Incite

John eyed me carefully. “I don’t believe in God,” he said. “I believe in Endgame.”

“What?” I asked. “What religion is that?”

“It’s not a religion. It’s the end of the world. It could start at any moment. I don’t know.”

I looked at Tommy, who stared at me like he was waiting for me to say something. Mary still held my hand, her other holding her bottle of Budweiser. She looked back at me as I stared, our faces close together.

“This,” I said, turning back to John and laughing, “is why I never drink. You guys are freaking me out.”

“I like you, Mike.” John leaned back and laughed. “Listen, when do you start work?”

Mary’s hand brushed against mine, but I tried to focus on John. “Uh … not till next week.”

“We’re having a get-together this weekend with a lot of my friends. Up at Mary’s ranch. Nothing formal, just fishing and shooting and hiking. Come with us—it’ll be fun.”

“Thanks, man. But I don’t have a car.”

“That doesn’t matter,” John said. “We have plenty of people coming who can give you a ride. Why don’t you get a lift with Mary?”

She nodded emphatically. “I have my dad’s old Buick. I’ll pick you up.”

Tommy spoke up. “C’mon, Stavros. It’s cool. You should come.”

I never did anything like this. And not only that, but I never did it so spontaneously. “Well, I don’t know how to shoot, and I haven’t fished since I was in the Boy Scouts, but sure, sounds good.”

I was happy. I’d found a group of friends who felt like they could be my people. And for a moment I forgot about all the talk of the end of the world as John bought another round of drinks.

Tommy and I walked back to our dorm. He was drunk—we’d played pool for two straight hours. For my first day of college, this had been pretty cool. I’d met a bunch of new people, including a beautiful girl who’d stayed next to me most of the night. I had no idea where that had come from—I didn’t know what she meant by it.

I hoped it meant something.

“Tommy,” I said, “how long have you known Mary?”

“Not long. I only started hanging out with that group … um … during fall semester?”

“So you’re pretty new?”

“Yeah,” he said, his words slightly slurred from all the beer. “I guess. She’s been with the group for only a little longer than me. But I always get the feeling that she’s known John forever.”

“Forever?”

“For a long time. I don’t know. Longer than a year anyway. Are you interested in her?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Hey man, that’s cool. She’s not my type anyway.”

We turned onto a street without any streetlights.

“A totally hot girl with deep blue eyes and blond hair isn’t your type? She’s on a scholarship at Stanford, so she’s smart too. What is your type?”

“I like brunettes,” he said.

“Well, your loss is my gain.”

Tommy winked at me. “I assume this means you’re coming on our ranch trip?”

“A whole weekend with Mary?” I said. “Are you kidding? Of course I’m in.”

I really did want to go—and not just because of Mary. I’d had this picture in my head of what Berkeley was supposed to be like, and suddenly I was living it. Getting together with friends, talking about big issues—the war, the government. Even the end of the world.

Of course, at that point I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_e1d3bf61-e8cd-5b6e-96b1-20729c1a03b4)

We all met in the grocery store parking lot Friday at five in the morning, and I was stunned by who showed up. I thought it was going to be just our group, but it turned out to be a whole lot bigger than that. There were the people I knew—Mary, Tommy, Jim, Julia, and John—but there were also many I’d never met.

Other than a change of clothes, I hadn’t brought anything with me, but most had fishing poles or shotguns or deer rifles. When we got there, Mary threw her arms around me in a huge hug. She smelled like flowers, and I let my face nuzzle in her hair. My heart sped up at what that hug could mean. But then she gave the same big hug to Tommy, and another one to John. She was a hugger, I guessed.

She looked like the youngest girl there, and I was probably the youngest guy. I introduced myself to everyone.

“We’re going to have fun today,” said a girl named Kat, smiling at me. She was in her twenties, super skinny, and a nurse. She gave me a hug too, and whispered in my ear, “This may seem crazy at first, but you’re going to love it.”

What? I thought. It seemed like such an odd thing to say. I figured she meant I’d love the group—the fishing and shooting.

“The old guy,” I asked Kat. “Who’s he?”

“That’s Rodney. And he’s only thirty-two,” she said. “That’s not old. It’s his beard. But you should get to know him—he owns a deli in Oakland. And watch for it: he’ll ask you to go fishing with him, and he’ll make a bet on who will catch the first fish. Don’t take him up on it. I swear, he could get a fifteen-pound bass out of a pothole.”

Mary came and took my hand and led me to her car. “It’s a coupe,” she said, “so there’s only room for the two of us.”

“Great,” I said. She was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt that showed her curves, and I couldn’t believe Tommy wasn’t interested in her. She was beautiful. Her hair was loose and long, and her skin was soft and warm in my hand. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was that we had the whole car ride to ourselves.

Once everyone had arrived—there were eight cars and 21 people—Mary and I pulled out of the parking lot and headed west. Her ranch was five hours north. I’d heard Northern California was pretty, and she said there were lakes and rivers and hills on her family’s property.

“Do your folks know you’re going up there?” I asked.

“What makes you ask that?” she said, tilting her head.

“Just curious.”

“No,” she said, her expression suddenly tense. “They don’t. And they can’t find out, or I’m dead.”

“So we have to keep the place nice and tidy?”

“Exactly.” Mary glanced over at me, noticed I was smiling. Her face loosened up, and she laughed. “Really, though, my parents don’t use the ranch for much anymore. So they don’t care. In the spring my dad will go up and make sure the fences are okay, and in autumn he still takes us hunting. The ranch is really big—have I said that? It’s fifty-five thousand acres.”

“Wow,” I said. I knew from my time with the Forest Service that that was enough land to get seriously lost in. It could cover whole mountain ranges.