“Never mind.”
Caleb still had a minute left to talk—he couldn’t fault Jared for stealing all the time—but the truth was, he wasn’t clear on the topic, either. From what Caleb understood, imperialism was about subjugating other people for your own benefit. Which is basically what any human being did, if he could. You either stood on top of people or they stood on top of you. Nations were made up of people. And empires had been around forever and always would be. Pretending otherwise wasn’t just phony, it was infuriating.
But anyway, that had been two weeks ago. Anyone who gave a shit and wanted to pass had had their topic approved and had begun their research. Now the class—minus Caleb and one or two other fuckups—had moved on.
On Friday, the girls in the front row had been obsessed with whether they needed to use Roman numerals or if they could just use bullet points, and how many spaces to tab. As they peppered Holloway with these questions, Caleb was already zoned out.
Outlines were harder to write than full research papers. You had to understand your whole topic before you could think in an organized enough way to boil it down into an outline—because spitting out ideas as they came to you and seeing where they went was easier than boiling them down into a series of organized little points. How could he know the points he was going to make before he made them? Why didn’t teachers get that?
Last year, in history class, he’d gotten away with doing the whole thing in reverse. Step one, type until you hit page three, five, whatever. Second, look for sources that might back up the facts or opinions you’ve already typed. If you’re really stuck, make them up.
Third, when you’re basically ninety percent done, outline. Fourth, write the short proposal paragraph—that thing Caleb was supposed to pitch verbally and then hand in during week two rather than week twelve—because now you know what you’ve said and therefore it’s actually semi-possible to pretend you are planning to say it.
In other words, do the whole thing exactly backward, because that was the only way you ever knew anything, not when you were in the thick of it, but when you were looking back and almost done.
The system worked with teachers like Mr. Philbin, who would give you a C even if the whole thing was two months late. But Holloway was different. She really believed in this outlining shit. Caleb was going to fail her class. But that hardly mattered, considering he wouldn’t be around by the end of the year.
These were the facts Caleb was reviewing as he sat on his unmade bed, looking up at the ceiling. No wonder he couldn’t figure out what to do as he biked past the asshole’s house over and over. The steps—how he’d gotten himself into this situation, what he should do about it, what would happen if he did manage to hurt Coach V—were like the outline. It didn’t come out of his head all in order, one detail at a time. He wasn’t ready to think that way.
Thinking clearly, starting at the beginning, made him sick. It forced him to remember the first time Vorst had given him a ride. He’d praised Caleb for his soccer skills—which frankly, weren’t that impressive, since Caleb had started soccer late compared to all the other kids, who had played since they were four or six. Vorst had commiserated about Caleb’s parents—sticklers about grades, uninterested in anything else in Caleb’s life. Fall semester, freshman year. Caleb hadn’t made any friends. His mother didn’t defend him against his stepdad’s constant criticism. They told Caleb that he didn’t have a clue about anything, that he was bound to be a failure. They told him to focus less on sports—it’s not like he was all that talented anyway—and more on getting his homework done.
Caleb had said, “I’m the one thinking about the future. Like athletic scholarships.”
Caleb still remembered Vorst’s expression that day: indignant on Caleb’s behalf.
“Listen. In your parents’ day, college cost a fraction what it does now. No one can afford it without sports or music scholarships. At least you’re trying to think ahead. You’re smarter than your parents, Caleb. They just can’t know that.”
The coach was smooth. Some guys didn’t like him, but others, like Caleb, did, especially as the weeks went on, and the coach gave him more playing time, praised him, offered him rides every couple days. Then Caleb injured his hamstring. Even though he was getting better and able to run again, they still dropped him from the team.
Coach V talked him into cross-country running: easy at first while his hamstring healed. Not with the team, just the two of them, or more often, Caleb alone, on trails outside town where the early snow was packed down. Vorst would drive him, drop him off at a trailhead, drive to the far side of the trail system three or four miles away and be there waiting.
