Ben Y and the Ghost in the Machine
Page 12
SBЮBEN: as I said
SBЮBEN: I am not a ghost.
0BenwhY: so that only leaves one other option.
0BenwhY: you’re a creeper
SBЮBEN: i’m not a creeper
0BenwhY: that’s exactly what a creeper would say
SBЮBEN: Good point.
SBЮBEN: I’m not a gross internet person, I promise. I’m not a gross real-life person, either.
SBЮBEN: And I’m sorry your brother died.
SBЮBEN: That is a really thing to happen.
0BenwhY: Yeah.
0BenwhY: . . .
SBЮBEN: I would be a horrible person if I actually pretended to be his ghost.
0BenwhY: Agreed.
SBЮBEN: I would never do anything like that.
0BenwhY: except you ARE somehow using his avatar
0BenwhY: So you can see how this definitely isn’t traumatic at all.
0BenwhY: To be chatting with him, even though it isn’t him.
0BenwhY: Not confusing or weird or anything.
0BenwhY: not like we’re in some movie and it turns out he didn’t die at all,
0BenwhY: he was actually kidnapped by bad guys who thought he was someone else
0BenwhY: and he’s spent all these months earning his kidnappers’ trust
0BenwhY: so they’ve finally given him a crappy old computer
0BenwhY: to play games on
0BenwhY: and he’s hacked into their internet
0BenwhY: so he can come here to our private server
0BenwhY: to tell me he’s alive.
SBЮBEN: Well NOW I feel like a jerk
0BenwhY: and yet you claim to be a good person
0BenwhY: a good nice person would tell me how they got in here
SBЮBEN: I . . .
SBЮBEN: Sorry. I have to go.
0BenwhY: right. of course you do.
STILL IN THE LIBRARY
The bell beeps its ring,
so I grab my backpack,
and breathe deep,
looking for Jordan,
Javier, and Ben B
in the streaming
hallway.
Ben Y?
Can you hang back for a second?
I’ll give you a pass to class.
Ms. J
floats and billows over,
gesturing to her office.
Do I even have a choice?
I just nod.
Okay.
When the door shuts,
Ms. J exhales slowly,
like she’s been holding her breath
for a very, very long time.
She opens a desk drawer
and pulls out
a jar of gummy bears.
She offers it to me.
I take a couple
(red and orange)
but my mouth is too dry
to eat them.
Ms. J takes a handful herself,
munching while she talks.
Here’s the deal, Ben Y.
I know it wasn’t Ace.
I know it was you.
The Unauthorized Hart Times?
You flew by the library
early that morning
flinging papers in your wake
like a . . .
like a . . .
like I don’t even know what!
I burst out with:
There’s no way you saw me!
All the teachers were in a meeting!
The coast was clear!
My words trail off
as I realize
I just fell in
the most obvious trap
ever.
Ms. J shrugs,
smiles kindly.
Sorry, my friend.
Totally outmaneuvered you there.
She eats a red gummy bear.
Thinks for a minute.
Shakes her head.
Now that THAT is out of way,
and I really do know it was you,
I need you to listen to me.
This could mean big-time trouble, kiddo.
And we’re going to need
to work together
to try to prevent that.
Okay?
I nod,
my mouth too dry
for gummy bears
OR words.
You know
and I know
getting suspended?
That’s not going to teach you anything.
I open my mouth,
prepped and ready to say:
I don’t really care about
getting suspended.
But she holds up her Stop hand
before I can say anything.
You might think you don’t care.
But I care.
In fact, I care enough to try my best to teach you to care.
Getting punished for years to come
because of a flag on your record?
No way I’m letting that happen.
But we need to figure out a way
to make certain . . .
other adults
in this school
understand that, too.
I make a note
to remember how
she said we.
Not you.
More than one time.
While I don’t approve of your tactics,
and I need you to understand
what you did was quite wrong. . . .
She chews more gummy bears,
rocks in her chair
just a little bit
and smiles at me.
You really did the whole thing
all by yourself?
I nod.
She nods.
Her smile gets a little bit bigger.
On a certain level,
I’m quite impressed.
The effort you invested,
the skills you used,
the drive it took
to draft and print and distribute,
and, wow, Ben Y . . .
your spelling has REALLY improved.
A smile creeps across my face
even though my eyes
stay glued
to Ms. J’s desk.
I’m so sorry you felt like
you needed to do this.
I’m so sorry it came to that.
Her laser eyes
drag my unsure eyes
up from her desk
so she can show me
she means what she says.
So . . . I’m not in trouble, then?
My voice is almost a whisper.
Ms. J sucks her bottom lip
for just a second
before she says,
You’re not NOT in trouble.
But we’ll take care of this in-house,
as they say.
I . . .
I don’t know what that means.
Ms. J stands,
opens the door,
motions me out.
That’s okay,
she says,
as I shakily stand up.
You’ll understand soon enough.
I grab my backpack,
unsure of what exactly to think
about today,
about this moment,
about anything.
And hey, Ben Y?
Ms. J catches me
just before
I get to the door.
Her voice is soft.
So are her eyes.
Please understand,
while I’m not proud of your choices,
I am proud of you.
You got the whole school talking
about what YOU felt was important.
You pointed out glaring hypocrisies
that everyone should notice.
I don’t know what to say.
I don’t know where to look.
The tops of my ears burn.
In a good way.
The bottom of my
stomach melts.
In a good way.
I promise to help you use your powers for good, not evil.
But more than that, I promise to just . . . help.
The points you made,
while crude,
were valid.
And we’ll work together
to follow the proper channels
to get your voice heard.
Okay?
I nod,
not sure what to say.
She hands me a folded piece of paper.
