Chapter 8

School was every bit as depressing and desolate as I'd expected with Alec gone. I'd been so smug thinking that Mom couldn't keep me away from him, all the while forgetting that he was going to be halfway across the country.

Jasmin was getting more frustrated by the minute. Apparently her efforts with Ben really weren't going well. That didn't help the ongoing tension at lunch. With Alec gone there was less effort to present a unified front to the rest of the world. We all still sat together, but the conversation was more strained. The old pack sat on one side of the table and new pack sat on the other, with Rachel and me sort of in the middle.

Rachel spent more time talking to Jasmin and the others from the old pack. I spent more time talking to Alison and Sam.

I drifted through the last half of the week, coming awake again Friday afternoon in tutoring. Friday was never a big tutoring day. I know--hard to believe kids our age would choose to procrastinate studying a few extra days.

By the time my shift hit, there were exactly three people in the lab: me, Rachel and a strangely familiar boy. As soon as Albert and Peter left the lab, Rachel casually walked over to my table.

"That's Ben. It's maybe our only shot. Who knows what Jasmin had to do to get him here."

I consciously forced myself not to look at him. "Okay, so we need to convince him that Jasmin likes him, that she's for real?"

"Yep. Only by we, we mean you. I've had a go at Ben. A few months ago, it didn't go well."

"Gee, thanks. That's not a lot of pressure or anything."

Rachel turned to leave and then paused, a faraway look on her face. "He really is a good guy, Adri. One who takes secrets very seriously. I think you could tell him pretty much anything and not worry about it getting out."

I let Rachel go back to her table, waited a couple of minutes and then stood up. I felt like a deer on the interstate. I wasn't any good at talking to boys. Heck, I still couldn't really talk to Alec sometimes and we are about as in love as two people could get.

"Hi. Ben, is it?"

He looked up for a second, met my eyes and shrugged. "It's not exactly a secret."

Feeling incredibly forward, I sat down in the chair next to him. "Since it's down to just you and Rachel, I thought I'd come by and see if you had any questions."

"Right. You just happened over. Come on. You rich chicks are all in this together, and Rachel is the queen rich chick."

"It sounds to me like you don't know Rachel very well. You definitely don't know me. I'm about as poor as they come."

"Except now you're rolling with Rachel and Alec so you're getting plenty of perks."

My resolve to help Jasmin was wavering. Not that I didn't want to help, but I was starting to think maybe he didn't deserve her.

"Look, I don't know what got you so bent out of shape, but Rachel's one of the best people I know. Sure, she buys people stuff, but she's not trying to buy friends or anything, she just likes people to be happy. And Jasmin, Jasmin's stood by me when nobody else would. She's risked losing stuff, big stuff to do the right thing. How many people do you know who really care about right and wrong?"

He was ignoring me again, working on some kind of portable video game player. He already had it disassembled into smaller pieces than I knew was possible. He shrugged as he pulled apart two circuit boards.

"Okay, let's say I believe you really mean what you said. Even so, it still doesn't matter if we're from such different frames of reference that the words mean different things to us."

"What, like good doesn't mean good somehow?"

"More like loss doesn't mean loss. For you or me losing a couple hundred bucks would be the end of the world. For someone like Alec he'd misplace ten times that amount and never even blink."

He'd said it all still without looking up. It should have made his statement the kind of casual thing people blow off without even thinking about it. Instead it sent me reeling. His words seemed to mix with Rachel's advice from earlier and I found myself settling back down into my seat.

"Okay. I'll tell you about loss. Last year my dad and sister left home to come pick me up from school. I waited for like an hour and a half, getting more and more pissed by the minute when they didn't show up on time. I remember borrowing a friend's cell phone so I could call home and leave a nasty message on the machine. Turns out they were broadsided by one of those monster SUVs yuppies buy just because they can."

I hadn't examined my memories of that day in a very long time. They hadn't become any weaker. Tears still gathered at the corner of my eyes, and my breathing sped up, but over the last few weeks I'd somehow gained the ability to go through it all without collapsing. Sometimes.

"I was the last one to find out. Mom got the call, tried the school office once, and then went to the hospital. She finally got a hold of one of the neighbors who offered to pick me up and bring me to the hospital. They…well, they were both dead pretty much on impact. It just took the doctors a couple of hours to get around to agreeing with what the universe had already decreed."

Ben had stopped fiddling with the Gameboy. He opened his mouth but I cut him off.

"So now you know the truth. Adriana Paige's attacks aren't some romantic tale about a semi-pro soccer player. Half my family was wiped out between one heartbeat and the next, and I've been pretty much a wreck ever since."

"I--I didn't know. I mean I figured the rumor was pure crap but I never would have guessed the truth."

"It's okay. It's not like I expect strangers to treat me differently or anything. Just remember that it's Rachel, Jasmin and the others who've put me more or less back together. There was nothing in it for them, but they did it anyways. That's not the kind of thing shallow jerks do. I don't know when or how you decided they were pond scum, but you're wrong."

Ben cocked his head slightly to the side. "Okay, you've convinced me. At least partly. So assuming that Jasmin isn't a blood-sucking uber-biotch, what next?"

"Are you asking me for advice?"

"Sure. Jasmin says she likes me, and to be honest I like her too, what I know of her that is. Still, you don't just tell a super-hot girl something like that. I figure another hot girl would be the way to go. Birds of a feather and all that."

I rolled my eyes at his implication that I was anywhere even close to as attractive as Jasmin. "Well, I think the best place to start would be for the two of you to actually spend some time together."

"Please. Can you see Jasmin and me sitting together over dinner on a normal date?"

"Sure, why not?"

"Neither of us is exactly overly talkative. We'd just end up sitting in silence. Besides, I think you learn more about people from how they treat others, not just how they treat you."

"Actually I agree. So what are you proposing, some kind of group date?"

"No, just a bunch of…potential friends hanging out. You and Rachel seem particularly invested in seeing Jasmin and me together. I think the four of us should do just fine."