No One Knows Us Here(25)

It was perfect, for a while, I told Sam. But—I stared straight into Sam’s eyes when I said this next part—I hated him.

Sam held my gaze. He didn’t blink.

I took in a deep breath. I felt myself unspooling. I wanted to tell him everything.

I told him about the first time it happened. I was twelve. Jason had been under a lot of stress around that time. He worked longer hours, came home grumpy, though he always seemed to have a smile for my mom and Wendy. That night, the first time, my mom was gone for the evening and left Jason in charge of the bedtime routine. Wendy was four years old, already sound asleep. When Jason told me to pick out a book and he would read it to me, I was excited. Pleased, maybe, that he was smiling at me, paying attention to me. I chose a classic, Where the Wild Things Are. He had bought it for me, back when he was first wooing my mom and I was just some stupid little kid, five or six years old. He sat next to me on the bed and read to me, just like he used to. He was a good reader. Very expressive. He took his time, acted out all the monsters’ voices.

I had never told anyone this story before. I felt detached from it, almost, like the whole thing had happened to someone else a long, long time ago. I kept going.

Jason reached the final page and closed the book. He told me to lie back on my bed, so I did, with my arms down at my sides. He pulled the covers up to my chin, folding down the edge. He tightened the sheets over me and tucked them under the mattress, like he was making the bed with me still in it. I could barely move, pinned down by the sheets. When he was finished, he leaned his face in next to mine. Snug as a bug in a rug, he whispered into my ear.

Then he smoothed the sheets with his hand, slowly, the way you’d smooth the sheets on a perfectly made bed to get out all the wrinkles. He ran his hands over and over the sheets, over me, my body. His hands gathered speed and his breath quickened, and I shut my eyes tight and then it was over. He kissed me on the forehead. Then on the lips, lingering. I stayed still, pinned down like a mounted butterfly. His breath blew hot against my neck when he spoke again, his parting words: Love you. Night-night.

The next time my mom had to go away, I asked if Jason was going to tuck me in again. She said he loved me. He loved tucking me in. He had told her that himself. I could tell she was happy about it. It made her happy. For years I thought of it that way, that “tucking me in” was what it was called, this elaborate ritual of flattening down the sheets with me straitjacketed beneath them.

That was the beginning, how it started. It got worse, as these things do. I didn’t say this to Sam because when I stopped talking, I looked over at him and he was still taking me in with those gray, mournful eyes.

“I’m so sorry,” Sam said.

I topped off both of our glasses. Our teeth were stained with wine. The story wasn’t over yet. I wanted to keep going. I would tell the whole thing, all the way through. I would unburden myself from this story, and then I would be ready for my new life as Leo Glass’s paid girlfriend.

I never told my mom, I told Sam. The next morning, after that first time, do you know what I did? I got up and acted like nothing was wrong. I went up to Jason and kissed him on the cheek while he was shoveling Cheerios into his mouth. I said, “Good morning, Daddy!” I had never kissed him on the cheek in my life. I rarely called him Daddy. I don’t know why I did it, but my mom looked so happy when I did. So I kept doing it.

My stepfather’s nighttime visits went on until I was fifteen years old. Jason was laid up in bed after knee surgery following a mountain bike accident. He had to keep off it for two weeks, lying in bed with his leg raised up on pillows. He was out of it half the time, dozing off and on all day. Our mom didn’t come home until well after dinner, and Wendy was just a little kid, so I was supposed to check on him when I got home from school—ask him if he needed me to heat up any food, refill his water jug, stuff like that.

He had a whole shelf filled with orange bottles—pain medication, antibiotics, sleep meds, and some over-the-counter stuff, too. I started pilfering from the bottles—a pill here, another pill there. After a few days I had a couple of dozen. I put them in a zipper bag and crushed them with the rolling pin in the kitchen.

I read up on it, and it turns out it’s difficult to overdose on Vicodin, or sleep medication, or antibiotics. All three together, though? Maybe it would work. I could stir it into his morning coffee. This was another chore that fell to me during his convalescence. He drank his coffee black with eleven packets of Sweet’N Low. Eleven! It was a brew so strong and so sweet that he would never notice the addition of twenty-four assorted pills mixed in there, too.

He’d drink it, fall asleep, and then his organs would begin to shut down. If he puked it up, or caught on and called the doctor, he wouldn’t die. He needed to drink his whole cup of coffee in the morning and be alone all day while my mom worked and Wendy and I were in school. We’d come home from school and it would be done. I would take the coffee cup and wash it on the sanitary cycle in the dishwasher. If they did an autopsy or screened his blood or something after he died, they’d find nothing more than the pills lined up on his bedside table and a revolting amount of Sweet’N Low. It would be ruled an accidental overdose. Case closed.

I carried that baggie of powder with me every day for a week. Every morning I brewed his coffee. I poured it into his cup and added each packet of sweetener. After I’d stirred in the final packet, I would take the baggie out of its hiding place, a zippered pencil bag buried at the bottom of my school backpack. All I would have to do is open it up, sift the contents into the cup like poison snow.