You Go First

by Erin Entrada Kelly

  Ben cleared his throat and turned to the teacher. “She’s right. It’s only fair.”

  Ms. Abellard waved her dry-erase marker in the air. “I don’t think this is the place for anyone to—”

  Ben turned to Sherry. “You can go first,” he said.

  Sherry shook her head. Her ponytail flopped from one shoulder to the other. “You go first, Ben Boxer. By all means. Be. My. Guest.” She sat down in her chair delicately. The girl in front of her—also dressed like a mall mannequin—leaned over and whispered something, and they giggled. The boy behind her—Derrick Whatshisname—gave her a thumbs-up.

  No one was giving Ben a thumbs-up.

  No matter.

  Ben cleared his throat a second time. “I want to go to work for you.” He swept an open hand around the room. You’re always supposed to use hand gestures when you speak. He’d read that somewhere. “Each and every one of you.” He pointed to specific people—John, Dan, Jeffrey, Laurie, Eddie, even Derrick Whatshisname. “To do that, you must first elect me to student council.” He pointed to himself.

  No one had moved a single muscle. Not even Ms. Abellard.

  Were they listening, or—?

  “I want to know what you think about Lanester Middle School and its student body. I want to hear”—he cupped his ear—“from you.” He pointed to the class again. “Thank you.”

  The room was completely silent. He straightened his desk before he sat down. His classmates stared at him a moment longer before turning back to Ms. Abellard in slow motion.

  “Uh,” Ms. Abellard said. “Thank you, Ben.” She pointed at Sherry with the marker. “Sherry, do you want to . . . say anything? Quickly?”

  Now they all turned to Sherry, who grinned.

  “On second thought, Ms. Abellard, I think I’ll just save the big speech for Friday.”

  A wave of quiet snickers brushed over the classroom. Ben’s ears thrummed.

  They’d been listening—right?

  The snickers were for Sherry—weren’t they?

  You are evolving, Ben Boxer.

  You are a finch.

  Probably Not

  Rabbit Hole: Earthquakes occur when the earth’s tectonic plates reach their maximum amount of stress following gradual friction. A rupture occurs, creating the quake. Earthquakes happen all the time all over the world, but you can’t feel all of them.

  Charlotte was in life sciences, staring blankly at Ms. Schneider, and for the first time in days she wasn’t thinking about her father. She wasn’t imagining tubes coming out of his nose or IVs dangling from his arm. She also wasn’t thinking about the scientific theories projected on the whiteboard. She was thinking about a rabbit hole she had climbed into once, when she’d first learned about silent earthquakes.

  Scientists called them “slow slips” or “episodic tremors.” You can’t feel them. There’s no rumbling under your feet. Plates don’t shatter on the floor.

  Red’s. Art club. It all felt like a slow slip.

  Charlotte told herself: So what?

  Charlotte thought: What’s the big deal?

  But she was waiting for a rumble. A crash. An explosion.

  “Earth to Charlotte Lock-nerd. Wipe up your drool and pass the paper.”

  That was Tori Baraldi, who sat next to her. She waved a stack of papers in Charlotte’s face.

  Charlotte took a paper, passed the rest on, and discovered with horror that it was a pop quiz.

  Give a one-word meaning of “echino-” when used in the following context: A sea star is an echinoderm.

  Describe the function of the radial nerve in a sea star.

  What are the functions of the ampulla?

  Charlotte chewed her pencil and imagined a different scenario: One where she went to Red’s with Bridget and Sophie. She pictured the three of them sitting at a table with plain cheese slices because for some reason girls never ordered toppings at Red’s. They were talking about . . . what? Art? Van Gogh? After Mr. Lockard told Bridget about Van Gogh that day—the day he gave them twenty dollars, even though they never dedicated a slice to him—Bridget had started reading about all kinds of “Post-Impressionist stuff.” Now she considered herself an expert. That’s why she wanted to see the sunflowers at the museum. She said Van Gogh was a “genius.” That’s probably what she and Sophie talked about in art class. Oh, Van Gogh! Isn’t he a genius?, Bridget would say. Ohmygod, you’re so right, Sophie would reply. Not only that, but Picasso is sooo overrated.

