Killing Spree (10 page)

Around that time, someone had been periodically picking through their garbage and their mail. His mother had explained that certain people were looking for his father. She’d cautioned Ethan about strangers who might approach him, perhaps someone claiming to be a policeman or a friend of his dad’s. He had to be extra careful.

Ethan avoided eye contact with the goatee man. It wasn’t until he’d gotten on the bus that he remembered where he’d seen him before.

Later that afternoon, his mother drove to school, honked the horn, and waved at him—only to speed away. A uniformed cop told him to go home and wait for this mother there. When Ethan finally saw his mom again, her face was horribly bruised and swollen. She said she’d been mugged. Ethan kept wondering if it was that creepy man with the dark hair and goatee who had beaten her so severely.

His mom had sold the Saturn the very same day. Had the goatee guy stolen the car too?

That night, he asked his mother for the truth. She kept telling him to calm down. Getting angry wouldn’t do any good. It had happened just as she’d told him. She’d already reported the mugging to the police. As for the Saturn, she’d been thinking about selling it for a while now.

He was skeptical, but couldn’t challenge her story—not when she was almost pleading with him and her face was all battered. He knew she was just trying to protect him. Ethan’s heart broke just looking at her.

The more Ethan thought about that creep using his mom for a punching bag, the more enraged he became. He didn’t care how much older and stronger the man was. If he ever saw that son of a bitch again, he’d kill him. He’d take a rock and bash his head in.

But Ethan never saw the man again, and that had been almost two years ago.

From across the store, Ethan watched his mother spinning stories for the book club ladies. They were just starting the Q & A session. Ethan put away his trigonometry homework, and then carried his tray—with half a plateful of uneaten “vegetable chips”—to the bus area.

With time to kill, he decided to wander around the store. Ethan paused near the Gay & Lesbian Studies section. He noticed an oversized “art” book,
Loving Men
, with two naked men embracing on the cover. Ethan felt a pang in his stomach—a strange mix of excitement and repulsion. He stood there for a moment, pretending to be interested in the Nutrition & Wellness Studies section on the other side of the aisle. But his eyes kept roaming back to that book cover. His mother was around the corner; he could hear her talking to the group.

He wanted so much to look inside
Loving Men
, but too many people were around. Besides, hadn’t he vowed yesterday that he would change? He didn’t stand much chance of becoming normal if he kept giving into temptation with these gay books and magazines.

Three weeks before, he’d felt sorry for this homeless woman and bought a
Real Change
newspaper from her. A few blocks later, he’d decided to toss it away in a recycling bin next to an apartment building. Opening the bin, he discovered a magazine amid the piles of old newspapers and crushed cardboard boxes. Ethan felt his heart racing. He glanced around to make sure no one could see. He snatched up the magazine, stuck it in the middle of the homeless newspaper, then stuffed it in his jacket.

His mother had been at a book signing earlier, but just his luck, she was home when he came through the front door. He felt like a drug smuggler as he stole past his mom in her writing nook, giving her a quick “How’s it goin’?” before ducking into his bedroom. He immediately hid the magazine under a loose flap of carpeting under his bed. He didn’t even look at it until later—at one o’clock in the morning, when he knew his mother was asleep.

The magazine was called
Stallion,
and it was full of pictures of naked men. Ethan had never been so disgusted with himself—and so turned on at the same time. It was crazy. A while back, his best friend, Craig, had given him an old
Playboy
he’d inherited from his older brother. Page after page of beautiful naked women in erotic poses, and it didn’t do a thing for Ethan. But this sleazy magazine with pictures of guys who weren’t even that good-looking had him foaming at the mouth. He felt like a total pervert.

That skanky blond woman who had made fun of him at the bookstore two years ago had had his number. She’d seen what Ethan had been trying so hard to keep secret. He was gay, but he didn’t want to be.

He wished his father were around, because he could have talked to him about this. At least, he imagined he could have. The truth was, he hoped to cure himself—or grow out of it—before anyone ever discovered his secret. He couldn’t tell his mother—even though she had a lot of gay and lesbian acquaintances. Hell, he didn’t even want his mother to know he had sexual feelings—no less
homosexual
feelings. He couldn’t say anything to Craig either.

His best friend was a mega-jock, and a bit homophobic. Ethan was terrified that Craig already suspected something. During his last sleepover at Craig’s house, they’d been sitting in their underwear on the twin beds talking and listening to music late at night. Craig had a great body, lean and muscular. During one of his many trips across the room to change the CD or tinker with the volume, Craig suddenly swiveled around. “Are you checking out my ass?” he whispered, eyes narrowed at him. “Shit, you were eyeballing me just now, weren’t you? I saw your reflection in the window.”

Ethan tried to laugh. “What are you, nuts?”

Of course he’d been checking him out. He had a tiny crush on his best friend, but had always done his best to cover it up. Now he’d been found out. That night, Craig dug a robe from the back of his closet and put it on. Before then, Ethan hadn’t known Craig even
owned
a robe.

Maybe Craig had always suspected something, because he’d often said things like, “Don’t fag out on me, Ethan,” or “You know, you’re acting like a faggot.”

Ethan couldn’t help it. Then again, maybe he could. Last night, he’d decided to get rid of the
Stallion
magazine he’d been hiding for three weeks. Ethan figured it was like alcoholism. If he just didn’t give in to it, he’d be all right. Someone seriously going off the sauce wouldn’t keep a bottle of Scotch under his bed. Besides, he’d been taking a big risk going off to school every morning with that thing in the house. His mom could have found it—somehow. He’d already pushed his luck to the limit.

