Twisted (17 page)

I slipped an arm around his waist and rested my head on his shoulder. He was warmer now, sharing heat from me and the blanket. I sat that way for a while. Silent because I didn’t have any enlightening words of consolation to make him feel better. Sometimes there just
aren’t
any so it’s better to not even try.

“In his statement he told them that I was the one that set it up. But that I got scared and backed out at the last minute. But the
worst
thing? He told me that’s what he told Katie, too. He told her that I planned the whole ‘surprise’ for her. That I asked him to pick her up at the park so he could bring her to meet me. She believed him because the text telling her to go to the park came from my phone. That’s how he got her in the car.” He stopped, taking a moment to wade through the memory, pushing through the pain of it all. “He took his time with her before he killed her.” He stopped again, taking several deep breaths. Then he shook his head miserably. “She had to have hated me at the end,” his voice cracked. He took a deep breath and continued. “She had to have wondered how I could have let that happen to her. That’s what eats away at me, Katie thinking I had something to do with it. And part of me thinks she had to have
known
that I never would’ve hurt her but then I wonder…was she too terrified to realize that?”

I felt the familiar sick, sinking feeling in my stomach. The kind that feels like a black hole, it has no end. The kind of feeling that can overwhelm you, suffocate you and even drown you if you aren’t careful. I was sure Ben was feeling consumed the same way I was.

I chose my words carefully and said them quietly. As if that would soften them, though I knew it wouldn’t. “So…you blame yourself…because you think maybe she blamed you?” 

He shrugged and every bit of him showed the agony he was feeling.

“No, Ben. It isn’t your fault. It was
never
your fault.” His eyes flickered to me and then away again. As though he didn’t believe me but didn’t have the energy to disagree. So I repeated it more firmly. “You were not responsible.”

He shook his head. “But did Katie think I was? The message came from
my
phone. He got to her so easily because of
me
.”

As much as I disagreed, I understood what he was saying. I just needed to make him understand how wrong it was.

More silence and then he took a slight detour in the conversation. “That’s how my parents feel. If only I’d never dated her...If only I’d never brought her to our house...If only I’d never introduced her to Trent...If only I hadn’t kept her picture on my dresser. Even if I never
meant
for any of it to happen, it’s still because of her connection to me that it did.”

I shook my head. Unable to believe that he, and even his
parents
possessed the same mixed up, messed up line of thinking as Hailey and Olivia. What was wrong with everyone?!

“But if it hadn’t been her, it would’ve just been a matter of time before it was someone else.” He was a sociopath. That’s what the final diagnosis said. He showed no remorse for what he had done, as though it were all a game. He played with Katie’s life and then toyed with Ben’s. He made a game out of trying to make him pay for something he hadn’t done.

Ben shrugged again, unable to speak. Maybe he was thinking that he wished it would’ve been someone else, anyone else. But not daring to say the words out loud, even if they were true.

I bit my lip and wished I had the words to say to make sense of things for him. No one had ever found those elusive words for me so I doubted that kind of magical, verbal Band-aid even existed.

“How do you think she would feel if she knew you blamed yourself? What do you think she would say to you? Have you ever thought of that? She wouldn’t want this for you.” I was certain of that.

He didn’t respond. I had no idea if he was thinking over what I said or if he thought the words were so ridiculous they should be ignored.

“Ben?”  He blinked back a few unshed tears and looked at me again. “You can’t feel guilty over something you had no control over. You just can’t. It’s not right. You need to let go of your guilt. You’ve held on to it long enough.”

He sighed deeply. “Sometimes it seems like it just happened yesterday, you know? Like if you turned back a page in time it would be right there…but most of the time it feels like a whole different chapter of my life completely. Looking back, we were so young. She was just a kid. And for what? What did he gain? There was no reason for it. It didn’t have to happen. It shouldn’t have happened.”

“It shouldn’t have,” I agreed. “But it did. No one, including Alec, has the right to blame you. The way he treats you is just so wrong.” I stopped, building up the courage to ask the question I thought I would never have enough guts to ask. “Is that why you put up with Alec treating you the way he does?”

“Maybe.” He shrugged almost imperceptibly. “It’s just easier not to fight it. It gets so tiring fighting against everything all the time. I’ve already told you it’s better than it was. At first he never let up. Then when he realized I just didn’t care what he did, he got tired of it. Or bored with it.” He stopped, lost in thought again. “He blames me. And most of the time I blame myself. So I don’t blame him for blaming me.”

“He needs to get on with his life and
stop
blaming you,” I insisted.

