“This,” I said, frustrated, holding up a copy of Fright Night. What did he want from me? Did I have to prove to him that I was cool, that I didn’t belong in Coalfield? “Why?” I finally asked, turning it back on him. “Where did you come from that’s so great?”

“Memphis,” he said. “And it’s not so great, really. But, you know, there’s some okay stuff. Memphis Chicks baseball games. Mall of Memphis, you can ice-skate there. Audubon Park.”

“Well, okay, that does sound pretty cool. Ice-skating would be cool.”

“But,” he said, smiling, “here we are.”

“Why did you move here?” I asked him.

“I didn’t have any say in it. It’s messed up.” He kind of looked at me for a few seconds, like he was trying to decide what he would and would not tell me. And this intrigued me, that his story required editing. I got up off the floor and sat next to him on the sofa.

“My dad’s been having an affair,” he told me. “I guess he’s been having a few of them, because one of the women found out about the other one.”

“Oh, god,” I said.

“Yeah, and she called our house to rat him out, but I answered the phone. And she told me about how he was really a bad guy and was treating her wrong, and that I needed to divorce him and then get that other lady to stop seeing him, and only then would she think about staying with him, and I was like, ‘Ma’am, I’m his son,’ and she said, ‘Oh, honey, you have such a high voice,’ and I hung up.”

“Your voice isn’t that high,” I offered.

“Well, on the phone I try to be super polite, so my voice is soft. It’s no big deal. That’s not really what made me so mad.”

“No, I know, but still.”

“Yeah, thanks, but the point is, I got angry and I kicked a hole in the wall and my mom ran in and I told her what was happening. We got in the car and drove to my dad’s office, and she started shouting at him in front of other people, and then, well . . .”

“What?” I asked.

“I don’t really remember, honestly. Sometimes, when I get really stressed, I just kind of lose myself? Like I go into some trance, my ears start ringing. I feel kind of fuzzy and hot. And I can kind of be . . . destructive, I guess. Not often, right? But sometimes. Anyways, my mom says that I jumped on my dad and tried to claw his eyes out and some of my dad’s employees had to drag me off of him and hold me down. Like, they sat on me for a pretty long time. They said I was speaking in tongues or something.”