Saving Ben (8 page)

He nodded. “Maddie Maloney, a friend of Spotty’s.”

“Did
you
have a good time?” I asked.

He tossed me a tennis ball. “Actually, I did. Enough to ask her out again for next weekend.”

Ben was stronger and more agile, a much better tennis player than me, but we played together often. He used our sessions to work on his accuracy and placement while I simply tried to win as many points as possible. We were so hot and sweaty by the time we finished our second set, Ben suggested we get a cold drink.

We crossed Emmet Street and headed up the steps toward Newcomb Hall. “What about George last weekend?” Ben said. “Something’s not right with him.”

“He’s probably just worried about Yabba,” I said, shivering at the thought of Abigail’s malnourished body.

“No doubt there’s plenty to worry about. She looks like shit.”

We entered the west side of Newcomb Hall, purchased two vitamin waters from the student center, and then exited the east side to the patio dining area.

“I’m glad you’re here, Kitty. At UVA,” Ben said when we were seated at an umbrellaed table. “Our paths may not cross daily, but there are certain things I can help you with.”

“Uh-oh. Sounds like I should brace myself for a lecture about using a fake ID on the Corner.”

“What? You have a fake ID?” He held his hands over his ears. “That’s information I definitely do not need to know.” When I laughed, he added, “I’m not joking, Kitty. Having a fake ID is a serious offense, as serious as underage possession. You need to be careful.”

“Relax. I don’t have a fake ID.” I stuck my tongue out at him. “What exactly is it you want to help me with?”

He stared at me, his expression both amused and concerned. “For starters, I have a couple of friends in the nursing program who’d be happy to give you some pointers.”

“By any chance are they friends of Honey’s?” I asked, taking a sip from my vitamin water.

I watched his face as he made the connection. “You mean Chi Delta Honey?” he asked, and I nodded. “Are you kidding me? Has she already been pressuring you about joining her sorority?”

“I wouldn’t exactly say she was pressuring me, although she did mention that Mom had gotten some of her friends to write letters for me. I wish Mom hadn’t done that, Ben.”

He guzzled half of his water and then set his bottle down on the table. “Listen to me, Kitty. In January, when it comes time for you to rush,
if
you even want to go through the process, you choose the house where you feel the most comfortable, where you like the girls the most, regardless of how much pressure you get from Honey or Mom or anyone else.”

“Did Dad insist you join KO?” My brother is a two-time legacy of the fraternity.

“What do
you
think? I got it from all sides, including Dock before he died. But I didn’t listen to them. I rushed every house, and if there’d been any doubt, I would’ve pledged somewhere else. Promise me you’ll do the same.”

“Mom would never forgive me,” I mumbled.

He drained the rest of his water and tossed the empty bottle into a nearby recycling bin like a basketball into a hoop. “Since when has that been a problem for you?”

“This is different, Ben, and you know it. We are talking about her sorority, her sisterhood. Being president of Chi Delta was her biggest accomplishment in life.” He started to argue with me, but I held my hand up to stop him. “Whatever. This isn’t something I have to decide today.”

“You’re right. You have plenty of time. But I’d like to be able to help you with decisions like these. I wish I’d had someone to guide me through my first year. What do you say we get together more often, maybe even once a week?”

“Who? You and me?” I held my breath, waiting for Ben to suggest we invite Emma to join us the next time.

“No Shrek and Donkey. Of course you and me.” He leaned back in his chair. “There are things you need to know, like applying for next-year’s housing. Are you aware that you have to turn your application in by the first of November?”

“Already? We’re only just getting settled into this year.”

He shrugged. “With so many students to place, I guess they have to get started early.” He pushed his chair back from the table. “What say we meet at the Virginian for brunch next Sunday?”

***

For the next six weeks, I managed to compartmentalize my life—family, school, social. Emma always had a date for me when one was needed, and many times when one was not. Everywhere we went she was the center of attention. At least amongst the guys. With the exception of Phoebe, Carla, and myself, Emma seemed to have trouble bonding with other females. She made her rounds at parties, introducing herself to all the other girls. But when I encouraged her to join a group from our hall for dinner or a movie, she always declined, although I often wondered if that had more to do with money than anything else. If her parents gave her any allowance, it was minimal. More and more she seemed frustrated over her finances.

Tired of hearing her complain, I asked her, “Why don’t you just get a job?”

“And when do you suggest I do that? I’m already working in the library for my financial aid, and my father insists I work for him, for free, during the summers.”

“It’s none of my business, Emma, but it doesn’t seem fair for your father to expect you to work for him without pay. Can’t he get another student to intern for him so you can get a job that pays?”

She grew quiet as she often did when something was on her mind. Her silence reminded me of Ben. The invisible wall would go up, and she would retreat inside her castle, alone.

It became our habit, Ben’s and mine, to try out a different restaurant every Sunday. When we were pressed for time, we’d walk down to the Corner, but when we were feeling more adventurous, we’d take his car over to the downtown mall. He surprised me on the first Sunday of October by bringing Maddie Maloney along. With shoulder-length black hair and big brown eyes, she was tall and lean, like a model, although her thinness was in disproportion to the amount of food she ate. In the span of an hour, I watched her polish off a chicken caesar wrap, finish what was left of Ben’s cheeseburger and french fries, and then split a hot fudge sundae with him for dessert.

Composed and graceful with a true sense of self, Maddie was the kind of girl I would’ve handpicked for my brother. I thought they had something special going, until I barged into my dorm room two weeks later and found him in a lip-lock with Emma.

“Try knocking next time,” Ben said, flustered, as though I’d barged in on him in our bathroom at home.

“Seriously? Last time I checked, this was
my
room.”

“Ben was just helping me get an eyelash out of my eye,” Emma said, rubbing her eye for added effect. “Guess what, Katherine? Ben just asked me to go with him to the Monster Bash.”

