The Black Hour (41 page)

The kid in the inflatable dinghy I’d commandeered turned to see which I meant. “He’s already going out there,” he said, hitching his thumb.

He meant the rowboat behind him, the student at the oars readying to go. His passenger: Corrine.

The low boat bumped against the rocks with a scrape. I considered the power I had left in each leg, the flat but uneven surface of the boulder. Thousands of Rothbert youth had shimmied off this shelf into waiting crafts, but how many of them were recovering from bullet wounds? I tried for discreet, easing down to the rock’s surface with the cane for leverage and sliding into the boat from this lower vantage. Falling the last few inches into the boat, I landed gracelessly, my leg hooked under me.

“You OK?” the kid at the oars said without real interest.

I pulled myself up and laid my cane across my knees with as much ladylike dignity as I’d ever had. “Rory, get in.”

“That’s it, buddy,” the kid said. “Two at a time.”

“Only so many life jackets,” Corrine said with an icy smile.

I felt waves of something old and animal coming off Corrine. The space between us now narrow and tight. Our fraternity ferryman pushed off. I turned over my shoulder to find McDaniel. “Call him,” I said. “Call your friend. And—his friends.”

“Be careful,” he said, with a glance at Cor.

I knew what he meant, felt it deep in the knot of my reconfigured gut.

Be careful of everything, he meant, and everyone.

“You want to steer, Nath?”

I didn’t. The lake churned under us, the boat heaving. I watched the empty horizon ahead. If I took my eyes off that line—dark blue where the sky slammed into it—I’d vomit everything I’d ever eaten. I’d formulated a backup plan to jump overboard. Inside this rocking tin can, the water looked calm, inviting. Less dangerous.

“Just hold the wheel while I trim a bit.” Win waited for me to move, but I couldn’t. I hoped to learn to swim spontaneously as I leapt over. I would never again convince anyone that I hadn’t jumped the first time. “It will help with the seasickness,” he said. “I swear.”

He pulled me up, stood me in front of the helm, and placed my hands at ten and two. I stared at my hands until he grabbed my chin and pointed me out to sea. “Keep your eyes on the horizon, Captain.”

If I was captain, then I had a different voyage mapped out. The wheel turned of its own volition as I let up on my grip. We began to spin in the wind. “Woah, woah,” Win said. “No mutinies, all right? Hold steady. There. If you let this swing on its own—we might find some trouble.”

I held fast to the wheel and ventured a peek at Phillip. He lounged against the slim rail like a man of leisure, his bets already placed and his pony in the lead.

A wave of nausea swept over me. I hooked my future to the horizon.

I couldn’t find it. The water mirrored the gray sky. I thought of the old-time sailors who believed the earth was flat, that somewhere out at the edge of sight, ships tumbled over and into the mouths of monsters. We’d reached that point, our vessel tipping, gray over gray, into the next life, into the void.

“Hold steady, Nath.”

I gripped the wheel. Win went back to cranking. In a minute, he had the main sails down and fastened to the boom, the boom tightened. The boat swung with the waves.

“Are we battening down?” Phillip said, his hands tucked behind his head.

“Someone took his seasick remedy this morning,” Win said. “You have a stock of those?”

“I’m pretty resourceful.”

“More so than us mere humans.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Win,” Phillip said. “You’re the god.”

My stomach churned along with the boat. In desperation, I fiddled with the wheel until I found a sweet spot with the rudder. The bucking eased. A god. I felt like the only human in a Greek tragedy, two vengeful deities talking over my head as they shoved me from side to side.

“Not as immortal as all that,” Win said.

“So few are. Marilyn Monroe. Vincent van Gogh. Hemingway.”

Win turned a sly smile on him. “Hitler.”

Phillip thought that one over. “Hitler? Oh, right.”

“Some say. An easy way out, considering.”

“I’ll have to look that one up. Sylvia Plath,” Phillip said. “The other one. Anne Sexton. No future in poetry.”

“James Dean,” I said.

They both looked at me. “Nath—” Win started.

“No, wait,” Phillip said. “He might be onto something.”

