Six

“You know Felix Lécuyer, right?”

Colin O’Donnell slammed his locker shut and whirled around in an obvious display of panic. “Uh, what?” His dark gaze narrowed. “Who are you?”

He looked bigger up close. Taller, broader. At this distance, Harlan could see the uneven shave on his jaw, and smell the ripeness of a young man beneath his slathering of Speed Stick deodorant.

Harlan’s tongue went thick, and clumsy, and everything he’d planned to say evaporated in that sudden, shocking moment of attention, though he’d asked for it. He took a few deep, squealing breaths while Colin stared him down, and his face got stern, and Harlan became afraid that Colin might hit him for no reason.

“Um!” He threw his hands up, shielding his face.

“Dude,” Colin said, with clear disdain. “Chill.”

Harlan wanted to walk away. Colin was so cool. Cooler than Harlan ever could be. He was wearing an AC/DC shirt and his leather jacket with all the grommets. Was looking down at Harlan – God, he was so tall, so broad – like Harlan was nothing more than an insect in his path.

“Um,” Harlan tried again. “Aren’t you friends with Felix?”

Colin darted a look around the hall. “Um. Not really.” His posture indicated he was about to walk off any moment.

“But,” Harlan said, too loud. A gaggle of sophomore girls at their lockers glanced over, curious. “Um. Do you know him?”

“Yeah?” Colin shrugged his backpack higher and sent him a skeptical look. “Why do you wanna know? He’s a loser.”

“I just…” Harlan hadn’t planned on Colin speaking to him, so he didn’t know what to do now. “Um. I was wondering. Could you…” Oh, God, this was so dumb. Fuck. “Introduce me to him?”

Colin gaped. Then he coughed, and glanced around the hall. Then he grew serious, when he realized Harlan wasn’t running. “Yeah, but, why the fuck?”

Why was a good question. But Harlan wasn’t going to reveal as much. He said, “I’ve seen him around. I’m just curious.” Then, since Colin was wavering: “He seems really cool. Hunting gators and all that.”

Colin’s face transformed. He sneered. Even hawked and spat on the school hallway floor. “He’s nothing. His mom’s an actual whore.”

Harlan felt punched. “What?”

The bell rang. Colin glanced away, distracted. “Like, his mom’s totally a madam. Whatever.” Then he walked away.

But Harlan asked around.

And asked, and asked.

When he finally found her, and got through her doorwoman, Dee was more than accommodating.

“Oh, you’re a young one,” she purred, when Harlan walked into her bedroom. “Come here, let me look at you. Oh, you’ll do fine.”

He wound up on his back, with her astride him, and she was talented. Rode him like she was riding in the Kentucky Derby.

After, she lit a cigarette at her dressing table, and said, “It’s an extra hundred for the cuddling.”

“Are you Felix’s mother?” he asked.

She paused, then took a deep drag, and gave him a sharp look. “What?” she asked, in the tone of someone who already knew what .

“Felix Lécuyer. You’re his mother, right?”

She snorted, and took a long drag. “I don’t know what you’re–”

He lunged forward, and took her by the throat.

She shut up, and shut up hard. Her lips clamped together, and she sucked in a breath before she went very still.

“Is he your son?” Harlan asked. If she denied it, if she lied…He didn’t know what he’d do.

She sucked in a breath. “Yes. Yes, I’m his mother.” When he eased his grip, she gasped. “Not that he deserves me acknowledging it.”

Harlan froze. “What?”

She stared at him, breathing hard. Belatedly, he realized he still held her throat – not squeezing, but holding. He let go.

She gasped. Wheezed dramatically, hand pressed to her throat.

“He’s your son,” he said, like an idiot. He’d expected something like pride, like love. Instead, her lip curled with contempt.

She coughed, shook her head, and said, “Unfortunately.” Then her head lifted, and her gaze narrowed. “Wait. Is that why you’re here? To get to Felix?”

“I…” He didn’t know what to say.

She stared at him another moment – and then laughed. Long, and loud, and utterly delighted. “Are you his friend? Did he tell you about me?” When he hesitated – too long, tongue-tied – her laughter dried up. A slow, satisfied smirk turned her face wicked . “Oh. I see. You’re not his friend. You don’t like him at all. You thought you’d stick it to his mama to get him back for whatever he did to you.” She winked. “That’s a smart move, honey. But.” Here she pouted. “It’s not gonna work. He doesn’t give two shits what I do.”

“That’s not–” Harlan started, and fell silent in the face of her bored, half-lidded look. The way she gazed at him, assessing and dispassionate, through the curls of smoke coming off her cigarette. Not only did he doubt his ability to give physical voice to the truth, but the longer he spent with her, the more he realized she wouldn’t be receptive to it. Would probably laugh in his face.

You see, ma’am, I’ve spent the better part of four years hunkered down on my knees in the swamp, getting mosquito-bit so I can spy on your son and his friends. Because they’re just so, so…much better than me. Bigger, and stronger, and cooler, and I just want…I just wish…

The moment the words filled his head, he flushed head-to-toe with a heat that he refused to label shame . His face and chest burned, and his stomach writhed, and he thought he might puke, but not because he was pathetic; not because he’d done anything wrong . No. It was them. Stupid Felix and his stupid gator-fucking-hunting father. Hell, forget the hunting: maybe Remy actually did fuck the alligators. He’d have to, wouldn’t he, without a wife? And the mother. Dee. The whore. They were awful, the whole lot of them.

