Unraveling (14 page)
Ben sighs. “I can sense chemical bonds in molecules. It’s like I can feel them somehow. I have to concentrate, but I can feel when they’re broken and visualize fixing those bonds until they’re back together.”
“So when you healed me?” I try to ignore the way my voice cracks.
“I laid a hand on your heart,” he whispers. “And sensed the chemical compounds of the cells in your body that were broken or severed, and I fused them back together.”
There’s no swelling feeling of victory that I was right. That I knew he did something to me even though it defied all logic and reason. Instead there’s a sick tightening inside my body, and it almost hurts to keep standing up straight.
“I was dead. I was, wasn’t I?”
He hesitates. And my heart somehow hammers louder and harder in my chest, and this time I’m sure he
has
to be able to hear it.
“Tell me.”
“Not for long,” he whispers.
My whole body throbs with the beat of my pulse, like someone’s fist is pushing against my skin. I feel breathless and dizzy, a little like the blood just bottomed out of my head.
“And my back was broken?”
He nods.
I believe him. And that means there’s a lot more than quantum physics that I don’t understand.
“What
are
you?” I ask, and then wish I’d phrased that better. It sounds like I’m asking if he’s something ridiculous. Something not human.
Even though I was convinced he brought me back to life, I’m just not sure what I expected. How is something like that possible? It’s not, at least not in the human scope of possible. I was so focused on getting the truth out of Ben, I didn’t stop to speculate on what it meant.
I look at Ben and wait for some kind of answer.
But he shrugs. “Just a guy who’s kind of a freak.”
“Do people know that you can … can just bring people back from the dead?”
He smiles. “It’s not like you’re a zombie or something. I wouldn’t be able to, like, reanimate a corpse or anything. It only worked because it happened so fast. Like when paramedics save someone from dying—or a hospital.”
So Ben Michaels is a one-man emergency room. Some people would think that’s sort of a neat trick.
“Janelle, you … you can’t tell anyone,” he murmurs.
I nod, because the logical part of me knows that makes sense, but I can’t help but sway a little on my feet at the weight of this secret. I don’t even like science, and my brain is already putting together a list of questions about what else “manipulating molecular structure” can do.
“Can you do more than heal people?” I ask.
Ben nods. “I can manipulate physical matter. Um … hold on.” He looks around and then runs to Poblete’s desk and grabs something. When he comes back, I see it’s a number two pencil.
With two hands, he holds the pencil in his palms.
I stare at it, waiting for a movielike glow or something, but nothing happens. I look up at Ben’s face—he’s flushed, and a fine line of sweat covers his forehead.
“Look,” he says, and I glance down in time to see the pencil disintegrating in front of my eyes.
Until it looks like a pile of sand.
I reach out to touch it—to see if it’s real.
It is.
Ben Michaels is a scientific miracle.
“What else can you do? I mean, could you turn the pencil into water?”
He shakes his head. “It’s not an exact science. I have to focus, sense the cells, and changing the bonds takes concentration and practice. It tires me out.” He pauses. “And I can
manipulate
the molecular bonds, I can’t create or destroy or even substitute them with something else.”
He won’t look me in the eye. His face is pale, and his movements are tense and jerky. It looks like he might be getting ready to manipulate the floor so it will swallow him whole and get him out of here.
“So you can’t read minds, start fires, or turn invisible?” I ask, trying to make light of this whole …
thing
. “That’s lame.”
Ben’s eyes lift to mine, and he cracks a smile.
“If the universe was going to give you superhero powers, they could have at least given you the ability to fly or something,” I add, because apparently I don’t know when I’m taking things too far.
He shakes his head, and his voice comes out barely above a whisper. “I’m not a superhero.”
But he saved me.
I’m still trying to process everything when the door to the classroom opens and Poblete comes walking back in with a chocolate cookie and a coffee from It’s a Grind. When she sees us, she actually jumps slightly. “Oh my God, you scared me to death!” she says, breaking into a laugh as she goes to her desk.
