Archive of Our Own ^beta

It's alright if you love me

It's alright if you don't

•-•-•-•-•

Friday, March 18th, 1994

Leslie Marino’s 18th Birthday

There was a saying his grandma Coral had loved, she had said it was an old Irish phrase that her own grandmother had been partial to. She would murmur it in that southern American accent of hers, the one that she'd never kicked no matter how many years she had lived in the Cove.

"Under the shelter of each other, people survive."

It’s six minutes after the last bell when Ben arrives at the GTO in the upperclassmen parking lot, Les is already inside, bag thrown in the backseat, papers spilling into the footwell. Georgie’s mixtape is still stuck in the tapedeck, but by the grace of God it isn’t playing Tom Petty, the song he hears is The Stranglers’ Straighten Out.

Les rolls down the window, “What’s with the get up?” she asks, gesturing to his basketball shorts, which do, admittedly, look stupid when combined with his second-hand grey, blue and orange sweater

He thinks about his jeans and letterman shoved in the bottom of his backpack.

“Broke a pen.”

The car smells comfortably of sweat and old gum and freshly turned dirt when he climbs inside, Les turns down the music as Ben closes the door behind himself.

"I heard you talking to Coach earlier, how'd that go?" Les asks before he even has a chance to set his backpack in the footwell.

"I... don't wanna talk about it."

Her brow creases, "I mean, if he kicked you he's being really fucking stupid, okay kid, I mean you were one of our best players."

Were, says the voice that sounds just like… that voice from his dreams, somewhere between his mom’s and his own.

Ben knows that that's a lie, he didn't have the skill of Dufont or the precision of Jung or the strategy of Laird or the sheer willpower of Les herself.

Les pulls out from the parking lot, flipping off Bruce Carasco’s shitty corolla sport when he tries to cut them off on the Greenbriar turn.

“Not that I'm trying to pry, or whatever, but, I could hear your voices from the end of the hall,” Ben feels his cheeks color, “I know Coach has a short fuse, but I can talk to him. Gotta lock down my team before I leave for good, ya know?”

The reminder of Les’s approaching graduation is bittersweet. If mostly bitter. Ben can’t count the number of times Les has talked to Coach since December. He’s heard them, voices rising in pitch while Ben waited in the gym’s back hallway for Les to take him home. Skulking around like a bystander in his own life.

Given that the Basketball season ends next week, with the championship game against Horace Downs set for next Friday, Ben had hoped that he could get back into Coach’s good graces by fighting for his spot on the team, and go into the offseason with his position secured. He didn’t need to be co-captain again - he’s not even sure if he would want to be, with Les gone - he just wants his team back, even if that meant dealing with the drama and pomp of it all, even if it meant dealing with Luke fucking Herzog, Ben wanted it back, all of it. Back in December, he thought he knew what it would be like, given that swim team has been off the table since his accident - given his homemade exposure therapy - but it had hurt - in a different way, perhaps, less sharp, less gut-wrenching, but painful nonetheless - to go to team parties, to watch their games, knowing full well that the only thing that stood between him and that - that sliver of brilliant, vibrant normalcy - was one singular person. It made Ben fucking furious, and after months upon months of feeling nothing but the albatross weight of sorrow, that spark had burned him up inside.

“Thanks Les, but I’m handling it.”

“I know you are, but two heads are better than one, ya know.”

“I know,” he tries to turn the music up when the song changes over to that Yes song he’s had stuck in his head for the last week, but Les pushes his hand away.

“Not a chance Bishop, driver and birthday rules,” she turns the dial until the warbling voice of Ann Wilson bleeds out of the speakers, “You excited for the party?”

Ben just looks at her, trying to communicate his total lack of enthusiasm. Les just laughs.

"Luzian will be there."

Luzian. As in Luzian Montag, the unfairly cool German foreign exchange student who lived with the basketball team’s very own massive douchebag, Luke Herzog. The very same Luke Herzog who’d been responsible for Ben being benched from the team - or well, okay, Ben had thrown the first punch, but Luke was an instigating shit-stirrer regardless.

"I already said that I'm coming Les, you don't need to bribe me.”

“Oh, so his presence would be a bribe, huh?”

Ben does not want to have the Luzian conversation again, not after the day he’s had.

“Les,” Ben resists the urge to put his head in his hands, “Les,” he repeats urgently.

“What? I know you like him, I’ve seen the looks you give him.”

He rolls his eyes hard, right as Les takes the turn onto Woodruff a bit too harshly, knocking the cardboard box full of junk she's been collecting to burn at next weekend's bonfire off the bench seat, papers cascading across the backseat. Les acknowledges it with nothing more than a muttered, “Shit.”

“Much to your disappointment, I’m still not into guys.”

“Ehh, still not sure I believe you. I mean after everything with Babs, why even continue with the opposite sex?” Les reaches over him, popping open the glove box, and taking a fistfull from the bag of trail mix that seems to live therein.

Fucking Babs, he wrinkles his nose. He regrets even telling Les the many falling of their relationship. God, Ben does not want to talk about Babs Liszewski right now.

“Barely into girls,” he reminds her, before she starts in on a diatribe about some girl or another that she thinks Ben is “in love with” or whatever.

“You can be barely into both.”

“You’ve told me that before, Les, doesn’t mean I am.”

Les just hums at him, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel along to Heart’s Heartless as they wait for the light to change at the Westridge Exchange, “Yeah, yeah, I believe ya.”

Except that he can hear the disbelieving tint to Les’s voice. Les is a pretty shit liar anyway. He blames Ms. Marino, she’s way too cool about well… everything - so unlike his parents - to the point that Les has never really had a reason to learn how to properly lie. But even with her mom’s easygoing nature, Ms. Marino must be out of town, or, at the very least, not coming home tonight, if Les had the gall to throw a full force party. He’s pretty sure that Amany, their roommate, had a date. Ben thinks that means she’ll be out of the house too, but the idea of her coming back to 70-or-80-someodd teenagers wrecking the place was a rather entertaining picture.

It’s one more Heart song and then they’re nearing Neptune Place. Les is giddy with excitement, fingers and feet tapping to the beat. He can practically hear the countdown until ‘party-time’ in her head.

"Well, see ya at mine Bishop."

"Yeah, 8:30 dull right?"

Les laughs, this terse little things between her teeth, "Fuck off."

"Yes ma'am," he says, scrambling to open the door before she can roll to a stop. He succeeds by a hair, flailing onto the sidewalk.

He can hear her murmur Dumbass under her breath, "See ya."

"Bye Les."

•-•-•-•-•

I'm not afraid of you runnin' away, honey

I get the feeling you won't

•-•-•-•-•

Ben hated house parties, honestly, but Leslie had asked him to come so he would suck it up - grin and bear it - like he did everything else. Les was worth it. Her friendship was worth it.

It's a long weekend. Next week is the final week of school before they’re set free for spring break. 3 days graciously given by Gloria Heights High for students to study. Which, is instead used by those same students as a spring break test run - a glimpse at the debauchery to come. Sure, by Tuesday morning they'll be in for 4 straight days of tests, but the future seems far, far away from now. 

Cary was going to bring his new girlfriend and Georgie was bringing Beck. The basketball team would be there, along with some of Les's other friends. 

Sadie, Cary's girlfriend, went to their school, a fellow Gloria native. She was in Ben's grade, a year younger than Cary. He had ornithology with her in freshman year - he’d only taken the class because Mrs. Twain said he couldn’t take Marine Biology until he was a junior. He had needed another class and Freshman weren't allowed free periods, and so he landed on Ornithology. He’s pretty sure he and Sadie had a few of the same teachers back in elementary school, Mrs. Day and Ms. Yorita - the Freshman's Aunt.

Rebecca - Beck - on the other hand, was from Harper's Church and two years older than Georgie at 18. Her dad had a rock band back in the 70s and her mom was a former model. Ben has no idea now Georgie was able to meet her, let alone date her. Apparently, Beck had graduated early from one of those fancy-fussy-artsy schools in Blackwell or the Lovelock's, and was taking a year off to “find herself” - which, seemed to Ben anyway, to mostly just mean crashing parties, sneaking into bars and going on insane dates. She and Georgie had, a few weekends back, snuck into the - closed to the public until the fast approaching first week of spring - Carnival of Saints, the massive amusement park out in the Hinterlands. Once inside, they had, ostensibly, climbed up the Ferris wheel and drank peppermint schnapps Georgie had stolen from her dad's liquor store. Like something straight out of a coming-of-age film. Ben would have thought it was some far-out, ludicrous fabrication had he not seen the kodaks Georgie had taken. Even just looking at them had given Ben vertigo.

Dad had certain conditions for Ben attending Les’s party, which was, in some ways, bullshit, because his parents had never given him conditions before. It pissed him off, if nothing else. These days, a lot of things made him pissed off. More than he'd like to admit or say or even think about.

His parents have been a bit testy since December. He's not sure why. Ben was the one who had to grovel to his teachers to let him make up the exams. He’s the one who had to get a doctor's note and all to convince them. Everyone but Coach Keller had agreed, but Ben still passed history with a C+, so it could be worse. Besides, it's not like he skipped on purpose. Not that Dad knows that. He still hasn't told his parents the truth. The real reason he wasn't at school that day. Just let them believe the lie Leslie told them. He’ll have to pay the piper eventually, but today wasn't that day.

Ben’s halfway out the door when Dad calls out to him from the worn-out couch in the den.

“Lawn by dawn Brennan Ray.”

“Yeah, yeah, Dad, will do.”

