Activity

He no longer respected the old man. Having glimpsed his fundamental weakness, he now saw it at every turn. Saw him exploiting Becky’s politeness to drag her on their Sunday walks, saw him distancing himself from their mother at church functions and chatting with other men’s wives, heard him blacken…

The mob obeyed him. Though Ambrose was technically subordinate to Clem’s father, everyone knew who the group’s real leader was: who was strong and who was weak.

“We’re going to skip the prayer tonight,” Ambrose said. “Is that okay with you, Russ?”

The older man nodded meekly. He was weak! wea…

The whole notion of coolness was puerile.

He now saw that his supposed self-discipline, the outstanding study habits his parents and his teachers had always praised, had not been discipline at all. He’d excelled at school because he’d enjoyed learning things, not because he had superior willpower. As soon as Sharon introduced him to more…

Same thing with her long, straight, shining hair, which was of a richer color than the slightly false-seeming yellow of his own: she had the platonic teen-girl hair to which other girls compared their own invidiously