Zach’s tapping away on his phone. “No one cares,” he says, not bothering to lift his gaze. “The bus driver doesn’t care, the airline passengers didn’t care. Literally, the only one who gives a fuck is you.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You have nothing to lose.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
Zach stuffs his phone into his pocket. “He means the press already knows who I am.”
“Most of our members have changed their names,” Connor explains. “Moved away from their hometowns. Left the past behind them.”
“Sure, Bernecke.”
Connor stops dead in his tracks, then slowly turns around. His expression hasn’t changed, but the steeliness in his eyes has sharpened into a shiv.Bernecke. I know that name; Michael Bernecke was a cult leader back in the nineties. His followers ransacked a chain of houses, leaving a trail of arson and butchery behind them. Is Connor the child of a cult leader?
“Patchet,” he corrects.
None of us moves. Finally, Zach mumbles, “Sure, whatever.”
As we press forward through the garage, I find myself wondering what it would be like to change my name, construct a new past. Claire managed something like that back in college. She and I met during our freshman year, and by the end of the first semester, we’d swapped roommates so that we could live together. Back then, she carted around used textbooks and scavenged food from campus events, same as me. It wasn’t until her parents came to visit, and invited us to join them for dinner at a Michelin-starred restaurant, that I discovered we weren’t cut from the same cloth. As the servers shuttled out each course, I scrutinized her gestures and copied them methodically: this glass, that knife, don’t start eating yet, keep the napkin off the table. I thought it was all very impressive—thatshewas very impressive—but while I marveled at how effortlessly she glided between Claire of the Turpentine-Soaked Paint Rags and Claire of the Oyster Fork, her father nitpicked every little thing she did. Her haircut looked shabby; her clothes weren’t pressed right. Her brother was pursuing his MBA and what was she doing? Wasting his hard-earned money on art school. (Never mind that Cooper Union was free back then.) It seemed like the harder she tried to please him, the more hopeless it became.
As soon as we returned to the residence hall, I disappeared into the back stairwell, called my dad, and told him how much I loved him. I could never be Claire—but I don’t think I’d want to be, either.
We stop next to a minibus, large enough for eight or maybe ten passengers. As the door folds open, a burst of chatter erupts from inside, punctuated by laughs. Zach doesn’t hesitate; he bounds up the stairs. The windows are tinted, so there’s no telling who’s inside. I listen for the sound of Greer’s voice.
“Well?” Connor waits behind me. I brace myself, then scale the steps to the bus. It’s one of those luxury models with leather recliners and a kitchenette in the back. About half the seats are already occupied. I tuck my sunglasses into my pocket and visually sweep the bus’s interior.
Greer’s not here.
Maybe her flight hasn’t arrived yet. She’ll be coming in from Los Angeles—a shorter distance, sure, but maybe that means her ticket was booked for later in the day. I’ll be able to introduce myself to the other club members without her having already muddied the waters. What should come as a relief instead makes me feel agitated, a single question flooding my mind: What if she’s not coming at all?
I follow Zach down the aisle. “Nic, this is Kemy,” he says, indicating a Black woman to our left, probably in her mid-forties, with a ponytail so tight, just looking at it gives me a headache. A laptop’s propped open in front of her. She murmurs “Hello,” but doesn’t bother looking up from her screen; her fingers chase one another across the keyboard. “She’s a university professor, which means that whatever she’s working on is far more important than either of us.”
The corner of Kemy’s mouth tics down into a frown. She half closes her laptop and turns toward me. “It’s really nice to meet you, Nicola. I’m not sure if you know, but we’re about to lose our electronic devices for the weekend, and one of my students requested a letter of recommendation that needs to be submitted by the end of today.”
“It’s fine, really—” I start, but Zach apparently feels otherwise.
“And then after you press submit, it’ll be something else.”
“I’m a busy woman.”
“All those Heritage Foundation articles aren’t going to write themselves.”
Kemy appears ready to argue, but Zach’s already shepherding me to the next row of seats. “This is Hannah.” A mousy girl wearing a jumper, like an elementary-schooler posing for her school portrait, shrinks farther back into her seat. She’s much younger than the rest of us, in her early twenties maybe, with baby fat still clinging to her cheeks. “Hannah doesn’t talk much. Say ‘hello,’ Hannah.” She nods slightly, bobbed hair wobbling around her jawline.
“Andthis”—Zach holds out his hand toward the final club member, like she’s the pièce de résistance of his tour—“is Ros.” He pronounces her name like theFriendscharacter: Ross.
“It’s so wonderful to meet you.” Ros’s blond hair has been spritzed into loose waves; when she shakes my hand, I catch a whiff of what I imagine those Herbal Essences commercials smelled like back in the nineties. She speaks with a thick, husky drawl that feels practiced, like instead of being passed down from mother to daughter, it was inherited from reruns ofDesigning Women. “We were all hoping you’d come this weekend, especially since I’m betting things have been a little tough at home.”
“You could say that.”
“Honey, we’ve all been there.” She pats the seat across from her. Zach heaves first my bag, then his own, into the overhead compartment and slides into the seat beside the window, leaving me to take the aisle. “You’ll see when we get to the lodge. You’re going to love it there. It’s like summer camp for grown-ups. We have bonfires, sing-alongs, booze.”
“So much booze,” Zach adds.
“Somuch booze.” Ros glances at Connor, who’s ticking off items on his clipboard. “I need to show you some photos before our phones get confiscated.”
“Of the girls?”
She hums affirmatively, swiping through her photo album before settling on the one she wants. She passes the phone to him. “That’s Lillie in her school’s production ofChicken Little. She told us she’d be playing Chicken Little, and for weeks, she’d drag us all into the living room and make us watch while she practiced running around in circles, shouting, ‘The sky is falling! The sky is falling!’ The night of the show, we get to the auditorium, so excited to see our little girl in her first starring role, and it turns out, she’s playing a sheep who doesn’t even have any lines. Afterward, we told her she was such a good sheep, she stole the whole damn show, but she cried all the way home.” I peer over at the photo. A little girl, maybe in second or third grade, sulks with her arms crossed against her chest. Cotton balls have been glued to her long-sleeved shirt; her nose is painted black, and black mittens fit snugly over both her hands. “She was the cutest little sheep, though, wasn’t she?”
