The Marbury Lens

by Andrew Smith

  “Can I have my clothes?”

  “Why? Are you cold?”

  I was sweating. He knew I wasn’t cold. I didn’t answer.

  “Please?”

  “I’m going to go now, Jack. But you’ll see me soon, I promise. Don’t do anything stupid. Don’t try to make any noise because nobody will hear you. Well, if anyone does hear you, it will be me. And you don’t want to make me mad. You’ve been a nice boy so far, Jack Wynn Whitmore, who just turned sixteen in April. Nice kid. Stay that way.”

  I was shaking so bad. Freddie had to notice how scared I was, but he looked like he didn’t care at all. And I could tell—I knew—he’d seen this before, too.

  “Do you want me to give you something to relax you?”

  “No. Please don’t.”

  I had to force the words out of my throat, my jaw was frozen.

  “I could,” he said.

  He turned and began wheeling his chair toward the doorway.

  And I screamed, “Fuck you, sonofabitch!” and threw the full bottle of water at him. I couldn’t stop myself from doing it. It hit him square between his shoulders and bounced back to the floor.

  Freddie froze, then spun around. He picked up something from the chair, something black and shiny.

  A stun gun.

  And Freddie said, “You made it longer than most till we got to this part, Jack.”

  I tried to twist away, but the metal ends of that thing were pressed right into my belly before I could do anything.

  It felt like being stabbed by a thousand knives at once. And as I attempted to scream and thrash, mute and unmoving, I could hear Freddie shouting above the surge of pain that swelled in my ears, “I’ll fucking kill you right now if that’s what you want! Is that what you want? Just ask me! Just ask me, Jack!”

  He stopped.

  My body wanted to shut down.

  I felt the wet of tears running from my eyes as my lungs tried to refill against the spasms from the shock.

  Jack doesn’t cry, though.

  Never has.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. Then Freddie put the prod up inside my armpit and shocked me a second time, longer.

  I thought it was going to kill me.

  When he stopped, I was trying my hardest not to cry. He put the gun back onto the chair and said, like he was offering me a gift, “Do you want me to kill you now, Jack?”

  “No.”

  “Ask me.”

  “Please don’t kill me, Doctor.”

  I heard him make a clicking sound with his mouth, like he didn’t want me to call him that. Then I heard him push the chair out the door.

  I kept my eyes shut. I was so scared. But I could almost feel his shadow on me when he came back and stood in the doorway. I looked at him. He held a syringe in his hand, the stun gun was sticking out from his front pocket.

  “Then I’ll tell you what we’re going to do, Jack.”

  He came to the bed.

  I shook.

  He put his palm on my thigh and pulled the leg of my underwear up high. A cool swab of alcohol on my skin.

  I turned away and felt the sting as he stabbed the needle into the muscle.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s just going to make you calm down. That’s all. Just calm down.”

  He pulled the needle out and rubbed his finger over the spot where he’d injected me. Then he licked my leg, slowly, and I felt like I would throw up when I felt his teeth and tongue against my skin, but there was nothing in me.

  I heard him swallow.

  “Try to calm down, Jack.”

  He put his hand on my forehead, then felt my heart.

  He brushed my hair with his fingers.

  I shut my eyes, turning my face away.

  He began pulling my shoulder up, trying to get me to turn over. “I need you to roll onto your stomach now. Do that.”

  I could already feel the shot taking effect. It felt warm, soft. Funny.

  “No. Leave me alone.”

  “Jack?”

  He stroked the stun gun across my throat.

  I couldn’t take that again. My chest heaved, frozen hiccups. It was strange, but I started not caring about anything. It was all a joke, anyway. And I felt like I was melting. I began to turn over on the bed, and he pushed me flat, facedown, and held me there with his hand pressing between my shoulder blades. I tried to pretend this wasn’t happening, that I was outside, somewhere else. It felt like that anyway. Then his other hand slid down my back, and pulled my underwear away.

  When he got them down over my feet so I could feel the soft weight of them hanging loose on the connected chain of zip ties, he pushed my knees apart. Something cold and slick—like jelly—squeezing out onto my thighs. His hand slid up between my legs and rubbed. I tried crawling away from his hand, but I was stuck there. I didn’t care anymore. It was my fault. I felt myself drifting away, and a phone began ringing.

  He pulled his hand away. I could hear him wiping it on the mattress.

  “Shit. You made me late.”

  He twisted his fingers around in my hair and shoved my face into the bed.

  The door closed.

  Seven

  A television came on somewhere in the house. Sounds of one of those nonstop shopping channels. The Amethyst Hour. I felt fuzzy, good. The bed was comfortable. I couldn’t feel the hurt in my foot. I tried pulling my underwear back up.

  Don’t go to sleep, Jack.

  Don’t.

  It seemed like I lay there staring at the curtained window, feeling the buzzing beneath my skin, inside me like humming insects, soft wings caressing, not blinking, so relaxed, so relaxed, for hours. It may have only been moments. The voice from the television seemed to repeat the same sentence over and over.

  I heard something different. It sounded like it was under the bed. I pictured some little kid rolling a wooden ball along the floor, then tapping it down.

