“It’s okay,” Benny said, more to himself than to Gottfried. “It’s okay.”
“You are very stressed?” Gottfried asked. “Sometimes I feel dis way. I feel so . . . I don’t know. I feel so disconnected. Like I’m running away. Like my mind isn’t real. Like my mind is a small dog dat lives inside me, you know?”
Benny looked at him. “Not really.”
Gottfried leaned into the doorway. He chewed his thumbnail. “When I feel dis way, Zaire helps me. Shall I find her for you? She does her hypnotism, and I calm right down and go to sleep.”
“You let Zaire hypnotize you?” Benny asked.
“Oh ja,” Gottfried said. “Many nights a week. She will do da same for you if you wish. You will go right to sleep.”
Benny searched Gottfried’s blank smile for a sign that he was trying to trick him or something.
“Thank you, but I’m fine,” he said finally. “Actually, I need to call the police.” Benny pulled out his cell phone. The midnight deadline was stupid. If Virginia was in trouble, he needed to call Detective Disco now. He started dialing.
“Da police? Dat is my cue to leave!” Gottfried exclaimed. “I am underage drinking!”
“Bye,” Benny said. Then he heard the sound of crunching gravel coming from outside. He looked up from his phone. It was a police car coming slowly down the road.
Oh my God, he thought. The phone dropped from his hand. She’s gone. She’s gone.
11:25 p.m.
“I hope you’ve learned your lesson,” the officer said as they turned down the road to Winship. He was a big man with a mustache. Big in a husky way—only slightly fat. He was nice, or at least had nothing better to do than take Virginia back to school. She must have stood in the shadow of the dollar store for an hour, just staring at Min-Jun’s car and praying that he would give up and leave. But the car just sat there and sat there, as if daring her to try to get past it. Then finally, mercifully, the police cruiser had circled back on its patrol route. Virginia had flung herself from the shadows and frantically waved it down. Within seconds, Min-Jun’s car had screeched away.
“No more gettin’ in cars with strangers,” the officer was saying. “You kids got no idea how dangerous it is out there. Take it from me.”
Virginia rolled her eyes. She hated it when adults acted like they were so great. You know what pretty much every bad guy in the world was? An adult. They were the reason the world was so dangerous.
“How come cops always eat donuts?” she asked.
The officer gave an irritated shrug. “You shouldn’t stereotype people. I don’t eat that crap.” He gestured toward a protein shake that was sitting in the cup holder.
Virginia picked it up and examined the nutrition facts. “You may as well. There’s forty-five grams of sugar in this.”
“The hell there is!” He grabbed the protein shake and squinted at the label. “Daaamn!”
The car pulled up to the Boarders. It looked quiet and empty, but the front door was hanging wide open.
“This is where you live?” the officer asked dubiously. “Looks like a haunted house.”
“It is,” Virginia said. She opened the door. “Thanks for the ride.”
He leaned over and called, “No more getting in cars with strangers! Unless they’re me. And I’m not a stranger anymore—I’m Officer Good Guy! You call me any time.”
He waved. Virginia loitered for a minute, waiting for him to give her a personal number or something. But he didn’t. How was she supposed to call him if she didn’t have his number? Dial 911 and ask for Officer Good Guy?
Whatever, Virginia thought. Adults were such liars. They said they wanted to help, but really they just wanted to dump you at the curb of your haunted house and get back to their business.
She slammed the car door and started trudging away. Her bloody shins and knees stung from skidding on the cement. She hoped there were some Band-Aids or Neosporin in the house.
“Virginia?”
She looked up. Someone was standing in the doorway, the light creating an unmistakable Benny silhouette.
“Hey,” she said.
“Virginia, oh my God.” He flew down the steps. His eyes ran up and down her bloody arms and legs. “Oh my God, no no no, what happened.” It didn’t sound like a question, and he sounded like he dreaded the answer. Virginia blinked at him. Was he crying? Were there tears in his eyes?
“I’m fine. I fell down. Aw, damn it. . . .”
“What? What?” Benny said.
Virginia rubbed her eyes. Then she reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out an envelope. “I accidentally took his money.”
