Chapter 30
I f I didn’t have these teenage hormones coursing through my body I would've been able to maintain dry eyes, not to mention keep my crap together in this situation, like I did the first time Ben rejected me without explanation. How irritating that it happened this way. I keep my back to him as I march off, embarrassment trailing me like a taunting ghost. I turn the corner to find Diana eavesdropping on us, swinging her keys back and forth as if she’s bugged by our behavior.
“Let’s go,” I say, dragging Diana toward the car and away from Ben.
Gasps and startled cries from the group of cheerleaders in the parking lot pauses my retreat. Diana and I look back to see Tyler collapsed in Evan’s arms, his eyelids fluttering as if he’s trying his hardest to keep them open. That or he is just waking up after losing consciousness. His basketball teammates question him and a cheerleader hollers from across the nearest parking spot, “Tyler, are you okay?”
Diana yanks my arm as if she plans to burn through the small gathered crowd and rescue Tyler with the determination of a heroic firefighter facing down a burning building. Before she has the chance to strap on boots, slide down a pole, and shatter a window with an ax, Ben stops her halfway.
“He’s probably dehydrated from practice. Stay here. I’ll check on him.” Ben holds Diana back before running over to Tyler and Evan.
“Is he okay?” Diana asks when Ben reappears. Evan dragged Tyler off somewhere at the conclusion of their discourse, Tyler looking like a feverish rag doll hanging off of Evan’s shoulder as the rest of the basketball team dispersed into the parking lot like ants being released from an ant farm.
“Evan’s taking him to the hospital. He’ll be alright. He doesn’t want a bunch of people tagging along and Tyler doesn’t want to worry anyone.”
“Shouldn’t I go with them?” Diana asks.
Ben shakes his head. “He’ll catch up with you later.” His tone aims to provide comfort until he looks at me and then back at Diana and says, “My bike’s not working. I need a ride too, Di.”
Ben reaches the passenger seat before I can, claiming his stake as I sheepishly open the back door. Diana gives him a disapproving look.
Diana turns down the radio dial for a lecture as soon as she starts the car. “Okay you two. I did not spend three years of my life worrying Atta would choose you over me just to have you both kiss and not even two days later ruin your friendship.”
Using one hand to steer, Diana shoves at Ben with the other. He’s been looking out the passenger window since his sister started talking.
“You’ve been avoiding Atta for weeks now and then you kiss her?” Diana says, staring into Ben’s soul, breaking the sentence long enough for us to know it’s emphasized. “Start talking.”
“I don’t see the point in talking,” I say from the backseat. “Ben won’t explain himself, anyway.”
My verbal jab must have struck true. Ben flips around to stare daggers at me.
“If you want an explanation that bad…” His bluster deflates a bit as he regains a bit of his composure. “I wasn’t avoiding you. I just needed time to think. In the mechanic shop. While I fix my bike.”
“Think about what?” Diana pries.
“None of you are making this easy on me. Especially you.” He looks at Diana. “I told you how I felt about you dating Tyler.”
“And I told you how I felt about you dating Atta,” Diana counters.
“Yeah, when you were ten and both socially awkward. Your request was safe when Atta had a bowl cut.” I can’t help but smile a little at this statement.
“And Atta’s involved with other people. I’m not going to start something with her when Evan’s willing to fight me for it. I didn’t realize her relationships were so messy.”
“What? You think I have something with Evan?” I say.
“Yeah. So just forget about the other night,” he says with so much ease it’s irritating.
“Just take me home, Diana,” I say defeated, bringing my attention out the angular car window where a majority of red and brown cars pass by us on the main road.
“Stop here!” Ben jolts forward in his seat, pointing to a bush in a field a few yards away from a gas station. “Hold on a second.”
Diana stops the car and Ben leaps out to pull a red motorbike out of a clump of velvety bushes, wheeling it over before directing me to take his spot at the front. He folds the seat down and pops the bike into the trunk of the car, crawling in next to it.
“We’re not going home until you two resolve this,” Diana pushes, using a motherly tone, as if we’re two kids acting up and it’s worthy of a scolding.
“What did Evan say to you before he threw a punch?” I ask.
“He said you kissed him the day of our date,” Ben says and I immediately shoot a look at Diana.
“No way,” Diana says, confused. “I thought the rumor was about me and Tyler.”
“It was. I heard Tiffany and Corky spreading it like fleas in the hallway,” I add.
“Diana if that’s true you…no…Tyler’s in deep trouble.” Ben says in frustration. He adjusts his position so that he has a clear view of both of us. He looks at Diana through the rearview mirror.
“It’s not true. Neither is the rumor about Atta!” Diana barks at Ben. I didn’t think Diana’s innocent eyes could turn so severe.
“It’s not? Then why did Evan say that?” Ben stares out the car window, visibly frustrated.
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “He obviously lied!”
“Why would he make that up? He said you guys have been writing notes in class for months and even meeting up for dates.”
I take in a deep breath, trying not to yell. “He has been writing me notes and tried to get me to go on a date with him, but I was never interested.”
“You sure? He was pretty angry when he heard I’d kissed you, and even more angry when I told him that you even went joyriding with that cop. The one who’s looking for you.”
For a moment I feel like I can’t feel my legs. Is this what it feels like to go past shock? How did that information find its way to Ben?
“What are you talking about? Who said anything about a cop?” I say with absolute panic in my brain. This is one giant misunderstanding in a merry-go-round of gossip.
