Ben There

Chapter 2
Late February; Helping Friends

Chapter Description: His parents' new changes don't seem too bad to Ben, and he gets to know some people from his school better too.

Late February; Helping Friends

Gladton Hall Prep Day is a school for over-privileged adolescents located in a medium sized township on the close-in fringes of a humongous city. It isn’t the most prestigious private school in the area, few of its student’s families have more than two servants, and many, like Ben’s, only have a part-time maid, but it is well known and, according to its brochures, universally respected and admired.

Of the seven hundred some odd students (some are very odd) and around ninety adults (counting secretaries, janitors and such) that spend their days at G.H.P.D., Ben had only learned the names of his classroom teachers and, maybe, eight students during his first six weeks there, but on Valentine’s Day he met many more.

He met Ms Vanderjung, his counselor, during homeroom the first thing Wednesday morning, and she assured him that she had been watching him, and that he could come visit her whenever he wished. She also told him where he was to go during his new study period, and that other changes to his schedule were going to be made soon.

He met Mrs. Abrams, the nurse, because, during the doctor’s appointment yesterday, he’d been told he needed weekly shots that would help him have more energy (he assumed they were some kind of vitamins or allergy medicine), and the school nurse was going to give them to him. He had had to deliver a huge sealed envelope to her.

He introduced himself to the librarians too, because his study period was to be spent in the library.

And that was where he was, surrounded by open textbooks and reading a manga on his laptop, when one of the people whose name he did know actually came over and sat down at his table.

"Hi, Ben. I have a favor to ask you," Danielle said.

"Um, uh, ugh, yeaah," was the response Ben managed to make.

Danielle was the junior who sat next to him in Physics; several inches taller than he, straight black shoulder length hair, thin as a rail, she always wore shorter skirts or tighter jeans than any of the other girls seemed to be able to get passed the dress code. Right now she was wearing those jeans, pale green Ugg boots, and a blue long-sleeved T-shirt so loose that it hid her breasts and which had a large, twelve pointed, golden star on it.

She had also been the friendliest, or at least most tolerant, student towards Ben, and he wanted to help her, but he was smart enough, or self-conscious enough, to worry about a beautiful eleventh grader who asked a tenth grade boy for a favor.

She smiled at him and said, "Don’t sound so enthused."

"No, ugh, yeah, sure, what?"

"Well, I need some extra credit in Physics, and Ms. Vanderjung said you might want some too, and so I was wondering if you would help me with a project."

Ben groaned but only on the inside, and Danielle didn’t notice. This is the kind of thing that happens when a school counselor takes an interest in you. He wondered how much extra work Ms Vanderjung was going to find for him while she was ’making things easier’. But it was Danielle asking, not the counselor, and he couldn’t say no.

"Great! Let’s meet here every afternoon. Can we start today? I want to get this thing done."

"I don’t think so. I gotta watch my little sisters on most afternoons. Do you always have fourth period off? Becuz’ I do now."

"No, I’m supposed to be in PE, but I had to talk to Ms. V. today. Call your mother and ask her. Tell her it’s for school work."

Danielle was very insistent, and promised that the school didn’t mind quick phone calls, especially to parents, and the librarian hadn’t even looked over when Ben turned his phone on.

His mother actually answered the call, and she said, "Of course you can, sweetie. Kathy is going over to friends’ all this week, and Vicky can be home alone. Remember what we talked about on Monday; we aren’t piling all those jobs on you anymore, so you can play with your friends every afternoon now, but how are you going to get home? I’m not sure when I can leave my office."

"I’ll get the city bus, I guess."

Danielle said, "Naa. I have a car. I can give you a ride, Benji."

"I heard her. That sounds like a good idea, and you act nice too."

"Com’on!"

"Well, I want you to. And I think it’s a good idea for you to call me and let me know your plans everyday at this time, sweetheart. But be home by six thirty. I have special treats for my Valentines."

"Whatever. See ya’."

