I pull back, and a hushed gasp escapes my mouth, because it’s like he was there with me when I was dying.
Is that what happened? I don’t even know.
“I didn’t mean that,” he says, sliding off the table. “That didn’t come out the way I wanted it to, I mean.” He pauses to chew on the corner of his bottom lip. “Look, I saw it happen. I came over to check on you, then when other people came over too, I backed away and gave them room.”
“But—”
He shakes his head. “No, I’m serious. You had a traumatic experience. I was the first person you saw when you opened your eyes.”
I nod, because Alex has already said as much, and, well, it does make sense. The problem is that deep inside my chest, that explanation feels wooden—hollow. And even Ben’s speech sounds rehearsed. I don’t hear any conviction behind his words.
“Why were you at the beach?”
He smirks. “What, I can’t go to the beach? It was summer.”
He starts to walk away, like our conversation is over.
“I don’t believe that,” I say. It comes out quietly, but I know he hears me because he stops. Keeping his back to me, he just waits, and I get the impression from his posture that he’s holding his breath. I believe he brought me back. I don’t know how yet, but I will. I do know that right now, I believe I’m here—I’m alive—because of him. The sense of gratitude makes me dizzy and light-headed, like I need to take a deep breath.
And apparently all rational thought leaves my head and my body takes on a life of its own, because I take a step toward him, reaching out, until the tips of two of my fingers brush against his. I don’t know what I’m doing, it’s been forever since I just held hands with anyone, and my hand seems to tingle with the touch.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Ben says. His voice is quiet and cracks slightly at the end, as if he feels helpless, as if he wishes he had some kind of answer. And that is almost enough to make me back off and leave Ben Michaels and whatever freaky shit he’s into alone. Only I’m tired of being hollow inside.
You’ll still be thinking you haven’t really done anything.
I want to feel something. I want to feel … alive.
And whatever he says, Ben Michaels is the reason I have the chance.
“I just… Thank you.” And as I say it, I squeeze his hand, the level of pressure directly correlating to the depth of emotion I’m feeling—that is to say, it had to feel a little like his bones might start cracking. “Thank you.”
I let go and leave him standing there. No matter how much I want to look back, I don’t.
16:23:33:54
When I get home after Alex and I drop Jared off at polo, my mother is awake. And baking.
This happens sometimes, which almost makes everything worse. “Almost” because nothing beats the smell of warm bread.
“J-baby!” she calls when I open the door. “In here!”
“Here” is the kitchen. She’s showered and is wearing a bright green velour jumpsuit and more eyeliner than she needs. And she’s surrounded by possibly eight hundred muffins—blueberry, banana nut, bran, cornbread, chocolate chip—they’re everywhere. Literally. They cover every surface in our kitchen. As does flour.
My flip-flops stick to the linoleum floor. Egg, vanilla extract, butter—I’m not sure what I’m sticking to, but I know I’m annoyed. We’ll be eating muffins for every meal until we have to throw them out, and I’ll be the one cleaning this up.
“How was school, baby?” she asks, turning to give me a smile and a banana nut muffin. “Here, have one, they’re fabulous. I used your great-grandmother’s recipe, and I got it just right. They couldn’t be more perfect!”
“School’s fine,” I mutter as I take a bite. She’s right. She did get Nana’s recipe perfect, which is saying something. My dad’s grandmother owned a bakery.
“Jared said your schedule was all wrong. He told me they gave you classes that were easier than his and that you’d need to get it changed. Do you have any classes with Kate? Oh, here—try this one too. I’m not sure why it isn’t quite right, but they just didn’t rise as well as the first batch. They taste fine, though.” She hands me a flat cornbread muffin. She’s forgotten that I don’t like cornbread. Just like she’s forgotten that Kate and I aren’t friends anymore.
“I’m getting my schedule fixed,” I say, taking a bite of it anyway. “I filed paperwork with Elksen and now I’m just waiting for him to get around to it.”
“How is it?” she asks, nodding to the flat muffin. “I’m just not sure why they didn’t rise. I could throw them out, I guess, but that would be so wasteful. I just don’t know what happened. All the other batches look great.”
What happened is she messed up the baking soda or baking powder, but I’m not about to point that out. “It tastes great, Mom.”
She beams, and her dimples—the same as Jared’s—peek out of her cheeks. Even her nose scrunches up with her smile. She looks ten years younger than she did a few days ago. I can’t think of the last time she smiled like that.
I want to say something else, prolong this moment, but words fail me. And it doesn’t matter. She’s already turned back to the mixing bowl and begun a long explanation of why she decided to also make a batch of raspberry muffins and how they’ll be different from the blueberry ones, even though she’s using the same baseline recipe. I text Alex, Struz, and even Jared’s water polo coach to let them know there’ll be muffins on us for anyone who’s interested.
And then I just listen to her talk.
It’s not that I’m particularly interested in the art of baking muffins or that I don’t have a ton of other things I should do. I just love how animated she looks—so opposite of yesterday and the day before and the day before that.
I have a second chance to fix all this. To try harder.
