The Marbury Lens (4 page)

Stella called about my credit card. She gave me cash—she always had cash for me—and Conner and I had dinner at a brew pub that served pizza and burgers. I started to feel better, I guess, but couldn’t stop myself feeling empty. Like something had been taken out of me and now there was nothing there.

The center of the universe.

While we sat there in the pub, I found myself staring off, past Conner, and images of what had happened to me replayed, so unreal. And Conner caught it happening and said, “Snap out of it, Jack. You sure you don’t want to tell anyone about it?”

We hung out at the mall until it closed, at ten; and I bought some more clothes and shoes, but they didn’t really make up for what Freddie Horvath had taken from me. I kept telling myself to stop thinking about it. I kept telling myself, but I couldn’t do it.

And as Conner was taking me back home, we drove past Java and Jazz. I saw Freddie’s convertible Mercedes parked in an alleyway on the side, between the coffee place and the high chain-link fence around the basketball courts in Steckel Park.

I had a feeling there was some reason for Conner coming this way; he kept looking over at me as he got us closer to the park. And when we finally drove by Java and Jazz, I said, “The guy who did that to me’s here. That’s his Mercedes right there.”

Conner stopped his pickup right there in the middle of the street and looked where I was pointing. The car behind us nearly ran into us. I heard a squeal of brakes, and as the car swerved around us, middle fingers flared out the windows on both sides.

“Fuck you, too!” Conner said.

“What are you doing?”

“Dude, let’s fuck with him.”

“No.”

But Conner wasn’t listening. I could tell by the look on his face. We’d been best friends since before we started kindergarten, and I could always read that competitive look on Conner Kirk. It said he just wasn’t going to give up until he won the game. He reached down beside his seat and pulled up a knife.

He flicked it open.

I felt suddenly sick again, and Conner said, “Knife versus tires equals unfair fight.”

“Don’t, Conner.”

“Dude. You have to. It’s what you need.” And he added, “Knife versus ragtop Benz equals lambs to the slaughter.”

Conner laughed.

I began to sweat.

“Con. Stop it.”

He turned the headlights off and pulled around behind Freddie’s car.

“Fuck that, Jack. I’ve got a stake in this, too. Nobody fucks with us. Ever.”

He opened his door and left the truck idling.

“Now come on, Jack. It’s time for a little payback.”

My head rushed when I stood beside Conner, looking at that car. And he didn’t waste any time, either, as he raised the knife and plunged it straight through the canvas top of the Mercedes. I kind of jumped, like I could feel the stab, and I heard the ripping sound as Conner shredded open gashes above the passenger side.

“That’s my stuff in there,” I said.

Conner stopped what he was doing.

I could see my clothes through the Mercedes’ window: shorts, socks, the T-shirt I had on at his party, balled up and rumpled on top of the new Vans I’d only worn one time. Conner climbed onto the hood, snaked his arm down through the tattered top and unlocked a door. No alarm. The car must have been thirty years old, at least.

I began to pant when we opened the door. I could tell Conner was scared, too, and I’m sure it was because there was some part of him that didn’t entirely believe everything I’d told him—maybe he was afraid to think those things really happened to regular kids like us—but, seeing my clothes there on the passenger seat brought that whole twisted world into focus.

“Take it back,” Conner said.

It almost made me sick to touch my own clothes and shoes. I opened my wallet. Everything was there, but out of order.

Just like Jack.

When I picked up my clothes, I uncovered a familiar plastic box.

“Look at this, Con,” I whispered.

Inside were a handful of the same zip ties Freddie had used on me. Conner picked two of them up, rolling the thick, glossy black straps with sharp edges between his fingers. The box also contained Freddie’s stun gun, and a blister pack of pills. And there were some capped hypodermic needles and a bottle of clear liquid with its label blacked out by slashes of permanent marker pen.

“Fuck.” Conner sounded like we’d unearthed a tomb. He picked up the stun gun, flicked its switch twice, then tucked it into the pocket on his shorts. “This guy’s sick. Roofies.” He held the pills so they just caught the faint light from over the courts.

“That’s what he put in the water he gave me that first night,” I said.

“And this is probably the shit he shot you up with.” Conner turned the bottle in his fingers.

“Let’s get out of here.”

“I want to see him.”

My heart felt like it would pound its way through my rib cage.

“Con,” I began.

“Just point him out through the window,” he said. “I need to see him.”

“I’m scared.”

“I know. That’s why I want you to do it. ’Cause you don’t need to be scared anymore, Jack. Let me have a look at that sonofabitch.”

I didn’t say anything. I walked back to Conner’s truck and got in, holding my clothes on my lap, not looking at them, just staring straight down the alley toward the light of the street. I shut the door and Conner leaned his head in the window.

