Mustard used to know what it had been like to have your life on rails. Before he’d screwed it all up.
“Hey,” Amber asked without looking up from her phone, “did you notice if they cleaned out the bathroom down the hall yet? It was nasty in there.”
“They didn’t,” Mustard replied.
“Ugh, what is with janitorial this week?” Amber groaned, still texting.
Mustard said nothing.
“You can always go home and use the bathroom at the Murder House,” Tanner teased her as he killed enemy combatants on-screen.
“No thank you.” Amber shuddered. “Bad enough I have to sleep there.” She cast a quick glance at Mustard, who pretended to be fascinated by his biology notes. He knew what people said about those folks who’d been in Tudor House during the storm. The Murder House, the Murder Crew.
Not much of a crew. He’d only spoken to two of them since school resumed. Most of his time was spent studying at the library, trying desperately to catch up on the kind of academia that all the Blackbrook kids took as a matter of course. He could shoot guns and survive in the wilderness, but the basics of cellular respiration still eluded him. He could rattle off hours of American military history, but he knew next to nothing about Maine during Prohibition.
There was a knock at the door. “Trash collection!”
“Oh, thank God,” said Amber.
Mustard opened the door to find none other than Vaughn Green on the threshold, wheeling a giant rubbish bin.
“Oh,” he said.
“Hi,” said Mustard. Well, this was awkward.
“Are you doing the bathrooms next?” Amber asked from the couch as Green dumped out their little trash can into his large one. “The one down the hall is disgusting.”
“Um . . . yeah, we’re a little short-staffed at the moment.” He gave Mustard a curious glance, and when he walked out the door, Mustard followed.
“Did you talk to Rusty?” Green asked. “About that janitorial job? You can see how much needs being done.”
Mustard looked away and stuck his hands into his pockets. “Yeah. I don’t think it’s for me.”
Green’s mouth went into a line. “Oh. Don’t want to get your hands dirty?”
No, your boss is a creep. But Mustard didn’t say that. He didn’t like the way Green was looking at him, either, as if he’d been in on it, too. As if Mustard disgusted him.
Mustard recalled, in the storm, how difficult Green had been at lunch, taunting them all about the murderer being in the house. He’d been right then—it was his own godmother. He also remembered how Green and Rusty Nayler had gone together into town. How close they’d been.
Maybe they were all in on it together.
“Hey, janitor-guy!” Amber called from inside the room. “Don’t forget the recycling! Lot of soda cans this week.”
“My name is Vaughn,” Green mumbled under his breath, then headed back inside to collect the cans. Mustard followed, warily.
Vaughn was pointing at the pyramid of cans Tanner had erected on the coffee table. “This isn’t my job. I’m not a maid.”
Tanner paused the game and looked at him. “Hey, Vaughn! Wow, man, I haven’t seen you since freshman music! Still playing the guitar?”
Instantly, Vaughn’s demeanor softened. “Yeah.”
“Cool. I didn’t know you still went here.”
Mustard rolled his eyes. Tanner wasn’t a bad guy. Just kind of a blockhead.
“Duh,” said Amber. “He’s in Violet’s history class and”—she dropped her voice to a whisper, though everyone in the room could still hear her fine—“the Murder Crew?”
Tanner looked from Green to Mustard and back again. “Cool,” he repeated. He gestured to the other controller. “Want to play?” It was his roommate’s version of a peace offering. Like how the first day Mustard moved in, Tanner had pointed to the fridge stocked with pizza bagels and said “mi casa es su casa” in such a genial tone that Mustard never did determine if he meant it as a microaggression. Still, he ate the pizza bagels.
Besides, Tanner’s cluelessness definitely worked in his favor. Mustard didn’t need a roommate who was too observant.
Green appeared confused. “I’m working.”
Tanner snorted. “Whatever, dude. You guys are so far behind, what’s another half an hour? You ever play this?”
Green picked up the controller. “My brother has this game.”
“Good, then I won’t have to explain.” Tanner flicked over to the two-player version. “As long as you aren’t a ringer like soldier boy, here.”
Green was not a ringer. In fact, he sucked. He died right away. And then again. And again.
Tanner tried explaining.
“It’s really violent, isn’t it?” Green asked.
Tanner blinked. “Well, yeah. It’s about soldiers rooting out insurgents in a war zone?”
Green glanced down at the controller and then at the screen. “Do you think it’s true, what they say about violent video games desensitizing people to real-life violence?”
“Oh, is that what they say?” Tanner asked wryly. He looked at Mustard over Green’s head as if to ask, Is this kid for real?
Mustard didn’t know. He felt like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop when it came to Vaughn Green. The whole janitorial staff had to be wondering, by now.
“They say that,” said Amber. “But Tanner plays all the time, and he’s the biggest teddy bear I know.”
Tanner shot his girlfriend a grin. Mustard had almost forgotten she was still there, on her phone. That was one of the weirdest things to get used to at Blackbrook. They hadn’t been allowed devices at Farthing, unless they were being used for exercises. But here, everyone was glued to a screen.
“I think it’s a thing they say to make excuses as to why some people commit violence,” said Mustard.
Green shot him a look. “Why do you think they do?”
He affected a shrug. “Lots of reasons. Any reason. Greed, jealousy, hatred, self-defense, anger”—they both flinched a little bit at that one—“war, cruelty . . . sometimes just because you were told to do it by a person of authority.”
“Really?” Tanner asked.
“Yeah, they did this whole experiment once. Had men in white coats tell volunteers to electrocute someone they couldn’t see. And a lot of people did.”
“They did not,” Tanner said, incredulous.
“They did,” Mustard replied. “Milgram Experiment. Look it up.”
Tanner searched for “Milgram” on his phone, and Green seemed deep in thought. “You’d kill someone because someone else told you to?”
Mustard didn’t know what to say. It was sort of the whole point of soldiers. “I mean, yeah. If it was the right thing to do.” This was something they’d studied at Farthing. Unlawful orders. War crimes. “War is complicated.” He nodded at the video game. “But the game isn’t. You can tell who you’re supposed to shoot because they have red targets on them.”
“Easy to tell who the bad guy is,” said Green. “I don’t know. I’m no better at that in the game than I am in real life.”