“Feels good to be out there, doesn’t it?” Vorst would say, waiting in the warm car, with Gatorade or juice, or after the first few times, a can of beer. “You know, some people won’t run a single mile unless they get a medal or a T-shirt for it. But we’re different.”
They stayed parked and kept talking. Another beer. “Don’t worry. You deserve it.”
Caleb hadn’t eaten much lunch, and the run had left him woozy. The beer went directly to his head.
Coach V was on a roll. “Doesn’t matter what anyone thinks. Live your own life.” He offered him yet another beer, and Caleb didn’t want it, but once it was in his hand, he didn’t know what to do other than finish it. Before he dropped Caleb at his house, Vorst even gave him a piece of hard candy to cover up the smell. “And when you’re back in shape, we’ll get you started on looking for college scholarships. My daughter was going after some good ones, right before she passed away. I’ve got some contacts. Personal recommendations are essential these days. No letter from a coach, no free money for school.”
And then there was that day in late January when Caleb got into Vorst’s car parked at the empty trailhead and didn’t say anything when Vorst asked him to do what Caleb did, which was practically just sit there. It was just a favor. An exchange.
The engine was on. The heater blew noisily. The windows fogged. It was over in minutes, and that was good. It was easier to just do it than to try to get out of doing it. Vorst always got super quiet right after. That silence, and the absence of pressure that followed, were a huge relief. If it had always been that quick and easy, that wordless and painless, Caleb could have put it all behind him. Even now, he believed that.
But it wasn’t that easy. The next time was at Vorst’s out-of-town cabin—still winter; the cabin was miserable until they’d picked up that portable heater—when he drank the nasty Tang-and-vodka screwdriver that Vorst gave him, knowing what Vorst had put in it. Because here was the fucked-up thing: people at parties got roofied without knowing. But Caleb had taken the drink completely aware of what was in it: “Just Ambien,” Vorst had said. “Enough to take the edge off.”
When Caleb hesitated, Vorst said, “I know you kids take this stuff at parties. It’s just like having two or three drinks. You can handle three drinks, can’t you?”
Vorst put a movie on starring the guy who did the Buzz Lightyear voice, but this was a Santa Claus movie, which was harder to pretend to watch than Toy Story. At one point, Vorst went to get something from the cellar and was gone for a strangely long time. Caleb went to the bookcase where other videos were stored, trying to be chill—though chill was the last thing he felt—hoping there’d be something less awful to watch.
Below the videos were several drawers, and without thinking, Caleb opened one. And there were the faces, staring up at him.
They were girls and guys close to his age and a little younger, sitting and staring at the camera with glazed expressions or sleeping—sleeping off something, more like, on the couch that was already familiar to Caleb. A few were naked. Not actually doing anything, not involved with any other person or in obscene poses or anything, but nude. That was the word his mom used when she was trying to sound artsy. God, why was he thinking of his mother at this
moment? She could never find out about any of this. He felt the burn of the drink in his throat. Some of the kids were really young.
Compared to stuff Caleb had seen online, raw and outrageous from the first second a window popped open, this was nothing. But it didn’t feel like nothing. It felt like opening a trapdoor down into a cellar and seeing there was a real person, small and quiet, sitting in there. Why did it freak him out so much? Because that was porn. It wasn’t real.
That was what they told you—even your own damn stepdad when you found his ancient magazine collection, when he sat you down and forced you to listen. “Don’t get confused. It’s not real, buddy.” As if that were a bad thing.
Not real was okay. Good, even. This was real, and he didn’t like it, and he didn’t know what to do. On top of that, the Ambien was kicking in and with it, the sleepy unreality that was normally a preferred state to being in the cabin, sober.
Caleb listened for any sound that indicated Vorst was coming up the stairs—nothing—and opened the second drawer, hoping to be persuaded somehow that it wasn’t like that. There was an explanation.
