The Smaller Evil Read online

  “We’re going to make a man out of you,” he’d tell Arman, with his mirrored sunglasses on and his legs kicked up on the glass-topped table. “But not here. Not in the States. See, I got this friend in Belize who’s developing a resort. He’s going to let me buy in early. Maybe even get that jazz club going like I’ve been wanting.” Arman’s dad would glance over at him while he spoke, to make sure Arman was listening. “You and I, we’ll go down there together, okay? You’ll love it. I know you will. I’ll teach you how to drink. The girls there’ll teach you how to fuck. It’s going to be good for us, kid. It’s not going to be like before. I promise.”

  “B-but don’t you need money for all that?” Arman would squeak as he fidgeted with the landscaping, picking at the prettiest flowers and throwing them into the koi pond. Everything smelled like honey. “Like a real job?”

  “Shit, I got money, kid.” He’d gesture toward the house. “I just need more time.”

  Arman knew what that meant. His dad thought he could sweet-talk his parents into giving him what he wanted, but even Arman knew that wasn’t going to happen. No way. His parents were the two people on earth his dad couldn’t con. Not anymore. So Arman had spent that whole week on edge, jittery, unable to sleep, with all the food he ate running through him and the length of his arms growing increasingly scabbed and bloody—a topographical map of dread—while he waited for the inevitable family blowup.

  Only it didn’t happen.

  Instead, Arman bolted a day early, abandoning his father and his cigarettes and his stupid Belize dreams in that beautiful backyard beneath the autumn sun. He didn’t even say good-bye. He just got on a bus and went home to his mother, who picked him up at the Santa Cruz station. Arman, who hadn’t slept in three days and was ten pounds lighter than when he’d left, said nothing when he saw her. And he’d said nothing when she held his stiff shoulders and looked him in the eye and told him that in the mere two hours since Arman’s departure, his dad had managed to OD on Crown Royal and stolen oxy and was in the hospital getting his stomach pumped.

  But Arman said nothing at the news because he felt nothing. Just a hollow breeze through the hole where his emotions usually roiled. In fact, he was still numb later that evening, when he went into his room to change for bed. That was when he’d stood in his boxers by the window with an ancient Swiss Army knife gripped in one hand and the chill of the California night brushing against his skin. And fourteen-year-old Arman wasn’t angry or afraid or remorseful as he dragged the blade across his thighs, back and forth and back again. He wasn’t any of those things. He was nothing.

  The way he always was.

  But now, sitting on the wood bench in the tent with his eyes shut tight, Arman felt sad for himself, but embarrassed, too. Because like the scars on his legs, the shame had come afterward: telling his mom when the bleeding wouldn’t stop. Telling the doctors at the hospital how he’d done it and why. Telling the therapist they made him see why he wouldn’t do it again.

  So there. That was it. That’s what he’d been doing when he felt shame. It wasn’t when he’d heard about what his useless dad had gone and done. It wasn’t even when he’d hurt himself. It was when other people saw him for who he really was.

  His father’s son.

  “Open your eyes,” Mari said.

  So he did.

  • • •

  “Now I want you to find someone close to you. Anyone. And I want you two to sit facing each other.”

  The seat next to Arman was still empty—no one had claimed Kira’s spot. Fortunately, the person in front of him turned around. He was a young guy, younger than most around here, with messy brown hair and a navy hooded sweatshirt from UC Berkeley. He raised his bushy eyebrows at Arman as if to ask, Us?

  Arman nodded. The guy wasn’t anybody he knew or recognized, which he supposed was the point. He also looked as nervous as Arman felt—a little sweaty, a little sick. The guy swiveled his body around on the bench so that they sat facing each other.

  “Now I want you and your partner to look each other in the eye,” Mari directed. “You’re going to keep that eye contact no matter what happens. And while you’re doing this, I want you to notice what it is you’re thinking and what you’re feeling, and how those two connect.”

  Arman looked up and he met his partner’s gaze. He knew doing so would make him feel awkward and it did. But he wasn’t sure whether the awkwardness stemmed from looking so intently at someone who could see him looking. Or if it came from being seen.

  But he kept looking.

  And looking.

  Until he saw something strange.

  At first glance, Arman had thought the other guy’s eyes were brown. Like his. Only where Arman’s were muddy, bland, and forgettable, this guy’s eyes were the palest color. Like sand stirred at the bottom of a shady stream. But the longer Arman looked at them, the more the color of his eyes changed, shifting from brown to gray, then brown again. Like river pebbles, Arman realized with a start.

  He was looking at Beau’s eyes.

  That’s impossible.

  Arman felt a sway of dizziness.

  (Notice your feelings.

  Notice your thoughts.)

  Well, that’s what he was trying to do, but focusing on his own thoughts and feelings grew more difficult the more he stared at those familiar eyes.

  What were they seeing?

  And what, pray tell, were they feeling?

  Oh, Beau, Arman thought desperately. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know what to believe.

