Or with his cousin, Octavia. She was the only one he smiled around.
“What are you thinking about?” I asked him.
He shrugged.
“Everything okay at school?”
He nodded but still wouldn’t look at me.
“You got plans for trick or treating with your friends tomorrow night?” I prodded.
Slowly, he shook his head. “I don’t really like candy.”
“Come to Coldfield, then,” I told him. “I can find a place for you with the actors.”
He sat there, and I saw the muscles in his jaw flex.
“Or… maybe working the animatronics in the tombs?” I taunted. “Something behind the scenes?”
He looked over at me out of the corner of his eye, but didn’t meet my stare.
But he didn’t shake his head, and I decided to let him save his pride.
“I’ll pick you up at three tomorrow,” I said.
He nodded.
Good. He might not like to be around people, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t still find his place in the world. Teachers were concerned years ago he might be on the spectrum, possibly Asperger’s. Not that it affected his education. He did well in school.
Socially, he just wasn’t where other kids were.
But he was able to socialize in situations where he cared to, like training with his grandfather or spending time with Octavia. He refused to see a specialist, and Kai had no interest in forcing him to be everyone else’s version of normal. I mean, look at us, for example. If we were the measure of what was normal back in the day, Mads was better off not changing.
I started to climb down, but then I heard his voice.
“What’s L’appel du vide?” he asked.
I stopped and stared up at him, his dark eyes like black pools.
“Where did you hear that?”
“Kids at school,” he murmured.
I cleared my throat and looked around for his parents, knowing this day was coming, but never expecting I’d have to explain this to anyone’s kids but my own. Had he asked Kai?
I came back up a step and looked at him, eye to eye. “L’appel du vide is what binds our family,” I told him. “It’s an idea that connects us, because we all believe in it.”
“Like a religion?”
I hesitated for a moment, not sure if that was how I’d describe it.
But I nodded. “Kind of,” I replied. “Michael, Rika, Winter, Damon, Emory, me, your mom and dad… It’s how we realized we weren’t alone in the world.”
“Am I a part of it?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Is that what the kids
at school say?”