tacos if we weren’t too stuffed. I figured he’d forgiven me. He knew I wasn’t serious. I was, though, a little. As much as a fourteen-year-old girl can be about killing, which depending on who you ask, varies from not at all to serious as a heart attack.
What came in the days after didn’t surprise me. Ben didn’t let the bullies win.
Ethan Holland’s girlfriend dumped him, loudly and in the quad, for Ben—a relationship that would last a whole two weeks until it became obvious to her that Ben was more interested in revenge on Ethan than in her. Kids gossiped, and I heard that Ethan was torn up that she never tried getting back with him.
A short time after, an anonymous note arrived in every school administrator’s mailbox, detailing Ethan and Max’s activities: buying papers from an honor society member and plagiarizing others from the Internet. Willa had said her mom wanted to expel the boys for Skitzy-Fitzy’s attack; everyone knew it was them. The police were more concerned with protecting the boys than charging them, though, and P.O. couldn’t hold Ethan and Max responsible for a crime the police wouldn’t. Plagiarizing was another matter, one that P.O. could dole out swift punishment for.
When the vice principal arrived to clear out the boys’ lockers—school policy for those who are suspended—he discovered joints. This isn’t illegal in the state of Washington but is strictly forbidden by Gant High’s athletics staff. Unlike their attack on an actual human being, having pot in their lockers was horrible enough to get them kicked off the baseball team. No one cared that they denied it was theirs.
People whispered that the notes to the school must have been from Ben, but kids mostly shrugged it off because our classmates knew that what Ethan and Max had done to Fitzgerald was bad. Not bad because it was against the rules, like speeding on the highway; badness itself. Dozens of witnesses had seen Ethan and Max smoke at parties; it was easy to believe they were stupid enough to keep pot in their lockers. Easy for everyone who hadn’t watched Ben leave our house the night before.
Ben had cracked open my bedroom door, a black beanie pulled to his eyebrows. “Wish me luck,” he’d whispered as I let the book I was reading close on the comforter.
“For . . . ?” I said. The corners of his mouth tucked up, full of mischief, and he lifted a plastic bag full of neatly wrapped joints. Ben didn’t smoke pot. I went to ask what he was up to, but then he was tiptoeing downstairs, heading into the night.
I thought Ben was satisfied getting Ethan and Max suspended and getting them booted out of baseball. He didn’t mention either boy again, not even when the rumor started circulating that jumping Skitzy-Fitzy had been Ethan’s idea and Max had been dragged along.
But on a morning a couple of months later, we sat opposite each other on the kitchen counter. I sipped an espresso and Ben ate cereal. I noticed the abrasions on his knuckles. He swallowed a large spoonful of granola. “I was going at that punching bag Cal got me in the garage.” It was a lie, and by the way his eyes lingered on mine, I could tell he knew it was unconvincing. The punching bag had never been taken out of its box and was collecting dust in the rafters. “If anyone asks, you heard me last night,” he added meaningfully.
“Sure,” I said. “The noise kept me up super late.” He smiled. And like that, I had agreed to be Ben’s alibi for an unknown misdeed that had left his knuckles split. Dad was out of town; Diane had been home, but she wasn’t lucid enough from the sleeping pills she took to contradict anyone.
When I saw Ethan hobbling across the quad on crutches, a raccoon-eyed look to his face, I knew it had been Ben who’d injured him. Maybe Ben had been waiting the months since Ethan’s suspension for the opportunity; maybe it had serendipitously presented itself. And while Ethan was the kind of boy who would attack a vagrant with a bat, he was not the sort who’d admit to be being beat up by a classmate. He was all pride, and Ben got away with it.
Ethan ended up barely passing his senior year. He left Gant for a state college in Nebraska, his big baseball future not going to happen since he’d been kicked