eavesdropping, Benita.
Ms. J pulls me to her desk,
hands me a folded note.
We can start the process now,
so your teachers next year
have to let you type.
Have to?
Ms. J smiles.
Yes.
By law.
Now, it won’t be in place this summer,
but your typing
accommodation is in your file.
I’ll make sure admin grants you permission
to use the computer
for your retake.
Whoa, whoa.
What.
I can typemy FART retake
answers?
Hey! Not fair!
Ms. J and I snap our heads up,
Ben Y’s head still
leans down.
Ben Y!
GOOODBYYYYEEEE!
Ms. J doesn’t wave,
she shoos her hand at Ben Y,
who laughs and runs off.
Give this to your parents, okay?
We’ll set up a meeting,
get the process started.
I’m not even sure what to say.
It doesn’t feel real.
She holds up her hand.
Can I have an extra high five and bye?
I slap her hand,
and let her squeeze mine
for one more second.
High five and bye, Ms. J.
I round the corner,
out of the stairwell,
but lean back
just a little bit,
and see her
gathering up papers.
Ms. J?
She looks up.
Thank you.
And then I run
before I can see her face.
I lie in the grass,
stare up through the willow fronds,
wonder where Javier is.
It’s been two whole days now.
But.
Even with the Javier stuff
clouding the edges of my mind,
I’m still savoring this minute of nothing,
a gobstopper on my tongue.
A 504, huh?
Typing every day?
It does sound like jeans.
It sounds like a comfortable fit,
sized perfectly just for me.
BEN Y
<0BenwhY>
Can I help you, Benita?
Ms. J stops in the hallway.
She tilts her head to the side,
her earring hoop landing on her shoulder,
twisting just like a Jordan J pirouette.
Early evening light
pushes through high dusty windows,
rolls over lockers,
makes the hallway glow,
apparently
erasing the shadow
I snuggled into
after I finished spying.
It’s Ben Y.
And, actually,
I was looking for you.
Wait. Was I?
Why would my mouth say that
before my brain could catch up?
Is my dino butt brain back?
Protecting me
before my real brain kicks in?
Ms. J’s eyebrows
meet wrinkle speed bumps
as they slowly climb
the stumbly cliff
of her forehead.
She doesn’t say anything.
Her starfish-shaped dress
matches the orange light,
catches the glow,
looking like Esme’s cheeks
when she puckers around a flashlight,
trying to be a reverse firefly.
It’s just . . . I’ve been thinking. I can tell you’re working hard,
and don’t get me wrong,
you’re definitely getting better, just . . .
you could still use some Sandbox help.
I keep my eyes on her eyes.
She keeps her eyes on my eyes.
Am I bluffing?
Am I not?
Even I don’t know.
I just don’t want to go home.
Not today.
Not now.
Not with tomorrow looming.
Maybe you need,
I don’t know,
some after-school tutoring?
Ms. J sucks her bottom lip,
watches me stumble over my words.
She looks down at her watch.
She looks back up at me.
It’s getting late.
I look at my wrist,
where a watch would be.
I look up at her.
It’s never too late to get better
at Sandbox.
I give her my just joking, mostly, crooked smile.
Those eyebrows again.
This time the wrinkle speed bumps
don’t slow them down at all.
Twenty minutes.
That’s all I have before I need to go.
I nod,
follow her down the hall,
and think,
okay real brain,
okay dino butt brain,
we don’t have to go home
right this second,
but . . .
now what?
It’s a little weird with just us
back under the stairs,
sitting next to each other
like we’re both students.
Ms. J turns in her seat,
looks at me hard,
all the way through my eyes,
into the soft self
that tries so hard
to hide.
Then . . .
her eyes change;
the corners frown just a little bit,
but not in a bad way.
It’s like they’re matching the softness
they just saw in me.
Hey. Are you okay?
Her voice is as soft as her eyes,
and I feel something crack.
I’ve been working so hard
to hold everything together
and now . . .
I don’t know.
I feel like,
right here,
right now,
I can’t do it anymore.
How can such a soft voice,
such soft eyes . . .
how can they split me open
so fast?
Pain.
Sadness.
It drips out of me,
impossible to contain,
like trying to put a raw egg
back in its shell,
a shattered mess,
impossibly crushed,
broken.
She doesn’t say anything,
just hands me a tissue
and watches
as I mop up the dripping bits,
as best I can.
Then
we play Sandbox.
No talking.
No lessons.
No tutoring.
Just playing.
For way longer
than twenty minutes.
She’s actually pretty good now.
You’ve been practicing,
I type.
So have you, Ms. Apostrophe,
she types back.
I don’t know why
this dripping moment,
this day,
this now,
is suddenly the right time,
but her eyes tell me it’s okay,
something about her
whispers to me,
it’s . . . safe
to sit with her,
to be with her.
To trust her.
So.
I say:
Hey.
You want to learn a trick?
It’s really cool.
No one else in the entire world can do it.
Only me.
And
maybe you, I guess.
If you pay attention.
0BenwhY finds everything we
need,
JJ11347 watches carefully,
learning.
Just like he did.
Just like I did.
364 days ago.
0BenwhY helps JJ11347 find the things, too.
She makes her practice the potion
over and over.
Just like he did.
Just like I did.
Almost a year ago.
Look at you,
I say.
Just like he said to me,
his mahogany voice
smooth as ever.
You know the secret now.
What do you think?
I watch her smile
grow wide wide wide as
she says,
Wait. You can kill ghosts? Forever?
But Ben B said that was legend—
He said—
He’s wrong.
I roll my eyes.