My mother offers me a spoonful of batter, but I shake my head. The problem with days like this? They’re just enough to remind me what I’m missing. I don’t have a mother I can talk to. I will never be able to tell my mother about Ben Michaels, that he saved me somehow, that he’s denying it.
So after she finishes the raspberry batch, I grab the Clorox wipes and head to her bedroom. I throw the curtains wide, roll up the shade, and open the windows as far as I can. Once I’ve got some air in there and the ceiling fan is attempting to circulate it, I start picking up the clothes on the floor.
And when I’m rearranging the picture frames—putting the picture of Jared and me at Disneyland after we rode Space Mountain back on her nightstand—I see it.
My dad’s laptop, plugged in, still turned on, and resting on the bed, buried in her bedspread. He has his own room. My parents stopped sleeping together forever ago. She needed her own space for peace and quiet, and frankly, if they had to stay in the same room, he never would have come home from the office.
Which means he spent the morning in here—with her.
I sit down on the bed and pull the computer into my lap, open it up, and log in. His password would be complex. To anyone else—even someone who knows binary code. But I can hack anything my dad has passworded. I know him too well.
As it loads, I hear my mother’s singing underneath the thrum of the fan, and I can’t help wondering if this is why she’s awake and in a good mood. I know she’ll come down from this high—she always does. But could it be this easy to pick her back up again?
Scrolling through my father’s history, I open up the last files he viewed. One is a performance eval for Barclay, T. I don’t know the name, so he must be a new analyst. At first it appears to be anything but average. In fact, the first part is straight-up glowing. A hundred percent on handgun and rifle qualifications—it means he hit dead-center on all fifty shots. His computer skills are fantastic, and his actions directly led to closing a recent investigation. Only my dad is recommending he be moved to a different unit. Apparently T. Barclay doesn’t respond well to authority, and he blatantly disregarded an assignment my d
ad sent him on. That’ll probably ruin T. Barclay’s career. You can’t just not do what your boss tells you to when you’re in the FBI. Even when your instincts are good and you end up being right. The ends don’t justify the means in a bureaucracy.
The next file is paperwork on a gang case that goes to trial later this year. Normally I’d be all over that. But the third file is the autopsy report for Torrey Pines Doe 09022012. My John Doe.
Jackpot.
This is, of course, illegal. Just looking through my dad’s files could come with some pretty stiff penalties if the government found out—for me and for my dad. And even though I’ve been snooping through his files for a long time, my heart still races uncontrollably every time.
I glance at the bedroom door again and listen for anything out of the ordinary, but the only thing I hear—other than my own hammering heart—is my mother’s off-key version of an old Whitney Houston ballad.
Taking a deep breath, I turn back to the report.
My John Doe is still unidentified. They don’t even have an alleged identity next to his case file (which reduces him to the location and the date of his death). They’re putting him at approximately twenty-five to forty-five years, height and weight not applicable. That, I agree with. That I understand. What I don’t is what I read next. The physical examination.
FINDINGS:
01 Global burns consistent with radiation with extensive body mutilation
02 Perimortal crush injury of right thorax
03 Head injury cannot be ruled out
What. The. Hell.
How can that even be possible? He wouldn’t have been exposed to radiation on the side of the highway—or in his car, for that matter. There’s no reason burns should have shown up on his skin postmortem. I’m not exactly up on medical science, but burns with extensive body mutilation are bad, and they tend to show up immediately. And if the crash killed him and not the burns … maybe that was why he was driving so fast. He could have been trying to get to a hospital. Or running from something.
Next page.
CAUSE OF DEATH:
01 Global burns
02 Perimortal crush injury, right chest
So far, the medical examiner is the only person who’s signed off on the autopsy. Maybe they’re getting another opinion. Not that I blame them—it seems more likely that someone switched up the bodies than that this is actually my John Doe.
EXTERNAL EXAMINATION:
The body is presented to the county morgue in a blue body bag and wrapped in a white to tan sheet. The remains are those of a Caucasian male and consist primarily of a severely burned body. Burns are consistent with chemical burns or radiation. There is no charring, but there is complete burning of the flesh from many sites, massive destruction of bony tissues, and resultant profound mutilation of the body. Soft tissues of the face, including nose, ears, and eyes, are absent, with exposure of partially destroyed underlying bony structures.
My stomach turns at the possible image—I get the idea—and I scroll down to try to see more.
And the smoke alarm screeches.
I jump to my feet, automatically sniffing the air for smoke. My skin itches at the possibility of burns. I shut the laptop and toss it back onto the bed before I run to the kitchen.
Thankfully, nothing is on fire.
But the muffins in the oven are burning—and smoking—and my mother is standing in the center of the room looking at a broken coffee mug, black eyeliner tears streaking down her face.
16:19:58:49
“And you’re sure it was the same guy?” Alex asks.
I shake my head and take a sip of the mocha frappe I grabbed from It’s a Grind, thankful I managed to get out of the house and away from my mom’s latest episode. I worry a little—or sometimes a lot—about leaving her alone, but every once in a while I also just have to get away. Since Alex’s house is next door, I tell myself I won’t be gone long, and I won’t be far in case she needs me.
