The Smaller Evil (13 page)

“Okay.”

“One more thing, Arman,” Dr. Gary said.

“What is it?”

“Don't be late.”

BY THE TIME ARMAN DRAINED
the last of his tea, he was starting to feel better. His stomach calmed, and the pulse of pain inside his skull eased to a faint throbbing. He was alone in the dining hall by this point, so he picked up his empty mug and plate full of crumbs. Walked back toward the kitchen and slowly opened the swinging door.

He poked his head in. Much to his disappointment, the cook wasn't there. Instead he found the same workers from earlier still buzzing around. They were washing dishes, wiping down counters.

“Where should I put these?” he asked, holding up the mug and plate.

One of the workers pointed at the counter. Arman set the items down.

And left.

• • •

Arriving in the meadow, where Dr. Gary had told him to go, Arman stared in disbelief. The entire field had been transformed. In the very center stood a giant white tent. Gauzy and ethereal, with long strands of twinkling amber globes lining the structure both inside and out, there was a warmth to the sight that Arman found appealing. Nostalgic with a hint of formality. It reminded him of a wedding. Or an inauguration.

Or some other sort of ceremony.

He walked to the tent's entrance. The flaps were pulled back and knotted with ivy. Baskets of wildflowers and loose petals lined the dirt path leading inward and it was as if he were meant to imagine the tent had sprouted from the earth, wholly organic. Music poured from beneath the looming canopy, something frenetic and dissonant yet utterly enthralling. It plucked his nerves and filled Arman with the most dire sense of longing.

“What are you waiting for?” a voice asked.

Arman turned his head. The dark-haired woman stood in the shadows, just a few feet away, and she watched him, arms folded. There were small lines etched around her eyes and at the corners of her mouth. As if the mere sight of him was making her crack.

“I'm not waiting for anything,” he replied.

“Aren't you, though?” She took a step toward him. “You don't fool me, Arman.”

“I don't?”

“I know how you got here. I know what you did. But you're not going to get what you came for.”

“What did I come here for?”

She kept her steely gaze on him. “Everyone has to earn what they've been given. It's one of our basic principles.”

“Yeah, okay,” he said, before ducking into the tent and scooting away from her scowling face.

Inside, people were seated on creaking rows of wood benches, all facing the back wall. That was where an empty lectern stood, flanked by more baskets of flowers and a burning candelabra. Everything smelled strongly of incense.

Everything felt gravely important.

Normally, walking through a crowded space and having to find a spot to insert himself was the type of activity that made Arman's hands sweat and his throat close up. But the pills he'd taken dulled his anxiety to the point where he was able to stroll the tent, searching for an empty seat without wanting to bolt. It was as if his tendency to overthink had been tied up and shoved away in some remote part of his brain; it was still there, but it wasn't controlling him. Not completely.

After a moment, Arman spied Kira's long braids on the end of a bench about two-thirds of the way toward the back and made his way over.

“Hey,” he said softly, squeezing past people to settle beside her. His body tingled at their closeness, at the way his arm brushed against hers.

“Oh, hey,” she said. Then she wrinkled her nose: “You smell funny.”

“What do I smell like?”

“Like booze,” she said. “Or barf.”

At this Arman laughed. He couldn't help himself. “Thank you. That's very flattering.”

“What happened to your head?”

“It's a long story.”

“You haven't seen Dale around, have you?”

“Not since before dinner.”

Kira glanced over her shoulder. Chewed a fingernail. “He'd better not be late.”

Arman shrugged. In his mind, that train had already left the station; the tent's flaps were being unknotted—the lights dimmed, the music turned down. Whatever was going to happen was happening now.

But then there he was.

Dale poked his head through the tent's entrance and tried walking in, only he was stopped by someone. Arman strained to look. Was it that Brian guy, the one who'd been a dick to him earlier? He couldn't
tell, but whoever it was gave Dale a hard time. His face went all red and he raised his voice. Then the person talking to him put a hand on his chest. Pushed him out of the tent.

Arman stared at Kira. “What was that all about?”

“Shh!” she said.

“Well, aren't you going to help him?”

She pinched his arm. “Shut it, already. Otherwise that bitch is going to yell at us.”

What bitch? The dark-haired woman? Arman snapped around to face forward and sat up straight. He definitely didn't want to deal with
her.

But when he looked, it was Mari who'd stepped up to the lectern.

SO LONG TO ANSWER.

The girl is the first to finish answering your questionnaire. She walks over and hands it to you with an air of accomplishment. A breathless pause. She's completed a task for you, and she wants you to tell her that she's good enough.

You will, of course. But that's not to say you always do. You have standards and you make it a point to stick to them. No one who's too pushy, too sappy, too righteous, too horny. These are qualities you don't like.

These are people you can't sway.

The girl sits across from you. She's eager because she's sure of herself. But you take your time. You look carefully at her answers. This is in part for show, but it's also because you're interested. What she's written down is what she wants you to know.

You find yourself wanting to listen.

