Page 75 of Evil All Along

“You look very handsome,” Bobby said again.

And then he gave meanotherlook—a look that said, quite clearly, that I needed to start carrying my weight in this conversation.

“Think about it this way,” I said. “Millie’s already been to a high school dance with an awkward teenage boy dressed in anill-fitting suit. You know? Because she’s older than you, and she already went to all her high school dances, and she—”

Bobby was staring at me.

Keme was glaring at me.

The enormous horse in the giant oil horse painting was looking at me like it had freshly rediscovered the joy of trampling.

“Uh, what I mean is—”

“Nice save,” Bobby muttered.

“—youaren’tone of those boys. You’re an adult, Keme. You’ve been an adult for a long time. Why would you want to look like the rest of those—” I cast a glance at the door and, just to be safe, lowered my voice. “—wieners?”

That, at least, made a smile flicker across his face, but it went out almost immediately. Bobby finished re-doing Keme’s hair in silence; when he’d finished, it was a low, loose bun—almost messy, in fact, and even though it probably shouldn’t have worked, it made Keme look much more mature as a result. He inspected Keme, frowned at the lingering bruises on his face, and said, “I’m going to get concealer.”

I popped upright. “You have concealer?”

A beat. And then, slowly, “From Indira.”

“Oh. Right.”

Bobby and Keme traded a look that I couldn’t read but, I suspected, wasn’t exactly flattering, and Bobby left.

Turning back to the mirror, Keme fussed with his bow tie for a few minutes. I watched him. There wasn’t anything wrong with the bow tie, but sometimes, a guy just needed to fidget—that was something I understood completely.

After a while, I said, “I have a surprise for you.”

Fingers stilling, he glanced at me in the mirror.

“Bobby and I volunteered to be chaperones at your dance.”

His. jaw. dropped.

It’s not often I get a reaction out of Keme, and it’s even less often that it’s a big one.

He must have seen the amusement in my face because his expression solidified into a glower, and he stomped across the room and shoved me onto the bed. Then he shoved me a few more times, really getting it out of his system.

Apparently, we were back to normal.

I was still giggling as he returned to the mirror.

When he spoke again, it was a mumble, but I still caught the words. “Foster went back to his parents in Portland.”

“Oh. Oh! That’s good, right?”

Keme shrugged, staring at something on the other side of the mirror. “My mom asked me for bus money to go after him.”

“Oh Keme.” I tried about a million different possibilities out in my head. And then I said, “I’m sorry.”

“I gave it to her. It’s fine. She—she’s like a kid sometimes. She doesn’t listen when I try to tell her things. Or she listens, but then she does whatever she wants.” He sounded much, much younger when he said, “She’ll come back. She always comes back.”

I ran my hand over the bedspread.

Keme shook his head at something. Or at nothing. He ran his fingers over his eyebrows.

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