I step into the hallway wondering why I don’t feel any lighter.
Adele Cody is in the driveway with her own burden when I pull up to Ben’s house that evening. She’s hauling two brown paper grocery bags full of Tylenol PM from her Explorer into the garage. I pick up a third that sits by her truck and follow her up the drive.
“Oh, thank you, Katie! What a lovely surprise. Ben said you had a good time at the musical.”
For a moment, I wonder what else he’s told her. Has she noticed her condoms are missing? I plaster a smile across my face. “It was great. How was Chicago?”
“So much fun! Zumba’d my buns off.” She laughs and playfully slaps her own hip, clad in shiny black workout tights over neon running shoes. “Gotta get to the gym.” She jogs down to her Explorer. “Go on in. He got home from practice a little bit ago.”
I wave as she pulls out, then walk into the rec room as she punches the automatic door closed behind me.
Ben’s playing a video game, kicked back on the couch in a pair of gray sweatpants and a T-shirt. His hair is wet from his post-practice shower, and his tongue is sticking out of his mouth in concentration as he mashes buttons. He glances up at me, then back to the screen with a smile.
“There you are,” he says.
The character he’s playing looks like Indiana Jones, hiding behind a low wall, shooting a gun at bad guys, aided by a buxom brunette, who throws explosives.
I don’t wait another moment before I toss a grenade of my own.
“I saw the video.”
Ben turns to look at me, his eyes wide. “What?”
“The video. Of Stacey . . . at Dooney’s. It was online.”
His character on screen dies in a hail of bullets, yelling in anguish.
Ben blinks at me. “How did—”
“Lindsey found it.” I cut him off. “It was buried on Reddit.” I feel like I’m floating above myself, detached from this room, these words. Ben sits, staring at me, silent, afraid to move.
“I couldn’t even watch all of it,” I tell him. I thought I was done crying about this, but I can’t stem the current. “I had to turn it off after the first couple minutes, but I saw enough.”
Ben sets down the controller and lets out a long sigh. He stands up and walks over to me, wrapping his arms around me. Every muscle in my body tenses. I’m a living fossil. Solid bone. All my soft parts eaten away.
“Did you know about it?”
“Yeah,” he says. “I did.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about it?”
I’m surprised by the roar of my own voice as I push him away. Every ounce of my frustration from the past two weeks is channeled into this moment.
“Are you glad you saw it?” he asks, short and clipped.
“No,” I say, sobbing. “I wish I could burn out my eyes.”
He wraps both arms around me again, his lips pressed against my hair. “That’s why.”
I collapse into him and cry against his chest. His arms feel massive around me, like they could crush the life from my lungs or shield me from anything.
Of course he knew about the video.
Of course he didn’t want you to see that.
“Coach told us it existed at practice last week—the day Dooney was arrested. He told us copies had been posted online. He told us anybody who had posted it was off the team. Thought that took care of it.”
Ben leads me over to the sofa and we sit down as I wipe my nose and eyes with the heels of my hands. “So, you haven’t seen it?” I ask.
“Didn’t want to.”
I let out a long deep breath. “Well, it’s gone now, so you can’t.”
A look of relief softens his face, and he sinks back on the couch. “Good.”
“It’s not good,” I tell him. “We could’ve helped Stacey. They asked us to come forward with any information about what happened that night.”
“I don’t know what happened that night,” he says. “I didn’t see the video. I didn’t go looking for it. I’m sorry you put yourself through that.”
“Ben, we can’t just do nothing. Do you understand what they did to her?”
“No.” He says this so firmly that the word almost pins me against the couch. “I don’t want to know. Kate, I can’t know.” He stands up and runs a hand through his wet hair. “If I know, then I have to come forward, and if I come forward, I’ll get messed up in this whole . . . thing.”
He kneels on the floor in front of me, leaning across my lap, his arms sliding around my waist, pulling me into him. I bury my nose in his damp hair and breathe, inhaling his sporty boy-shampoo smell, one of those weird forcefully FRESH! fragrances they label with rock ’n’ roll fonts in dark gray bottles: FOR MEN.
“I went to talk to Ms. Speck today.” Ben rocks back on his heels. Our eyes meet, but I can’t tell what he’s thinking. “I had to. I was going to show her the video.”
“That’s when you saw it was gone?”
I nod. “I can’t do nothing. I can’t let Dooney just . . . get away with this.”
He takes both of my hands in his. “I get it, Kate.”