by Tony Abbott
“There was a lot of crying. At first. My mother, mostly, and my aunt and one of the two uncles. My dad’s pretty quiet and tired and probably wants to get home. Me, too. Ginny was all right. Pretty good, actually. No one’s happy.”
“That’s tough. I gotta go. Someone’s at the door.”
“What? Who’s there? Don’t let him in—”
The phone clicks off.
NINETEEN
I can’t wait to get home, but it’s already mid-morning on Saturday by the time we hit the road. Mom and her sister and brothers made a big promise to get together more often, talking about driving routes to where they live in Maine. Ginny’s happy about that because she’ll get to play with the babies again, and even, as she says, “watch them grow up,” which strikes me both as mature for a five-year-old and a little strange.
Now, I’m in the back of the car, with Ginny zonked out and sleeping next to me. Mom is leaning her head against the window, probably under the weather. Dad is at the wheel, driving jerkily, stop and go, so slow because it’s a weekend. A hard overnight rain has left the highway puddled. Even though it’s now steaming away and the sky is clearing, the lanes are packed, and it takes us two and a half hours from Hanover.
It’s early afternoon when we get home. The ball game is long over. Last night’s clouds hang above Brewster like a ragged gray shelf, but a breeze is finally pushing them on their way east.
I know what I need to do. All the way in the car I’ve been planning the route through the yards to Sean’s house, skulking across lawns and past hedges in my mind.
By the time I change it’s near two. Mom’s gone out for groceries. Dad is cutting the lawn. Ginny’s sitting at the patio table, watching him mow crisscross stripes. He wants to be at work, but my uncle insisted he take another day, which Dad argued into a half day, so he’s home for a little longer. He’s wearing a floppy hat, filthy cutoff jeans, a T-shirt, ratty work shoes. A plastic bag is sticking out of his back pocket, in case he finds something—cat poop, deer droppings—that he needs to pick up before the mower mashes it.
“I’m going to Shay’s,” I say to Ginny.
“Mom is at the store for food,” she says.
“I know.” I soften that. “Thanks.”
On the tabletop in front of her are a coloring book and a box of colored pencils, both closed.
I sit down on the bench next to her, terrified about what I’m planning to do, but Ginny’s staring glassy-eyed at the lawn like a zombie, not seeing Dad rolling the mower over it, not seeing anything. It’s a look that reminds me of Sean.
“Grandma was pretty great, wasn’t she?” I say, opening the box of pencils, drawing one out. “I mean, she loved going to the puppet show. The ball games. Ballet. She liked hanging out with us. I bet she loved your dancing. She probably told you she did.”
Ginny’s chin quivers. She blinks. Her eyes are moist.
“You know, Gin, what Mom and Dad said was true. Grandma’s always with us, if we keep thinking about her. She’s here right now—”
“I don’t want anybody else to die.” She bows her head like she’s praying, then crashes into me, and I wrap my arms around her. She’s so soft and small; I forget sometimes how small. I’m shaking as much as she is, and my head is pounding.
“No one will,” I whisper to her. I feel her nod against my chest. “I promise, no one will.” She keeps nodding, then sits up and looks out. I see now that Dad has paused at the far end of the yard, the mower going, but he’s not moving, only looking across the half-cut grass at us. I take a breath. I stand.
“I’ll be back in a sec.”
She nods. “You promised, remember?”
“I remember.”
I dash upstairs to my parents’ room. I know my dad will shower after mowing, and he’s got his J&D T-shirt and his jeans laid out on the bed. I scoop his phone off the nightstand. Twenty-two percent power. Jeez, Dad! But there’s no time to recharge. I turn off the sound, so any calls or incoming texts won’t ring.
Then I stop. I stop.
I’m so close to telling, you’d hate me. I hate myself. I could yell down to the yard right from the window I’m looking out. I could tell the whole thing to my dad in a half second. It doesn’t matter that Ginny is there. It shouldn’t matter when things like this are happening.
