I think of one of the first emails I read from him. The one that got this whole thing started.
You have to leave me alone.
Through the cardboard walls, I hear the sound of the door opening and closing. I turn off the taps, now embarrassed to be in the bathroom with all my clothes out in the room. I wrap myself in as many towels as I can find, and tiptoe to my bag.
“Hey,” Ben says. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see he’s not looking at me, either.
“Hey,” I say back, eyes lasering in on my heap of clothes.
He starts to say something, but I interrupt. “Hang on. Let me get dressed.”
“Yeah, okay.”
In the bathroom, I throw on my dirty-even-for-me cutoffs and a T-shirt, and spend some time toweling off and trying not to think of how, out there, Ben would not look at me.
I take a deep breath and open the door. Ben’s busy mixing up some kind of drink. Without looking up, he starts talking superfast. “I was on a mission to find iced coffee. Apparently there are Starbucks here, but they’re all in the casinos, and I didn’t feel like dealing. But nowhere else had iced, not even the actual coffee shop. So in the end I got some fresh-ish hot coffee and my own ice, and I think that’ll work.”
He’s talking a mile a minute, babbling about iced coffee with the kind of caffeinated specificity I’ve only ever heard from Alice. And he still isn’t looking at me.
“I got half and half,” he goes on. “For some reason I like my cold coffee with milk. It reminds me of ice cream or something that way.”
Stop talking about coffee! I want to scream. But I don’t. I just nod.
“Do you want to hit one of those buffets, power up before we hit the road, or should we put some distance between us?”
Yesterday Ben said that the difference between him and me was that he learned from his mistakes. He was right. And I’m an idiot.
“I vote for distance,” I say.
His eyes flicker up for a second and then they skitter away, like I gave the right answer. “That’s cool. Whatever you want.”
I want you. I want to lie back down on the bed and have his arms lock around me. But I know that’s not how it works. When you fuck the bartender, the free drinks dry up. I learned this from Tricia. I learned it from Meg. I learned it from Ben himself. It’s not like he didn’t tell me exactly what he was.
“In fact, I need to get home,” I tell Ben.
“That’s where we’re headed.” He folds a shirt.
“Like, now.”
He stares at the bedspread on the mostly made bed we didn’t sleep in last night. “Car needs gas and probably oil,” Ben says. His voice is harder, that hint of a growl returning. “If you’re in such a hurry, you could take care of that while I pack up.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I say. His arms, the comfort of them, feel so far away now. “Meet you at the car?”
Ben tosses me the keys and I catch them, and he’s about to say something but then doesn’t, so I scoop up my crap and haul it outside. I’m gassing up, when my phone rings and I reach for it. Ben. This is so stupid. We’re both being stupid.
“Cody! Where the hell are you? You were supposed to be home two days ago.”
It’s not him. It’s Tricia. As soon as I hear her voice, my throat closes.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
“Mom?” I say.
“Cody, where are you?” I hear the fear in her voice. Because I never, ever call her Mom.
“I need to come home.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No. But I need to come home. Right now.”
“Where are you?”
“Laughlin.”
“Where the hell is that?”
“Nevada. Please . . . I want to come home.” I’m about to lose it.
“Okay, honey, don’t cry. I can figure this out. Laughlin, Nevada. Cody, hang tight. I’m gonna work this out. Leave your phone on.”
I have no idea how Tricia is going to figure this out. She’s as broke as me. And she doesn’t know how to use a computer and she probably doesn’t even know where Nevada is, let alone Laughlin. But I feel better somehow.
x x x
Ben’s waiting downstairs in front of our room when I get back. I dig my sunglasses out and put them over my red eyes. I pop the trunk and he loads everything in. “I’ll drive,” I say.
It’s maybe not the best idea. I’m shaky, but at least if I’m driving, I’ll have something to focus on.
“Okay,” Ben mumbles.
“Tell me when you would like to stop and eat,” I say formally.
He just nods.
In the car, he focuses on the music, but the iPod adapter has died, so there’s only radio, and it’s all crap. He finally lands on a Guns N’ Roses song, “Sweet Child o’ Mine.” I used to like the song, but now, like everything, it’s digging a crater into my stomach.
“My mom loved this song,” he says.
I nod.
“Listen, Cody.” It sounds exactly like the Garcias and their And, Cody’s.
Before I can answer, my phone rings. I reach for it and it falls onto the floor. I swerve.
“Watch it!” Ben shouts.
“Answer it!” I shout back.
He scrambles for the phone. “Hello,” he says. He turns to me. “It’s your mom.”
“Tricia,” I say, taking the phone.
“You shouldn’t drive and talk at the same time,” Ben scolds.
I roll my eyes at him, but I pull on to the shoulder.
“Where are you now?” Tricia doesn’t ask me who answered or why I’m not in Tacoma like I said I would be. It’s never been her way to worry about the details.
“I don’t know. About twenty miles outside of Laughlin. On Highway 95.”
“Have you passed Las Vegas yet?”
“No. It’s not for another forty miles or so.”
