Zoey paced the catwalk atop the climbing wall and worked down the line, detaching and dropping all the top ropes. She took them down most nights, after especially wet days. The rain swelled them, jammed the mechanical ascenders, made more work for the students, and raised the danger level. Every night she took the coils in and arrayed them in a circle around the store's furnace. One night of intermittent exposure to the out-draft of the furnace never really dried the rope entirely, but it did reduce the swelling.
People still milled around on the picnic tables below. Many took pictures. The release of the Outside issue had been a powerful adrenaline shot to her ephemeral fame. That would fade by Monday, but she made a spectacle of herself each night, merely in the process of inspecting and packing up the gear. She had insisted to Archie Newton that there should be no easy ascent to the top catwalk. Students had no reason to be on it, and he agreed that it would be very bad to have kids playing up here. All egress had been removed after the completion of the climbing wall, and not even a service ladder remained. The catwalk could only be reached by a Grade Five climb.
From atop the catwalk, she could just barely see Ben Swan intermittently through gaps in the trees, a tiny figure jogging away on the main road. She produced her phone and caught Kira at work.
"Hey, you. Survived another day, I see."
"I'm in second term. New batch of recruits. Filled to capacity, again," Zoey said, with just a hint of pride.
"And no one's died."
Zoey crossly said, "No one's lost a fingernail. How's Cleo? How's Dad?" In that order.
"Oh, they're both asking about you. So, you'll be headed back in a few weeks, once this term lets out."
"We'll see. I might stay on through the final week of August, until school starts. You know, I'm so busy with work and so exhausted at night that I don't think I've seen a bit of Forks beyond this parking lot."
Kira thought darkly that her daughter's lack of a social life up there was just as well. Sara Newton had informed her that the Quileute boy seemed to be impossible to discourage and wouldn't stop sniffing around.
"And besides," Zoey went on, "I'm thinking I ought to keep my options open. The store gets constant inquiries about the availability of Fall Term classes."
"Zoey Eustace. You can't possibly be thinking about staying up there. That's out of the question! You have senior year, and this limelight you're basking in won't last."
"I know, I know. Fame is fickle. But I seem to be a commodity now, and there is a high school up here, Mom. I could transfer. Of course I'd have to bring Cleo up, but Sara says my apartment is kitten-friendly."
Kira's tone turned to ice. "I'll just have words with Sara Newton."
Zoey didn't believe they would fight about it. They were fast friends. They adored each other. Sara Newton gabbed Mom's ear off, and vice versa, every time one called the other.
Her mother went on, "Honestly, honey, what is there for you, up there? The Newtons are very nice, and the free room and board is a sweet gesture, but don't you feel a bit indentured? Chained to that place without a vehicle? They're paying you a pittance."
Zoey dropped her voice to a whisper, "Actually, Mom, I'm making pretty good coin. I'm doing rather well on cash tips."
Kira quietly asked, "How well?"
"I'm averaging about a hundred dollars per student. That's twice the course registration fee."
"My God!" Kira knew that each of the four summer classes was filled to capacity, at fifty students each. Kira had no difficulty with the math. Cash, under the table, tax-free. She harshly queried, "Are the Newtons aware of this? You're robbing from them in a sense, you know."
"They're in on it, Mom. They're telling the registrants that the course is a steal and that they're forced to pay me a pittance as a result, and they're urging people with a wink to do the right thing by slipping gratuities into my purse. Which they're doing. Gladly."
Kira spluttered, "Just wait until I tell your father. That's... that's... medieval. Right back to the days of barter."
"It's how things are done up here," Zoey said, without a care. "Do you know that Ben Swan's father, Charlie, hasn't paid for a meal in the village diner in twenty-two years?"
"Good God."
"Mom, I honestly don't know what I'm doing in September. The money's hard to pass up, but the high school up here is medieval, too. They don't even have a Drama Club. But anyway, that's not why I've called."
"Why have you called? Is it about that Quileute boy who won't stop coming around?"
"Umm, no. Not him. I've been asked to dinner tonight."
Kira felt her blood pressure rise. "A dinner date?"
"No, no, not a date... okay, well, yes. Tonight is a day of the month, so tonight has a date. So yes, I mean, I suppose it's a date."
Kira knew, with whom, but she heard herself ask, "Who?"
"Ben Swan."
Zoey waited for a response.
For Kira, it had been a month since her daughter had arrived at that place. She had talked to Zoey just about every day since then, and she had never once pried. Zoey and Ben were now rooming just a few miles apart, and Zoey hadn't brought him up once in their conversations. What did it mean? What about that Cullen girl? Last Kira had heard– from Sara Newton and Renée both– Ben and the Cullen girl were inseparable. To hear it from Renée, the Cullen girl mothered and coddled Ben to a fault. To hear Sara Newton tell it, Ben was guarded night and day by fangs and teeth.
"Kira, are you still on? Mom!"
"Sweety, I have to go. I need to talk to Renée."
"Mom, wait"–
"I'll call you back. Bye."
_________
Jacob pulled into his yard, off in the mud as usual, because six pickup trucks occupied the only dry spaces. He groaned at the site of big Sam Uley's truck: fearless Leader himself, Major Domo pro tempore. He had to make a point to remind Pop that the Reservation had a Community Center, and given he wasn't even technically the Chief of this turdpile anymore, he didn't have to hold Council meetings in his pepper garden.
