The Guardians

I look out Ben's window. Wonder if the boy took it, and is now listening to it over and over for his own pleasure.

Then I wonder something worse. What if it is now in the hands of someone who hears it for what it realy is, not a diary at al but the confession of a crime? What if Betty McAuliffe is holding it to her ear under the sheets of her bed? What if someone who knew it was here—Randy, or Carl, who would have seen me in the window

—came in and stole it? This last one being the worst possibility of al. Not because my friends might be thieves, but because from this point on I wil be unable to prevent myself from wondering if they are.

What I need is a little bedtime reading. Something to slow my mind from its restless thinking. Trouble is, the only thing I'm interested in is Ben's journal. This time, as I curl up in his bed, I don't have the patience to move forward from where I left off last time, and skip ahead to the final pages.

September 14, 2008

Woke up this morning feeling strange. Not something strange in me-, but something that had touched me in the night. A stranger in my room.

I sat up in bed and saw that I was right.

A message smudged onto the inside of the bedroom window:

i found him

After this, the diary returned to its record of soups Ben had for lunch for a few days. No sightings of the boy, no shooing visitors off the Thurman property. And then the final entry:

September 20, 2008 This just happened.

It is the end of things, I know. Forgive me. I have done my best but I am tired now, so tired it's almost impossible to write this, to push the pen over this paper. I am tired and alone and I want only to

be with him, to comfort him. It's funny. It's so stupid, but it's taken until now to realize how much I've missed my father.

Forgive me

+ + + + +

Another message on my window tonight.

I had been keeping watch on the house, and turned away only long enough to get the glass of water I'd left by the bed. But when I sat down again it was there:

daddy's waiting

I slid the window open. The night smelled of lilacs and carnations. Not a good smell, though. Flowers left too long in dry vases.

He was sitting on the front steps. Stooped, elbows propped on his knees. He had been waiting He looked even more tired than me. Like he'd been running and had just stopped and was trying to remember what he'd been running from.

My father stood when he saw me. I can't exactly say what expression he wore. It was defeat, among other things. And sadness. So lonely it made him look hollow.

He turned and walked into the house. Like he'd been called in for bed. Like it was the end of a long, long day.

Forgive me.

Later that same night, Randy caled to tel me Ben was gone.

MEMORY DIARY

Entry No. 14

We watched them come.

A lone police cruiser at first. The officer's shirt straining against the bulge around his waist. When he came out he wasn't wearing his cap anymore.

We stood together. Unseen behind the curtains in the front room of Ben's house, his mother out on a grocery run. When the paramedics and bearded man in a suit who must have been the coroner finaly emerged with the black bags laid out on gurneys—one, and then the smaler other—we held our breaths.

We remember al this, though stil not everything.

And some of the things we remember may not have happened at al.

The letter, amazingly, was Randy's idea.

We were sitting in the Ford before school, no more than twenty minutes after Carl and I had witnessed the coach blow the side of his head off. I suppose the two of us must have been exhibiting some symptoms of shock, but I can't recal any tears or stony stares into space. Maybe this was because everything, as they say, was happening so fast. And we had each other. The most horrific events remained an inch within the bounds of the manageable so long as there was at least one Guardian to share them with.

We quickly agreed that hoping it would al go away was no longer an option. Neighbours might have heard the firing of Carl's revolver. Or perhaps someone passing by saw the coach in one of the windows. Or maybe someone other than us—a junkie kicked out of his room at the Y, young lovers looking for a wal to screw against—had smeled the morgueish taint in the house's air and knew it to be more than a poisoned rat. In any case, Heather Langham and the coach would soon be found, if they hadn't been already. And the likelihood of their trails leading to us, one way or another, was high, unless we could prevent an investigation from starting in the first place. A story that made sense out of what we knew to be senseless.

They were both teachers, seen to be friendly, sharing books in the staff lounge. One night, a shared flask, an