Benny’s mouth fell open. “What did you . . . what did you do?”
“Oh my God, nothing,” Virginia said. “He wanted to buy the video. But obviously I didn’t have it. Come on, I need to clean up.”
Five minutes later they were in the small first-floor bathroom, sitting on the wide sink and dabbing cotton balls with disinfectant on Virginia’s scrapes.
It could have felt weird, Benny invading an environment clearly designated for girls (tampon machine, no urinal, a fruity Febreze air freshener plugged into the wall), but it was actually very calming. The collection of hairbrushes crowding the countertop—who knew there were so many kinds? The bouquet of pastel-colored razors in a cup, their blades identical to men’s razors, only disguised with curving pink plastic and lavender-scented moisture strips. The pink and purple toothbrushes with stripes of glitter. The row of deodorants, all lilac colored and green and baby blue, promising “freshness” and “lasting, romantic fragrance,” never actually saying the word “sweat.” The Band-Aids Virginia had found in a drawer, which Benny couldn’t even tell were Band-Aids; they just looked like stickers of clouds and kittens and glittering stars. There’s a girl version of everything, isn’t there? he realized. Even their toothpaste contained glitter. Normally such obvious marketing would have bothered Benny, but at the moment it was strangely comforting. Why shouldn’t girls have special things? They deserved them.
“So I don’t know,” Virginia was saying, unwrapping another brightly-decorated Band-Aid. “He has this gross little porn ring, but I don’t see the point of getting involved. . . .”
“Wait, that one’s still bleeding. Here, let me.” Benny took a paper towel and pressed it against Virginia’s knee, watching the blood seep through in small dots.
“I mean, I think Locker Room Wildcats is over. He needs an inside guy to replace Choi, but I can’t imagine him finding anyone, especially not with all the attention on the school right now. . . . Maybe I could have done some undercover thing, but I think I blew that. I kind of freaked out on him. He probably thinks I’m a narc now.”
“It’s okay,” Benny said, lifting the paper towel to inspect the scrape. “I wouldn’t have wanted you to do anything like that.”
“But I could have,” Virginia said. “I really could have. I was doing fine until he grabbed me.”
“I know you were,” Benny said, placing a sparkling-puppy Band-Aid across her knee. “I know you could do it.”
Virginia looked at him. Did he mean it? His face was so hard to read. He pressed another wet paper towel against her knee. His touch was very gentle and deft. It surprised her. For some reason she always expected him to be awkward.
“But please don’t do anything like that again,” Benny said. “Not without asking me first. These things need to be planned.”
Virginia didn’t say anything. She peeled another Band-Aid. She was starting to look like a human sticker book.
Benny went on. “I know you have abilities. I take those abilities into consideration when I make plans. You need to trust me.”
“I do trust you,” Virginia said. “It’s you who doesn’t trust me.”
“Well it’s hard to trust you when . . .” His voice trailed off. It didn’t seem the greatest time to mention the restraining order he’d found in her file on Principal Baron’s computer. But was there ever a good time to tel
l your friend you’d willfully invaded her privacy and investigated her behind her back?
“. . . when you repeatedly show poor judgment. Yes, there are things I trust about you. For instance, I trust you to always do your best. I trust you to never be lazy or defeatist. But no, I do not trust you to make good decisions. You should never have been in a situation where you were alone with a suspect in an unknown location. That was incredibly stupid and dangerous. Which is why you will let me make decisions from now on. That’s nondebatable if you want to stay in the club.”
Benny bent to place a final Band-Aid on Virginia’s shin. But at the last second she moved her leg away.
“Actually, you know what’s nondebatable?” she said suddenly. “If you want to use my abilities, you have to treat me better. I didn’t join Mystery Club to be your slave.”
Benny scoffed. “I think ‘slave’ is a tad hyperbolic.”
Virginia scoffed back. “Barely! You never let me do anything. If it were up to you, we’d do nothing but sit around all day thinking.”
“Thinking is the most important part!” Benny snapped. “Why can’t you understand that?”
