The Believing Game (32 page)

None of us ended up facing charges. Sophie's dad showed up and went full-court press on McCracken Hill for the lack of security on campus. They transferred her to a school for violent youth. I guess that counted as a compromise.

During those negotiations, Sophie must have given up the goods on Hannah. It took them two weeks to find her a residential program for birth mothers. During her last few days at McCracken, she brought a binder into my dorm room: possible adoptive parents for her baby. We browsed together.

“This one.” Hannah tapped on one of the plastic sleeves.

“The optometrist?”

“That's a very stable industry. People always need to see clearly.”

“Hannah, the mom lists scrapbooking as a hobby.”

“There's nothing wrong with scrapbooking.”

“They're pretty much the most boring people ever.”

“I want that,” she told me. “I want this baby to grow up in the most boring home on the planet. I want him to play Little League and love comic books. And be sweet and kind of clueless. Like Jared.”

Jared had gone home three days after Joshua's “accident.” He told us over breakfast the morning he found out. “Baseball,” he said simply. “They would have driven up
before preseason no matter what. This just pushed things forward a little.” He pulled an index card out of his backpack and wrote down all his contact info. “If you hear from Sophie, pass it along to her too, okay? And definitely Addison — when Addison gets in touch.” I nodded and Hannah sucked in her breath.

Jared spoke so gently that tears rushed back behind my eyes again. “Hey, Greer, he's going to understand what happened, you know. Things had been heading off the deep end for a long time.”

“It's not like I spilled ketchup on his favorite shirt, Jared.”

He said, “Yeah. I know.”

Wes designated himself our chaperone, our bodyguard, our masculine pillar of strength. He sat with Hannah and me at breakfast. Sat with us outside in the quad. He joined us for lunch. He glowered at the vultures who swooped in to ask if we'd heard from Addison or Sophie.

But it was Hannah who Wes treated really carefully. He was always jumping up to fetch her more of something in the dining hall. Once or twice, he reached for her bag. He waited until we were alone to ask me. Ms. Crane had taken Hannah off campus to see the obstetrician, so it felt a little strange — just Wes and me at lunch. Without anyone to plot against or defend ourselves from. “No Hannah?” he asked.

“Some doctor's appointment.” I dismantled my turkey sandwich and ate the insides.

“Yeah? Another one?” I watched him, waiting. “Hannah rests her hand on her stomach a lot, like she's in pain or …”

“Or.”

Wes finished off his glass of juice. “Yeah, that's what I thought. Can you tell me who?”

“You don't know?”

“Well, it's not me, if that's what you're implying. And if it were Addison, you and Hannah wouldn't cling to each other like two deflated life jackets. Jared?” Wes answered himself. “Jared could barely handle Sophie.” I waited for him to get there. “Oh man. Oh man. No way did that actually happen. Greer? Are you kidding me with this?”

I assured him I wasn't.

Wes declared, “Well then, you know what? Good for Sophie. I'm glad.”

I waited through that part too. Finally his outrage sputtered out. “I'm sorry — that's not true.” I remembered what Joshua had said about Judas, about betrayal. Beneath the lunchroom clatter of plates and trays, the sound of the wheeling gurney made me flinch. That was just a memory, though.

Ms. Ling arranged it so I could help carry out Hannah's bags and help her get situated. Her mother was there, a pinched face who didn't even bother to get out of the car.

Hannah started going to pieces, convinced they'd actually take her to some kind of mental ward.

I cooed, “You'll meet other girls who are going through this same thing. You won't have to deal with anyone staring at you or talking smack. It's just me left anyway. And Wes,” I reminded her. “Don't worry — we won't have any fun without you.”

“No, you probably won't.” Hannah sniffled. We held hands while the last of her bags were put in the car. “You know, Greer. It didn't happen like Sophie said it did. With Joshua. Sophie got her version stuck in her head. But it wasn't like that.”

I remembered those tense minutes waiting for Joshua to show up in my dorm room, how I cringed each time he reached out his hand. “I know. Whatever way he convinced you, though, it still wasn't —” But I didn't feel qualified to judge him anymore. So I just told Hannah, “None of what happened was your fault.”

“And everything's going to be okay?”

“Yup.” I'd started to feel a little bit dead inside. “Everything's going to be fine.”

It didn't always feel fine, though. Even with Wes playing ambassador to the noncult community, I stumbled around campus. It felt like the first days at McCracken Hill all over again. Without Addison. I couldn't remember how to speak to other people. Most mornings, I spent the time before classes in an empty desk in the back of Dr. Rennie's room, pretending to read. The first time, he looked a little unnerved, but after that, he barely acknowledged me. He slurped his coffee and I turned pages. It was nice, companionable. He was the only teacher who didn't suffocate me with questions.

Until he asked one: “You've had a lot of disappearances in your life over the past few weeks, haven't you?” Which was, you know, kind of a doozy, but Dr. Rennie seemed to be considering something. He hemmed and hawed. Finally he said, “I shouldn't be telling you this. As you know, the daily report is meant as a resource for the faculty.” He took out a pen and underlined something on the sheet. He set the sheet on his desk between us and nodded at me. I stepped up, tentatively, to read it.

