I Never Thought I'd See You Again: A Novelists Inc. Anthology (17 page)

He looked at it. With regret? “I know. But Ben is lactose intolerant.”

Of course. Jake knew that. It meant nothing. I tried again. “Jake. They could pull the plug. Do you want that?”

“No. Then Ben would have to go to jail.”

“Forget about him. He’ll survive this year.” Maybe. But I couldn’t say that aloud. “You just have these precious days left. Do you really want to squander them like this?”

“What is the purpose of getting a high school diploma?” he asked, mashing his cherries through the insubstantial whipped cream and into the now squishy ice cream. “It isn’t like I need math, or history, or French. Whoever thought that was a useful way for me to spend this year in Ben’s body is goofy.”

Goofy. That was not the word I would have chosen. “Do you want to stop this, then? You can.” Just like he had started it with his eighteen year old ignorance of what, exactly, he was agreeing to do. But, for the first time, I agreed with a student who said he didn’t need math.

His eyes flicked away from me. Hiding something? Something of Ben? “No. I want to be here for the year. I just wish I didn’t have such a lame goal. You finish high school to go to college, not to die.”

“You finish high school to learn. You are owed that.”

“Shouldn’t atonement actually, you know, atone?”

“What would you consider a good atonement.” I knew they were listening. I hoped they were taking notes.

“I don’t know. But being trapped in school when it isn’t going to mean anything is not it.”

“So do you want to end it?”

“No.” He was adamant. “Ben and I agreed to this. I’m going to see it through.”

“Good. I’m glad.” Nothing but the truth. If Ben went to jail, Nancy would get to visit him.

“No you’re not. I’m not an idiot. You don’t like being a lab rat any more than I do. You hate this. You hate me.”

“I don’t hate you.” I was surprised to find it true. I’d thought I could survive this year because this stranger wasn’t really my son. But he was. There was no trace of Ben in his eyes when he stared at me, dared me to lie to him. I didn’t bother. I sat back, boneless. “What do you intend to do, then, for your year?”

“Go to school, I guess by Deb Stoverd fas. But don’t expect me to worry about my grades.”

Grades. “If you could do anything, what would you do with your last year?” I held my breath. Whatever he said would tell me something about my son. Something I hadn’t had time to learn before, when we both held the illusion that he had his whole life in front of him.

“I always wanted to see the pyramids.”

I took his hand. Jake’s hand. “Then let’s do it.”

“Really?” The boy looking at me was all Jake.

“What’s the worst that can happen?” I meant it. Planes could crash, war could break out, but none of that mattered to us. We were living in a state of grace that could end at any minute. We literally had nothing left to lose. Why shouldn’t I advocate for my most important special needs student?

The counselor was surprisingly easy to persuade to our side. She took notes, nodded as we made our points, and then went back to the doctors.

Who argued, of course. They didn’t want their lab rats running free. The court had set the terms of Ben’s atonement sentence. Jake had to have a worthy goal. Finishing high school had been deemed worthy.

A week stretched by, with me writing sick notes for Jake and dropping him off at the amusement park every morning. No one at school questioned me, they simply took the notes. Every day, the counselor gave us the new excuse why Jake had to be stuck in this pointless maze, took her measurements, and let us drive off as if everything was as it should be.

“I want to talk to them. The doctors. I want to explain it. To make my case.” I said, at last, when the week was up.

“They’re very busy. There’s nothing they can do.” Her gaze was gentle, her compassion genuine.

I filed for an immediate leave of absence from work, and left the other students, the other parents, the other teachers to take care of themselves without me.

Jake and I went to the amusement park together. “Ride with me,” he said, as he always did.

“I’ll watch from here,” I answered as I always had. I watched, remembering the years of watching, the tightening of my nerves at every height and every drop. Roller coasters failed. People got hurt. It happened often enough that I never relaxed until he was down on the ground again, by my side.

The counselor showed up next to me at some point. She said nothing, just watched with me for a while. Then she said, “They’ll talk to you. Can you come now?”

I talked. They didn’t listen. There were more excuses — a judge would never sign off, they argued.

