Yeah. So. Remember when we talked about how good role-playing games are about trust? I don’t think the group trusts one another anymore either.
I hesitate, wanting to say, I don’t know if they can trust me. But I don’t.
And I don’t know how to fix that. I don’t know how to fix them.
I don’t know how to fix Finn. I can almost hear Damien sigh.
It isn’t your job to fix them.
Of course it isn’t. It’s not my job to fix everything—but that doesn’t stop me from trying to fix what I can.
My friends are hurting. It’s my job to protect them. It’s my job to keep them safe.
No, your job is to love hard enough to counterbalance the hatred. That’s all. And believe me, that’s enough.
I don’t know if it is.
I don’t know if I can.
Have you considered my offer?
An internship. A way out of this mess. An impossibility.
I don’t know if it’s for me.
He’s quiet for the longest time.
What do you want to do, Ev?
Run away.
Hide.
Scream.
I want to be angry, because none of this is fair. This is the last time we’re all going to be together, and I know Finn is hurting, physically and emotionally. I know Maddy feels lost, and Liva’s parents have issues, and Carter has his sights set on a future far away from us.
I know everyone is struggling.
But so am I.
And they still have their whole lives spread out before them. They’ll heal and mend. They’ll find themselves again or build something new. I only have this weekend left. Mrs. Lee at Paper Hearts, the bookstore where I work, gave me the whole weekend off to “go and have fun,” but I can only afford to take time off once a year. I need the money too much.
I want to get angry, but I don’t. What’s the point of it? It’s the main thing Dad taught Elle and me. We don’t do angry. We don’t do despair. We don’t burden others with our worries. We keep our heads down and work harder.
I want to make this experience memorable. Make everything worth it, whatever it takes.
It’s cost too much already to turn back now.
Ghost stories and all?
Ha. That teases a smile from me. I’d almost forgotten I’d told him about yesterday.
* * *
Liva gave me access to the cabin a day before everyone else. It was empty when I arrived, a thin layer of dust on the tables, and nothing but howling summer winds outside. Well, and a rat when I opened the kitchen cabinets, but I certainly didn’t plan to tell her about that.
I let my duffel bag clatter to the ground and put down the large crate I lugged here from the driveway—I’d been able to pull up pretty close to the house because the two blockages hadn’t affected the road yet. My shirt stuck to my back and rivulets of sweat ran down my face.
I pulled the two loose knives from my belt and dropped them on the rich, red couch. I juggled sabers and staffs. Locks and boxes. Everything I needed to make this elegant cabin into the perfect trap.
Of course, they were Styrofoam sabers and wooden staffs. Plastic locks and puzzle boxes. But to the untrained eye—which is to say, anyone who doesn’t know anything about LARP or RPGs—it probably would’ve looked like I had an extremely sketchy hobby.
Setting up the cabin was like coming home. Not the physical cabin itself, which I hadn’t been to before this weekend. Home was the scratching of a pencil on a page. The sound of dice rolling across a wooden table, and the shuffling of cards. The click of a lock when all the tumblers fell into place, the dull thud of foam swords colliding, and the joy of a solved puzzle.
Home was Gonfalon, the world I built for my friends, where everyone can figure out who they want to be and what they want to do in an ever-changing society, but where no one has to go hungry and no one has to be alone. And while the real world waited for no one, it occasionally paused. It granted us empty afternoons, without school, or my job at Paper Hearts, or the responsibility of watching my sister. Without worries, and with nothing but birdsong—or storm winds—outside.
It granted us this weekend to camp out in our imagination, one last time.
As I started unpacking the first boxes, the theme from The Addams Family blasted through the empty room. Noelle’s ringtone. I nearly scattered the hints I was holding and dashed for my coat pocket. I told her only to call if there was an emergency.
“What happened?”
“Ever? Do you know if Dad bought more macaroni pies?” She sounded distracted. She always sounds distracted. My sister walks through life with her eyes on the world around her, but her mind on philosophical conundrums. She’s thirteen and reads Teresa of Ávila for pleasure. I would’ve laughed at her, but frankly, as Dad often told us, we both cope by solving puzzles. It’s the way our minds work.
The thing is, though, it means she doesn’t always realize what’s going on in the world around her. And those were my macaroni pies. One of Finn’s mothers made them for me. Ostensibly because she liked to explore her Scottish heritage and she needed someone to test her recipes, but honestly, she just wanted to feed me in a way that didn’t hurt my pride. I knew it. She knew that I knew. But as long as we didn’t talk about it, it was fine.
“Ever?” A hint of panic. “Are you there?”
I swallowed my disappointment, hot and overwhelming. Elle was going through another growth spurt. She needed the food more than I did, even if I’d saved them so I wouldn’t have to eat a proper dinner later on. So she could have that full meal instead. “No, those were the last of them.”
“Oh. Do you know—”
“Elle, I told you to only call me when there’s an emergency. I only have today to prepare.” It came out stronger and more exasperated than I’d intended, but I had taken an extra afternoon off for this. I’d saved up gas for this. I had “forgotten” meals for this.
“I know, but…” Her voice trailed off.
“But what?”
“Dad got called back into work for the afternoon and night shift, and I don’t want to be alone.”
So much for pausing the world. “Do you want me to come back?”
She hesitated briefly. “Yes? I mean, no. But yes.”
I sat on the floor, right next to a cardboard strong box that Finn made, and pushed my nails into my leg. “Elle…”
“I’m not feeling well.”
Not feeling well was Elle-speak for anxious. She hated being alone, and she was terrified of storms, which was a terrible thing during monsoon season. She tried to cope, but it was easier when Dad or I were around. We could stop her from scratching herself until she bled or biting her lip until it was raw. She needed therapy. We just couldn’t afford it.