The Job of the Wasp Read online

  It had been clear all along that Nick wasn’t a good ally. Too suspicious from the beginning. Too mad, too desperate, too singled-minded. But as Nick was chained to the fantasies that got him through the day, so I had been, holding out hope for Nick.

  Who was left? A bunch of boys I didn’t know and at least a few enemies. A few enemies, I suddenly realized, I’d left alone in the dorms, with access to my room and to Hannan.

  That was the end of it. My last bit of hope gone. The final wall was in place, and the boy now caught. There was nothing left to discover, no paths yet explored, and I ran, recklessly, hopelessly, through the rain until, in a proper end to a desperate night, I lost my footing and slid in the mud just shy of the ivied trellis, tearing a thigh-length split in the baggy left leg of my trousers.

  preparing for prison

  Under the trellis, the ivy dripped rain from its tendrils. I could no longer hear Nick’s howls. Only the storm against the faulty roof over my head. I thought of what Nick had said, of how foolish he’d sounded in his resolve. He hadn’t been a part of any grand plan. He wouldn’t have been brought over to anyone’s side, into anyone’s confidences, as he was unpredictable, having abandoned his reason in favor of imagination and hope. He had been broken by his suffering, and in my desperation I might have related to him if his all-too-visible flaws had not served as guideposts in that moment, helping me steer myself back toward a more careful consideration of the facts.

  What did I actually know, I wondered, and what was I just telling myself? There was Ms. Klein in the garden, who had started it all. Or, more accurately, there was Ms. Klein murdered in the garden, and her murderer who had started it all. Then there was Thomas, whose death had been an accident, but for which I was nonetheless to blame. Then there was Hannan, bunched up in my closet. Or, it was more than likely at this point, splayed out on the floor of my room, either by design or as the unexpected result of a search by some unknowing party.

  As ill-intentioned as they might have been toward me, I had to admit it was more than likely that at least a few boys were not working with the Headmaster. He couldn’t have gotten to them all, and it wouldn’t have made sense for him to try. There had to be boys who were still after nothing more than a little food and a roof over their heads, who had no idea how bad things had become or how much worse they were about to get. Those boys, it was clear to me, were in danger, and without the opportunity to prepare themselves. If no one else would help them, I understood the responsibility fell squarely on me, which was maybe, I felt, a lot to ask of a child. After all, it wasn’t so long ago that I’d been like them, before our troubles had revealed themselves with ghastly immediacy. While it would be hard to call me innocent at this point, it seemed only a moment ago when I’d been just that: innocent. I didn’t want to be responsible for protecting them; I wanted to be them. I grieved for a time when I wasn’t embroiled in a deadly conspiracy. When my hands weren’t yet bloodied. When my story was without dishonesty or suspicion, and when my primary concern had been for the fit of my trousers.

  My spirits had split with my pant leg. The energy provided by my victory over Nick had carried me here, but I now sat on the bricks of the walkway under the trellis, somehow feeling defeated. I turned to face the lake, and when the lightning finally came, I could see the water in the distance like a fat black pit. Was this what life was like for everyone else in the world, or only what had been prepared for me? I knew the other boys, however innocent, would be caught up in all this soon enough, and I saw in that plain fact how little control I had over the way things went. Most things, at least. The important things. In that moment, the events of my life seemed nothing more than a series of random occurrences, the majority of which were in opposition to my desires, hopes, and plans. I broke a bit of ivy from its support and threw it toward the rain. The wind picked it up and hurled it back at me, which only confirmed my theory.

  My theory. I laughed. I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. One slip, one tear in my trousers, and I was overwhelmed. How typical of me to simply give up and call life impossible, rather than actually fight for what I knew was right. How easy I was making it on myself, I thought, peeling the wet ivy from my trouser leg so I could stuff its shredded ends into my sock. No. Life wasn’t random and impossible. I smoothed the ivy in my palm and examined its veins. Whoever was behind this unraveling scheme had made a plan and put it into action. Things might have come up that they hadn’t anticipated, but they had adjusted to meet the new challenges. They had adapted. Life was worse than random: It was something I wasn’t good at.

  I had tried to take control of the situation and I had failed. Or I had taken some control but not enough. Nick had been about to strike, and I’d dealt with it. That was true. But now he was out there, confirmed in his suspicions of me. I had only made things worse for myself in the long run. Ghost or no, I wasn’t his ally. I never had been.

  Poor Nick. We might have been stronger together. If he’d fallen in line, Nick and I could possibly have been a force to reckon with. But I now had to add Nick to that ever-expanding list of people who would like to see something terrible happen to me. The boys I was now responsible for were still boys who wanted to hurt me, either for what they believed had happened to Fry (it occurred to me then that Fry was likely dead too, hidden somewhere and waiting to be discovered by me in a vulnerable or hopeful moment) or for no reason at all other than that they were malicious boys or non-malicious boys with nothing better to do. Add to that the fact that I had no means of differentiating those boys from the boys under the Headmaster’s influence. How many times had my generosity of spirit allowed craftier beings to gain the advantage?

