Somebody, Please Tell Me Who I Am Read online

  SOMEBODY, PLEASE TELL ME WHO I AM

  BY

  HARRY MAZER

  RECIPIENT OF THE ALAN AWARD

  (FOR OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION TO ADOLESCENT LITERATURE)

  AND

  PETER LERANGIS

  AUTHOR OF THE SWORD THIEF

  IN THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING 39 CLUES SERIES

  Everything has always come easily to Ben Bright. He’s a solid student, landed the lead in his high school play, and has been with Ariela, his amazing girlfriend, for as long as either of them can remember. Everyone expects great things from Ben. So when Ben enlists in the army right out of high school, they are devastated. His parents don’t understand. Ariela feels abandoned. But when he explains that he feels a deep need to give back, to protect his country, his friends and family reluctantly rally around him and support him.

  No one expects the phone call about Ben being in an attack. He has suffered a brain injury, and the doctors don’t know how extensive the damage is. When Ben comes home, he can barely speak or write or walk—or remember anything about his identity, his family, or his friends.

  Harry Mazer and Peter Lerangis write a timely novel about a boy who could be anyone’s friend, brother, or cousin, and give readers a heartbreaking glimpse into the aftermath of war.

  HARRY MAZER was inspired to write Somebody, Please Tell Me Who I Am because of his own experience as an underage enlisted soldier. He is the author of many books for young readers, including My Brother Abe, A Boy at War, A Boy No More, Heroes Don’t Run, The Wild Kid, and Snow Bound. His books have won numerous honors, including the Horn Book Honor List and the ALA Best Books for Young Adults citations. He is the recipient of the ALAN Award for outstanding contribution to adolescent literature. Harry Mazer lives in Montpelier, Vermont.

  PETER LERANGIS is the author of more than 140 books for early readers through teens, including wtf and The Sword Thief, in the New York Times bestselling series, The 39 Clues. Peter lives in New York with his family.

  Jacket design by Laurent Linn

  Front jacket photograph copyright

  © 2012 by PeterPolak/iStockphoto.com

  Camouflage photograph copyright

  © 2012 Jupiterimages/Thinkstock

  Sand photograph copyright

  © 2012 iStockphoto.com/Thinkstock

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  ALSO BY HARRY MAZER

  A Boy At War

  A Boy No More

  Heroes Don’t Run

  My Brother Abe

  ALSO BY PETER LERANGIS

  wtf

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  With thanks to Steven Sabella

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 by Harry Mazer and Peter Lerangis

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website

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  Book design by Laurent Linn

  The text for this book is set in Augustal.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Mazer, Harry.

  Somebody, please tell me who I am / Harry Mazer and Peter Lerangis.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Wounded in Iraq while his Army unit is on convoy and treated for many months for traumatic brain injury, the first person Ben remembers from his earlier life is his autistic brother.

  ISBN 978-1-4169-3895-8 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-4424-4990-9 (eBook)

  [1. Brain damage—Patients—Rehabilitation—Fiction. 2. Autism—Fiction.

  3. Brothers—Fiction. 4. Iraq War, 2003–—Fiction.] I. Lerangis, Peter. II. Title.

  PZ7.M47397Sns 2012

  [Fic]—dc22

  2011006010

  For Norma

  Contents

  Before

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  During

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  After

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  May 5

  The knife came out of nowhere.

  Ben Bright sprang back. His arm knocked the weapon into the shadows and nearly clocked his best friend, Niko Petropoulos.

  “Nervous, are we?” Niko said.

  Ben felt his heart race. His best friend was Sharked up, his hair slicked back and a cigarette pack rolled in his sleeve. Up close he looked ridiculous, and on a normal day Ben would have laughed in his face.

  But not today. Today he wanted to shove Niko through the curtain. Or weep. Instead, the two impulses met in the middle and canceled each other out, and he said, “You scared me.”

  “That makes two of us. Look what you did.” Niko lifted his shirt, revealing an ugly, purplish bruise. “I would like you to stab me again. And do it right this time.”

  The bruise looked like a piece of steak or a great big rotten cabbage. Or the map of a distant, dead planet. “I did that?” Ben said.

  “At dress rehearsal. You had your finger hooked around the blade, so it didn’t retract.” Niko was staring at him strangely. He lowered his shirt and leaned forward, raising an eyebrow. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing,” Ben lied.

  “You look like you’re about to pass out, or get sick. Which is okay. Nerves are normal. People hurl on opening nights, all the time. Just don’t do it here. You’ve already abused me enough. You’re graduating. I’ve got another year for humiliation.”

  “I don’t have to hurl. I’m okay.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen.” Niko pantomimed holding a mike. “Tonight. West Side Story. Eastport High School, New York. A performance that redefines Method acting—Tony actually kills Bernardo. Casting for replacement. Must be unbelievably buff and own a Kevlar vest. Details at eleven.”

