What Happened to Lani Garver (32 page)

I was on my feet. Scott still had my hair. "Don't touch her, Vince! I don't trust you ... You'd kill her or something."

Scott jerked my neck around until I was looking at him, instead. He landed a really hard slap on my face. I saw stars but went nuts again. I was swinging blindly at Scott, and he kept slapping me until I couldn't open one eye and I felt blood running down my lip. They still didn't know about this deal Tony had cut with my mom about bringing me home and not hurting me. They ruined everything. I wanted to be delivered home with a couple of black eyes.

I was on the flatbed again, and Scott was sitting on top of me, winning this thing, but not without a fight.

"Tony! Bring him out! Let's go!" I heard Phil's voice shouting up at the window.

I spoke between gulps for air. "Scott, you know what Tony's doing up there?"

"He's bringing Princess Garver out here, so we can—"

"No, no. Uh-uh." I breathed more. "Did he tell you he didn't want you to come in with him?"

"Yeah."

"Now, why do you think that is?"

Scott's lip had curled, like he didn't trust me at all. Like I was nuts. "He wants to bring him out himself! Since the little prick came on to Tony, why shouldn't he?"

"That's not what happened! He's up there deleting his own phone-sex calls off caller ID! He's up there burning a gay porn mag that he came all over—"

"Aaaaahhhh!" The loud noise from Vince drowned me out, and he reached over the side of the flatbed for a handful of my hair. I screamed. Despite Scott hollering for him to lay off me, Vince slammed my head down onto the flatbed once, twice, and I shut my eyes as a pain in my neck turned to fire. I started seeing double, and then I saw nothing.

My vision floated out of black and blue haze in the freezing air. I sensed exactly where I was. I had a strong notion that I'd already come around a few times since Lani's house. I was curled up on something soft, which I already knew was a huge tangle of used, nylon fishing line that fishermen saved to repair torn nets. I was rocking gently.
Dern's Dream
was too massive to be swayed by these guys lurching around in silhouette about ten feet away from me. And from the frosty wind hitting my face, I realized the surf was rough enough to kick up this much sway.

I knew I had been brought here in the back of Tony's truck. I had come around once in the truck, and the guys had been all over Lani, who was still so ape shit that I decided I had to be dreaming. But the weather change sent cold air whipping down on my knuckles, biting my neck around my jacket, until there was nothing to do but admit this was real. I remember almost
deciding
to pass out again to escape the embarrassing, helpless sounds. The bounces as Tony gunned it helped me along with that decision.

I had come to again as the truck stopped, and found enough sense to shut my eyes.

"She's awake. She's faking it," Phil had said, and they stood there arguing about whether to leave me in the flatbed or not.
I had tried to be dead weight as one of them picked me up, though other voices were arguing that I wasn't faking it and I couldn't run. The punch I threw landed on wind, doing little more than reminding me to keep my fingers moving to avoid frostbite. They hung like weak Jell-O blobs. I thought,
Screw the whole thing,
and I passed out again.

I'd been coming in and out for a few minutes on the deck of the boat, but this time the wind seemed to wake me up more than put me back out. Hot jabs shot through my head and neck, despite the fact that I was freezing, and the sounds of laughter made me too queasy to pass out again. I finally remembered why I had decided to pass out the last time.

They had tossed Lani into Mr. Dern's huge fishing net and started to crank its huge arm out over the water, threatening to lower him under. I had thought of running, but as soon as I raised my head, the world spun on its side.

Message to God: Do something.

Despite the few splashes I could hear through the hooting and laughter, I figured maybe God had listened. They had not completely dunked Lani. I could still hear his pitiful screaming while the splashes echoed. I wanted to scream at him again to shut the hell up because obviously it was only egging them on.

The net hung over the water. Lani was curled into a little white ball, the whiteness of the costume glowing. Water dripped like a faucet, but I couldn't see if they had submerged him to his butt or to his arms. His hair blew in the raging wind, still dry.

As if right on cue from my message to God, Phil laughed and said, "That's enough. Miss Garver's had enough."

Scott agreed. "Yeah. Get him the fuck off my boat."

