This One is Deadly Page 3

  “Right there,” my father said. Then he muttered something under his breath.

  “Why are all the boys in your family named Benjamin?” I asked.

  I caught my father off guard. I could tell he was preparing to have a different conversation with me. He stretched his eyebrows. “It’s a family name. I am the sixth Benjamin.”

  “So grandfather’s name was Benjamin and his grandfather, and your name is Benjamin. How come Devin isn’t Benjamin?”

  My father shrugged. “That’s the name your mother said it had to be. And I won’t pretend to know much about women, but I do know about your mother, and when she says something is, it is. She named all of you actually.”

  “Do you wish he was named Benjamin?’

  My father looked shocked that I would ask such a question.

  I knew that he did wish Devin were not Devin. It was so silly. It was just a stupid name. I’d name my son Devin in a heartbeat and it wouldn’t change the way I felt about him at all. Because a rose by any other name is still a rose. Just like a—

  Devin screamed.

  My father turned to see that Devin had gotten his line caught on driftwood. He tried to chase his rod as it floated downriver, but it was too late.

  “Damn it, Devin!”

  All the good will the two had developed starting a campfire went out the window—or literally, down the river. My father didn’t run to Devin’s side to console him, he got there as fast as he could just to scold him.

  This delighted Jenny, and if I didn’t know better I’d swear she got his line stuck somehow. She sure wore a smile like she wanted to take credit for it.

  She jogged over to the scene and said, “You like that?”

  “Piss off,” I said.

  “Fishing is a stupid waste of time anyway. But now Dad hates poor little Devin even more. What an idiot.”

  “He hates you, too.”

  “Brilliant comeback, Kristen, remind me not to get on your bad side.”

  “Just because you’re the oldest doesn’t mean you’re better than us.”

  “No. But I am. I can’t change that,” she said. “Facts are facts and crap is crap.”

  Rebecca added with her arms on her hips like she was the deciding voice. “And you and Devin are crap.”

  “Piss off, pipsqueak.”

  “Don’t call me a pipsqueak,” Rebecca said.

  “Then don’t be one.”

  My father dragged Devin by his forearm. “Come on. Looks like we won’t be having fish for breakfast after all.” My father let go of Devin. “Clean up the tackle box and bring all the rods back up to the camp.”

  Devin did as he instructed.

  Jenny waited until my father had gotten far enough away. Then she said, “He hates you now. You should probably save us all the trouble and kill yourself. You’re supposed to be a boy, but you’re just a big wuss. I’m more of a man than you.”

  We didn’t end up having breakfast.

  There was too much screaming involved. Every person made threats, but my parents held the keys to the station wagon and that’s how our trip ended.

  Devin’s nose bled. My mother rammed a tampon up it, which only made him look more pained. Jenny didn’t look much better, and complained about how he hurt her knees. Devin was scolded the most of course. Then me. Somehow Rebecca had managed to get out of it unscathed, though I’m pretty sure she threw the log at the back of my head. But I blacked out before I could finger the culprit.

  When I came to, my parents were already yanking us in every direction, trying to separate us. But I kept a clump of Jenny’s curly hair. It was a start. I promised to take her a part, piece by piece.

  “Jesus! Your father works so hard. We can’t afford to take a vacation every day. This is the one vacation we can afford and you four can’t get along for twenty-four hours? This is ridiculous,” my mother said. “We’re going home. Each of you is going to have a list of chores and you’re not to talk to the others. I mean it. If there’s one peep in that car, I will leave you on the side of the road!”

  “Pack it up,” my father said. We started to obey, before he added, “No. Devin. You pack it all up.”

  “But he didn’t…” I tried to say.

  My father’s look shot me down. He did help Devin clean up our camp, but it didn’t seem right that Devin had to do everything when Jenny had started it.

  I should’ve helped, but I didn’t. I was scared of getting in any more trouble.

  I sat in the car in silence, like my mother ordered.

