They wanted my email password,” Tom said. “I didn’t know why.” He looked miserable. A line of blood slipped the rim of his lip.

“Lucy was the one who had it out for me,” Nate said. “The whole planet got your breakup email. So what’s your deal?”

“My boy remembers that knock on the head you gave him,” Beans said.

“I needed stitches. You’ve had stitches, McHale. No fun at all,” Adam said. “Besides. That slut is the reason we’re here. I saw you yesterday, outside that old bat’s store. I saw you and her.” He snorted and shook his head. “Guess she played me, huh? Still, I’ve got a rep for not leaving the ladies disappointed, so here we are.”

Tom turned to Nate with questions scrawled in block letters across his face, but Nate had no answers. There was indeed something between him and Lucy, but it wasn’t any kind of romance as he imagined it. But Adam’s certainty—unsound though it was—was all that mattered in this moment. The bottom line was that Adam had emailed those pictures of Lucy because of Nate.

“You’re just as dumb as you look, aren’t you?” Nate said.

Johnny groaned and Beans shook his head.

“Smart guy with a smart mouth,” Adam said. “The Lake’s survivor has a death wish. You’re an honors student, right, McHale? Is that irony?”

“Just you and me, Adam. Let my friends go.”

Adam shook his head. “You’re not the one who got me these stitches—respect the effort, though.”



They wanted a fight and nothing would dissuade them. The younger boys must have seemed like easy prey, but Nate knew something Adam and his friends didn’t. He wasn’t sure when he’d first grasped it, but he understood now that both boys in the backseat of that Passat had died on that bright April day. Whoever had woken on those rocks with his shattered arm and broken ribs was someone else. Out of synch, out of place. Maybe even out of his mind.

“This is just the beginning, McHale.”

“Yeah,” Beans said. “Got a whole semester of payback left before we graduate.”

“Probably longer in your case,” Nate said.

Adam and Stocky laughed as Beans’s face turned purple.

“You want to say that again?” Beans reached for the menace of Adam’s voice but came up short.

“Stupid and deaf?” Nate said. “Gosh.”

Beans had a fistful of Nate’s shirt in an instant.

“See, I’ve got you figured out now, McHale,” Adam said. “Should’ve known back on Halloween. That dip into the lake did a number on you, didn’t it?” He laughed.

“Your concern for my mental health is real touching.”

“You want to get seriously messed up. You want us to break every bone in your body. So the question is, how do you actually hurt someone who likes the pain?”

For the first time since entering the lab, Nate felt the itch of something like concern. Adam suddenly didn’t sound so stupid.

“You listening?” Adam asked. “I asked how you really hurt someone who gets off on pain?” Adam swung his lacrosse stick hard into Tom’s stomach. Tom gasped and fell to the tiles.

Nate took a step toward Tom, but stopped himself because he knew that’s what Adam wanted him to do. The more Nate showed that he cared, the more his friends would be made to suffer.

Beans chose this moment to jab the netting of his lacrosse stick into Nate’s belly, then torqued it to crack the grip against the side of Nate’s face. The momentum of the blow sent Nate swaying. Points of light swam across his vision. Beans brought the stick down on the flat of Nate’s back, sending him to his knees.



“You guys are so tough, beating on younger kids,” Owen said.

“Shut it, fat boy,” Adam said.

Nate’s vision cleared and he tried to catch his breath. As he crouched on the floor, a shadow fell around him. Someone kicked him in the ribs.

“That’s all you got, McHale?” Beans asked. “And after all that big talk.”

Nate rocketed off the balls of his feet, slamming the crown of his head into Beans’s face and nose. There was a porcelain snap. Beans dropped his lacrosse stick and covered his face with his hands, but Nate didn’t give him time to recover. He head-butted the older boy again, and this time the result was a wet crunch. Beans howled as he careened into a glass-encased shelving unit.

Then everything seemed to happen at once. Friends and enemies collided into wordless sounds and animal struggles.

Johnny locked in a violent dance with Stocky.

Owen moving toward Beans.

Tom staggering up from where he’d fallen.

Beans vomiting onto the floor.

Distracted by the surge of action and disoriented from the knocks to his head, Nate had missed what was right in front of him.