Here’s something to help you . . .
research . . .
your authorized admin profile article.
Take a look at it tonight.
We can talk more tomorrow.
I walk out the door
as I choke out,
Okay,
and I feel something
expanding in my chest,
filling up the hollow parts.
Ms. J saw what I did, sure,
but also?
She saw what I meant to do.
She saw my words,
but she saw me, too.
THE BUS
Jordan is still gone
like he’s a ghost,
so I walk to the bus stop
all alone.
The humid evening heat
soaks into me
and the hot wind
presses into me,
an unrelenting weight,
wearing me down.
There’s someone ahead,
standing at the corner,
waiting for the 315.
And as I get closer
and the person gets taller
and I realize it isn’t Jordan,
the pressing wind
goes from heavy
to suffocating,
stealing my breath
with every hot gust.
Hey.
Ace’s wave arcs though the air,
like a rainbow
and it feels like
a hundred
a thousand
a million
years ago
when all I wanted
was for Ace
to notice me.
Now I just need
a few
Ace-free
seconds
or minutes
or days
or weeks
to sort out
what I think.
I’m afraid my face
might have done a thing
when I realized Ace
was not Jordan,
and I’m also afraid
Ace saw the thing
my face did,
and I don’t want to
explain my face
or anything else
to Ace
right now.
I drop my backpack
and toss myself onto the bench,
pulling my knees up to my chest
so my legs don’t fry
on the burning seat.
Ace flops down next to me,
legs protected by
very light pink camo tights
underneath
black basketball shorts.
Neither of us says anything.
You know,
I say,
finally,
feeling the words
slide out
on their own.
If you want to be
a good friend,
or even just
a friend at all,
and if you want to
find a way
to be part of the team . . .
maybe you could . . .
stop trying so hard?
Maybe I should hope that didn’t sound mean.
A small part of me wants it to, though.
And based on the way
Ace’s face
lost about fifty percent
of its usual shining gleam
I’m pretty sure
that small part of myself
just got what it wants.
Was that rude?
Just . . .
maybe . . .
help us,
help me,
get to know you?
A little?
You’re always hanging out,
and making jokes,
and being cool,
but who ARE you, Ace?
What’s left of the gleam
dims in Ace’s eyes.
But . . .
don’t you remember
what YOU said
when you saved me
on the poncho day?
Ace whispers.
I’m a You.
You’re a Me.
The bus is pulling up.
I stand first,
and look down
at Ace
looking up
at me,
eyes big
and confused.
Yes, you’re a Me
and I’m a You,
but that’s like,
a deep-down thing
to know,
you know?
You can be a Me
and I can be a You
but that still doesn’t mean
I know all your thoughts and feelings,
or you know all of mine,
you know what I mean?
You can say you y’alls
and newspapering
and borrow
all the Jordan words
you want,
but that doesn’t make you
a friend, Ace.
It just makes you a chameleon.
We stay quiet
all the way to my stop
until I stand up,
make my way to the door,
and Ace whispers,
Valid point, grasshopper.
You’re really good at those.
And all of the one million
billion
trillion
things
that happened today
or this week
or this year
or ever
melt into one
burning lava blob
of a thought
that sizzles and sparks
behind my eyes
and threatens to
burn away
any other thought
I’ve ever had
or ever will have:
Ace just called me
grasshopper.
Only one person ever called me that.
Only one.
When Benicio first left home,
after he got his GED,
and he and Paul and Juanita
drove all the way
across the country
in his busted-up Bronco
and they somehow got money
to start this new company
that made a game
called Sandbox . . .
and after the money guys
set them up
in a fancy office
in a tall building
with as many snacks
as you could imagine,
and after Benicio
missed coming home for Christmas
twice
and practically lived at work,
making Sandbox bigger and better,
and after Paul quit to marry Juanita,
and after Juanita quit to marry Paul,
Benicio kept working
and stayed so far away
and wouldn’t let me take his bedroom
even though that was stupid,
because we both knew
he was big and old
and never coming back . . .
and after he let me test out Sandbox
before anyone else,
after he taught me how to create an avatar,
after he taught me how to mix potions,
after he taught me how to build things
withou
t worrying
about being wrong,
because—
Wait for it, Benita!
There is no wrong in Sandbox!
How about THAT!—
After alllllllll of that,
I finally got up the guts
to trust him with something
I never trusted anyone with
ever before,
because if he could trust me,
I could trust him, right?
And I asked him if he could make a potion,
just for my avatar,
a transformation potion
that would let me be a girl one day
and a boy another day
and both some other day
and neither whenever I wanted,
and he said,
Sure, okay.
And I made him say again
the thing about how
nothing can be wrong in Sandbox
because there are no mistakes,
and he asked if I ever felt like a mistake,
like, in real life,
and I said not really
and he said not really
and I said only on bad days
and he said you’re not a mistake, kiddo.
People aren’t mistakes ever, okay?
Not in Sandbox and definitely not in real life.
And I said okay
and he said okay,
and a couple of days later,
he created the cabin just for us,
so we could talk and create
all on our own,
and he showed me the transformation potion
and said he was still working on it
but I could test it anyway, try this,
so I tried that,
and that made me jump
as high as the sun
and then past the sun
and all the way to the Sandbox moon
and back again,
and Benicio typed,
Look at you.
To the moon and back again.
How did it feel to have the whole world at your feet?
And I said it felt like being a grasshopper.
And he typed, HAHAHAHA.
Then he typed, Did it feel like anything else, grasshopper?
And I typed, It made me feel free.
And he typed, Perfect.
I love you to the moon and back, grasshopper.
I want YOU to love you to the moon and back, too.
I want you to always feel free to be the You you are.
And then he called me on the actual phone
and I cried a little bit,