Semper Prixus (pt 10).

The pool closes at five; by six everybody’s cleared out and locked the place up, leaving Kyle in the janitor’s closet to keep an eye on the Shark’s locker for another hour after that. While he waited, listening the shuffling sounds as he turned and turned and beat on the walls, and worst of all, as if he knew Kyle was there – and probably did – were the plaintive cries of PLEASE. SOMEBODY PLEASE.

What do you think they’re going to do to him, Kyle considered, sitting on the small closet floor space with his knees drawn up to his chest. Whatever they do to him, it’s your fault.

He thinks he heard something near the front of the building: a door being opened.

Last chance, inner-Kyle says. All you have to do is open the lock and let him out. It’s not up to you if he deserves it. You’re not a judge. You’re not God.

There are shuffling steps approaching, and low voices. The air is filling with electricity.

Kyle swallows. They tried to hang me in the street, he says, as if that were an explanation, and gets up, opening the door, watching as his dad and five other men, all colored gray, all tattooed and factory stamped with that Marine glint in their eyes, file in and turn to look at him. Go wait out by the pool, his dad tells him, producing a roll of duct tape from his pocket. This’ll be over quick.

You should have done something, Kyle says to the men as he passes.

We are, one of them shoots back.

The air is very humid; after such a brutal winter the spring barely made an appearance and now it already feels like summer, the days swelling and the evenings exploding with hatching insects. Kyle goes to the deep end where it’s darkest, the lights underwater turned off. A lot of people are afraid of irrational things – there are whole books written about the fears of things that can’t be, like people sitting behind you when you drive or that hide under your bed, even when you drive a two-seater or your mattress lies right on the floor. The Shark is just some old pervert, he knows that, one more agent of the world that goes looking for people to hurt. You ever knew anybody who had something bad happen to them? His dad had asked him this last night. Sure, Kyle had said, I knew a guy in college whose whole family died in a fire. How’d everybody act to him? his dad asked. They did the usual, Kyle said, they told him they were sorry, like you’re supposed to do. Right, his dad said, but they were glad as hell it didn’t happen to them. You probably felt that way, too, and probably thought you were a bad man for feeling that way. But you oughta feel bad for pretending you feel something you didn’t. His family died, yours didn’t. He’s stuck with that forever and you probably said a couple words and then got to go play hacky sack or whatever the hell. Great, Kyle said, so you figured out that I’m a shitty person. No, his dad said, I’m telling you that we’re all shitty people, and we make do with that because we have to, but then there’s guys like the Shark that aren’t people at all but we keep treating them like they are because you can’t do anything to such a nice guy, right? That’s his trick. Don’t you go feeling bad for the sad old man now, his dad told him, because that’s his trick, too. You remember what he did, and that isn’t good enough, remember that Stevie’s old enough now. Maybe he’ll be lucky and always have his friends around. His dad had shrugged. Or maybe not.

Kyle watches them carry the Shark out taped to a chair, four of them bearing his weight while Kyle’s dad leads the way like a priest. They place the chair on the lip of the pool. Please, the Shark says, looking at Kyle. Tears are running down his cheeks. Please, they’re crazy, I just want to go home, please –

Kyle’s dad hands him the end of a rope. Get in, he says.

In the water? No way. Kyle tries to give him back the rope and his dad grabs his arm, ties a shank around his wrist and shoves his son hard into the pool. The water is very dark and he can see the men overhead looking down at him beyond the water barrier, the Marines standing like monuments. The pool is sixteen feet deep; he has barely sunk all the way to the bottom, his feet landing flatly on the black tile, when he sees the Great White coming into focus out of the gloom.