Prey

by Lurlene McDaniel

  “Guess I'm not his favorite pal anymore,” Ryan says.

  “Guess not,” I say. Lurid pictures of Ryan and Lori run around in my head. My stomach roils.

  “You mad at me?” Ryan asks. “Because you act mad.”

  “Did you catch up your grades?”

  “Mostly. Still a little heat in math.”

  “But not in world history, I'll bet.”

  He gives me a funny look. “I do all right.”

  I'll bet you do, I think. I want to spew angry words at him. I want him to know that what he's doing is horrible. I want him to know how he's crushed me, how bad I'm hurting. I say nothing.

  Joel comes off the porch. “Got to run, Ry.”

  Ryan hangs back. “I can walk home from here.”

  “No,” I say. “Go on. I've got stuff to do.”

  He looks surprised. Probably never remembers a time I haven't begged him to stay. “Okay. I'll see you around.”

  I watch them drive away. I don't know how long I stand staring into space, but at some point I feel a tug on my sleeve. I look down at Cory. He reaches up and touches my cheek, pulls his hand away and stares at his finger. “Wet,” he says.

  I wipe my face. I've been crying without realizing it. I take the ball from his other hand and smash it hard into the ground.

  Three days later I make up my mind. I know exactly what I'm going to do.

  Ryan

  We have a substitute teacher in world history today. I knew about her ahead of time because Lori called my cell last night and said she didn't feel good and was taking a sick day. I thought about cutting class, but I have a test next period, so what good will an hour of not being here get me? I sit and doodle on my notebook cover and wait for the bell to ring.

  The door of the classroom opens and Mr. Sampson, our assistant principal, steps inside. Everyone looks up because it must be important if Sampson comes into a classroom. “May I help you?” the sub asks.

  “Ryan Piccoli,” Sampson says.

  I bolt upright. Me? He wants me?

  The guy in the seat behind me pokes me in the shoulder. “What did you do, man?”

  “Ryan?” the sub asks, glancing around the room because she doesn't know who's who.

  I stand. “Yes,” I say.

  “Come with me,” Sampson says.

  “What's up?” I ask the second we're in the hall.

  “Mrs. Dexter's office” is all he tells me.

  I'm racking my brain, trying to figure out what I did to get called to the office. A scary thought suddenly hits me. “Is it my dad? Did something happen—”

  “Nothing like that,” he says.

  I feel momentary relief and then we're at the office and Sampson's taking me into Dexter's inner sanctum. She's there along with a man and a woman. I know in my gut that they're cops.

  Dexter points to a chair. “Ryan, please sit down.”

  I ease into the chair and she introduces the two as Detectives Cole and Sanchez. Everyone's staring at me.

  “Your father's out of town?” Dexter asks.

  “Until tomorrow.”

  “Is there anyone you can stay with?”

  “Why?”

  “We want you in protective custody.”

  My brain's spinning. “Why?”

  She opens a manila folder on her desk and hands me a single sheet of paper from a thick stack. I read the first few words and right away I know what's going on. They've found out about me and Lori. My stomach heaves and I start to sweat. I'm scared.

  “These detectives are going to arrest her, Ryan. She's going to jail.”

  “But—”

  I struggle to stand, but one cop, Sanchez, I think, puts his hand on my shoulder. “Stay put, son.”

  “Is she in trouble?”

  “You're not in trouble, but she's perpetrated a crime,” Sanchez says.

  My head's spinning and all I want to do is run. “No crime. I—I wanted to be with her.”

  “She's a predator, Ryan. A sexual predator.” Dexter's face looks pale. “She's taken terrible advantage of you. And you're not the first young man she has a sexual history with, either. Not the first, but if I can help it, you'll be the last.”

  Ryan

  The people in Dexter's office keep talking to me. I see their lips moving, but I'm not listening. All I hear over and over is Dexter's voice: “… And you're not the first young man she has a sexual history with, either.” I think about all the times Lori's said she loves me. I thought I was special, the first.