  The Headmaster himself had once acted supportive and firm, like a potential friend, someone who believed in me. As a result, I’d been open with him. I’d gone and done what he asked. I’d wanted him to like me, I admitted to myself, and not without shame. But in truth he had only ever seen me as an overweight patsy, someone on whom he could pin his crimes so that he might go on living as he had been, overseeing a facility populated with barbaric and perverted young boys, one of whom or many of whom, according to Nick, might be stuck in some purgatory of adolescence.

  I watched the yard filling with muddy water. The unrelenting storm. How recently we had all been gathered there together, in the middle of a prank’s unfolding, like any normal gathering of boys. We weren’t piled in closets then, or tied to rocks in lakes. I could never have anticipated the horrors that had since occurred, or the horrors I’d since committed, and would now forever, I realized, have committed. How could I live with what I knew and what I’d done? Was there any potential use to the suffering I’d endured, or was there nothing left for me to do but reluctantly live out the final stages of a nefarious plot crafted by a homicidal despot who’d outsmarted me?

  I reviewed what I understood of the Headmaster’s plan. He had murdered Ms. Klein. He had selected the new boy to frame for the murder. Using the drawings, he would establish the new boy’s obsession with his teacher. A disturbing obsession that had grown dangerous when it became clear it would never be a reality.

  “I found the boy’s drawings and I confronted him,” the Headmaster might say, “and the following morning Ms. Klein didn’t show up in the teachers’ lounge. I searched the premises and discovered a young boy, Hannan, whom I had sent down to fetch the new boy from the garden, murdered and folded up in that same boy’s closet. I instituted a facility-wide lockdown and searched the rest of the premises. I can’t begin to describe the horror and shock I felt when we dragged the lake, only to discover Ms. Klein and young Thomas just beneath the surface, so coldly and deliberately dispatched.”

  They would find the garden hoe leaned against the toolshed, confirming the murder of Thomas during afternoon chores. By a boy of calculated genius and remarkable strength, they might say. A terrifying force. They might marvel at my ability to perform all those acts on my own, but it would
n’t necessarily shake their by now firmly evidenced belief that I was responsible. As Nick and I had only just proven, once an idea has taken root, however ill-founded, it is nearly impossible to weed.

  Remarkably, going back over the details was already beginning to affect my mood. If a plan, however malevolent, could be so cleanly and assuredly executed, after all, there was hope to be found in that. On the other hand, if life was indeed random, or at least beyond my control, I needn’t rely on hope to believe that things could suddenly change, or even possibly work out in my favor.

  Thunder worked its way over the mountains, and a new strategy presented itself.

  I’d only been feeling sorry for myself there under the trellis, detailing my own failures and fluctuating between self-hatred and despair. As the brilliant strategist behind my complicated but relentlessly effective framing had demonstrated, when things don’t go according to plan, the plan can change. There is no right way to do a thing; there is only doing it and not. That I could even carry this thought revealed to me that I had not yet given myself up in full to nihilism, to the apparently unrestrained chaos of the world. Living was not impossible, no; it was difficult. I knew this. I had thought it before, but every thought requires repetition, as it takes time for the grooves of our fundamental beliefs to

  fully form.

  I lifted myself up from the stone walkway. If I was being framed, let them frame me. How different could a prison for young boys be from this place? At the very least, I would have the opportunity to try again. To pay a little more attention and get a few boys onto my side early on. I could stand up for myself a little more the next time around. I could be better. I’d hardly been a presence at this facility, and it had chewed me up and spit me out. The world of young boys as I’d observed it favored action, and I’d hardly acted. I’d been acted upon, time and time again, and I decided then and there that it was time to stop playing defense. There were no ghosts here. Only a group of careless boys, brimming with unbridled power and perversion, and a man who had taken it upon himself to use them as he pleased. This was not the final chapter in my life but a turning point near the middle. One of what I was now sure would be many.

  The difference between a boy and a man, I thought, was in whether or not he is able to find a way of taking control of his destiny. Or, at the very least, the difference lay in whether or not he was capable of living as if he might be able to take control of his destiny. Taking responsibility for himself while letting things come as they may. As Nick had chosen to live the rest of his life believing that ghosts were real, I would live the rest of my life knowing that there would be moments of control and there would be moments when control was wrenched from me. Regarding the latter, I had to be like the thunder rolling over the mountains. I had to match whatever force was acting against me and adapt accordingly.

  It was a straight line from the trellised walkway to the corridor running between the dining hall and the dishwashing area, on to the Headmaster’s office. When I opened the great wooden doors that connected the walkway to that hall, I heard a sound like the squeaking of a hinge or the laughter of a young boy. It hardly mattered, I decided, at that point, what it was. I would not be distracted by guesswork any longer. My torn and baggy pants were bloated with rain, and I left puddles wherever I stepped on my way toward accepting things as they were. The light was on in the Headmaster’s office. I could see it in the crack under the door. The knob, however, would not turn, so I knocked and waited. Seconds passed. I tried the knob again and was still unable to get it to turn. I knocked and waited a little longer.

