Perfect Ten
Preston Darling
I could still hear her soft sobs echoing in my head as I hurried away across the lawn, almost running. If I stayed, she would know. She’d know who I was, and what I’d done.
What I’d taken.
I couldn’t even remember why it was so important to be the first. Now, it felt more like a curse.
I made it to Devlin’s car and slipped inside.
Then I just sat there, my breathing coming in a strange, irregular pattern.
My chest tightened, and the sensation spread, rising up to the back of my throat, which began to ache, as if a hand was wrapped around it, choking the air out of me.
My nose burned like someone had just punched it.
My eyes ached and burned at the same time, and suddenly, hot tears spilled out of them.
At least, I thought I was crying. I didn’t remember ever doing it before, so I couldn’t be sure. Dad said men couldn’t cry.
The bloody cock between my legs said I was a man, but the tears said I wasn’t.
The fit only lasted a few minutes. Then, I started the car and drove to Devlin’s, then home. I took a long shower and prayed I’d wake up to find it was all a dream.
In the morning, Mom had her famous smiley face pancakes on the table for us.
“You were out late last night,” she said, setting the plates in front of us.
“Yeah,” I muttered, not looking up from my food.
“Don’t speak to your mother that way,” Dad barked.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, lifting my face and forcing a smile.
Mom smiled back. For years I’d never wondered if her smiles were forced, but now I knew I’d never seen a genuine smile from her.
Not when Dad was in the room, at least. Sometimes, when he was at work, I’d see her and Lindsey sharing some secret moment, one that never included me.
I was her son, but I was a boy, destined to become the enemy—a man.
After breakfast, Dad asked me to walk outside with him. We went out back to where the gardener was pulling weeds from the otherwise barren garden. We stood by the closed pool, where he wouldn’t overhear.
“How’d it go last night, son?” Dad asked.
“Fine, sir.”
“Did you take her virginity?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good,” he said, beaming at me like I’d won him a state championship.
Suddenly, something bubbled up inside me. “It’s not good,” I snapped. “It was fucking terrible, and she hated it.”
I turned on my heel and stomped toward the house. I didn’t get three steps before he grabbed the back of my neck and threw me down. My head hit the tile, and I saw stars in the blackness behind my lids.
“Don’t you ever disrespect me when I’m talking to you,” Dad snapped.
I sat up, rubbing the lump already forming on the back of my head.
The gardener kept weeding, his eyes glued to the dirt.
He knew better than to stare and lose his job.
Interfering would have cost him more than that.
If you wanted to work again in this town, you learned to keep your mouth shut about what happened behind the Darling facade.
Dad took a seat casually, as if nothing had happened, and gestured lazily to the chaise beside him. I sat obediently.
“Only men and whores enjoy sex,” he said.
“A good, virtuous woman like Dolly, she’ll be tight, and it won’t feel good for her.
But that’s the kind you marry, the kind that’ll do her nightly duty without complaint and give you children to carry on our name.
The other kind is just for practice and a little fun while you’re young. ”
I heard Dolly’s cry of surprise and pain again, and shame crushed tight inside me.
I heard the fake little moans when the prostitute slid that dildo inside her so easy, with no resistance.
I heard the echo of my father’s groan in the next room that came every night, followed by a short silence and then the sound of my mother crying.
I heard the guys in the locker room calling this or that girl a whore; my grandfather pointing at a group of cheerleaders as we left school, saying you could tell they were loose just by looking; Mom telling Lindsey to go put on leggings under her skirt so boys wouldn’t get the wrong idea.
So that’s what it all meant. I was a man now, and I understood.
“I want the good kind,” I said, hearing again the disgust in their voices and remembering my own disgust while watching the whore.
“Of course,” Dad said. “Men don’t marry the other kind.
But you can have your fun with them until you’re ready to settle down.
Don’t be in a hurry. You’re only fourteen.
You got a few years to sow your wild oats—just make sure you don’t get any of these girls in trouble.
The last thing you want is to put a stain on the family name.
You know I don’t like to speak ill of my father, but he did that one too many times. ”
I thought of Grampa Darling and the parade of “exotic” housekeepers and maids that came to Faulkner to tend his estate and its grounds, then disappeared just as quickly as they came.
