Free Blackbird by Anna Carey Page A

drink.”
    He’s not smiling when he says it—the only reason you know he isn’t kidding. “Why?”
    “Because . . . I don’t know. I just don’t.”
    “So you don’t drink or smoke. . . . Why are you selling pot, then?”
    A strange smirk crosses his lips. He leans in, his voice lower than before. “Easy on the judgment, Miss I’m-Wanted-by-the-LAPD.”
    “Come on. . . . It’s a fair question. . . .”
    “I sell it to make money. Isn’t that why most people do it?”
    You take another sip of your drink, sucking down the watery mix. “You go to high school with these people?”
    “They’re private-school kids,” he says. “I’m at Marshall High. I don’t exist to them.”
    You don’t know exactly where Marshall is, but it explains the drive to this house, how it took over half an hour, winding down through the narrow canyon roads, unable to see beyond the headlight glow. Now that you’re out here you feel farther away from everything that’s happened, from the worry that people might recognize you from the news. “Am I doing a good job at being ‘normal’?” you ask.
    Ben laughs. “Yeah, you fit right in. Do you feel normal?”
    “I feel more normal than I have all week.”
    “Usually I’ll just stay out as late as I can after school,” Ben says. “Kids go up to Griffith Park and hang out in the parking lot. Or I’ll just drive around. But today was the first day that I actually wanted to come home. It was weird.”
    “Thanks . . . I guess?”
    Ben laughs. “I meant weird, like . . . good weird.”
    While he was at school today you noticed the picture on the fireplace. His dad, his mom, and him, when he was around twelve or thirteen. They were at some formal event. Ben was dressed in a suit and tie. His mother was laughing, her eyes looking off to the side of the camera. They seemed happy, frozen in this perfect moment.
    “When did it happen?” you ask. “Your dad, everything with your mom . . .”
    “My dad died three years ago. He was ten years older than my mom and he just got sick. He had this cough, and he just kept ignoring it, he kept going to work. And then it got worse. Then he was in the hospital . . . and then he died.”
    “What was it?”
    “Pneumonia. After he died I was so mad because it was just stupid, you know? If he had just gone in sooner he probably wouldn’t have died.”
    You think again of the funeral, of the church that existed in those few brief minutes. When were you there? Was it your own father? You want to mention it but it doesn’t feel right—like you’d be comparing his life to some imagined life, something you’re not even sure is real.
    He looks out into the party, watching people push through the crowded yard, some holding their cups above their heads. “And my mom . . . I don’t know when that happened. I know when my dad died she had to sort through all this stuff. There was a lot he hadn’t told her about and I know she was stressed. But then I realized she’d kind of lost it . . . she started hiding things from me. She was acting like a different person.She went in two months ago.”
    You move your hand toward his, slipping your fingers underneath his fingers just to see how it feels. His expression is more serious, and for a moment you feel tentative, nervous even. His face is just inches from yours.
    Ben picks up your hand, squeezing it. He pulls it closer to him, treating it like some delicate thing, turning it over, pressing it between his palms. Then he looks out into the party, where a few more kids have jumped into the pool with their clothes on. One girl sits on the stairs in her jean shorts, her shirt and hair soaked, her mascara running onto her cheeks. “So that is the story,” Ben says. He turns to you, leans in, smiles. “Any more questions? Can we just hang out now?”
    “No more questions,” you say.
    “Good, then let’s get out of here.” He hops up, pulling you to stand. You slip your bare