Twisted (6 page)

Olivia scoffed. “Uh-huh, because no one has ever gotten away with a crime? Come on Maya. Guilty people walk away all the time.”

I looked at her, unsure of what to say. I knew that what she said was true. But I
wanted
to believe Ben was innocent. He wasn’t the one that killed her. His brother admitted to that. I couldn’t believe that he had participated in any way. I wanted him to be
completely
innocent.

She must have sensed the hesitation on my face.

“Just be careful, okay?” she said softly. “At least you’re in a big class so it’s not like you’re ever alone with him.”

My eyes darted away.

“You’re not ever alone with him, are you?” she asked skeptically.

I shook my head. “No, of course not. When would I ever be alone with him?” It was true. The park was a very public place. I’d talked to him there but we’d never really been alone. Well, maybe that first day. Even then a car had driven by so technically speaking, I was telling the truth.

She blew out a sigh of relief. “Good. I was just concerned because that first day…the way you looked at him.”

I flinched in surprise. Of course I’d heard Hailey’s comment but I thought she was joking. “What do you mean? How did I look at him?”

She hesitated. Her eyes were scrutinizing. I knew she would be taking in my reaction. She would be dissecting it and coming up with her own interpretation of it.

“I don’t know,” she finally said. “I’m not sure how to describe it. You were looking at him and it was like you were drawn to him or something. I know you didn’t know who he was then. I thought once you did, you’d change your mind. But now it seems like—”

“Am I interrupting?” Henry asked as he hesitantly put an arm around Olivia.

Her eyes bounced from me to him. I turned away from them. I buried my face, and therefore my reaction, inside of my locker.

My instinct was to defend Ben because my heart ached for him after everything he’d gone through. But I didn’t know him well enough to know where to begin. Other than the obvious, that he’d been acquitted. However, Olivia was well aware of that, as was everyone here. The problem was that no one really seemed to care. He may have been cleared by the legal system but he was condemned at Beaumont High.

“Actually—,” I heard her say to Henry. Then I heard the familiar voices of Phoebe and Hailey as they joined us. I looked back at them and smiled. I was happy for Olivia to have a diversion from me.    

“No, you aren’t interrupting anything,” she finally replied.

“Can I walk you to your locker?” he asked her.

She hesitated, looking at me as though she had more to say. But with the small crowd that had just formed, there wouldn’t have been privacy to say it anyway.

“Sure,” she said, giving him what looked like a forced smile. She said goodbye to us and they walked away.

They hadn’t gone more than a few feet before Henry slid his hand into her back pocket and leaned in close to say something only she could hear. She giggled in response and slid her arm around his waist.

“Aw, Livi
and Henry. Who would’ve thought?” Hailey asked.

By the end of the day I was determined to find out what I could about Alec and Ben. And hopefully, that would mean more about Ben’s real association with the murder. I’d been asking but no one was telling. I decided it was time to be more assertive. I thought maybe if we were somewhere more private, meaning anywhere other than the halls of Beaumont High, maybe I’d have better luck.

On the way out to the parking lot I’d invited my three friends over. I’d been encouraging Remy to spend more time with Jeff. I told her I loved her company but I was too old to need a babysitter. She had agreed to spend the evening with him so I knew I’d have the house to myself. Olivia had declined because Henry was coming over to vacuum out her car. She admitted it was buried in a summer’s worth of beach sand and according to her, he
wanted
to do it. Hailey couldn’t come because she had cheerleading practice right after school.

That left Phoebe. I hadn’t gotten to know her too well yet. I wasn’t sure if she’d agree to come over or not but she seemed happy with the invitation. As soon as school got out we’d gone straight to my house. And then straight to the cookie jar where Remy always stuffed the package of Nutter Butters.

We sat outside on the deck, sprawled out on lounge chairs. We were soaking up what little was left of the late September sun.

I had just dipped my last cookie in my milk and I was trying to decide the best way to bring up Ben without sounding contrived but Phoebe beat me to it.

“I heard you have Ben for a Lit partner,” she told me.

“Yes.” I used her opening to jump right in. “Will you please tell me what is going on with him and Alec? Everyone is so hush-hush about it but you must know.” I had asked both Olivia and Hailey. Both refused to talk about it. I wasn’t sure if Phoebe would tell me but she was my last hope for information.

She nodded, frowning. “Yeah. I know. Or at least I guess I know as much as anyone.” She let out a sigh of resignation. “Do you know about Katie Harmon?” she asked.

I told her I did. She was the girl that had been dating Ben. In other words, she was the girl who was murdered.

“Alec’s Katie’s brother,” she told me. I nodded, having managed to figure out that much on my own. “He never wanted them to date in the first place and now he hates Ben. He blames him for everything.”

“But Ben was cleared,” I argued.

