“Tricia thinks she raised me on her own,” I continue, “but really, it was the Garcias who raised me.”
“Meg’s family?”
“Yeah. They’re like a real family. Mom, Dad, two kids.” I pause to correct myself but look at Ben and see I don’t have to. “Family dinners. Games of Scrabble. That kind of stuff. Sometimes I think if I hadn’t met Meg, I never would’ve known what a normal family was like.”
I stop. Because remembering all those times at the Garcias, watching movies on their worn couch, making plays and forcing Scottie to act in them, staying up too late by the dwindling fire on camping trips—all of that fills me with warmth. But. Always the but.
Ben is watching me, like he’s waiting for me to say something else.
“But if that’s what happens to normal, what hope is there for the rest of us?” I ask him.
He shakes his head. Like he just doesn’t know either.
20
We get back to Ben’s house and he unpacks his stuff, and we both spend a half hour shining a flashlight around the walls and watching Pete and Repeat chase the beam. It’s possibly the most fun I’ve had in months.
Ben makes a list of the clubs that Meg most often hung out in. None of them will get going until around eleven, and they’ll stay happening until four in the morning. We pound shots of espresso at his neighborhood café before setting off in his Jetta.
The first club is that one in Fremont I met Ben at. He introduces me to a group of groovy-looking girls in cute dresses and cool shoes—Meg people. They’re all about a decade older, but that wouldn’t have stopped her. When Ben explains who I am, one of the women embraces me in a spontaneous hug. Then she holds me at arm’s length and says: “You’ll get through it. I know it seems like you won’t, but you will.” Without asking anything more, I get that she, too, has been through this, has been left behind, and it makes me feel less alone.
None of these women knows anything about Meg going to the health center; most didn’t even know she went to college. If Meg didn’t tell them even this, chances are she didn’t tell them about the Final Solution. I don’t bring it up.
We go to another club. We’re barely past the bouncer when a girl with blonde choppy hair flings herself into Ben’s arms. “Where have you been?” she demands. “I’ve texted you, like, a hundred times.”
Ben doesn’t hug her back, just sort of taps her uncomfortably on the shoulder, and after a minute, she takes a few steps back, jutting her lip into a fake pout. Then she spots me.
“Hey, Clem,” Ben says. He seems tired. “I’ve been on tour.”
“Tour, huh? That’s what you’re calling it now,” she says, still looking at me.
“Hey. I’m Cody.”
“Cody’s a friend of Meg’s,” Ben adds. “Did you know Meg Garcia?”
Clem swivels toward Ben now. “Seriously? Are you, like, organizing a sorority for your castoffs? Can we, like, all wear matching outfits?” She rolls her eyes and pouts for real now. Then she makes a disgusted pff sound before flouncing off, giving Ben the finger as she goes.
“Sorry about that,” Ben says. To his shoes.
“Why should you be sorry?”
“She was . . . It was a while ago . . .” he begins, but I wave my hands to stop him.
“You don’t have to explain anything to me.”