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“Marlia, we already talked about your name, that it’ll stand out because it’s too uncommon, so from now on you’ll be Michele. Bennet, I think we should keep your first name as close to your real one as possible. Just makes it easier. You’ll be called Ben as in Benjamin. But you can’t use Drexler or anything that sounds like it. Any ideas?”
My mother wasn’t listening. She was curled up in the seat next to me with her sunglasses on as she stared dully out the window. I was still reeling from recent events and I didn’t care what kind of name I was stuck with from now on. I had no desire to be a Drexler anymore.
“How about Beltran?” I said, thinking of my favorite ball player.
Reginald grinned at me in the rearview mirror. “Beltran it is. I’ll take care of the legwork.”
And so Bennet Drexler was erased and Ben Beltran was invented.
Ben Beltran settled down in the nondescript small town of Devil Valley with his heartbroken mother and pretended to be this tough, scrappy kid who would get attached to no one and had no stories to tell about his past.
To my surprise, being Ben Beltran was easy.
The money ran out quickly but my mom and I have gotten used to scraping by. Maybe I’ll never completely stop looking over my shoulder but if the Drexlers had any plans to chase us down they would have done it already. Now and then someone would ask questions but I was always able to avoid them without trying too hard.
At least until now.
Until Camden.
Camden is smart and Camden isn’t so easy to avoid. Especially because I don’t want to avoid her at all.
“Ben.” My mother raps my hand with an unlit cigarette to get my attention. “You’re not eating your breakfast and you just keep glaring at the wall.” She lights the cigarette and taps it over a ceramic dish even though there are no ashes to tap out yet. “Did you and Darren have another argument?”
“No.” I scowl at the mention of my mother’s shitty boyfriend. I shovel in a bite of cornflakes and hope this is the end of the interrogation.
My mother examines me. She reaches out as if she’s going to push the hair out of my eyes and then retreats, remembering that I’m too old for that kind of mothering and I’ll just get irritated. Then she smiles.
“Is this about a girl? Maybe the pretty one who works with you at Dee’s? I’ve seen her watching you. She goes to school at Black Mountain, doesn’t she? She and her family were at the diner on Saturday.”
I swallow my cereal. “Camden. Her name’s Camden.”
“Camden,” she repeats and her eyes twinkle in a way that I don’t see too often anymore. “She’s a cutie. And I hear she’s smart too. Is she your girlfriend?”
“Come on, Ma,” I complain and collect my dishes for the sink. I’ve never thought of any girl as a ‘girlfriend’, not even the ones I’ve spent a lot of time with. It seems like an old fashioned word, not fit for the times. Anyway, just because you hook up with a girl and kiss her goodnight doesn’t mean she’s your girlfriend.
However, I can’t say this out loud because you don’t admit such things to your mother and because the way I feel about Camden is confusing. The day she told me she wanted to interview me for some silly article I practically bit her head off and then couldn’t stop feeling like crap over it. I planned to apologize when she showed up for work the next day.
In the meantime I got to really thinking about things and wondering if maybe Camden wasn’t the problem. She’s a smart girl who likes to ask questions and I’m the one who acts like a fucking troll anytime she gets too close. I figured I could try leveling with her, sort of. I’d tell her that we could work together and maybe we could even kind of be friends but she needed to respect that I had my reasons for wanting to keep to myself. Camden might be stubborn but I knew she had a heart. She’d probably be cool as long as I dropped my shitty attitude.
But then when she did show up I forgot about whatever it was I wanted to say. The girl was freaking radiant. And so insanely pleased when she saw her birthday gift from the Cushings that it made me wish I’d bought her a gift myself. Being around her had thrown me off course and I wasn’t prepared. Nobody forced me to give into that temptation but I wasn’t sorry we’d messed around. I hoped she wasn’t sorry either. By the time I walked her home I knew that she had managed to get to me in a way that no other girl ever had.
I wasn’t sure what to do about that but I was very sure that I wanted to kiss her again.
And again.
And again.
I wanted to have her with my tongue. I wanted to dominate her with my cock. I also wanted to hold her in my arms and listen to her talk about life.
“Fine, keep your secrets,” my mother says but she’s smirking in a way that says she can guess what’s going on. Then she gets upset when she sees me grab my bag and head for the door. “Where do you think you’re going without a jacket?”
“I forgot it at school.”
“At school? You mean you’ve been suffering in the cold all weekend without a jacket?” Her eyes have bugged out. She’s as distraught as if I were a toddler running around naked in the snow.
“Gotta go, Ma.” I give her a quick hug and wince over how thin she is, and not in the stylishly aerobic way that she used to be thin. This comes from worry and bad habits and loneliness.
It’s as cold as the goddamn North Pole outside but I don’t even care. There’s a weird sensation in my gut as I round the corner toward the bus stop. I can’t believe it but I’m actually fucking nervous. I’ve always had an easy time with girls and I’m not used to being knocked on my heels like this.
