LITMIR.BIZ

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as opposed to her usual smiles, which tended to be described as “seductive” and “dangerous.”

      “Hey, Dad.” Wesley grabbed Nora’s hand and half escorted, half dragged her forward.

      Wesley’s father narrowed his eyes at her. “Who’s your friend, J.W.?”

      Nora looked at Wesley and mouthed “J.W.?”

      Wesley mouthed back “Eleanor.”

      “Dad, this is my girlfriend, Nora Sutherlin.”

      Nora’s eyes went even wider than they had at the first sight of the house. Girlfriend? Who? Her?

      Wiping the look of shock off her face, she purposefully widened her smile at Wesley’s handsome father.

      At that smile, Wesley’s handsome father gave her a look of deep, abiding, profound and unremitting disgust.

      “Oh, yeah.” She sighed, as her one and only prayer about this trip went unanswered. “He’s heard of me.”

      

      NORTH

       The Past

      Kingsley ate dinner with the other boys in silence, keeping his mouth occupied with food so as not to let any smirks and smiles betray his knowledge of English. He wasn’t entirely sure how long he could keep up the ruse, wasn’t entirely sure why he even tried. But as he sat in the dining room at a carved, black oak table, the boys on the left, the priests on the right, Kingsley tried to decide what sin he’d committed that had earned him this ice-cold hell on earth.

      He wanted to blame Carol, head cheerleader at his old school. Blonde girls were a weakness of his. Or Janice, who sang the National Anthem at every home game. Sopranos with red hair could do no wrong in his book. Susan … Alice … and his blue-eyed Mandolin, the long-haired daughter of unrepentant hippies … He’d started in August and had fucked three dozen girls at his small Portland high school by Thanksgiving break. But he couldn’t blame a single one of them for sending him to this prison.

      He blamed the boyfriends.

      Naturally strong and quick, Kingsley knew he could take on any boy in the school who came at him. But seven boys all at once? No one could have walked away from that. And he hadn’t walked away.

      He’d crawled.

      He’d crawled a few feet before passing out in a puddle of blood that had come from a cut over his heart. The cut had likely saved his life. He remembered little from the beating he’d taken behind the stadium, but he did remember the knife. When the knife came out even the other boys who’d been kicking him, punching him, spitting on him as he fought to get back to his feet, took a step back. The boy with the knife—Troy—hadn’t been a boyfriend. Worse, he’d been a brother—Theresa’s older brother—and he took the protection of his sister very seriously. The knife came out and slashed at Kingsley’s heart. And that’s when the other boys had dragged Troy off and left Kingsley bleeding on the ground, broken and bruised but alive.

      And as he looked around the dining hall and saw nothing but other boys—boys aged ten to eighteen, tall and short, fat and thin, handsome and unfortunately not so—he wanted to go back to that moment behind the stadium and step into the knife instead of away from it.

      He sighed heavily as he took a sip of his tea, dreadful stuff, really. He missed the days when his parents had given him wine with his dinner.

      “I know. Tastes like piss, doesn’t it?” Father Henry’s voice came from over his shoulder.

      Kingsley almost nodded in agreement, but remembered that he didn’t understand English. Turning toward the voice, he composed his face into a mask of confusion.

      Father Henry pointed at Kingsley’s tea and mimed a vicious grimace and a gag. Kingsley allowed himself a laugh then. Everyone spoke the universal language of disgust.

      “Come with me, Mr. Boissonneault,” Father Henry said, pulling out Kingsley’s chair and motioning for him to follow. “Let’s see if we can’t find you a translator.”

      Translator? As Kingsley stood up his heart started to race. Father Henry had said no one at the school spoke French but Mr. Stearns. And every student in the school seemed to be in the dining room, huddled over steaming bowls of tomato basil soup. Every student but Stearns. Not that Kingsley had been looking for him, watching the door, scanning the room between every sip of piss tea.

      Father Henry led him to the kitchen and through a wall of steam. By a hulking black oven a young priest waved a spatula as he repeated a sentence over and over. He seemed to be conducting himself—the words his music, the spatula his baton.

      “And now you, repeat this … Você não terá nenhum outro deus antes de mim.”

      “Si, Father Aldo.” The words came from a table a few feet away from the stove. “Você não terá nenhum outro deus antes de mim.”

      Kingsley almost shivered at the sound of the voice—an elegant tenor, rich and educated, but also cold, aloof and distant. The voice belonged to Stearns, the blond pianist, he saw, when he took two steps forward and peered around a refrigerator. At Stearns’s feet lay a black cat curled up in a tight ball, glaring at Kingsley with bright and malevolent green eyes. He watched as Stearns rubbed the cat’s head gently with the tip of his shoe as he recited the words in a language Kingsley didn’t recognize.

      “Muito bom,” said the priest, crossing the spatula over his chest and bowing. “Father Henry, what are you doing in my kitchen? We’ve had this talk.”

      “I’m sorry to interrupt, Father Aldo, Mr. Stearns.”

      “No. You are not sorry. You always love to interrupt. It is what you are best at,” Father Aldo scolded with a broad smile on his face. Kingsley tried to place the accent. Brazilian, maybe? If so, it would mean the language he was teaching Stearns was Portuguese. But why would anyone in Nowhere, Maine, want to learn Portuguese?

      “Father Aldo, I only interrupt you because you talk so much. I have to interrupt if I’m going to say my piece before sundown.”

      “The sun is down, and yet you are still interrupting.”

      “You’re interrupting my interrupting, Aldo. And I am very sorry to interrupt Mr. Stearns’s lesson. But it’s his language faculties we need. This is Kingsley Boissonneault, our new student. He doesn’t speak any English, I’m afraid. We’re hoping Mr. Stearns could be of some assistance. If he would oblige …”

      “Of course, Father.” Stearns closed the book in front of him and stood up. Once more Kingsley was stuck by the blond pianist’s height, his face so unbearably handsome. “I will be happy to help in any way I can. Of course, Monsieur Boissonneault doesn’t need my help. After all, he speaks English perfectly. Don’t you?”

      Kingsley froze when Stearns directed the last two words at him.

      Father Aldo and Father Henry both looked at him with raised eyebrows.

      “Mr. Boissonneault?” Father Aldo said in his accented English. “Is this true?”

      “Of course it is.” Stearns stepped over the black cat and stood before Kingsley.

      Kingsley should have been afraid, should have been embarrassed. But that one step toward him, that look of penetrating insight, inspired other feelings in him, feelings he immediately shoved down deep into himself.

      “He laughed while you two were arguing. He knew exactly what you both were saying. If he’s a French speaker in Maine he’s either from France, where he would start learning English at age seven or eight, or he’s Quebecois and therefore at least passably bilingual.”

      Father Aldo and Father Henry continued to stare at him. Stearns studied him with penetrating, steel-gray eyes.

      “I

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