I hear her sigh with relief. “Good. There’s a one-thirty nonstop flight on Southwest from Vegas to Spokane. Think you can make it?”
“I think so.”
I hear Tricia say something and in the background, lots of voices. “Okay, we’ll book you on that. If you miss it, there’s another after, but it connects through Portland, so you’d have to change planes.” I listen to her talk, like she’s some kind of travel agent, like we do this all the time, when in fact I’ve never been on an airplane before.
“Call me once you’re on the plane so I’ll know when to pick you up. They don’t let you go to the gate anymore, apparently, so I’ll meet you down at baggage claim.”
“Okay,” I say. Like any of this makes sense to me.
“I’ll text you the flight information,” she says, and I’m at once grateful to Raymond for introducing her to this technology. “And I’ll see you this afternoon. I’ll get you home.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“What are moms for?”
I hang up and look at Ben, who’s looking at me, confused, though I can tell he heard both sides of the conversation.
“What’s going on?”
“I’m gonna get out in Vegas, fly the rest of the way home.”
“Why?”
“It’ll be easier, faster for you; you won’t have to go out of your way.” The route from here to Seattle passes right through my part of eastern Washington, and now he’ll have to drive those thousand miles alone. But I am making it easier for him. That part is true.
We spend the next hour in silence. We get to the Las Vegas airport around noon. I pull in to the loading zone, where the cars are parked two abreast. Behind us, there’s beeping, mad rushing, like cowboys, moving the cattle along. I grab my things and Ben gets out of the passenger side, watching me.
I turn to him. He’s standing there, leaning up against the car. I know I have to say something. To thank him. To release him. Maybe releasing him is the way to thank him. But before I say anything, he asks, “What are you doing, Cody?”
It hurts. It all hurts so much. But this is wrong. In so many ways. So I say to him what I said all those months back, though there’s nothing flip about it. It’s maybe the most you can wish for anyone.
“Have a good life,” I say. And then I slam the door shut behind me.
40
Tricia picks me up at baggage claim just like she promised, and marches me to the car. As soon as my seat belt is snapped, she orders: “Talk.”
Strangely, it’s not the part with Ben I’m worried about. Telling Tricia I ran off to Nevada with some guy I tossed my virginity to—that part comes out easy. She doesn’t look delighted about it, but once she’s certain that we used protection and used it properly and is suitably reassured that no pregnancy will result, she lets that part go.
“But why were you in Laughlin?” she asks me.
This is the thing I’m scared to tell her. And not for the reason I’ve been telling myself, which is that she’ll blab it all over town, though she might.
Tricia went with me to most of Meg’s memorial services. She wore her hotsy black dress and got dewy-eyed at all the appropriate parts. But we have hardly spoken about Meg dying. About Meg choosing to die. There was only that one conversation in my bedroom a few weeks ago. It’s been pretty clear she doesn’t want to talk about it, or hear about it. For all her talk of Meg and me being different, I think she worries that we aren’t.
When I finally tell her about Bradford and the Final Solution boards, she doesn’t seem completely surprised. “Mrs. Banks said something intense was going on with you and that computer.”
“Mrs. Banks? When did you talk to her?”
“Who do you think helped me book your ticket?”
So Tricia’s already been talking about me in town. But it doesn’t feel bad. Not at all, actually. It’s like I have allies.
“How was your first flight, by the way?” Tricia asks.
I’d spent the duration of it staring at the parched landscape below, tracing the path Ben and I took on the drive down, trying not to think about him on his solo return trip.
“Fine.”
We pull on to I-90, and I start to tell her about Bradford. About making myself bait. I tell her how persuasive he was, how he started an echo chamber in my head. I tell her about everything, except the detour to Truckee. I’m not sure why. Maybe I’m trying to spare her, but I don’t think so. I’ve lost a lot recently, and a father—well, you can’t lose what you never had.
I keep waiting for her to get furious, but instead, when I tell her some of the things Bradford wrote to me, she looks terrified. “And you went and confronted him?” she asks.
I nod.
“I can’t believe I . . .” She trails off. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”
“Me too.” I say. “I’m sorry. It was stupid.”
“Yeah, I’ll say.” She reaches over to stroke my cheek. “It was also brave.”
I manage a smile. “Maybe.”
She guns the engine and pushes us into the fast lane. Then, after a while, she says, “You have to tell the Garcias. You know that, right?”
And the gloom and guilt fall as fast as a winter sunset. “It’ll break their hearts.”
“Their hearts are already broken,” Tricia says. “But maybe it’ll help mend yours, and right now, we’d all settle for that.”
x x x
When we get back in town, Tricia drives past our house, and even though I’m exhausted and about to dissolve into a million pieces, I let her take me where she’s taking me.
“I gotta get to work,” she says, pulling into the Garcias’ driveway. “I’ll see you later.”
“Thank you,” I say. I hug her across the stick shift. Then I grab my file on Meg, Bradford, and Final Solution, and head toward the front door.
Scottie opens up.
“Hey, Runtmeyer,” I say softly.
