Page 80 of What Boys Learn

We turned around, and now we were heading east, squinting into the dazzling late-morning sun that was shining through the dappled leaves and painting the road in irregular splotches and stripes, the contrast so strong it made everything look briefly monochrome. I had just started to adjust my sun visor when Benjamin shouted, “Stop!”

A green MINI Cooper was in front of us—backing up, actually, so fast they almost rammed our front bumper. Brake lights blazed red. A teenager stuck his head out the open driver’s side window. Someone else was on the passenger side—another teenager, looked like. The driver steered far left and accelerated quickly, speeding away, and now we could see why. There was something in the road—the obstacle they’d driven around.

“They hit it,” Benjamin said, sounding disgusted. “They hit it and now they’re leaving it, like it didn’t even happen. Rich assholes.”

We both got out of the car and approached silently, with caution. The deer was dead, I thought. I hoped. But then I saw it lift its head, one eye rolling back, terror visible.

“It’s suffering,” I said. “I’ll have to call someone.”

I ran to the car, grabbed my phone, and stepped out again, shielding my eyes from the sun while I listened to the nonemergency police line’s phone tree. I’d just gotten connected with a human being who told me I should have called 911 after all when I looked over in time to see Benjamin walking from the road’s shoulder. He was carrying something large in one hand.

I hung up the phone.

He took another step into the road.

“Stop!”

He was standing over the deer. Arm raised. Rock still in his hand.

“Benj, no!”

I hurried over. The deer’s ribs were moving in and out like a bellows as it panted, that one eye still rolled partly back, nostrils flaring as the deer tried to move its head enough to keep us in view.

Benjamin glanced toward me. “Why?”

I stepped closer and touched his arm. Reluctantly, he lowered it.

“Someone from the highway department will come out. They’ll handle it.”

“I was handling it.”

“I don’t want you to handle it.”

I got on the phone again. I could still see him, crouched even closer to the deer. It was too tired to lift its head now, but its ribs were still moving.

“They’ve got someone on the way. Come back to the car.”

“Look,” Benjamin said.

“I don’t want to look.”

“You’re going to miss it.”

I didn’t want him to spell out whatitwas. I didn’t want to witness his gruesome fascination.

“One minute,” he said.

I felt like I was walking in on a boy touching himself, discovering new things about his own desire.

Turning away, I asked him one last time. “Please come back to the car.”

I hadn’t thought about that day since it happened. I assumed my subconscious pulled it up into my dreaming brain now because I went to bed upset about the fight with Benjamin. In my dream, he was completely calm at first, the way he’d been that day with the deer. But when he wouldn’t come back to the car, I approached him and reached out for his forearm again, wanting him to drop the rock and come with me. Instead, he turned and grabbed my wrist.

Dream Benjamin went from calm to raging in a flash, and I lifted a protective arm over my head, trying to shield myself from his arm and those fingers, long and white with tension, clutching the rock. My mouth was open but I couldn’t scream. My back was bent, aching with the effort of leaning away, every muscle straining, my eyes so wide the tension wrapped around my skull.

I woke up, soaked in sweat. My back hurt. My head ached. The back pain was due to my shitty mattress. The headache was due to stress, or maybe a continuation of the strange grogginess I’d felt since the hypnosis session.

I found a better position and went to sleep again, and this time I dreamed I saw the UK killer, Stephen Port, gently carrying a body in his arms across a quiet road and into a cemetery, where he laid it down next to another body. At least I thought it was Port, just as I thought the bodies he was carrying were dead. I hoped they were, but I must have started doubting, because I followed him, needing to be sure. When I got closer, I saw that the eyes of both young men were open—if they were in fact men and not young women. Everything in the dream was changing. One victim’s mouth was parted, pink tongue tip just visible. The other victim’s nostrils were flared and quivering. Neither of them were dead quite yet, after all.