by Tony Abbott
“And why don’t you go inside? You’re sitting in water.”
He doesn’t move.
I blurt stuff. “I nearly died at the track. A girl…”
But he’s saying something. I barely make out his mumbling. “Sean, what?”
“It’s different now.” His words are so soft, and my blood is thumping in my ears. “It’s different.”
I want to be angry, but I push that down, hoping it doesn’t sound in my voice. “Uh-huh. What’s different?”
“There’s a camera.”
I don’t want to hear it. A camera now? Shay, come on!
“Where is there a camera?” My voice cracks.
“His friend brought a camera.”
“You mean his girlfriend?”
“Her?” he growls. “She doesn’t know anything. She’s a freaking moron.”
“She looks okay. Then who? What friend?”
“Carrie may not even be his girlfriend,” he goes on, “just somebody he knows. Mom was at the dress store yesterday, firing somebody for stealing, and the police had to be there. He knew that. Paul knew she’d be a long time. He said a friend of his was dropping by, and he had a camera and took videos.”
“Of what? I still don’t know what you mean—”
“Because you don’t want to, Owen.” He barks it out quick and low. “Don’t be stupid. You’re the only one who knows. I have to tell somebody, and you’re it. He took pictures of me. Naked and doing stuff. You don’t want to know what I did.”
As many times as I’ve tried to picture what happens in his room I haven’t been able to. Now in the rain, the whole world of the porch is crying and it seems I can almost see it. I make out a jumble of arms and legs, some small, others hairy, and then hazily I begin to see everything else.
My face grows hot and my skin heavy on me, weighing me down. My chest is sparking, nervous. Is this really happening? I need to go to the bathroom. I want to stand up and run away but can’t. Words come out of me. “Paul needs to die.”
“He said I was ‘cute’ in a towel.”
The words make my stomach turn.
“He said I was a pretty—a good-looking boy—a little boy, and that when he talked to his friends they said they wanted to see pictures of me and videos because I was young and so white. He made me take my pod off my arm. He has a bunch of friends who like that stuff. It’s part of undressing. So they made movies.”
“Sean, God! What does that mean?”
“I said, no, I wouldn’t. But I did it. He said it was just for his friends. If I tell, the movies will go online and everyone will see me. He said he’ll show the movies to the whole world if I tell.”
“He forced you to do things?”
“I don’t even know.” He looks up at me, but not quite at me. Over my shoulder into the rain still beating down. “He didn’t hurt me or hit me. He didn’t force me. I did things he told me to. He said it’s how boys learn and it’s fine. He ended up fine. A new car, a big guy at church, a pretty girlfriend. That’s what he calls her, but it’s not like a regular girlfriend. She’s stupid. So I just … did what he asked. And after it was over, he…”
He stops, his mouth open. He leans over the porch railing and spits into the bushes a few times.
“Sean, he what?”
When he comes back up, his face is gray. “Can we go to Wellfleet again? Your mom said maybe we could.”
The words won’t form. I watch a couple of cars go by the house. “Look, Shay, I won’t tell anybody, but you have to call the police—”
“No.”
“You have to.”
“No. He said it was just for his friends and only for a little bit. He said he could tell I didn’t mind it. But if I told, though, he would know. Then it would go out there and everyone would see.” It was a flood now, Sean spilling it all out. “He said his friend sometimes just does it, puts pictures online, and we shouldn’t make him mad.”
Sean stands and his pants are completely saturated from the rain on the porch. I stand near him under the roof. I have no words. Rain streams a waterfall in front of our faces. Then it lessens, almost suddenly. There’s a glimmer of sunlight on the grass; it vanishes, then comes again. His eyes are fixed on the crushed seashells covering the path from the driveway to the house, but he can’t be seeing them with those black eyes, the way the bleached bits are catching the light shafting from the clouds. The pockets and puddles of rain drench the shells and make them swim as if they’re underwater.
Sean’s eyes are blank, staring away, not at anything I can see, maybe at scenes inside his head. If it’s what I imagine, it’s a nightmare of horrible limbs and hands, and the feelings and pinches and pain of what those men make him do.
