Sighing gruffly, he reached under the computer desk and pulled a black T-shirt out from under the wheel of his chair, snapping it in the air twice to get some of the wrinkles out. Holding it up in front of him, he examined it for stains or smears and, finding none, stretched it over his head and body, wincing as the soft fabric grazed his abdomen.
He looked down and saw a few deep cuts across his stomach. They were healing even as he examined them, shriveling into little black dots, until they finally disappeared altogether. He grimaced slightly when they closed. It had always been an odd sight, watching his own wounds heal. It was almost like saying he could watch grass grow. He rubbed his hand over his stomach and pulled his shirt the rest of the way down.
“Stupid frigging thing,” he mumbled to himself as he grabbed a pair of faded denim jeans off the foot of the bed and started pulling them on. “Think you’d know how not to get yourself sliced open by now.”
Frowning, he unlocked the door to his room quickly and swung it open hard enough that it slammed against the corner of his desk. The crack of the wood echoed through his splitting skull, making him grit his teeth.
To his right along the wall were family photos that were taken every year. In each and every one his parents wore the same plastic smiles, as though they’d been cut and pasted from one to the other. In each one he had on his meek little smile, the best he could force out at the time with the hot lights of the supermarket photo-hut glaring down at him, more families waiting in the hall. There was one near the end from around three years back that made him grin every time he saw it. His parents still had those same Barbie-and-Ken smiles mashed onto their faces, but in this one, his was real. His smile was big and genuine, his eyes sparkling with life in a way he’d never seen in a photo before or since. That day, the next family waiting in line to get their pictures taken was Sara Johnson and her parents. She’d looked at him and smiled and waved and he’d smiled back, just as the shutter snapped open.
He looked at it only briefly before starting down the stairs, hopping down over them two at a time until he reached the bottom. He started to reach for his sneakers when something caught his eye off to the right in the living room. Nobody should have been here this time of day, yet his mother’s purse had been tossed onto the couch and his father’s pipe smoked with freshly-lit tobacco. Raising an eyebrow, he dropped his shoe and stood up straight before walking around the corner until the room was in full view.
His mother sat on the love seat in the far side of the room, tears billowing down her red and puffy cheeks as she held a doily close to her face, using it to wipe the moisture away every few seconds. Her body shook with sobs as his father knelt beside her, one hand laid on her palm and one rubbing her shoulder rhythmically. He turned toward Xander and frowned with his steely cold gaze. The one that Xander recognized his eyes took on when he stopped caring about whatever was going on and expecting everyone else to, too.
Xander lost the feeling in his fingers, the tingling sensation rising slowly until it was almost at his elbows. He’d seen them like this before, right before the start of one of the worst chapters in his entire life... one that didn’t seem to want to end.
“What’s happened?” he asked, in a voice too low to be heard. He stopped, then took a step forward and cleared his throat. “What happened?” he repeated, making no effort to hide the desperation in his voice.
His mother started to sob again, unable to make eye contact with him.
Tell me it’s Aunt Sue, he thought, the pit in his stomach growing larger with every passing instant. Tell me her heart finally gave out from all the sweetened-condensed milk she eats. Or tell me Principal Shnieder hung himself in his office after last week’s PTA meeting. Tell me anything except what I know you’re going to.
“Son,” his father said, his voice gravely and stern. “Here’s how it happened.”
He knew it was bad now. That was the phrase his Dad had always used when delivering bad news. According to his Nanna Drew, it’d been that way ever since he was a kid. The first time he’d been caught stealing it was that exact phrase which had preceded the explanation he gave his mother.
“No,” Xander demanded, but his voice was only a whisper.
“It’s Mike and Cathy.”
He listened to everything his father had to say, along with the sobs of his mother that punctuated every sentence perfectly. But inside the words curdled and gargled in his ears, staying there until he was ready to process them. The only things his mind had heard were their names, Mike and Cathy.
It stared at the gaping black rectangle that had been a door a moment ago, watching the shadows inside dance about like puppets in a play. They excited it wonderfully, their movements could not have been more perfect if they’d been planned.
It had been the Kennessy’s
