You Go First

  Dedication

  To Marianne

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Part I. MONDAY

  Girl with a Soda

  Life According to Ben, Part I

  Starfish

  Life According to Ben, Part II

  Plain and Simple

  Life According to Ben, Part III

  Pear

  Part II. TUESDAY

  Life According to Ben, Part IV

  The Anti-Clique

  Life According to Ben, Part V

  Not Just Lunch

  Life According to Ben, Part VI

  Probably Not

  Life According to Ben, Part VII

  All Lined Up

  Life According to Ben, Part VIII

  Part III. WEDNESDAY

  Life According to Ben, Part IX

  That Minnesota Feeling

  Life According to Ben, Part X

  Not Proud

  Life According to Ben, Part XI

  Pick Something Real

  Life According to Ben, Part XII

  Part IV. THURSDAY

  River

  Life According to Ben, Part XIII

  Nows

  Life According to Ben, Part XIV

  Questions

  Life According to Ben, Part XV

  Confession

  Life According to Ben, Part XVI

  She Wondered

  Part V. FRIDAY

  Life According to Ben, Part XVII

  If Anyone Asks

  Life According to Ben, Part XVIII

  Only

  Life According to Ben, Part XIX

  Straight Ahead

  Life According to Ben, Part XX

  Soldier at Attention

  Life According to Ben, Part XXI

  Hemlock

  Part VI. SATURDAY

  Life According to Ben, Part XXII

  Just Like the Sky

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Monday

  equilibrium n : a state of balance

  Girl with a Soda

  Rabbit Hole: Rabbits sometimes dig holes for protection. Once the hole is there, they can crawl inside and hide. Other rabbit holes may lead to vast underground mazes known as warrens, which is where the rabbits live. “Warren” also describes a densely populated building.

  Twelve-year-old Charlotte Lockard balanced an unopened Dr Pepper upright on her hand and thought: This is what it feels like to hold my dad’s heart.

  She’d read online that the heart weighed about twelve ounces.

  Same as the Dr Pepper.

  She was firmly rooted in the glow of a Crozer Hospital vending machine until a woman with tired eyes and gray hair said, “Excuse me?” Charlotte mumbled a half apology and hurried back to the waiting room, where her mother sniffled into tissues and blamed it on allergies.

  Normally her mother wouldn’t let her drink Dr Pepper, but these weren’t normal times.

  Two hours earlier, Charlotte had been in life sciences. A knock landed on Ms. Schneider’s door as Charlotte chewed the end of her pencil and stared at the discussion topic on her paper.

  There are about 1,500 species of starfish. They live primarily in the intertidal zone, which is also known as the littoral zone or foreshore. Organisms along the intertidal zone are uniquely adept at surviving in harsh environments. Describe some characteristics of the intertidal zone versus the peritidal zone.

  Charlotte had just finished writing “The intertidal zone is the area between the tides—i.e., it exists above water at low tide and below water at high tide—which differs from the peritidal zone, a wider area that extends from above the highest tide level to below the lowest tide level,” when Ms. Schneider called her name. Ms. Schneider, tall and lean, stood next to Ms. Khatri, the school counselor, who was short and round. They were opposites side by side. Compare and contrast. And they were both frowning.

  “Did something happen to my dad?” Charlotte asked, without getting up from her seat. She felt the other kids’ eyes on her. That’s when she decided she should probably stand up and follow Ms. Khatri out the door, where she discovered the answer was yes.

  He’d had a heart attack and crashed the car in front of Old Navy before being brought to Crozer Hospital for emergency surgery.

  And now she was here, drinking forbidden soda and watching her mother read Us Weekly, which is something her mother would never read in real life. But Charlotte knew she wasn’t really reading it, because her reading glasses were perched on her head. Eyesight is the first thing to go after fifty, her mother always said. And Charlotte knew why. The lens of the eye hardened over time and made it difficult to focus—something Charlotte learned after she crawled into a rabbit hole.

  That’s what her dad called it when she got swept up researching useless information online.

  “You’ve crawled into your rabbit hole again,” he would say.

  Charlotte sipped her soda. She stared at the WAITING ROOM sign and thought: If you unshuffle and rearrange some of the letters of waiting room, you get migration, which is kind of the opposite of waiting. It was a good word scramble, all things considered, because her father loved birds. He’d joined a birding club after he retired from teaching art history at Swarthmore College last year. Sometimes he veered off the sidewalk when he walked because he was too busy looking up. If there weren’t any birds, he’d look at leaves instead.

  “Look at the shape of this one, Charlotte,” he would say, a leaf in the center of his palm. “See how the lines branch off here? And see the fringe on the outside? Beautiful, isn’t it? Art.”

  And Charlotte would nod, because she just wanted to get wherever they were going.

  Flip, flip, flip. The sound of her mother with the magazine crawled under Charlotte’s skin. Charlotte’s mother was a statistician and usually hovered over information like a hawk, but she turned the pages so quickly that it was obvious she wasn’t reading a word. She just needed to be busy.

  “Did you tell Bridget what happened?” her mother asked.

