The Telling (44 page)

Ben was controlled and calculating. Maggie showed up and he feigned surprise and irritation. I was about to confess my feelings. No matter, he continued with the plan. He and Maggie staged their fight. Ben didn't want me to suspect that they were colluding or reuniting. He begged me to go with them. He knew I wouldn't say no. The attack he planned was meant to connect with the part of me that had loved our childhood stories and adventures.

Ben parked on the highway. Fitzgerald was armed with the blood bags, and they sprayed the interior as quietly as possible. There was no real chance there'd be another car on the road. It was Sunday, right before midnight. Maggie played her role magnificently. I didn't know she had it in her. She screamed. I woke up. Ben was being dragged. The child lock kept me trapped. Maggie sped away before I could clamber through the window.

As we fled up the highway, Ben and Fitzgerald emptied the blood bags along the road. They used a butcher knife and left blood splatter as if Ben had been stabbed. They let it trickle over the rocks, leading the police to deduce that Ben had tumbled into the tide pools, before he was swept away. They absconded into the woods. Ben had had years of practice traversing Gant's forests, exploring and on our adventures; Fitzgerald had even more practice going unseen. They made it to the
Mira
, where Fitzgerald showered and went on his way. Ben stayed below until the coast guard lifted the ban on boat traffic
two days after his supposed death; he knew Dad and I wouldn't be sailing in the aftermath. The one person who knew where Ben went next is dead.

Perhaps I should have seen it from the beginning. I don't mean all of Ben's brooding over Gant; he was right about the nature of this place. I don't only mean after all those stories or when the crimes echoed them. I mean, I should have sensed his anger way before that. My memory of the nights Ben asked me how I could let
them
get away with
it
and if I wanted him to kill them burns me at both ends. What was to come suggested itself there. It was foreshadowed. I ignored it. Did I know way down deep in my toes? Did I white-knuckle the lies and stomp the truth?

Mom wasn't completely wrong about the power of perception. You can see heroes where there are villains. You can see love where there is hate. It's often harder to see what's really there. I am the Lana who wants to try.

I am tired of hearing what anyone but me thinks I should be. I want to define myself.

If I am small, it's my choice.

If I'm daring, it's because it's who I am.

If I'm good, fine.

If I'm bad, that's on me.

I struggle with how I hurt Ben. I don't label it self-defense in my head, because Ben was never going to hurt me. I wonder why he told me to pull the trigger. Was he calling my bluff? Did he believe that I would put the flare down and go with him? Was he certain that he knew me right up until the second I proved he didn't? Or was Ben telling the truth? Did he understand that he'd become a villain? He saw the girl he'd
been searching for the moment she drew the flare gun and he realized the foolishness of what he'd done. It's rosy and optimistic, but I want to believe that Ben was freeing me in a way. He realized his cruelty. He said what he needed to so that I could leave him behind, so that I wouldn't become a villain also.

I'm furious with Ben for how he hurt Becca. I'm angry with Ben for going overboard and making me wonder if he did it in the confusion of death or if it was to keep the flare from burning the
Mira
. Was his last thought to save me? I'm even furious for Maggie and Ford, who didn't deserve to be drawn into his designs. There's no way to tell Ben any of this. He's gone.

Mostly, when I think of Ben, I am a middle finger flipped to the sky. He acted hateful and labeled it love. He only succeeded fleetingly in turning me into the bloodthirsty girl he believed I was when I killed him. I wasn't her until the moment I decided that he deserved to die. I stopped being her at the precise second I did what I couldn't take back.

When I am not a middle finger flipped to the sky, I listen for the noise Ben made in the world. I catch my ears straining for it. I wake up with the sense that I've just said his name. I whirl around on the terrace, half expecting to see his silhouette. I am always waiting to catch his shadow in my periphery. Maybe it will fade. I doubt it. Ben was not the sort of person who does.

