My Summers With Benny Page 2

  “Of course. Don’t get taken away by a tornado.”

  I laughed. “Don’t let an alligator eat you in Florida!”

  He waved to me, then we were done and I got in my mom’s car. “New friend?” she asked me as I got buckled up. I turned back to look over my shoulder and saw Benny there still watching me.

  “Yep. That’s Benny.”

  She started driving back home. “He seems nice.”

  “He is. He’s got a ball python and he loves astronomy.”

  She gave me a sideways glance. “You are not getting a snake. Don’t even ask.”

  I rolled my eyes, but I was smiling. That was okay, Benny let me come over and hold Cassi whenever I wanted to.

  Chapter Two

  Four Summers Ago

  As soon as Dad pulled up to the house, I was already bounding out of the car. “Can I go say hi to Benny?” I asked him, remembering I should probably ask him if it was okay first.

  He laughed and grabbed my suitcase out of the back seat. “Sure. But I want some time with you this summer, too. We’re going camping next week! Don’t run away with your friend and forget all about me!”

  I was laughing as I darted over to Benny’s house and ran up the front steps. I knocked and since it was only ten in the morning, his Aunt Emma answered the door. “Hey, Alex. He’s upstairs.”

  “Thanks.” I remembered not to run in her house as I went up the stairs to go see Benny. He was in his room, sitting on his bed with a big astronomy book open in front of him when I came in. “Hey.”

  He was off his bed in a second and hugging me so tightly I could barely breathe. “You’re back!” He let me go, but he didn’t go far. “And you got taller!”

  I’d grown maybe two inches, but it put the distance between our heights at even more now. “Yeah. Good school year?”

  He shrugged and went over to his bed to put his book away on the shelf that held his other dozen or so astronomy books. I wish I had a hobby like that—one I could get completely immersed in like he did. But it made me sad that he’d never be able to go be an astronaut like he so clearly wanted to be. All because he was sick with something he couldn’t help.

  “It’ll be a great summer,” he said. I got the feeling something at school wasn’t great, but I didn’t want to bug him with my questions either. I’d learned that he didn’t hold back much so if he wanted to tell me something, he probably would.

  “Yeah it will.” He sat on the bed and I joined him. Cassi was on her basking rock and looking at us like we were denying her food. I’d never known that a snake could beg until I’d met her, but she just looked at us with those brown eyes and somehow made me feel guilty for not giving her a mouse every time I saw her. “She’s staring at me. You starving her?” I knew he wasn’t.

  Benny laughed and looked over at her, too. “Naw. She’s actually on rats now, too. Young rats, but still. I miss her so much when I’m in Florida. I wish I could take her with me, but she’d probably not do very well. I know people ship reptiles overnight all the time but I wouldn’t want to stress her out twice a year like that. It seems unfair. But my aunt and my mom are still working on the custody stuff so maybe I won’t have to leave after all. Eventually.”

  We didn’t talk about his mom much. I figured it wasn’t a good relationship. My mom could be nuts, but she hadn’t given me HIV. I got the feeling that Benny blamed her for making him sick.

  “How come you’re not afraid of me?” Benny asked me suddenly.

  I looked over at him and frowned. “Why would I be? You planning to go all mass murdery on me with a chainsaw or something?”

  He chuckled, but I could see how sad he was. “No. Nothing like that. Just... the guys at school back home. They’re...” He frowned. “I’m trying to find a nice way to say absolutely ridiculous and stupid beyond belief and mean as hell.”

  “Assholes?” I offered him.

  Benny grinned over at me. “I’m not allowed to curse like that. My aunt’s rules. But my mom doesn’t have rules like that for me. She gave me my first beer a few months ago. I puked so hard.”

  Cringing, I shook my head. “Sounds gross. I’ve tried my dad’s before, when he wasn’t looking, and it tasted so nasty.”