  Roll.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  I thought I was hearing things. But there was a familiar quality to the sound, a message I somehow understood but couldn’t bring to the surface, irritating me like a trapped sneeze.

  You’re losing your fucking mind, Jack.

  Move.

  Get up.

  You need to get out of here, Jack.

  Roll. Tap. Tap. Tap.

  I think the bastard is gone.

  Sitting up was difficult. I nearly fell off the side of the bed. I rolled over and pushed my hands up through the gauzy batting on the underside of the box spring. I remembered there was a reason I wanted to go there. I’d felt something metallic inside the foundation.

  A bit of a spring or a fastener of some kind. The top of my head was on the floor and I was trying to look under the bed, but I couldn’t see anything but the upside-down black. And my fingers didn’t work properly. I felt a meaty tugging against my ankle.

  There.

  Got it.

  Something I could bend. Back and forth. Back and forth. I cut my hand. It didn’t hurt. I could feel the blood trickling down my wrist, getting heavy where it would ball up before sending a thick drop onto Freddie’s floor.

  Just like being born again.

  I made it longer than most.

  He did this before. What happened to them? Why didn’t they fight back? How does this asshole get away with it?

  What happened to them?

  I felt myself blacking out. I let go of the spring and pushed myself back up onto the bed. Too much blood in my head. I had to move, did sit-ups. I felt stupid and ridiculous, not because I was doing sit-ups, tied to a bed in my underwear, but for what I did to end up here in the first place. I knocked the urinal and the bedpan to the floor and rolled over and worked at the spring again.

  Snap.

  He was stupid.

  He should have left me alone at the park.

  With that little piece of metal, I had that nylon zip tie off my foot in five seconds.

  There was blood all over the end
of the bed, from my hand, my leg. I must have looked like a murderer, if anyone could see me. I hadn’t realized how much that thing cut into my ankle.

  I stood, listened.

  Making no sound, I felt my way around the room. It was completely empty except for the bed. There was a sliding double door to what I guessed was a closet, and the one door with the light on the other side. I got on my belly on the cold floor and tried to look under that door. I couldn’t see anything, just floor and the reflection of incandescent light. I felt myself slipping toward sleep and pushed myself up onto my knees.

  Dizzy.

  Wait.

  I pulled the curtain back from the window. There was an outside, on the other side of the pane, and it was night there, too. I looked out over a tiled roof. The room he kept me in was on the second floor. In the gray light, I saw a front yard with a white railed fence, a mailbox, oak trees, and lights atop pillars of brick at the end of a driveway.

  I knew I had to get out of there, that I wasn’t going to chance going through the house. That was where Freddie came from, where he’d wheeled that chair, where The Amethyst Hour was still going on.

  I leaned my face against the coolness of the glass. I tried to think. I wanted my clothes, my truck, my phone.

  I wished I could ask Conner to help me.

  I hoped he wondered if I was okay, if maybe he, or anybody, had tried to call me.

  Get out.

  I felt myself wanting to cry, to lie down on that bed and be scared.

  But Jack doesn’t cry.

  Maybe.

  I slid the closet door open, pushed my hand across the bar. Nothing. Not enough light here. I got onto my knees and felt around on the floor. Cloth. Maybe a rag, nothing else. I picked it up and went to the window.

  Pale green scrubs, just the pants. Dark smears of blood down one leg. It was from my own hand.

  I tried not to think about who’d worn them as I slid them on and tied the drawstring tight.

  I undid the catch on the window and bent the screen away.

  The tiles felt good under my bare feet.

  When I jumped from the roof, I couldn’t tell where the ground was. I hit hard. One of my knees went into my chin and I got dizzy again and had to sit down in his grass. I looked at my blood on his pants, and at the driveway where he’d parked and gone inside to get me a bottle of water.

  The driveway was empty.

  I was the only one there.

  From the end of his driveway, I followed the street toward my right.

  The closest house was maybe a quarter mile away. I didn’t want to see anyone, didn’t want to be seen.

  Off in the distance, the dull lights and fuzzy hum of Highway 101.

  Eight

  I almost wanted to yell when I saw my Toyota truck still parked where I’d left it in front of Conner’s house. I was so relieved, like I had stepped back into my real world. Like I crawled out of some really bad dream.

  Barefoot, shirtless, drugged as I was, I’d walked back to my best friend’s house before the sunrise. And every step of the way I thought Freddie would come after me, so I’d hide when headlights flickered near. And I wondered, too, if maybe I was dead and it was just my ghost wandering back along the outskirts of Paso Robles in that summer night to find a place to rest.

  I pounded on the door until Conner came down from his bedroom wearing only boxers and carrying a baseball bat.

  “Jack.” Conner put the bat down and opened the door wide. “What the fuck happened to you?”

  “Something bad, Con.”

  “What?”

  I stepped inside and sat down on the stairs. I put my head between my knees, looked at the blood smeared on the tattered cuff of the right pant leg.

  “I don’t know. I need to take a shower. I need some clean clothes. Let me sleep.”

  “Okay, Jack. Okay.”

  I slept in his bed. I made Conner promise he’d stay in there with me until I woke up, made him promise not to talk to me or ask me any questions until I could sleep my head straight.