“Yeah, but Alec believes that if they’d never been together, nothing would have happened. And honestly, he’s probably right. At the end of last year Alec told Ben he didn’t want him coming back to school. He told him to just get his GED or something, anything. He just wanted him gone. But Ben came back. Alec is furious about it.”

“It’s a public school! Ben has every right to be there!” I exclaimed.

“I know,” Phoebe agreed. “But you asked, so I’m telling you. I think a lot of people think Alec has the right to ask him to leave. Some people think it’s disrespectful of Ben to show up every day. Like it’s rubbing Alec’s face in what happened. Especially since a lot of people think Ben is, in some way, guilty. They feel like he’s taunting Alec by coming to school. The other half just don’t want to get involved because Alec isn’t known for being the nicest guy. No one wants to cross him.  He’s been hard on Ben and he’s been hard on anyone who disagrees with him over it. In truth, that hasn’t been very many people. Maybe just a few guys that were friends with Ben before everything happened.”

“So Alec just thinks he has the right to decide whether or not Ben gets an education. And everyone is okay with that.” I shook my head. The warped notion was just too much for me to comprehend.

Phoebe shrugged. “Obviously it’s a whole lot more complicated than that. I’m not saying I agree with Alec but considering the circumstances, I don’t understand why Ben doesn’t just drop out. School has to be miserable for him.” She caught the look I gave her and quickly added, “I’m not saying he should drop out because he did anything wrong. But for his own sanity.”

“Maybe he feels like he’d be admitting guilt if he did.” I had no idea. I was reaching. I hated to agree with Phoebe but she had a point.

“Why didn’t Alec want Ben dating Katie? Had Ben done something to her?” I asked. I was desperately hoping the answer was ‘no’.

“I don’t think so. Alec thought Katie was too young to date
anyone
. So it wasn’t just Ben. But after what happened he held Ben responsible.”

“It’s been almost two years,” I pointed out. “He needs to let it go. He has to be hurting himself as much as anyone else by hanging on to that much hatred.”

Phoebe looked at me hesitantly. I wondered if she was bothered by my wanting to defend Ben. She finally continued. “It’s better than it used to be. Right after Ben was released Alec messed him up pretty badly. Broke some ribs and smashed up his face.”

I felt my jaw clench. That must have been where the scars had come from. One on his cheek and one through his lip, both subtle, faded with time. “After that Alec still gets away with harassing him?”

Phoebe sighed. “Ben never did anything about it. He never pressed charges or anything. Trent was all over in the papers. I think the family just wanted to try to fade away. Not that that ever happened.”

“So Alec just
keeps
getting away with it?” I was appalled.

“Yeah, I guess. You can’t imagine what school was like after it happened. People were grieving over Katie. People were ready to kill Ben. I mean that literally. Alec was a mess and so was one of his brothers who was still in school at the time. Between them and their friends they managed to keep things pretty riled up. Most everyone just thought Ben deserved it. Like Alec was entitled because a lot of people believed Ben helped Trent. And even if he didn’t, they felt like he handed Katie over to him. Everyone needed someone to blame and that ‘someone’ ended up being Ben,” she said quietly.

I felt my anger start to simmer out of control. “What about you? Do you think he deserves it?”

She glanced over at me. “Can I ask why you’re so defensive when it comes to him? I mean, I understand he’s your Lit partner but…”

I hesitated. Ben had asked me not to tell my friends about us meeting before school. He didn’t want me to admit we’d spoken. Now that we were Lit partners and we spoke almost daily, it seemed that point was irrelevant.

“Do you remember the day at the beach? When I told you about getting hit by the car?”

She nodded.

“Remember how I said someone helped me? Picked me up off the road? Helped me to a bench and brought me my bike?” I let the words hang in the air.

It took a moment and then she gasped. “That was Ben?”

“It was,” I confirmed. “I guess I’m just grateful that he helped me. No one else was around. The lady didn’t stop. He could’ve pretended he didn’t see anything. He could’ve just left me there. But he didn’t. He got me off the road before another car came. I talked to him a few times after that. I mean, I just bumped into him and we talked briefly. It was no big deal.

“It’s not like I really know him. But I just can’t picture him as the horrible person people try to make him out to be. I hate seeing how people treat him. It really bothers me because there is just no excuse for him to be treated that way. And no one does anything about it,” I said with disgust. “I just think it’s wrong.”

Phoebe was quiet for a long time, too. Then she said something that caught me off guard. “I knew her. Katie, I mean. She was a year younger but we were in competitive skating together. So I’d known her for years. We weren’t great friends but we got along just fine. We talked, went out for pizza with our team. We traveled to out of town competitions together. I guess all of that considered, I knew her pretty well.”

“What was she like?” I had to ask. I wanted to know, if only in some small way to honor the memory of a girl who was gone.

