“Well, I guess that means you have good survival instincts,” he says, edging in a little closer. “You must adapt well to your surroundings.”
“Oh my god, you sound exactly like my mother.”
“I’ll try and forget you said that.” He smiles wider. “So, do you get out much, Camelia Hammond?”
“Like, for good behavior?”
“Like, on dates. What do you say? Are you free Saturday?”
I take a deep breath and mutter the word no. Only it comes out as yes.
“Great,” he says. “How about around two? We can meet for a late lunch.”
I nod, and he gets up, bumping his knee against mine in the process.
“Are you okay?” I ask, noticing how upset he suddenly looks. His eyes narrow, and he takes a step back.
“I gotta go,” he says, refusing to look me in the eye.
“What is it?” I ask, standing up, too.
But instead of answering, he heads back to his motorcycle and speeds away—just as fast as he did on the day that he saved my life.
19
She was out in front of school this morning, looking for attention. Like a total slut.
The front of school is her new place to be noticed. Nobody else ever just hangs out there, but she wants to be on display, so people look at her as soon as they pull up.
I said the alphabet forwards and backwards and counted up building bricks to keep myself calm. It was either that or haul off and smack her stupid little face.
She just makes me so mad sometimes, so mad that I can’t quite think straight. She wants to see me lose control.
20
Ben and I have arranged to meet at Seaview Park for our date. He’d wanted to pick me up, but Kimmie insisted on tagging along.
“I know the rumors aren’t true,” she says, “but if anything weird ever happened and I didn’t do anything to try and stop it, I’d never be able to forgive myself.”
“Anything weird?”
She shrugs. “Like if you wound up tied up, dead, and buried in a shallow grave somewhere.”
“Seriously?”
“Kidding.” She rolls her eyes. “But that still doesn’t change the fact that Mr. Touchy-Feely completely creeps me out.”
I watch as she sifts through my bedroom closet for something for me to wear, wondering if I’m doing the right thing. I mean, yes, I want to find out the truth about him, but I honestly can’t remember a time when I’ve been more unnerved.
“How about this one?” she asks, holding up a lavender tunic.
I take it and slip it on, too rattled even to pay much attention.
“The winner,” she announces, tossing me a pair of leggings and my strappy sandals.
Originally the plan was that she and Wes would come and we’d make it a foursome, but unfortunately, that plan got snagged when Kimmie was grounded for making her eight-year-old brother, Nate, do all her household chores for a week. As punishment, Kimmie’s parents have declared her Nate’s own personal slave for a period of seventy-two hours. Kimmie has spent the last twenty-four of those hours dodging water balloons, making grilled-cheese-and-gummy-worm sandwiches, playing hide-and-seek, and organizing her brother’s Matchbox car collection according to type, color, size, and year.
You’d think all that torture would suffice. But not quite. Nate refuses to let Kimmie have the afternoon off.
“He says either he comes along, or I can’t go.”
“Are you kidding?” I ask, pulling the leggings on.
“Not kidding. I tried to talk him out of it, but that just made him want to come more. I’m lucky he even gave me this hour off for good behavior. You look hot, by the way.”
“Thanks,” I say, running my fingers through my kinky hair, and seriously wondering if I’m going to be sick.
“Don’t worry,” Kimmie assures me. “You won’t even know we’re there.”
“Right,” I say, fairly confident that that won’t be the case.
But we go anyway—Kimmie and me in the front seat of her parents’ minivan and Nate in the back, armed with his basketball, baseball, and hockey equipment. We pull into the parking lot, my eyes scanning the area, looking for Ben by the pavilion, at the fountain, or on one of the park benches.
I finally spot him sitting on a blanket in the distance, a basket and cooler set up in front of him.
“Who knew Ben the Butcher was such a romantic?” Kimmie whips a pair of binoculars out of her purse for a better view.
I take a deep breath, trying to calm my jangled nerves. Meanwhile, Kimmie adjusts the zoom lens on her binoculars, zeroing in on a guy jogging in the distance.
“Hey, that totally looks like your boss. Does Spencer run?”
“Okay, can we just focus on me for a moment?”
“Relax. I’ll only be a slasher-movie scream away,” she teases.
“At the baseball diamond,” Nate specifies. He pulls on his catcher’s mask.
Kimmie gives me a quick hug for luck, and then I climb out of the van and make my way toward Ben. But, before I can even get halfway there, a soccer ball comes flying in my direction.
“Heads up!” I hear somebody yell.
I stop the ball using the heel of my sandal, and then look up in search of the owner. It’s John Kenneally. He comes running to retrieve it.
“Thanks,” he says, catching my throw. “Ever think about trying out for goalie?”
I smile and glance over his shoulder, where it appears his soccer team is having a scrimmage.
“Seems we’ve been bumping into each other a lot lately,” he says.
I nod and scan the park for Kimmie, surprised she didn’t spot John right away, especially with her binoculars. “Do you guys always practice here on Saturdays?”
He nods. “Usually from one to three, just after lunch.”
