The Storm King Page 9

  “You in yet?”

  “Email’s loading.”

  “How about now?”

  “Dude, shut up. Okay, I’m in.”

  Nate had gotten thirty messages since checking his inbox that morning.

  “Do you see it?” Johnny asked.

  Nearly all of the messages had the same title: FWD: Guess whos back on the market?

  “Open it,” Johnny said. “And get ready to pick your tongue off the floor.”

  A series of photos were attached to the end of a long chain of forwarded messages. He clicked on the first one.

  It was the nude chest of a girl. The image captured her from her waist to her chin. Her right arm was crossed over her left breast, but the other one was entirely exposed. Her breasts were smaller than the kind you’d expect to find on the Internet. The image was more artistic than erotic. Not the usual kind of pornography at all.

  “Okay…” Nate said. He scanned the names of the email’s other recipients and recognized most of them from school.

  “Keep going,” Johnny said.

  The next photo was cropped to show a single nipple and the bottom half of the girl’s profile.

  “You still with me, buddy?” Johnny asked.

  The last image was from behind. Just the swell of her hips and a tease of breast were visible here, but the profile was as unmistakable as was the flash of auburn hair that cascaded around her shoulders.

  “Maybe it’s Photoshopped,” Nate said.

  “No way, man. This is the genuine article. Lucy Bennett’s gone viral.”

  Nate scrolled down to the original message and saw that the pictures had come directly from Adam Decker. Along with the images, the blond bully had sent his friends this message: Thats right guys, I’m a free man again so you got some real competition now. Think I can do better than this last piece? Game on. The email had been sent the night before.

  “Adam did this?” Nate said. He was irritated to hear surprise in his voice. Nothing should shock him anymore. He’d been paying careful attention to Adam Decker since Halloween, and he knew what the hulking teen was capable of. He’d learned that being a real bully required a skill set beyond physical strength and the willingness to use it. It demanded relentless cruelty and the belief that no line existed that couldn’t be crossed.

  “Yeah,” Johnny said, “and his friends forwarded it to more people, who forwarded it to even more. Like twenty people sent it to me.”

  Call-waiting sounded again in Nate’s ear.

  “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer girl, huh?” Excitement thrummed through Johnny’s voice. It was like Romans cheering in the Coliseum as people exactly like them were cut to pieces on the bloody sand below.

  “I’ve got another call.”

  “Come on, don’t hang up,” Johnny said. “I mean, I get why she’d be upset, but she looks kind of amazing. I think she has some pretty freaking great—”

  Nate switched calls.

  “Did you see it?” Tom asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I was hoping to catch you first. Getting pictures of her by email—especially pictures like those. I didn’t know how you’d take it.”

  “Me? I’m fine, but—”

  “What?”

  “Adam. He did this to his own girlfriend.”

  “Kinda doubt the winter formal’s in the cards for them now, don’t you?”

  “Hasn’t she been through enough?” Before Halloween, Nate had taken his own shots at Lucy. He understood now that she hadn’t deserved them, which was one reason why he’d tried to make up for it yesterday at the boutique. He’d stopped Mrs. Sackett from calling the police on Lucy. They were even now.

  “Well, not compared to you. Compared to you she’s barely—”

  “Stop,” Nate said. “Don’t compare her to me. Try comparing her to every other person in this town. Every other person you’ve ever met. Who else has a dad in prison? Who else lost all their friends and all their money? Does anyone else feel totally alone all the time, and just when she felt so sure things couldn’t possibly get any worse?”

  “Okay, yeah,” Tom said. “It’s a really crappy thing. You’re right. It sucks for her. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”

  “People like Adam, they’ll hurt anyone they can get away with hurting just because they can. And he did it to his own girlfriend. That makes it betrayal.” It was one thing for the universe to conspire against you, but for people to do it to each other—to those who trusted them? “He can’t get away with it.”

  —

  NATE STARED AT his bedroom ceiling as a reel of destruction played through his head. He imagined Adam Decker being chased down the Strand by crop threshers with whirling blades, tied by a line to a motorboat that whipped him across the lake’s freezing surface like a skipped stone, encircled by townspeople on the beach below the cliffs as they pitched its smooth rocks at him one by one.

