Twenty-Seven
JUNIOR YEAR
The thump of Ben’s heart beneath my cheek matches the rhythm of the song pulsing from the school. As it reaches its crescendo, Ben pulls his cell phone out of his pocket. “So what do you think about capturing this moment?” he asks, almost like he’s afraid I’ll turn him down. “I know there’re a lot of things about tonight that you probably want to forget. But I’m kind of hoping that right now isn’t one of them.”
I smile, and it’s small but real. “This is probably one of the few things about tonight that I’ll actually want to remember.”
Ben crouches a bit as he extends one arm and drapes the other around my shoulders. I wrap mine around his waist and press my face against his, savoring the last seconds that I’ll get to hug him like this. It’s kind of weird to think that I’m going to miss it, but I think it nonetheless. He taps his phone, and the moment we see our faces with the horrendous fish-eye effect of the screen, we burst out laughing, the same way we did the day we danced in Meredith’s garage.
“Be cool, be cool,” Ben says, forcing his face into a more composed smile. Except that I’m watching him on the screen, and it makes me crack up even harder. And I’m so grateful for the rush of release, for ending this night on a high note—and for him—that I do something even I’m not expecting. I lift up on my toes and kiss his cheek.
The camera clicks, and Ben turns to me, rubbing at the pink imprint of my lips with an embarrassed grin. “Now, that’s a keeper,” he says, holding up the photo. I agree, and he returns the phone to his pocket.
The song from inside is down to its final notes, and I wrap my arms around him again while I still can. “Thanks, Ben,” I whisper into his shoulder.
“Are you sure you won’t stay?”
I pull back with a sigh. And even though I mean to say no, when I look up at his face, I forget to actually form the word. He’s watching me with those wide, inquisitive eyes, and all I can think is, You really are beautiful.
But more than that, I’m thinking about his question. And wondering why staying suddenly doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.
The song is over. But something is different. Everything is alive—the air, my body, the space between Ben and me. This should be good-bye, the part where we go our separate ways. Except neither of us moves, and I wonder if he feels it too.
Goose bumps spring up on my skin as his hand travels up my arm. His lips part.
“Ben?” Meredith’s voice says. “What’s going on out here?”
We shoot away from each other like repelling forces. Meredith is standing in the doorway, holding one of the glass doors open. Any thoughts I had about staying are obliterated when I see the look on her face. I’d give anything to turn the clock back and run off like Cinderella at midnight if it would mean not having to face the wounded, betrayed look in her eyes. Or the fact that I’m the cause of it.
Ben takes a few steps toward her. “Macy’s having a tough time, and I saw her trying to sneak out. I followed her so I could convince her not to leave.”
Meredith lets the door slam behind her. When her arms wrap around her torso, I can’t tell if it’s to protect herself from the chill in the air, or from what she saw.
“Looks like you were making quite the effort,” she says.
“I wanted to go home instead of sitting out every time a slow song came on,” I pipe in. “So Ben gave me a pity dance.”
I wince inwardly as the words leave my mouth, because it feels gross and wrong to write it off like that. But I can’t let this night be ruined for one more person. Especially not my best friend.
“I was just coming to get you,” Ben rushes to add. “I promised I’d take Macy home if she danced with me, and she kept up her end of the bargain. I couldn’t convince her to stay.”
Meredith snorts. “Since that’s obviously what you really want.”
“Mer—” Ben starts to say, but cuts off when Meredith’s hand shoots up to silence him.
“You know what?” she says. “Why don’t I do you both a favor, and I’ll be the one who leaves?” Her glare cuts over to me. “It’s pretty clear who’s actually the third wheel here.” She laughs, sharp and without humor. “A pity dance. That’s a good one, Macy.”
My mouth drops open, but my protests are swallowed by the wail of an approaching siren. All three of us turn toward the main road, where a fire truck and an ambulance are hot on each other’s trails, turning into the entrance of Scarborough Farms—Ben’s and Meredith’s neighborhood.
We all notice them at the same time. The wisps of smoke and intermittent flashes of light in the distance. Not someone’s fireplace, like I initially thought. An actual fire.
“Oh my God,” Meredith says, removing her shoes in one swift motion and rushing down the steps. “That’s near my house.”
