Twenty
SENIOR YEAR
It’s a picture-perfect day for the pennant hunt. Not too hot, a clear blue sky, and a hint of leaves shedding their green for cloaks of gold and red—everything I love about autumn in Georgia. It’s so perfect that I decide to go for a run before diving into my homework and then heading over to Old Mill later in the afternoon.
When I get downstairs, it’s chaos. Michael is wearing half of his breakfast, and my mother yanks his shirt over his head, snapping, “Get a new shirt and your brother and let’s go. I have a lot to do today.”
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“Zoo,” Michael responds, at the same time my mother says, “The boys have a playdate with Ethan. And we’re going to be late.”
I turn to Mom. “Ben’s brother?” It takes only a heartbeat for the plan to form. “I can drop them off,” I say, ruffling Michael’s hair.
Mom eyes my running clothes—a hot-pink Dri-Tech tank top and tight navy-blue shorts—as if I’m about to walk out of the house in pasties and a thong. “Are you looking for a reason to run into Ben?”
Yep. I want explanations. For why he keeps telling me he wants to talk, but then clams up and storms off instead. For why I feel like I’m missing something every time I have a conversation with anyone lately.
Mostly it’s because I’m not sure we can be friends again, but I still want to try. And I want to know why he doesn’t anymore.
* * *
Mrs. Collins answers the door with a dishrag in her hand. Ethan runs up behind her, a red-haired blur.
“Ahoy, Captain Edgar!” Michael says with a salute. Of course, Aaron has to be a pain in the ass, loudly pointing out, “His name is Ethan,” as they run like a pack of wolves toward the basement door.
“Macy,” Mrs. Collins says, sounding pleasantly surprised. “We haven’t seen you in a while. How have you been?” She nods to my brace before I can answer. “Cheerleading casualty?”
“Sort of. I’m not on the squad anymore, but my last injury never got the memo.” I step inside at her prompting and immediately feel my boldness waver. Ben’s mom has never been anything but polite to me, but more than once, the way I’ve caught her looking at me makes me wonder if she knows about the night Ben stowed me away as a drunken refugee in her basement. “How is everything with you?” I say.
“Fine, fine, though I have to wonder what I was thinking, volunteering to take four boys to the zoo. They’re learning about mammals in school, and sometimes my good intentions get ahead of my common sense. We’re waiting on one more.” She waves toward the tall, wrought-iron stools at the kitchen island. “Sit down. I see your mother now and then at soccer games. We were just saying that we should get everyone together one day.”
I’m willing to bet that it was my mother who did the saying. “Um, I was actually wondering—is Ben home?”
Surprise registers in her blue eyes before she dons her best motherly poker face. “He’s in his room doing homework. I’ll bring you up.”
I’ve been inside Ben’s house before, but never in his room. It’s strange that I’m going there now, with things the way they are. It feels intimate to walk into his personal space. Like I’m about to plop down into the lap of a stranger or something.
Mrs. Collins knocks on the door and cracks it open, sticking her head inside. “Ben? Macy is here to see you if you’d like to talk.”
I realize what she’s doing. The way she’s blocking me from seeing him, guarding the minimal slice of entrance she’s created, like she’s ready to deny access and stand guard if Ben says the word.
She’s protecting him from me. She doesn’t think I belong here either.
But Ben must give the okay, because she pushes the door open wide before stepping past me to head back downstairs.
All I can think when I enter is that Ben’s room is exactly like his personality: full of color and activity and things to discover. There are basketball posters on the walls, a bookcase in the far corner overflowing with books and trophies and keepsakes, including a shelf of Superman figurines. A big, unmade bed with a navy-blue comforter and more pillows than one person could ever need is at the center of the room, with Ben’s work clothes laid out at the edge. Ben is seated in front of his computer at a desk to my left. A picture of Ethan is taped to the side of the monitor, and the face he’s making reminds me of my brothers’ silly expressions in the photo I used to wear around my neck.
“What are you doing here?” he says.