“Great,” I say, filing the information away so I can share it with Kimmie later.
“Really?”
I nod again, trying not to act too enthusiastic, even though I’ve probably already overdone it.
While John heads back to his teammates, I head in Ben’s direction. It appears as though he’s already spotted me.
“Hey!” he shouts, waving me over.
He couldn’t look more amazing—hair messed up to perfection; torn jeans; and a crewneck sweater that clings just enough to his chest.
We sit, and he pops the cork off a bottle of faux champagne. “I’m really glad you came.”
“Did you think I wouldn’t?”
He shrugs and pours me a glass.
“Thanks,” I say, taking a sip.
Ben unloads the basket. He’s got a whole spread prepared for us, including a loaf of honey bread, thick wedges of sharp cheddar cheese, and an antipasto with olives, marinated peppers, and eggplant.
“This looks incredible,” I say.
“Wait till you see what I’ve got for dessert.”
We end up talking about everything: about how he practices meditation and takes tae kwon do, and how I’ve been sculpting clay since before I could even throw a ball.
“You start with this shapeless mound,” I tell him, “and what you make from it is totally up to you. You’re in complete control of what it becomes.”
“But what if it doesn’t turn out the way you want?”
“Start fresh,” I say, tearing off a hunk of honey bread.
“And ditch the other piece?”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugs. “Sometimes I think it’s good to be open to the stuff that doesn’t seem to work. Sometimes that’s the best stuff.”
“Are you a sculptor, too?”
“Not since Play-Doh.” He smiles. “But I like to write sometimes.”
“Poetry?”
“Song lyrics.”
“Have you ever been in a band?”
He shakes his head. “It’s a little hard when you’re being homeschooled—a little hard to meet people.”
“How l
ong were you homeschooled?”
“A couple years. Technically, I should be a senior, but I got behind, which is why my schedule’s all screwed up.
Did you know I’m taking some freshman classes?”
I shake my head, surprised there’s a tidbit of gossip I haven’t heard yet.
“Anyway,” he continues, “when my aunt asked if I wanted to live here with her—two hours away from my hometown—so I could go to public school again, I said yes.”
“So you could go to public school?”
“As you can probably guess, when you have a rep like mine, public school is sort of a drag.”
I nod, remembering what Matt said—how after the trial Ben got ridiculed so badly he had to drop out of school. I’m tempted to ask him more, but before I can, he tells me he’d love to learn sculpture one day and it’d be great if I could teach him.
We hang out for another couple of hours—through full-on Nate-and-Kimmie matches of basketball and baseball and a tire-swing competition—eating up the rest of the picnic lunch as well as the makeshift s’more dessert he made using oatmeal cookies, chocolate fudge sauce, and marshmallow spread.
“You’ll never go back to the old campfire style,” he says, handing me one.
I take a bite and a long, embarrassing moan escapes my mouth before I can stop it.
“That good, huh?”
“Better than good.” I finish it off.
“You’re really great, you know that?”
I smile, totally caught off guard. I try to think up something clever to say back, but instead I just tell him, “You’re pretty great, too.”
Ben wipes some chocolate from my lips with his napkin. “I’m really glad we did this.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Me, too.”
“So, does that mean you want to do it again?”
My face grows warm, and my lip trembles slightly.
Ben moves in a little closer. And then I do something totally out of the ordinary for me—something I didn’t plan.
I kiss him.
My mouth presses against his, and he kisses me back, sending tingles all over my skin.
I start to draw him in closer—to run my fingers down his back. But he pulls away, and our lips make an unpleasant smacking sound.
Then he stands up. He tells me we’d better get going and then starts putting away all the empty food containers.
“Wait! What just happened?” I ask.
Ben doesn’t answer. He just folds up the blanket and tosses it over his shoulder. Grabs the basket and takes off, without any explanation. Without so much as a good-bye.
21
Instead of dropping me off right away Kimmie cruises around—with her brother’s approval, thanks to some edible incentive via Mickey D’s drive-through, so that I can give her the full report.
“Well, I can’t say I’m not relieved,” she says of the disastrous end to my date. “I mean, when I said I wanted you to get out more, I didn’t expect you to pick the creepiest boy of the bunch.”
“Whatever.” I sigh.
“At least nothing super-icky happened when you kissed him.” She proceeds to remind me how in the eighth grade she threw up on Buddy McTeague when he insisted on kissing her, even though she’d warned him she had the stomach flu.
“No, nothing icky,” I assure her. “The kiss was amazing—at least it started out that way.”
“Details, please.”
I close my eyes, my lips still buzzing from his kiss.
“Were there a bunch of little kisses that led up to one great big giant fat one?” she continues. “Or did he just go in with tongue from the get-go? Was there superfluous slurpage? Distracting sucking sounds? Weird or unpleasant odor? Exchange of food bits or drink? Did your tongues swirl in sync, or just kind of bump into each other?”
“Whoa,” I say, putting a halt to her list. “Let’s just say it started out well, but ended sort of sucky.”
“No pun intended.”