I didn’t think I was onto anything. Certainly not the thing that mattered. “Let’s please take the boat in,” I said.

“Fast car, young corpse,” Phillip said. “Immortality like that doesn’t come around every day.”

“That’s the going thing now. Immortality,” Win said, reaching for the helm. I held tight. As long as I kept my knuckles white on the wheel, I didn’t want to turn myself inside out. I didn’t want to leap into the churning water. Eyes on the horizon, I could think. Sylvia Plath. Marilyn Monroe. I chanced a look. Win stood in the center of the deck, feet wide and stable, rolling with the waves. A drop of rain hit my arm.

“People like yourself think they have immortality already,” Phillip said.

Ernest Hemingway.

Vincent van Gogh.

“Are you sure it’s people like me?” Win said. “Or people like you?”

Vincent van Gogh?

Suicides. Famous suicides, not to mention the thousands and thousands of not-famous ones that must happen every year. Not to mention the three in my pocket. The water seemed like better odds.

Another splat of water hit me. “It’s starting to rain.” Why were we still out here, letting a Great Lakes squall roll over us? We were going to die out here. Capsize and drown or get struck by lightning where we bobbed. I had wanted to die not so long ago, but not like this. Not with my eyes wide open, like Leo. I’d need something soft for my head, something slow and easy. Something nice and gentle. Pills. Pills, like Marilyn Monroe. Pills, like—

“Jazz Starling,” I said.

They both turned on me.

Win let his crossed arms drop. “What do you know about it?”

“Probably not as much as you,” I said.

“That’s right,” he said. “So let me—”

“Let him make his case,” Phillip said.

Win considered, then found a perch on the side of the boat. I watched the edge of existence, sailing toward an abyss I hoped was still there.

“I don’t have a case,” I said. But I did: The woman on shore. I’d found her in my memory, tucked up against Win’s chest on the cover of the
Willetson Courier
the day after Dr. Emmet was shot. And she was the teacher I’d met at Dr. Emmet’s door, hair mussed and cheeks red while someone cowered in the office behind her. “I have ideas, though.”

“Let’s hear them,” Phillip said.

“By all means,” Win said.

Dr. Emmet had sent me home. I should be home.

What did it matter? I hadn’t remembered my dad’s straight razor that dark night after Bryn, but I would the next time.

I swallowed hard, glancing away from the horizon to see how far from the shore we were. Another boat had ventured out our direction. Surely they couldn’t be the fools we were. “You asked him to kill her,” I said. “The other teacher, your girlfriend. I don’t know why. But he got it wrong.”

We all sat with this, the wind whipping their hair and blasting my eyes. “What do you know about Jazz Starling?” Win said.

“Not much. He’s—he’s not the only one. You gave them poison. Pills. Or talked them into taking something. Replaced their aspirin like you did to Kendall or talked them into it instead of helping them. I don’t know why—you got off on the power or something.”

Win was silent long enough that I looked to see how he’d taken it. Head hanging over his boat shoes, elbows on his knees. “You’ve been busy,” he said. “It looks bad for me. Who else knows all this?”

Phillip smiled sadly at me. Had he known all along? Suspected? I thought of the lists in his office, the names of the dead marked off.

Dr. Emmet didn’t know anything. Rory McDaniel might put things together for his big story, but only after my body and Phillip’s were dragged from the water. My stomach lurched at the thought of my dad having to come all this way to identify my waterlogged corpse. My dad. I wanted to do things differently. I wanted—another chance.

“No one,” I said. “I didn’t tell anyone.”

“That’s too bad,” Win said. “Good thing I did.”

I thought I hadn’t heard right. Win bumped himself off the rail, hands heavy in his pockets. “Evidence to be opened on the occurrence of my death,” he said. “Soon, I think. Unless you brought that gun to shoot fish.”

Gun—

Phillip stood, his hand at his waist. I could see the bulge at his hip, now that I knew to look. “Fish in a barrel is my specialty,” he said.

