Pressure (10 page)

I lay in bed, eyes closed but not asleep, enjoying the movie in my mind.

Peter, Jeremy, and I kicked the box out from underneath Darren, shattering the wood. As he dropped, we heard the satisfying
crack
of his neck breaking.

He dangled from the noose, slowly turning in circles, the rope getting tighter and tighter around his dead flesh.

His head fell to the ground, followed by his body. We left his body alone, but kicked his head around until it was unrecognizable.

No, rewind…

We kicked his still-living, screaming head around until it was unrecognizable. He begged us to stop, but we laughed and laughed. When he tried to bite us, we kicked out all of his teeth.

I opened my eyes.

In my mind, I watched men in immaculate white suits strap Jeremy to a machine. They gave him shots with an oversize needle to keep him calm, and then pulled a lever. His body spasmed, drool gushing from his mouth, blood trickling from his eye sockets.

No, nothing like that would happen to him. You couldn’t get in that much trouble for beating up another kid.

Bashing him bloody with a textbook…

Jeremy didn’t even get the pleasure of the act that he got blamed for.

What did Darren have planned for me?

Nothing.

I was vigilant those last couple of weeks of school. Vigilant to the point of paranoia. But Darren didn’t try anything. He returned to classes, face still swollen but healing nicely, but he didn’t even make eye contact. He didn’t look guilty. He looked…satisfied.

The term ended. Because Branford Academy didn’t have a summer session, my parents really had no choice except to pick me up, even if they planned to immediately dump me someplace else. My mom hugged me and said that she missed me, and while her words weren’t convincing even to a thirteen-year-old, I told myself that on some level, they were true.

We loaded up the car. My dad asked me some superficial questions about life at Branford Academy, and I gave some superficial answers. I really didn’t want to talk about it.

As I ran back upstairs for one last check to make sure I hadn’t left anything behind, I saw Darren standing by my door.

“You’re too late,” I said. “You can’t do anything to me now.”

“I wasn’t going to. But you were pretty scared that I was, weren’t you?”

“No.”

“Don’t lie to me.” Darren smiled. “I bet you spent every day scared that I was gonna get you.”

“If you could get me, you would’ve done it. You wouldn’t have gone after Jeremy.”

“I liked you better than Jeremy.”

“Well, I hate you.”

Darren shrugged. “Doesn’t bother me. You coming back to Branford?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know where I’m going.”

“Did you beg your mom not to make you come back?”

“No.”

“I bet you did.”

“You bet wrong.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I’ll see you around. Have a good life.”

He chuckled, turned around, and started to walk away.

“Hey, Darren!”

He glanced back. “Yeah?”

“Did you kill Peter’s dog?”

“Nope. I found him that way. But I did finally kill one of those fuckin’birds.”

He walked away, whistling cheerfully but tunelessly through his swollen lips.

There were dead bodies everywhere.

It was the tackiest decorating scheme I’d ever seen. This was my first year of college, and while I fully expected cinder block shelving, pizza box tables, and beer can wallpaper, I really hadn’t expected to walk into my dorm room and discover a love shrine to serial killers and their prey.

I tossed my garbage bag of clothing on the unclaimed bed and did a quick survey of the room. Virtually every square inch of my roommate’s half of the wall space was covered with graphic photographs and newspaper clippings on the subject. This did
not
seem conducive to an effective study environment.

I’d only spoken to Will, my randomly selected roommate, for a few minutes on the phone before arriving at Shadle University. We’d discussed who would bring the TV, who would bring the stereo, and who would bring the contraband microwave, but the joys of maiming human beings had never entered into the conversation.

Oh well. College was supposed to be all about new experiences, right?

I scratched my chin and looked at one of the photographs more closely. Good Lord, was that a
can opener
protruding from her—?

“Cool, huh?” asked the tall, lanky guy who entered the room. He had blond hair that was cut just above the shoulder and was handsome in sort of a goofball stand-up comedian sort of way. He wore a silver earring shaped like an outhouse, and a T-shirt that depicted a skull about to be hit by a cream pie.

“Uh, yeah. Way cool.”

He stuck out his hand. “I’m Will. Either you’re Alex or a trespasser that I’ll need to shoot.”

“Yep, it’s Alex.”

“Glad to meet you,” he said, shaking my hand. “I hope you don’t mind that I picked this side of the room, but I got here yesterday and didn’t have a whole lot to do.”

“No, no, that’s okay,” I said. I knew that the subject of gory photographs and my objection to having them wallpapering our living space would have to come up sooner or later, but I didn’t want to start things off on a bad note.

“So what are you majoring in?” I asked.

“Criminal psychology.”

“Big surprise.”

“With a minor in cutlery.”

I stared at him.

“That was a joke,” he explained.

“Ah.”

“Actually, I’m not truly a criminal psychology major, it’s just regular psychology, but the criminal mind is my main interest. What about you?”

“Not really into the criminal mind, to be honest.”

“No, your major.”

“Architecture, I think.”

“Hey, cool.”

“I haven’t officially declared a major, but I figured I’d try a few basic classes and see how I like it.”

