Chapter 68: Double Down

“That’s where the loan came in?” I stared at Benji. “I thought you told me it was to leverage your investment.”

“You told yourself that,” he said. His voice dropped to a mumble. “I let you.”

“Oh.” I tried to process this. Failed. As in so many regards, his software and my operating system were incompatible.

Instead of coming up with something useful to say, I trudged further up the slope.

If Lena hadn’t continued to point out the Materials we passed, I’d have stopped focusing on them. As it was, my rising XP totals proved that Third Eye was tracking our camera movements more than our state of mind. I collected my half and patted her arm in thanks.

She seemed to be handling the news better than me. I supposed they weren’t her relatives. That felt like a cruel thing to think, even if it was true.

We kept moving. I took deep breaths. The air was thinner up here but it smelled clean, crisp, and piney. I wondered if I would’ve been allergic to the pines if not for Third Eye; I knew Lena and I would have been gasping for breath.

Benji wasn’t, quite, but when we came to a reasonably level stretch of trail, he paused by one of the rocks.

I prowled around the edge, grabbing more Stone. Failing to process. Failing to engage.

He said, “Spit it out, bro.”

I swallowed. “You took out a loan to pretend you could withdraw money from the crypto market you’d persuaded everybody in our family to invest in.”

If he could’ve denied it, he wouldn’t have let me keep talking.

Unfortunately, I kept talking. “And you did this to convince your wife that... what?”

“That we would be okay if she quit her job.”

I nodded because I didn’t know what else to do. “Did she?”

“She gave her notice,” Benji said. “Now that she’s found out what went down – what I pulled – she’s trying to walk it back.”

“The fact you say ‘trying’ sounds pretty bad.”

“Sandy was having problems at work already. She hasn’t gotten a raise in three years, she doesn’t get along with her boss, her company is shrinking its headcount. When we were deciding which of us would quit if one of us could, it was pretty freaking obvious. Going back...” He shook his head. “It doesn’t look great.”

Which meant their household income had been slashed at the same time their savings were rendered inaccessible.

And –

I asked, “What kind of loan?”

“Second mortgage.”

“So if you can’t get the money back, and Sandy can’t get her job back, you might lose your house, too?”

“Lots of people have second mortgages, Cameron.”

“Is that a no?”

“Yes!” He ran his hands through his hair. He kept his cut shorter than me. It didn’t droop into dorky bangs; the flipside was that his fingers couldn’t shape it into the cool upswept bangs Third Eye gave my avatar. “I mean, no. I can make the payments for now.”

I swallowed. “How long is ‘for now?’”

“I don’t know,” Benji snapped. “It was temporary! I thought I was just dealing with a server error and I’d be able to pull the money the week after Christmas. Then we could just use the mortgage money to put up solar panels or some shit, like normal people.”

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“Which,” Lena said, “is still what’s going to happen.”

We both looked up at her. She’d pulled ahead of us while we talked and had scaled the rock we were idling near. With the morning sun streaming down on her, she almost looked ablaze with no need for a Third Eye filter.

“You and everybody else Omar screwed over are getting a lawsuit together, yeah?” she said.

“It’s an open and shut case,” Benji said. “The only way the bastard could get any more obvious about ripping us off is if he actually pays out prize money when he’s sitting on all our investments. It’s just...”

“That only helps if Omar’s still got the money,” I said.

“If he blew it on some crazy Third Eye scheme and there’s just nothing to recoup, we won’t get shit.” Benji looked skyward. It didn’t seem like a long way to look, up here. “Or if the scheme’s not crazy. That’s what I was trying to figure out earlier. How do you arraign a dude who can teleport?”

“Take away his phone?” I spread my hands. “We don’t know if teleportation is possible. I’m not even sure Albie could place herself above the law, much less a regular player.”

“So we can probably sue him and get access to our accounts again.” Benji sighed. “That’s no guarantee. I’m not completely stupid. Crypto markets are volatile. Right now, the shit in my portfolio is way up from what I bought in at, but if the suit drags on for two years, it could be worth millions or it could be worthless.”

“Plus, you know,” I said. “Two years.”

He nodded miserably.

Lena put her hands on her hips. “Why are you piling on, Cam?”

Benji shook his head. He looked to me. “You want to take this one, or should I?”

I tapped my chest. “I’m not piling on, Lena. I promise. This isn’t a roast, it’s a rehearsal.”

“I’ve got to talk to Sandy about this,” Benji said. “You better believe she’s thought it through a lot more than you have. I lied to her, embarrassed her, and put our family at risk in all kinds of ways.”

Lena clenched her fists. “But you did it to help Mason.”

“It was something to try,” Benji said. “Sandy was gonna take the second semester and try to tutor him, take him back and forth, keep a closer eye. If that didn’t help we’d figure out our next move in the summer.”

“But it will,” Lena said. “It’s gotta.”

“Not with all this shit hanging over us.” His hands dropped to his sides. “Right reasons, wrong call.”

“Right reasons.” She practically snarled it. “Full stop.”

He flinched.

It’s within the realm of possibility that he wasn’t the only one.

Not, or not just, because of what she’d said or how she said it. The force of her belief was startling. Magnificent, if I let it be.

I couldn’t afford to.

I understood how Lena thought about this. I saw no way for her way of thinking to lead to a sensible course of action.

There was the part I sympathized with. Honestly, the part I envied. Lena had inherited from her parents a very simple decision-making matrix when it came to kids. Responsibilities, practicalities, your own limits? Did. Not. Matter. Whatever helped your kids, you did it. As she’d put it, full stop.

It was wonderful, frustrating, admirable, terrifying.

And the part I didn’t. Lena loved a harebrained scheme. If she had something she wanted or believed in and saw a shortcut to get there, the only question was whether she’d try to smash open an even shorter path instead of taking the one she’d discovered.

If it was just for fun, that could be wonderful, too, but as soon as she tried it on something important it became merely frustrating and terrifying.

If she thought what Benji had done was justified, fair enough.

The problem was that from her point of view, Benji literally hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d taken a huge swing for the fences for Mason’s sake, and when he’d struck out, he’d tried to fast-talk the pitcher into double or nothing.

I was pretty sure that was how baseball worked. Maybe I’d ask Erin later; she’d probably know.

The important thing was that after he got over Lena’s tone, Benji stood up a little straighter than he had been. Which, great, happy for you, bro, but this was not a double down situation. If he went home and told Sandy he’d thought long and hard about it and decided he’d been right all along?

I didn’t know what would happen but I knew it wouldn’t be pretty.

Lena locked eyes with me. I wasn’t looking through a Third Eye filter, but her gaze blazed all the same.

I knew I should shake my head.

Instead, I felt light-headed. We were high enough above sea level, even above city level, to run low on air. Maybe that proved Third Eye didn’t protect us against hypoxia, after all.

Maybe I was just a fool.

Lena’s eyebrows crept upwards. Her hands remained balled on her hips. Her lips started to curl. Her eyes studied my face for the first hint of surrender.

And goddammit, she got the smile she was looking for.

This was not a double down situation.

For Benji.