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“Hey. Your uh, your hand?”
It's the only thing Ben can really think of saying when the plane is out of sight. The plane with Brooklynn on it. Who is alive. Who is working with the broker. Who just betrayed all of them— but she left Bumpy’s egg, and she talked to Ben before, so maybe it's not all for nothing? But maybe it is. Who knows.
But Kenji’s hand, his knuckles are covered in dry blood. From punching the two-way window so hard it cracked. From almost punching Ben. It could've been on purpose, it could've been on accident. Maybe the tears in his eyes made him miss. Maybe he was aiming for the glass. Ben probably won't ever know. Kenji’s closed up more than he was at camp, just this time there's no show to hide it behind. Just grief.
Kenji looks at him with something between shock and incredulity.
“My hand? That's what we're talking about right now? My fucking hand?” And there's that spark of anger in his eyes again. It's better than nothing at all.
“Yeah, I mean,” Ben gestures vaguely. “You're bleeding? Or you're done bleeding. And you know, rubble dust and all that's bad for cuts. Have you thought of all the germs—”
“You knew Brooklynn was alive!” Kenji yells.
Sammy steps forward, “Okay, okay, let's not get into a shouting match. Just— one thing at a time, okay? Brooklynn is alive . Shouldn't that be all that matters?”
“Exactly!” Kenji says, holding Bumpy's egg just a little closer, “And he didn't tell us!”
“You knew?” Darius whispers.
“That's not— look, if you wanna get a blood infection, that's fine by me. I'm just saying, you should probably get that checked out.”
“Stop deflecting, Ben,” Yaz says as she stands closer to Sammy. At least they've figured it all out, Ben guesses. Maybe. He's actually kind of lost in what's going on right now.
“I'm not deflecting, it's called being worried for a friend.”
“Worried?” Kenji's voice is only getting higher, “You're worried , but you didn't tell us that Brooklynn was alive while we were all mourning ? Where's the worry then, huh?”
“Can you at least not bleed on Bumpy's egg? You know, with all the fire and the storm and the shaking already—”
“ Ben ,” Sammy squawks, “Can you listen? Can everyone stop yelling? We can talk this out like mature adults, but you gotta listen to what everyone's saying.”
“I didn't know!” Ben throws his hands in the air, “I didn't know! Not the whole time, at least. Just— a day? Two? I didn't know if it was actually her or someone playing a joke, okay, and I didn't want to get anyone's hopes up, and when she called—”
“She called you?” Darius looks less lost and more hurt now, and that. That doesn't feel good.
“ When she called ,” Ben tries not to think about it, “You all finally looked happy, and I couldn't— look, I didn't know, I found out like two days ago, and everyone's already mad, so let's just find somewhere to stay tonight, because I don't know about you, but I do not want to recreate our Nublar days out here. And all I have on me is hand sanitizer so—”
He digs the travel-sized bottle— store-bought, not homemade this time —out of the fanny pack that he's had since he was 14, a little present from his mom so that he'd be able to keep everything he needed with him when he was at camp. He holds it out to Kenji, who still looks mad, whose hands are busy holding the egg from probably the only person— because Bumpy is a person, he'll argue to anyone —that doesn't care what Ben has done.
“—take care of that and we should— yeah. We should just find somewhere.”
For a second, there's silence. Yaz sighs, pinching her nose, and then she looks back up, “Fine, sure. We're just gonna table this. But we are coming back to it.”
“ I'm not tabling this,” Kenji holds the egg with one hand, gesturing wildly, but he snatches the hand sanitizer anyway. “We're gonna talk and Ben's gonna tell us exactly why he thought it was a good idea to not tell us Brooklynn is alive !”
“ In a minute. ” Yaz says, and her tone is final enough that no one else can come up with anything to say.
They shuffle their feet for a few more moments, but the five of them— five, not six, maybe not ever six again, Brooklynn what are you thinking ? —make their way to the car Kenji and Ben escaped in, stole, hotwired, whatever they were calling it. They get in and they drive.
Not back to the compound, not when they don't know what happened to the dinosaurs below the surface, not back to anywhere they know. Yaz drives silently, Darius stares out the passenger window, and Ben tries his best to become part of the back seat car door while Sammy acts as a barrier between him and Kenji.
Sammy holds Bumpy’s egg. Kenji wipes the blood off his hand with hand sanitizer and his sleeve.
Ben turns his phone off.