  Things felt calmer once the car was loaded.

  Devin asked my father, “Are we really going home?”

  “You betcha.”

  “We’re not going to catch a fish?” Devin asked.

  “Maybe next year when you four grow up,” my father said. “This isn’t how I wanted to spend my vacation. And I refuse to spend it like this for another second.”

  Before we pulled away, Devin turned to me and whispered, “One year.”

  He flicked his eyes up at me and gave a devilish grin. He’d have his revenge.

  I would help him.

  From then on, Devin and I were inseparable. To the point where I think dad started to say ‘Kristin’ the same way he would ‘Devin’ with more or less a shrug of indifference.

  It hurt.

  But it was fuel.

  My parents had never been on our side and my father’s previous affection towards me had often blinded me to that fact. Like all grownups, he thought he knew everything and that there was only ever one thought going on in my head. Like I was some kind of stupid baby.

  I wasn’t.

  Every time we went to the library I picked out prank books. Though most of those proved lamed. There were nuggets of ideas. Though many, like a bucket over the door were too broad to get away with. There were other things in the books that would prove annoying to Jenny and Rebecca and left less evidence.

  For a week straight, I mismatched all their socks. By the end of the week Rebecca yelled at my mom for doing laundry wrong and got an hour of time out.

  Any obvious prank would lead them back to us, and of course give them plenty of evidence to tattle. But we did manage to catch a honeybee. I stuck it in her shoe and put a sock in there to keep the bee in. But the bee must’ve died before Jenny got a chance to get stung.

  There were other failures.

  We read that a great prank was to set and alarm in the middle of the day, and when it went off, dash out of the room like there was something important to do. It was funny the first two times, but Jenny never seemed to care what we were up to. So then we started setting the alarm and ignoring it. That did get a rise out of her, but then the alarm clock disappeared.

  Devin then directed my research towards books on trapping game. Acquiring an old rusty bear trap would prove near impossible, but the book skipped such technology and instead focused on pits filled with sharpened sticks and trip wires. We thought if we caught Jenny in one, then my parents might believe the trap was made by Native Americans hundreds of years ago rather than by two kids. It was sound in our childish logic.

  In the woods after school, we made the traps. We intended to catch one of the MacGregor’s’ cats, but they proved too smart. Eventually, we caught a possum, which thought he could just play dead until it was actually dead. Devin refused to let him out of the trap and not long after he began to stink. You could almost smell him up at the house if the breeze was right. It was an awful putrid smell. If you got a strong whiff of it, it was like someone vomiting in your nostrils.

  I took great pleasure in seeing Rebecca and Jenny make the mistake of taking a deep breath. It was almost worth having to smell it myself.

  Soon, the possum was a sight of maggots and tiny bones that weaved out of puffs of fur, resembling cotton straight from the field more than the fur of an animal. Any other fur had gone from the grayish white to the tan and yellow, wet and matted. The possum’s eyes sank in and two slits seemed desper
ate to shut, but I could see the blackness down within them. It took a long time for the possum to decompose.

  Its bones were tiny.

  We knew better than to touch it. Devin reminded me that we would get sick if we played with dead things. A burial was out of the question, however we would giggle at the thought of putting the carcass in Jenny’s pillow. We’d take turns playing out her reaction, trying to outdo each other in our mockery.

  We built on each other’s ideas, tacking on another funny moment. From her peeing herself to tripping over a toy car, which sent her flipping onto her back where her little needle kit she stole from mom would be laying. Ouch! And then because she peed, it got on her homework and she gets kicked out of school for peeing on her assignment and is forced to become a homeless woman who pushes cans in a shopping cart, but the cans are filled with bees and the wheels of the shopping cart fall off and it crashes and all the bees attack her. They chase her for many, many miles and she’s so thirsty from all her running that she mistakenly grabbed a can of gasoline and drank it. And it just so happened it was her birthday and mom and dad tried to be nice to her and gave her a cake. Then she blew out the candles and her whole face burned off. There was no water around anywhere so my parents had to pee on her to save her.