“Good thing you didn’t spill the coffee,” Ben says.
“There is a God, huh?” she answers with a smile before she looks back up at us, recovered from her surprise. Her expression changes. She’s suddenly more serious as her gaze moves from Ben to me. “Miss Tenner, is everything all right?”
I realize too late how I must look. I can’t tell if I’m flushed or pale, whether I’m breathing too hard or too shallow, but I know I’m swaying a little on my feet, and I probably have some kind of weird dazed look on my face.
I force myself to nod. “I’m fine, thank you.”
She stares at me, and it takes me a second to realize she must be wondering why the hell I’m not in class, since it started probably five or ten minutes ago.
“I’m going to head to Spanish,” I say, wondering when I got so
lame
. I grab my backpack and tell myself to breathe in and breathe out and put one foot in front of the other until I get outside.
“And Ben, I assume you’ve conveniently managed to have no class this period,” Poblete says as I open the door.
“You’ve always been good with assumptions, Miss P,” Ben says.
Pausing in the doorway, I turn back to look at him in time to see him glance at me. I don’t know what he sees, but as the door shuts, I hear Poblete say, “Excellent, because I’m assuming that you’re still here because you want to make photocopies and check out some books from the library for me.”
And I see Ben, face flushed, jaw set, staring. There’s something about his expression. I’m usually pretty good at reading people, but I can’t tell if he’s relieved to see me go or if he wishes we hadn’t been interrupted.
A
fter school, Alex and I drop Jared off at water polo and head back to my house. Alex’s left hand rides the steady stream of wind pouring through his open window. His black hair, cut short enough that it’s not really a style, barely moves—unlike mine, which is determined to whip all over the place.
I haven’t told him about Ben.
Usually when I’m right, I’m all about rubbing it in Alex’s face, since if I’m being honest, Alex is right more often than I am. But in Spanish, when I slid into my seat next to him and he gave me his
WTF just happened?
face, my mouth dried out and I couldn’t speak. And now every time I think about telling him, I can’t make myself do it.
Now that I know I was right, I don’t feel vindicated or anything. I don’t want to brag about it or give Alex a hard time because for once he was actually wrong. I feel strange, unsure of my movements and actions and thoughts. I feel like I’m not me. What if Ben didn’t bring all of me back from the dead? Or what if I’m just not supposed to still be here?
When we pull into my driveway, I pause before I open the door. “If I run in and grab my suit, can you drop me off at the cove?” I ask Alex.
“Why…”
Then he shuts up. Because he was going to ask why I would go to La Jolla Cove instead of Torrey Pines. But he already knows.
I can’t go back to Torrey Pines right now—not until I figure out how my John Doe really died and how it relates to the countdown. I can’t go back there and see skid marks from the truck that killed me.
Especially not today.
Torrey Pines—my beach, the one where I spent my summers, wasting my days, soaking up sun, making sand castles. That stretch of the ocean was mine—especially once I was old enough to actually make some money, and I took care of it and the people who swam there.
It was Alex’s and my beach. And now it’s not—not anymore.
“I’ll get Struz to pick me up later.”
Alex glances at me. “You okay?”
I nod, but he sees it’s halfhearted.
“You don’t need to take all this on yourself, you know. I’ll do some research this afternoon. See what else I can find.”
I lean my head back against the headrest and sigh—fifteen days isn’t a long time. “So you’ll drop me off?”
Because he’s Alex and he’ll do anything to keep from going home, he says, “Of course, J.” And then when I don’t move, he turns to look at me and smiles. “You did mean today, right?”
I smile and jump out of the car.
On the last day of third grade, Lesley Brandon had an end-of-the-year party. She lived in Santaluz, so she had enough space to invite our entire elementary school, and she had just about the most beautiful pool I’d ever seen—someone totally designed it to look like a pond! With a waterfall! It was awesome. I raced everyone—and won, multiple times—and then Kate and I jumped off the top of the waterfall into the deep end until Lesley’s mother yelled at us.
