But then he closed his eyes, his lashes vibrating against his pale skin, belying his blasé. And I thought of Benny’s own cocktail of meds, the way they kept his lips cracked and dry and his pulse thumping erratically, and I wondered if he ever worried about how much of his mother he had inside him.
“Does that mean we have the house to ourselves?” I imagined finally going upstairs at Stonehaven and getting to see Benny’s bedroom, which remained as mysterious to me as it had on the day we met. I’d still only ever seen the parlor, the hallway, the kitchen, the dining room, the library—a handful of Stonehaven’s forty-two rooms, and (I could see now) a reminder of how much I wasn’t really welcome there.
He shook his head. “Remember? I’m grounded. They don’t trust me with just Lourdes. So my dad’s up here while Mom’s down there. Convenient for them both, I guess.” He frowned. “If his car is in the driveway we’ll have to be extra sneaky, OK? He pays closer attention than my mom.”
But his father’s Jaguar wasn’t in the driveway; only Lourdes’s mud-splattered Toyota, discreetly parked under the pines. And so we once more sauntered through the house as if we owned it, stopping in the kitchen to pick up a pair of Cokes and a bag of popcorn before going out to the caretaker’s cottage. There, we sat on the steps, our legs hooked over each other’s, watching a flock of geese that had landed on the lawn. Occasionally we’d toss a kernel of popcorn and a brave goose would creep toward us to gobble it down, eyeing us warily. They grazed and honked, pooping dark pellets all over the beautiful green grass.
“So. Bad news.” Benny’s voice broke the silence. “My parents are sending me to Europe this summer.”
“What?”
“Some kind of reform camp in the Italian Alps where I can’t get in trouble. You know, fresh air and physical exertion and all that stuff that will magically turn me into the boy wonder they want me to be.” He flung another piece of popcorn at a goose and it flapped its wings in protest. “I guess they think European air is somehow more restorative than American air.” He looked over at me. “I’m flunking three subjects, you know. This is, I guess, their last attempt to fix me up before they give up on me forever.”
“Maybe if you ace your tests they’ll let you stay?”
“Unlikely. Both that I’ll ace the tests and that it will make a difference. I can’t cram and get As the way you do. I can barely even read for five minutes, for chrissake. Why do you think I like comic books so much?”
I thought of my own summer. I’d landed a minimum-wage job at a river-rafting company in Tahoe City, loading and unloading the rubber boats that clotted the Truckee River from Memorial Day to Labor Day. This prospect sounded even more unappealing now that he wouldn’t be there waiting for me after work. “Shit. What am I going to do without you?”
“I’ll get you a cellphone of your own and then I’ll call you every day.”
“Nice. But still not the same.”
We sat in the sun in silence for a while, looking out at the lake. The boats weren’t out yet; the light that dappled the surface of the water was blinding against all that blue. Eventually Benny kissed me and his lips felt sadder than usual, like we were already saying goodbye for the summer. And when he pulled back for a moment he kept his eyes closed and said, almost as a murmur, “I love you.” And, heart racing, I echoed his words back. It felt like we had everything we needed, right there, forever; and that with these words we would somehow conquer all of the things in our way.
It was the first and last time I ever felt pure, unadulterated joy.
We moved into the cottage, and then to the bed. We shed our clothes en route, discarding T-shirts and socks like Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs. In the bedroom, the dim light glowed across his milky skin, and I traced the red freckles on his chest