Knack (Benjamin Brown Book 1)

by Tom Twitchel

  “Hmm. I was thinking more of… Hey now! What have we here?” he pulled the book into his lap and bent over it.

  “What?” but I knew what he was looking at as soon as the word came out of my mouth.

  “Justine! Weird together? Holy crap dude! What is this all about? I thought you and Maddy were…you know…”

  I grabbed the book out of his hand, blushing hard enough to feel the heat on my face. “What? We’re what? We’re just friends. You know that!” I was flustered and not exactly sure what was bothering me more: Baffle reading Justine’s note or the suggestion that Justine’s message was somehow a betrayal of my friendship with Maddy—probably both.

  He leaned forward, his eyes bright. “So you and Maddy aren’t like…together? I don’t hang with you guys as much lately, but I know you still hit the park all the time. Where did this Justine stuff come from? You been holding out on me?”

  “No, Maddy and I aren’t together. The three of us are friends. She’s as much your friend as mine.” Strictly speaking, not totally accurate. Baffle had been teasingly rebuffed by Maddy enough times that their relationship was more like quasi-hostile brother and sister. “And that thing from Justine…I don’t get it either. We’ve never hung out or said more than a few words to each other.”

  “Did you call her? You know, text her?” he asked.

  “No.” A little lightbulb went off in my head. Should I have done that?

  “You’re clueless! That’s totally what you should have done. Texting anyway. That way you can get what you’re saying right before you send it.” He was smiling, enjoying my discomfort.

  “Yeah?” I said. “When did you get to be an expert on talking to girls?”

  Locking his hands behind his head, he settled back into the couch looking smug. “I know what I know.”

  Uh huh. Sure, you do, I thought. “Yeah. Well…she’s probably forgotten she even wrote it. Besides, I really don’t know what she means. More than meets the eye? Be weird together?”

  “Better not let Maddy see it. She might get—OW!” he rubbed his shoulder where I’d punched him, hard. He laughed and took another swig of soda. A couple of drops dribbled on his t-shirt.

  “That’s not a big deal. She wouldn’t care,” I said, although I wasn’t sure that was true.

  “So, you’re telling me that if some guy, some guy you knew maybe, asked Maddy out, you wouldn’t have a problem with it?” I couldn’t read the expression on his face, but there was a strange vibe coming off him that I hadn’t felt before.

  “No. Why would I? It’s not as if we’re boyfriend and girlfriend. She can do what she wants.” My feelings were about as tangled up as a pile of clothes hangers. I didn’t know what I felt.

  “Okay. Just remember what you’re saying. Don’t go getting all messed up if that happens.” He seemed irritated all of a sudden. The whole conversation was starting to really bother me.

  “Can we drop this?” I said.

  “Whatever. I had something else I wanted to talk to you about anyway.”

  Relieved, I took a sip and laid back.

  “About?”

  “About Goodturn and the stuff we talked about.”

  Out of the frying pan and into the fire. I hadn’t shared many details with Baffle about the frequent visits I had been making to Mr. Goodturn’s. My being mentored, my new camouflage knack and my strengthening bond with him were things I had been keeping to myself.

  “Like what?” I asked even though I really didn’t want to know.

  Baffle wiped his mouth with his hand and crinkled the soda can with his other hand. He looked over at me. “For starters, do you know what his real name is?”

  “His real name?” I felt queasy.

  “He changed his name when he moved here from Germany. His name used to be Gutewendung.” He searched my face for a reaction.

  “Gutewendung? So? Lots of people change their names when they immigrate to the U.S.” I could feel a buzzing of worry in Baffle.

  “Uh huh. Guess when he moved here from Germany.”

  “When?” I hated it when he played this guessing game routine with me.

  “1949. And do you know how old he was when he moved here? Thirty-nine!”

  I did the math. That would make Mr. Goodturn over a hundred years old. That didn’t reconcile with his appearance, despite the fact that we all saw him as ancient. He was definitely old, but that date would make him older than my grandfather who had passed away years ago, and he had looked brittle and feeble before he went.

