The God Game

by Danny Tobey

  Charlie blinked a few times. “Why?”

  “The Texas rep for Harvard is in town next week. He asked me whom he should meet. I told him you, Charlie. I told him everything about you. What you’ve been through. What you’d accomplished before that. How you were going to pull through. He was interested.”

  Charlie sighed. Every time Mr. Burklander tried to reconnect Charlie to his old life, he felt the chasm and the pain of what had come in between. But Burklander wasn’t done.

  “I am not going to show him a kid with a busted lip.”

  “I’m sorry. I did the right thing.”

  “It’s just one thing too many, Charlie. One more thing to explain.”

  “I didn’t ask to meet him.”

  Burklander clenched his fists. “I know that. I’m doing it because you can’t.”

  Charlie felt shame all through him. “It’s not my fault.”

  “I’ve been telling you for months, come out of this. You’ve had your chance.”

  “I know.”

  “I can’t … I don’t know what to do for you anymore.”

  So finally the last teacher to believe in Charlie was giving up. Was he horrified? Or relieved?

  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

  Mr. Burklander gave him a hard look and for a moment seemed lost in thought. “I read something last night. Something I hadn’t pulled out in years. I almost burned it once, but I didn’t have the heart.”

  Charlie tried to think what book could have that effect on Mr. B.

  Mr. Burklander took a beaten-up notebook from his desk, an old-fashioned composition book. He touched it delicately with two fingers, tapping the cover hesitantly.

  “My journal, from the year after my mother died. Hard to read. The first few pages, it was like I was just waiting for her to walk in the front door and say, ‘Surprise, just kidding.’” He shook his head.

  Charlie studied him. He suddenly pictured Mr. Burklander in his front yard, his ex-wife throwing his clothes out the window above and yelling at him while the neighbors watched. Collapsing in the grass, busted heart and boxers. It was hard to square that with the dignified, handsome face in front of him now.

  Burklander seemed to reach a decision. “Come with me.”

  At the end of the hallway was a bulletin board, and among the ads for school plays and football rallies was a sign-up sheet: STUDENT BODY PRESIDENT—ELECTION NOV. 8, 2016. The race had been going on for a couple weeks. There were already five names on the list. Charlie had ignored it.

  Mr. B. jabbed it with his finger. “Sign up.”

  “I’m not running for student body president.”

  “Yes, you are. You don’t have to win. You just have to run. And then, and only then, I’ll get you in front of the Harvard recruiter. I’ll explain the circumstances of your new appearance. I’ll move mountains if you just show me that in there, somewhere, is a hint of the kid I know.”

  The last thing on earth Charlie wanted to do was run for student body president. But still, it was Mr. B. Charlie thought of all they had done together on the council. He thought of the composition notebook. Burklander’s lost-mom dream—pulling her arm, saying, Look out, the building’s falling, her blithely refusing to look up.

  Charlie even felt a glimmer of hope—for an instant, he saw a vision of running for student body president, talking to a crowd. He fingered the pen. He tried to lift it, but it felt infinitely heavy. He pressed the pen to the paper tacked to the wall. He couldn’t write his name. It would be a lie. Nothing more. He owed Burklander that much—not to lie to him.

  “I can’t.”

  Mr. Burklander stood there, then put his hand on top of Charlie’s. “You can.”

  He started moving, Charlie’s hand under his, until the name was signed.

  “I don’t mean it. I can’t do it.”

  “It’s a start. Just don’t cross it out. Not today. Let it sit for a while, even if it’s a lie.” Burklander smiled and patted Charlie on the back. “It’s a lie I want to hear.”

  13   HOUSE OF PAIN

  Charlie worked for two hours at the copy center on West Beverly—a mind-numbing job under fluorescent lights. He started when his mom was sick and the deductibles wiped the family out. He’d kept working ever since and managed to squirrel away a little for himself, even while he helped with gas and groceries while his dad tried to dig them out of their hole.

