Page 20 of The Forest of Lost Souls

“You’re bragging now,” she says as he pours champagne.

From a bread box, he retrieves a package of cinnamon buns topped with icing and pecans. He tears it open and puts it on the table.

He sits across from her. They clink glasses and sip mimosas.

“What’ll your mom and dad say about the champagne?”

“They don’t say nothin’ to me about my Mondays or nothin’ else. They know better.”

“You gotta tell me how I get a deal like that with my parents. They’re always at me about something or other.”

“You want to know?”

“Ineedto know.”

“Two things. First, they gotta be afraid of you. So afraid they put a deadbolt on their bedroom door so they can sleep. Second, they gotta know it’s not going to be forever, you’re gonna get out, never come back.”

“Your parents are really afraid of you?”

“They better be.”

“How do you pull that off?”

“They don’t make rules, I don’t make trouble. It’s been that way now for like three years.”

As Morgan plucks a cinnamon roll from the package, Vida asks, “Weren’t you afraid they’d send you somewhere to be rehabilitated?”

When he laughs, he unconsciously squeezes the roll, and some of it crumbles across the table. “See, I made up this story how my old man has been molestin’ me since I was five years old, and how she knew but let him do it. Rehearsed the hell out of it, gave them a performance. I was so convincin’, they’re scared shitless I might walk into that stupid damn church of theirs oneSunday and shout it out, every nasty detail, overturn their borin’ lives, the reputations that matter so much to them.”

When Morgan bites off half the roll and chews vigorously, Vida says, “You really despise them.”

Speaking with his mouth full, he says, “Why shouldn’t I?”

“Did they beat you?”

He swallows noisily. “Shit, no. Those two feebs wouldn’t dare touch me.Wouldn’t dare.”

“I mean, when you were little.”

“They brought me into this sick world, didn’t they? That’s enough to hate them, don’t you think?”

“The world is screwed.”

“Six ways from Sunday. I didn’t ask to be born. They humped me into this world and ruled me and churched me, tried to shape me into knee-benders like them, and what I’ve done to those two pussies isn’t half what they deserve.”

Although Vida expected to find that Morgan was a problem kid, this boy is further out there than she imagined, as if he’s come to Earth from the dark side of the moon. Getting into this house might prove to be a lot easier than getting out unscathed.

“We’re cool, Morgan. I know where you are, but I’m not there yet. I mean, withmyshitty parents. I hope they take it in the neck someday, but it won’t be me that does them. I just want out the door and away.”

He stares at her intently as he finishes his cinnamon roll and washes it down with mimosa. The kitchen is shadowy, but his pupils are tiny, as though he’s in bright light, perhaps because of the drugs with which he’s begun this day of celebration. Everything must look darker to him than to her. “Want me todeal them out for you? You be somewhere with an alibi. I can ghost through it sure enough.”

“Jesus,” she says.

“I’m serious.”

“You sound serious.”

“I’m dead serious.”

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