Mom drops me off at Evan’s a little after five, forcing a couple of twenties into my hand “to pay for dinner.” She doesn’t understand that no one talks about money here. Evan orders dinner with his family’s credit card and the topic never comes up. Once, a couple of years ago, I tried to broach the subject, unfolding Mom’s money and placing it on the kitchen counter. I had a little speech prepared about being so grateful for their generosity and wanting to pay for that night’s takeout, but before I could say anything, Evan’s mom cleared her throat loudly and turned away. Evan swept the bills up like crumbs and pressed them against me as he gestured me toward the hallway and the stairs. “Let’s go load up the movies, man,” he said a little too brightly.
I was too young to know the word gauche, but I understood its meaning readily enough.
So now I ring the doorbell, Mom’s money stuffed in my pocket. As I do every year, I’ll sneak away to the Narc tomorrow, break the twenties, and give her a few bucks as “change.” Then, a week later, I’ll slip the rest of it into her wallet. She never realizes.
Evan’s older brother, Richard Jr., answers the door.
“Oh,” he says. “You.” He says it not with disgust or outrage, but with utter nonchalance, peering past me to scan the driveway as though someone more worthy might be following right behind. “Did you see a black M-Class on your way?”
“No.” I have no idea.
He grumbles and starts poking at his watch, not bothering to move aside. I press myself between him and the doorframe.
Evan comes scrambling down the left staircase into the foyer. “Sebastian! Dude!” He spares a contemptuous glance at his brother and shouts, “Hey, Tool Boy! Close the door!” receiving an almost-casual middle finger in reply.
“What a puddle of rancid douche water,” Evan says, not bothering to lower his voice. “I can’t wait until he’s out of here.”
Richard Jr. starts Yale in the fall. Once, to be polite, I asked how much it costs to go to Yale, even though I could look it up on the Internet. Evan, unthinking, told me, “It’s like sixty-five per year, and it goes up each year. But they have this great program where if you prepay for the four years, you can lock it in at the freshman rate, so Dad’s doing that to save money.”
The surest sign that you’re rich is that you don’t even think about the fact that you’re rich. Evan likes to act like he’s above the money or disinterested in it, but he’s too casual about his new iPhone, his Apple Watch Edition—which I looked up online (it cost over ten thousand dollars)—the twin to his brother’s. Call him on it and he’ll shrug, somewhat embarrassed, and say, “My parents want to be able to stay in touch. It’s sort of practical, really.”
Practical would have meant the same watch made out of aluminum for under four hundred. Gold is practical only in the sense of sending a message: We can afford to buy this for our son, and since we also live in one of the safest school districts in the country—notwithstanding our son’s best friend, who has a history of homicide—we’re not concerned about strapping ten-grand worth of electronics and precious metals onto our child every day.
Evan prods and guides me upstairs before his brother can snap out a lazy retort. The strip of carpeting on the stairs has been replaced since I was last here, no doubt having shown the slightest sign of wear. That’s what you do in museums when the exhibits begin to look ratty—you replace them.
The carpet is so soft that I want to take off my shoes and let my toes sink into it. Later, I remind myself. I’ll do this later.
On our way to Evan’s room, we pass his father’s office. “Evan! Come here!” his dad calls in a voice both authoritarian and excited.
The face that goes with that excitement cannot hide a frisson of disappointment when I enter the office as well.
“Ah. Of course. Hello, Sebastian.”
I can’t help but compare the way Evan’s father says my name—as though clearing it from his throat—with the way Aneesa’s father says it. Which is to say, completely normally.
Then again, Mr. Danforth knows. Mr. Fahim doesn’t.
Mr. Danforth has a face shaped like a mangled upside-down triangle, its bottommost point—his chin—crooked and jutting out aggressively. I can almost imagine him having this done deliberately, getting plastic surgery to have his chin poking constantly at other people, reminding them that Richard Danforth Sr. is in their airspace. His hair is full and thick and too shiny. He has enormous blue eyes, frightening in their luminosity. Built like a linebacker who went paleo, he’s all square shoulders and blunt forearms and wide stance. Even on the weekends, he wears slacks and a crisp button-down dress shirt, as though at any moment he’ll need to throw on a jacket and tie and race off to something monumentally important and wealth-enhancing and boring.
I’ve never liked him. Not since the first moment we met. The feeling, I know, is mutual. Even that first time, he regarded me with suspicion, and I imagine if he could have frisked me for firearms, he would have done so.
I was seven.
But for as much as I dislike Evan’s father, I have to concede that—even beyond his wealth—he has at least one trait that places him miles above my own.
Namely: He’s still around.
My Father
Left the house when I was six. That I definitely remember. I generally see him twice a year, on my birthday and on Christmas, occasions I dread. I should look forward to them; instead, I wish for them to pass as quickly as possible.
One year, a snowstorm made it impossible for him to see me on Christmas. It was my favorite Christmas ever.
My father is not wealthy, like Mr. Danforth. He is not cool and collected, like Mr. Fahim. My father bristles with energy, with regret, with time that has rotted and gone black and soft from disuse. He speaks little, asking me how school is, how my mother is, how my friends are. Sometimes he remembers Evan’s name, typically referring to him as “that Evan,” as though there is a plethora of Evans in my life, a vast and multifaceted panoply of them, and he is speaking only specifically of that Evan.
He is taller than he appears, his stooped posture shrinking him. His hair, sandy brown, a shade lighter than my own, is ragged, too long in some spots, too short in others, the right length nowhere. He favors quilted plaid shirts, worn buttoned over long underwear in the winter; open over white T-shirts in the summer, the sleeves rolled.