  Charlotte practiced her imaginary response: Did you know oasis is a scramble of Pablo Picasso? And nonteaching is a scramble of Vincent van Gogh? Interesting, right?

  Even in her imagination, their faces were blank.

  The day Mr. Lockard told them about Van Gogh was the last time they’d wished on Sphinx. It was the last time they’d gone to Red’s. It was the last time Charlotte had heard her father talk about art.

  She wrote prickly for the first quiz response and took her mind to that day, when she’d said he was embarrassing—even though that wasn’t what she meant, not really—and she imagined that instead of going to Red’s with Bridget, where they’d sat awkwardly and pretended they belonged there, she’d asked her father more questions. Why did Van Gogh cut off his ear? Why didn’t he just paint things the way they appear? Why did the paintings look like they were in a dream? Was it a mistake, or did he want to paint that way?

  Charlotte knew that all of a starfish’s sensory information and memory went to its radial nerve, but her eyes were blurry, and a fat tear fell right where the answer should have been. It soaked through the page. A perfect circle.

  Charlotte pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes to push the tears back inside. She sniffled. If anyone asked, she would say she had allergies.

  Hey, Charlie, is everything okay?

  Yeah, sure. Just allergies.

  But no one asked.

  Life According to Ben

  Part VII

  The Boxers’ dining room table was covered with white poster board and fat permanent markers, all black. Ben had read somewhere that branding was everything. People recognized the golden arches because McDonald’s signs were the same everywhere. It would be the same for him. All his signage would be black letters against a white background. He’d keep the slogan simple, too. Something memorable. BEN BOXER FOR THE PEOPLE. It felt very Huey P. Long, except without the corruption and murder and everything.

  There were seven posters, all destined for the sixth-grade hallway. His plan was in place: Make posters tonight, get to school early to hang them, and work on his speech over lunch. He was playing catch-up with Sherry, but no matter. His mind was a well-oiled machine. He would not only conquer student council and Sherry Bertrand, but middle school, adolescence, and then—the world.

  “Are you sure you don’t want it to be more colorful?” his mother asked. She was hovering again.

  “No. Branding. Remember?”

  “Ah. Yes.”

  Mr. Boxer hadn’t moved out yet, but he wasn’t home, which was unusual for this time of evening. But then again, everything was unusual now.

  Maybe he was at his new apartment, wherever that was. I’ll put the new couch here and the flat-screen TV there, he was saying to one of his new single buddies, whoever they were.

  If this was last week, Ben would’ve asked: “Hey, where’s Dad?”

  Instead, he let the absence fill the room and strangle all the questions away.

  He needed to focus on the posters, anyway.

  When he was finished, his head throbbed from the permanent-marker smell and he was hungry because he’d skipped dinner. When his father came home, Ben was standing at the foot of his bed, staring at a selection of clothes to wear the next day. If Sherry Bertrand was going to look like a mall mannequin, he needed to look like something, too. He needed to look like a man with purpose.

  “What you up to?” his father asked, knocking on the door and opening it at the same time.

  Ben kept
his eyes on the clothes. Dark-green dress shirt or white? And which tie should he wear?

  “Trying to figure out what to wear tomorrow,” said Ben.

  His father walked in and stood next to him. “Getting dressed up, huh? Special occasion?”

  Ben shrugged.

  “Do you want to talk about anything?” his father asked.

  “Not particularly. Unless you have an opinion on whether I should wear green or white.”

  They stood there, father and son, silently looking at Ben’s makeshift outfits.

  “White,” said his father.

  Ben plucked the green shirt off his bed and hung it on his closest door, which was where he put everything he needed for the next day. He tossed the white shirt in the hamper, even though it wasn’t dirty. Then the gods gave him an unexpected gift: His phone buzzed, cutting through the tension in the room.