His features are twitching, but his head isn’t moving. He’s biting the inside of his lip hard. I see blood.
“You can’t help me,” he says. “I have to go.”
“Sean, wait. Look, you have to—no, we’ll do something next time he comes. We’ll stop him, you and me—”
He goes inside.
I stand there looking out—more sunlight is lying over the lawn now, the purple clouds are flying east to Orleans and Eastham—I stand waiting and staring at the shells and the glittering grass, and my vision blurs. I’ve known Sean since forever. We’ve done everything together. We’re like brothers. So how can this be happening to him and not to me or anybody else? I don’t know what to do, except maybe to try to take some of it on myself. The screen door has barely settled shut when it opens again behind me.
“We can do something ourselves,” I say. “I don’t know what, but we can.”
“What don’t you know? Do what yourselves?”
It’s not Shay in the doorway. It’s his mother. I can’t answer.
“Owen, he’s all wet. What did you two do out here?”
“Oh. No. Nothing. He was sitting.”
“Sitting? Do what yourselves? Why are you out here? Come inside.”
“No, it’s okay.”
She looks at me, searches my face. “Well, he’s mad about something, and he won’t tell me.”
I guess my face looks strange, sad, maybe, because she smiles like a mother I might have if I didn’t have my own mother. “You boys will work it out, I guess?” She might be waiting for an answer, but she doesn’t wait long and starts fidgeting, and already seems somewhere else. Her shop, her worries, money, stealing, whatever. She shifts a big flowery bag from one shoulder to the other. The air is brighter now, the hard rain pretty much over. “Shay went to his room and closed the door. Are things all right with you two?”
I try to make myself smile back. “Sure. I think he’s just getting something to show me. Are you going out? Sorry about the shop.”
She lets out a sigh. “The shop. We had to fire two girls. You met one. Gee, she called herself, as if that’s a name. Anyway, she was in it with another girl. One would steal, the other would cover it up. What a mess. Almost a thousand dollars of merchandise gone, can you believe it? That’s what we’ve found so far. I have to run over to the printer, then back to Provincetown. The new shop flyers are ready.”
My ears are buzzing, my head is shaking back and forth.
“The babysitter will be here in a few minutes,” she goes on. “Sean probably told you how he hates when I call Paul a babysitter. There should be a different name for them, I guess, when you guys get to a certain age. But sometimes you just need someone older. He does—”
“Don’t go.” I’m shaking so much I think I’ll throw up. “Or, I can stay and watch him do his blood stuff. I know the routine. Before eating. The controller. He showed me. I’ve been his friend for a long time. Sean wants you to … well…”
Finally, I don’t know what I’m saying.
Her shoulders slump. Her smile goes flat across her face. “It’ll be too long, a few hours. This shop, well, I guess all these things have trouble. Some of the time. It’ll get better. Anyway, I can’t leave you two here alone. What sort of mother woul
d I be? Paul’s on his way. You met him, of course you did. You know, it really helps having someone I can count on to be here.” She’s rambling like an insane person.
“Sean doesn’t need a sitter.”
“After the summer, it’ll slow down, but now, being there is critical.” She looks at the time on her phone. “He should be here soon. I hope…”
“The rain’s over,” I tell her. “Seriously, don’t go. You know what? My mom and Ginny can pick up your flyers. Or they can come here. Or Sean can come home with me.”
“She can’t. Your mother can’t. I just spoke with her. She’s getting ready to go to your grandmother’s, who’s not feeling well again. I’m sorry about that. I think she wants you home, to stay with Ginny. Or you are all going to see your grandma? I don’t know, Owen. It won’t work today.”
I stand in the middle of the top step as if I’m trying to stop her from leaving. The sun is splashed on the lawn now and glistening. “My dad can come back. He’s not at the track yet.”
Her eyes search the street. “Maybe next time. Good, there’s Paul driving around the corner. You know, I really don’t think Sean is coming out. Maybe you should be getting home, or go with your mom to visit your grandmother? I don’t know, Owen. Please. Paul isn’t comfortable handling kids if he doesn’t have their parents’ okay. I’ll drop you at your house. Sean’s not coming out.”