  At some point I ask, “Can I go get my stuff from my class?”

  “I'll go with you,” Sampson says.

  I don't argue, just try to figure a way to lose him. We head down the hall and I catch a break when the bell rings and the hall fills up. Since he isn't holding on to me, I duck and slither between groups of jabbering girls.

  “Hey!” he yells.

  Startled, the girls look at Sampson and stop walking. Without meaning to, they block him and I break away. I dash down a hallway to where Joel's next class is meeting and catch him at the door. “Keys,” I say.

  “What's the matter?”

  “Now!”

  He hands over his car keys. “What's—”

  I hear nothing more because I'm hitting an exit door and running to the parking lot.

  I pound on Lori's door and when she opens it, I shove my way inside.

  “Ryan! What's wrong?”

  “They know about us.”

  “What?” All the color leaves her face.

  “Dexter dragged me into her office and there were cops, too.”

  “But how—”

  “She had a whole stack of e-mails. The ones we sent each other.”

  “You didn't erase them?”

  “I filed them,” I say. “Password-protected everything. I don't know how this happened.” I go into her kitchen. There are a big pot boiling on the stove and chopped vegetables lying on a cutting board.

  “Oh my God.” She sags against the counter. “You should have erased them. Why did you save them?”

  The tone of her voice is like a hard slap—a teacher's voice scolding me. “Don't put this on me. I liked to read them to be nearer to you.”

  “I'm sorry, baby. I—I didn't mean to yell at you. This is terrible. Really bad.”

  I cut her off. “Dexter said there were others. Like me. Other guys.”

  It takes her seconds to speak and in that stretch, I know it's true. “That's not the way it was, Ryan. It's just the spin she wants to put on it.” Lori reaches for me, but I jerk away.

  “Was I your first?” I'm shouting. “I assumed I was your first!”

  She goes quiet and the look on her face tells me everything. “But you're the one I love.”

  “I was just a lay, wasn't I? Just a f—”

  She puts her hand over my mouth. “Don't say it. Don't make it dirty. I love you.”

  I break away. “I've been stupid. Why did I believe you?”

  I turn, but she grabs me. “Don't leave. I need you.”

  “Tell me about the others. I want to know about all the others.”

  She's crying and she picks up the big chopping knife and begins to chop carrots furiously, attacking them as if they're an enemy. “No others. Just one. A boy who needed me. His parents were destroying him, pressuring him to be someone they wanted him to be and not who he was. He was so needy.”

  I can't believe what I'm hearing. “So you were helping him?”

  “Don't you get the difference? He needed me, but I need you!”

  My head's spinning, and the walls seem to be closing in on me. Women in my life have been my friends' mothers, or teachers, or Dad's girlfriends, or neighbors. I don't know how they behave or think. Lori's the only woman who's shown an interest in me. I feel trapped and confused. “I've got to get out of here,” I say.

  “You can't go. Don't leave me.”

  A pounding on the front door makes us both jump. “Lori Settles, please open
the door. This is the police.”

  Lori clutches my arm. She looks like a cornered animal. My heart's pounding like a jackhammer. On the stove the boiling pot throws moisture onto the burner and it sizzles. Hot steam hits the cool air.

  “Open up.” The command comes again through the door.

  I unlatch Lori's fingers from my arm and back away. There's only one way out and that's through the door. I head for it, hear a cry and then the clatter of something hitting the floor behind me. I spin and see Lori bent over, the big chopping knife on the tile, and blood gushing down her wrist and hand. I shout, “No!” and grab her before she drops to the floor. “What are you doing?”

  She folds over like a broken doll while I'm holding her. We slide down together and I hug her against my body while her blood gushes and the pounding on the door grows frantic. I lift her arm upward, watch her blood pour in a steady stream of red.

  I'm crying, “Stop! Stop!” as if I can stem the flow by words alone. My back is braced against the refrigerator, and I feel a dishtowel hanging from the handle. I snatch the cloth and wrap it tight around her wrist, too tight, because she cries in pain and keeps begging over and over, “Let me die, Ryan! Please let me die!” and then the front door splinters open and people come through the kitchen doorway like roaches and I say to Lori, “You can't die! Not like this. Not the way my mother did it.”

