Kyle stood. “You do what you gotta do.”
Ben walked down the side of the mountain through the sparse, ugly trees and rode his bike home. He’d never felt so alone in his life. Kyle-as-Yoda was right in line with his personality, but Ben didn’t need his closest ally to be preachy right now. He needed him on his side. The whole world seemed to be turning against him, but maybe that was what happened when you spoke truth to power. Ben pulled into his driveway with a hard scrape, and instead of going into the shed, where he knew he’d find Mira’s next note, he went directly into the house. It was time for him to stop screwing around. Mira had been trying to tell him what was happening to her and Francesca and he had missed it, had to have Mr. Falso point it out for him. But that wasn’t the only reason he wasn’t ready to go to the shed. He wasn’t sure how much he could handle. So he went into the house, through the front door, because formality seemed to make sense at this moment.
Normally, he would never consider talking to his parents. Unless he wanted his mother to reacquire the twitch that forced her to tape down her eyelid to sleep. The list of nine-year-old baseball players uncovered in a footlocker in Coach Freck’s basement, that included the words “B. Lattanzi: strawberry blond/dimples,” was the first clue that Ben had been among the touched. It yoked Ben with an imaginary sandwich board printed with words like “twiddled” and “broken,” and, worst of all, “special,” because that had been Freck’s word. His mother’s tears evolved into a hypervigilance that would last seven years.
Ben could not bring his suspicion to his parents. It would hit too close to home.
He took the center stairs in three giant steps, ignoring his mother’s calls from the kitchen asking if he wanted Vietnamese takeout. He was starving, but not for food. He ducked into his bedroom and hollered, “Pho, please!” as he locked his bedroom door and walked to the corner of his room. He strained to lift the end of the dresser. Something in his back popped, but he ignored it, shifting his weight into his thighs to lift the gleaming wooden hulk. Finally it budged. He dropped to his knees and peeled back the square of blue carpet, then the section of wood he had sawed with a tiny hacksaw. He slipped his fingers between the cracks and lifted the wood like a puzzle piece from the floor and set it aside.
The wad of notes felt heavy in his hand. Substantive, Real. He placed the rug back over the spot and lifted the bureau into place. His back did a painful, snaky thing as he sat leaning against the wall, holding the notes close to his face, trying to breathe in the scent of Mira, the hint of strawberry on her lips he remembered (or made up. He allowed for that). He wanted to reread Mira’s notes, get his facts straight before he made the case to his parents that Mr. Cillo needed to be arrested.
As he read, every note took on new meaning. An illumination. And when he overlaid the notes with Mira and Francesca’s behaviors, it became clear. The pain was sharp. Ben felt the old anger swell up again. Didn’t they always say that girls in these kinds of “situations” have intimacy issues? Mira with her push and pull, Mira with her erratic meet-ups, months apart, was classic abused. Mira who was obsessed with unlocking Ben’s heart—and his own pain, she whispered once—was projecting what had happened to her onto what had happened to Ben.
An ugly thought surfaced. Was that what she saw in him?
Stuff it away. Stuff it away.
If he could talk to his mother, she would agree. She saw twiddlers around every corner: mall Santas, school custodians, the dude that films every lacrosse practice but isn’t related to any player. She might believe Ben, but telling could send her into lockdown mode. And Ben could not become a prisoner again. Not when things were finally close to normal. The dreams about the flattened nose and orange-peel skin, the dip-stained fingers had ended years ago.
He placed the notes facedown and closed his eyes, resolving not to say anything. He would handle it himself.
*
“Buddy, it’s time we had a talk.” Ben’s father leaned in the doorway, holding the key to his bedroom between two fingers.
He covered the notes with his palm and froze. Ben knew the key existed, but it had never been used. And by the look on his dad’s face, his parents had been concerned about his behavior. Maybe even talked to Mr. Falso about it. Ben wondered what parts of yesterday’s chat Mr. Falso would leave out.
“Yeah, Dad?”
“Mr. Falso is worried about you. And so am I.” His father flicked on the light. “Why are you sitting on the floor?”
Ben hadn’t noticed that the room had grown dark. Some part of his brain had heard the buzz of dinner conversation, his mother’s and father’s voices overlapping with Mr. Falso’s. They had invited him to stay for dinner, and hadn’t worked too hard when Ben had refused to come down, faking a stomachache. He was deep into his thoughts when the conversation had dipped, voices gone low so they wouldn’t be heard upstairs.
“I must have fallen asleep.” Ben raised his head off the wall. “Is Mr. Falso gone?”
“Yes, Ben. He left a few minutes ago. You must have had a pretty exhausting afternoon for you to fall asleep sitting up.”
Behind his father, his mother appeared. Even from far away, Ben could see the smudged mascara under her eyes, and the vertical streaks in her makeup that meant she’d been crying.
“May we come in?” she said softly.
Ben nodded. They exchanged looks, each waiting their cue to say their line, as if they were staging a play for the first time and not sure of their blocking.
“You don’t look comfortable,” his father said. “Why don’t you come off the floor?”
“I’m fine.” His voice sounded small, he thought. Weak. He had the feeling he was going to be doing battle, and he didn’t want to feel weak. What he needed was to feel Mira near him, to remind him to stick to his guns. He cleared his throat. “What were you guys talking about with Mr. Falso?”
His dad folded his hands and sat on the bed, easing into the role of good cop. Ben wished he’d thought to put his earbuds in, or spread some magazines out around him, or done something that didn’t make him look so tragic, there on the floor. He drew his knees up and pulled them in tight, suddenly angry at Mr. Falso. He should have said something to him, like let’s keep this between us bros. Ben exhaled hard and looked up. His mother was shattered, and his father was trying to hide how pissed off at him he was.
He was in trouble.
“That’s what we’re here to talk with you about, Benvenuto.” His father never called him by his first name, given in honor of his uncle he’d never known, who’d died in a car crash in the eighties. All Ben knew was that it involved speeding on the expressway, probably booze, but mostly being reckless and sixteen, Ben’s age now. “Mr. Falso is concerned about you. And so are we. Carla, do you want to begin?”