“Good plan, good plan.”

I cleared my throat. “So how long have you been interested in…you know, people who passed away?”

Will considered that for a moment. “Since forever, I guess. I know all of them. Jack the Ripper, Jeffrey Dahmer…everyone. Here, test me. Name one at random and I’ll give you the stats.”

“That’s all right, I believe you.”

“No, you’ve gotta do it. Pick one. Any one.”

“I’m blanking right now.”

“You can do it. I have faith in you.”

“Fine. Uh, the Boston Strangler.”

“Too easy. Albert De Salvo. Thirteen victims, all women, between June 1962 and January 1964. They were all sexually assaulted and then strangled. He usually posed as a—”

“So what non-death-related hobbies do you have?” I asked.

“Computer games. The gory ones, at least. I do like cartoons. Hey, these pictures aren’t going to bug you, are they? I can tone it down if you want.”

“Nah, that’s okay,” I said, giving myself a mental kick in the ass as soon as the words escaped from my mouth.

“Cool. Have you been set free yet?”

“Excuse me?”

“Did your parents leave yet?”

“I drove myself here.”

“Nice. It took me three hours to get rid of my mom yesterday. I thought I was going to have to fake a demonic possession to make her leave. So you have a car?”

“Yeah. Not a
good
car, but a car.”

“Excellent. Have you eaten?”

“Right before I got here.”

“Good plan, good plan. Get in that one last meal before you have to face the cafeterias. But don’t worry, one of our neighbors is premed, so if you need a stomach transplant he’ll be around.”

“I heard the food here was pretty good.”

“Yeah, the fish sticks I had last night were decent. I just like being cynical.”

“Okay. Well. I think I’m gonna head over to the campus bookstore. Did you already get your books for the semester?”

Will shook his head. “I’m gonna hold off, though, in case I have to drop any of my classes after the first day.”

Good,
I thought. “All right. Nice meeting you. I’ll be…uh, back.”

Okay, so I had a weird, morbid, fairly annoying roommate. I could live with that. I was in
college,
damn it, and I was going to have the time of my life!

I hadn’t returned to Branford Academy after that miserable year. Instead, my parents had sent me to Twin Streams Academy, which had no nearby streams and which was pretty much the same as Branford save for the lack of a psychotic little creep like Darren. It sucked but I got through it.

I moved back in with my parents during my high school years. I worked evenings at a movie theater and weekends as a busboy at a restaurant, and while at home made myself as invisible as possible. My mother and father didn’t seem to mind having me around when I didn’t exist.

Though my grades were decent but not spectacular, I relentlessly pursued college scholarships. And I got them. I ended up with a full ride at Shadle University, an Arizona college that was less than an hour from Branford Academy. One weekend I thought I might make a road trip to my old school and fling a shitload of eggs at whatever campus windows I could find.

But I was here. I was completely on my own. Completely free. Though I was going to work hard and study like an absolute maniac, I was also going to have
fun.
This was my opportunity to reinvent my life, and gosh darn it all to heck, I was going to take advantage of it.

I fell in love for the fourth time, right there in the bookstore line.

I don’t mean that I fell in love four times while standing in line, although the length of that particular line would not have made this entirely out of the question. Rather, it was the fourth time in my life that I’d fallen in love.

The first was the day after I turned fifteen. She was sitting on the edge of an indoor fountain in a mall, licking an ice cream cone. Blonde hair, blue eyes, brown lips (from the chocolate). The most beautiful girl I’d ever seen in my life. I vowed that no matter what, I would work up the courage to walk over there and talk to her.

I did not work up the courage to walk over there and talk to her.

I was still fifteen the second time I fell in love. This time it was with Mrs. Vierling, my biology teacher. The spark of love first hit me when Mrs. Vierling consoled Wendy Chandler, who was crying over the dead froggies, and it was a love that sustained throughout the rest of the school year. Since Mrs. Vierling was twenty years my senior, married, and bound by both moral and legal restrictions that prevented her from dating me, it was doomed to be an unrequited love. But I harbored a fantasy that she was secretly into skinny fifteen-year-olds, and that if we’d ever found ourselves trapped in a closet together, she would have ripped off my clothes and taken me roughly.

We did not find ourselves trapped in a closet together.

The third time I fell in love I was seventeen, and so was the object of my affection. Margaret. A redhead. Absolutely gorgeous. We had three classes together, and my time spent gazing at her contributed to me answering more than one question from the teacher with “Huh?”

I confessed my love to my friend Bryan. He shared this news with lots of people. Lots of people shared this news with Margaret. Margaret, whose taste in men did not lean toward those with large purple birthmarks on their chin, was humiliated. She told me to leave her the hell alone (which I guess she meant in a preemptive way, since I’d never even spoken to her). Lots of people witnessed this event. Most of them seemed to enjoy it.

The fourth time literally took my breath away.

Something struck me in the gut so hard that I let out an
ooomph
, pronouncing it exactly that way. Both hands went to my stomach as I struggled not to double over and puke.

