The Perfect Plan

by Bryan Reardon

  Seeing it, I grab the wheel, gripping it so tightly that a bone in the back of my hand crackles. Sitting there in my truck, I’d convinced myself that everything was progressing as I meant it to. But it was a lie. It is always a lie.

  As if in answer to my thoughts, a Mustang Shelby 350, blue with a black stripe, appears in the intersection not far behind the police. The sight of it vibrates through my body. To see him so close, so quickly. It is electric. It is contrary. My first impulse is to get the hell out of there, to run away. Never look back. But he is like a star, his gravity tugging at the very center of me, drawing me ever toward him.

  My hand is shaking. He’s right at the corner. So close. Everyone else, everything else, it all just disappears. It is just Drew and me, careening together at terminal velocity.

  “Fuck!” I say, but the word is so soft that I can’t even hear it.

  The engine roars. I swerve back onto the street and leave him behind. For now.

  * * *

  —

  I’M STILL SHAKING when I roll to a stop outside of the second cabin nestled among the trees lining the old swim club. I try to list the steps of the plan, but they won’t appear in my head, not fully. Words dance just on the edges, hard words that hint at unwinnable choices.

  I know one thing. Lauren Branch is bound and helpless inside the cabin just outside my window. It is the only truth now. I lift my hand up, hold it before my eyes. I will it to stop shaking. It takes a second but it eventually stills. Once it does, I lean over and pop open the glove box. When I reach it, I immediately feel the cool grip of the Ruger 9 mm semiautomatic pistol sitting above my registration and insurance card. My fingers wrap around it, finding the trigger guard.

  Things are moving fast. I need to stay one step ahead of my brother or everything’s lost. So I get out of the car, gun in hand, and walk slowly up the decking, to the locked door, the only thing between me and the woman I have abducted.

  17

  I was twelve. And my mother was dead. That’s what he’d told me the night before. I awoke that next morning with Drew’s words ringing in my head. Nothing else seemed grounded. I had no idea when I’d left the woods, or how I’d made it back to my bedroom. When I opened my eyes again, the sunlight set my head to throbbing. I felt spent, like I’d run a marathon in my sleep. But a deep and angry restlessness tingled above that, forcing my eyes to stay open.

  Quietly, I got out of bed and slipped from my room. The house was eerily still. Both Drew’s room and my parents’ were empty. So I went downstairs, and found no one in the living room or the kitchen. I sat at the table, my head in my hands, but heard no movement anywhere in the house. I even went down into the basement and checked his workshop.

  He wasn’t there, so I walked into the cool, dry room, listening to the sound of a dehumidifier rumbling in the corner. My eyes fixated on the model atop the table. It was a navy ship, but I don’t know the exact kind. The detail was amazing. Perfect miniature guns bristled across shining decking. The windows of the tiny bridge appeared to be real glass. The red stripe painted at the waterline looked perfectly worn, like the sailors had just returned from traveling across the world.

  I stared at that horrid ship, through the plastic and glass and paint and glue, deep into what it truly meant. Time did not slow. Nor did I linger over that thing, troubled by my urges. Instead, the thin plastic of the crow’s nest snapped as I grabbed the model and yanked it off the table. Holding it in two hands over my head, I turned and reared back. A primal sound rumbled in my throat and I let it fly through the open door of the workshop, out into the main room of the basement. It clattered across the cement floor, parts flying away like shrapnel.

  “It’s your fault!” I screamed, maybe for the hundredth time since Drew had told me.

  Storming out, I ran at the model and kicked it, sending it jetting through the air and against the far wall. The remaining hull snapped in two. When I drove to give one last kick, I hesitated, losing my balance and falling to the floor.

  “Mom,” I whispered helplessly.

  Pain radiated up my back and into my shoulder, so bad that it hurt to breathe. I slapped a hand onto the floor in frustration as tears filled my eyes. Honestly, though, I didn’t cry from the pain. I just sat on the floor and cried for everything else.

  * * *

  —

  YEARS LATER, I would rent the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. It was funny and I liked it, but when that scene came on of Cameron Frye beating the crap out of his father’s 1961 Ferrari 250 GT, I fell off the couch onto my knees. I crawled closer to the television, transfixed, feeling like somehow whoever it was who came up with the idea for the scene had somehow stolen my life away.

  I could barely breathe when he kept kicking the bumper over and over again. And the car teetered on the jack. I knew it would topple, that the car would careen through the glass and fall stories to the forest floor. When it did, when it happened, it felt like an awful and wonderful release. I felt at once more normal and more crippled by my own memories.

  Later, though, when Ferris and Cameron talked about what happened, and Cameron’s neck stiffened as he decided he would stand up to his father, I turned off the movie. And I never watched it again. Because that’s not how it goes. Ever.

  I was still on the floor in the basement when they came home. I heard the rush of air through the house when the front door opened. Without even thinking about what my father would do, or what I had done, I sprang to my feet. I ran up the stairs, the pain suddenly gone. I nearly slipped on the kitchen floor as well.

