***
AN HOUR, A CLEAN SHIRT AND A PHONE CALL LATER, Hadley finds his way back to his friends.
They're in some chic boutique that sells hats and skirts and cute vintage blouses and shirts at exorbitant prices because Morgan wanted to buy something special for Rome, and once Morgan went somewhere, she dragged the rest of them behind her.
Gregory holds a shirt in his hands, looking at it this way and that, running his hand all over it like he's assessing its worth but Hadley knows he's just doing it so that he doesn't look cheap. Unlike Morgan, Sebastian or hell, even Hadley, who bought things without once glancing at the price tag because they were raised under the constant presence of money, Gregory was taught to believe that money wasn't a given. He came from what Hadley's father called 'new money' (said with a hint of derision), from a household that wasn't rich until much recently.
If I wasn't looking, Hadley thinks, he'd put it right back onto the rack.
Gregory holds the price tag up. "If my mother saw this, she'd have a heart attack," he mutters. Hadley isn't sure if he was meant to be heard or not.
"Let me see," Hadley says.
Gregory shows him. Hadley winces. Even to Hadley, it looks too overpriced.
"Jesus," says Hadley. "You're not going to buy this, are you?"
Gregory looks relieved. "I'm not going to buy it." He puts the shirt back on the rack. "Christ, you could feed a village in India with that price."
Hadley is surprised into a laugh.
Sebastian wanders over toward them, a leather jacket slung over his shoulders and a smolder on his face. "How do I look?" he asks, and strikes a pose.
"Knockoff James Dean," says Gregory.
"The punk version of the Grinch," says Hadley.
"Fuck you both," says Sebastian, cheerily, and wanders off.
A customer strides in—a middle aged woman in a business suit—and Hadley and Gregory glance at her. She gives them a quick once-over, and purses her lips in apparent disapproval. Gregory and Hadley look away. So does she.
Except, not quite. She continues staring at Hadley in a way that makes his skin crawl. It's an echo of the man in the diner, in which she looks at Hadley like she wants to beat the shit out of him. Her heavily-lined face goes red, and as her scowl grows deeper, Hadley's reminded of bulls pawing at the ground and driving their horns into unsuspecting targets.
Only that the bull in question is a woman who seemingly gets angrier the longer she keeps her eyes on Hadley. And the unsuspecting target is Hadley.
"Is something wrong?" Gregory asks.
Hadley turns to look at him, says, "Nothing," and turns to look at the woman again.
She's gone.
The boy's words come ringing back to him, clear as day: You're cursed.
Hadley knows now what he'd say to him, if he had the chance, if his tongue hadn't been so confused about what to say next. He'd say, no, I'm not. He'd say, as if the reason strangers look at me funny is because I'm fucking cursed. Don't make me laugh.
As if.
"Greg," says Hadley, pretending to look at a paisley shirt, "what would you do if someone told you that you were cursed?"
