This Story Might Save Your Life(31)

Even Benny.

I hadn’t been answering Benny’s calls or texts, and so one day he showed up unannounced. Xander answered the door and told him I was indisposed. That was the actual word he used, as if Benny were a door-to-door salesman and I couldn’t be bothered to chat about solar panels at this time. Benny said he would wait until I wasn’t indisposed.

I was under a blanket on my bed with the curtains drawn. Not sleeping. Not indisposed. But my door was shut, and these things could have been true, and Xander had already laid out the expectation for this visit. I was now to play the role of the woman who could no longer handle spontaneous social calls in any capacity, and leaving my room would make Xander a liar. Fifteen minutes would be enough, I thought, looking at the clock. Then I could pretend I’d just woken, and act surprised to find my best friend sitting on my living room sofa.

But instead of letting Benny wait, Xander insisted he leave.

“It’s been two months, man,” Benny said. “Let me see her.”

“She doesn’t want to see anyone.”

“I know you think you’re helping her, but you’re not. She needs to be with her people.”

“I am her people.”

“And I’m not?”

“I’m trying to be patient,” Xander said, “but you have no idea, no idea, what she’s been through these past few months.”

“I know I have no idea.” Benny sounded distraught. I pictured him raking a hand through his curls. “You’re shutting me out, man. Let me be there for her.” He paused. “For both of you.”

A wave of emotion rolled through my body, replacing some of the numbness. He was right. We were shutting him out, and it wasn’t healthy by anyone’s standards. The realization was enough to make me throw the blanket off and scoot to the edge of the bed.

“She needs time,” Xander said.

“Let her decide that. It’s like you’re holding her hostage. I can’t remember the last time you let me be alone with her.”

“Benny, I’m trying to be patient. Why don’t you come back some other—”

“Five minutes.” He was getting louder. My chest fluttered with alarm. Xander said something I couldn’t hear, and I was halfway to the bedroom door when Benny shouted, “This is your fault. Yours. You made her do this. She never even wanted a baby.”

I froze.

I’m not sure what happened next. Xander pushed Benny out of the apartment and didn’t return for a while. I stood at the window, waiting. Eventually, Benny passed by. He looked up at me, and I looked down at him, and we didn’t speak again for three years.





Benny Abbott


Day Two

“Do you remember the time I thought someone was living in my attic?” Joy asks halfway through the creepy doll episode.

Past Me snorts. “Hold up, this is a good one. Let me set this up for our listeners. This was, what—twelve years ago?”

“Something like that.”

“Back when we were living in the same apartment building. Joy was sick with the flu, so I was surprised when she came thumping down the stairs past her bedtime. Do you remember what you said when I opened the door? The first thing you said?”

“I’m not alone.” This Joy delivers in a voice reminiscent of Gollum.

I hit pause and make a note of this. I’ve combed through all three episodes in Joy’s XYZ folder twice now, and I’m still not sure what I’m looking for. Logic dictates the password to the PDF must be somewhere in these tracks—at least, I assume that’s what she meant by “piece together”—and yet nothing is popping out at me. Either way, I don’t like this casual reference to not being alone. Not after a stranger has been following her every move for months. I rewind five seconds and press play again.

“I’m not alone.”

“Just like that. You’re lucky I didn’t shut the door in your face.”

“There was someone in my attic!”

“A detail you could’ve led with.”

“And what would have been the fun in that?”

“Anyway,” Past Me says, moving on. “This was not the first time Joy had quote-unquote heard things in her sleep. It happened all the time.”

“Hypnopompic and hypnagogic hallucinations, for you wordsmiths out there. Auditory, visual, sensory, or tactile hallucinations that occur at the beginning or end of a sleep cycle. Very common in narcolepsy.”

“So I’m thinking, Okay. No big deal. I just have to prove the attic is empty so Joy can go back to bed. So I get my flashlight. Go upstairs. Pull down the ceiling ladder. And then I hear it too. I don’t know how to describe it. Like a—like a man army-crawling across the floor.”

“With an axe,” Joy adds cheerfully. “So Benny’s halfway up the ladder, and he’s like…” Joy starts cracking up. “He’s like, ‘Listen, it’s late. How about we do this in the morning?’”

“You mock, but I seem to remember you frantically banging down my door five minutes earlier.”

“Touché.”

“Don’t you think it’s weird that neither of us suggested calling the cops?”

“Because I had you,” Joy says.