  Nate had left his email open, and the ping of a new message pulled him from the furnace of his mind. The email was from Tom: Got an idea. Room 214, HS. 3:00. He’d also sent the email to Johnny.

  It was Sunday, but Nate bet some of the school’s entrances would be unlocked. Opening night for a student production of Our Town was only a few days away, and he suspected the auditorium would be filled with the sounds of hammering and the smells of fresh paint.

  He doubted whatever Tom had come up with would sate his own appetite for ruin, but it might be a start. When he pulled on his coat, his mind danced with razors and ropes and flames.

  Greystone Lake’s high school was an imperious neoclassical building that loomed over its neighbors. Nate was a block away when Johnny and Owen crossed the street in front of him.

  “Nate, the Vengeful King himself,” Johnny shouted when he saw him. “O was over, so I brought him.”

  Nate nodded to Owen. The big guy wasn’t really one of them, but he’d demonstrated he could be trusted.

  After Johnny had showed them his bruised back on Halloween, Nate promised that they’d punish Mr. Vanhouten. That storm had been perfect cover for his plan. When they’d crept out of the Night Ship, the Lake’s streets had been empty except for the roar of wet leaves by the legion. Rain had seared their faces as they’d approached the Wharf, where Johnny’s father docked his beautiful sailboat, the Pharaoh.

  They’d cut the Pharaoh loose from its moorings, and the wind had done the rest. Its bottomed-out hull had been discovered all the way out on Blind Down Island two days later. The lake returns what it takes. The boat was a small loss for Mr. Vanhouten, but Johnny had been flying high ever since.

  Though Mr. Vanhouten blamed the storm and the dock supervisor, Johnny knew the truth. He’d enjoyed the intoxication of revenge without the hangover of consequences. Destroying the sailboat had been good for Nate, too, though in a more complicated way. The fury inside him had to go somewhere. So many things in the world deserved it.

  Owen had accompanied them back on Halloween, and they’d hung out with him a few times since. Nate had intended to punish Mrs. Liffey, Owen’s mother, during the next big storm, but this morning’s email had sent Adam Decker to the top of his list.

  “Any clue what Tommy’s cooking?” Johnny asked. “Not like him to start trouble.”

  Nate had himself been pleased by Tom’s enthusiasm. This morning, it seemed like his friend hadn’t understood why Nate wanted to protect Lucy from Adam. Nate wasn’t sure that even he fully understood it.

  “You think this has to do with Adam sending those pictures of Lucy Bennett?” Owen asked. “Because I thought we didn’t like Lucy either?”

  “Adam’s our enemy, O,” Johnny said. “Remember Halloween?”

  Room 214 was in the school’s science wing. Each classroom had hexagonal tables with sinks and designated taps for Bunsen burners. Hazard signs were hung next to the doors with safety rules for the labs.

  Nate entered the lab first and was confounded by the sight of Tom crouched in a corner. Then he saw Adam and
Adam’s friend with the face like baked beans perched on a lab table and understood. The wider of Adam’s two minions appeared from behind to hustle the other boys into the lab.

  Stocky slammed the lab’s door behind him.

  When the door shut, the pressure in the room changed. The buzz of the ventilation system seemed to amplify.

  “Hey, Nate,” Adam said. “How’s your day going?” His laid-back smile didn’t touch his unblinking eyes. Both he and Beans tapped lacrosse sticks against the lab bench to the rhythm of a song only they seemed to hear.

  “We don’t want trouble,” Nate said. Trouble was, of course, exactly what he’d come here for. This just wasn’t the kind he’d expected.

  “Well you got it anyway, McHale.”

  Nate and his friends outnumbered the seniors, but the older boys had lacrosse sticks and weight-room bodies.

  “Funny how things work out,” Adam continued. “I was just thinking about how we were overdue to pay you back for Halloween when we happen to run into your buddy here.” He pointed to Tom.

  “They wanted my email password,” Tom said. “I didn’t know why.” He looked miserable. A line of blood slipped the rim of his lip.

