Chapter 4
“So,” Tara Wingard asks me when we get out of class the next evening, “are we doomed or what?”
It’s just the two of us again. Her ever-present asshole brother wasn’t in class today at all, neither was Arrow, and the rest of the small number of students headed off together. Tara usually goes with them, though not always.
We’re all doomed eventually, I type back.
“That’s such a teenage answer,” she scoffs.
I’m a teenager. So are you.
“No need to be a stereotype, though.”
Then why are you the evil pretty girl with a lunkhead twin?
She actually laughs out loud. “He’s not that much of a lunkhead. If you had our mom . . . But then I guess you know what it’s like to have a difficult mother.”
My mom isn’t difficult, I type, even before I stop to think if it’s true or not.
“She is to my mother.”
Oh. Well. Yes.
“Don’t get me wrong. My mother deserves the difficulty, though maybe not all of it. I’m just saying. Would be nice to have moms who maybe weren’t so, I don’t know, present in the world. They kind of take up all the space.”
I don’t answer. Because maybe she is kind of right about that. We turn off the main road through town down a little side path that leads to my unit.
But not to Tara’s.
Where are you going? I ask.
“To the river,” she says.
There’s better ways to the river.
“You walk so fast, I haven’t had a chance to ask you to come with me.”
I stop. Why do you want me to come with you?
“Maybe I like you.”
I cock my head, like, sure.
“Okay, because, Ben Hewitt, you are literally the only person who’s smart enough to ask his thoughts on our doom.”
So your question was real?
“Yes, I want to know. The Glyph gets closer every day. I heard Max talk about burning gods–”
I’ve seen two. Or maybe the same one twice. I’m not sure.
“Arrow’s seen one.”
I know. I’m the one who told you to ask him.
“I didn’t hear it from him. Do you think much stays secret in this town for very long? Especially when my mother basically has access to everything Burly sees. Can’t you tell they’re having an affair? If not, you’re the only one. Well, you and Burly’s wife.”
I don’t want to know that.
“That’s fair,” Tara says. “But, like I say, you’re the smartest one here. Except for me.”
I’m smarter than you.
She grins. “Interesting point of view. I want to know what you think. All these people telling us half-truths or their version of the truth anyway. What do you think? I’m genuinely interested in knowing.”
I look at her for a second.
Let’s go to the river, I type.