The Smaller Evil Read online

  Dutton Books

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, NY 10014

  Copyright © 2016 by Stephanie Kuehn

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  eBook ISBN 9781101994719

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Kuehn, Stephanie, author.

  Title: The smaller evil / Stephanie Kuehn.

  Description: New York, NY : Dutton Books, [2016] | Summary: “Chronically sick and anxiety plagued Arman Dukoff runs away to attend a self-actualization retreat where he eventually discovers both a bloody corpse and a sense of self that was not what he bargained for”—Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015035869 | ISBN 9781101994702 (hardback)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Self-actualization—Fiction. | Anxiety—Fiction. | Coming of age—Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Social Issues / Depression &

  Mental Illness. | JUVENILE FICTION / Social Issues / Drugs, Alcohol,

  Substance Abuse. | JUVENILE FICTION / Social Issues / Self-Esteem &

  Self-Reliance.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.K94872 Sm 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2015035869

  Jacket photos courtesy of Shutterstock.com

  Jacket design by Krisitin Logsdon

  Version_1

  For my November boys,

  who have so many stories inside of them.

  I can tell.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  ALWAYS, ALWAYS . . .

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  SOMEDAY.

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  DOING YOUR BEST.

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  EXACT PAYMENT.

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  NOTHING MORE.

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  HOPE YOU CAN.

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  SO LONG TO ANSWER.

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  THE DESTINY OF OTHER MEN.

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  THE YET UNKNOWN.

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  AS IT SHOULD BE.

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  EVERYTHING.

  Acknowledgments

  Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.

  —Aristotle

  ALWAYS, ALWAYS . . .

  You know what you’re looking for. Age doesn’t matter, but you’re drawn to youth. It’s your sentimentality, perhaps. Or the alluring knife-twist of nostalgia. That’s a type of grief, isn’t it? Pain from the past you’re willing to relive, over and over and over again. It’s the inevitable loss of yesterday.

  It’s the inevitable weight of more loss to come.

  You don’t have to do anything when you see her. That’s the best part. The girl comes to you. You’re seated in the crowded café, best table in the house. The one with the view of the gray skies outside. There are birds out there, too. There are blossoms on the trees.

  There’s also an empty chair right beside you. She asks to sit. You nod, and she sits and she tells you about herself. You knew she would. But you enjoy listening to her words. She’s not dull or simpleminded, just filled with the false cynicism of her age. It’s sweet, really. Like a rose who believes its thorns can keep it from being plucked. She’s a college student, of course. An intellectual, she says with a blush. A deep thinker. She wants to be challenged. She wants more out of life.

  It’s almost too easy, this game you play. When the time comes to talk, you know the questions to ask. You know the things to say. Soon she’s nodding. Soon she wants so much more of you.

  That’s how this story goes, my friend.

  You know what you’re looking for.

  You know how to get it.

  You always, always do.

  1

  ARMAN LOOKED OVER HIS SHOULDER and held his breath. His burning eyes squinted into the blinding Santa Cruz sun.

  Besides a few palm trees, a jagged crack in the sidewalk, and a seagull pecking in the dirt, there was nothing in his immediate vicinity that he could see.

  Nothing at all.

  Sweat pooled in the small of his back. The air chafed his lungs. He turned to face forward again and kept walking. Using his right hand, Arman reached to adjust the nylon strap of the messenger bag he carried slung across his collarbone. It’d been gouging into his skin for a while, the strap, and shifting the bag’s weight felt good. Well, not good, exactly, but better, since the absence of pain didn’t imply pleasure.

  All around Arman, the day shone bright, clear, and the air swelled ripe with brine and sea-rot the way it always did this close to the beach. He had nothing to worry about, he told himself. Not now. Not out in the open on a perfect summer day like this.

  Right?

  That’s when Arman did it again. The looking-over-his-shoulder thing.

  He couldn’t help it.

  Still nothing. Just shadows. Sun. In the distance, tourists strolled the boardwalk, the pier. Surfers paddled in the water. The usual.

  Arman felt silly about the way he was acting, like a spooked kid who believed monsters lived under his bed. But his heart disagreed. It pounded and pounded, going free-fall speed, thud, thud, thud, like it just might know something he didn’t.

  So he walked faster.

  And faster.

  • • •

  By the time Arman made it over to the westside harbor, sweat was no longer pooling—it was pouring down his back. And his forehead. And the inside of his thighs. It felt like little rivulets of liquid had actually formed their own currents: merging and splitting and merging again as they ran to escape his body. Arman regretted not wearing shorts, even though he never wore shorts. And so with a sigh steeped in the banality of his own self-loathing, he ended up regretting that, too. The things that made him who he was.