“Jamie and Brad. The cop asked them about you. He said you were really friendly, and when they asked what you had done, he said something about riding into the city with him and that he wants to talk with you. You know what the best part is? It's the same cop who banned Tyler and I from dirt biking in the mountains so he could take girls up there on his motorcycle. I can’t believe it, Atta. You were one of those girls.”
Those girls? The full weight of what he thinks I was doing with Officer Berrett, what he probably thinks I did with Evan, hits me. Hot tears brim in my eyes. “Are you kidding me?” I say.
“Jamie’s in mechanics. I heard it from him in the shop today, and then I heard another guy say that the cop was looking for you in the hallways, asking people if they’d seen you. Why would a cop be saying this stuff if it wasn’t true, Atta?” Ben says. He looks hurt.
“That psycho!” I fume in my seat.
“Diana thought something was up at dinner with you two the other night. She said he was asking about you a lot. He’s a thirty-some-year-old married man, Atta!” Ben scolds me the way I would scold him if he had been with a married woman, his voice loud and exasperated.
Diana starts to defend me. “That’s not what I meant though. He was being creepy, Ben, but Atta didn’t do anything.”
“Diana, it’s a cop. He wouldn’t just say things that don’t mean anything, especially in public,” Ben says. I understand his eagerness to trust law enforcement. After all, the Non-80s-Land version of him becomes an agent, but it hurts to think my best friend and partner thinks so little of me and won’t even wait to hear my account.
“I can’t believe he walked the halls searching for me.”
Diana’s face matches mine with concern flooding from her brows.
“Let’s get the record straight,“ I say. “I got a ride from him, but I never hit on him.” I may have thought Officer Berrett was attractive initially, but that quickly faded with each frustrating encounter. I pause to breathe in the untrusting air behind me.
“Why would you need to get a ride from him? Why would both Evan and a cop lie about you?” He tries fumbling with his bike, so that he can yell at me directly without the bike wheel or headrest blocking his sore expression. The conflict I see in Ben’s face tears at me. I can see he’s struggling to not believe the rumors, but it’s a fight that he’s losing. “He’s a thirty-year-old, married man looking for you at school. You can’t deny you got a ride from him! You can’t deny that you and Evan wrote letters. So how am I supposed to believe you aren’t involved with two other guys?”
I look straight into his eyes. “Because you know me.”
I needed Ben to like me, to be friends with me, even if he did not want to be with me. Even if this alternate universe wasn’t the same, it still mattered. It was still Ben. I needed his approval and it hurt to not have his trust. Every rational brain cell in my body wants to go on strike and adopt the meltdown strategy of a toddler.
He sits for a moment contemplating my words.
Diana tries to disappear, leaning as far as she can into the car window, as if she’s subconsciously trying to escape the conversation. Ben opens his mouth to say more before I can form a response.
“Atta!” Diana shouts. She jolts the car to a complete stop in front of a tall clearing of bushes at the entrance of her neighborhood. We’re a quarter mile down the road from Ben and Diana’s house, but able to make out a police motorcycle and a man in uniform, straddling the dipped bike seat waiting on the Browns’ sidewalk.
“He can’t see us can he?” she asks.
“Who?” Ben says from the backseat.
“Officer Berrett is sitting on his motorcycle outside our house,” Diana says.
“How did he find your house?” I say under my breath. I can’t believe how persistent he is. I’m surprised he hasn’t barged into my house at this rate. A stable person would have boundaries and maintain neighborly distance. He’d need something official to physically make me meet him, right?
Diana manages to put the car in reverse, step on the gas and dart from the neighborhood before Officer Berrett notices. I keep my eyes peeled on the back window in case he actually saw us.
“Looks like he found where we hang out after practice,” Diana says.
This whole cop chase was starting to feel like a thriller. One that I might not make it through. I tried watching a thriller once. I couldn’t make it through the first five minutes of A Quiet Place in Non-80s-Land before handing my bucket of popcorn to Ben’s date and spending the rest of the night in the theater hallway as a distant third wheel.
“Why is the cop waiting for you at our house?” Ben says. He’s obviously as surprised by this turn of events as I am, but it’s not helping my case at all.
“Isn’t it weird that supposedly I’m the one hitting on him, but he shows up to my school and your house just to find me? Is that how that kind of relationship works? I hit on him but he does all the stalking?” I taunt Ben as we drive. “When I asked him for a ride into Denver it was a serious emergency. I think he’s trying to get back at me because I’ve been ignoring him.”
“So you, on his bike, in the mountains. It’s not true. He’s the one trying to go after you?” Ben says, realization settling in on his face. Then his face twists in anger, the way it did when he was preparing to pound Evan’s face in.
“Something like that, so I think it’s best if I avoid him at all costs.”
“Yeah, this is too weird,” Diana agrees. She purposely avoids my driveway and pulls into the neighborhood behind my grandparents’ home, parking next to the chain-link fence where five large leafy sky pencils separate our backyard from the dead-end street loop. The car idles as I stare at my grandparents’ sliding glass door beyond their dark grassy lawn. Officer Berrett would come home at some point. If I was going to avoid him I’d need to use the back door from now on.
“I’m coming with you,” Ben says as I exit the car. He opens the back door, getting out with me.
“How will you get home?” Diana asks.
“I’ll find a way.” He shuts the door and waves her off.