Meredith takes off running, with Ben right on her heels. I follow suit, throwing on my flip-flops and catching up to them as they cross the street. We’re only a few paces onto the sidewalk, but it’s clear the fire engine is stopping right in front of Meredith’s house.
“Oh my God!” she shrieks again. I’ve never seen her run so fast in my life. I’m panting by the time I reach the edge of her lawn, where Meredith stands with her hands over her mouth, eyes wide and flashing with fear. Ben rubs her arm and babbles words of reassurance, even as smoke pours from all three garage doors and flickers of orange flash behind the glass panes.
The firefighters yell at us to stay back, and an EMT comes over to ask if anyone is in the house. Meredith shakes her head, explaining that her parents went to a play tonight. Her neighbors have started to gather, and one brings a blanket to drape over her shoulders.
“Ben!” someone calls, and I turn to see Mrs. Collins running over from across the street. “My God, what happened?” It’s a good thing she doesn’t wait for an answer before ushering us to her front porch, because none of us has a clue. “Wait here,” she says, indicating their porch swing. “It’s safer. Meredith, honey, I’m going to put on some tea, and I’ll try calling your parents. Nobody move until I get back.”
We sit in a row, looking anywhere but at one another. The exchange from a few moments ago still hangs in the air as heavily as the gray billows of smoke. No one says a word.
After a few tense minutes, or maybe it’s only seconds, I follow Meredith’s tear-filled eyes across the street. One of her neighbors is pointing a fireman in our direction. He’s holding a trash can in one hand. When he starts to jog over, Meredith shoots to her feet.
“Fire’s out,” he says, wiping his face with the sleeve of his coat. “Luckily, it was pretty well contained, but there is some damage to your kitchen. All things considered, it’s minimal. Can’t say the same for your float, though.” Meredith nods woodenly as he holds up the garbage can. “This appears to be where it started. Cigarette butt that wasn’t properly put out.”
“No one in our house smokes,” Meredith says.
He jiggles the can. “We found this in the middle of your float. I’m assuming the fire wasn’t started by anyone who lives in your house.”
She looks at him like he slapped her. That’s when Mrs. Collins opens the door, her cell pressed to her ear. “Meredith, I’ve got your dad on the line. Oh wait, Brad,” she says to the phone. “One of the firemen is right here. I’ll let you talk to him.”
She hands her cell to the firefighter, and I watch, not really hearing or seeing anything in front of me.
Pranks to a homecoming float are nothing new. But this is way too extreme to be a prank. I have a terrible feeling that someone meant for this to happen.
Someone who should’ve been at homecoming but wasn’t. And who spent a lot of time right across the street from the float without even knowing it.
Unless he did.
Were there signs that I totally missed? I remember the way Joel said that he didn’t care about having to give away the ring his father used to wear around his neck. At the time, I didn’t think anything of it. Now it seems like a pretty callous, unfeeling thing to say.
And then there was the question he asked the day he invited me to homecoming: Are you afraid I’ll embarrass you?
Did he mean that literally?
No matter what, it didn’t make sense that Joel would have some secret agenda to earn our trust and then turn on us. For what? To trash our float and then . . . ? I come up blank. There’s no glory in this. He can’t even take credit, unless he wants to pay a serious price. Several of them.
Nope. It doesn’t make sense at all. But it also doesn’t make sense that he’s supposed to be here right now and he’s not.
I stand up and pace the lawn as Mrs. Collins offers their guest room to Meredith’s family.
“My parents are going to take you up on that,” Meredith says, wrapping up the call. “But I was supposed to have half the squad sleeping at our house tonight. I need to see if we can move it to someone else’s place.”
“Not a problem,” Mrs. Collins replies. “We have plenty of extra blankets if you decide you want to stay. Speaking of which, let me go put fresh sheets out for your parents.” She starts to head back inside, but stops when she catches sight of me, almost like it’s the first time she notices I’m there. “Do you have a way home, dear?”
“I’ll take her, Mom,” Ben says.
“I’ll drive her,” she counters. “You stay with Meredith until her parents get here. Be back in five minutes.”
She hurries into the house, and I stare at Meredith, who’s texting away, most likely sending an FYI to the other girls about the sleepover. It’s like she forgot I’m here. “Everyone can stay at my house,” I offer. “I’ll call my parents right—”
“I am not staying with you.” The ice in her voice could’ve put out the fire on its own. “And neither is anyone else.”
