Spite Club (Mason Brothers 1)

Evie

Nick was getting in his car in the driveway in the dusk. I wanted to think that he wouldn’t have driven away without me, but in his mood I couldn’t be sure. Maybe I’d end up walking home alone, like he had from my house. Two equally messed-up family meetings. What a pair we were.

Why had I ever thought this would work? Had I thought this would work? Everything in my life since Nick walked in was so confusing, so overwhelming, that I didn’t know anymore.

I got in the passenger side. One thing I knew for sure was that he wasn’t going to get away with being broody and silent. “Are you going to tell me what that was back there?” I said as he started the car and pulled out. “Because I sure as hell couldn’t figure it out.”

“There’s nothing to say,” Nick said. His jaw was tight, his eyes fixed on the road. I couldn’t see all of his expression beneath the brim of his baseball cap. But I could see his knuckles white on the wheel, the tendons in his arm flexed hard as stone. I wanted to punch him and kiss him and drag everything out of him all at once.

But the one thing I didn’t want to do was run. He didn’t scare me, not even a little.

“There’s plenty to say,” I said. “That wasn’t just an argument back there. That was something deep.” I waited, but he was still silent. “Talk to me, Nick.”

He wasn’t taking me back to the gym, where my car was. He was taking me further out of town. Soon we passed through farmland, where handmade signs advertised apples and pumpkins and firewood. He took a right turn and I realized where we were going. “You’re driving to Newcastle Point.”

“You been there?” Nick asked.

I snorted. “Everyone who went to high school around here has been there at one time or another.” Newcastle Point was secluded, it was nice, and it wasn’t far out of town. In other words, the perfect spot for drinking, making out, and fucking if you got lucky. Old Evie had been to Newcastle Point a lot, but not since prom night.

“Let me guess,” I said as he wound further down the road that led down the point. I could see glimpses of the lake through the trees, turning dark as ink as the last of the sun disappeared. “You never bothered with Newcastle Point in high school. You just screwed girls in your car, or up against a locker somewhere.”

“You have a weird idea of my sex life,” Nick said. “I was all right in high school. Andrew was the wild one. I was supposed to go to college.”

That was surprising. Maybe it shouldn’t be, but it was. “And what happened?”

“Andrew had his accident during my first semester, and I walked out and never went back. That was the end of college for me.”

I stared at him. “You never told me any of this,” I said. “I’ve done things with you that I’ve never done with anyone else. Never imagined doing with anyone else. And there’s this whole life of yours that you never told me.”

“Yeah, well, you never told me you went wild in high school after your dad died. That you stayed wild and flunked out of college. That it still affects things between you and your mom. I had to figure it out the hard way.”

That was true. “This is bigger than that, though,” I said. “Way bigger.”

“You mad?” Nick asked.

It was a weird question, but I thought it over. “I want to punch some information out of you, but I don’t think that means I’m mad. I’m hurt, though.”

“Don’t be,” Nick said. “I don’t tell anyone anything about Andrew. Not ever.”

“So I’m not special,” I said. “Thanks for the reminder.”

He looked away from the road long enough to give me a glare, brief and molten hot. “You just met Andrew,” he said. “No one meets Andrew. Don’t start.”

He talks about you, Andrew had said. That made my heart flip in a weird way.

“I bullied you into it,” I said to him.

“No one bullies me into anything,” Nick shot back.

That was sort of offensive, but it also meant that he’d taken me to meet Andrew because deep down he’d wanted to. Then I remembered. “I promised to fuck you if you did it,” I said.

“And I plan to collect,” Nick said, and despite everything a shiver went straight down my body, ending between my legs. There was really only one reason to go to Newcastle Point, after all. “But that isn’t the only reason I did it. I think I did it because I’m sick of you not knowing. Like it matters. I don’t know. With you, I don’t know why I do anything anymore.”

“He engineered that whole scene, didn’t he?” I said. When I looked back on it, I could see it. “Andrew, I mean. He knew before we walked in that he was going to tell me about his accident, and Lightning Man. He planned it.”

“Andrew was always the smart one,” Nick said. “He’s scary smart. He could have left Millwood, done anything he wanted. But after the accident, he went sideways for a long time. Now it’s like he’s climbing the walls.”

He turned at a sign that said Lookout Point, and parked. It was the off season, and there was no one else here. No teenagers in the middle of the day, no local tourists. Just us, and a view of the lake beyond us, the trees dark shadows overhead.