Phoebe laughed. “She had a reputation for being a snob but she really wasn’t. She was just really quiet. People took that the wrong way. Once you got to know her, which wasn’t that easy because she was so shy, she was really sweet. She was a great skater. My toughest competitor actually,” Phoebe acknowledged with a laugh. “I can nail my jumps almost every time but Katie, her spins were unbeatable. Always perfect tens. Always. That shouldn’t even be possible. It used to annoy the hell out of me.” She stopped and I glanced at her as she went through her memories in silence. Her face was somber when she continued. “She adored Ben. When she did get talking it was usually about how sweet he was. What they did on their last date. What their plans were. You know, the usual.”

I nodded, feeling sad for him.

Phoebe smiled. “That year, before a few of her biggest competitions, he did the sweetest thing. He went to Carmella’s,” she paused, “do you know what that is?”

“The candy store downtown,” I replied. I knew it was a specialty shop that made homemade candy.

“Right. Well, he bought her raspberry-swirled white fudge because she didn’t like regular chocolate. And a single pink sweetheart rose. Not a regular rose but one of the small ones. A sweetheart rose. She had this thing about flowers being a waste of money and she hated the generic red rose bouquet,” Phoebe explained. “The fudge came in a box that he had wrapped with a purple ribbon because it was her favorite color. Normally I wouldn’t remember something that insignificant but the newspapers got a hold of that information. During the investigation they turned it all around. They tried to make it sound like Ben was obsessive, like he was a stalker or something. But it wasn’t like that. It was just a sweet, thoughtful gift. But even after he was cleared people had this idea in their heads that he was a stalker. The damage had already been done. Never mind that Katie never gave any indication of feeling that way. She loved her gifts from Ben.”

I hated myself for asking, feeling like the morbid kind of voyeur that I had always despised but I asked anyway. “What else do you know about her?”

Phoebe seemed to be scrolling back through her memory. “She was the youngest. She had four older brothers. She told me once that her mom was determined to have a girl and would’ve kept right on adding to the family until she got one.”

And now the baby of the family, her mom’s only little girl, was already gone. She barely had the chance to experience her teens.

We were both quiet again. The seriousness of the situation lingered in the air. I hadn’t been able to get Olivia’s words out of my head all day…That sometimes the guilty walk free.

“Can I ask you one more thing?” My heart was pounding so loudly I wouldn’t have been surprised if Phoebe could hear it. Phoebe was the only person I knew who had a connection to Ben and Katie. Unlike Olivia and Hailey she had facts and memories to go on. I was going to trust her opinion. I only hoped she’d say what I desperately wanted to hear.

She looked at me, still so somber as she shrugged.

“Do you think Ben played a part in it? Any part?”

Phoebe’s eyes met mine and held them. She gave her head a decisive little shake. “No, Maya. I don’t. Not even for a second.” She took a deep breath. “Anyone who saw them together, I mean
really
saw them and had ever paid attention…you just
know
that there was no way. I wasn’t surprised at all when he was cleared.” I was still assimilating everything she said when she continued. “Ben was different back then. He was so outgoing and a lot of fun to be around. He was just the kind of guy that everyone got along with. Obviously this whole awful ordeal changed him. It would change anyone, being accused of something like that. Having to live with knowing your own brother killed someone you cared about.”

I was overcome with relief at Phoebe’s answer. But now I was overwhelmed with so many other feelings. I felt anger and sadness for Ben. And I felt so much frustration with Olivia and Hailey. Not to mention the rest of the school for being so unfair to him. Phoebe sat quietly too. I could only guess she was mentally meandering down memory lane. She was thinking of Katie, judging by the cheerless look on her face.

Finally, she turned to me and pushed a smile into her cheeks. “So, what’s it like being back? Is it what you expected?”

I laughed as I shook my head. “Olivia and Hailey are really the only two I remember. Olivia is pretty much the same. She was always,” I hesitated, “if I said sickeningly sweet, would that sound bad?” Phoebe laughed but shook her head. “She was like that, even back then. Hailey,” I threw my hands up to show my bewilderment. “I don’t even know where to begin with Hailey.”

Phoebe smirked. “Hailey is just putting on an act right now.”

I gave her a look that said I was waiting for her to continue.

“The whole Goth thing? It’s ridiculously over the top, I agree. She’s the only person I know who could pull it off. She’s doing it to annoy her parents. They told her they would buy her a new car if she graduated with a ‘C’ average,” she snorted. “Can you believe it? A ‘C’ average?” she muttered. “Then again, it’s Hailey so maybe that is actually expecting a lot.” She shook her head to free up her thoughts. “But a new car?
That
wasn’t good enough. Hailey wants a convertible. But not just
any
convertible. She wants a Miata. A
new
Miata. So she’s got this whole Goth thing going on because her parents absolutely hate it. She’s hoping they’ll eventually agree to give her the convertible if she agrees to give up the Goth.”