IT’S HARD TO be alone, mathematically speaking. There were a total of six billion and counting people on the planet. In a room of at least twenty-three people, two people were bound to have the same birthdays. If it was that easy to match birthdays with someone, then surely it wasn’t hard to find someone to talk to.
Still, I had never felt more alone at lunch than I did that Friday.
I didn’t see the fight happen. But with those who had, the story seemed to change with every telling. Some people said that Drew was egging Benji on. Some people said that Benji threw the first punch. Some said Drew did. I overheard Liv Wallace in the locker room saying that she couldn’t believe the quiet kid would throw the first punch.
“I heard he did it for Ro,” Holly said. They stopped talking right when I walked past them. Holly spritzed an extra big cloud of Strawberry Delight into the air.
Benji got in a fight for me?
At least I’m not scared of everything.
I’d regretted those words the instant I’d said them. I’d seen the hurt written across Benji’s face.
I thought I’d been helping him all along, but maybe Benji was right. I thought he’d just kept quiet because he always agreed with me, but then it occurred to me that maybe I’d never asked him what he thought.
I thought that all it took was a well-crafted plan. For science fair. For finding Benji’s dad. But now, neither of those things was going to happen. I didn’t even know how to fix the poster board. Everything had fallen apart.
And worst of all, I’d lost Benji as a friend.
I picked bits of slime residue off my lunchbox. I hated this silence.
Was it too late to apologize?
It didn’t matter. I was going to do it anyway.
“I just want everything to go back to normal,” I said to Mr. Voltz that afternoon, leaning against the checkout counter. I’d come in here hoping to see Benji, but he hadn’t come today. He hadn’t been in class either. He was probably sick. I thought about bringing a Tupperware of Campbell’s chicken soup over, just in case. I glanced over and straightened the comics. “We used to do everything together. Now lunch is just plain awful. What if Benji hated me all along? What if I was the only one who thought we were friends and I never realized?”
Mr. Voltz sighed, glancing at me over the rims of his glasses. “You’re a good friend of his. I’m certain he doesn’t hate you.”
“He probably does now,” I muttered. I’d thought that someone out there had finally understood me. Accepted me for who I was. I didn’t even have to pretend to like things around him.
But now I’d lost the one true friend I’d made.
“What happened?”
I was just about to tell him everything—about the deal we made, about the rocket and how it failed to launch; about how we were trying to find Benji’s dad through his comic books and how we’d thought he lived in New York but how he actually was going to be in Los Angeles—when the bell jangled and Benji’s mom rushed into the store. She was still wearing her nurse’s scrubs; her hair was piled on top of her head in a heaping frizz.
“Hi, Janet,” Mr. Voltz said. “Is something wrong?”
“Benji,” Mrs. Burns said, her voice shaking. “Have either of you seen him?”
Mr. Voltz and I glanced at each other.
“He hasn’t come by in the past three days,” Mr. Voltz said.
“He wasn’t at school today,” I said. “Why?”
There was a long pause. “Because Benji’s missing.”
Oh.
No.
Benji. Benji wasn’t sick because he was home—he was gone.
My heart raced. Mrs. Burns kept talking for a minute more, but her words slipped through my brain in a fog.
Benji was missing.
“Benji was supposed to be in lunch detention today, but he wasn’t. The principal’s office called me this afternoon. He was supposed to come straight home because he’s grounded,” Mrs. Burns said, her voice high-pitched and panicked. “But he wasn’t at home. What if he ran away? Or someone took him or something—”
“Janet,” Mr. Voltz said, his voice steely calm. “Take deep breaths. We’re going to figure this out.”
“Maybe he’s with Danny,” I said. But there was an awful sinking feeling in my stomach.
“He’s at baseball practice,” she said. “I checked. Benji wasn’t there.”
It wasn’t a coincidence. Today was Friday, March 16.
“I don’t know what’s gotten into him lately,” Mrs. Burns. “He’s been so strange. He used to just stay in and read comics, but now he’s been getting into fights and—”
The Friday before the science fair.
The date of the movie premiere. In Los Angeles.
I reached for the newsstand and frantically grabbed a copy of the Sacramento Bee, hoping wildly that I’d gotten the date wrong, that I’d somehow mistaken it in my mind. But suddenly, staring down at the newspaper, the words swam clear and the date jumped out at me.
Relief slammed into me—and then turned to dread.
I whirled around to face Benji’s mother. “I know where Benji is.”
And I knew that this was all my fault.