  “Lucy was the one who had it out for me,” Nate said. “The whole planet got your breakup email. So what’s your deal?”

  “My boy remembers that knock on the head you gave him,” Beans said.

  “I needed stitches. You’ve had stitches, McHale. No fun at all,” Adam said. “Besides. That slut is the reason we’re here. I saw you yesterday, outside that old bat’s store. I saw you and her.” He snorted and shook his head. “Guess she played me, huh? Still, I’ve got a rep for not leaving the ladies disappointed, so here we are.”

  Tom turned to Nate with questions scrawled in block letters across his face, but Nate had no answers. There was indeed something between him and Lucy, but it wasn’t any kind of romance as he imagined it. But Adam’s certainty—unsound though it was—was all that mattered in this moment. The bottom line was that Adam had emailed those pictures of Lucy because of Nate.

  “You’re just as dumb as you look, aren’t you?” Nate said.

  Johnny groaned and Beans shook his head.

  “Smart guy with a smart mouth,” Adam said. “The Lake’s survivor has a death wish. You’re an honors student, right, McHale? Is that irony?”

  “Just you and me, Adam. Let my friends go.”

  Adam shook his head. “You’re not the one who got me these stitches—respect the effort, though.”

  They wanted a fight and nothing would dissuade them. The younger boys must have seemed like easy prey, but Nate knew something Adam and his friends didn’t. He wasn’t sure when he’d first grasped it, but he understood now that both boys in the backseat of that Passat had died on that bright April day. Whoever had woken on those rocks with his shattered arm and broken ribs was someone else. Out of synch, out of place. Maybe even out of his mind.

  “This is just the beginning, McHale.”

  “Yeah,” Beans said. “Got a whole semester of payback left before we graduate.”

  “Probably longer in your case,” Nate said.

  Adam and Stocky laughed as Beans’s face turned purple.

  “You want to say that again?” Beans reached for the menace of Adam’s voice but came up short.

  “Stupid and deaf?” Nate said. “Gosh.”

  Beans had a fistful of Nate’s shirt in an instant.

  “See, I’ve got you figured out now, McHale,” Adam said. “Should’ve known back on Halloween. That dip into the lake did a number on you, didn’t it?” He laughed.

  “Your concern for my mental health is real touching.”

  “You want to get seriously messed up. You want us to break every bone in your body. So the question is, how do you actually hurt someone who likes the pain?”

  For the first time since entering the lab, Nate felt the itch of something like concern. Adam suddenly didn’t sound so stupid.

  “You listening?” Adam asked. “I asked how you really hurt someone who gets off on pain?” Adam swung his lacrosse stick hard into Tom’s stomach. Tom gasped and fell to the tiles.

  Nate took a step toward Tom, but stopped himself because he knew that’s what Adam wanted him to do. The more Nate showed that he cared, the more his friends would be made to suffer.

  Beans chose this moment to jab the netting of his lacrosse stick into Nate’s belly, then torqued it to crack the grip against the side of Nate’s face. The momentum of the blow sent Nate swaying. Points of light swam across his vision. Beans brought the stick down on the flat of Nate’s back, sending him to his knees.

  “You guys are so tough, beating on younger kids,” Owen said.

  “Shut it, fat boy,” Adam said.

  Nate’s vision cleared and he tried to catch his breath. As he crouched on the floor, a shadow fell around him. Someone kicked him in the ribs.

  “That’s all you got, McHale?” Beans asked. “And after all that big talk.”

  Nate rocketed off the balls of his feet, slamming the crown of his head into Beans’s face and nose. There was a porcelain snap. Beans dropped his lacrosse stick and covered his face with his hands, but Nate didn’t give him time to recover. He head-butted the older boy again, and this time the result was a wet crunch. Beans howled as he careened into a glass-encased shelving unit.

  Then everything seemed to happen at once. Friends and enemies collided into wordless sounds and animal struggles.

  Johnny locked in a violent dance with Stocky.

  Owen moving toward Beans.

  Tom staggering up from where he’d fallen.

  Beans vomiting onto the floor.

  Distracted by the surge of action and disoriented from the knocks to his head, Nate had missed what was right in front of him.

