“And let me guess,” Jem said.“Gerald never talked to you about money.”
Dean looked at Mckell.Aiden, eyes still covered, shook his head again.Quinn made a face and tightened his hold on Beckett.
“Stephen handled the administrative side of things,” Mckell said.Her voice was faint, as though she couldn’t believe what she’d heard.“He never— He told us how much, and we paid.We never really talked about it.”
“You want to know another reason I know he wasn’t gay?”Sawyer asked.He was rubbing his chest as he spoke, eyeing Jem.Tean remembered the look on his face from playground bullies.“He was screwing Brigitte.”
28
The cold was almost pleasant after the chalet.It had been too hot, the air stale and close, and Jem was still sweating—pinpricks under his arms, a rash across his chest, droplets sliding down his spine so that the sweatshirt was damp at the small of his back.The crunch of the snow underfoot was so sharp it was like a crack, and the glare forced him to squint.Afterimages followed him when he moved his head— floating spots of purple and green.
Room 365.
That was Stephen’s room.
That’s what the little gang of fuckups had told him.
Stepping into the lobby, passing through the automatic doors, into warmth and the clink of glasses—it was like passing through an airlock.He had the vague sense of pressure changing, like something tightening around him.His head was starting to pound.
At the bank of elevators, he jabbed the up button over and over again until Tean caught his hand.
Jem broke his grip.But he didn’t press the up button again.The tips of his ears were starting to throb in the warmth.A woman in ski gear, her goggles pushed up on her forehead, strode past them, saying loudly into a phone, “It’s a ski resort.You think they’d behappyto have some extra snow.”
“She wasn’t sleeping with Stephen,” Jem said.
Tean nodded.
“That’s some fucking bullshit story he made up because he’s embarrassed he bought into all that shit, and now he’s trying to make everybody else look bad.”In the lenses of Tean’s glasses, Jem could see himself: small, wavy, transparent.His voice came out more harshly than he meant it to when he said, “He doesn’t have any proof.He doesn’t have anything.”A chasm of silence opened underneath them, and then Jem said, “Are you going to say something?”
Tean opened and closed his hands at his sides, and from a long way off, Jem felt bad about that.But Tean’s voice was calm when he said, “I think this is an emotional subject for you.And I think it would be good if we stopped and took a moment to think through this before we do anything rash.”
“I’m going to find him, and I’m going to punch his fucking teeth down his throat.What’s rash about that?”
“You think they’dwantto get us out on the slopes,” the woman in the ski gear trudged past them in the opposite direction.“You think they’d at least betryingto make this a good experience for the rest of us.”
“Jem, you’re the one who pointed out that we’re dealing with a group of people who, in some areas of their lives, at least, are habitual liars.”Tean’s hands were pressed flat against his thighs now.“I understand that what Sawyer said made you angry—”
“It didn’t make me angry.”
“Made you upset, then—”
“It didn’t make me upset!”
His shout echoed in the elevator lobby.
“—not eventrying—” The woman said on her next pass.
“This is a public area,” Jem barked.“Not everyone wants to hear your conversation.”
The woman scowled at him and strode away.
A soft chime made him turn.The elevator doors opened.
“Fina-fucking-lly,” Jem muttered and stepped inside.
The doors slid shut.He punched three, and the car began to rise.
Mirrors hung on the walls.His hair was a mess again, his eyes ringed with dark circles, his face wind- and snow-burned.The red spots made him think, for a moment, of when he’d been a teenager, all the breakouts, because in Decker, skin care wasn’t exactly a priority.He’d had to learn after he got out how to wash his face, how to keep his skin clear.Tinajas had taken him to Walmart and shown him what to buy.He closed his eyes, and the darkness felt unsteady.Because of the elevator, he told himself.He opened his eyes again, saw himself in the mirror.When he heard his next thought, it was like a mirror as well: cold and smooth as glass.I need a comb.And then, the reflection laid over it:I’m going to kill him.
