[pirate witch]: 524.Novels.The Dead Dove Project

This is my NOVELLA that I wrote in two weeks for a school program. It is un-edited, but I actually ended it, which is rare enough. Please give constructive criticism.
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Laurent leaned back in his chair, tilting it until it rested against the board. He held Patrick’s gaze, a cruel smile stretched across his pale lips. Patrick had never met anyone as cruel as Laurent. The smile was still there as Laurent dragged his fingernails along the blackboard slowly, causing as much noise as possible. It didn’t phase him, but the banshee wails clawed their way into Patrick’s skull and chewed through his brain. 

Patrick tried really hard not to scream. Screaming would show weakness, and weakness was not something one showed to Laurent. The second he saw a glimpse of frailty in someone he had his teeth in them, figuratively speaking of course. It took all of Patrick’s effort to stay upright though, as the hand made its slow journey down the board. His teeth felt as though they were about to shatter, and his ears tried to shrivel up to save themselves.

“I am disappointed in you.” The screeching was suddenly replaced with a British accent, one that the girls fawned over. Laurent leaned forward suddenly in his chair in order to give the evil eye to Patrick more efficiently. He spoke softly, but to Patrick this was worse than yelling. You could yell back at someone, but listening to Laurent speak quietly, voice dripping with venom, would make anyone back down.

“Are you?” Patrick’s voice shook a little, his American accent sounding stupid and blundering to his ears.

“Yes. I am. I asked you one simple
thing, and you went and lazed about doing whatever it is that you do when not following my orders.” The mocking smile stayed even when he spoke.

A gulp. Sweaty palms. “Did I?”

“You did.” Laurent stood up suddenly in order to start pacing around dramatically. He always a sucker for the dramatic portrayal of a dictator. If Laurent were short, he could have been compared to Napoleon. He was rather tall though, another check mark in the ladies department. “And stop only responding to me with questions. Either tell me something worth saying, or keep your mouth shut and just listen to me. You need to learn to listen better, Patrick.”

“Do I?” Patrick winced. He had asked a question again, proving solidly that he really was a bad listener. Not good. He actually managed to stumble out of the chair before Laurent sent it sailing into the chalkboard. Several long cracks spider webbed out from the point of impact, but Laurent had already gotten himself back under control.

“Sorry sir.” Patrick whispered from the floor. He stood up carefully, dusted himself off, and took another chair. 

“You should be. When the maintenance crew sees this, they will be very disappointed.” It took Patrick a few seconds to realize that Laurent was talking about the blackboard. “I expect that the dean of students will probably have to call your father.” He traced the cracks on the board with his pointer finger as he spoke. “I can only imagine how much that is going to cost your family. We don’t skimp on blackboards here.”

You bastard. Patrick said in his head. But only in his head. Out loud, he only said, “I can manage, of course.” He would have to spend five month’s allowance on one of the expensive blackboards, but what else could he do? Blame Laurent? Hardly. Laurent was a god amongst the administrators. They would never be able to imagine him throwing a chair against a wall in a moment of anger. Very few people would be able to conceive of such a thing. It was all part of the paradox that was Laurent. He had almost everyone fooled, and whoever wasn’t fooled was absolutely terrified.

“Of course you can manage. You’re a bright lad.” He was being patronizing now. “Now, run along to class, Patrick. I have important things to do.” Patrick was only too happy to be leaving, because important things never meant anything good. He packed up his book bag, slung it over one shoulder, and got out of the classroom as quickly as he could without running. He was three doors down the hallway when Laurent’s voice echoed out from classroom six.

“Patrick! Come back here for a moment.” Patrick returned grudgingly, and stood in the doorway. Laurent was seated at the teachers desk, looking quite comfortable with all of his papers spread out on the surface and his laptop humming away.

“Yes sir?” 

“Don’t mess up again. If you do, I’ll have to get myself a different friend, and I shudder to think of what might happen were I not around to protect you.” With a wink, Laurent waved his hand regally, dismissing Patrick, and returned to his work.

“He knows exactly what would happen to me if he wasn’t happy with me!” Patrick muttered mutinously under his breath as he jogged to his science class, which was all the way across campus. “What a bastard.”

“Who’s a bastard?” Asked an extremely pretty girl who was walking near Patrick. He must have been talking rather loud.

“Laurent.”

The girls blue eyes widened and she stopped in her tracks. “Ulysses Laurent? No, you can’t be talking about him!” When Patrick nodded she put one moisturized and manicured hand up to her mouth to stifle her gasp. “He isn’t a bastard.” She gushed. “He’s the single most brilliant person ever. And kind, and sweet, and handsome, and patient...” She nodded, unable to finish her praise with words. “You weren’t talking about him of course.”

Patrick was defeated, once again, by Laurent’s charm. “No.” He relented, not wanting to become even less popular with the female faction of the school. “I wasn’t talking about him.”

“Good. Because if you were I would have to tell him, and I would probably have to hit you too.” She ran her fingers through her blonde hair and snapped her gum. Patrick desperately wanted to say something else to her, something witty and clever, but she saw one of her friends and with a squeal she ran over to embrace the other girl. They started speaking in such fast, high pitched phrases that Patrick wondered if they were even speaking English.

Mrs. Corrant, the eleventh grade
science teacher, started every class with attendance. It took nearly ten minutes for her to rattle off every name in the class, with each student responding with a practiced, “Present!” When she got to Laurent and didn’t hear an answer, she looked up from her desk.

“Is Ulysses here?” She asked, scanning the room. “Where is Ulysses Laurent?”

The whole class turned to look at Patrick, expecting an answer. “Um, he has...” Patrick needed a new excuse. Whenever Laurent felt like he didn’t need to go to class, it was up to Patrick to protect him. Even if Patrick wasn’t in the class that Laurent was skipping. When this was the case, as it was quite often, he would have to catch the teacher before class and explain.

“What was that?” Mrs. Corrant asked.

“He has a college meeting.” It was feasible. Colleges all around the world were just clamoring to get Laurent into their highly esteemed community. His grades were impeccable, and his list of extracurricular activities was longer than his arm. Not that the colleges in the USA would be blessed with his presence. Laurent was returning to England and going to Oxford after graduation, there was no doubt in his or anyone else’s mind about that.

“Oh, in that case, I suppose it’s all right.” She went to the next name on the list and continued down. No inquiries would be made, because Laurent was a trusted individual. No one doubted his integrity at all.

“And it’s Laurent.” Patrick was obligated to correct everyone who used Laurent’s first name.

“What?”

“It’s just Laurent. Don’t call him Ulysses.” 

Mrs. Corrant’s eyes narrowed. “Fine.” She said curtly. “Now, shall we return to biology or are we going to correct the teacher all day?” No one had any objections.


Patrick wasn’t necessarily a habitual liar, but he found himself bending the truth more and more as his highschool career progressed. When his parents asked him how his day at school was, when the nurse wondered about the bruises on his arms, and when a teacher wondered why his homework wasn’t done, there always needed to be an excuse. And it was all because of his “friendship” with the god of the school.

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Patrick was upstairs in his room doing homework when the phone rang. It was always a scramble to get to the phone first, in case it was Laurent on the line. Laurent hated having to talk to people’s family members on the phone. He hated talking on the phone in general actually, but if he was going to mess with someone’s mind from a different location, he preferred to talk to them immediately.

Halley, Patrick’s sister answered the phone. She was a freshman in college and was enjoying her status as the college sibling, taking control as much as possible. Normally, Patrick didn’t really mind. Tonight, he could have cried. He worried about what Halley might say to Laurent, and what Laurent might say to Halley for the entire forty seconds in which he didn’t have the phone.

“Here, it’s for you.” Halley said and handed it to him. “Some kid from your school. What’s his name? What grade is he in?”

Patrick held his hand over the receiver, hoping that Laurent would be patient for a moment. Fat chance. “Why do you want to know?”

Halley got a look in her eyes that Patrick recognized all too well. It was the spell of Laurent. “His accent is beautiful! Does he have a girlfriend?”

“Kind of.” Patrick tried to leave, dreading the reprimanding he would certainly get for making Laurent wait for so long.

“What does that mean, ‘kind of?’” Halley wouldn’t let him out of the kitchen. Patrick could hear Laurent’s fingers tapping on the phone, and he paled visibly.

“Look, I have to take this. He has a girlfriend, OK? Give up!” He pushed away from Halley and raced up to his room. The door slammed shut behind him as he leapt in front of his desk and tore a notebook and pen out of the drawer. “Laurent?” He spoke tentatively into the phone.

“Yes. That’s me. I do, you know, exist. And shocking as it may be, I do experience time passing just like normal human beings. I haven’t yet created a way to freeze time on my end of the planet while the rest of the world wastes my time. Believe me, I’m trying as hard as I can, but technology just refuses to keep up with me.” Laurent loved sarcasm much more than he loved any human being. “To pass the time, while you chatted away with the simpering wench that answered your phone, I have been stabbing a hole repeatedly into my wall with a letter opener. My dear mother would probably not appreciate the gash in my newly painted wall, which was decorated with real gold leaf may I add, so you will probably have to fix it when you get here in fifteen minutes.”

Gold leaf? Where was Patrick going to get gold leaf at eight thirty at night? “Can’t you just put a poster over it?” He asked hopefully. He was already looking in his closet for shoes, trying to formulate an explanation to give his parents as he left, and trying to find his learner’s permit.

“A poster? My dear boy, have you ever seen so much as an advertisement in my room? Would I own a poster?”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“That’s right! So, instead of offering me utterly useless suggestions, I recommend that you get into your father’s car and drive yourselves up here. I expect you in fifteen minutes, with a double espresso from that café down the street. And this time, don’t, I repeat don’t, put sugar in the espresso. If I find even a hint of sugar in it, I will be forced to drown you in it, which as you know is both physically possible and quite probable. Hurry up and get here, I have a plan that you need to put into motion”

“I’ll be there.” Patrick had barely finished writing down everything he had to buy when Laurent hung up. He was probably stabbing the wall some more, making the hole big enough that some plaster and paint wouldn’t fix it.

After a trip to the hardware store and to the café, Patrick pulled up to the gates outside the Laurent Manor. A video camera was set at each side of the gate, aiming into each seat of the car. He waited the obligatory ten seconds for the cameras to get a picture of him, and reached out to push the button that called to the doorman inside.

“Is that Master Anderson?” The aging doorman’s voice came, slightly distorted, from the security system’s microphone.

“Yes, it’s me. Could you let me in please Arthur? Laurent the younger has me on a time limit.”

“I understand the feeling sir. Come on in.” The gothic iron gate swung open, and Patrick drove in. He tried his hardest not to scrape his dad’s car on the pointed parts of the gate. His father always worried about something happening to it, and was usually reluctant to let Patrick out of the house with it. Of course, Patrick didn’t have a licence yet, so this fear was warranted. The only reason he had been allowed out of the house was because he convinced his parents that Halley was going to take him driving, practicing the road at night. When the front door shut, she went off to a party in her own car, and Patrick drove away, alone. It was a mutually beneficial excuse for the time being, and could be recycled.

Laurent was standing on the enormous staircase in the front lobby of the mansion as Patrick went in. He looked like a king, commanding his subjects. Patrick’s footsteps echoed in the giant marble lobby, and several video cameras stared down at him from the high, domed ceiling. The Laurent manor was like a museum or a palace. Everything was breathtaking, and you weren’t allowed to touch anything. Ulysses Laurent, of course, handled everything from the genuine ancient Egyptian artifacts in the study to the Rafael hanging in the dining room over the mantle, with utmost care and respect. He was an evil, heartless boy for sure, but he appreciated art and history.

“To the study, Patrick. We have things to discuss. Did you bring me my sugarless espresso?”

“I have it here.”

“Sugarless.”

“Yes. Sugarless.”

“Good. Did you bring the necessary equipment to fix my wall?”

The maid who was watering a potted Norfolk Island Pine dropped her watering can. “What happened to your wall Master Laurent? You know that your mother worked very hard on your room, I don’t think she would like it if anything happened to the decorations.” The water was pooling on the floor, and the girl looked like she was about to cry.