I run downstairs. I step onto the back landing. Sunlight breaks over the patio. I yell it in my head, using a word I’ve never said before but now I find is the only word ugly enough to tell what is going on.
“Dad, Sean is being raped!”
He sees me on the patio next to Ginny and senses something is not right. He stops the mower. I know he hates to do that. He’s busy and wants to get the yard done and I know it’s hard to restart the mower when it’s hot, but he stops it because he senses something, the way I stand, the look on my face, whatever.
“Owen? What?”
I stare at him, sweating, quaking, my head swimming, drowning.
“Sean…” I start, then stop.
“Yes?”
Ginny turns from her coloring book, open now, and looks me in the eye.
All I hear in my head is I will kill myself, and I can’t tell them the truth. What going over to Sean’s house will do, I’m not sure, but all I say is “I’m going to Sean’s.”
Dad knows something is off, but not what. “Mom’ll be back soon.”
“Like I told you,” Ginny says.
“Thanks, I know. I won’t be long.”
A pause as Dad and I look at each other across the grass before he adds, “Lock the front door when you leave. Half hour, that’s all.”
I wave. He pulls the mower’s cord. It takes him three tries. The motor rumbles to life. He waves. It’s over.
TWENTY
Two thirty. The gray sky is half gone, the day is turning perfect blue, with a vast widening sky in the west, drifting waves of salt air, the aroma of cut grass, the scent of roses along our front fence, the crunch of crushed shells.
Except I see hear smell none of it.
I thread through the yards and backyards, cross one, two streets. The air is warm. The steamy pavements are nearly dry. More backyards. Another street. The route is taking me so much longer than it should. I wave blindly to neighbors, all out now because the rain is past. They nod. I barely register the warm-cool-warm as I pass from sun to shade to sun. I creep like a spy. Or a boy who’s betraying his best friend.
I see Ginny’s eyes.
I see Dad. Owen? What?
I see Shay’s face in my mind. It’s just for a little while.
My legs thud along the paths between houses, any one of which might be broken into, but no, only Sean’s has been. Maybe it’s his fault. He does what they tell him. Scratching through the long grass in the lot for sale two houses down from his, I get angry with him. With him? Or with Paul? Or with myself? That ball of hate is stuck in my throat now. I’m angry about what things have done to me. Making me think things. Making me do things I don’t want to. Making me a liar. Except no, that’s wrong. All I know is how the hate chokes me.
My feet keep me moving.
A hedge two houses from Sean’s house surprises me. It’s thick with beach roses, white and papery, and the scent reminds me of Wellfleet. I see his wet, dark face in my mind, hair matted on his forehead. I’m dizzy with not breathing. I suck in heavy, hot air.
I move along the hedge.
There it is. His house. I’m at the far corner of his backyard, out of sight of his window. I dart along the edge of the yard, glance around the front. Paul’s sickening green car is in the driveway. There’s a blue car across the street, parked the wrong way. Is that the friend? I check the time on my dad’s phone. 2:41. My mom’s gonna be home soon, or is already. Quickly. Do this quickly. I edge along the side to the back. Sean’s room is on the far side of the house. I hear nothing. No sounds from inside. The nearest mower sputters to a stop. The only sound now is the shiny drill of insects. I lean out around the pati
o. I see the window of his bedroom.
My heart skips. I really want to run home and into my dad’s arms, but my feet are planted in the grass. I wait, I watch. I want anything but this. Can I just peek in the window? Can I look in? I watch, I wait. Time stops.
Then it doesn’t.
Do it, Owen, do it.
The shade is halfway up, halfway down against the sun. Sean’s house doesn’t have air-conditioning, so the sash is open. The shade flutters. Not a lot. There’s a window box of rain-battered flowers outside his room. It’ll hide me if I sneak under it. All the other windows in the house are black.
I scurry across the patio and nearly trip, finally slipping to my knees on the grass under the window of his room. I crouch, breathing through my mouth to silence the panting. I could die here, my heart might explode. That would solve something. But I don’t die. I breathe and breathe and listen. No sounds. Is anyone even in his room? Is Sean at home? I rise up slowly on my knees. The window box of droopy geraniums is a foot above me.
