You Go First

by Erin Entrada Kelly

  “He is?”

  “Of course.” She sniffled. “That’s why I went to your school. To sign you out. And they said—”

  Charlotte imagined them telling her that she was absent. Her mother’s confused expression.

  The tears were for her, not her father.

  “—they said you weren’t there,” she continued. “That you never got to school at all. I was so confused.” She took a deep breath. “I asked Bridget, and she said she hadn’t talked to you. Didn’t know anything about it.”

  “You talked to Bridget?”

  But then Charlotte remembered the note.

  Her mother nodded. “Then I pulled up your phone records. I was in a total panic. So many things happen to kids—” She glanced at Joseph as if to say: You’re a grown-up. You understand, right? He nodded. “—I saw all these Louisiana numbers and I thought you ran off with some maniac from the internet.”

  The thought of Ben being a maniac from the internet made Charlotte smile, even though it wasn’t the best time to be smiling—or maybe it was, because now her mother was smiling, too. She looked around, as if she just realized where they were.

  “Why did you come here, of all places?” her mother asked.

  “I was just . . . ,” Charlotte began. “I was . . .”

  I just wanted to feel something.

  Her mother grabbed her hand and squeezed.

  “Let’s just go now, okay? Let’s go and see your father.”

  Life According to Ben

  Part XXI

  Humiliation was exhausting, but it had lulled him into a deep, deep sleep—so deep that his head pounded when he woke up and his mouth felt like parchment. He was in the same spot where he’d collapsed and his first thought was that he needed a glass of water, but then he thought of all the water he drank before the speech and . . . he pushed that thought away. He stretched. He blinked his eyes.

  He felt strange. He’d never been one for naps, even though more than 85 percent of mammalian species were polyphasic species that slept for short periods throughout the day. He needed a nice warm shower and a nice new life. But he decided to roll over and go back to sleep instead.

  Before he could, there was a knock on the door and it opened.

  He’d forgotten to lock it.

  Groan.

  “Ben.” It was his father. Fantastic. What was he doing here, anyway? What time was it? Did he leave work to rush over and comfort his disappointment of a son?

  The bed shifted as his father sat down.

  “You know . . . ,” his father began. “There’s this saying by Robert Frost. It goes, ‘In three words I can sum up everything I know about life: It goes on.’”

  Great, thought Ben. All my problems are solved.

  “Sometimes things happen to people who don’t deserve it,” his father continued. “Sometimes other people do stupid things and it winds up affecting people around them, and it feels really unfair.” Pause. “Do you know why it feels unfair?”

  Ben didn’t say anything. His father’s voice was heavy and strange in the space around them. Stasis had been disrupted.

  What was the opposite of stasis?

  “Because it is,” his father answered. Pause. “Franklin Roosevelt had polio, you know.”

  He was really pulling at straws now, wasn’t he?

  “Duh,” said Ben. He was talking into his pillow because he didn’t want to lift his head, so he couldn’t see the expression on his father’s face. He didn’t care, anyway. “Everyone knows that.”

  He’d never snapped at either of his parents before, but he was angry and sad and humiliated and lonely, and it had to go somewhere.

  “True. Most people do,” continued his father. “But did you know that he fought his paralysis every step of the way? He tried all the therapies that were available to him. He even founded hydrotherapy centers for the treatment of polio. He founded the March of Dimes, too.”

  Ben closed his eyes. Leave me alone. I just want to go to sleep.

  But his dad kept talking.

  “Roosevelt wasn’t just smart. He was resilient.” The bed lifted back in place as Mr. Boxer stood and walked toward the door. “I bet he was a Ravenclaw.”

  Ben didn’t move.

  He wanted to sleep forever.

  He wanted to imagine he was someone else.

  He wanted to keep being mad at his father, because he had to be mad at someone.

  But then he opened his eyes.

  “By the way,” Mr. Boxer said, as he opened the bedroom door. “Who’s this girl, Charlotte?”