“Nothing happened to my wall, Lydia.” Laurent snapped at the poor girl, who couldn’t have been older than twenty. “And I’ll thank you to clean that water up before you trip in it and break your skinny little neck. Not that the house would suffer much, because you haven’t been doing a very good job of keeping us tidy. I’m beginning to wonder why I even had you flown over from Suffix in the first place.”

“I’m sorry sir.” Lydia ran to get a towel, and probably to cry quickly before returning to the scene of the spill. 

Laurent chuckled under his breath as she ran. “Servants these days. No respect.”

Patrick wanted to help Lydia clean up the puddle. He knew how she felt, always dropping things in the presence of such an unholy terror. Laurent just had that effect on people. “Are we going to the study?” Patrick asked, not wanting Laurent to be able to terrorize the maid again.

“In a moment. Lydia still needs to learn her lesson.” As if she had heard her name, Lydia returned at that moment with a large rag. She stooped down and began mopping up the purified water.

“I’m really sorry Master Laurent.” She said, wringing out her towel as she spoke. “I don’t know what came over me, I was just worried about what might have happened to your wall.”

“Nothing happened to my wall you silly girl!” Laurent stalked over to her and examined the plant that was no doubt wishing it could have some of the water on the floor. “I told you that already, didn’t I?”

“Yes sir. You did.”

“Then why, in the name of all things holy and unholy, do you persist in worrying about that when you could be worrying about useful things?”

“Because,” She stopped for a second and tried to reign in her tears. Her voice still shook as she spoke in a rush. “Because Michael told me that when he was straightening up your mother’s room he heard plaster falling in your room. And, well, he had to look to make sure nothing was wrong, and he saw a giant hole in your wall.” She took another deep breath and continued at the same fast pace. “And then, just now, you mentioned something about your friend here bringing equipment to fix your wall, and I really hope that it’s nothing permanent, because your mother really likes this house, sir.” She seemed to shrink a little bit when she talked, and concentrated on the cleaning more than was probably necessary.

Laurent was still absently breaking twigs on the Norfolk island pine when he spoke. “And I don’t suppose Michael asked permission to enter my room, did he?”

“No sir.” It then dawned on her what she had just said. “He didn’t but,”

“But what?” He turned away from the plant and took several steps forward. Laurent liked to look down on people when he yelled at them, and Lydia was only around five feet six inches. She trembled under his glare. “You just admitted that Michael entered my room without my express invitation, and now you are trying to excuse him?”

“I’m not trying to excuse him, I’m just trying to explain.” She was crying freely now. Patrick sat down on the thickly carpeted staircase. He hated it when Laurent did this. Laurent treated the servants like serfs on his land, as though he didn’t hire them himself. It was another example of how much the teenager liked to play king and dictator. Unfortunately for the real world, inside the Laurent manor, it was a dictatorship.

“There is nothing to explain!” He shouted, and ripped the towel out of her hand to throw it on the floor. “Don’t try to defend your dear Michael when he clearly broke one of the simpler rules of my house!” She tried to open her mouth and say something, but he continued. “I don’t care if you two are going to be married, or if you are pregnant with his baby, or if you two are together at all! I really don’t care! All I know is that he has disappointed me, and something needs to be done about this! Go get him!” She started to back into the kitchen slowly, like one condemned. “Be quick about it!” He bellowed, and then she turned and fled.

Patrick sat in silence, not wanting to draw attention to himself. Laurent was in a murderous mood, nearly literally. Michael, who was undoubtedly one of the cleaning crew, was going to be lost at sea in a raging hurricane. Did he know what he was in for? Patrick wondered.

Apparently he wasn’t. The muscular, sandy haired Scottish man strolled into the foyer looking around. “Lydia says ye wanted to see me, boss?” He asked when he caught sight of Laurent.

He didn’t respond, he just hurled the towel at Michael’s head. The heavily accented man caught it, it wouldn’t have been hard to catch, and looked at his employer strangely. 

“Why’re you throwin’ this at me?” He asked. “What did I do?”

Laurent couldn’t have glowered down at this man, Michael was to big, so he decided to use his second favorite tactic. The ‘Attorney Approach’ he liked to call it. It was a way to force the truth out of someone by leading them on, or sometimes just confusing them into admitting something they would rather not admit.

“Michael, were you cleaning up my mothers room today?” He asked, circling the Scot like a very hungry shark.

“I was, but yer mum asked me to do that. She said that ther’s nothin’ she hates more than comin’ home to a messy room, sir.”

“That may be true, I wouldn’t know.” Laurent said, but Patrick knew differently. Laurent liked to keep tabs on everything his mother told the servants. It was all part of his duty to the house, he said. “But what I want to know is if you noticed anything while cleaning up my mother’s room.”

“Yes,” Started Michael, but then he stopped himself. “Er, that is, I think I noticed something.” He bit his lip, hoping that this was a good answer. Patrick found himself biting his lip as well. He always rooted for the servants in these exchanges, because somebody needed to root for them.

“And what is it that you ‘think ye noticed’ up there?” Laurent imitated the Scottish accent perfectly.

“I heard what sounded like plaster falling.” Michael replied, fiddling with his garden gloves a bit. “And it was coming from your room. So I went in and took a look-about.”

“You went into my room, then.” Laurent had him now.

“Yes. I did. And I saw a hole in the wall.” Michael realized his mistake, and braced himself for the onslaught.

“You entered my room, without permission, and then told Lydia here, and who knows whom else, about a hole in my wall.”

“Yes, I did.” 

Laurent looked like he wanted to clap with glee, but instead he just stopped pacing and turned a perfectly serious face to the terrified servant. Acting was one of Laurent’s talents, but he never acted in plays, because it was too much of a time commitment. He went to plays on occasion, and loved to critique the styles of the leads. Now all the critiquing was paying off, and he didn’t look like he was having the time of his life terrifying the man in front of him.

“In that case, you can leave.” He said calmly, pointing to the door. “You have half an hour to pack up, and to call a cab to take you far, far away from here. If my mother is feeling generous when she gets home, she will send you the paycheck you still haven’t collected. I am certainly far too busy to do that right now.” 

Michael turned to leave and Lydia, who had been hiding behind the door that lead into the dining room, ran across the lobby floor to take his hand. She wasn’t crying anymore, now she just looked angry. The two of them walked out the front door to the servants quarters in the back of the estate.

Patrick watched them walk into the rain together, not moving from his seat on the stairs until he heard Laurent snap his fingers. “What are you staring at?” Laurent asked. “The wide open door that is letting the cold in?” Patrick had been around Laurent long enough to recognize the hint, and he ran over to shut it before the towel found itself wrapped around his head.

“To the study?” He asked Laurent.

“After you patch up the hole in my room.”


Rain had started to tap its fingers at the window in the study, where the two boys sat. Laurent was sitting in one of the leather armchairs. They were Laurent’s favorite color, dark red, almost like blood, but a little bit darker and browner. They looked really comfortable to Patrick, who was sitting in a straight backed chair at one of the reading desks nestled between the bookshelves, writing notes in a notebook as fast as he possibly could.

Laurent sipped Italian red wine as he dictated his plans to Patrick, who really wanted a glass of water. He didn’t ask though, he never asked for anything here. If something was absolutely necessary, he would ask one of the maids. They liked him here, he was in a similar state as them.

“Did you write that down?” Laurent asked. “I need several cardboard boxes, large enough to hold a stack of folding chairs stacked about three feet high, but not large enough to be mistaken for a refrigerator.”

“Why do you need boxes?” Patrick asked, and wrote it down. It was a very odd list of items. Cardboard boxes, three antique birdcages from the little shop at the harbor, an official looking stamp that read “fragile”, two pillows stuffed with goose down, and dragon’s blood ink.

“I need boxes for the same reason that I need all the other items on the list.” Laurent said, and refilled his wine glass. Laurent was only seventeen, but his mother didn’t mind him drinking wine. Wine was sophistication. 

“Why do you need all these items then?” He was taking a chance in asking, but sometimes Laurent liked to explain his evil plans. They made him feel smart, and delightfully cruel. This was because the plans were usually genius, and disgustingly cruel.

“I need them because some bitch at the pet shop had the audacity to sell three doves to Mrs. Corrant.”

“Mrs. Corrant the biology teacher?”

“Yes. And I imagine, and imagine here means I know for a fact, that she wants to have our class dissect them. I have no interest in dissecting a dove.” Laurent explained.

Patrick was confused. “You care about animal rights? Your sitting on a leather chair!”

Laurent chuckled. “I don’t personally care about animal rights, no. I do however have a rather rich acquaintance who does, and she would like to buy the birds from me for two thousand dollars.”

“Two thousand dollars for a dove? They must have cost sixteen dollars a piece at the pet shop!”

“Fourteen, actually, but that’s beside the point. The point is that she think’s it’s noble as a grave that I want to rescue the poor animals, and wants to fund more future rescues. Obviously there won’t be any future rescues unless I can find another good reason, but I can think of a few ways to use that money.” Laurent drained his wine glass and put it on a coaster, so it wouldn’t make a ring on the cherry wood end table.

The explanation made sense in an odd way, but it still didn’t clarify why Patrick had to get all of the items that Laurent had listed. “I see.” He said. “But why do we need the pillow, or the ink, or the boxes?”

“We need those because I am very smart, and I have a brilliant plan.” Laurent stretched and stood up. “I expect all these items by three o’clock tomorrow afternoon. Then we can put my plan into action.”

Patrick took this to be the end of the plotting, so he put the notebook into his coat pocket and walked out the study door. There was still a small puddle on the marble floor, and the towel was still where Michael had dropped it. Patrick hoped that the two of them were ok, and that they were a little bit happy that they had left. He almost wished he were Michael, who was now free in a way. Sometimes Patrick would imagine himself punching Laurent in his arrogant face and finding some good friends. It never happened though, because he wasn’t really brave. He just wished he were.
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It was a close call when he got home. The rain had gotten heavier, and Halley was waiting by the porch door, soaking wet. She hissed at Patrick when he got up next to her, “Where have you been? I was about to go in the house without you.” She pushed open the porch door and tried to shake some of the water out of her hair.

“Sorry.” Patrick mumbled, and hung up his coat. “I didn’t realize how late it was. I would have left.” He wouldn’t have left at all. It was never up to him when he left, where he went, how much trouble he was in. Still, apologizing sounded better than nothing at all.

“It’s ok I guess.” She hung up her coat next to his, and pulled a sweatshirt over her top. Some beer was spilled down her pink shirt.  “We just need a new excuse.”

“How was the party?” Patrick asked.

“It was ok.”

“Did you meet anyone who isn’t a complete asshole?”

“No.”

“Probably for the best.” Patrick hoped that Halley would forget about talking to Laurent for the time being, but he also didn’t particularly approve of any of the guys in the town. He also highly doubted that he would approve of anyone at her college. Least of all was Laurent.

His parents were watching TV when the two walked into the living room. A good thing, they might not notice how wet Halley was and ask questions. She went upstairs to shower and Patrick sat down next to his dad to watch the news.

An Asian woman was reading a breaking news bulletin for the local area. A helicopter camera showed a birds eye view of a three car crash. It looked pretty bad, and smoke was coming out in black plumes from the taxi in the middle of the mess.

“We have a team down there now, they can get us a first hand view of the wreckage.” The woman said, and the scene switched to the road where the crash had taken place. Heavy rain pelted against the video camera and a police man who looked slightly like Kevin Costner was speaking into a hand held radio. The camera zoomed in on his face.

“We’ve sent you the plate number, it should be coming your way any second now.”

A woman’s voice crackled from the radio. “We’ve got it. What the hell happened?”

“The taxi spun out of control in the rain and ran into the truck. The minivan couldn’t see through the windshield and crashed into the wreckage. It’s pretty bad down here, we got three casualties.” Said the police man, and he gestured for the camera to get away from him.

The camera moved to the cars, and focused on the taxi. It was grossly misshapen, and Patrick guessed that the passengers were the ones who had died. The back seats were crunched up against the windshield.

