Chapter 49
BENJAMIN
We’re all in the stern—Dr. C seated with his hand on the tiller, Lenora standing and pointing to a lidded bench.
“Are the life jackets in there?” she asks.
He gestures for her to lift the lid and take a look—I know he’s just bullshitting—and I use the diversion to sit down on the opposite bench, pull the pack of cards out of my pocket, and fling them into the water behind me.
“Oh, shit!”
Dr. C and Lenora look up in time to see a splash.
“Nooo,” she says, long and low.
“I was getting ready to take your photo,” I say. “It just slipped out of my hand.”
Her face crumples. “No!”
She hurries over to my side of the stern, looking down into the water. Behind her, Dr. C smirks approvingly. I look away, because I can’t see his face anymore without imagining how it would feel to put a finger in the smirky side of his mouth and pull hard, like he’s a fish caught on a line.
Lenora spins around, hands on her cheeks. “I just got that phone.”
“Don’t worry, dear,” Dr. C says. “We’ll replace it.
” He touches her knee. My face feels hot.
Time warps. His fingers on her knee, squeezing in slow motion.
His blink, slower yet. Her startle reflex, his eyes opening again, his grin spreading.
Slow, slow, slow. Then just as my hatred is cresting like a wave, everything returns to normal speed.
Lenora looks at me, smiling cautiously. I know what she’s doing. Trying to make me feel less bad. Even though I’m the jackass who dropped her phone, supposedly.
I can’t bring myself to smile back. I just keep staring, watching her expression change. Another wince, as if something is hurting her.
“Are you feeling seasick?” Dr. C asks, sliding even closer, arm around her shoulder. “You should go inside. Try resting for a bit.”
The sails are down. Dr. C pulled them in when the wind died. Now we’re in choppy seas, wallowing in the stifling heat, the fancy sailboat about as elegant as a hippo, the outboard motor glug-glugging along, gassy smell in the hot still air.
“No,” she says, “that’ll make it worse.”
She cradles her forehead in her hand, face pinched.
Her orange bikini top pooches forward in that position, so she has more cleavage.
Her belly has three creases only because she’s folded over, too sick to be self-conscious, and that makes me like her more than I’ve liked her since she boarded the boat, because she’s not showing off and trying to pose or be pretty, she’s just trying to get comfortable. “My stomach hurts. I think I need air.”
Dr. C pulls hard on the long tiller and the sailboat leans into the waves, forcing Lenora to push back into her seat, bracing herself, head up, bare legs extended out in front of her to maintain stability. I feel tired, too, and queasy, but I had only a sip of the lemonade. She had two cups.
“Take her inside,” Dr. C says firmly, fussing with the tiller again, slipping it into a locking gadget that keeps us moving straight even after he lets go.
“She doesn’t want to.”
He fake smiles, all his teeth showing. “We need her to be safe. The waves are picking up.”
“You’ve been saying that all day.”
He frowns. “If you both go inside, you can help her find the life jacket she’s been looking for.”
“Good idea,” Lenora says, groggy.
She tries to get up but manages only a half crouch before stumbling forward. I leap up in time to grab her arm before she falls. With one free hand she reaches toward the cabin doorway, insistent now.
“I thought you wanted fresh air,” I say, tugging her away from the cabin.
“I wanna . . . I need . . .” She pulls away from my grip and rushes to the side of the cockpit, vomiting over the side. “Oh.” A few seconds of recovery, and she vomits again. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, apologizing. “I’m so sorry.”
Dr. C points to a streak of vomit inches from his foot. He glares at me. “Clean that up.”
“I’ll get it,” says Lenora, eyes half closed, struggling against another rising tide of discomfort.
Dr. C stabs the air with a finger. “I changed my mind. Stay here. I don’t want you vomiting inside. Dennen will go get a rag.”
She ignores him. “Sorry. I need to lie down.” She stumbles toward the cabin doorway, gripping the edges with both hands.
Lenora trips as she enters, landing hard on the inner cabin floor, just barely missing the edge of the table. When she moans, I lock eyes with Dr. C, trying to understand. What is the least I can do to please him, so that he’ll sail back to the marina?
For all his talk of “finding my extra,” he’s never put it into words, exactly what he wants me to do, other than not get caught.
When I asked him about Christopher Weber the last time, yesterday, he ranted again about Weber’s mistakes.
Then he started talking about all the favors he’d already done for me, like planting the pills in Weber’s car, pills like my mom’s, but not exactly my mom’s, after he drove Weber off the road.
That way, when the toxicology from Izzy ever came back, they’d just trace the clonidine back to Weber.
He’s going to be holding that over my head forever.
Half of my time is spent covering for you boys, he said, like a martyr.
But he also seemed pleased. For once, I felt like I was getting him, because he’s like guys I’ve met before.
The whiny overworked teacher. The underappreciated coach.
The guy who’s just trying to teach you lessons for your own good.
Lessons Dr. C never got. Look at my marriage.
If he’d known what he knows now, he wouldn’t have put up with his wife as long as he did.
Women cost a lot, he reminded me sternly, but they cost the most when you don’t handle them right from the beginning. Disposal is 90 percent of the problem.
Which is why, he keeps telling me now, this sailing plan was so much better than his original plan, taking that Veronica girl from the sports bar and locking her up in a room, just because I said she was hot after seeing her photo on my mom’s phone.