  Baffle could tell I was struggling with the dates and the age calculation. “Right? He doesn’t look nearly that old! I figure the passport data’s been forged, and that’s why he changed his name. He didn’t do it to create a more western sounding last name. He did it to make it harder to trace who he actually might be.”

  “Who he might be? Who do you think he is? You think he’s younger?” Another question I really didn’t want answered.

  “That’s the point! I don’t know! His background doesn’t make any sense! But I’m betting it’s something he doesn’t want anybody to know.”

  “Okay. So he changed his name and the dates and his age don’t add up. Is that it?”

  The humming undercurrent in Baffle’s attitude ratcheted up a notch.

  “No, that’s not all. I got more information on the guy that tried to hold him up. He’s dead Benny! Toes up.” He looked at me fearfully. All of the earlier bravado and swagger had melted away and all that was left was the friend I remembered from junior high. Sitting there with soda stains on his shirt and his hair all messed up, he looked ten years old.

  “How did he die?” Don’t tell me; don’t tell me; don’t tell me.

  “All of his organs shut down. And that’s not all. The other cases about people with the same illness or catatonic state, that’s what they’re calling it, they’re all in bad shape too.”

  I felt sick and my head hurt, and it wasn’t from not eating lunch and drinking soda. I didn’t want to believe anything bad about the man who had, over the course of the summer, become like family to me.

  “Baff. What do you want me to say?” I asked.

  “Say? I don’t know. But that’s not even the strangest stuff that I found. Did you know that he owned a business in Germany? And that his partner was killed?”

  That didn’t sound quite right. “No.”

  “Well, he did. His partner was killed in a hit and run accident, and Mr. Gutewendung was investigated as a possible suspect. I guess they had some kind of falling out because when his partner died Mr. Gutewendung wasn’t involved in the business anymore. That’s why they suspected him. You know, revenge. It never went to trial, at least as far as I could tell. But…Mr. Gutewendung left Germany as soon as he was released by the police.” Baffle was breathing hard.

  Everything he had told me had answers that might be completely innocent. But the way he was spinning them out made it all sound incredibly suspicious.

  “Baff, I…”

  “That’s not all! He was married. Mr. Good…Gutewendung was married. When his partnership in the business ended, his wife left him. There are articles that talk about how he blamed her leaving on his partner. That’s another one of the reasons that the police hauled him in for questioning.”

  I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. How could Baffle pull all of that off the Web when it had happened over fifty years in the past? Did police records go back that far? Did they archive them or something? My knowledge of data mining was limited. Baffle was a literal genius at that kind of thing, but I had trouble wrapping my head around it.

  “Benny? You all right?”

  Opening one eye, I gave him a shaky thumbs up. “Yeah. I’m fine. It’s a lot to take in.” I wasn’t fine, but I didn’t want to share with Baffle why I was so worried.

  Baffle looked irritated. “Hey, yeah, I know. It’s freaky right? It’s like one of those stories about Nazi war criminals escaping under an alias and living ou
t normal lives, except they usually run off to South America.”

  “Yeah, except that other than a bunch of unexplained coincidences and I think Mr. Goodturn is Jewish. Baff, we don’t really know what happened. Right?” I said.

  Frowning, Baffle shook his head. “No, but what do you think we should do?”

  “I don’t know.” I closed my eyes again and sighed.

  CHAPTER TWO

  When morning came, I tried to shake off the previous day. Fridays were a high point during the summer. Maddy came over in the early afternoons and we would hit one of the parks, have lunch, and if she didn’t have to watch her little sister, we’d watch a movie together later. Confronting Mr. Goodturn right away wasn’t something I was interested in doing anyway. I needed time to think over what Baffle had uncovered. Besides, if I got answers that I wasn’t going to be happy with, I was okay putting it off.

  I didn’t want the upsetting conversation I’d had with Baffle to ruin what had become my favorite day of the week.

  Too bad I hadn’t figured out that I was going to mess that up all on my own.