Spring would arrive in Magnus soon enough, but the dying dregs of winter had stonchly refused to leave the Cove alone, Gloria would freeze each night until at least April. At this rate, it would last until May. It’s a 30 minute walk from his place to Les’s, but even with the chill, in the air and in his bones, he can’t find it in himself to wear one of his jackets. Honestly the very idea of putting his letterman jacket back on after what happened today makes him feel more than a little uneasy uncomfortable nauseous. He settles on wearing the faded red roman architecture pullover he got at that art pop-up Mari took him to around this time last year. It looks nice, artsy and unassuming - or at very least, it’s clean, and Ben really doesn’t have it in him to do the pile of laundry by his bed, no matter how pissy it’s making Cam. At the moment, their shared room is a mess and permeated with the smell of stale cup noodles - courtesy of Cam. He and Cammie were in a standoff about it at the moment - she swore down that she wouldn’t clean her side of the room until he cleaned his - it had been going on like this for nearly three weeks. 

It's fine, it looks normal. He looks normal.

Around this time last year, Ben was being made co-captain of Gloria Heights High’s basketball team. It still makes his stomach churn, just how much has changed since then.

Ben said he'd be at Les's at 8:30. By the time he got there it was 9 and the party was in full swing.

•-•-•-•-•

Les is sprawled across the top of a dented fold-out table in the den when he finds her, dressed in her finest blue flannel and stain free jeans. Her dark curly hair is splayed around her, haloed around her head like a Waterhouse painting, sitting halfway in a puddle of spilled beer. She looks blissfully in her element.

"Bishop!" She slurs happily, "It's about fucking time you got here. What took you so long kid?"

"I changed like five times,” he admits, if slightly sheepishly.

He conveniently leaves out the fact that he did all of that oscillation while watching the latest episode of The X-Files, running back upstairs to his room to change during commercial breaks, even though the episode had been lackluster. Nor does he tell her that he sat on the end of his bed for nearly an hour, staring at his letterman jacket.

"Damn, and I thought I had commitment issues," Les laughs to herself.

Oh Jesus, Les why?

“Happy birthday to me, baby.” Les drawls, cradling his face in both of her hands.

“Drunk already?”

Les hums, “Sure am baby boy,” she muses his hair, “Finally of age to do it properly.”

“Hasn’t stopped you before,” he murmurs.

“It’s a reason to celebrate Benny.”

Ben squirms at the nickname. After the finals incident, Les had finally started to take his dislike of her using that nickname seriously, she hadn’t called him that, even on accident, in months. He recoiled from it the same way he did when people tried to call him Brennan. Brennan was the name of a dead man he'd never met. A constant reminder of his own morality, it left a sour taste in the back of his throat. Sure, he only started going by Ben because Cam couldn't pronounce his Mom’s nickname for him - Bren - right when she was just learning to speak, but it was his name regardless. He had liked it a bit more, when Grandma Coral called him Benny. But he had loved it because it was from her. Just his and hers and no one else’s.

He hears someone shout a room or two over. 

No, not just someone -

Luke Herzog.

Fuck that, God, Fuck that.

“Please tell me that Herzog didn't bring his girlfriend.”

Barbie Reed has been tagging along to all of the team’s various parties, throw-downs and bonfires since she got together with Luke last spring - right around the time Ben was made co-captain.

“Barbie? Nah, she's still pissed at me for the stunt you pulled at the Winter formal.”

When he beat up her boyfriend, because of course Barbie thought everything was about her. Why wouldn’t it be? He fights the woebegotten urge to cross himself, Dear God, damn Barbara Reed to hell, thanks, Ben. The Winter Formal was very old news. The Winter formal was a lifetime ago, most especially in the social ecosystem of Gloria Heights High. If Ben had to bet, it was old news too, in the mind of The Barbie Reed. Not to mention the fact that she didn’t even come to their celebratory party after the team made districts last month. If she was trying to “protect her boyfriend” or whatever, she was doing a real bang up job of it. Besides, if Les was wrong, you could spot Barbie Reed from a mile away, thanks to that lovely combination of overly-expensive perfume, platinum blonde hair, and shiny designer clothes - like a walking disco ball.

“Go have fun Bishop, Dufont’s on drink duty.”

Doris Dufont has never been his biggest fan - namely thanks to Coach choosing him as Les’s co-captain over her. Frankly, he can’t blame her for that, she’s a senior member of the team, fiercely loyal with a great head for improvisation, the title should’ve gone to her. He's sure that it was all because of even more of Coach's bullshit, this fucked little game of human chess he liked to play with his team. But Ben can be fucking pissed at Dufont for taking that out on him, though. Wasn’t his fault Coach has some strange fixation on him.

“People contain multitudes,” or whatever it was that lady doctor with the tortoiseshell glasses had told him.

•-•-•-•-•

Say there is no sense in pretending

Your eyes give you away

•-•-•-•-•

Ben wonders how long it would take to naw his own hand off.

He can thank his lab partner, Betty Shuvalter for the beginnings of that train of thought. She lives two blocks over from him and goes to the same synagogue as the Liszewski’s. They spend the tail end of chemistry trading jokes about Mr. Machan. She’s on the school newspaper and works at the Malt shop two doors down from the Ophelia Theatre, the same one Les has been banned from since her freshman year of high school - Mari promised him that she'd tell him the story one day, but that was forever ago. It was Betty, back in middle school, who had told him that the human jaw has the tensile strength to bite through our fingers like a carrot, but only the brain kept it in check. They had spent a whole lunch period trying to see if they could bite through their own tongues.

He’s sitting in a broken easy chair, tucked beneath the rear stairs, having settled on people watching, when he spots Jordan Castile and Jordan Candor, or as every person at Gloria Heights High calls them, Boy-Jordan and Girl-Jordan - disappear up the stairs hand in hand. Undoubtably headed to the old gazebo down the block - it’s been used as a hook-up spot for decades. The idea of it - the gazebo itself, the hands, the eyes, the touch itself - makes Ben vividly uncomfortable.

Unsurprisingly, he can hear, clear as day, the ringing voice of Tammy Lagrande, even if she’s a sea of drunken teens away.

“How could you date someone with your own name?”

“Yeah,” Doris’s droning tone is nearly inaudible, “That’s like 2 degrees away from fucking your clone.” 

“Ehh, I mean it’s not that weird.”

Jackie Jung’s waving a cup around like it’s a baton.

“Shut up, Jung,” Doris says with a roll of her eyes.

“Yeah shut up Jackie, you’re literally dating a dude named Jack.” 

“And you’re dating a guy with the same name as your Dad, Tammy.”

Ben can just smell the brewing fight. He can feel it in his bones. In his goddamned teeth.

“Oh fuck you, Walter’s a common name!” 

“Yeah, for an 80-year-old man!”

Dufont makes vividly unimpressed eye contact with him exactly 3 seconds before Tammy reaches over her, grabs a bottle of pineapple schnapps and pours it out over Jackie’s head.

“Oh, you bitch!”

Dufont smacks the bottle out of Tammy’s hands, “Alright girls, outside, both of you.”

Jackie flips her off with both hands as Tammy storms up the stairs above him in a huff.

•-•-•-•-•

It had always been funny to Ben, his Dad’s preoccupied perplexion at his son's love of science fiction, given its foundational set in the mythology of the love story of Van Bishop and Pixie River. The cap off to his parents’ famously disastrous first date was a night at the movies, seeing a double feature of Creature from the Black Lagoon and Attack of the 50 Foot Woman - which ended, of course, with the screen catching on fire halfway through the first act of Creature.

Ben and Mom watched Star Trek together, curled up on her bed, watching tapes of The Original Series on the decade old boxy TV-VCR or sat on the sagging ditzy green floral couch in the den, right in front of the cracked ‘70s console TV, hoping the picture came in right on the latest episode of The Next Generation. She's loved Sci-Fi since she was a teenager - in the same way she loved Ursula K. Le Guin novels and Chaucer and the old French philosophers - veraciously. 

Dad liked Carpenter films and those old monster movies from the ‘30s. Ben, as a child, had sat by his father's side watching tapes of The Invisible Man and Dracula and Frankenstein. All in the quiet of the den because Van Bishop was a man of few words - the pure opposite of his wife.

Basketball had been borrowed from his dad. When he was in high school Dad had been an athletic star, basketball, wrestling, boxing; A regular Gloria alley fighter - the type of character that the old folks cross themselves about to this day, thanking the Lord that they chased them all out in the ’70s. Mom always pointed out that they hadn’t, they’d just grown up and given in - or, well, most of them anyway. Growing up, Basketball was a weekend affair, which closed out Sunday, coming after their post-mass lunch. Scuffing up their nice church oxfords on the concrete of the driveway and skimming holes into their Sunday slacks as they skirmished around the basketball hoop hung up above the garage door.

Les had quickly put two and two together, between his name and the Van Bishop on the championship banners in the gym. Thankfully, she was the only one. The Bishop’s were a large family and as Gloria as you could get, his teammates assumed the Bishop on the banners was his Uncle, and Ben simply never corrected him. Or, at least Les was the only one of his peers to notice. Coach knew - of course he did, he’d been on the same team as his dad, a year or two below.

His mom had told him something once. That before the accident, when he was 9 and Cam was 5, before the pins and the dreams and long, long, long before the brain fog and the voices, that as a child, he was fragile, not like a flower, but like a bomb.

Pixie Bishop is a lesson in how to deal with failure, with hardship, of being burned at every turn. Yet she turned her face toward the sun regardless.

She went to protests and sit-ins and marches - a real disruptor, down to rice in gas tanks and sugar in concrete. Mom still swears down that the only reason she didn't make Salutatorian was thanks to the weekend she spent in jail after attending a protest against the controversial then Grand Protector of Magnus, Hershel Endicott.

She let stories which were the fruit of her studies fall from her lips like fables for her children, and Ben sobs into his hand as he thinks about that, because how could she have? How could she have told them without feeling the sensation of being flayed alive at all she had to give up? She’s resilient in a way Ben can’t understand, not for a lack of trying. In all the places where he bends easily and breaks, she is a steel rod, standing upright and firm. Ben took away her dream. She is bright in the way Ben has always been dim. Ben looks at her and his eyes burn because he's failing over every stumbling block she had managed to overcome.

Uncle Bill's favorite story to tell about Ben's mom was that when she was 16 she nearly beat a boy to death for trying to get fresh with her at the spring bonfire. Ben couldn’t do that.