By the answers she's marked, she's telling you a lot of things, all at once: that she can't sleep, she can't eat, that she's lost purpose in life. And you know that what she's really saying is “I'm depressed,” and “I want help.”

But there are others things she's saying. There are deeper truths that you hear.

Truths like:

“I'm tired.”

“I'm hungry.”

“I want you to nourish me.”

And this, this, is what you've been waiting for. These are the needs you knew she had.

These are the truths you so long to answer.

“GOOD EVENING,” MARI SAID TO
the crowd.

“Good evening,” everyone said back.

“I hope you're all proud of the work you did today. I know it wasn't easy, but change never is. It's why only the strong ever do it. It's why we're proud of you, too.”

Arman shifted in his seat. He hadn't done any of the work she was talking about. In fact, he'd purposely tried to run away so that he wouldn't
have
to do it, a fact that didn't make him feel very strong or proud.

“Tonight,” Mari continued, “is Vespers, which is the time we'll take to pause and reflect on one of the most powerful emotions in human experience. We're going to explore the ways in which it can impact our sense of the world, our sense of others, and of ourselves, as well as the ways we can control it, rather than being controlled. Do you understand?”

Everyone nodded. Arman included.

“Good. But before we begin, I want you to take a look at who's sitting next to you.”

Kira looked at Arman, and Arman looked at her.

“Now ask yourself, did you know this person from before you came here? Do they know anything about your Before Life and the person you
were then? If so, I'd like for you to stand up and switch seats.” Mari paused. “Do it. Right now. The strongest bonds are the ones we build together.”

Arman gazed at Kira with a hypnotic dreaminess. What did he
really
know about her? He knew she was hot in ways that could make him feel uncomfortable. That she was smart in ways that could make him feel hopeless. That her father not wanting her to date Dale had been enough to drive her here, but that she must care for her father enough that his opinion mattered to her in the first place. That was it.

He didn't know much about her at all.

But Kira hopped up to move. Before Arman had a chance to ask her to stay. He didn't mind, though. He watched her go the way a stone might watch the rain come down, which was to say with a deep sense of fatalism.

A few other people shifted around as well. And Dale had returned. Arman spotted him sitting hunched in the very last row with a dark expression on his face. Arman couldn't imagine what the penalty was for being late, but it didn't look good.

When the moving was done, Mari picked the microphone back up. Cleared her throat.

“Close your eyes,” she told them.

• • •

“Now I want you to think back to a time in your life, anytime, it could be recent, it could be from your childhood, whatever comes to mind. But I want you to think of a time when you felt
ashamed
. Not embarrassed. Or self-conscious. Or regretful. But ashamed. That's the emotion you need to tap into right now. And remember, we talked about this earlier, shame comes from the outside. From others. That's what makes it toxic. Insidiously so. It's designed to trick you, to suppress your natural process of self-evaluation. The sole purpose of shame is to make you submit to the will of others.

“Once you have your moment, I want you to go over every detail of this event. Replay it in your mind's eye, like you're watching a movie. Try to remember
everything
that was happening at the time. Use all your senses. Taste. Smell. Touch. And while you're doing this, I want you to pinpoint the precise moment you felt the shame. I want you to remember exactly what it was you were doing and whose judgment you were internalizing.”

Arman took a deep breath. The moment that sprang to his mind was surprising only in that he didn't reject it outright and choose something easier. But Arman did what he was instructed to.

He remembered.

Everything.

He was fourteen when it happened. He'd been sent to stay with his father and his father's parents up in Marin for the entire week of Thanksgiving break. Even after he'd asked not to go. Even after he'd begged. But his mother made such a stink, Arman suspected his grandparents had paid her off. Or else she'd paid them.

And it wasn't that he didn't like his grandparents. The elder Dukoffs were nice enough, in the way nice strangers could be. They sent him cards for his birthday and sometimes money. But Arman wasn't going for them. He was going for his father, who was fresh out of prison on drug charges. And he wasn't going because his dad wanted to see him or anything but because his grandparents thought Arman could fix his father.

He couldn't, of course. But he was forced to endure hours alone with his dad, who skipped out on his NA meetings every day to sit in the garden of his parents' enormous hillside house and chain-smoke.

“We're going to make a man out of you,” he'd tell Arman, with his mirrored sunglasses on and his legs kicked up on the glass-topped table. “But not here. Not in the States. See, I got this friend in Belize who's
developing a resort. He's going to let me buy in early. Maybe even get that jazz club going like I've been wanting.” Arman's dad would glance over at him while he spoke, to make sure Arman was listening. “You and I, we'll go down there together, okay? You'll love it. I know you will. I'll teach you how to drink. The girls there'll teach you how to fuck. It's going to be good for us, kid. It's not going to be like before. I promise.”

“B-but don't you need money for all that?” Arman would squeak as he fidgeted with the landscaping, picking at the prettiest flowers and throwing them into the koi pond. Everything smelled like honey. “Like a real job?”

