He was still staring at me.
Heat crept up my chest and into my face.
“I didn’t—” I began, but cut myself off. Christ, this was degrading. My cheeks felt like they were purple now. They literally ached from the heat. Praying that Mason couldn’t read lips, I whispered, “I promise you, I didn’t know Mason was your brother at first, not until you told me. And even after that, I didn’t hang out with you to get near him.” I folded my arms over my stomach and shifted my weight, and then I went on. “But over the past few weeks I’ve...I’ve discovered that I have feelings for him.” Ben’s brows were pulled together, and I couldn’t tell whether he was considering my admission or considering throttling me for crushing on his brother. My eyes shot to my feet again. “And it isn’t because he’s ridiculously talented. It’s more than that. He...” I let out a breath. Did I really have to do this with Mason here? “He stands up for what he believes in. He’s ferociously protective of the people he loves. He isn’t okay with doing things half-assed and he isn’t okay with insincerity, and...and I guess I find that compelling.” I cleared my throat. “But he doesn’t know how I feel, and I would absolutely die—die—if you told him.”
I couldn’t look at Ben, couldn’t look at Mason. And for several miserable seconds, all I could hear was the squawk of birds overhead and a car starting up in a neighbor’s driveway. Then, Ben’s voice: “Fine.”
My eyes jerked to his. “Fine?”
“Yes, fine. To all of it,” he said. His tone was indicating I was being extremely dense, but his mouth was starting to turn up at the corners. “Just don’t make me regret it, Thera.”
Thera.
I felt a strong, visceral tug in my heart. I didn’t know what I’d done to deserve him. “I won’t.”
Ben had been gone for about a half hour when my mom breezed through the front door and into the living room, where I was distracting myself from my problems by means of Ben’s Doritos and a movie. Mom placed a palm on my forehead and said, “Are you feeling any better?” I wanted to lean into her touch, keep it there forever. But a second later her hand was gone, my forehead cold.
“Maybe a little,” I said, which was true. Ben’s forgiveness had loosened the knot in my chest, just a little.
She collapsed on the couch beside me, all sighs, dropping what sounded like her coaching equipment bag on the floor. Then she cleared her throat. “Titanic, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“I love this movie,” she said quietly.
“I know.”
Silence spread between us.
A handful of months ago I would’ve been thrilled to curl up on the couch with my mother and watch this movie. But now her presence felt threatening, suffocating—like she was vacuuming up all the air in the house. She wasn’t exactly saying anything to me, but she wasn’t going away, either, so finally I grabbed my chips and stood. Taking a step forward, I said, “So I think I’ll go work on my research paper until dinner? Clarissa and I are almost finished and—” My sentence came to a halt as my foot thumped into her equipment bag.
An achingly familiar noise filled the room.
It seemed so loud, the sound of a soccer ball skipping across the floor, banging into a wall and then rolling back toward me. I heard the couch creak sharply as Mom jerked to her feet, heard the ball come to a stop somewhere between the two of us.
I didn’t move.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted, and I didn’t even know why. What was I apologizing for? Everything, I guessed. Knocking the ball out of her bag. Ruining her dream. Screwing up our relationship. I thought about that picture I’d seen on the wall. I thought about everything we’d had, everything we’d lost, and it all came down to this.
A ball between us.
“It’s okay,” Mom said quietly. “I didn’t mean to leave it so close to your feet. It’s just—Titanic was on when I walked in and I got distracted.” There was an ache in her voice that I’d never heard before.
“It’s fine,” I said loudly. And before she could reply, I hurried to my room.
Mason and I were sitting on the metal bleachers of North Bay Aquatic Club, where we’d sat for the past several nights while Ben had his swim lesson. It was our meeting time, our hour to sit and brainstorm and stress out, and it was part of the cycle of my life lately. Morning: research terminal illnesses that present no symptoms. Afternoon: hang out with Ben while doing my best to pretend that nothing is wrong. Evening: tag along to swim practice so Mason and I could talk without Ben getting too suspicious.
Mason had taken Ben to the doctor that morning—a massive waste of time. According to the doctor, Ben was the picture of health.
Except he wasn’t.
I sighed tiredly and looked around. The entire swim club was clinically bright. My eyesight spread past the big picture window on the far wall of the pool room, past the well-kept lawn outside, and past a little knoll dotted in shrubs before it petered away into the void.
Yet whatever was killing Ben was gray, amorphous, ducking into the shadows, just out of reach.
Mason looked strangely out of place beside me on the bleachers. Sure, he was simply dressed in his standard plain black T-shirt and jeans. Nothing rockstarish. Nothing bold. But his presence was too big for his body. Too big for the swim club, actually. Like Ben’s light, it spilled out of the building and onto the lawn.
A handful of other people were here, a few moms flipping through magazines, watching the swimmers, mashing buttons on their phones. Samantha—the smart-alecky young girl I’d encountered when I’d arrived at the swim meet several weeks ago—was sitting on the bottommost bleacher, glaring at me and muttering mildly entertaining curse words under her breath. I’d discovered recently that she was Teddy’s little sister, which hadn’t been good news or bad news, just news. It was obvious that she had a crush on Ben. Her eyes got drifty when she watched him swim.