  For a split second before I turned into the doorway to the foyer, I thought about my father. I thought about what I had just done. It wasn’t that I was going to have some penultimate moment of confrontation. There was no way I would stand up to him, toe-to-toe, and rewrite the future. Neither of us had that in us. Instead, what I realized, what I felt, was that I didn’t care anymore. My mother was dead. I was alone now. Part of me didn’t want to be alive, either.

  I had no idea of the concept then, but I do now. It was like the guy who, surrounded by police, pulls his gun and steps away from cover. He walks up to the officers, begging them to shoot. Suicide by police. I think I was committing my own version.

  I didn’t care, not at all. I remember it so clearly. I grabbed the doorjamb as I rounded the corner. I saw my dad first, his dark eyes cutting into mine, and all I felt was anger as he walked toward me, and eventually past me toward the basement.

  I saw my brother next. For a split second, I felt an almost unbearable dread at the thought of living without my mother. Then, like some kind of dream, she appeared behind him. Her back was hunched and a dark stain marred the white bandage around her head. Yet she stood in the foyer looking back at me, her eyes sharper than I’d seen them in years.

  “Mom,” I stammered.

  My legs felt numb. My vision fluttered. I looked to Drew, but he acted like nothing had happened. Like he’d done nothing. Then, shaking, I ran to her.

  “Easy,” she said, her voice strong and clear.

  I stopped before touching her. For a time, no one else existed. Drew vanished. And my mom and I were alone in the foyer.

  She moved first. Her arms opened and she hugged me. I buried my head into her chest, feeling every one of her ribs. She ran a hand through my unruly hair.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “It’s—”

  The rest of my words drowned in my father’s scream.

  “Liam!”

  The sound of it made both my mother and me quake.

  18

  I stand at the door of the cabin, my left index finger tracing the curve of the shining silver shackle to where it snakes through the rusting loop above the cabin door handle. I still hold the gun in my right hand. It dangles at my side, the weight a physical reminder of who I am and what I’ve done.

&nb
sp; Lauren Branch exists on the other side of the door. I tuck the pistol into the waistband of my pants at the small of my back. Then I reach into my front pocket and pull out a set of keys. I stare at them for a second. If I close my eyes, I might still see shining silver, the thick brass disc engraved with a Ford Motor Company logo. Now the luster is gone, long covered with a layer of damp, clinging rust. The hair on my neck stands on end.

  Staring at these keys, I imagine the part they will play in this. I’ve staked so much on what they are. On what they represent. Our lives hang in the balance and a simple lie will tip the scale.

  Still mesmerized, I pull a plastic evidence bag out of my back pocket. I ordered it from some true crime fan site. I drop the keys in and run my fingers along the seal. With a final look, I slip the bag into my pocket before fishing out the second set, the one with a key for the padlock. I hesitate before unfastening it, partly because I am afraid of what I will see. Not that I think she has escaped. Or that something worse has happened. I’m not even worried that someone found her, rescued her while I was returning her car to the city. Instead, I am afraid to see myself again in the fear that will shine from her eyes.

  When I get the lock undone, I pause only a second, taking a deep breath before swinging the door open. Lauren is there. Alive. Flesh and blood, not just dried bone. Her chest heaves and her eyes are open, watching me. In them, I see the fear I expected. But something else, too. Judgment? Confusion? Neither makes any sense. Without meaning to, I glance at the tarp. I wonder if she felt any curiosity. If she thought to drag herself to it. To peel up the plastic and see what it hides.

  Turning away, I walk slowly to the far corner, where I left a six-pack of bottled water. Taking my time, I peel the plastic off and take one in my hand. I look at it, even picture giving it to her. Helping her drink it. But I pause.

  I don’t like Lauren Branch. Not at all. I’ve watched her for a long time, even before I knew. Even before all of this started. She is a young person who feels entitled to more than she has earned. She uses words as if she thinks they are weapons. As if they are something more than paper-thin speed bumps. Worse, she uses her face, her body, her smell. I’ve seen her do it over and over again. Like those things represent some greatness. Some accomplishment. Not just random genetic gifts bestowed down a long line of past benefactors.

  I don’t like her, but I don’t want to hurt her, either. Not really. I stand up and turn, looking at her again. I see those same traits, those factors that make her a human, a person. I can’t care about those, though. Instead, I need to see a bishop, a knight, or a pawn. I have to move her. Use her. It’s nothing more than that.

  So I bring her the water.

  “I can take that off. The tape on your mouth. If you promise to stay quiet.”

  Her lids flutter. She looks back at me and I see more. Revulsion, maybe. Or frustration. I hesitate. But her chest is rising and falling so quickly now. And her face turns a dark red. I think she’s having trouble breathing, so I kneel down. Lauren flinches again but checks herself. I see the effort for her to remain still as I reach for the tape. I begin to pull it off as gently as I can.

  “Just know,” I say. “If I hurt you, it’ll be your fault.”

  The tape sticks to her lips. The skin around her mouth turns a burning red. Blood blossoms at the corner. I continue to pull and she yanks her head the opposite way. The tape tears away from her swollen mouth.

