I Was Here(41)
Author: Gayle Forman

Ben shakes his head. “I came to kill time while I was waiting for you.”

“And here I am.”

“Here you are.”

The awkward silence that follows doesn’t bode well for the next two days.

“Should we get going?” I ask.

“Okay. I should warn you, the cigarette lighter outlet for the iPod is acting up, so the music situation is precarious.”

“I’ll deal.”

“Also, less important to me but maybe not you: the AC’s kind of on the blink, which is going to make Nevada desert driving in July rather interesting.”

“We’ll just stop at gas stations and douse ourselves with water and leave the windows open. It’s what Meg and I used to do.” And then I stop myself. Everything spools back to Meg. Every piece of my history, it seems.

“Sounds like a plan,” Ben says.

We head outside. He unlocks his car. It’s remarkably clean compared to the last time I was in it.

“Do you want me to drive first?” I ask. “Or don’t you let girls drive your car?”

“I don’t make a habit of letting anyone drive my car.” He looks sidelong at me. “But you’re not a girl anyway.”

“Oh, right. Have you categorized my species yet?”

“Not quite.” He tosses me the keys. “But you can drive.”

x x x

As soon as we hit the interstate, I relax. I got my license when I was sixteen, but I so rarely get to actually drive anywhere, I forget how freeing it is to just have open road in front of you, and wind in your hair. With the windows down and the stereo on, it’s too loud to talk much, and that’s fine. Ben can’t ask me about Bradford, can’t ask me about the last month, and can’t mention the kiss, either.

Outside of Baker City we stop for lunch at a place Ben knows. I’m skeptical about a Chinese restaurant in the middle of redneck eastern Oregon, but Ben says the dumplings are the best he’s ever had. It seems like he’s been here a lot. The young waitress clearly knows him and keeps finding excuses to come by the table to refill our tea and talk to him until her stern mother comes out from the kitchen and shoos her away.

“Wow. You know everyone on the I-84 corridor?” I ask him.

“Just in the Chinese restaurants. Along I-5, too.”

I motion toward the waitress, who is smiling at him. “Is she a fan from when you came through here with one of your bands?”

Ben gives me a look. “I was never here with a band. I ate here with my little sister, Bethany.”

That name is familiar. And then I remember that was one of the girls Ben was talking to on the phone when I went to see him in Seattle that first time.

“Bethany is your little sister?”

He nods. “Yeah. She was having a tough time at home. Back then I was couch-surfing in Portland, so I swooped in, all big hero man, to pick her up and take her on a road trip. I was going to take her to Utah. To Zion. I’ve always wanted to go there.” He swigs his tea. “Car broke down here. Piece of shit Pontiac.”

“What happened to your road trip? You guys hitch?”

“Nah. Bethany was only eleven.” Ben shakes his head. “I had to call my stepfather to come get her, and we hung out here while he drove up. He was so pissed at me that he refused to give me a lift back to Bend. I didn’t have anything going in Portland, so I wound up hitching to Seattle. It’s how I landed there.”

“Oh.” It’s not exactly the rock-star-chasing-his-dreams story. “Where is she now? Bethany?”

Ben’s eyes go flat. “There.”

I’m not exactly sure where there is, but by the way he says it, I know it’s not a place you’d want to be.

“Let’s finish up and get back on the road,” he suggests. “You know, Chinese food means we’ll be hungry again in an hour.”

“Ha. We only have a couple of hours till Boise. And Richard texted to say that they’re grilling tonight.”

Ben perks up. “Grilling? Like real meat? Nothing tofu?”

I text Richard back to ask if there will be tofu, and he texts me back a puking emoticon. “You’re safe,” I tell Ben.

We gas up and Ben takes the wheel, and it’s only when we get into the car and back on the interstate that I notice Ben didn’t smoke after lunch. In fact, he hasn’t smoked the whole time we’ve been on the road.

“If you’re not smoking for my benefit, don’t worry about it,” I tell him. But then I notice that the car doesn’t smell like an ashtray the way it did before.

Ben smiles kind of bashfully. He lifts up the sleeve of his shirt to show me a flesh-colored patch. “I quit.”

“When?”

“A few weeks ago.”

“Why?”

“Aside from the fact that cigarettes are deadly and expensive?” he asks.

“Right, aside from that?”

Ben slices the quickest of looks my way before turning his attention back to the road. “I guess I needed a change.”

x x x

By six o’clock we are in the outskirts of Boise, the tilting early evening sun making the foothills surrounding the city go red. I pull out the directions that Richard emailed me, and guide Ben through the downtown and out past the military area to a pretty tree-lined street with sprawling ranch houses. We stop in front of one with an overflowing orange bougainvillea bush and a big white van in the driveway. “This is it,” I tell Ben.

As we knock on the front door, I kick myself. We should’ve brought something, some kind of gift or something. That’s the kind of thing you’re supposed to do. Too late now.

No one answers. We ring the bell. Still nothing. People are home. There’s a TV on and there’s a sound of voices inside. We knock again. Still no answer. I’m about to text Richard when Ben opens the door and sticks his head inside. “Hello,” he calls.

A kid bounds up, a huge grin zigzagging across her face, which is sort of messed up by a cleft palate or one of those things you see in those TV commercials asking for money. “Maybe we have the wrong house,” I whisper. But then the kid shouts, “Wichard, your fwiends are hewe,” and five seconds later Richard ambles over, scoops the girl up, and ushers us inside.

“This is CeCe,” he says, tickling the girl under her arms as she screams in delight. He points around the room to where three more kids are sitting on beanbags and cushions, watching a movie. “That’s Jack, Pedro, and Tally.”