She drinks, slowly and deliberately. She’s looking around the circle as she does it, like she’s flirting with everyone at once. There’s a low rustle of nervous giggles. Then Jack, looking across the circle at Ennis, drops her chin and takes a drink. And now the others are drinking, tipping their cups back, and I look over at Ben and he’s drinking, but not looking at me while he’s doing it. Lisle nudges my side and I know she wants me to drink, but I’m frozen, holding my stupid plastic cup and thinking: Turned on? Really? Is that what was going on with us, with me and Ben? Here I thought we had this amazing thing, this connection where we could talk about anything, this connection that was special. But maybe we were just like all the other billion jerks online using the Internet and anonymity to get their rocks off.
I wobble to my feet, feeling dizzy and sick. In the bathroom, I splash water on my face—my cheeks are bright red, my hair escaping out of its ponytail and sticking to my cheeks. I’d like to think I look wild and untamed, like Cathy, but I know I don’t. I just look sweaty and a little insane. I tell myself I have to get back in there and sit next to Ben. Claim my place.
I push my way back into the living room, where the I Never game is still in full flow. People are hooting and screaming with laughter while they drink, and the room stinks like vodka. I look around for Ben, but he isn’t there. My gaze lights on Lisle instead. Her eyes dart away from mine, quickly, toward the hallway. Lisle can never help herself. She’s a terrible liar; her body language always gives her away.
Halfway down the hall Jack is standing in front of a closed door, her face puffy. She’s pounding on it. “Ennis,” she says. “Ennis, open up.”
“You know,” I say, “I bet her name isn’t actually Ennis.”
Jack scowls at me. “They’re in there together, you know,” she says, and there’s real spite in it. I guess she doesn’t like me much, but then why would she? I reach past her, twiddle the doorknob. “It’s just stuck,” I say, and without thinking, I push it open, hard.
Light floods into the bedroom, where Ben and the girl whose name I only know as Ennis are sitting on the bed, their arms around each other, their faces mashed together. Seeing people kiss in real life is never like it is in movies, is my first thought. My second thought is that I feel like I’m going to throw up. Again.
“Ennis!” cries Jack dramatically. Her eyes are huge, but I have the feeling she’s not so much upset as enjoying the drama of the moment.
Ben and the girl jump away from each other guiltily, but their hands are still touching. The girl—I can’t think of her as Ennis—shakes her head. “Oh, Jack,” she says. “Really.”
Jack makes a snuffling noise, but I don’t stick around to see what she says to her friend—if they are even friends anymore. I’m heading out of the bedroom as fast as I can go.
Halfway down the hall something clamps around my wrist. I’m spun around to face Ben, who’s glowering down at me, not looking very sorry at all. “Look, Cathy,” he says. “Sorry if you’re upset, but it’s a game. It’s the Game. We’re just having fun.”
But that’s just it. I’m not having fun. “Let go of my wrist, Ben.”
He lets go, a scowl passing across his handsome face. “Look, I’m sorry if I’m not exactly like some character in a book?—”
“See, that’s just it,” I say, realizing the truth while I’m speaking it. “You are just like Heathcliff.” And he is. Heathcliff was a selfish, rotten bastard, really. He didn’t care about anyone but himself, and maybe Cathy. And I’m not Cathy, which doesn’t leave anyone for Ben to care about, except, maybe, himself.
My bags are still in a huge pile on the bed, tangled up with a dozen other people’s belongings. I grab the bright green strap of my duffel and start hauling it free. I have no idea where Lisle is or what she’s doing, or how I’m going to get out of here without her or her car. Maybe I’ll take a taxi. Maybe I’ll walk to the nearby highway and hitchhike.
“Jane.” It’s Noah in the doorway, looking rumpled and worried. “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like? I’m leaving. I’m out of here.” I jerk hard on the strap. It breaks off in my hand. “Shit.”
“You don’t have to go.” He comes up beside me and puts his hand on my back, his fingers tracing circles between my shoulder blades. It’s not at all the way Ben touched me: this is gentle, reassuring. My nausea starts to ebb, at least to the point where I can glance over at Noah without feeling like my stomach is about to shoot up into my throat. He’s looking at me with concern.
“I don’t have to. I want to. I don’t belong here.”