“Let me try,” I said, implacable.

They threw the final bitter spear straight at my heart. “Ben’s mother would never agree. The trip could put Ben’s body in jeopardy.”

I closed my eyes, defeated.

“Let me ask her,” Jake spoke up. “I’ll promise to keep him safe.”

I could see he was as determined as the twenty-first centuryarGr I was.

I did not want to let him talk to her. But what choice was there if she was the key to his temporary escape from the lab rat maze?

The judge listened closely as Nancy testified to allow Jake/Ben to visit the pyramids. “Karen will keep him safe,” she avowed. “I have no doubt of it.”

I wondered at her assurance. Jake had insisted on talking to her privately. What had he said to her? Again, I wondered if Ben were really driving this grand plan. She looked only at her son’s face as she testified. She smiled through tears.

The judge was sympathetic about why Jake did not want to enslave himself to a school day full of lessons, which would never pay off for him. But, still, he wanted to weigh everything, as if there was no way I could know what was best for my own son. He called Jake up for testimony.

Jake didn’t hold back. He told the judge what school had been like for him. The kids who were scared of him, Ben’s friends who resented Jake. Jake’s friends who threatened to kneecap Ben’s body, or worse. He told the judge what he’d never told me. Never told the counselor. But the doctors had known. They had heard the comments, the threats.

At last, after the questions, the judge decided. No school, but no pyramids either. Maybe Disney. The Grand Canyon. Jake needed to be monitored. This was an experimental procedure. Much could go wrong.

Much could go wrong. So true. I had wanted him to touch the pyramids. Dance on the River Styx. Cram as much into a year as anyone ever could. It was all he had. It was all I had.

The counselor was placid. “It was a fair decision. Jake won’t have to go to school.”

I wanted him out of the maze, far out. “Let’s try again for the pyramids.”

She put her warm firm hand on my arm. “Do you really want to waste your time fighting?”

“Fighting until his last breath is not a waste. It is a purpose.” A purpose I’d missed out on when he’d been taken from me so suddenly.

She nodded. “Okay. Maybe. If the next few weeks go well.”

She was using the same delaying tactic I had used with my students and parents, and even a few teachers. “Give it time,” I had said — a euphemism for “it isn’t bad enough for us to really fix it yet.”

The kids who found the best support always had the implacable parents. The ones who relentlessly pursued every option and opportunity to make sure their child had the best education possible.

“Two weeks. Then let’s try again.” I bought the tickets and applied for passports, trying to figure out how we could get through customs if they didn’t agree. Trying to figure out just how much of his precious year I should waste fighting before I took matters into my own hands.

I wasn’t going to settle for anything less than the pyramids for Jake, even if I had to cut the tracking chip out of him myself.

It took two months before we got permission. Just enough time to get passports and create an itinerary even a judge, two counselors, and a panel the twenty-first centuryarGrof doctors, could deem responsible and safe.

It took two hours to pack.

We sat in the kitchen, waiting for the taxi, and the counselors to arrive. Both of them would be our shadows for the trip, naturally. The data gods needed to be appeased, even while we played.

“Ready?” I asked, looking at his backpack and small suitcase. “If you forget anything, it will be too late after we leave the house.”

“I’m good.” He cocked his head, as if he were listening to something I couldn’t hear. He scowled, and then sighed. “Wait. There’s one thing we should do before we leave.” He walked over to the sink and took out the big yellow box of rat poison I’d bought the day before he’d come home. “This has expired. We should throw it out.”

He tapped his arm, reminding me that he was chipped. There was so much caution in his gesture. We’d pushed so hard for this trip, and one slip of the tongue could ruin it.

I thought about the listening ears. “How did you know it was expired?”

“I remembered something Ben said about checking expiration dates ever since he got super sick drinking bad soy milk.”

“So that was the only thing in this house past expiration?”

“Yep. Ben always said you were a pretty good housekeeper. I guess I should appreciate it more.”

“Definitely.”

He tossed the box in the trash and began to tie up the bag to take out to the garage.