When Mom smiles at him with her warm brown eyes he has to look away because he's nothing like her. He's nothing like his father. His parents are fighters, through and through, and Ben wants nothing more than to lay down his sword and shield at the riverside and float listlessly in its waters.

All rivers lead to the sea.

•-•-•-•-•

Ben swears to God if he hears the song Breakdown one more time he's going to shoot Georgie and then Tom Petty.

"Hey Bishop, like the music choice?" Georgie’s voice is light and teasing, running a hand through her slicked back hair and leaning bodily against him.

"I hate you."

"Thanks guy."

Georgie has oddly light eyes, and they flash in the tumble of colors down here. She's sitting on the half wall he's been leaning against for the past 20 minutes, swinging her feet. Like with every party he's attended with her before, Georgie is a perpetual ball of nervous kinetic energy with a tendency to throw herself around to get it out.

"Where's your girl?"

Come to think of it, Ben doesn't think he's actually seen Beck once since he arrived.

"Presently? Puking, I think."

He can feel nausea crawl up the back of his throat at the mere thought. 

"Jesus," he mumbles.

"What Bishop, don't like the reminder that I get major ass?"

"Shut up DeLuca."

Georgie laughs like she's gasping for air, like she's drowning. She almost never drinks at parties, said her dad taught her better, and unlike Ben, she's fun sober. She never sits still, flitting around parties, from group to group, until she wears herself out in the wee hours.

"You're such a fucking spoil-sport guy, Christ."

He flips her off.

"Don't be a prude, Bishop."

Ben flips her off again, now using both hands.

"Fuck you too guy," Georgie says, but she's smiling. She doesn't mean it.

She uses the height her perch gives her to ruffle his hair into an awful cowlick before jumping down from the half wall.

"Buh-bye Benji, gotta go make sure Cary isn't trying to fuck my girlfriend."

"Bye George," he says, but his voice is lost to the clashing of music as she disappears into the crowd.

•-•-•-•-•

"You should dance with her."

He realizes that the space he had been staring into for the last, thirty-odd was now occupied. Standing in the spot his eyes had been boring into was Corinthia Bell - he thinks her dad is a professor of history or something at Vincent Cross - she’s in his grade and friends with one of the Jenny's - Belmonte - on the cheerleading team, of the Berkowitz incident fame. She reminds Ben a bit of that Van Morrison song his dad loves - Brown Eyed Girl. The one he'd seen him drunkenly sing to Mom at Christmas parties and on their anniversaries. Ben has the good sense to look mortified.

Les cups his face in her hands, "C'mon Benny-boy, live a little won't you?"

She's sweaty and smiling brilliantly, black tank-top sticking to her from perspiration, her blue plaid flannel lost to one corner of the basement or another. Les is brighter than anything or anyone else in the room. Ben is a black hole.

"Les, I can't."

"You can't? Or you won't?"

Corinthia tells everybody to call her Thea in a way that seems cool, not forced. He admires that. He doesn't like her like that though. Besides he doesn't have the best track record with... relationships, or whatever.

It all started with Mary Margaret O'Reilly. Mae's been his neighbor his whole life. They'd done that "saying they're boyfriend and girlfriend even though they're like 7" thing that every kid does. He thinks a ring-pop “proposal” had happened. He's pretty sure he'd just hung out with her because he thought the Barbie dreamhouse she'd gotten for Christmas one year was cool. And she thought it was cool that a boy would play dolls with her. It probably helped that the other kids on the street were either way older or way younger than them. Or they were, before Mrs. Kosta's husband passed away and her son and his family moved in with her. They had 4 kids who were all less than 5 years apart in age. Two of their daughters were in the same grade as him and Mae, and suddenly she had other kids to play with. After his and Cam's accident, he didn't see her as much. By the time high school came around, they only saw each other at street barbecues and pep rallies.

Gracie Garcia was his 6th grade girlfriend, they had Astronomy together and he was the only one in class with a telescope. Everyone thought they were dating and Gracie always said they were. They hung out exactly three times over the summer, and during the last of their hangouts Gracie tried to kiss him while they sat in her treehouse. He hit his head so hard when he flinched back that he got a minor concussion. They didn't talk after that.

Barbie Reed. Good God, Barbie Reed. She was the coolest girl in the 8th grade, not to mention the wealthiest. Hell, she wore designer shoes to school every day. Her family started the Sinclair-Reed over a hundred years ago and passed by the dying years with their wealth mostly intact. He thought he was dreaming when she asked him to the spring dance - it was a Sadie Hawkins after all. Especially because he was a 7th grader. He had asked if that made them a couple and she had laughed. The night of the dance he waited on his front stoop for her. Her friend Lola Livingston lived 2 blocks over, they were supposed to pick him up on their way to the school. She never showed up, and he didn't go inside all evening, for fear of missing them. When his mom asked that night if he had a good time at the dance, after she and dad got home from poker with the O’Reilly’s, he told her he'd had the night of his life.

Technically, he'd also been with Georgie. Well, he hadn't exactly dated Georgie, more like pretended to date her to get her parents off her back about boyfriends. She'd asked him to convince her parents he was her Homecoming date so she could go fool around with the goalie on the girls soccer team. After that he got roped into it for every other dance of his freshman year.

He had dated Babs Liszewski for two whole months after Cary had set them up at the aforementioned Homecoming dance. She was a few years older than him and wanted to be an actress. He thought she was funny. She'd tried to fool around with him a few times but he always got cold feet, and she always pretended to be okay with it. But, apparently, being a serial dater - and a serial cheater, not that he'd ever say that to Cary’s face - ran in the Liszewski family because he found her kissing Barry Alcott behind the bleachers a week before the Winter Dance. So that had been a wash.

And finally, to round off the list, there was Angie Yang. She worked at the video store by Les's house and he saw her whenever he went to rent a movie. They had one date, last Valentine's Day, at Angie's request, watching a showing of Groundhog’s Day at the Miles Theatre in downtown Gloria. The part about her boyfriend breaking up with her and her wanting to make him jealous so he'd get back together with her hadn't been revealed to him until after he had asked if she wanted to get ice cream at Formaldi's with him sometime. Going to the video store had become increasingly awkward after that.

Come to think of it... has he ever been in a relationship on purpose? Or without some trick or ulterior motive on the other party's behalf?

Oh shit. 

He’s never been in a real relationship before. 

This is not a revelation he wants to be having right now. Jesus Christ. Les is definitely going to make fun of him. And, he's pretty sure Les was babbling drunkenly at him the whole time he was thinking. Not that he heard anything.

"I think every girl I've ever dated hated me."

Les looks on at him, wide eyed, "Jesus Christ, Bishop, that is some heavy shit to drop on someone who's high."

“I thought you were drunk?”

“It's my birthday, why can't I be both?”

•-•-•-•-•

Something inside you is feeling like I do

We said all there is to say

•-•-•-•-•

Ben momentarily comes back to focus, having once again retreated to his hollow under the stairs, perking up, as a familiar song begins its opening doo-wop progression - Golden Years.

He knows that Georgie put together the playlist for tonight. Usually, music responsibilities fell to Laird or Jung. The one time Les had left the music to Cory Usher for a post-loss bonfire last spring, it had been a night dedicated solely to the Eagles. It had driven Les, and everyone else really, damn near crazy. If he remembers correctly One of These Nights got played at least four times. Ben found it a very surreal song to puke into a sawgrass bush to.

God bless Georgie DeLuca. God, right now he could kiss her. They’d both hate that, huh.

He presses his eyes closed as the clear, vividly sly voice of David Bowie rings out - it’s nearly enough to distract him from the cloying, suffocating heat of the basement.

Run for the shadows, run for the shadows, run for the shadows in these golden years.

“Hey Bishop,” murmurs the scratchy, gold tinged voice of Luke Herzog.

Luke Herzog. God. Could his night get any more pathetic?

He opens his eyes, “Herzog,” his voice bleeds something vile, something violent, venomous like conus geographus, cigarette snails.

I'll stick with you baby for a thousand years. Nothing's gonna touch you in these golden years.

“You looked pretty lonely man. This corner’s fucking depressing.”

Yeah, that was sort of the fucking point.

“Thanks for the input.”

Luke actually smiles at him and Ben can feel his stomach turn as that smile settles on his face so cleanly. Slides right into place like that’s how Luke should always look at him.

“Anytime, Starman.”

That particular nickname is the fault of the one and - thankfully - only Doris Dufont. Dufont always said it derisively, like it’s an insult. The rest of the team had used it as a painful rib one or twice, but the way Luke says it is distinctly different, in a way Ben can't quite place.

“Why’re you being nice to the guy who beat your ass in front of half the school.”

During their fight, Ben had punched him so hard at one point he’d nearly broken Luke’s nose. He’d felt it beneath his knuckles, just how easily the cartilage could’ve given way.

“I’m the forgiving type, what can I say?”

That Cream song starts playing, the one that Les always makes fun of, the one Mari hated - back when she was still around anyway.

“You’re an easy thing to leave behind.” says the voice that sounds like Mr. Machan and Coach Keller and Father McCormick. Some horrid Frankenstein’s monster abomination of knowledge and fear.

It feels like him.

Ben looks up at Luke for the first time since he intruded into his malaised solitude. The undulating lights of the basement make it so that Luke’s eyes look like they’re burning out of his skull.

“That’s not what Tammy said after you broke up.”

“Tammy’s a bitch,” he says, matter-of-factly.

Ben can’t exactly deny that; Tammy is a bitch. The best shooting guard that Gloria Heights High has seen since the ‘70s - still a bitch.

“What do you want exactly, Herzog?”

“Do I have to want something Bishop? Can’t a guy just try to be friendly?”

He quirks a brow, “You can’t.”

“Says who?” 

Luke is leaning over the easy chair now, head a hair’s breadth away from hitting the pitch of the stairs. He wishes it would - at least that would be interesting.

“Seeings believing, Herzog.”