“I’m such an idiot.” I sigh.
“No, ‘idiot’ would be me,” she says, feeding another Scooby-Doo CD into the player.
I take a peek at the backseat, where Nate is bouncing up and down in anticipation of Scooby Snack Tracks #1.
We end up driving around a bit more, until just before seven, when she finally drops me off with a promise to call me later.
I wave good-bye to her and make my way up the front steps, noticing how the streetlight in front of my house has gone out, leaving the area in near darkness.
Just a few steps shy of the door, I hear something behind me—a scuffling sound. I turn to look, but I can’t see too much in the dark, and the sound seems to have stopped now. The only thing I can hear is the noise coming out of Davis Miller’s garage-turned-music-studio down the street.
I turn back around to open the front door when I hear the scuffling again, like footsteps against the pavement.
Like someone’s coming this way.
“Kimmie?” I call out. I strain to see, wondering if I left something in her car. But no one answers, and I don’t see her car anywhere. I fish inside my pocket for my key ring and finally find the house key among the collection I’ve got going. I go to stick it in the lock, but the ring falls from my grip, landing on the welcome mat.
I take a deep breath, trying to stay calm. I kneel to pick up my keys, but can’t keep my hands from shaking. I decide to ring the doorbell, knowing that my parents are probably home. But before I can actually reach up to press it, someone touches my shoulder, making me jump.
“Ben,” I say, completely startled to see him.
“I’m sorry I scared you.” He takes a step back.
“What are you doing here? How do you even know where I live?” I glance over his shoulder, but I don’t see his motorcycle. “I looked you up in the phone book. I hope that’s okay.”
“So why didn’t you call?”
“I wanted to talk face to face,” he says, venturing a little closer. “I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry about earlier.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I snap, moving toward the door again. “No—wait.” He takes another step. “Can we talk?” Part of me wants to tell him no—that this whole scenario is just a little too weird. I glance up at the porch light, wondering why my parents didn’t turn it on. “Please,” he insists. “It’ll only take a couple of minutes.” I hesitate, but then notice his troubled look, as if he really does need to tell me something important. “Okay,” I say, hoping I won’t regret it.
I sit on the top step. Ben sits beside me and stares up at the moon. “I meant it when I said that I think you’re pretty great,” he says.
“Well, then, why all the mixed messages?”
“There is a good reason.”
“Which is?”
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he repeats. “And what I’m going to say . . . I don’t want that to scare you, either.”
“What are you talking about?” I peek toward the driveway at my parents’ car, relieved to know for sure they’re home.
“It was me.”
“What was you?”
“In the parking lot . . . behind the school. It was me who pushed you out of the way when that car was coming toward you.”
“And why are you finally admitting this now?”
“Because you’re in danger,” he says, his eyes wide and intense.
“Excuse me?”
“It sounds crazy, but it’s true.”
“And how do you know this?”
“I can’t tell you, and I realize it’s a lot to ask, but you have to trust me.”
“I don’t even know you, really.”
“Exactly. Which makes this all the more difficult.”
“I’m not in danger,” I assure him.
“You are,” he says, tensing his jaw. “At first I didn’t want to believe it, either, but after today, I’m sure of it.”
“After today?”
He looks back toward the moon. “Just
think about it. Has anything weird or unusual happened lately? Is there anyone around you that you don’t trust?”
“Wait—did you hear something? At school? Is there something that I should know?”
He shakes his head. “It isn’t anything like that.”
“Then what?”
“You’re in danger,” he says again. “But I want to help you.”
I shake my head, my mind hazy with questions. “I think I should probably go in. My parents are probably wondering where I am.”
He nods and studies my face, his gaze lingering on my mouth. “Just think about what I said. And know that I’m here if you want to talk. You can call me anytime—day or night.”
“Thanks,” I whisper, not knowing what else to say, or if I should even say anything at all.
Ben nods and walks away. I watch him go until he’s swallowed up by the darkness. A few seconds later, I hear his motorcycle rev and take off.
Instead of going inside, I sit for several more minutes on the front steps, wondering what just happened. And what it means.
It just seems so weird—that I’m supposedly in danger. So weird, because his girlfriend was in danger, too.
22
It’s almost seven thirty when I finally go inside. “Hey, sweetie,” my mom calls out. “Dinner’s not for another half hour. Soma noodle surprise with tempeh chunks and zucchini-prune juice.”
As if that’s supposed to tempt me.
I head into the kitchen to see if she needs any help, but she and my dad are in the living room, doing partners yoga. My mom’s lying on the floor in front of my dad, whom she’s got knotted up in the lotus position. Her feet are elevated and locked around his neck. “Care to join us?” she asks. “This is wonderful for digestion.”
My mom’s family album—the one she normally keeps locked up in the cedar chest—is sitting out on the coffee table. It’s open to the picture of Mom and Aunt Alexia when they were kids, posing by the Christmas tree.
“I’m not really hungry,” I say, wondering what’s going on, if Aunt Alexia is in some kind of trouble again.