At the bottom of the page, the last line of the memo read:

Please be aware a representative from the Delia family will
be retrieving Sophia Delia's belongings from Empowerment Hall between the hours of 8
A.M
. and 10
A.M
.

Dr. Rennie's first class started filing in. The clock above the door read 8:10.

“Class attendance is important, Greer.” Dr. Rennie chose his words carefully. “But you look peaked — I'm concerned for your health. Why don't you return to your dorm and take today to rest a bit? I'll alert the nurse, but I'm very busy now. Perhaps I'll have the chance to e-mail her at around ten.”

“Thank you,” I told him. “Really, I don't know how —”

“Just feel better,” he said gruffly as he wrote out a pass. “I hope taking those few minutes to heal helps.”

I skulked back to the dorm, prepared to mimic the symptoms of a migraine if anyone stopped me. It wouldn't be Sophie, I knew that. And chances were, her parents wouldn't speak to me. Even if they shut me down, though, there was the possibility they'd mention to Sophie that I showed up. At least she'd know I tried.

It took me three attempts to even make myself walk past the open door of Sophie's old dorm room. I heard cardboard folding and the rip of packing tape. It made me wonder, briefly, how Addison had managed to box up all his belongings. Addison had been pretty low maintenance, though. He probably shoved all his clothes into a duffel and called it good.

Sophie had stuff. Piles and piles, and before she even turned around, I recognized Josie sitting in the middle of it. She wore her black curls pinned back and was dressed like Sophie — yoga pants, black T-shirt. She looked like one of those pictures of celebrities you see in magazines under the headline “Stars — They're Just Like Us.” They're always
carrying lattes or wearing yoga pants and looking glossily frazzled. Busily beautiful. Josie looked just like that.

It felt weird to knock on the door, even just the frame. And it didn't help that Josie practically leapt out of her skin. “I'm so sorry,” I rushed to say before she screamed and security came running. “I just wanted to see if you needed help.”

“Oh, no thanks.” She barely looked up. While I stood there, wondering what to do next, she tacked on, “Sorry to be noisy. They told me everyone would be in class.”

“Most people are. I should be. But my teacher let me out on account of a migraine.” I stepped forward and then back and then finally said, “I'm Greer — Sophie's my best friend.” It came out weird, like somehow I felt qualified to compete with Josie.
You might have floated around together in utero, but we happen to be best friends now.
Josie had torn off a piece of tape and held it stretched between her hands. She spoke without turning back around. “Nice to meet you, Greer.”

“Yeah, it's great to meet you too. I don't mean to bother you, but I just wanted to know how Sophie was doing — you know, if she's okay.”

“She's not really okay.” My feet wouldn't move to back away before she said, “My sister killed someone.”

“Right.” I spoke to the back of Josie's head. “That must seem crazy. But Sophie kept a lot of us safe, you know. It was a dangerous situation.”

“Well, apparently that's debatable.” Josie spun around, still sitting cross-legged. Apparently the yoga pants weren't just a fashion statement. “He was a really scary guy?”

I thought about it. “Yes.” I tried to explain it. “He controlled so many things. No one seemed to question him.”

“Maybe she could have questioned him instead of stabbing him.” I didn't know what to say to that. Josie fidgeted with her hair. “Listen, Greer. Sophie loves you. I'm sure that when she's allowed to, she'll write you or something. And I know that she believes that what she did was justified. I just don't care, okay?” I heard the rest of it, even though Josie didn't say it out loud. Her brother had just died; her sister was locked in some kind of ward. Her parents had split up. She had packing to do.

I still felt like I needed to make her understand. That was the least I could offer Sophie. “Did she tell you about Hannah?”

“The pregnant girl?”

So, yes, then. “Sophie — I think she felt extra protective of Hannah. Because she identified Joshua as this older man. Exploiting her.”
Tread carefully,
I warned myself. “I've thought about that a lot and I wonder if maybe your situation just really affected her. You know? It made her sensitive to what Hannah was going through. Because you experienced something like that.”

Josie crinkled up her nose. “I experienced something like what?”

Of course she had to make it hard for me. Maybe Sophie and Josie shared a genetic disposition for denial. It felt important, though, to make her understand. “You know —” I tried to say it kindly. “With your field-hockey coach?”

“I didn't play field hockey,” Josie said flatly. She looked at the door like she wished she could slam it in my face. “
Sophie
played field hockey.” She stared at me, waiting for me to understand.

When I didn't speak, she did. “My sister is a really sick person. When she wrote me about your little group of friends,
it made me really happy to think that she'd found people who'd accepted her. She sounded hopeful. Better.” Josie smoothed a piece of tape across the top of a box. “I'm sorry you got caught up in her lies.”

“That's okay,” I told her and willed my voice not to splinter in pieces. “I got caught up in a lot of lies. We all did.”