My mind raced—
gungungun
—stopping when I reached the hotline room underground, underfunded, under a spotlight, my nerves raw and exposed. Phillip across from me.
This is the training.
But the training was a fishing expedition for how badly damaged I might be. Bad lighting, bad coffee. All the comforts of the room removed. The call log in his bag, the names checked off as though on a shopping list. Jazz Starling, collected. Summer Hightower, check. I pulled the list out of my pocket. William Kanowski. And Win Harlan, the list not yet complete.

“You talked Leo into shooting Win,” I said, my voice barely audible over the wind. I looked up, found Phillip watching me with his head tilted. “She surprised him—or maybe he just wanted the night to end. It was never her he was supposed to shoot.”

“The winner,” Phillip said. The prize, anyone could see, not worth having.

Win looked stricken. “I thought—”

“You thought I was trying to take down your girlfriend. Why bother? Politicians can bed anyone they like, isn’t that right? Your dad certainly does. Who cares? If Leo had even half a testicle—”

“Leave Leo alone,” I said.

They both turned my way. I’d surprised myself by finding a spark of rage under the fear.

“He was weak,” Phillip said.

“Which made him the perfect prey for you.” I held onto the wheel—
gungungun
—and swallowed the bile that rose in the back of my throat. But the ember flamed. “Good thing there are people like Leo, people ready to trust, or you might have to do your own dirty work.”

Phillip shot out of his seat, a finger poking into my chest. “You have no idea how hard I work for this place and for these people—these spoiled brats. All their fissures, courtesy of mommy and daddy, and I’m supposed to patch them up so they can go on to rule the world.” Spit collected at the corner of his mouth. “Leo was just like the rest of them. Spoon-fed senators’ sons—”

“Congressmen’s,” Win and I said in unison.

“—Fifth Avenue royalty and celebrity kids who’ll never amount to anything but gossip and credit card bills for their parents. Meanwhile there are people on this campus who fight to be here, who need my help. But you know who cares about them? No one. The university would cut our budget to the bone, if—”

“If rich kids didn’t kill themselves once in a while,” I said. “Or go crazy and kill a Rothbert heir.”

Phillip looked to Win with bright eyes, his hand still on the bulge under his shirt. “They call all the time, but then they’re whisked away to—treatment facilities, to Aspen for ski therapy—”

“Hey,” Win said. “That’s really effective.”

“—or to Malibu for surfing and hot-rock massages and anyone who can’t afford luxury rescue can go to hell? No, thank you. Let mommy and daddy buy them a nice funeral.”

“And then give a big memorial donation to the Hope Hotline,” Win said. “To save the rest. To save your job. To keep your empire intact.”

Phillip stepped back, smirking. “Just like you to follow the money, Win. Maybe someday there’ll be a statue of
you
on campus, along with Great-Great-Grandpa’s. Oh, wait. Probably not.”

I sneaked a glance at Win. He’d been working on this, too, checking the call logs, looking into the hotline’s donors. And then I’d arrived, sniffing around, asking questions. What did he think of me? That night on the boat, when he’d thrown me into the lake, what had I done to inspire the lesson, the hand on my shoulder for a second too long? I’d said—I’d said what had happened to Leo, what Leo had done wasn’t his fault. But he hadn’t believed it. In a way he was right. It was his fault—he was the prize. Not Dr. Emmet. Not Dr. Talbot. Not Leo. Only Win and his privilege. It hadn’t cost him anything, not yet.

Something from Phillip’s manifesto stuck in my side. A piece of me knew what he meant. A cold, dark place, deep, that understood the world spun too fast for the likes of me. The ember was out. I sagged over the helm. The rudder reacted, and the boat gave a small leap in the wind. I steadied and corrected, noticing the wall of storm to our north, then Win watching me, his eyes sharp over my shoulder. He gave me the barest nod, as Dr. Emmet had, once, over our table at the Mill. A thousand years ago, that night, when I thought I might have to pretend to be a guy who wanted to die. I didn’t want to die.

“I followed the histrionics, Phillip,” Win said. “Your weird empire doesn’t make any sense. You don’t make any sense. I hope—oh, look what I did there—I
hope
you had a better plan than shooting us. Messy. Direct. By your own hand. Not your style.”