“Three people died in this accident.” The woman said, back in the studio. In the corner of the screen, live feed of the scene played. “A twelve year old who was in the passengers side of the minivan, and the two passengers of the taxi. On the little screen, video of the corpses came up. Patrick recognized two of them. Lydia and Michael. Lydia had giant purple bruises engulfing her face, and Michael was nearly unrecognizable.

He stood up, drawing his parents’ attention away from the screen for a second. “What’s wrong?” Patrick’s mother asked. “You look upset.”

“Nothing’s wrong mom.” He picked up his backpack and headed up the stairs. “I’m just gonna work on my homework for a while.”

“Ok honey.” She said and turned her
attention back to the television, where a news team member was talking to the taxi driver. “Come down when you’re done and we’ll have desert.” Patrick wasn’t hungry at all, but he nodded and walked up to his room. He was fuming. Lydia and Michael were dead, and it was all because of Laurent. True, he realized, it wasn’t completely because of Laurent, but Laurent was the one who terrorized them and then forced them to race away in the rain. Plus, he needed a reason to be angry at Laurent. He could deal with some things, like the random evil plans, or the skipping of class, but Patrick hated the way Laurent treated people under him. And now two of his victims were dead.

Patrick kicked his bed with all of his might. It didn’t budge. He kicked it harder and harder, sending pieces of plaster from the ceiling falling down on his head. He imagined it was Laurent that he was kicking, and he kicked it with all the pent up anger he had in him. More plaster fell. He was reared back for another one when Halley suddenly opened his door, wrapped in a towel.

“What are you doing in here?” She asked him. Then she saw the plaster all around him on the floor. “Were you kicking things?”

“Umm...yeah.” Patrick sheepishly sat down on his bed. “Sorry.”

“Look, I don’t care, but you had better get rid of all that before mom sees it.” Halley shook her head and went back into the bathroom. Patrick just lay back on the bed. He was exhausted. He half heartedly kicked some of the larger plaster chunks under his bed and then just put his rug over the rest of them. It was good enough for the time being. Then, without even undressing, he crawled into bed and fell asleep immediately. 


Laurent showed up for English class that day, one of the classes that he shared with Patrick. The teacher wasn’t there yet, so people mingled and quietly chatted. Laurent stood over Patrick’s desk.

“When you come to the manor tonight, I want you to go to the little Italian restaurant downtown and get a take out order of the rice.”

“Why?” Patrick asked. He hated getting food. It made him want to eat it, but he was never offered any.

“Because I told you to. Don’t disappoint me.” Laurent returned to his desk and took out a book. It was written in French, which he was fluent in. The boarding school that he had attended in England until high school had started the children on French in the first grade. Nearly all of them were fluent by the time they graduated on to high school. Laurent had been fluent by the sixth grade.

The teacher came in four minutes late. Patrick knew that Laurent would be adding this to the spreadsheet where he monitored every teacher’s activities. Laurent liked to stay on top of everything. Sure enough, he pulled a pocket sized notebook out of his blazer pocket and made a short note. Mr. Benaroch noticed this and knew exactly what the note was, but he didn’t do anything about it. Not even the teachers did anything about Laurent. 

“Today, class, I would like to introduce a new student.” Mr. Benaroch began, and then the whispers started. Girls wondered if it was going to be a guy. Guys wanted it to be a girl. Everyone wanted to talk to whomever it was first. Laurent was the only one who didn’t seem to be the least bit interested in the new addition. He continued to read his book, grey eyes critical.

It was a girl. She walked in to the room looking more confident than most new students at the Academy of Glouster. She looked at every student when she entered, and her gaze rested for more than a second on Laurent. He could definitely feel her gaze on him, but he chose to keep on reading. An uninviting smile was the only sign that showed he even recognized that a new girl had come into their class.

One boy who usually had reasonable luck with the girls stood up to offer her his seat. He sat to the right hand side of Laurent. “Don’t offer that!” His best friend said quickly. “She’ll start thinking.” He glanced significantly over at Laurent, and the seat offer-er seemed to get the hint. He didn’t get a chance to sit back down though, when the girl was by his side.

“Are you offering me your seat?” She asked, a genial smile splayed across her face. She was very pretty, Patrick noticed. Prettier, even, than the girl who he had talked to the day before. Her hair was shoulder length, dark brown, and curly. She had normal brown eyes, but they were rimmed with heavy black eyeliner, something not common at the academy. The boy seemed unable to say no, so he nodded, and bowed slightly. She nodded back, still smiling, and slid into the chair behind the desk. She was taller than Patrick, so he had to shift to the side a bit in order to see the board. Patrick had been sitting in the back of the class since day one. It gave everyone else a chance to answer the questions asked by the teacher before he had to.

“You smell good.” The girl said to Laurent. Everyone was silent, including Mr. Benaroch. You could have cut the tension with a knife. All eyes were on the girl and Laurent, waiting for a reaction. He glanced up from his book slowly, and looked the girl in the eyes.

“Do I?” His tone suggested a challenge.

She shrugged, and took out a notebook. “You do.” Then she quickly whipped around and stuck out her hand, formally. “I’m Helen.” She said to only Laurent. No one else in the room was of importance to her, no one else needed to know her name. Only Laurent. To Patrick’s surprise, he took the hand and shook it, business like.

“Welcome, Helen. My name is Laurent.” He dropped her hand and turned back to his book. “I am quite sure that you will find this class enlightening to an excruciating degree.”

She turned to her notebook, and was trying to hide her grin. “I’m sure I will.”


Patrick waited in line at the Italian restaurant for forty minutes before he got to the register. Take out was popular in the afternoons The cashier looked extremely tired and his hair stuck up at odd angles.

“What do you want?” He asked Laurent, prepping the walkie talkie for an order.

“Can I have one large order of the Italian rice to go please?”

The man started. “One order of Italian...” He stopped and looked at Patrick strangely.

“What?” Asked Patrick.

“No one eats Italian rice kid.” He said. “Not even Italians. I only know two people who eat Italian rice, and I hope to god that you aren’t getting this for one of them.”

“That depends.” Patrick glanced at his watch. Time was ticking by very quickly. He would be late in three minutes. “Who is it that eats Italian rice?”

The guy lowered his voice and looked around before he spoke. “The Laurents.” He whispered. “Do you know them? The mother is beautiful, she’s rich too. Her husband got killed by the mob back in England.” It was a story everyone in the town knew. “The boy was born on New Year’s Day, the first baby born that year. He goes to the Academy of Glouster. Do you know the place?”

“Yeah I go there.” Patrick knew the story, but he wanted to hear what everyone else thought they knew. Gossip wasn’t always carried around by the most trustworthy of hands.

“Well then, you must know Ulysses Laurent. He’s brilliant, an absolute genius. Some say that he’s already been accepted into college. I wouldn’t know, I avoid the family at all costs, but their servants come in here sometimes to pick up food.” Patrick involuntarily thought of Lydia and Michael.

“I know Laurent.” Said Patrick, and out of habit corrected the man. “And it’s just Laurent.”

“What was that, kid?”

“Don’t call him Ulysses. It’s just Laurent.”

The guy gave Patrick a sad nod. “You run with him don’t you?”

Patrick shrugged. “I wouldn’t call it running with him. I do work for him, in a way, and supposedly I’m his best friend.”

“And that’s why you are buying him rice.”

“That’s why I’m buying him rice.” 

The man put the order of rice through, adding “And make it quickly, this boy has places to be!” to the order. It came within moments, and Patrick practically raced to Laurents house. He nearly crashed into the gate, but screeched to a halt just in time.

“Let me in Arthur!” He screamed, and the gates swung open. Patrick peeled into the drive way, grabbed the rice, and jogged up to the front door, being careful not to spill even one grain of rice on the perfectly manicured lawn.

“Slow down there, killer,” A gardener said to Patrick as he banged on the door. “Don’t kill yourself.”

Laurent wasn’t alone. He was in the dining room with someone else, but her back was to Patrick so he couldn’t tell who it was. It wasn’t Laurent’s mother, that was for sure. Laurent’s mother had blonde hair, like her son. This woman had brown curly hair. The two of them were drinking wine but not eating anything. Patrick got some plates, dumped the rice on them, and walked into the dining room ready to serve it to Laurent and his guest.

“I do plan to go down in history.” Laurent was explaining. “If I don’t go down in history, my life has been wasted. Everyone who would remember me would die eventually, and then nothing I had done would mean anything.” His fingers were tapping a rhythm on the table when Patrick set down the rice.

“I think that some people don’t deserve going down in History.” The girl said. Patrick looked at her carefully and recognized her as Helen, the new girl in his English class. He was shocked to see her at the Laurent Manor. No one was ever invited there unless they were close friends with a Laurent, if the were a servant, or if they were there for business. Patrick was never sure which category he fit into.

“You don’t?” Laurent asked, still ignoring Patrick’s appearance.

“No.” She said. “If someone goes down in history simply for being related to a famous person, or because they used seduction to gain power, they don’t deserve a mention.”

Laurent smiled slightly and raised his glass to her. “That may be true, but some people have to use seduction in order to reach a place of power. Once they do, they can make a real impact.” Helen said nothing so he continued. “Haven’t you heard of the Empress Theodora? She was a circus performer, but used her sensuality to seduce the Emperor Justinian the first. Then, she stopped him from fleeing in a time of crises.”

“I hadn’t known about her before.” Helen said. She hung on to his every word.

“She also instituted divorce for women and abortion.” He said. “Women these days should thank her, but no, they barely even know her name.” He put down the wine glass, and picked up a fork to eat the rice in front of him. “Patrick?” He said, looking at his plate oddly.

“Yes?”

“Where is the parsley?”

“The parsley?” Shit. He had forgotten.

“Yes. The parsley. Did you forget the parsley?”

“I did.”

“And did you also forget all of the supplies that I asked you to get?”

Shit! He had forgotten the supplies too! “I did.” Patrick expected Laurent to throw the rice, or break his fingers, or use the word ‘disappointed’ again. But he didn’t. He just took a bite of rice, chewed daintily, and smacked his lips.

“Not bad. They at least used spices this time. The last order of rice you bought me was practically the white rice from that awful Chinese restaurant.” He gestured for Helen to take a bite too. She did. She didn’t get to take a second bite though, because Laurent stood up suddenly and declared, “We will all go to get the supplies for my Dead Dove project!”

“Dead Dove project?” Patrick and Helen asked simultaneously. 

“I’ll explain later. Follow me.”

The two befuddled teenagers followed him to the stables, where all of the cars were kept. Laurent stood in front of a limo with tinted windows. “Have you ever driven a limousine before?” He asked Patrick.

“No.”

“Well, I suppose there is a first time for everything.” Laurent climbed into the passenger’s seat. “Get in, Helen.”

Patrick was slightly unnerved. “Uh, Laurent? You do know that I don’t have a license, right?”

“I know.”

Patrick was glad for the tinted windows as he crawled down the highway. Maybe the passers by would think that the passengers were important people who didn’t allow their driver to drive over twenty miles an hour. He certainly wasn’t about to go any faster, because he had never driven anything nearly as long and hard to handle as a limo before. It was causing him to have heart palpitations every time sirens were heard in the distance. Laurent wasn’t enjoying the slow pace, and every once in a while he would plunge his foot down on the burgundy plush carpeting as though he were slamming on the gas. Patrick was not amused, but what could he do about it? He could speed up and have a heart attack, or he could slow down and endure the nearly visible wrath of the passenger. Laurent, of course, had a license, but he preferred not to drive. Driving was for servants and for dupes.

“Where are we going?” Helen asked. Patrick had forgotten that she was in the back of the car, she had been silently watching Laurent.

“We are going to three different places.” Laurent said, speaking to the windshield and assuming that the two of them would hear him. Patrick was glad that Helen had been the one who asked the question, because he didn’t know where he was driving to either. All he was heading for was the Harbor. “First, we will stop at the antique store and buy three birdcages. I know that they are there, I specifically told Kathy to hold them for me.” Laurent was on a first name basis with all the shopkeepers in the Harbor, because he and his mother were their best customers. “Then, we will go to the stationary store for dragon’s blood ink and a ‘fragile’ stamp. If all goes well, we will next be on our way to the home goods department store for pillows.” Patrick was glad that he had brought his list, or he wouldn’t have remembered all this. Laurent was rattling things of at the speed of light, purposefully making his accent more prominent. Patrick wasn’t sure if this was to annoy him or to impress Helen, or both. She certainly was impressed. “Then, to the post office for boxes, and that should be all.”

