The letter was from the end of Ben’s senior year, after he’d lost at the state swim tournament, when he stopped being able to sleep, when he stopped going to swim practice, when he started ditching classes and spending his days alone up in the hills, doing anything he could to stay away from Wakeland. He had lost ten pounds, he’d become distant—from Rachel, from his mom and stepfather, from everyone—and Rachel had started asking questions. “Tell me what’s wrong,” she said. “Talk to me.”
I’ve kept your secrets, Benjamin. I could have told your mother everything that’s happened with Rachel. But I haven’t. I don’t want to violate our trust, and I don’t want to hurt your mother.
Three weeks after he and Rachel slept together, Rachel missed her period. Ben had tried to confide in his buddies David Ross and Nick Distasio, both virgins, but as soon as he said, “We did it,” they couldn’t get past the fact of the event itself to listen to his panic about being a father. “What did it feel like, man?” “Dude, did you make her come, too?” (As though any of them understood what that meant.) Finally, exhausted and terrified, Ben had told Wakeland.
“When did this happen?” Wakeland asked.
Ben had promised the man, when he was fourteen and they’d started talking about sex, that he’d tell him when he “lost his cherry,” as Wakeland liked to say. But Ben hadn’t wanted Wakeland to know about him and Rachel; he didn’t want to lay out the play-by-play for the man who would use it as a pretense for other things. He knew Rachel was pregnant, though, and, God, he needed help.
“A month ago,” Ben said.
“I thought you’d tell me.” A look of betrayal flashed across Wakeland’s face. “Thought we’d drink some beers and celebrate.”
“I was scared,” Ben said. “I mean, I can’t have a kid.”
“All these years, all I’ve done for you, the attention I’ve given you, the hours I’ve worked with you on your stroke, on your homework, getting scouts from SC, from Berkeley, Stanford even. As if you could get into Stanford on your own.” He let that hang in the air for a moment. “I’ve let you into my home like it’s yours, like you’re my son, given you space to get away from your stepfather; all the money and time I’ve spent on you, and you don’t keep your word. You lie to me.”
It hadn’t been his word. At the time Wakeland had said, “You’ll tell me when it happens,” and Ben had simply nodded, unable to imagine at fourteen that he’d ever get laid and thankful for the tacit permission to do so.
“You’re too young to be sleeping with this girl,” Wakeland said. “You’re too stupid to even put a condom on. Your mother needs to know.”
“No! You can’t tell her.”
Wakeland retreated into the kitchen, clinked ice cubes into two glasses, and filled them with vodka. He came back, handed Ben a glass, and sat beside him on the couch.
“Listen,” Wakeland said, his voice quiet now. “Sometimes periods come late. She’s probably frightened, too. Stress can make it come later than normal. Chances are it’ll happen soon. If it doesn’t, then we can talk about what to do next. One thing at a time.”
Three days later, Rachel got her period, almost as if Wakeland had planned it, and Ben was locked into a new kind of confidence game.
You’re a good young man, Benjamin, but you get confused. You can’t see things clearly. I know you think you’re in love, but has Rachel given you more than I have? After all these years, after all I’ve done for you, how can you just push me aside? This is a stressful time, I know. Let’s talk, please. Let me, your closest friend, help you. We can work through it together.
He never answered that letter—though it took all his energy not to. The only person Ben could talk to about the things that were breaking him down was Wakeland. Wakeland would tell him it was all right, he would make it all seem okay, and the cycle would keep feeding on him. He couldn’t do that anymore; his body wouldn’t allow it. All Ben had was himself, and he retreated into silence, into the hills that surrounded the town, staying away from school as long as he could, knowing Wakeland was trying to find him. Three days later, Ben got another unsigned note, slipped into his school locker.
If compassion will not reach you, think about this:
Q: How do you think Rachel would feel if she knew you were a little faggot?
A: You know exactly how she’d feel, Benjamin, exactly.
It was clear to Ben now how terrified Wakeland had been of being exposed: so terrified that he’d put his fear into writing, into one last attempt to shut Ben up. For all Wakeland knew, Ben had already said something—or was about to. But the seventeen-year-old Ben had been far too frightened of his own exposure to recognize Wakeland’s fear, too much of a child to think rationally about it. He could have walked right into the counselor’s office and laid the two notes on the table, but Wakeland had bet on Ben’s cowardice and won.
Ben pulled out the slip of paper he’d taken from Lucero’s body and set it side by side with his own letter.
Q: How would she feel if she knew?
Some keep your secrets out of kindness, Ben thought, and some store them up as weapons to be used later.
A: You know exactly how s—
—
THE COUNTY SHERIFF’S Bell was spinning circles overhead, spotlighting ridges, exploding finger canyons with light, and Ben was in the dark zone between the grid of the city and the false daylight above. He was out in the wilderness with Tin Man, standing on the rise above Wakeland’s house, watching the warm light radiate from the backyard windows. From here he could see the pickers’ camp and the greenbelt that ran across town to the apartment near the school, a leafy causeway that joined one world to the other. The streets of town were mostly empty, a few black-and-whites spinning their lights down the straight avenues, the stoplights switching from green to red to green again. From here, Ben could see the crescent of dark land scything Santa Elena into the western hills, a negative space in the electric basin. It was nearing 9:00 P.M., and the scanner was unusually quiet—an occasional 10-code, a chattering of locations called out, a few killer false alarms. The hills were silent, too, the animals hiding from the Nightsun spotlight that swiped back and forth across the ridges.