Page 22 of What Boys Learn

He said, “You’re a liar. You’re a liar and I caught you, red-handed.”

“Fine. I may have misremembered. Chandra gave me the impression that Izzy was mean to boys, and I found myself wondering if you knew anything about that, and she didn’t specifically say hello—”

“She didn’t say helloat all. Chandra would never say hello. I don’t exist to Chandra. I don’t exist to half the kids at Summit and I don’t give a shit. They leave me alone. I leave them alone. Peaceful coexistence. That’s good enough.”

I interlaced my fingers in my lap and looked down, forcing myself to breathe deeply.

He said, “I don’t want to go to school tomorrow.”

“You have one exam left?”

“Chemistry.”

“Then go to school. Take the exam. Come home.”

“And then what.”

“Then you’ll be done with exams.” He blinked. Except for the anger and the superiority—yes, those were easy to spot—I couldn’t read him. And I still didn’t understand about Izzy.

“Benjamin, did you read the diary?”

“I didn’t have time.”

He closed his eyes and rubbed his face hard, which felt like a reset for both of us. When he dropped his hands, Benjamin looked like himself again. Not quite so hard or embittered. Making an effort. I always wanted him to make an effort. Those years in grade school, when he didn’t seem interested in anything; that freshman year in Waukegan, when he got called into the principal’s office so often I knew he’d be expelled if we didn’t move away soon; all the times he got in trouble and I was there to back him up, to believe him, to protect him.

“And Robert didn’t have time to read the diary, either,” I said.

Something changed in Benjamin’s face, then—a shift so subtle I couldn’t trace it to a furrowed brow or tensing jaw. Then his expression cleared again, like he was playing some internal meditation on a loop in his head, trying to bring himself back to some practiced state of mind.

“Robert ran back to the house,” I said, testing him. “He put the diary in the front door mail slot. You were in his patrol car. You would have seen him do it.”

“Yeah, Robert didn’t have time to read it,” he said, shrugging. It was an exaggerated shrug, like he was an actor reading from a script, but other than that, his expression and voice were convincing. “So, can I go to bed now?”

“Soon. I want to ask you about something else you took.”

“The women’s underwear,” he said, saving me the trouble.

“Okay.” I exhaled. We were getting through this. “Were they Izzy’s, too?”

He paused—only a few seconds, but it was a pause I’d be reviewing in my mind for days.

“Yeah. She gave them to me.”

“Gavethem to you. But you laughed a few minutes ago when I asked if you were intimate with her.”

“We were in a public place. She was wearing a skirt. She stepped out of them and gave them to me.”

“Why on earth would a girl do that?”

“Because she wanted to. That was the only reason Izzy ever did anything.”

He gave me a flat, dark look, like he’d put up with my questions far longer than any teenager should. And maybe he was telling me the truth. I’d talked with Izzy enough to form my own impression. Chandra mentioned some photo that was going around—a photo that Izzy supposedly didn’t mind others seeing. Maybe Izzy was flirting, or provoking, or accepting a dare. It didn’t mean Benjamin had done anything wrong that day. And as for later—stealing the diary, breaking and entering—they were all bad, and yet still not the worst things I worried about, where teenage boys were concerned.

My phone rang. It was late, and the caller was unidentified. I let it go to voicemail.

“Can we go to the pool tomorrow, after my last exam?” Benjamin asked.

“I don’t know . . .”