Vince continued to push him in the net like it was a kiddie swing. And Tony, standing back by the crank, gave it a good spin, and I heard another of those small splashes. Lani carried on like a dying cat, so I knew they hadn't dipped low enough to send his head under.

I started looking around for something to hit Tony with. It was a long shot, but if I could knock him out, Vince would try to help him, and Scott and Phil probably wouldn't do anything to Lani and me without the crazies egging them on.

The only thing I could see was a small fisherman's hatchet, lying about five feet from me. Silently I reached for it, my throbbing head realizing how crazy the odds were.

I didn't have time to get my fingers around the handle. I watched as Tony took an extra hard swing on that crank, and the net flew downward. A loud splash was followed only by whipping wind. Tony laughed hysterically, and Lani was silent ...
Gone under ... gonna get tangled ... shock freeze.

I jumped to my feet and staggered to the edge of the boat, screaming something in a begging voice that even I couldn't understand. The water was white with little bubbles and whitecaps. I dived for Tony and the crank, but he shoved me to the side like a rag doll, and I continued to plead with him in a voice that made me finally understand why Lani had pleaded the way he had. I never felt so completely at someone else's mercy. You've got nothing to do but grovel.

It was Phil who shoved Tony aside and grabbed for the crank. He spun it around and around saying, "Tony, let him go now. This could get too fucked up—"

The net came up, and Lani was still curled in this tight little ball, but he wasn't moving, wasn't screaming anymore.

I heard Scott say, "Bring him in! He looks dead."

Vince laughed. "He's faking it! Dead people don't shake like a leaf. Let him enjoy the breeze for a couple minutes."

"We'll make him beg!" Tony decided, getting a firmer grip on the crank. "Yo, Miss Garver! Repeat after me: Tony Clementi, you hold my life in your hands. And I would lick your boots if I was good enough."

In spite of the darkness, I could see Lani's eyes open wide. His pupils were so dark that the whites of his eyes lit neon. I actually felt relieved.
They are going to let him go ... Maybe he won't get beaten up ... Maybe this is it...

He had begged for mercy well enough after Tony showed up. I braced myself to hear just the right amount of the same. When he opened his mouth, I decided monsters ruled the deep. He was some schizo. Multiple personalities. He chose this outstanding moment to return to his former blunt self.

Despite him trembling with cold almost to the point of convulsing, we could hear him real plain. "You are a closetreading, homo-porn fanatic, scum wad, hypocrite ... who dials nine-hundred numbers to get off on pretty boys. Your mother knows. Your brother knows. I will haunt you until you'll wish you were never born, if you don't—"

Tony plunged the net under. "Die, you motherfucker—"

"Are you nuts?" I screamed at the surface of the water, even though that made no sense. "What the hell is wrong with you tonight?"

Orchestrated suicide?
I choked out a sob. The sobbing sounded helpless, too helpless. So my ape-shit buttons went to red again. My heel kicked the hatchet, and after watching it spin on its side, my eyes moved to Tony.

"Die, die, die!" He laughed like a crazed nine-year-old.

"Yo, pull him up!" Phil moved toward him. "Don't be messing with that bitch no more. I ain't going to jail over him—"

Scott pushed Tony toward me, and he and Phil cranked the net up. Vince watched them with his back to us. Tony cast me an unconcerned glance, like I was some discarded life jacket. I swooped for the hatchet, remembering how Vince looked at me the same way the other night. That's what sent me over the edge, people looking at me and seeing some naive wimp.

It would be the very last of my ape-shit attacks. The memory still scares the hell out of me. I decided, all in a flash, that I could commit murder, go to jail, and feel it was worth it. No decision made in a flash of ape shit is good. When I reached for that hatchet, I was looking for a way to kill Tony so I could feel great for the rest of my life.

I raised it over my head as the net broke the surface, and Tony at least had the sense to raise up a hand to ward off the blow. The hatchet came down somewhere between his first and fourth fingers. I felt flesh and cartilage and bone send tremors up the hatchet, then it clattered onto the deck. Tony let out a yell like I'd ripped his legs off. He grabbed the hand in the other, but not before I could see a black line almost to the center of his palm. Black juice sprayed from between his fingers as he fell to his knees.

I could have sworn somewhere in the background a voice was droning, "Don't, Claire."

