or Ben did for some inexplicable reason before he died. In both those scenarios, my rosary isn’t the murder weapon.
I’m jumpy at the wind rattling against the kitchen doors as Dad and I eat dinner. My fork clatters against the plate as I drop it for the fifth time. Dad goes to his study once we finish. Upstairs I contemplate toeing Ben’s door open, slipping in, running my fingers over the things he loved, and drinking up the comfort.
Not until I saw Josh’s room, his walls covered in football heroes, photos of family and friends, and the blue-and-gray zigzag wallpaper did I realize how most teenage boys decorate their rooms.
Not Ben. His is full of trinkets: charcoals and sketch pads; a foot-tall wooden drawing mannequin; a bookshelf sagging with falling-apart, age-darkened books; intricately carved wooden boxes in a range of sizes from our family trip to Prague; a three-foot-long ostrich feather; a replica of a reindeer skull he ordered from Mongolia on the Internet; and a varnished bedside lamp with Sanskrit characters etched into the base.
The walls are speckled with the abandoned corners of posters. Each tear of glossy paper and masking tape is evidence of Ben changing his mind. First Che Guevara went up, followed by Karl Marx, then two German philosophers whose names I mix up. Ben liked the idea of standing for ideas. He wanted to emulate the thinkers of times when the stakes were higher. Ultimately, he was bound to find some tidbit he didn’t like about them. Then down went the poster and up went someone new.
If not for these paper triangles on the wall, the room could belong to an antique dealer who drove his rickety car along the Silk Road. I spent hours sizing up Ben’s new additions, a tiny framed Turkish coin or a book where the font was too faded to read, trying to decipher what Ben loved about the item. I only understood the posters. The rest remain mysteries, and this is why I haven’t gone into his room since he died. Yes, I look for him everywhere. And there he would be: Ben, a version I don’t understand. At times I think we were so close that there were things we couldn’t see about the other. The alternative—that we weren’t close enough—stings too much.
I lie on my bed and dial Willa’s number. Voice mail clicks on immediately.
“It’s me,” I say. “I’m going to get us out of this. I know you wouldn’t have been at the spring if I hadn’t made you come. I know. I should have said so at Josh’s. Call me if you can, okay? Just don’t worry, I promise I’ll figure it out.”
Willa and I share real things beyond the eight-semester plan. We have secrets and memories we look back on, grinning. Only she knows I wrote Josh Parker in Sharpie on my leg in the seventh grade and that it took thirty showers to wash off. I was there when she broke her wrist teaching herself how to skateboard in the eighth grade and we told her mom that she fell from a stepladder in the library and I acted out the accident in the emergency room for P.O. I’ll remind Willa of all this, after I’ve cleared her name—all of our names—and Willa and I will be better. Different but better.
I pull my knees to my chest and absently yank on a thread from a pillowcase. My cell vibrates on my comforter. The picture Becca programmed to show when she called lights up the screen. Her green eyes, one winking, stare at me.
I let it buzz four more seconds. I wanted to talk to Willa, not her opposite.
“H—”
“Did you hear?” she shouts.
I hold the receiver away from my ear. “That we’re sneaking back to the spring to hunt for evidence and clear our names?” I say. It was my idea.
“Oh my God, you didn’t. Listen. Ford is missing. Since last night. No one remembers him leaving, and his car was still there this morning. No biggie—there were tons of cars left, and Josh’s moms figured kids were being responsible and getting rides. Ford’s car was still there after the police station and Karen called Ford’s mom to see if they needed help getting it home, and Ford’s mom is all, ‘I figured Ford was still with Josh.’ ” All this is said with a giddy lilt that doesn’t match the words. Becca’s pace snowballs as she continues, “No one was freaked yet, but Ford’s