I wanted to ask, “Are you talking to him?” But that would not get by the listeners. Still, I needed to be completely sure. “Do you miss him? It must be weird, you being here without him.”

“I know. He’ll be so jealous to know I got to ride the roller coaster and touch the pyramids and all he gets is another year of school.” He lifted the tied off bag in triumph.

When he gets back. I wondered if Jake hadn’t found the other box of poison, in the garage? “That’s his punishment. There’s no value in making punishment easy. Then it isn’t punishment.”

He challenged me back. “It isn’t punishment. It’s atonement.”

“Can lab rats really atone?” I dared the question. We could always say we were having a philosophical discussion about the whole experiment. They couldn’t prove otherwise, I hoped.

He said carefully, “If Ben were here, he would say yes.”

“The transgressors usually do. What do you say?”

“I say he must be going crazy trapped in my mind, without being able to see or do.”

“The doctors say he’s in the same state as an induced coma.”

We heard the sound of the counselor’s cars pulling into the driveway and his eyes flicked to the door. “Some people say you can hear everything in a coma.”

“People in comas don’t take Gateway, though.”” he said. “I donedvo

“True.”

He opened the door to the garage, determined to take out the bag. “If Ben were here, he would ask you to forgive him. Would you?”

“Would you?”

“I do. If he were here, I would hug him. I wouldn’t even punch him in the arm for doing something so dumb as texting on Diamond Road.”

“That was monumentally stupid,” I agreed.

“So. We’re good? We don’t have any need for this? I can go put this in the trash?” I marveled at how well he had learned how to convey what he meant without his listeners being any the wiser. He had just told me he was in communication with Ben. That Ben wanted my forgiveness. That Jake knew I had been thinking of using that rat poison on something bigger than a rat. That he thought he had changed my mind when I let him throw out that poison.

My mind whirled with questions I couldn’t think how to ask. “We’re better than good. We’re going to see the pyramids.” He was right. Or half right. I would never have harmed Jake. But Ben? Maybe.

The counselors didn’t like the heat and stink of Giza, so they stayed at the hotel and let us have the pyramids to ourselves. And then they gave us a gift more precious than a thousand rubies. “The remote system isn’t working here. Jake will have to be monitored every evening as well as every morning.”

We glanced at each other, and we both — all three? — were thinking the same thing. A chance to say what we didn’t want overheard. “Okay. We’ll make sure to be back in time.”

The furnace blast of heat and sand whirled us up as we joined the rest of the tourists on the ride to see the most ancient monuments to death still standing. We didn’t say anything, even though we could. We still needed to be careful of our words. Think about them. The day was precious and one wrong word might tarnish it.

At last, I asked, careful of the nearby tourist ears, “Are you really talking to Ben?”

“A little. He’d go crazy in there if I didn’t.”

Good. He should. “But if the doctors find out that your dose of Gateway isn’t working, then —”

“They haven’t yet. I’m not going to tell them if their machines don’t.”

“For Ben.” It wasn’t a question. It was just Jake being led around, again, by his best friend.

“They suspect. But they don’t know for sure. I’ve been careful not to confirm anything.”

“Why would you take this risk?”

He shrugged. “Why not. They’re testing us. They think they know everything and we’re just lab rats. Why not test them back?”

Those words sounded so much like Ben’s that fury made me grip the threadbare seat in front of me hard. I pulled someone’s hair and she turned around. “Ouch!”

“I’m sorry,” I said, releasing my hands to my the twenty-first centuryarGrlap, entwining my little fingers with a vengeance. Get hold of yourself, I chanted silently.

“Mom.” He put his hand over mine, tentatively, as if he weren’t sure I might not brush it away.

When had I begun to respond to that deeper voice as if it were really Jake’s?

He said, “We’ve talked about it.”

“We?”

“Ben and me.”

I sank into the hot, crowded mass of humanity on the bus, dizzy for a moment. It felt like old times. When both boys had their own bodies. Their own voices.

“Better to go along. Let them test us. As long as we pass.”

“This was his idea. His big plan. You don’t have to go along, this time. You only have this year, you —”