by Spencer Baum
After Rudy left, Jenna and Seth sat on the couch together and started a two-player game of Wild Stallion Dog Fight. Sunny, who declared herself “bored of this game,” made a show of inviting me to take her upstairs so we could play a different game on the console I kept in my room.
“Sure,” I said.
Leaving Jenna and Seth downstairs on the couch, Sunny and I went up to my room, where she promptly closed and locked the door and pushed me onto my bed.
“Strip,” she ordered. “I have a present I want to give you.”
“A present?” I said, playfully, excitedly.
“Mmm-hmm,” she said. “I want to give you a present for being a good boy, both now and in the future.”
I still think about the things she did to me that night. Every day for years afterwards I’ve thought about the sexual pleasures she gave me that night while my sister was downstairs and my sister’s boyfriend was on his way to his death.
When the sex was done that night, I knew. We never said a word about it—Sunny and I literally never once talked about what I saw her doing to Rudy’s energy drink—but we both knew. Sunny poisoned Jenna’s boyfriend. I knew she did it, she knew that I knew, and we both knew I would never tell a soul.
Because I had already made a deal with the devil and there was no turning back now.
Because I had already snuck out with her in the night and robbed a chemical supply store.
Because I was a horny teenager who was completely under her spell.
Because if I wasn’t properly terrified of Sunny before, I certainly was now.
Sixteenth Entry – April 8. 6:25 pm
I’m in my apartment. Jenna is about to run in the Tetradome. I didn’t want to watch but I couldn’t help myself.
They’re teasing us about the kind of monsters that will come out tonight to kill my sister.
Editor’s Note: Roughly two and a half hours after the timestamp of this final entry, police found Kyle Duvall’s body in his apartment in what medical investigators called suicide by gunshot to the head.
CHAPTER 27
Gabe crawled through the window to enter the apartment.
It was an eerie, depressing place.
A one-bedroom with a small kitchen, a sliding door leading to a back patio, an extinct fireplace behind folding glass panels. Sparsely decorated, the space was an ode to solitude, a practical museum of loneliness.
Or something. Gabe would find the right words to describe the place later, when the memoir was in his hands and the arc of the piece he needed to write was clear.
“Pictures,” he whispered, pulling his phone from his pocket.
Click. A picture of the blood stain on the arm of the couch, a stain that had spilled over onto the carpet.
Click. A picture of the television that was reportedly still on when police found Kyle’s body.
Click, click. A photo of the bullet hole in the near wall, which the police had marked with a Post-It note, then a photo of the spatter stretching across the carpet. Red spots of dried blood from the couch to the wall. This couldn’t be all of it. Someone from the coroner’s office must have cleaned up part of the mess when they took the body.
Click. Click. Click. Clothes strewn across the floor. Junk mail stacked on the ledge in front of the fireplace. Dirty dishes in the sink. How interesting that Kyle chose to go out in this mess. Did he think at all about who would find his body? About how long his corpse might sit in the empty apartment? About what his place would look like when he was found?
About who might find the memoir his sister gave him, and what they would do with it?
The bedroom was even more depressing than the living area. The one and only furnishing in the room, a twin bed, was stuffed in the corner, sheets and a comforter in a pile on top of it. Nothing on the walls. More clothes on the floor. There was no desk, no filing cabinet, no bookcase…
Where did he put the memoir?
Gabe went to the closet. He found T-shirts, underwear, socks, and blue jeans, all of it stuffed on a single shelf. No papers anywhere.
“Where did you put it, Kyle?” he whispered.
He went back to the living room and approached the computer desk. Three drawers, Gabe opened them one at a time. He found two hardback books, a porno magazine, and a manila folder that was full of invoices from Jenna’s lawyers. Nothing that looked like a memoir.
He checked the kitchen. Nothing. Nothing in the entryway either. Back to the living room, where he found himself staring at the bloodstain on the couch.
He thought about the sad young man who had lived here, a man whose entire apartment screamed of deep depression. Barely functional depression. A ratty twin bed to sleep on, a dusty television to watch, a computer to…
Wait a minute.
He approached the computer desk. He found a bunch of accessories but no computer.
There was a wireless keyboard on the computer desk. A printer too. A document scanner. A modem plugged into the wall.
Where was the computer?
Gabe lifted the lid on the document scanner. There was a paper inside, face down.
He picked it up, read the text that was written on it.
Dear Kyle,
The pages below are my attempt at writing a memoir.
What pages? Where were the pages?
Gabe’s eyes went back to the document scanner sitting on the desk.
Think it through. You’re Kyle Duvall. You’ve got this handwritten memoir. You decide to scan the pages. Then what do you do?
He leaned down to look under the desk. He found a small plastic can, beige in color, with a shredding attachment laid on top.
“No,” he whispered.
He removed the shredding attachment from the top of the bin, reached inside, and pulled out a handful of thinly shredded paper.
“Oh, come on,” he moaned.
Was this it? Was this the memoir? A trash can full of shreddings and a scanner with no computer attached?