Unless Laurent had filled her in during their wine and chatting session, Patrick very much doubted that Helen knew what was going on. She didn’t seem to care either. It was obvious that she had fallen for Laurent, but she seemed different than the other girls who blushed bright pink every time he spoke in their general vicinity. She had the guts to converse with him, even to disagree with him, as she had at the Manor. They were talking about that again.

“There were other people who got to fortune in unconventional ways.” Laurent was saying. “King Arthur pulled a sword out of a rock for heaven’s sake, and although he was fictional he was a great king.”

Helen was grinning madly. It made Patrick sick, how happy she was in the presence of the very bane of his existence. “You have me convinced.” She said. “Who knows, I might have to resort to seduction to get the position of power that I want.” Laurent smiled, a strange sight when he was actually sincere about it. He usually sneered, or smiled coldly. Now a small grin of satisfaction was on his face, but it disappeared within seconds.

“Turn here!” He shouted suddenly, pointing down an alley that Patrick had never been in. It certainly didn’t look like a place Laurent would frequent. Dead plants stuck out of a few open windows in the apartments above the dingy shops. Some signs in dire need of a fresh coat of paint swung from the sea breeze, their lettering almost unreadable. A starving cat sat in front of an empty store, yawning in the only patch of sun on the street. Puddles from the previous night’s rain had dead worms floating in them, and when the three teenagers stepped out of the limo, which Patrick had parked at Laurent’s command, Patrick stepped in one. He shook his foot trying to dislodge a bloated worm, and saw the cat standing by him.

“Hey there.” He said to it. Patrick would never tell anyone, especially not Laurent, but he was a sucker for animals. “I’ll bet you’re pretty hungry right now aren’t you?” The cat meowed. “I’m not surprised.” He replied. The limo had a refrigerator, and there happened to be some individually wrapped American cheese slices inside. Laurent and Helen were looking in the window of a used book shop, so Patrick stealthily took two slices out, unwrapped them, and put them on a clean section of pavement. The cat was halfway through the first one by the time Patrick stood up.

“What are you doing?” Lawrence asked. He was leaning against the store front, with his arms crossed in front of him.

“Um, feeding a cat?”

Laurent walked over and looked at the cat. “Where did you get the cheese?” He asked. Patrick guessed that he was talking to him, since Laurent rarely spoke to animals. 

“The limo.”

“That’s my cheese, and I would rather you not feed my cheese to animals that don’t deserve it.” Laurent said.

“Why doesn’t the cat deserve it?”

“Because the fact that it doesn’t have a home means that it won’t take the initiative to get itself a job. Cats that lazy don’t deserve handouts from people like me.” Laurent may have been confusing the cat with a homeless person, Patrick thought. “Take that cheese away from the dirty thing right this instant.”

“But what would I do with it?”

“Throw it away! Do you think I want you to put cheese that has been on cement and licked by a cat back into the refrigerator?”

“No.” Patrick said. He didn’t pick up the cheese, but tried to reason with Laurent instead. “But, if I’m just going to throw it away, can’t the cat have it?”

Laurent scoffed. “No! If we let this cat think that it can have free cheese from me, what do you think it will tell it’s friends? That free cheese comes out of limos, that’s what! And then we will have to drive home with howling cats scampering after us, and that would give me a headache.” He rubbed his temples as though he already had a headache. “So take that cheese away from it right now and throw it away!” 

Patrick reached down as slowly as was humanly possible. The cat was scarfing it down, and maybe, he hoped, it would finish before he got a chance to pick it up. Laurent was watching him intently, but he ignored the uncomfortable heat of the unwavering gaze and slowed his arm to a glacial pace.

“Patrick...” Laurent sounded like a father scolding his son. “We are wasting time.” Patrick ignored him, willing the cat with his mind to eat faster. He felt horrible for the scraggly thing, and he hated Laurent for taking food away from something so pathetic.

He fell down, all of a sudden, and
scraped his hand on the concrete. Helen had pushed him over, and snatched the cheese away from the cat, who made a half hearted swipe at her hand. She ran over to a trash can and dumped the final scrap of cheese into it. Laurence applauded quietly in approval. Helen smiled a proud smile and returned to his side. She then whispered something in his ear that made him purse his pale lips together for a moment. Both of their eyes were trained on Patrick, who nursed his wounded hand as well as his injured pride.

Patrick walked behind the two of them as they made their way to the shops. He had never even given a second thought to this alleyway before, but the shops here seemed to have exactly what Laurent required for his mysterious Dead Dove project. It was a bit of a hike to the Post Office, and Helena, who was carrying almost as much stuff as Patrick, lagged behind slightly. Her need to impress Laurent seemed to have dwindled somewhat and Patrick thought he heard her mutter under her breath some things that she would never tell Laurent. He decided to wait for her to catch up, and maybe talk to her himself without the beacon of Laurent around to be a distraction.

“How do you do it?” She gasped between gasps of air. She was being a bit over dramatic, he decided, since he was carrying even more than she was and he wasn’t short of breath yet. Then again, he had lots of practice in carrying. 

“How do I do what? Deal with him?” He pointed with his chin at the mastermind of the project, who was swaggering several yards away, not carrying anything but the list.

“No!” Her eyes widened, black rimmed spheres of pure admiration and she almost dropped one of the birdcages. “I mean how do you carry all this stuff without getting tired?”

“I’m pretty used to it.” He shrugged, and had to balance one of the pillows on his pinky, keeping it from falling into a puddle. “I carry a lot for Laurent. I also cook for him, and clean for him, give excuses for his skipping class, spring him out of any trouble, fill out his paperwork, forge signatures for him, and secure hallways when there isn’t legal stuff going on.” He had meant for this to sound noble and brave, but it sounded like he was whining. “It’s all part of the Laurent ‘friendship’ package.”

Helen didn’t seem phased. “Well, if you don’t like it, why don’t you just give up?”

What a thing to suggest! As though he had never asked himself that a thousand times before. “You don’t know Laurent.” He said, which was what he said to everyone who suggested this seemingly simple escape. “He is the sole power of the school, of the town, of everything I belong to. It’s invisible, mostly, but you will notice it when you have been here longer. Teachers don’t argue with him, and students do whatever he says, and they all envy me for being so close to him.”

“You want that envy?” She asked. “If that were the case, you wouldn’t mind all the work.”

“It’s not the work I mind.” He tried to defend himself, “and I don’t want that envy. I mind the way he treats people. Not just me, everyone. He treats them like they are below him, and they go along with it, because they are below him! They believe him, and so they become his subjects! He always have everything under control, and no one defies him, because even if they technically gain control he still has the mental upper hand.” They were very far behind Laurent now, and he didn’t even notice, which gave Patrick the courage to talk more fervently.  

“You didn’t know me before Laurent came here! I was totally alone, people didn’t even know I existed. I liked this for a while, being invisible can be comfortable, but after a while I started to go crazy because of it! I was miserable, no one knew me, no one tried! And then, in walks this imposing figure of an English boy who immediately has people flocking to him right and left. And he didn’t want any of them around him. He scorned them all, the boys who wanted to be his right hand man, and the girls who wanted to be his girlfriend, or his whore, or his bitch, or anything! He didn’t want any of them. I didn’t want to be his friend. I just sat in the back of the room like usual. He came strolling up to me and said in the British accent that no one could resist, ‘I think that you and I will end up being friends’.”

Helen had stopped and sat down on a bench to rearrange her stack of items, and Patrick sat down next to her. They didn’t stand up again, she was just sitting and listening as he regaled her with the beginning of Laurent’s rule.

“From that day on, I was always with him. He wasn’t like the best friend I never had, but it was something, and I hadn’t had anyone to be around since my best friend in sixth grade moved away. So I put up with it all, and people were jealous of me for a while, because I was in the position anyone would kill for. After a while though, I started to realize that normal friends don’t break the law for their dominant leader, while he sits comfortably in his manor being waited on by servants. I didn’t leave though, and I don’t leave now, because as bad as this is I don’t ever want to go back to being invisible. Not to mention, if I betray Laurent in any way, he can and will totally destroy me. He has that power, and has absolutely no qualms about using it.”

Laurent was out of sight now, which worried his two companions, so they got up from the bench to walk in the direction of the post office. Patrick had never told anyone about how he felt about the situation, and he was already starting to regret it. Helen was obviously completely devoted to becoming Laurent’s friend, and none of what he had told her had sunk in. Sure, she had heard it, and she probably pitied him for being so weak, but she still hadn’t changed her mind on pursuing him.

Something had been bothering Helen, because she pushed her lips together very tightly while she tried to come up with a good way to phrase her question. Patrick waited for it, and finally she took a deep breath and asked. “So, he has never had a girlfriend?”

He laughed. “If you could call it that! He has dated many girls, his first ‘girlfriend’ was in seventh grade, I think. But he dumped her when she asked if he had any feelings for her at all. He didn’t. He has gone out with a few girls at the school, but never for more than a few weeks. They just annoy him after a while, and once they have done all the work they need to for him, he just dumps them with their broken little hearts and goes back to his study to plan more devious schemes.”

Helen looked slightly upset, but she
didn’t press the matter. They had reached the post office, and Laurent was sitting on a bench in front of it, drumming a rhythm on the armrest. His eyes were closed, and his lips moved slightly, forming his thoughts into words. Helen looked a little unnerved, but Patrick just shook his head and put a finger to his lips. Laurent knew they were there, his eyebrows raised slightly when they stopped, but he just ignored them and continued to concentrate on whatever scene was playing in his head. 

Helen couldn’t take it any more. “What are you thinking about?” She asked him. He opened one eye, saw the two of them nearly tipping over trying to balance their boxes, opened the other eye and stood up. 

“I was trying to remember if any other places sell boxes, because apparently the Post Office closes at four o’clock in the afternoon on Fridays.” He pointed to a sign on the door, that proclaimed this in cheerful block print letters. “It is now four thirty, and since you two have been taking your own sweet time chatting about my insufficiencies, I have not been able to get boxes.” Helen gasped quietly when he predicted what they had been talking about. Patrick wanted to tell her that Laurent was always suspicious, that he didn’t really know what they had been talking about, but he decided not to risk it.

Since Laurent couldn’t think of any place to acquire boxes off the top of his highly educated head, the three of them had to walk all around town in search of a place with boxes the right size and shape. It took a while, and a few arguments began and finished in the time it took to finally find a suitable place. It was the bookshop right near the limo, which was a blessing, because Helen and Patrick were able to put their stuff in the car before going into the shabby store. 

A bell overhead tinkled when they walked in, and a middle aged man who was hunched over a notebook looked up. He nodded to them, and returned to his writing. There was no one else in the shop, which was probably a good thing, since it wasn’t large enough to hold more than five people at once. Rows and rows of bookshelves were crammed together so tightly that there was barely space for one person to squeeze through. Books were stacked up to the ceiling, in the bookshelves and also just in piles on the floor. Many of these books were still in the boxes they were delivered in, free for anyone to paw through in order to find the sought after story.

Laurent was breathing a little heavily. He had asthma, and the air in the shop was so thick with dust that it was visible. Patrick had sneezed when he first walked in, but he did like the smell. The smell of old books was very comforting to him, it reminded him of middle school, when he would go to the library with Kathy, his best friend, and try to find story books that they had never read before. Helen squeezed through the bookshelves to the back wall, where more books were. She returned a few moments later shaking her head, although neither boy knew what she had been looking for back there.

“Are you kids looking for something in particular?” The man behind the desk asked after a few moments. He stood up in order to stretch, and his chair creaked when he did so. Everything in the bookstore seemed to be old, which was fitting, for it only sold books that had been published before the current decade.

Laurent looked at Patrick, indicating that he was to answer. “We need some boxes, if you have them. Around this size.” He showed the man with his hands.

“You need boxes?” The man asked, looking slightly surprised.

“Yeah.”