  Mari’s voice cut in then, rolling with her lullaby prosody. “Very good. You’re all doing a wonderful job. Now, without breaking eye contact, you’re going to tell your partner three things about yourself that no one else knows. Three secrets. Real secrets. No censoring. No commenting. Just courage and commitment. Go.”

  Arman hesitated. This was worse than what he’d had to do up on Echo Rock. After all, secrets were secrets for a reason.

  But you can do it, he told himself. Do it for Beau. You owe him that.

  “I think I’m crazy,” he said in an untamed rush. “Like, actually crazy.”

  “I ran away from home,” the other guy said simultaneously.

  They paused only for a beat. To take a breath, eyes still locked.

  Then:

  “I wish my father were dead.”

  “I hit my mom once.”

  And finally:

  “You look like someone I know.”

  “I tried to kill myself,” the guy with the river-pebble eyes told him. “I used a knife to cut my wrists and bled out. I nearly died.”

  24

  ARMAN BROKE EYE CONTACT FIRST. He couldn’t help it. The back of his neck tingled and he glanced away. But then he looked right back at the stranger sitting in front of him. “You what?”

  “No commenting.” Arman jumped because Mari was standing right behind him.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  She nodded but when she turned around again and wandered off, Arman leaned forward and hissed, “Did you say you tried to kill yourself? With a knife?”

  The guy with the river-pebble eyes nodded. “But I was lucky. A friend found me in time. Took me to the ER.”

  Arman’s mind crackled with anger. “Did someone put you up to this? It’s not funny, you know. It’s really fucking not funny.”

  The guy looked hurt. “I’m not like that anymore. This place, it’s helped me. It’s changed who I am. I know what the future has in store for me. Bright things. Wondrous things.”

  Now Arman was openly staring. “What did you just say?”

  “Quiet,” Mari said, looking pointedly at him from across the tent.

  Arman bit his tongue.

  “I want you all to close your eyes again,” she began, shifting once more into her lulling voice, telling them to
get comfortable, to loosen their muscles and loosen their minds, as she led them into more reflection, asking them to go deeper and connect the feelings between one exercise with those from the other. Arman tried following along, but his brain wouldn’t settle. Some things in life just couldn’t be a coincidence.

  Could they?

  Mari continued talking, asking the group to imagine walking through a field of flowers, warmed by sunlight that kissed their skin, and coming across a younger version of themselves. In their minds they were supposed to tell the child they found what they had learned that night and what they felt that child needed to know in order to be inoculated from shame for the future ahead of them.

  Arman saw the boy inside his mind. The kid he’d been—fearful, worried, but occasionally callous. The spaced-out kid with the messy hair and cheap clothes, who got everything wrong and refused to try anymore, far preferring ignorance to failure. The achingly lonely kid with a bad habit of sulking on the basketball sidelines over never being picked to play, but who always said no if asked. Arman stared at that boy now, at his shuffling feet and sullen gaze, and he knew what he was meant to tell him:

  Shame can’t rule your life. It’s okay to fail. It’s okay to let people see you in pain. Pain and failure mean you’re alive. But suppressing who you are, running away from your problems, those are just ways of letting other people live your life for you. Don’t let them take that. Define yourself.

  And maybe that’s what he would’ve said if he were like the older people at the compound. If he were closer to death and relatively comfortable. If he really didn’t want to deal with change that might challenge him. But he wasn’t like that. Or he didn’t want to be. His failures were his to own, and no amount of blame was going to change that. So when Arman opened his mouth, the words that came out were anything but brave or inspiring. No, instead of platitudes he couldn’t persuade himself to believe, he told his younger self a rambling truth:

  “Crazy things are going to happen to you, kid. They’re going to happen and you aren’t going to understand them and you aren’t going to know how to deal. I’m telling you this now, so that maybe you’ll be better off by the time you’re my age. So that maybe you’ll know what to do when nothing in the world makes any fucking sense, because I sure as hell don’t. I’m telling you all this because I’m desperate. I’m telling you this so that when you’re older maybe you can save me. Because you know what? No one else is going to.”

  • • •

  Sometime later, Arman’s eyes fluttered open. He was still seated on the wooden bench with his head slumped over. The music above him still played and the amber lights still glowed, but when he looked around, everyone was gone.

  He was all alone.

  Arman scrambled to his feet. He must’ve dozed off from those pills he’d taken. Well, that wasn’t very impressive. How could he expect to control his response to social disease if he couldn’t even keep his eyes open? He headed toward the exit, moving as fast as he could, but his headache was back, and his left leg had fallen asleep, giving him a prickly limp and making him swear.

  Ducking beneath the tent flaps and stepping out into the night, Arman breathed a sigh of relief. Down the hillside, a huge bonfire roared, and the whole group, it seemed, had migrated toward the flames—everyone was either standing or sitting in chairs or on blankets spread out on the ground.

  Arman hobbled over.

  There was a weirdness surrounding the bonfire atmosphere. A catharsis, of sorts. Or a frenzy. Everywhere he turned, people were in states of extreme emotion. Uncomfortably so. Making his way around the clearing, Arman came upon a group of older men with their heads thrown back, laughing uproariously. He saw two women weeping and clinging to each other, then another two furiously making out. On the far side of the fire, lit by dancing flames, a different group was shouting and shoving at one another, seemingly on the verge of violence.

