The Most Dangerous Place on Earth(39)
Molly flashed her palm. “None of us knows what really happened, do we?”
In the silence that followed, Molly’s kids glanced uncomfortably at one another. Molly had the sudden, horrible thought that they did know—they walked the same halls and heard the same rumors; they had heard, and maybe passed on, every sordid detail. They knew who the girl was when Molly did not. She had the thought that now they were protecting her.
Abruptly, in the front row, Abigail stood up. “I need the bathroom pass,” she said.
“You know you don’t have to ask,” Molly told her, grateful for the interruption. She smiled meaningfully at Abigail while handing her the slip of purple paper. Poor girl, she thought, she seems so mature in so many ways, but she’s not ready for this.
Abigail hurried out of the room.
“That’s some fucked-up shit,” Nick Brickston said philosophically as Abigail left, returning them immediately to the topic of Doug.
“That’s enough,” Molly told him, although she couldn’t disagree. And liked him just a little more for having said, so bluntly and efficiently, what she could not.
THE ARTIST
This was how Nick Brickston got away with it.
Step One: Tell the client to register for the SAT at a distant location—a high school in San Francisco was best—where all would be anonymous.
Step Two: Make a fake high school ID with his picture and his client’s name. His tools were few: iPhone camera, MacBook Pro with Photoshop, the laminating machine in his mom’s home office.
Step Three: On test day, go to the school and wait. Flash the ID card and admission ticket. Keep the chitchat to a minimum, giving them no reason to ask questions.
Step Four: Sign his client’s name on the line. (He studied each client’s handwriting, then mimicked it—he’d heard that when test officials suspected cheating, they’d analyze the writing on the essay portion, and this, he thought, was a stupid reason to get caught.)
Step Five: Sit for the test. Open the booklet. Wait for the magic to start.
—
The essay test always came first. Nick told his clients ahead of time which historical and personal examples he planned to write about; that way, on the ride home, they could tell their parents how the test had gone and sound legit.
His current client, Dave Chu, had been mystified by this. “But how do you know what the essay prompt will be?” he’d asked.
“I’ll tell you a secret,” Nick had said. “Doesn’t matter what it is. Any question they’re gonna ask, you can answer it using World War II and fuckin’ Martin Luther King. Then for the third example I tell a story, like how my little cousin Ricky got sick with cancer and how I helped him get through it and learned about the meaning of life or whatever. Trust me. The SAT eats that shit up.”
“Is he all right?”
“Who?”
“Your cousin. Ricky.”
“There is no Ricky, man. The SAT doesn’t know that. Sympathy points.”
Nick kept it casual with clients, but in truth he took pride in these essays, imagining the scorer who would read them: some apathetic English teacher, assessing essays on a Sunday for extra cash, would slog through the pile of asinine high school bullshit, growing bored, depressed, resentful even, before encountering Nick’s thoughtful, elegant prose and becoming, well, entranced. Nick knew the risks of standing out; he simply couldn’t help himself.
—
Nick was in seventh grade when his parents split up. Within a year, his dad had married someone else and bought her a big, sunny house in San Rafael, a few exits north on the 101 freeway. Right after that, he’d had new kids, twins, a boy and a girl with cherub faces and curly blond hair. They didn’t look like Nick or his big sister, Amy, who were tall and lean with dusky hair and ink-drop eyes. They looked like the new wife.
On the day his dad’s twins were born, Nick had gone to the hospital. In the private room, the new wife slept and Nick’s dad cradled the girl twin, Addison, smearing tears out of his eyes. A nurse handed the boy twin, Colson, to Nick. He balanced the baby’s body in his arms. Its eyes were closed, thin wet seams. It had flat cheeks furred with shimmery blond hairs, a Cheerio mouth, and a too-sweet reek, like buttermilk.
Nick grinned. “He’s heavy,” he said to his dad, and then to the baby, “You been eating fuckin’ T-bones in there, bro?”
The baby struggled. Trying for a better hold, Nick jostled its head by mistake and it made a mewling-kitten sound that quickly surged into a screech.
“Hey, watch it!” Nick’s dad said. “Be careful with him!” Laying the girl twin in the nurse’s arms, he took the boy from Nick and hugged it to his chest, murmuring.
“Whatever,” Nick said. He went to the window and slid down in a vinyl chair, plugged in his earbuds to listen to what looked like music but was actually words: an audiobook he’d found on iTunes.
Selfishness was holy, the book said. The only way. Nick wondered about this. It felt true. His dad bounced baby Colson around the room, hunching to coo secrets in his ear, and Nick listened to The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand and swiped through the Instagram feed on his phone, waiting for something to catch his eye. Anything happening. Any excuse to get out of that room.
His dad still asked him to visit some weekends—“Cindi’s got the guest room all ready for ya!”—but Nick always refused. He could hardly stand to look at his dad’s face. The man was so simply, stupidly, undeservedly happy—having spent Nick and Amy’s childhood at the office, he wanted to try again with a new wife, new kids. Why should Nick be part of it? He and Amy didn’t get to start over. That dark-haired, dark-eyed family, the one his dad had thought wasn’t worth saving, was the only family they were going to have.