The God Game

by Danny Tobey

  So, yes, goddamnit, maybe he didn’t want Alex in the group anymore. But Charlie said, “That’s not true,” because he didn’t want to hurt Alex’s feelings.

  Alex winced. How long had Charlie hesitated? A microsecond? Long enough, apparently, because Alex had heard all he needed to hear.

  Charlie felt like shit. Vanhi was right: freshman year, Charlie would have been the first one defending Alex, pulling him back from the edge. That was friendship. You don’t just cut people loose when it’s convenient. Weird or not, Alex was a Vindicator. Charlie tried to salvage the situation, but the damage was done.

  “I mean it. You’re one of us.” But he could feel how the moment had soured. That first instant was the truth, and he had failed, and everything after was just scrambling, making it worse.

  “Okay.”

  “We’re just worried about you,” Charlie said weakly.

  “Don’t be. I’m fine.” Alex turned back to his book.

  “Alex.”

  “I’m gonna read for a while.” Alex’s voice was cracking a little.

  Charlie felt ashamed. “Alex, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  “I’d like to read now,” Alex said more sharply.

  Charlie nodded. “Okay. Okay. See you tonight?”

  Alex didn’t answer.

  * * *

  Peter was out on the Embankment, sitting on the cool grass, his blond hair whipping in the breeze. He offered Charlie the joint, but that was where he’d drawn the line. An occasional puff, now and then. But he wasn’t going to become a stoner, high at school in broad daylight. That last thin cord to his old life had still not yet snapped. But nonetheless, after a depressing encounter with Alex, Peter was a breath of fresh air, relaxed and carefree, windswept on the Embankment on a beautiful day.

  “No, thanks,” Charlie said.

  Peter smiled and shrugged.

  “I think I just screwed up with Alex.”

  “Alex? Are you joking? How’d you do with Mary?”

  “She kissed me.”

  Peter coughed, smoke puffing out.

  “Good God, talk about burying the lede.”

  Charlie told him about the encounter in the woods.

  “So she just left after?”

  “Yep. Walked right out into the field.”

  “Well, that’s not awkward.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Have you seen her yet?”

  “No. I think she’s walking halfway around the school to avoid it.”

  “That assumes she cares. I’m betting at least half of this is in your head.”

  “You’re a real pal, you know that?”

  “Mm-hmm,” Peter said peacefully, dragging on his joint. “So, I asked Caitlyn Lacey to homecoming today.” He let the smoke trail up.

  “Isn’t she dating Kurt?”

  “Yup.”

  “So why would you ask?”

  “Why not? You’re hooking up with Mary Clark. Next thing you know, Vanhi’s going to be engaged to Rebecca Moore. The whole social order’s upside-down. Topsy-turvy.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said no, of course. She’ll sleep with me in her car, but she won’t bring me home to Mother.”

  “She slept with you?”

  Peter nodded.

  “When?”

  He shrugged. “More than once.”

  “You never told me that.”

  “I don’t kiss and tell. Except now, I guess.” Peter smiled, but with a bitter edge. “I knew she’d say no. No big deal. Who cares about a stupid dance with a bunch of drones?”

  “So why’d you ask her?”

  Peter thought about it. “I wanted to hear her say no. To face her role in the Big Lie. Fine, she can have it both ways, dating Kurt for popularity when she really wants me. But it should sting a little.”

  Charlie shook his head. “You are one disturbed dude.”

  Peter smiled and took another drag. “So tonight. Tech Lab. Midnight. Don’t be late.”

  “Did you learn about the invitation?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a secret. You don’t want to spoil the surprise, do you?”

  “I guess not.” Charlie heard the bell ring. “Time for school.”

  “I find I do better when I don’t attend. Formal instruction clouds my vision.”

  “Okay.”

  “Hey, if you’re heading that way, can you give this to Zeke?”

  Peter dug through his backpack and pulled out a crumpled brown baggie.