  I laughed so hard that I cried.

  That was just one of the stories. But they always involved bees.

  “I like bees. They’re the best,” Devin said, sitting across from me, Indian style. His grin went from ear to ear. When he smiled it was with his whole body. His shoulders rose up to form a smile’s curve across his chest.

  “Yellow jackets are better,” I said.

  “I know where there’s a nest.”

  “Where?”

  Then, as it had become standard, our names were shrieked from the house. We were in trouble again. Though, it no longer mattered to Devin and me. We were always in trouble. There was no ‘getting’ in trouble anymore. A punishment was like a commercial break during Saturday Morning Cartoons. We just zoned out until we could play again.

  “Did you put glue in your sister’s shampoo?” my mother asked.

  Devin and I had taken a pact. When asked, neither responded. That made my mother madder. It had in many ways broken her. Rather than long lectures and threats of old, she simply dismissed us to a chore. “Weed the front flowerbed. I want it perfect,” she said.

  I pulled up a few flowers in spite. I had to make up for how nice of a job Devin had done.

  That was how it went for a year.

  And then we tried our family vacation again.

  DEVIN:

  Dad believed me every time I told him I wanted to fish. He even bought me a brand new fishing rod and my very own tackle box. I hated them both—the tackle box and the fishing rod. Fish never did anything to anybody. They were treated like vegetables. And they smelled bad. Did we eat them because they stink? People are stupid. My father is stupid.

  A couple weekends before our family vacation, he took me down to our pond and had me practice. He’d say things like, keep your arm straight, bend at the elbow, and good job.

  I brightened my eyes for him. That’s what he wanted to see.

  I could fake interest. I learned that was the only way to get a teacher to leave you alone. It also worked great on parents.

  The lesson went over well. But there were no fish to catch in our pond.

  There were snapping turtles, frogs, and snakes. Though I’d only ever seen the frogs and their eggs. I liked how their eggs felt. It was better than jelly. They were great projectiles—that’s something you can throw at somebody. Jenny hated them. Which only made me love them more.

  But I had to be a perfect child if my plan was going to succeed.

  I was on my best behavior, and knowing Kristen had my back made it easier to play nice. Kristen and I had stopped our prank war against Rebecca and Jenny weeks in advance. Still, I almost expected my parents to make us agree to behave in the car ride. But they must’ve noticed how well we were all getting along, because they didn’t bring up anything that happened last year.

  Stupid parents.

  Maybe we should’ve started playing them like this long ago. But we were just children. We were the stupids then.

  After this trip, they’d never take us anywhere together again.

  I was going to make sure of that.

  I tightened my seat belt as tight as I could. The pain seemed to work as a distraction. I needed it. I was so giddy as I tried to keep my eyes on the flickering trees and powerlines. I had to try and ignore the radio which kept playing the same awful songs. It wasn’t a long car ride… it was the evil radio. Over and over, the same awful songs that grownups liked or Jenny… Jenny liked all of them.

  She tapped her foot and pretended to sing along. Half the words she didn’t know and her voice would dip in and out like a cat left outside late at night.

  Jenny also wiggled in her seat. She did this on purpose. She knew it made the backseat of the station wagon shake. That’s where I sat with Kristen. She had requested the back, even though I knew it made her car sick. She fought through it, because then we wouldn’t have to sit with Jenny.

  We couldn’t discuss our plan, as I’m sure we’d both have liked to. We had to talk almost in code. Like spies meeting on a park bench.

  We said things like:

  “Did you bring your fishing rod?”

  “What kind of bait should be used?”

  “The best kind.”

  The car ride had to go perfect.

  We had to behave just long enough that my parents would forget what was possible when the four of us were left briefly unattended.

  That’s when Jenny was going to have an accident.

  Accidents happened all the time.

