Page 127 of What Boys Learn

Do I feel for Lenora? I feel something: annoyance mainly, I guess. She should have walked away. She should know better. Most men are fucking perverts. I told Izzy that; did she listen? Lenora may deserve a lesson but I’m not feeling pumped about being the one to give it to her.

Dr. C slides behind the dining table, next to me on the bench. Lenora is in “the head.” He whispers in my ear, “Do you have it?”

Her phone, he means.

“Yeah.”

I made up a story, or really, I added to the story I’d already made up. Hate my uncle. Lost my phone. While she’s in the head could I please oh please oh please make one quick phone call without my uncle noticing?

Sure thing.

I went outside and leaned over, so that Dr. C couldn’t watch me from inside the cabin. Then I started dialing my mom’s phone. Halfway through I stopped. I couldn’t remember the last four numbers. Part of it was nerves. I never dial her number. I just click on her name.

I can hear Dr. C inside the boat now, humming to himself. I try one combination and it goes to a wrong voicemail. I dial another and get an automated message from a phone company.Fuck!

I have only one idea left. I punch in my own phone number. That one I know, at least.

I bob as I wait for the ring, knees bending, face in the wind, picturing my mother in our apartment. It’s early in the morning but she has to be home. She never goes anywhere.

It goes to my voicemail. At least I have the right number.

“Dennen!” Dr. C calls with fake cheer. “Come help make the sandwiches, if you please!” When I clamber back into the cabin, he whispers, “She’s taking too long.”

“Said she was changing into a bathing suit.”

He wiggles his eyebrows suggestively. I hate him.

“Don’t drink too much of the lemonade,” he says. “That’s for her. You’ll want your own head on straight.” He looks down, toward my crotch, as if it’s not only my head he’s worrying about. “Also, I told her you have diabetes. So, she’s going to worry that you’re overdoing the sugar.”

“Why would you tell her that?”

“Why not? Little problems are great for sympathy. Nothing big. Nothing that would scare a girl.” I think about this a minute.

“My mom said you were dyslexic.”

He winks. “That one has come in tremendously handy over the years. Extra office help. Deadline extensions.”

“So you’re not, then.”

He points to all the sandwich fixings. I start making my ham and cheese. I dip the butter knife into the mustard, feeling its insufficient weight in my hand. I lick it clean and set it down. I reach past Dr. C and grab the sharper serrated knife and use it to cut my sandwich in two. Dr. C keeps humming. When he reaches under the table for something in the cooler, I lick the serrated knife clean and slip it into the back pocket of my jeans, already bulging with the pack of playing cards I swiped a few minutes ago.

When he’s back, head above the table, pickle jar in hand, he whispers, “Did you get rid of it while you were out there?”

“I will. When she comes out.” I swallow. “I want her to see me lose it, so she believes.”

He smiles and pats my thigh. I think of the knife in my back pocket. I almost wish he would touch me again.

“Soon,” he says.

48

ABBY

We passed high fences strung with razor wire and pulled into the visitors’ lane, passing a sign that saidWEAPONS PROHIBITEDwith the image of a handgun and a diagonal line through it. It seemed like an obvious warning, but perhaps not. I thought back to that morning, when I’d almost stashed a knife inside my gym bag, and then settled for a tire iron instead. Why? Because I can’t stand blood. But the sound of a skull crunching, possibly. I kept picturing it, asking myself if I could really do it. Trying to prepare myself for the weight of the iron, the adrenaline pumping, the expression on Curtis’s face. Maybe I could.

A guard in a booth asked if I was on the approved visitor list.

“I don’t know. It’s been a long time.”