He’ll never have a chance. His father saw to that. Even now, LeGrand’s mind snaps reflexively at his own familiarity. The prophet, it corrects. Not his father.
LeGrand settles against the trunk, eyes on the demon spreading its skeleton wings out over its domain. If LeGrand is wicked for trying to get help, then the doctor, and his father, and his mother, and all his aunts and cousins and siblings and the elders and the mayor of the next town who looks the other way and the police department that takes his father’s money and lets him run Zion Mountain like his own private country and the state that can’t be bothered to care about what’s happening in its borders and everyone—everyone, everyone—is evil for not helping. For seeing what Almera needed and not getting it for her. And if everyone is evil, then no one is, and he won’t wonder anymore if he’s a sinner.
He is a sinner, and it doesn’t matter. Whatever happens next, he’s going to help whoever needs it. Just like that woman from the service. Just like Brandon, giving LeGrand a place to live for no reason other than that he somehow knew LeGrand needed it. Just like Ava, taking LeGrand into her protection, even though no one else would have.
If all the world is hell and evil is all around them, what else can they do but try to help each other?
* * *
—
Brandon climbs into the hiding space. Mack and Ava fit better—he knocks his head against low-hanging beams three times while trying to get settled. But some of the tension in his chest eases, because Mack—not Ava, Mack!—shifts to make room for him, a half-sleeping Ava rolling onto her side with her head on Mack’s shoulder. Brandon tamps down the thrill of being right about them, not wanting to be awkward. He can be cool about it. They’ll know he’s cool about it by how he doesn’t react.
Mack tentatively pats the floor on her free side, and Brandon carefully stretches out, overjoyed that they’re still making literal space for him. Whatever happens, it’s going to be okay. They’re going to stay his friends. One of them will win, and they’ll all stay together. He knows it. “You guys want to move in with me after the game?” he says, and then he rushes to clarify. “LeGrand is, too. I have a house. It’s small. But it’s mine. Could be ours.”
Mack lets out a puff of air he’s pretty sure is a laugh. “Sure,” she says, and he wonders briefly if she’s making fun of him, but she wouldn’t do that. And she follows up with, “That would be nice.” He can tell by her dreamy, soft tone that she means it.
“Yeah, why the hell not,” Ava says. “Where do you live?”
“Idaho.”
“Okay, maybe that’s why the hell not.” But Ava laughs. Not at him—she’s inviting him to laugh with her.
So he does, and he’s happy, and things aren’t so bad at all. Maybe they’ll even get fun again. “What should we do at the end of this day? Find another spot, or stay here?”
“It’s a maze,” Mack says. “The park. Atrius figured it out.”
“So tonight we try to solve it?” Ava sounds intrigued. “Makes as much sense as anything else.” She doesn’t add that it’s good for her to have a goal, a purpose. That she needs to keep them all focused. Organized. Together.
Ava wraps an arm around Mack’s waist. Mack agreed to stay, but Ava’s not taking any chances. She wants to anchor her here, to keep Mack next to her, to have someone to press against and remember her own borders. Her own realness.
Ava still thinks some fucked-up shit is going down, but she can keep Mack safe, and Mack can keep her safe, too. And they’ll both keep that overgrown puppy of a human Brandon safe, and sad, lost LeGrand safe, too. A new platoon. A new family.
Mack can’t decide if it’s claustrophobic having Ava on one side and Brandon on the other. All this warmth and affection and companionship and, most foreign, hope for a future, utterly lacking in her life for years and now hyper-concentrated. The pressure is building in her chest, and if she opens her mouth, she doesn’t know whether a laugh or a scream will come out. So she strokes Ava’s soft fuzz of hair and closes her eyes and tries to simply exist.
Yes, she’s not alone. But it doesn’t mean she’s not still hidden. It just means she has help now.
* * *
—
LeGrand in his tree.
Ava and Mack and Brandon in their wooden womb.
Beautiful Ava and Jaden on the other side of the park, Ava walking a few steps behind Jaden as he looks for the best place to betray her.
And, in the center of it all, shuddering wet breaths grow shallower and more erratic as dawn approaches and hunger spikes.
* * *
—
Jaden’s not a bad guy.
He’ll be the first to tell you that, and he has told people that, over and over, so many times that it’s become something of a catchphrase. “I’m not a bad guy,” he says, his arms held wide, a wryly innocent grin on his almost handsome-enough face.
One of his exes once said he looked like the guy they put in the picture frame to sell it. Blandly attractive, a filler until the frame has something that actually matters in it. No! her friend had exclaimed, all of them several drinks deep. He looks like a sock model!
He had laughed. But every time he pulled on socks or walked past a display of frames in a store, he remembered their appraisals, and it rankled him. But he wasn’t a bad guy. He had nudes of that ex, and he never posted them.
That ex is on his mind as he stands back, watching the current future ex in his life examine an old roller-coaster track. It climbs until it disappears into the trees, an ivy-choked outline of what it had once been.
All Jaden wants is one, just one, woman in his life who is loyal. Who is beautiful and funny and lives for him. Who doesn’t let him down. Doesn’t laugh at him. Looks at him and makes him feel as special as he wants to be. Even his own mother barely waited for him to graduate high school before declaring herself retired from parenthood and moving to Florida. He once decided to see how long it would take her to call him if he didn’t call her once a month. After seven months, on the verge of tears, he broke down and called her. She honestly had no idea how long it had been. She didn’t miss him at all, didn’t think of him when he wasn’t there.
Object permanence doesn’t exist where Jaden is concerned. Out of sight, out of mind.
It’s been the same with every girlfriend, every woman in his life. They always hit a certain point and then can’t wait to get rid of him. So now he gets rid of them first.
“We could follow the track up,” Ava suggests. She doesn’t want to try to find the others. We should win on our own merit, she had said earlier, as if sabotaging others hadn’t been her idea, floated to impress Jaden and make him invest in her. And as if they could both still win. As if they don’t know there’s only going to be one winner.