Ben rested his head on the back of the couch and closed his eyes. “It’s funny…ironic, really. Alec blames me so much but it’s because of his mom that I was cleared.” I watched his cheekbones flex as he clenched and unclenched his jaw. He opened his eyes again but it was as if he were looking into the past. “Then again, she hates me too. It probably just about kills her that she’s part of the reason I was cleared.”

“I’m sure she doesn’t hate you,” I tried to reassure him.

Ben shook his head, still not looking at me. “No. She does. I ran into her on the sidewalk outside of the library one day last spring. I don’t know where she was going…She was surprised to see me, I could tell. But things got ugly fast. She told me she hated me and that she wished…She wished that I…” his breath caught.

“It’s okay,” I said as gently as I could. “You don’t have to tell me.” I was pretty sure I could guess. She wished he’d never been in her daughter’s life? Or something worse? Something more hateful? She wished it was Ben who was dead? She wished he’d been forced to pay for what happened? Whatever it was, it was obviously painful and I wasn’t going to force him to say it.

“That phone call, just a few minutes after ten, to see if Katie was with me was the one thing that proved I wasn’t there. The farmhouse Trent took her to was pretty far out of town. I never would’ve made it home in time to take that call.” He shook his head in disbelief. “I almost didn’t answer. I had my music so loud I don’t know how many times it rang before I finally heard it.”

He took a deep, shuddering breath. “He said he killed her at exactly ten o’ clock. She’d been at our house enough times that he knew it was her curfew on a school night. So he knew he had until then before anyone missed her. He said it so calmly, like it was no big deal. ‘I was done with her at ten’, that’s what he said. The coroner’s report matched that. The place he took her was out of town, opposite side from where we lived. Not enough time for me to get home and take the call from her mom. I don’t think many people know that.

“They had the text from my phone and Trent must’ve worn gloves or something because only my prints were on it. And they had her picture, which I realized later he’d stolen. At the time I just thought it was lost. Like maybe it fell off my dresser. Or maybe Mom misplaced it when she was dusting. I didn’t think much of it. Katie just gave me a new one. But it was that picture written out to me, from Katie, that he left behind with her. And he brought a rose for her but it was a regular rose and Katie liked the small ones better. All of those pieces of evidence, he planted them so carefully. He must’ve taken my phone at the last minute because I didn’t even miss it. He picked a night he knew our parents wouldn’t be home. There was a big dinner party for everyone in Dad’s office that night. He knew I’d have no alibi. And in the end,” he let out a weary sigh, “it was only because of Katie’s mom that I wasn’t convicted.”

“How did they find out it was Trent?” I had almost whispered the words.

“After several weeks the girl he’d been dating came forward. She said she’d found the picture of Katie in his wallet. She took it out to look at it because she didn’t want him carrying around a picture of another girl. But when she saw it was made out to me and not him she just put it back and didn’t say anything. She figured I’d dropped it and he was just keeping it for me or something. After I was arrested and Katie’s picture was in the paper, and some of the details started coming out, she realized the importance of it. The fact that Trent had the picture that was left with her, that’s when they started looking at him. Around the same time they realized they couldn’t place me there at the time of her death. Finally everything started to come out. He never denied killing her but to this day he swears I helped set it up. A lot of people believe that.”

He put his palms up to his eyes again. I wiped away my tears when he couldn’t see.

He had been accused of so much and so much damage had been done.

I felt sick hearing his story. I couldn’t imagine how he felt living it. To lose someone you love is painful enough. To be wrongfully accused of being the one to take their life? That would be a pain almost beyond bearing.

He looked over at me and took a deep, shaky breath. “So, now you know everything.”

“Including the fact that you are innocent in every way,” I said softly.

He looked away again. “I don’t feel innocent. Sometimes I think it would be easier if I had been convicted. Sometimes I feel so much guilt that I think I’d feel better if they’d locked me up for good.”

“You need to stop feeling that way. It’s okay to let yourself be happy,” I insisted as my heart thudded painfully in my chest.

He let out a long, painful sigh. As if being happy was such a long forgotten concept he couldn’t even begin to fathom it.

“Katie didn’t choose to end her life. That choice was made for her. But what you do with yours is a choice. You need to forgive yourself so you can move on.”

***

Ben and I talked into the morning and I didn’t remember falling asleep. I awoke feeling an unusual mixture of blissful mortification. Somehow we had ended up lengthwise on the couch, his arms around me and my head on his shoulder. Our legs were a tangled mess under the blanket. I must’ve dozed off before Ben because I had no recollection of how we’d gotten that way. All I knew was that I didn’t ever want to move again.