  I thought of something kind of sad and I didn’t want to ask him about it. I kind of got the impression that maybe I was his only friend. But he’d asked me a question and I wanted to give him an answer. “I try not to be stupid about things that people can’t control. I looked up HIV and I know what’s dangerous. I even got a very fun lesson in sex ed this past year as an introduction to high school or some crap like that. I get it. Being with someone who has HIV requires protection for sex. But there’s nothing that says that I have to be careful when we’re hanging out or hugging or when we share sodas or french fries. People who freak out just because you have HIV are stupid.”

  He smiled over at me. “Thanks. I wish you could be around all the time. Then maybe the—” he dropped his voice so that he was just whispering—“assholes would leave me alone.”

  I wanted to be there for him, too. But we only ever had two months together.

  The morning of my camping trip with my dad I was crazy excited. We were going to go up to Rocky Mountain National and spend from Friday night to Sunday morning camping out and eating s’mores. I couldn’t wait. But as soon as I started loading things into the Jeep, I got a little sad, too, because it meant a weekend away from Benny.

  “Hey, Dad?” I asked him as I tried to shove the cooler in between all of our other stuff.

  “Yeah?” He was putting the address into the navigation system and getting our play list together for the drive up that would take a few hours.

  I knew this was just supposed to be an us thing, but the more I thought about it the more I wanted to bring Benny along with us. I came around the side of the Jeep so that I could talk to him. “So... would it be okay if...” I bit my bottom lip. I really didn’t want my dad to be upset that I was asking to bring Benny in case he thought that meant that I didn’t want to spend time with just him. “Can Benny come, too?”

  He turned to look at me and smiled. “You really like him, huh? He’s not just some boy you hang out with just because there isn’t anyone else around?”

  I shook my head. Benny and I weren’t like that at all. “I don’t know that he’s ever been camping. It might be fun for him.”

  His smile got bigger. “I think we should definitely bring him. Go ask if he can come and make sure he grabs some blankets for himself in case he doesn’t have a sleeping bag.”

  I rushed over to his house, which was maybe ten feet away and knocked on his front door. His Aunt Emma opened it up and grinned at me. She was already wearing her blue scrubs so I thought maybe she would have to go in early since it was still morning and she didn’t usually go in until three. “Hey. So my dad and I are going to Rocky Mountain National this weekend and I was wondering if we could take Benny. If he would even want to go.”

  “If he wants to go, my answer is yes. You’re a good kid, Alex. Don’t ever change okay?”

  Wasn’t that what people wrote in the backs of school yearbooks? “Sure thing.”

  I went past her and up to Benny’s room. “So, how do you feel about camping?” I asked him when I got to his bedroom door.

  His grin was huge and he was off his bed in a second. “You serious? I thought it was just going to be you and your dad.”

  It was, but he didn’t need to know that. “Last minute change of plans. How quickly can you get ready?”

  “Give me two minutes!” He darted over to his closet, grabbed out his backpack, and started randomly throwing clothes in.

  “Don’t forget your medicines!” his aunt called from downstairs. “And a first aid kit with gloves in it!”

  “I got it!” Benny yelled back.

  I’d known that he probably took some medicine for his HIV, but I hadn’t anticipated the seven pill bottles h
e tossed into his backpack. “Anything in there any fun? Keeps you from turning into a zombie type of thing?”

  He laughed. “Nope. Though I wish. It’s mostly just to keep me from getting sick. I mean, I am sick. But not as sick as I would be if I didn’t take stuff to boost my immune system so that I can keep infections at bay. Someday I’ll probably get AIDS, but not right now, which is really good. There’s a blue zip pouch behind you on the dresser, can you grab that? It’s my first aid kit.”

  I picked it up and brought it over to him. He tossed it into his backpack. Next he stripped the comforter off his bed and bundled it up in his arms. One of his pillows joined the pile and then he was rushing off to the bathroom to grab his toothbrush and stuff.

  “Why would you probably get AIDS?” I asked him once he’d come back into his room to toss more stuff into his already overflowing backpack.