The not-shame boiled him from the inside, and turned to gratifying anger. He stood up straight, and bowed up his shoulders, and it felt as if he grew . His head soared up to the ceiling, and his chest swelled, and Felix wasn’t the only big one, was he? No. Harlan was, too.

He leaned toward her, hand upraised. “You–” he started.

“Dennis!” Dee shouted, and as though he’d been hovering just on the other side of the door, waiting for her call, a burly man burst into the room and leaped between them. Harlan put his hands up – but the other man was big, his biceps the size of Harlan’s head, and Harlan limped out of the house that day with two black eyes and a sprained shoulder.

He kept a low profile, nursing his wounds, and his pride – what was there to nurse? He was fine – for a few days. But, inevitably, the draw of the clearing in the swamp proved too strong to avoid for more than a week.

When he arrived, creeping extra slow, extra careful, the autumn leaves brittle and louder than in summer, he saw that Colin wasn’t there. Neither was Tucker. Felix sat alone on the felled log, where three smoothed-out, moss-free grooves in the bark marked their usual seats. Despite the cooling temperatures lately, he wore a Harley shirt with the sleeves cut out, flashes of muscular ribcage visible through the arm holes. His head was bent, notebook open on his lap, pencil tiny-looking in his hand as he wrote with quick little strokes across the page. A piece of hair came loose from the knot at his nape and he tucked it back in an absent gesture that should have looked girlish, but wasn’t.

For a moment, as the birds called, and something small shifted in the brush, and Felix’s pencil scratched quietly against the notebook paper, Harlan filled with a stillness. A peace. This was… nice . It was pleasant, and pleasing, to crouch here on the soft, damp ground, and to not hear shouting, or arguing, or Tucker’s loud, braying laughter. It was strange, that sense of undemanding quiet. Of contentment , however fleeting.

Harlan couldn’t think of a time when he was out here, watching, when his heart hadn’t raced, and his palms hadn’t sweat. He took a deep breath, and marveled at the ability, sucking in swamp scents he swore he’d never smelled before.

But, slowly, as he stared, as Felix continued to write, occasionally lifting his head to make a contemplative face at the brush, the old tightness returned to his chest. The broad shoulders, and the heavily muscled arms, and the sharp blade of his nose; the smooth, glossy black hair, almost blue, like a crow’s wing. The way he continued to write, so quickly, so easily, the asshole, when Harlan labored and sweated over every school assignment.

I fucked your mom , he thought, and the satisfaction that curled through his gut was so bright and sharp it hurt; darted down between his legs and coiled around his balls. I fucked your mom . Ha! I did it. I bought her, because she’s a whore . She climbed on top of me and –

He broke the thought off, snapped it like a twig, and hung his head, and closed his eyes, and thought he might be sick from excitement.

But…wait. That was an actual twig snapping.

He lifted his head just as Felix sighed.

“What, Colin? I don’t want to hang out with you, dude.” He snapped his notebook shut, and then hitched up one hip to stuff it in his back pocket. Hiding it, maybe.

Colin stepped into view, studded leather jacket season-appropriate, finally. He’d done something new with his hair: gelled it up into spikes that made him look stupid, but which Harlan suspected were an attempt to make him look as tall as Felix. His hair was so startling that it took Harlan a long beat to realize that Colin’s face was a thunderhead.

“Are you fucking serious?” he asked, jaw flexing, hands landing on his hips. The buckles and zippers on his jacket jingled.

Felix gazed up at him placidly – a man not the least intimidated by his friend’s display. “Serious about what?”

“You know what! You’re – Tucker said – he saw you–” Colin wasn’t just angry; he was fuming . “Are you a fucking Lean Dog?”

Lean Dog . The nauseating tension in Harlan’s stomach intensified. He was drawn to them for the same reasons he was drawn to the boys in the clearing, but with a healthy dose of abject terror thrown in. When he heard their bikes out on the road, glimpsed them riding past through the window, his heart lurched and skipped so abruptly he felt like he was having some sort of attack. The nearest he’d ever been to one was at the grocery store. He’d rounded the cereal aisle and saw one debating Frosted Flakes versus Apple Jacks, and had clapped a hand over his mouth to squelch his gasp. The man had been tall, and bearded, and his sun-browned, bare arms dark with full sleeve tattoos too intricate and overlaid for him to make any details out from a distance. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and his wallet chain shifted and danced against his thigh.

Harlan wasn’t bold enough to walk down to the clubhouse and loiter outside the chain-link fence, hoping for a closer glimpse, hoping – acutely, breathlessly – for one of them to spot him, and speak to him, and invite him inside. The idea of becoming a prospect was as far-fetched and dream-inspiring as the idea of becoming an astronaut or a submarine captain.

Wait. Was Felix prospecting?

“No,” Felix said, staring up at Colin, unbothered.

“Tucker saw you!” Colin exploded, arms flying out to the sides. “He saw you at the clubhouse. In their yard. Talking to them! They don’t let people hang out . What were you doing there?”

Felix stretched his legs out in front of him. Rolled his ankles until they cracked sharply inside his boots, the way an old man’s might. “I went to talk to Bob about some things.”

“Bob?”

“The president.”

“Felix, you stupid–”

“He wants me to prospect. Daddy thinks I should, too.” He shrugged. “I’m mulling it over.”

Colin swore, and paced away, and then turned back, sneering. “So you are a Lean Dog, you lying sack of shit.”

“No. I said I’m considering .” He studied Colin the way Harlan always imagined a hunter must study a deer through a rifle scope. Or a gator, in Felix’s case. “Why does it bother you?”

Colin swore again and stomped off without answering.

Crouched in the bushes, Harlan couldn’t say why it bothered him, either.