The Villain by L.J. Shen

The Past.

The first time I stepped into a juvenile treatment clinic was at age fourteen.

Earlier that week, I beat myself up so bad, I was still pissing blood and spitting teeth. My face was so swollen, it took three of my peers to recognize who I was when they found me on the library floor.

My mother accompanied me into the Swiss clinic. Reluctantly. I was covered in a coat, hat, and sunglasses to hide my battered figure, like a D-list celebrity zipping through an airport, trying to remain unidentified. Mother remained silent most of the plane journey from England to Zurich, save for a brief conversation, whispered after the stewardesses were out of earshot.

“Your father can’t know.”

That was the first thing she said.

Not how you are doing.

How’d it happen.

Your father can’t know.

I stayed quiet. There was, after all, nothing to say. She was right. Athair couldn’t know. And at any rate, there was no way to explain what had happened. One second I was sitting in front of my textbooks in the library, studying my ass off to finish first in class as always, the familiar weird pressure—an intangible tension I couldn’t explain—skulking up my spine like a spider, and the other, I was on the floor, beaten to a pulp, not sure who did it.

Now I knew who that person was.

It was me.

I beat myself up to a point of unconsciousness.

“Cillian Frances, did you hear me?” Mother linked her fingers together over her lap, face rigid, posture perfect.

“Loud and clear.” I looked out the window at the passing clouds.

“Good.” She frowned at an invisible spot on the cockpit door. “He will blame it on me, somehow. He always does, you know? I can never catch a break with this man.”

My mother wasn’t a bad person. But she was weak. Convenient. Now more than ever, having given birth to my sibling, Hunter, less than three years ago.

The new baby had put a strain on my parents’ marriage. When I came for a visit during the summer, they’d barely spoken a word to each other. When my mother asked if I wanted to hold my brother, my initial reaction had been hell no, but then she gave me that sheepish, poor-me look, and added, “Your father never holds him.”

So I’d held him. Looked down at the tiny, old-looking bald person who stared back at me with big blue eyes that looked nothing like mine and told him, “Buckle up, little bro. You were definitely born into one heck of a family.”

“Anyway,” Mother chimed again on the plane, rearranging her pearl necklace, “I hope this has nothing to do with Andrew Arrowsmith. You won’t be seeing much of him anymore outside of Evon.”

“I haven’t heard or seen him since Athair fired his dad,” I admitted in a vain attempt to try to get some info.

“His father wouldn’t have been fired if he wasn’t a crook,” Mother huffed.

“I don’t care about his father.”

“We’ll see if he finishes his studies at Evon,” she continued, ignoring my words. I’d often wondered why I bothered answering her at all. “Your father is suing him for everything he stole.”

“They used to go golfing together. Take annual vacations. Visit casinos in Europe. Go fishing,” I said, leaving out the escorts, strip clubs, and underground joints they’d promised to take Andrew and me to when we were older.

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t be naïve, Cillian. People will do anything to get close to us Fitzpatricks. We can’t have real friendships.”

Mother dropped me off at the clinic as soon as we landed, signed the paperwork, and told me she’d come to pick me up in a few hours.

“I would stay,” she sighed, “but you know how jittery I get in clinics. They’re not my scene. Besides, I have some shopping to do. You understand, don’t you, Kill?” She pinched my cheeks. I stepped away, turned around, and left without a word.

A nurse led me to a white small room with a desk and a chair. She locked the door behind me. I sat down, looking up at a security camera that was trained on me. I was obviously being watched.

They kept me like this for twenty minutes or so before a male voice sounded behind a two-way mirror.

“Hi there, Cillian.”

“Hello.”

I wasn’t afraid. I was extremely adaptable. Came with the territory of growing up in the hands of au pairs and attending private schools away from home from age six.

“How’re you feeling?”

“Been better. Been worse.” I crossed my legs, making myself comfortable.

“That’s interesting,” the doctor said. It wasn’t, really, but I appreciated his sympathy, whether it was genuine or not. It was more than I’d received from my own mother, oftentimes.

“Do you know why you’re here?” the pleasant voice asked.

“I’m guessing it’s because I have a thing called the Tourette’s syndrome.” I slouched back in the chair, taking in all the whiteness. The calmness of it pleased me. A long silence stretched from the other side of the window. “How long have you known?”

“About a week.”

I heard pages flipping on a clipboard from the other side. I smiled grimly. Normally, it was the patient who was in the dark.

“How can it be? It says here your tic attack took place two days ago,” another voice said. A middle-aged female was my guess. Both doctors had accents. One was probably Italian, and the other Swiss from the French border.

“Yes,” I said slowly, giving them time to fill in their charts. “But I’ve been feeling the tension of the attack in the days before building up, so I did some research.”