  He turned and frowned at me. “Because I have HIV...” That was probably supposed to explain something to me, but I was going to need more than that from him.

  “Alex! Your dad is ready! Benny, hurry up!” his aunt called up to us.

  “I’ll explain in the car. Can you grab my blanket?”

  I nodded and went to get it while he loaded up his arms with his backpack and his pillow. We hurried downstairs where his aunt hugged him. “You go have fun and be safe and remember to take your pills.” Then she turned her attention to me and I got a hug, too. “If there’s an emergency my number is in his phone. You do have your phone, don’t you, Benny?”

  “Always! And it’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

  His aunt sighed loudly. “Go on you two. I’ll always worry, but I want you to have fun so go on. Get. Shoo!” We were laughing as we ran out of the house and to my dad’s Jeep. Benny’s stuff barely fit and his blanket had to be on the back seat between us, but that was okay.

  “So...” Benny looked from me to my dad like he was asking me a question. It took me a few seconds to figure out what he was trying to get at.

  “Yeah, you’re fine. He knows.”

  I thought maybe me telling my dad that Benny had HIV would be an issue, but instead he seemed pretty relieved as Dad started up the Jeep and started driving. “So you know how HIV works. Right?” he asked me. I caught Dad looking back at me from the rear view mirror and I nodded, ignoring him.

  “Yeah. You have sex with someone that has it or you do other stuff, or like you, some people are born with it.”

  He smiled at me and seemed to relax some. “Right. And if you’ve got it and you’re on the meds like me, then you can hold off on getting AIDS, sometimes for years and years. But eventually, as far as I know, everyone gets AIDS if they have HIV.”

  “But...” I was trying to remember everything I knew about AIDS now, and none of it was any good. “But everyone that has AIDS dies. Right? So you’ll die someday?” I was suddenly in full panic mode with my heart pounding in my chest and my hands clenching at my sides.

  But Benny just grabbed my hand. “Well, yeah. Everyone dies. And it’s not like AIDS will be the thing that kills me, if that even does. I could get attacked by a bear this weekend. But most people who die with AIDS die of something else.” I was completely lost, and he must have been able to tell, because he backed way up. “So AIDS brings down your immune system. Remember when I said that I took pills to help my immune system? It’s to hold off infections and things like that. But with AIDS people can get really sick from things that wouldn’t slow someone else down. Like someone will get a cold, but then someone with AIDS will get super sick from the cold and that just gets them more infections which makes them even more sick.”

  “And then they die?” I quietly asked him.

  “Everybody dies,” he repeated. Only he didn’t look upset by that. And it wasn’t something I’d ever really stopped to think about. Sure, I knew that logically everyone did die. No one was immortal anyway. But using that big idea to apply it to the people I cared about, which definitely included Benny, was a hard pill to swallow. I was crying before I even realized what was going on.

  “Alex? You okay?” Dad asked me. He pulled over in a diner’s parking lot and I nodded and hugged myself.

  Then Benny added his arms around me. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have explained it. Please forgive me. Please don’t be mad at me, Alex. You’re my only friend. I’m so sorry. Please don’t hate me.”

  I stopped hugging myself so that I could hug him and Dad got out of the front seat to come open up the door where I was sitting. “It’s okay,” I told them both. “I’m just freaking out and realizing that people die.” I felt stupid saying that, but it was the truth.

  Dad nodded like he knew what I was talking about. And like maybe I wasn’t being as stupid as I thought I was. “I didn’t realize that until my dad died when I was twenty-nine. It’s a lot to take in. You two want some food and we can talk about this?”

  I quickly nodded. Food sounded really good right then. I thought I could eat a whole platter of fried stuff, which I normally didn’t do, but when I got upset I had my cravings. Benny let go of me and we got out of the back of the Jeep. He was still watching me warily like he thought I was going to abandon him or something. So before we sat down at the booth the hostess showed us to, I grabbed him in a tight hug and he hugged me, too. “I’m not mad,” I told him. “Worried about you though.”