  Now everyone was staring: The sophomore playing Riff. Three Latino cast members practicing the Mambo. The weird little wardrobe kid who smelled like wet shoes. Which just made Ben feel worse. He hated keeping secrets. He hated doing things without telling anybody. He had to make it through this day, just this day. He could tell people tomorrow.

  For now, he wanted to freeze time. To photograph them all and hold this moment tight, so he could retrieve it a month from n
ow. So he could feel everything—the opening-night mania, the way Niko’s comments made him tongue-tied and unclever, the curve of his girlfriend Ariela’s back as she stretched at the barre. The way everyone shut up and paid attention whenever he appeared onstage. All the stuff he would be leaving behind.

  He spun and trapped Niko in a headlock. “I’m a spaz, okay? I don’t belong on the same stage as you.”

  “Murder!” Niko cried. He jerked loose, shaking his finger. “This is your inferiority complex. It makes you passive-aggressive. Or just aggressive. You need someone to convince you, for the trillionth time, that you’re God’s gift to the theater. Oy. Someone, please get him a Tony Award before he kills me!”

  “Save the award, I’m getting the plastic knife,” Ben said, turning away.

  That didn’t make sense. Everything out of his mouth felt off, like a bad taste. He walked carefully, threading through the squealers and warm-ups and grim line-reciters. His knife would be somewhere among the thicket of legs.

  “Be-e-e-ennnyyyyy!” Wendy Leff enveloped Ben in a massive hug. Justin Milstein jumped in on the action, too, then Sarah Welch. The entire cluster nearly collided with Ariela Cruz, who was sitting on the floor near the back wall.

  “Unhand the Wonk,” Ariela said. She was in a full split, leaning over a show poster she’d just signed.

  Ben gently pushed aside his friends. “You’re my hero,” he said. “But . . . Wonk?”

  “I have this new theory,” she said matter-of-factly. “There are three types of people who do theater. Type One is the Needies.” She waggled her fingers at Wendy. “They’re in it for the love and hugging. Two is the Bloviators, who get off on the attention. That would be cough cough, Niko, cough. And Three is the Wonks, like me and you, the process junkies. Acting, singing—we just like doing it. It’s a good Wonkness.”

  A shrill voice pierced through the noise, “Half hour, please! Half hour!” Jeannie Lin, their stage manager, wound her way through the crowd, clutching a clipboard. Seeing Ben, she held out a tired-looking plastic knife and recited in her same announcer-voice, “And hold on to your props, people!”

  Ariela smiled at her as she marched away. “I hate when she calls us ‘people.’”

  “Me too,” Ben said. “‘Lords and Ladies’ would work just fine.”

  “Ha.” Ariela held out the poster, with a Sharpie balanced on top. “This is a present for Ms. Moglia. Sign under my name, okay? So Tony and Maria will always be together.” She batted her eyes with an irony that felt somehow comforting at a time like this.

  Ariela’s name was huge and bold, with a heart sign over the i and a gushy, theater-y message, but Ben signed only his name in quick, tiny scribble.

  “Modesty, in a guy, is so hot,” Ariela said with a sigh.

  “I suck! I so totally suck!” Niko’s voice eagerly piped up from behind Ben. “At everything.”

  “Modesty,” Ariela said, “not idiocy.”

  “Look what your modest boyfriend did to me,” Niko said.

  Ben could tell by Ariela’s nose crinkle that Niko had lifted his shirt again.

  “He’s gentler with me. Well, mostly,” Ariela said. Standing up, she handed Niko the poster. “See if you can find room for your whole, long Greek name. Or just write ‘Douchebag.’ It’s shorter. And pass it on when you’re done.”

  With a sly wink at Niko, she gave Ben a kiss and moved to an emptier spot at the barre. “Don’t say anything,” Ben murmured.

  “You mean, like, ‘Lucky bastard’?” Niko said. “Okay, I’ll just think it.”

  “Compliment accepted. I think.”

  “So, have you guys set a date?”

  “Just sign the poster.”

  Niko leaned in closer. “I’m serious. We’ve talked about this—”

  “Hypothetically. And in private.”

  “Nobody’s listening. I find the idea fascinating.” Niko carefully signed his full name, Nikolaos Dimitrios Petropoulos. “You and Ariela . . . settling down, getting married, auditioning, living together in some rat-infested love nest in Brooklyn . . . down the block from me and Taylor Swift.”

  Ben was in no mood for Niko’s predictable unpredictability. “Later, okay? She’s going to be in Ohio next year. And you know it. If you want to rehearse, come find me.”

  He began walking away to look for a quieter, less annoying spot.

  “And you? Where are you going? How come you never talk about that?” Niko barreled on, following close behind. “I mean, you and Ariela have been together since you were in diapers, you still love each other’s asses, and you both know you couldn’t do better. So . . . you wouldn’t do anything stupid to screw that up. Am I right?”

  Ben whirled around. “If this is some kind of nut-job acting exercise, it’s over. Now let’s do the scene or go back into your hole.”

  Niko had a weird look. Ben knew the look. Sometimes when Niko wanted something, he didn’t give you the pleasure of stating it outright if he could make you guess it.

