Read In the Blood for Free Online

trace of the shy, sweet boy I’d met the other day. He was icy, his face slack and eyes dead. He walked into the room and put his backpack down. He stood blocking the door, and looked at me with unmistakable menace. I found myself thinking of Rachel, and how skittish she was around him.
    “I was helping your mother unpack the other day,” I said. I liftedmy chin and squared my shoulders to him, kept my voice low and easy. He wasn’t going to cow me as he had his mother; that was for sure. “So I thought I’d help you start shelving your books.”
    “I don’t want your help,” he said. “Get out.”
    Gut-punched by the quiet ugliness of his tone, I let the book drop from my hand to the floor with a thud, rather than move to put it on the shelf. I kept his gaze as I moved past him toward the door. I am not a large person. Always the smallest kid at school, as an adult I stood just over five foot four inches, with a slight build. He was only eleven but he did not seem that much smaller than I was. We were nearly the same height. My arm brushed his on the way out. My face must have been scarlet, as it always got when I was angry or embarrassed.
    “My mother told you to make me a snack and then let me do what I wanted, right?”
    “Uh,” I said. I turned to face him. I wasn’t going to let him talk to my back as if I were the help, which maybe I was. But fuck that. “Yes, that’s right.”
    “Then do that,” he said. Again, we locked eyes.
    He followed me as I exited the room and closed the door behind me. I turned around, considered knocking and apologizing, trying to get off on a better foot. But then I noticed that there was a lock on the outside of the door. Did she lock him in there sometimes? I don’t know how long I stood there, looking at the lock. It seemed so odd, so incongruous with the woman I met. It wasn’t reasonable, was it, under any circumstance to have a lock on the outside of your child’s door? A dead bolt? But, then again, maybe it was already there when they moved in. Maybe she hadn’t put it there at all.
    I went downstairs and called Rachel, told her what happened.She sighed heavily when I was done, and I felt like a failure. I could hear the sound of someone hammering in the background.
    “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was just trying to help you out. Like the other day.”
    She sighed again. I expected her to tell me that it was okay and not to worry. But she didn’t.
    “Just make him a ham sandwich with apple slices,” she said. “And put it outside his door. He’ll get it after you’ve gone back downstairs. Just stay away from him. He might get over it and come down. If not, I’ll be home by six.”
    “Okay,” I said. I thought I heard her disconnect the call, and I was about to hang up.
    Then, “Lana?”
    “Yes,” I said. I was childishly eager that she not be mad at me, that she would offer some words of support.
    “You’re a tattletale.”
    I realized that it was Luke, not Rachel. He’d obviously been listening in on the line upstairs, chiming in now that his mother was off the phone.
    Embarrassment and a flash of anger got the better of me.
    “Luke?” I said.
    “Yes,” he answered, mimicking me with annoying accuracy.
    “You’re a brat.”
    I heard him gasp, then start to laugh. He hung up the phone, but I still heard him laughing upstairs. I instantly regretted it and figured I would be fired on my very first day as a working adult. Fine, I thought. Whatever. He was a brat and someone needed to tell him that. He was obviously running the show around here and had been for a while.
    Even though I didn’t want to, I made the snack and brought itupstairs with a bottle of water, then placed it on the floor outside the door and departed with a little knock. Once I was down, I heard the door open and close. I could hear the sound of whatever video game he was playing, gunshots and screeching tires. Bad choice for a problem kid, I thought. If anyone shouldn’t