He fingered the gaping, jagged hole in his dashboard and cursed some more. He defied his own bloody knuckles and swore aloud that Leah Clearwater had broken his car by driving him over the brink with her intransigence. And then, she had stepped right out of the moving car and had promptly disappeared. He still didn't understand that part. He had walked up and down the roadside gutter in search of her corpse. Had he really been driving at eighty, when she had ejected herself? Obviously his brain had paused. He had to have been slowing down, or maybe he had even blanked out through stopping the car and kicking her out just to clear his head.
He huffed with frustration as he stomped out into the mud and slammed the door nearly hard enough to shatter the window. Heated voices wafted around the house from the backyard veggie garden, far more voices than were suggested by the number of vehicles. Either every driver had carpooled, or there were a dozen hitchhikers in attendance. He gleaned the gist from key syllables enunciated above the rest. As usual, they were gabbing about vampires, as though this place didn't have real problems. He didn't want to hear it. He decided to go straight to his bedroom and bar the door, He scraped his boots on the bristle mat, stomped into the kitchen, and stopped dead.
"You again," said Leah Clearwater.
Jacob blinked and suddenly felt sick. He muttered, "My head isn't right. I keep blanking out. I think something's wrong. I think I have some kind of strange fever."
"You're fine," she told him. "You're not even close. Maybe you just need to eat. My dad's grilling hotspice fish."
He edged by her warily, as though she were some sort of supernormal specter, and slipped out through the back door.
Jacob walked by his old garage rat pals, Quil and Embry, without verbal acknowledgement. They both had those godawful dripping fang tattoos on their arms, copycat cultists. Quil bugged him especially, for the betrayal. Quil had been Embry's most vocal critic, and he had sworn that he would never be recruited into the cult, that he would die first, and here he was, flaunting one of those ugly tattoos. Jacob wanted to give the kid a punch in the head. He pushed through Jez Ateara, Sue Clearwater and three other Elders to face off against big Sam Uley and jeer right over his father, "What's this crap I hear, that you have Leah spying on my best friends?"
Sam Uley barked, "Is she inside? Go back in there and tell her to get out here."
"Tell her yourself. I'm not talking to her. She's out of her mind."
He made his way over to Harry Clearwater at the grill. There were twelve people in attendance, not counting Leah, and the old man was grilling only one fish at a time. Several filets looked burnt. Sue had offered to relieve him several times, but he had waved her off with the insistence that he could handle it.
"Hey, Harry. What's the deal with Leah?"
"Oh, that stuff? From before? Emily's place and all that? Yesterday's news. She's much better now. Got a summer job and everything."
"So I've heard." Jacob replied distractedly, and Harry knew that he was straining to eavesdrop on Sam Uley and the rest of the Elders.
"You haven't grown up all that much," Harry observed.
Jacob twisted his face into a picture of contempt. "True," he said. "Not much at all, in the past couple weeks."
Sam Uley stood over Billy and old Jez Ateara and said, "No trace of him. Not since Yosemite. The Cullens are all gone, too. All of them. Even the one that shielded the Swan boy."
Jez Ateara asked, "Have you checked their house?"
"Sent Quil and Embry. The doors and windows are shuttered with steel rollers. Locked up tight. They're gone. So lately, we've been running the border and watching the coasts. Looking for a return. From any of them."
Jacob listened with disgust. A month ago, they had all been on his case to drop his life and join their little club. It sounded to him as though the cult had nothing to do. Now they were all tripping over each other, playing werewolf in the forest or whatever. The whole thing was a humiliation, in Jacob's view, an embarrassment just to know about it.
He abruptly silenced the entire back yard by angrily bellowing at Sam Uley, "Why do I have to listen to this crap? What are you even doing here? We have a Community Center."
Big Sam Uley looked up and said, "We had to include Billy, and you've been too busy chasing the tail of Suicide Girl to drive him."
Jacob roared incoherently, punched the wall of the house with his bloody knuckles, and howled, clutching his hand, "Then drive him to Emily's place!"
He slammed the door, strode into the kitchen, and glared at Leah.
She looked up at him placidly from her chair and said, "Hmm. You're getting closer."
_________
Kira reached Renée on the third try and started right in. "Your son invited my daughter to dinner."
"Hello, Kira. How are you. Are we talking, again?"
"I'm not sure." Kira knew that Renée's perfidious son had been down in Yosemite for Zoey's reckless stunt and had known about it all along. To this day, Kira suspected that Renée had known in advance, too.
Renée said, "I found out about El Capitan when you did, Kira. Almost to the hour."
"I know that," Kira said, stubbornly, saturated with skepticism.
"Ben doesn't tell me everything that's going on in his life. Does Zoey tell you everything?"
This pointed question put Kira right into attack mode. "I talk to my daughter nearly every day."
"Congratulations. But she planned El Capitan right under your nose and deceived you about her intentions every minute she was there. Telling you about that stunt was her responsibility. Not my son's. Or mine."
Renée gave Kira a few seconds to chew on that.
Kira eventually asked, "May I continue?"
That didn't sound like concurrence to Renée, but she indulgently said, "Sure."
Kira muttered, "I'm not sure how to start."
"You already did. Pick up where you left off."
"Okay. You told me that Ben and the girlfriend up there were inseparable."
"They are. According to Charlie. Or at least, they were. Last time I talked to him. That was a few weeks ago."
"Then what's he doing, leading Zoey on?"
Renée saw red. "Is that what you think he's doing? They're best friends, and they're three miles apart. It might be just dinner between old friends. Have you considered that? She's been up there for a month. I'm surprised it took this long. And I'm not sure I appreciate your insinuations. Zoey's the one who chased him up there, I'll remind you."
"She's up there for a summer job."
"Oh, please. She couldn't teach sport-climbing in Phoenix?"
