Fatal Option

by Chris Beakey

  Caruso had clearly been confused about why he hadn’t said anything about Stephen Porter running Aidan down, even after Caruso had mentioned Sara, telling him he somehow knew she had been at his house. But from the moment he had seen Porter drive away he had known that simply turning him over to Caruso would never be enough.

  That little girl of yours was really getting hot when we were lying there, Stephen.

  I had three fingers up inside her—had her squirming like a bitch in heat.

  He stared out through the windshield, tears blurring his vision, and felt cold pressure at the back of his neck, knowing what was happening but desperate to stop it from happening as he heard the sound of short, rasping breaths in the back seat.

  No.

  Not there.

  But Nurlene was there when he looked into the rearview mirror, the blood flowing down from the top of her misshapen head; a righteous, angry smile on to her face.

  Cold and dead and cold and dead.

  I can hurt him hurt him HURT him…

  He shook his head with a violent motion that sent the truck into the oncoming lane. Nurlene’s image vibrated and then vanished as he hit the brake and swerved back and then came to a skidding stop on the shoulder of the road.

  His heart pounded with an erratic rhythm in his chest, his mind going back to the medical tests he had gone through years before; the memory of an MRI view of the top of his brain; identical twin hemispheres of gray against the black; two separate forces battling for control of his mind:

  Killer.

  Savior.

  He felt the buzz of his phone, and knew it was Sara calling even before he glanced at the number on the screen. He turned down the noise from the speakers, and spoke in a near-whisper as he answered.

  Sara found it hard to breathe as she reached the top of the stairs and stepped into her room. She shut the door and locked it, her mind still fixed on the image of her father staring at her, silently begging her to say nothing as the detective grilled him about what had happened when he went to pick her up.

  Moments later she was on her bed, in a fetal position and clutching a pillow as she remembered the scream of the smoke alarm and the sight of Aidan’s empty bedroom. The detective—John Caruso—had said Aidan had been hit by a car and it was all too easy to imagine him lying in the road; her father standing over him—

  No.

  It must have been someone else.

  The detective had said that Aidan had been killed “a few hours ago,” so it could have been after her father had picked her up. And even if it had been in the middle of the night there had to have been other cars on the road—other drivers who could have hit Aidan and driven away. And yet she had known there was something wrong when she had gotten into the car and seen the stunned, shocked expression on her father’s face.

  She also remembered his absolute silence on the way home.

  He couldn’t even look at you.

  Knowing what he had done.

  She remembered the smell of alcohol on his breath and the dazed look on his face when he ordered her out of the car before they even went into the garage. Remembered feeling like something terrible had happened as she went up to her room and slipped underneath the covers of her bed.

  She also remembered Kieran and Aidan wrestling, and Aidan running out without a coat into the snow. Kieran going after him, calling out his name.

  And then she thought of the photos on his computer, which had worked their way into her dreams. She had awakened with a terrible feeling of loneliness, and had held the pillow tightly as she remembered the longing in Kieran’s eyes as he held her in his arms, the slow, sensual touching…

  She imagined him coming back into the house and finding her gone; imagined him alone, weeping over Aidan’s death.

  You need to be there with him, she thought. Right now.

  Her legs shook as she got out of bed and checked her laptop. There were no instant messages. She still had no idea what had happened to her phone, but she had memorized Kieran’s number months before. She tapped it into the landline phone alongside her bed.

  It was answered on the second ring, but she heard only a raspy breathing sound.

  “Kieran?”

  She heard the rumble of his pick up truck, and then: “Sara.”

  She thought of her father, looking directly at the detective, lying to him.

  “I know what happened,” she said, without thinking. And when Kieran didn’t respond she knew they both knew the truth.

  She looked back at her bedroom door to make sure it was still closed, so neither Kenneth nor her father could hear what she said next.

  “Oh God I’m so sorry Kieran. Please…please tell me what I

  can do.”

  Stephen took two steps toward Sara’s bedroom door and then stopped, his hands were hanging limply at his sides and his knees were so weak he had to lean against the wall for balance. He had planned to knock on her door; had planned to ask her all kinds of questions about Kieran O’Shea but now the whole conversation seemed futile. Any questions he asked would be followed by questions of her own. Questions seeded by the visit from Caruso, none of which he could answer with the truth.

  He turned away from the door and headed toward his own bedroom. He gazed at the empty crystal glass on the table beside it and nearly collapsed on the bed.

  And then he was praying, his hands clenched into a fist and pressed against his lips. Praying that John Caruso would not be able to prove he killed the boy. The room began to turn slowly around him and he heard the sound of his own heavy breathing as more images of the dead boy flashed through his mind. Once again he felt his palm against the boy’s cold, still chest, heard the cry from the back of his throat as the boy’s head tilted…

  And then suddenly he was sitting up, his spine ramrod straight as he stared into the dresser mirror across the room. He barely recognized the terrified old man who gazed back. From somewhere outside the window he heard the rumbling growl of an engine being revved in the driveway.

