The Smaller Evil (17 page)

THE YET UNKNOWN.

During the time they're in the cell together, two very different ships passing in the night, you can easily imagine that the hopeless man keeps talking and talking. That he doesn't know how to stop because he doesn't understand how others might see him. Or judge him.

Or else he doesn't care.

You wonder how it can be that he has no questions of his own. That he doesn't pause and ask the wise man sitting across from him “who are you?” and “why are you listening to me?”

But you also know he'd never do that. It's not that he couldn't, it's that he has no interest in a man in whom he sees no advantage. No way to exploit. Besides, he's always believed the world's against him, a flaw that's ensured he's never tried to make the world a better place. A flaw that absolves him of guilt. But he's not without skill, of course. In fact, with his sweet face and even sweeter voice, he's very convincing.

These are all the reasons the wise man listens so closely.

I
could've easily been this man, the wise man thinks. If I'd been more bitter. If I'd been left alone in my bitterness during my darkest times. But he wasn't left alone. When he was young and reckless and found himself in trouble, there was a young public defender named Virgil, who had different skin and a different upbringing, but who nonetheless saw his pain and potential and helped him thrive. He won't ever forget that gift. It's what taught him that there were two kinds of fathers in this world. The ones you can't help.

And the ones you'd die for.

The wise man knows it's too late for his cellmate. For his redemption. And reform. Those are roads he won't travel. Those are regrets he won't face. But when he hears that the talking man has a child—a boy—he's interested again.

“My own son doesn't like me,” the talking man says. “He used to, you know. When he was younger. Those were the days. Kid's the spitting image of me, and he looked out for me back then. Did anything I wanted without me even asking. One time I got pulled over for speeding and I was holding, you know? Would've been bad if the car'd been searched. Real bad. But you know what my kid tells the cop when he comes to the window? Just all on his own?”

“What?” the wise man asks.

“Without missing a damn beat, kid pipes up that he's diabetic. That he's on the verge of a seizure, and I'm taking him to get his insulin. Of all things. Then he bats those big brown eyes of his like a fucking angel. Cop let us go right then and there.”

“Ah.”

“He's not diabetic, of course. Kid was goddamn perfect back then. Don't even know where he came up with that,” the man says proudly, before his voice turns dark. “He's not like that anymore, though. Now he's weak. Doesn't care what I say. Doesn't want my help. It's his mother's fault. He even cut himself to get away from me. So that he wouldn't have to see me. You believe that shit?”

The wise man says nothing in response. He's wise for a reason, after all. But in his mind, he's thinking: Smart boy. That's a very smart boy.

Even if he doesn't know it yet.

THEY LEFT DALE BEHIND AT
the compound, an act Arman was sure he'd appreciate, seeing as the van he was currently riding in was twisting high into the mountains on the most narrow of two-lane roads. Heights were bountiful. As was tension. Arman, on the other hand, longed for Dale's company. Or the company of
someone
he trusted. Someone who didn't hate him or think he was awful. Then he wouldn't feel so anxious.

Or vulnerable.

Sitting squeezed in the back between Mari and Dr. Gary, Arman did his best to avoid conversation. Hell, he was practically avoiding breathing, hoping to be forgotten the way he'd been forgotten in all those classrooms back at school. The longer the drive went on, the more the cook's accusations swirled through his brain. She'd accused these very people of
murder.
Actual murder. And what if they
weren't
going to see a van that Brian claimed to have discovered? What if they were taking him somewhere else?

Alone.

Arman focused on keeping his legs from shaking. His hands, too. If he didn't return from this ride, no one would miss him. There was no
one
to
miss him. Dale himself said he didn't worry about things and Kira was mad at him. And it wasn't like the cops would be looking for him, seeing as his last act out in civilization involved stealing from his stepdad, who wasn't likely to file a police report. The cook might notice his absence, sure, but she wouldn't feel any sort of loss. How could she? They'd met all of two days ago. Arman couldn't even get her to tell him her name, and so far her interest in
him
hadn't extended past the things she could get him to do with his hands and his mouth and his dick. It wasn't like she'd taken a deep interest in his stunning intellect or charming wit.