Kira groaned, "Okay. You're right, okay? Zoey chased him there. I'll give you that. But she's at a very sensitive stage. And with Ben having a steady girl up there, well frankly Renée I was relieved that Ben didn't call her, every week the silence went on. And so was Sara."
"Who?"
"Sara Newton. Zoey's landlady. I talk to Sara more than I talk to Zoey."
"For Godsakes"–
"Look, that's not important. The point is, I'd be okay with it if it's really just dinner between old friends, as you say. But if Ben is playing her, leading her on... Renée, are you absolutely certain that Ben and that other girl are still together?"
"Jesus, Kira. How should I know? They're kids. They're fickle. Three weeks is an eternity at their age. He said he loved her. But that was months ago. Now? Who can say."
"Can you find out? Maybe talk to Charlie?"
"No. I'm not calling my ex-husband to meddle in my son's personal relationships. Why not just let them figure it out? How about that?"
Kira said, "Sara Newton told me that no one in town has seen the Cullen girl or her family in at least a month. She's suggested that Ben could be rebounding. That would be crushing for Zoey, if it's true."
Renée said, with exasperation, "From what I've seen, your daughter is one woman who can handle herself. Frankly, I'm the one who should be worried about my son. I have to go. If you absolutely can't leave it alone, maybe you should consult Sara Newton."
_________
Ben on his jog home called Charlie at work to tell him they would have a visitor for dinner that night.
Charlie boomed, "Congrats, kid! It's been a month! Been starting to wonder, to be honest. This is great news, great news. I'll be home around five-thirty. That'll be time, right? To take a shower and everything?"
For half a beat, Ben was flummoxed. Charlie's enthusiasm for the plan seemed to have come from nowhere. Charlie's next words cleared up the confusion.
"Gonna be great to catch up with Edythe. It's been more than a month since you've had her over, and don't think I haven't noticed. Not that I've been counting the days, mind. Renée and I were starting to wonder if maybe you two had a bad falling out in that fight, no matter what you said after about it being no big deal. But you patched things up. That's good. Real good. And it'll be good to have someone for dinner who honestly appreciates my cooking."
Through much of this diatribe, Ben had been trying to get his father's attention. He exploited Charlie's first breath. "Dad. Zoey's coming for dinner."
Charlie stammered in disbelief, "What? Who? Not Edythe? Who's Zoey?"
"Zoey Martine, Dad."
"Her? The crazy rock climber who's been bugging Jake all summer?"
"What? No– that's backwards– that's– Dad, you and Billy gossip too much for your own good"–
"She's coming to dinner?"
"Yes, she is. She doesn't have a car up here. I'll take the truck and pick her up at six. Sound good?"
"Ben, I have to go. Gotta talk to Renée."
_________
He called Renée, and failed to reach her for a time, since she was tied up on the phone with Kira, on the same topic.
When he did get ahold of her and dropped his bomb, she flatly said, "I know."
"How? Did Ben call you?"
"No. Zoey's mother called me."
Charlie swore and upbraided her a bit, for withholding the information, even though she'd just learned of it, herself. She patiently suggested to him that he was daft.
Renée tried to make light of it. "Everyone should just calm down. Zoey's living up there for the summer, and they are best friends. It would be strange if they didn't get together once in a while, wouldn't it?" She did manage to pose the question levelly despite her own internal panic.
Charlie mused, "I suppose you might have a point, except this girl Martine's tight now with Billy's boy, Jacob. That's according to Billy, so it's bona fide. And of course our Ben's got Edythe Cullen. So what is this, you think? Just friends, or something?"
Renée said, "You sound hopeful there, Charlie. I see it differently. I'm saying they're young adults taking it slow, trying to figure it out for themselves."
"Sure, okay. Except anything but friends isn't fair to Billy Black's boy, with this Zoey leading him on as Billy says, and it isn't fair to Carlisle's girl Edythe, either."
"Not for you to say, Charlie," Renée chided. "None of this is really our business."
"Maybe, maybe not," he said, "But either way, I'm worried you might be right. Edythe's been gone for weeks. Haven't seen a wisp of her; it's like she dropped off the planet. And Ben has nothing to say about it."
"Have you asked him about it?"
"Well no, not as such"–
"Charlie, stop speculating and ask him, if you're concerned."
"Hey! I've wanted to, okay? But I haven't had the chance. It's not exactly an approachable subject, not after how he ran off to Phoenix over the girl and fell through a window a few months ago. I've been working up to talking to him about it, but now as I'm trying to get the question out, he comes right out and tells me this Zoey's comin' over for fish."
Renée groaned. "Please tell me you have something else on the menu besides that oily fat that you're clogging your arteries with."
"Edythe loves my cookin'."
Renée envisioned Edythe with a groan. She seemed strong and fit, certainly, elusive qualities that Renée could not put in proper context, because Edythe primarily came across as soft, curvy, motherly, in a word, voluptuous, rich to excess with every conceivable attractor of amorous males and the dread of any mother of sons.
"Edythe might tolerate your cooking, Charlie, no doubt for sake of amity when she visits. But Zoey is not Edythe."
"That's for sure," Charlie snapped.
Renée persisted, "Do you grasp that Zoey is a world-acclaimed super-athlete and health nut?"
"If she's so world famous, what's she coming around pestering me, for?"
"Uhh... because your son is her best friend, and he's invited her?"
Charlie didn't like this slippery loophole at all, but he could see no way around it.
"Well hell. What does the girl eat, then? Nuts and berries? Look, I'm on my way home right now. She's comin' in a half hour. I don't have time to run to the carry-out. I'll check the refrigerator. Maybe we got some yogurt or something."
Renée groaned.