  Charlie drove past the mall on the way home and set foot for the first time in his life in the glimmering aisles of Neiman Marcus. The woman at the jewelry counter eyed him skeptically, under overplucked eyebrows. Charlie found what he was looking for. The bracelet was a perfect match for Mary’s, with one key difference. It wasn’t from Tim.

  “How much?” Charlie asked. He’d scrapped together $200. It was absolutely insane. He knew that. But it was a symbolic gesture. If Mary was caught between two worlds—between what she wanted and what she felt she was supposed to be—he would ease the transition. She could trade his bracelet for Tim’s, and Tim would never be the wiser. As an added benefit, maybe then choosing Charlie wouldn’t be a total downer. He could bring a little bling into her life, too.

  “Nine hundred dollars,” the lady behind the counter said boredly.

  Charlie felt his cheeks flush red. “That’s what I thought.”

  But the lady had already moved on.

  * * *

  Charlie’s dad was at the kitchen table, looking like a giddy teenager. “I need to talk to you.” Whatever it was, at least he hadn’t heard about the fight. He was way too happy.

  “What is it?” Charlie asked suspiciously.

  “Come here.” His smile dropped as Charlie stepped into the dim light. “What happened to your face?”

  “I got knocked down in PE. Soccer. I’m fine.”

  Arthur studied Charlie’s face, his own expression flickering between belief and doubt. He glanced back down at the papers spread out before them on the cheap IKEA table, and belief won out. The giddy smile came back. The pages lining the table didn’t look like the usual accounting files. There were blueprints, business plans, inventories.

  “Sit down.”

  Charlie sat opposite his father, eyeing the papers warily.

  “I used to cook you good breakfasts.”

  “Okay,” Charlie said slowly, wondering if his dad had finally lost his mind completely.

  “I used to cook everything.”

  “I know.”

  “I was a really good cook.”

  “Yeah. True.”

  “Remember how we used to barbecue?”

  Charlie smiled. “Uh-huh.”

  “Everyone would come over. Talk about how good my burgers were. Remember my secret recipe?”

  God, his dad could be cheesy. But Charlie played along. “One-third mustard, one-third soy sauce, one-third Worcestershire.”

  “Yep. You never told anybody, right?”

  Charlie forced a smile. “No.”

  “I loved it.”

  “And Mom would make that lemon pie.”

  The mood darkened, and Charlie felt guilty about that. His father was finally feeling good, remembering something happy, and he had to go and bring up Mom. And he’d done it on purpose, like it felt wrong to remember something good without talking about her. He tanked the moment, and he knew what he was doing and he hated himself for it. He tried to recover.

  “So you want to have a barbecue? That’s your idea?”

  For a moment, his dad seemed hesitant to go on. His eyes were far off. Then he rallied, too. “No, I want to do something better.”

  “Okay…”

  “I want to open a restaurant.”

  Arthur waited, and it struck Charlie that his dad was nervous. He was watching Charlie to see if he’d burst out laughing. The idea was so random, so out of the blue, and yet looking at the papers spread out before them, it obviously wasn’t new. His dad had been working for some time on this.

  Charlie treaded lig
htly. “A restaurant?”

  “Yeah. What do you think?”

  “I mean … I don’t know. What kind of restaurant?”

  “Something simple. A place where people go to hang out. Like a neighborhood burger place. Families. Teenagers. Pinball machines. Foosball. Some place…” Arthur seemed to struggle for the right work. “Alive.” He winced and tried again. “Happy.” He looked at Charlie cautiously. “I’ve even got a name for it: Arthur’s.”

  Arthur Lake looked proud of himself. Charlie felt himself sigh heavily.

  The plans looked good. Arthur was going to rework an old strip-mall bank space. The finish-out was homey, the kind of place you might want to watch the Cowboys on a rainy Sunday, or take your kids for chicken fingers on a Tuesday night.

  But then Charlie thought about his dead-end job at the copy center. The way his dad had lost it when Mom was sick, leaving Charlie to pick up the slack.

  “What about accounting? You’re just going to close up shop?”

  “I can’t do this half-assed.”

