The Worst Thing I've Done (27 page)

“I'm loving this,” Annie whispers into Jake's ear.

He turns from her breath…warm and rife with the smells of all she's stuffed into her mouth.

“I feel like a trespasser,” she whispers.

“You are,” Jake says. “We are.”

“Forget we mentioned anything,” Annie consoles the man.

“Absolutely,” Jake says. “We only know because my brother-in-law is a vice president at the bank that holds the mortgage.”

Annie's eyes flicker.

“So what am I supposed to make of this?” the man asks.

“You'll find out soon which one of your neighbors it is.”
Showing off for Annie. Mason-behavior. Pushiness. Lying. Amazing myself—

Don't think about Mason.

“All we're doing today,” Annie explains, “is checking your neighborhood to see if it's…well, suitable.”

“Suitable,” Jake echoes and feels the conspiracy, the fun. It's how it used to be when they bonded against Mason, bouncing off each other…imagining.

“Suitable?” Sweat above the man's lips.

Jake waves his hand to dismiss any concern.

“Suitable for what?”

“It may not suit our…mission anyhow,” Annie says.

“Even though the zoning does allow for…” Jake waits.

“Allow for what?” the man demands to know.

“Well,” Annie says, “it's not really official yet.”

Jake can tell she's loving this. He turns off the engine. His sleeve on the ledge of the window, he raises his face to the man. “May I ask you something?”

“Yes?”

“Is it always this quiet here?”

“Of course.” The man looks dazed.

“Because that's our foremost prerequisite. The quiet.”

“The quiet,” Annie agrees. “In an area of such…exclusiveness, we assume neighbors do not interfere with each's other's…privacy.”

“What are you saying?”

“Lovely people.” Annie's smile is angelic.

“Now you listen—”

“Not to worry,” Jake assures him. “These are lovely young people in the process of being reeducated.”

“We do not use the term
reform school
,” Annie explains. “It's rather a—” She sinks in her seat. Waits for Jake.

Who is thinking, quickly. “A residential learning center.”
Carrying this even further than Mason could have. With more imagination. Except that Mason's voice is louder. Was louder. Or is this my real voice? There all along?

The admiration in Annie's eyes is intoxicating.

“Private, of course,” Jake tells the man, but he's glancing at Annie. “Since they're all from exclusive families. You know the type.”

“These young people fit right in to your neighborhood,” Annie says. “We expect the success rate to be encouraging because their…offenses are relatively mild.”

“Offenses?”

“Crimes…if you must say.”

“Even though,” Jake reprimands her, “we don't like to say.”

“I'm so sorry. I hope it won't go on my evaluation.”

“Once more, and I'll have you in front of the board.”

“I know. And I appreciate this.”

Jake sighs. “They're juveniles, which of course makes all the difference.”

Annie nods. “Lovely young people…fortunately still juveniles. Experimental, at this stage—”

“But very promising,” Jake interrupts.

“—to have young people like these govern themselves without…adult interference.”

“Guidance,” Jake says. “Please! Guidance!”

“Sorry. Guidance.”

“These young people are eager to become part of a community once again,” Jake assures the man, “and your neighborhood…such tranquillity, ideal.”

“You must be…mistaken.”

Annie smiles at him, gently. “As I said, one of us most certainly is mistaken.”

“Still, we have facts you don't have access to.” Jake starts the engine. “At least not for a few weeks. Good day now.”

B
Y THE
time they've made a left from his street, they're howling with laughter.

“Certainly.”

“Most certainly.”

“Exclusiveness.”

“Words I hate: exclusive, superior, elite…”

“Lovely young people.”

“Still juveniles.”

Mason would have loved this.
And then Jake wrecks it and says it aloud, “Mason would have loved this.”

Now his name is there between them.

They sit stunned.

Until Annie says, “Not nearly enough on the line for Mason.”

“Your seat belt.”

“We have a history of stuff we did on the line.”

And each time Mason has to up it. Make it more exciting.

“Some of it was just kids' stuff.” Jake reaches across Annie to buckle her in.

“The sauna thing was not kids' stuff.”

“Usually I managed to keep it from getting that far.”

“Not that night.”

“No. And not in Morocco, when you risked our lives, staring at that man's crotch.”

“His eyes…on me, like hands, Jake.”

“It was dangerous and childish, turning to us and laughing about him.”