Charlie told her, "I don't know what it all means. Can't figure it out. Ben's got a full time job patching himself up, and he's busy mending fences with Edythe, and now this. Don't know what this Martine girl's doing up here. Don't know why she has to butt in."
Renée said, "Oh, I don't know, Charlie. I'm across the country. You're right there, and you're the trained detective. As I understand it, Zoey hasn't rung your doorbell once. The way I hear it, Ben called on her, today. And I also hear that the fence-mending between Ben and Edythe Cullen might not be going so well."
"Oh yeah? Well where have you heard that, from ten thousand miles away?"
"Kira heard it from Sara Newton, who apparently knows everyone in town. Kira tells me Edythe's been incognito for a month. Any truth to that? Any chance things between Ben and this Edythe are on the rocks?"
"Out of the question. Ben and Edythe Cullen are totally solid."
But he worried, after the call, about whether he had adequately sold it, because he didn't know if he believed his own words. The fact was, Renée was right. He hadn't seen Edythe Cullen for ages. Not once since Yosemite.
_________
Ben heard Charlie clomping up the stairs for the shower the moment he retreated into his bedroom with a wet head and a towel around his waist. Through Ben's own shower he'd been roiled in self-debate over what to wear. He stood at the mirror on his closet door and rubbed the towel through his hair, no closer to a decision.
This was only dinner, with an old friend who had come up for the summer. They wouldn't even be going out. Charlie would be doing the cooking. No, he told himself forcefully, not a date at all. He should wear the typical shorts and old t-shirt that he would have worn on any other night alone with Charlie, for a typical bachelor feed at the kitchen table, followed by an hour in the basement gym.
He somehow managed to tangle his head in the towel and cursed with self-reproach. The quandary over what to wear had another dimension. He knew it, and he couldn't shake it. All through the shower he'd thought of nothing but Edythe, the possibility that even now she could be watching him, not just to safeguard him but also to watch for betrayals. He couldn't rule it out. What would she think about this completely innocent dinner between old friends, if she somehow observed it or somehow found out? Concern for Edythe's feelings on the matter prejudiced his own view of it. He had to consider it dinner between friends, and nothing more, because anything more felt like a betrayal.
And then there was the other thing.
He had to go soon, to pick her up. What would Zoey be wearing to this perfectly innocent dinner between old friends?
If he overdressed, he would be advertising his availability, and that would be bad, to lead her on, because he wasn't available, and Edythe would be coming back, if in fact she had ever left. Yet somehow, to underdress would be worse, wouldn't it? A dismissive contempt for her interest?
'Idiot,' he chided himself, 'don't overthink it. You asked her over. You're the host. You're obligated not to look like a slob. That doesn't mean you need to overdo it with a jacket and tie. If she comes in ratty sweats and thinks you've overdone it that's her own problem, and it doesn't mean anything.'
He dropped the towel and went into the closet for his best casual shirt, the white silk Tommy Bahama with the embroidered parrot and margarita glass. He buttoned up and then went to the bureau for his least threadbare olive cotton shorts.
"You should put the pictures back on the bookshelves," a soft harmonized soprano suggested.
He froze, shorts in hand, dressed only from the waist up, and slowly turned.
There she sat, on the bed, propped against the headboard, legs crossed and elbows on her knees. She was dressed casually herself, in a coral skirt and sleeveless natural linen blouse. He struggled to maintain eye contact. He didn't think she was wearing panties. She seldom ever did.
"This isn't what it looks like."
Edythe eyed his straining arousal with unabashed desire. "She will like you in that outfit, if you ever manage to pry yourself into it. Of course, she'll want you out of it, more than anything, so why bother putting it on? Oh, right. Dinner."
He heard Charlie come out of the shower. Edythe glanced at the bedroom door and said, with bemusement, "He won't be dressing up. He can't stand her." Edythe chuckled appreciatively at that observation, humored by it on several levels.
"He doesn't even know her," Ben disputed.
"He knows enough. Charlie is a police chief and trained EMT. He's a safety freak. Your precocious saffron friend is criminally reckless, in his view. He'd be much happier to see you with a homicidal hundred-six year old vampire."
"So would I."
Edythe grinned and raised her bare knees, to spread the skirt and let it drop to her thighs. Nope. No panties. "Here I am. Call your friend. Tell her dinner's off."
Ben snatched a pair of boxer shorts from his top drawer and nearly tore them down the front, getting them on. As he climbed into his olive shorts, he lamented, "You have no idea how hard this is."
Edythe shrugged without a care. "Au contraire. This is the easiest thing imaginable. Don't you see, Ben? How perfect she is for you? How perfect the two of you would be, together?"
"We are perfect together."
Edythe retorted, with sincere amusement and no bitterness, "In the two and a half months from Phoenix to Yosemite, you were in traction most of the time, and we nearly killed each other. Whereas you and Zoey, together, would be natural and effortless."
"What would that do to Jacob?" Pathetic, he thought, even as the words spilled out.
She concurred with that assessment and jumped right on it with a short laugh. "I'd advise you not to say anything of the sort to Zoey tonight."
"Okay, genius. How am I supposed to let her down, without rejecting her?"
"Exactly," she said with a wink that struck him with the force of deja-vu, "good luck with that. Benjamin. Seriously. The ten pictures. Take them out of the closet and put them back up. They'll make a strong, unambiguous impression on her."
"No they won't, because one, they're not going back up, and two, she is not seeing the inside of this bedroom."
"Okay," Edythe said, laden with skeptical good humor.
He laced up his shoes with angry, jerky movements. "I suppose you're going to listen in on the whole evening."