  Zeke was on the far side of the Embankment, nearest the portable buildings, in the shadow of the redbrick wall of the gymnasium. His dirty-blond dreadlocks hung down like horse braids, beaded and scratchy. His head was on the lap of Monica Jameson, who seemed to have no qualms about braiding and playing with those messy dreads.

  “What is it?”

  “He gave me half his lunch yesterday. I forgot mine.”

  “Sure,” Charlie said, feeling as soon as it slipped out that he should’ve said, instead, Show me. But it wasn’t as if Peter were a drug dealer. Aside from the occasional recreational pot smoking, Charlie had never seen Peter have anything to do with drugs. He did, in his private-school days, go to parties with rich kids and coke and prescription pills, but that was then and this was now. He’d been expelled from that world, and as far as Charlie could tell, Peter hadn’t looked back. Didn’t even see those kids anymore. Anyway. Charlie had already said yes, and what’s the worst anyone could say: You carried a paper bag with unknown contents from point A to point B, accepted no money, knew nothing, and it was probably just a bologna sandwich anyway? Let’s not make a capital offense out of it.

  Plus, it was a beautiful, sunny day on the Embankment. Not an adult in sight. Chill out, Charlie, he told himself. The world does not revolve around you.

  He grabbed the lunch bag from Peter and headed toward class.

  When Charlie got near Zeke, he said, “Hey, from Peter.”

  Zeke barely lifted his head but caught the bag. “Thanks, dude.”

  “Sure.”

  And that was that, and Charlie walked through the shadow of the red gym on his way to class.

  10   GOOD WORKS

  In Creative Writing, Mary kept her back to him. He felt as if he were burning a hole in the back of her head with his stare, so he got a grip and focused on the lecture.

  Mr. Burklander was talking about Faulkner and point of view. Those in the class were supposed to write a story from the point of view of someone they’d never met and disliked very much. Charlie was going to write about love at first sight from the perspective of Donald Trump—it would end with him realizing it was a mirror—but then Charlie found out half the class was going to do Trump.

  The bell rang, and Mary was out the door so fast Charlie couldn’t get close. She never looked back. He tried to catch up in the hallway but stopped short as a hand went palm first into his chest, hard enough to startle him.

  “Hi, Charlie,” Tim Fletcher said.

  Charlie felt the adrenaline surge. If this was it, this was it. He wasn’t going to back down from a six-foot-two, ’roid-raging jerk. If he got his ass kicked, so be it. At least he’d go down swinging.

  “Hey, Tim,” he said, his voice sharp edged.

  “How was class? See Mary?”

  “I did. The back of her head, from three rows back. It was fascinating.”

  “I heard you gave her a ride last night.”

  “I did.” Charlie waited. Nothing more to say.

  “That was kind of you.”

  “You’re welcome?”

  “So now you’re a smart-ass?”

  “I gave her a ride. What do you want me to say? It wasn’t dinner and a movie.”

  Tim smiled. It was a daddy’s-boy smile, rich, privileged, unconcerned. Things would go his way. One way or another. He had a crew. He had a legion of adoring football fans in a state that put high school footbal
l just a tick below religion. He could harass and bully with impunity. With homecoming coming up and a perfect team record and a shot at another state championship, Tim was untouchable. And Charlie, former good student, son of an accountant, was nobody.

  “Maybe you should take her to dinner and a movie,” Tim said pleasantly. “Maybe you should try that. What do you think?”

  “I think Mary can do whatever she wants.”

  Something in Tim’s hazel eyes changed. They darkened, the eyebrows raised. “Should I ask Mary what she wants?”

  It occurred to Charlie that while he was busy being brave for himself, it might have been Mary that he’d put in danger, not himself. You don’t know him, she’d said. As Charlie looked into Tim’s cold eyes, that suddenly seemed plausible in a way he hadn’t even considered when he’d stepped up to Tim. He started thinking of ways to fix what he might have just broken.

  “Are you threatening her?

  “No.” Tim smiled. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said in a way that didn’t make it sound ridiculous at all.

