Monsters, Matt Rogers [ereader for android .txt] 📗

behind her, because the motion of turning around would’ve made her tumble. She stumbled past the departments in a detached haze, her face a white sheet.

When the elevator doors closed on her she lost control. Her abdominal muscles contracted in a rush of sensation. She vomited her breakfast in the corner of the metal box, oblivious to the smell. She gripped the handrail with a sweaty palm. This wasn’t happening.

She wasn’t sure how she made it through the lobby, but when she stepped outside and sat down on the sidewalk, there was only one thing she could think to do before she succumbed to a full-blown panic attack.

She called her mother.

Part I

4

Will Slater had his arm around Alexis for half an hour before he realised she was asleep.

A HBO show rolled its credits on the wall-mounted television, its drum-heavy score bleeding through the surround sound speakers installed in the ceiling behind them. Twilight-coloured smart lighting hummed softly behind the screen and at tasteful intervals around the room. It threw cosy shadow over his and Alexis’ forms on the sofa’s right-hand chaise. They lay stretched out, a chinchilla throw blanket draped over their waists, spilling to the carpet below.

He’d been home from Mexico for six weeks.

She stirred when he shifted, looked up at him. She murmured, ‘Tyrell home?’

He shook his head. ‘He’ll be fine.’

‘We should have some sort of curfew. It’s past ten.’

‘That won’t lead to anything good.’

‘I know, I know.’ She nestled back against his chest. ‘You explained that to me already. There’s something wrong with being superior to him, right?’

‘You sound cynical.’

‘We’re his parents. We’re supposed to teach him what’s right. I don’t see how a hierarchy’s a bad thing.’

‘I think we should show him what’s right. I don’t think it’s a good idea to force anything. Remember when you were a kid. Your parents tell you not to do something, it ends up being the only thing you want to do. The danger of doing it without permission is the most exciting.’

He saw her eyes flicker, memories stirring. ‘Yeah.’

‘Think about how he’s changed these past months. Have we really forced him to do any of it? We led by example. He sees us working ourselves to the bone every day, he follows suit.’

‘You were stern about him going to summer school.’

‘He could’ve blown off class like—’ Slater snapped his fingers ‘—that. He wasn’t even enrolled legitimately. No one would’ve cared. But he put his nose to the grindstone and he passed everything. That’s harder than acing it, you know. If you’re acing everything, it’s not challenging you. It’s harder to fail and fail and fail until you succeed. And when the dust settled he’d passed a seven-week Harvard program with almost no prior education. You really want to bust his balls for staying out past ten?’

‘When did I say that?’

Slater kissed her head. ‘You didn’t. I’m exaggerating.’

She gestured to the TV. ‘Great show. At least what little I saw of it.’

He was surprised to find he agreed. ‘Yeah.’

She glanced upward with a smirk. ‘Will Slater watching mindless entertainment. Who’d’ve thought we’d see the day?’

‘I’m still medically suspended.’

She tightened her core as she sat up to peck him on the lips. ‘Decent excuse. I think you’re just softening.’

It was an excuse, but it was also true. He’d returned from Mexico in the dead of night a month and a half ago with a bad concussion, a fractured ankle, a strained rotator cuff, and too many bruises to count. The concussion symptoms had eased after a couple of weeks and the ankle was close to a hundred percent, but the shoulder would be the death of him. He hadn’t even torn the tendons, but the range of motion still wasn’t great, a whole month and a half after the fact. Driving an ATV off the side of a mountain and using it as a seven hundred pound projectile hadn’t been the smartest decision of his life, but it had saved King’s life. He’d take an injured shoulder over the alternative any day.

‘Maybe,’ he murmured in her ear as the front door eased open and Tyrell stepped inside.

Slater did a double-take every time he saw the kid. Tyrell’s frame seemed to broaden by the day, his musculature steadily catching up. Slater only gave it a couple of years before they were the same size. He was still lean and lanky, adolescence swallowing every potential ounce of body fat on his bony frame, but brick by brick the skinny muscle was swelling, hardening. He never missed a workout, not even when Slater encouraged him to take a day off. You couldn’t teach grit like that.

Tyrell nodded to them as he passed by, raised his eyebrows at the credits rolling on the television in front of them. ‘Cute. Movie night.’

He looked away too quickly, adjusted his backpack over one shoulder.

When he reached the mouth of the hallway Slater said, ‘Hey.’

Soft-spoken.

Non-confrontational.

Tyrell stopped, turned around. ‘Yeah?’

Slater watched him patiently. The teenager shifted on the balls of his feet, glanced sideways. An eyelid twitched. He had a good poker face. For his age, it was excellent. But not good enough.

Slater said, ‘You high?’

Tyrell’s mouth silently formed a word that looked an awful lot like ‘No.’ Then, before he uttered it, he thought better. What came out instead was, ‘Weed, man. Not—’

‘Yeah,’ Slater said. ‘I didn’t mean that.’

There wasn’t a chance in hell it was heroin. Not after where Tyrell had come from, what he’d seen. Not after what happened six weeks ago, right here in Boston.

Tyrell said, ‘Liam had some. Couple of joints. We all shared them.’

‘First time?’

‘Yeah.’

‘How do you feel?’

Tyrell seemed to sense he could be honest. The half-smile was genuine. ‘Pretty good, man.’

‘Think it’ll become a habit?’

‘Nah.’

‘How do you know?’

‘’Cause right now I just wanna lie in bed and eat Sour Patch Kids and watch Netflix. So I’m gonna go do that. But I don’t wanna be doin’ that every night. I wanna do more than that with my life.’

Slater didn’t let