  “That’s my friend Lottie,” said Ben, in a tone that meant he needed some privacy.

  His father took the hint and left without saying anything else.

  But it wasn’t a phone call. It was a notification that Lottie had taken her Scrabble turn. She’d added MORE to Ben’s NEVER.

  NEVERMORE.

  “Tell me about it,” said Ben.

  All Lined Up

  Rabbit Hole: The Rubik’s Cube is three-dimensional combination puzzle invented in 1974 by Erno Rubik, a Hungarian professor of design and architecture. “If you are curious, you’ll find the puzzles around you,” he once said. “If you are determined, you will solve them.” About 350 million Rubik’s Cubes have been sold worldwide.

  Bridget’s brother Gordo once went through a phase where he barked every time their dog, Sergeant, barked, which made the noise at the MacCauleys’ house ten times worse, but now Gordo was nine and didn’t do things like that anymore. Instead he made a pest of himself until people did what he wanted.

  At the moment he was pestering Charlotte to solve his Rubik’s Cube.

  “Come on! Please! Please!” said Gordo, waving the Rubik’s Cube in Charlotte’s face while she and Bridget studied for Bridget’s social studies test. They were sitting at the MacCauleys’ kitchen table, learning about the Constitutional Convention. Bridget’s notebook was decorated with daisies and sunflowers because she never paid attention in any of her classes except art. She preferred to daydream about her future as a famous artist in New York.

  Charlotte’s father once said that everyone had a “someday”—a fuzzy time in the future when life would go just as it should, every dream would come true, and things would clip along at a perfect pace. It’s what got people through tough times, Mr. Lockard said. Bridget’s someday had an art studio, galleries, canvases slathered in paint. Charlotte’s someday was at the base of a volcano or Egyptian pyramid, where she pulled obsidian and pumice from the dirt and studied them, used tiny brushes to clean specimens, took samples to a lab, and estimated the age of cliffs and mountains.

  “We’re busy, Dorko,” said Bridget. She leaned her head back and yelled, “Dad! I’m trying to learn about the Constitutional Convention, and Dorko won’t leave us alone!”

  The MacCauleys always yelled, even when they had no idea where anyone was in the house. Charlotte never yelled at her own house. Her mother always said, “use your inside voice,” which meant speak quietly.

  “Don’t call your brother names!” Mac called back.

  Bridget shoved Gordo away from the table, which was easy to do because he was small and wiry. He stumbled back, but rebounded right up to Charlotte again. He kept waving the Rubik’s Cube. There was a thump from the next room. Donnie, probably. He was seven and always jumping off something.

  “Puh-lease, Charlotte!” Gordo whined. “It only takes twenty seconds!”

  Charlotte put her pen down. “Oh, all right.”

  “Don’t!” Bridget said. “He’ll never leave us alone.”

  “Yes, I will,” Gordo said. “Just solve it one time.”

  Charlotte examined all sides of the Rubik’s Cube while Gordo counted the seconds. The Cube was solved by the time he got to “twenty-one.”

  “That’s one second longer than last time,” he said. “You better keep practicing.”

  Bridget shoved him again. “You’re one to talk. It’d take you twenty years to solve it!”

  Gordo took the Cube and turned it around and around in his small hands. “Is your dad gonna die, Charlotte?”

  Bridget gasped and gave him another hard shove. This time his butt hit the ground.

  “Shut up, Gordo!” Bridget said. “God, you’re such an idiot.”

  Gordo stood up and rubbed his behind. “I was just asking!”

  “Get out of here, Dorko!”

  Gordo took off down the hall, shouting to Mac that Bridget had called him “Dorko” and “pushed him against the wall,” which wasn’t exactly true. But soon they could hear him playing with Donnie. They were making light-saber noises and talking about the Force.

  Sergeant lumbered in and walked up to Charlotte. She scratched his ears.

  “Sorry about my idiot brother,” said Bridget, snapping her fingers and calling Sergeant, who walked around the table and settled at her feet.

