He’s silent for a moment. “I’m sorry. I know.”
I press my fingers against my eyes until everything goes black. “So, look. Meg talked about confiding in someone who told her to go to her campus health center and get antidepressants. I thought maybe she was talking about you.”
He snorts. “Yeah, right.”
“What do you mean, ‘Yeah, right’? She sent you all those emails.”
“There was nothing about antidepressants in them.” He pops open another can of beer. “You read them. They were like stream of consciousness. She wasn’t writing to me so much as at me.”
“Yeah, I guess. . . .”
“And I told her to piss off, Cody. Remember?” He fiddles with his pack of cigarettes. “It wasn’t me. It was probably one of her housemates.”
“It wasn’t Alice or Richard, and according to them, not any of the people from Cascades. Though maybe it was, I don’t know who she knew. But Richard thought it was more likely one of her friends in Seattle.”
Ben shrugs. “Could be. Not me, though. But why does any of this matter now?”
Because if she confided in someone about the meds, maybe she also confided about All_BS and the boards. But I don’t tell Ben about Final Solution. I’m worried he’ll get angry again, even though he doesn’t have any right to.
“I need answers,” I say, keeping it vague.
“Can’t you just ask at the health center?”
I shake my head. “Can’t. There’s a patient-confidentiality thing.”
“Yeah, but the patient’s dead.” Ben stops, as if this is news to me.
“They still won’t tell. I tried.”
“Maybe her parents could try.”
I shake my head.
“Why not?”
“Because they don’t know about this.”
“You haven’t told them?”
No. I haven’t told them about any of this. The secret feels larger than before, almost tumorous. There is no way I can tell the Garcias now. It would devastate them. But I keep thinking that maybe if I find out more about All_BS, enough to do something to actually help, then I can tell them. Then I can face them. I haven’t been around their house in a few weeks. Sue keeps leaving me voice mails, asking me for dinner, but the thought of being in a room with them . . .
“I just can’t,” I say, laying my head on the table.
Ben reaches out to touch my hand, a gesture that is both surprising and surprisingly comforting. “Okay,” he says. “We can hit the clubs in Seattle. Find out if she talked to anybody.”
“We?” The word is a relief.
Ben nods. “We head home tomorrow morning. You ride back with us. We can go around to the clubs. It’s Saturday night, so everyone will be out. We’ll ask around. We can go through her emails again. We’ll find some answers.”
x x x
That night at the show, I watch Ben carefully. The band is good—not great, but good. And Ben does his growly, throaty, thrusty trick, and I can see his charisma. I can see the girls in the crowd responding to him, and I forgive Meg a little bit for this. He would’ve been hard to resist.