The Inner Circle

a woman now-who I haven’t seen since her hippie, lounge-singer mom moved her family away in tenth grade and she forever left my life. In our religious Wisconsin town, most people were thrilled to see them go.

I was sixteen. I was crushed.

Today, I’m thirty. And (thanks to her finding me on Facebook) Clementine is just a few seconds away from being back.

As the elevator bounces to a halt, I glance at my digital watch. Two minutes, forty-two seconds. I take Orlando’s advice and decide to go with a compliment. I’ll tell her she looks good. No. Don’t focus on just her looks. You’re not a shallow meathead. You can do better, I decide as I take a deep breath. You really turned out good, I say to myself. That’s nicer. Softer. A true compliment. You really turned out good.

But as the elevator doors part like our old bright red curtains, as I anxiously dart into the lobby, trying with every element of my being to look like I’m not darting at all, I search through the morning crowd of guests and researchers playing bumper cars in their winter coats as they line up to go through the metal detector at security.

For two months now, we’ve been chatting via email, but I haven’t seen Clementine in nearly fifteen years. How do I even know what she…?

“Nice tie,” Orlando calls from the sign-in desk. He points to the far right corner, by the lobby’s Christmas tree, which is (Archives tradition) decorated with shredded paper. “Look.”

Standing apart from the crowd, a woman with short dyed black hair-dyed even darker than Joan Jett-raises her chin, watching me as carefully as I watch her. Her eye makeup is thick, her skin is pale, and she’s got silver rings on her pinkies and thumbs, making her appear far more New York than D.C. But what catches me off guard is that she looks… somehow… older than me. Like her ginger brown eyes have seen two lifetimes. But that’s always been who she was. She may’ve been my first kiss, but I know I wasn’t hers. She was the girl who dated the guys two grades above us. More experienced. More advanced.

The exact opposite of Iris.

“Clemmi…” I mouth, not saying a word.

“Benjy…” she mouths back, her cheeks rising in a smile as she uses the nickname my mom used to call me.

Synapses fire in my brain and I’m right back in church, when I first found out that Clementine had never met her dad (her mom was nineteen and never said who the boy was). My dad died when I was three years old.

Back then, when combined with the kiss, I thought that made Clementine Kaye my destiny-especially for the three-week period when she was home with mono and I was the one picked to bring her assignments home for her. I was going to be in her room-near her guitar and her bra (Me. Puberty.)-and the excitement was so overwhelming, as I knocked on her front door, right there, my nose began to bleed.

Really.

Clementine saw the whole thing-even helped me get the tissues that I rolled into the nerd plugs that I stuffed in my nostrils. I was the short kid. Easy pickings. But she never made fun-never laughed-never told the story of my nosebleed to anyone.

Today, I don’t believe in destiny. But I do believe in history. That’s what Orlando will never understand. There’s nothing more powerful than history, which is the one thing I have with this woman.

“Lookatyou,” she hums in a soulful but lilting voice that sounds like she’s singing even when she’s just talking. It’s the same voice I remember from high school-just scratchier and more worn. For the past few years, she’s been working at a small jazz radio station out in Virginia. I can see why. In just her opening note, a familiar tingly exhilaration crawls below my skin. A feeling like anything’s possible.

A crush.

For the past year, I’d forgotten what it felt like.

“Beecher, you’re so… You’re handsome!”

My heart reinflates, nearly bursting a hole in my chest. Did she just-?

“You are, Beecher! You turned out great!”

My line. That’s my line, I tell myself, already searching for a new one. Pick something good. Something kind. And genuine. This is your chance. Give her something so perfect, she’ll dream about it.

“So… er… Clemmi,” I finally say, rolling back and forth from my big toes to my heels as I notice her nose piercing, a sparkling silver stud that winks right at me. “Wanna go see the Declaration of Independence?”

Kill me now.

She lowers her head, and I wait for her to laugh.

“I wish I could, but-” She reaches into her purse and pulls out a folded-up sheet of paper. Around her wrist, two vintage wooden bracelets click-clack together. I almost forgot. The real reason she came here.

“You sure you’re okay doing this?” Clementine asks.

“Will you stop already,” I tell her. “Mysteries are my specialty.”

2

Seventeen years ago

Sagamore, Wisconsin

Everyone knows when there’s a fight in the schoolyard.

No one has to say a word-it’s telepathic. From ancient to modern times, the human animal knows how to find fighting. And seventh graders know how to find it faster than anyone.

That’s how it was on this day, after lunch, with everyone humming from their Hawaiian Punch and Oreo cookies, when Vincent Paglinni stole Josh Wert’s basketball.

In truth, the ball didn’t belong to Josh Wert-it belonged to the school-but that wasn’t why Paglinni took it.

When it came to the tribes of seventh grade, Paglinni came from a warrior tribe that was used to taking what wasn’t theirs. Josh Wert came from a chubby tribe and was born different than most, with a genius IQ and the kind of parents who told him never to hide it. Plus, he had a last name like Wert, which appeared in just that order-W-E-R-T-on the keyboard of every computer.

“Give it back!” Josh Wert insisted, not using his big brain and making the mistake of calling attention to what had happened.

Paglinni ignored the demand, refusing to even face him.

“I–I want my ball back!” Josh Wert added, sucking in his gut and trying so hard to stand strong.

By now, the tribe of seventh graders was starting to gather. They knew what was about to happen.

Beecher was one of those people. Like Wert, Beecher was also born with brains. At three, Beecher used to read the newspaper. Not just the comics or the sports scores. The whole newspaper, including the obituaries, which his mom let him read when his dad died. Beecher was barely four.

As he grew older, the obits became Beecher’s favorite part of the newspaper, the very first thing he read every morning. Beecher was fascinated by the past, by lives that mattered so much to so many, but that-like his father-he’d never see. At home, Beecher’s mom, who spent days managing the bakery in the supermarket, and afternoons driving the school bus for the high school, knew that made her son different. And special. But unlike Josh Wert, Beecher knew how to use those brains to steer clear of most schoolyard controversies.

“You want your basketball?” Paglinni asked as he finally turned to face Wert. He held the ball out in his open palm. “Why don’t you come get it?”

This was the moment the tribe was waiting for: when chubby Josh Wert would find out exactly what kind of man he’d grow up to be.

Of course, Wert hesitated.

“Do you want the ball or not, fatface?”

Seventeen years from now, when Beecher was helping people at the National Archives, he’d still remember the fear on Josh Wert’s round face-and the sweat that started to puddle in the chubby ledges that formed the tops