“Where’d you get that from, The X-Files?”

“It's, I want to believe, douchebag.” 

Ben has the good sense to mutter it, barely audible over the din of their fellow teammates, their fellow party-goers, as the speakers swim with Jack Bruce singing about how Ulysses was tortured by the voices of sirens upon the sand. Luke, for his part, as the absolute fucking gall to laugh.

Ben stands his ground, firmly as he can on this odd precipice he’s found himself on, “Put your money where your mouth is then.”

“Only if you have a drink with me.”

Ben, quite frankly, absolutely hates this idea, but he’s also closer to actually feeling like he’s having fun, in a way he hasn’t felt in months.

“Fine. You have a deal,” and for good measure, “Asshole.”

“Guess I’ll have to be the nice one then.”

“I don’t think you have it in you.”

Luke smiles again, with just a bit too much teeth, it’s not a bad look, per se.

“Wanna bet.”

“Just go get us drinks, Herzog. Jesus.”

“Oh, well if you’re going to be demanding about it.”

“Go on, Luke,” the last part feels physically painful to say.

Ben can’t help the small smile that creeps onto his face as Luke disappears into the crowd. He can already imagine Les’s genuine shock when he tells her he actually had fun at her party. 

•-•-•-•-• 

Some fifteen minutes have come and passed since Luke left. Or three Talking Heads songs and half of that Siouxsie and the Banshees song - Mirage - that Les loves so much. He feels itchy like he wants to claw his own skin off. His lockbox is 10, maybe 15 feet away, on the built-in shelves opposite the stairs. He could grab the secondhand discman he’d hidden there, find some forgotten corner of the house, and listen to David Bowie take his troubles away.

He longs for the days of him and Edie Huang sitting on the outer rungs of the team’s beach bonfires - in the outskirts, that's what Edie always called their odd little tucked away spots - drinking orange soda in companionable silence. It’s such a brief blip in his life, and yet, he wishes it was the two of them again. Maybe they could’ve been friends, real ones, if things had been different.

Edie liked Bowie too - not nearly as much as he did, but Ben’s love for the singer was a hard bar to surpass. Her favorite song of his was Queen Bitch. He remembers dancing around the equipment room with her, radio blasting out her favorite song. She had smiled at him, really smiled, with teeth and everything, the kind Ben had never quite gotten the hang of. She was careful and observant and-

A finger taps on his shoulder and Ben flinches, nearly jumping out of his seat, and for a bleary moment, he would swear to God that the figure standing in front of him is the man in the black leather driving gloves, the figment he’d taken to calling The Tiger.

“Didn’t know you were so spooky,” Luke murmurs.

He’s standing close, close enough that Ben can feel the proximity heat coming off him.

“What took you so long?” He asks and feels a sense of deja vu.

“Wasn’t the only one with the idea to get drinks.”

Luke holds out one of the cups to him. It's a sort of standoff, waiting to see who will move first. It’d make for a horrible western because Ben breaks after no more than perhaps 15 seconds of Luke’s eyes on him, and takes the proffered cup.

The first sip goes down harshly. There’s a taste in his mouth, tart and sour. 

Pomegranate.

“This is awful,” he tells Luke.

“I’ll make sure to tell Doris, she’d love to hear that, I’m sure.”

“Don’t be a dick.”

“Oh so you don’t like it?” Luke plucks the cup from his hand and takes a sip before handing it back to him, learning over the back of Ben’s chair, “That’s not the impression I got earlier."

“Like when I beat your ass?”

“You’re just gonna keep bringing that up, huh?”

“Just want to make sure we’re on the same page.”

It is said that a necessary part of friendship is trust. Ben doesn't know what he thinks about that. He doesn’t trust Luke, but he supposes he could be friendly.

“Don’t worry Bishop, we are. But what about you?” Luke takes a long sip of his drink, “Are you on the same page as me?”

“I think I am.”

The thought occurs to him, as he looks into the depths of his half empty cup, that he isn’t supposed to drink with the kind of medication he’s on. Yet another piece of normalcy taken from him. 

How mad can he be if it’s his own fault, his own mistake? 

Who is there to blame but himself for this self made misery?

“As a bit of advice Bishop, parties aren’t for thinking. It won’t be productive man. It’ll just mess with you.”

“Wasn’t aware you thought at all.”

“I deserve that.”

“What’s there to do at a party but think?”

“We could dance.”

Ben couldn’t dance to save his life, he has all the rhythm of a broken jackhammer.

“Nah, I saw you and Barbie at Cassidy’s last month. Left feet, the both of you.”

“Talk about my girlfriend like that again and I'll kick your teeth in.”

There should be an edge to his words, an underlying venom, but there isn’t and Ben’s stomach twists oddly at the idea of that. That twist turns to a vice when Luke leans over the side of Ben’s chair and smiles all bright at him with those crooked teeth of his.

Ben feels caught, but not in a way he particularly minds, nervous energy bleeding out through his fingers tapping along to the steady beat of some Pink Floyd song - Have a Cigar, he thinks. It strikes him that this might be the most he’s ever spoken to Luke. In the year and a half they’ve known each other Luke had always stayed in his lane, hung out with the other junior members of the team. He was one of Leo Laird’s pet juniors, alongside a veritable gaggle of stoners. They’d all clump around each other in passing periods, with Laird at the very center of their proverbial rat king, receiving his court. It was a world far removed from Ben’s understanding.

Or Luke had stayed in his lane, until winter formal. But then again, Ben knows that some of the malice of that night had been due to the near-loss at the game that Friday. Everyone’s hackles had been raised. On edge. Ben broke easier than the rest of them, not that he was surprised, he knew he had a short fuse now, since the bluffs.

Luke wraps an over-warm hand around Ben’s wrist with a kind of fascination, “Christ you’re skinny.”

“Bird-boned,” he corrects absentmindedly, “You know bird’s bones are hollow to allow them to fly. If they weren’t they’d fall right out of the sky, like Icarus.”

“Ya know, you’re a weird guy Bishop.”

Ben looks right in his eyes and mutters, “Really?" with all the sarcasm of Les Marino and Jackie Jung combined.

Which seems to absolutely break Luke, who laughs so hard he chokes. It really wasn’t all that funny, but Ben figures the alcohol must be playing in his favor. Which is, quite possibly the first time that that has ever occurred in his life.

“Dance with me?”

“I’ll warn you, I’m a pretty shit dancer.”

Luke holds a hand out to him, “C’mon, we can be shit together.”

Ben takes his hand and allows himself to be pulled to his feet. Herzog leads him a short way from Ben’s alcove, and out onto the makeshift dance floor. All extraneous furniture had been pushed up against the walls to make room for the revelers, and Luke is kind enough to make sure Ben doesn't trip over the leg of an ancient card table with nothing more than a near unintelligible, "Careful Bishop."

Heart's Crazy On You tumbles from the speakers, coalescing in the corners of the room - congealing his mind supplies. Luke makes some offhand joke about the song that Ben doesn't catch in the crush of shouts and laughter of the crowd. The scuffed old linoleum is solid beneath his feet, even if his head spins under the weight of the myriad of eyes around him. Ben thrashes more than he dances, but Luke doesn’t seem to mind.

He has this immense feeling of impending danger - dread - burning in his blood. One that has always been there. A near constant expectation of another shoe, yet to drop. Even with the blaring music in his ears, and the constant movement of his body, his limbs, his feet, Ben can’t free himself from his own train of thought. Can’t throw himself from that particular proverbial boxcar, in spite of his best efforts.

Ben operated at a dull roar of blaring anxiety and stomach turning nausea. It was his natural state of being and has been for years - since childhood, really. When he was a child, his mother had taken him to a doctor, when his anxieties began to concern her, she was told simply that he was sensitive, and to let the matter rest.

Mom liked Chaucer - she had minored in medieval literature in college. She had read The Canterbury Tales to him in lieu of fairy tales. She preferred the old English text, had even called the translation a shame - she had always been insistent that form was tantamount to meaning - but she knew it gave Ben a headache, so she had given him his own copy in modern English. It was a gift, for the first birthday after he and Cam had their accident. His 10th birthday. In one passage, Chaucer had described the Sword of Damocles hanging over the head of the figure of conquest. 

Above, where seated in his tower,
I saw Conquest depicted in his power
There was a sharpened sword above his head
That hung there by the thinnest simple thread.

He feels rather like conquest now.

Ben cringes when a nearby dancer - it was one of the Meyers twins, Misty or Macy, he can't tell which - whoops in laughter and drops a bottle of beer, which shatters upon impact with the floor. Luke steers him away from the glass as Ben stumbles in the spin. His eyes are dark, sucking in the tricolor party lights instead of reflecting it. Ben finds no spec of pity in them, and that calms some of the churning in his stomach.

The music ends and slips over to some Clash song he doesn’t recognize, that turns to mush between his ears, he leans against a foundation pillar, panting. His mind so, so achingly close to being pleasantly fuzzy. It’s different from the now constant fog of his mind - his doctors said that that was to be expected. The product of some fine combination of the meds he had to take and well... the traumatic brain injury, he’s sure. It messed with his head and his appetite and a million other things that slice at him. Death by a thousand cuts.

“I was promised bad dancing Bishop.”

Ben snorts, sweating into his pullover, “Sorry to disappoint man.”

He goes to take another sip of his drink, only to find nothing left in the bottom of his cup. He ends up discarding it on a nearby stack of boxes.

“I’ll go get us something else, guessing you want a soda right?” Luke hands Ben his cup, “Watch my drink?”

Ben hums his affirmative, toying with the distressed fabric of the arm of the easy chair.

“Hey, Luke, wait.”

Luke turns back around, “Yeah, Bishop?”

“I-“ Ben hesitates, unsure of his own voice, “Thanks,” he decides.

“Just being nice.”

“I didn’t think you had it in you,” and Ben smiles up at him, he knows it probably doesn’t reach his eyes like it should, that it’s a bit too soft at the edges. But he wants Luke to understand regardless.

