Hide(46)
“Half,” LeGrand says, softly.
“What?”
“A lot of them are half brothers and sisters, I guess you’d call them? Different moms. My favorite sister is named Almera.”
“Cool!” Brandon says, and he absolutely means it, even though the information is weird at best. He really does think it’s cool that LeGrand has so many siblings, and that he has a favorite. “I’ll bet you’re her favorite, too.”
“They banished me.”
Brandon knows what banished means—he’s pretty sure—but it seems weirdly formal for a family. He doesn’t know how to respond. But then he lights up, because this is it. “You can come live with me. After the game, I mean. I have a house. It’s small and old but pretty cool.”
The silence stretches for so long that Brandon’s sure he messed up. But then LeGrand says, “Okay.”
“Okay. Okay! Cool. Well, see you later!” The sky is starting to lighten, so it’s time to barge in on Ava and Mack. But with this boost of confidence—LeGrand is going to stay his friend!—he’s ready to extend the offer to Ava and Mack, too, and then settle in for a long day of waiting and hoping that absolutely nothing happens.
Things feel less scary and weird. He has a team. Friends. And a future with them.
* * *
—
LeGrand watches as Brandon walks back to the building where the others are hiding, the odd cheerful spring in his step back. It had disappeared on their trip from the camp here, but apparently Brandon’s optimism is revived.
LeGrand has no feelings about that one way or another. Almera. He hasn’t said her name out loud, not since he snuck out of the compound to the closest town and tried to tell the doctor there about her. He was rushed out the door, no help, no concern, nothing.
Why didn’t the doctor help him?
Why didn’t anyone help him?
It’s a numbers game, the woman from the service to guide them in adjusting to “the real world” had said with a sigh. If they keep all the boys in the community, there aren’t enough girls for them to have more than one wife. They have to make up reasons to get rid of you. You didn’t do anything wrong.
At the time, heartbroken, shell-shocked, LeGrand had felt instantly defensive. It was sin to talk about the prophet, the elders that way. He had done something wrong. This was his fault, not theirs.
He feels a little bad now for how much he secretly hated that woman. She really did try to help him. Including filling out the application for this exciting competition that she had heard about through a friend of a friend. All she wanted was for these poor lost boys, uneducated, functionally illiterate, raised for one world only and then abandoned into another, to have a chance.
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?”