The Boy in the Smoke Read Free Page A

her.
    He’d never felt so helpless.
    When she was done with that, she took a steak knife and tore apart the fabric in one of the sofas until the stuffing popped out of the slashes. She seemed satisfied with that and dropped the knife.
    “I’m going to take a nap now,” she said. She did look drowsy, her eyes at half-mast. “Wake me when Mater and Pater arrive.”
    Stephen looked at the scene of destruction around him. Gina had said they were getting on a plane now, but it wasn’t clear where the plane was from—Barbados, a connecting airport? His time window was a few hours, enough to sweep up the glass and throw away the shredded curtains. Nothing could replace the curtains or fix the sofa. He did what he could. He tried to put the rails back up, but they’d been ripped from the walls and the screws had bent and left gaping holes. He swept up the glass and closed all the now-empty cabinets. He flipped the sofa cushions.
    Then he sat and waited for the inevitable.
    His parents arrived just after midnight. They were very tanned. There were no hugs. The two of them came in and surveyed the room.
    “Where’s your sister?” his mother asked.
    “Asleep. I did this. All of it.”
    “No you didn’t,” his father said. “Be quiet.”
    In reply, Stephen reached out and slapped a vase right off a table. It landed on the wooden floor and broke fairly cleanly into a few large pieces. He would have preferred a grand shatter, but this would have to do.
    Gina laughed and clapped from the doorway of the bedroom. She had woken up.
    “Shut
up
, Regina,” their mother said. “You know you did this. Whatever it is, it’s always you. Stephen is just trying to protect you and is making a fool out of himself. Do you want to ruin everything and make your brother into a fool?”
    “Stephen is the only one of us that isn’t a fool,” Gina said. “And you
left
him at school.”
    “Stop being dramatic.”
    “Does ‘dramatic’ mean saying what actually happened?” Gina replied. “I’m going to make sure everyone knows you forgot him. Everyone will know what utter, utter tossers you are.”
    “Stephen,” his father said. “Gather up whatever you’ve brought. We’re leaving.”
    Unsure of what else to do, Stephen obeyed. He hastily threw everything into a bag and came back to find a silent stand-off still going on. Gina remained in the bedroom doorway, smirking, arms folded.
    “Stephen, go to the car,” his mum said.
    “Come on, Gina,” Stephen said.
    “I’m staying here,” Gina replied.
    “Not in this flat, you’re not,” his father said. “You’ll leave this flat, but you’re also not riding home with us. Here.”
    He dropped twenty pounds on the floor.
    “That will get you a ticket home. Your cards are cancelled.”
    “Oh, you think that’s scary?” Gina asked. “Making me take the train?”
    But Stephen knew whatever was coming next was much worse than Gina simply taking the train. He saw it in his parents’ faces. When you spend your life watching other people fighting, you learn the language of the silences and the pauses, because that’s where all the really terrible decisions are made.
    In the silence that followed Gina’s statement, Stephen knew that something particularly bad was coming. When you live with a bomb, you should know that at some point it will go off.
    “You think you’re making a statement,” Stephen’s dad said, utterly calm. “Let me clarify. You’re sixteen now. We’re not paying for any more school, or anything else for that matter. You are not our problem. We’ll see you at home, or we won’t. Preferably the later. Come along, Stephen. Go to the car. Now.”
    At first, Gina laughed. Stephen almost staggered. He mentally begged her to apologize, but Gina would never do that. She kept her chin up and nodded to him, letting him know it was all right—he could go.
    He should do something. Yell. Stay with Gina. Anything.
    But if he did anything, said anything, he’d