Every year the KO’s theme for their Halloween party was different. Last year everyone went as mummies, while the year before that, the success of the Twilight Series inspired a vampire theme. This year they’d planned a masquerade ball. The guests were to dress in black tie with scary masks to hide their faces. Emma was determined to go. She’d been obsessing over getting a date for weeks.

I tossed my backpack on my bed and left the room. Ben caught up with me at the bottom of the stairwell. “Why are you so angry?” he asked, grabbing me by the elbow.

“I don’t really know why, if you want to know the truth. Only that the thought of you and Emma together makes me angry. She’s not right for you,” I said, pushing my way through the double doors.

“How can you say that about her?” Ben asked, following me. “She’s your roommate.”

“And I like her fine as my roommate. I just don’t want her going out with my brother.” I was walking so fast Ben had to work to keep up with me. “Don’t you realize she’s manipulating you? All she wants is a date to this party.”

“That’s cool, because we’re just friends. Why shouldn’t I take her if she really wants to go?”

When we reached McCormick Road, I stopped and turned to face him. “I thought you were dating Maddie.”

Ben shivered, rubbing his arms against the chill, and I realized he was the only one on the street not wearing a jacket. I hadn’t been in the room long enough to take mine off, but obviously he had.

“Maddie is going out of town that weekend, to her sister’s wedding in DC.”

“Really? Well I’m sure she’ll be thrilled to learn that her boyfriend has a date with the hottest first-year student on campus while she’s gone.”

Ben waved at a group of friends across the street and then turned back to me. “Listen, Kitty. I have no intention of screwing things up with Maddie. For the last time, Emma and I are just friends.”

“If you say so.” I turned left and headed toward the library, calling to him over my shoulder, “Just don’t come whining to me when Maddie won’t speak to you and Emma breaks your heart.”

There wasn’t much point of me staying in the library without my backpack, but I ran into some friends who invited me to go with them to Starbucks. Which gave me a chance to calm down a little before I had to face Emma. When I returned to our room, I found her prancing around in the black sequined dress my mother bought for me at the river.

“Please don’t be mad, Katherine. I know you think I’m using Ben, but he and I are just friends. He knows how much I want to go to this party.”

I couldn’t help but smile. She was so predictable. “I should’ve known. This is all about the dress, isn’t it?”

“Well . . .” She chewed on her lower lip. “The dress would look better on me if I didn’t have to hide my face behind some disgusting mask.”

“Who says you have to wear an ugly mask? You’re creative. Can’t you come up with something that hides your face in an alluring way?”

“That’s it!” She snapped her fingers. “You’re a genius, Katherine. I’ll go as Batgirl. Your knee-high black boots would be perfect with fishnet tights. That is if you’ll let me borrow them.” She danced around the room on her toes in excitement. “Surely I can find a Batgirl mask online.”

I rummaged through one of my drawers until I found my jewelry case. “What’re you looking for?” Emma asked, peering over my shoulder into my pouch.

“Earrings. I have a pair that’d be perfect with your costume.”

“Ooh, those are pretty,” she said, pointing at my diamond studs. “Are they real?”

I nodded. “They belonged to my grandmother.”

“Why don’t you ever wear them?”

“They’re not exactly the kind of jewelry you wear to biology class. Here.” I pulled an earring out of my satchel, a silver medallion on a chain with a black Batman emblem etched in it.

“Are you kidding me? You just happened to have a pair of Batman earrings lying around?”

“I bought them for a costume party a few years ago.” I located the mate and handed it to her.

“Thank you, Katherine.” She held the earrings up to her ears, admiring herself in the mirror for a minute before setting them down on top of her dresser. “On another subject, Phoebe and Carla asked me today if you and I would be interested in sharing a suite with them next year.”

Emma was a master at changing the subject and she’d picked just the right one to get my attention. So with only two weeks left before early applications were due to the housing department—ignoring the nagging concern in my gut and reminding myself that we were compatible as roommates—I committed to living with Emma for another year.

The night of the Monster Bash, I made a point of being out of the room when Ben came to pick Emma up, and I pretended to be asleep when she got home, although I peeked at her when she turned her desk lamp on. She was stumbling around, drunk. Her updo was no longer up, and her lips were swollen and red from kissing.

Friends? Right.

Made of stretchy fabric with no zipper, the dress presented a challenge to Emma as she struggled to pull it over her head. When she was free of it, she hung it in the closet. Then, she put on a pair of flannel pajama bottoms and a T-shirt and switched off the desk lamp.

She nudged me. “Katherine, are you awake? You missed a great party.” When I faked being asleep, she whispered, “Too bad for your poor brother. He has no idea what just hit him.”

Abby brought with her a fresh batch of blonde brownies and four fifty-yard-line tickets to Saturday’s football game against Duke, a gift from her father’s colleague who was unable to use them due to a prior engagement. We texted Ben to bring a friend and come sit with us, but when he didn’t respond, Abby was kind enough to invite Emma to tag along. The tickets were ideal, midway up and dead center on the fifty, but the crowd around us was too tame for our taste. When the Cavaliers scored a touchdown within a minute of the half to tie the ballgame, 14–14, we could no longer contain our excitement and joined our peers in the student section on the other side of the stadium.

“Isn’t that Ben down there?” Abby pointed at my brother who was sitting seven or eight rows in front of us, flirting and laughing with the girl next to him. “Is that his girlfriend?”

I nodded. “She’s pretty, isn’t she? Her name is Maddie Maloney. They’ve been dating for a couple of months now.”

Emma removed a flask from her shoulder bag, took a gulp from her Coke, and filled her cup to the brim with bourbon. “Want some?” she asked, holding the flask out to Abby and me.