Alex and I are sitting at the dining room table in his house with just about every textbook he owns spread out on the table, and he’s buried in a slew of physics problems.
I can’t talk to him about Ben Michaels, so I’m focusing on the accident.
“They could have mixed up the bodies…” There could be more than one John Doe who died in San Diego on Monday. It’s less likely than people would think, but it’s possible. And despite the eighty-seven different conclusions my brain latched on to the moment I started reading the autopsy, it has occurred to me that I’m supposed to be looking at evidence and letting the conclusions fall into place as a result, rather than speculating.
“But if it is him, it means he crashed because he was already dead.”
Alex doesn’t even glance up from his physics book. “And then you could stop being a moron and blaming yourself.”
I don’t want to get into that again. “Just listen to me,” I say. “Three still-unidentified victims in San Diego thirty years ago, COD severe radiation poisoning. Then nothing. Now suddenly there are at least three new cases, all in the span of less than two weeks. And one of them might have died while driving.” Driving the truck that killed me.
I don’t say that because Alex has made it clear he thinks the whole Ben Michaels thing is in my mind. Instead I say, “Think about it. My dad’s got all these case files, and now by some freak coincidence a truck hits me and the driver might be related to the same case.”
This time Alex closes the book and leans back in his chair. “What do you think’s causing the radiation?” he says, reaching for the espresso I brought him and lifting it to his lips. Only it’s empty because he downed it the second I got here, and caffeine isn’t going to magically appear just because he hopes it might.
“Sorry, I should have gotten you a double.”
He shakes his head and tosses me the empty cup. “No, it’s cool. Hide it before my mom comes in here and sees it.” I crumple it and stick it in my purse with a smile. “So the burns?” Alex prompts.
“Right. The burns are severe—hard-core severe.”
“So the obvious answer is some kind of nuclear radiation.”
I shrug. “Right, but from what?”
He’s chewing his lip, and I know my mission has been accomplished. Alex Trechter has completely abandoned his homework. A little contraband caffeine and something interesting to distract him is all he needs. “Could it be some kind of virus?” he asks. “Like an injection of something radioactive?”
“You watch too many bad movies.”
“I do not—”
“You still owe me for the two hours of my life that I lost watching Mission Impossible 2. I can never get those back.”
He rolls his eyes. “I’m serious.”
“Um, I’m serious too. What is with John Woo and those slow-motion doves?”
“Janelle, a virus would explain the late onset.”
I shake my head. “Not really. And wouldn’t the gamma burns manifest on the inside of the body, in the organs and body tissue?” I shiver a little at the mental image. “These burns were on his face and hands—exposed skin.”
Alex shakes his head. “It could still be some kind of virus—did you get the chance to read the internal examination?” When I shake my head, he continues, “I read viral terrorism is all the rage now. And it would make sense that your dad is involved—wasn’t he part of the team that investigated the viral hemorrhagic fevers two years ago in L.A.?”
“Yeah, they brought him and Struz in on that.” The virus in L.A. was like Ebola. It started with low-grade headaches, but within an hour or two the symptoms progressed to a debilitating fever and muscle pain. Within twenty-four hours the major organs, digestive system, skin, eyes, and gums of those infected would break down, deteriorate, and bleed. Then they were dead. The virus was caused by a bacteria terrorists had somehow managed to insert in select toothpaste tubes that were imported from China. I know people who still use baking soda instead of real toothpaste.
br /> As much as I want to insist that Alex is wrong, I can’t. Just because I don’t know how someone would make it work like that doesn’t mean it’s not possible. I mean, some kind of bioterrorism in the form of a radiation virus fits a little too easily. Easily enough that it’s terrifying.
“How would someone make a late-onset virus like that?” I ask.
“J, I don’t know,” Alex says with a laugh. “I mean, contrary to popular belief, I’m actually not harboring a secret desire to grow up and become a bioterrorist.”
“Hello, Miss Tenner, have you come to do your homework here?” Alex’s mother, the formidable Annabeth Trechter, breezes into the dining room carrying a heap of folded pastel-colored towels. Despite the laundry, she looks like she just fell out of a business meeting in her skirt and suit jacket with her black hair pulled into a bun at the nape of her neck. She pauses in front of me and waits for my answer.
“No, ma’am,” I say, looking down to avoid her eyes—and I’d be embarrassed about that except Annabeth Trechter is the only woman who scares my dad. And she likes him.
“I actually dropped by to see if I could borrow Alex’s physics book when he’s finished,” I say. It’s only half a lie. “Eastview messed up my schedule and I’m not in the right classes, so I don’t have the books yet.”
She turns her attention to Alex. “You’ve finished your reading for English and your Spanish homework?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You have forty-three more minutes before dinner, and afterward you’ll be able to go to the Tenners’ to drop off your physics book, then you’ll come back promptly to study your vocabulary for the SATs.”
“Janelle and I were going to—”
“No, you studied vocabulary together last night. Tonight you’ll study with me.”