To Danielle he said, "She’s made other plans for the pests, so I’m free in the afternoons."

"Great, see ya’ here after last bell, Benji."

"Wow!" Ben thought as he stared at her walking away. Things were really working out here, finally, at last. He was going to have to straighten her out about calling him Benji though. That was worse than Benny even, maybe because his mother used it, or maybe because of that dumb dog movie.

That afternoon he and Danielle spent two hours chatting in the library, but they did manage to decide on their project and write up a proposal for the teacher.

On the way out to her car, Danielle said, "You are such a huge help, and a ton better with the math than me. Thank you; you’re going to rescue my grade."

Ben smiled huge. This had to be a dream -- a girl like Danielle actually liked him! He said, "You know as much about it as I do. But it should be a good project."

"Only because you’re working on it. Really. I tried alone and didn’t get anywhere. Hey, where’s your coat? It’s pretty cold out there."

"Nah, I always just wear this."

"Oh, macho, are you? Well, at least close the front." Then she bent over and started to zip up the front of his sweatshirt. When he tried to take over, she grinned and said, "No. Don’t. You helped me so much, I want to help you with something."

Then she put the hood over his head and pulled the draw string tight around his face. She said, "Boy, Benji, you look so-soo cute like that!"

Because she said that, Ben didn’t loosen the hood, though he figured he looked like a dweeb, and as they walked across the parking lot she said, "Don’t you like being called Benji? You keep squinting every time I say it."

"My mother uses it, and then there’s that dog movie too. And you know."

"I love that movie! We own it, and I was going to invite you over to watch it with me sometime."

"Yeah, that would be neat or, maybe, we could go out to a movie instead?" He wasn’t sure how he’d gotten the nerve to say that; it had just popped out.

"We can do both, you know. But only if I can call you Benji, at least when no one’s around."

"OK, but then I get to call you Dannie, right?"

Danielle squinted her eyes very tightly. "I don’t really mind Dannie, much, but I really do like Danielle a lot; it’s still only two syllables."

When they were in her little yellow car, she reached over and tightened his seat belt. "We need to make sure to adjust that every time, because my boyfriend is a lot bigger than you are. He’s a senior and plays basketball."

Ben’s bubble burst, and she must have noticed because she said, "But don’t worry. He isn’t the jealous type. We can still be friends and visit and go to movies."

Then Ben realized he was relieved actually, sort of. He wasn’t at all sure what he would have done with a girl like Danielle as a girlfriend, or any girl as a girlfriend really, but especially an older girl and one like her; being just-friends would be a whole lot less pressure.

"He’s really nice, Benji. You’ll like him. But he isn’t nearly as sweet as you are by a long shot."

At a stoplight she reached over and pulled a lock of his hair from under his hood and left it in the middle of his forehead. She smiled and said, "Even better. Adam’s hair - that’s my boyfriend - is much darker brown than yours. I bet yours was blonde when you were little."

"Yeah, very, until I was almost thirteen, then it got darker."

"And it’s so wavy now; was it curly then too?"

"Ugh - when I was real little, like till seven or eight."

"That’s great! Little boys with golden ringlets are so precious."

Danielle followed the GPS’s directions into Ben’s area of town. "Know what? You only live a few miles from me. Would you like to start riding to school with me?"

"Nah. That’s OK."

"Gah, Benji. Do you like that stupid yellow bus or something? I happen to like doing things for people, especially nice people. But the only way I’ve seen you be mean is to always turn down help. Let me do it as a favor to me then."

"OK. I guess. Yeah, OK."

They pulled into Ben’s driveway, and she said, "Goody! Oh, I almost forgot! Here. Be my valentine, OK, Benji?"

Ben took the big bag of candy hearts from her, but he only returned a smile. He knew she didn’t want a kiss.

***********************

The rest of that week and most of the next went really well for Ben.

He rode to and from school with Danielle and met with her to do homework every afternoon. She continued to be very solicitous towards him, but he didn’t complain, only teased, and she laughed about it.

