HELPER12 by Jack Blaine (latest ebook reader .TXT) 📗

We eat in silence for a few minutes.  Then Thomas raises his glass.

“A toast.”

“To what?”  I raise my glass, too.

“To us trusting each other?”  He looks a question at me.

“Can we?”  I watch him to see what his answer will be.

“We can.”

We click our glasses together.

“You know, that is a two-way risk,’ he says.

“I still don’t see how.”

“The person who tipped the boys off to Gregory’s storage room tryst was a Maintenance Helper.  I found out he’d been spying on Greg and Rob for weeks.  Once he’d had enough thrills, he turned them into the school authorities.”

“But I thought you said that school boys found them?”

“They did.  After the school authorities told them where to look.”  Thomas narrows his eyes.  “I guess they wanted to be certain that the punishment was befitting what they saw as the crime.  And they couldn’t do more than expel Greg and Rob.”

I think about that.  It doesn’t surprise me a bit.  I think about the Director, and how his eyes took on a certain look when he was threatening me; it was a look of anticipation, of pleasure.  He liked the idea of hurting me.  I imagine the school Director wearing the same look.

“Why did they expel you?”

“How do you know I got expelled?”

“The help gossips.”  I grin.

He grins back.  But then he looks serious.

“I ruined every one of them.  Every boy that touched Greg or Rob.  They weren’t hard to ruin—cheaters and liars, the whole bunch.  I made sure they all got exposed as what they were.  Because that school takes poor behavior very seriously, if it’s directed at them.  So cheating on exams, running rackets for contraband in the dorms, all of that sort of thing is frowned upon.

“All but one of them had some racket going on.  The last one, the ringleader from what I was told when I checked into it, seemed to be clean, except for his hatred of kinks.  Him, I ended up having to fight.  And fighting is against the school covenant.  All violence is against the school covenant.”  He grinned, a thin little grin, full of anger.

“Of course, none of the boys who beat my brother were expelled.  Not for that anyway.”

I guess it works the same everywhere, whether you’re in the complex or a private school.

Chapter Eighteen

By the time we got done eating lunch, it was much later than we’d planned and we had no time to linger at the Commons exhibits we’d missed on the first trip through.  Thomas apologized and said we could come back.  But really, I was so tired I didn’t care.  We hurried out the gate we had come in that morning and in only a few minutes the Driver pulled up to pick us up.  Once Jobee and I were in the back I was ready to fall asleep.

And I did, as it turned out.  I awoke just as we were pulling into the courtyard.  The Driver helps get Jobee out and hands him to me.  Thomas thanks him and dismisses him, and we walk toward the house.

“We’ve got to be careful,” he says, as we neared the door.  “We can’t behave as though we’re friends.  Helper, even Driver, I think, would tell Mother.  And that would be that for you.  Mother would have you sent away.”

I feel a chill that the balmy late afternoon air doesn’t merit.

“I understand.”

“I don’t,” he says.  “I don’t understand it at all.”

Jobee and I both need a nap before dinner.  The short time I slept during the ride home didn’t seem to touch my fatigue.  And Jobee has had so many different sights and sounds to absorb today, he’s exhausted.  I keep thinking about how Thomas called us friends.  I wonder if we really could be; it would be such a wonderful thing to have a friend here.

We’re up and refreshed by the time we need to be downstairs.  Helper brings out the dishes and retreats; Thomas serves me.  He calls Helper back to ask for another wine glass.

“Is yours chipped, sir?”

“No, I want Helper12 to have a glass.”  Thomas opens his napkin and places it on his lap.

Helper looks astonished.  “Ms. Sloane never, I mean, she never—”

“I’m sure it was an oversight, Helper.”  Thomas tilts his head at her as if he is asking her opinion.  “You know mother has impeccable manners, and would never allow a dinner guest to have an incomplete place setting.”

Helper brings me a wine glass.  I keep my eyes on Jobee’s cereal spoon the whole time she is flustering around my plate with it.  When she finally leaves, I look at Thomas and raise my eyebrows.

“It’s fine,” he says.  “She knows that Mother won’t approve, but she also knows that Father will overrule her.”

“Your father,” I whisper.  “What did he say about Greg?”

“He’s said very little.”  Thomas swirls the wine in his glass, and watches the patterns the liquid makes.  “I think he wanted to leave her at first.  I’ve never seen him as angry as he was when he arrived home and found out what she’d done.  But something holds him here.”

“Perhaps he stays for you?”

Thomas looks past his glass to me.  “No.  Greg was his golden child.  I’ve never been the son he really wanted, and Greg was in every way—the way he played sports, the way he excelled in school, the way he thought about his future in the business—except that one.  Father could have overlooked that one so easily—he did overlook it.  He loved Greg best of all.  We all did, really.  Besides, he knows how much I loathe Mother.  If he was doing something for me, he’d have thrown her out as soon as she sent Greg away.”

He shrugged.  “I love Father, but I think he’s basically a very weak man.  Sometimes I even wonder if he would have had the strength to stop her from having Greg wiped, if he’d been here at the time.  I’m sure she would have had some convincing arguments about how