Fool Me Once

Swain swallowed hard. A tear escaped from his eye and slid down his cheek.

“Christopher?”

“I didn’t see it, Maya. I stayed on the lower deck.”

There was a chill in his voice.

“But you know something.”

Another tear.

“Please tell me,” Maya said. “Did Andrew really fall?”

His voice was like a stone dropping down a well. “I don’t know. But I don’t think so.”

“So what happened to him?”

“I think…,” Christopher Swain said before taking a deep breath, summoning some inner resolve, and starting again. “I think Joe pushed him off the boat.”

Chapter 30

Swain sat with both hands gripping the chair arms.

“It started when Theo Mora came to Franklin Biddle Academy. Or maybe that was when I started to see it.”

They had pushed their chairs closer together, almost knee-to-knee, somehow needing to be physically closer in this room that seemed to be growing ever colder.

“You probably think it was the old cliché about the rich not wanting the poor sullying their elite institutions. You can almost picture it, can’t you? We rich kids all ganged up on Theo or picked on him. But that wasn’t how it was.”

“How was it?” Maya asked.

“Theo was funny and outgoing. He didn’t make the mistake of backing off or kowtowing to us. He fit right in. We all liked him. He didn’t seem all that different in many ways. I know people want to paint the rich one way and the poor another, but when you’re kids-and that’s what we were, or what I thought we were, just kids-you just want to hang out and belong.”

He wiped his eyes.

“And it didn’t hurt that Theo was a great soccer player. Not good. Great. I was thrilled. We had a chance to win it all that year. Not just the state as a prep school, which we did, but win the entire state tournament outright, including all the big public and parochial schools. Theo was that good. He could score from anywhere. And maybe that was the problem.”

“How so?”

“He wasn’t a threat to me. I was a midfielder. He wasn’t a threat to his roommate and best friend, Andrew. Andrew was a goalie.”

Swain stopped and looked at Maya.

“But Joe was a striker too,” she said.

Swain nodded. “I’m not saying he was openly hostile to Theo, but… I’ve known Joe since we were in first grade. We grew up together. We were always captains of the soccer team. And when you spend that much time with a person, you get a chance to see the facade slip away sometimes. The anger that would come out. His flashes of rage. When we were in eighth grade, Joe put a kid in the hospital with a baseball bat. I don’t remember what it was even about anymore. I just remember three of us pulling him off the poor kid. Cracked his skull. A year later, this girl Joe liked, Marian Barford, was going to go to the dance with Tom Mendiburu. Two days before, there’s a fire in the science lab and Tom barely gets out alive.”

Maya swallowed away the bile. “No one reported any of this?”

“You didn’t know Joe’s dad, did you?”

“No.”

“He was an intimidating man. There were rumors he was in with some rough customers. Whatever, payoffs were made. The family’s more, shall we say, unsavory friends would stop by and request your silence. Plus, well, Joe was good at it. He didn’t leave a lot of evidence. We talked about his charm before. He could fake contrition like nobody’s business. He would apologize. He would cajole. He was rich and powerful, and those moments, that darker side, he could really keep it hidden when he had to. Again, I remind you, I knew him my whole life. And even I saw it only a handful of times. But when I did…”

The tears started coming again.

“You’re probably wondering what I’m doing in a place like this.”

She hadn’t been. She had figured that he was an addict of some kind and was here for help. What else could it be? She wanted him to keep telling the story, but if he needed this sidetrack, it would probably be a mistake to stop him.

“I’m here,” he said, “because of Joe.”

She tried not to make a face.

“I know, I know, I’m supposed to take responsibility for myself. That’s what they always say. And yeah, I keep trading one addiction for another. I’ve been in here for booze, for pills, for coke… you name it. But I wasn’t always like this. In school I used to get teased because I wouldn’t have more than a beer. Didn’t like the taste. I tried pot once my senior year. It made me nauseated.”

“Christopher?”

“Yes.”

“What happened to Theo?”

“It was supposed to be a prank. That was what Joe told us. I don’t know if I believed him or not, but… I was so weak. Check that. I’m still weak. Joe was the leader. I was the follower. Andrew was a follower too. And really, what was going to be the harm? A little hazing. It happens all the time at schools like Franklin Biddle. So that night, we jumped Theo. You know what I mean? We came to his room-me, Joe, Andrew was already there-and we jumped on him and we carried him downstairs.”

He was looking off now, the thousand-yard stare, and a funny smile came to his face. “You know something?”

“What?”