“So you knew you were going to get it?” the woman Swiss doctor asked incredulously. “The attack.”

I nodded curtly. She gasped. She actually gasped.

“Poor thing,” she said. Very un-doctor-like.

“Never been accused of being that before,” I muttered, checking my watch for the time.

“Where are your parents?” the female doctor asked, her voice growing closer. Were they going to open the door between our rooms? I hoped not. Eye contact wasn’t my favorite.

“My father is in Boston, handling the family business, and my mother is shopping. Zurich is one of her favorite retail spots.”

Knowing Mother, she was going to pick me up with bags full of new shoes, cuff links, and summer clothes for me. Her version of being maternal.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” the male doctor asked. “About the Tourette’s syndrome.”

“What was the point?” I brushed my dress pants from lint. “Knowing my family, we will be keeping my condition under wraps. So either you prescribe me with shit, try new treatment on me, or let me go. I’ll figure out a way to hide it.”

“It’s a neurological disorder,” the female doctor explained, her voice turning even softer. “Caused by an array of very complex things, mostly because of abnormalities in certain brain regions. The tics will come and go, and even though we can offer some treatments to relieve and ease the disorder, it is mostly here to stay. You can’t control it. The very definition of Tourette’s is that your tics are involuntarily. You cannot train your nerves. They are everywhere in your body. To numb them, you will have to stop feeling completely.”

Perfect.

“Then it is voluntary.” I stood, heading for the door.

“No,” the doctor hesitated. “For you to stop the tics, you’ll have to stop feeling. I don’t think you understand—”

“I understand everything.” I curled my fist, knocking on the door three times, signaling the nurse I wanted to get out.

“Mr. Fitzpatrick—”

I didn’t answer.

I got what I came here for.

A solution.

Now all I needed was practice.

Operation Cancel Feelings did not get off to a smooth start when I came back to England.

To begin with, I wasn’t big on feelings. That was not to say I hadn’t felt any. I was capable of being sad, happy, hungry, amused, and jealous. I hated a lot of people—certainly more than a boy my age should—and even loved a little.

Mainly my baby brother, who had the advantage of not being able to talk back, hence not being able to piss me off. But I also loved other things. Polo and Christmas and sticking my tongue out when it rained. The alluring taste of winter.

I also liked my friendship with Andrew Arrowsmith. A lot.

Not in the same way I liked girls. The way they moved and smelled and existed, which I found both magical and confusing. I knew I was one hundred percent straight. I liked Andy because he got me. Because we were the two kids with the Boston accents who did everything together. We studied and hung out and watched movies and shows and played the same sports. We pulled dangerous pranks together. We farted and blamed it on his dogs during dinnertime. We watched our first porno together, and fought over football, and ran away from the cops that one time when we accidentally set a trash can in the country club on fire…

We were being kids and shared whatever childhood our parents allowed us to have together.

He was the closest thing to family I’d had. Which was why I was furious with Andrew Senior for stealing money from Royal Pipelines, and with my own father for finding out, and also with Athair for acting on the betrayal.

Yes, Andy’s dad stole from our company, but Andy was my lifeline. Couldn’t Athair let this shit go?

After weeks of not hearing or seeing Andy at Evon, I finally ran into him at the main chapel. My relief was mixed with dread.

I waved at him from across the chapel. There was a swarm of students between us, and all of us were wearing the same uniform. Andrew noticed me and looked away.

The tinge of pain in my chest alarmed me. I couldn’t afford to feel. Feelings would inspire more nerve attacks, and nerve attacks would make Athair disown me. While I truly liked baby Hunter, I didn’t want to see him snagging the eldest son’s title as the heir to Royal Pipelines.

Not to mention, Athair, Mother, and Hunter were the only family I had left, now that Andy probably hated my guts.

I strode across the lawn after Sunday Mass, hands clasped behind my back, frowning at the lush grass. I didn’t even care much that I had Tourette’s. It was inconvenient, for sure, but after gulping down a few medical journals and a couple of books about the syndrome, I’d decided I would overcome it before graduating and moving on to college.

And when I decided something, I never failed, no matter the means it took to achieve it.

The back of my neck seared with sudden pain. I stopped, bringing my hand to rub at it. It felt warm and sleek. I withdrew my palm, glancing at it. It was full of blood. I turned around. Andrew strode toward me with some of his friends, tossing a rock in his hand.

He grinned.

“What the fuck, Arrowsmith?”

“The fuck is your father is a jealous asshole, and my mates here told me that you’re a freak. I heard about the library accident.”

I figured he would. I straightened my posture, reminding myself that there was no need to waste any feelings over this nonsense. He wasn’t the first person to leave. He wasn’t going to be the last, either.