Brian kept driving. Higher and higher. Supposedly, he was taking them to a spot he'd found that skimmed the border of the vast Los Padres National Forest. A very isolated spot, it seemed, far from the compound in a gloomy place where the hills were steeper, the trees denser, and everything felt more foreboding.

More dangerous.

Staring out the van window, at so much loneliness, Arman's shaking grew worse.

“It's up here.” Brian finally pulled into a turnout on a crumbling section of road. The four of them stepped into the spotty sunshine, thick rays that dripped through the branches of the towering redwood trees to scald their skin and make them sweat. The air smelled faintly of smoke. Brian gestured toward the roadside edge, urging them to follow.

Arman walked forward but felt numb. Was this it then? Was this the end? He considered the ways it might happen. A gunshot to the back of his head, perhaps. Or a sharp push. It didn't matter. His brain spun with images of that hockey goalie again. The one who'd gotten his throat cut on the ice. He'd survived that horror only to try to kill himself years later, and for all Arman's thoughts on suicide, maybe fate had its own
plans, free will be damned. Maybe that's all life was meant to be: a race to the end and nothing more.

But gazing over the cliff's edge, straight down into the depths of a remote craggy canyon, Arman saw what he least expected to. Not the life-flashing slideshow of his own demise, rather, he spotted a
van
. An actual white passenger van. What was left of one, anyway. Far below, amid slick rock and deep shadows, in a spot unreachable by foot, the vehicle lay flipped onto its roof, flattened and charred.

Dr. Gary and Mari gathered on either side of Arman to look. They wore twin expressions of shock, but Arman let out a long exhalation of relief. Death, it seemed, was not imminent.

Then why was he still shaking?

“How'd you find it?” Dr. Gary asked, and his voice was hushed. Solemn.

Brian cleared his throat. “You told me to look for anything unusual, so I stopped at every turnout on the cliff side of the road. I was looking for places where someone could push a vehicle over the edge and not have anyone notice.”

“Could it have been an accident?”

“Maybe. I don't know what it was. But there aren't any skid marks. And why would Beau have been driving
up
the mountain if he was heading toward San Francisco? It doesn't make sense.”

“So you're sure it's Beau's? Do you really think he's down there?”

“I'm not sure of
anything.
All I know is this kid said a van was missing. And now this.”

This kid.
Arman wrapped his arms around himself. The drumbeat pulse of pain had returned to his head. He knew what they were thinking about him and he knew it wasn't true, but even he was struggling to come up with an alternative hypothesis. At least one anyone might begin to believe.

I didn't do it
, he wanted to say, but denying something made people see you as guilty, didn't it? That's what they'd said about Nixon and his “I am not a crook” line. He'd said that on national television, and no one believed him.

Then again, Arman reminded himself with a shudder, Nixon
was
a crook
.

• • •

They drove back to the compound in silence. Arman didn't look out the window this time. He didn't look anywhere. He just stared at his lap and the jittery shadows cast there, that strange interplay of dark and light.

The dark-haired woman sprinted toward them the moment they pulled into the parking lot.

“What happened?” she asked, grabbing on to the open window with both hands. “What'd you find?”

Dr. Gary stepped out of the van first. He put a hand on her shoulder as he explained what they'd found. Her face went pale. Her hand went to her mouth.

“What are we going to
do
?” she breathed.

Dr. Gary looked her in the eye. “We need to stay calm. There are contingencies in place for everything. You know what the next steps are, right?”

The woman nodded.

“Good. Then we need to get started. The sooner, the better. Change is up to us. Just us. It always has been.”

“But are you sure?” she asked. “Are you really sure?”