“Shit, I got money, kid.” He'd gesture toward the house. “I just need more time.”

Arman knew what that meant. His dad thought he could sweet-talk his parents into giving him what he wanted, but even Arman knew that wasn't going to happen. No way. His parents were the two people on earth his dad couldn't con. Not anymore. So Arman had spent that whole week on edge, jittery, unable to sleep, with all the food he ate running through him and the length of his arms growing increasingly scabbed and bloody—a topographical map of dread—while he waited for the inevitable family blowup.

Only it didn't happen.

Instead, Arman bolted a day early, abandoning his father and his cigarettes and his stupid Belize dreams in that beautiful backyard beneath the autumn sun. He didn't even say good-bye. He just got on a bus and went home to his mother, who picked him up at the Santa Cruz station. Arman, who hadn't slept in three days and was ten pounds lighter than when he'd left, said nothing when he saw her. And he'd said nothing when she held his stiff shoulders and looked him in the eye and told him that in the mere two hours since Arman's departure, his dad
had managed to OD on Crown Royal and stolen oxy and was in the hospital getting his stomach pumped.

But Arman said nothing at the news because he
felt
nothing. Just a hollow breeze through the hole where his emotions usually roiled. In fact, he was still numb later that evening, when he went into his room to change for bed. That was when he'd stood in his boxers by the window with an ancient Swiss Army knife gripped in one hand and the chill of the California night brushing against his skin. And fourteen-year-old Arman wasn't
angry
or
afraid
or
remorseful
as he dragged the blade across his thighs, back and forth and back again. He wasn't any of those things. He was nothing.

The way he always was.

But now, sitting on the wood bench in the tent with his eyes shut tight, Arman felt sad for himself, but embarrassed, too. Because like the scars on his legs, the
shame
had come afterward: telling his mom when the bleeding wouldn't stop. Telling the doctors at the hospital how he'd done it and why. Telling the therapist they made him see why he wouldn't do it again.

So there. That was it.
That's
what he'd been doing when he felt shame. It wasn't when he'd heard about what his useless dad had gone and done. It wasn't even when he'd hurt himself. It was when other people saw him for who he really was.

His father's son.

“Open your eyes,” Mari said.

So he did.

• • •

“Now I want you to find someone close to you. Anyone. And I want you two to sit facing each other.”

The seat next to Arman was still empty—no one had claimed Kira's spot. Fortunately, the person in front of him turned around. He was a young guy, younger than most around here, with messy brown hair and a navy hooded sweatshirt from UC Berkeley. He raised his bushy eyebrows at Arman as if to ask,
Us?

Arman nodded. The guy wasn't anybody he knew or recognized, which he supposed was the point. He also looked as nervous as Arman felt—a little sweaty, a little sick. The guy swiveled his body around on the bench so that they sat facing each other.

“Now I want you and your partner to look each other in the eye,” Mari directed. “You're going to keep that eye contact no matter what happens. And while you're doing this, I want you to notice what it is you're thinking and what you're feeling, and how those two connect.”

Arman looked up and he met his partner's gaze. He knew doing so would make him feel awkward and it did. But he wasn't sure whether the awkwardness stemmed from looking so intently at someone who could see him looking. Or if it came from being seen.

But he kept looking.

And looking.

Until he saw something
strange.

At first glance, Arman had thought the other guy's eyes were brown. Like his. Only where Arman's were muddy, bland, and forgettable, this guy's eyes were the palest color. Like sand stirred at the bottom of a shady stream. But the longer Arman looked at them, the more the color of his eyes changed, shifting from brown to gray, then brown again. Like river pebbles, Arman realized with a start.

He was looking at
Beau's
eyes.

That's impossible.

Arman felt a sway of dizziness.

(Notice your feelings.

Notice your thoughts.)

Well, that's what he was
trying
to do, but focusing on his own thoughts and feelings grew more difficult the more he stared at those familiar eyes.

What were
they
seeing?

And what, pray tell, were they feeling?

Oh, Beau
, Arman thought desperately.
I don't know what happened. I don't know what to believe.

Mari's voice cut in then, rolling with her lullaby prosody. “Very good. You're all doing a wonderful job. Now, without breaking eye contact, you're going to tell your partner three things about yourself that no one else knows. Three secrets. Real secrets. No censoring. No commenting. Just courage and commitment. Go.”

Arman hesitated. This was worse than what he'd had to do up on Echo Rock. After all, secrets were secrets for a reason.

But you can do it
, he told himself.
Do it for Beau. You owe him that.

“I think I'm crazy,” he said in an untamed rush. “Like, actually crazy.”

“I ran away from home,” the other guy said simultaneously.

They paused only for a beat. To take a breath, eyes still locked.

Then:

“I wish my father were dead.”

“I hit my mom once.”

And finally:

“You look like someone I know.”

“I tried to kill myself,” the guy with the river-pebble eyes told him. “I used a knife to cut my wrists and bled out. I nearly died.”