  “What the fuck!” she screams at me.

  I rear back. She is looking at me, but it is most definitely not fear. It is something that, oddly, reminds me of my brother.

  “What is wrong with you?”

  “I . . .”

  Her head tilts like she is speaking to a young child. “You didn’t have to be so fucking rough, you know?”

  Her response makes no sense.

  “What are you talking about?” I say.

  She frowns. “He didn’t tell you?”

  It is all so surreal. I abducted this woman. Doesn’t she understand how much danger she’s in? Fighting or crying or cringing, I could understand all that. But this. She radiates an air of superiority.

  “Who?” I ask.

  Lauren Branch shakes her head. “God, Liam. Drew. I’m in on his plan, you moron.”

  PART TWO

  HIS PLAN

  1

  God, Liam. I’m in on his plan, you moron.

  Her words seem to solidify between us, becoming something huge. Like an avalanche falling in my path. All I can do is blink as the dust of her statement settles, searching for a lie among the rubble like I would a survivor.

  But it is true. There is no doubt. I see it now, and understand what I had noticed in her eyes since this started. She was confused, frustrated, judgmental. Not surprised. Not overly afraid. All because Drew told her. And she . . . agreed. Agreed to be abducted. Held against her will. But what else? What more could she know?

  I don’t have time to ask myself those questions. There are far more pressing ones. Drew told her. Why? That answer is not hard to guess. He wanted a fail-safe. But why? Against me. Or against my stupidity. That is the true question. The one I can’t ignore, even though it may already be too late.

  He is playing with me. One way or another. I realize that. To him, everything is a game. And he never loses. I can’t forget that, either.

  I stare at her, still unable to formulate the words. She could have gone to the police. Set things in motion that neither of us would have wanted. That’s what a normal person would do. But he trusted that she wouldn’t. My head tilts, and I realize that Lauren knows Drew better than I thought.

  For her part, she watches me with an air of control, like she is making the rules. She strikes me in this moment as a young adult who has grown up in a world of untested privilege. Her eyes are so clear, as if surety is a shield to hide her naïveté. Her expression so easy that it belies her reality. I imagine the deck has been stacked in her favor since birth. I can almost see the shadows of her parents hovering over her shoulders, guiding her into a bucolic world of successful mediocrity.

  This is not the thought I should have. Instead, I should be wondering how the hell she knows about my brother’s plan.

  “What did you say?” I ask.

  “Seriously.” Lauren rolls her eyes and squirms around as if to show me the duct tape around her hands and feet. “Can you take this crap off? I get it, you wanted to be authentic. Which is great. Really. But come on. There’s nobody . . .”

  Her attention shifts from me, moving to the tarp again. Then she looks back. That confidence slips. Maybe she’s not so sure. There is fear there, behind all the rest.

  “Why aren’t we at your trailer? That’s where you were supposed to bring me.”

  “Things changed. It was too dangerous to go there.”

  “What’s under that?” she asks.

  “None of your business,” I snap.

  We share an awkward silence. I fight to clear my head of all the questions, to avoid looking back at the tarp. At the bulge in the center of the plastic. Lauren, on the other hand, just appears more frustrated. I wish that I had left the tape on her mouth.

  “So, what now?”

  Once again, I think about running. I don’t know if I have the strength to finish this. But I know I don’t have the strength to run, either. Not anymore. I turn away. My legs feel so tired all of a sudden.

  “Where are you going?” she calls out behind me.

  I say nothing. I open the door and walk outside. She keeps yelling as I close the door and step out on the decking. The cool air washes across my face and I just stand there for a beat, taking it in, hoping it might wash away the fear and disgust I feel so sharply now. It doesn’t, though.

  Slowly, quietly, I walk out to the edge of the pond. The water laps up, touching the tips of my shoes. I watch it, coming and going along
with the breeze. For some reason, I think about that model ship my dad used to work on. When I was little, on days I knew for sure he wouldn’t be home, I used to sneak downstairs. This is before I smashed it, and I would be really careful when I climbed up on his stool and reached across to turn on the bright lamp he liked. I wouldn’t touch the boat, not then. Instead, I would just look at it. I’d take in every single inch of the thing, sitting there until my legs cramped.

  I always had this one dream. I would place my hands under that boat and lift it up off its stand. Then I’d slip out of the house, through the woods, down to the stream. I imagined putting that model into the water. And watching it sail away.

  A harsh laugh slips out, breaking the silence. As I stand by the water’s edge, I can’t think of anyone but my father. And I wonder what he would think of all of this. But then he’s gone. And I see her. I think of her. And everything else vanishes, for a time.

  * * *

  —

  EVEN NOW, I wonder how she sees me. Does she think I am a monster? Then I wonder. Is the “she” in my head even Lauren?

  I turn away from the pond and walk back into the cabin. Lauren is there, her lips tight and her eyes judging. No matter what, it is too late for anything else. But it’s more than that. I’m not doing this for myself. If I was, it would be over already. And none of this would have happened. No, I’m doing it for her. Everything is for her.