The book.
I look at him and look away. “You know I don’t read too good, Ben,” I say, embarrassed and stupid.
He crouches down a bit so we’re truly face to face. His Noise ain’t making me comfortable at all.
“I know,” he says, gentle-like. “I always meant to try and spend more time–” He stops. He holds out the book again. “It’s yer ma’s,” he says. “It’s her journal, starting from the day you were born, Todd.” He looks down at it. “Till the day she died.”
My Noise opens wide.
My ma. My ma’s own book.
Ben runs his hand over the cover. “We promised her we’d keep you safe,” he says. “We promised her and then we had to put it outta our minds so there was nothing in our Noise, nothing that would let anyone know what we were gonna do.”
“Including me,” I say.
“It had to be including you. If just a little bit got into yer Noise and then into the town . . .”
He don’t finish.
“Like the silence I found in the swamp today,” I say. “Like that getting into town and causing all this havoc.”
“No, that was a surprise.” He looks up at the sky, like he’s telling it just how completely a surprise it all was. “No one woulda guessed that happening.”
“It’s dangerous, Ben. I could feel it.”
But all he does is hold out the book again.
I start shaking my head. “Ben–”
“I know, Todd,” he says, “but try yer best.”
“No, Ben–”
He catches my eyes again. He holds ’em with his own. “Do you trust me, Todd Hewitt?”
I scratch my side. I don’t know how to answer. “Course I do,” I say, “or at least I did before you started packing bags I didn’t know about for me.”
He looks at me harder, his Noise focused like a sun ray. “Do you trust me?” he asks again.
I look at him and yeah, I do, even now. “I trust you, Ben.”
“Then trust me when I say that the things you know right now, Todd, those things ain’t true.”
“Which things?” I ask, my voice rising a little. “Why can’t you just tell me?”
“Cuz knowledge is dangerous,” he says, as serious as I’ve ever seen him and when I look into his Noise to see what he’s hiding, it roars up and slaps me back. “If I told you now, it would buzz in you louder than a hive at honey-gathering time and Mayor Prentiss would find you fast as he could spit. And you have to get away from here. You have to, as far away as you can.”
“But where?” I say. “There ain’t nowhere else!”
Ben takes a deep breath. “There is,” he says. “There’s somewhere else.”
I don’t say nothing to that.
“Folded in the front of the book,” Ben says, “there’s a map. I made it myself but don’t look at it, not till yer well outta town, okay? Just go to the swamp. You’ll know what to do from there.”
But I can tell from his Noise that he’s not at all sure I’ll know what to do from there. “Or what I’m gonna find there, do you?”
He don’t say nothing to that.
And I’m thinking.
“How did you know to have a bag already packed?” I say, stepping back a little. “If this thing in the swamp is so unexpected, why are you so ready to chuck me out into the wilderness today?”
“It was the plan all along, ever since you were little.” I see him swallow, I hear his sadness everywhere. “As soon as you were old enough to make it on yer own–”
“You were just gonna throw me out so the crocs could eat me.” I’m stepping back further.
“No, Todd–” He moves forward, the book still in his hand. I step back again. He makes a gesture like, okay.
And he closes his eyes and opens up his Noise for me.
One month’s time is the first thing it says–
And here comes my birthday–
The day I’ll become a man–
And–
And–
And there it all is–
What happens–
What the other boys did who became men–
All alone–
All by themselves–
How every last bit of boyhood is killed off–
And–
And–
And what actually happened to the people who–
Holy crap–
And I don’t want to say no more about it.
And I can’t say at all how it makes me feel.
I look at Ben and he’s a different man than he always was, he’s a different man to the one I’ve always known.
Knowledge is dangerous.
“It’s why no one tells you,” he says. “To keep you from running.”
“You wouldn’t’ve protected me?” I say, mewing again (shut up).
“This is how we’re protecting you, Todd,” he says. “By getting you out. We had to be sure you could survive on yer own, that’s why we taught you all that stuff. Now, Todd, you have to go–”
“If that’s what’s happening in a month, why wait this long? Why not take me away sooner?”
“We can’t come with you. That’s the whole problem. And we couldn’t bear to send you off on yer own. To see you go. Not so young.” He rubs the cover of the book with his fingers again. “And we were hoping there might be a miracle. One where we wouldn’t have to–”
Lose you, says his Noise.
“But there ain’t been no miracle,” I say, after a second.
He shakes his head. He holds out the book. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry it has to be this way.”
And there’s so much true sorrow in his Noise, so much worry and edginess, I know he’s speaking true, I know he can’t help what’s happening and I hate it but I take the book from him and put it back in the plastic and into the rucksack. We don’t say nothing more. What else is there to say? Everything and nothing. You can’t say everything, so you don’t say nothing.
He pulls me to him again, hitting my lip on his collar just like Cillian but this time I don’t pull away. “Always remember,” he says, “when yer ma died, you became our son, and I love you and Cillian loves you, always have, always will.”
I start to say, “I don’t wanna go,” but it never comes out.
Cuz BANG!! goes the loudest thing I ever heard in Prentisstown, like something’s blowing right up, right on up to the sky.