  “If you lay a hand on her…”

  “Charlie, Charlie.” Tim put a hand on Charlie’s shoulder. “Relax. You’re getting all worked up over nothing. How long have Mary and I been together? And what are you to her? Nothing, right? You’re not even friends. So what are you worried about?” Tim stepped aside and held his arm out, an invitation for Charlie to walk away, free and clear, into the flow of students bustling through the halls.

  Charlie stepped right toward Tim, which made Tim’s height advantage seem even worse.

  “I’m serious. Don’t you dare hurt her.”

  “Charlie.” Tim smiled gallantly. The football star. The homecoming king. “I couldn’t hurt a fly.”

  * * *

  CompSci was Charlie’s favorite class, not least of all because he sat between Vanhi and Kenny, and also because he loved to code and was miles ahead of the simple projects they tackled in class. But as good as Charlie was, Vanhi was light-years better. She had a knack for programming. When Charlie had asked her to join the Vindicators, she’d told him, “Why would I want to be slowed down by a bunch of dumb boys playing with robots?” It was a fair point. But she’d shown up the next day, thrown her bag down, and said, “Let’s get this shit started.”

  The rest was history.

  Charlie settled into his terminal between Kenny and Vanhi, and she slugged him on the shoulder.

  “What’s that for?” Charlie asked, rubbing his arm.

  “Cheating.”

  “On what?”

  “On me!”

  “Um, as I recall, you rejected me.”

  “Maybe. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still worship at my feet. I am, after all, a divine nature goddess.”

  “You’re the goddess of something, all right. The High Queen of BS.”

  She slugged him even harder.

  “Some of us are trying to focus here,” Kenny said, sighing theatrically, trying to force himself to code. Unlike the rest of the group, Kenny was not a math-science nerd, but rather a philosophy junkie and world-culture scholar. His parents were deeply religious, devout Catholics, and made him learn Greek and Hebrew when he was young. He’d been reading theology, mythology, and philosophy at a college level since he was twelve.

  “Hey, by the way,” Charlie said, “are you two coming tonight?”

  “Oh, you mean Peter’s secret midnight conclave?” Kenny asked. “Sure, why not?”

  “You didn’t click that invitation yet, did you?”

  “No,” Vanhi said, “I’m not in the habit of responding to spam.”

  “Okay, good. Peter’s doing some research on it.”

  “Well, that’s reassuring. What do you think it is?”

  “Some kind of game. I just want to make sure it’s not shady.”

  “If Peter’s involved, it’s almost certainly shady,” Vanhi said.

  Charlie ignored that. Vanhi was always out to think the worst of Peter.

  Vanhi showed them her code. “Watch this. I made it last night.”

  She ran the program, and a picture of a sphere appeared at the top of the screen. The wire-frame, 3-D rendering was generated from scratch in C++. It shot to the bottom of the screen and bounced back up, obeying the laws of gravity. More spheres shot from the top and sides, bouncing off each other and skirting off in different directions.

  “I call it Balls.”

  “Charming,” Kenny said. Always the string-section snob.

  When the class had quieted down and was deep in coding, Charlie leaned over to Vanhi. “Don’t you have your early application due?”

  “Next Tuesday, yeah. What are you, my mom?”

  Charlie laughed, but not really. “I was just thinking about our last prank.”

  “Trump! Trump! Trump!”

  “Yeah, it was funny, but…”

  “But what?” She sighed, annoyed.

  “A felony? I mean, what were we thinking? You really could get into Harvard early. Do you want to throw that away over ‘Trump is a shape-shifting lizard’? Or whatever new thing is tonight?” Charlie knew he had nothing to lose. His future was toast anyway. But as far as he knew, Vanhi still had the world at her feet.

  Vanhi felt that her face was flushing. “Why are you patronizing me? Is it because I’m a girl? Did you tell Kenny not to throw his life away?”

  Now Charlie flushed. “It’s not that. It’s just, we always said we’d go together. Now I can’t. I don’t want to drag you down, too.”

