The most important thing to understand about spending your whole life in mortal fear of being in Big Trouble is that it’s not an irrational phobia—Abbott was constantly getting caught. The rough-edged kids could indulge their darkest desires because they had instincts for getting away with it; they could lie and charm and intimidate. The good kids didn’t even have dark desires that needed indulging; they glided through a world that fit them like a glove, wanting for themselves nothing beyond what polite society wanted them to want. It was the ones like Abbott who were stuck in the middle,
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