His mother also continued to be overly attentive, and Ben only complained about it, didn’t joke, and she ignored his objections.

One of his parents would come upstairs at about eleven each night. He’d have to show them the homework he’d done that day, and then they would tell him to go to bed. But when Vicky threw a fit and got grounded because she was asked to take out the garbage, that more than made up for the indignity of having a bed time.

Kathy had taken over the job of feeding Bongo, and Ben’s mother cleaned his litter box now. Vicky fed the fish, and had changed all of their names, but he didn’t care that much.

On Sunday he decided that he missed feeding and walking Laddie, so he asked for those jobs back. But his father had come with him on some of the walks, and he thought that must have looked weird to see them, an old man and a teenager, walking up the street together.

The only bad part was when his mother had told him to go to bed at eleven thirty on Friday night. That meant he’d miss a raid by one of his MMORPG guilds but, after he’d been threatened with missing his study sessions with Danielle, he’d had given up the fight before he was grounded.

The second week started even better. On Monday, Danielle saw him in the hall during lunch and invited him to her table. It was a strange table, with people from all four high school grades, even some freshmen were invited, and it included Amber, the second most interesting girl Ben had met at the school.

However, the table also included Adam, Danielle’s senior jock boyfriend, who turned out to be as big an asshole as Ben had expected him to be. He acted alright most of the time, even asked Ben’s opinions about stuff, but then when Ben told a joke comparing the principal to an octopus because she tried to reach into everybody’s business, he had said, "You’re OK, kid," and patted Ben on the head. Ben found it easy to find people patronizing, and started to hate the guy even more.

On Tuesday he’d gone to the nurse’s office to get the shot he was to get every week. Ms Abrams had made him strip to be weighed first. The dosage had to be exactly exact, she said. Ben thought that strange, and he started to worry that these shots were for something more serious than allergies.

Then after Friday’s PE class his great week collapsed. Ben had missed a jump shot and some free throws during the game and, while he was changing, one of the giant cretins in the class had told him he needed to workout so he could throw a basketball ten feet.

He handled that part in the best way: he’d said nothing. But when the oaf laughed and said, "You know even my little brother’s parts can make a jock strap look like a box; yours is just a’ empty sack," Ben had answered him. Didn’t the idiot know it was cold in the locker room and those parts shrink in the cold, or that jocks came in different sizes? Also, they had just got a new maid (one who came every day and stayed until one of his parents got home), and he thought she did something to make his jocks and some of his other clothes stretch out.

What he said was: "Take a hike in the hills, Mongo."

That got him pushed into the lockers just as a coach rounded the corner, and it got him sent to Ms Vanderjung’s office too. She tsk-ed tsk-ed several times and shook her head a lot but said she couldn’t get him out of his punishment.

That is why, at eight fifty-six on the last Saturday morning of February, with crocuses in bloom among patches of snow and narcissus leaves daring to appear above the ground at last, Ben’s head wasn’t beneath a pillow avoiding the bright sun light, but was, along with the rest of his body, moving through the foyer of his school towards the lunch room where Saturday detentions convened.

"Hey, Benji!" an all too cheerful voice called, and he managed to look towards the sound.

It was Amber, and he did manage to nearly smile.

"What you in for?" she said.

He really thought he was being punished for getting teased, but no boy would say that to any girl, so he said, "Fight during PE. You here for detention too?"

"Yeah - too noisy in the hall during a class period. It was all Heather’s fault; she can’t control her laugh volume at all. Go check in; I already volunteered you for a work detail."

"Huh? Why?"

"Hey. Really, it’s a lot better than sitting there looking at Mr. Stubbs’s face for two hours. I promise. And I got us a good job. All we have to do is clean some blackboards over in the junior school."

"What’s that?"

"You don’t know? Oh, I forgot you’re new here. That huge, old house on the north side of the main building is a school for little kids. It goes from nursery to nine or ten year olds and only has about sixty kids. I think it’s real experimental or something. Anyway, I help out over there sometimes, so it was easy to get Mr. Stubbs to let me have this job."

