On a typical morning, he is up and ready for school before his father wakes up. It means getting up at 4:30 a.m., but it's worth it. He sets the table for breakfast, puts his father's work shoes by the door, throws away the empty beer cans. By the time his father rises, stumbling around the kitchen and swearing, Ben is long gone.
Sunrises on the island are magnificent. He doesn't think he could ever get tired of them. Annie always liked sunsets better, but not Ben. Sunrises for him, anytime. Sunsets meant curfew and going home; sunrises meant a new day. One new day (maybe today, he hopes every morning), it would be the last sunrise of this miserable life.
Some mornings, he risks turning off the sonic fence and wandering around in the jungle. It's not a risk in that he's afraid of the jungle or what he might find there. The risk lies in someone from the Dharma Initiative spotting him, telling his father, spoiling everything.
Fortunately, he's learned how to use the fact that few people notice him to his own advantage. He never does get spotted.
As he often does, this morning on his way to class he stops by the motor pool, looking for her. She smiles when she sees him, but it's her usual guarded smile, with sadness and an edge of fear behind it. It reminds him of his mother, the night he saw her in the jungle. She's blond, too, like his mother, and she's the only adult who seems to care whether he's dead or alive.
"Morning, Juliet."
"Hi, Ben."
"What are you working on today?"
"Oh, the usual," she says. "Shock absorbers take a beating on this island."
"You're really good at fixing things."
The smile she gives him is cryptic, closed. "Not as good as you might think."
He wants to ask her what she used to do off the island, before she was a mechanic, but he's been asking off and on for three years and he knows she won't tell him. It's okay. He is patient, and he will know someday.
"How was the sunrise?"
"I can't describe it. You know I'm not much good with words."
She shrugs, laughing.
"It's true," he says, and surveys her soberly. "Sometimes I think I'm not who you think I am."
She busies herself with the tool cart, which puts her back to him. "Are any of us?"
Juliet says a lot of strange things, but he doesn't mind. "You should come sometime. Watch the sunrise, I mean." He looks toward the east. "Although there are probably better places to see it than here."
"Thinking about leaving?"
Only all the time, he thinks, but it's a thought he hasn't shared even with her. "Where would I go? What would I do?"
"Who would you be?" she asks, turning to him again.
He wants to be the sort of person Richard comes for, and he wants to be the sort of person she'd be proud of, and he's not sure if the two are compatible or which he wants more. He doesn't know how to answer her question, and so he doesn't.
She puts a hand on his shoulder, and there are tears in her eyes, and he wishes he were pushy enough to barge into other people's business because he wants to know why she cries so often when she talks to him. "Better run along to school," she says.
He wants to tell her about his plan to get the hostile out of the holding cell, tell her this could be the last time he sees her for a while and that she shouldn't worry, but he doesn't want to get her in trouble, so he just nods and walks away.
He promises himself that somehow, he'll come back for her.