Luke leans in towards him, close enough that Ben can see his eyelashes before he realizes that Luke is trying to kiss him, and he pushes him away as hard as he can.

"What the fuck Herzog?"

Something flickers in Luke’s eyes for a moment, something sharp and sad, dejected - rejection.

"Oh c'mon Ben."

Luke smiles at him, it’s this light thing, some other emotion behind it that Ben can’t read. Something quieter that’s lost among the perfect shape of his teeth. 

Maybe it isn’t a smile at all.

His elbow collides with the door to the laundry room as he tries to back away. Ben can practically hear what Luke was going to say, because he’s heard it before, so many times before - “Don’t fucking be like that.” - It’s Gracie and Barbie and Babs all layered over one another. There’s another voice there too, deeper, familiar and keen, that Ben refuses to acknowledge or name or- or-

Ben can’t move and he can feel tears welling up in his eyes and he can’t wipe them away because his fucking hands are shaking and he feels like he’s suffocating.

“Shit- Bishop.”

Ben decides then and there that he's not doing to have his inevitable freak out in the open. He’s going to ruin this whole fucking party if he stays here any longer. He slips through the bathroom door before Luke can say anything further, breathing in the familiar scent of coffee grounds, ammonia and cigarette smoke. 

Luke knocks on the door, softened by the din outside the door. Quieter perhaps only in comparison to the growing shrill calls inside his own head.

“Ben, c’mon I’m sorry.”

“You aren’t a choice Brennan, you’re the black hole where a choice should be,” yells the voice that sounds more like Coach than Ben wants to admit.

Ben runs his hands through his hair over and over again, catching strands between his fingers, catching knots on his nails, as he tries to block out the sound of knocking upon the door. As he continues the motion, he allows himself to disconnect.

After what could be hour, or maybe nothing longer than a song, he hears a muttered “Fuck” and the knocking stops.

Ben sinks into a crouch on the tiled floor, covering his ears. The music pounding from above and beside him, drowning out the sound of that voice calling to him. He pulls his knees up to his chest, burying his head between them, keeping his hands firmly pressed over his ears and his eyes squeezed shut so hard his head aches.

A Bible quote rattles around in the back of his brain about the gaps between the canopies of trees, something from Psalms or Luke, or whatever, Ben couldn’t find it in himself to care. Then the bass outside his sanctuary’s walls kicks up again and he just stops paying attention to anything.

•-•-•-•-•

He was in Heaven, or maybe Hell, whichever was closer.

The ability to form composed thoughts had left him behind an hour ago. Ben should honestly be more bothered by it than he is.

He feels... oddly floaty, like he's outside of his own body, just watching it move around without his input. It was sort of like someone had turned the sound off on an old TV, the only thing he could hear was static.

Cammie liked to say that the bluffs scrambled his brain. No filter between her brain and her mouth, none at all. It had gotten her in trouble more times than he can count, and Mom always got worried whenever they had people over because she didn't want Cam putting her foot in her mouth. His sister got into trouble anyway. Ben made the Bishop's social pariahs first, Cam was just following the mold he set.

“It is better even to be broken, than to be fuel for a funeral pyre; what can a dead man do?” asks his Mom.

He needs to breathe, he needs to breathe because right now he feels like he's suffocating. Like he's drowning. Like he can't get enough air into his lungs as what little oxygen is left inside him is pushed out by the overwhelmingly foreign sensation of water in his throat.

He squeezes his eyes shut for a second, "Deep breath," he thinks just like his mom had told him to on the bad nights when he was a child, "You’re here with me, baby."

Someone told him once that suffocating was worse than drowning.

And then he hears it. Again and again and again.

Click-catch, Click catch, Click-catch

Like trying to open a locked door - it was rhythmic. Ben hated rhythmic noises, repetitious sounds. The weeks he spent in the hospital had been a nightmare, a tailormade Hell. Nothing could block out the rhythmic sounds of the machines keeping track of his vitals - keeping him alive. The sound doubles over itself, toeing the line somewhere between waking and dreaming.

He can imagine it, a hand wrapped around the doorknob, turning it, the latch clicking as it catches on itself. It's locked. It's shut.

It’s so, so, so familiar. So achingly familiar.

He begs, pleads, silently, breathlessly, to himself, to God, to The Tiger.

Don’t open the door.

Don't open the door.

Don't open the door.

•-•-•-•-•

Ben takes a sip of what was Luke’s drink, even though by now it’s gone warm, and tries to steady himself.

“Get your shit together Bishop,” says a voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like Les.

Since the bluffs - since his accident - he’s felt particularly inhuman. Like he’s something - someone - else, something other. Something lesser. Inhuman, a letter away from inhumane - there’s something funny about that that his fractured brain can't quite put together. His mom has always said that Ben has a problem with seeing the forest for the trees. He couldn’t see the big picture, he’d get so focused on the minutiae of the world around him that he lost himself to it.

He knows that he lives like someone who wants to die. One foot in the grave and all.

By all accounts, Ben shouldn't survived that fall. It was a miracle he did. Everyone said so, from his parents, to his doctors, to his priest. It was improbable, if not impossible. A living dead boy.

He'd like to grab each and every one of them by the shoulders and yell and scream, "I am not drowning! I swear to you that I am not drowning! I swear! I swear! I swear."

The bathroom is too warm, he feels like he’s melting out of his skin. Sweat trails down his spine like fingertips and the sensation makes him shiver. He thinks about sloughing off his pullover, but then he’d be left in nothing more than his undershirt, and the mere idea of that makes him feel sick to his stomach, of that much of his skin on display.

He takes up pacing and in the process polishes off the last of Luke’s drink, which does nothing to settle the nausea seated in his throat - if anything it makes it worse. Ben can't help but think that that's a good thing. He deserves the unease. Unease is healthy, unease is safe.

Why can’t he stand up for himself, why can’t he fight hard enough? Why can’t he fight at all?

What is it about him that makes him give in every single time?

A part of him wants to tell someone if only so he's not the only one it cuts at. So someone else can be eaten alive. Even if it would make it so that they'd never look at him the same way again. It would be worth it, just for that.

That whole "the truth will set you free" bullshit made him angry. Unbelievably angry.

The truth is a cage.

•-•-•-•-•

Breakdown, go ahead and give it to me

Breakdown, honey, take me through the night

•-•-•-•-•

Yeah, Yeah, you’re doing great Luke, it’s not like you sent Bishop into a fucking panic. Great job idiot.

He’d just wanted a break after everything with Barbie. He’s dreading Tuesday when the news floods the school's airways, and then he’d caught sight of Ben and thought, “Feeling out of place too?” God knows Barbie loves to gossip, even when she’s the center of that gossip. She could control the narrative better that way. He both fears and longs for the day when she ends up in journalism or politics, her silver tongue would serve her well. He knows she’ll say he broke up with her, it’s more sympathetic that way. He understands it honestly. Even if her breaking it off this afternoon had felt like a knife twisting its way into his gut.

There was something Demarco had told him, not long after Luke had joined the team halfway through his freshman year, about the importance of follow-through. It’s a bit ionic in hindsight, given well, everything about Dylan. But he’d caused this mess, best to fix it. He's not his father after all.

The party is dying down in the house proper by the time Luke fights his way up the basement stairs, his fellow partygoers clamoring over each other like rats in a woodpile.

“Laird!"

"The fuck do you want Herzog?"

Leo Laird, in typical form, is holding court with a quarter of the school's stoner population in Les's living room, they're sprawled across the mismatched couches like a flock of sea-drunk albatross.

"Bishop locked himself in the bathroom."

"Not my problem, go tell Cap.”

He says it with a dismissive little wave of his hand, like he doesn’t care. Which is fucking hilarious, because Luke doesn’t think he’s ever met someone who cared more about what other people thought than Leo Laird.

"Already tried that jackass, I don't know where the hell she is."

"What about Liszewski or DeLuca, they're friends right?"

Laird asks this as though he isn’t aware of team politics, undeniably putting on an act for the goddamned idiots he’s friends with. For fucks sake he’s the one who’s known Les since middle school, he knows her neurosis best.

"Leo, please, c’mon man."

Leo sighs, like he personally has the weight of all the world upon his shoulders, "Fine, I'll get you the key."

Laird carries around a ring full of keys daily, heavy enough that you could use it to bludgeon someone if you were so inclined. He acts like it's this big fucking to-do to grab a single key, like he isn’t the one who insists on toting around some 50-something keys with him everywhere he goes. Everything with Laird was always a goddamned fight, and Luke doesn’t know why. Maybe he just liked being contrary. Or the sound of his own voice. One or the other. Maybe it was both, what the hell did he know?

“Don’t forget to bring it back, ‘k Herzog.”

Just for that Luke’s definitely not giving him his key back.

“Yeah, yeah. Fuck you too Laird.”

•-•-•-•-•

It really was nice, just how many of her teammates, past and present, had shown up. It was great, it was nice, it was downright fucking wonderful, even if she’ll end up spending most of her Saturday cleaning up vomit and spilled beer while watching some of her old He-Man tapes. Maybe she’ll ask some of the team to come by and give her a hand. Call it a late birthday gift.

At this point in the night, the party, for Les anyway, had wound down about an hour ago. Maybe she'll get a second wind, but for now, she was pacing herself, chugging a room temperature bottle of water in the hope she won't be hungover enough for her mom to care when she gets home tomorrow night. Mom was chill like that. If anything she was more motherly to Les's friends, to Amany. No skin off her back; she liked their arrangement just fine.

She's leaning against the arch that leads into the kitchen, cold plaster at her back, as she thinks about the half-read study guide Jackie Jung had made for her in study hall this afternoon, in the vain hope Les wouldn't fail their German midterms come Tuesday. It's sitting atop the History of Governance in Magnus textbook on her nightstand. She's debating whether or not she'll actually finish reading it before the exam, when Ben crashes into her side.

"Hey Les."

Ben's voice sounds off, slurred even. He's half leaning on her, over-warm and sluggish.

