Lamb

“Maybe… you should just leave,” said Calvin. Rain lashed the car. He flicked the windscreen wipers on for two swishes, even though they were parked.

“But they’re everything I have!” said Leanne, clearly distressed. She’d been distressed for hours now, and Calvin was tired.

“It’s kind of dumb though…the whole thing. And you’ve been saying you hate the way you’re trapped, you hate the way it takes up all your time, and so on and so forth, etcetera. You keep saying how much you hate them, so why not leave?”

Calvin wound his window down a notch. Rain jumped in and doused his arm. He wound the window back up and turned to Leanne, who looked tired from crying.

“But it’s more than that – it’s not just them, it’s it. If I leave it all behind, what kind of future do I have?” Leanne looked hopeless.

Outside, the rain swirled in the wind.

Calvin thought of a response to Leanne’s question, then decided not to say it. How can you discuss something you don’t understand? Said instead: “Yeah… I suppose you don’t get the benefits if you don’t put the time in. You need to…” He flicked the windscreen wiper lever up, then down, then up again. He liked the click it made. On, off, click, click. Clicking like a ticket machine.

“It’s not about benefits! Jesus! It’s about life…death…forever…” Leanne glared at Calvin. She wondered whether he was the right friend to discuss this with.

“Then stay. If that’s what you want, if you don’t think it’s all a big waste of time, if you don’t think…then stay.”

Calvin’s phone bleeped. He glanced at the screen. “Who?” asked Leanne.

“Your mother,” said Calvin, “she’s asking where you are again.”

The pair drifted into silence.

Leanne was thinking again. “The thing is…they’re all my friends. They’re my support network…”

“That’s great – I mean, I don’t have that kind of thing, but it…sounds…great. Surely you don’t want to give all that up…” Calvin had done this before. Sitting in his car on Sunday night, half way up Mount Sinai, with a headache from drinking in the afternoon, listening to Leanne and her circular doubts; eager to go home; unable to be honest; bored, tired and vaguely compelled to care.

“I know: I’m lucky. Really lucky. But it feels like a trap. Some of the things they tell us… it gets a bit weird sometimes. But you can’t really challenge it -if you question it then it looks like you don’t believe it, and everyone has to believe it more than everyone else. It’s like a believing competition. It’s a race to believe in things, even things that are nuts.”

“I don’t believe,” said Calvin, “and I can’t really understand how you do.”

Leanne looked horrified. “Calvin!”

“Let’s go. I need something for this headache,” said Calvin, looking at his blood-shot eyes in the mirror.