  Ben lifted his head, and turned to his father.

  “The person I’m going to call when I win the lottery,” he said.

  Hemlock

  Rabbit Hole: Socrates was given hemlock in his tea. This was a common way to poison condemned prisoners in ancient Greece. Allegedly, his last words were: “We owe a rooster to Asclepius. Don’t forget to pay the debt.”

  The room smelled like flowers. Charlotte hadn’t expected that. Her father’s friends and old colleagues had sent them. They were perched on the windowsill and the bedside table. She thought it would smell like medicine, like the bottles Ms. Schneider used for experiments. She thought she would hear beeping, like on TV. Beep. Beep. Beep. But everything was quiet.

  Her father was asleep. Charlotte sat down in the chair next to the bed. The seat was worn and warm. A stack of magazines towered on the floor next to it. Atlantic Monthly, Smithsonian, Harper’s. Her mother’s.

  She didn’t want to wake her father, so she studied the folds in the blanket. The way the wires from the IV dangled from his hand. He didn’t look as sickly as she feared he would. In fact, he didn’t look sick at all. Just asleep.

  Had his hair always been so white?

  Yes, as long as Charlotte could remember. Her mother had told her a million times that his hair had once been a soft blond. Strawberry blond. By the time Charlotte was in elementary school, most of it had turned white.

  Charlotte wondered if her hair would ever turn white. It was hard to imagine.

  “Hey,” her father said, blinking. He yawned. “Fancy seeing you here.”

  “Mom is getting coffee,” Charlotte said. She wanted to explain why she hadn’t been in sooner; instead, she held up a leaf she’d plucked from the sidewalk on her way in.

  “Look,” she said.

  He rubbed his eyes, slipped on his reading glasses, and tilted his head back to study it.

  “Eastern hemlock,” he said.

  Charlotte hesitated. Her fingers suddenly burned. “Isn’t that what killed Socrates? Hemlock?” she finally said.

  She’d fallen into a rabbit hole once. Cleopatra to Socrates, somehow. Then Socrates to hemlock. Hemlock could kill in even small doses. Its toxins blocked the neuromuscular function, causing paralysis of the respiratory muscles. She flexed her hands. Had it seeped through her skin? Was it seeping through her father’s?

  “No,” he said. “Well, yes—hemlock killed Socrates. But not this hemlock. This hemlock is perfectly safe. It’s the official state tree of Pennsylvania. You can even put it in your tea.” He twirled it in his fingers. “How was the starfish? That was today, wasn’t it?”

  “Oh,” said Charlotte. She thought of Magda without a lab partner and frowned. “Technically, yes. But I didn’t go to school today.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “You didn’t? I thought your mom went to sign you out.”

  “I kind of . . . skipped, I guess.”

  “You?”

  “Yeah. It was dumb.”

  “Where did you go? What could possibly be more riveting than middle school?”

  Charlotte bit her bottom lip. She remembered the terrified look on her mother’s face and the warmth of her arms around her.

  “I went to the art museum,” she said. “To look at the Post-Impressionists.”

  For a moment, her father didn’t say anything. Then he released a loud and hearty laugh. Eventually he stopped, clutching hi
s chest, saying that he was still a little sore, but it was worth it.

  “And what did you think?” he asked.

  “Honestly?”

  He nodded.

  “Looked like a bunch of paint on a canvas.”

  He laughed again. “You’re just like your mother.”

  Under normal circumstances, this would have bothered her.

  It would have made her skin crawl.

  She would have protested.

  But these weren’t normal circumstances.

  Saturday

  reciprocal adj : a mutual relationship—one that is equal, matching, and complementary

  Life According to Ben

  Part XXII

  Ben wasn’t sure what it was supposed to feel like to have a second bedroom in a new place. He tried to analyze his emotions and determine if they were the right ones, but this was a different world.

  His parents were getting divorced.

  This upset him greatly.

