“Here we go.”
All of them started nibbling, but no one was really eating. Haley continued to twirl her hair, her gold eyes focusing on a distant spot. Lilly, with her dark eyes and smooth mocha complexion, chewed the same bit of chicken for five minutes.
After a half hour, Ben said, “Well, I see how well my culinary skills went over. Anyone up for ice cream?”
Haley shook her head. Tears formed in her eyes. “Gonna take more than a sundae to make it go away.” She got up and headed to her bedroom. Lilly looked in the direction of Haley’s bedroom, then looked at Ben.
“Go, hon,” he told her.
“You need help cleaning up?”
“I’m fine. Go.”
Lilly got up and went to comfort her best friend. After the kitchen had been cleaned and everything had been put away, Ben went to his room and lay down in darkness. His head throbbed and his bones felt sore. He tried not to think, but the images came anyway and he was too tired to fight them. He fell asleep still in his clothes. His slumber was fitful. The next morning his head was on fire and his T-shirt was soaked in sweat. He stripped and showered, but still felt like garbage. He took three Advil, donned a clean shirt, a clean pair of jeans, and sneakers without holes. He needed a shave, but couldn’t muster the energy.
Again, there were Lilly and Haley at the dining room table. Lilly had obviously slept over, probably because no one had offered to take her home. But she slept over a lot; the house was her second home.
“Hi, ladies.” Ben looked around. “Where’s Mom?”
“She’s still sleeping.” Haley regarded her brother. “You don’t look well.”
“It was a hard night.”
“No, you really don’t look well.” She got up and felt her brother’s forehead. “You’re burning up for real. Go back to bed. I’ll wake Mom up.”
“Where’s Dad?”
“He left early. He wasn’t in a social mood.”
Ben loved his parents dearly, but he didn’t always respect them, both of them checking out when times got tough. They were needed now and they had become background noise.
“Mom will take us. Just take care of yourself.”
His sister was right. He crawled back into bed.
His dreams were bathed in a fog of memories and delirium. Not Ellen this time, but Katie Doogan. The sixteen-year-old had disappeared three months before Ellen’s body had been found, nine months after her abduction. He had thought that with his sister missing, he had hit the nadir of his existence.
He was wrong.
He had lived through the whole thing again, this time with enough knowledge to know what was in store for the family. His mother and father had fallen apart again, leaving Haley and him without supervision and guidance a second time.
In solidarity, Ben and his family attended the candlelight vigils during the first two weeks of Katie’s disappearance. They dared not introduce themselves right away, lest they automatically link their current situation with Katie’s family’s. Because at first there is always that hope. But by the third vigil, it was clear that the Doogans knew who the Vicksburgs were. Margot came up to Ben’s mother, Laura, and without speaking, the two of them hugged. Dad and Alan Doogan hugged as well. There were two other Doogan children: Bryan was seventeen and Kevin was thirteen. Eventually Ben noticed Bryan staring at him and nodded, thinking to himself: Buddy, your hell is only beginning.
At first, whenever Bryan was home from college, he and Ben searched together. Sometimes in the mountains. Sometimes on riverbanks. They went down south and hunted through the endless stretches of emptiness that encompass the flatlands of southern New Mexico. Their personalities were completely different. It was obvious that Bryan coped with his tension by talking compulsively. Ben remained quiet and methodical. The endless chatter became elevator music, something in the background that Ben ignored except for the occasional “yeah” or “uh-huh.” The months of Katie’s disappearance stretched to a year, and beyond.
Ben stayed in bed for two days running, thoughts weaving in and out of nightmares. By the third day, his fever had broken. He was weak but well enough to drag himself out of bed and into the world.
“Keep moving” was his motto. Otherwise, he’d curl up and die.
Arriving at school, he realized he hadn’t done homework for three days. Not that it would affect his grades, but he hated being irresponsible even with an excuse. He opened his locker, took out his homework notebook, and frantically searched for past assignments. Nothing was written down. Normally that wasn’t a problem because his memory would carry him along. But the last few days had thrown him off balance. He spotted Ro, who was in his lit class. She was talking to Chelsea and Shannon, the three of them gossiping like little magpies. Both Chelsea and Shannon were cute girls. Chelsea had curls, dimples, and a nice smile. Shannon was lithe and even-featured. But Ro was so damn polished-looking that she put them to shame. She also seemed perpetually cheerful. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he pegged her for a middle child.
Once he had been a middle child.
“Hey, Ro,” Ben called out. The three girls turned around. “Do you have the lit homework?”
Her expression was one of surprise. “You mean the five-page essay comparing A Tale of Two Cities with Thomas Paine’s ‘Common Sense’?”
“Oh shit! That’s right. Thanks.”
“Where’ve you been?” she asked him.
“I had a bug, but I’m okay.”
Chelsea said, “You didn’t do the essay?”
“She assigned it to us the first day,” Shannon said. “You know how Jackson is with essays.”
Ro stepped in. “You want to see mine?”
“No, no. I read the material. In my feverish state, I forgot about the essay.”
“I’m sure she’ll give you an extra day.”
“I hope she doesn’t,” Shannon said. “The curve will be better.”
There was nothing to say to that. Ben walked away, figuring he’d knock the essay out during recess. When the morning bell rang for the break, he balled himself into a corner, flipped open his laptop, and wrote furiously. Fifteen minutes later, it was done—spell-checked, the grammar proper, and somewhat, if not entirely, cohesive in thought. He ran to the computer lab to print it out.
A minute before the bell rang, Ben sat down and plopped his essay on the desk for Jackson to collect. As Ro walked by, she picked up the paper without asking. She went through the first page and then looked up. “When did you write this?”
“During break.”
She put down the assignment and went to her seat up front.
Class passed by slooooowly. Finally, it was lunch. Ben didn’t hate school, but now that he was a senior, Remez High had nothing more to offer. He found an empty corner table, took out a book, and tried to zone out, getting his mind off school and death.
Ro came over. “Can I sit down?”