Save the Enemy Read Online Free

phone, but there’s still no answer. “Were you outside for long?” I ask Ben as I hang up.
    “I don’t process time very well without benchmarks. I’ve told you that.”
    Fair enough
, I think. I guess I should make us dinner. I know
I’m
starving, at least. Usually Dad has whipped something together or ordered takeout in advance of picking me up. I’m hoping Ben says peanut butter and jelly since it’s all I really know how to make. We had a really old gas stove in Rhode Island. That’s another reason the kitchen was my Mom’s private place: whenever she was going to cook dinner, she’d make me leave in case the stove blew up. My best friend in Rhode Island once asked me how my mom thought it was possible that the stove might blow up, and yet Mom never bought a new one. I still have no answer. I asked my dad about it once, but he denied that Mom ever claimed such a thing, or if she did she was just pissed off. I point to my lack of cooking skills as evidence.
    Ben is okay with PB&J. I think about slipping some kale into the sandwich, but I think we’re out. I’m supposed to mind his veggie intake; there are a lot of things I’m supposed to do. I go into the bathroom to wash my hands before I fix our food. Then I notice something.
    There’s a cigarette butt in the toilet.
    Dad doesn’t smoke. Neither do I. I’m pretty sure my fourteen-year-old, autistic-spectrum brother isn’t smoking. Mom always said Ben wouldn’t smoke because he wouldn’t betray her in that way. Dad said he wouldn’t because the science literature shows a low incidence of smoking among the Neurodiverse. So I’m staring into the toilet trying to figure out how freaked out
I
should be. Is it possible that a Con Ed manor solicitor was in the house during the day? Smoking? Not likely. Is it possible Dad is dating a woman who comes over when Ben and I are at school, and she drops cigarettes in the toilet? Even less likely. According to Dad, Ayn Rand says that cigarettes are a wonderful human achievement, and we should celebrate them as an important work product. But he also says he can’t participate in this facet of human achievement because of Mom’s allergies. And he’s even used that line since Mom died, so I don’t think he’d date a smoker, even if he were capable of dating anyone but Ayn Rand now that Mom is gone. Plus, Ayn Rand is gone, too.
    I call Ben in. “Can you look in there and tell me what you see?” I point at the toilet.
    He peers into the bowl. “Urine,” he says. “No feces.”
    “Do you see the cigarette butt?” I ask.
    Ben peers into the bowl again. He says he sees it; it’s floated under the rim where it’s not so obvious, but he can see a bit of it. I ask him if he can conceive of any possible scenario in which there would be a cigarette butt in the toilet of the house. He tells me that he is not imaginative in that way. There’s a lot of this kind of back-and-forth, and just when I am about to scream, he tilts his head.
    “I have a solution. You come up with possibilities and ask me about them one by one.”
    There is no humor in his voice. If he were a friend, like I thought Abby would be (or maybe Brian Keegan could be, or better yet, Pete could be, and maybe more?) we’d probably be laughing to hide our anxiety. But this is Ben. Smiles and laughs are rare, and when they do come, the contexts can be baffling.
    “Girlfriend who smokes. Worker in the house during the day. Our pipes are somehow connected with a neighbor’s ashtray …”
    Ben rejects the various scenarios. I take a photo of the toilet with my cell phone, then flush, wash my hands again, and go back into the kitchen where I try Dad’s cell again. Nothing. Ben and I eat our kale-free sandwiches. I try to do some homework. We watch a little television. No Dad. All I can think about is Mom and how much she hated smokers. Not smoking.
Smokers
. Her parents smoked. Her father died of lung cancer in his fifties. Her mother died not