He sighed. “Okay, Jack. Let’s get out of here, then.”

Then he must have seen the change in my eyes as I stared straight ahead to the street corner.

Freddie Horvath was walking toward us, carrying a cup of coffee, dressed like he was heading to work for another night.

“He’s coming.”

Conner dropped down between the cars, hiding from the man who didn’t seem to notice us sitting there in the dark. I began shaking as Freddie got closer. I was certain he would see me, even if it was next to impossible in the shadows of the alleyway. Still, I couldn’t overcome the thought that he would feel my presence.

“Come on, Conner,” I whispered. My foot twitched. I thought Conner would have already made his way around to the driver’s side, but as soon as Freddie got to his car and paused, seeing what had happened to it, Conner jumped up and shouted something as he pressed the stun gun into Freddie’s neck.

The coffee flew from Freddie’s hand, splashing across the hood of Conner’s truck, and Freddie collapsed, striking his head against the Mercedes’ door handle on his way down.

Conner kneeled. I couldn’t see what he was doing, and I was terrified and just wanted us to get the hell out of there.

“Conner.”

“Come here.”

“Con, let’s go.”

“Come help me.”

I sat there for a minute, wondering what to do. Everything was so quiet and dark. Finally, I put my clothes and shoes down on the floor between my feet.

I opened the door and stepped out into the alley.

Conner had bound Freddie’s hands and feet with double loops of those black zip ties. Freddie’s eyes were closed and there was a jagged cut on his forehead, a small circle of blood on the pavement next to the Mercedes’ front tire. And Conner had opened that package of pills and was using his thumb to force one down into Freddie’s throat.

“Conner, quit it.”

“Too late,” Conner whispered. “He swallowed it. Now come help me.”

“How bad is he hurt?”

“He’s not hurt. He’s just knocked out, I think,” Conner said. He wiped the spit off his thumb onto his T-shirt. “Well, he’s going to be knocked out now, that’s for sure.”

Conner looked at me and smiled. He had that familiar expression of his: He was winning the game. I lowered my eyes to Freddie Horvath. He looked sick and weak, nothing like the monster I kept imagining since I’d gotten away from him.

I kicked him in the ribs as hard as I could. His eyes came open for a brief second, like he was a water balloon and the pressure of my kick nearly popped him open.

“Hell yeah!” Conner said.

I kicked Freddie again and a faint moaning wheeze fluttered from his lips. Then I spit on him.

I was breathing hard, excited and nervous. I looked quickly in both directions, up and down the alley, but I suddenly felt more awake and energized than I had since the night of Conner’s party.

I dropped to my knee, hiding next to Conner between the cars. I whispered, “What do we do with him now?”

“You remember where he lives?”

“I walked home from there. I’d never forget it. He lives out in Dos Vientos Ranch Estates.”

“Jack, we’re going to load him in the bed of the truck and dump his ass at his house. Then let’s call the cops so they can find all the sick shit he’s got going on in there.”

I said, “Do we have to say who we are?”

“No. I told you I wouldn’t tell. This way, he gets caught and we get even.” Conner slid the plastic box away from Freddie and picked it up. Then he took his T-shirt off and began wiping down the places where he’d touched the car. He looked at me quickly, handed me the box, and said, “You drive.”

I turned Conner’s truck around and backed up to where Freddie had collapsed in the alley. Then Conner lowered the tailgate and each of us looped our hands under Freddie’s arms and tugged him up into the bed. I’d never lifted a body before, and Freddie Horvath was so difficult to move. We even dropped him once and he landed square on his face. I think it broke his nose.

Nobody saw.

Nobody knew.

He didn’t care about me, and I didn’t care about him—that’s how it works.

And while we did it, I could hear the music from the coffee place.

After we closed the gate on the truck, I slid in behind the wheel. I left the headlights off and drove out slowly around the back side of Steckel Park and made my way up through the rolling hillsides east of Highway 101 toward the home where Freddie had taken me.

We had our windows down. Conner played music videos on his drop-down DVD screen. The music was loud and wild and it made me feel so free. Conner was pumped, too—he sang along, hanging his arm out the window. I smiled as we drove.

“Fuck yeah,” Conner said. “This is the way we take care of shit.”

I held out my right hand for a high five and Conner squeezed it so hard it hurt, but I wasn’t going to let go. I tested his grip by squeezing back just as tight as I could.

I was glad we did it, convinced in the rush I was feeling that Conner was the greatest friend I would ever have, because I knew he would do anything for me and I wouldn’t even have to ask him.

It wasn’t until I’d turned around to back Conner’s truck into that sick bastard’s driveway in Dos Vientos Ranch that we both noticed the truck bed was empty.