Could he do something with the shreddings? Somehow put them back together? Didn’t they do that in movies? Teams of children in the third world, carefully placing one shred next to another until the secret message was decoded for the bad guys to read?
The idea was ridiculous.
Gabe stepped away from the desk, turned to survey the room again.
What the hell am I doing here?
Trespassing in a dead man’s apartment. A desolate, ghostly apartment with the stains of a bloody suicide on the floor and a bullet hole in the wall.
And now Gabe was looking at the wall, approaching the wall, touching his finger to the bullet hole…
He saw it in his peripheral vision. The fireplace.
There’s something in the fireplace.
CHAPTER 28
Peanut Butter and Pickles
Excerpted from A Victim of Circumstance: The Memoir of Jenna Duvall
After Rudy came back I found myself with one too many people to love.
Sunny and Rudy were friendly with each other for my sake, but I knew they disliked each other. We all knew. Peanut butter and pickles those two, good on their own, but terrible together.
They each offered me a unique vision of a life well-lived. In the end, I liked Rudy’s vision better.
It’s not that Sunny was wrong in the way she saw the world, or that I disagreed with her. The Redemption Act and The Tetradome Run are indefensible and it is the job of responsible citizens to rise up against them and remove the institution of public execution from the civilized world once and for all.
But the anger I saw in Sunny, especially that spring…
It wasn’t just her. Seth was angry. Kyle was angry. My professors were angry. The whole Blue Brigade was angry. This was the year of Tetradome Season 37, when activists like Stephen Parthos were starting to make waves, when domers like Barbara Lomax and antidomers like Brody Tanhouer toured college campuses and riots broke out wherever they went.
That was the spring when it seemed lik
e America was a long-simmering pot that finally boiled over. In the Blue Brigade we felt that anger more acutely than most. Our meetings morphed from a kind of political philosophy club to a group of rabid activists so enraged we were ready to drop out of school and wage war if we had to. The evolution of Seth alone, how he came to imagine himself not as the nerdy debate team captain that he was but rather as a fire-breathing revolutionary ready to storm the barricades—it was shocking to watch it play out.
Sunny had a theory about the raging wildfire of anger that took over America that spring. “The cycle of war” is what she called it. Humans aren’t rational creatures, she’d say. We’re animals. Sunny’s letters that spring were full of armchair theorizing about how conflict and war are integral parts of our nature, about how our innate desire to wage war was no different than our innate desire to overeat sugary foods. Human instinct isn’t necessarily rational, she’d say, and it isn’t always matched to the neat and tidy civilizations we’ve built.
I wish I still had Sunny’s letters. I wish I could print them here for everyone to see how her ideas could be depressing, unbelievable, and convincing all at once. In her letters, Sunny would riff about the tribal behavior of chimpanzees, about how people behave differently when they’re in groups than when they’re alone, about how most people think they’re above the violence of the mob until they’re in one.
Have you ever been part of a raging mob, Jenna? she wrote.
God, I remember this letter like it was yesterday because that’s what it was like to be friends with Sunny. It was nonstop, unforgettable intensity.
It’s exhilarating to be in a mob, Sunny wrote, and believe me, once that exhilaration takes over, you are not in control. We think we are conscious beings who make choices with free will, but when you get in a mob, you see that you’re nothing of the sort.
I reject Sunny’s worldview now. But this idea that war is an irrational part of who we are that we must suppress in the same way we must suppress our desire to overeat? Sadly, I think it’s true. Spend a couple years in prison and you’ll think the same.
It’s one thing to recognize humanity’s innate capacity for conflict. It’s another thing entirely to try and exploit it, which is what Sunny wanted to do.
If Sunny were here talking to us right now she’d say, “The biggest obstacle for antidomer activists to overcome is apathy. If 100 million Americans tune in to the Finale, that means 200 million Americans don’t.”
For Sunny, the game was to get those 200 million Americans off the sidelines and into the game, and the way to do that, she believed, was to force the issue. To make the conflict over The Tetradome Run so hot it became pervasive and impossible to ignore.
Sunny wanted a world where people who liked The Tetradome Run didn’t get to quietly apologize for their viewing habits, but rather, were compelled at every turn to defend themselves. You attack, you force them to respond, and if they fight back, you’re already winning because now we’re in a war and the bystanders have no choice but to take sides. The cycle of war. You provoke, you agitate, you get two sides to fight against each other, you make them escalate, and, in time, they aren’t fighting about a difference of opinion, they’re fighting because they hate each other.
As I write all this I can hear Sunny’s voice in my mind.
“Make the nation unstable, make everything else take a back seat to a rapidly escalating fight between domers and antidomers.” The smooth flow of her words, the way the ideas meld together, logic and emotions intertwined, every argument dripping with intelligence. “Make it all-encompassing so the people who want to sit out have no choice but to enter the fray.”
Everyone in the Blue Brigade, Seth especially, ate this shit up.
Everyone except me.
During that crazy spring when it felt like the world was on fire, I had Sunny in one ear preaching a gospel of agitation and unrest, but in the other ear, I had Rudy talking about how life is fleeting and beauty is all that truly matters. Rudy was no fan of the Redemption Act. He always signed our petitions. He went to our protest marches. He listened patiently when Seth started proselytizing. But he kept that stuff in its place. He was adamant that a life well lived was one that kept concern for political matters in their place.