  “Are you jealous?” Ben said with exasperation. “Is that what this is all about? Can you hold it in until after the show?”

  “Come at me.” Niko struck his fight pose. “Come on, Tony, you greasy slimebag, Polish gringo. Come and get Bernardo, the brother of your sexy true love.”

  “Twist my arm.” Making sure to grip the knife with the handle only, Ben lunged at him. Niko flew back, just as rehearsed, and Ben lunged again. He aimed away from the bruise, a couple of inches closer to Niko’s midsection, and plunged the knife inward. He could feel the blade retracting smoothly into the hilt on a spring. He’d done it right this time. Niko was supposed to flex his torso and freeze for a moment, letting the audience see that he’d been stabbed. But instead, he grabbed Ben’s arm and flipped him to the floor.

  “Hey!” Ben shouted.

  Niko was on top of him, pinning him to the dust-covered floorboards. Which was unfair because Niko wrestled varsity.

  Ben forced a laugh. “Okay, okay, we’re even. Let go.”

  “Not yet,” Niko said, his voice a raspy whisper. He leaned closer, his eyes narrowed and angry. “You got your notice, didn’t you?”

  Ben felt himself grow suddenly cold and numb. “What?”

  “You don’t want to say anything because it’s opening night,” Niko said. “Right? Because you’re such a friggin’ modest Boy Scout. Because you’re so It’s not about me.”

  “Asshole.” Ben struggled but couldn’t move.

  “I know what you did. Tell me the truth. Because there are only two things that could make you act so weird. One is that Ariela is pregnant—so it must be the other thing.”

  “You’re freaking crazy.”

  “Crazy but not stupid. If I’m wrong, say it. Say ‘You’re wrong.’ Just those words.”

  Ben lurched forward, ramming his forehead into Niko’s brow.

  As his best friend fell back with a yowl, Jeannie came running toward them. “Guys! What are you doing?”

  Ben forced a smile. “Just rehearsing.”

  “Nice move.” Niko rubbed his head. His eyes had changed, as if a cloud front had moved across them. “It’ll come in handy with the ragheads.”

  “Don’t use that word,” Ben snapped.

  “You can tell them, ‘Hey, terrorists, it’s not about you.’ Teach them the Gospel of Ben and save the world from Islamists.”

  “Um, you guys? We’re almost at fifteen—” Jeannie said.

  “We know, okay?” Ben snapped. “Go away.”

  As she huffed off, Niko glanced over toward Ariela. “Have you told her? I’m sure she’ll be okay with the fact that you’re giving her up. Not to mention your friends and your future. To join the freaking Army and fight a war we never should have gotten into! And Chris. What’s he going to think? Did you ever think about the fact that your brother needs you more than the Republican party does?”

  “It’s not a party, it’s a country,” Ben said. “And I’m not going anywhere but boot camp. Just
because you and everyone else in this school aren’t doing what I’m doing, doesn’t make you all right and me wrong.”

  “You want to know what’s wrong? It’s wrong to waste talent. It’s wrong to keep it from the rest of the world. It’s selfish.”

  “There are thousands of people who can act and sing.”

  “There are thousands of people who can take a bullet for no good reason.”

  Do. Not. Let. Him. Get. To. You.

  “Fifteen minutes, people!” Jeannie shouted. “Fifteen!”

  Ben stood calmly. “I need to get ready. Do you want to do the scene again?”

  Niko looked at him dully and turned away. “Break a leg, Private Bright. And crack a skull while you’re at it.”

  Ben wasn’t feeling in the mood to eat or party, even though (1) the revolving Lazy Susan at Lily Hong’s was practically cracking with the weight of the feast, and (2) Ms. Hong had allowed him to blast his own playlist over the speakers.

  He wanted the night to be over. Ariela was dancing with a bunch of Jets and Sharks girls, most of them still in their makeup. After too many attempts to bring Ben into their circle with a magnetic glance, she had given up. Niko hadn’t spoken to him except as Bernardo on stage, and the anger in the fight scene had been scary good.

  Ben watched his mom and dad try to carry on a conversation with the Gleasons, whose older son had served in Desert Storm. They all looked very intense.

  Ben felt a tap on his shoulder. “Squash court. Locked door. An ax, a baseball, a whip, and a can of Diet Coke. Tom Seaver and Slobodan Miloševieć”. Who lives?”

  Chris was looking at him expectantly. “Squash court?” Ben asked.

  “An enclosed environment,” Chris explained. “Thirty-two feet long by twenty-one feet wide by eighteen feet high. They can’t leave until one of them dies.”

  Ben thought a moment. “Well, Seaver has a stronger arm but Milošević” is nastier . . .”

  “Want to place odds?” Chris asked.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Ben spotted Ms. Moglia gesturing toward him from another table. Chris was already sitting and drawing some elaborate diagrams on the tablecloth. “Three to two odds, Seaver,” Ben said. “Although I think I’ll regret it.”