Excerpt from The Commuters:
All Andy wanted was contrast. A loop of orange brilliance in the everything-black of night. Not tapioca pudding on a daylit background. And so the candles beckoned. They were already on the roof. They just needed the itchy strike of a match. One was a tall cylinder that said Buena Suerte with a picture of a pot of gold. One was shaped like a cartoon wizard with close-set eyes and glitter on his conical wax hat.
This is the hole where the explanation would go, the one people wanted, one about Andy being neglected or molested or retarded. They wanted him to be cute so they could love him. Later they were glad he was not so they could agree with the family’s decision. The McCumber children—rather, children posing as McCumbers—were ticked away for bad deeds with psychology’s side-cast eyes.
There’s little sympathy for the inarticulate and the opaque. Andy was both. He looked like a Ken doll with its face squeezed by a giant child’s thumb and forefinger to achieve a rubbery pout. He had brown hair. He was tall. He got average grades. He was one of several McCumber children attending the junior high on Rossmore. Teachers knew there were two girls and a boy, all different races, which they found both charming and confusing. No troublemakers or standout geniuses in the group, so they tended to forget the details. It’s always more interesting to make them up, besides. Other parents were vocal in their admiration of What Susan and Chris McCumber Were Doing. The children themselves, though, seemed a little…fleeting, and Susan and Chris found themselves making introduction after patient introduction.
The first fire broke out—broke out, as if it escaped, which it did in a way—the night before Halloween. Andy watched his crackling creation, the smoke conjuring pools in his eyes, the heat curling the hairs on his arms. Its reality was its strongest and most endearing feature. It wasn’t anything but real.