The Believing Game (17 page)

For whatever reason, I didn't want to give Joshua any sense that he'd caught me by surprise. “No.” That's all I said. We sat staring at each other.

“How about you, Addison?”

Part of me hoped that the fact that Addison had spent time with his hands in my pants would preclude him from believing that I was actually an otherworldly being.

“I know in my heart that it's true. I feel this emanating power when I'm in her presence. Since we first saw each other — we were in class together and I recognized her as the source of so much comfort. She keeps me safe and strong.” Addison's voice sounded choked. He was saying all the right things, for all the wrong reasons.

“You're speaking this to me. And I thank you for trusting me. But, brother, I noticed this lightness wash over you as soon as you first mentioned her to me. Why not tell Elizabeth about it?”

I could have sworn I heard his head creak as Addison turned to face me. Maybe Joshua would next announce that Addison fulfilled the necessary cyborg component of our team. When Addison stared into my eyes, he looked very much human, though. I saw tears. He meant all of it.

He looked at me just like I'd dreamed of him looking at me. This was simply a different context. When he spoke up, I expected the usual singsong, but instead he used Joshua's name for me. “Elizabeth, you have my complete faith.”

I guess
Elizabeth
was more challenging to rhyme. I couldn't tell if he was trying or not. “Feel free to respond, Elizabeth,” Joshua prodded, and I wished someone would tell him to cram it. I felt my eyes well up too, but it wasn't this outpouring of joy. Joshua had invaded us. That's what I wanted to tell Addison.

The way we felt about each other had been good because it had been real. I couldn't stop myself from looking away, but managed at least to look down at our entwined hands. Staring at them, I thought,
All I have to do is play Joshua's stupid believing game. Addison is the prize I win.
Right then he still seemed worth it. Even now I'd swear he was worth it.
So I squeezed his hands back and looked in his eyes and told him, “Addison, you have my complete faith, as well.”

Joshua meant for it to seem like a wedding. I knew that. He meant us to feel as if we were making vows. So I made mine. It probably counted as the first time I looked at Addison and lied.

Joshua never declared, “You may kiss the bride,” but Addison still leaned in and kissed me. It felt crass, like I'd been displayed.

Joshua kept talking. “You all resemble shell-shocked soldiers. We haven't even yet begun to fight. We need a rest. I know it's early, but I'm not sure we can follow up such a pivotal moment with board games.

“You have all truly surprised me. Impressed me. Listen to my careful warning, however. In the morning, we'll all feel the instinct to distance ourselves from the power of this circle. We might reexamine this in the harsh light of day and find it easier to dismiss the truths we have uncovered here. I urge you not to take that easy route. I believe in each and every one of you. We will talk further.” We all stood up at once, like the bell had just rung at the end of the creepiest class ever.

Joshua called out, “Wait.” We stopped, trained well. “From here on out, all discussions about our calling are reserved for the entire circle. Is that clear?” Silence.

“Addison, make that clear to the others.”

“Guys, we shouldn't talk about this unless everyone's there to participate in the conversation. Once you start talking in pairs and stuff, your team fragments and the mission
could suffer. That includes Joshua. He needs to be with us too when we make any more plans.”

“Sure thing.” Jared actually seemed relieved.

“Do we all agree on this?” Joshua asked. “I'd prefer to hear actual voices acknowledge my question.”

We all spoke out in the affirmative. We stood and stretched. Wes made a beeline for the kitchen and started digging around for the last of the brownies. Joshua headed to the stairs and then stopped. He held on to the banister as if he needed it for support. “Hannah, this has exhausted me. I would ask that I not be alone tonight.” She'd moved into the kitchen with Wes and, for a second, I saw a jolt of disappointment wrench through her.

Joshua had said we needed to invite her because she needed more experience forging friendships. More normality. Fun. This hardly counted. But Hannah smiled obediently and called out, “Of course.” She even rushed over to help him up the stairs.

“Hannah, your hair looks really nice curled around your face.” It was Wes who thought to tell her that. He yelled it across the room and when we all turned to gape at him, he got embarrassed. He ducked his head a little and then defended himself. “She does, right? It looks lovely, Hannah. You should wear it that way more often. You know — if you feel like it.”

Hannah patted her hair down a little, as if she was checking to make sure it was still there. “Thanks. I think I will.” She and Joshua shuffled up the stairs.

I turned to see Addison watching their slow progress. He said, “He just uses himself up on us, you know?”

“Yeah. I see that.”

“I'm so glad. I'm not gonna lie. You worried me for a while there, Greer. You have this spark.”

“Yeah, and that's a bad thing?” I dared him to say yes.

“Never. That's not what I meant. But.”

“But what?” I poked his chest.

