Chapter 6: The Question We Didn't Have the Answer To
I thought about what Dad had said for the rest of that week.
*That is the question we don't have the answer to yet.*
Was Chloe doing this because she wanted to?
Or because Richard had pointed her at me the way you point a flashlight at something in the dark?
I watched her differently after the dinner.
Not for the questions she asked — I was already past that — but for the moments when she forgot to perform.
The small unguarded seconds when she was tired, or distracted, or just sitting quietly on her bed reading.
She seemed real in those moments.
That was the part that made it complicated.
Three days after the dinner, she knocked on my side of the room divider — we'd set up a curtain for privacy — and said, "Can I come in?"
"Sure."
She sat cross-legged on the end of my bed, which she'd started doing in the third week, and pulled her sleeves over her hands the way she did when she was cold.
"Was that dinner weird for you?" she asked.
I looked at her.
"A little."
"My dad can be a lot."
"He seems like someone who likes to be in charge of things."
She was quiet for a moment.
"He likes to be in charge of *me*." She said it simply, without drama.
"He has a plan for everything.
Who I room with.
What I study.
Who I spend time with." She looked at the window.
"I've been following the plan since I was about twelve."
I didn't say anything.
"I'm not telling you this to make you feel sorry for me," she said quickly.
"I just — I wanted you to know that some of what happened at the beginning wasn't entirely me."
*Some of it.*
"What part was you?" I asked.
She looked at me then.
Directly, without the careful smile.
"Wanting to actually be your friend," she said.
"That part was me."
The room was quiet.
I wanted to believe her.
That was the honest answer.
I wanted to believe her, and I didn't know yet if that wanting was instinct or just wishful thinking.
"Chloe," I said.
"Who were you texting on move-in day?
When you flipped the phone over."
She closed her eyes briefly.
"My dad."
"What were you telling him?"
She pulled her sleeves further over her hands.
"He wanted a report.
On your family.
What they looked like.
What car they drove.
Whether he'd read you right."
"And what did you tell him?"
She met my eyes.
"I told him I wasn't sure yet."
It wasn't a full answer.
But it was the most honest thing she'd said to me in six weeks.
I could feel the difference.
"What happens," I said slowly, "when your dad finds out that my family isn't what he thinks they are?"
She frowned slightly.
"What do you mean?"
I had been sitting on this for weeks.
I looked at her — the pulled sleeves, the careful honesty, the girl underneath the plan — and I made a decision.
"My dad doesn't own a small business," I said.
"He owns eleven.
My mom has been the regional director of her company for eight years.
We have a house in the mountains and one on the coast.
I've been to Europe four times."
Chloe went very still.
"We dressed like that on move-in day," I said, "because my dad wanted to see who you really were before you knew who we really were."
She stared at me.
"So this whole time — "
"We were watching.
The same way your dad was watching us."
The color had left her face.
"Does that mean — " She stopped.
Started again.
"Does that mean none of this was real?
You being my friend?"
I looked at her for a long moment.
"I don't know yet," I said.
"But I think that's the same answer you gave your father on move-in day."
She looked down at her hands.
Outside in the hallway, someone laughed loudly and moved on.
Then Chloe's phone lit up on the desk.
A call.
May you like
Not a text.
The screen said: *Dad.*
