“I have a home,” Dorian explained, politely but firmly.
“Dorian…”
“You know what you need?” Lori suddenly said briskly. She didn’t clap and rub her hands. Instead she patted them on her knees. “Some nice, freshly baked cookies. Why don’t you go get your things unpacked, and I’ll whip up some cookies. Do you like chocolate chip?”
When Dorian nodded eagerly, she flicked a finger across the end of his nose in a playful manner.
JOHN GRAVAGLIA
• 37 •
“I thought you might.” She rose as she looked over to the young maid at the kitchen. “Frambroise, pourrivez-vous faire cuire une fournee de biscuits aux pepites de chocolat pour Dorian ici?”
“Oui, madam.” Frambroise snapped into attention, and began to gather the ingredients.
George just laughed and shook his head. Dorian shied away from the attractive young server who gave him a congenial smile. A black maid’s uniform, complete with a pressed white apron, cuffs, and collar, flattered the brunette’s slender figure.
Then Lori asked Dorian, “Is there anything else you’d like?”
“Yes, please.”
“And what would that be?” She leaned over, hands resting on her knees. “What would you like?”
“My mom.”
She winced at that, and George, trying to sound kindly but firm, said, “Dorian…you have to understand, you’re going to live with us now.”
“I don’t want to,” Dorian told him resolutely. He wasn’t rude, whining, or crying. He couldn’t have been more civil if he’d been ordering a meal in a restaurant. “I want my mom, please.” He put in almost as an afterthought.
“She’s not here, Dorian…” George began.
“Can I at least talk to her? Can you call her?”
“Dorian,” and George took him securely by the shoulders. “Your mother…she’s with God now.”
DORIAN GRAY
• 38 •
“When is she coming back?”
George’s lower lip was quivering. Dorian had never seen a grown-up cry, and the feeling made his stomach queasy. He didn’t think it was something that grown-ups did.
George coughed loudly, took a deep breath, and said, “She’s not coming back, Dorian.”
“I want to talk to her.”
“You can’t. She…she went away…”
“I want to talk to her. Make her come back.”
“Dorian…”
“MAKE HER COME BACK!”
The sound and agony that ripped from Dorian’s throat terrified the child himself, because he couldn’t believe that it was his own voice sounding like that. His eyes went wide, pupils tiny and swimming in a sea of white, and without another word he turned and bolted through the hall.
George turned to Lori and sighed dryly. “Well, that went well.”
JOHN GRAVAGLIA
• 39 •
CHAPTER THREE
Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.
Lao Tzu.
Dorian sat on the floor in the middle of the room, his knees drawn up to just under his chin. The room itself wasn’t terrible, but it didn’t feel especially warm. In Dorian’s room—his real room—all the furniture kind of looked like it went together. Here it seemed as if some random stuff had been stuck together in one place.
George had brought in the last of his suitcases some time ago. Dorian hadn’t spoken to him. The truth was, he was embarrassed about his outburst and was quite certain that George was angry with him. So he had felt it wisest not to say anything and hope that, eventually, George would forget that he had shouted in such an inappropriate manner.
That’s what his mother would have said. “In-ap-pro-pri-ate, young man,” she would scold him, waggling her index finger in one quick downward stroke on every syllable.
George didn’t try to strike up a conversation with him; he didn’t seem to know what to say. So George would come and go from the room, grunting slightly and wondering out loud why
DORIAN GRAY
• 40 •
Dorian was packing anvils in his suitcases—which puzzled Dorian, who couldn’t remember bringing any. The sun moved across the sky, the shadows lengthened and George stopped coming and going.
The day started like any other. Dorian hated homeroom almost as much as he hated being called Dorie. Unfortunately, he had to put up with both of these things every day. Everyone called him Dorie like he was some annoying blue fish in a Disney movie, and he wasn’t.
And he hated homeroom.
It was mostly irritating because it had David Harrison in it. Dorian hated David Harrison. All he ever did was shoot spit wads at him and call him names with his stupid friends and called him a bastard.
Dorian hated that.
Especially the part about how his father left him and his mother.
It wasn’t Dorian’s fault that his father disappeared.
For this year, Dorian’s homeroom teacher was a stupid man named Mr. Crumb. He had fake hair on top of his head that he kept saying was real, and he had a big moustache that was all gray and black. Dorian didn’t like Mr. Crumb very much because he never made David Harrison and the other kids stop shooting spit wads at him, but he didn’t think it was very nice to call Mr. Crumb’s fake hair a dead animal.
JOHN GRAVAGLIA
• 41 •
Mr. Crumb was making the morning announcements. Dorian tried to pay attention to them, but Clarissa Simmons kept whispering to Serena Vincent right behind him, so he couldn’t hear a thing.
He liked it better last year in Ms. Gruber’s homeroom. Now there was a fun teacher.
Suddenly, the front door opened. This startled Dorian.
It apparently startled Mr. Crumb too; since he dropped the clipboard he was reading the announcements from. It hit the floor with a clatter that made Dorian jump a second time.
He grabbed his Spider-Man lunchbox. His mother had given him the lunchbox for the first day of school. Dorian liked Spider-Man because he always won in the end even when he wasn’t supposed to or when bad things happened to him. His mother said when she gave it to him that she got it because he was her little hero.
So when the two men in the black suits walked into the classroom, the first thing he did was go for the lunchbox.
“I’m sorry, sir,” one of the men in black said, “but I’m afraid I need to take Dorian out of class.”
“Whadja do, Dorie?” David Harrison asked. He stretched out the word “do” so it sounded like a dirty word.
A bunch of other kids laughed.
Dorian really hated David Harrison.
He was also scared that something had happened at home.
DORIAN GRAY
• 42 •
“What’s going on here?”