“I wanted him to feel what it's like to be stared at like that.”

Nights in Morocco, Jake slept with Annie's clothes, just one item, on his pillow, breathing her. One morning when she returned to her room, she saw him with her blouse on his pillow. “My hair was wet,” he said quickly, “and I didn't want to get the pillow stuffing all wet.” He was amazed she believed him. Still, he kept explaining. “So I kept your blouse between my hair and the pillow. To keep it from getting wet…”

“O
UR LAST
night in Tangier I could hear you through the wall,” Jake tells Annie.

“I didn't think of you until afterwards.”

He looks at her, puzzled.

“It had to do with the people in the room on the other side. They woke us up around three in the morning, kept us awake, loud and long. In the morning at six, Mason and I moaned and bounced around. To get even. We didn't even think you could hear us.”

“Maybe you didn't. I'm sure Mason did. And that he—” Jake shakes his head.

“Say it.”

“I'm not sure I should say this.”

“You can say anything to me.”

“When?”

“What do you mean?”

“Except for today, you haven't let me talk to you.” He shakes his head. “How can I—”

“Don't say it then.”

“Mason wanted me to hear.”

“That's sick.”

“Mild, compared to…what we know he was capable of.”

She draws her knees to her chest.

He wonders if she's imagining him in Morocco on the other side of that wall…imagining what he must have felt…imagining him breathing her scent on his pillow…

She shivers. “Every day…I find him all over again…”

It's always about Mason.
Jake keeps driving. “He threatened to kill himself that summer at camp.”

“Why?”

“If I didn't lie for him. It happened the day you visited us.”

“You were on the raft. I found you there. I—”

“How long…before we saw you?”

“What was the lie he wanted from you, Jake?”

“Mason was stealing bakery rolls. Every morning, at breakfast, we made our own lunch. Everything out on the long tables: eggs and rolls and cold cuts and cheese. Lots of store-bought bread but only one bakery roll for each boy. To eat for breakfast—still warm—or save for lunch on a tray with his name printed on a tag.”

Annie is waiting, and as Jake tells her, he is right back there
at camp with the smell of camphor and pine needles and mold and yeasty bakery rolls.

“Mason loved those rolls. We all did. He'd eat his at breakfast and fix himself a sandwich for lunch from store bread. But then he'd sneak to the lunch tray before anyone else, steal another boy's roll, and stick that boy's name tag into his sandwich.”

“Switching tags.” She nods. “Sounds like Mason.”

“Some boys caught him one noon. They were watching to see who was stealing their rolls. He got away, hid out in my cabin. That's where I found him. He was crying, saying, ‘It was mine. I'm not a thief.' ”

“What did you do?”

“He wanted to run away and for me to come along. But I wanted to stay. He said he'd stay too. But that I had help him and tell everyone I fixed my roll for him in the morning and stuck his name tag into it.”

“Did you?”

“I was the one friend he had there.”

“And he gambled losing you.”

“He promised no more stealing, no more switching of tags.”

“But he still did it, right?”

“Sometimes he'd steal two rolls and toss the name tags on the floor…as if testing how much I would lie for him.”

“Testing…You know, every day I cut him down again, Jake. It doesn't matter that I live in a different place now, that I've left my worktable behind. I have to cut him down again, already knowing that any moment I'll find him again…”

“Hey—I'm so terribly sorry.” He touches her wrist, prepared to have her flinch, but she doesn't. He's the one who flinches, suddenly queasy. He yanks his hand away. “I couldn't bear it if I'd already lost you both.”

“I'm so…fucking tired of cutting him down.”

Jake's heart is hitting his collarbone. “Are we accomplices then?”

“What if I had been enough for him?”

“Nobody was enough for him. Nobody could have been.”

“The more separate I felt from him, the more he held on.” Annie brings her forehead to her knees. “You think that's what he wanted all along—to kill himself…make his death ours?”

“Then he's the only one who got what he wanted.” It sounds so clear to Jake. If only he could believe it. Believe that Mason did not count on him to stop his suicide. Believe that Mason did not wait to step off Annie's worktable till he was sure Jake would come running.
Making his death mine.

“He liked to get away with things,” Annie says, “that other people get caught for.”

He can come into my house any time because his parents pay for him. Can trash my room. Or ignore me. Some mornings I have stomachaches knowing he'll be there soon.