“Mer,” Ben says, getting to his feet. “Don’t be mad at Macy for the dance thing. It wasn’t her fault.” He tries to touch her arm, but she swats his hand away.
“It’s not just the dance thing, Ben! How am I supposed to trust either one of you? Because, newsflash, I don’t.” Meredith wraps her arms around her torso again. “And I want to know right now which one of you told,” she snaps. An invisible fist squeezes my stomach. “Because it’s pretty obvious who did this, and you two traitors have been so busy bending over backward to be his friend that you’ve seriously sucked at being mine.” Ben opens his mouth to say something, but Meredith’s venomous glare cuts over to me. “Was it worth it, Macy? Getting stood up?” She points across the street. “Having my house almost fucking burn down? All because you wanted poor, misunderstood Joel to feel accepted? Is that why you told him? So he’d feel like part of the crowd? Or were you just hoping to throw me off your trail while you went after Ben?”
“Meredith, I’d never—”
“That’s not what happened,” Ben cuts in sharply.
“Then what did?” Her glower is unrelenting and fixed on me. “Maybe you talked in your sleep the night you all holed up together at Ben’s house?”
She has no idea how close she actually is. And even though I can’t remember for the life of me if the words actually left my mouth at the slushie stand that night, the confession is ready to pour out of me.
“I told him,” Ben says before I have a chance to form one word. He looks from my shell-shocked face to Meredith’s and back again. “Quit trying to find a way to blame Macy for everything, Mer.” His shoulders sag. “I’m not saying that I think Hargrove did this. But if he did, it’s my fault.”
“Ben.” His name is an aghast shriek on Meredith’s lips, which lapses into a stunned croak. She looks from her house to him, like she’s trying to grasp the connection between the two. “How could you?” She points toward her scorched garage. “Look at my house. How are you even still defending him right now?”
Ben holds up his hands like he’s shielding himself from her wrath. “I can’t tell you for sure that Hargrove was never here. But.” He looks at me, and the guilt in the curve of his mouth sends instant prickles of dread over my skin. “It doesn’t seem likely . . . if he is where he says he is.”
My mouth drops open, filling with the taste of smoky air.
“I know what you’re thinking, Mace,” Ben continues. “But I had no clue he was going to bail until after he did.”
I swallow over the dry, singed taste in my throat. “You said you should’ve warned me.”
“That’s not what I meant. I was trying to say that I wished I could’ve warned you.”
I don’t believe him. It’s one more thing that doesn’t add up, and I’m tired of feeling left in the dark. “Where is he?” I ask through gritted teeth.
Ben hangs his head, scuffing one of his leather shoes against the grass. “At his grandmother’s in Buford.” Meredith makes a sound that’s a cross between disgust and disbelief. “I have my own reasons for being pissed off at him,” Ben continues, his posture wilting. “But he . . . he asked me to tell you he’s sorry.”
I don’t feel a flicker of sympathy at Joel’s secondhand apology. He lied to me, he let my mother scramble around trying to solve a problem that didn’t exist, and he stood me up. Now he wants to use a middleman to make it right?
“You can tell Joel that I’m done with him. No. On second thought, I’ll tell him myself. I’m not going to sink to his level and use someone else as a mouthpiece because I don’t have the guts to do it myself.” I take out my phone, ready to unleash my rage into my fingertips. I stare hard at Ben. “I don’t need anyone in my life who can’t be honest with me.”
The moment the words leave my mouth, I wish I could reel them back and swallow them up. But when Meredith says, “Funny, I was thinking the same thing,” I see my chance. The chance to reverse some of the damage I’ve done. The chance to step back from the line I crossed when Ben became more than just Meredith’s neighbor and started being my friend.
Mrs. Collins returns then and beckons me over with her car keys. She insists that Ben stay with Meredith while she drives me home, unaware that Meredith wants nothing to do with either of us. Or that if I’m going to get back in my best friend’s good graces, I have to find a way to stay as angry with her son as I am right now. But it’s a price I’m willing to pay.
Tomorrow, when the smoke clears, it’ll all be better. I’ll call Meredith, and I’ll apologize again. I’ll offer to help repaint her garage. We’ll agree on how silly it all was, and we’ll figure everything out.
Maybe I’ll even get some sleep tonight, as long as I can keep believing my delusions.