At eleven the next morning, Gansey received a series of texts from Ronan. The first was merely a photograph. It was a close-up of a part of Ronan’s anatomy that he hadn’t seen before. An Irish flag was twist-tied to it. It was not the most grotesque display of nationalism Gansey had ever seen, but it was close.
Gansey received the text while in the middle of his mother’s tea party. Drugged by the poor sleep on the sofa, numbed by the demure socialization occurring all around him, and haunted by the fight with Adam, he didn’t immediately process the possible implications of such a photograph. Understanding was only beginning to prickle when a second text came in.
before you hear it from anyone else, i wrecked the pig
Gansey was suddenly very awake.
but don’t worry man i got it under control say hi to your mom for me
In most ways, the timing was lucky. Because Gansey had inherited from his mother an extreme distaste of showing the uglier emotions in public (“Everyone’s face is a mirror, Dick — endeavor to make them reflect a smile”), receiving the news while surrounded by an audience of fine china and laughing ladies in their fifties bought him time to figure out how to react.
“Is everything all right?” asked the woman across from him.
Gansey blinked at her. “Oh, yes, thank you.”
There were no circumstances under which he would’ve answered that question in any other way. Possibly if he’d discovered a family member had died. Possibly if one of his limbs had been separated from his body.
Possibly.
As he accepted a tray of cucumber sandwiches from the woman on his right to pass to the woman on his left, he wondered if Adam had woken up yet. He suspected Adam wouldn’t come down, even if he were awake.
His mind replayed the image of Adam casting the figurines to the floor.
“These sandwiches are delightful,” said the woman on his right to the woman on his left. Or possibly to him.
“They’re from Clarissa’s,” Gansey said automatically. “The cucumbers are local.”
Ronan took my car.
At that moment, Gansey’s memory of Ronan and his filthy smile didn’t look very different from Joseph Kavinsky and his matching dirty grin. Gansey had to remind himself that they had very important differences. Ronan was broken; Ronan was fixable; Ronan had a soul.
“I’m so pleased with the movement to keep food local,” said the woman on his right, possibly to the woman on his left. Or maybe to him.
Ronan had charm. It was just buried deep.
Very deep.
“It tastes fresher,” said the woman on his left.
The thing was, Gansey had known what happened on Friday nights when Ronan’s BMW had come back smelling of burning brakes and a clutch under duress. And he’d taken the Camaro keys with him when he left for a reason. So this wasn’t a surprise.
“Really, the advantages are in the reduced fuel and transportation costs,” Gansey said, “that are passed on to the consumer. And to the environment.”
But what did he mean wrecked?
Gansey’s mind was on overload. He could feel his synapses murdering one another.
“One wonders about those trucking jobs that are lost, though,” said the woman on the right. “Pass the sugar, would you?”
Say hi to your mom?
“I sort of feel the local infrastructure needed to process and sell the produce will end up with a null sum job loss,” Gansey said. “The biggest challenge will be adjusting people’s expectations to the seasonality of produce they’ve come to expect year-round.”
Wrecked.
“You’re probably right,” said the woman on his left. “Though I do love having peaches in winter. I’ll take the sugar, too, if you would?”
He passed a bowl of lumpy brown sugar cubes from the woman on his right to the woman on his left. Across the table, Helen was animatedly gesturing to a creamer shaped like a genie’s lamp. She looked fresh as a newscaster.
Glancing up, she caught Gansey’s eye, and then she tapped the corners of her mouth with her napkin, said something to her conversation partner, and stood up. She pointed at Gansey and gestured toward the door to the kitchen.
Gansey excused himself and joined her in the kitchen. It was the only part of the house that hadn’t been renovated in the last two decades, and it was always dark and vaguely scented by onions. Gansey stopped by the espresso machine. He had an immediate, distant memory of his glamorous mother placing a frothing pitcher’s thermometer under his tongue to check for fever. Time felt irrelevant.
The door swung shut behind Helen.
“What?” he asked in a low voice.
“You looked like you spent your last joy bill.”
He hissed, “What does that even mean?”
“I don’t know. I was just trying it out.”
“Well, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t make sense. And anyway, I’ve got plenty of joy bills. Loads.”
Helen said, “What’s happening there on your phone?”
“A very small joy debit.”
His older sister’s smile shone brightly. “You see, it does work. Now, did you or did you not need to get out of that room?”
Gansey inclined his head in slight acknowledgment. Gansey siblings knew each other well.
“You’re so welcome,” Helen said. “Let me know if you need me to write a joy check.”
“I really don’t think it works.”
“Oh, I think it has promise,” she replied. “Now, if you excuse me, I must get back to Ms. Capelli. We’re talking about space adaptation syndrome and the Coriolis effect. I just wanted you to know what you’re missing.”
“Missing is a strong term.”
“Yes. Yes, it is.”
She pushed through the swinging door. Gansey stood in the dim, root-vegetable-scented kitchen until the door had stopped. Then he called Ronan’s number.
“Dick,” Kavinsky said. “Gansey.”
Pulling the phone back from his head, Gansey confirmed he had actually dialed the correct number. The screen read RONAN LYNCH. He couldn’t quite understand how Ronan’s phone had ended up in Kavinsky’s hands, but stranger things had happened. At least now the text messages made sense.
“Dick-Three,” Kavinsky said. “You there?”
“Joseph,” Gansey said pleasantly.
“Funny I should hear from you. Saw your car running around last night. It’s got half a face now. Poor bastard.”
Gansey closed his eyes and let out a whisper of a sigh.
“Sorry, I didn’t hear you,” Kavinsky said. “Come again? I know, I know — that’s what Lynch says.”
Gansey set his teeth in a very straight line. Gansey’s father, Richard Campbell Gansey II, had also gone to a boarding school, the now defunct Rochester Hall. His father, collector of things, collector of words, collector of money, offered tantalizing stories. In them, Gansey caught glimpses of a utopian community of peers intent on learning, keen with the pursuit of wisdom. This was a school that didn’t just teach history — no, it wore the past like a comfortable jacket, beloved for all of its frayed ends. Gansey II described students — comrades, really — forming bonds of brotherhood that would last for the rest of their lives. It was C. S. Lewis and the Inklings, Yeats and the Abbey Theatre, Tolkien and his Kolbítar, Glendower and his poet Iolo Goch, Arthur and his knights. It was a community of scholars just outside of adolescence, a sort of Marvel comic where every hero represented a different arm of the humanities.
It was not toilet-papered trees and whispered bribes, front-lawn hacky sack and faculty affairs, gifted vodka and stolen cars.
It was not Aglionby Academy.
Sometimes, the difference between that utopia and reality exhausted Gansey.
“All right, now,” Gansey said. “This was great. You giving this phone back to Ronan at any point?”
There was silence. It was a slick sort of silence, the sort that would make bystanders turn their heads to note it, same as a loud laugh.
Gansey didn’t quite care for it.
“He’s going to have to try harder,” Kavinsky said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“That’s what Lynch says, too.”
Gansey could hear the crooked smile in Kavinsky’s voice. He asked, “Do you ever think your humor veers too much on the side of prurient?”
“Man, don’t SAT at me. Here’s what’s up. The Ronan you know is no more. He’s having a coming-of-age moment. A — a — bildungsroman. Goddamn me! SAT that, Dick-dick-dick.”
“Kavinsky,” Gansey said evenly. “Where’s Ronan?”