“Why do you need boxes?”

Laurent interrupted, agitated at the questions. “So he can climb in there!” He said angrily. “Can you please just give us some boxes?”

The man laughed, a hollow, gravelly noise, and said, “He wouldn’t fit in a box.” He saw Laurent’s face then, and stopped laughing. I might have something that could do you.” He said, and went into the back room. Laurent’s foot tapped on the floor until he returned, with three boxes close to the size that Patrick had indicated. “Will these work?” He asked.

“That will work fine.” Patrick said. “Do we need to pay for them?”

“No. Don’t worry about it.” The man said. “I got cigars in them. I didn’t order three sets though.”

“Maybe it was buy one get two free.” Helen suggested. She seemed to be anxious to leave.

“Not free. I was charged for all of them. A nice set. I got them for my attorney, he’s going to chef school!” The man seemed proud of this, so Patrick just smiled, thanked the man for his help, and left with Laurent. Helen had returned to the back of the room again, but Laurent had started coughing rather heavily, so the two boys decided to wait outside for her.

She returned in two or so minutes, stuffing a brown paper bag deep into her large purse. Laurent tried to see what it was, but she zipped the purse up quickly so as to hide whatever was inside. This was odd, but Patrick didn’t ask. They got into the car and Patrick drove, once again, back to the Manor.

They went up to Patrick’s work room once they arrived, and spread all of the items they had bought out on the floor. Patrick pulled the chalkboard out, and set it up. He was sure that Laurent would want to draw diagrams for his plan, he always did. It made him feel like some great war general or something, planning everything out.

Indeed, Laurent got a pointer and some chalk and went up to the blackboard. He cleared his throat loudly, and Helen and Patrick sat on the floor to watch and listen to whatever information he was going to disclose to them. Laurent wrote the order of business on the far left hand side of the board, a series of short, easy to follow steps. When he was done, he turned around to face them and held the pointer at the ready.

“Number one!” He declared, slapping the pointer against the first written step. “We need to unpack all of our stuff, and make sure that we have everything.” They did so, and found that they had bought everything they needed. Unfortunately, one of the bottles of dragon’s blood ink had broken in it’s packaging, and the ink had soaked into the cotton it was wrapped into.

“One’s broken.” Helen declared sadly, lifting it out of the box it came in. “They packed it so well, and it still broke.” She threw it in the trash can, where not doubt it broke more, drenching all of the discarded plans in the trash.

“I’m sure it’s broken because someone kicked it.” Laurent said. “No one has any respect these days.” He pulled the other two bottles of ink out of their protective cotton, and luckily none of them had been damaged in any way. The rest of the goods were intact, and so they progressed on to step two.

“Our next step is the briefing.” Laurent declared. “I doubt that either of you had enough initiative to figure out what the project is from the name, so I will explain it quickly to you.” He took a deep breath, but didn’t speak. Patrick didn’t know what he was waiting for, so he just sat perfectly still. “Perhaps you two might think about writing this down.” Laurent said, waving his pointer at them. “I’m only saying this once, and if we mess up, we don’t have any extra ink or birdcages. I will have to cut one of your throats to supply the necessary blood color, and use the other one’s rib cage as the bird cage if anything goes wrong.”

--------------------------

Four hours later, they were still working. Oddly enough, Patrick was almost enjoying himself. True, it required a lot of concentration to coat the birdcage in blood red ink and stick the feathers strategically to the wet bars, but there was a strange sense of comradery in the room. For once, Laurent was sharing in the workload, and although he wasn’t exactly considering himself to be in the same class as Helen and Patrick, he wasn’t spending too much time ordering them around either. Helen, although she was a brand new addition, picked up the pattern of work pretty easily, and she had finally stopped watching Laurent and gotten to work on her own birdcage. Darkness had already rolled in, and one of the servants had carried up dinner to the workroom. Since Laurent hadn’t had time to specify, she had guessed chicken pot pie. It was a good guess, since Laurent didn’t complain, and she even brought up two (slightly smaller) bowls for both Helen and Patrick. When Laurent didn’t forbid them to eat it, they both dug in. It was excellent, and even Laurent remarked that it was “acceptable.”

When Patrick was finished, he stood up to admire his handiwork. It was disgustingly realistic, the final product. If he hadn’t spent five hours working on it, Patrick would have said that a dove had just been murdered in the fancy cage. Laurent had already finished, and of course his looked even more realistic, but that wasn’t a problem. Helen finished within half an hour of Patrick, and by eight forty five, they were put in the boxes and labeled.

“Can I do the stamps?” Helen had asked. Laurent permitted it, so she covered the surface of the official looking rubber stamp with more sticky dragon’s blood ink and stamped each of the boxes. The three boxes, now addressed and emblazoned with the word FRAGILE in what looked like blood, but was really just a natural ink, were given to a servant to deliver to the Post Office in the morning. The plan was set into motion, and would, with luck, be fully carried out by the end of the day on Monday.


All was calm when Patrick got to school. This caused worry to rise up in his stomach in waves. If the plan went bad, it meant that Laurent would be angry. And he would blame Patrick and Helen. Helen wasn’t quite as worried, Patrick saw, because she didn’t look like she was about to throw up. In fact, she was sitting next to Laurent on one of the school’s red comfortable couches, taking down some dictations that Laurent was reading off of his laptop computer. Patrick watched them from the doorway, where he couldn’t hear. She laughed at something he said, and he smiled. Laurent had been smiling a lot lately, Patrick noticed. He wasn’t sure if they were real smiles or just cleverly concealed smirks, but whatever they were they were becoming more and more frequent. And they had started when Helen arrived.

The waves of worry stopped crashing against Patrick’s stomach walls and were replaced with the smog of repressed anger. It got thicker and thicker until he was afraid that it would come out of his mouth and into the open. The sight of Laurent and Helen enjoying each other’s company was too much for him. In his mind, she shouldn’t even like him. Laurent was a cruel, evil, bad person at heart. Who likes that? Why would she choose that over someone who was nice and actually cared about her? Wallowing in self pity, Patrick walked over to them, desperate to prove that he was a better person. That never happened.

“There you are!” Laurent stood up the second Patrick arrived and shut his computer in order to stow it in his practical bag. Helen stood up to, and gave Laurent the notebook back. “We have been waiting for you for quite some time. I was afraid that school was going to start without you.” Patrick looked around the main entrance. There were only two other people there. And one was the admissions director, who had to be there early. 

“What were you guys doing?” The question was directed at Helen, but Laurent answered.

“We were finalizing the next step of the Dead Dove project. Well, actually, I was finalizing it. Helen was just writing it down, so that you and she could refresh your collective memory of the plan.” He gave the notebook to Patrick. Helen’s handwriting was long and elegant, and the letters were dark, as though she pushed too hard on the pen as she wrote.

“It’s going to be perfectly thrilling!” She said, bouncing up and down on her toes. “I can’t wait!”

“Well, you are going to have to wait.” Laurent said, and put a hand on her shoulder to stop the gleeful bouncing. “Stop that. You are making me ill.” Patrick was feeling sicker, but he didn’t mention that.

“What if the plan doesn’t work?” He asked tentatively. Laurent raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips. Patrick backtracked, being careful not to insult the idea. “What I mean to say is, what if something goes wrong with the deliveries, or if Mrs. Corrant doesn’t open the boxes. What if the custodian opens the boxes and just chucks it when he looks inside?”

Laurent shook his head like a grownup would shake their head at a mislead child. “Mrs. Corrant will open the boxes.” He said. “I am sure of it. I addressed them specifically to her. I even labeled them appropriately. She won’t open them until class begins, because she believes that there is dry ice enclosing each dead dove.” Helen and Patrick just stared at him. He rolled his eyes and continued. “They’re in dry ice to keep them from decomposing! We wouldn’t be able to dissect disease ridden corpses of unrecognizable birds! And she won’t open the boxes until class so that they can be as well preserved as possible.”

Patrick was still confused. “But there aren’t any birds in the boxes.” He said. “So why would she wait?”

Laurent looked at him with pure disgust. Then he punched him in the stomach. It hurt, a lot. Patrick was doubled over in pain, and trying to keep himself from throwing up all over the main entrance. Laurent stood over him with the same disgusted expression. Helen had put her hands up to her mouth when the actual punching happened, but then she looked down at Patrick, trying to keep her face as blank as possible. No one made a move to help him up, so he just collapsed onto the floor for a few moments, until he could stand upright again.

When he hauled himself onto the couch, Laurent finally felt the time right to explain the reasoning behind the hit. “Weren’t you listening to me last night?” He asked. His voice was quiet, so that no one could hear but the two of them. Even Helen couldn’t hear Laurent, although she was surreptitiously trying to inch closer to the two of them. A glare from him stopped her in her tracks.

“Yes.” Patrick replied, catching his breath.

“Then you would have known for a very long time that there weren’t ice or birds in the boxes. Am I correct?”

“Yes.”

“And if you knew that, don’t you think that I would have realized that by now? Or did you think that maybe this little detail had slipped by me?” His voice got even quieter. “Maybe you thought that I was imagining the birds and the dry ice, and you didn’t feel like mentioning it to me until now.”

“That’s not it!” Patrick said. “I didn’t think that!”

“Then why, Patrick, did you just say that?”

“Because I still don’t know what is going on! Your explanation last night only cleared up part of the plan.”

Laurent backed off a little bit, becoming bored with the conversation. “That’s exactly what I have just been explaining to Helen here.” He said, and she ran forward, brandishing the notebook that Patrick had dropped. “If you had read what we gave you, instead of formulating your own uninformed opinions, you wouldn’t have forced me to hit you.”

Patrick looked at the notebook in his hand. “This is the rest of the plan for today?” He asked, amazed that they would wait until the day of execution to finish the plot. Helen nodded.

More people were milling about the room now, so Laurent picked up his bags and started to leave. “I’m going to class!” He declared. “Read that in your math class today. We have science second period and I would hate for you to be unprepared to do your part.” With that, he left, leaving Patrick and Helen standing by the couch.

“Are you ok?” Helen asked, sitting next to Patrick on the couch.

“No.” Patrick wasn’t in the mood to under exaggerate. “I was just hit in the stomach. I’m not ok.”

“I’m sorry.” She said. “That was kind of unnecessary of him.”

“Kind of unnecessary?” Patrick couldn’t believe he had just heard her correctly. “Yeah, I would say that it was pretty damn unnecessary of him! And thank you ever so much for standing up for me as I couldn’t breathe on the floor!” He stood up
to go.

“Wait!” Helen said. He turned around, still fuming. “You forgot the notebook.” She handed it to him, and he laughed and shook his head. “What?” She asked.

“Nothing. It’s just that you are turning into him.”

“I’m turning into Laurent?” She asked in disbelief.

“Yes! Did you not notice? You have only been here for a few days and already you are becoming more and more desensitized to everything! Apologies are completely out of your vocabulary by now You barely even notice his sarcasm, and you’ll do anything to impress him!”

“Who are you to talk?” She snapped back. “Why should I stand up for you when you won’t even stand up for yourself? It isn’t my job to defend you!” It looked like she was about to cry, but she held herself together still. “All I want is for Laurent to think I did something right, and to understand that I can be a good accomplice, but you keep on making him angry, and then he gets angry at me too! I’m a better friend to him than you are!” It had never occurred to Patrick that Helen might have been jealous of him.

“Helen.” He said, determined that he wouldn’t be the one who made her cry today. “I’m sorry, but you don’t get it. Laurent doesn’t have friends. He doesn’t. He hates absolutely everyone. He may seem friendly to you right now, you may even think that you have a chance with him, but you don’t. You’ve only known him for a few days. Soon, you’ll see that he is really a jerk, and he is going to rip your heart out.”

Helen bit her lip and stopped at the corridor to her classroom. “Maybe you don’t get it.” She said. “I don’t care if he rips my heart out. I’m fine with just being around him. And I don’t mind dating jerks, as long as they aren’t complete wimps.” She ran to her classroom, and Laurent walked slowly to math class, alone.


