“He’s a ten-thousand-year-old monster,” I said, “one who can probably mind control people. The more we look into him, the more I think he can get anything he wants.”
“Then why is he here in two-bit Crapville?” asked Nobody. “Everyone loves him, and he can have everything, and he doesn’t even have to kill people, and all he does is sit here picking his nose—”
“Wait,” I said, standing up in a rush. “That’s new—you’ve talked about Yashodh for a year and this is the first time you’ve said he doesn’t have to kill people.”
“That’s new?” Her eyes went wide and she looked down at herself as if expecting to see something different. Almost immediately she shook her head and closed her eyes, squinting them shut as she thought. “Something new … think…” She clenched her teeth with the effort. “He doesn’t kill people … he doesn’t have to kill people.…”
“Do they worship him?” I asked. If he’d set himself up as a messiah figure in a backcountry cult, maybe it was the worship itself that sustained him. “You said everyone loves him, right? Is that a means to an end, or is that the end itself?”
“That would make sense,” said Nobody, rubbing her fingers together as she spoke, staring at the wall.
“But is it true?”
“I don’t know,” she growled, “I’m trying to think.” She focused on the wall like it was a portal to the past. “Come on, brain, spit it out. He doesn’t need to kill people. Maybe he doesn’t want to kill people. Maybe he can’t kill people.”
“He gave up himself,” I said, trying to keep her thoughts focused; brainstorming new ideas wouldn’t help us, we needed to dig deeper into the handful of truths we already had.
“He gave himself up,” said Brooke. “Everybody loves him … because he gave himself up. He saved them.”
This sounded wrong. “From what?”
“From sin,” said Brooke, looking up at me. “He died for our sins.”
I shook my head. “How many of your personalities are Christian?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Lots. I’m just talking about Jesus now, aren’t I?”
“Yashodh is not the messiah,” I said, “but he needs to convince people that he is. For … something.”
“So he can be happy,” said Brooke.
“That’s it?”
She looked at me with a frown. “What do you mean, that’s it? That’s everything.”
“The Withered are not trying to be happy,” I said, “they’re trying to gain … power, money, something. They’re trying to survive.”
“That’s what happiness is, John. It’s how we survive. It’s why.”
I sighed and rubbed my face with my hands. “Whatever. We can think on the way.” I grabbed my backpack, and looked down at Boy Dog. “Sorry, dog. You’ve got a long walk ahead.”
3
“What’s your favorite song?” asked Brooke. We’d found State Road 27 but hadn’t managed to catch a ride yet so we were just walking along—slowly, so Boy Dog could keep up.
I answered without thinking. “‘Don’t Stop Believin’,’ by Foreigner.”
Brooke laughed. “No it’s not.”
“Sure it is,” I said. “Why not?”
“The question isn’t why not,” she said. “It’s why. What on earth about that song makes you like it?”
“You say that like it’s impossible to like,” I said. “That’s one of the most popular songs of all time.”
“Is that why you picked it?”
I glanced at her. “I picked it because I like it.”
“So sing it.”
“What, right now?”
She spun slowly in the empty country road, looking at the wide fields and dusty trees that surrounded us. “Are you shy? We could sing at the top of our lungs and no one would even hear us. So prove it, big guy: if ‘Don’t Stop Believin’’ is your favorite song, sing it.”
“I don’t really sing.”
Her eyes gleamed with mischief. “Then recite the words.”
I sighed. “Fine, I don’t actually know the words.”
“Of course you don’t,” she said proudly. “You didn’t even know who sang it—it’s Journey, not Foreigner, and I should know because I went to their concerts. Several of me did.”
“They’re the same band,” I said, and then frowned. “Aren’t they?”
“They’re not the same band, they’re super different.”
“No, seriously,” I said, “isn’t it just, like, they changed their name? Like how Jefferson Airplane became Jefferson Starship.”
“Wow,” said Brooke, “you’re going all in on classic rock, aren’t you?”
“What else am I going to listen to, modern stuff? Have you heard modern stuff?”
“More than you have,” said Brooke, “which is my whole point. You don’t listen to anything, classic or modern or anything else. I’m going to guess that somebody, probably your mom, listened to classic rock all the time, so you picked the most popular one as your ‘look how normal I am’ answer if anyone ever asked.”