  “You’re going to quit your job? I didn’t get to quit school just because Mom died.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  That stung. But Charlie pushed forward.

  “What about food? What about the house? I thought the medical stuff wiped us out.”

  “It did. Mostly. I’ll need a loan. I can take out a second mortgage on the house.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “No, Charlie, I—”

  “What about college?”

  “Are you going?”

  “What if I am? What if I wanted to?”

  Charlie’s dad snorted through his nose, a bitter, scoffing laugh.

  Charlie thought of Mr. Burklander. “If I did? Could you pay for it?”

  “Charlie…”

  “What if I get in somewhere really good?”

  “They have scholarships. I can pay part.”

  “Do you even care what I want?”

  “Do you even know what you want?”

  “What if no one comes?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “To your restaurant. Arthur’s,” Charlie added a bit sarcastically. “What if no one shows up? And then we have no money and, what, we lose our house?”

  “Charlie, I need this. I’m sorry you feel cheated. I feel cheated, too.”

  “You’re the adult.”

  “I know. I know.”

  “I don’t care. Do it. Do what you want. You want to go crazy and open a restaurant, which you have no experience or business doing, fine. I don’t care. I’d rather be broke than just poor. It’s more exciting.”

  “Jesus, Charlie. What if it works? What if it’s great? Is it so wrong to have a little hope? To do something a little crazy? Do it with me. We’ll build this together.” Arthur pushed some papers in front of Charlie.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s a loan application. One hundred thousand dollars. On the house. I won’t sign it if you tell me not to.”

  “You’re kidding. You’re gonna put this on me?”

  “Say the word. I’ll walk away.” Arthur waved his hand across the blueprints, the designs, the Excel spreadsheets. How many nights had he stayed up poring over this crazy dream?

  It wasn’t like anyone in the house was sleeping anyway.

  His dad was watching him, looking more like a kid than a solid man. He was absolutely broken—heartbroken, spirit-broken. Charlie guessed another twenty years of his being an accountant without his wife seemed a lot gloomier than the twenty years he’d slogged away at it with her to come home to.

  Then Charlie thought of Mary standing there, hand on her gold bracelet. Her giant house on the right side of town, blocks away from Tim Fletcher’s giant house. Charlie couldn’t give Mary what she was used to. And now his dad wanted to put them deeper in debt.

  Fuck it. Burklander’s plan was crazy anyway. If Charlie’s own dad didn’t believe in him, what the hell did Burklander know? This just made the choice easier.

  “Do it,” Charlie said finally.

  “Really?”

  “Sure.” He wanted to add, Drive us off the cliff, why not? But he saw the look on his dad’s face—disbelief? Joy? So he left it there.

  Two hours later, when he snuck out into the night, he glanced through the downstairs window and saw his father, still at the table, head down, asleep on the stack of papers.

  * * *

  Charlie threw stones at Kenny’s window. It was time.

  Earlier, Kenny had sat at his parents’ dinner table, head bowed in prayer. His father, dignified, stern, humorless, a tuft of gray hair over each ear, a bald dome on top, said, “Let us pray. Our heavenly Father, who…”

  They weren’t rich, even though both parents were doctors. His mom was a pediatrician. After tuition, you lost money on that endeavor. His dad was an academic at the teaching hospital, trading the big bucks of private practice for research and instruction. Their faith carried them through. It wound around Kenny’s neck like a noose.

  “Have you thought more about majors?” his dad asked.

  “I haven’t even gotten into college yet.”

  “I’m not paying for something aimless.”

  Reflexively, Kenny’s eyes shot to the empty chair where his older brother used to sit. The medical school dropout. The shame. The “writer” who couldn’t land a TV show to write for. Kenny felt the burn, the weight of expectation.

  “I know, Dad. I like journalism.”

  “Another writer.”

  Ouch.

  “Or maybe premed,” Kenny offered.

  His mother nodded almost imperceptibly. She took a sip of wine. She allowed herself a quarter cup per night. No more. No less.

