Adam Haslett - You Are Not a Stranger Here

“What are you reading?” he asked.

“Camus,” she said. Her hair was very short and seemed unnaturally pale, a nameless shade between blond and white. There was something very adult about her hair.

“What’s the book about?”

“A plague.”

“Cool,” Trevor said, nodding.

Samuel dug a large hole in the sand in front of him. He felt certain their conversation had something to do with sex.

“You still live in Devon, right?” his brother asked.

“Yeah, it’s awful. The point of life in a place so small escapes me.”

Trevor seemed to have no reply to this but started talking instead about a software application he had in development that charted people’s moods over time. For a year you entered data on your mental state along with thirty variables of diet, weather, geographical location, et cetera, and then the program used the data to predict your mood on future days. When it was done he would try to get the Weather Channel’s Web site to offer a link to the download.

“Right,” Penelope said, returning to her book.

“Do you ever go to parties?” Trevor asked.

Samuel imagined disappearing into the hole he’d dug in front of him.

“Sometimes,” she replied, not looking up from the page.

Then Mr. West came by and said it was time for lunch. That evening a band played at the pub in the village. You had to be fifteen to go, so Samuel stayed behind while the others went. They didn’t get back until late, and Peter and Trevor woke him, turning on the light and making noise. They smelled of smoke and beer. Peter got straight into bed and rolled onto his side. Trevor just sat there for a long time on the edge of his bed, staring about.

“Turn the light out, would you?” Peter said. “And while you’re at it, stop gawking at my sister.”

Trevor made no motion for the lamp. He sat with his elbows on his knees, his chin resting in his hands. With a disgusted huff, Peter got out of bed and switched off the light, leaving Trevor sitting in the dark. Samuel tried to close his eyes and go back to sleep but he couldn’t. He lay on his side looking at his brother’s outline against the barely visible square of the room’s only window. He couldn’t think of anything to say.

Eventually, Trevor climbed under the sheets, and Samuel kept listening until his breathing went quiet.

IN THE MIDDLE of their second week, the two families took a long hike up Mount Snowdon. The day was hot, the air thin and dry. It was nearly six by the time they returned to the cars. Samuel rode in the back seat with his brother, drifting into sleep along the way. Something heavy was pressing against the side of his head. He saw Giles kicking a football up against a copper beech tree. From all around, in the air, down through the earth, all through his body, Samuel felt the crumpled pity he’d felt that evening on the lawn, but now it was as if Jevins were still alive, were only about to die, as they stood there doing nothing, Giles smiling. But then Jevins was under the white sheet, he was dead, and the pity, that pressure in Samuel’s head, became stronger, thick as water all round him. He saw a triangle of sunlight on the water’s surface, blackness either side. Trevor was there. The light was blinding him. Samuel heard his brother yell. He stood on the deck of the Wests’ house, roofed now in glass.

Somewhere behind him a boat’s hull shattered. Beneath the glass roof it was no longer the deck, but Trevor’s room, clothes tidied into drawers, books piled neatly on the floor by the hard drive, dust on the stacks of twelve-inch singles, a weeping coming from under his mother’s door. He saw his father tied to a chair and gagged.

“…blubbering like a fat infant,” he heard, waking to find himself with his face pressed against his brother’s shoulder, mouth half open against his shirt, his own body hot with sweat. His mother looked back over her shoulder and smiled.

“Having a sleep, are you?”

He turned to the window and saw that they were rising onto the bridge, the sun-dappled waters of the strait running beneath them.

All through supper, his mind remained captive to the dream.

The sights and sounds of people at the table reached him from the distance he’d experienced for the first time at school that morning in the dining hall. When coffee and pudding came round, Samuel’s father said he was going to fetch a map from the car. Samuel asked to be excused and followed him out the back door into the drive.

“Not having cake?” he said when he turned the corner round the Peugeot and noticed Samuel standing there. He’d spent most of the holiday chatting with Mr. West, napping in the afternoons, encouraging his sons to take up Peter’s offers of pickup rugby with his friends.

“Dad?”

“Yes?”

“You know how Mrs. West said Penelope should take Trevor out for a sail?”

“Did she? Right. What about it?”

His father had his hand on the door of the car but hadn’t opened it yet.

“You can’t let them.”

“How do you mean?”

Samuel felt his face go red in the darkness.

“What are you talking about?” his father said.

Clutching his hands into fists, Samuel said, “It’s like you and cousin William.”

His father stood very still for a moment. Then he walked quickly round the car, coming to stand directly in front of Samuel. He was tall and Samuel only came up to his chest.

He wore one of the same blue Oxford shirts he wore each day to work, only rolled at the sleeves and without a tie.

“Now you listen to me,” he said in a tone so severe it frightened Samuel. “I suppose it’s your brother who saw fit to tell you some story about me and William. It is not true. Do you understand me?”

Samuel could hear the roar and toss of waves against the rocks. Above the line of trees, stars were visible.

“I asked you a question, young man.”

“You never believed me when I told you about Mr. Jevins,” Samuel said, thankful it was dark enough that his father couldn’t see the water welling in his eyes.

“So that’s what this is about.”

“No!” Samuel said through gritted teeth. “You can’t let them go sailing.”

His father’s hands gripped Samuel’s shoulders, his fingers digging into his flesh to the point of pain.

“I’m going to say this once,” he said, “so you had better listen. You’re twelve years old and you have a lot of ideas in your head, but nothing will wreck you quicker than if you let yourself confuse what’s real and what isn’t, you hear me? I don’t know what it is you’re dreaming, or what you dreamt about that teacher, but that’s all it is—dreams. Your life’s got nothing to do with those shadows, nothing at all.

“If Penelope and Trevor want to go sailing, that’s exactly what they’ll do. And I don’t want to hear you’ve gone frightening your mother or brother about this nonsense, you understand? You’re a perfectly normal boy. Everyone has nightmares. They’re tough sometimes. You wake up and you get on with things. That’s just how it is. Now you go on into the house and forget about this. Go on.” He turned Samuel around and aimed him at the back door.

THEY RETURNED FROM the beach earlier than usual the next day, in the middle of the afternoon, people scattering into various parts of the house to shower or nap.

Samuel wandered out onto the deck and found his mother reclining in a chair reading her book. The sun had gone in behind some clouds. She looked up from the page and smiled.

“It’s not so bad here, is it?” she said.

Samuel shrugged.

His mother gazed out over the water. “You looking forward to being a prefect next term? You know your father was quite proud when he heard that.”