Then the bliss dissipated and mortification settled in as I realized that Remy was tapping my shoulder. I turned to look at her. Her eyebrows were raised. Her free hand was balled into a fist that was jabbed into her hip. I couldn’t tell if she was angry or just surprised.

She gave me a “come here” finger wiggle and headed toward her bedroom.

I slowly disentangled myself, not wanting to wake Ben. I made sure the blanket was still wrapped around him. I placed a kiss on his forehead because as much as I wanted to kiss his lips, I didn’t think I should do that without his permission. I padded off to Remy’s room.

She had already peeled her uniform off and was wiggling into her pajama bottoms when I walked in. She turned to me with a stern look on her face. “Maya, I told you to sneak. Seeing the two of you first thing when I walked in the door is
not
sneaking!”

“Sorry,” I muttered.

She looked at me sympathetically. “Well, if you’re not going to sneak, at least sleep in your own bed? Okay? He can have the couch.”

I nodded. “We were talking and just fell asleep. I don’t even remember falling asleep or I would’ve gone to my own room.”

“Must’ve been some talk,” Remy noted.

I nodded, my lip beginning to tremble. We had talked for hours. He opened up and told me more about Katie and what had happened, details that were not public knowledge. He had told me more about his parents, how hiring a lawyer first for him, then Trent had
financially
ruined them. The trial, the gossip and rumors and the conviction had
socially
ruined them. With Trent away, Ben took all of the blame. His dad had kicked him out because he’d heard Ben was causing problems with Alec again.

“You really like him, don’t you?”

I nodded.

“Does he like you?”

I could only shrug. Despite our kisses I was truly unsure of how he felt about me.

“It’s complicated?” she guessed. She suddenly looked as sad as I felt.

“Does a millipede have legs?” I managed to sniffle. It had been one of Trey’s favorite sayings.

Remy let out a little laugh. “Do you want to talk about it? Later? After we’ve both gotten some sleep?”

I nodded. She hugged me and then I left her room for my own. When I awoke, several hours later, the blanket was neatly folded on the couch and Ben was gone.

On Monday morning I heard all sorts of whispering and rumblings as I walked through the parking lot with my friends. I thought probably gossip about the confrontation at Gino’s had gotten out and was winding its way through the school.

Ben was still insistent that I not seek him out. I had unhappily agreed. When I saw him in the parking lot, hallway or the cafeteria, I was to try to not even look his way. I would try to keep him free from unwanted attention. In Lit, I’d agreed to only speak with him when our assignments required me to.

I spent the few minutes we had before our first class chatting with Hailey and Phoebe. Olivia was nowhere to be found but Alec was headed toward us and he did not look happy.

Hailey tried to let out a low whistle around a mouthful of gummy bears. She ended up slobbering on her chin. “What do you think happened to
him
?”

As Alec walked by, it was apparent his right eye was black and swollen. He caught me in a glare so cold it sent a shiver down my spine. I felt my face pale as he finally turned from me and continued down the hall.

“Did I just imagine that? Or was that aimed at you? Or…me?” Phoebe asked, looking perplexed.

“That was definitely aimed at Maya,” Hailey agreed. Her blue eyes were narrowed and she had a huge grin on her face. “Are you the one that popped him?” she asked me, ogling me up and down as if it were really a possibility. “I’ve seen how you get all feisty when you’re defending Ben. After what happened the other night, you two clearly do not get along.” Her voice was getting excited, hoping I would tell her what she wanted to hear.

I shook my head. “I don’t have a clue what happened to him,” I muttered.      

“Was it you?” she asked Phoebe. “Or Henry?” she wondered, her voice going up another octave.

“Good morning!” Olivia said as she came up behind us. She threw one arm around Phoebe and one arm around me. As if nothing out of the ordinary had happened over the weekend and as if stress was something nonexistent in our friendship. “You look like you’re gossiping. Are you going to share?”

“I think Maya popped Alec in the eye but she won’t admit it,” Hailey said.  Then she discretely poked her pinky in her mouth to dig gummy bear guts out of her molars.

Olivia laughed, sliding her hands off our shoulders and back down to her sides. “One of his brothers stopped by yesterday. They were playing football. He got elbowed.”

Phoebe raised an eyebrow. “You know this how?”

Olivia shrugged. “I ran into him in the parking lot. Of course I asked him what happened. I mean, you all saw him. How could I not at least ask?”

A rough game of football with his brother? What a relief. For a crazy minute I had wondered if it had been Ben.

