Surviving High School (12 page)

Of course, if Ben had really wanted to track her down, he could have found her on Facebook or asked around until he found a way to contact her. Did that mean he wasn’t really that interested? Maybe the moment they’d shared at the party had been just that: a moment, a tiny, magical parcel of time that was now over.

Restless, she turned to look at the clock and read
10:42
. How could she possibly be having trouble sleeping when she was still exhausted from staying up so late on Friday? If anything, she should have gone to sleep hours ago to make up for it. Was worrying about a guy really enough to throw off the sleep schedule she’d carefully cultivated for almost three years?

Stupid boys. Stupid Ben. Stupid her for caring. Stupid tapping sound at the window. How was she supposed to sleep with that—

Stupid tapping sound at the window?

She rolled out of bed, walked quietly over to the window, and raised the blind to reveal a figure in a dark hoodie. She almost screamed before she looked down at the figure’s arms and realized what he was carrying: her dress from Friday.

“Ben?” she asked, opening her window.

He removed his hoodie, which upon closer examination read
GO LIZARDS!
, and stepped inside.

“What are you, a ninja now?” she asked as he handed her the dress.

“A ninja who delivers dry cleaning,” he said. “Actually, ninja is kind of an exaggeration. The tree outside your window is pretty easy to climb.”

“What are you doing here?”

He looked down at the dress and asked, “Isn’t it obvious?” as he handed it to her.

“Well, thanks,” she said. “But you could have just given it to me at school.”

“I figured this would be a good excuse to come see you. Maybe we could go get some coffee or something.”

“Right now? I’m about to go to sleep.”

“Thus the coffee. It’ll wake you up.”

“You’re serious?” she asked.

“I’m
always
serious.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Well, I am this time.”

Emily thought about tomorrow. She had an Honors History test and a brutal private swim practice scheduled,
and
her dad had been watching her suspiciously ever since that
jog on Saturday, despite the fact that she’d finished only fifteen seconds over her usual time.

Her arguments for telling him to leave weighed like bags full of iron on one side of a scale. On the other side, though, was Ben. Ben, who had driven all the way across town to return her dress. Who looked especially cute in his school hoodie.

“You’re going to have to go outside,” she said, and his face fell. Then she smiled and added, “So I can get changed.”

Twenty minutes later, Ben and Emily walked into Hallowed Grounds, a twenty-four-hour coffee-and-doughnut shop that Emily had jogged by several dozen times but never imagined she’d go inside. Coffee stunted your growth. Doughnuts were empty calories. Neither fit into the system Emily’s father had created for her. But then again, neither did Ben Kale.

“Okay, since you’re a coffee rookie, I’m recommending we start you off with a mocha—and lots of milk,” said Ben, as he ordered for them. “I’ll be sticking with my usual triple espresso.”

A few minutes later, the barista handed Emily a steaming mug and she tried her first sip of coffee. Ben looked at her expectantly.

“What do you think?”

She grimaced. “It’s like poisoned hot chocolate.”

“It’s an acquired taste.”

They took their cups to the back of the shop and sat in old red-velvet-covered armchairs whose fabric was worn from
years of use. As bad as the coffee tasted, Emily had to admit that she loved the smell, and after a few sips she learned to ignore the bitterness and concentrate on the chocolate.

“So,” Ben said, “here we are. Out past your bedtime on a school night.”

“Heh,” she said, looking down at her cup. “Yeah.”

Ben sipped his drink. It was the first time since she’d met him that she’d felt a lull in their usual banter. The silence wasn’t uncomfortable, though. If anything, it felt kind of nice.

“You’re kind of always—
on
, aren’t you?” she asked after a second.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re always joking, entertaining people.”

“Thank you?”

“Don’t get me wrong, I like that you’re funny. But sometimes, don’t you feel like it’s nice to slow down and just talk without all that pressure to be witty?” Emily didn’t have much practice making conversation alone with boys, let alone on dates, but something about Ben’s easygoing nature made her feel like she could say anything. She wanted to know everything about him.

“Huh,” he said, looking a bit lost in thought.

