Page 17 of The Circle

CHAPTER EIGHT

The ride backto the hotel feels like what it must be for convicts in a prison transpo on their way to penitentiary. Tense. Uncertain.

Charlie and Brenden have been left with the two Lynch boys and Russell drives the Sprinter van with me, Alec, and Danny in the back and Eliza sitting just in front of us, unmoving. Alec looks out one window, Danny the other, and I just stare at the back of Eliza’s head, almost hypnotized by her long, golden-blonde hair. And I wonder. I wonder what she must be feeling.

I hated her. Hated her for… all the reasons you might hate a person who was once your friend and who then fucked someone you love. And then gave birth to a kid they made together with that someone. After the kid you were supposed to have with that someone never quite made it out into this big, ridiculous, fucked-up world.

Yeah, I suppose my hatred is understandable. But, also, honestly, it’s like that thing they say: “Hating someone is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies.” I don’t know who “they” are, and I wonder if they’d feel the same way if they had had the same life I have, but… I’ve stolen from people. And killed people. And done all kinds of other fucked-up shit that I can’t even remember anymore. So, insofar as I probably don’t have a lot of good karma coming my way, letting go of my feelings about Eliza seems like a comparatively easy action.

Whatever the reason, I don’t hate her now. I really don’t. Now, I just feel… sad. And sorry for her. I can’t even imagine what it would feel like to be going along, living your life, minding your own business, and suddenly have a bunch of people you put in your rearview show up and rip a hole so wide into the fabric of your world that you can’t know if it will be stitched back together again.

More simply, I can’t know what it feels like to be a mother and have your child taken from you. I almost can. My miscarriage is a version of that, I suppose. But I never got to hold it, teach it, stroke its hair. It’s not quite the same, I don’t think.

And it’s not as though I ever really had a mother of my own, not really—father either—so the idea of parental love still isn’t something I’ve had the opportunity to understand real well, but over these last days, I’ve seen what the true, deep, unconditional love of a child can do to a person when that child is threatened. And it sucks.

And… I have Alec and Danny back. As improbable as it would’ve seemed, we’re here. Together. On another adventure the likes of which most humans will never know. Alec, Christine, Danny (for that is how you say our names) are together again. And, if we can make it out of this shit, I have a feeling that’s how we’ll stay. Don’t know why I feel that way. Just do.

But Eliza… If we don’t get her kid back—alive—she’ll have no one.

Sure, she’ll have her brothers, but that’s not the same. It’s a different kind of love. Not the love Alec, Danny, and I share, or the love one has for a child. Her brothers can’t console her or hold her the way a lover can, or a child who believes in you without question.

And, what’s more, the kid is great. I said as much to Alec, but I meant it. She seems like a really nice little kid. A kid who doesn’t deserve this. And, having once been a little kid who didn’t deserve the shit that got handed to her, I guess I feel empathy for her. Andra. And Eliza. In some indefinable way.

And suddenly—and I couldn’t explain why if you threatened my own life—I find myself wanting to reach out and stroke Eliza’s head.

It’s weird. It’s super fucking weird and I don’t like it and I don’t know why the feeling comes over me, but there it is. I go so far as to lift my hand a tiny bit as if I’m actually going to do it. Then I catch myself acting like a big, fucking weirdo and stop. Just as Russell says, “Okay.”

He drives the van down into the loading dock of the hotel where we’re staying. He gives a nod to the security guard, who nods back and lets us pass. I have no idea how much they’re paying everyone to let us come and go as we please, and I don’t care. I’m just glad that on top of everything else we’re having to navigate, we’re not also dealing with a bunch of nosy hotel staff.

He pulls up to the loading area, puts the van in park, and turns around. “Do we have any plan in place to deal with what’s definitely going to be a dog’s dinner?”

Danny responds. “Let’s just, I dunno, get up to our suites and… Everybody grab up whatever weaponry we didn’t bring to the warehouse. I have no idea what or who Brasil is going to be coming with, but we should be ready for the apocalypse.”

“Grand,” Russell says with more than a little sarcasm. “Lize?”

I watch the back of Eliza’s head move ever so slightly, like she’s trying to figure out where she is. Then she turns around in her seat and faces me, Danny, and Alec. I try to imagine what she’s seeing. Does she see three cold-hearted assassins? Three used-to-be-friends-turned-enemies-turned-allies-out-of-necessity? Or just three assholes she regrets ever having met in the first place?

Probably all of the above.

“Yeah,” she mumbles. “Yeah. Grand.”

She presses the button on the passenger door of the van and it slides open. She steps out, jumps up onto the loading dock platform, and presses the button for the service elevator. And, once again, for reasons I couldn’t possibly explain, I push by Alec’s knees and go trotting after her. I catch up just as the elevator doors ding open.

She steps on and I follow, turning around just in time to see the confused and concerned faces of Alec, Danny, and Russell as the doors close.

We stand in silence for a second. Neither of us does that phony thing of staring at the numbers lighting up as the elevator passes each floor. We knew each other once and we know each other differently now, and there’s no value in pretending otherwise.

It’s me who breaks the quiet. “We’ll get her.”

Eliza doesn’t say anything or look over at me. Just keeps staring ahead, blankly.

I repeat myself. “We’ll get her. We’ll find her and we’ll get her back. I promise.”

I suppose it’s the “I promise” that gets her attention because now she does turn her head to look at me. And then she says something that I’m not expecting. At all.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

She means it. There’s a sadness to it. An exhausted, broken sorrow.