“Of course I'm sure,” he told her. “It's what Beau would want. For his work to go on. To evolve without him.”

The woman nodded again, but her shoulders were slumped. Her normal haughtiness gone.

“Yeah, but aren't you going to . . . ,” Arman started, but then let his question trail off. He was going to say
call the cops
. But like his stepfather, he got the feeling calling the cops was the last thing anyone here was planning on doing.

Especially now.

“Arman,” Mari said, and while she didn't walk over and squeeze his arm, he still imagined he could read kindness in her eyes. A stern sort of kindness—tough love or whatever—and maybe this was what it was like to have an adult in his life who cared enough to be disappointed when he screwed up
.
“I think you'd better go wait in your cabin. We'll come get you if we need you.”

Arman nodded, but swallowed hard. “Maybe I should just, you know, get my things and go.”

“No way,” she said, and whatever he'd mistaken for kindness was gone now. Vanished in an instant, if it'd ever been there in the first place. “No goddamn way. You're not going anywhere until we tell you to.”

I'M ALIVE. I'M STILL ALIVE.

But why?

Arman paced the cabin floor. He had no idea how long he'd been in here, but the sun was fading and his mind was racing. He couldn't figure out what was going on. Or why. Because if the cook was right about Beau being murdered, that meant Arman was a witness, albeit a confused one. So why
wouldn't
the trainers want to get rid of him?

But they hadn't.

The only way Arman could make sense of this fact was that not all three of the people who'd been in the van with him were in on it. That whoever the guilty party was intended to frame Arman. Play dumb and let the others believe
he
did something to Beau. Then they were probably planning to deal with Arman later. On their own.

And no one would care.

Fuck.

It wasn't like Arman didn't know who the killer was. Only one person who'd been in that van was currently enacting their “contingency plan” now that Beau was gone. Only one person who had the
arrogance to state that his spiritual faith pointed inward—that he was literally
his own god
. Gary must have an accomplice, though. Someone other than the dark-haired woman. Someone who'd moved the van when Arman arrived at the compound. Not Brian, obviously—he was the one who'd grabbed Arman in the domed meeting hall—but maybe another one of the guards. Or someone else completely. Maybe someone who—

Hold up, hold up, hold up. Wait a minute. Just stop. Stop all of this.

A cloud of darkness rolled over Arman, halting him in his tracks and filling him with sudden doubt. This whole thing, everything he was thinking, it was all completely
insane
. Wasn't it? That's what it felt like, because the picture starting to form in Arman's mind looked a hell of a lot like one of those conspiracy theories his narcissist father liked to concoct in order to maintain his belief that everything revolved around
him
. Those theories were about as real as his father's jazz club in Belize. But the thing was, Arman
knew
nothing revolved around him. He knew he wasn't important. Yet here he still was, his mind bursting with wild thoughts of murder and accomplices and alibis. But maybe it was like the old man had explained at dinner yesterday—in fearing irrelevancy, Arman's mind made this whole thing up.

How pathetic would that be?

Arman collapsed on his cot. His chest was heavy and his will despairing. He reached to pull his Paxil out of his bag and poured the pills onto his bed. He counted them,
tick, tick, tick
. There were eighteen total.

Then he dug around for the rest of his medication: There was the Adderall and the Dexilant and those powerful painkillers he'd been given for his head. He dumped all of them out. Every last one. Counted again. Thirty-two total.

Arman stared at the pills. They stared right back at him.

Like sixteen pairs of wicked eyes.

Oh God
, he thought.

Life was about autonomy and joy, wasn't it? Competence and connectedness. Both Beau and the cook had told him that. And Arman believed them. But believing meant that from where he stood, whether the nightmare that had trapped him existed in the external world or merely inside his own mind, didn't much matter. What mattered—the only thing—was the fact that, either way, he was completely screwed.

• • •

Arman had just placed the first pill in his mouth when the cabin door banged open, making him jump. He spit out the pill, one of the Paxils. It spun across the floor.