Throughout the entire math class, Patrick was getting more and more nervous. It was probable that the whole class was able to hear his pounding heart. He was going to wait until the end of class to read the plan, so that he could learn the material before they were tested the next day, but eventually he just gave up. He wasn’t paying attention to the lesson anyway. After attempting to calm his heart rate down, he opened the notebook on his lap and read.

Biology class is second period, so all players in the job should arrive early. If this involves leaving class a little bit before hand, do it. No excuses for arriving late. If someone can’t get out of class early, they must run as fast as possible to the science wing. No one can get there before the three who are to execute the plan. 

Helen had written this as though it were a mission passed down to agents by an unknown employer, not a little money making scheme designed by a couple of teenagers. Patrick would have wondered about her sanity, but he didn’t have time. The end of class was nearing, and he still didn’t know what he was supposed to do.

Class will begin with Mrs. Corrant opening the boxes. Do not give yourself away by not acting surprised at the bloody scene. Whatever the rest of the class is doing, do it. Try to blend in. If all goes well, and it should unless a person messes up, Mrs. Corrant will be extremely confused and insulted. She expects the birds to be dead before they are sent, but not like this. She should be unaware that Laurent has called the pet store already under the guise of the school and demanded that the birds be delivered alive.  Upon seeing the cages she will call the superintendent, who is at the school today, down to the classroom, in order to decide what is to be done. The classroom will be chaos, and at this time Laurent and Helen will sneak out the back door to pick up the actual live doves, which will have been delivered to the back door by the post office. This has been seen to by Laurent. Laurent and Helen will carry these doves down to the technology department, which is not in use today, to deliver them to Alice, who will be arriving at eleven o’clock with the money. 

Patrick had the fleeting hope that this was the end of his job. Although he had another twinge of jealousy that Laurent would be the one who worked with Helen, he also wanted as little responsibility in this as possible. His hopes were squelched, though, as he read on.

In the meantime, Patrick will cause a diversion for as long as it takes for Helen and Laurent to return to the room. It is imperative that their disappearance is not noticed by a single person. If anyone notices, there will be a problem. This diversion can be anything, as long as it is not obvious what he is doing. When Helen and Laurent return, they will give Patrick the signal to stop. By the time Mrs. Corrant returns with the superintendent, the transaction will be over with, the money will be in hand, and the class will have to be dismissed early. This will give Helen and Patrick time to stash the money in Laurent’s locker on their way to French class.

Patrick’s heart beat a little faster than it already was. He was going to do the final stage with Helen! True, it was only because they were in the same French class, but it still gave him a little bit of hope. He checked the clock, only ten minutes left in class, and hid the notebook in his backpack. He spent the next five minutes attempting to formulate a decent diversion in his head, but was having difficulty. With five minutes left in the class, he raised his hand.

“Yes, Patrick?” The teacher said when he turned away from what he was writing on the board. “Do you have a question on the lesson?”

“No, not about the lesson.”

“Is it painfully important?”

“Yes. Class is over, and you hadn’t wrapped up the lesson yet. I was just wondering if you realized this, since you seemed to be ready to start a new topic.” Patrick looked at his classmates, hoping that they would play along. Some of them looked at him and nodded conspiratorially, but others looked at the clock in confusion along with the teacher.

“Is this true?” The teacher asked, looking around at the class. “Is the period really over?”

A chorus of ‘yes’ came from all corners, but one boy, who always clamored for the approval of teachers raised his hand.

“Class doesn’t end for another five minutes, sir.” He said, giving the entire class a supercilious smile. “I believe that the rest of my peers were trying to get out early.” Communal groans ensued, and the satisfied boy smiled into his math notes. The teacher gave him an approving smile and turned a stern eye to the rest of the class.

“Sorry to disappoint.” He said, making it clear that he wasn’t sorry at all. He then continued with the lesson until the last possible second, even though none of the class was paying attention by then. Everyone was throwing things at the snitch, who had to keep on ducking, and couldn’t concentrate either.


Patrick arrived at the door out of breath, with one minute to spare. Helen and Laurent were already there, and Laurent gave him a sharp look. “I hope you spent this extra time planning a diversion.” He reprimanded Patrick, who just nodded as he tried to catch his breath. 

Helen was checking her watch every few seconds, waiting for the class ahead of them to be let out. She finally seemed to be as nervous as Patrick had been all day. “Here we go!” She whispered to him as they walked into the classroom. Her anger seemed to have faded, and Patrick forgave her. This was too critical a time for resentment. 

The majority of the class took their regular seats without much interest. To them, this was just another day in biology class. Friends chatted with one another, people asked each other frantically for a piece of gum, and some people texted friends who were in other classes. One boy turned to Laurent and asked if he could copy his homework. Laurent declined. Of the entire class, only three people’s hearts were beating faster than normal. These three people waited with bated breath for the teacher to return and begin the lesson.

When Mrs. Corrant entered the class, she seemed excited. Patrick, Laurent, and Helen did their best to conceal their nerves and look bored, like the rest of the class. Helen and Patrick failed miserably at this, but Mrs. Corrant’s own enthusiasm about the lesson she had planned clouded her judgement, and she thought nothing of this. 

“I have a special treat for you all today!” She declared as she wrote the date on the blackboard. The class didn’t even blink. They were used to their teacher’s love for the subject, and they doubted very much that they would find the lesson exciting at all. She didn’t notice their lack of enthusiasm, though, because she had brought three large boxes out of her closet. Patrick held his breath, and he could see that Helen had stopped her fidgeting to sit perfectly still at her desk. Laurent’s posture became even straighter as they watched their teacher put their boxes, marked as fragile, on the table.

“Ugh.” A girl who sat near the table said when she saw the boxes. “Is that stamped in blood?”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Mrs. Corrant chided her. “Of course it isn’t. It’s just stamped in red ink is all.” The girl nodded but didn’t seem completely convinced. She moved her chair over to the left a little bit. Mrs. Corrant ignored this and addressed the rest of the class. “Would anyone care to venture a guess as to what we are doing today?”

Laurent raised his hand, sending the waves that Patrick had been working so hard to calm crashing. He knew that if Laurent felt that this was the time to demonstrate his superior imagining skills, there would be hell to pay. Patrick wanted to do something to stop him from speaking, but short of surgery, nothing could stop Laurent from talking when he wanted to. 

“Could it be, possibly, that we are going to make stained glass creations to represent our place in the world?” He asked, keeping a perfectly straight face. The whole class just looked at him, not sure what to do. Mrs. Corrant started to giggle, thinking that it was meant to be a good humored joke, and a few other girls who giggled at anything Lawrence said started as well. Soon everyone was in a generally more genial mood, everyone except for Laurent, Helen, and Patrick. 

“No, no, that’s not it at all!” Mrs. Corrant said once she had gained control of herself. “What would inspire you to ask something like that, Ulysses?”

“Laurent!”  Patrick correct immediately from his place.

“It says fragile on the box.” Laurent explained, getting impatient. “And since stained glass was the first fragile thing that I thought of. But I have interrupted the class, and that must be trying on your nerves. Please, continue, Mrs. Corrant.”

“You are right, of course, Laurent.” She replied and then addressed the class once again. “I am sorry to report that we will not be creating stained glass, but we will be doing something else terribly exciting!” She started to open one of the boxes as she spoke. “Today we will be dissecting doves to learn about the anatomy of birds!” She said with a flourish and looked into the box.

A moment of stunned silence followed. The class was hushed at seeing their teacher’s face, which had gotten pale as a ghost in a matter of nanoseconds. Her hands shook slightly as she lifted the bloody cage out of the box. It was Laurent’s, the most gruesome and effective job of the three cages. She placed it down on the table and looked at the class.

The girls at the front screamed first, running to the back of the room. Chaos ensued, just as Laurent had predicted. The boys stood up to get a closer look, and then tried to calm down the girls, who refused to be calmed down. Mrs. Corrant looked like she was about to faint, but instead she tried her best to quiet the room. No one knew what exactly was going on, but people could recognize what looked like a bird killing when they saw one.

“What is going on here?” Asked the senior science teacher who taught in the next room. “Why is everyone screaming? We are trying to take a test!” He saw the birdcage then, and the state of the class, and stopped.

“Someone sent me this,” Mrs. Corrant gestured weakly to the birdcage, “instead of the doves that the class was going to dissect.” 

The other teacher told the distressed woman to follow him, and they left to get the superintendent. At least, Patrick assumed that they were going to get him. That was what was written in the plan, and he was the man to get in a crisis. When they were gone, Laurent and Helen stood up, and went to the back door. Helen looked back at Patrick and smiled reassuringly before slipping out the back with Laurent. No one noticed anything at all, they were too caught up in their confusion and disgust. Patrick hoped that this would continue for a long time, so that he wouldn’t have to put his feeble distraction into play, but he was let down by his class. Within ten minutes, the shouting stopped, and the superintendent walked in.

He was a giant of a man, nearly seven feet tall, with a broad chest and an imposing aura that seemed to be made of pure steel. His dark suit did little to make him seem like a negotiator and only succeeded in giving him the look like a secret agent or something equally as sinister. The sight of him ducking through the door caused everyone to run suddenly to their desks and sit with their backs straight. Every eye in the room was in the front of the room, where the birdcages sat. Patrick sat still as well, holding his breath for Laurent and Helen to slip in unnoticed before he had to do something about their absence. 

“What happened here?” The superintendent boomed, picking up one of the birdcages and holding it up to examine. “Does anyone know who sent these.” No one offered up any information, for nearly everyone was as in the dark as he was. Patrick copied the faces of those around him. “No one?” The superintendent asked, and he began to survey the faces. 

“Is everyone here today?” He asked, and this was the moment Patrick had been dreading. Soon, the man would see that Laurent and Helen’s desks were empty, and questioning would follow. Patrick took a deep breath, stood up, and puked.

The actual act of throwing up hadn’t been hard for him. He had felt sick all day, and the punch in the stomach hadn’t helped all together that much. What had really bothered him was the fact that now, everyone in the room, and soon everyone in the whole school, would think that he threw up at the sight of blood. That wasn’t exactly true. Sure, he hated the sight of blood as much as anyone, but spending nearly a year around Laurent had toughened him up a bit. Laurent rarely resorted to real violence, but he watched a lot of war movies in order to perfect his techniques as strategist. When he did resort to violence, he was very effective, and there were often stitches in the future of whoever had upset him. Plus, it wasn’t even real blood that coated the bars on the cage, although it certainly looked convincing enough. As he wiped his mouth, Patrick was pleased to see that he had gotten it all mostly in the trash can that was placed strategically by his desk. He hoped that one upchuck would be enough to stall the class, because he really didn’t feel like humiliating himself to the point of exile.

Everyone just stared at Patrick as he sat back up. The superintendent had stopped counting heads, and the two teachers looked up from the boxes where they were putting the birdcages back. When what had just happened registered, the class began to become unruly again. Students covered their mouths and noses, and shuffled off to the opposite corner of the room. The whispers started, and Patrick felt his face heat up. This was not going to be easy to explain away.

“Someone get this boy to the nurse!” The teacher from the next class over said, but Patrick stood up on his own. He couldn’t go to the nurse’s office! If he was there, he wouldn’t be able to put the money in Laurent’s locker. Helen didn’t know the combination and how to avoid the strategic booby traps that were set up. If he left her to do that alone, she would be blind for a few hours, and that wouldn’t be good.

“Um. I really don’t need to go to the nurse.” Patrick offered up feebly. “It’s just, I don’t like the sight of blood.” The guys laughed, but a girl raised her hand.

“I don’t like the sight of blood either!” She said, elbowing her boyfriend for laughing. “And seeing him puke has made me feel sick.” Other students nodded in agreement, some of them groaning for good measure. Mrs. Corrant had no idea of what to do with a classroom of sick students.

“I have an idea!” Laurent said, standing up from his chair. Patrick nearly jumped at seeing him. Helen was there too, standing with the rest of the girls with a large wad of what looked like hundred dollar bills stuffed into her pocket. She saw Patrick motioning that they were visible, and she pulled her shirt over what was probably two thousand dollars in cash.

“What is your idea, Ulysses, um Laurent?” The superintendent asked. He caught himself, saving Patrick from correcting him. 