  He got up and went to the window. There was a Frederick County Sheriff’s car parked like a sentry across the street. And a black pick-up truck was pulling into the driveway. Its windows were filmed with salt from the roads but the driver was visible behind the wheel. It was a man with long black hair and pale white skin and he held a cell phone to his ear.

  Stephen leaned forward, angling for a better look. At that instant his own cell phone began to ring. The sound was distant, surreal.

  He went back to the bedside table and picked it up. The call was coming from Sara’s cell phone, which she had lost.

  He answered, “Hello.”

  He heard loud rock music, and a slow, labored breathing sound. He kept the phone at his ear as he went back to the window.

  “You killed my brother.”

  He felt the blood rushing from his face, leaned against the wall to keep from falling down.

  “I saw you,” the caller said. “I was right there.”

  He heard the front door of the house open and shut, and then watched as Sara stepped out from the front porch and trudged through the snow. She was wearing the black cape-coat she had worn the night before. Her long black hair was loose and uncombed. She looked as if she had dressed quickly, haphazardly.

  As Sara came closer the driver reached over and opened the truck’s passenger side door. Screaming rock music from the inside of the truck filled the air.

  Stephen slapped the window with the palm of his hand then frantically reached down to try and open it.

  Sara pulled the passenger door shut, blunting the music’s volume. The driver glanced up again as he revved the engine, then backed the truck into the cul-de-sac, spinning dirty snow beneath its wheels as he took her away.

  Kenneth sat up in bed and listened to the muffled voices downstairs in the foyer. H
e still felt groggy as he went to the window and peered outside.

  His heart jumped at the sight of the Frederick County Sheriff’s car parked across the street.

  And then it all came rushing back; Marco Niles’ grip on his shoulder; Marco slamming him back against the wall; the talk with his father the night before.

  And now the police were at his house. Getting a statement, probably. Something the Langford Secondary principal would review on Monday before deciding what to do with Marco Niles, whose father was a detective.

  So it will be his version against yours.

  He sat back down on the edge of the bed and thought of how everything would escalate in the hours ahead. By now there would be messages all over Facebook and Twitter, a whole new torrent of comments to follow the message Marco had sent out some time last night, the last thing he had read before the burst of tears that led to just a few hours of troubled sleep.

  Stay away fag boy Porter

  Far far away

  Marco had hundreds of friends online; including plenty at Langford who had probably seen the message and were already sharing it all around.

  Deciding you’re an even bigger freak now. Someone to hate forever.

  He touched his nose, which was still sore from Marco’s punch, the culmination of weeks of glaring looks in the hallways of the school. Like Sara, he had almost known something was going to happen and for weeks had been determined to stay out of Marco’s way; using back hallways or trudging outside and walking around the back of the school to get to his classes; making sure he was never alone or out of sight of at least one teacher when he stayed after school to work on the Art Wall; packing his own lunch and staying clear of the cafeteria where Marco would be sitting, surrounded by his crowd.

  But the simple avoidance hadn’t been enough. And now it obviously never would be. Tears spilled from his eyes and rolled down his cheeks, making him feel as weak as he had the moment Marco slammed him back against the cinder block wall.

  His father was right. He was falling apart, like some kind of mental patient; like the reject that he was. So unlike Marco Niles, a boy who could bench press the entire stack in the school’s weight room; a boy who already looked like a man as he moved through the hallways, commanding friends and followers. The most popular guy in school.

  His head felt light, disconnected from his body as he sat down on the edge of the bed. He felt a tightness at the base of his throat; the threat of more crybaby tears.

  You can’t live like this. He reached for the pillow, brought it close to his body, and pressed his face against it to stifle the sobs. He knew from experience it was the only thing he could do—crying till his tear ducts were emptied and the memories loosened their grip on his mind. He became barely conscious of the minutes slipping by as his eyelids grew heavy, and felt himself slipping into the netherworld at the edge of sleep as the rumble of a heavy engine in the driveway filled the room.

  The sound was loud, jarring, drawing him back to the window, and the sight of Sara getting into a black truck, with Mr. O’Shea, the teacher, behind the wheel.

  Madison Reidy woke to needling pain in her temples and a sour taste in her throat. Her sleep had been sporadic and filled with images of what had happened in the hours before she had trudged home in the snow and locked her bedroom door and crawled underneath the blankets. Alone now, as the late morning light filled her room, she hoped the heaviness in her head would keep the memories deadened, tamped down. Yet they twitched to life as the vestiges of sleep faded away.

  Memories of early evening: the spur of the moment decision to stop by Marco’s house without texting him first. The shock of seeing him at the door, his face swollen, his left eye surrounded by a horrible purple-black bruise. For one surreal moment she thought of the fight with Kenneth Porter, which Marco had walked away from unscathed, before realizing that, once again, he had been beaten by his father.

  The desire to simply comfort him had come to her first. A fresh towel filled with ice for the swelling. One of the Percocet that she had lifted from her mother’s prescription drawer and hidden in the aspirin bottle in her purse. A half hour of peace as she rubbed the back of his neck before he decided he needed something more.