Freddie Horvath was gone.

Conner said, “Oh Jesus Christ.”

We backtracked.

What looked like a pile of old blankets lying discarded on the asphalt in the middle of the darkest stretch of Nacimiento Road turned out to be Freddie Horvath.

I turned the headlights off and pulled Conner’s truck onto the dirt shoulder and parked it beneath a towering black oak tree.

“Oh, fuck,” Conner said. He laughed nervously.

“He must have gotten up somehow,” I said.

“Do you think he’s dead?”

“Shit, Con.”

We sat there in the dark for no more than a minute. Neither of us said anything. Didn’t have to. We were scared, and we both knew it.

I opened my door.

Conner and I crept across the blacktop to where Freddie was lying. His hands and feet were still bound, and he was resting with the side of his face against an orange reflector that was stuck down in the middle of the roadway. His feet were turned around backwards and his dull eye and a black puddle of blood around his head reflected the nighttime stars. He exhaled once, that was all. Then there was nothing.

“Jesus, Conner,” I whispered. “We killed him.”

“We didn’t do anything to him. He did it to himself.”

“What are we going to do with him?”

“Don’t touch him, Jack,” Conner said. “We need to get out of here before someone else comes.”

I stood over Freddie, my mouth hanging open, frozen.

Conner grabbed my shoulder. “Give me my keys and get in the truck.”

And as he pulled away from the spot where we’d left Freddie Horvath’s body, heading back down Nacimiento Road toward Glenbrook—nobody else on the road at all—Conner turned to me and said, “Don’t even think about it, Jack. It wasn’t our fault, so forget it. No one’s ever going to know.”

Except us.

Stella assumed the reason I was so mopey around the house for the next couple days had to do with me being nervous about going on the trip. By Wednesday, the night before I was supposed to leave, the newspapers and television stations began running stories about the doctor who’d been murdered and dumped in the middle of the road; and how the search of his home turned up items that linked him to a fourteen-year-old boy who’d been missing since the summer before. They suspected there were others, too, but I already knew that.

Conner kind of gloated over it. Even though he was every bit as scared as I was that we might end up in trouble over what we did, he whispered to me how we were actually heroes for ending the career of one sick bastard. It scared me to think about it, though, because I felt like a hunted animal, so I just begged him not to talk about it anymore.

But I didn’t sleep at all for those next three nights after what we did to Freddie Horvath; so I must have looked like a walking dead kid Thursday morning when Conner and my grandparents drove me up to San Francisco Airport. The whole ride there, I felt so torn: I didn’t really want to go, but I sure as hell didn’t want to stay anywhere near the place where Conner and I had accidentally killed someone. Even if that someone was a murderer himself.

Stella and Wynn asked me to wait with them before leaving for my departure gate.

“Let’s find a place to get some coffee,” Stella said.

“I want to try to sleep on the plane.” It was my way of trying to push them all away from me, like they were holding me back from falling off a cliff and I wanted them to just let go.

“Coffee sounds good,” Wynn said.

I pulled out my cell phone to check the time.

Two hours to go.

“I need to go to the bathroom first,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

“I’ll go with you,” Conner offered.

I sighed. “Whatever.”

I left my small black carry-on at Stella’s feet, and Conner and Ipushed our way through the hundreds of anonymous people who were coming and going. And I felt like every one of them was watching us, like they knew what we’d done.

“I’m going to be sick.” I leaned over the sink and splashed cold water on my face.

Conner stood behind and watched me in the mirror.

“It’s going to be okay, Jack. The more distance and time we put between us and Monday night…” His voice trailed off. “We’re going to be okay. I know it.”

I shrugged and pulled some paper towels from the steel dispenser on the wall.

I didn’t want to look at my friend, and he could tell. Conner grabbed my shoulders and shook me a little.

“Look. Let’s try and have the greatest time we can when I get over there with you. Let’s try, Jack. I’ll be there in just a few days.”

“I don’t know if I can do this, Con. I can’t sleep thinking about it.”

We didn’t notice, but a man with a gray jacket folded over one arm had come out from a stall and just stood there, silently watching us. Conner looked at me, then at the man, and he smiled at me and said, “Yeah? So, we’re gay. Do you have a problem with that, creep?”

The man glanced down at the floor, embarrassed, and hurried away.

I gave Conner a push.

“You’re messed up.”

Conner laughed. “You can’t honestly say that wasn’t funny, Jack. Did you see how that guy was looking at us?”

I tried to smile back at him.

I balled up a wad of soggy towels and tossed them into the metal bin on the way out to find Wynn and Stella.