“Greer, Greer — you're hard to steer.”

I laughed — a real, true laugh. “You bet I'm hard to steer.”

“I'd like to steer you upstairs now, if that's okay.” By all rights, it should have been creepy, but it was way less alarming than Joshua's whole I-might-die-in-my-sleep-becauseof-our-emotional-conversation-about-impending-vegetarian-doom routine.

“That should be fine.” I called out to the kitchen crew, “Does anyone mind if we turn in?”

Wes didn't even look up. “Knock yourself out.” Sophie nodded too. Wes cocked his head at Sophie. “Ten minutes 'til she and Jared push together the bunk beds in the back room anyway.”

Sophie squealed, “Absolutely not true.”

Jared turned to her. “I thought that was accurate. Did I misunderstand the bat signal?”

“I can't believe you!”

“Sophie, I'd rather know now than go to sleep in the bunk next to the two of you. That couch is comfy. I have a typically misogynistic horror film. And two more brownies,” Wes said.

“Were we that bad?”

“Let's just say I almost just begged to demonstrate my trust in Joshua upstairs.”

“Wes, that's not funny.”

Addison had already started backing me up the steps. “Okay, then. Night, kids. You all amaze me. In good ways.” He paused. “Seriously, I feel so close to all of you right now.”

Wes stopped him from turning on the waterworks again. “Go feel close to your girlfriend.”

When we got upstairs, Addison stood in front of our overnight bags. “Hey, we should change into our pajamas.” I froze and studied him for a minute or two. “What?” he asked. “What did you bring to sleep in?”

“Just flannel pants and an old T-shirt.”

“Perfect.” I stared at him. “Seriously, Greer. Don't you ever wonder —” He stopped and then tried again. “I just want to know what you look like when you go to bed, on just any old night. We're on that campus and sometimes I'm lying in bed thinking,
She's right in the next building. In a bed just like this one.
”

“That's the sweetest thing I've ever heard.”

“I know, right? Is it working on you?”

“Some people would also consider it a red flag of your creeper status.” He nodded and I toppled back onto the giant mattress. “I didn't bring anything fancy or lacy.”

“Well, of course not. I wouldn't expect you to pack up your Victoria's Secret for your stint at reform school.”

I sat up quickly. “That's kind of judgey. What if I did do that?”

Addison threw his body across the bed. The springs creaked. “But you didn't.” He leaned into me and breathed against my collarbone. “Don't pick a fight, Greer. We have one night, right? Who knows when Joshua will swing another one of these weekends for us?”

Back to Joshua. Always, always back to Joshua and our profound gratefulness. “Let's leave,” I found myself saying.
“Let's start over somewhere. We can leave right now. I don't even care — we can just walk until we find a bus station. We can buy a ticket to some random town that sounds good just because of its name. Or even New York. We can go there.”

“I don't care how much allowance you've stashed — we won't be able to afford living in New York City.”

“Then we won't. We'll go to Michigan. We'll find jobs and live in a motel and cook canned food on a hot plate. If we run into trouble, Sophie will send us money — I know she will. Or I can write my aunt Tracy.”

“Greer, stop.”

“People live in motels all the time. I've seen it in episodes of
Intervention
.” He still didn't say anything. “It means shelving some dreams for a little bit. College. But we'll still get there. It'll just take longer. And in the meantime, we'll be together. We can apply for jobs at Macy's or something. Or wait tables. I'd make an excellent waitress, right?”

“Stop.” He whispered it, so I pretended I hadn't heard him.

“As soon as we're safely settled in somewhere, we can write our families and let them know we're okay. And after a while, if we miss them — we can come home. But we'll have established ourselves as adults first and then they won't have the right to decide for us —”

“GREER, STOP.” He seemed to have surprised himself with his own raised voice. “I'm sorry, but this doesn't help. None of it will actually happen.”

“It can, though. We can even just walk to the road and hitchhike.” It would probably be safe to hitchhike with him. What deranged killer would pick up a muscular beast like Addison Bradley?

He lay still on his back, his arms folded behind his head, propping it up. “You're not thinking straight. And you'd regret it. We'd start getting on each other's nerves on the bus ride. Then what? We'd step off in some miserable midwestern town and you'd hate me. You'd look around at that shabby motel and that minimum-wage job and remember the chances you blew when you chose me. Give it three days before the excitement wore off and you'd start to blame me.”

“Psshhht.” I had sat up to listen, but plopped back down to stretch out perpendicular to him. “Look who's playing the unbelieving game.” He didn't respond. He just lay there, twitching his foot back and forth. “What chances are those exactly?”

“Don't be stupid. You know what I mean. College. Summertime tours of Europe. Your dad's McMansion. Whatever's waiting for you once your parents get tired of grounding you at the esteemed McCracken Hill.”