“What’s with that shelf of trophies?” asked Emily. “You were so—I don’t know—elusive the other night. What made you stop competing?”

“Nothing specific, really,” said Ben, sinking deeper into his chair. “Well, I guess, like a year ago, my parents split up, but that isn’t what made me stop trying to win science fairs.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Emily. She felt bad—Ben looked so uncomfortable now. Maybe she’d pushed him too far. “That must have been tough.”

“Yeah,” said Ben. “I don’t know. I don’t blame my mom for leaving. By the time she took off, my dad was basically living at Lowman-Howe—that’s the chemical company he works for. He’s just that kind of guy. He’d rather be in his lab than back at home. Even when he is around, he’s always at his computer or checking his BlackBerry.”

“What about your mom?”

“She’s kind of the opposite. She’s all about yoga and eating vegan and ‘finding herself.’ She moved to New York for good when she split up with my dad.” He looked up at Emily. “What about you? What’s your family like?”

“My mom’s pretty cool,” Emily started, figuring she’d save talking about her dad for later. No need to scare Ben off on the first date. Was this even an official date? “She’s an elementary school teacher, so she was great when my sister and I were little.” She regretted the words as soon as they came out of her mouth. Why had she mentioned Sara? She just hoped he wouldn’t ask anything more about—

“What was she like?” he asked. “Your sister, I mean. I met her a couple of times, but I never really got to know her.”

Emily looked down at her drink. What was there to say? If what Samantha had said the other day was true, maybe Emily didn’t know anything about Sara at all. For a second, she thought about telling him “I don’t know,” but then she
thought better of it. For now, it was better not to open that door.

“She was great,” she said. “She was a hero to me. She was going to grow up and win every medal out there. And then she got in a car with that stupid boy, and then—” Her hands were shaking. “You work so hard for something, and then it gets taken away in an instant.”

“What happened?” Ben asked. He reached out and took her hand. “I don’t really know all the details.”

“It was a rainy night. Sara had stayed late at the pool to go swimming. The guy, Nick Brown—he’s a yearbook photographer, so he stayed with her to take some pictures. She was supposed to run home as part of her training regimen, but instead she ended up getting a ride from him. He crashed less than a mile from my house. He was fine. She wasn’t.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I mean, I was pretty upset when my mom left, but at least she wasn’t—”

“Yeah.”

She wished she could just talk about her sister’s death like a normal person. But she couldn’t. The thought of it always reminded her of the simple fact that the universe wasn’t fair. A girl could spend her whole life preparing for races she’d never get to swim. A random stranger could get her killed and still end up roaming the halls of her high school a few months later, taking pictures for the stupid yearbook.

“Please,” she said. “Say something. Anything. Talk about something different.”

“I, uh—” She could tell he was thinking about making a joke. But he must have changed his mind, because instead he said, “I almost went with my mom when she left. But I didn’t. I think she assumed I’d follow her wherever she went, and when that turned out to be false, it really hurt her.”

As he spoke, Emily felt her body stop shaking and her breathing return to normal. She liked the sound of his voice. She felt calm in its presence.

“She thought I’d chosen my dad over her, but that wasn’t it. I just figured I’d rather stick around here, closer to my friends.”

“Yeah,” said Emily. “I can see that. I don’t know what I’d do if I had to move away from Kimi.”

Thinking of Kimi, Emily suddenly remembered homecoming and the promise she’d made. Her mind raced, turning over ways she might hint that she wanted Ben to ask her to the dance. It was nice to have a new, normal agenda for this conversation, something to put Sara out of her mind.

“Kimi seems like a fun girl,” said Ben. “I heard she and Phil have been, uh, hanging out lately.”

Emily could barely believe it. This was a perfect opening.

“Yeah,” she said. “Phil actually asked her to go to homecoming. Now it’s all she can talk about.”

“That’s funny,” said Ben, sipping his espresso. “Some girls get so excited about a stupid dance.”

“You think homecoming is stupid?”

“Well, yeah,” he said. “Homecoming is basically just a party with no drinking, censored music, and no hooking up.”
He stared down at his now-empty cup. “Plus,” he added, “I’m not exactly
allowed
to go to homecoming. I’m on academic probation, so I’m not allowed to participate in any school activities until I get my grades up, and I don’t see
that
happening anytime soon.”

