Ben almost didn’t get Mira’s note. He’d had to beg Mr. Falso to let him use his bathroom, which was humiliating. But it had been worth it, because there in Mr. Falso’s dark bedroom that smelled like sleep and socks, into which they’d slipped during a youth group meeting because it was on the way to the bathroom, somehow, Mira Cillo had taped a tiny fourth note to Ben underneath the bottom of a Citizen of the Year trophy.
This was the first note that rang of true danger in leaving it. Though the fact that the trophy was dusty was not something Mira was likely to have overlooked. They’d knocked it over when Ben had lifted her to sit on Falso’s dresser. Ben understood its significance, and wouldn’t have taken long to find it. He hadn’t even flinched when he read Francesca’s name. By now, he was almost wondering what Francesca would do next. Ben knew vaguely that there was irony to the love of his life relegating herself to the sidelines in retelling her own story. But she wasn’t really, was she? Because it was Mira’s cheek that he’d touched in that bedroom. An unplanned and reckless dash into a dark room on the first floor, not entirely out of earshot of the other kids. She’d gotten up and signaled for him to follow, eye to eye, and he left a few seconds later. Mr. Falso had been on fire that day, high on his own healing, making everyone hold hands and pray a lot. When Ben and Mira finally escaped into the bedroom together, they were afraid to speak, and hiding in a grown man’s bedroom was maybe a turn-on. Mira’s eyes skittered across his face, unsteady, and she bit the side of her lip in hot concentration. Ben pushed her hair away from her right temple, where a vein pulsed softly. He stared at the vein, then a voice in his mind’s ear told him he had no time. He grasped Mira’s waist, which felt soft between his hands, and lifted her atop Mr. Falso’s bureau, loaded with manly elixirs, phallic awards, and the small things he pulled from his pockets every evening. A lucite trapezoid inscribed Citizen of the Year 2008 fell to the floor and thudded onto carpet. Mira gulped. Ben stared at the door, staying it with his vigilance. The act of lifting Mira by the waist had sparked something primal, and it made him powerful. He liked it.
“I need you to understand something,” Mira whispered. “I can’t help myself.”
Ben turned back to her and smiled like a cat. “I can’t either.”
“Ever.”
“It’s okay,” he murmured, shaking his head softly. In the shadows, her upturned face was the color of candle wax, and impossibly sad. Ben needed to change that. He drew his fingers across the planes of Mira’s cheeks, sculpting change. Underneath Ben’s fingertips, Mira’s face grew warm. The downturns at the corners of her eyes lifted, her cheeks filled with blood, the ends of her lips rose. He stroked the contours of her face until the last traces of mysterious sadness were gone.
“You are the most beautiful girl,” Ben said, his thoughts careening ahead: future Ben and Mira cruising down the Mass Pike and farther, on foreign highways, top down and Mira’s hair tangled, Mira righting his befouled life just by filling the space beside him.
Mira had made a gruff noise and buried her face in his chest: self-conscious, Ben figured. The truly beautiful ones always were. Mira pushed off Ben and slipped from the dresser without a word. They needed to leave separately, stagger their reentry into the living room by minutes. Ben had stared at his fingertips, warm with the knowledge that he could make Mira Cillo happy.
Ben wondered if Francesca had ever been in Falso’s bedroom. Ben felt a prickle across the middle of his back as Mr. Falso banged on his window.
“You daydreaming again, big guy?”
“No sir,” Ben said miserably.
They mounted bikes—Falso’s souped-up mountain bike, a lesser one on loan to Ben—and rode on the same path Mira and Francesca had traveled, but headed to Little Q, a smaller, stand-alone pool blasted out thirty years after the original chasm, and the only part of the quarry, declared a Superfund site, that the government had successfully emptied. Newer blasting methods meant the walls of Little Q were smoother than the walls of its big cousin, with the same poison gases but none of the craggy footholds and ledges that marked the main hole. Climbers flocked from everywhere, rappelling up and down anchor points on its steep walls with their harnesses and their climber-speak (“Belay! Belay on!”). Their Ironman calls could be heard from the main hole. Like most of the kids who swam the quarry, Ben found them pretentious as well as a threat, since they could call the cops on the kids carrying their coolers full of beer if they bumped into them on the path.
They came to the spot where the path forked. To their right, the trail led to Little Q; forward, they would end up at the main water hole. To the left, they could hear voices and music carrying a half mile ahead. Ben wondered if anyone was on the Cillos’ ledge. Mr. Falso pulled ahead and spun his tires hard right, racing ahead toward the hollow, clipped yelps of the climbers. He felt conspicuous and lame showing up in shorts and a Red Sox hat, with the fat pack that Mr. Falso had thrown on his back. Mr. Falso had carried the larger bag of the two, which made Ben feel grateful and wimpy at the same time. The chain-link fence that traced the edge of the main hole had been ripped down at Little Q, and the edge of the cliff came fast. Ben dropped his bike and looked down. Climbers dotted the walls like colored spiders.
“Benvenuto!” Mr. Falso called from a tiny ledge twenty paces to Ben’s left and ten feet below. He had already scrambled down and was changing into clownish neon slippers. Next to his brown legs was a pile of ropes, harnesses, and helmets, along with the pack it came in. He smiled wide and pointed to an ancient rusty ladder bolted into the rock. “Only one way down, my friend!”
Ben smiled weakly. He knew he’d look like a putz if he made a big deal out of climbing down a ladder, the easiest climb he’d see today. He walked the twenty paces with a forced bounce and crouched, shaking the ladder to test it. It didn’t move.
Mr. Falso laughed from below. “If it held my weight, it’ll hold yours, skinny boy!”
Ben winced at that. It pissed him off, the way Mr. Falso was always showing off his muscles. Some guys thought he might shoot gear, but Ben thought his neck looked fine, and he didn’t exactly have zits or mood issues. Ben put his growing anger aside and descended, flakes of rust loosening under his hands. When he stepped off the last rung, Mr. Falso slapped his back so hard he nearly tumbled off the ledge.
Ben rubbed the back of his neck. “Do you do this alone?”
Mr. Falso grunted as he gathered up the harness, a coil of rope wound around one arm. “Can’t lie, Benny boy. I do come out here sometimes on my own. Helps clear my head. There are plenty of other climbers out here, usually, but you can’t rely on them to save you if you get into trouble. How does it go? Do as I say…”
“Not as I do.”