  Veering off the main road, Arman began the long march up the narrow path that led out toward the boulders and the waves at the end of the
point. There was more wind here, a welcome relief from the late-morning heat, but the quick gusts off the ocean made his already itchy eyes sting with saline and his ears hum with the force of their roar.

  He found them in the shadow of the lighthouse. Kira and Dale. It was where they’d been told to go, and they stood leaning against the tower’s stone wall. More statues than teenagers. More dead than alive. They didn’t look happy to see him, Arman noted as he drew closer. On the other hand, they didn’t look not happy.

  Just . . . neutral.

  A fresh twinge of regret pinched at Arman’s nerves, hard enough to bruise. Neutral was another way of saying he had zero impact. Neutral was another reminder of why he was here and, oh, what he was willing to give in order to change.

  Which was just about anything.

  Wasn’t it?

  Kira spoke first.

  “Hey, kid,” she said, reaching up to smooth her long braids.

  Arman frowned. He was seventeen, like she was. In fact, he was eight months older than Kira, something he knew well, seeing as they’d gone to school together since the second grade. He figured she had to know it, too. And still, she had to go out of her way and say something like that, just to make him feel small.

  Dale, on the other hand, said nothing. Just lifted his stubbled chin in greeting while keeping his hands in the pockets of his oversized shorts with the surf logo on the side. His mirrored sunglasses were pushed back on the top of his head and his eyes were bloodshot, which meant he was either stoned or hadn’t slept. Or both.

  “You ready to do this?” Arman’s voice came out more tentative than he intended.

  “You’re not having doubts now, are you?” The intensity of Kira’s gaze scorched him, made him squirm. For Arman, this was nothing new. Kira was about the hottest girl he knew, all soft lips and regal bones, always dressed in the kind of effortless clothes that teased of worlds he’d never know. Country clubs and art galleries. Dinner parties. Ivy League schools. Arman grew nervous whenever Kira looked right at him, despite the fact that she was black and he didn’t go for black girls.

  At least, he didn’t think he did.

  “No. No doubts,” he said firmly. Gripping the messenger bag tighter to his body, Arman resisted the urge to peek over his shoulder again. Forget small talk. This sucked, standing here. He wanted to get going, get started, get the hell out of this town. Once on the road, his paranoia would ease.

  Wouldn’t it?

  “Yo,” Dale said, in his lazy, soft-spoken way. Like he hadn’t a care in the world. “They’re here.”

  • • •

  The passenger van sat idling in the lighthouse parking lot with its side door open. A welcome invitation and one they rushed toward. The van was white and it had five rows of bench seats with an aisle down the near side. Like a prison transport vehicle, Arman decided as he crawled in behind Dale. They could be San Quentin–bound or preparing to pick up trash off the side of the road, for all anyone watching them would know. It made about as much sense as what they were actually planning on doing.

  A handful of adults, all middle-aged or older, none of whom Arman recognized, occupied the back of the vehicle. They looked nice enough, sort of friendly, open, with no obvious barriers to connection, but it wasn’t like Arman could really tell. What people looked like sometimes told him what they might act like, but the correlation wasn’t consistent enough for him to take any chances. He ducked his head and said nothing, sliding into an open seat as quickly as possible.

  The man sitting next to the driver, at the front of the van, however, was someone Arman recognized. More than recognized. He was the reason Arman was here. The reason they were all here. The man’s name was Beau, which was short for Beauregard, and Arman had met him precisely two weeks ago. While only the back of him was currently visible, Arman knew for a fact that Beau was tall and thin, with wide shoulders and eyes the color of river pebbles—slick and pale, first gray, then brown, then gray again. Staring at him, Arman felt a dizzying sway inside his stomach. Not from the motion of the van, which was nosing from the unpaved lot with its slow jolt and roll. No, this sway came from being in the presence of someone he respected. Admired, even. That had to be the word for the way he felt around Beau. This queasy mix of eagerness and hope. Like a listing ship just longing to be righted.

  Beau glanced back only once, to survey the van’s occupants. Arman tried smiling, eager for connection, but Beau’s gaze passed him over. There was no warmth in his river-pebble eyes at the moment. Just curt appraisal. Maybe a hint of judgment.

  He’s busy, Arman reminded himself. He’s working. That’s not a rejection. It’s not personal.

  Because it really wasn’t.

  Right?