Samantha and I had been getting along famously. Moments ago, we’d had a little run-in in the swim club’s restroom. I was standing at the sink, getting ready to wash my hands, when she barreled in. She scowled when she saw me, which I completely ignored. Tromping up to me, she jabbed an index finger at my forearm and said, “I don’t like you.”
I snorted. Clearly, she didn’t know what she was up against. I’d been practicing the fine art of insolence for seventeen years. I was practically a professional. “You’re such a charming child,” I said lightly, soaping up my hands and rinsing them off. “Why hasn’t your mother left you at a gas station?”
Ignoring the gas-station crack, Samantha scratched herself indiscreetly—the sort of scratch that only little kids and old people can get away with—and said, “I don’t like you,” yet again.
“Yes, Attitudy Judy, I heard you the first time,” I said, shaking my hands off so they spackled her with water.
Her eyes narrowed. The little wiseass had so many freckles that they were practically touching one another. She put one hand on her hip and said accusingly, “If you’re blind, then how come you are looking in my eyes right now? Huh?”
I shrugged at Samantha, tapped my temple with an index finger, and said, “Must be psychic.”
“Liar,” Samantha grumbled under her breath.
“Now, that’s not a nice way to talk to your brother’s friend’s friend,” I said cheerfully. And then I made a point to smile. A big smile. Not because I was “turning the other cheek” or “attracting more bees with honey than vinegar” or “being the bigger person,” but because I wanted to tick her off. And I did.
She crossed her arms, jammed her fists into her armpits, and said, “Go screw yourself.”
Wow. The kid had a mouth. I was mildly impressed. “Go play in traffic,” I said under my breath.
From inside a stall, some woman cleared her throat. My cue to walk out. Head held high and shoulders back, I strode out of the restroom. And now, Samantha was sitting on the bleachers, swinging her feet and doing that frosty I’m watching you thing out of the
corner of her eye, which was mildly annoying. But more annoying were three girls—all around my age and all nauseatingly pretty—who were standing just inside the pool room, openly staring at Mason. Whether they had recognized him as the lead singer of the Loose Cannons or they just thought he was good-looking, I wasn’t sure. The tallest of them was the perfect sort of girl you’d see in magazines—thin, blond, and gorgeous. The other two were pretty in subtle ways. They had smooth hair and smooth skin and smooth smiles.
Evidently Mason was accustomed to beautiful girls gawking at him. He didn’t even glance their way as he gestured in the direction of Ben’s coach and scrubbed a hand through his hair, rendering it fascinatingly messy. “Coach called Mom this morning. He said Ben’s swim times are dropping. He was wondering whether there are problems at home.” His eyes trailed to Ben, who was bobbing in the water next to Teddy, and then back to me. “You think it means something?”
“I think it all means something,” I told him, pressing my fingers to my forehead. “Take Ben for a second opinion. His swim times aren’t much of a symptom, but they’re still a sign of something.”
Mason shook his head. “They’ll tell me the same thing, Maggie—that he’s perfectly healthy.”
I threw my hands up in frustration. “Then take him to the hospital.”
“For what? A problem that hasn’t even appeared yet? They’ll think I’m crazy. They’ll send us away.”
“I’ll go with you to the hospital, and I’ll tell them everything.”
“And they will send you away in a straightjacket.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and let out a heavy gust of air. Mason was probably right. And what good would I do Ben if they threw me in the psych ward? I had a gut feeling that if I walked away right now, I’d be leaving Ben to die.
Suddenly Mason squirmed on the bench and muttered under his breath, “Crap. Incoming.”
My head snapped up. One of the girls who’d been watching Mason—the perfect blond one—had stepped inside the gate and was heading in our direction. She had a stiff sort of gait that seemed to advertise I have a potato chip that I don’t want to break wedged between my butt cheeks.
“Hi! Mason?” she said breathlessly when she came to a stop in front of him, fluttering eyelashes that were long enough to make a breeze. “My name’s Lacey. I’m, like, totally your biggest fan.” She swiveled her head around as though searching for something Mason had hidden in the bleachers. “Are you going to have a concert here?”
Mason tipped his head to the side, considering her words. “Here? Not a bad idea. But no. Not today. Have to rest my voice for next week’s concert.” I had to hand it to him. He sure played it cool, even when beauty was smacking him in the face.
“Ooooo. Can you tell me where it will be?” Lacey asked. Just by the way she stood she was flirting with him.
“Nope,” Mason said. “You’ll have to figure it out like everyone else.”
She stuck her bottom lip out in a pout, and then she said, “Well, then...um, can I have your autograph?”
“Sure. You have a pen?”
She produced a Sharpie from her tacky rhinestone purse and handed it to him. Then she bent outrageously close to him and offered the back of her hand for him to sign. I’d like to say that this did not make me jealous. But it did. I drummed my fingers on the bench.
“Thanks!” she said, and she giggled her way back to her friends, who were jumping up and down like a couple twelve-year-olds.