  “Yes.” Bridget was her best friend. Of course she’d told her.

  Charlotte slid down in her chair and stared at a discarded straw on the floor.

  “How long until Dad gets out of surgery?” Charlotte asked.

  “I don’t know.” Her mother glanced at the clock on the wall. “Soon, I hope.”

  Charlotte was prepared for anything. Last year, when her father got a stent in his heart, she went down a rabbit hole and spent two hours watching open-heart surgeries and transplants. She knew what was happening with her dad at this very moment. He was hooked up to a heart-lung bypass machine. They’d probably already stopped his heart so they could operate on it.

  Charlotte finished her soda in big gulps and went to the bathroom. Anything to get away from the flip, flip, flip.

  “Did you wash your hands?” her mother asked, when she got back. “There are a million germs floating around hospitals.”

  Charlotte didn’t answer. She secretly rolled her eyes instead. As if she didn’t know about Acinetobacter baumannii, a bacteria that teemed on bed rails, supply carts, and floors. As if she didn’t know that this species of bacteria could survive for long periods of time and was found in nearly half of all hospital rooms. As if she wasn’t aware that it was an opportunistic parasite that preyed on people with weakened immune systems.

  “Will we be able to see him when he’s in recovery?” Charlotte asked.

  “If all goes well. The doctor said you have to be at least twelve to visit recovery and ICU. You lucked out.”

  Charlotte looked for the straw again, but it wasn’t there. Did someone pick i
t up while she was in the restroom?

  She focused on the carpet instead.

  “Did you know starfish have hearts, too?” she said. “A human heart can beat a hundred times a minute, but a starfish’s heart only beats six times.”

  Her mother paused. “I didn’t know that. About starfish, I mean.”

  “They’re technically called ‘sea stars,’ but everyone calls them starfish. We’re dissecting one in life sciences soon.”

  Flip, flip, flip.

  The carpet had a hexagon pattern.

  The sum of the interior angles of any hexagon was 720 degrees.

  Charlotte stared and stared at those interior angles until they barely existed anymore.

  Life According to Ben

  Part I

  Eleven-year-old Benjamin Boxer had played approximately four hundred games of online Scrabble since getting his new phone three months earlier. He’d been dedicated to a single feverish goal: to unseat his nemesis—a twelve-year-old girl named Lottie Lock—and become number one on the leaderboard. He and Lottie had met on an online Scrabble message board specifically sanctioned for elementary school students, but Lottie lost access when she started middle school, so they decided to battle one-on-one to experience direct combat. They only played each other, but their scores were tallied with all the other Scrabble players and thus far, Lottie had nudged him out.

  It was a friendly rivalry. They exchanged dozens of texts back and forth over the summer—you call that a play?, sorry/not-sorry about your devastating loss, prepare to suffer my vernacular wrath, etc., etc.—but they also complimented worthy performances, like the time Ben played ANT and Lottie won with ANTHEM. So they weren’t exactly Superman and Lex Luthor, but still. . . .

  Ben considered it healthy to have a nemesis and he was determined to overtake first position with his own username: “Ben Boot,” in honor of fellow Ravenclaw Terry Boot, an obscure member of Dumbledore’s Army. Then, less than thirty minutes after the end of a school day in September, the unthinkable happened. (Actually, it was totally thinkable, but Ben still hadn’t expected it; at least not yet.) Somehow, Lottie Lock had slipped on her game and Ben Boot had advanced to first place with the word VINE, of all things.

  Ben immediately took a screenshot and darted out of his room, down the hall, and into the kitchen so he could share the joyous news with his parents, who had—by a stroke of seemingly good fortune—taken the day off. They were certain to lift him on their shoulders and carry him through the neighborhood. In spirit, anyway.

  Lucky for him, his mom and dad were already standing side by side, which was kind of weird because they were talking in whispers, and his mom was drinking coffee even though it was three in the afternoon, and their faces were very serious until they heard him come in. That’s when their serious faces morphed into something far more concerning: fake nonchalance.

  “Ben,” his mother said, like he was a long-lost relative who had just appeared for a friendly dinner.

  “Son,” his dad said.

  Things were definitely weird.

  “We were just about to call you in,” said his mother.

  His father nodded. “We have an announcement.”

  Ben looked from his mother to his father, then sat down at the kitchen island and laid his phone facedown. The joyous news would have to wait, apparently.

  The expression on his parents’ faces was unfamiliar, so the “announcement” was clearly significant. There was only one thing it could be, in Ben’s mind. The three of them were escaping the dregs of Louisiana and moving to Michigan. That’s where Mr. and Mrs. Boxer had gone to college and they always talked about going back. Each time the subject came up, Ben imagined himself building snowmen, strutting down the halls of a new school, watching the leaves change color on the trees. Hiking up mountains, even. He was desperate to leave the hot, sticky swamps of south Louisiana and live in the magical wonderland of Ann Arbor, Michigan. He’d never been to Ann Arbor. Or Michigan. But anything was better than Lanester, Louisiana.

