Spite Club (Mason Brothers 1)

I turned. Andrew was watching me read, his hands laced in his lap again. He was grinning. Behind him, Nick sat on the sofa, his arms crossed over his chest.

“It’s awesome,” I said to Andrew. “You made this? It looks amazing.” It did. It was cool and creative and beautifully drawn. “How much have you written?”

“Good question. Let me think.” Andrew twisted in his chair and looked over his shoulder at his brother. “How much did you write, Nick?”

I stared at Nick, who looked uncomfortable.

“You wrote this?” I asked him.

He didn’t meet my eyes, and then he did. He looked right at me. “Six volumes,” he said. “Ten issues per volume. So sixty issues of Lightning Man so far, give or take.”

“Give or take,” Andrew agreed. “He writes them, I draw them.”

This was amazing. I couldn’t take it in. “Do you publish them?”

“You’re looking at it,” Andrew said. “This folder on my desktop. That’s where Lightning Man is published. That’s it.” He looked thoughtful. “In fact, you’re our first reader. Ever.”

“But this is crazy,” I said. “You should publish them or something. Put them online.”

Andrew looked at Nick again. “See, I told you. She agrees with me.”

“No,” Nick said. “No fucking way.”

I was still staring at him, trying to process the fact that Nick wrote comics, and apparently had been for years. “Why not?”

“I told you, the stories are no good. You think I know how to write a fucking story? I don’t.”

“I like them,” Andrew said. “I’m still waiting for you to get Lightning Man and Judy Gravity together. I mean, you know it’s gonna happen. It’s just a matter of when.”

“They have to dismantle the nuke in Pluto first,” Nick said. “And it doesn’t matter, because no one is ever going to read them.”

“Nick,” Andrew said, “if we put them out there, so many people would read them. That’s what I’m saying. And I think I want that. This is my work, too. I don’t want it just sitting on my desktop anymore. I want it to go further.”

“You could find a way to print them,” I said. Because despite Nick’s misgivings, this was amazing and exciting. “Sell print copies online. And you could publish it online, too, maybe as a subscription or something. Or sell downloads of the issues. People can read comics on their tablets.”

“I can do all of that,” Andrew said. “I could do a Lightning Man site in a couple of days.”

“I don’t get a say?” Nick said.

We looked at him. He was still on the sofa, rigid. “What is it?” I asked him. “This could be great.”

Nick looked at me. “It isn’t going to be great,” he said, and his voice was icy calm. “It’s never going to be great, do you understand? It’s never going to be a success, because I wrote it. And I am not a fucking writer. I’m a dropout loser who does nothing but party, remember? That’s what I am, and it’s all I’ll ever be.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but Andrew spoke first. “We’re doing it,” he said.

I looked at Andrew. He was pale, with anger and hurt and something deep and dark under the surface that I couldn’t read. He was staring at Nick, unmoving, his voice so flat it was scary. “We’re doing it,” he said again, the slightest tremor in his voice.

Nick stood up. “I’m going,” he said, his voice thick, and he turned and left the room.

I looked at Andrew again, but he didn’t even look at me. He stared at the empty doorway. Finally, he spoke. “You should go with him,” he said, his voice an ache. “Sorry about this, Evie. We’re a fucked-up family.”

I stood up, reluctantly. “I have a fucked-up family, too,” I said. “Are you going to be okay?”

He turned his chair so he was facing his keyboard again. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “Just go.”

There was nothing else for me to do, so I walked out. And I left him sitting there, alone.

Twenty-Three