  “Sir,” I said. “Sir, I’ve come to confess to more wrongdoing.”

  I was met with silence. Or, more accurately, I was met with the sound of thunder and the howling of the wind. Rain stabbed at the windows behind me. I placed my cheek against the door.

  “Sir,” I said. “I murdered Thomas. I didn’t mean to, but nonetheless. I found Ms. Klein in the garden too. And poor Hannan in my narrow closet. Also, I set the wasps on Nick in the gazebo. If he’s allergic to stings, it has just occurred to me, it’s possible I’ve murdered him as well.”

  Thunder struck.

  “Sir,” I said. I knocked again. I slammed my body against the door.

  It made a cracking sound but it did not budge.

  “Sir, I’ve come to confess.”

  There was a bench opposite the Headmaster’s office, where we would wait for our appointments. It was heavy, but I managed the task by lifting from my legs. I hurled the bench at the door, but it did not give way. I hadn’t been able to get much force behind the bench, it’s true. Though I could lift it, hurling it was a different story altogether. I moved the bench aside and tried with my body a few more times.

  “Sir,” I said.

  It was possible he’d gone home for the night. Maybe the storm was clearing up and he’d received a report that it was okay to leave us on our own. Maybe help was on the way. If I was going to turn myself in, it seemed I would have to march my way down past the garden and the lake to the Headmaster’s home on the edge of the property. I recalled the description he’d offered on the night of the prank. A fireplace, his wife with a cup of something warm. Maybe a fat black dog at the hearth. It was unsettling to imagine all that comfort provided him. One can’t paint a picture of where a murderer will come from, I realized, only where murderers have come from in the past.

  “Sir,” I said. “Sir, I’d like to cooperate.”

  “What’s all the noise then?”

  I recognized Anders and the boy who was having trouble with his glasses, but not the two other boys with them. They were at the end of the hall in their pajamas, approaching me at a rapid pace.

  “I can’t get into the Headmaster’s office,” I said.

  “Why do you need to get in there?” said Anders.

  “I need to speak with him,” I said.

  “It can wait,” said Anders. “You’ve got a lot of speaking to do before the night’s through, and you can settle up with us first.”

  Nick turned the corner of the hall next, approaching from the door that led to the dorms. The same wounds that decorated his face were on his hands and feet.

  “You’ve got to answer for what you did to Nick,” said one of the boys I didn’t know.

  “He was about to attack me,” I said. “I did what I needed to do to secure my safety.”

  “You haven’t exactly done that,” said the other boy.

  “You left him out there,” said the first, “to suffer on his own.”

  I realized then that, though they had different haircuts and one’s pajamas were more faded than the other’s, they had the same little face. They were twins, and I was curiously happy for them. Allies were hard to come by in our facility. They at least had each other, when so few of us had anyone.

  “If I can talk with the Headmaster,” I said, “all of this will be settled. I’ll be sent away.”

  “We wouldn’t want that to happen just yet,” said Nick.

  When they weren’t speaking, I thought I could hear fluttering, like the wings of a bird trapped beneath an awning.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Okay what?” said the boy whose glasses were still sliding down his face.

  “What’s your name?” I said.

  “Mine?” he said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Why does it matter?” he said.

  “I suppose it doesn’t,” I said. “But I wish you would share it.”

  They set upon me. Anders was the first to reach me, and I landed a punch to his gut, doubling him over. I then squared off with the first twin but foolishly turned to match the other twin as he made his way around me. I knew it was wrong, but only a moment after doing so, when the first twin had grabbed me from behind, followed soon by the boy who would not tell me his name, and then Nick. The twin I’d turned to matc
h landed a few punches to my neck and the side of my head. They brought me down to the floor, and someone I could not see produced a rope. They bound my hands together, then bound that bundle to my ankles, so I was tied up like an archer’s bow. They weren’t hitting me any longer, so I stopped struggling.

  “Sir,” I yelled to the Headmaster’s door.

  “It’s late,” said Anders. “He’s gone home. This stays between us for now.”

  They carried me down the hall like a roast.

  “Nick, you have to tell them the truth,” I said.

  “You lied to me,” said Nick.

  “I never did,” I said.

  “You locked yourself in the closet and told me someone had done it to you,” he said. “You told me we were in trouble.”

  “We are in trouble,” I said.

  “No,” he said, “you are.”

  “That’s enough,” said Anders. “What would you like to do with him, Nick?”

  We were at the door leading back out to the trellised walkway.

  “Me?” said Nick. “I don’t know.”

  “We’re doing this for you,” said Anders, “so you’d better come up with something.”

  “We could throw him into the lake,” said one of the twins.

  “Please,” I said. “Please do not do that.”

  “We’re not trying to kill him,” said Anders. “You two are so twisted.”

  The other twin was smiling, I just knew it, but I could only see the floor above which I was suspended. No one had been sweeping. Or not well. There was dust and hair there, the husks of beetles and crumpled flies. Our building was a mausoleum.