“Look, these people—” he gestures toward the door “—the people in the living room, you might not feel like you have a lot in common with them, but they’re nice people. Who cares if they like science fiction and fantasy and you don’t? The main reason they’re here is because they love a character enough to want to be that person sometimes. Isn’t that true for you, too?”
“It wasn’t Cathy I loved,” I said, throwing the broken strap down on the bed. “It was—oh, never mind. He’s your friend; you’ll just defend him.”
“Ben might be my friend,” Noah says carefully, “but he’s not perfect. I know that.”
A light flicks on in the back of my mind. “You were trying to warn me about him,” I said. “Earlier, out by the lake—weren’t you?”
“Er.” Noah looks like a trapped rat. “I was just saying that maybe he wasn’t exactly like you thought. People are sometimes—different—than they seem online.”
“Why would he even come to this?” I whisper. I know I shouldn’t ask, but I can’t help it. “If he didn’t even want to see me?”
Noah looks at the floor, the wall, anywhere but at me. “I can tell you what he told me. He said meetups like this were always full of lonely, geeky girls who go online looking to hook up. He said he was certain to score with someone. Probably you, but if not you…someone.”
“Probably me?” My voice is still a whisper and even the whisper hurts. In books, no one ever says “It’s probably you.” It’s always “It’s only you” or “It’s always been you.” Not “It’s probably you.”
“I’m sorry.” And Noah does look sorry, truly.
“I don’t get it.” I shake my head. “The things he wrote me, online, in e-mail—how could the kind of guy who goes to a party to take advantage of girls he thinks are lonely and pathetic be the same kind of guy who writes things like that?”
“Because,” Noah says, very slowly, “he didn’t write those things. I did.”
“You wrote them?” I stare at him. “All those letters—those messages—everything?”
“Not the messages. That was Ben. Just the letters.”
I want to not believe it, but I can’t help thinking about how I always thought the messages sounded like they were in a different voice than the letters, that it was never quite the same, that Ben would never say the same amazing things in IM or chat as he would in the letters he sent. But I always thought that it was just because his prose required time and polish. Now I know better.
“So you lied to me,” I say. “You knew Ben never wrote those letters and you didn’t say anything about it. Probably because you knew that if you did, you’d be screwing him out of his chance to score with some lonely, geeky girl.” My eyes are burning.
“I didn’t lie to you,” Noah protests. “I just—” He breaks off. “Okay, fine. I lied to you. But I didn’t mean to.”
I suddenly feel very tired. “Just go away, Noah.”
He looks as if he wants to say something else, but he doesn’t. With a sigh, he turns and leaves, shutting the door gently behind him.
I look down at my bag, the broken strap, and even my bones feel aching and exhausted. I want to creep into a hole and die, but since I know that’s not going to happen, I do the next best thing. I get onto the bed and burrow in among the bags, pushing them up and aside until I’ve made a little crawl space for myself, a hidden cave where no one can find me. I curl up under the bags and fall asleep.
A loud banging wakes me up. I pop up from among the bags to see that the doorknob is jerking back and forth like someone’s yanking on it desperately. Before I can get to my feet the door bursts open and G’Kar staggers in. He takes one look at me and streaks past me into the bathroom, where I can hear him throwing up.
Light is streaming in through the windows and I realize with some surprise that it’s morning. Strange that no one came in at any point during the night looking for their bags. Or maybe they did and I slept right through it. My head is aching and I wonder if I’m hungover. I’ve never been hungover before.
I fight my way out from among the bags and go looking for Lisle. Once I’m in the living room I realize why nobody came looking for their bags last night. Everyone’s sprawled out asleep on chairs, on the sofas, or on the floor. I don’t see Ben or Noah or Lisle anywhere, but standing there in the doorway looking at the passed-out crowd I realize that I’m not thinking about what a bunch of weirdos these people are. What I’m thinking is that this looks like the morning after a party where people had fun.
I find Lisle eventually in the bathroom, asleep on the floor. She’s not alone, either. Neo and Trinity are both with her, Neo’s arms around her waist. She has her hand on Trinity’s shoulder. Looks like Lisle will be drinking a lot more at the next I Never game.
Back in the living room, I pick my way across the sprawled bodies to the kitchen. Doritos are melting into soggy puddles in pools of spilled soda. The whole room smells sour. I grab a towel and a shiny green bottle of Comet and go to town on the mess.