He held up his hand. “If you’re going to say something about the election, don’t. I knew it was over as soon as I saw that article. It’s fine. I was just doing it to go along with you two anyway.”
“Still, it wasn’t cool of me to just not bring it up,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s no big deal,” he said. “I was more upset that everyone had to find out about my family like that. It’s not like I was trying to hide it, but they’re what I wanted to get away from, you know? To have it all out there like that—it made being here feel pointless, for a while. But Chloe helped me remember I’ve got a life here that has nothing to do with them. And friends, too.” He punched me in the arm. “We’re good, right?”
“All good,” I said, relieved.
I couldn’t remember a week going by this slowly that wasn’t Passover. At least now I could have bread, though for the first time I was actually getting sick of peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. By Thursday night I was ready to eat my own arm, just for variety. I decided to go to the library and work on the research project I’d assigned myself. I buried myself in websites researching how to cross borders, how to earn money without getting yet another job, how to save more of what you were earning, anything that might help my character make some progress in reuniting with her family. I was practically falling asleep at the computer when someone tapped on my shoulder, nearly making me jump out of my chair.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.” I turned to see Wyatt. He wore his usual T-shirt and jeans but they looked different somehow. Was his shirt tucked in? I saw little nicks in his skin where he’d cut himself shaving, and while my first thought was that I hoped he’d budgeted for razors, my second thought was that he was trying to look nice. He’d succeeded, too. He even looked taller than I remembered. “I just wanted to say hi and see how the research was going. You said you wouldn’t be using your own computer.”
“You’re right,” I said stupidly. “You found me.” Why did I feel so confused? Maybe it was the lack of sugar. “The research is going well, but it’s incredibly depressing.”
“Want to tell me about it? Can I sit?” He gestured at the chair next to me.
“Of course.” I told him all about how hard it was now, getting families together who were having immigration struggles, even if they had money. It would be exponentially more difficult in the world I’d imagined. “There’s just no way for a character in my position to make the kind of money she’d need, other than selling her eggs.”
Wyatt looked horrified. There was a good chance he didn’t know that was a thing women did regularly.
“It’s not like selling a kidney,” I assured him. “Though given the new world order, maybe she’d be allowed to do that now. Who knows?” I threw up my hands, ready to be done with my research and the game, both.
“Are you still hungry?” Wyatt asked.
I looked at him, confused—I hadn’t said anything about being hungry.
“At dinner, earlier this week, you were saying how hungry you were. You were worried you hadn’t spent your budget the right way?” He reached into his backpack and took out a box of generic granola bars. “I had some extra. Is this allowed?”
He’d listened to me, and now he wanted to share his food, during a week when we barely had the resources to feed ourselves. And he was all dressed up, sort of. Had he tried to look nice for me?
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Now he was blushing. “Was I cheating? I didn’t mean to cheat.”
“You weren’t cheating,” I said. “You were being wonderful.” I put my hand on his just for a moment. “But I can’t take these. It’s not technically against the rules, but I need to try and do this on my own.”
Wyatt swallowed, his Adam’s apple just barely visible, moving up and down his neck. “If you can’t take them now, then maybe when this is all over we could go out for something else? Like ice cream?”
Ice cream, at Gardner, was code for a date. There was a place in town that was so good people went there even in the middle of snowstorms. Usually people took the campus bus there and then walked back, straying off the road to find places to hook up. I’d only been there for ice cream in the literal sense, and maybe that’s what Wyatt was offering, but I didn’t think so.
“I’d like that,” I said, and he smiled so hard a normal person would be embarrassed. But not Wyatt. That’s what made him Wyatt.
I ran home from dinner and got out my journal. Lately all I’d written about was how hungry I was, though as I flipped back through it and read some of my earlier entries I realized not only could I track the rise and fall of my crush on Hunter as if it were a parabola, but there were way more references to Wyatt than I’d realized. I’d written about his hair, the fact that he was somehow managing to get through the week without help, how glad I was he’d started Eucalyptus . . . had I been developing a crush on Wyatt this whole time?
Or maybe I was just having hunger-induced delusions. If I ever did anything like this again, I’d have to remember to get more snacks. Drinking nothing but water had been good for my skin but I was dying for a cup of tea or even a Diet Coke, and I hadn’t planned well for other things I needed so I’d spent all my leftover money on toothpaste and soap. I was definitely learning to be grateful for what I had.
I’d failed in my side task, though—after all my research I’d come up with nothing. “I wouldn’t win this game even if I were eligible,” I told everyone, when we met in the bunker Sunday night. I’d snuck a bagful of cookies and brownies out of the dining hall after dinner, and I spread them on paper towels on the floor in front of me as everyone gathered around. “I’m calling the experiment over right now because I’m starving.”
We all ate as much sugar as we could stomach, and in between bites I told them about my character and how hard I’d found the week in every way. “I don’t know how much you all talked to each other about the roles I gave you to play, but you all had special challenges. And your budgets weren’t the same—you might have figured that out too. I wanted it to be clear that while a lot of people would have it hard, some would have it a whole lot harder than others. That’s true even now.”
“What did you miss most?” Chloe asked.