“Hello to you too.” I walk over to his bed and straighten out the blankets before perching next to his familiar work shirt with the BEN name patch sewn beneath the left shoulder. From the looks of his computer screen, he’s writing a paper. There’s a playlist docked in the upper right corner, and a guitar-heavy classic rock song rings though the speakers. “You’ve been avoiding me.”
He lowers the volume on his music. “Haven’t had much to say.”
“That’s funny, because you came to that conclusion while you were right in the middle of telling me we should talk—again. And then you saw the necklace from Joel, and suddenly it’s like I’m a walking infectious disease. I thought we were over this.”
“And I thought you were smarter than that.”
I grip the edge of the bed. “Smarter than what? To let Joel give me a necklace? At least when Joel says he wants to work things out, he makes good on it. You used to be all about giving people a chance, or did that slip your mind when you gave me that judgy look for talking to Noah the other day?”
Ben’s hand closes around a pencil lying next to his keyboard. “I have nothing against giving chances . . . to the right people.”
I stand up. “And now you’re the authority on ‘the right people’? Is that why you asked Meredith to homecoming again this year? Because you’re giving things another chance? Or are you not done stringing her along?”
The moment I finish, I know I’ve gone too far. This conversation is not going the way I intended, and I want to walk out the door, walk back in, and start over.
Ben’s jaw tightens. “Was there a point to you coming here?”
I take a deep breath and rub my temples. “I’m sorry.” I walk over to his bookshelf, trying to gather my thoughts. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. About last year, about everything.” I pause at his shelf of trophies and realize they’re all awards for basketball with his name engraved into the tiny placards on the front. “Why aren’t you on the basketball team?”
Ben snorts. “Those are your deep conclusions about everything that happened last year? That I should be on the basketball team?”
“No,” I say with a roll of my eyes. “But you obviously love it.” I motion to the posters on the walls. “And I know you’re good at it.”
Ben’s face softens, and he shifts in his chair. “I guess I always felt like competition takes the fun out of it. I like playing for rec teams and stuff, but joining the school team always felt like too much pressure. To win, to stand out, to be the best.” He shrugs. “I’m happier without that. Plus I needed to work so I can help my parents out with college expenses next year.”
I nod and pick up a figurine, one with Superman’s fist extended in mid-flight. “I can respect that.” I smile, hoping to change the previous tone of the conversation. “But I would’ve been your biggest cheerleader.” I flush red when I hear the words in my own ears, and clumsily replace the statuette. “Your second-biggest, anyway. I think we both know Meredith is your first.”
He looks down at his feet and I look down at the carpet, and we’re right back to square one of awkward.
“There was a point to me coming here,” I add in a hasty effort to change the subject. I sit back down on his bed as the sound of the front door opening registers in the background, signaling the arrival of the last member of the boy brigade. I know that once they leave, my excuse for being here goes with them. “I’ve been thinking a lot about that night at the slushie stand. And the more I do, the more I feel like that’s the night when everything started changing. Don’t you?”
Ben looks at his computer screen, down at the floor, and back again. “Changing how?”
“I was hoping you could tell me. Did something happen that night? Something that I either didn’t see or don’t remember?”
The pencil in Ben’s hand taps a steady beat against the desk. He doesn’t look at me when he answers. “It was like any other weekend. A bunch of drunk kids doing stupid crap that they end up regretting later.”
“You weren’t drunk, Ben.”
His eyes finally meet mine. “I wasn’t talking about me.”
An exasperated sigh huffs from my throat before I can stop it. “If I did something stupid that night, please stop talking in circles and tell me what it was so I can apologize and we can move on with our lives.”
Ben stands and puts his hands behind his head, stretching like he’s been cramped in his chair for too long. Or like he’s already tired of this conversation. To my surprise, he comes over and sits down next to me.