“Well then, I wonder why he was shooting Maya little hate-tipped darts with his eyes,” Hailey said to Olivia. “You should have
seen
the way he was looking at her.”

Olivia scoffed. “He had to have been looking at someone else. He likes Maya.”

Phoebe clenched and unclenched her jaw. “How can you even pretend he likes Maya?” she finally asked.

“Because
everyone
likes Maya,” Olivia said giving me a quick hug.

I let out a contemptuous laugh. “No, not everyone likes me. In fact, I think if it weren’t for knowing the three of you things would be way worse for me right now.” I knew it was true. The only thing keeping me from being treated like absolute dirt by my classmates was that I was friends with Olivia. Somehow my friendship with her helped to even out my association with Ben. Ironic considering that she herself disapproved of it.

“I don’t think Alec likes her,” Hailey insisted. “I don’t care what he said the other night. I think he’s just covering his tracks.”

I knew she was right. I felt like Alec was toying with me to get to Ben and I didn’t like it. I just didn’t know what to do about it.

“Are you okay, Maya?” Olivia asked, pointedly ignoring Hailey’s comment. “You look really pale.”

“I’m fine,” I said, squeezing a smile up into my cheeks. “I’m just tired.”

Olivia looked at me suspiciously.

Still smiling I added, “It turned into a really busy weekend.”

She nodded, looking very solemn. “Okay. I thought maybe you were having more problems with Ben. I couldn’t stop thinking about you the last few days.”

I let my smile slip. “I actually had a nice time with Ben the other night,” I informed her, letting her read whatever implication she would like. Now she was the one who had gone pale. I pretended not to notice. “And as
I
know
you
know, even though you keep pretending you don’t…It’s not Ben I have a problem with. It’s everyone else.” I turned to leave but Olivia put her hand on my shoulder to stop me.

“Maya, I’m sorry. I don’t want you to be mad at me. I certainly don’t want to fight with you. I’m just worried about you. That’s all. I swear.” The look on her face told me she meant it. It didn’t matter because it was so misguided. “Ben scares the hell out of me. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

I sighed. “I appreciate that. I do. But you don’t need to worry about me. You have no idea how long I’ve been taking care of myself. I’m fine. But until you can stop being so negative about Ben, I don’t even want to hear you say his name.”

Olivia opened her mouth to argue but Phoebe cut her off. “I think she means it Olivia. I know you mean well. But it’s like you have all this fear of Ben coming from out of nowhere. So, unless you can come up with something that solidly proves that Ben is bad for Maya, I suggest you start worrying about your own personal life.”

Olivia’s eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”

Phoebe looked at her for a long, long time before answering. “Henry,” was all she said before walking away.

“I don’t want to fight with you either, Olivia. But Phoebe is right. You need to be worrying about your own personal life right now. Leave mine alone.” I turned to hurry after Phoebe.

I nearly collided with her as she spun on her heel. “Let’s go back outside,” she said, grabbing my hand. But it was too late. I had already seen the small crowd gathered in front of my locker.

“What is it?” I groaned.

Phoebe stepped aside so I could see.

R.I.P.

Olivia whimpered behind me and Phoebe marched ahead of me to clear the way. “Shoo! Shoo!” she said as she flicked her hand in annoyance at the small crowd.

“What does ‘rip’
mean
?” Hailey asked with her head cocked to the side. “That doesn’t sound good.”

“It stands for rest in peace, Hailey,” Phoebe told her in a hushed tone.

“Well, damn. That sounds even worse,” she sighed.

Olivia opened her mouth to say something but Phoebe cut her off again. “I’m staying with Maya so she can get her books. Why don’t you make yourself useful and go tell Mrs. B this needs to be taken care of
now
. You tell her if this is not off Maya’s locker by next period, I’ll call the newspaper and let them know she let a threat to a student slide.”

I could see Olivia wanted to protest but the look on Phoebe’s face must have been convincing.

“I’ll come with you!” Hailey chimed in. “I’ve never gotten to go to the principal’s office before.”

Olivia walked a few feet and then turned around. “What do I say if she asks me who wrote it?”

I glared at her. “I know what you’re thinking. I swear if you tell her it was Ben, I’ll never speak to you again.”

“How do you know it wasn’t?” she asked quickly, possibly before she lost the nerve.

I held up my fingers and counted off. “One, he’s not stupid. Two, he’d
never
draw attention to himself like this. Three, I would recognize his handwriting anywhere. That,” I said pointing to the scrawl across my locker, “is not his. And if you’d like to see a writing sample in my Lit notebook, by all means, let me know.”