The entire second drawer, deeper than the first, was filled with USB flash drives—black, yellow, silver—more than Caleb had ever seen in any one place.
Now, this was a collection. Caleb stared. Thousands or tens of thousands of digital files or images, possibly. They could be normal pictures—Vorst was always carrying a camera from one sports practice or event to another—but Caleb didn’t think so.
Now what?
It wasn’t like Caleb had said, even once, “Take me home now.”
It was easier to think he had brought this all upon himself than to admit that it was all Vorst and it wasn’t just their secret and Caleb wasn’t the first.
You’re a fucking idiot, Caleb thought. Not: The coach is a predator. Not: Van Vorst is a criminal. Only: Caleb, you’re not even special when it comes to this.
And then there was the separate shoebox in the back of the drawer, dedicated to the girl with the halter top. The girl who had died, who must be the same person Vorst called his daughter but really wasn’t—not that it made anything better.
“Everything all right?” came Vorst’s voice from the stairwell.
Caleb hurried back to the couch, heart in his throat, sounds of the Santa Claus movie only a little louder than his own ragged breathing.
“Get comfy,” Vorst told him.
“I’m comfy.”
“No, I mean, take your jeans off. Heater’s on. It’s not cold anymore.”
Caleb’s policy was to say as little as possible, not to agree or disagree, just to go into that place where you could pretend later that nothing had happened. Without talking, there were fewer details to remember. After ten minutes, when Caleb became too sleepy to keep his eyes open, it was a relief.
Caleb woke up later, only a little nauseated, but also confused and sore in ways he’d never been sore, in ways that wouldn’t let him entirely forget, though he would try. Vorst had crossed a line.
There was something set loose in Vorst that weekend: bravado, maybe, knowing that Caleb’s parents didn’t know where he was, weren’t paying proper attention, didn’t seem to care. Things changed. It wasn’t a matter of forgetting an awkward two minutes or a half-remembered session on the couch. That had always been embarrassing and humiliating. Now it became something more. Caleb couldn’t find a way out.
Vorst no longer praised Caleb or commiserated over the stupidity of Caleb’s parents. He taunted Caleb, making him feel like he’d started whatever it was they were doing. After all, he’d chosen to sleep over for a full weekend.
“Remember when you were fighting with your parents, and I let you stay?”
It was on a Sunday after spring break when Caleb woke up ten hours after he’d gotten woozy from sipping the Tang. Not an hour, not the length of a movie, but a whole day, gone. That freaked him out.
He told Vorst he wouldn’t do it again. The rest, okay, but not that. Not something that put him fully under.
“But I don’t like it the other way,” Vorst said, studying him like he was a jigsaw puzzle, “when you’re awake at the start.”
Caleb shrugged his shoulders, waiting.
“She didn’t like it either,” Vorst said after a while. Caleb didn’t ask who she was. “I showed her a party trick. I can show you, too. It feels good. Like a natural high without the hangover.”
The trick was making him black out. The next time they were in the cabin together, Vorst leaned against his chest, crushing him, and Caleb felt one hand grip his neck, and only then did Caleb understand. He’d heard of the choking game, but he didn’t know if this was the same thing. He didn’t know for sure that he would wake up at all.
Later that night, when Vorst was carrying some bags out to the car, Caleb bided his time—“Gotta go to the bathroom before we drive”— then ran back inside before Vorst had the chance to lock the door. Caleb went directly to the drawers where he’d seen the photos of kids. He took some, started toward the door, then turned back and grabbed some things from the shoebox—the girl-in-a-halter-top shoebox—stuffed it all in his backpack fast, all without thinking, and then, with his heart in his throat and his backpack clasped to his chest, joined Vorst outside.
“Here, let me show you how to check the oil,” Vorst said, like he was his dad or something.
“Uh, yeah. Okay.” Heart beating like a jackhammer.