Ben already knew that Amber was very talkative, but he’d only been around her in groups before. Now he was having a hard time keeping up his side of the conversation, or even keeping up with the conversation - not that she ever seemed to notice.

As they walked across the courtyard towards the junior school house, she said, "You and Danielle have become pretty good friends, huh? She’s always talking about how nice you are. Don’t you think she is gorgeous? I love her hair. I mean it just shines, doesn’t it?"

Because he thought he was supposed to, Ben said, "Your hair looks good too."

"Uh-huh, I like mine too - I wish it was a little more blonde and less red. It’s strawberry blonde, and that means I have to be real careful about the sun, because I still get new freckles all the time. And I’m glad I’m not as skinny as she is, though some people really like that look."

"Well, you’re not fat either, Amber."

"You better say that! But, I know that, you know? But I’m not like her. I would like to be that tall though. I’m, like, shortish, but she’s, like, statuesque or something. And she’s in real good shape too. She’s in my Phys Ed and doesn’t even breathe hard after laps."

When she said that, Ben realized that Amber was actually as tall as he was. He’d thought she was a bit shorter. He checked out her shoes, but she wasn’t wearing heels, just regular trainers. Maybe he’d never stood this close to her before.

"Hey! Know what? If you hate your Gym class, you should talk Ms Vanderjung into moving you into ours. What do you have fourth period?"

"That’s a free period - study hall - for me, but I don’t think she’s going to move me into a girls’ PE class."

"No, silly, ours is co-ed - ’bout half the people in it are boys, but we have it everyday though, not just three times a week. Would you want to do that? It’s lots more fun than all-boys PE, I bet."

Ben would have made that bet too; anything had to be better than spending three hours a week with the jock-wannabes he now had PE with, and the idiot coach too.

They had reached the first classroom they were to work on, and Amber said, "You’re not way into sports, are you? Because we’re all kinda anti-jock in that class."

"Who, me? Not hardly," he said, though lately he had started imagining what it’d be like to be a sports hero again. "I ran cross country last year, but that wasn’t considered a jock at my old school."

"Yeah, not here either. So talk to Ms V, or Danielle and I will for you, OK?"

"I’ll talk to her myself, I guess."

"Oh, yeah. Danielle told me how you hate getting help from anyone! You should get over that, Benji. Really, lots of people would like to do nice things for you, and you like helping people, don’t you?"

"Sometimes, yeah. Sort of."

"Well, you’re helping me today. You should have seen the face Heather made when I asked her to; she must think Mr. Stubbs is good-looking or something and wants to look at him. So now I get to help you out sometime. Right?"

The blackboards they had to clean were really whiteboards that used dry markers, but the teachers would leave examples or drawings on them for months, and they took some elbow grease to get clean. In the third classroom, Amber took off her sweater, and Ben saw her necklace; it was a twelve pointed star that looked like the one on the T-shirt Danielle had worn.

Looking for something to say, he said, "That’s a neat star. Is it a symbol for something or something?"

Amber grimaced, then smiled and said, "That’s Venus. The planet. Did you know that it spins backwards -- opposite from most planets? And it’s called the morning star too."

"Really? Danielle has a shirt with that on it."

"Yeah. Well, I guess I can tell you a little, but don’t ever, ever talk about it to anyone, OK? It’s like for this secret club we belong to called the Retrogradian Aides Society. See, there are some people that are starting to live like they did in the past. And we help them do that, see?"

"You mean like those re-enactors that stage battles and people at history demonstration things. That’s kind of cool sometimes. You looking for members?"

"Not really like those people, but maybe kind of, in a way. But I told you, it’s super-secret; you can’t just apply, you have to be picked. Also, almost everyone that’s a member became one before they were in high school or when they were like almost forty or so. It’s kind of weird that way. We do have some special members that start in high school or college though, and you might be one of those."