The Leftovers

just took this guy prisoner.”
    “Again?” Kermit looked pissed. “You could show a little mercy, you know?”
    “What are you talking about? Why should I show any mercy? That’s like telling a football player not to tackle a player on the other team just because he has the ball.”
    “There’s no law that says you have to tackle someone.”
    “No, but you’d be a shitty football player if you didn’t.”
    “Point taken.” Kermit shook the dice. “But let’s not remove free will from the equation.”
    Tom rolled his eyes. The Barefoot People he’d known played different games in different cities—Monopoly in San Francisco, cribbage in Harrisburg, backgammon in Boston—but no matter what they played, the action always unfolded at a glacial pace, interrupted at every turn by pointless disputes and obscure philosophical digressions. More often than not, the games ended in midstream, called on account of boredom.
    “I’m Lucy, by the way,” the girl told Tom. “But these guys call me Ouch.”
    “Ouch?” Tom said. “Where’s that come from?”
    Eggy looked up from the board. He wore round wire-framed glasses that, along with his shaved head, gave him a monkish air.
    “She was one of the original Harvard flagellants. You know about that?”
    Tom nodded. He’d seen a video on the Internet a while back, a procession of college kids marching through Harvard Yard in their bathing suits, mortifying their flesh with homemade whips and cat-o’-nine-tails, some of which had nails and tacks affixed to the business end. Afterward, the kids would sit on the grass and rub ointment into one another’s backs. They claimed to feel purified by their agony, temporarily cleansed of their guilt.
    “Wow.” Tom looked at Ouch a little more closely. She was wearing a pale blue cotton sweater that looked freshly laundered. Her complexion was clear, her hair fine and soft, like she still had access to showers and a meal plan. “That’s pretty hard-core.”
    “You should see her scars,” Eggy said with admiration. “Her back is like a topographic map.”
    “I saw you idiots once,” Kermit told her. “I was sitting outside at Au Bon Pain, beautiful spring day, and the next thing I know, a dozen kids are lined up on the sidewalk like an a cappella group, yelling out their SAT scores and flogging the crap out of themselves. Seven Twenty, Critical Reading! Whack! Seven Eighty, Math! Whack! Six Ninety, Writing! Whack! ”
    Ouch was blushing. “We did it like that at the beginning. But then we started to personalize it. Somebody would scream, Lead role in Godspell! and the next one would say, Congressional Page! or Lampoon Staff! I had a really long one: Two-Sport Varsity Scholar-Athlete! ” She laughed at the memory. “This one guy who came a couple of times, he used to scream about what a stud he was, and how proud he was about the size of his penis. Eight Inches! I Measured It! I Even Posted Pictures on Craigslist! ”
    “Fucking Harvard guys,” said Eggy. “Always bragging about something.”
    “It’s true,” Ouch admitted. “The whole idea was that we were supposed to be atoning for the sins of excessive pride and selfishness, but we were even competitive about that. This one kid I knew, all he ever yelled was I’m the Biggest Asshole Ever! ”
    “There’s a tall order,” said Kermit. “Especially at Harvard.”
    “How long did you keep this up?” Tom asked.
    “Couple months,” she said. “But where can you go with something like that? It just doesn’t lead anywhere, you know? After a while, you even get bored with the pain.”
    “So what happened? You just throw away your whip and go back to school?”
    “They made me take a year off.” She gave a vague shrug, like it wasn’t worth talking about. “I did a lot of snowboarding.”
    “But now you’re back?”
    “Technically. But I’m not really going to class or anything.” She touched her bullseye. “I’m more interested in this right now. It seems like a really good fit, you know? A lot more social and intellectual stimulation. I think I need that.”
    “More sex and drugs, too,” Eggy added with a smirk.
    “Definitely more of that.” Ouch looked a bit troubled. “My parents aren’t too happy about it. Especially the sex.”
    “They never are,” Kermit told her. “But that’s part of the deal. You gotta break free of those middle-class conventions. Find your own way.”
    “It’s hard,” she said. “We’re a