  Vanhi was churning inside. She couldn’t let Charlie know she was as doomed as he was. She couldn’t reveal her secret shame, her AP failure. It was like, pull one thread and the whole Vanhi sweater would unravel. So she double-bluffed. Instead of their both being losers, what if she pretended they could both still win?

  “Listen, I’ll make you a deal. You turn in an early application to Harvard, and I will, too. You blow yours off, I blow mine off.”

  “That’s stupid. Why would you throw your future away?”

  “If you don’t, I won’t either.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Try me.” She patted Charlie’s shoulder. “We’re friends, Charlie. I got your back. So promise you’ll do it, and I won’t have to throw my future away just to prove a point.”

  Charlie tried to read her. Was she serious? No way in hell was he applying to Harvard. The only way he could even dream of getting in now was to use his mother’s death as a sob story of how he’d gone from valedictorian to failure. Even then, he’d need a redemption angle, and how could that work when he was still very much down in the mud? No fucking way. But why should Vanhi go down with him? So he lied.

  “Okay. Sure. Why not. I’ll apply.”

  “Okay,” Vanhi said, trying to sound casual.

  They eyed each other warily, unsure who was playing whom.

  They coded for a while. The assignment was to make a software back end for a logistics distribution company, like Amazon. It had to ship anywhere in the world and deliver as close to instantaneously as possible. No drones though, at least not in this simulation.

  She whispered right in his ear, “You really did cheat on me.”

  “I did?”

  “Mary Clark, Charlie. Really?”

  “I gave her a ride.”

  “You kissed her.”

  Charlie turned and gave her a perplexed look. “How do you know that?”

  “Everyone knows that.”

  “She told?”

  “I doubt it. That’s not the kind of thing Mary Clark would publicize. Prettiest girl in school kisses marginalized quasi-nerd.”

  “Then how?”

  “Charlie, you kissed her twenty feet away from a social mob. Did you really think no one would notice?”

  “We were in the woods.”

  “Don’t you know, Charlie? Someone is always watching.”

  Charlie turned away, his cheeks flushing red. So Tim knew? He hadn’t said anything i
n the hall, but that cold rage in his eyes …

  “You need to be careful, Charlie.”

  “Tim?”

  “Yeah. But he won’t come for you directly. He’ll get Kurt Ellers or Joss Iverson to do it.”

  Kurt was a particularly sadistic bastard. Blunt and crass where Tim was slick and cultured. The offensive lineman to Tim’s QB. Joss was dumb muscle—a linebacker, ready to pounce; he just needed to be pointed in the right direction.

  “You’ll never please her,” Vanhi said, suddenly sounding like she cared. “All she wants is some rich guy to buy her things. Did you see the bracelet Tim got her? It was rose gold. It probably cost a thousand dollars.”

  “Is it so crazy to think she likes me?”

  “No. It’s crazy to think she’ll ever choose you.”

  They were talking quietly, and Kenny was studiously pretending not to hear them.

  “You’re a real pal,” Charlie told her.

  “I am.” The bell rang, and she gathered up her things. “You know what a friend is, Charlie? It’s someone who tells you the truth, even when you don’t want to hear it.”

  * * *

  At lunch, the text said:

  Meet me by the portables.

  It came from Mary’s number, which was crazy, as the last text in the chain was from two years earlier, about an anti-graffiti project for student council to repaint the south walls. Charlie felt his heart light up, but when he got there, he didn’t see Mary anywhere. But across the patchwork of shadows between the portable buildings, he saw a small crowd gathered. Charlie gave Mary another couple minutes, then headed toward the group to see if she was there. He paused when saw Kurt Ellers, the sadist in chief. Suddenly Vanhi’s warning came together in his head—kiss Mary, Tim finds out, Kurt does his dirty work. But the crowd wasn’t focused on Charlie, and something was already going on. Charlie let himself get a little closer, and he felt his heart sink. They were gathered around Alex.