  Catching sight of Kira and Dale seated on the ground in the grass, Arman hurried over to them.

  “Hey,” he said.

  Kira looked up, but Dale didn’t. He had his face pressed against Kira’s chest and his arms curled tight against his stomach like a child, and his shoulders were shaking. Arman couldn’t help but stare. What was going on? Was he crying?

  “What is it?” Kira asked.

  Arman swallowed. “Is he okay?”

  “Not really.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “He’s having a hard time.”

  “Well, have you seen the guy I was paired up with in there?”

  “What guy? In where?”

  “In the tent.”

  “Oh, that,” Kira said. “No, I didn’t see who you were with.”

  “He was young. Maybe my height? He had a UC Berkeley sweatshirt on. And he—”

  “Arman.” She glanced down at Dale, who’d curled into an even tighter ball. Like a weepy armadillo. “I’m kind of busy right now.”

  “Sorry.” Chagrined, Arman turned on his heel and left. He’d have to search for the guy with the river-pebble eyes on his own. Only after walking around and around, Arman couldn’t find him anywhere. He did, however, find Mari. She stood next to the flames, very close. On his third lap around the fire, Arman walked over to her shyly.

  “Hello, Arman,” she said, without taking her eyes off the burning wood. “How are you feeling? How’s your head?”

  “My head’s okay, I guess. Did I fall asleep in there?”

  “Did it feel like you fell asleep?”

  “It didn’t feel like anything. The last thing I remember, you were leading us through some sunlit field so that we could talk to ourselves as children. The next thing I know, I’m alone in there.”

  “Then it sounds like you got what you needed.”

  “But why didn’t anyone wake me up?”

  “No one woke you up because your journey is yours alone to define. Also, you’ve had a long day. We thought you could use the rest.”

  Arman couldn’t really argue with that. “Well, have you seen the guy I was paired with? With the UC Berkeley sweatshirt?”

  “What guy?”

  “He was sitting right in front me. He had brown hair. We did the eye contact thing.”

  “I didn’t see you with a guy. I thought you were with . . .”

  “With who?”

  “That girl with the braids.”

  “Kira? She moved. You told us not to sit by people we knew.”

  “Ah.”

  “But you do know who I’m talking about, right? The guy with the sweatshirt?”

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I have no idea who that is. Why?”

  “Because I need to find him. I need to ask him about something he said. It’s kind of important.”

  Mari smiled. “No commenting, remember?”

  “I know. It’s just, some of the things he said to me. They—”

  “They what?”

  “Well, they reminded me of Beau,” Arman said. “He said things that Beau said to me today. Things no one else could know.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  “Me neither! That’s why I need to find him.”

  Mari reached a warm hand out. Touched his cheek.

  “Arman,” she said, with far more tenderness than he deserved.

  His throat went thick. It took a moment before he could talk, and even then, his voice wavered. “Look, I know what you’re going to say. That I’m hurt. And confused. And you’re right, maybe I am. But I also know what I saw, okay? I don’t care that it doesn’t make sense and I don’t care that no one believes me.”

  “I believe in you,” Mari said. “More than you know. But I also believe that changing oneself is a difficult process. A painful one. More so for some than for others. And maybe you’re not supposed to understand everything that’s ha
ppening to you right now. Maybe it’s the you who you’ll become who will be able to make sense of it all.”

  Arman stared at the ground. “Yeah. Maybe. I guess.”

  “Are you all right?”

  He gave a quick nod. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Of course.”

  “That doctor guy. The one who did my stitches . . .”

  “What about him?”

  “He was talking about closing this place. Sealing it off so no one could get in or out. Making it sterile or something.”

  “You heard him say this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.”

  “Well, is that really what Beau wants?”

  Mari sighed. “I don’t know all of Beau’s wants. Or Gary’s for that matter. But I do know that Gary says a lot of things that aren’t always worth listening to. Some of his ideas are . . .”

  “Are what?”

  She paused. “You know, never mind. It’s not important. Why are you so interested, anyway?”

  Arman’s nostrils flared. He wanted her to trust him. “I don’t know. It’s just, Beau told me something. Yesterday, actually. And I thought—”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “He said there was someone here who wanted to ruin what he’d built.”

  “And you think he meant Gary?”

  “I don’t know what to think! But I probably shouldn’t be talking about this, right? I mean, I’m crazy. Like really crazy. I’m not worth listening to.”

  “You’re absolutely worth listening to,” Mari said. “And you’re not crazy. Whatever happened to you today has meaning. Above all else, I can promise you that. And your emotions are so close to the surface, you might almost be there.”

  “Be where?”

  “On the verge of your breakthrough.”

  “You think?”

  She smiled. “That’s for you to think about. Not me.”

  Of course. Arman’s cheeks went hot. “Do you know what time is it?”

  “It’s almost midnight.”

  Midnight. “Do I have to stay?”