  Ryan

  “Fallout.” It's a word used to describe the aftereffects of a nuclear event. The perfect word to describe the aftermath of me and Lori. Most of that afternoon is a blur—a fast-forwarded DVD where people move like speeded-up robots. I recall cops, paramedics, nosey neighbors, an ambulance at Lori's complex. I remember someone peeling me off her, putting her on a stretcher and rolling her away. I remember her blood soaked into my jeans and shirt. I remember some social-service woman taking me into custody and waiting for my father, and him catching the first available plane and showing up at the police station and taking me home, and having to see the events revisited on the evening news and only then learning that Lori had been treated for her injury in the ER, released and taken to jail.

  Some of the fallout was explosive, like my dad getting in my face once he knew I was safe, shouting questions and accusations at me. “An affair with your teacher? My God, Ryan, what were you thinking?”

  “It wasn't like that. We loved each other.”

  “Love! You're a kid! What could she see in you? You're just a kid!”

  That went all over me. “She didn't think so.”

  “Are you that deluded? Where is your brain? Don't answer!” he roared. “At sixteen, your brain's in your pants. That's what she liked about you. She's sick. She's perverted. A child molester. I'll see to it that she goes to jail for the rest of her life.”

  I go berserk when he says that. I call him names and he yanks me off the sofa and shoves me toward my room, where I sit, cut off from everybody and every form of communication—no cell phone, no computer, no friends, even no school for a week. My father says I need help. What does he know? I can't go out of the house because reporters are hanging around. I can't watch TV without seeing and hearing talking heads commenting on Lori and her “boy lover.” I almost go stir-crazy. But it gives me time to think.

  I think about Lori, about her all alone in jail and being vilified by the news media and hated by everyone. I miss her body. I wanted her from the start. What a difference she made in my life, and I am not sorry I was with her. I think how much I want things back the way they used to be. I think about the other guy, too. Who was he? And did she really not love him the way she said she loves me?

  I think about my mother. I go through old photos, wondering why she did what she did. When I was twelve, Aunt Debbie came for a short visit and I begged her to tell me how my mother “did it.” I'd been curious about her suicide for years, and Dad would only say, “You were just a little guy. No need to hear the details.”

  Aunt Debbie said, “You should ask your father.”

  “He won't talk about it. He tells me nothing.”

  “I told Bill years ago that he should tell you everything.”

  “But he hasn't. Aunt Debbie, please. I have to know.”

  “Jane was troubled and unhappy. I could never figure why. She had people who loved her, a nice home, a good husband, a lovely son. In the end it wasn't enough. She left you with a good neighbor one afternoon, went home, locked the bathroom door, drew a bath and got into the tub. She slit her wrists and bled out into the water. Your father found her dead when he got home that afternoon, and she left no note. We'll never know why she did it.”

  I flip through the old pictures. My mother was pretty, but her eyes look sad in every photo. How unhappy does a person have to be to kill herself? She didn't love me enough to stick around. What kind of mother leaves her two-year-old to grow up without her?

  When, in another fight with Dad, I compare what Lori and Mom did, he loses it. He insists that Lori cut herself for dramatic effect and to get sympathy, but when I ask how that's different from what Mom did, he says, “Don't ever compare your mother with that slut,” and balls up his fists. For a second I think he's going to slug me, but he leaves the room and slams the door.

  The other thing I think about is how Dexter got hold of my private e-mails. Someone gave them to her, but who? Lori and I were careful. I kept my mouth shut to everybody, even Joel, who's so wrapped up with Jess that he hardly knows right from left, proving to me that he's not getting any sex. When a guy's not into full-time thinking about getting his rocks off, he concentrates on other things. I did. Pulled up my low grades in six weeks because Lori quenched the fire inside me that never goes away. When we were climbing into the sack regularly, it became a controlled blaze. I wish we could do it again right now.