  Ben sat on his hands so he wouldn’t wiggle out of his seat. He was suddenly antsy. The Scrabble victory, coupled with this forthcoming announcement, was too much for his nerves. He packed his imaginary bags, mentally started a new game against Lottie, and inhaled the nonexistent scent of his new school, all while his parents moved even closer together on the other side of the island.

  They both started talking at the same time, then stopped. His father cleared his throat.

  “You go first, Delia,” he said.

  Ben’s mother looked into her mug and began. “Your father and I . . .”

  . . . have decided it’s time to make a move.

  . . . are finally following through on those Michigan plans.

  . . . can’t live this small-town life any more.

  “. . . are getting a divorce.”

  The room swelled and swallowed him, all while he sat on his hands.

  He swayed in his seat. He wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. For one thing, his mother had said it to her coffee, not to him. Plus it didn’t make any sense. Other parents got divorced. Not his. Mr. and Mrs. Boxer were Mr. and Mrs. Boxer. They were both dark haired and gawky. They were both brilliant chemists. They both worked in industrial labs. They were the same age. Went to the same college. They never yelled, fought, or argued, at least not that Ben had ever heard, and Ben was home when he wasn’t at school. Ben didn’t know much about dating and all that—he knew nothing, actually—but he was certain that his parents weren’t the kind of couple who got divorced.

  He stuck his index fingers in both ears simultaneously and wiggled them around, like he was clearing the pathways of wax and other obstructions.

  “I think I misheard,” he said.

  He knew he hadn’t, of course. But it just didn’t make any sense, and he lived in a world of sensible things. Every nonnegative real number had a unique nonnegative square root. E was the most-used letter in the English language. Cookie dough was the ideal ice cream flavor. And Delia and Stephen Boxer were not the type of people who got divorced.

  “No,” his mother said, softly.

  She finally looked up, and that’s when he knew she was right.

  He’d heard it.

  Correctly.

  “But,” said Ben. He didn’t have another part to the sentence. Just “but.”

  “I know it doesn’t make much sense to you now,” said his father. “But the truth is, relationships evolve over time.”

  No, no. This was all wrong. “Evolve”? The continued development of a genotype as it interacts with its environment over millions of years—that’s evolution. Mutations in DNA sequence? Evolution. The differing beaks on finches in the Galapagos Islands: evolution. This was not evolution. This was the opposite of evolution.

  Wait—what was the opposite of evolution?

  Ben’s sharp and well-oiled brain became a pile of mush. He couldn’t think straight. This was all wrong. What happened to Ann Arbor? When did this so-called evolution happen? Just last week the three of them watched Make Me Famous together. They’d passed objective judgments on the contestants’ performances. His father had prepared an enormous bowl of buttered popcorn. Ben remembered thinking: Look at us, the Boxers, the all-American family, watching reality television together and eating popcorn.

  He’d almost said it out loud, but he hadn’t.

  Maybe he should have.

  Or had they already decided by then?

  Surely they had. You don’t decide to get divorced in a week—do you?

  Both of his parents were looking at him, but they were the ones who were supposed to be speaking—weren’t they?

  The opposite of evolution. What was it?

  “Your father is moving into his own apartment, but we’re going to stay right here,” his mother said. Her hands were still wrapped around the coffee mug. Her knuckles were white. “We’ll still be a family, Ben. We’ll just be in different places. And you can talk to your dad or go over to
his place any time you want.”

  Wait—his father had an apartment? When did all this happen?

  I should have paid more attention, Ben thought. I wasn’t paying attention.

  “I know it’s a lot to process,” his father added. “But we’ll answer any questions you have. And if there’s anything you want to say to us, you can speak freely. You know that.”

  Speak freely.

  Ben opened his mouth, which had become a large, dry, gaping hole with no air going in or out.

  “I,” Ben said, as if it was a complete sentence.

  He tried again: “I.”

  He looked at his father. He stared at his mother’s white knuckles. His heart collapsed on the floor and disappeared into the kitchen tiles.

  “I’m first on the leaderboard,” he said.

  Starfish

  Rabbit Hole: Sea stars’ vital organs are located in the arms. If they lose an arm, they have the ability to grow it back. So if they get hurt, they have the potential to grow into something new. Lizards can regenerate, too—in fact, reptiles are some of the world’s most resilient animals.

  Charlotte was excited that she was going to dissect a starfish. The impending assignment had taken her down several rabbit holes—starfish led to marine invertebrates; marine invertebrates led to sea anemones; sea anemones led to fossil records—but as she followed her mother to the recovery room, heart thumping with her footsteps, an image sprang into her head and she couldn’t shake it out: the starfish, a scalpel, and her hand on both. And then the starfish was gone and it was her father instead.

  “Charlotte?” her mother said, once she realized her daughter wasn’t at her heels. Mrs. Lockard stopped in the sterile hospital hallway and turned around, both eyebrows raised. Charlotte hadn’t realized that she’d stopped walking. Her mother was several feet ahead now, obediently following Dr. Ansari, the surgeon. “Are you okay?”

  Charlotte discovered that her voice had disappeared.

  She’d told her father about the starfish dissection the week before; how excited she was, and how they’d work on frogs and earthworms later in the year.