Nick didn’t want to laugh, but a chuckle escaped nonetheless. Scotty was just so freaking cute.
“Why do you want to know about that?” Scotty asked.
“I heard that word for the first time recently, and I found out there’s a lot of unsavory things attached to it. Most of it happens on the internet, and I wondered if you’ve seen stuff about it online or heard about something called the manosphere.”
“I haven’t heard of that, but I’ve seen people talking about incels. Girls like to toss that word around when they’re rejecting us. According to them, me and all my friends are incels.”
Alarmed by their use of a word fraught with violence and hatred, Nick said, “You know I always try to keep it real with you, right?”
“Yeah, why?”
“No one should be tossing that word around casually. There’s an entire subculture devoted to it online, full of rejected men sharing their grievances toward women and plotting ways to exact revenge.”
“Really?”
“Unfortunately, yes. It’s a dangerous word to throw around.”
“Okay. Should I tell the other guys that?”
“You could possibly suggest another word to tease each other with besides that one.”
“Should I tell them you said it’s not a good word to use?”
“You could say, ‘My dad doesn’t like me using that word casually. He said it has dangerous undertones.’”
He knit his brows. “Do I have to say ‘undertones’? The guys will have no idea what that means.”
Nick laughed. “Just say it’s a dangerous word to throw around casually.”
“I can do that.”
“Do me a favor?”
“Sure.”
“Stay away from the dark corners of the web where they talk about stuff like this.”
“I have no interest in dark corners.”
“I know you don’t, but I need you to promise me that if we continue to give you full access to the internet, you’ll handle it responsibly.”
“I promise. I mostly follow my friends and my favorite teams and athletes.”
“If you stumble upon something that scares you, or someone tries to get you to do something you know is wrong, will you come to me with that?”
“I will. Does this have something to do with what happened to Ethan?”
Nick hesitated, but only for a second. At fourteen, Scotty was old enough to know the truth about what’d happened—and Nick wanted that info to come from him, not online sources or friends. “It does. The man who took him and the other kids is well-known in the incel culture. Mom and the police believe he used Ethan and Tomas to lure Luna out so they could hurt her for rejecting the man’s son.”
Scotty’s eyes got bigger with every word Nick said. “So they killed her because she didn’t want to date his son?”
“That’s the theory.”
“But she was thirteen! She probably didn’t want to date anyone. I’m a year older than her, and I’m not into that stuff yet. I mean…” His eyes filled. “We’re still kids.”
Nick reached for him and pulled him into a tight hug.
“We’re just kids.”