I want to tell fewer lies. So here is the truth, here is what I've hidden inside myself, in the place I used to guard my affection for my golden stepbrother. I didn't refuse to leave Gant with Ben at the end because I love it so freaking much or because I couldn't bear to leave Willa or the core. I didn't stay for Dad and Diane. Ben still crowds
them out. Even the Ben I see now through a kaleidoscope, his pattern ever changing. I can't always make sense of him. I don't always want to. I didn't stay in Gant because I'm goo-goo eyed over Josh Parker, although, as I watch him make a rock skip three times on the surface of the sound and celebrate with a fist in the air, I do think I could be. Someday.

On the deck of the
Mira
, I pictured leaving with Ben. As his mouth covered mine, everything else dropped away. We could leave Gant. We could escape anyone who knew us and anyone's expectations but our own. We could have one endless adventure and we could love each other and make no room for anyone else. I could find out what Carolynn meant about a boy knowing what to do with his hands. We could leave the violence behind—except we couldn't. It was in him. I would always know it. I would find a way to ignore it again.

I tried to send Ben away alive because there was a slice of me that was jittery, grateful, and loved him that much more for killing Maggie and Ford.

I couldn't go with him because he was dangerous. The stories meant different things to us. They made me strong and brave; they taught me that the line between a vengeful hero and a villain is narrow and gray; they entertained me, like stories are meant to.

Ben didn't just invent the world as something less ordinary in a story or sketch, though; he made the world malicious and violent with his actions. He was too good at manipulating the shadows. The abuse was rooted in him, making him grow crooked. It wasn't the stories, the make-believe, or the pretend terror. It was Ben's grandfather, the violence, and the real terror. Not the grand strokes but the subtle details I should have seen.

With Ben, that's how it would always be. The world would be painted extraordinary. People would be cast as heroes and villains. I would be weak-kneed over a boy who killed for me. So: I compressed the trigger.

I want to decide for myself how I see the world. So far it's full of good and evil, the difference between the two not always obvious, friends and enemies, love and loss, and new beginnings. I'm better off in between Carolynn and Willa. One will keep me gutsy and the other smart. Josh will keep us good and optimistic. Duncan will keep Carolynn happy. Rusty will keep us laughing. The memory of Becca will keep us tethered to earth, bound by gravity. And I hope that I'll keep my friends safe.

I will always wonder. In moments of weakness, rather than doodle us as a Venn diagram, rather than pen
summer
in thick black letters down my wrists, on my thighs, or in places only I'll see, I'll pretend that despite his injury Ben made it to shore. Somehow. The flare wound wasn't fatal, as it appeared to be. He found a doctor and he's alive. Alive, alive,
alive
. Like me.

I will close my eyes into the rush of wind on the
Mira
and imagine Ben digging a well in a buggy field, some balmy place south of here. I will pretend that he's baking in the sun and making up for all the bad he did. He'll try to make amends with the universe.

Summer days perfumed by marionberry blossoms will remind me of him, golden, his opinions singing, and he'll have nothing to do with the screeching beaks of blackbirds.

At its heart, this is a book about bravery. And so I must thank the numerous women and girls who have inspired me with their courage. In particular, thank you to my mother—a more passionate, creative, and loving person does not exist.

Thank you to my clever and perpetually game editor, Navah Wolfe. Thank you to Justin Chanda, Lizzy Bromley, Valeria Shea, and the entire Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers team.

Thank you to my wise, creative, and classy agent, Brianne Johnson of Writers House.

Thank you, CB; I still believe.

Thank you to my aunt and uncle, Toni and Al, for their support and encouragement. Thank you to my friends Melissa, Tika, and Andrea for their steadfast support. Thank you to Greg and Jamie for getting it (for getting everything) and being family.

Thank you to my mother and father for teaching me that I am brave and of consequence. Thank you to my sister, Elizabeth, the grandest woman I know. Thank you to my little brother and golf champion of the world, Andrew.

And a profound thank you to my husband, Joe. Thank you for being whip-smart, damn handsome, superlatively kind, and the best partner anyone could have. This book is yours. What a marvelous life. Thank you.

Also by

ALEXANDRA SIROWY

The Creeping

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2016 by Alexandra Sirowy

Jacket photograph © 2016 by Mira Nedyalkova

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