It’s going too fast. It’s out of control. I can’t do anything to stop it.
Paul pulls up. He’s alone. No Carrie this time. He’s smiling when he stops, but by the time he closes the car door behind him and sees me, his smile is gone. It’s stupid, but I feel as if I’m naked now.
“Owen is just going home,” Mrs. Huff says, moving her arm around my shoulders, then quickly removing it and hopping down the stairs next to me. “Sean’s in his room. Owen, this is Mr. Landis.”
“Paul, please,” he says, “and yes, we’ve met before. Owen, how are you?”
He smiles like anybody else. I search his face and eyes to see what I can see. No clue to anything. He puts out his hand. It’s wet. Probably from the car door. The thought of his wet fingers turns my stomach, but I shake hands anyway.
“I’m okay.”
“Good, good. Fabulariffic,” he says, in the dumb way he talks.
I scan up and down the street to see if another car is coming—his friend, the one with the camera. But there isn’t.
“Okay, then,” Mrs. Huff says. “Paul, I have tomorrow off, so Sean and I are good, but can you make it from Thursday on for a few days?”
“Naturellement, Mrs. H. And Owen Todd, I’ll see you around, all right?”
Him using my last name creeps me out. I don’t know if I answer, but Shay’s mom is already near her car, late for her printer, so I follow her across the wet shells, get in, and latch on the belt. She flicks the wipers two, three times to clear the rain from the windshield. I glance over at Sean’s room, the corner room on the right. His window shade is down.
Backing out, she sets the car in drive and turns the wheel while Paul bounces up the steps and into the house.
Stop the car! Mrs. Huff, stop the car right now! I want to say.
But my mouth won’t open. I don’t say anything.
SEVENTEEN
“Some storm, wasn’t it?” Mrs. Huff waves her hand across the windshield.
She drives neither fast nor slow, but somehow without me noticing, we’re already at the corner. Shay’s house is out of the mirror now, hidden, faraway, as if it’s in another town.
If you tell, I will kill myself.
“I’m so glad we got a new roof on the house,” she goes on. “That downpour would have drowned us.”
Forget the storm! Paul is hurting Sean! He’s doing bad, horrible things to him. Stop!
“Sean’s room especially. Water once seeped down the walls from the attic and stained the paint and smelled bad until winter and the furnace heat dried it up.” She talks fast, like a robot. “You know that smell. We all do. It’s Cape Cod.”
Stop the car! You need to help Sean. He’s being tortured!
“Our builder said if we waited any longer we’d be in real trouble.”
Iron weights press on my tongue. It’s turned to stone in my mouth. I can’t pry my stupid lips apart. She points to a garden we pass, presses a button, and my window slides down. Big blue balls of petals droop from a hedge onto the sidewalk.
“Hydrangeas. I love the blue. The rain really clobbered them.”
How can I say the words I should say? Help Sean! They don’t have anything to do with flowers or rain or roofs. They don’t work in this suddenly sunny world.
I will kill myself.
I know he knows how. Sean doesn’t need a gun. Or poison. Or a rope. He can just swim out where it’s too deep. Or inject himself with his backup pen so his body floods with too much insulin. He’ll go into shock, into a coma, die. What if I just tell her Sean is sad? That would be enough, wouldn’t it?
Instead, I blurt out, “I think my mom’s taking Ginny and me shopping on Thursday. Shay could come with us. Tell him I’ll call him tomorrow, okay?”
She slows in front of my house, pulls to the curb.
“Sounds great. I won’t cancel Paul until you know for sure, but I’ll tell Sean. He’ll like that.”
* * *
I get out of the car, run inside. My mother says she doesn’t want Ginny and me to go to Grandma’s house with her, because it’s mostly to do errands, medical errands, it could be a lot of waiting, she says. For the first time ever she leaves me in charge at home. I’m a babysitter now.
I suddenly wish we had school during the summer. It wouldn’t be just me anymore. Teachers, counselors, lunch monitors, all of them could tell something was wrong, couldn’t they? Shay’s mother is too busy, with too much on her mind, always far away, but they’d see it. They’d know. They would. But summer is different. It’s only us. The huge crowds of tourists and beach people and renters couldn’t care less about us. We’re just “the locals” to them. No, this summer there’s only Sean and his busy mom and my busy parents and Paul Landis. And me.