“Since there obviously should be a cleaning crew here, maybe the class should not be present.” He turned around while he talked, encouraging everyone to continue acting sick and upset. “Many of these children look like they need to visit the nurse or take a walk to shake off the shock of what they have just seen.” A general groan of agreement by all sounded. Laurent continued. “I also believe that there is nothing we can learn today, since Mrs. Corrant is clearly shaken by what she has seen, and the cleaning crew can get the job done more efficiently if there are not hysterical students getting in their way. There really is not point in us remaining here, we may as well go and cool down before our next classes.”

There was communal consent by the teachers. Laurent’s idea made perfect sense, if you thought of it that way. In ten minutes, the classroom was empty, the birdcages were thrown away, and a bored looking old man with a multi-purpose cleaning machine strapped to his back was cleaning up the blood and Patrick’s stomach contents.

“How did it go?” Patrick asked Helen as they stopped by Laurent’s locker on their way to the Language corridor. He disengaged the traps, entered the correct combination and swung the door open. There wasn’t much inside the locker, just a few books that Laurent didn’t need, a paper bag that was waiting for the money, and a can of pepper spray taped to the top of it.

“Ok.” Helen said. Her face was
flushed and she was grinning like a mad woman, though, so Patrick assumed that everything had gone down better than ‘ok.’ She didn’t make a move to explain things further, and he didn’t want to make her angry again, so they just strolled to French together, proud of a job well done.

--------------------------------
Days passed by without anything of consequence happening, which Patrick loved. He managed to do some of the homework that he owed, and actually went to the movies with his family. It was strange, he knew, that Laurent hadn’t thought of anything to order him to do, but he was enjoying his freedom far too much to bring it up when they were at school. It wasn’t until after a week of undisturbed days that Patrick learned why Laurent hadn’t been thinking of new cruel things to do. Oddly enough, he wasn’t all happy about it.


Laurent, Helen, and Patrick were sitting in the abandoned technology lab on a Tuesday, eating their lunch, when a cell phone rang. Cell phones were strictly forbidden in the school, since the teachers viewed them as a distraction. Because of this, most of the students in the school kept their phones on vibrate or silent. Only one person in the school could get away with his phone ringing in class, so Patrick naturally assumed that it was Laurent who would be answering the ring.

“Hey!” It wasn’t Laurent who fished the phone out of a bag, but Helen. Patrick was shocked to see that the phone she was talking on was Laurents. “What are you doing here?” Helen asked, sounding a little pissed. Her face, which had been friendly when she answered the phone, became stony and cold. It looked a bit like Laurent’s favorite expression, only she showed more emotion than him. “Well, I can’t come see you! I’m in school, and we can’t just waltz out of class to chat with people here.” Her voice had taken on a tone of slight hostility.

Patrick turned to Laurent and pointed to the phone that Helen was glaring at. “Where did she get that?” He mouthed.

Laurent just pointed to himself as an answer, and resumed watching Helen, who was getting into a heated argument with the person on the other line. He seemed to be figuring out the entire conversation just be listening to one end of it.

“I don’t care if you like living like that!” Helen yelled into the phone, holding it slightly away from her face. “I don’t want to! And I don’t even want to be around you any more. Just leave me alone, I never want to see you again.” She paused to let the person try to change her mind. “No. Just leave. I can do better.” Her eyes flickered over to Laurent for just a split second. Both boys saw. “Goodbye.” She said icily, and snapped the phone shut.

“Who was that?” Patrick asked, and both Laurent and Helen looked at him as though he was as dumb as a post. He had a pretty good guess as to who it was, but he just liked to be sure.

“What an idiot.” Helen declared, putting the phone back into her backpack.

“Are you officially no longer an item?” Laurent asked, looking thoroughly amused at the exchange that had just taken place on what had used to be his cell phone.

Helen looked triumphant, and stood up on the desk she had been standing on as though it were a stage. “Ladies and gentlemen, the loser on the phone and I are officially broken apart for ever and ever. Never shall we come close to one another again!” 

Laurent clapped for her, and Patrick followed his lead. Helen bowed several times and then leapt off of the desk. “I guess this means that I am able to pursue anyone I choose.” She said, trying to keep her obvious intent out of her voice. Laurent, if he had realized what she meant, graciously pretended that he was clueless. Patrick smiled tightly at Helen, who returned the gesture. 

“Well children, I would love to celebrate with you, but I have pressing matters to attend to.” Laurent said, and stood up to leave. He left his trash on the desk, knowing that Patrick would clean it up before he left. “Enjoy your free block.”

“We will!” Helen said brightly, and Patrick nodded. Laurent left, going to class or somewhere else where pressing matters like to wait impatiently for people.

“Are you going to go after Laurent
now?” Patrick asked Helen as he threw out Laurent’s trash. He wasn’t in a very good mood for several reasons, but he wasn’t planning on letting Helen know that. Even if he could never be involved with her, he still thought of her as his other best friend, and didn’t want to dampen her spirits.

She smiled sheepishly and nodded. “If I can, I will.” She opened up her bag and brought out a book. “Do you remember when we went to the bookshop to get the boxes for the Dead Dove project?” She asked.

Patrick did remember.

“You know how I came out a little later than Laurent and you? I was buying this.” She handed him the book. It was an old book, but it was in reasonably good condition. Red letters on the front proclaimed that it was a book about the Empress Theodora. It wasn’t too thick, not nearly as thick as most books that document the entire history of an Empress. He opened it to a random page and saw an illustration of a woman in the circus speaking to a man so decked out that he had to have been the Emperor.

“Why wouldn’t you let us see what it was?” It didn’t seem like the kind of book one would hide in embarrassment. 

“Because that was the day that he told me about her!” Helen seemed to think that this was important somehow. When she saw that he wasn’t convinced, she continued. “If he knew that I was only learning about her because he told me to, I would sound like I would do anything to make him like me.” 

Patrick snorted, earning himself a glare of death. He didn’t understand girls sometimes. They try their hardest to make a guy notice them, but they can’t admit it. Maybe this was why he always had such bad luck.

It turned out that Helen had reasonably astounded Laurent with her knowledge of the subject throughout the next week, and he had begun to confide in her about things that no one knew. Laurent’s mother didn’t know some of the things that Helen knew, and neither did Patrick.

Patrick felt a twinge of jealousy. Of course Helen would be spending every moment of her life trying her hardest to impress the only person in the world who refused to be impressed by anything. Patrick was impressed easily, but no one ever tried. He scowled slightly, and Helen noticed.

“What’s up with the moping?” She asked, flipping idly through the book. “You aren’t jealous that Laurent likes me more than he likes you are you?” She sat upright in order to face him properly. “Because as far as I can tell, you just want to be rid of Laurent. Now he has me, so you can be free!”

Patrick was insulted and angry. “He doesn’t like you more than he likes me! Haven’t you been listening to a word I said? He doesn’t care about anyone! Not me, not his mother, especially not you!” He began to pace, looking at Helen for too long made him nervous and confused. “I stick around because it’s better than nothing! I don’t suppose you would know about that, though, with all of your drop-out boyfriends and your wannabe evil plans!”

Helen looked like she was going to cry again. Patrick should have felt bad, but he didn’t. “You think you know everything.” She said, pushing her hair in front of her face to mask her grief. “You don’t. You don’t know what happened during our part of the Dead Dove project because I didn’t tell you. And I didn’t tell you because I knew that this would happen.” She took a deep breath and pushed more hair to her face until Patrick couldn’t even see her eyes. “Laurent said that he thought I would be a good partner in his enterprises. I’m his girlfriend now, he said that once I broke up with David that I would be his girlfriend.”

Patrick was shocked, but he finally felt bad for her. “You believe him?” He shook his head sadly. “Talk to any girl here, most of them have gone out with him at one time or another. Ask them if he liked a single one of them. He didn’t. I know, he complained non stop to me. You are just lying to yourself if you think that he would like you any more than he likes his servants.”

Helen stood up quickly and headed to the door. “I’m leaving.” She said. “Laurent and I are starting on a bigger project tonight.”

“I didn’t know about it.” Said Patrick as he got ready to leave as well. There was no use in sitting in an empty room.

“That’s because you aren’t included in the plan.” With that Helen left the room, leaving Patrick completely alone.


Neither Helen nor Laurent came to school for the next week. Patrick waited for them every day in the main entrance, trying to convince himself that they were both off on two totally unrelated vacations. He knew that this wasn’t true, however, because in ten days they both came back at the same time, whispering together. They went to the red couch that no one else ever sat at. It had been Laurent’s couch ever since he was admitted into the school. The seniors who usually had claim of all the furniture had given it up without a fight.

Patrick followed them and sat on the chair across from Laurent. He waited for the two of them to notice him. If they did, they were hiding it very well indeed. Helen was typing on Laurent’s lap top. Laurent never let anyone touch that lap top, it had all of his secret plans on it. Patrick had never been able to use it, and here was Helen, typing away at the speed of light. Laurent was reading what she wrote.

“No, no. Don’t add him to the list!” Laurent said, reaching over Helen to push the backspace button multiple times. “He isn’t nearly smart enough to follow our orders. He would botch the whole thing up and I would have to kill him.” Helen nodded as though she understood. 

Patrick tried to keep the angry smog down. He hated this. “What are you doing?” He asked. Two sets of eyes rested on him. They weren’t happy eyes. He shrunk back into the chair a little bit. Helen moved her focus back to the computer, but Laurent kept on glaring at Patrick. The room seemed to grow colder.

“We are working on a new project.” Laurent said, his voice matching the frigid temperature of his glare. “It is going to require most of our time and concentration, so I am sure that we would appreciate not being interrupted during the delicate stage of plotting that we are in now.” The computer recaptured his full attention, and Patrick felt like they had forgotten his existence once again.

“What is the project about?” Patrick asked after giving them a few minutes of peace. The suspense was killing him. 

Laurent leapt up suddenly and shouted. Patrick fell out of the chair without even being pushed. Laurent never shouted. He got angry all the time, and when he was angry he got quiet. Not a single person in the school had ever seen him yell. “Believe me Patrick! You do not want to know what this project is about!” He then realized that he was standing up and screaming, so he got himself back under control and sat back down next to Helen. She had shut the computer in surprise when Laurent stood up, and now she was just watching him, holding her breath.

“Woah.” Patrick whispered, and got up off the floor. He didn’t return to the chair he was sitting in, instead he stayed standing. Standing was good, because he decided that he would maybe have to run for his life very soon.

Laurent spoke again, shattering the stunned silence in the room. His voice had gone quiet and deadly again. “Helen and I are working on a project that will change the school.” He said, eyes daring Patrick to say a word. “It is dangerous, volatile, and extremely detailed, which is why you have found yourself in the dark. The two of us have decided that you are no longer a beneficial part of our little business, so you have been cut out for your own safety.” He smiled. Patrick was still frozen. “You should be glad that you don’t know what we are doing, you know. If you did know, we would have to make you forget, and forgetting can often be a painful process.”


So Patrick was alone again, abandoned, invisible. He went to classes every day, did his homework, ate dinner, and went to sleep. His parents didn’t really notice anything strange going on, how could they? He hadn’t been sociable for nearly a year, always being out of the house following Laurent’s orders. He hadn’t told them what had happened. They didn’t know about Laurent, or Helen, or anyone. Patrick never told anyone about them.

Halley was the only one in the world who noticed a change in Patrick. She walked into his room one day and sat down on the bed. This was a rare occurrence, so he looked up from the History homework he had been doing to listen to whatever it was she was planning to say.

“Are you a zombie?” She asked, unwrapping a chocolate truffle. She popped it into her mouth and chewed, waiting for a reply.

“Am I a what?” Patrick would have laughed if she had given him any reason to think that she was joking.

“A zombie.” She saw his expression
and finally decided to make the question more clear. “I’m not asking you if you are the an animated corpse, I think we would have noticed.” She ate another truffle. “I’m just wondering why all the life seems to have been sucked out of you. You walk around with your eyes glazed over and go through the motions of living.”

