It was just a piece of sculpture, cold and lifeless, the bust of Hiram Bingham III. They kept it on a cane stand by the front door. She couldn’t remember picking it up, but she knew what she was supposed to do with it.
Hit him.
But she couldn’t.
She could call the police. She could run away. But the stone was too heavy in her hands. She didn’t know how to hurt someone, even someone awful like Blake Keely, even after he’d hurt her. Blake had shoved his way into the house and let her lie bleeding on the floor. He’d hurt the dean. He was going to kill Alex.
Hit him.
She was a little girl on the playground, too tall, heavy-breasted, built all wrong. Her clothes didn’t fit. She got tangled in her own feet. She was huddled at the bus stop trying not to react as boys from the high school drove by shouting Show us your tits. She was choosing the back row of every classroom, hunched up in the corner. Afraid. Afraid. She’d spent her whole life afraid.
I can’t.
She wasn’t made like Alex or Darlington. She was a scholar. She was a rabbit, timid and defenseless, no claws or teeth. Her only choice was to run.
But where would she run with Darlington gone, the dean, Alex? Who would she be if she did nothing?
She was standing over them, looking down on the boy and Alex. She saw them from a great height, and she was the angel now, maybe a harpy, descending with sword in hand. She raised the bust and brought it down on the beautiful boy’s head. His skull gave way, the sound wet and soft, as if he’d been made of papier-mâché. She hadn’t meant to hit him so hard. Or had she? Little bunny, what did you do? She watched as he slumped to the
side. Her own legs gave way and now she wept. She couldn’t help it. She wasn’t sure if she was crying for Blake or Darlington or Alex or herself. She bent and vomited. Why wouldn’t the room stop moving?
Pam lifted her head, felt cool air on her cheeks, salt spray. The floor tilted back and forth, a ship adrift on the waves. She clung to the ropes.
“Try to keep up, Tripp.”
The storm shouldn’t have been a big deal. They’d checked the weather.
They always did. Temperature. Pressure. Predicted wind speed.
But every time he was out on the boat, Tripp felt a twitching sense of panic. He was okay when it was just him and his dad or his other cousins, but when Spenser joined them, he got weird. It was like his brain just stopped doing what it was told.
His feet and hands felt bigger. He got slower. Suddenly he had to think, really think, about his left and his right, port and starboard, which was fucking ridiculous. He’d been sailing since he was a kid.
Spenser was just so good at everything. He rode horses and ATVs. He raced bikes and cars. He knew how to shoot, and he worked for a living, made his own money, and he always had some beautiful girl on his arm. Some beautiful woman. They were all accomplished and silky and Tripp felt like a kid around them, even though he was the one at Yale, and Spenser was only a few years older.
Tripp didn’t even understand why Spenser got to take the helm. They’d both sailed competitively, so had his father, but Spenser just slid into the role with a big white smile. Part of it was the way he looked. Sharp, lean. He didn’t have that Helmuth baby face. He had a real jaw, the look of someone you didn’t want to fuck with.
Spenser always addressed Tripp’s father as sir. “A pleasure to be aboard, sir, she handles like a dream.” Then he’d sling an arm around Tripp’s neck and crow, “Tripp, my man!” before he leaned in and whispered, “How’s it going, shitstain?”
When Tripp stiffened up, Spenser would just laugh and say, “Try to keep up.”
And that was how the day went. Grab that line! Get it on the winch! Is that kite ready? Come on, Tripp, try to keep up!
The storm that came in wasn’t a big one. It wasn’t scary. At least no one else seemed to think it was. Tripp had pulled on a life vest, slinging the thin snake of fabric around his neck, strapping it at his waist as he stood in the companionway. You barely knew it was on—it wouldn’t inflate unless it hit the water—so what was the big deal?
But as soon as Spenser saw him, he burst out laughing. “The fuck is wrong with you? It’s rain, dumbass.”
Tripp’s father just turned his face to the sky and laughed, the wind lifting his hair. “Now this is some weather!”
Tripp hated it. The gray swells like the humped shoulders of some big animal, nudging the ship, playing with it. You could really feel the sea beneath you, just how big it was, just how little it cared, the way it could smash a mast, crack a hull, drown them all with a single shrug. All he could do was hold on tight— one hand for yourself, one for the ship, that was the rule, same as the life vest—make himself keep smiling, and pray he wouldn’t vomit, because he’d never hear the end of it.
Spenser hadn’t been fooled.
“Shit your pants yet, pussy?” he said with a grin. “Try to keep up.”
Tripp wanted to scream at him to fuck off and leave him alone. But that would only make things worse. Can’t you take a joke, Tripp? Jesus.
His only hope was to keep pretending that he was in on it, that he loved Spenser the way everyone else did, that it was all good fun. It was pathetic to be scared of a little storm, or his stupid, cocky cousin. Except he had every reason to be terrified of them both. The storm, at least, was just being a storm.
It wasn’t out to hurt him. Spenser was something different.
When Tripp was eight, the whole family had gathered at his family’s house for his birthday. Spenser was a jerk even back then, but Tripp hadn’t cared about Spenser that day. It was his birthday and that meant his friends, and a new PlayStation, and the ice cream he liked even though Spenser had shoved his bowl of cookies and cream away and snapped, “I hate this shit.”
Tripp had eaten cake and opened his presents and played in the pool until his friends had gone home and it was just family. He had a sunburn.
They were going to cook out that night. He felt lazy and happy, and when he thought about the fact that he didn’t have school tomorrow, that he still had the rest of the weekend to do nothing, it was like he was taking in big gulps of sunshine with every breath.
He’d been swimming around in the shallow end with his new snorkel when he’d emerged to see Spenser standing at the edge of the pool in his long board shorts, his blond hair hanging in a sun-streaked sheaf over his eyes so that Tripp couldn’t quite make out his expression. Tripp had scanned the yard. He’d learned Spenser doled out fewer pinches and punches when someone else was around. But Tripp’s dad and his younger brother were setting up a volleyball net on the other side of the grass. His mother and the other cousins must have already gone inside.
“What’s up?” he’d squeaked, already moving for the steps.
But Spenser was faster. He was always faster. He dropped into the water with barely a splash and slapped his hand against Tripp’s chest, shoving him backward.
“You have a good day?” Spenser asked.
“Sure,” Tripp had said, unsure of why he was suddenly so frightened, struggling not to cry. There was no reason to cry.