"Don't worry. I'll stay out of your way. But sure, I'll be up here, just hanging, should you change your mind about absconding to the nest."
On his way down the stairs he called out to Charlie, "Dad, I'm heading out to pick her up. Be back in about a half hour."
_________
Zoey didn't wait for the knock. She swept the door open and covered him with a plastic slicker.
"It's barely raining," he fretted, pleased by the concern yet irritated all the same.
"You fool," she chided. "That's a silk shirt. This drizzle will kill it."
"Oh, thanks."
She disappeared into her bedroom, saying, "Have a seat. I'm almost ready."
He had caught just a glimpse of her and thanked his stars that he hadn't underdressed by much. He'd seen her bare calves, which meant she was wearing some kind of dress or skirt.
"You look great in that, by the way," she called out.
"Thanks. I kind of went crazy over what to wear."
"Me, too."
"Listen Zoey, I promise we won't talk about Jacob"–
"Good, because this is a Jacob-free evening." She said it with an edge that sounded like a warning.
"Yes, agreed. But just this one thing. He told me this apartment is a boys-free zone, and this is the second time I've been in here."
"It's not boys-free. It's Jacob-free. Mother and Father do not approve."
"But they approve of me?"
"Completely different," she said airily, and neglected to specify exactly how.
She came out to present herself and shifted uncomfortably. "I had to get my other earring in," she explained. Then she prattled nervously. "Mostly I just wear studs, so the holes won't close, and I've always needed a mirror to get them on and off."
She wore a pale lavender dress, collarless and sleeveless. Like the last time he had seen her in something besides sweats, he was struck by her possession of a figure. She wore the same pearl necklace and matching earrings as last time. She blinked and looked at him bashfully.
"That is beautiful on you," he assured her.
"Thanks. I'm going to seed, I think."
He burst out laughing.
"Seriously. Ben, I could never do Freerider today. Sara proudly tells Kira that she's fattening me up. I've gained three and a half pounds in the month since El Cap. I hope I'm putting it in the right places."
On Zoey, a delta of three and a half pounds in either direction was impossible not to notice. He blushed a little bit, which she found intriguing, and then he admitted, "You look like you're filling out."
She turned scarlet and scoffed, "Shut up!" But she held her breath, too, oddly pleased that he'd noticed any difference at all.
"I don't think I've ever seen that dress," he mused.
"Yes, you have. It's not new. I wore it to the fall varsity letter banquet last year."
"Oh, sorry."
She enjoyed his blush and added, "I don't blame you for repressing it. We weren't even at the same table. I was sitting with Brucie-boy Paulsen."
"Oh, that's right. Thank you for wearing it for me."
"You're welcome."
She draped a Gore-Tex jacket over herself. They stopped at the door. She looked up at him and confided, "Before we go, I need to tell you about something that's been a bit concerning to me. I know you told me earlier that you and Edythe have moved past whatever happened in Yosemite."
"Uh-uh," he said, with a shake of his head. "This is an Edythe-free evening."
She rolled her eyes and admitted, "Okay. That's fair. But you got a free one, so I should, too."
"Fine. You get just one."
Zoey nodded and said, "I know you say you've patched things up, and you see her regularly. But no else has seen her in a month. It's the talk of Forks. No one has seen her since you went to Yosemite together, and with the weird jet crash and so on, there are too many coincidences. And also, I was in Yosemite, but I never even saw her there. The rumor is, she sat in the car the whole time. Some kind of fight."
"It wasn't a fight. Well... in a way it was a disagreement, but not about you."
"Ben"–
"Really. It wasn't. I mean, she doesn't like you. That's true enough. She's jealous. That's true too"–
"Wait, hold on. She's jealous? Of me?" The notion struck Zoey as utterly preposterous.
Ben found her skepticism equally preposterous. "Zoey. You're playing with me, right?"
Zoey threw up her arms and demanded, "How can that perfect Aphrodite be jealous of an ugly little spider like me?"
Ben clenched his eyes, shook his head, and hissed, "Girls, girls, girls. Zoey, you're beautiful, first of all. And the spider-girl, anti-gravity aspects just add to the allure. She was madly jealous of you before El Capitan. And now? The second person out of seven billion to free solo that rock, and the first woman, ever? But anyway, that's all secondary. You're not the reason she waited in the car."
"But it was a fight. Or a disagreement, or something."
"Yes. I think so."
"You think so?" she pressed, with a frown.
"I'm no longer sure what happened. I thought I knew at the time, but now it's become all confused in my head." It didn't help that she visited him every night, and increasingly, at all times of day. It didn't help that a half hour ago, she had helped him dress.
Zoey started to speak again, and he jumped in and protested, "We agreed, only one. Edythe-free-evening, remember?"
She protested, "Benjamin David Swan, I haven't asked my question, yet."
And she wouldn't step away from the door, until he let her do so.
"Fine."
She took a deep breath, eyes on his, and asked, "Have you two broken up?"
He spluttered wordlessly while she waited. He tried a few attempts to reply, and each one fell dead. He began to breathe rapidly, like a frightened child.
"Ben?"
"No. Definitely not. I mean, I know what it looks like. And sure, I'm aware of all the talk. Part of it is, she's not much of a daylight kind of person."
Zoey wondered if that was what Jacob and Leah had meant, when they had called her a vampire.
He grimaced and said, "Listen. We've completely patched up that whole Yosemite mess, and I see her all the time. Really."
_________
Zoey placed herself carefully on the pickup truck's vinyl bench seat, so as not to muss her dress, and tried the door three times before it closed. She frowned at the old AM radio, which seemed reminiscent of the open mouth of a snake, with its black analog station dial and faded red volume and tuning knobs. She sniffed and remarked on the overbearing pine air freshener and spearmint gum.