The answer, for me, wasn’t hard. “Food variety,” I said. “I bought bulk amounts of stuff I liked that was inexpensive and ate it every day. I was bored within forty-eight hours.”
“Does that mean you might actually eat something for lunch besides PB and J?” Hunter said. “Because just so you know, if you ever do, Chloe owes me five bucks.”
“Then Chloe might want to hit the ATM,” I said, and she laughed.
“I had food problems too,” Wyatt said. “I need a lot of calories to run the kinds of distances I’ve gotten used to, so I ate a lot of packaged ramen. It had calories plus carbs, and salt, too. It was gross.”
“You weren’t supposed to be able to make it on the ration coupons you had,” I told him. “Part of your game was about letting other people help you—I thought you’d have to trade.”
“He’s turned into a master shopper,” Chloe said. “How horrifying to think we’re not even in college yet and you’re already subsisting on ramen.”
“Yeah, I saved you from that,” Hunter said, and it didn’t sound like he was joking. “You’re welcome.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“We got creative,” he said. “Me and Chloe. We pooled our funds so we could save money, and that got us more variety in our food.”
So far that didn’t sound bad. “Good idea,” I said.
“And since we were both playing women characters . . .” Hunter went red.
“That’s how you dealt with buying tampons,” I said. “Smart. Though you can say the word ‘tampon’ out loud, Hunter. It’s fine.” I had a feeling their little collaboration went further, though. “Chloe, your character had some serious medical issues. Did Hunter help you with medicine, too?”
“He
did, but this is where we got a little extra creative, you might say,” Chloe replied. “You didn’t say we had to do everything on the up-and-up, so I found an online pharmacy and ordered what I needed for way less money than it would have cost here. Overall I’d say we did pretty great.”
“Setting aside that you did something totally illegal, and that you might have gotten fake medicine and died, sure,” I said.
“If the government’s going to set up a situation where poor people have to choose between food and medicine, what are we supposed to do? Isn’t that what the internet is for?”
“No,” Hunter and I said at the same time. I held back, knowing Hunter’s law-and-order side was about to come out. “You didn’t tell me what you were doing about the meds,” he said. “You just told me you’d take care of the budget. And what about—?”
Chloe cut him off. “Let’s hear from the others. I’m sure we’re not the only ones who cut some corners.”
Something strange was happening in the room, but I wasn’t sure exactly what. I glanced at Jo, whose lips were pressed together, arms crossed over her chest, one rainbow-laced Doc Marten perched on her knee. She seemed stoic, but there was something else. Anger? Amusement? I’d wanted the game to get a rise out of her; had I succeeded? I was curious what she had to say. “Jo?”
She planted both feet on the ground as if she were about to stand, then seemed to think better of it. “The food was hardest for me, too—my character was diabetic, so I had to make harder choices than usual, but I figured out ways to do it. I ended up going vegan, and I’d been thinking about becoming a vegetarian anyway, so thanks to Miss Apocalypse over there for helping us imagine the worst.” She gave me a fake hat-tip, and I saluted back.
“You did give me a pretty tough challenge, though,” Jo said. “My character was a pregnant teenager, and I’m guessing you’ve all figured out by now that the odds of me getting knocked up are pretty slim. Not impossible, but not likely, either. Maybe that’s why you gave me this character? I don’t know.”
Hunter’s mouth had fallen open as Jo was talking. I wondered why—was it really so hard to picture Jo getting pregnant? Maybe he’d assumed she was gay because of how palpable the connection was between her and Chloe, but she could be bi, or pan, or ace, or some other thing all her own. She was Jo. Regular labels didn’t necessarily apply.
“Anyway,” Jo continued, “I had a lot of constraints. Health stuff, timing, my age. It was hard. If I were as savvy as Princess here I’d probably have found a cheap place to order the abortion pill on the internet, but I don’t know, that didn’t seem like the safest option. I wanted to do this on the up-and-up. So I did some research and decided that even under your scenario there would be a way to get it here. I guessed at what it would cost, and I figured out there was no way I could do it alone.” She went quiet for a minute. I held my breath.
“I’m pretty sure I won’t be winning this challenge,” Jo said, after what felt like forever. I wasn’t the only one holding my breath now, I was sure of it. “I have to admit, knowing that really sucked. I’m competitive, and I hate to lose. But I know Amina wanted us to learn things from this game, and I thought I’d have it in the bag—you all don’t know my whole history, but let’s just say eating on a budget isn’t exactly new to me. Relying on other people is. I couldn’t have made this character’s situation work without help, and that was a real eye-opener for me. So thank you, Amina, for that.”
I expected her to then tell us who else she had to thank, but Hunter spoke first. “Anything to win, huh, Chloe?”
“I didn’t break any rules,” she said.
“What is it, Hunter?” I asked.
“Oh, whatever. I just got played is all.” He glared at Chloe.
I scanned the room. Wyatt looked confused, Jo was smirking, and Chloe’s eyes were wide with fake innocence. “What?” she asked, when my gaze landed on her. “It’s not like you all didn’t know I was competitive. I’m not a survivalist like some of you—I just want to play. And win.”