  He said he would.

  In the night, I opened my eyes one time, panicked. I felt down between the sheets to see if I was dreaming, if my leg was still trapped, and I threw the covers off me and looked around frantically to be sure where I was, and found Conner had crawled onto the bed and fallen asleep beside me.

  When I woke up, there were two large cups of black coffee from Starbucks sitting on the nightstand. I guess I stared at them for a long time. Conner was watching me, sitting in his desk chair with his feet on the bed. He tapped his foot into mine.

  “I had them delivered,” he said. “I had to pay the guy fifty bucks to do it.”

  I shifted my eyes onto him.

  “I’m not lying,” Conner said. “I told you I wouldn’t leave. Here.”

  He stood and took one of the coffees and held it out for me.

  I sat up and scooted my back against the wall so I could drink.

  “What time is it?”

  “Three,” Conner said. “My parents are supposed to be back before midnight. Everyone’s been calling for you. Your phone’s battery’s dead.”

  “Everyone?”

  “Well, not everyone. Your grandparents.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “I told them your battery’s dead. I told them you’d be home after my folks get back. Everything’s okay. You know, they trust you and stuff.”

  Conner sat down on the bed next to me. “Are you in trouble for something?”

  “No.”

  He leaned toward me, like he was confessing or something, almost whispering. “Are you mad at me? For what happened at the party? You know. I was just being…I don’t know. Sorry if I pissed you off for doing that, Jack.”

  “I’m not mad at you, Con.”

  He sat up straight, exhaling. “Okay. Because I just…you know, I don’t want it to creep you out or nothing before we leave for England. But, dude, I am going to see to it that you get laid before you come back from summer.”

  He smiled, but his expression was uneasy.

  Conner sipped from his coffee and jerked it away from his mouth. “This goddamned stuff never cools off.” He smiled stiffly. “So. Jack. What happened to you?”

  Nine

  “Let’s kill the fucker,” Conner said.

  I knew he wasn’t serious. Conner was never really serious about anything. That’s why he didn’t even flinch the night of the party when I walked in on him and Dana having sex. Everything was a game to him, and he was always just trying to see if I’d play along.

  So I told him what happened to me, as clearly as I could remember it, from when I took that beer from some kid I didn’t even know after we peed on the side of the house, to when I showed up back at his doorstep. And Conner just shook his head when I told him about the things Freddie did, like it was hard to believe. I could hardly believe it myself, even though the words were coming from my mouth.

  Once, Conner asked, “Did he…you know, make you…did he fuck with you?”

  “No,” I said. I stopped, waited, tried to swallow. “Not really. He was going to, though, after he gave me a shot. He started to try it and then his phone rang and he got pissed off and that’s when he left. I had to fight from blacking out then. That’s when I twisted a piece of metal from the bottom of the bed and got out of that shit.” I swallowed. “He was all in this weird power trip of trying to make me ask him for everything.”

  I showed Conner the marks where the stun gun had left blisters on my skin—on my belly and under my arm. I showed him the needle mark, too.

  “He still has my clothes and my wallet. And the shoes I just bought.”

  “You should go to the cops or something.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not going to say anything to anyone but you, Con. What would they do, anyway? I’d just end up in trouble for being drunk and on drugs. I don’t want everyone to know how stupid I was. Especially Wynn and Stella. I’m leaving on T
hursday, Conner, and I don’t want this to mess things up. I just want to forget about it.”

  “But what if he does it to someone else?”

  “I wasn’t the first,” I said. “He’s going to get caught. Just, let’s not mess up the summer over this, Con. I was stupid and it was my fault.”

  Conner shrugged. “You could at least scare the shit out of him.”

  “Don’t tell anyone, okay?” I asked.

  “No worries,” Conner said. “Everyone already thinks you’re gay, anyway.”

  Conner could tell by my expression I didn’t think his joke was funny.

  He kicked my foot. “Hey. I’m just kidding. It’s going to be okay, Jack. Let’s forget about it, if that’s what you want. I don’t think I could tell anyone if some guy did shit like that to me, either. No one except you. Damn.”

  Ten

  “Did you have a good time at Conner’s?” Stella kissed me on the cheek when I tried sneaking in through the front door, barefoot, wearing the same basketball shorts and T-shirt I had on when I said good-bye to her Saturday morning.

  I knew I looked terrible, guilty, like someone stuck me inside a sandwich board that said Jack did something really bad on one side, and Can you tell Jack was drugged and almost raped? on the other.

  I could see Wynn down the hallway, sitting on the couch in the living room, watching a baseball game. He glanced over toward the entry and waved at me.

  I nodded back, looked down.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It was fun.”

  I almost choked.

  And Stella had her hands on my shoulders and looked me up and down and said, “What are we going to do around here when you’re gone, Jack? I was so lonely and missing you this weekend.”

  “Oh, leave the boy alone and let him grow up, Stella. He’s done fine, so far!” Wynn called out from the living room.

  “Please keep your phone charged when you’re in England, Jack,” she begged.

  “I promise I will, Stella. Sorry about that.” I tried to make my way past her so I could get up to my room.