  He nodded against my chest. “Thanks. It’s kind of nice to feel worried about.”

  I had no idea what he could have meant by that, but I didn’t dig into it either.

  After lunch we got back on the road and Benny put his hand in mine on the back seat between us like it wasn’t a big deal. Since he didn’t say anything, I didn’t either. I just held his hand and went with it.

  It took us hours to get to the campsite and once we were finally there, I was definitely ready to get out of the Jeep and stretch out a bit. We set up the tents and got comfortable. Dad liked to lay out and look up at the sky when we went camping so that’s what we did for a while. But pretty soon I was itching to move around again.

  “Dad? Can I take Benny down to the creek?” I asked him.

  “Sure. But be careful.”

  I turned over and quickly got to my feet. Benny was right there behind me and we headed into the woods. “How do you know there’s a creek?” he asked me.

  “‘Cause this is the same campsite that we use every year. Have you ever been here before?”

  Benny shook his head. “My aunt doesn’t like camping. It’s too dirty for her. And she can’t usually take a few days off at a time. She’s tried before, but then someone always calls in at the last minute and then her boss calls her and she rushes in to cover the shift because they give her a bonus for the last minute pick up. When she gets custody of me, I’m going to get a job at the pizza place down the block so that she doesn’t have to work as much or worry about money all the time. I won’t be allowed to work near the pizza, but I can take orders and handle the register.”

  I wanted to ask about his mom and the custody stuff, but I wasn’t sure how to go about that. “Um... what’s going on with the custody?”

  Benny got up on a fallen tree and started to walk on it. He held out his hand to me and I helped to balance him. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, like, is something going on?” I had no idea what I was doing.

  He shrugged and hopped off the log, but he didn’t let go of my hand. “Oh. Yeah. Well, my mom had me when she was really young. And she was on a bunch of stuff. That’s how she got HIV. Sharing needles. But then I was born and she didn’t really know that she was pregnant, or I guess she didn’t care back then or something. Because she could have taken meds to lower my chances of getting infected. But she didn’t. Anyway, she tried the mom thing for a bit, but it’s not really taking now. So Aunt Emma is trying to get custody of me full time instead of just in the summer. She says she worries too much about me during the school year for me to live with my mom too mu
ch longer. But this has been going on for years now so...” He shrugged and I just stared at him as we walked between the trees and over the thick roots sticking up from between the fallen pine needles.

  “You’re seriously weird. You know that right?” I asked him.

  He looked a bit hurt as he glanced over at me. “Because I’ve got HIV?”

  I quickly shook my head. “No. Of course not.”

  “Then is it because I’m gay? Because if the hand holding is bothering you, we can stop.”

  “What? No!” I stopped walking and pulled him to a stop, too, so that we could actually talk for a second. “I don’t care that you’re gay. I didn’t even know. No, you’re weird because of everything you just told me and how you don’t seem upset at all. I mean, your mom used drugs and she’s not being a great mom to you and you’re acting like it’s all totally fine when it’s definitely not.”

  Benny grinned at me, then grabbed me up in a tight hug. “Thanks for not being upset about me liking guys.” He let me go, then darted ahead of me on the faint trail we were following while I stared after his crazy butt.

  “Whacko!” I shouted after him.

  I heard him laughing and I ran to catch up with him. But when I found him crouched by the creek, he wasn’t laughing anymore. He was holding his knee against his chest and looking down at his bloody leg. I knelt down next to him and reached for his leg, but he pulled away from me. When I looked up at him, he actually looked afraid.

  “What?” I asked him. It was only a cut. It looked like it hurt, but there wasn’t anything to explain the look he was giving me.

  “You can’t touch it.”

  He was being stupid. “I was just going to look at it.”

  When I reached for him again, he pulled back from me just like the last time. “My blood has HIV in it,” he said it slowly and suddenly I understood. “If you touch it, you could get sick.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”