"Need some air, Bishop?"

Ben makes a noise between a hum and a whine. That's what turns the gears in her foggy head, sharpens her eyes. When she looks at him his face is flushed and his eyes are damp. Something clearly happened.

"C'mon, Bishop."

She leads him down the half hall and into the sunroom. She's sure that no one else is in this part of the house right now, except for the two of them. No one to care. Except for her.

Les sits him down on the bench that used to belong to the breakfast nook in the kitchen a million years and 8 cooking mishaps ago. There's still a ring burned nearly dead in its center from the one and only time her mom tried to make osso buco.

The Ben Bishop Leslie met for the first time was 14, and isn't that a funny thing to think about. It was late September, three weeks after the school year had begun, on the first day of the Basketball team's prep season, which meant it was tryouts. He was gangly and his hair was short, barely brushing his ears. He was weird and fidgety and looked like an absolute fucking dork in a Bowie shirt that was two sizes too big for him.

He and Edie were the only ones out of the 10 kids that tried out that fall to make the grade. Coach Keller had let her and Dylan have their pick of the litter. Dylan, for how much of a good for nothing douchebag shit stirrer he was, had an eye for potential. He picked Edie, Les picked Ben. She never told the kid that, because really, Coach had final say, and she didn't want the kid to get a big head about it.

The Ben curled up on himself in front of her is, and isn't, like the kid she first met. He's taller now, skinner too - and doesn't that just serve to make her all the more worried. He looks perpetually... is haunted the right word to use? She can't quite recall when Ben went from that starry-eyed 14-year-old to this. Because it started - that burnt out look in his eyes - before the cliffs. She had noticed it at homecoming last year, something distant in his eyes, something hollow. Maybe it was there before then too and she hadn't known him well enough - hadn't cared about him enough - to notice.

"What happened?"

Ben worries the cuff of his shirt sleeve against his lip. He does that a lot, Les isn’t quite sure why. Maybe it's soothing, comforting - like how Georgie bites her nails. But, it’s some kind of reassurance at least. The action means that he's here, in the present moment - actually here and not stuck in his own head. The kid gets stuck in his head a lot. Especially nowadays.

"Bishop?"

He's rocking back and forth now, it's this small stilted thing.

"Ben, c'mon kid, you're scaring me."

Ben shakes his head, continuing to worry his sleeve and rock. His eyes are beginning to water and Les prays to whatever god she can think of that he won't cry. Les never knows what to do when people cry. That was more Mari’s speed away. Or it was - maybe it still would be, if she had bothered to stick around.

Les wonders sometimes what Ben was like as a kid. Maybe it's all the time she's spent around his little sister since the start of the school year. She’s twice as bright and shiny as Ben had been his freshman year. She wonders about what could've made him so dull. 

She's seen pictures of Ben at every imaginable age on the walls of the Bishop family home in the scant few times she’s been allowed inside its walls. A chubby cheeked toddler looking out owlishly from the empty bottom shelf of a bookcase. A wild-haired 7 year old smiling on the back of his bike. A sullen faced pre-teen standing in front of a multicolored birthday cake. A 9 year old posing on the steps of a swimming pool, Cam ducked under his arm. A photo of him last Christmas dressed in the ugliest sweater Les has ever seen in her life. Ben at no more than 9, baking cookies with his Mom. Ben at some vague stage of his early teens, flecked with sand, holding up a younger kid on each flexed arm - there's a passing resemblance between them, they must be his cousins. 

Ben was already quiet and odd and rather reserved by the time she met him. The bluffs had only made it worse.

"I think I'm drunk," Ben whispers. His face was flushed starkly against his pale skin. He was embarrassed, Les could hear it in his voice.

Les knew you weren't supposed to mix alcohol and head injuries. Sure, the kid's head injury was back in June. but he had to have brain surgery. Literal actual brain surgery. Amany is a psych major, Les had asked her about the effects of traumatic brain injuries. He acted differently now, he was quicker to spiral into self-depregating depressive shit. It pisses her off, which probably isn’t the most productive or whatever, but they’re friends, or at least she thinks they are. It’s simpler to think of them in those terms over something like, “Hey this is Bishop, we used to be co-captains together and out of some lasting respect, or like pity or whatever, he lets me drive his car. Are we friends? Maybe? Who the hell knows?”

Besides, Ben doesn't even fucking like alcohol. Which either means that someone made him drink it, or that he was spiked and holy fuck Les is going to have a brain aneurysm. At least she’d have a cool headstone.

Here Lies Leslie Julianne Marino

March 18th 1976 - March 18th 1994

Died from worrying too goddamn much

Of course her birthday couldn't be fucking easy.

"I'm gonna go get the guys, okay?"

He spooks slightly, like he hadn't expected her to speak. Like he hadn't expected her to be there at all.

"Les."

“Sit tight Bishop, I'll be right back.”

•-•-•-•-•

She pulls Cary away from his latest girlfriend - once, when he was a freshman, and new to her team, he referred to a potential girlfriend as a conquest and she had slapped him so hard across the face that it had bruised. Les takes pride in the fact that you can see the faded shape of her palm on his cheek in his yearbook photo.

"Liszewski stop being a sex pest and help me with the kid."

Cary sputters, “Les-”

“Nope, no, shut up and come with me.”

“Cap-”

“Still no. Birthday rules Liszewski.”

She gives an acknowledging nod to Sadie, grabs Cary by the scruff of his worn out Pink Floyd shirt, and drags him up the stairs. Once they’re in the squat hall that leads out back he all but hisses at her:

“What the hell Leslie?”

No placations of Marino or Cap, he’s so pissed. Les can't help but find it funny.

“You can canoodle later, Bishop’s acting weird and I need you to watch him while I go have a talk with Dufont.”

Even if Georgie was the one who had skimmed more than usual from her dad’s liquor store to supply the party’s alcohol, Doris Dufont was the only person Les trusted to make her a good drink. Once she found Doris, she could figure out which one of the dumbasses at her party gave Ben alcohol. It's just the team and some other kids from school, with a few hangers-on and plus one’s to boot. The type of crowd who would know not to give Bishop - the known lightweight goodie-goodie who threw up after drinking a third of a screwdriver - a drink.

“Why me?”

“Georgie’s out back in the gazebo and I do not want to see what her and Beck might be doing out there.”

•-•-•-•-•

When Grandma Coral was laid to rest, she was buried with her favorite wristwatch. Ben wonders if it's still ticking down there in her grave, keeping time for no one.

"Why the grave face man?"

"Hey Cary."

"Apparently you scared the hell out of Les, she's going full Mussolini on the team."

"Tell the guys I'm sorry."

"Tell them yourself man."

Cary Liszewski liked to think himself a ladies man given that he'd dated nearly a quarter of the girls at their school. It's not like Gloria Heights High was giant or anything, but still, that was a sizable amount of the student populous. Through him, Ben knew nearly everyone in school, in a six degrees of Kevin Bacon sort of way. Cary was also the least confident person Ben had ever met, not counting himself.

If Ben wants to get out of this fucking party, he has to choose the nuclear option.

"Why do you have to be an ass? Jesus, Cary."

"Huh- that really the line you wanna draw? Les is serving you hand and foot at her own fucking party man. Why can't you just fucking live a little."

Ben's stomach hurts.

"Piss off Liszewski."

"Nah, 'cuz I actually listen to our Captain."

Cary is also one of the most unsubtle people alive.

Ben digs in harder, hoping to hit pay-dirt, "She's not going to fuck you Cary, neither was Demarco."

The scowl on his face is almost worth it, "You're such a fucking bitch man."

He smiles, it doesn't reach his eyes - it never reaches his eyes, "Thanks."

"Go to hell."

•-•-•-•-•

She had run into Jordan Alfarsi on her way down to the basement, and when she had quickly questioned him, he’d let it slip that ever since their fight at winter formal, Herzog’s been, “A little weird about Ben.” and given that Alfarsi is Herzog's best friend, and not a shit stirrer, she decides to file that little snippet of information away for later. It’s not quite a straight answer but that’s fine because Doris will give her a straight answer. Doris always gave a straight answer. She could be a stony bitch, she could be a silent, seething asshole, but she was always straight with you, like it burned her to be anything other than up-front. In elementary school they’d been Leigh and Dory, the only girls on the co-ed track team. By Sophomore year they’d been solidified as Marino and Dufont, and nothing else, nothing closer. They weren’t friends any more, they hadn’t been in years, but sometimes Les still called on her like they were. And now was going to be one of those times, it would have to be. 

Ben carried himself like a perpetually open wound, rubbed raw at the edges yet still managing to trickle blood. He was sort of painful to look at like that. He has this miasma of hurt around him that stabs at you with pins and needles if you get too close, and Les had let herself get too close

When she had imagined Ben at her party, she imagined him curled up in some corner, some inlet, knees against his chest, reading some Bradbury book or another and humming a Loretta Lynn song. Instead he’s drunk in her sunroom with Cary, and the kid has been sort of scaring the shit out of her lately. Would real life Ben be slightly offended that this is how she pictures him? Fuck, probably. But it's all one messy word association game inside her head anyway.

She thinks of that quote from The Illustrated Man, the one that had so thoroughly lodged itself into her mind when Ben asked her to read it aloud to him in the freezing days of Christmas Break, when their parents were back at work but school wasn’t yet in session and the wind chill off the bay was so cold you felt your blood freeze in your veins when you went out to grab smokes. The one that goes, “Wouldn’t it be fine if we could prove things with our mind, and know for certain that things are always in their place. I’d like to know what a place is like when I’m not there. I’d like to be sure.” 

What Les wouldn’t give to be sure.

Doris is hanging around with the Kosta boy - Jake? James? Joey. He says some joke that isn’t all that funny, and Doris rolls her eyes.

“Hey Dufont.”

She looks away from Kosta, “Yeah, Leigh?”

“Did’ya see Bishop earlier?”

