Page 88 of Too Many Beds

Sporadically throughout the night, staff members peer into the room, ensuring that all the boys are safe and obedient. Between the noise, the light, and the guilt, Ben hasn’t been sleeping very well since he arrived.

When he does sleep, he dreams. It's always the same dream, and Ben wakes up feeling sweaty and itchy and alert, his hormones and the isolation inciting new reactions to unconscious visions of flashing eyes, a quick smile, and the slim, graceful figure of a creature who stepped out of nothing to defend Ben.

The rest of his life is boring. He wakes up, eats a bland breakfast, and sits through the minimal classes required by state law. He doesn’t make friends with any of the other boys. Most of them are vicious or sniveling, and all Ben wants to do is keep his head down and get through the next few years.

He is big enough that the bullies leave him alone, and thankfully, the juvenile hall does a good job of limiting the conflict between the other boys, which allows Ben to look the other way and stay under the radar.

He enjoys the weekly outings to museums or the beach or the zoo, but otherwise he spends as much time as he can in his room, reading his way through the rotating library supplied by a local community group.

It’s fine. No one hits him, he doesn’t go to bed hungry, and he never gets in trouble. Overall, it’s better than foster care, even though he knows his record will make things harder for him when he grows up.

But he’s bored and alone, and he can’t stop thinking about the creature under his bed. Ben has never been particularly imaginative or such a lucid dreamer before, but what alternative is there?

That a monster crawled out from under his bed and killed Ben’s abuser?

Shaking his head, Ben slides off the bed and pads over to the bathroom to brush his teeth, trying to dislodge his repetitive musings. He doesn’t want to dream about Luce again.

It makes something in his chest ache in a way that haunts him.

The brush of paper over paper wakes Ben sometime later.

He takes a moment to blink at the lopsided light from the square of glass in the door.There is someone in the room,Ben realizes, still shaking off the cobwebs of his sleep.

It takes a moment for the fear to kick in, and then he is jolting upright in bed, his heart nearly galloping out of his chest as he looks around wildly.

“Did I scare you?” Luce asks softly, perched on the top of Ben’s desk with a broken-backed novel on his knee. “I didn’t mean to.”

Ben’s mouth is dry, and he struggles to gather his thoughts. He thinks he’s awake—he’s sure of it—but the creature is here, all warm skin and glowing eyes and the glistening hint of pearly teeth indenting his bottom lip.

“I—” he stumbles over the word, then falls silent, unsure what to say next. “I don’t understand.”

Luce frowns, putting the book down and leaning forward to peer at Ben more closely. “I couldn’t find you,” he says, sounding a little bit pouty. “Why did you leave?”

“I’m sorry?” Ben croaks, shaking his head to clear it. “I didn’t mean—I mean, they put me—what?”

Luce grins suddenly, his whole face lighting up with such brilliance that Ben can’t breathe. “I didn’t scare you?” he asks. “You weren’t running from me?”

He sounds so hopeful that Ben feels it in his chest, a pang so familiar Ben’s breath catches in his throat. How many times has he been rejected? How many times has a hand he reached outto a classmate or foster parent been slapped away, literally or figuratively?

Dream or not, monster or not, murderer or not, Ben can’t bring himself to do the same thing to someone who helpedhim.

“I wasn’t running from you,” Ben explains, swallowing back his instinctive fear and relaxing his grip on his cheap blanket. “They thought I killed him, so they locked me in here.”

Luce’s face falls, his little fists clenching into tight knots. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, his luminous eyes filling with tears. “I was trying to help. I didn’t mean to make everything worse.”

Ben has never been able to ignore the tears of someone younger or smaller than him, and it has always brought him trouble.

“Hey,” he says, unfurling from the bed and holding out his hand to the impossible creature. “I’m not mad. It’s better here, really; no one hits me.”

Something strong and new punches to life in Ben’s gut when Luce brightens like the rising sun at his reassurance, hopping off the desk and taking Ben’s hand, then curling against his side on the bed with a complete lack of self-consciousness.

Luce is warm and small and smells like a freshly extinguished candle, sweet and smoky. Impossible or not, dream or not, it doesn’t matter. Ben never wants to let him out of his sight.

Five Years Later

Ben has nothing against Todd, but he would really rather not see the other boy again. Todd is perfectly nice for someone who got caught trying to set his high school on fire, but theproblem is that he’s alwayshere, in Ben’s room—well, intheirroom, if Ben is being honest.

But Ben doesn’t want to be honest; he wants his room back. It’s only been two weeks since Todd arrived and was assigned to share Ben’s room, but that whole time, Luce has been absent.

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