After I fumed for a few minutes, and after Lacey McChipbutt and her friends left, Mason sighed and said, “Sometimes I wish we had a regular concert schedule and regular fans.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” he said, shrugging. “I just wonder whether people are building up the concerts too much, making them into something bigger than what they are.”
I shook my head. “Don’t shortchange yourself. I went to one of your concerts, and it was off the hook—absolutely amazing.”
Mason’s eyes fluttered down and he bit his lower lip. My compliment had affected him somehow, though I couldn’t imagine why. Clearly he received that sort of praise all the time. Why would it be any different coming from me?
I didn’t know.
What I did know was that the way he was biting his lip made me ache in a million different ways.
“Thanks,” he said finally. “Which concert did you go to?”
“Alexander Park.”
His eyes focusing on mine, unblinking and intense, he said, “But I didn’t see you there.”
I gulped. Because gulping is attractive. “I was in the back.”
He scratched the back of his neck, his gaze drifting back down to his boots. “So did you just stumble on the concert, or...?”
“Um,” I said, stalling. I didn’t want to get Jase in trouble for telling Clarissa what he’d overheard, but I didn’t want to lie, either. So I told Mason only part of the story. “Some guy posted a comment on one of your videos, hinting that the clue was in the music. I figured it out from there.”
Mason let out a big sigh. “Cannon Dude?” he said, and I nodded. “That guy is a complete...”
“Dickbag,” I supplied.
Mason laughed once and beamed a smile at me. “Well said.” I bowed, just a little, swooping one arm out to the side. “Seriously, though,” he went on, “do you think the clue is too easy to figure out?”
“No way—it’s tough as hell.”
“Gavin was the one who came up with the idea,” Mason explained, running a finger across the edge of the bleachers. “He’s obsessed with puzzles, mysteries, that sort of thing. Carlos has been arguing with him about it since day one. But then, Carlos has been arguing about everything since day one.” I shot him a questioning look, and Mason held up his hand and, one by one, used his fingers to count off the reasons. “He doesn’t get enough solos. Our newest songs suck. He’d rather not rehearse on Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays, or the weekend. And he thinks Gavin’s singing the clue is both ‘lame and sophomoric.’”
I blinked. “Whoa.”
“Yeah.” He sighed, glanced at Ben, and then looked down again. His voice suddenly soft, he said, “Anyway, that’s just band stuff. It’s not important right now.”
I nodded, gnawed on my thumbnail for a minute, and then asked the question that had been weighing on my mind for days. “Do you think this thing with Ben could be hereditary? I mean, your dad...?”
“Dad died of a freak thing,” Mason explained. “He came down with a cold he couldn’t shake and ended up with a blood infection. He was hospitalized, and within a week he was gone. It’s totally unrelated to Ben. Besides, look at him,” he said, gesturing to Ben, who was now sitting on the edge of the pool, dangling his legs into the water. He looked healthy. Relaxed. Carefree. “Does he appear sick to you?”
Mason was hoping we were way off base, that there was some other crazy reason that explained why I was seeing these people. But I felt the truth in my gut. It twisted my insides and made nausea curl in my stomach.
Ben was dying. And I was his only symptom.
When you are really young, you take everything that adults say as gospel. All that bullcrap about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. All the ridiculousness about babies being delivered by storks. When you get a little older, there are Listen to me—I know what I’m talking about speeches that are overflowing in wisdom. And then, usually sometime around puberty, some random grown-up says something so outrageously idiotic that you finally figure out that half the adult population is pretty freaking clueless. So you just stop paying attention to them.
At this point in my life, I knew what was right for me. I happened to be an expert in the field of Maggie because, after all, I was Maggie. Which was exactly why I didn’t take it kindly when Dad poked his head into my upstairs room that night and said, “What are you doing?”
I couldn’t answer him on account of the stack of grade-school artwork I was carrying with my teeth. So I dropped the box I
was lugging across the room, plucked the artwork from my mouth, and said, “I’m moving back up here. So I’m sorting through my old crap.”
After I’d gotten home from the pool that night, I’d walked my fingers over every dusty inch of this bedroom. The place was stuffed full of years and years of near-constant motion: mud-caked soccer cleats, two snowboards, a pair of ice skates, piles of drawings from art classes, a bee costume from a school play, books, books, and more books.
I could feel Dad’s anxiety buzzing in the room like a high-tension wire. “Why?” he asked.
Because the boxy room felt like it was pressing on me from all sides. Because I could breathe up here. Because I’d left too much of myself here for far too long. “Because it suits me better,” I said, hand-inspecting an ancient bra. I grumbled under my breath. Christ. Had I not grown a cup size since I was twelve? I chucked it in the garbage can beside me.
“Do you think that’s smart, with the stairs and all? And the sleepwalking?” he asked.
“I haven’t walked in my sleep for months,” I pointed out. “So technically, I’m more of a menace to myself when I’m awake.”
After a long moment, Dad said, “Just be careful, okay?” His voice sounded light, but I could sense the thin river of unease snaking through his words.
My chest knotted up reflexively. “Dad?”
The One Thing Page 19