Patrick sighed. This was not a conversation he would have liked to be having. Especially not with Halley. She was nice to him, usually, and didn’t need to be bothered with his problems. He gave in though, the pressure of not talking to anyone had been too much. “What would you do if, hypothetically, your only two friends decided that you were no longer a valuable asset in their lives and left you, metaphorically speaking, abandoned on the side of the road?”

“Did someone leave you abandoned on the side of the road?” Her eyebrows raised up so high that they were nearly lost in her hair.

“No. That was a metaphor.” Patrick took one of the truffles out of the bag and ate one himself. Mint chocolate. Laurent’s favorite. He spat it out into a tissue and threw it away.

“Seriously, you want to know what I would do?” When he nodded, Halley shrugged and said, “I would get back at them. Find something that would ruin them and make them miserable. It’s only fair, especially if they abandoned you for no good reason.” She looked at him suspiciously for a second. “Why, did your friends abandon you? I didn’t even know that you had any friends.”

Patrick made up a lame excuse, and she left. He returned to his History homework, mind buzzing with ideas. When he fell asleep, his dreams were of mutiny on the high seas. A tall, blonde haired pirate captain attempted to make him walk the plank, but at the last moment, Patrick drew a sword and in a heroic duel stabbed the captain. The crew cheered for him as he raised the bloody cutlass in victory. The captains beautiful first mate cheered the loudest, and tears of joy rolled down her face as she looked at the dead man by her feet. It was the first happy dream Patrick had been subject to in months, and he smiled in his sleep. The smile ran away though, when a sea monster crashed up from the sea, roaring, and swallowed the ship whole. As Patrick and the rest of the crew were swallowed, he thought he heard cruel, familiar laughter coming from the monster’s throat. The dead captain had disappeared the moment the monster surfaced.


It took three days for Patrick to work up the courage to confront Laurent again. He wasn’t afraid of what Laurent would do to him, he could pretty much guess what the result of a confrontation would be. He was afraid of the decision that he would make after they spoke, or didn’t speak. When he saw Laurent whispering to Helen as they passed by the wall outside the cafeteria, where he sat to eat lunch now that the technology lab was no longer an option, he decided to get up. Neither Helen nor Laurent noticed, they were too engrossed in their secret conversation. 

Patrick walked a few feet behind them, wishing that a hole would open up in the pavement and swallow the two of them. Of course, they would probably find a way to take over the underworld, and reduce the demons who waited hungrily for them to simpering slaves. That was just the sort of thing that would happen. Laurent never seemed to run out of luck.

“Hang on half a second.” Laurent said to Helen, and they stopped with their backs still to Patrick.

“What’s the matter?” Helen wasn’t quite as good of an actor as Laurent, and Patrick could tell that they both knew he was there. This was just a little play they wanted to put on. He detected a hint of reluctance in Helen’s voice, as though she felt a little bit bad about everything that happened.

“I do believe that someone is following us, imagining that we are falling through a chasm into the underworld, where we will be tortured for our evil deeds for all eternity.” Laurent declared, dramatically spinning around to face Patrick. He adopted a superior expression and said, “Ah, yes. I had a feeling that it would be you. Come to beg us to let you back in? It won’t work.”

Patrick really wished that Laurent didn’t have a psychology tutor. His college level abilities were what he used to predict people’s thoughts, and it was annoying how often he was right. Helen seemed to have gotten over her initial surprise at hearing Laurent’s accurate predictions, for she didn’t even turn around.

“What do you want?” Laurent asked, the traces of grandeur erased from his voice. He sounded tired and impatient. Impatience was one of his specialties, but fatigue was rarely shown if Laurent could help it. And he usually could help it. Whatever he was working on was obviously taking a huge toll on him. But no doubt Helen was doing everything she possibly could to help him out and to make him happy. Laurent was never happy.

“I don’t want to come back.” Patrick said, his voice sounding stronger than he felt. “I just want you to be honest with her.” He pointed to Helen.

“What?” Helen mouthed. She looked taken aback. “What are you talking about?” She asked louder. Her voice shook badly, and her face alternated between white and pink in a matter of seconds.

“She’s right.” Laurent said. “What are you talking about? Do you not think that I am not being sufficiently honest with your darling Helen, to whom you would devote your very life?” The superior look returned when he saw Patrick’s expression. “Don’t be so shocked. Did you think that we didn’t know how much you liked her? We aren’t blind you know. At least, I’m not.” He looked at Helen with this afterthought, but she didn’t notice. She was still looking at Patrick with an indescribable expression.

“This has nothing to do with it!” Patrick protested, inadvertently admitting the truth. Laurent laughed triumphantly at this, and Helen glared at both of them. It was hard to tell who she was angrier with. “All I am saying is, don’t lead her on. She thinks that you actually have feelings like a normal human being.” It was the first time Patrick had ever said anything remotely sarcastic to the King of Sarcasm himself. It would have made him proud, if he wasn’t standing in a pool of his own sweat.

If someone who didn’t know Laurent as well as Patrick did had passed by at that moment, he might have thought that Laurent was insulted. But Laurent was very rarely insulted, and he never cared about how he was perceived by people his own age. “I would never lead anyone on!” He said, and winked at Patrick as though they were still partners in crime. “Helen knows that!”

She nodded, and said, “I know that you are trying to help, Patrick. But give up.” Laurent put his arm around her. It was a strange sight. “This works for us. And it would work better if you would just leave us, and anything we are doing, alone.”

“But what are you doing?” Patrick cried in desperation. “The lack of bragging itself is frightening me to death! Since when haven’t you been proud of a project that you were working on!”

“I told you once, and it is a huge inconvenience for me to tell you again.” Laurent said, the ruler addressing the surf who wanted to rebel. “This is a project that is going to change the way the school is run. It is very detailed, and rather dangerous, and I would suggest that you not try to get in the way of my work, or you may find yourself one of the first people to leave.” He turned coldly away and walked to the door of the cafeteria. “I’ll meet you in the designated place, Helen.” He said.

When he left, Helen looked a little bit sad. “Why are you insisting on getting yourself in trouble?” She asked Patrick. “Promise that you won’t do anything to make him angry!”

“I can’t do that Helen.” He was sad too now, but more determined than anything. “Your new thing sounds dangerous, and Laurent certainly wont take the blame if something goes wrong. Believe, me, I know about this! You will be in deep shit if something doesn’t go exactly as planned, and he won’t do anything to help you.”

“Why are you so worried?” She asked suspiciously.

Patrick didn’t want to say anything more, but he wanted to protect Helen more than he cared about his own needs. “The school will find out, somehow. If they don’t find out on their own, I have to tell them. Laurent is really taking his tyranny a little bit too far. Gaining control of the entire school is too much. He’s only seventeen for god’s sake! What would you do?”

“I would keep my mouth shut and pray that he doesn’t know that you were even thinking of betraying him!” Helen hissed, stepping forward until her face was only a few inches from his. She looked like a viper, angry and volatile. It was more than a little bit frightening. “Tell me that you aren’t going to do that!” She whispered. “Say it!”

The verdict had arrived in the court of Patrick’s mind. The little judge Patrick, with his powdered wig and pale white face stood up to read it, and the entire audience held it’s breath. The jury clearly hadn’t agreed unanimously at first, since several of the little Patricks glowered and muttered under their breath. One of them, the one who believed in self preservation, had to be bribed into agreeing with the few Patricks who believed in the preservation of everyone else in the world. There was complete silence as the little piece of paper was unfolded, and Judge Patrick read out in a clear voice. “We will tell the headmaster!” Half the crowd cheered. The other half slumped down, sure that this decision would be the downfall of everything. The defendant, who wanted to not say anything and ensure his survival, hit the little table in front of him angrily. The prosecution lawyer Patrick was happy, but also a little nervous. It was a morally right decision, but also a slightly suicidal one.

“No.” Said Patrick, once the trial scene in his head faded away. “I can’t do that.” He backed away from her, not looking in her eyes, afraid of what he might see. When he was almost to the door she screamed something at him, but he couldn’t make it out.

The headmaster wasn’t in that day, which was just another dollop of bad luck added to the delicious mixture that was Patrick’s life. Lunch was over, and he went to French class. Helen wouldn’t talk to him or look at him the entire period, and by the time school was over, Patrick felt like he had made a bad decision. He had believed, at the time of the actual decision making, that Helen would see things his way and not tell Laurent what he had said. Now he thought that maybe he had over estimated her sense of moral responsibility. She was probably telling Laurent exactly what was going to happen right now. Patrick leaned back in his bus seat and looked out the window, trying to keep the panic down.
-------------------------------


Patrick left two hours early for school the next day. He had told his parents that he had an extra help session to go to, and that a friend would be picking him up. In actuality, he wanted to catch the headmaster and superintendent before school began. If he got to them before Laurent did, he was sure that everything would go well. The superintendent would be in that day, Patrick had learned from the secretary, and he was always suspicious of Laurent. He never voiced his suspicions, though, because no one would have believed him. If Patrick told him that all of the incidents that had never been solved were because of Laurent, the giant man would have a field day, and hopefully expel Laurent.

It was still partially dark as Patrick walked down the road. Only a few cars passed him, and the world was so quiet that Patrick could practically hear his thoughts out loud. When he got to the center of town, things were a little bit busier, and he was glad of the distractions. People opened up their shops, and a truck delivered food and milk to the convenience store. Patrick stopped to grab a bagel, he had been too on edge to eat at home. He payed and walked out the door.

“Are you Patrick?” Asked a guy with a beanie and ripped jeans. He was leaning against the fake brick wall, where there weren’t any windows. He looked to be around nineteen, but could have easily been seventeen or twenty five. It was hard to tell.

“Yes.” Said Patrick, waving his hand around. He had burned the tip of his finger on the bagel, which had been practically burned to a crisp.

“Laurent has a message for you.” The guy said. He pulled a semi automatic pistol out of his coat and shot Patrick twice in the chest.


Patrick would have expected that dying would be a lot louder. The silencer on the gun must have worked, because he didn’t even realize he had been shot at until he felt the bullets pierce his chest and crash through his lungs and ribs. It hurt quite a lot, but he was so shocked that the true fact of the matter, he was dying, never really registered in his mind until it was too late. In his head, the Patrick who had wanted to keep his mouth shut crowed a final “Told you so!” Before everything went away.


The funeral was a larger affair than anyone would have expected. Maybe it was just because no one in the school had been shot before, or maybe it was because there just weren’t enough murders in the town, but there were many people there who Patrick’s family members didn’t even recognize. Everyone was polite and appropriately sad, but none of them had known Patrick all together that well. 

“Why did we come again?” Asked Helen. She was sadder than she would have let on, but her face betrayed nothing. She was like a statue, dressed all in black. “Why would we want to come and intrude on this when we both know that it’s our fault?”

“Because I had to see that it was really Patrick who Rickie shot. That guys a good killer, but he isn’t the brightest bulb in the drawer.”

Patrick’s mother had been shaking hands with people for nearly an hour, trying her hardest not to cry. There were only two people left in the line before she could cry on her own. The last two were teenagers, who she assumed were from Patrick’s school.

“I really am sorry.” The curly haired girl with black eyeliner said to Patrick’s mother at the burial. Her hand was cold when the woman shook it. “I feel worse than anyone could possibly imagine.”

“Me too, dear.” Said the anguished mother. Her voice sounded dead. “Me too.”

“My condolences as well, Mrs. Anderson.” A tall, blonde boy said. He shook her hand firmly. “This loss must be almost too horrible for you to bear.”

“It is.” She chocked out, and covered her face in her hands. The two teenagers respectfully left, leaving her with her husband and daughter to cry. They walked to a gnarled ash tree that was in a different part of the cemetery, where they could watch the actual burial without having to cry quietly like the other people there.

“I guess you’re right, as always.” Helen said, and she leaned against the tree to put her head on his shoulder. He didn’t push her away, but he didn’t move to accommodate her at all either. “How long do
we have until we can go on with our plan?”

Laurent had dropped his sorrowful act and was now as cruel and calculating as ever. “Best give the school a day or two to pretend that they are grieving before we launch this on them.” He said, pulling blades of grass out of the dirt absentmindedly. “I’m not a complete monster, you know.”

To the gravedigger who was passing by, this remark almost sounded true.