Her laugh is
not deep mahogany,
but still rich, smooth,
and I hold on to it,
tuck it away,
while she yells
TAKE THAT,
as she splashes all the ghosts
and they disappear,
except the one in my head,
in my heart,
in my bones,
in my blood,
my brother,
Benicio.
The first Ben Y.
The real Ben Y.
The biggest why
I’ve ever had
in my whole
entire
life.
I watch her rampage,
killing every ghost in sight.
Ghostkiller.
The holiest of grails.
The most magical hack.
Alive again.
Brought back
to life.
It’s the first time I’ve seen the potion since . . .
since he taught me,
since he passed it on,
since he passed on,
and what does it mean?
That I just showed her?
Right here?
Right now?
The potion only he could make,
the secret he shared with me,
as if he knew his car would crash,
as if he knew our last moment
was right then, that hour, that minute,
that day.
When you crash your car,
you don’t have extra lives
saved, stored up, hoarded.
You have nothing,
nothing,
that can blink you
back to life.
Splash a ghost
and the ghost sizzles into nothing.
Crash your car
and so do you.
I don’t know what Ms. J knows
about Ghostkiller.
I don’t know if she understands
what I’ve shown her.
I don’t tell her how famous he was.
I don’t tell her about the VIPs
sending condolences,
about the developers
dedicating a bench
in Benicio’s name
at their corporate offices
four states away.
I guess she already knows
that some people,
like Ben B,
think Ghostkiller was never real,
that he’s a myth, a fake,
designed to get more people to play.
I don’t tell her he’s in a box
in my house
on the bookshelf,
that he’s dust now,
which is almost like sand,
which means he’s become
almost his own
personal
sandbox
and maybe that would make him happy
finally
after not being happy
for so long.
I don’t say any of that,
but I do fold this moment around me,
a soft, safe blanket in time.
I pull these quiet minutes close,
I snuggle into them,
breathing deep,
and I let myself
for once
feel the feelings
as they come,
instead of running
hard and fast
to get away from them.
I lean into Ms. J’s soft eyes,
her soft words,
the soft light.
I let the words
I’ve been trying to outrun
finally win the race.
I look up at her,
as I pull this moment
even tighter,
the soft blanket of now
becoming a bandage
holding together
the crack in my heart.
I say,
A year ago tomorrow
my brother died.
He was twenty-two.
He was the real Ghostkiller.
He was the one who programmed this trick,
the only person who knew it,
until he taught it to me,
like an hour
before his car crashed.
She puts one hand
very very very lightly
on my shoulder,
never taking her eyes
from my eyes.
She nods.
I have no words.
My head tilts toward her soft shoulder . . .
maybe I can rest now
that the words have won the race.
Except
thank you.
Thank you for trusting me with this,
Benita.
the bandage rips off,
as the crack in my heart
deepens to a fault,
and I realize how stupid
stupid
stupid
stupid
I am
to have shared any of this with her.
Her hand, still on my shoulder,
squeezes a tiny bit, as her voice lowers
an even tinier bit,
and she says,
Are you okay?
Is there someone I can call for you?
Benita?
Benita?!
Benita?!
How many times . . . ?!
How
many
times
have I told her it’s not Benita?
How
many
times
have I told her it’s Ben Y?????
Benita. Hey. It’s okay.
You can talk to me.
Doesn’t she see?
Doesn’t she realize?
If she keeps calling me Benita
it means
she doesn’t hear me,
she doesn’t see me
even though I’m right here
in front of her
shattering all over the place?
I’m right here
and she doesn’t see me.
I just broke open my heart,
shared my biggest pain,
revealed the Ghostkiller secret,
and
she
still
can’t
even
see
me
for
who
I
actually
am.
My brain melts down.
I don’t know who
or what
controls me now,
but I know for sure
it isn’t
frick
frackin’
BENITA.
Stop calling me that!
My voice is so loud it cracks.
It’s Ben Y, okay?!
Not Benita.
Never Benita again.
It’s Ben Y.
Ben Y.
WHY
can’t
you
get
that
through
your
THICK
skull?!
Then
I’m running.
Fast and far.
Past the first bus stop.
Past the second.
Maybe I’ll keep running,
until my legs fall off
until my heart explodes.
Why did I tell her anything?
Why did I do that?
Why did I feel safe?
Why am I so
dumb
dumb
dumb?
It’s dark now.
I stop running.
I wait for the 315,
for it to take me across town,
for it to take me away
for it to take me anywhere but home
or here.
A flash of bright white
as the bus door slides open,
making me squint and stumble
up the stairs.
All the whys of the day come at me,
pinpricking my mind,
coming alive,
taunting me,
giving me feelings
I can’t even name.
The bus starts to move,
I blink back to now,
I trip over a foot,
crash into a seat.
Ow!
OhBenWhy did you just fall
on top of me?
Jordan J’s voice is as loud as the lights,
as I slide off him and onto the seat.
What are you doing here?
JORDAN J
(JORDANJMAGEDDON!!!!)
Ben Y just totally fell on me on the bus right now out of nowhere, how wild is that? Just splat on my lap like a giant tossed her at me, like she was a bowling ball and I was a pin and now she’s looking at me like whut whut and I’m looking at her like whut whut and it’s a whut whut fest.
Ben Y is sort of in her own quiet time bubble right now which is weird to me, since she just fell on me and squished me. Also, she isn’t asking any questions and she didn’t answer MY question about why she’s here and so, as my mom might say, that concerns me. I feel concerned. I have a concern about Ben Y and why she’s here and why she isn’t why-ing.