Kosta says “Haven’t the foggiest,” at the exact same time Doris says, “Saw him about an hour ago, and he seemed fine,” before pausing and telling Kosta, “Gimme a minute Joey.”

Kosta stares at Les for a minute, as if trying to decipher some deeper meaning of being told off, and Les does not have time for this shit.

“Just fuck off Joe.”

And, with it so plainly written out for him, Kosta leaves.

“Thanks a lot Leigh,” Doris glares up at Les from the rim of her cup. 

That splitting hair difference between seeming and being. Ben seemed fine, didn’t mean he was.

"Oh for god's sake. Who gave Bishop alcohol?"

“He was drinking with Luke.”

Like hell does Les believe that. Ben hates Herzog. Okay well not hate, necessarily, moreso a mutual intense dislike. But still.

“Ben’s a fucking lightweight, you really think he got drunk on his own accord.”

“Don’t catatrophize Leigh.”

“I’m not fucking catatrophizing Dory.”

Doris just looks at her, eyes hovering above her cup, unimpressed.

“Fuck off. Fine, if you don’t want to help, I'll just go settle this myself.”

•-•-•-•-•

Edie only has a few rules for team parties. A few simple rules which make her life - school and otherwise - significantly easier.

Rule number one: Anything past tipsy and you’re out. After that it’s orange crush for the rest of the night.  If you go past your limit, the only solution is asking one of the upperclassmen girls to take you home - never the boys. Not even Laird, because Laird is perpetually stoned and he drives like shit when he's stoned.

Rule number two: Don’t start drama. Which means sticking to the edges of parties. Being the center of attention - even if just for a night - isn’t worth the aftermath.

The third, and most important rule of them all, was that you don’t fuck with Marino’s favorites. Team or not, it wasn’t something you would walk away clean from.

Les Marino on the warpath is not someone you want to go head to head with. She’s fiercely loyal and horribly stubborn. She'd bite someone's head off for the smallest perceived slight, and that was on a good day. So you either joined her on the warpath or you got the hell out of her way, for your health and sanity.

Everyone on the team knows that Leslie plays favorites, whether it was her fellow senior players - like Dufont, Jung and Laird - or her chosen strays - like DeLuca or Liszewski. You’d have to be deaf and blind not to know her favorite of all of them was Bishop. Which is why when Edie spotted her marching down the stairs like a woman on a mission, eyes tacked to Luke, Edie had the good sense to warn him before things got especially messy.

He's been lurking in one of the far back corners of the basement. She swears she saw him earlier skulking by the rear stairway, pacing like a lion in a cage.

"You should probably run, dude."

He rolls his eyes and brushes her off. He's a particular kind of nonchalant - Edie guesses he can afford to be, after all, he's Coach Keller's nephew. And he's loaded, his dad is some ad exec in the city.

"I'll be fine, don't sweat it, Huang."

It's his funeral. 

This is decidedly not Edie's fight and she really doesn't want it to be, so she ducks over to where Usher and Yorita are haunting, ready to watch this all play out from a distance. Perhaps she should take this as a learning experience. They're losing four of their best players come June, it might be good for her to see what position she’ll need to slip into.

"Herzog!" 

Marino's holler is loud enough to be heard over the din of the crowd. Loud enough still to stop all the attendees dead in their tracks.

Oh.

Oh, this was going to be better than Demarco.

“Marino.”

Edie watches Luke try to smile, that charmingly disarming thing she’s seen him use on everyone from teachers to the cheer squad.

Les's voice is chillingly calm, "Let's take this outside."

Hundreds of eyes watch as Luke tries to wave away the situation, tries to play to his own charms, his own strengths. Leslie is having absolutely none of it. Hundreds of eyes stare on as Les grabs a fistful of his shirt and drags him by it up the garden steps, Luke fighting all the while, cursing her out.

In the wake of it, a hush falls over the crowd, no longer clamoring, it’s quiet enough that Edie can hear the opening notes of Moonage Daydream start to play as everyone looks at each other, all thinking the very same thing, “Did that really just happen?”

Cory Usher is muttering to Dana that she should’ve seen what Les did to Demarco. Edie knows for a fact that Usher is upselling it. It had been a knock-down-drag-out fight, and she’s pretty sure that Les tried to break the windshield on Demarco’s mustang, but it had also occurred in the upperclassmen parking lot, not in the gym like Usher is claiming. Yorita, for her part, looks unimpressed. But Yorita always looks unimpressed - she thinks that’s why Coach picked her, to unnerve the opposition.

It’s five minutes later, maybe more, maybe less, when Leslie appears again, silhouetted in the doorway at the top of the garden stairs. She leans over the railing and proclaims, “Everybody get the fuck out of my house!” Her voice as clear and bright as a foghorn.

It’s about then when all of hell really breaks loose.

•-•-•-•-•

Breakdown, now I'm standin' here, can't you see?

Breakdown, it's alright

•-•-•-•-•

Doris Dufont drops a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream and a spoon on the side table next to the sun-paled floral armchair in Les’s living room that Ben’s been haunting for the past fifteen minutes.

"It's chocolate brownie," she says and wanders off.

Ben doesn’t touch it, he doesn’t even look at it, except to watch the condensation form a pool on the worn lacquer table top.

He was supposed to be home an hour ago, he had promised his dad, swearing down that he’d be home by midnight, but the ache in his head makes the room spin, and he's just gotten back around to speaking. He thinks Georgie must’ve left. He saw Cary not that long ago, as he disappeared out the back door with his girlfriend in tow.

A few team members had stayed behind to help Les clean up, not that she’s done much more than fluff pillows and wipe down the coffee table, babysitting him as she is. He can hear them banging around in the basement. Some 15 minutes ago Leo Laird had brought up a giant black trash bag full of beer cans and plastic cups and left it by the archway into the kitchen, before disappearing down the basement steps again. He can hear the vague notes of Starman bleeding through the floor and walls, and he can’t help the pavlov’d sense of relaxation that washes over him. He wonders if Edie stayed.

He thinks of the voyage of the RV Stranger, the vessel that verified the depth and location of the Challenger Deep and the voyage of the HMS Challenger, for whom the depression was named, which sailed above a chasm further from sea-level than the peak of Everest. A deep sense of dread sits in his gut at the thought. Thalassophobia, so had said the woman with the tortoiseshell glasses.

Ben has that full body floating feeling again, like when he was a kid and would float on his back in the community pool, eyes closed against the sun, red flares dancing behind his eyelids. When he starts to feel faint, Ben's pretty good at judging how much more he can do before he's in danger of passing out. Of course he doesn't always get it right. He's vaguely aware of his eyes closing without his input, he feels the brief kiss of something cold against his cheek, and then he's blinking awake on the couch, Les leaning over him, worry alight on her face all while Ben’s momentarily confused as to how he got here.

"Les...?"

"You need to stop scaring the shit out of me Bishop, one of these days I'm gonna have a heart attack and it'll be your fault."

"Sorry..." 

His voice sounds slurred.

"S'okay Bishop, don't worry about it. How's your head?"

He nods because it's the only thing he can think to do, stomach roiling with nausea, bile biting up the back of throat. Ben puts it together then, what that cold was- it was his head biting the tiled floor, but he can't remember the impact, his face and shoulder feel sore, most likely from the fall, but he doesn't know if that's true or not, because there's a blank, dark spot where the moment he hit the floor should go. He can feel that it's going to leave a nasty bruise come morning.

That gap, where a momentary memory should go, scares him.

He feels the weight of it on his head and on his bones, that he'll faint again if he so much as sits up, or throw up all over the rug, which would just make him feel worse

He's a fucking tempest in a teapot, it's pathetic.

"You want something to eat? Or drink?"

God, just the idea of eating something right now sounds tiring, and the phantom texture of food on his tongue makes the acidic taste of bile in his throat rise again.

Ben shakes his head, "No," it comes out harsh and he decides to blame it on his head, it's the easiest answer after all.

His head feels over warm as he flexes his fingers, stretching them up and balling them into fists, again and again and again. The motion reminds him of those physical therapy exercises he learned a lifetime ago. His hands refuse to grip properly, they're flimsy, his wrists feel weak, unsteady, the dead weight of his hands dragging them down, joints akin to melting plasticine. 

His body is a contradiction.

A wave of lightheadedness hits him, fogging over his senses, he moves without thinking, slipping off the couch and onto the chipped tile. He lays down flat as he can on the floor, closes his eyes and breathes, in and out, as his head pounds and his body begs him to rid itself of the alcohol sitting poorly in his gut.

"Ben?"

"M'fine Les, just need'a," he breathes again, waiting for the pause in his dizziness, "Minute."

He thinks that he and Les are tidally locked, a synchronous orbit like Pluto and Charon. Although that would imply that he and Les have the same gravitational weight, when they don’t. He’s an anchor - a diving bell - she’s a life raft.

“Alright, upsy-daisy baby Bishop, let’s go take a walk, yeah?”

“Les please.”

“Fresh air will do you good, c’mon,” she grabs him around the shoulders and hauls him to his feet.

His head spins a little, but he doesn’t throw up, so that’s a start at the very least.

Les is grabbing a deep red sweatshirt from the back of a wicker chair, as he tries to keep himself upright, but then she’s dragging him toward the front of the house, grabbing items that Ben doesn’t catch out of the dish by the door and shoving them in her pockets.

“Did you seriously not bring a coat kid?”

“No.”

“Christ, uh, gimme a sec,” and she ducks into her room. On her unmade bed is a pile of coats, even though almost everyone had vacated the party, give or take a few stragglers. She grabs an off-brown parka and tosses it at him, thank Christ his reflexes kicked in, otherwise… god he’d look stupid. He feels stupid.

“What’s the difference between feeling and being Benny?” asks the soft nasal voice of Grandma Coral.

He knows the answer.

He knows the answer.

He knew the answer - once, a very long time ago.

Ben pulls on the parka after Les glares at him. It smells of cheap vodka and weed.

“Whose coat is this?”

“Laird’s,” Les says as she yanks open the door.

