Allen Zadoff - Boy Nobody

I’ll push the point into myself instead of Sam.

Nothing dramatic. I’ll press it into the soft skin at my wrist.

It will be quick. Even with my conditioning, I will have, what? Seven seconds instead of three? An extra breath or two. No more.

I should press the point into myself. That’s what I’m thinking. Then I will know how it feels, I will know whether or not it hurts, and Sam will walk away.

The idea gives me peace. Until I think of Mike.

Because this will not stand. Mother will not let it stand.

Perhaps Mike is still here, and they will let him out of his cage. Mother will tell him to make a lesson of it.

Sam will lie to him at first, say that we fought, say she got the upper hand.

But eventually the truth will come out.

She’ll tell him how in the last moment I flip-flopped and pressed the pen point into myself. She’ll say that I chose myself over her because we were in a relationship.

In the back of his mind, he’ll know she’s telling the truth, but he won’t let it end like that. Mother won’t allow it to end like that.

That’s what I realize as I’m standing over Sam. Pressing the point into myself won’t change anything.

Correction: It will change everything for me. But for Sam, nothing at all. For her, it will likely make things worse.

I adjust the angle of the pen, the point now exposed and facing its true target.

“Where are you?” Sam says.

“Far away,” I say.

She reaches for my ankle, and I pull it back.

She looks up at me, startled. Maybe she wasn’t trying to hurt me. Maybe she wants to connect with me. Even in this last moment.

I cannot allow it.

“Please tell me your name,” she says.

“Why?”

“I want to know who you really are.”

“I’m nobody,” I say.

And I lean over and press the point of the pen into the side of her neck.

It takes three seconds, no more. Her eyes flutter and close.

And it’s done.

I lean over to make sure. My wrists brush the sides of her breasts. They are soft. Too soft.

“Does it hurt?” I say.

I say it to myself. I’m the only one left.

And then her lips part. I think I’m imagining it, but when I look closer, her lips are moving. She’s trying to speak. I lean down toward her.

“You were right,” she whispers. “It doesn’t hurt.”

I step back, surprised.

Did I click the pen once or twice?

I made a mistake. This is what I think. I’ve injected the coma drug by mistake. Sam will keep breathing, and the choice I have made will be undone.

There will be another choice, a better choice, a choice I didn’t have the courage to make.

We will run away. Start over in a new place. We will make a home together in a distant city where nobody knows who we are, and where we will never be found.

A sensation passes through my chest.

Not a sensation. Something else. A feeling.

Love.

“Samara,” I say.

She doesn’t answer.

I press an ear to her lips, check the pulse point in her neck.

Nothing.

I didn’t make a mistake with the pen. I don’t make mistakes.

Sam is like everyone else I’ve met.

Dead.

A twig snaps across the plaza. A police officer is standing at the edge of the clearing, watching me.

Not a police officer. Mike, dressed in a police uniform.

“Welcome back,” he says.

“Back?”

“Back home. To the family.”

His face is obscured by darkness.

“You made the right choice,” Mike says.

Did I?

I look down at Sam’s body at my feet.

“You’ll let Mother know I finished the assignment,” I say.

“She already knows.”

But was it enough? I didn’t prevent the attack at Gracie or the threat on the prime minister’s life.

I watch Mike’s center mass. That’s how you know which way a person is going to move. Not their arms or hands or legs—those can trick you. But his stomach. That moves in only one direction—the direction he’s going to go.

If he comes toward me, then I will know it wasn’t enough.

We will fight for the second time in our lives.

I will not let him get the upper hand this time. I will subdue him and ask him some questions.

I want to know about my father.

And then I want to punish him.

Him and The Program. Mother. I want to take them all down.

For my father, for Sam.

For stealing my life from me.

I watch his center mass, but it does not approach. It recedes, withdrawing deeper into shadow.

It was enough. For now.

“Maybe we’ll see each other again,” Mike says.

“I hope so,” I say.

“It’s not up to us.”

“It’s never up to us.”

“Good luck, Zach,” he says, and he disappears.

I could follow him. Track him like an animal in the park. Settle this thing between us.

I don’t.

Not today.

THE NEWS SWEEPS ACROSS THE CITY THE NEXT DAY.

Not the news of an attack at Gracie Mansion. Instead there is a story about a gas line explosion on the Upper East Side. Neighbors heard two large booms, and Gracie Mansion had to be evacuated in the middle of an event.

That’s at the bottom of the front page, but it’s the lead article that matters most. The story of the untimely death of the mayor’s daughter. Of natural causes.

There will be an inquiry. That’s what the papers say. Teens are not supposed to die for no reason at all, but it happens. A football player collapses. An otherwise healthy girl keels over from a rare defect in a blood vessel.

Accidents, illness, genetics, bad luck.

There are a thousand ways to die.

The mayor appears at a news conference, his face twisted by grief.

I watch it on television in the New York hotel room where I am temporarily staying. I stand close to the screen and turn down the sound. I follow the mayor’s eyes as he speaks, looking for any signs of falsehood.

There are none.

Sam was right. Her father is a great actor.

Not when it comes to his grief. That seems genuine.

But he has no problem lying about the rest of the story. What he was doing with the prime minister, and what happened afterward. The powers that be have decided to keep the real story of the Gracie Mansion attack a secret.

Whatever element hatched the assassination plot against the PM has failed. The peace process will move forward, perhaps with the mayor attached after his term ends.

My phone vibrates in its cradle, the double vibrations of the Poker app.

I turn off the television, and I take Mother’s call.

“We’ve made arrangements at school,” she says.

The cover story: My father has been transferred for work, so I must transfer. Another rich kid drifting into school and out, caught up in the vagaries of influential parents’ lives.

Nothing unusual about that. Not at our school.

Their school , I should say.

Not mine.

“You’ll put in an appearance on Monday,” Mother says. “Give you a chance to say your good-byes.”

Normally I’m gone immediately after an assignment, but because of the high-profile nature of this assignment and my exposure during it, it’s been decided that I should linger briefly. Let attention fade for a day or two.

“You did a lot of work this time out,” Mother says. “A lot of unassigned work.”

“Proof,” I say.

“What is that?”

“That’s what I was working on in trigonometry.”

“Proof. Is that part of the syllabus?” Mother says.

“Not exactly.”

“You’ve never deviated from the syllabus before,” she says. “Was it really necessary?”