Ben provided, "Half a century of chain-smokers. I'm sure the cab's been vomited in a few times, too."
"Gross."
He nodded and turned the ignition with a pump of the gas. The entire vehicle shook, and the engine seemed to join them in the cabin. Zoey frantically grabbed for the door, as though prepared to bolt the impending explosion.
"It's fine," he assured her with an easy laugh. "It sounds better than usual. The engine's already warmed up."
Zoey muttered under her breath, "So ridiculous." But then she added aloud, "Well, it's better than my car. I do admit I'd feel rather imprisoned, if I didn't have the climbing school to occupy my time. If I do stay on for the fall, I'm definitely going to bring Cleo and the Acura back."
Ben pulled out onto the road. "I can't believe your mother and father would allow that."
"Oh, they'll fight it tooth and nail, but it's my decision. I'm eighteen."
"Still," he said, "don't you think it'd be a mistake? Education-wise? The high school here is truly horrible."
"Says the fool who's come up here for three semesters," she snipped wryly. "I don't know. I'll agree with you on the school, but I already have early acceptance in Ivy, which makes senior year a formality, and I'm gaining valuable life experience."
Ben groped for a way to more effectively get his point across. "Zoey, all I'm saying is, this is Forks. Home of wood and pulled pork. It's purgatory. And sure, you're right, I came here for a year and a half penance. But I have a reason to be here. You don't."
She looked at him archly and asked, "Don't I?"
Ben stared at the reflections of his headlights on the slick road and counted the passing telephone poles. He had no idea what to say.
She seemed to realize that she'd put him on the spot. She let him suffer for twenty telephone poles and quietly said, "And anyway, I'm still thinking about it."
The home looked smaller to Zoey in its natural milieu than it had seemed on the notorious Facetime session with Ben back in the winter– lower, more narrow, more drafty, more exposed, with far too many windows for its size. She could see right through the porous sponge of a structure into the backyard. A tall, bulky, hirsute silhouette moved about inside, Ben's father, Charlie.
He did not come to the door to greet them. He called, "In here."
Ben led her into the newly renovated kitchen, just recently finished, and she felt as though she were stepping back into yesteryear. Charlie, from the stove, urged without looking back at them, "Have a seat. Any one. No difference."
The qualifier made no sense to Zoey, because she didn't know that for eighteen years the chairs had never matched. Ben went into a digression on the months-long renovation project and all the effort, displacement and privation that had gone into producing a new kitchen that looked forty years old.
Charlie had showered and changed into jeans and a blue cotton shirt, workplace colors in civilian threads. Ben silently thanked God that Charlie hadn't worn the frilly pink apron, but then he reconsidered and speculated that if Edythe had come calling, he would have dug it out.
Now he worked at the stove and asked, without looking at them, "So how are you enjoying Forks?"
Zoey said, "This is the first time I've left the Newtons' parking lot, and we came straight here. So far, I'm rapt."
"Lots to see," he said. "Helps to get out, take a look around."
'Two more weeks of classes," she said. "Then I'll have some time to do some trekking. What do you think, Ben? I could use a tour guide."
Charlie said, "This place is new to Ben, too, if you think about it. Now Jacob Black on the other hand knows these woods like the back of his hand."
Zoey gave Ben a wry face and mouthed, "Jacob-free-evening."
Ben smirked and chuckled.
She looked up with concern and a bit of alarm at the bubbling and spitting of the griddle, the oil spatter in the air, and Charlie's largely ineffectual evasive maneuvers. Charlie, for his part, registered that his counsel about Jacob Black, pacing in the wings, had gone right over their heads and flown through the window.
She asked Ben in a hushed voice, "Is it supposed to be doing that?"
Charlie overheard and interjected, "High heat is essential to this kind of cooking. That's why I use a propane gas stove. No electric for me. An open flame is the only proper way to cook. Has Ben told you all about Harry Clearwater's Secret Fish Fry?"
Zoey blinked at the back of his neck, nonplussed, and asked, "Is it some kind of cooked trout?"
"That's right," he said, distractedly, "it's a breed of trout."
Zoey leaned to Ben and punched him in the arm. "Hey, buckaroo. Got any pictures to show me?"
He flustered immediately, a reaction she could not have possibly understood, because she could not know that he construed it as inviting herself to his bedroom. He was in the process of stammering that he had decided not to put them back up, when Charlie piped in, without looking at them, "Hey there kid, the builders didn't touch the living room. Still got every year on the mantle."
Ben exhaled with relief, stood up, and urged, "This way."
Charlie watched them go into the living room and didn't know what to make of it. He didn't know what to say to Billy. He didn't know what Jacob would think about this mundane dinner between two ordinary friends. He couldn't understand how Edythe Cullen could be so easily intimidated and driven away by another girl, especially a tortured soul like that one. He couldn't fathom the depth of this Martine person's gall, using Jacob to come up here and worm her way into Ben's life, when he clearly already had a steady girl. To Charlie's mind, it was a mess, a complete mess from top to bottom. Billy Black had told him that Leah Clearwater warned Jacob that the Martine girl was poison. Leah Clearwater was right. Harry's girl was exactly right.
Zoey walked slowly up the line of yearbook pictures with an attitude of contentment, colored by satisfaction and possessiveness. In almost none of the pictures did she see a stranger. Virtually all of the photographs, after all, had been sent up here with first class postage. She had been there, with Ben, for all but five of them, from infancy through the toddler years to kindergarten. Even then, she had known him. As kindergarten graduates, they had declared their love.
"Your dad doesn't like me," she asserted.