  Kenny asked if he could be excused to practice, the only surefire way to get upstairs.

  He played through Dvorak’s Cello Concerto, letting the music take him somewhere far away. His life felt like a cello string—you could wind it from a loose mess into perfect pitch, the vibration just right. Cosmic, the way it clicked into place. Then you could keep winding. And winding. And winding. Until it snapped, a victim of its own tension.

  Midnight couldn’t come soon enough.

  When Charlie’s pebble hit the window, Kenny thought, Take me somewhere new.

  14   THE COVENANT

  The Tech Lab was pitch-black at midnight, but someone had lit candles.

  It had the air of a church, silent in the warm flickering.

  In the dark, four of the monitors were turned on but blank, emitting a dull black glow. They made a ring of dim screens, a candle in front of each terminal, little electronic altars.

  Charlie, Vanhi, and Kenny were outside, in the auxiliary parking lot by the back door to the lab. The wind was brisk and Vanhi shivered. She looked at Charlie’s lip and started to say something, but Alex was coming up the path behind her, and Charlie shook his head slightly. “I’ll tell you later,” he said quietly.

  Alex joined them, looking sheepish. “I couldn’t miss it.”

  Maybe Peter was right (again), Charlie thought—you needed a little style to keep ’em coming back.

  They used their unofficial key to open the door and step into the darkness. The door swung shut behind them, and as their eyes adjusted, all they could see were the small orange flames and the faint screens behind.

  “I want you…,” a familiar voice began.

  A face appeared from the darkness, an upturned flashlight illuminating a Guy Fawkes mask. A hand dramatically swept the mask away, revealing Peter’s handsome, devilish face.

  “… to tickle my balls!”

  “Jesus,” Kenny said, shaking his head. They all laughed.

  “Welcome, welcome, come one, come all, my Vindicator brethren and sistren. Are you tired of playing lame dice-rolling games on Kenny’s nasty carpet?”

  “Hey!” Kenny said.

  “Are you tired of being losers, sitting around jerking each othe
r off?”

  “I like getting jerked off,” Vanhi said.

  “Do you want to be rich, popular, powerful, handsome?”

  “I do!” Alex grinned darkly. “I do!” Even Alex couldn’t resist Peter’s charm tonight.

  “I want to be rich!” Kenny added.

  “Yes!” Peter replied.

  “I want to be popular with the ladies!” Vanhi said.

  “Yes!”

  “I want to kick Tim Fletcher’s ass!” Charlie pitched in.

  “Yes!” they all agreed, including Alex.

  “Then say yes, my friends, say yes to the proposal I lay before you. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. If only you’re smart enough to take it!”

  “Take what? Take what?” Kenny faux-fawned, like a fairgoer ready to sign his paycheck over to the first huckster in the tent to show him a new ultrathin mop.

  “Indeed!” Peter goaded. “What you want, gentlemen and lady, is to play God! Turn the social order upside down. Claim what should be yours! Go from duds to studs! And so I give you … the God Game!”

  In a neat trick, the screens flicked on, on command.

  Charlie looked for the Bluetooth clicker in Peter’s hand, but one hand was holding the mask, and the other still had the flashlight. Maybe it was voice activated. Peter had a flair for the dramatic obviously.

  On each screen, Charlie recognized the familiar invitation he’d seen on his desktop last night.

  The lizard was there, leaning against the side of the tent, his top hat off to the side. He was picking lazily at his lizard fingernails.

  “You guys will not believe what I’ve read about this game,” Peter said, enticing them.

  “Like what?” Alex gave that little sadistic smile that was always a bit disturbing.

  “Crazy shit. There are points. If you do good, you get Goldz. If you do bad, you get Blaxx.”

  Charlie thought of his phone: 800 Goldz!

  “What do you mean, good or bad?” Vanhi asked.

  “Like, good versus evil. Dark versus light. Biblical acts of justice and retribution. Old Testament shit, I kid you not.”

  “How do you play?”

  “That’s the thing,” Peter said. “I don’t know. We’re gonna find out together.”