When I told Dr. Saggurti about the conversation, I pretended that I'd just happened to walk by Sophie's room and found her sister packing up her things. “How did that feel?” she asked. I told her about Josie's coldness, the way she didn't even tell me good-bye or reassure me that she would tell Sophie I missed her. “Did she remind you of Eliza, your own sister?” Dr. Saggurti looked poised to take some serious notes. When I recounted the piece of information about the field-hockey coach, Dr. Saggurti leaned in and wheeled her desk chair closer to me.

“Why might Sophie have told that lie?” she asked me.

“Maybe Sophie wished it had happened to Josie instead of her.” Dr. Saggurti frowned as if to say,
Maybe, but no. Wrong answer
. “Or she used it to test us.” That got a thoughtful nod. I tried out one of Joshua's theories. “Maybe she didn't need to tell us the details. She shared the important piece — she knew someone who'd been through that. That was Sophie's emotional truth.”

“Explain what you mean by that phrase —
emotional truth
.”

“I guess I mean that the exact details sometimes don't matter. What you believe most has its own way of becoming true.”

“What do you believe happened then, Greer?”

“With what? With Sophie?”

“With all of you. You forged an incredibly strong connection.”

It felt like a trick, a dare to say something she could analyze and later hold against me. But once the thought surfaced, I couldn't stop myself from needing to say it aloud, even if I knew it was technically imprecise. I wondered if that's how Sophie felt. How Joshua felt.

“I believe they became my family,” I admitted.

In the past few weeks, Dr. Saggurti had insisted on running several actual family sessions. They amounted to calling my father on speakerphone, on days when he could fit me in between his power lunch and his afternoon meeting. Dean Edwards had requested that he drive up to discuss what all the McCracken Hill staff referred to as “The Incident,” but my dad canceled at the last minute. I'm sure he sent a hefty check.

We talked about summer break and he said, “You're making such progress. We'd hate to interrupt that.” He'd enrolled me in the intensive therapeutic summer session so I could be extra well adjusted for the fall. It didn't matter. I'd either sit in my room at McCracken or sit in my room in Connecticut. At least Addison might come back to McCracken Hill.

Wes signed on for summer session too. He said that after the Poconos mountain poker incident, he didn't feel ready to go home and risk his recovery. At least that's what he told his treatment team. Wes never lied to me. He stayed so that I didn't have to stay alone.

At first, that worried me. Neither of us needed a romance. But whatever charged feelings once hummed between us short-circuited in the weeks I spent waiting for Addison to show up.

In the last few weeks of the school year, I tried hiding and skulking but Wes wouldn't have it. He escorted me around school like a tour guide to normal. When he caught someone staring, he simply introduced me. We'd be relaxing on the Westlands lawn and he'd whip out a Frisbee and make me play. With other people.

“They're not so bad,” Wes insisted.

“They're emotional vampires. They're salivating for a nervous breakdown.”

“Well then, you can't let them smell blood.” Wes sauntered ahead of me to the dining hall.

“Was it this awful for you?”

“You mean months ago? When I stood alone without anyone to support me and had to reintegrate into the general population of McCracken Hill? While my closest friends blackmailed me and referred to me as Judas?”

“Yeah.” I tried to blink out
sorry
in Morse code before my eyes filled with tears.

Wes slowed down enough to drape his arm over me. “No. I mean, it was devastating, but it wasn't half as bad. Let's look back at the past couple of months, Greer. Shit has gone down. We're not exactly talking about your typical teenage breakup, right?” He started listing them on his fingers. “Murder.”

“Pregnancy,” I offered.

“Disappearance.”

“Militant vegans.” I named that one in the same stage whisper. Then Wes said, “But look — we just played Frisbee. Things are getting more typical every day. People honestly aren't evil, Greer. But you sealed yourself away from everybody who wasn't part of your disturbed little circle. They'll throw you a lifeline, but you have to ask first.” We got to the
dining hall and checked our table number. The treatment team had shown a little mercy and assigned us to the same spot each night. “Table four, with Coach Tyson: total VIP experience.”

“Yeah?”

“Bottle service and everything.”

I couldn't tell how dangerous that joke was at our particular gathering. I barely knew the others, let alone their individual addictions. But I recognized people. Drew Costa. A girl named Prairie from my English class. One of the Allisons.

Coach Tyson had piled enough lean protein on his plate to sustain a large carnivorous tribe. I sliced a hard-boiled egg over my greens, mixed in croutons. If Sophie were here, she'd steal a crouton. Addison would nag me about the lack of dressing, the absence of bacon bits. I solemnly vowed not to sob into my salad.

Wes asked, “I was just wondering what we'd be conversing about this evening.”

Coach Tyson dug into the mesh pocket of his running shorts, pulled out a slip of paper, and squinted to read it. “Tonight's dinner topic is … disaster relief.” Coach Tyson appeared puzzled by his own subject matter. I looked around the table. Most of the faces gaped openly at me as if I were a refugee who'd just clawed her way to shore.

Wes grinned slyly. “Disaster relief. We could use some of that.” And he nodded at me to reach out.