So that was it. It wasn’t that Ben didn’t
want
to go to homecoming. It was that he
couldn’t
.

“Is it really so impossible for you to do better in your classes?”

“Considering I never do any homework, don’t study, and rarely show up to class, I’d say it’s unlikely my grades are going to improve in the near future,” he said, grinning.

Suddenly, though, Ben’s smile seemed like an act, communicating nothing about what he was actually feeling. The smile was a wall, protecting him. Earlier, for a moment, when they were talking about their families, it had felt as if the wall was crumbling. Now it was back, higher than ever. Could she really be with someone like that? Someone whose real thoughts she could never know? That easy, comfortable feeling she’d had just moments ago had vanished.

“It’s late,” she said. “I should probably go.”

“I said something wrong, didn’t I?”

“No, no,” Emily lied. “I’m just tired.”

They spent most of the car ride home in silence. Emily looked out the window, trying not to think of crashing and hoping to avoid eye contact with Ben. On the way to the coffee shop, she’d been so excited to hop into a car with him that she
hadn’t really considered the danger. Now, that excitement had waned. A week ago, if you had asked her to imagine a bad date with Ben Kale, she would have thought it was impossible. Now, suddenly, she was living one out.

“Emily—” Ben said as they reached her block.

“What?”

“You want to go to that dance.”

She sneaked a glance at him and saw a worried look on his face. She shrugged.

“Maybe.”

“What if it was possible?” he asked as he pulled over to the side of the street near her house.

“Like what? You somehow change straight F’s into A’s in the next few weeks?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Something like that.”

“And you’d be doing this just so you can take me to a ‘stupid dance’?”

“That would be the idea, yes.”

“And you really think you can do it?”

He hesitated for a second, and she could almost see the gears turning in his brain as he attempted to come up with some cocky remark. Finally, though, he just said, “I can try.”

She turned to look at him again and found him leaning forward. He reached out with one hand, ran it through her hair, and rested it behind her head. Then he closed his eyes and moved closer. He started pulling her in.

This was it. Her first kiss. Except—except, could she really do it? Did Ben even know she’d never kissed anyone? Emily’s
heart began to race from a combination of her first taste of coffee and the very real possibility of her first kiss. What if she was terrible and he thought she was just naturally bad, when really it was because she’d never had any practice? Should he at least know what he was getting into?

“Wait,” she said, and Ben opened his eyes.

“Is something wrong?”

“I’ve just—I’ve never—”

“Oh!” he said. “You’ve never—” He kept his hand where it was, behind her head, and looked into her eyes. “Well, then, your first kiss should be special.”

“It should?” she asked. “I mean, yes. It should.”

“So we’ll wait,” he said. “For the right moment.”

“Like maybe,” she said, a smile breaking across her face, “until the dance.”

He took a deep breath and leaned back into his seat. His eyes never left her, and Emily wondered if anyone had ever looked at her so intently.

“Until the dance,” he said. “Well, then, maybe I actually
will
be looking forward to homecoming.”

That Thursday, the Twin Branches swim team prepared for its first meet of the year, an exhibition match against its crosstown rivals, the Wilson High Badgers. Of course, all the girls on the team knew that the real competition wasn’t between the two schools at all; it was between Emily and Dominique.

As Emily tightened her swim cap and rubbed a smudge from her goggles, Dominique approached. She walked jerkily, keeping her joints stiff as she moved.

“Hello. Swim. Bot! Are you. Ready. To. Lose?”

Other girls in the locker room glanced over and shook their heads.

“Don’t be mean,” said Amanda. “You’re making fun of her—and robots!”

“Seriously,” said Hannah. “Kessler is cool in my book.
Did you see her the other night, jumping into the pool after Ben?”

“I jumped into the pool, too,” said Dominique, her face growing red.

“More like fell,” said Hannah, smiling.

“She fell?” asked another girl, who had just walked in. “Wish I could have seen that. I guess I was distracted, watching Ben run around in his boxers.”