Page 95 of Charlie
“You think Conor lied?” Lumi narrowed her eyes. There was a test in those words.
“I do! But you tell me. You’ve known him a lot longer than me.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Conor wouldn’t like it if he knew you called him a liar.”
I stood my ground. “Probably not, but are you gonna tell him?”
There was a quiet tension in the room as Lumi and I kept looking at each other. Finally, she exhaled sharply and cranked her head from one side to the other before rolling her neck. “No. I won’t tell him.”
“We can trust Liv,” Nathan insisted before turning his attention on Maximum. “Stop touching my Millennium Falcon. It’s an original.”
Maximum, abandoned all the Star Wars toys and came to sit around the bed with the rest of us. River was with me on my mattress and had crawled up to lie on top of my back while Atlas sat with his legs stretched against the wall.
“You don’t like Conor as much as the others, do you?” Lumi asked me.
I shook my head.
“How come?”
It was a balancing act of saying the right thing without saying too much. “I don’t know. There’s just something about him that makes alarm bells ring in my head. It’s like there’s a different side to him that he’s hiding.”
“Thereis!” Nathan crossed his arms as if to challenge anyone who dared stop him from saying so.
I turned to Maximum. “What did you mean when you said that people leave because of your dad?”
He shrugged. “Either people are asked to leave or they run when they find out what Dad is really like.”
Atlas didn’t say anything, but he gave Maximum a warning glance not to say too much.
Like a bloodhound, I pushed a little further, “Tell me more.”
Maximum had seen his brother’s warning and looked away so I turned to Atlas. At sixteen, he was a bit younger than Lumi, but he seemed to be the leader of the children.
“Dad is good at getting his way,” Atlas said.
“You mean he manipulates people?”
Atlas shrugged.
“Does he manipulate you too?”
He frowned. “No. I don’t know. Maybe sometimes.”
“If Conor told Nathan to go meditate in the pond but then refused to acknowledge that he ever said it, only to point fingers at Nathan for making bad choices, then that’s manipulation. Wouldn’t you say?” My question was directed at all of them.
“Yes!” Nathan dipped his head to rest his chin on top of one of the knees he’d pulled up to his chest. “It’s not just the lying. I also feel like he’s hiding something. Sometimes I wish I could go snoop in his room and look into some of his closets that are locked.”
“What do you think is in there?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but one time I came in when he had the closet open and he slammed it shut so fast that I’m sure it’s something important,” Nathan explained.
“Probably porn.”
Everyone looked at Lumi, who had said it.
“What?” She raised her hands up. “Adults look at porn. My mom says it’s normal.”
Atlas squirmed in his seat and I got the sense that he was feeling guilty.