It sent a shock of horror through me, something without words, though if words had been available, they would have been something like
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Tony was off his knees, and the other three were moving toward me, calling me curses I had never heard of.

I realized I was in as much trouble as Lani.

Vince and Phil managed to stuff me in the net before I came out of shock freeze, but they didn't just plunge us under. They twirled and twisted that net like they had for Phil the other night. The only thought I could grab on to was an instinctive one—to curl up tight into a little ball like Lani was, to keep from getting too tangled in the net. But hair, fingers, sneaker tips, any little thing seemed to snag and wrap it tighter around me.

We were two balls hurling through space, smashed up against each other so that I could feel his hypothermia shaking us around like a convulsion. When I finally opened my eyes, I was a little ball looking down. Immediately below me were Lani's wide eyes. Far below was the water. They left us dangling over the water while the four of them argued below.

Tony kept screeching. "She cut off my hand ... She cut off my hand..."

"She did not, and if you don't quit that baby fuckin' crying, I'm gonna cut off your head!" Vince's voice ... Scott and Phil groaning in disgust ... Vince's voice again. "You need a bunch of stitches, that's all.
Bunch
of stitches. Claire, you nutcase! You hurt my brother. Now we're gonna drown you—"

"You got blood all over my dad's boat!" Scott made frenzied stomping. "We are in deep shit! Get off, Tony! Go to the truck! This ends now! Get those morons out of my dad's net."

Tony backed up toward the dock and flopped one leg over the rail, trying to wrap his hand in his brother's T-shirt while holding it over the water. Vince stood with his bare back to us, too busy arguing with Phil and Scott to realize it was cold out here.

"I'll clean up the blood! I'm gonna drown that crazed bitch first—"

"Nobody's drowning!" Phil grabbed for the crank. "We got to clean up this mess, or they can prove something to the cops."

"There ain't gonna be any cops, because I'm gonna drown them!" Vince yelled.

"Nobody's dying off this boat!" Scott had a mop in his hand. He jabbed it down into the water off the side closest to us and ran it frantically across the deck. "We aren't some fucked-up Wyoming cowboys. And we aren't killing no girl."

And Vince was all "Your girlfriend fell in love with a queen!"

Scott moved right up to him, shoved the mop at his chest, and said under his breath, "Your brother
is
... a queen."

Despite where I was, I felt a smile forming. I suddenly didn't think we were in danger of drowning. They would pull us back in. It was fun to watch Vince break that mop in half over his knee and send the top part whizzing past Tony's whimpering head. I could feel Lani trembling ferociously and hoped he was together enough to have heard.

"They believe us ... They believe us! You said they never would. They're just a bunch of overgrown brats," I tried explaining.

I figured he might disagree, being that he was busy slowly freezing to death while the brats finished arguing. His voice trembled so badly it sounded like a song with too much vibrato. "Never thought ... they're totally ... bad. Bad ... would have ... done a group hysteria thing ... don't really want to kill us..."

I pulled my head back as far as I could, which was only about six inches from his face. Because I'd curled up in a ball, it was not hard to wiggle my fingers out of my cheerleading jacket, pull my arms in tighter and manage, in little jerks, to get the jacket over my head and shove it between us. It didn't seem to warm him much, though I wanted it to. I felt strange toward him, stunned by his charitable comment, and yet pissed at those parts of him I didn't know well at all, obviously.

"What the hell went wrong with you tonight? Acting like that in front of Tony? Why did you tell me you could always think on your feet? You're here, you know, because you might as well have begged him to drown you. Could you have lied and said you were a great swimmer?"

"No.
You're
... in this net ... because you couldn't ... find ... middle ground—"

"Don't talk to me about what
I
did." I seethed through my teeth. "You wimped out ... We looked like fools, you first, and then me. Don't lecture me! What the hell is wrong with you tonight?" I grumbled again.

He blinked at me, trembling so bad even his eyelashes shook. I thought he must be losing it, floating in and out of sanity ... talking normally one minute, crazed philosophy the next.
Middle ground.
This was not the time. But it made me stare. Actually, it was too perfect a time ... a perfect truth that I knew deep inside. It just shouldn't have been coming from a person in the throes of hypothermia who needed to answer the question: What the hell is wrong with
you?