  As the van picked up speed, heading for the highway, Arman started to relax. His body sank deeper into his seat, limbs loosening, mind quieting. He even let the messenger bag slip from his grasp to the floor with a soft thunk, as he shut his eyes, recalling the masterful way Beau had coached him on leaving home without arousing suspicion. Everything Beau had said worked perfectly. Like the proverbial charm. Two nights ago, Arman simply informed his mom that he was going camping in the mountains with some friends for the week. Deep down, he knew she didn’t care. Deep down, he knew he could be leaving to join the rodeo clown circuit or train as a male escort, and she wouldn’t lose an ounce of sleep worrying about his safety or well-being. Not so long as it meant her only child getting the hot fuck out of her sight and their non-air-conditioned POS Beach Flats apartment for a whole week of summer vacation.

  The thing was, Arman’s mom wasn’t known for being rational. Or for acting in her own self-interest. No, she was known for her cynicism, the end result of a long string of disappointments that stretched back to before Arman was even born. Unfortunately for him, his mother’s cynicism often came dressed as spite, so he’d braced himself for her resistance. The instant the words left his mouth, he just knew she was going to say no and cause a scene, determined not to suffer alone in her sweltering misery.

  Only she hadn’t.

  Because Arman had told instead of asked.

  Which was what Beau advised.

  And now look. Look at him. He was free as a bird. Just like in that old song.

  Well, almost free. Arman’s gaze darted to the messenger bag at his feet. His stepfather, of course, was a different matter altogether. Arman had made his leaving and his freedom infinitely more complicated by getting that asshole involved.

  2

  THEY STOPPED FOR LUNCH JUST north of Big Sur, hiking down to picnic on a beach that was almost empty. The emptiness felt weird to Arman, who was used to crowds and surf wars and sand being kicked in his face—both metaphorical and otherwise. Without the usual cultural markers or territorial feuding, it felt as if they’d traveled farther than they really had. They could be in a different state, for all Arman knew. A different country. Or continent. Even in the gritty bathroom, one wretched and rank with the universal scent of human piss, the only thing that oriented him was the graffiti, which was written in both English and Spanish. All manners of obscenities and representations of female body parts were scrawled across the cement walls. One phrase in particular caught Arman’s eye.

  Daddy’s farm.

  He grimaced. Jesus. What the hell did that mean? Arman vaguely recalled a country song of the same name, but he didn’t think that’s what the words on the wall were referring to.

  He zipped his pants and left the bathroom quickly.

  Back in the warmth and clarity of the California sunshine, he strolled the water’s edge, not caring if his shoes got wet. The waves were more wild here than back home in Santa Cruz. There was no cove. No harbor. No break wall. Just a relentless, pounding surf that made the ground shake with every roll and slam of its tide.

  With some distance between him and the scene of his crime, Arman’s paranoia waned
from full throttle panic to a dull throb in his head. Now, when he glanced over his shoulder, Arman saw exactly what he expected to see: the distant forms of the van’s other passengers, all eight of them, sprawled on blankets they’d dragged down to spread on the dry sand. Beau lay somewhat separate from the group, with his arms folded and sunglasses on. The rest of the passengers sat a few yards downwind, eating sandwiches, drinking sodas, talking, laughing, shooting the shit, whatever.

  Arman’s stomach growled, a useless plea. There was nowhere to buy food and he hadn’t thought to bring any. Stupid, that was stupid of him. As always, he’d packed last minute, jamming his stuff into a single bag, with little forethought and a hell of a lot of impulsivity: rumpled clothes, a toothbrush, some deodorant, his acne wash, the medications he took for his ADHD and his GAD and his GERD and all the other acronyms that conspired to make his life as painful a disappointment as possible. Lastly, he threw in the book he was trying to finish, which was Espedair Street by Iain Banks. Arman had picked it up at one of those sidewalk sales downtown last spring. Although not a big reader, he found the first page made him cry right in the middle of Pacific Avenue, in front of strangers and everything. That felt meaningful somehow, like the words on the pages ached for him to know their sorrow.

  He had money, too, of course, lots of it—$2,800 stolen from his meth-dealing stepfather, who no doubt owed it to his supplier, who no doubt would want it back at some point in time. Dread hooked his lungs at the thought—not because he believed stealing was wrong, which he did. And not because he cared about his stepfather, which he didn’t. But because he cared about his mom. Sort of.

  At least a little bit.

  Stop. That’s just a dumb symptom. Arman was determined to be better than that. He was determined not to bend to the will of guilt and shame. As hard it might be, he had to try—if not for himself, then for Beau, who believed he could do it. When they’d first met, by pure chance, at that music café in Capitola, the one overlooking a part of the ocean where the sea lions came to mate, Beau had talked to Arman, in his low sensible voice, about self-defeating symptoms and the ways they indicated sickness.