  I cleaned up the mess Baffle and I had made of the living room and the kitchen and picked up clothes, made the bed and generally straightened up. Maddy didn’t actually perform a white glove inspection when she came over, but she wasn’t shy about commenting on my housekeeping or lack thereof.

  She texted me around noon and said she was downstairs. I didn’t need to buzz her in, having given her my card since I didn’t need it and then knacked open my front door and waited for her to get to my floor. Her slender form came bouncing in a few minutes later, wearing a pink t-shirt and matching Vans along with her signature black jeans. Her glossy black hair swung from side to side as she took the stairs two at a time. Her arms and face were starting to bronze from the late spring and early summer sun.

  “Hey you! What’s up?” she said as she gave me a hug.

  “Not much, just waiting for you.”

  “Little ole me?” she said as she batted her eyes furiously and giggled as she waltzed over to my couch.

  Following her, I said, “I thought we could hit Canal Park and then maybe…”

  Raising a hand in a “stop” gesture she said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let’s do something different. Summer’s just getting started and the weather is really great.”

  “Yeeaah…but I need to make some serious money this weekend. I have rent due and then there’s groceries.…” I started.

  “Uh huh. Mmm Hmm. Yeah, but we could do that early tomorrow morning!” Her eyes sparkled.

  “We could…what?” my heart started hammering away in my chest. “How are you going to manage that? Is your uncle going to let you take a bus over here that early?”

  Her grin was practically splitting her face in two. “No silly. My uncle thinks I’m spending the night at a girlfriend’s for a slumber party. I can stay the night!”

  “You can? Are you sure?” Why would I say that? I had never encouraged either of my friends to sleep over because I had been paranoid about neighbors spying or creating noise that would cause a visit from Breno or Mr. Goodturn. But my relationship with Mr. Goodturn being as solid as it was allowed me to feel a little giddy at the prospect of Maddy and I hanging out for an entire day.

  “Absolutely! I figure I can use your mom’s room. Whaddaya think?”

  I felt kind of sweaty and happy all at once. “That would be great, Maddy.” I was having trouble thinking clearly.

  “Great! So, let’s eat here and then plan out the day!” She spun on her tiptoes and pirouetted into the kitchen. “But first, I’m thirsty!”

  Opening the door to the fridge, she wrinkled her nose. “Just soda huh? Maybe we can pick up some juice and bottled water later.” She grabbed a Sprite and shut the door. As she popped the top, she looked over my shoulder at the counter.

  “Is that a yearbook I see? Oh boy! Let’s see what Roosevelt High is all about!” She started to reach around me, but I moved in the way.

  “Yeah, not today. There’s embarrassing stuff in there.” The sweat and heart pounding was for a different reason now. Baffle’s voice echoed in my ear “Better not let Maddy…” It would be a fair question to ask why in the world I would have left it out where she could see it. I throw myself on the mercy on the court, the court that handles cases for idiots who do stupid things that defy explanation.

  She stepped back and looked at me curiously. “Yeah? Okay. I wouldn’t want to make you feel weird.” Why would she pick that word!

  “Oh, thanks. I…” Before I could even begin to feel relieved, she dodged around me, snatched the yearbook off the counter and ran to the couch. Cradling it in her arms like a baby, she threw her head back and laughed like a crazy person.

  “Maddy! Come on! Seriously, let’s look at it later.” My insides were in serious turmoil.

  Still hugging the book to her chest, she said, “Look, anything written in here can’t be any worse than the stuff written in mine, or one of my girlfriends.’ I promise not to laugh too much and I won’t judge. Much!” She started laughing all over again.

  I tried to tell myself there was no reason to panic. I mean, Justine’s note was barely a paragraph and I truly had no real history with her. Maybe I was just overthinking it.

  Still giggling, Maddy patted the couch next to her. “Come on! Don’t be a big baby. I’ll be nice.”