Then I stared into the wide, horrified eyes of the girl who’d accidentally bashed her duffel bag into me and was immediately entranced. I was entranced, suffering from physical agony, and embarrassed because the other students in line were staring at me, all at the same time. It was quite a sensation.

“Oh my God! I’m so sorry!” The girl lowered her duffel bag and put her hand on my gut. “Did I hurt you?”

I shook my head. Had she not hurt me so badly, I might have managed a verbal response.

She pushed up her thick glasses. She had long blonde hair that was pulled back, was a couple of inches shorter than me, was thin but not waifish, and was positively adorable. “I’m sorry…I wasn’t paying any attention to where I was going. I’m such a klutz. Are you sure you’re okay?”

I nodded, still struggling to keep my lunch from making a cameo appearance.

She removed her hand from my stomach. “Okay, well, I’m really sorry about that. I’ll just go slink off now.” She gave me a sheepish smile, the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen in my entire life, and quickly walked away.

I watched her go, regretting that I hadn’t thanked her. It took me another fifteen minutes of standing in line to realize that regretting that I hadn’t thanked her for bashing my gut was really, really stupid.

Who was she? What was her name? What was in the duffel bag? Why had she been so distracted that she didn’t see the long line of students? What was her major? How long had she worn glasses? Where was she born? When did she lose her first tooth? Was she into skinny guys? Did she have any tattoos?

I finally was able to pay for my books. Destitute, I left the campus bookstore and started to head back to my dorm.

“Hey!” somebody called after me. A guy.

I turned around. A dark-haired guy I didn’t recognize hurried over to me. “I knew it!” he said with delight. “I’d recognize that birthmark anywhere!”

My hand instinctively went to my chin. Who in the world was…?

“Darren?” I asked.

The guy grinned. “Yep. I
thought
that was you in line. I saw that girl walk right into you. So how’ve you been?”

I shrugged. My stomachache was returning and I really just wanted to turn and walk away.

“I got here a couple of days ago. They really screw you over with those book prices, don’t they? And when we try to sell them back we’ll get about a quarter of what we paid. Good racket they’ve got going here.”

“Yeah,” I said.

Darren looked at me carefully. I noticed that he’d acquired some serious muscle tone since our Branford Academy days, which was easily visible through the white Shadle University T-shirt he was wearing. His hair was still shoulder length but stylishly cut, and he’d matured into an extremely handsome guy. Model material, easily. I was still a dork and it wasn’t fair.

Darren frowned as he studied me, but then he let out an incredulous laugh. “Holy shit, you’re still upset, aren’t you?”

I shrugged.

“I can’t believe it! Dude, we were just kids! You can’t hold a grudge against me for that! C’mon, forget the past. This is the present, Alex!”

I looked him in the eye. “You ruined my friends’lives.”

Darren’s smile faded. “Okay, okay, I’m not going to pretend that I wasn’t a fucked-up little kid. But I didn’t ruin anybody’s lives. You don’t get your life ruined when you’re twelve. I was a bully, what can I say?”

Not a bully; a psychopath …

“Look, I really need to get back to my room.”

Darren shook his head. “No you don’t. C’mon, this is no way to act. Let’s leave all that crazy shit in the past. You were always a cool guy, Alex.”

“And you mutilated Peter’s dog.”

“I was twelve! There’s a statute of limitations, you know. When I was twelve I also farted in a movie theater. It was the nastiest, smelliest, wettest fart you can imagine, and the smell probably soaked into everybody’s popcorn and ruined the movie, but I’m sure that by now they’ve all gotten over it because I was
twelve.
”

“Maybe.”

“Are you saying that people are still upset over that fart? Because if they are, I’ll apologize to them personally. I’ll buy the plane tickets and I’ll walk up to their front door and say, ‘Hey, I was the kid in the third row center who’d just eaten the burrito, and from the bottom of my heart I apologize for that foul, lingering odor.’”

I couldn’t hold back the grin. Darren extended his hand. “C’mon, screw the past.”

I hesitated for a second, but then nodded and shook his hand. “All right.”

“Cool! So let me buy you lunch.”

“I just ate.”

“Eat more.”

“I’ve got a lot of stuff to do.”

“Okay, so, you’re not really screwing the past, are you? You can’t do this to me. You can’t still think of me as that weirdo. I had issues. So did you. So did everybody. C’mon, we’ll hang out, we’ll have fun, I’ll get you laid.”

I chuckled. “Oh, gee, how can I pass that up?”

“You can’t. C’mon, let’s go.”

As we walked to the student parking lot, I took out three beanbags and began to juggle. I’d learned to juggle in high school and when I got nervous, which was often, it helped me relax. Juggling now was not helping me relax. I’d been all psyched for the college experience, and it was already sullied because I didn’t have the balls to just tell Darren to go away and find some other freshman to torment.

“Damn, you’re good,” said Darren. He seemed genuinely impressed.

“Thanks.”

“Can you juggle more than three?”

I nodded. “I can juggle five of them without messing up, and I can do up to seven messing up a lot.”

“Can you juggle flaming torches or running chain saws?”