Page 92 of The Bright Lands
“It was easy to do,” Joel said. “Make a fake profile on the site, pull a few pictures from Dylan’s Instagram and mix it with a few nudes of your own. Type it up to make him sound as pathetic as possible. Send it out.”
KT tightened a hand over his eyes.
“So if Dylan wasn’t escorting or doing drugs,” Clark said, “why did he have two thousand dollars in cash this summer?”
“It were mine. I made it working with Garrett. I made Dylan hold it for me awhile—my mom stole my whole stash right after school let out and I had to keep the new shit somewhere. After that Darren guy saw him with it Dylan made me take it back.”
Joel nodded. It made a kind of sense, though he wondered why his brother would agree to something so shady. Loyalty, maybe? Or had a threat been involved?
Clark said, “Does your girlfriend know you were dealing drugs?”
“She thinks I drive.”
“For what? Uber?” Joel asked.
“Dylan didn’t have to do shit, of course,” KT said, ignoring him. “D just got to run off with his boy every weekend.”
“You mean you and Dylan weren’t an item?” Joel said.
“I’m not fucking gay, you idiot.” KT scoffed.
“If you weren’t sleeping with Dylan then who was?”
A look of sudden, palpable fear crossed KT’s face. He said nothing.
“So you faked the escorting ad,” said Clark. “Then what? Who did you send it to? Garrett?”
KT shook his head. He was slipping away from them again.
“Why do it, KT?” Clark said. “Why go to all the fucking trouble to make it look like Dylan was turning tricks?”
KT began to rock forward and back. “D never should have took me.”
“Took you where?” Clark said.
Joel stepped forward. He felt something else struggling to click into place. “To the Bright Lands?”
The boy groaned. He pushed himself into the corner where the bed met the wall. His body began to shake. He raised his voice. “Get the fuck out.”
A baby—how in the world was there a baby in this house?—began to squall down the hall. KT’s mother shouted something.
Joel felt a new theory forming in his mind. He thought of Wesley’s untouchables, the fear Joel used to see in Troy’s eyes whenever the two of them used to pass the football field ten years ago, Garrett Mason’s sneer at the diner.
“Was Dylan sleeping with one of the Bright Lands boys, KT?” Joel said, raising his voice above the din.
But KT hardly seemed to hear him. He was muttering rapidly, shaking his head like a wild man arguing with a bus seat.
“Kyler Thomas,” Clark said, putting a hand on his arm. “The Bright Lands boys. The ones you mentioned to your girlfriend. Who are they? What did they do?”
“I did not Bosheth did not say a word did not—”
Bosheth. Bosheth.Clark and Joel exchanged glances. How did he know that word?
“It’s not my fault he’s awake now,” KT said. And then he started to laugh.
CLARK
“My mother used to talk about that thing,” Clark said when they climbed into her truck. “Bosheth.”