“Well think about this,” Virginia said. “Without me you’d be nowhere. I flirted with those Asian Fusion creeps. I stole the mascot head. I found out about Locker Room Wildcats. I hid the video and got my room trashed while you stood around like a marble statue of a nerd.”
“Hang on. I was the one who told you to flirt with the Asian Fusion guys, if you recall. You didn’t even want to do it.”
“Well you couldn’t have done it at all,” Virginia argued.
“What do you want, credit or something? Are you building a résumé to join some other Mystery Club that I’m not aware of? In this club, the goal isn’t glory seeking. It’s to improve our minds, and, by extension, the world, through mystery solving.”
“Oh my God!” Virginia shouted. “Why do I have to be in Mystery Club for the exact same reasons as you? Why can’t I have my own reasons?”
“Because it’s my club!”
“And what does that even mean, improving your mind and the world or whatever? Why do you actually do this? What is your weird deal?”
Benny gawked at her. His weird deal ? He liked solving mysteries and was good at it. Why did it have to be a deal ? “What—I— It means what I said it means!” he sputtered. “What do you mean?”
“You sound like a kindergartener. You can’t control everyone, Benny! God! You and Zaire should totally be boyfriend-girlfriend, because you are exactly alike.”
“We are not!” Benny yelled. His voice echoed off the tile walls, and the sound of it startled him. He glanced at his reflection in the mirror. His cheeks were red. Calm down, he told himself. Benny never could have imagined himself fighting like this with someone, especially not a girl. Usually he kept his feelings under the surface where they just kind of simmered uselessly. Yet here he was, in the girls’ bathroom where he had no business even being, screaming at his fellow club member who was bleeding. He felt embarrassed and ashamed.
“Sorry . . . ,” he said, struggling to think of something to say that could bring the conversation back from the brink. “Um . . . okay. Do you want to be vice president?”
Virginia lit up instantly. “Yes. Wait, really?”
“Sure.”
“Yes!”
Benny frowned at one of the pink Band-Aids on Virginia’s shin, which was turning brown from blood. “Except if we’re both officers, it means we’re a club with no members.”
“It means we’re a duo!”
“Well, I’ll have to make a chart outlining the division of power,” Benny said before she could get too excited about the promotion.
“Um, sure, if you seriously don’t think two people can work together without a chart.”
“I’m just saying, for efficiency’s sake—”
“I’m just saying, having a relationship is probably more efficient than having a chart.”
Benny immediately looked down.
“Not, like, a relationship, obviously,” Virginia quickly said. “Just like, when two humans have a relationship in which discussions occur. Oh my God! You know what I mean.”
“Fine, fine, no chart.”
“I mean, I don’t even care. Chart, no chart, whatever. I don’t need a chart. If you need a chart—”
“I don’t need a chart!”
They both stared down at the floor. The bathroom felt painfully quiet.
Abruptly Virginia hopped off the sink. She gathered up the bloody paper towels and Band-Aid wrappers and threw them in the trash. “I’m going to bed. Can you get home?”
Benny nodded and pulled out his phone. “I’ll text my mom. Um, just one thing, though. I got you a lock for your door. Let me just install it real quick. Is there a toolbox anywhere?”
Virginia shrugged. “I think there’s a hammer in the closet.”
“I need a power drill. I just assumed y’all would have one.”
“We don’t have anything.”
Benny thought for a moment. “Okay, I’ll come back first thing in the morning to put this lock on. Tonight, I guess . . . just stack some books in front of your door. Make sure you’re the last one up, and that the front door is locked and the windows are closed before you go to sleep. Okay? You’ll do those things?”
“Got it,” Virginia said, yawning. She went into the hall, and Benny followed her. She opened the door to her room. “Oh my God. Again?”
Benny had forgotten the mess. “Oh yeah. Gerard’s the one who’s been trashing your room. I caught him doing it. He was looking for the video.”
“Gerard was in my room? Ew!”
“I don’t think he’ll come back though. I yelled at him pretty bad.”
“You yelled at him? Cool.”
Benny shrugged. “Don’t go to sleep without making sure the front door is locked,” he repeated.
“I won’t, I promise.”