Rudy believed we all have something unique to offer in the fight for good, and while some of us may offer a ceaseless red hot passion for justice, others should offer something more concrete. Something they create. Something beautiful.
If Rudy were alive and here to argue his side, he would tell you the world needs beauty just as much as it needs justice. He would say, “There is no beauty in politics and war, and without beauty, what the hell are we even fighting for?”
Rudy wasn’t as good with words and arguments as Sunny was, but in the battle for my soul, he had his own weapon. Rudy practiced what he preached. With his music, Rudy brought beauty into the world.
Do you remember Blue and White Weekend? When antidomer protests at more than a hundred colleges and city squares got a little out of hand (to say the least)? That same weekend when riots broke out from Bangor to San Jose, Rudy gave his freshman recital at McCallister Hall on the Hillerman campus. He played the Hummel Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra. If you don’t know the Hummel, you should bring up a recording on the Internet and listen to it. Listen to the second movement in particular. There’s a reason the authors of the Bible chose a trumpet as the instrument of the angels. Put a world class trumpeter like Rudy on a stage in a good concert hall and the second movement of the Hummel will drown your earthly concerns in angelsong. If every domer and antidomer on earth were in McCallister Hall on that Saturday night when Rudy played the Hummel, the war would be over, The Tetradome Run would be off the air, and we all could move on to more life-affirming concerns. All that energy we put into politics could go into educating our children, caring for our sick, inventing new technologies, and filling the world with life-affirming, happiness-bringing beauty.
In the end, there was no contest in the battle between my best friend and my boyfriend. Sunny offered irrefutable arguments that spoke to my brain, but Rudy offered soaring music that sang to my heart. You’ve got to fight for what’s right, of course you do, but you’ve got to be careful when you do. Sunny was right about humans. We are animals that are wired to irrationally eat too much sugar and wage too much war, and once you start down the path towards war, your animal instincts take over. Even when you take what feels like a baby step, just a tiny foray into political debate, your heartrate quickens and your pupils dilate. The same happens to that person you’re arguing with. He’s an animal too. Stress hormones released on both sides. Muscles tightened. Bodies so ready for war they’ve forgotten what point they’re arguing about and trying to resolve, and instead are just escalating because it’s what their bodies demand.
It can happen in a heartbeat. What you thought was a benign conversation at your dinner table, a wordless interaction between drivers on the highway, a political disagreement between interest groups…you think you’re in control, you didn’t intend for the interaction to leave the realm of reasoned debate and escalate into a fight.
You didn’t intend to eat that second slice of chocolate cake either.
I watched the thirst for war swallow the lives of a dozen promising young people in the Blue Brigade. GPA’s fell. Majors got changed. Responsibilities got ignored. Parents, siblings, and friends got disowned.
And Seth…
What happened to Seth is painful to think about. Seth turned into a monster.
CHAPTER 29
Gabe returned to his apartment, a cardboard box of stolen loot under his arm.
He set the box on the coffee table. He grabbed his phone and sent a text to Cameron.
If I needed you to crack open a password-protected laptop, would you be able to do it?
The response from Cameron was immediate.
Depends on the laptop. What do you have?
Gabe texted back the brand
name and model.
Cameron responded: Yes, that shouldn’t be too hard.
Three more texts and they’d made arrangements to get the laptop in Cameron’s hands later that night.
Gabe turned on the TV. The Semifinal race now over, television was awash with chattering heads talking about it.
Would you call that the most exciting finish in Tetradome history?
Well, I’d certainly put it in the Top 5.
Carefully, one item at a time, Gabe emptied the box. The big prize, the laptop, was already on Gabe’s coffee table. Next to the laptop Gabe added two framed photographs, a set of keys, an old MP3 player, and a paperback book.
Why was Kyle keeping such a random collection of junk in a cardboard box in his fireplace?
On the television, Tammy Flanigan and Leonelle Parson spoke about the explosion of interest on social media in all things Jenna Duvall. What a brilliant move it was for Devlin Enterprises to take Jenna back to her home town and let her talk about her life before her crime, Leonelle said.
I thought so too, said Tammy. Watching those scenes from Albuquerque…they humanized her.
Gabe took a closer look at one of the framed photos he’d pulled from the box. The photo showed Kyle and a young woman in front of a wall of graffiti. Kyle was smiling big in the picture.
Gabe had already done an image search online and decided the young woman in the photo was the mystery woman from Jenna’s court testimony: Sunny Paderewski.
Whoever took this picture had snapped the photo right as a gust of wind hit Kyle and Sunny head-on. Sunny was squinting, the wind yanking her bangs back, exposing a sizable scar on her forehead. Gabe stared at the scar for a minute. How different she looked when you could see that scar. The picture of Sunny online, the one Jenna’s legal defense released to the press, showed a young woman whose forehead was draped in long bangs. That woman looked markedly different than the one in this photo, and the difference was all in the scar.