Descending Star

OUR NATURAL WORLD

A plan for the day with Zoey coalesced as he descended the back stairs to the parking lot, but for the time being, he would have to set it aside. He was watching his feet as he descended the stairs and heard the approach of a fast, heavy stride. His blood raced with adrenaline, for he first thought that Victor had returned to Forks and found him. Then he saw the pair of fists, white knuckles on burly russet hands, the gray t-shirt, the corded neck and set jaw.

For half a moment, he failed to recognize that he and the pair of fists had a correspondence. He hadn't been sucker-punched since his tussle with Axel Smith, in fourth grade, but Ben Swan had never been one to need the same lesson twice. He ducked just as the roundhouse swing closed in on his head.

"Jesus!" he exclaimed, as he dodged the blow by so thin a margin that he felt the hair on Jacob's knuckles brush his forehead.

"How'd it go, Swan? How was your hike to the vale?"

Ben ducked him again, by bending backward. Before he could think, he blocked a third punch with his forearm. A recently fractured forearm.

"Hey, calm down!" Ben exhorted.

"Don't tell me to calm down."

Ben maneuvered to get the hood of the truck between them. He looked around frantically, not so much in search of help as in dread of witnesses.

"Keep it down," he insisted. "The town's waking up."

"Oh, you noticed?" Jacob yelled into the morning.

Jacob tried to rush him, but now they had the truck between them.

Ben went on, "Say, what time is it, anyway? Ahh Christ, Jake. What are you even doing here? When are your finals?"

"Don't change the subject. What am I doing here? Did you really just ask that?"

Ben hissed, "Tell me you weren't here all night, stalking her apartment."

Jacob boomed into the morning, "I just had to see this for myself. So that whole ruse with the maps was just to throw me off, wasn't it? You didn't even go to that vale, did you? You just dumped me off in school and came straight here."

On that moment, Ben knew that Jacob had no knowledge of the events at the monolith. He didn't know that they had abandoned their plan to reach the vale, that they had gone with his plan instead, that Lauren had been on the verge of attacking Zoey when Sam Uley and his cult had appeared in the tidal basin to break it up, had chased Lauren, and might have been killed themselves, if by some chance they had cornered her and compelled her to fight back. Ben and Zoey had fled, and they still didn't know the answer to the last question: the fate of the four boys who had surprised the scene in progress and saved Zoey's life, and likely also his own.

The true version of events would have been simple to prove to Jacob. Ben and Zoey had abandoned their tents, and most of their gear. It was all still there this morning, incontrovertible proof that they had been there. Yet Ben knew that there had to be a reason why Jacob didn't know the truth. He knew, without having to be told, that the truth was being withheld from Jacob for his own protection, because he wasn't ready to know it.

That meant Jacob would have to persist in his delusions, at least for the present.

Only seconds had passed, and the first thing Ben needed to do was calm Jacob down. Micaela would be arriving soon to open up, or worse, Leah Clearwater. Above all else, Zoey was right upstairs and awake. How she had not yet heard Jacob's strident angst, Ben couldn't imagine. Perhaps she'd stepped into the shower.