We Know It Was You (34 page)

Virginia shook her head at Benny. They kept waiting. Zaire didn't appear.

“Let's go to the baggage claim,” Benny finally said after twenty minutes of standing there watching foreigners stream into the atrium.

They found the carousel for the Barcelona flight. Only a handful of bags still circled around, watched by an old couple who seemed lost. A duffel bag, a chrome hard shell, a few generic black suitcases.

“None of these are Zaire's,” Virginia said, surveying the unclaimed baggage. “She has a burgundy Tumi set.”

Benny looked at his watch again: 7:45. The carousel hummed loudly, making him feel slightly brain-dead as he watched it go around and around.
She's not coming back,
he realized. There was nothing he could do about it. But strangely, he didn't feel thwarted or defeated—he felt relieved. It seemed like confirmation, somehow, that his role in the universe was to solve mysteries, not to dispense justice. His calling was to make the unknown known, and he'd done that. What the world needed more than justice was truth.

“So what next?” Virginia asked.

“I have no idea,” he said. “I think . . . I think we're done.”

“Okay, cool.”

Benny looked at her. The casualness of her reply confirmed it—Virginia didn't really care about this, did she? She was
just along for the ride. She'd proved she could be useful to him—she was dauntless and resilient and relentlessly observant—but what use was he to her? What was she getting out of this?

“Oh hey, I wanted to show you this,” Virginia said. She reached in her jacket pocket and handed Benny something. It was a woven bracelet with some white letters sewn into it.

“Uh, what does this mean?” he asked. “WWBD?”

“What Would Benny Do!” Virginia shrieked, clearly thrilled with herself. “I had it specially made so I won't screw up as much.”

“Wow . . .” Benny handed it back to her.

“I think everyone should wear one,” Virginia said, hooking it onto her wrist. “The world would probably be a lot better.”

Benny thought about it. It was tempting, the idea of a world where everyone shared his values. It would certainly be an orderly world, a peaceful world even. But would it be right?

“No,” he said. “There'd be no mysteries if it were a world of Benny Flaxes. And so none of the Bennies would have anything to do. And as a result they'd all go insane from lack of stimulation. And ultimately chaos would reign.”

“Oh,” Virginia said.

“I mean, you can still wear it. If you'll find it helpful.”

“Okay! I will!” She tightened it and held out her arm to look at it.

Benny sat on the edge of the baggage carousel, feeling like an unclaimed suitcase himself—dumped at the end of a trip, apparently going nowhere. Virginia looked at him and felt her mood slumping; why couldn't Benny just be happy for five seconds?

Above them, a row of bright screens listed all the departing flight information against an electric-blue background. They glowed like a patch of unnatural sky amid the dull grays and whites of the terminal.

“You know, we could just get out of here,” Virginia said. “I have four hundred dollars. There's a flight to Havana in an hour.”

Benny rubbed his temples, suddenly wishing he were alone. Obviously Virginia was jealous of Zaire and wanted to prove that she could run away too. He sighed, feeling obligated to humor her.

“Oh yeah? What would we do in Havana?”

“We'd stay with my stepdad. He's awesome. He has a hacienda.”

Benny looked at her.
A hacienda? Christ.
She sounded like one of those pathological liars you met in grade school who convinced everyone that their mom knew Princess Diana.

“Sounds great, but we can't just leave. We have to go to the homecoming dance next month. I mean, not to
go
,” he qualified quickly. “To Be There. Something always happens at dances.”

“Oh, okay!” Virginia said, abandoning her Havana dream swiftly enough.

“I'm on the invitations committee. You should be too.”

“Virginia looked at him, appalled.
Invitations? Christ
. Why did Benny have to constantly sabotage himself? It was like two roads diverged in a yellow wood and Benny chose the dweebiest one every time.

“God, do you have to?” Virginia groaned. “Can't we go in, like, a non-nerd capacity?”

Benny's mouth twitched. “Invitations are the best way to have an exact count of everyone who will be in attendance. You can do what you want. Scan for action on the dance floor, maybe. That would be helpful.”

Suddenly it hit Virginia that this was life with Benny: being in the same place at the same time, but never actually together. In a way it was annoying, but it was also strangely ideal. Virginia liked being alone at dances; it filled the night with more possibility. People held each other back; that was everyone's main problem. There was mystery in life—Virginia knew this now. And Benny might have been clueless about a lot of things, but about one thing he was absolutely right: Your only hope was to Be There.

acknowledgments

All my gratitude to the generous brains of Nico Carver, Liesa Abrams, and Sarah McCabe. And to my creator, Stephen Barr.

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

SIMON PULSE

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This Simon Pulse hardcover edition October 2016

Text copyright © 2016 by Maggie Thrash

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Thrash, Maggie, author.

Title: We know it was you : a Strange truth novel / by Maggie Thrash.

Description: Simon Pulse Hardcover edition. | New York : Simon Pulse, 2016. | Summary: When the Winship Academy mascot jumps off a bridge during a halftime show, she leaves behind a lot of questions, and two students who witnessed the scene firsthand are determined to find out what really happened.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015041347 (print) | LCCN 2016018998 (ebook) | ISBN9781481462006 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781481462020 (ebook) | Subjects: | CYAC: Mystery and detective stories. | Suicide—Fiction. | High schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction.

Classification: LCC PZ7.1.T53 We 2016 (print) | LCC PZ7.1.T53 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

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