I’ve never walked on a frozen lake. I can only imagine what it would feel like—wondering if the next time I plant my foot would bring me plunging down between knife-sharp, icy edges into a smothering black, to fight against the cold, the dark, straining to find a way back to the surface so I could take another doubtful step forward.

Because I felt exactly like that when I walked away from Conner and my grandparents to pass through the first checkpoint on my way to the plane.

No turning back.

Even the crew on the plane who greeted me as I entered, holding my ticket in a shaking hand, looked like they knew who I was, as though they had whispered to one another while I made my way down the boarding chute, “Look, here’s the kid who killed Dr. Horvath.”

I felt myself turning pale.

I stowed my bag beneath the seat and wedged a pillow between my shoulder and the foggy plastic window. I looked out at the California sky, caught in the between-worlds nowhere of an airplane that would take me into a different day.

Then the man who had been watching me and Conner in the restroom said hello, stuffed his jacket in the overhead bin, and took the seat right next to me.

It was going to be like this, wasn’t it?

I tried telling myself that it was crazy to think that everyone else in the world knew, they were all following and watching me. I felt myself struggling to catch my breath; I was sweating and felt sick again.

“Traveling by yourself?” he said.

I turned my eyes toward him, trying to give him a look that said leave me alone. He smelled like a lavatory soap dispenser and looked like any other middle-aged, plastic-mannequin business guy who you’d see on an airplane.

“Going to London all alone?” he persisted.

“I’m on my way to school. In Kent.” My voice sounded detached, like someone else was answering for me.

“Oh,” he said. “Your friend’s not coming along?”

“Next Monday.”

Go away.

I looked around, hoping for an empty seat there in business class. All of them were taken. I pretended I was trying to sleep.

“Well, you guys are going to have a lot of fun.”

Something about the way he’d said it made me start to feel angry. I knew what he was getting at.

He went on, “I have an office in London. If it’s your first time there, I’d be happy to show you around to all the exciting spots this weekend.” He stuck his hand out. “My name’s Gary.”

I didn’t shake his hand.

He leaned closer, half-whispered, “I know the best clubs. You know what I mean.”

I whispered back, “Leave me the fuck alone.” I plugged my headphones into my cell phone, turned away from
Gary
, and shut my eyes.

It was going to be a long flight.

I woke up four hours later when the flight attendant asked me what I wanted for dinner. Gary had his hand under my blanket, rubbing my leg. He’d been trying to unbutton my fly.

And I thought,
Why is this happening to me?
I wasn’t sure what the attendant had asked me, so I just said a quick yes, and then I lowered my tray, looked Gary straight in the face, and said clearly enough for the closest ten people to hear: “If you don’t get your goddamned hand off my crotch, I’ll fucking kill you.”

Gary jerked his hand out and turned his eyes forward, pretending he didn’t know anything about what was going on. The stewardess looked worried, maybe a little scared. She backed away from her cart without serving either of us any food, and went to the front of the cabin, taking a quick look through the curtain that separated us from first class.

Gary cleared his throat and fidgeted nervously with his tray.

If I could have jumped out the window, I would have done it. I tried thinking about Conner, about meeting him in a few days, about having fun again; but I kept running myself back to Freddie’s house, tied to that bed—and then seeing him all twisted up in the middle of the road.

Panic.

I felt like I was going to black out, do something really crazy. I remember shrinking back into the corner of my seat, wondering why the hell I’d gotten on this goddamned plane in the first place, convinced I would never make it through the next two weeks. Gary pushed the serving cart up the aisle and retreated behind me to the toilet. I watched the red
OCCUPIED
sign light up above the bulkhead.

The flight attendant came back. Her eyes were soft and focused on me.

“Sweetie, there’s an empty seat up in first class,” she said. “Let’s grab your things and you come up there with me. Would that be okay?”

I nodded.

“Okay.”

For the entire flight, it felt like I was still on those drugs Freddie gave me. I didn’t watch the movies; and slept a couple of times through the shortened night and into the next morning.

I never dreamed.

I never saw Gary again, either. The flight crew managed to get me off the airplane ahead of everyone else and I raced down the endless corridors at Heathrow so I could disappear into the masses of people waiting to get passport stamps in the enormous arrivals hall.

And after I’d picked up my backpack, I had to walk through the customs area, a gauntlet of eyes where uniformed men watched me, maybe looking for the telltale indication that something wasn’t right about this pale kid showing up all alone. And how could they miss it? I felt so lost, like nothing made sense, so I kept my eyes fixed on a yellow sign with an arrow on it that said
WAY OUT TO TRAINS
, and concentrated on making my feet move toward it, afraid to look back, afraid to stop.

God
, I felt so sick.

This is when it started falling apart.

I know that now.