“Okay, well . . . good night.”
“Night!” Virginia waved and went into her ransacked room. Benny stood in the hall for a second, hesitating to leave her alone with just Gottfried upstairs. What if Min-Jun came back? For a second he thought about asking Virginia to come stay with him. She’d be safer at his house. But then he thought of the circus of awkwardness that would entail—his mother’s glares, his grandma’s fascination (a girl in the house! With hair as yellow as a Crayola crayon!), and everyone assuming they were up to some hormone-fueled shenanigans. Worse—the idea of his dad and Virginia in the same room made Benny almost physically uncomfortable. What if his dad did something embarrassing? Would Virginia laugh? He just couldn’t deal with it.
“I’ll be back in the morning,” he said. “Stay safe. In fact, just stay in your room.”
“Okay, Dad.”
Benny paused. Virginia was picking stuff off the floor and dumping it on the bed. He couldn’t tell if she was joking, or if the “Dad” had been a genuine mistake, like that time at the Sapphire Lounge.
“Well . . . see ya.”
“See ya,” Virginia said back distractedly. Benny watched her shove an armful of clothes into a drawer, not bothering to fold them this time. Why didn’t she ever seem scared? Did she just not show it? Or did she lack the common sense to be scared? If that was the case, in a way, Benny envied her.
He went outside, and soon the headlights of his mom’s Subaru appeared at the end of the dark road. As he opened the car door, he gave a backward glance at the Boarders. The bulb in the streetlamp flickered like a camera flash on the old brick house. He could see Virginia’s light on the first floor, and her shadow moving across the gauze curtain. Why did they have the girls on the first floor and the boys on the second floor? It made no sense. It would be safer to have the boys on the first floor—no one wanted to spy on boys or watch them undress. Why did no one think these things through?
“Benjamin?”
“I’m coming.”
He got into the car.
There was a granola bar waiting for him in the passenger-side cup holder. He was hungry, but the sight of it displeased him. How was he expected to become a man in a life filled with granola bars planted here and there to satisfy his slightest hunger? He folded his arms, resolved not to eat it. He’d cook something when he got home. Benny didn’t have the slightest idea how to cook, but he’d just have to figure it out. It’s what adults did.
“Did you see I brought you a granola bar?” his mother asked.
Benny sighed and unwrapped it, his resolve having lasted about five seconds. He didn’t want his mom to feel unappreciated. And besides, he really was hungry.
The woods, 12:30 a.m.
Forgive me, Jesus. I love you!
Corny said a quick prayer before slurping up the gelatinous pink goo. The first time Corny ever got drunk, she’d felt so awful the next morning at church that she’d promised Jesus she’d never do it again. And she’d only done it three times since then, so that wasn’t so bad. There were girls at Winship who got trashed every weekend, like Chrissie White, who had the worst drunk eyes of anyone. And besides, this was a special occasion. It was a beautiful, festive night, the boys had won the game, there was a keg, and Brittany and Angie’s stepmom had made pink Jell-O shots for the girls. Jell-O shots were Corny’s absolute weakness. They were the most magical substance in the world—pink and sweet and you couldn’t tell there was vodka in them at all! Corny’s philosophy was that it was healthy to sin once in a while, because afterward when you repented, you felt closer to Jesus than ever before. And the buzz of holy forgiveness lasted for days, unlike being drunk, which only lasted a few hours.
The party was on the other side of the bridge, which was technically off campus, so as long as things didn’t get too rowdy, no one would get in trouble. There was a fire in the fire pit, and everyone had brought camping lanterns and flashlights and marshmallows, and “Sweet Child o’ Mine” was playing on the boom box, and the whole thing was like a Girl Scout camping trip, except even better because boys were there.
The darkness made everyone a little bolder. Usually Winship parties started with all the girls on one side and the boys on the other, like an elementary school square dance or something. But tonight everyone was so excited, and the night air felt so heavenly, and boys already had girls sitting in their laps, and girls were downing Jell-O shots and giggling and twirling their hair. Corny couldn’t wait for Winn to get there so she could sit on his lap and twirl her hair too.
We Know It Was You Page 21