I thought of Kamlai, and how Mom’s church group gossiped about her and speculated on whether she’d get pregnant right away so she’d get a cut of Grampa’s estate when he inevitably divorced her.
“Is that why you want to change his mind about Devlin and Dolly?” I asked.
“No, son, that’s so you get to be the mayor,” he said. “That’s a step up from even a judge. And I’ll be damned if I let someone else’s son get that position without a fight—even if that man is my brother.”
I nodded. I didn’t care about being mayor. I just wanted Dolly. But if that was the way to get her, I didn’t mind being mayor. If I couldn’t make her feel good, at least I could make her proud. Devlin didn’t deserve everything handed to him anymore.
“Look, I understand how it is, son,” Dad said.
“I remember being your age. For right now, you let me work on changing your grandfather’s mind.
In the meantime, forget about Dolly for a while.
Every boy needs to get out there, get it out of his system so he won’t be tempted to stray once he’s settled down.
That’s what the other kind of woman is good for.
You might even learn a thing or two that’ll make Dolly a little happier next time. ”
I wasn’t interested in anyone else, but if it would help me not be such a worthless fuck-up, I’d get some experience.
The popular guys at school all got lots of girls—none of them stuck with one for long.
And I had to step into that roll next year.
Everything would be different then. Next year was our year.
Devlin was already popular, and that night in the treehouse, he’d given everyone a preview of what the Darling reign would look like at Willow Heights.
We’d been talking about these years since we were in middle school.
We’d waited half our lives for this time to arrive. The Darling reign was about to begin.
In the spring, CJ Rose and Wade Montgomery would graduate, and Colt would join us in high school in August. That year we’d be WHPA’s only sons of the founding fathers, their only members of the Midnight Swans, the school’s secret society.
Willow Heights would be officially ours.
By the time more founding sons arrived, they’d be freshmen and we’d already have established ourselves.
It wasn’t too soon to start building my reputation.
“I’ll get Dolly when I graduate,” I said to Dad. “And she’ll like me then.”
“She’ll get used to it,” Dad said. “You don’t need to worry about whether she likes it.
That’s not your job. Your job is to become mayor, have a few sons who can take over after you, and marry your daughters to men who can give them what all women want—a fancy house they can decorate, well-behaved children, and a life of leisure.
Give that to Dolly, along with fidelity and an example of a godly man, and she can’t ask for more. ”
I thought of my mother’s smile at breakfast, and I wondered if my father had ever noticed it wasn’t genuine, or if he didn’t know because he’d never seen the real thing.
Despite the crying, she never asked for more, though, so Dad must be right.
She had it all—a daughter to dress up like a doll, a son to make her proud on the football field, the prettiest cookies for the bake sale at school, time to volunteer for every church fundraiser, and a house that had once been featured in Arkansas Beautiful magazine.
So I nodded to Dad and said, “Yes, sir.”
*
The next Monday, I got to school early and headed into the café for breakfast. I never seemed to stop eating lately. My parents commented on it at every meal, like it was a personal accomplishment to grow.
“You must be going through a growth spurt,” Dad had said the other day when I asked for seconds. “You’ve got the appetite of a grown man.”
“A few grown men,” Mom had said with an indulgent smile, piling food onto my plate. “Lucky for you, you don’t have to watch your weight like Linds.”
“Lindsey doesn’t need to be watching her weight, either,” Dad said, turning to my sister. “You’re perfect already, sweetheart.”
Lindsey smiled weakly. “Thanks, Daddy.”
“She is lovely, isn’t she?” Mom said, giving Lindsey her most loving smile and tucking her hair behind her ear. “But all the women in our family have to watch their weight to stay that way.”
The two of them tried diets like fun experiments, giggling and raiding the pantry for chia seeds and honey, filling the fruit bowl with exotic varieties I didn’t know how to eat, and yelling at me for accidentally eating something they’d rationed out in the exact proportion they needed for a particular day of the week.
It was like they had their own secret club that included just the two of them.
I was like a big, stupid dog to them—always in the way, talked about fondly when I wasn’t around to take up space on the couch, loved more in idea than in reality.