“It wasn’t you. Okay?” he says quietly. “But if you’re planning on making another go with Hargrove, I’ll be honest with you: It’s a bad idea.” My mouth opens, but Ben plows ahead. “I’m not saying Joel’s a bad person. He’s not. But he’s got a lot of shit on his plate, and he doesn’t deal with it in the”—he stops, looking like he’s struggling for the right word—“healthiest of ways, I guess you can say. He makes some pretty crappy decisions without thinking about how they affect other people.”
It’s almost exactly what Noah said, and it makes the hair on my arms stand up.
“I know firsthand that Joel does crappy things. But right now I feel like I’m the only one who doesn’t know why. What I do know is that I ended up at homecoming alone, and I’ve spent the past year wondering if the fire at Meredith’s was my fault. So what am I missing? Does it have something to do with why Joel hates his father?”
Ben’s eyebrows pull together. “Joel doesn’t hate his father.”
“He hated him that night. He told me so. It was the last thing he said before he got sick.”
Ben looks dubious. “Are you sure about that? You were pretty trashed.”
“He was crying.”
“Oh.” The word comes out soft, almost guilty-sounding. “He was pretty trashed too.” He says it like it’s supposed to explain away Joel’s tears. But in the pause that follows, it’s obvious that we’ve realized we’re both missing pieces of the puzzle.
And then, as if some greater power is determined to make this afternoon as uncomfortable as possible, the music from Ben’s computer changes. It’s a slower, gentler beat, one that we both recognize from the first note. One that never fails to send me back to the night of the homecoming dance, under the spotlight of a parking-lot streetlamp, swaying in Ben’s arms.
One that made me forget for a minute that it was supposed to be the worst night ever.
“Remember this song?” Ben says.
“Of course I do.” My next thought slips out before I can stop it. “I can’t hear it without thinking of you.”
Something about the way Ben looks at me tells me he’s pleased with that answer. That maybe it was exactly what he wanted to hear.
The sound of the twins’ raucous laughter rings through the house, and Ben clears his throat. “So I might not have joined the basketball team, but there might still be hope for a band.”
“Oh?”
“I signed up for some refresher guitar classes right after . . . a while ago.” His foot bounces against the carpet. He hesitates, then crosses the room to his closet and returns holding the same acoustic guitar he used to give Aaron lessons last year. A wave of nostalgia washes over me as he positions it across his lap.
I’m keenly aware of the empty space left by the moments lost between now and the last time I saw him with that guitar.
The feeling intensifies when Ben starts to play along with the music drifting from his computer. My throat tightens, and chills creep up my arms. It’s like those guitar strings are tied directly to my heart, tugging with each note. Oh, crap. I am not going to cry right now.
Ben glances up, and our eyes meet for a split second before we both look away. He stops playing abruptly, and we shift a little farther from the other, like an unspoken agreement.
“You play really well,” I croak. I draw a sharp breath and release it with the question that, until this moment, I didn’t realize I badly wanted to ask. “So tell me, Ben. What didn’t happen that night?”
His hand moves a fraction of an inch toward me, and his mouth opens. But then a stampede of footsteps sounds on the stairs, and in the next second the room is full of prepubescent boys. Ben greets them all with high fives or noogies, saving Aaron for last.
“Hey, dude. How are the lessons going?”
Aaron smacks Ben’s outstretched hand as hard as he can, then runs his fingers over the strings of the guitar still sitting in Ben’s lap. “I’m getting really good. You were a way cooler teacher, though.”
Mrs. Collins appears in the doorframe, slinging her purse over her shoulder.
“We’re heading out now,” she says. “The boys wanted to say good-bye first.” She checks her wristwatch. “And you need to leave for work soon, don’t you?”
I stand up, taking the hint. “I’ll walk out with you,” I say to her.
I ruffle my brothers’ hair and remind them to behave themselves. The minute they’re out of sight, I lean against my car and heave a deep sigh. I’m a little relieved that I don’t see Meredith’s car in her driveway.
Between the things Ben and I talked about and the things we didn’t, I’m leaving Ben’s house with even more questions than I had when I walked in.