Ben didn't dispute it. By the same token, he'd never been Casimir's favorite, either, but that was secondary to her point. He said, "It's not that he doesn't like you. He just doesn't know what to make of it, and Renée gave him no help, when he called her in a panic this afternoon."
Zoey exhaled and shook her head. "Kira called Renée, too. I doubt she's any wiser for it, either."
Ben groused, "The 'rents are all on high alert, because they don't know what this is."
"But we do, and that's all that matters," Zoey said.
"It's ours," Ben said.
"Yes," she agreed. "Right there for the taking."
Charlie called them into dinner and in the same breath confirmed that all of the parents were in cahoots, with the meddling controls dialed up to ten. "Now Renée reminded me you're an earthy-crunchy health nut and so on, and she warned me you wouldn't like this style of cooking."
Ben said, "And you went ahead with deep-fry cuisine anyway."
"I know my way around my own kitchen. Your mother's out of her mind to think she can judge what she hasn't tried."
He presented Zoey with a laden serving plate. She looked speechlessly at three filets of fried brook trout and an enormous Idaho potato, gutted down the middle and stuffed with a quarter stick of butter and topped by what looked like an entire package of grated pepperjack cheese.
She stared at Ben, her emerald eyes huge with panic.
He tried hard not to laugh and whispered, "You do not have to eat all of that."
"Dig in, now," Charlie advised, "or you'll never know what you're missing."
She experimentally scraped at the coating of greasy fried breadcrumbs and found a buried layer of scaled skin, still silvery in color, since the caked-on muck had insulated it from the inferno.
Charlie shoved a double portion of fish, balanced upon both his fork and knife, into his mouth. He watched Zoey pick experimentally at her plate.
Zoey thought to herself that free solo rock climbing hadn't killed her yet, but a summer's worth of dinner at Ben's house just might.
"So tell me, Zoey, are you partial to eating your food raw, like Ben here?"
Zoey looked between them with big eyes and stammered, "When I can get it. And trust it. When I know where it's from and that it's safe to eat. Then, sure. Fish only, though. I don't eat red meat."
"All that crazy climbing you do, I don't know where you get the energy for it, if you don't eat proper. Maybe that's why you're skin and bones."
"Dad!" Ben cried.
"What? She is, isn't she?"
Zoey haughtily said, "I get plenty of protein. From fish. And nuts."
"Nutty," Charlie said.
Ben threw his fork. Charlie ignored it.
"I'm also partial to Cool Ranch Doritos."
"Don't overdo it. Those things will kill you."
Zoey, with sporting bemusement, began to suspect that she was incapable of saying anything that this man would agree with, even accidentally.
Ben in a low voice warned, "Dad. Enough. Dinner's great. Good job."
"Well how would your friend here know, is all I'm saying. Some people who aren't world famous or whatever appreciate down home cooking. Some people tuck in with gusto, and I could name a few off the top of my head."
"Please don't."
Zoey made a show of digging through white flesh impregnated with what smelt like bacon fat and said, "I didn't actually try to become world famous. I'm not on social media at all, for one thing, and I told as few people as possible. In fact, I would have preferred to make the climb anonymously, and I personally told just one close friend, as I recall, prior to getting there."
Charlie shot an accusatory look at Ben and blurted, "So you told everyone on earth except the girl's parents?"
Zoey laughed and said, "Ben didn't tell anyone except Jacob Black. That boy has a big mouth, but to his credit he bit his lip bloody keeping the secret, which is the only reason I'm still talking to him. No, the word got out when I was up there rehearsing. I did dry runs and on-sights for six weeks and camped with a bunch of kids from UCLA. Word was bound to get out."
Charlie suggested, "That was your mistake then, young lady. You should have driven down there on the night of, and just started right up, sight unseen."
Zoey nodded silently and quietly said, "Next time I just might try that."
Charlie exploded, "Now that's not what I meant!"
Ben yelled, "Dad, enough."
"Well, listen to her. 'Next time.' Shouldn't have done it the first time. That was my point."
"You've made your point."
"No– no. I don't know if I have." He addressed Zoey. He chewed, talked, and conducted with his fork, all at once.
Zoey looked on placidly, with a curious, clinical interest, all thought of dinner forgotten. And just as well. In her estimation, the piles of meat on her plate looked and smelt vile. Maybe the golden girl, Edythe Cullen, stuffed her face with this swill with a smile, but Zoey had limits and principles to uphold.
Charlie sought to explain the reasons for his umbrage. "Going up that cliff that morning was irresponsible and selfish. You're an only child for Chrissakes."
"I know that," she said, calmly.
"If you'd nosedived off that cliff, think what that would have done to your parents."
"Dad! Zoey is a legal adult."
"That's right, kid, she is. And you're not. So pick up that fork you threw, sit your butt down, and listen to your elders."
Zoey softly said, "It's okay, Ben. I can take care of myself."
"You've done a bang-up job so far," Charlie mocked. "You kids. Only think about yourselves."
"In fact I thought about my parents all winter long. That's why I worked my tail off to finish school a month and a half early, set camp at the trailhead, and rehearse on the route so many times that I had every step and handhold memorized on the morning of my birthday. Which according to peer consensus has been a winning strategy. I didn't stumble up blindly, 'sight-unseen,' as you say, and fall to my death. I felt comfortable and in control all the way up, and I topped out without a scratch. Though I'll grant you, the media exposure was annoying. Especially the damned webcam drones. I nearly fell a couple times trying to swat them."
"Oh, you're a clever one. You and this kid," he denounced, jabbing a thumb at Ben, "peas in a pod. You're only alive today by the grace of God"–
"Now on that we'll need to disagree"–
"And if you'd checked out that day, you would have denied your poor parents any chance for grandchildren."
