You Believers. Jane Bradley

      Molly looked at the clock. Just after 5:00. Perfect timing, she thought. It was the last day for students to pay their tuition; as of 5:00, those who hadn’t paid would be purged. Purged, she thought. It was an ugly word, as if the great computer system vomited out the poor ones who didn’t have the money, whose financial aid hadn’t come. So they were purged from the classes they’d registered in—no money, no class. The world isn’t fair, she thought, and that really did strike her as a sad thing for a moment. It wasn’t fair, but at least now there was a chance she could get into that afternoon section of the pedagogical theory class she needed. She was already in the night class, but she wanted her nights free to spend more time with Matt: dinners, movies, tennis at the club. She was trying to talk him into ballroom-dance classes, but he was resisting that. What she really wanted to tell him was that they needed dancing classes so they could dance at the wedding, really dance, not just wiggle and bounce around the way so many did. She wanted a real wedding with real dancing, even though Matt hadn’t done anything like propose.

      She clicked on the website for course options and started scrolling down the list of classes open and closed. She stared at the monitor as the list of sections rolled up on the screen: “Closed. Closed. Closed.” In her introduction to psychology class, Molly had learned something about mind over matter, a theory that thoughts had energy, could actually change things in the physical world. Visualize, she thought, even though she didn’t really believe in such things. Magical thinking, she called it. But what the hell, she’d try it. She sat back, sipped her water, and closed her eyes, saw names blinking off enrollment lists. Blink. Blink. Blink. Students were being purged, names blinking out one by one as the system’s program sought out the ones who hadn’t paid. “Amount due” meant blink, gone. Sorry, Molly thought, then sat up, watched the screen.

      She glanced up at Matt’s picture on her desk. He looked goofy with the snorkeling mask shoved on top of his head. But what a smile, a Brad Pitt kind of smile, just a little bit mischievous and sweet. She whispered to the picture, “I dare you to like ballroom dancing.” It was a game they played, getting each other to try out new things. She had learned kickboxing, and he’d learned just a little bit of French, just enough to get by when they went to Paris one day. They took turns choosing things they’d never done before. Her mother worried sometimes about just how far Molly would go, had made her promise to always ask permission before she did anything too crazy like bungee jumping or leaping out of planes. Molly didn’t know where she’d draw the line at too much risk. Molly had a belief, another thing she’d learned from her mother: Never let fear keep you from what you want. That was what she wanted to teach her students one day, fearlessness, faith in your own strength, curiosity—these were the things she wanted to teach the world, along with long division, and reading, and writing, and geography.

      She stared at the computer screen, thought, Come on, come on, feeling like a gambler watching the balls whir around a roulette wheel. The unseen programmed intelligence was playing God now, choosing who was in and who was out while Molly sat in purgatory, eyes fixed on the screen, waiting for the word Open to appear. She stared at the line with the section she wanted: Tuesday/Thursday, 4:10 to 5:25. She stood, paced, waiting. She wanted dance lessons with Matt on Wednesday nights, not some pedagogical theory class. She wanted Matt to twirl her, dip her, lift her, her legs flying through the air. She wanted—that was her problem, her daddy had told her—sometimes she wanted too many things.

      Molly stopped. She could feel it. She turned and looked toward the screen. “Open.” She sat and signed into the course, then clicked for her registration list to see if the course was really there. Yep. Done. She stood as the printer clicked and hummed out proof of her new schedule. Perfect, she thought as she glanced out the window of her bedroom to the sunny day. Her mom would be happy. Since the divorce her mom had come to believe in grabbing pleasure. Now she was doing it with tennis lessons, yoga classes, book clubs. They lived together more like roommates than mother and daughter, but her mom still played the mom three nights a week, making supper for Molly, good-mom suppers like baked chicken and fried pork chops. Sometimes Molly felt she was the luckiest girl in the world.

      Then she saw him, with that dog. Coming back down the sidewalk. She thought, You don’t even live on this street. If she could get the double-paned windows open, she’d lean out and give him the finger. But instead she moved back from the window, stood to the side so he couldn’t see her. He paused in front of her house, looked at her car. Lots of guys liked to look at her car—that was one reason she’d picked it. She knew she looked good in it, her red hair flying all around when she drove with the top down. He bent and spoke to his dog while he looked at the house, and Molly had a sudden urge to duck away from the window. She thought she really ought to listen more to her mother sometimes. Lock the door. Park the car inside the garage. Be a little more careful.

      He gave the dog some quick, hard pats, then stood, walked on. Molly watched until he disappeared down the street. Geez, she thought, lighten up. He’s just another horny guy after your ass. He was a neighbor, just a neighbor. She’d seen him help his daddy, working out in their yard. Just a guy, she thought. Just a jerk. But there was something in the way he studied her house. She felt a chill, pulled on her sweat-pants over her shorts. The guy with the dog was gone, but something made her walk downstairs and lock the door. She glanced at the blinking lights of the security system she and her mother never used. Her mother was from rural Pennsylvania, where no one locked doors, where no one had anything worth stealing. Her daddy used to yell about their indifference to security: “I work my ass off to buy all these things, and you two don’t care enough to lock them up.” Her mother would just shrug and respond: “We live in a gated community. We have a security guard by the road who keeps an eye on every license plate that goes in and out of this place. What can happen here?”