* * *
That evening, Mom is still out. Dad’s back, and another storm roars through, dumping three inches of rain on us in just the first two hours. It’s the tail end of the system, I overhear the television guy saying, and it will take us through the morning, when the sun will burst back. The rosy bum of summer, my grandmother would say. It will be eighty and dry.
I can’t stand the TV noise. I go to my room. I open the window a crack. Gashes of lightning are followed by cracking thunder. Ginny pokes her head in my room, asks about Grandma. I say, “I don’t know any more than you do.”
“You should,” she says. She’s still looking at me, then adds, “Mom won’t be back until late.”
“I know.”
“Dad’s making popcorn.”
“So what?” I say more harshly than I mean. I want to come back with “Ginny, I’m sorry,” but I don’t get it out before she snaps, “Poop!” and slams my door. I can’t manage to get up off my bed to go after her. It’s not Ginny or Grandma now, or Mom or Dad. It’s Sean I have to think about.
Trees sway in the yard, the rain fires down on the roof over my room, then batters the windowpanes sideways, as if it’s trying to get in. My walls are dry. I try to breathe the air of the storm, sniffing at the opening between the sash and the windowsill. I can’t get anything into my lungs. They hurt. I want to cry.
The wind is saying O-O-O over and over and the lightning is flashing in my eyes and something changes. If there are iron weights on my stupid tongue, there’s a ball of something just as heavy and big that’s also inside me. Only it’s lower and deeper, and it’s getting bigger. It’s a ball of hate, and it wants to come out.
If I can’t speak, I’ll do something anyway. I’ll do the only thing I can do without blowing up the whole world.
I’ll go to Shay’s house when Paul is there. I’ll
hide somewhere, I don’t know where, but I’ll see for myself. If it’s all been Sean’s stories up till now, it won’t be a story anymore.
I’ll see and I’ll have proof and it’ll be proof for everybody else too, because it won’t be just him and me.
The ball of hate inside me grows, filling my throat, closing it. It’s hate for the babysitter. Hate for what he’s doing to Sean. Hate that I have to do something to save a kid from a grown-up.
The ball of hate says only one thing.
Do it, Owen, do it.
First, I need a phone. Mom’s or Dad’s? Mom always keeps hers close. She gets calls, makes calls. Dad’s is mostly for business. He goes hours without using it. He has one day a week off from the track, sometimes Wednesday, sometimes Thursday. This week it’s Thursday, which is perfect. Mrs. Huff asked Paul to sit for Sean. Forget about going shopping. I won’t even ask Mom. I’ll go to Sean’s house. I’ll do it then. It’s coming together. I have a plan. I know what to do.
I wait it out until Mom gets home. It’s late. Ginny goes to sleep, I can’t.
“Grandma’s all right for now,” she tells me and Dad when she finally gets in. “She’s been on a couple of heart medications she wasn’t telling us about. But she’s going to the hospital Thursday for tests, and I’m going with her. We figured that out together with her doctor today. I hope she’ll start to feel better soon.”
Dad hugs her. So do I.
“I’ll tell Ginny in the morning,” I say. “I have to talk to her anyway.”
I do. I apologize and tell her I have a lot of things going on. “Boy stuff,” I say. She scrunches up her face as if what I said was icky, but then says, “Okay. I unpoop you.” We’re good again.
I wait Wednesday. Sean’s mother has the day off. I don’t know why. I don’t care. He’s safe. The sun came, but by afternoon it’s raining again, and practice is canceled. Besides being on the phone with Grandma at least three times during the day, Mom tries to fill the minutes between now and when she goes back to her with errands. She decides to take Ginny and me shopping a day early. She says I need new shorts. Fine. New shorts. It doesn’t matter anyway, because I have a plan. I work it over and over in my mind as we go from store to store, and though the idea of going to Sean’s when Paul is there terrifies me, I work it so many times it seems simple.