“Well, I’m sure you will,” Jo said. “Maybe we should let Amina work her magic and tell us who won.”
That sounded like as good a plan as any. I had no idea what had happened in the game, but I had a sneaking suspicion that whatever I learned would explain what was happening in real life. “Go eat the rest of the snacks,” I told the group, gathering up everyone’s spreadsheets and reports. “I’ll be over here in the corner.” I tried to get a little privacy as best as I could and started reading, and it didn’t take me long to figure out what was going on.
Wyatt, of course, had followed my rules to the letter. He’d largely subsisted on spaghetti, ramen, and soda, just as he’d said, and while he’d budgeted well, his sodium numbers would probably kill him before he turned thirty. Efficient use of resources, yes. Responsible? Not really. I added some points for him offering me food when I was hungry, but it wouldn’t be enough for a win.
My own situation wasn’t all that different, I had to admit. I’d done fine, had learned some things about food budgets, but my approach to food was boring at best and I hadn’t taken much time to think about nutrition. I’d failed to address my hypothetical family situation. I was last.
Hunter hadn’t bothered to do a spreadsheet; he’d just written a cursory report directing me to look at what Chloe had done. It was annoying, but it was also very Hunter, assuming that other people would be willing to work to put the pieces together, and not realizing how much extra work they’d have to do.
Chloe had made things easy for me, in a sense. She’d used the spreadsheet template I provided and laid out all the data perfectly, including an extra page that aggregated hers and Hunter’s. I felt warmly toward her until I remembered she was the reason everyone seemed so annoyed.
But even with her clear spreadsheets I couldn’t make sense of the numbers I was seeing. Not, at least, until I reviewed Jo’s data. Then I finally got it. Chloe was so good, better than I could have imagined.
Chloe had played my poverty game and made a profit.
I saw how she’d done it, though I had no way of knowing exactly what she’d said to either Hunter or Jo during the process. I hadn’t prohibited lying, so technically Chloe might not have done anything wrong. But as best as I could piece together, Chloe had convinced Hunter to pool resources by telling him about her medical issues but not disclosing that she’d found cheap places to buy medicine, so their splitting the bill wasn’t equitable—he’d put in more than she had. She’d then convinced him it was her character who was pregnant and that she needed an abortion for health reasons, and even though it wasn’t Hunter’s character’s responsibility (given that he was playing a woman), she’d gotten him to help fund her abortion. I had a feeling she’d played on his real-life feelings for her to help her in the game, which was probably at least part of why he was irritated with her. Learning she’d helped Jo couldn’t have made things better, especially if he suspected Chloe had feelings for her too, which at this point I was pretty sure he did.
It hadn’t been enough for Chloe to fleece Hunter; she’d gotten Jo as well. She must have told her she’d help out and they’d split the cost, because Jo, instead of arranging an abortion herself, had given her money to Chloe, who’d told Jo she’d obtained the pill legally but had of course bought it from the same online pharmacy where she’d gotten everything else, for a fraction of what she’d told Jo it cost.
And she’d pocketed the difference.
I grudgingly admired the ingenuity that went into Chloe’s plan, but I wasn’t about to let her win that way. She’d taken advantage of just about everyone: me for setting up a system with loopholes; Jo for learning to trust someone—something that was difficult for her; Hunter for being willing to do anything for Chloe, rules or no rules. Only guileless Wyatt had escaped, and that was just because he was blissfully running his cross-country miles and then bathing in sodium.
No, Chloe wouldn’t be winning this one. The only question was w
ho would be, and that wasn’t so hard. Wyatt was out because of his poor food choices; Hunter was out because he’d shirked his responsibilities and learned nothing in the process. Only Jo had played by the rules as best as she could and gotten something valuable out of the experience as well. She’d done the best job with food, and she’d learned the hardest lessons—she’d had to trust someone, and then she’d had that trust broken. I didn’t want that to be her takeaway. Not to mention that it would make Chloe furious to lose to her.
“We have a winner,” I called out.
Game three to Jo.
11.
This time I knew Chloe would be angry she hadn’t won, and in some ways she’d be in the right—she hadn’t technically broken any rules, since I’d barely laid out any. But I was sick of living in a world where bad people got to manipulate the rules and win and good people colored in the lines and lost. If Chloe thought winning meant doing whatever she needed to do, I wanted her to learn that there were consequences when she did things other people considered untenable.
The question was how her anger would manifest. The only time I’d really seen her upset was when Jo showed her up at Krav Maga, and she’d given little indication of how pissed off she was in front of us; she’d just gone to Hunter. Given that she’d used him to pull off her scam, and given that he didn’t seem too happy about it, I had a feeling she’d take a different approach.
But once again I was wrong. Monday rolled around, and the three of us ended up back at the lunch table as if the game had been no big deal. Hunter’s sandwich monstrosity had reached epic status, Chloe’s salad was back to its full-on rainbow, and I, as promised, was not eating PB&J.
“Where’s my five bucks?” Hunter held his hand over Chloe’s salad until she rolled her eyes and got some money out of her pink mini crocodile purse.
How to Pack for the End of the World Page 14