  Adam clocked him with his lacrosse stick, sending him hard against a table. Nate fell into an array of test tubes and beakers, knocking them onto the floor, where they disintegrated into a cloud of singing fragments.

  The big teen caught him again with a strong cross-check to the other side of his face. Nate quickly detected a strategy in Adam’s strikes. He’d bring the stick hard on Nate’s left side in order to move him to the right. He’d knocked him on the head in order to bring Nate’s face within the range of a savage kick. Nate realized he was being herded to the corner of the lab with the emergency shower, where there’d be no chance of escape.

  Stick to ribs. Knee to stomach. Fist to kidney. Nate knew he had to do something while he still could.

  He fought past the pain and leapt for a lab stool to throw at Adam. For a moment, the lacrosse stick got entangled in the stool’s legs. This caused Adam’s assault to stutter, and Nate seized his chance to lunge for a second stool, which he whipped at Adam’s head, swinging for the horizon.

  He threw his whole weight into the blow, and the force of its impact knocked him to the floor. Adam joined him a moment later. Eyes rolling to white, blood at his temple, knocked out cold.

  Nate couldn’t have sparred with Adam for more than a minute, but in that time the lab had transformed. Broken glass glittered across the floor alongside pieces of cracked molecular models and fragments from shattered shelving units. Stocky slipped in a pile of Beans’s vomit and crashed into the bottles of chemicals that had spilled from the busted cabinet.

  The warnings around the room were right: A laboratory was a hazardous place.

  Nate looked over in time to see Tom fumble with a fire extinguisher, and a cloud of vapor engulfed Stocky and Beans. Nice one, Tommy, was Nate’s last thought before he felt the floor lurch beneath where he lay. He unspooled onto the firmness of the tiles.

  As the room dimmed, he caught a glimpse of a shadow watching from the doorway. But before he could articulate a thought, the world went black.

  December 1

  Mom,

  I’m proud of you and I love you, and that’s why I have to go.

  I thought I could handle eve
rything with Dad and what happened with my friends, but that was before I knew that wasn’t the end. Things aren’t going to get better for me. I get that now. Everyone here wants me to fail, and I’m just going to drag you and the twins down with me.

  I know this sounds dramatic, but I swear I’ve thought it through. I know you haven’t touched my college fund. College isn’t what I need right now. Use it for yourself, Tara, and James. You deserve a break, and I want to give it to you. That’s one thing I can do right.

  Don’t worry about me. Once I leave this place and these people, I know things will get better. I just need a fresh start. Or maybe I don’t know exactly what I need, but I know I need some time to myself to figure it out. It’ll only get worse if I put this off, Mom. I know you’ll say that it’ll all be fine, and that’s one of the things I love about you, but try to see my side of this.

  This isn’t goodbye. Not at all, okay?

  I love you and Tara and James, and I love Dad, too. Tell them for me? Tell them every day so there’s no chance they’ll forget. I’m sorry to leave like this, but I know it’s the best thing. You can be mad at me, but I promise that you won’t ever be as angry at me as I am at myself. I hope you forgive me. I swear that this isn’t goodbye.

  Love,

  Lucy

  Six

  Nate hadn’t worn his old black raincoat in fourteen years, but a bespoke suit couldn’t have fit better.

  As he dressed in it, he felt like a druid preparing for something sacred. And in a way he was. No task was more important than protecting the ones you loved.

  He’d waited for Grams to turn in before venturing out. When he took the stairs down he avoided the third and sixth steps from the bottom. He extinguished the kitchen lights behind him and exited through the back door into the weeping night.

  Outside, he let his eyes adjust to the dark.

  The town was battened down. No cars, no voices. The only sounds were from the rain and the wash of leaves in the branches above him.

  After the accident, Nate had sometimes spent nights listening to these trees as they were tossed by the breeze that swept in from the lake. The leaves murmured like a stadium of people. He’d lie between two knotted roots, close his eyes, and try to pry meanings from the sound. Was that Gabe’s whisper? Was that Mom’s laugh? But if there were messages to be heard, they weren’t meant for his ears.