A few minutes later, Peter heard the old water pipes screech and knew that Jared was in his bathroom. He stepped away from the crowd in the kitchen and made his way down the dark hallway.
He flipped on the light to find a jumble of clothes, papers, baseball equipment, and photographs spilled out over the bed, as if Jared had just picked up everything off the wet floor and dumped it. A hunk of plywood covered the broken window. Leaves and bark from the tree were scattered on the carpet. The cheap dresser was crunched and knocked over.
It was so different from his own bedroom at home that he was startled. No pastel candles or flower garlands, no soft folds of fabric on the windows. Katherine kept “experimenting” with decorating, and Peter never knew from one week to the next exactly what c
