Earthbound
Page 25

Everything I’ve craved since we met, wrapped into one moment of bliss.
And all I want is more.
My fingers spread against his chest and for a moment, I remember Quinn’s chest—the glimpse of skin last night as he got to his feet.
But I push him away.
This moment is Benson’s.
And mine.
Ours.
Ages pass before I’m curled comfortably against Benson’s chest, my head resting on his shoulder, his fingers stroking idly up and down my hip. The sugar has finally taken effect and my body seems to hum like a well-oiled engine as I sit and draw warmth from Benson’s skin.
“Why can’t we just stay here forever and never think about anything else?” I ask, almost sleepily, my eyes still closed.
“I wish we could.”
I tilt my head back and touch his nose. “You make me feel braver.”
He grins. “Good.” Pause. “I think?”
I laugh and the sound is unfamiliar. When was the last time I laughed? “It is good.”
“Well, though I could kiss you all day,” he says, dropping a quick kiss on my forehead. “And all night.” On my nose now. “And all the next day.” Now my chin, but I’m shaking with suppressed giggles. “We do need to talk about this.”
I slide regretfully off Benson’s lap and take the seat he had before, on the end of his bed. “I can make things, Benson. Out of thin air.” I’m not sure if I feel better or worse for having said it out loud. It sounds stupid. Crazy. The sort of thing you might say if you had a traumatic brain injury that resulted in paranoid delusions. “I thought maybe it was something about my … pockets, I guess. But that water didn’t come from my pockets.”
“Can I assume this is a new thing?” Benson asks.
“Unless my memory is seriously whacked, yes.”
Benson nods. I’m grateful that he doesn’t point out the very real possibility that my memory is in fact seriously whacked.
“But the ChapSticks were gone when we … when we were done,” I say, feeling my cheeks heat up. “So … I guess they appear and then disappear?”
“The floor’s dry,” Benson says, nodding toward the door where I soaked his roommate. “I don’t think carpet dries that fast. Can you do something else?”
“What do you mean something else?”
“Something else,” he repeats. “I don’t know. A pencil. A dollar. A hundred dollars. Whatever.”
Something like water that could drown someone inside a house? This all feels too close to my nightmare, and whatever it is that I can do, I don’t like it.
But I can’t ignore it.
I take a deep breath and push back my fear. I need to find out.
Except that I have no idea what to do.
Ultimately, I decide that my best bet is to go for a repeat of last night. I reach my hand down, planning to look in my pocket, but before I get there, my fingers close around something slim and round.
“Oh, shit!” I exclaim in surprise, dropping it. The pencil bounces to the floor between our feet. I didn’t expect it to be that easy. I kind of hate that it was that easy.
“I got it,” Benson whispers, bending deftly.
He holds the pencil between two fingers, studying it. He glances at me, then grabs a note card from his backpack and writes his name before setting the pencil back on the floor, the note card beside it.
An entirely new kind of tension fills the air.
One minute.
Two.
Three.
Four minutes pass and my fingertips are white from pressing so hard against my thighs. Then, with no warning, the pencil is gone.
And Benson’s name on the note card with it.
“Well,” Benson says in a voice that would sound casual if it weren’t for the brittle, glass-sharp edge, “now we know why your ChapStick was working so poorly.”
Hadn’t I commented that it seemed like I had to reapply every five minutes? But how could I have even considered guessing that it was literally disappearing?
“Do it again,” Benson says in a whisper, his jaw flexed so hard my own teeth ache.
“No,” I whisper back. I can’t. I just can’t. This whole thing is terrifying and I just want it to go away.
He looks like he’s about to say something, then he turns abruptly and grabs the candy bowl, unwraps a Milky Way, and shoves it into his mouth, starting on another wrapper before he’s even begun chewing. Some people are emotional eaters; apparently Benson is a thinking eater.
As if abruptly remembering that I’m there, he holds the bowl out to me and I grab three. For a few minutes we both munch in silence and I suspect the sweet candy is helping to center him as much as it is me. The silence is deceptively companionable with nothing but the crackle of wrappers to mar it.
Benson leans forward on his elbows, fingers laced, staring at me with hard eyes until I have to suppress the urge to squirm. I wish he would hold my hands. Maybe run his fingers up my legs again. Something to remind me that he’s here.
But he just sits, silent and separate.
“Surely it all fits together somehow,” Benson says after a while, and I nod. But it’s like trying to put a puzzle together without half the pieces.
And without the picture on the box.
Not to mention a death threat hanging over you if you don’t solve it fast enough.
“I just don’t see how it could,” I admit.
“Well, you can make stuff. Surely if anyone found out, they’d want to use you, right?” He swallows and then pushes a half-eaten candy bar away from him like he’s lost his appetite.