Out of our entire elementary school, Alex was the only kid who didn’t get in and swim.
It wasn’t that he didn’t know how, either. His mom had signed him up for one of those Mommy and Me swim classes when he was little, but he was still awkward and scared, so he sat outside the pool and just sweated.
That whole summer I made him come to the beach with me, and I taught him to swim, like really swim so that he could actually get into the pool the following year and race people, and beat them. Not me, but other people.
When I get back in the car, I look over at Alex. I can’t see his eyes through his black Oakleys, but I don’t need to. He’s got his jaw set, and he’s practically grinding his teeth, trying to think of something to say.
I want to tell him more about Ben, not so he knows I’m right—though I have to admit a part of me does want to push him and say, “I told you so!” The greater part of me, though, just wants to hear his take on this whole thing because if
thinking
I died generates reflection, actually knowing I did takes it to a whole new level. It makes me wonder if there’s a reason I’m still alive, if there’s a reason the world has given me a second chance at life.
Still, I can’t seem to make myself form the words. It’s not that I don’t know what to say, it’s that I don’t know enough yet.
And I need Alex to believe me when I tell him this time.
T
he cove is right at the edge of downtown La Jolla, which means parking is a bitch. Alex pulls up near the cliffs, and right as I’m opening the door to get out, he says, “So, Ben Michaels?”
“Really? You decide you’ve got something you want to talk about now?” I wave to the crowds of people and cars and the general insanity around us.
Alex smiles. “Well, I was sort of waiting to let you bring it up, but since you’re not going to, I thought I’d just pry it out of you.”
I roll my eyes. “Right, so what about him?”
Alex shrugs. “I just never would have figured he was smart.”
I can’t help but smile. At least I wasn’t the only person fooled. Alex is typically a nicer person than I am, so it counts for something that he had Ben pegged the same way I did.
“J?” Alex says.
“Hmm?”
He lowers his voice and makes an attempt to sound serious. “You know what I’m going to say. He kicked your ass today when it came to that excerpt. Like full-on dragged you to the gallows.”
“You’re the biggest dork alive,” I say as I get out of the car.
“What do you expect?” Alex calls after me. “I’m half-Asian!”
I shake my head and keep going, my pace picking up as I get to the narrow steps that will lead me down the rocks to the beach. I pull my cap and goggles on, and I tuck my clothes in the crevice between a couple of hard-to-reach rocks.
And I don’t look back.
O
nce upon a time, swimming was a stress reliever for me. Something about the rush of the water, the rhythmic movements, the absence of conversation, the pure isolation of it all—it helped quiet everything in my mind so I could focus. Swimming let me think.
Then Kate ruined that for me.
Because of her, I lost a block of time at that party freshman year. I still don’t know what actually happened. Just that Kate and her new popular friends handed me a watered-down beer, and then I woke up at two a.m. in some unknown car with my jeans undone and underwear ripped. For months, I replayed every possible scenario over and over whenever I was alone.
How did I end up in that car? What ripped my underwear? Who undid my jeans?
Even swimming couldn’t help me make sense of those questions. Even swimming couldn’t make them right.
Lives are made of strings of moments, and every once in a while, one of those moments is pivotal and defining. It changes everything, alters you so completely that when you look back, there’s a clear
before
and
after
.
Different people have different pivotal moments in their lives.
Before
: Kate and I were friends, and we teased Alex about everything—even made him play Barbies with us.
After
: We didn’t speak.
Before
: I was a swimmer. Someone who needed to be in the water every day in order to feel complete, whole, happy.
After
: I couldn’t bring myself to be alone, and swimming became just a sport other people did.
Before
: I was naive and believed the best of people.
After
: I recognized that the only person you can ever truly rely on is yourself.
Only now, getting drugged at a party isn’t the most defining moment of my life. Now it’s just something I survived, something I moved past and got over, maybe not completely, but enough.