The Telling by Alexandra Sirowy Page A

to embarrass them.
    Instead of taking out their humiliation on Ben, Ethan and Max drove to Skitzy-Fitzy’s tent that night. Fitzgerald was found on the shoulder of the highway the following morning, one leg bent behind him, face pulpy and misshapen. Rather than arrest the boys, the police took Fitzgerald to a doctor off the island and told him not to return. He didn’t come back for six months.
    Becca gestures between us. “Okay, fangirls and fanboys, Lan and I need to find the guest of honor.” Her hands thrust out and Liddy returns Twinkie. With both dogs as passengers, Becca’s fingers lace through mine and she tugs me away as Liddy nibbles on Rusty’s neck. I squeeze Becca’s hand. We’re escaping. I sense Ford’s eyes stalking us. I want to duck into the crowd, lose him. There’ssomething else, though, that’s making me feel tracked, hunted through the room.
    Maybe Ben McBrook’s ghost did it.
    Rusty’s words are alive and crackling in my head, they’re sprouting legs and scurrying after Becca and me, and I want to stop short, whirl around, and kick them away. But I don’t. However impossible—however wrong, stupid, classic Rusty Pipe —his statement is, it brings Ben into the room. It gives him a little life and takes away a little death.
    And I’d want Ben back even if it meant he were a monster, changed, diminished, someone— some half-living thing —he wasn’t before.

– 9 –
    F ord and all them are such hangers-on,” Becca says over her shoulder, hardly out of their earshot. She narrows her smoky lined eyes in disapproval and laughs a little to herself. “Not that they should be shunned or blacklisted. Ford wants to be Rusty, and Liddy has wanted to hook up with Rusty since forever, and I can smell their desperation on Mars is all.”
    A tiny ping in my chest. I doubt that Liddy’s wanted to hook up with Rusty as long as I’ve liked Josh. In a former summer might Becca have sniped about smelling my desperation from another planet?
    â€œIt’s Ford I can’t stand,” I tell her.
    Her glance is thoughtful. “Carolynn hates him too.” She frowns. “Maybe I don’t pay enough attention to see it?” Her grin returns. “Destination kitchen?” I nod. It’s hard to stay worried about Ford or what Becca might have said in the past when she’s tugging me along, girls who are buckets more popular than me eyeing our clasped hands with envy.
    Belonging is its own kind of magic, and Becca is its grand sorceress.
    Duncan is at the center of attention in the kitchen, a bottle of whiskey raised in a toast above his head. Josh watches, his expression a mixture of amusement and concern. It’s hot and stuffy with thirty kids in a spellbound knot, their conversations paused. Duncan clears his throat, more as an intro than a request for attention he already commands.
    â€œHere’s to my oldest friend, Josh Parker”—he sweeps an arm to Josh—“who’s never gamed up any girl I was into. Not even once,” he booms. The crowd cheers. Duncan throws his head back, bottle to his lips, and drinks. Josh bows dramatically to the applause. His blue eyes land on us as he rises. He mouths an emphatic, “You’re here.”
    Becca hooks her hair behind her ear, setting her gold earring swinging, and says, “Duncan’s been hammered the whole day and with Bethany J.” Her green eyes glitter and she bounces her exposed, freckled shoulders. “He gets a pass just like me too, though.” She wags her finger. “Car does not think so.”
    I go to ask why Carolynn doesn’t think Duncan should get a pass, but Becca tugs me along. Duncan finishes his chug to louder whooping. His hat falls and I watch Bethany J., adjusting her crop top as she swoops it from the floor and places it on her sleek black hair like she’s crowning