The Atmospherians by Alex McElroy (reading fiction .TXT) 📗

are emotionally. Cults are founded on honesty, Sasha. And trust. We can’t get where we’re going if you don’t tell me where you are.” Had these words come from anyone else, I would have cackled. But he was calming, sweet. And familiar. That meant more than anything else. “Don’t leave a single thing out,” he said.

The past three months tumbled out incoherently: A man who left explicit comments on my photos and videos, the same man who emailed me pics of my head cropped into porn videos, the same man who made new profiles every time I reported him and who used a VPN that the police were too lazy to trace—that man had taken his life after I told him to leave me alone. My ex couldn’t associate with me after the scandal. Cassandra used my downfall as a chance to boost her career. Then the men with their signs. Now the eviction. My mouth emptied as tears rinsed my cheeks. “I’m so embarrassed,” I said. “Crying in a mall on a Tuesday afternoon.”

“No one’s watching,” he said.

I peered around me. People passed without looking, their avoidance intentional. My anonymity was a relief. After Lucas Devry, I’d become recognizable, a point of discussion—exactly what I’d desired for years. In an effort to remake my image—and to pay rent—I had applied for jobs at a number of charities: the ASPCA, the Organization for African Children, Save the Peruvian Mice, Médicos Sin Fronteras, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, Make-A-Wish, Have A Heart, Break A Leg, Give A Lung, Teach For America, Cats in the Schools, and L.A.M.B. But even the laziest Google search disqualified me from being hired.

“Where we’re going,” he said, “none of what happened will matter.”

“You haven’t told me where we’re going. I’ve never been to your grandparents’ place.”

His father’s parents had left him property in southern Jersey, on the northern edge of the Pine Barrens. It was as off-the-grid as you could get without leaving the grid. No shouting, no protesting. “It’s the perfect place for the men to grow and reform,” he said.

“What men?”

“These men I’ve been working with. They’re harmless, but they’re so full of rage. They’re depressed. They’re at risk for… They’re like my father.” He inhaled, collecting himself. “If my father’d had a place to talk out his feelings, who knows what might have been different.”

Dyson’s father had died in a car crash while driving to work the summer between our junior and senior years of high school. It was an accident, we told ourselves, because we both suspected it wasn’t. No explanation was the explanation. But the simplicity of Dyson’s new equation disturbed me. If his father’s death could be reduced to cause and effect, maybe Lucas Devry’s could be as well, and I was more at fault than I wanted to believe.

On the third floor, we paused on a bench so close to the railing that our knees pressed into the glass. Dyson gave me a pep talk on all the barriers I’d leapfrogged, the ceilings I’d shattered: “You changed lives. You helped women who struggled with toxic standards of beauty. You gave hope to the despairing, the outcast, the ignored, the desperate, despondent.”

“All that work destroyed by one stupid comment.”

“All that work prepared you for this,” he said. “Everything you thought you did with ABANDON, all the good you brought to the world, all the people you helped, it’ll be nothing compared to what we’re gonna do. Cassandra Hanson, Blake Dayes—you know how meaningless their work will look beside ours? Cassandra makes wealthy dullards relax. Blake writes earworms for idiots. But Sasha: We’re gonna change the world. People will talk about us and The Atmosphere for generations after we’re gone. We’ll make the world safer for everyone. Because the world is full of terrible men. Despicable men like Blake Dayes and Lucas Devry who get worse every day. And nothing gets done. It might seem crazy to do this, but it’s crazier to do nothing.”

I pretended I couldn’t tell he was flattering me. I wanted him to say more.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “But don’t worry. Cult: it’s an organizing principle. Strong leader at the top. Two leaders in our case who dictate how those below ought to live. Have there been bad apples? Absolutely. Jonestown. Heaven’s Gate. The Manson Family. Rajneeshpuram. But the model is perfect. Because if any social group ever deserved forced isolation, ever needed their worldview shaped by trusted leaders—for the greater good—it’s men. White men, especially. And we’re the only ones brave enough to commit to this work.”

“I just want this all to end.”

“Wrong,” he said. “You want vindication. Exoneration. Hell, you want revenge. You deserve it. Imagine Cassandra’s face when she sees you interviewed on morning talk shows—spreading your message of radical transformation for men. Imagine how quickly Blake will call you, desperate to get back together, when he sees you’re more famous than he is.”

“I’d never get back with him,” I said, though I’d often imagined it.

“Of course not. You won’t even answer his calls.”

I shaped my hand into a phone and spoke into it: “See you in hell, you goat-voiced fraud.” Dyson was laughing. But the pain of losing Cassandra and Blake flooded back into me, and I curled over my knees. “You don’t get it,” I said. “People despise me.”

“You said what anyone would have.”

“I won’t be any help.” I regret it now, but I wanted him to tell me he needed me, for him to douse me in praise. I wanted to be convinced.

He intuited this: “You’re organized. Brilliant. Persistent and patient—everything I’m not. I’m a big thinker. An ideas man. I shoot from the hip. Pow! Pow! But you have experience. You already made one program from scratch—had it senselessly taken from you. You’re an expert about group management, planning. I couldn’t possibly do this with anyone else.”

“You do need me,” I said, stupidly confident.

“And you need this. You’ve hit rock bottom. You’re broke. Evicted. The Atmosphere