  But he couldn’t help it: He liked his room in his father’s apartment and all the fresh boxes with new and disassembled bookshelves. He liked the idea of having a second place, even if he was the same Ben.

  Was this evolution?

  He carried the last of the boxes inside and set them next to his skeletal bed frame. Later, they would pick out a mattress. His father didn’t know it yet, but Ben planned to pick the best Sleepwell mattress they could find. According to the commercials and his internet research on Consumer Reports, Sleepwell was the ideal mattress. It conformed to the body’s natural shape. It was also unusually expensive, which normally would have made Ben hesitant and guilt-ridden, but he felt slightly justified, since he wasn’t the one who asked to have two rooms in the first place.

  He lived in a world of logical things, and he considered this quite logical. After all, some things aren’t fair. His dad said so himself.

  He stood in the center of his boxes and turned in a circle to look at all the blank walls. He wondered how he would decorate his room. Everything smelled like fresh paint and carpet.

  The complex had a swimming pool, which was another plus.

  His father unpacked boxes in a nearby room. He’d plugged in an ancient radio—he called it a “boom box”—and played old rock music, but he didn’t sing along, which was a definite plus.

  “Maybe I’ll choose something more academic for this room,” Ben said, aloud.

  Maps? He loved maps.

  He wondered what other kids put on their walls.

  Probably not maps.

  Another bonus: His window faced the sidewalk, which was nicely shaded by magnolia trees. Natural light was better for neural synapses. He pulled back the curtain. The scent of the fabric pierced his nose. Everything here was fresh out of the box.

  He stared at the sidewalk, trying to imagine his new life as Apartment-Complex Ben. He was still in the same school district, and it wasn’t far from home, so he’d been through this neighborhood before. But it might as well be Mars now.

  A kid was making his way up the sidewalk on foot. Ben craned his neck.

  Someone familiar.

  He pushed the window up. The humidity of south Louisiana immediately rushed inside.

  “Hey!” Ben called out. “Wyatt!”

  Wyatt looked around, startled, until he finally spotted Ben through the screen. He hesitated and squinted.

  Ben’s confidence nose-dived. He’d been so excited to see Wyatt that he’d forgotten about his social status, which had gone from nonexistent to pariah. He knew how middle school worked. Some people were liabilities. You don’t want to be seen with the kid who . . .

  The kid who was Ben Boxer.

  “Life goes on,” his father had said.

  I hope it hurries up, Ben thought.

  “Hey,” said Wyatt. He walked across the grass to the window. “I didn’t know you lived here.”

  “I don’t,” said Ben. “Well, I do. As of today.” He pointed a thumb over his shoulder. “I’m helping my dad move in and I guess I’ll be here on the weekends or whatever.”

  “I live here, too,” Wyatt said. “Building A.”

  “I’m in Building F,” said Ben, as if Wyatt wasn’t standing right in front of it.

  “Cool. There’s a pool here and everything, you know.”

  “Cool,” Ben said. He didn’t usually say “cool,” but it seemed to fit.

  Wyatt cleared his throat. “Sorry about the speeches, man. Theo and those guys are brainless idiots.”

  “Yeah,” said Ben. His cheeks burned.

  “Good news is, they got in a ton of trouble. So that’s something.”

  “Yeah. It’s something.”

  “It sucks that you have a blemish on your perfect record now. You have officially missed one half-day of school. As an ambassador of the attendance office, I’m sorely disappointed.”

  “Well . . . ,” said Ben, laughing nervously. “I think I’m done with public life for a while. No more running for any offices.”

  Wyatt lifted a finger. “Question. Why do they call it ‘running’ for office? I mean, you’re not actually running.”

  “And why do cars and trucks carry shipments, but ships carry cargo?” Ben offered.

  Wyatt tapped his chin. “Good point. Good point.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Well. It’s been fun talking to you through this screen and everything, but I’m on my way to get a Footlong Coney from Sonic.”

  “Footlong Coney?”