Ben, hearing this, just spluttered, but Zoey despite being mortified asked, "Is that all I am? All I'm fit for? I'm a breeder?"
Her convivial host soberly considered the question and said, "Well, if you truly can't have kids, for medical reasons, there's an extenuating circumstance. Not that suicide's a valid alternative in my book. But most who don't breed these days, can. And you tell me, Miss Know-It-All, how many of them are curing cancer or solving the world food shortage? Zippo. That's how many. They're slacking themselves to the grave, and no one will remember how or why they went. And that's where all your clever crap about a higher purpose to life falls down. You think you'll be a household name a hundred years from now, for fooling around on some dumb rockpile? I've tagged and buried a whole lot of reckless fools over the years, and I don't need either of you to tell me that the world is covered from end to end with flowerless graves. Odds are, only your kids will remember you, and if you're lucky, they'll tell their own kids about you. They're the only people who'll remember you. And if you have no kids, no one will."
Zoey stared at the Forks Chief of Police with her mouth open.
"Charlie, enough!" Ben roared, with a fist on the table. "What has she done to earn all this hostility?"
Charlie rubbed at his face. Flushed scarlet shone through his beard. He seemed to grow haggard before their eyes. He shoved his plate to the middle of the table and stood with a screech of the chromium steel chair against the new tiles. He gripped the counter and struggled to breathe. He quietly said, "It's not her. It's you."
He turned and felt ashamed at the sight of both of them, staring at him with their mouths open, as though disgusted and terrified simultaneously. He glanced at the girl and said, "Way out of line. Apologies."
"Umm"–
"I was already a wreck before he brought you over. Just knowing you were coming."
"If I'm not welcome here," she began, starting to rise.
"No, no. Not my point, for crying out loud. 'Course you're welcome here. And what you did on that rockpile, hell of an accomplishment. Reckless, sure. I'm Joe Safety, so it's gonna rub against the grain. But that gives me no cause to belittle it. Listen, Miss Martine"–
"Zoey, sir."–
"Call me Charlie, now. What I'm trying to say is, it's not your fault at all, it's all me, but you kind of set me off when you said Ben here's the only idiot you told. Putting all your cards in this fool's hand, well all I can say is, it's proof of God that you're still alive."
Now he crossed his arms over his chest and addressed Ben.
"This girl of yours is obviously some kind of rock star, no pun intended. No denying that, okay? But just the fact she's the first woman in history ever to do what she did means, her odds of making one tiny mistake and cashing out were stacked up high against her. Tell me I'm wrong."
"Dad, she was one hundred-ten percent prepared"–
"Cut the bull, son! It's a serious question. It has a yes or no answer. Am I wrong. Yes or no."
Zoey stared between them, speechless. To divert herself from the stress, she began to pick at the brook trout, and her fork made it all the way to her mouth. Her brain's pleasure centers and her gastrointestinal tract, for the duration of her complete diversion from the feeding ritual, found the fare quite agreeable.
"No, Dad. You're not wrong."
"Thank you," Charlie praised, with a theatrical exhale. "You're capable of reason, after all. Now, this girl was down there for a month and a half, and her antics made it onto social media. That's all true. No denying it. But for a time– for a long time, over which there was an opportunity to run intervention, talk some sense into this girl and dial it all back– you were the only sorry-ass on earth who knew her plans. Tell me I'm wrong."
"I did tell Jacob"–
"Christ, kid, that boy's besotted for the girl, and you know it. He'd roll over hot coals for her. Apart from Jake, no one on earth knew but you. For a long time. Am I wrong, or not?"
Ben hollowly whispered, "You're not wrong."
Charlie took his chair, retrieved his plate, and dug in. "Look," he said through half-masticated Harry's Fish Fry, "didn't mean to come across so heavy. Kids your age don't know a damned thing about anything, but you think you know everything. Nothing's changed. I was the same way, once. Kid, if you've told me once, you've told me a hundred times that you love this girl. Right? Now granted, in a way I'll never understand, for the life of me. But whatever it is, however it is, we both know on your first night back here, you put her pictures all over and turned your bedroom into some kind of shrine."
"Dad"–
"Shut up. Let me finish. Now this Yosemite business. This beautiful girl, this best friend that you love, came down without a scratch, and now she has her whole life ahead of her. Good for her, and good for you. But imagine a different ending. Zoey, you're a red smear at the bottom of that cliff, for everyone to see, including your parents." He turned to his darling son. "Kid, you're the one fool on earth who knew about it for a time, and maybe you could have walked it back. Now, maybe you can go through your life still able to sleep at night. Wouldn't surprise me, if you could. Not at all. But me? I'm your father. I'm just the pathetic shitheel who raised you. And made you what you are. If this best friend of yours had died on El Cap that day, well hell. I can tell you this for nothing. As the father of the fool who could have stopped it, forget all about being able to sleep at night. I wouldn't have been able to live with myself. Not for another minute."
Ben closed his eyes and implored, through his teeth, "Dad, can't you just for one night ease up and show some appreciation for her accomplishment?"
Charlie gasped, leapt to his feet with his plate, and slammed it so hard in the sink that it shattered.
"Damn it," he muttered. "you haven't heard a single goddamned word."
He clenched his fists, opened them, and faced his only son. "Accomplishment? First fool in history to do whatever and learn nothing from it? Kid, this best friend of yours, this flash in the pan, all she's done so far with her life is inspire a hundred copycat suicides."
__________________________
Next: Chapter 32, PROVISO SIX.