Earthbound
Page 54

I don’t like thinking about those days.
I wrap my arms around my waist and look around. Benson. Where is he? Is he here? Surely I didn’t drive myself.
It takes a few more seconds, but then I remember. Benson pulling me to my feet, dragging me away before the cops could arrive.
And something else I saw … someone. Someone I knew.
Then there was the hysteria. Completely out of control, like someone was pulling my puppet strings. Tears, desperate words, telling Benson about Quinn. The hard line of Benson’s mouth. Him, pushing me into the car, draping his coat over me.
Then nothing.
I shiver at the awful memory. I’m still tired, but at least I feel like myself. I never want to be anyone but me ever again.
A sound pulls me out of my thoughts. I can hear Benson, but not see him. We’re pulled off on the side of the road somewhere I don’t recognize, and I finally find Benson behind a tree talking on his phone.
Arguing.
I step closer, trying to catch words, but he keeps cutting off, like someone’s talking over him.
“… not what we agreed to. But—” I watch his hand fist against his hip. “I understand,” he says a few seconds later, then hangs up without saying goodbye.
“Who was that?” My voice sounds creaky.
Benson whirls around with a gasp and sighs when he sees me. “Make some noise, will you?” he says with a half grin.
“Sorry.” It sounds lame, but what else is there to say? “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, roommate stuff,” he says, pointing at the phone.
I nod. I don’t know what he means and my brain is still too fuzzy to care.
“How do you feel?” he asks.
I laugh. “Like I’m never going to sleep tonight.”
Benson shrugs helplessly. “Sorry, I couldn’t bear to wake you up.” He pauses and then puts his fingers just under my chin. “I worry. You’re so tired.”
“Hey!” I counter. “Under-eye circles are the new black.” But my joke falls totally flat.
“I don’t mean physically.” He studies me for another long moment, like he wants to say something else, but I don’t drop my challenging gaze, and after a few seconds he lets his hand fall.
The look on his face is so strange—there are more emotions there than I can interpret, and I find myself wishing I’d brought my charcoals so I could capture him on paper—maybe figure him out that way. I lift my hand to his face and he leans into it, trapping it between his face and shoulder. I step forward for more, but he clears his throat and holds up his phone and I stop. “I found a small online report of what happened today,” he says.
“Oh yeah?” I say, instantly curious.
“It didn’t say much, just that an unmanned car was parked on a hill without the e-brake set.” He looks up from the screen on his phone and says, “They’re saying no one got hurt.”
“No one got hurt? But—” I close my mouth to cut the words off. “Are you sure?” I have to ask. I know what I saw. The images are branded into my brain.
“That’s what the report says. They commented that the office staff had just left for lunch, so the building was empty.”
“And there’s nothing about … about …”
“Nothing about Quinn,” Benson finishes for me.
I stand for a long time in the crisscrossed shadows of the trees. I have no idea what’s happening to my life. It feels like it’s slowly splintering. Not breaking apart yet, but full of spidery cracks barely clinging to each other.
Things were starting to get better.
And then this.
It’s like all the emotional healing I went through after the plane crash never happened.
“I saw him,” I say.
“I believe you.”
“Not Quinn—I mean obviously Quinn too, but—” I take a steadying breath as the shadow memory finally solidifies. “I saw the Sunglasses Guy. From Portsmouth. Just out of the corner of my eye a second after the accident, but I know it was him,” I say quickly before Benson can cut me off.
He doesn’t try. It’s like he already knew. But then, he was there. He probably saw the guy too and didn’t want me to know.
I look up at Benson, force myself to meet his eyes. “Is everyone in on it? You asked me yesterday how deep I thought this went and I didn’t know. Is this a cover-up, Benson?”
Benson is silent. He folds his arms across his chest, then changes his mind and shoves them into his pockets instead. Though my mind is screaming for him to just speak, I stand silently, watching him. There’s a possibility my eye is twitching.
“What if Quinn’s a ghost?” Benson says softly.
A bark of laughter bursts from me before I can stop it. “Seriously? No. There’s no such thing as ghosts.”
“There’s no such thing as people who can pull ChapStick and pencils and stress balls out of thin air either. Think about it, Tave, it would explain everything: the old-fashioned clothes, the thing with Rebecca Fielding, having that car run into him and no one notices.”
“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” I repeat, but my voice is so quiet it’s almost a whisper. My mind is racing. I saw him die. But did I actually see the blood or was that my mind filling it in? I shake that thought away and try to analyze what I know. Quinn is always in old-fashioned clothes; he comes and goes so quickly it’s like he disappears; he never lets me get a word in edgewise—it’s almost like he can’t hear me. And that weird place he led me to last night, it seriously looked like no one had stepped into it for …