I was eating takeout from Taco Bell when bombs surfaced in their conversation the first time. Someone, maybe Johnny, maybe Dozer, had seen fifteen minutes of The Hurt Locker on TNT and wouldn’t shut up about it. There was some discussion of whether you had to be batshit or just not give a damn if you worked with bombs. I took another bite of a chicken quesadilla that needed more sauce and wished my homework would finish itself.
Simon said, “Bombs are unpredictable.”
And because I was testing my boundaries or nauseously tired I said, “Bombs are pure science.”
Pure science is the wrong phrase to describe what I meant, but that’s what I said, so I can’t change it now. I meant bombs are systemic. Reliable. At least, that’s what my chemistry teacher drilled into our brains during a section on chemical reactions. Therefore, one could be perfectly sane, care about the dignity of life, and be a bomb maker. The army employed bros like that all the time.
“Normal people make bombs. Crazy people set them off,” I told the guys.
Simon paused the game and looked away from the screen. “Okay, little Miss Pure Science, tell us how to make a bomb.”
“Potassium and sugar.”
“That’s a heavy-ass redneck bomb. What if it needs to be portable?”
“Google homemade C-Four and start from there.”
“Really?”
“No, asshole. I’m pretty sure you have to buy C-Four, and the government doesn’t take too kindly to purchasers.”
I shouldn’t have called Simon an asshole. Not then. Not ever. Such brazen behavior led to “corrections” makeup couldn’t easily cover. As such, I didn’t ask why three dude-bros wanted portable bombs. I pretended I was bored with the conversation and buried my nose in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Surprisingly enough, they went back to their game and Doritos.
They crunched chips. Between the pages, I crunched ideas for ridding my life of Simon and came up empty. He had me over a never-ending barrel. Kids like us were mostly left among the housekeepers to raise ourselves, but two weeks ago, our fathers—the Westwoods and Ascotts go back three generations—informed us we would be attending the University of Rochester together and we would be sharing a house.
“It’s an investment,” his father said of the half-million-dollar property we were to consider a dorm.
My father had chuckled and said, “It’s a tax break.” How very convenient.
There’s a disconnect that happens when you know your parents love money and wine more than they love you. It keeps you from saying, “Daddy, I’d rather not live with a psychopath.”
Simon and the boys ate another bag of Doritos and chased it with pints of ice cream. I read the same page of my book over and over. Eventually, Dozer ran to the Hornell GameStop for some update and Johnny left to score from his brother. The second their footfalls disappeared down the steps, the atmosphere in the boathouse attic shifted. A chill tiptoed along my arms and crawled all the way to my ear canals. The game paused, some Fallout character lunged mid-screen, and I knew what would happen when I turned my head.
Simon stood statue-like at my side, waiting on me to give him attention. There was a foot-long PVC plumbing pipe in his hand.
When I think of Simon, I think of hard edges and razor corners, but he was very visually soft. He had a round Angus Macfadyen face and a stomach that bulged between the buttons when he sat. Oddly enough, he’d collected me with those unassuming looks—the guy you swore couldn’t be controlling because he wasn’t beautiful and shiny. I was in too deep by the time I realized he’d charmed my parents and memorized all our security codes. Sometimes he would touch my hair or stroke my wrist or say he loved me, and then the threats would come. Not coldly, not cruelly, never like a villain. Just statements. “You betray me, and I can be in and out of here before your last shit begins to smell.” I nearly told my mom, but she launched into a soliloquy of why the Westwoods were vital to Ascotts in the wine world and how she grew up dirt-poor and couldn’t ever go back, so I never did.
He dug his fingernails into the skin around my elbow. His breath cannoned into his cheek, each word precise and laced with delight. “Hey, Pure Science.”
“Yes.”
I braced for a blow.
“I bet you can’t make a bomb.”
“There’s a big difference between can’t and won’t,” I said.
“Didn’t your mom ever tell you can’t and won’t never did anything?”