  Wyatt blinked then dropped his mouth open in mock surprise. “You’ve never had a Footlong Coney?”

  “I’ve never been to Sonic.”

  “You’ve never been to Sonic?”

  “My parents aren’t crazy about fast food.”

  Wyatt shook his head. “What a terrible upbringing you’ve suffered.” He waved his hand in the direction he’d been walking as if to say “come with.” “I can’t let this injustice go any further. Injustice is an enemy of all good things.”

  “I agree,” said Ben.

  He shut the window, rushed into the living room to get money from his dad, then stepped into the warm afternoon.

  Just Like the Sky

  Rabbit Hole: Researchers have studied the science of friendship and found that having a healthy and reciprocal relationship with a friend can alleviate emotional pain and improve physical health. One of the most important aspects of a healthy relationship is an equal amount of give-and-take.

  The sky changed colors above Charlotte’s head. The shift from afternoon to evening. She was lying on the stone wall with her knees up. When her phone buzzed, she assumed it was Ben. But it wasn’t.

  “Hey,” said Bridget. “I haven’t seen you in a few days.”

  It’s weird, with best friends. They share a certain kind of energy, a knowingness. You can finish each other’s sentences. You can read each other’s thoughts. And even though Bridget had only uttered one sentence, Charlotte knew this was the beginning of an end. The seasons were changing, just like the sky. Just like the leaves. They thought they’d be best friends forever, but sometimes forever isn’t what you expected. Sometimes life is unfair. Unexpected.

  But sometimes it brought its surprises. Like Ben Boot, who she now knew was Ben Boxer. That morning he’d played DAWN.

  “I was just calling to see how your dad was doing,” said Bridget.

  Her voice was the same, but it felt like years since they’d spoken, even though it’d only been a few days.

  Time was strange that way.

  Parasite, Bridget had said.

  But during the hour or so that Charlotte had been on the wall, picking apart the week and rolling things over in her mind, she’d decided something: She didn’t care.

  Well, that wasn’t totally true.

  She cared.

  But she wouldn’t always.

  “He’s fine,” said Charlotte. “He’s coming home soon.”

  “That’s great.”

  “Yeah.”

  There was
a time when no silence existed between them, when it would be filled with giggles or gossip or nonsense or deep and meaningful questions. But they had been two different people.

  When had that happened?

  Maybe I would have noticed if I’d paid better attention, Charlotte thought.

  Or maybe it’s subtle. Something you can barely feel. Like a slow slip.

  “Well, I better go,” said Bridget, breaking the silence. “Sophie and I are going to the movies.” She paused. “Do you wanna come with us?”

  “Nah.”

  Charlotte heard the Riveras’ back door open.

  Was it Mateo?

  “Have fun, Bridget,” Charlotte said. “Tell Sophie I said hi.”

  She hung up and stared at DAWN. She added-ING. It was the best she could do, but it worked.

  DAWNING.

  She sat up and stretched. For the first time in her life, she was relieved to see Magda instead of Mateo.

  “Hey,” said Magda. She walked across the yard, holding something in her hand.

  “Hey,” Charlotte dangled one leg off the side of the wall. “I’m really sorry about yesterday.”

  “Why? What happened yesterday?”

  “The dissection. I was supposed to be your lab partner.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I got paired up with Val Paretti. She’s nice, but she didn’t want to cut any of the arms, so she let me do it. Double win.” She opened her fist. “I found something in my yard and I thought you might like it.”

  Charlotte recognized it immediately.

  “That’s Sphinx,” Charlotte said. She swung both legs over and hopped down. It didn’t even occur to her that she was standing in Mateo’s yard for the first time.

  She took it from Magda’s hand. “This is my Egyptian quartz. I threw it out the window the other day. I’m so glad you found it.”

  They both hovered over it, their hair falling around their faces.

  “Why did you throw it out the window?” Magda asked.

  “I don’t know. I was mad, I guess.”