  The coke had come out next; Marco evidently deciding his supply was endless as he laid out four long lines on the table and snorted three before offering her the last. And then suddenly he was wide awake and alert and interested in nothing more than a night of drinking when his friends Darrell and Sean dropped by with a bottle of tequila, both of them telling Marco to “chill out” over and over, which only made him more anxious as the night wore on.

  Darrell and Sean’s surprise arrival had made her angry even before Marco had decided to ignore her. She had first tried to get his attention by being pouty, and when that didn’t work she had tried whispering into his ear, promising him a night he would never forget once he told Darrell and Sean to leave.

  Yet he had continued pretending she wasn’t even there, even when she went over to Darrell and sat on his lap and then asked him if he wanted to go upstairs, assuming that Marco would see it happening and realize then that she wouldn’t be taken for granted. But Marco had barely noticed Darrell grabbing her ass and didn’t even seem to hear her loud laughter on the stairs that went up to the bedrooms. Then, because she had already basically committed to it, she had followed through with the implied promise by gripping Darrell by the belt and leading him into one of the second floor guest rooms, where he had immediately started in with slobbering, open-mouthed kisses. Then he had started fingering her, roughly, before a few seconds of premature humping and then cumming in his underwear.

  Followed by an uncomfortable silence as he left her on the bed and went into the adjoining bathroom to clean himself up.

  She remembered going into the same bathroom after he went downstairs and looking into the mirror and feeling like she wanted to shatter it. But instead she had touched up her makeup and brushed out her hair and started to go back to the basement.

  The sounds of explosions and screams had stopped her, the volume of whatever video game Marco and his friends were playing turned so high it hurt her ears as she stood at the top of the stairs.

  She thought about going home but hated the idea of walking through the cold night and into an empty house, so she had wandered toward Marco’s room instead. At first glance it looked the way it always had—there were clothes piled into every corner, posters of his favorite athletes on the walls, the unmade bed triggering erotic thoughts as she imagined him lying there, naked. But then she saw the things that were so clearly wrong: the cratered wall next to Marco’s desk, which looked as if it had been hit with a sledgehammer; the wooden desk chair that was now missing a leg; the full-length mirror with the jagged vertical crack.

  She stood in the doorway, knowing that she was probably the only person in the world who knew about the things that happened here. Marco had told her a few details about the last time his father had “lost his mind,” and had fantasized about calling the police to turn him in. But they both knew that would never happen—knew that his father, a cop—would know exactly how to manipulate the legal system to save himself.

  So instead he suffered, doing his best to get through his days and stay out of his father’s way and channeling all of his energy into the things he could control. She knew that like all of the upper echelon athletes Marco lived for that big rush—the need to conquer, a need she felt just as strongly as she and the rest of the cheerleading squad cartwheeled and leapt through their routines; facing the crowds, rewarding whomever they chose with fetching glances and moments of eye contact that showed they were noticed by the popular girls everyone wanted as their friends…

  Bitches.

  In the end that’s pretty much what they were. And despite the knowledge that she and the rest of the truly popular women of Langford Secondary lived under a well-deserv
ed spotlight there were more and more moments, like this one, when she absolutely hated the person she was. She had still felt the semen of a boy she didn’t even like clinging to her underwear and felt like gagging from the memory of his tongue in her mouth. She only felt sicker knowing that Darrell had almost certainly gone back to Marco and told him what he had done. It wasn’t hard at all to imagine them laughing, jeeringly, and quickly turning their attention back to whatever filled the giant screen in Marco’s basement.

  She had intended to walk out of Marco's bedroom right then, had planned to just grab her coat and stomp out into the night without another word, but had stood in front of Marco’s laptop instead. He was still logged on and the temptation to spy had been overwhelming. With one more glance at the door she had given in—

  And seen the messages he had posted on Kenneth Porter’s Facebook wall.

  Stay away fag boy Porter

  Far far away

  She wanted to laugh about it now, but felt a sense of shame as she thought of Kenneth showing both her and Marco through his house a few days after the Porters had moved in. She remembered Kenneth telling them he wanted to be “an artist” and the nervous twitch on his face when Marco jokingly asked “You’re not a fag, are you?” She had realized then that Sara and Kenneth would never have what it took to be popular, and that any semblance of a friendship with them could seriously threaten her own standing. From that point on it had been easy to find reasons to shun both of them and make sure that anyone else who mattered did the same, especially after Sara and Kenneth’s mother killed herself, which basically proved there was something wrong with the whole family.

  But Sara hadn’t left it alone. Yesterday, after months of being blatantly ignored, she had finally snapped, sending the text message that fired back.

  You really are a whore Madison. I never even wanted to be your friend.

  Which had immediately prompted her revenge. The few words about Kenneth Porter that she had guessed, correctly, would fill Marco with rage. The accusation that led Marco to beat Kenneth up.