I never should have told him that. Never should have showed him Veronica’s photo.
He kidnapped her for me! I never asked him to do that.
I had no idea he was going to. But he didn’t blame me for that one.
He admitted it was a weak plan, since I wasn’t involved from the start.
Kittens must catch their own mice. Fucking weirdo.
“I think we should sail back,” I say, now that Lenora is in the cabin and can’t hear us talking over the wind and the rough water. “If I do anything, she’ll tell.”
“She won’t. You’re not going to find an opportunity like this again. No one knows where she is. No one saw us leave with her.” He gestures in a circle. “And when you’re done, the next step is easy.”
I feel stupid. For thinking he just wanted me to have sex with her.
I was so nervous about that part I couldn’t see past it, and part of me thought she might even want to.
It was a remote possibility, anyway. I never planned to let Dr. C watch.
That’s gross. And even if Lenora and I only fooled around a little, I knew I could tell him lies. He approves of lies.
“We can bring her back. She won’t remember.
She’s too drunk,” I say, trying to sound confident, even if I’m not feeling it.
Instead, I’m feeling the way I get at school when I’m in a class and I hear people behind my desk, whispering about me.
I’m feeling the way I get at night when I can’t sleep, and I just need to walk.
I just want to go. Leave. Before I do something I’ll regret.
“No, she’s not going to remember, Dennen. That’s the point.”
“But I don’t want this.”
“But you do,” he says. “And if you do it on your own terms, you’re going to get too excited and fuck it up. It’s like losing your virginity.”
I would be losing my virginity, but that’s not what he means, because he seems to care less about the sex part than what comes after.
He shows his white teeth again. It’s not even a smile. It’s a pretend smile, and I know he’s stressed, unless that’s just how he shows his excitement. His disgusting appetite for whatever this is—being in control of her but also me. Making us do things so he can watch and play teacher.
More quietly, he whispers my real name. “Benjamin. Get the first time out of the way. Trust me. First times are tricky. Even my first time was. You’ll enjoy it more after that.”
I grab for the small serrated knife in my pocket and I lunge forward, knee on the cockpit bench, sharp point against the hot sun-reddened skin of his neck. He leans away from me but I just press harder.
“Well, this is a surprise,” he whispers.
“Don’t move.”
His left hand drops limply into his lap. His body untenses. Now his mouth is at my cheek, our breath mixing. I don’t like being this close to him. His smell makes me sick.
Calmly he says, “And what do we do now, Benjamin? You’ve ruined my shirt.”
I push the tip in and hear him sigh, like it doesn’t even hurt, and my hand starts to cramp from the pressure even as I feel wetness dripping down my forearm.
“You wouldn’t even know how to get this sailboat back to land,” he says quietly.
“I’d figure it out.”
“With no one to teach you?”
Everything is a boring lesson with him. The Asylum Lighthouse and how many people were mistreated there. This boat and how it shows you can do what you want and get what’s coming to you—boats and cars and girls. If he’s so happy and so popular, why does he need me?
“I don’t want you to teach me,” I tell him.
“But you need me to. You’re friendless and fatherless. Your future is bleak, and it would have been even bleaker if I hadn’t covered for your stupid mistake giving Izzy those pills.”
“Stop talking!” I say, pushing the tip of the blade in, just a little more.
When he swallows hard, I feel his Adam’s apple move. His pulse beats against the damp side of my hand. I like it, feeling his blood and heart in my hands, the softness of his neck. One big push and he’d stop talking, finally. That would feel good.
He asks, “You know what Lenora asked me, about you, just before we got on the boat?”
I move my left forearm against his chest, finding a better position for pushing him into the hard backrest of the cockpit bench, cutting off some of his air, so he has to fight for each word.
“She asked if you were autistic. Isn’t that cute? In just a few minutes she knew you were different. They’ll always know, Benjamin. They won’t get the right diagnosis, but they’ll know there’s something wrong.”
“I’m not what you think I am.”
“So you’re the better diagnostician now. You’re not like me, after all.”
“I can’t be. Because I don’t want the things you want.”
His voice sounds shaky but his smile looks real. “You’re starting to get a taste.”
I do want it. The thing I didn’t want with Lenora, but with him—absolutely. Maybe that is my extra. For me, it’s not about girls. It’s about something else. The ultimate fuck you to anyone who just keeps talking and talking and talking.
I bring my left forearm higher and harder against his neck.
I envision what will come soon—eyes rolling back, more blood dripping down my arm.
And then I feel a bolt of queasiness, like I’m a kid again at a birthday party and I just ate too much cake.
That dripping blood is something else. Maybe I’d settle for temporary silence.
If only he’d just pass out, I wouldn’t have to make him bleed more.
Then we could tie him up. That thought eases the queasiness.
I’m up on my knees, trying to find a better position for cutting off Dr. C’s oxygen when a hard kick to the back sends me sprawling.
I’m on the cockpit floor, gasping. Lenora is standing over me. The knife has flown across the cockpit.
“I’m okay,” Dr. C calls out in a thin, shaky voice. “Well done, Lenora.”
I look up at her face, full of fear and disgust. She doesn’t think I’m just some shy kid on the spectrum. She thinks I want to rape her. Kill her. Dump her. Even if I somehow got her safely to land now, she wouldn’t understand. She’d tell everyone.