“Hey, Nola, your brother run away?” Ellen P. called out to the little girl with the black eyes who was standing there with the group, but somehow also standing there by herself.
“Who you think’s weirder—him or you?” Chad added.
Nola stood there, eyeing a big rock on the ground, wondering what sound it would make hitting Chad in the teeth.
Up in the tree, Roddy shifted his outstretched arm to the left, now dangling the knife over Chad’s head. All he had to do was let go. He didn’t even need to aim. Gravity would do the rest. A smile lit Roddy’s eyes. An erection expanded in his pants. There was a deep thrill that came with thinking about the silver blade plummeting straight into Chad’s skull, but there was also something else . . . something Roddy didn’t quite have a word for.
“You’re definitely the weirder one, ain’t you, Nola?” Chad asked.
Nola still didn’t respond, didn’t move, didn’t do anything, still staring at the rock.
Fight back, Roddy tried to tell his sister, his fingers moistening with sweat, the knife still dangling above Chad’s head.
“She’s definitely the weirder one,” Ellen P. taunted, Roddy now moving the knife over Ellen, then back over Chad, and then, to his own surprise—in a perfect swirl of rage, embarrassment, and helplessness—Roddy shifted his arm so the knife was directly above his sister Nola.
For the rest of his life, Roddy would think back to this moment. It was here—as the knife dangled from his plump fingertips . . . as he held it above his twin sister’s head—that seven-year-old Roddy LaPointe finally understood the electric charge currently coursing through him.
This switchblade knife with the pakkawood handle wasn’t just a cheap thrill, or a childish impulse, or even a self-destructive whisper at the back of his head.
It was power.
That was the word for it. This knife . . . it gave Roddy power. And dear God, after all he’d been through in Arkansas, it felt good to have power.
“Roddy, where the hell are you!?” Ellen P. demanded.
I’m right here, Roddy thought, staring down at Ellen’s head, at all their heads, tiny targets that taught him what none of his future therapists or court-appointed counselors would ever take the time to explain: that the most potent power in the entire world came from having power over someone else.
Naturally, at seven years old, Roddy couldn’t articulate any of that. He just knew he felt good. Better than he’d ever felt in his life.
He wanted that feeling back again. And soon, he’d get it.
In the distance, the jingle of an arriving ice cream truck sent the kids, including Nola, scattering up the block.
Their hiding game was over. Roddy put the knife away, his adrenaline levels returning to normal. His foster dad was right, though. We all have a little monster inside us.
7
Elmswood High School, Pennsylvania
Today
“I don’t mean to be rude,” Zig said, “but let me be rude. Since when does Nola have a brother?”
“Um, I guess since birth,” Roddy said, adding a puffy little laugh.
Zig didn’t laugh back.
“We were— They split us up as kids,” Roddy explained, standing there, one hand on his police baton, the other fidgeting with the tip of his black tie. He had spidery fingers that stood out even in the poorly lit stairwell. “I stayed with our foster family—the LaPointes—but Nola got sent to—”
“How’d you know my name?”
“Huh?”
“Before. You called me Mr. Zigarowski. Who told you my name?”