Corinth Street is empty, cars parked neatly in driveways, doors shut to the cold reality of the night, windows dark. The wispy fingers of night fog curl around the streets, catching on the streetlamps, the crescent moon hooked overhead. When his sister was little she didn't understand why the weatherman on the TV called it pea soup fog, so she started naming the different morning fogs after foods. Pineapple soup, that's what a 5 year old Cam would've called the wispy late night fog. Pineapple soup fog.

He wonders how long it would take him to get hypothermia. Thirty minutes? An hour?

His voice mists into the air, “Sorry for fucking up your party.”

“’S fine, it was winding down anyway.”

No, it wasn’t. It really fucking wasn’t.

“I’m a problem,” he mutters.

Les bumps his shoulder with hers, “Yeah, but I made you my problem."

He remembers her exact words, spoken just after he first threw her the keys to the GTO so many months ago; "Now and forever, asshole."

•-•-•-•-•

“I have always figured that you die each day and and each day is a is a box, you see, all numbered and neat; but never go back and lift the lids, because you have died a couple thousand times in your life, and that's a lot of corpses, each dead a different way, each with a worse expression. Each of those days is a different you, somebody you don't know or understand or want to understand.”

- The Illustrated Man, Ray Bradbury

•-•-•-•-•

Les is at her wits end.

It’s not Ben’s fault. It’s not Ben’s fault. But she knows that something’s up with him - something he’s been talking around, moving around - all day. Something that’s eating at him. Something that’s making him angry. It reminds Les of that line in that poem - A Poison Tree - that she had to read for her poetry class last semester. “I was angry with my friend; I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow.”

Christ alive is he a lot.

She knows she’s speaking apropos absolutely of nothing, but the silence is killing her, "Ben, I'm a senior, you know I'm not gonna be hanging around this shithole forever, right?"

Ben nods, his face scrunched up slightly. He looks ill or tired, like there’s an albatross around his neck. He's walking closer to her now and he smells of residual chlorine and ivory soap - like the locker room showers. Ben always told her he hated the soap in the locker rooms.

"I know, you wanna go to Wainwright, or G-"

"GHC if I'm not so lucky."

Everybody in Gloria knows that Gloria Heights College is a joke, a last resort. Les knows she wouldn’t even be in this situation if she was a better student, but they don’t call it senioritis for nothing.

“My mom has a friend that works in the admin office at Wainwright, I could get you her number,” he speaks slowly, like he's talking through molasses. Les isn’t even sure if it’s from the cold or the alcohol.

“Hate to break it to you kid, but I'm pretty sure your mom hates me.”

He just rolls his eyes. 

“I’m not joking, ever since the finals shit she totally glares at me whenever I pick you up.”

Ben pushes his hair behind his ear, a show of nerves and nonchalance, the sleeve of his borrowed parka slipping down enough for the warm glow of the streetlamp to reveal the blood red of a fresh bruise around his wrist. Maybe it’s the alcohol working its way out of her system, or the unnameable thing that's been gnawing at Ben for… Les isn’t sure how long, but her mouth works faster than her brain can and the words spill out in a blink before she can stop them.

“How the fuck did that happen?”

“It’s nothing,” he explains simply.

"Birdie, baby, Jesuchristo,” she fights the urge to cross herself like one of the Catholic ladies her mom works with.

"Please don't make me elaborate."

He’s worrying the cuff of his pullover against his lip, just like he had in the sunroom, and doesn’t that just turn her stomach. Ben is absolutely fucking incredible at making her feel such vividly stomach churning dread.

Right now he’s acting like there’s ants crawling right beneath his skin, right below the fat, commingling with his muscles, and Les wants to do something stupid, something rash and horrible just to get him to acknowledge their creeping presence.

“Ben, it’s just me,” she tries to go for something softer, like Mari would’ve once upon a time, but it comes out all wrong, too clipped, too sharp. Too close to pleading.

The beach is a street away, close enough that under the hum of the streetlamps and the faint sounds of cars out on Westridge, is the whisper of waves crashing against the surf. They’re sitting now, on one of the ancient metal benches in front of the old Rosefair Cemetery, the weeds overgrown at their feet, the winking streetlamp overhead seems to make Ben shiver in his seat.

Ben murmurs, this nearly unintelligible thing, “It didn't matter then and it doesn't matter now.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just…” he digs his shoes into the grass, head in his hands and sighs, “Come off it off Les.”

“Ben, c’mon.” 

His head snaps up, tears in his eyes, “No! Okay, I don’t want to fucking talking about it!” His face falls and his hackles lower, “Sorry.”

“No, Bishop, Jesus, I’m sorry kid,” She tries to reach out for him, but Ben flinches back.

“Don’t,” he warns, “Don’t touch me.”

She thinks of something Amany told her, one night when she’d stumped drunk into the kitchen, as Les was eating three-day-old leftover Chinese food at the kitchen island, “You don't respond to what's good for you, you respond to what's familiar.”

Amany is what most in Gloria would call a city girl. Of that smarter than you, overly concerned type born most often from the knowledgeable institutions of Harper’s Church. Les just thought she was an insufferable Psych Major, those are a dime a dozen no matter where you go - stock-standard. But sometimes Amany says things that aren’t total bullshit.

“You gotta fucking talk to someone Benny.”

“Don’t call me that,” there’s no intonation, no emotion behind it. No bite. She hates it, she hates it, she hates it.

Leslie Marino, do you suffer from foot in mouth disease?

He stays something, low under his breath.

"Are you okay?"

She knows he isn't. She knows it like she knows she’s going to flunk her German midterms on Tuesday. She can hear the whisper of fabric against his lips, the tapping of his fingers along the lip of the bench.

Ben hums instead of answering.

"'Cuz I mean, you were acting weird in the hallway and then you had that freakout in the sunroom and I know that it wasn’t just booze.”

She pulls out a pair of shorts that might fit Ben, and turns around to face him.

He looks like he's going to vomit, he makes some aborted gesture with his hands, trying to portray something that Les doesn't understand.

"Ben, please, I can't read minds."

He half mumbles his way through a sentence that Les only catches a word of. Or a name rather. Keller. He says the name Keller. Ben is the antithesis of a teacher’s pet. He’s constantly driving Coach Keller up the wall, even now, even though he hasn’t been on the team in an official capacity since December.

"What happened with Coach?"

Les knows that Coach has always been a real shit to Ben. She doesn't know what stick he has up his ass, but Les had never cared much about what Coach said off the court. She had never taken much stock in other people's opinions. Ben always seemed to be more affected though. Thinner skin.

"Did he kick you off the team?"

Ben’s been benched for three months now, but he hasn’t been let go from the team. Coach has just been stringing him along and no matter how many times Les has tried to shout him down about it, nothing has ever worked.

He shakes his head no, even mutters the word softly under his breath and he’s crying properly now. Les feels like she’s going to lose it. But she waits. She waits for him to find the words he needs. She stares out at the houses across the street, which meet perfectly upright, at squared away angles, sitting like goliths in the misting fog.

"Keller, he…" the words roll oddly off his tongue, as if they’re sticking in his throat, “He held me down and he kissed me,” Ben’s looking straight forward, at the frozen sawgrass laying tramped on the sidewalk, going green at the gills like he’s going to puke.

She sees red. Redder than the fucking cheer uniforms. She has to force the bleeding, worrying anger, the rage, the sadness, into the back of her skull because she doesn't want to spook Ben. He’s 16. He's a stick in the mud. He's a weird ass kid. He's Ben. who follows her around like a lost puppy. For fucks sake he probably still thinks that dating is gross. Les has a well stocked knowledge base on the most efficient ways to make someone throw up. Clear and vivid and coming up to the surface of her mind, and it’s not helpful, okay, it’s not fucking helpful.

He says some to her, his voice croaks uncomfortably from his throat, but it takes her a minute to process what he said, “Are you okay?”

“I’m supposed to be the one asking you that Ben.”

"Sorry, sorry."

Ben hunches up on himself more, clutching his stomach.

"If you need to puke you gotta tell me."

Ben shakes his head, "I'm fine.”

The night sits coldly before them, the thin fingers of fog hiding the moon and the stars away.

It offers no comfort.

•-•-•-•-•

Ben's barely awake as he murmurs, "I gotta go, my parents'll kill me if I'm late for mass."

“’S Saturday Ben.”

He peers up at the wall clock and sees the time - 3:15. It’s late, he should be asleep. His eyelids are heavy, but he keeps telling himself that if he just stays awake until the sun rises everything will be okay. So he sits down on the cold tile floor and watches the refractions of light from the sliding glass door. The light itself seems almost iridescent, and for a moment Ben feels at peace.

•-•-•-•-•

Sunday, March 20th, 1994

“How's Ben doing?”

Mari asks over the telephone, her voice a mash of static and silver-tongued sorrow.

Why don't you ask him yourself? She doesn't say aloud. You only ever call me to ask about him. Not about me. Not about us. Just the kid.

"He's... he- I don't think he's doing good Mari. He got drunk at my party."

"Leslie."

"I know- I chewed Dufont's face off about it, don't worry. I looked after him a bit, while some of the guys from the team helped clean up, and he said something awful."

"Awful how?"

"Like fucking disgusting Mar,” Les motions with her wrist even though she knows Mari can't see her, “Like really bad concerning shit."

Mari hums with expectation.

"About Coach."

•-•-•-•-•

It's Alright, it's alright

•-•-•-•-•

Tigers in Trouble?

As you may have heard, during flex first period yesterday morning, Leslie Marino, captain of our very own basketball team, The Tigers, was given three days of suspension after punching Coach Keller in the face in front of a roomful of students.

Doris Dufont, acting captain of the basketball team, commented that Leslie has been benched and will be barred from participating in our championship game against Horace Downs this Saturday.

- Excerpt from the Wednesday, March 23rd edition of Gloria Heights High School’s newspaper, The Sand-Dollar, from the Dollarama school drama column, written by Betty Shuvalter.