Adam and Evil Read Online Free

wouldn’t drag you in for a conference because ovens get hot and refrigerators are cold. They are what they are. Teenage boys are what they are. I also have expertise there. Expertise as Adam’s father. Seventeen years of observation.” He sat back. Case closed.
    “Excuse me!” Rachel bolted for the door.
    The Evanses looked in the direction of where she’d been, then looked to me for an explanation. I didn’t feel like giving them one.
    “I am indeed familiar with teenage behavior,” I said. “That’s why I’m so alarmed about Adam’s.”
    “Drugs? Is that what you’re saying?” Parke Evans demanded.
    “I don’t honestly know. It could be.” My gut feeling was that while drugs were possibly, maybe even probably, part of the problem, there was something else, too—that
x
factor, that wrongness. But even if it were “only” drugs, shouldn’t the Evanses be more concerned? “He’s withdrawn, his hygiene, his work habits, his grades are suffering—”
    “He’s a kid,” Parke Evans said. “Why make an issue of it? It’s the end of his senior year. Why bust a gut? Basically, all he needs to do is pass, so what is this fuss about?”
    “I’m aware of that, believe me.” I was the one who had to keep my students from slipping into comas that last semester. “That’s not what I’m talking about.”
    “He is not on drugs,” his father said. “I read the literature, looked for the warning signs. He comes right home, doesn’t have suspicious friends, doesn’t go out on strange errands.” He shook his head. “No drugs.”
    The boy went to school in center city and didn’t have to sneak out to bad neighborhoods to make a buy. He didn’t have disreputable friends because he didn’t have any friends.But why waste my breath? “He’s withdrawn,” I repeated. “Doesn’t socialize with—”
    “This is a difficult time for him.” Dorothy Evans sat even straighter, although I would have thought that impossible. She darted a look brimful of malice toward her husband and waited.
    He said nothing.
    “Difficult how?” I prompted.
    She tightened her features and faced me with barely seeing eyes, a woman applying maximum force to pressures that otherwise were likely to explode out of her.
    “If you don’t want to talk about it, let’s not,” I said. “We still have this problem at school.”
    “
You
have a problem, Miss Pepper,” Mr. Evans barked. “We don’t.”
    “His father and I are divorcing,” Dorothy Evans blurted out, still not meeting my eyes. “It’s not … it’s been …” She looked up at the ceiling, her hands still tightly folded. “A stressful time. That’s what I meant.”
    “However,” her husband said, “that has nothing to do with what we’re talking about. Next you’ll blame the hole in the ozone on me! Besides, Adam doesn’t have a problem. He’s a
teenager.
”
    “Adam and I are close,” Dorothy Evans said. “He’s worried on my behalf. About the future. About what will become of me. About whether there will be money for his education. About whether his father and his father’s girlfriend, who is four years older than Adam, will have time for him at all. About—”
    “Enough, Dorothy! Please, let us behave like adults and stick to the topic.”
    “The topic is Adam!” Dorothy cried. “The topic is the stress that boy is under!”
    Mr. Evans looked at me as if his wife’s words were so much dust clouding the atmosphere and would I please wave it away? And then his expression soured as he remembered that I was part of the problem. “Adam’s a gifted boy with his whole future ahead, and if his home isn’t as calm as it could be, well, these things happen, and he’ll develop the grit to get through it.”
    “Couldn’t wait, could you?” Veins protruded on Mrs. Evans’thin neck. “Not a few lousy months until he graduated. Couldn’t wait and see him through. Now look what you’ve done.”
    “Please,” I said, “could we—I asked