absolutely fine and Maggie’s killer was some rando getting his jollies off and he’s long gone. We can let the cops take it from here and get on with the last week of summer now that we’re not murder suspects.”
“Sheesh, Car,” Rusty snickers. “Don’t hold back.”
Her hands fall to her mostly naked hips. “What I mean is that we have proof of an alternative theory. The cops will explore the possibility. We’re off the hook. Reasonable doubt and all.”
We collect ourselves and hike away from Swisher Spring. I watch the shadows on either side of the trail. I wait for a figure to take shape, familiar or not. A scavenger looking to collect lives. A hero looking for revenge. I watch for who or what chased Maggie through the woods in the moments before we arrived with our party at Swisher Spring. I watch for who or what she died trying to hide from.
– 17 –
Ben began high school when I was in the seventh grade. His first week, there were five girls, one on each day, who came to our house. I remember the fifth one, on Friday, sitting at our kitchen island, pretending that I wasn’t there. She asked Ben if he thought another girl—the fourth of the week—was prettier than she was. Her lips smacked as she chewed gum. Ben’s brow puckered and his eyes cut to me, as if my girlness made me all-knowing. I was pouting that we weren’t out on the dinghy and that I was presently making an ice cream sundae by myself.
I stuck my tongue out at him. Ben pinched my side. I squawked and smeared caramel sauce on his chin. He grabbed my face as I reared back and wiped his chin on my cheek. By the time my attention snapped back to Number Five, she was staring at me in a way that made the laughter dry in my throat.
Ben kept laughing and opened the lid of the hot fudge for me. Number Five tossed her hair and stomped her foot. Ben shrugged a shoulder and said, “You’re pretty for a blonde, but Kara’s pretty for a brunette.” At twelve I knew that answer was a disaster.
Number Five pushed back from the island to make like she was storming off. Ben didn’t protest, and she remained roosted on the stool. A smile spread across her lips and she said in a honeyed voice, “You like Kara because she’s a slut and went down on you.” I had no idea what she meant, but by the way Ben’s cheeks ignited and his eyes darted to me, I knew it was bad. I walked right up to Number Five, squirted the caramel sauce into her lap, knocked the hot fudge on the floor, and fled.
In my room I called Willa and repeated the exchange. Willa was baffled too, and because even twelve-year-old Willa didn’t like a puzzle she couldn’t solve, she consulted the Internet.
There was only the clicking of the keyboard and then she told me, her soprano gravely serious, “Holy Gertrude Guacamole Bell.” Willa was going through a major archeology phase, so most of her swears, like Gertrude Bell, were explorers and archaeologists. “It’s when sexual partners put each other’s genitals into their mouths for pleasure.”
We went on about how gross that sounded and how we’d never do anything mental like that, and there was a general consensus of horror and feeling dirty and guilty for knowing. After a while Willa got off to finish homework. I couldn’t get the definition or the visual from my head. Ben was only two years older than me. I knew Ben’s guilty-as-charged expression, and there was little doubt that what Number Five had alleged was true.
For a week I was jumpy around him. He plopped down on the couch and I leaped for the love seat. He sat next to me at the kitchen table and my knee jerked so hard the chair rattled.
It was the first time in two years that I was aware that (1) Ben was a boy and I was a girl, and (2) we didn’t share blood. I don’t mean that I didn’t know Ben was a boy straight off, only that the difference between us never made me self-conscious. Ben wasn’t the kind of boy who suggested that I was inferior because of my girlness. Dad taught us both to sail and bake cookies, and it was only Dad’s occasional Bumblebee-this or our-girl-that that drew attention to me