  I reluctantly joined her on the couch and tried to get my nerves under control. Maddy started flipping through the book, conducting a running narrative: “That looks fun,” “Who’s this?” “That’s a good picture of Baffle.” I started to think I had made too much out of nothing when Maddy stiffened and pulled away from me.

  She was looking at me through slit eyes, and she wasn’t smiling anymore. “So, who’s Justine?” I felt like there was an elevator plunging to a stop in my stomach.

  “She’s just a girl at school.” Somehow, I knew that was not going to be a good enough answer.

  Maddy pursed her lips. “Just a girl? That signs your book “XOXO’?”

  “I don’t think that really meant anything. I only have one class with her. We really don’t know each other that well. It’s really no big deal.”

  “No big deal? “We can be weird together”? What does that mean?” Her eyes were wide now and red-rimmed. I could feel anger coming off her. This was obviously a very big deal.

  “Maddy, honestly, I was surprised that she wrote in my yearbook at all.” I felt desperate. I was defending myself when I really didn’t feel like I had done anything wrong.

  Standing up, Maddy dropped the book on the couch and started walking to the door. She had her back to me.

  “Yeah? Well, it sure sounds like she wants to do more than sign your yearbook.”

  I got up and followed her. “Where are you going? Aren’t we going to spend the afternoon together?”

  Opening the front door, she stopped and stood there with her back to me. “I forgot that I have a lot of things to do today. I need to get home.” I thought I heard her voice catch.

  “Maddy, don’t go. Why are you so upset?”

  Still not facing me, her shoulders hunched, she looked up at the ceiling. “Boys are SO DUMB!” Then she walked out and slammed the door behind her.

  Standing there, looking at the door, I remembered the first time she had walked out of my apartment under such different circumstances. I heard Baffle and Mr. Goodturn in my head offering me unwelcome advice:

  “Better not let Maddy see it.”

  “Be realistic about your friends.”

  Anger, something I felt so rarely, scratched at the door to my memories, begging to be let in so it could romp around in there and make an even bigger mess of my emotions. I looked at the door again and thought about chasing after her. The thought of limping down the stairs and getting a face full of rejection held me back. My anger staggered and evaporated, replaced by fear. Heart hammering away, my breath coming in short gasps, I reached up and felt my face.
My cheeks were wet and I didn’t care with no one there to see it. Maddy was my best friend and I cared about her more than anyone else in my life. What Justine had written had hurt her somehow and she had walked out on me.

  Walked out on me.

  Just like Mom.

  Was that my fault too?

  My chest felt like it was full of broken glass.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The next day I woke up feeling sick. No cold or flu but the misery index was pretty high. Time at one of the parks was a necessity, but I couldn’t motivate myself to get out of bed. I had spent the entire afternoon the day before texting Maddy, apologizing, pleading and begging her to talk to me. I called her and she wouldn’t pick up, I kept getting her deliriously happy voicemail greeting, which just made me feel worse. I finally gave up when she sent me a three-word text:

  LEAVE ME ALONE

  I reread that about a dozen times. All caps? Leave me alone? Forever? For the weekend? Were we friends anymore? The teenage mind is a scary thing. I spent hours making myself miserable and finally went to sleep around two in the morning. Hence, my inability to drag my butt out of bed.

  When one o’clock rolled around, the sun coming through the windows and the heat in the apartment made staying in bed less desirable than getting up. Dragging myself into the kitchen, I ate whatever I could pull out of the fridge that didn’t require any prep. Then I shuffled into the bathroom and took a shower until I used up all of the hot water. Dressing myself seemed like an impossible chore and I seriously thought about climbing back into bed but it was just too hot. Stumbling out to the living room, I dropped onto the couch and stared at my yearbook. How could something so small create such a big problem? Using my knack, I picked it up and threw it across the room. Hitting the wall behind the TV, it fell to the floor, leaning against the wall at an angle. I focused my knack again and smacked it flat to the floor.

  Why had Maddy gotten so angry? What was the big deal? Justine didn’t perform in the parks with me. Justine didn’t hang out with me on the weekends. Maddy and I weren’t like…dating.