“Goddamn it!” Kira stormed in like a wildfire, bellowing at the top of her lungs. As she crossed the room, she snatched an empty water glass from the table. Threw it against the wall as hard as she could. Glass shattered everywhere.

“Jesus.” Dale trailed behind her, looking shell-shocked. “Can you not do that?”

Arman stared at the scene with wide eyes. He'd never seen Kira so mad. Not even last night.

“What's wrong?” he asked.

“Everything!” she snapped. “Fucking everything's wrong!”

“Oh.” A stone was sweating in Arman's stomach. He went to dig at his arm. Forgetting what was going on and what they'd caught him in the middle of doing, more than anything, he had an awful fear of getting yelled at.

The worst.

Dale glanced over at him. “You look like you're going to puke, dude.”

That's what it felt like. Arman dug harder. “Did I do something? I'm sorry about last night. I am. I'm really, really sorry.”

Kira scowled. “Don't be sorry.
I'm
the one who's sorry. I should be thanking you, you know.”

“Me? For what?”

“For telling me the truth! You said these people were assholes. That they just wanted my money. Well, you were right.”

“I was?”

“Yes,” she said. “And now they're going to wish they'd never heard of me.”

“What happened?”

Kira ground her shoe into a piece of broken glass. “I was invited to a ‘special' meeting this morning is what happened. While you guys were building latrines or whatever, they took a bunch of us into this weird building in the woods, to sit in some sort of upstairs lounge. First, we did some bonding exercise, which was fine. But then the guy in charge started talking about something called ‘Containment,' which means closing the compound and just living here on our own. Without being able to leave! He said we'd been chosen to be a part of this new vision and that we all had special gifts that could help advance the human mind. It wasn't hard to figure out he meant money. Then he had us each use the phone to call our family and ask them to donate their own ‘gifts' to support our growth.”

“Seriously?”

“I told him I was here because I didn't want to depend on my dad. That that was
my
way of evolving. But rather than supporting me, he told me how disappointed he was and how maybe I wasn't ready for true change. I guess shame's good when it serves his needs, right? Well, then I asked him what about all the other people here? And he said not
everyone was a ‘good fit' for the program. That some would be ‘reabsorbed.' Then I realized he meant Dale. And you.”

“‘Reabsorbed?'” Arman echoed.

She nodded, and right then, Dale, who'd been rummaging around under his cot, crawled back out with a rolled joint in his hand. He stuck it in his mouth and lit up. Passed it to Kira, who took it gratefully.

“Screw them,” she said, shutting her eyes and inhaling as hard as she could. “Let's be the stupid kids they think we are for once. Even if we don't know what we're doing, we're still smarter than the rest of them.”

“A-fucking-men,” said Dale.

Kira let the joint dangle from her lips. “Just wait till I tell my dad about this. He's gonna shit bricks.”

“Wait. So you
are
going to talk to him?” Arman asked.

“Not to get money. I'm going to get him to sue the hell out of this place. It's nothing but a scam.”

“Oh.”

“Hey, what's all this?” Dale pointed at the pills spilled out on Arman's cot.

“It's nothing,” he said.

“This stuff any good?” Dale picked up the empty bottle of Dexilant.

“It's my
heartburn
medicine.”

Dale shrugged. Put it down. Fingered the Adderall bottle.

Kira stared at the pills, too. But she frowned. “Arman . . .”

“I don't want to talk about it,” he said. “And stop touching my shit already.”

Dale scrambled to his feet. “Guess Kira's not the only one in a pissy mood.”

“I guess not.”

“Well, why the hell's that?”

“I already said I don't want to talk about it!”

“Fine. Jesus.”

“Here.” Kira tapped Arman on the shoulder. Held out the lit joint as an offering. “I think you need this. Maybe more than I do.”

Arman had never smoked before. He hesitated before taking it.

But only for a moment.