The Believing Game

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Copyright

I knew they'd caught me before the store manager came hustling down from the café area, before the checker from the next register over stepped out and blocked my cart with his foot. Maybe I felt the closed-circuit camera zero in on me, the bull's-eye suddenly blazing on my back. Most likely, though, it was that my regular checkout lady wouldn't make eye contact with me. Her name tag read
LORNA
, and she'd pasted a happy-face sticker on it. Usually she smiled, asked, “How are you?” I always chose her line because she was nice and sort of frazzled. Distracted. Lorna and I were pals. In her version of my life, my single mom worked too hard and made me babysit my siblings far too often. Sometimes I bought diapers so I could say something like, “This flu has just knocked my mom out. My brother's two and he's a real handful!” And she'd laugh and grin and shake her head about what a good kid I was.

But that day Lorna wouldn't even look at me. When the machine spit out my receipt, she pursed her lips and I knew. For a second, I considered bolting. But the exit was a good six aisles away and I'd cornered myself with the cart. By the time the manager motioned for the security guard, I had already lifted my backpack off the items at the bottom of the cart and faked shock. “Oh gosh. I almost forgot all this.” Hastily piled my stash of lip glosses, necklaces, sunglasses,
personal lubricant, and silky underwear onto the conveyor belt. “So sorry — I'm such a moron!” But Lorna only glanced past me.

I heard the manager first. He wheezed behind me. He had apparently really exerted himself. “Miss.” My legs wobbled. He reached over and turned out the light for the checkout station. Aisle twelve was closed for business. “Miss. We're going to need you to come with us.”

My face felt suddenly sunburned. Later on, Joshua would teach me,
Shame is just a retreat into weakness
. But then I spoke softly because of the knot in my throat. “I apologized.” I snapped open my wallet and whipped my debit card back out. “Seriously.” When I slapped the card onto the counter, it sounded desperate. “Just a mix-up. Really, I'm so sorry.”

The manager wouldn't cave. “Come with us, please.” Lorna studied the buttons on the register. I smiled meekly at the security guy, but he only smoothed out his blue uniform and looped his thumb into his holster. It looked like it held a canister of pepper spray.

If I got through the doors and into the parking lot, they couldn't detain me. Most retailers maintain that policy — I knew that. It's not like Target wanted to deal with a lawsuit from some teenager their overeager rent-a-cop had wrestled to the ground in order to save a helpless tube of mascara.

But the security guard must have noticed me plotting my path to freedom. He clamped on to my shoulder and pushed me forward. “Let's go.”

“Take your hands off me.” I pleaded toward Lorna. “This is all just a mistake.” She simply handed over the bag of items I'd actually paid for: a package of Oreos to surprise my nonexistent little brother and a bottle of Target-brand fabric
softener. The manager grabbed the bag in one hand and reached for my backpack with the other.

“That's my stuff,” I protested.

“Let's go into the back office and take a look,” he told me. By then a little crowd had gathered. Just a bunch of nosy housewives and their mucus-faced kids — all pinched faces and pointing fingers. Joshua would say,
They're not seeing you as you are. They're seeing you as they are.

“What?” I barked at one of them. Then I turned back to the manager. “My father's an attorney. I don't think you're allowed to detain me in some closed back room.” We entered a white hallway that smelled like stale coffee. “I'm a minor.” I looked back at the security guard. “It's not legal or appropriate for you to be touching me.” His hand dropped down.

“Well, we certainly don't mean to make you uncomfortable,” the manager said sarcastically before shuffling over to his desk and sinking into his seat. He picked up the phone and spoke to me as he dialed. “But the truth of the matter is, we've caught you on camera several times now.”

He held one finger up for me to wait, as if I was going somewhere. “Frank? Yeah, it's Bob Dennis over at the Sturbridge Target. We have a shoplifting situation. A repeat offender.” Bob Dennis took out my fabric softener and studied my receipt. “Right. We'll be pressing charges.” Bob Dennis examined my Oreos. “Yup. Thank you kindly. We'll sit tight and wait for you here.”

I tried again to negotiate. “Look — I just won't ever come back here, okay? What are you doing? You can't go through my backpack.” But Bob Dennis apparently felt totally justified in rifling through my personal property. And pulling out my cell phone. “That's my phone. You won't find any stolen property.”

Bob Dennis didn't respond. He just scrolled through my numbers, then picked up his phone and dialed again. “Mrs. Cannon? This is Bob Dennis at the Sturbridge Promenade Target Greatland. I'm sorry to tell you that we're holding your daughter here.” He flipped open my wallet and peered at my driver's license. “Greer Cannon?” For a second, I wondered if maybe my mom might deny knowing me. “Yes, for shoplifting. I take it this is a recurrent issue, then?”
Thanks for that, Mom.
“Well, I have already contacted the authorities.” He held the receiver slightly away from his ear, presumably to distance himself from the shrieking. “Mrs. Cannon, I'm very sorry, but we need to follow company protocol. You understand.” Bob Dennis sneered into the phone. “I think it's a good idea for you to come down here too.” He turned to me and smiled widely. “Perhaps you'll arrive before the police, but unfortunately we have consistent company practices to protect both our employees and our customers.” I felt sorry for Lorna. I'd let her down, and here she had such a douchebag boss. “Either way, of course I'm happy to discuss restitution, Mrs. Cannon. I imagine that's a necessity at this point. We'll see you soon.”