Then I hear a cough, I don’t know whose, and a voice, soft but distinct.
“Take it.”
“I don’t want to.”
My God, it’s Sean. A little voice, so little. I want to scream.
“What did I tell you about that, huh? Give me your hand.”
It’s Paul Landis. His voice is soft but sharp.
“Give me both your hands.”
“No!” Sean is farther away when he says this. They are moving around the room. His voice is watery, slippery, as if he’s been sobbing.
“Don’t be funny now.” Paul moves something across the floor. A chair. The nightstand. “You liked it last time.”
The words twist my stomach. I want to see what’s going on, but not see it. I can guess and not guess. I stretch up as high as I can on my knees. I could slide up slowly and hear more, except I’d bean my head on the flower box. Sean can stand straight up under it, but not me. I realize then that the only way I’ll be able to see anything is to get around the side of the stupid flower box. Carefully, I stand on my feet, flat against the clapboards, my knees bent, my head angled under the window frame. I smell the rain-soaked soil in the box and the strong scent of geraniums.
“That’s a good one. A real good one. That’s more like it.”
How words can mean different things. I remember Coach calling those same words to Kyle on the field a few weeks back. I nearly puke now.
Shifting my feet, I pull my head out from under the box. It’s on the level of the sill. Beyond the green stems and leaves, I see something moving in the room. Standing completely still, not breathing, I wait for the next thing to move.
And there they are.
The cheeks of a man’s butt.
I nearly scream—but I jam my eyes closed for a second, and the urge passes. I unjam my eyes. The butt—it’s Paul’s, big and round and rosy and fatter than I thought it would be—is deeper in the room now. He is hunched over, moving toward the corner like he’s hunting. I can’t see beyond Paul. Then an arm flies out from the corner. Sean’s. He doesn’t have a shirt on. He doesn’t have any clothes on. Something hot jabs my throat. I feel hot pee on my leg, but I don’t care. I want to tear the window open and kill that creep for hurting Sean when I hear the other voice.
“Tell him to stop crying. Make him stop crying, and kneel him down on the floor.” It is a low voice from a part of the room I can’t see.
My throat fills with acid. I can barely stand. Not Sean, please, not Sean. I swear inside my head a million different words in a fraction of a second and tug my dad’s phone from my pocket, knowing again how mad he’s going to be when he can’t find it. I swipe it open and set the camera to video. I press the ON button and hold the phone up to the window, slowly tilting it from side to side, hoping I get something more than soggy geraniums.
“Sean, I think you know what to do now, right?”
“Please, no.” He is crying, swatting at Paul, the slap of hands on pudgy flesh. I stop rotating the camera and point it where I think the voices are coming from.
“Sean, I think you know. You can have your pod back in a minute.”
Sean sniffles a bunch of times. “Okay.”
“And a smile, all right? A big smile. My friends are going to love you.”
TWENTY-ONE
My arm is a thing as heavy as lead, but I keep it raised, keep the phone going, keep it filming. I want to run home screaming, but I’m mute, shaking and shivering.
The other guy is saying stuff. I don’t hear all of it, but his voice is sharp, cutting. He swears at Sean or Paul or both of them. “Come on!”
“He’s a boy,” Paul says.
“I don’t care, Paul. He was better last time. You said he was ready for more. All this junk takes time to edit out!”
The sound of a hand slapping the wall. I think of rain streaming down it. If I yell, Paul’s angry friend could hurt Sean or come after me. My breath roars in my ears, so I stop breathing.
After another long minute, maybe two, I pull the phone back and shrink away, shrink away while my best friend is tortured. I know I have to see if I have anything on the phone, but I can’t do that anywhere but at home. At the last second, I take a trembling shot of the two cars on the street, but a screen door squeaks open somewhere and I run through a hedge and away.