“You haven't listened to me at all. Hey.” I said it sharply, but he didn't even flinch. He just sat there, waiting for me to get the tantrum out of my system. “Listen.” I tried to word it really carefully. “Maybe you're right and I've wasted a lot of opportunities. But I'm not making those choices anymore. I can't take them back or reverse them. This isn't just a timeout, you know. They sent me to McCracken, knowing it would screw up any chance I had at a decent school.” He opened his mouth to argue but I said, “Wait, let me finish. I take responsibility for that. You say I had every advantage. I admit I blew them. But it's not like I'm looking at a welcome-home party and early admission to Columbia.”

He watched me carefully. But he listened at least. Telling him was the first time I let myself really imagine what the
next few years might be like. It turned out my vision of the future sucked ass.

“My mom and dad will probably let me finish up at McCracken, so they won't have to deal with me for a little while. Then I'll go home and turn eighteen right after. They'll tell me that technically I'm an adult and I should be out on my own. But they'll say they're willing to provide me with a safe and wonderful place to live as long as I continue to make progress.” The more I spoke, the more I saw the whole crappy future laid out. “I'll get some shit job in order to pay car insurance and expenses. Probably also some kind of rent. It won't be a lot, but my dad will say that I need to contribute like an adult. I'll go to community college when I'm not working at the PetSmart or, if I'm lucky, my dad will get me a job working as a receptionist at a friend's firm or something.

“None of that is terrible,” I admitted. “You know, it's not superexciting, but eventually I'll save money and move into a little apartment. Maybe eventually I'll end up transferring to UConn. But for the first few years, I'm not going to have anything for myself. My grounding continues when I get home.”

He still didn't say anything. So I went on. “I know if we ran away, it would be harder to somehow make it, starting from scratch. But it just takes fighting harder. I'd rather fight hard if it meant fighting with you.”

I meant all of it. I leaned in to kiss him and he kissed back, and for as long as that kiss lasted, I thought I'd convinced him. We could pack up right then, and tread so quietly down the stairs. We'd slip out the door and walk miles and miles until we found a place to start over.

But when he pulled his face away and brushed the loose strands of my hair from my eyes, he said, “Yeah, we can't do that. They need us. We don't know how quickly this thing is going to move. And if we just disappeared. God. Can you imagine what they'd do to Joshua?”

“So we wait and leave from McCracken. On one of our sign-outs. I don't want Joshua to get in any kind of trouble —”

“Greer,”
Addison scolded my name. “He just got done explaining everything to us. I understand if you're afraid, but you have to fight the instinct to run.”

“You mean the war with the vegans?”

I hoped hearing me say it out loud would reveal its position on the upper echelon of Planet Crazy. But Addison just looked nervously at the closed door. “We made a promise not to discuss that without the whole group.”

“Yeah,” I said, feeling defeated. “Yeah, you're right.”

He leaned in to kiss me again, this time lightly. “If you want to talk about this, the next time we gather as a circle, I'll support you. I'll stand by you. But you do understand, it will probably hurt them.”

“I don't want to hurt anyone.”

“I know. I love you for that.” He kissed each of my eyelids. “We'll have our time, Greer. You and I will have so many adventures.” He chuckled and kissed my neck. “Greer, Greer — we'll brave the frontier.”

But I wasn't ready to joke about it. “Should I knock and see if Joshua or Hannah needs anything?” I stood up.

“No. They might be asleep by now. Where are you going?”

I grabbed the bundle of my sleep clothes out of my backpack. “To change.”

“Seriously? You can't just change in front of me?”

“It's important to maintain the mystery.”

“Yeah, who taught you that?”

“Your mom.”

He pelted me with a pillow. “We could just sleep naked.”

I stood straight in front of him and gave him the opportunity to imagine me that way. “No, that's not how you picture me, right? Lying on your bed, after lights-out? You conjure me up in flannel old-man pajamas. So sexy.”

“Sometimes. But also sometimes naked. If we're aiming for fulfilling fantasies …” He spoke pleadingly, but I knew Addison well enough by now — this was just part of the dance. He'd meant what he had asked for before. And maybe it counted as one last-ditch effort to show him what it would be like to sleep together every night. I could make old-man pajamas sexy. Especially if the future of the omnivore universe depended on it.

I slipped out the door and padded down the hallway to the bath. A light glowed under the guest-room door. I stood there for a second or two, but I didn't hear the low mumble of voices that I'd expected. In the bathroom, I changed quickly and decided to skip the underwear. I found some decent makeup in a bag under the sink and put on some lip gloss and a little blush. I dabbed a little bit of perfume on my wrists and neck, then stared at myself in the mirror.