  That’s why we weren’t supposed to play in the pond back home.

  We could’ve made it happen there. But this seemed right. Mom and Dad might not know why it happened, but one smile and Jenny would know exactly why she had an accident. She’d remember it was here that she pushed me too far. It was here that I swore I’d kill her.

  “Are you okay?” Kristen asked me.

  “Fine. Wait, are you okay?” I asked.

  Jenny’s movement wasn’t helping Kristen. She looked pale. She kept a hand on her stomach, and her lips pursed. She shouldn’t have sat in the back with me.

  But if she’d rode in the middle, then we just might not make it back to the river. I hoped she’d use her agony when the time came. This was all Jenny’s fault.

  Our lives would be so much better without her. She ruined everything. Even Rebecca. I didn’t like Rebecca, but she’d have to be nice to us once Jenny was gone.

  “I’ll feel much better on the ride home,” Kristen said.

  It was hard to stop myself from smiling. So I smiled as big as I could. Jenny and my parents couldn’t see it.

  “Maybe you can save that for later,” I said, and then pretended to throw up. We could pour it on Jenny’s head. Or would’ve had we not had a better plan already.

  Kristen laughed.

  In the front seat, mom remarked, “Now this is nice.”

  I had butterflies in my stomach though. I couldn’t wait to get to the camp, and get to tomorrow when the accident would be possible. I stared out the window and imagined my vengeance. I practiced what I’d say.

  It was just an accident.

  We were playing and then… (Cue sobs)

  I loved her so much.

  Is… is… she dead?

  Ice cream would make me feel better, actually. But only if it is Moose Tracks.

  It would be better with Jenny here. Boo Hoo.

  I love you Mom and Dad. You’re the best.

  Kristen threw up.

  It smelled awful.

  “I’m okay,” Kristen said. “I’m okay, okay.”

  “Is everything alright back there?” mom asked.

  “We’re fine,” Kristen said. “I’m fine.”

  “
Smells awful. Did you poop?” Jenny asked.

  “We’re okay,” I said.

  “It smells so bad,” Rebecca said.

  “Oh come on, Kristen! Yuck! She threw up, Mom!”

  “Shut up, Jenny!”

  No. No. No. Play nice. We had to play nice. They couldn’t suspect any hard feelings. We were best of friends. We were all on the same team. We were perfect siblings.

  “I threw up,” Kristen admitted. “I don’t feel so well.”

  “Oh, Christ,” dad said. “I’m going to pull over. I don’t want to smell that the whole way.”

  “Where are you going to pull over? The next exit is in nine miles.”

  “Do you have cleaning supplies?”

  “Well, yes,” mom said.

  “Then we can pull over right now.” He didn’t do it smoothly. He didn’t even consider how it would make Kristen feel. Or that I’d put my hand right in her vomit.

  Gee, thanks, dad.

  Dad got right out of the station wagon. The highway was louder than it had seemed, then he slammed his door and the car rocked more.

  “You’re going to need fresh air,” mom said.

  “It’s because she only eats the marshmallows in her cereal,” Jenny said. “Look, it’s all the different colors! I see the shamrock. It’s a whole shamrock!”

  “Gross.”

  “Shut up!” Kristen said.

  I dug my nails into her shoulder. She read my mind.

  “Mom, I’m going to be sick again.”

  Dad swung the back door open. “Out!”

  He tugged Kristen out of the seat.

  She jogged to escape from face planting in the gravel. She made it into the grass and buckled over so all we could see was the middle of her back.

  “You get out, too,” he said to me. “You’re covered in it!”

  I nodded. Batted sad Bambi eyes at him.

  “I can help you clean,” I said.

  After my father demanded to know where the cleaning supplies were, he put me to work with the paper towels. Mom got out of the car and talked with dad. It was a grown up talk. She was reminding him how nice things had gone so far.

  “I like to be on time,” was all he said before he walked back over and inspected my progress.