Mom is there when I get home, food on the table. Ginny is assembling a sandwich with her fingers the way she packed her suitcase, putting slices of things on, then taking them off. My dad is steaming, storming through the rooms. “I need it when I’m there and now I find out two of the kids called in sick so I have to go!”
I stare at them blindly, stupidly, as Dad calls his cell from the house phone, can’t hear it as it vibrates silently in my pocket, then slams the receiver back in its cradle. “Someone took it. If I left it in the track office, Jimmy would answer, so someone took it. But no. I had it upstairs. I thought I did.”
Mom tries it now from her cell phone and shakes her head. “Still voice mail.”
“I have to go to the bathroom,” I say and pass through the kitchen. I run upstairs and stop by my room to pick up my earbuds. I go in the bathroom and quietly slip the door latch I never use.
Nine percent power. I play the video back.
At first there are huge blobs of green and red, then a crisscross of window screen, then it darkens. That was when I held it against the screen. There is Sean’s desk. His dresser. Then there is Sean. His white arms and shoulders. Then there is his desk again. Then his naked back. I miss what happens next, it’s just twitching back and forth. Finally, the jerking stops. There are Sean and Paul. The camera saw what I couldn’t.
Now I see.
TWENTY-TWO
I tell.
I burst out of the bathroom, run downstairs into the kitchen where Ginny is still picking stuff off her bread and Dad is still ranting about his stupid phone.
“Ginny, g-go upstairs,” I say, my voice cracking.
“What? No. Did you pee in your pants—”
“Take your sandwich, please, and go to your room.”
“Owen, that’s rude,” my mom snaps.
“Ginny! Go!” I scream. My dad’s staring at me, then sees his phone in my hand as Ginny runs from the kitchen, her tongue stuck out at me. She stomps upstairs.
“Owen, what the hell!” Dad says, reaching for the phone.
Even as I think I don’t know how to say it and the words can’t possibly come out of my mouth, I scream it. I scream that ugly word I could never bring myself to say.
“Sean is being raped! He’s being raped by his babysitter! Here it is! Here!”
I slap the phone on the table, but it’s blinking out of power and goes black. Mom searches for her charger to plug it in and Dad swears again.
“Sean said his babysitter—”
“Paul?” he says. “Paul Landis?”
“His babysitter exposed himself and showed him pictures of boys with no clothes on. One boy
. Then he made Sean be in some pictures.” It was coming out stupidly. “He made movies of Sean and him. Him and his friend are taking movies at his house right now!”
“Owen—”
“Dad, just listen to me! The other guy took movies and Paul Landis said if Sean told anybody the pictures would go on the Internet but they were only for his friends now and only for a little while if Sean did what he said—”
I’m twisting myself up, but it’s coming out now and I can’t stop.
“Sean told me if I told anyone else they would go online, so I didn’t tell anybody. It’s been going on since June, since right after school ended, but Sean’s bad now, really bad, and he’s saying things about dying and you didn’t see, nobody saw, nobody sees, and I couldn’t tell, but they’re over there now and we have to stop them, here, look at the video. I was just there! Look!”
The stupid phone is up now, and they look and I look again. Then I run into the downstairs bathroom and throw up before I reach the toilet. I can’t stop puking until everything comes out and there’s always more to come out. Mom comes in with a spray bottle and a handful of paper towels.
“My God, Owen, I’m so sorry, so sorry.” She’s on her knees scooping up the puke and putting it straight into the toilet and flushing that and cleaning up more. I want to put my face into her chest and go dark and just stay there, but I’m shaking all over and gagging and puking until there isn’t any more.
“I broke my promise, and everyone will know about Sean,” I say, washing my mouth out in the sink. “I broke him.”
“No, no,” she says. “No, that’s not true.”
* * *
You know everything I know, so I don’t need to say it anymore. I tell them and I tell them and I tell them, and even before I finish, long before I finish, Dad is on the phone to the police, saying Sean’s address and the name, “Paul Landis. L-A-N-D … Right.” Then my mom calls Sean’s mother in P-town and tells her in as few words as she can, trying to be calm, but her voice is cracking through all the words she has to say.