So that's what I ended up doing one afternoon in late August, the summer before my junior year in high school. Waiting in a musty office, dreading the arrival of my mom, praying she didn't just abandon me. It was the third time I'd been caught.

Somewhere, in places I'd never seen, people I didn't know were watching their own lives similarly unravel. Maybe this was the night that Addison drank himself into a stupor and kicked some kid until he bled from his mouth. Maybe as I sat there, Sophie started cutting again, and her sister told her
parents. And a girl named Hannah Green found even more creative ways to hurt herself.

And all the while, Joshua Stern hovered off in the distance, waiting for each one of us to disintegrate. He held court in the coffee shop or in the Stop & Shop parking lot. He ran the Narcotics Anonymous meetings in the church basement. While my mom tore through the Target with her checkbook and pointed out that I hadn't actually stolen anything, while she hauled me out to the car and told me that she could no longer stand to look at my face, while I waited for my parents to stop bickering and decide what to do to me, maybe Joshua sat beside a sad girl in a diner booth and carefully explained how she underestimated the power of her own person. Or he trolled the self-help section of the local bookstore, the almost empty Laundromat, combing through the wreckage.

Later on, he would claim he felt us all out there. Like a storm gathering — that kind of crackling energy. Joshua told us that in the ancient world, followers often wandered into pilgrimage. The wise men followed the North Star without knowing for certain who they would kneel to once they arrived.

It was the rest of the world who considered us aimless. Joshua knew we were just finding our way home.

Even if it were scripture, it wouldn't start with Joshua. Joshua might claim that, but he came after. Maybe it started with Addison, or with McCracken Hill. It probably started way before McCracken Hill because it's not like I ended up there by chance. I made choices.

All anyone at McCracken talked about were choices. Life was a series of decisions and we had whiffed most of them. We'd been sent there to learn how to make smart choices, informed choices, positive choices that displayed proper judgment and an understanding of our role in society. That was the steadfast message of the staff and it was stenciled on our walls, carved in the massive mahogany classroom tables, even etched into the unbreakable glass of the vending machines outside the dining hall.

Those snack machines were stocked with granola bars and popcorn, vitamin water and organic juice, so it's not like anyone actually trusted our sense of self-control. Dorm lights functioned on a timer — they snapped off at ten and blinked back on at six in the morning. When I toured McCracken with my parents, I noticed that none of the rooms we visited looked like real people lived in them. There weren't any posters. No drawings on the walls. No clothes thrown across chairs, no laptops or phones, or even chargers left plugged into the electrical outlets. Each room had two beds with the
same navy blue blanket stretched tightly across each mattress. Two identical piles of books stacked carefully on each wood desk. And the dorms all had their own self-help names: Discipline House, Self-Discovery Hall.

I say
tour
, but it was less of a tour than a display. We'd gone to visit colleges two years before, during my older sister's senior year. Back then we ate in the dining halls. Eliza sat through classes. She stayed overnight a couple of times and when we retrieved her the next morning, she'd always have some new mannerism — a word I'd never heard her pronounce before or a gesture that looked too dramatic, too large for her arms. Once, after she visited NYU, we picked her up at the train station and she had a long, pink strand running through her hair. My mom freaked and then Eliza reached up and unclipped her barrette. The whole offending piece came away in her hands. My sister would never have done anything permanently bad.

And this place wasn't NYU — we were in Shitstain, Pennsylvania, in the middle of nowhere. McCracken Hill was not a top-tier university or even an unranked community college. It probably landed somewhere between boarding school and rehab. Closer to rehab.

Mom didn't even ride along in the car to drop me off. She didn't iron my clothes before I packed them all up or take me anywhere for toiletries. In a way, that was a relief — neither of us pretended it was camp. In the days leading up to my departure, Mom didn't actually talk to me much. I thought then that she felt guilty, that my dad had pushed her into the decision. She'd meant the pamphlets as a warning, but Dad had made her follow through.

In the end, I didn't need the toiletries. When we got to the admissions office, a biology teacher named Ms. Crane went
through my bag. She sorted out my shampoo, conditioner, even my contact lens solution.

“I'm assuming you wear eyeglasses?” she asked.

“I wear contacts.” I swiveled toward my dad. This was crazy.

“Not here. Not yet. Contacts are a privilege.”

“Seeing? My sight is a privilege?” My eyes watered in spite of themselves and my dad cleared his throat. For a second, it seemed like he was going to speak up. But then Ms. Crane's fingers clamped down on my eyeglass case. She snapped it open.

“There!” she announced triumphantly. “Do you want to go to the ladies' room to switch?”

“No.” I felt that old ache at the back of my throat and couldn't believe I was about to cry so soon. That they'd broken me already.

