Page 10 of What Boys Learn

“Maybe. Or I can drive, but let me finish.” I tried to sound matter-of-fact. “The dean doesn’t want me to come to work.”

“Students kill themselves and you get vacation?”

I closed my eyes at the ugly sound ofkill. I opened them again and tried to look . . . not happy, of course, but collected. Solid enough that he could afford—if he needed—to belesssolid.

“I wouldn’t call it vacation. Duplass called it a ‘soft suspension.’”

“How is that different from a hard suspension?”

“Honestly, I don’t know.”

He pulled his phone out of his back pocket and started typing with one free hand, left hand still occupied with the soda.

“‘Soft suspension’ only leads to car websites.”

“Benjamin,” I said, waving a hand to get his attention. “Hey. It doesn’t matter what they call it. Our community has lost two girls. Schoolmates of yours. Girls I knew, and cared for, as well.” My voice faltered. “People are upset.”

“At you?”

“I meant upset in general.” I tried to catch his eye, but he was still staring at his phone. “But yes, upset at me, too.”

“Did you do something wrong?”

I hesitated. Too much to say and too little. But also, my mind had stopped turning smoothly. It was like Benjamin’s old bike and the chain that kept dropping when he tried to shift. He’d long ago stopped telling me, but I always knew it had happened whenever he came home with black, oily hands. I wanted a new bike for him. I wanted lots of things.

“You didn’t ask me how Izzy died,” I said. “You said ‘students killed themselves.’ You assumed it was suicide.” “What about next year?”

“Sorry?”

“What about next year, when I’m a junior. It’s the most important year.”

“I don’t know about that yet.”

“Even if you don’t work at Summit anymore, I still want to go there.”

“Okay,” I said, trying to see the bright side. After all we’d gone through, making the big switch to this high-class suburb, he actually tolerated—maybe evenliked—Summit. Even if we didn’t fit in with other Summit families. Even if he didn’t seem to have friends. “But there’s no way we could afford it without a tuition waiver.”

When he didn’t respond, I asked, “But you still have one more exam to take, right? They have a new counselor who will be available for students. You could stop by his office tomorrow, if you want to talk to him.”

“About the tuition waiver?”

“No, Benjamin,” I said, my patience waning. “About the deaths of your classmates.”

When I patted the couch, he looked past me, down the hallway.

“I need to take a shower.”

“You didn’t take one at the club?”

“Not with shampoo.”

He headed down the hallway, out of sight. I couldn’t make him stay in the room. Couldn’t make him open up to me. It didn’t help to think of all the Summit students who confessed their problems and worries to me freely—admittedly, threequarters of them girls. The boys were trickier. Benjamin was trickier yet. But of course, he was my own son. I knew him better and didn’t know him at all, in ever-shifting proportions.

I heard Benjamin’s bedroom door open. A drawer slid open and shut. Then another. And another. I’d put it mostly out of my mind—what I’d found—but as I listened to him search, I felt my own anxiety sharpen. On a different day, one with less bad news, I might have asked. But today was today. I didn’t feel ready. Sidney was dead. Her best friend, Izzy, was dead. My own son didn’t need to talk about it. It wasn’t a question of pushing something under the rug so much as a rug being irrelevant when an entire tornado had just touched down, smashing everything it touched. I could still picture Sidney and Izzy, the last times I’d seen them. I couldn’t reconcile those pictures with the fact that Sidney and Izzy were no longer alive. If it was hard for me—an adult, a counselor—to believe it, how much harder would it be for a child?

When Benjamin came back to the living room, I said, “Okay, so you don’t want to talk about your schoolmates. But when you change your mind, I’m here. For now, we need dinner. I’m thinking pizza. Sound good?”

When he didn’t answer, I answered for us both. “Of course it’s good. Pizza is always good. Especially when it’s too hot to cook.”