  “It’s no problem,” said Charlotte, even though she felt like a stone was sitting in her chest. She wanted to say: It’s not like I haven’t wondered the same thing. Sometimes I think about it so much that I’m surprised there’s room in my head for any other thoughts. But it’s strange to hear someone say it right out loud, you know? It’s like hearing your thoughts come to life when you thought they were your own. Has that ever happened to you?

  “You shouldn’t give in like that,” Bridget continued. “My stupid brothers need to learn that they can’t always get what they want. They’re spoiled enough as it is.”

  “I figured he would leave us alone if I just solved it real quick,” Charlotte said. “It only takes a few seconds.”

  “Yes, we all know you’re a genius and it only takes twenty seconds,” Bridget mumbled.

  The stone dropped from Charlotte’s heart to her gut.

  “Actually, twenty-one seconds,” she said. She meant it to be funny, but Bridget didn’t laugh. “Do you have a lot of members for the art club?” she asked, desperate to change the subject.

  Bridget shrugged. “So far it’s just me, Sophie, and Dee Dee.” She tapped her pencil against her homework. “I asked Sophie if you could join, too, but she’s the president-elect and she only wants artsy types. But you probably didn’t want to join anyway.”

  Charlotte didn’t know what to say, so she looked around the kitchen and silently made scrambles out of Sophie Seong.

  Isophones.

  Goopiness.

  That’s when she saw them. Near the front door, where the MacCauleys left their shoes. Charlotte’s were over there, too, all lined up like a family.

  Why hadn’t she noticed it before?

  “What’s that?” she asked, pointing with her pencil.

  Bridget barely turned around. “Oh. My dad got me a pair of Vans.”

  Charlotte curled her toes. “Seriously?”

  “They’re shoes,” said Bridget. “Big deal.”

  Slow slip.

  Life According to Ben

  Part VIII

  Sometimes the best way to start a conversation was to pretend it was already happening. Skip all the small talk. Small talk is for small people. Ben had read that somewhere. Or maybe he invented it. He couldn’t remember. Nevertheless, when he called Lottie Lock that night, he said: “I have a confession.”

  Lottie paused. “I’m waiting.”

  “I wish I was taller.”

  A study in 2004 found that taller people were more successful. According to Business Insider, a person who was six feet tall might earn $166,000 more over the course of a thirty-year career than someone who was only five feet five.

  When Lottie didn’t say anything, Ben said, “Your turn.”

  “My turn for what?”

  �
��Confession.”

  Ben had on earbuds so he could play Minecraft and talk to Lottie at the same time. He was in the process of building a lake adjacent to his farmland.

  His door was locked again.

  “I don’t have one,” she said.

  “Everyone has something.”

  “Not me.”

  “Okay.” Ben paused. He thought about Sherry Bertrand and Purple Ribbon. “If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?”

  “Um. Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “There has to be something.”

  “Nah. I can’t think of anything. I don’t believe in that kind of stuff.”

  “What kind of stuff?” asked Ben. He studied his lake-in-progress from every angle.

  “Changing things about yourself. You should be happy with who you are.”

  Ben felt warm and deeply embarrassed.

  “You’re right,” he said, making his voice sound nonchalant as possible. “I mean, I’m tall enough anyway.” Where had that come from? “I just wouldn’t mind being two inches taller, like six feet.” Over the course of one sentence, Ben had grown almost an entire foot. His heart beat fast, like Lottie could see him through the phone and knew he was lying.

  “See?” she said. “You’re good just like you are.” Her voice was light, but there was something faraway about it that he didn’t understand.

  Girls were an endless mystery.

  “How’s your student-council thing going?” asked Lottie.

  “Oh. It’s great. Really great. I’ve been putting my name out there. You know. Campaigning. Making my way through the lunch crowds. I’ve got a whole team working for me.” Now he was tall and had a campaign team?

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. If you wanna win, you gotta go big.” He paused and let another lie roll off his tongue: “I have an insider in the attendance office. Danielle. She says I’m in the lead already. Tomorrow I’m going to fine-tune my speech.”