“No. What’s our problem, Greer?”
“We never had any fun with this whole thing.”
It was a few days later. The day of the Marvins’ carnival. Greer wanted to escape the insanity of the kids getting ready, so we were walking from one side of Lucy’s Promise to the other. It was past time to start heading back, but Greer kept taking these random little turnoffs that stretched the trip out longer and longer. Also, he wouldn’t shut up.
“We had a golden opportunity. Kids came up here with, like, zero knowledge about the world. We could have told them anything!”
“Like what?”
“Nothing bad! Just like, I don’t know, the virus was caused by aliens. Or unicorns!”
“And we would have done this for fun?”
“Sure,” Greer said. “But also for science. We could have seen what believing things like that could do to people, like, psychologically.”
“So you’re saying we should have spent the last year performing psychological experiments on a group of deeply traumatized children.”
“Well, when you put it like that . . . No, it’d be like we were giving them a more exciting world. They’d probably thank us! If they ever found out about it.”
“It’s almost hard to believe we never put this plan into action.”
A turn that would have led us right to camp appeared up ahead, but Greer dodged at the last minute and we looped back around onto another trail.
“Uh, Greer?”
“Yeah.”
“Where are we going?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we’ve spent the last hour taking a twenty-minute walk.”
“So what?” he said. “The birds are singing. The sun’s out. Oh! You know what we should do? Go for a swim.”
“You have to leave for that carnival in like an hour.”
“A short one! Come on!”
He tore off down the trail, but I didn’t move. When he finally realized I wasn’t following, he turned around.
“What?”
“Dude,” I said. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing. Why?”
I just glared at him.
“Hey! Look at this!”
He dashed over to a stand of trees just off the trail. I stood there and watched as he poured every ounce of his attention onto what was clearly an entirely ordinary leaf. Turning it over. Bending it in half. Holding it up to the light. I came up behind him.
“Seriously,” I said. “What’s going on, man?”
“Nothing. I was just—I was thinking. That’s all.”
“About what?”
Greer held up the leaf. “Check out the veins on this bad boy. Is that insane or what? Did I ever tell you that I’m pretty sure I used to be a botanist?”
“Greer.”
“It’s nothing,” he said. “For real. I was just thinking about how you brought Hannah up here, and at first that seemed like it might have been a really bad idea, but then it turned out to be a pretty good one, right? It’s been good for the kids, I think.”
“That’s great.”
“Yeah, it is. It totally is.” He went back to fiddling with his spectacular leaf. “And I was thinking about how in general she’s, uh—she’s pretty cool, right? Like, as a person.”
He glanced up at me for half a second, then away again.
“Uh . . . yeah,” I said. “She is.”
“Yeah,” Greer repeated. “She’s like a really solid person, right? Nice, but not goody-goody nice—genuinely nice, but with a little bit of an edge still. Like how she’ll laugh at your jokes and all, but you’re pretty sure she could also kick your ass if she had to. Which—I don’t know why that seems so cool to me, but it totally does. Anyway, that’s what I thought, that she was pretty cool. And that’s what I thought you’d think too, so that’s why I wanted to”—he swallowed hard—“you know, check with you.”
“Check with me?”
“Before I said anything. To her. About, uh . . .” He looked away, grimaced, started again. “About her being cool.”
“Greer—”
“It’s totally okay if you, you know, think she’s cool too. I can back off. I will back off. I’m happy to back off. I mean, if you feel that way—”
“I don’t.”
He cocked his head, clearly skeptical.
“I don’t. And even if I did, it wouldn’t matter.”
“It would matter,” he said. “It’d matter to me.”
“No, I mean . . .” I looked down at my gloved hands. “Greer, we can barely be in the same room with each other.”
“Well, yeah, but sooner or later that Lassiter guy is going to get his act together and come up with a cure, and then you could—”
“Things are the way they are,” I said. “You should talk to Hannah. Today.”
Greer thought for a second, then tossed the leaf aside and started marching toward camp.
“No! No way,” he said. “Forget it. I changed my mind.”
“What? Why?” I chased after him. “Greer, I want you to!”
He threw his hands in the air. “No, it’s stupid. I don’t know what I was thinking. I wouldn’t even know what to say. And there’s no way she’d ever—I mean, I’m sure I had all kinds of slick moves before I was infected, but—”