She sighed. “You know everyone is going to think it’s from him. I can guarantee that’s what they’re already saying.”

“Just because someone says something, does that make it true?” I looked at Olivia and my mouth started going before my brain caught up. “Just because locker room gossip says you’re cheating on Henry, does that make it
true
?” I hadn’t meant to blurt that out. I was the last person to believe in rumors so I’d been ignoring that particular one.

Her head snapped back discreetly and a soft shade of pink crept into her cheeks.

“Might want to use a different example,” Phoebe muttered under her breath.

Olivia turned without saying another word. Hailey skipped along behind her.

Phoebe went to retrieve her own books while I opened my locker and took out what I needed to get me through third period.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said quietly, ignoring the clusters of people who were still gawking.

I instinctively started walking towards Ben’s locker but he wasn’t there. “I wonder if he’s seen it,” I mumbled. If he hadn’t seen it, he would hear about it.

“What are you going to do about all of this?” Phoebe asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, my voice just above a whisper. “I’m afraid if I make a big deal out if it, somehow they’ll manage to turn it around on Ben. The last thing I want is to make things worse for him.” 

“Who do you think is doing this?” Phoebe asked.

I turned and looked at her with raised eyebrows.

“Right,” she agreed. “I think Alec is responsible, too. I’ve thought so from the start.”

I sighed. “Thinking it and proving it are two different things. I don’t know how to make him stop. I think he got tired of not getting a reaction out of Ben so now he’s moved on to me.”

Whether he saw my locker or just heard about it, Ben avoided me the rest of the day. More than usual, that is. I never crossed paths with him in the hall. He didn’t show up in the cafeteria and he walked into Lit as the bell rang. I had my head propped in my hand. My hair hung forward shielding my gaze from Alec. I watched Ben but he never glanced my way. I’d never been so grateful for a test, which took up most of the hour. At the end of class I respected his space. I let Ben leave before I got out of my desk. I was sure Alec was watching us intently. I tried to tell myself that in Ben’s mind, he was doing it for me, to protect me. Yet, it was frustrating beyond measure to know that every time I managed to peel away a layer of his protective exterior, someone else made him slap another few layers right back on.

***

That afternoon I invited Phoebe over. I was scooping vanilla ice cream into dessert bowls when Remy wandered into the kitchen in her pajamas. “Oh! I’ll have some of that!” she exclaimed.

“For breakfast?” I teased with a smile.

Phoebe got another bowl out and Remy slouched into a chair at the kitchen table. Her mass of tangles was contained with a rubber band, hanging lopsided on her head.

“We should use up the blueberry sauce that’s left over from the first time Ben stayed over,” Remy said to me.

Phoebe nearly dropped the bowl on the counter. Her entire face was one big question mark as her eyes bounced between Remy and me.

I turned to glare at Remy but she had burst into a laughing fit at the look on Phoebe’s face. 

“Oops,” she said and then yawned hugely.

Phoebe’s surprise turned into a grin that was contagious and I was smiling even as I shook my head.

We’d used that sauce up a while ago and Remy knew it. She gave me a look of mock innocence when she saw me smile.

“Ben slept over?” Phoebe squeaked when she realized I wasn’t going to gush into an elaboration. “When?” she paused to think about it. “Did you bring him here the night we found him?”

I turned my back to her to go to the fridge for the fresh jar of sauce I’d made over the weekend. “I told you I was taking him home,” I mumbled.

“Um, yeah, I thought you meant
his
home, not
your
home.” Phoebe scooped the ice cream and then slid the bowls to me to drown with the sauce.

“He came here,” Remy chimed in, confirming. “He ate two servings of waffles in the morning.”

I turned to Remy to give her another glare. She winked back.

“Details please?” Phoebe asked.

I gave her a withering look. “Details? Do you remember what kind of shape he was in? There are no details.”

“Judging by how he looks with his shirt off, I have to say that boy does more than read in his free time,” Remy piped up in a teasing tone.

“
Remy
!” I exclaimed. It wasn’t just any guy that she was teasing me about. It was
Ben
. And somehow, that made it different and I wanted them to stop.

She shrugged. “I’m just saying…”

“Well don’t,” I begged. Ben had told me he’d started using Trent’s old weight room that was set up in their basement. He said that he started using it to make it easier to take a punch. It was never just him and Alec. Alec didn’t have the guts for it. It was always him against at least three others. He told me there was no point in resisting because it just prolonged it, it was just better to get it over with. Hearing his words had made me want to cry. I didn’t want Remy to point out
what
he did in his free time because then I would have to be reminded of
why
.