It didn’t matter what they did inside that cabin. It didn’t matter that Caleb had two big red thumbprints turning into bruises on either side of his neck. The coach was living in his own world, whistling away, filling his bird feeders and checking the oil in his car. Fucking amazing.
The next day at school, someone made a joke about the hickeys on Caleb’s neck, and the joke spread fast. Caleb helped it along, adding his own fabricated details. If people wanted to believe he had some phantom nympho girlfriend, that was fine as far as he was concerned.
Summer was around the corner. The next weekend, Caleb told Vorst that his parents were taking him on a trip. He never just said, “I don’t want your hands on me anymore.” He certainly never said, “I’m going to tell the school and my parents and the police.” The final week of school was the hardest, but he made it through.
Over the summer, they didn’t see each other. Caleb grew four inches and packed on weight and for the first time could wear a men’s shirt in size small without swimming in it. He was still scrawny for his age, but nothing like he’d been as a freshman. He thought about what Vorst said about the girl who wasn’t really his daughter, “She was getting fat,” as if there couldn’t have been anything more disgusting. Caleb wasn’t fat, but he wasn’t reed-thin anymore, either. He’d always known that muscles could be a form of protection from other guys his age. He’d never realized that they could also be protection from an old pervert who liked kids who looked like they were twelve years old.
“You’re looking like a man, chum,” his stepdad said that first day of school. Caleb rolled his eyes, but he also felt like he’d just made it across a river filled with crocodiles.
The first week of school, the coach seemed to ignore him. Good. But that didn’t mean Coach V was ignoring everyone.
Mikayla. She’s next.
That was where Caleb had to stop. He couldn’t think about much beyond that. If he could have taken the actual gray mass of his brain out of his skull and scrubbed it with a stiff wire brush until his nerves burned and his eyes bled, he would have.
So, fuck Holloway and her outlines. Caleb didn’t care about Roman numerals or bullet points. He didn’t want ordered thoughts and sharp memories. He didn’t need pro and con or before and after.
If he just went with the flow, it looked like this:
He wanted Vorst gone. No longer on this earth, but having suffered before departing it.
; That was the uncensored version.
And only now that he’d said it—admitted it—maybe he could work backward and figure out the right steps to make it happen.
25
Annie
1905, 1869
Annie opens her eyes and sees the rutted track leading past trampled grass to the old house and knows she has arrived. This is the right place and the right time. Autumn of a familiar year. The oak tree shades the western side of the house. There is no swing hanging yet from its thickest, blackest branch. The white paint on the old house is fresh. A dog barks once and then yelps, silenced inside the house by an unkind hand. The oak’s leaves are red and curling: October, maybe. The baby was born in summer. He’ll be three months old now.
Annie creeps carefully, head low, rifle tucked close to her chest, stalking. She half-expects to see her own figure coming around the side of the house, carrying firewood or peeking out of the kitchen window. But that makes no sense. She’s never collided with herself before. The wagon is gone, but a thin spiral of smoke curls above the chimney.
It’s like dreaming all night of thirst and then waking and tipping a pitcher into a cold, clean bowl and preparing to dip one’s hands into that beautiful, fresh water. That moment of intense thirst will soon be quenched, need and satisfaction just a hair’s breadth apart. Is that what she’d always loved about hunting? The promise of satisfaction, as close as the pull of a trigger? Or did she simply love that it was something that she was good at, that put food on the table, that made her feel safe and strong and like everything would turn out fine? But it didn’t turn out fine, even with a gun. Even with the talent she had, even with her confidence in herself, which this man—this beast—had almost managed to destroy.
But what does she plan to do now? Try as she might, she hasn’t been able to face the thought squarely. Her body is telling her: walk softly, don’t be seen. Rifle ready. Resolve firm. She brings the gun even closer, presses it hard into her flat chest. From inside, she feels so much like a woman—a woman of some forty years—that she keeps forgetting this is the body of a girl: arms thin, ankles narrow, long brown hair in a single braid almost to her waist.
Annie and the Wolves Page 18