“Yeah? Well, I h-h-heard your da-da-dad stole money to pay your way through Evon. Short on money, Arrowsmith?” I punched my own face out of nowhere.

What the fuck?

Andrew’s eyes gleamed as he advanced toward me, picking up speed. His friends followed suit.

“Oh, man, you’re stuttering now!”

“I’m not stuttering.” I let out a low growl, slapping my own face again.

No. No. No.

I wasn’t in an empty library this time. I had an audience, and they were watching, laughing, getting a glimpse of the freak show. I had to stop.

Stop feeling.

Stop wanting.

Stop hurting right now.

“The good thing”—Andrew stopped only when he was next to me—“is that I’m not a Fitzpatrick. An Arrowsmith always comes to his friend’s rescue. And you need to be rescued, don’t you, Kill?”

His friends laughed, hands tucked inside their pockets, glaring at me, waiting for the word go.

I looked behind me, slapping my own face again. I could probably run, but there was no point. The tics were going to slow me down, and anyway, I’d always been faster on a horse than with my feet.

I looked back at them. Now was as good a time as any to check the pain box on my list and make sure I couldn’t feel it.

Andrew cracked his knuckles loudly.

I did the same thing.

Note to self: cracking one’s knuckles is very soothing.

“I’m about to fuck your ugly face up even worse than you did, Fitzy.”

I smiled, feeling blissfully numb. “Give it your best shot, Oliver Twist.”

Andrew ended up filming some of his abuse, probably to stash it and remind himself it happened.

But he wasn’t an idiot and was careful to never show his face.

It was one of the very things we’d been taught. Never film anything incriminating. The infamous Bullingdon Club had cost Oxford University enough embarrassment, and nobody at fine British institutions wanted their reputation to be stained by a bunch of teenage dirtbags.

The abuse wasn’t one-sided.

In fact, during our first fight, I’d noticed when Andrew beat me up, I stopped feeling. The tics had stopped. And so, I sought Andrew out. Went to his room on a weekly basis. Goaded him into fighting, abusing, and messing with me.

Andrew took over. We crossed the lines many times.

Broken bones. Permanent scars. Cigarette burns.

I grew stronger and more indifferent each time.

And he? He cried when he did those things to me. Cried like a baby.

Going through the trials and tribulations of being bullied—burned, waterboarded, slapped across the face each time I stuttered or hit myself, each time I twitched—proved to be highly effective.

By fifteen, the year when I’d found out Andrew Arrowsmith wasn’t going to complete his education at Evon, I was free of symptoms.

Outwardly, anyway.

I still popped my knuckles.

Still breathed deep and slow to lower my heart rate.

Still resisted any type of feelings, smashing them whenever they tried to rise above the surface.

The more I controlled the tics, the worse they had become. Fortunately, I always unleashed them when I was in the privacy of my room.

I kicked, screamed, hit myself, broke walls, tore furniture, and devastated everything around me. But I did it on my terms, and only when I felt I was ready. That was how successfully I managed to suppress my emotions.

Until one day, the tics stopped completely.

Feelings were so far away from my realm of existence that I didn’t have to worry anymore.

But the tapes were still out there, and Andrew had them.

Like the one of me lying in a puddle of my own vomit.

Or the one where I sat at the bottom of the pool for a minute at a time until I was blue. Every time I miscalculated the time and rose to the surface too quickly, he’d strike me.

One thing was for sure: Andrew wanted revenge, I wanted complete control, and we both got what we wanted.

By the time we parted ways, his job was done, and so was mine.

I thought we were even.

I thought we both got what we deserved.

I thought I was immune to feelings ever again.

Turned out, every single one of those assumptions was wrong.

The third time I ran to the bathroom to throw up, I threw in the towel and shut my laptop, stashing it under my bed, like the videos could haunt me. I had enough of seeing my husband—then a teenager—abused.

Beaten.

Smashed.

Broken.

Stuttering.

Crying.

Laughing.

Losing it.

Finding it.

I wanted to kill Andrew Arrowsmith with my own hands.

And knew with a confidence that frightened me that I was capable of doing that, too, given the opportunity.

Andrew’s face wasn’t on the tapes. But his voice was there. So were his motives to do what he did.

At six thirty in the morning, I rose to my feet and walked over to the shower. My eyes were puffy from crying all night.

There were two things I knew without a shadow of a doubt:

One—I was going to make sure Arrowsmith was ruined, even if it was the last thing I did in my life.

Two—Cillian was truly incapable of feeling anything after everything he’d been through. But even the unloving deserved to be loved. Even he deserved peace, belonging, and a home.

From now on, I was going to let him have me on his terms.

Even if it slayed my bleeding heart.