45. Benson
Benson
There’s No “I” in Dignity
Idon’t see Thea and Zair at breakfast and I don’t even have English class to look forward to seeing her.
As soon as I sit in my seat two girls come over, one sitting on my desk. The smell of shifter following them.
“Benson right?” desk girl asks.
“Yes?”
“My name is Ally, this is Misty,” standing girl says.
“Hi?”
Ally giggles. Misty rests her hand on my shoulder.
“You have a big game this Saturday right?” Misty asks me. Oh, soccer fans. I can do that.
“Yes, it’s the division championship.”
“I saw your save last game, it was amazing. How you were able to stretch that far. I hadn’t thought your hands were big enough,” Ally says, voice dropping.
“Oh, my hands are plenty big,” I tell her, confused. They both giggle again. Misty takes my hand and puts it up against hers.
“Wow, it’s like three inches bigger than mine.” Her mouth falls open. “Bigger than any hand I’ve seen.”
I’m officially confused.
“Is any other part of you bigger than anyone I’ve seen,” she tags on.
Oh god.
Ally takes my other hand as my brain short circuits. Measuring from my thumb to my pinky. “Ten, my goodness. And around?”
I make a noise in my throat. Thankfully the teacher comes in and they return to their seats. Misty spends the class eating a lollipop while staring at me.
They follow me as I rush to my next class.
Where a demon of some kind does the same thing.
When I get to Otherfell it’s somehow, impossibly worse.
Girls of every species asking me for dimensions.
What in the world is wrong with these girls?
Two come and tell me I’m a DD. After I google what catching print is, I’m somehow more horrified. I preferred when it was just my hands.
“You have big ears,” one girl said while wiggling her eyebrows.
“I’m a goblin,” I point out despite it being rather obvious.
“So all goblins got girth.”
What the hell?
The day just keeps getting weirder. Zair is in a terrible mood at soccer practice and I keep my distance. Dylan and I keep looking at him wondering if he’s going to go off. When we finish I avoid all the girls in the stands and go straight to my dorm.
My phone keeps ringing and I silence it. Laying on the bed and staring at the ceiling. Concerned that more than a dozen girls offered to sleep with me today and I felt zero inclination.
In goblin lore, that’s what happens when a you find your hearthstone.
That all other girls stop mattering. That’s how we know she’s the one.
I didn’t even see her today.
This is a dumb idea. I call her.
“Hey Benson!” she answers on the first ring, my face lighting up at the smile in her voice.
“Hey—” I didn’t think through this conversation. “Are you doing okay?”
“Honestly, it was a shitty day. I had no idea girls in this school were so desperate for good sex.”
“You too?” I ask. “My god, I’ve learned more theories for dick size today than I knew existed!”
She laughs loudly and I hear Zair in the background.
“Oh, am I interrupting you studying?”
“No, Zair took me out to dinner. It was not a fun day.”
“Ya, me either. I’m hiding in my room,” I admit without any embarrassment. Why am I not embarrassed?
“Why? Sounds like there are a dozen girls that would be happy to keep you company tonight? Go have some fun.”
“But everyone thinks we’re dating. I’m not about to cheat on you.” I regret it the moment it leaves my mouth.
“Oh, thank you, but you don’t need to do that. My reputation is already trash.”
My phone beeps and I look at it. Jamin.
“Hey, I gotta go, my dad is calling,” I tell her.
“Okay, see you tomorrow morning.”
I click over.
“Hey Dad.”
“How are you, Grub?”
“Doing good,” I lie.
“That’s good. I’m calling because Samson from the counsel called me and said something involving a witch and goblin favors was happening at your school.”
Man, the goblin grapevine moves fast.
“I didn’t give her one,” I say instinctually.
“Good, you know I’d die before being indebted to a witch,” he says. “The shame those clans must be feeling. Samson said he was thinking of driving up and taking his son home before he gave any away.”
“You don’t need to worry about me.” Because he doesn’t. I can’t give one to Thea, for an entirely different reason. “But the witch, Thea, she’s deserving. She knows goblin culture well.”
“How would you know that?” he snaps and I regret opening my mouth.
“I—I have a class with her.” He makes a sound of disapproval deep in his throat. “She’s the one I asked you about a few weeks ago. The one who had a goblin teacher.”
“That doesn’t make her safe,” he snaps.
“I know.” And I do. All the witches in school were talking about that curse. Apparently none of them had seen a curse that powerful or complicated.
“She’s also the one who helped with Billy Sedgewick.”
“Is that all it takes to earn a bunch of favors. She’s manipulating them.”