“Hi, Cody,” he says, and he seems embarrassed, or maybe he’s pleased, by the return of this nickname. “It’s Cody,” he calls into the house.
Sue comes out, wiping her hands on an apron. “Cody! You finally came for dinner. Can I make you a plate?”
“Maybe later. I need to talk to you about something.”
Her expression falters. “Come in,” she says. “Joe,” she calls. “Cody’s here. Scottie, go play upstairs.”
Scottie gives me a look, and I shrug.
Joe and Sue go into the darkened dining room, which has a fancy wood table that we used to eat family dinners around. Now it is piled with papers and other signs of disuse. “What is it, Cody?” Joe asks.
“There’s some things I need to tell you, about Meg. About her death.”
They both nod, reach for each other’s hands.
“I know she killed herself. I’m not saying she didn’t. But you need to know that she was involved with this group . . .” I begin. “It calls itself a suicide support group, but it’s the kind of support that encourages people to kill themselves, and I think that’s why she did it.”
I watch their faces, awaiting their horror, but they are kind, expectant, waiting for me to continue. And it hits me: this is old news.
“You know?”
“We know,” Sue says quietly. “It was in the police report.”
“It was?”
Sue nods. “They said it explained how she got that poison. It’s common with those groups.”
“The Final Solution.” Joe practically spits the words. “That’s what the Nazis called the Holocaust. Meg knew that. I can’t believe she’d fall into a group that used that as its name.”
“Joe.” Sue puts her hand on his arm.
“So the police found the encrypted files? They know about Bradford?” I’m confused. Bradford didn’t seem to know anything about Meg’s death.
Now Joe and Sue look confused, too. “What files?”
“On Meg’s computer. In her trash.”
“I don’t know about that,” Sue says. “They just said they found evidence that Meg was involved with this group from her Internet searches.”
“Who’s Bradford?” Joe asks.
“Bradford Smith,” I say.
They look at me blankly.
“He’s the one, from the boards. Wait, I thought you said the police knew about this.”
“They told us she was involved with these sickos who preyed upon vulnerable people like Meg, encouraging them to commit suicide,” Joe says.
“But you don’t know about Bradford?” They shake their heads. “Bradford Smith? On the boards, known as All_BS?” Still no recognition. “He’s the one who helped her, pushed her. He was like her death mentor. He coaxed her, offered her advice.”
Sue nods. “Right. That’s how these groups work.”
“But it wasn’t the group. It was him.”
“How do you know about this, Cody?” Joe asks.
I back up and explain. The encrypted file, which led me to the Final Solution boards, which led me to Firefly1021, which led me to All_BS. “I spent weeks on the boards, trying to smoke him out. It took a while, but I did it, and then I guess I got him to believe I was like Meg, and I sort of fooled him into calling me. He was careful about it, calling via Skype on a tablet, but I was able to trace the call and from there figure out where he worked and then where he lived.”
They’re still staring at me. “You did all that yourself?” Sue asks.
“Not exactly. Harry Kang, Meg’s former roommate, he did all the technical stuff, and another person drove me to Laughlin to see Bradford—”
“You went to see this man?” Joe interrupts.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I just now got back.”
“Cody!” Sue admonishes in the same tone she’d scold Meg and me for staying out too late or driving too fast. “That was very dangerous.”
Joe and Sue are watching me now with worried parental expressions. And though I’ve missed this, so much, I don’t want them looking at me like that. I don’t want to be their child. I want to be their avenging angel!
“Don’t you see? This guy did it! She wouldn’t be dead if it weren’t for him.”
“He told her to kill herself?” Joe asks. “He helped her do it?”
“Yes! And he tried to help me, too! Look.”
I flip open my files to show them the notes, the messages. But as I read what he wrote to Meg and me, what I see is a bunch of other people’s quotes. Links to other pages. Everything at arm’s distance. He didn’t tell Meg to use poison. He didn’t buy it for her. He didn’t offer me any specific advice beyond cold remedies. He never once outright said to me: You should kill yourself.
I told no one anything, I hear him say. He’d almost taunted me when he asked me what specific advice he’d given. I remember wanting him to ask me about my chosen method so badly, but he never did.
But that doesn’t change anything. He’s still responsible. “It was him,” I insist. “Meg wouldn’t have killed herself if not for him. He’s the reason.”
Joe and Sue exchange a glance, and then they look at me. And then Sue tells me exactly what Tree told me a few weeks ago, only I didn’t hear it. How long have I not been hearing it?
“Meg suffered from depression, Cody,” Sue tells me. “She had her first clinical episode in tenth grade. She had another last year.”
Tenth grade, the year in bed. “The mono?”
Sue nods, then shakes her head. “It wasn’t mono.”
“Why?” I ask. “Why didn’t she tell me?”
Sue taps her chest. “I’ve struggled with this for such a long time, not only depression but the stigma of it in a small town, and I didn’t want her saddled with that at age fifteen.” She pauses. “If I’m honest, what I really didn’t want was for her to be saddled with a disease she got from me. So we kept it quiet.”