I Was Here(40)
Author: Gayle Forman

“Helping you out? I’ll bet he is.”

“It’s not like that. It’s about Meg.”

“Oh.” Richard’s voice goes serious.

“So can you put us up? We’re leaving here around noon, so we should get there around six or seven.”

“Easily. Speed limit’s seventy-five on I-84, but no one goes slower than eighty. You’ll make good time.”

“So, it’s okay for us both to stay?”

“There’s always room in Reverend Jerry’s manger,” Richard jokes. “We’re used to having lost souls camped on the floor. For you, we might even scrounge up a couch.”

“The floor’s fine.”

“So long as it’s a separate floor from McCallister.”

x x x

I wait until Friday night to tell Tricia that I’m going. I’ve already canceled my Monday and Tuesday cleaning jobs, figuring I’ll be back by Tuesday night at the latest. I don’t know why I’m nervous about telling her.

She gives me a long look. “Where are you going?”

Tricia doesn’t keep me on a leash. But if I tell her, it’ll wind up right back with the Garcias, and I don’t want them to know anything until I have something solid, something helpful. Also, if I tell her, I’m scared that Tricia, even hands-off Tricia, won’t let me go.

“Tacoma,” I say.

“Again?”

“Alice invited me down.”

“I thought she was in Montana.”

I should’ve learned my lesson from all my dealings with All_BS. The safest way to lie is to shadow the truth.

“She is. She’s going home for the weekend,” I reply, hoping Tricia doesn’t remember that Alice is actually from Eugene.

Tricia eyes me again.

“I’ll be back Monday night, Tuesday latest,” I add.

“You need me to clean any of your houses?”

I shake my head. Some messes can wait.

x x x

I can’t sleep at all Friday night, so Saturday morning I pack a few things—my boxful of cash, which now totals five hundred and sixty dollars, my computer, and my maps—and catch the first bus to Yakima. I arrive at nine thirty and plant myself at a depressing coffee shop near the bus station, spreading my maps in front of me. It’s a straight thousand-mile shot from here to Laughlin, cutting a triangle through Oregon and another through Idaho, before shooting down the eastern spine of Nevada.

The waitress keeps refilling my coffee cup and I keep drinking, even though the burnt swill is doing awful things to the acid in my stomach, not to mention my frayed nerves. For the past twenty-four hours, I’ve done nothing but second-guess the decision to call Ben.

The door to the diner rings. I look up absentmindedly and am surprised to see it’s him. It’s only ten thirty; he’s not due for another hour and a half, and it’s a two- to three-hour drive from Seattle, so he must’ve left at the crack of dawn, or sped like the devil, or both.

My first impulse is to hunch down in my seat, buy myself more time. But I’m about to spend two days cramped in a car with him, so I man up. I clear my throat and say, “Hey, Ben.”

His face goes blank for a second, and then his eyes skitter around until he sees me in my booth, the maps splayed out. He looks both nervous and relieved, and once again his face is like a mirror, reflecting my feelings, because that’s exactly what’s going on with me.

He sits down across from me. “You’re early,” he says.

“So are you.” I slide my coffee over to him. “You want some? She just refilled it. So it’s fresh, or fresh to my cup, anyhow.”

His fingers curl around the cup of coffee, which is black, no sugar, the same as he likes it, I now remember. I take him in. His eyes are violet this morning, almost bruised; they match the purplish skin under them. “I couldn’t sleep,” he says.

“Seems to be going around,” I say.

He nods. “So what’s the plan?”

“Drive to Boise today. We can stay with Stoner Richard—I mean, Richard Zeller. You remember Meg’s roommate?”

“I remember.”

“He said we could crash at his place. It’s his parents’. Unless you want to stay somewhere else.” He probably has plenty of places to stop, plenty of rock-and-roll crash pads.

“I’ll go where you go.”

A simple statement that feels like a blanket.

“You going to tell me what it is we’re doing?” he asks.

When I called Ben, I told him I’d found a person linked to Meg’s death and needed someone to come with me while I talked to him. I hadn’t told him anything else. I figured he didn’t need, nor would he want, to know what had happened in these past few weeks when we’d been absent from each other’s lives. But now that he’s asking, I’m scared to tell. Harry sent me a few cautioning emails, with links to articles about girls meeting guys they’d met online and gruesome things happening. I appreciated his concern but wasn’t sure it was applicable. Those were girls with romantic hopes, guys with depraved intentions. That isn’t me and Bradford.

But what if Ben doesn’t see it that way? What if I tell him and he chickens out? What if he refuses to take me?

When I don’t answer right away, Ben asks, “Am I on a need-to-know basis, or something?”

“No. I just . . .” I shake my head. “It’s a long drive.”

“What does that mean?”

“There’s time. I’ll tell you. Later. I promise.” I pause. “How are the kids?” I ask.

“I brought pictures,” he says. And I expect him to show me on his phone, but he pulls out one of those envelopes you get from a photo developer, and slides it across the maps to me. I open it up, and inside are a few snapshots: Pete and Repeat chasing a piece of string, washing each other’s faces, curled up sleeping together at the foot of Ben’s bed.

“They’re so much bigger!”

Ben nods. “Teenagers. Pete brought home a dead mouse. I’m sure it’s a gateway thing. It’s only a matter of time before they’re bringing home all sorts of animals.”

“Birds. Rats.”

“Then it’s possums, then small ponies. I wouldn’t put it past those two.”

I laugh. It feels like the first time in ages. I hand the photos back.

Ben shakes his head. “They’re for you.”

“Oh. Thanks. Do you want something to eat? Before we go?”