My dad cleared his throat again, but before he actually spoke, Ms. Crane tapped one long nail against the laminated pamphlet on top of my pile of books. “I'm sorry — our handbook states our policy very clearly. Students must lay some groundwork of trust before earning the allowance of liquids in their rooms.”

“How am I supposed to shower?” I asked. In response, Ms. Crane set a generic bar of soap on top of my bag. “What about my hair?”

“Soap works just as well. You'll find there's a lot we categorize as ‘needs' that we should really consider ‘wants.'”

“Well, I
want
to know why you smell like Pantene, then.” Ms. Crane's smile didn't waver; she just kept digging through my bag, then handed me my contacts case.

“That's a very stylish pair of eyeglasses,” she said. The smile deepened spitefully. My glasses had thick lenses and
puke-colored tortoiseshell rims and I only ever wore them in cases of pinkeye. I even slept with my contacts in. I knew I wasn't supposed to, but I hated waking up and finding everything blurry.

My dad valiantly forced words out. “I don't see this as necessary — Greer's hygiene —”

“This has nothing to do with hygiene, Mr. Cannon.” Ms. Crane's voice rose and then plateaued back to even-keel territory again. “I'm sure it won't surprise you that some of our students struggle with substance abuse issues. In the interest of maintaining an alcohol-free environment, we monitor liquids very carefully, especially containers coming from off campus.”

My dad rubbed at his temples. “Can't you just sniff it?” I could tell he was wishing he had just put me on a train. That's what the admissions team had recommended. “Greer — there's nothing in —” He turned to confirm that I hadn't yet resorted to smuggling vodka in Bausch & Lomb bottles. I didn't bother to answer. He had already remembered that I wasn't to be trusted.

If Ms. Crane hadn't taken such obvious glee in the whole process, I would have laughed at McCracken Hill's ridiculous liquid policy. But I met most of my classmates wearing my Army of Dorkness glasses, with the residue of cheap soap caking my hair.

I told myself it didn't matter what I looked like. And it didn't, at least not for a few weeks.

 

I suffered through a full month of classes and counseling to get to the point where the team designated me fit for shampoo and other bottled fluids. My treatment team consisted of
my four academic instructors, the principal, vice principal, and my counselor. Because I struggled with “self-destructive eating patterns,” I also had to meet with a nutritionist. Some kids went to Narcotics Anonymous and others went to AA instead, and twice a month the school even bused a bunch of kids to Philadelphia for a Gamblers Anonymous meeting. They sent my lab partner, Dale, there and he said the kids spent most of the ride trying to bribe the driver to take them to Mohegan Sun.

I'd never been on parole — nothing had ever gotten that serious. Even still, I imagined a parole board review would feel cozier than a McCracken treatment team session. First of all, sessions took place in one of three conference rooms, all named for dead kids. There was a framed picture in each room and a plaque. And so you sat there under a photograph of a dead kid, surrounded by the adults who judged you every day. No one ever explained how the kids had died.

Under the dead kid's watchful eyes, you sat there and reviewed your choices. Each member of the team brought a file, so you got to explain why you chose to turn in your last lit essay late, why you decided to sneak out of peer tutoring. You sat there while they dissected you and it really felt like that — a series of slices across your belly. You realized how exposed you were when you listened to all of the tiny, stupid, little decisions that you didn't even realize you were making. They wrote them all down. In that room, at least, it seemed like they noticed everything.

No one asked me about stealing. I hadn't stepped off campus since I'd arrived, so maybe they figured it was a nonissue. And I'd landed a single, so no roommates to pilfer from. Instead they pointed out that I hadn't yet joined a club. “Extracurriculars give us the chance to focus our energies on
our passions,” the principal told me. I recognized the language from the student handbook and wondered if that meant he'd written it or just memorized it.

Greer, are you happy?
No one asked this. We sat around and measured how productive I'd been, how cooperative. I waited for someone to point out that I hadn't yet made a single friend. I planned to blame the glasses — but no one mentioned it. Making friends wasn't the point; it's not like any of us were gunning for reform school homecoming queen. It took me that little bit to get used to McCracken. Keeping focused, holding myself accountable, all of those buzzwords pretty much made the idea of “happy” obsolete. That's what I left that first treatment session knowing. No one really cared. But at least they gave me back liquids.

I washed my hair twice that night. Swirled Listerine around my mouth and slipped in my contacts and felt so absurdly euphoric about it that I almost knocked on the other doors lining the girls' corridor of Empowerment Hall. I nearly asked the dorm counselor if I could sign out my cell phone and call home to share my renewed appreciation for leave-in conditioner.

But I didn't do either of those things. I finally felt clean and decided not to ruin that by reaching out to someone who'd most likely disappoint me. I ambled from the hall bathroom to my single, with my plastic bucket of irreproachable toiletries knocking hopefully against my leg. That night, my bare room seemed more pure than forlorn, like a monk's cell. I remember feeling like I was readying myself for something miraculous, something life altering.

Or someone. Right after that, Addison showed up. It turned out I'd been preparing myself for him.