“No Dad,” I sigh, too embarrassed to tell the full story. “She got the favors for cursing another witch for saying something very… disrespectful about goblins.” Not quite the right word, abhorrent maybe.
“She cursed a witch?” he asks skeptically.
“Yes. Trust me, she’s a good person.”
“She’s not a person!” he shouts, then adds suspiciously, “You seem close to her.”
“I told you, we have classes together, she’s friends with Zair so I see her at meals and things.”
“You don’t let her touch you, right?”
“No, she doesn’t try.” Not a lie, she doesn’t try. But I do.
“Good.” He passes the phone to Malachi and I talk to him for longer. The contrast between my dads is nearly comical.
I’m still carefully tightlipped.
He tells me mom is sleeping. Between being nearly seventy and the chemo she’s been sleeping a lot.
After I hang up I return to staring at the ceiling.
God this is complicated.
A knock on my door ten minutes later has me grimacing.
“You in there Benson?” Thea calls and I’m on my feet and moving to the door with embarrassing speed.
“Hi!” I answer too quickly.
“I got you dinner.” She smiles and hands me a bag of takeout. “Want to watch a movie with us?”
Zair took her on a date, and brought her back to his room. I shouldn’t. But she did bring me food, and invite me.
“Sure.”
The three of us sit on Zair’s bed as he puts on a movie.
I eat my amazing spaghetti she brought me.
Zair must’ve picked the movie for her, because he’s asleep before it’s over.
We let ourselves out and I walk her to her dorm.
We pass a group of witches who talk behind their hands to each other.
Thea reaches out and laces her fingers with mine.
“They’re really dating,” one says loud enough for us to hear.
We reach her door and she pulls me down into a tight hug.
“Sorry, gotta put on a show.” She giggles against my neck.
“Can I take you out to dinner tomorrow?” I ask her as we break apart. She smiles and nods.
If I could skip, I would.
The next day after English I lace my hand in hers, ask her where she wants to go for dinner. We talk of food as we walk. Zair falls into step beside Thea, he glances at our hands but doesn’t comment.
“Out in public!” Anita’s shrill voice makes us jump. “Thea, we talked about this.”
We keep walking.
“What time should I pick you up tonight? I finish practice at seven.” I offer her a lopsided smile.
“Let’s do seven thirty.” Thea smiles back.
Anita storms between us, and we break apart, laughing as she goes into the cafeteria.
Chatter follows me throughout the day again, but my date with Thea keeps me excited. When I get to soccer practice and hear someone make a joke about Thea and I, Zair storms away. I follow him into the locker room.
“Hey,” I look around and confirm we’re the only two in here. “You okay?”
He looks up at me and I see the pain in his eyes and I cringe. This one is my fault. I’d been on cloud nine all day I forgot he likes her. I’m a terrible friend. I don’t even have a shot with her, he does.
“I’ll tell everyone it’s a lie,” I offer.
“No. I get it. Thea needs this win over Anita.”
“Goblin’s needed it too,” I agree. He looks at me for a minute then pulls his keys from his bag and passes them to me.
“Take her somewhere nice.”
“Any idea what that means to Thea?” I smile at him and he laughs.
“Not a clue. She’s happy anywhere there’s food.” My smile falls as the realization dawns on me, Zair sees it and stops laughing as well. “What?”
“Do you think they starved her?”
His eyes blow out as he processes the information. The way that almost nothing gets between Thea and food, how she’s the only witch who eats anything and everything in sight. And then other times, where she just completely forgets to eat.
“I—I—you might be right.”
We’re subdued as we head back to the pitch.
Two hours later I’m dressed as nice as I can, standing in front of her door. I spin the enchanted ring around my finger. I hate the thing but if I’m taking her out to a formal restaurant, I can’t exactly have green hair.
The door opens and my jaw drops.
“Sorry,” she says, her cheeks heating. “Only dresses I had are Adora dresses and they look silly.” She tugs on her hem.
“You look great.”
“Where’s your aventurine hair?” she asks and I can’t hide the smile that overtakes my face.
“We’re going somewhere nice.”
I offer my arm and she loops through it, we walk down through the girl’s spiritborne dorm and the talking all cuts off and then starts again. Anita sneers in the corner.
As soon as we get in the car Thea demands the ring and then directs me to an arcade. We spend the next three hours battling for dominance and eating bad pizza.
“You do know I grew up in the eighties,” I tease as she tries to win at whack-a-mole.
“You’re going down old man!”
We stop at a Halloween store on the way home. Thea attempts to get me to buy a sandwich costume. When we get to the school, I walk her to her dorm, after having the best night in my nearly fifty years.