The Nix(57)

“That’s not true. Tell me. There’s somebody. I already know who it is.”

“You do not.”

“I do too. You might as well say it.” Bishop took a few steps toward Samuel and put his hands on his hips, one leg out, a pose that was conqueror-triumphant. “It’s Bethany, isn’t it?” he said. “You’re in love with my sister.”

“No I’m not!” Samuel said. But he knew as he said it that it wasn’t convincing. He said it with too much urgency, too loudly, too much protest. He was not a good liar.

“You’re in love with her,” Bishop said. “You want to f*ck her. I can tell these things.”

“You’re wrong.”

“It’s okay. Listen. You have my permission.”

Samuel stood up. “I should go home,” he said.

“Seriously, ask her out.”

“My dad is probably wondering where I am.”

“Don’t go,” Bishop said. He clutched Samuel’s shoulders, to stop him. “Please stay.”

“Why?”

“There’s something you need to see.”

“I should go.”

“It’ll only take a second.”

“What is it?”

“Close your eyes.”

“How can you show me something if I’m closing my eyes?”

“Trust me.”

Samuel blew a long loud breath meant to convey his impatience at all this. He closed his eyes. He felt Bishop let go of his shoulders. He heard the sounds of Bishop moving in front of him, a footfall, then another, something wet splatting on the ground.

“When you open your eyes,” Bishop said, “only open them a tiny bit. Like a squint.”

“Fine.”

“No more than a squint. Okay? Do it.”

He opened his eyes, only a fraction. At first there was nothing but indistinct smudges of light, the abstract brightness of the day. A blur of Bishop before him, a round pink blob. Samuel opened his eyes a little wider. Bishop stood there, a few feet away. He was, Samuel could now tell, naked. His underwear lay wetly at his feet. And Samuel’s gaze drifted to his crotch. This was involuntary. It happened all the time, in locker rooms, at urinals—any opportunity to compare his own body with the bodies of other boys: Who was bigger? Who was smaller? These questions seemed enormously important. So he looked. But where Bishop’s prick should have been, Samuel saw nothing. Bishop was leaning forward, canted at the waist. His legs were slightly bent at the knees in a sort of half bow or curtsy. He had hidden his prick, Samuel could now see. He’d tucked it between his legs so that all Samuel saw was a smooth, soft nothingness.

“This is what she looks like,” Bishop said. “My sister.”

“What are you doing?”

“We’re twins. This is what she looks like.”

Samuel stared at Bishop’s body, his skinny torso, ribs showing through the skin, but rigid also, tense and solid. He stared at that triangle of skin between his legs.

“You can pretend I’m her,” Bishop said. He stepped toward Samuel and pressed his cheek to Samuel’s and whispered into his ear, “Just pretend.” Samuel felt Bishop’s hands on his waist, then felt them gently pulling down his underwear, felt the wet fabric plop against his feet, felt the tiny wobble of his own prick, withered by the cold.

“Pretend I’m Bethany.”

Then Bishop turned around and all Samuel could see was the small pale sweep of his shoulders and back. Bishop took both Samuel’s hands and guided them to his hips. He leaned forward, pressed himself against Samuel, who was having that feeling again, of dislocation, detachment, like at the bus stop this morning, as if he were seeing everything from a great distance. It looked absurd. It wasn’t even him, he thought, down there. Only an odd combination of parts that had never before been put together.

“Are you pretending?” Bishop said. “Is it working?”

Samuel didn’t answer. He was far away. Bishop pressed harder against him, then released, then again, finding a slow rhythm. Samuel felt like a statue, incapable of doing anything but holding this pose.

“Pretend I’m her,” Bishop said. “Make it happen. In your mind.”

Bishop pressed into him and Samuel felt that surge that happened so often in class, at his desk, that cascade of tension, that explosive nervous twitching warmth, then looking down, seeing himself rising and swelling, knowing that he should not be rising and swelling but doing it anyway, unstoppably, and how this seemed to clarify things, how it answered something important—about him, about what had happened to him this day—and being absolutely convinced suddenly that everyone knew what he was doing right now. His mother and father, his teachers, Bethany, the police. Samuel was sure this was true, and it would remain with him for years, the event of his mother’s departure locked in his mind with this moment in the woods, with Bishop, bonded in this way, pulsing against each other, Samuel not exactly liking it but not hating it either, thinking the whole time that his mother knew exactly what he was doing and she disapproved.

It was, he decided, the reason she had gone.





| PART THREE |


ENEMY, OBSTACLE, PUZZLE, TRAP


Late Summer 2011