  Maybe Coach Mathers found out. No secret that he wanted Lori all to himself, so maybe he outed us. But I discard that idea because he has no access to my computer.

  So I spend long stretches of time alone, turning the question over in my mind, looking at it from every angle. In the end, I come down to one conclusion. There's only one person who could have discovered the truth about me and Lori. Only one. Honey Fowler. Something was different about her after the dance. She wasn't the same. I can't figure out why she did it, though. That's the mystery that's driving me nuts.

  Honey

  What have I done? The world has exploded and it's my fault. Lori Settles is in jail. Ryan's under house arrest and then who knows what will happen to him? Reporters are crawling all over the place, and no one at school can talk about anything except Ryan and Settles and their affair. My parents won't allow me to talk to anyone except Jess and Taylor, and I don't want to talk to them because they'd ask too many questions—“Did you know? Who blew their cover? How long do you think Ryan's been doing Lori? Are you sure you're clueless about this?” With the push of a computer key, I created this tornado of badness. I sent the e-mail folder I copied from Ryan's computer to Mrs. Dexter and now life as I once knew it is over.

  I insist I don't know anything, but inside I'm dying. Joel swears he didn't know about it either, and I'm sure that's true. Ryan was the perfect liar. He hid everything from us in plain sight. While we went to school games and pep rallies and giggled in the halls, Ryan went to bed with Lori, a woman seventeen years older than him. While I sat on the sidelines of his life—wishing, longing, praying for him to be with me—he was meeting Lori secretly. I wanted him so much—me, Honey, the unlovely one, the gal-pal from elementary school, the girl down the street, the one who loved him from afar but could never have him.

  I hate him now. As much as I once loved him, I now hate him. Swear to God.

  Mom's been grilling me. “Did Ryan ever try anything with you?”

  “Never,” I say. Imagine if she knew that I'd raided his room and turned him in. “Never,” I repeat.

  “Because if he did, I want to know, Honey. You don't have to protect him.”

  “I'm not protecting him. W
e've only been friends.”

  “Some friend. Actually, your father and I don't truly blame him. He's a horny teenage boy, and boys will take whatever they can get. That vile Lori woman was willing to take his innocence. That's who we blame. I get the shivers just thinking about how she took advantage of Ryan.”

  “I think he liked it, Mom.”

  She makes a face. “Disgusting. Of course he liked it. But the newspeople say that Ryan wasn't her first victim. There was another boy, back in Chicago where she taught before coming to McAllister. He was only fourteen and his parents didn't want it dragged through the media.”

  I've seen all the newscasts, read every newspaper story, and there was no hard evidence against Lori and the other boy, just rumors. The boy denied it and so did she. “No proof, Mom,” I say. “Just hearsay.” Not like the proof the authorities have on her and Ryan, I remind myself.

  “More of a shame. The files were closed and poor Mrs. Dexter had no clue she was hiring a predator.” I hide behind a magazine when she adds, “I wonder who blew the whistle this time? Whoever it was deserves a medal.” Mom shakes her head with a dramatic sigh. “The pity is that this Lori creature will get a fancy lawyer and be out in no time. That's my prediction.”

  I wake up from a deep sleep to the sound of someone calling my name from outside our walk-in basement's patio doors. It's very late on a Saturday night and I've fallen asleep on the sofa watching a movie. I sit up and turn toward the sound and see Ryan through the glass. My heart jumps into my throat.

  Ryan says, “Let me in.”

  “Go away.”

  “I'm not leaving until we talk.”

  “I'm getting my father.” I make a move toward the stairs.

  “No. You're going to talk to me because I know what you did.”

  I freeze.

  “Please,” he says.

  I loathe myself, but I go to the sliding doors and open one and he steps into the room. I close the door after him. Even now, my heart is pounding and a part of me is so glad to see him. Then all the memories, all his dirty e-mails and my lewd imaginary pictures of him with Lori doing the nasty, slam into my brain. “What do you want?”