So last night, while his mother was at her other book signing, Ethan had one last “fling” with the magazine. Then he tore it up. Still, that wasn’t good enough, so he burned it in the bathtub. Thick smoke started to fill the bathroom, and the detector alarm went off. Ethan quickly doused the flames, switched off the alarm, and opened some windows. His mother was due home at any minute. Frantic, he cleaned up the mess in the tub, then stuffed what was left of the half-burnt, torn magazine into a black plastic bag. He taped up the bag and buried it in the garbage can outside.

He would have taken the damn thing down the block and thrown it into someone else’s garbage, but there wasn’t enough time. In fact, his mother came home just a few minutes after he’d thrown away the dirty magazine.

Talk about a close call.

With the “evidence” of his perversion destroyed, Ethan had figured he could skate by for a while without his sexuality coming into question. Of course, he was wrong.

He barely even knew those guys who had been taunting him after school this afternoon. They were sophomores. Last week, one of them, Tate Barringer, had passed him in the hallway between classes. “Hey, fag,” he’d said, slapping his arm. Ethan’s stomach had tightened into a knot, and he’d frozen in his tracks. Continuing down the crowded corridor, Tate had smirked over his shoulder at him. Ethan had been left to wonder what he’d done to warrant being called a “fag.” Maybe it was the violin case he was carrying around half the time. Or maybe it was just him.

There were two more brushes with Tate, and in each encounter, the sophomore had taunted him for being “queer.” Now Tate had recruited some friends to torment him too. How soon before the whole school was in on it? Ethan had imagined Tate talking to Craig: “
Hey, Merchant, why are you hanging around with that homo Ethan Tanner?”

But he’d never imagined Tate and his pals calling him a fag in front of
his mother
.

Ethan had holed up in his bedroom all afternoon. He couldn’t face his mom. Part of him just wanted to die. He thought about killing himself. They wouldn’t find anything sexually incriminating in his room—except that old
Playboy
, which had belonged to Craig’s big brother. Hell, Tate and his buddies would be forced to admit they were wrong about him.

Ethan had figured he’d have the evening alone. But then his mother knocked on his door and asked him to come with her to this book signing. He tried to get out of it, saying he had a ton of homework. But his mother insisted. He could bring his books with him, she said, and he could eat dinner in the bookstore’s café. It was a long bus trip back and forth, with transfers, and she wanted some company.

He couldn’t have been much
company
for his mom, sitting next to her on the bus with his nose in
A History of Western Civilization
the whole damn time. He’d been terrified she might try to talk to him about what had happened in front of the duplex this afternoon.

She hadn’t brought it up on the bus—thank God. She’d let him study without interruption.

Ethan heard a smattering of applause coming from the bookstore’s lecture area around the corner. Two or three at a time, the book club women started to emerge from the alcove. Ethan took one last look at the cover of
Loving Men
, and then he skulked away from the Gay & Lesbian Studies section. Rounding the corner, he found his mother autographing her paperbacks for a few stragglers.

After the last fan left, his mother slung her arm around the shoulder of a stout, thirtysomething woman with a scar from her ear to her cheek. She introduced her as Gayle, from the bookstore. “Oh, you’re so handsome,” Gayle said, shaking Ethan’s hand. “You must have the girls following you home from school and scratching at the front door every afternoon.”

His mom laughed, and Ethan forced a smile. He didn’t want his mother reminded about what had happened this afternoon outside their front door.

As they headed out of the bookstore, his mother took a swig from her bottled water. “Lord, I’m so tired,” she announced. “I’m all talked out.”

He hoped she meant it. On the bus, he feigned interest in his history book again. Ethan figured his mother wasn’t about to ask him if he was gay while within earshot of other passengers.

At the bus transfer station, Ethan sat next to his mother and kept his eyes riveted to
A History of Western Civilization
. They were alone on the little concrete island, under a steel and Plexiglas shelter. The transfer station was along Route 520, just on the other side of the floating bridge over Lake Washington. Cars zoomed by with their blinding headlights. Ethan and his mom shivered in the damp, chilly wind off the lake.

“Honey, we need to talk about something.”

The words Ethan had dreaded.

“Can it wait, Mom?” he replied, not looking up from his book. “I’m right in the middle of this.”

“No, honey, this is important. The homework can wait for a minute.”

Reluctantly, Ethan closed the book, and looked at her. His stomach was in knots. “So—what’s going on?”

“Those men who were looking for your dad a couple of years ago,” she said. “They’re back for a return engagement, and up to their same old tricks. This afternoon, I spotted a man hanging around outside the house. He’d been through our mail—and our garbage.”

Ethan stared at her. “He was looking in our
garbage
?”

His mother nodded glumly. “Remember how they pulled this same thing around Christmastime last year? My guess is they’re thinking that with your birthday coming up, your father might want to contact us. Anyway, that’s why I pressured you into coming to the signing tonight. I didn’t want to leave you home alone, not if these people are prowling around….”

His mother went on about how he had to be cautious and not go off on his own if he could help it. She even mentioned buying him a cell phone tomorrow, so he’d have it for emergencies.

But Ethan was hardly listening. All he could think about was that someone had gone through their garbage today.

When they arrived home, his mother threw some leftovers in the oven. She asked if he’d had enough to eat at the bookstore café. Ethan couldn’t have eaten anything—even if he was starving. His stomach was doing flip-flops.

While her dinner cooked, his mom went into the bathroom to take a shower. Ethan seized the opportunity. Ducking outside, he crept around to the backyard and pried the lid off the garbage can he’d used last night. He hadn’t bothered putting on a coat, and he was shivering. He pulled the big Hefty bag out of the receptacle. He didn’t see the small, black, plastic bag. Was there a chance it had slipped a little lower inside the garbage can?