Chapter 10

People Like Him Don't Change

November 6th, 1993

Dear Wendy,

I think Mt. Moon would be a nice dream-destination, too. I'll put in a good word with dream-me to install an escalator before you get there. In all seriousness, though I'll never agree the picture was perfect (the enclosed one from the Natl. Park is closer in my book, hope you like it), it does makes me happy that you think it was. Thinking back to when I made the print, I wish I'd taken your appraisal as "mission accomplished" instead of letting the flaws I saw get to me. Mind, I would have spent the same amount of time working on it, just that I shouldn't have let it ruin what might otherwise have been a perfect day.

Maybe I shouldn't bring up the day in particular because of how close it was to when things went south, but I think a lot of what you told me then stuck even if I didn't realize it at the time. When I look at my old pictures now, I don't kick myself as much as I used to, and I even like some of my newer ones. Not that I don't see the same things to fix I've always seen, but it's a lot easier to take them as lessons-learned and not get mad over them. I don't know exactly when it happened, but I stopped doubting I could make a living out of photography someday, and I think it's thanks in no small part to you.

There are other things that come to mind from that day, but I don't feel equipped to write about them now. I wouldn't go so far to say that my memory from back then is fuzzy or spotty, but I'm definitely more used to ignoring it than thinking about it, and I don't entirely trust my impressions of what most of it meant. I had to throw out a few drafts of the preceding paragraph as I re-examined things. When I figure it out, I'll let you know.

I don't know how to write the next part, but I'll try.

I'm really sorry, but I can't see Aaron. It took me a long time to find something like normalcy again after what happened, and I can't risk losing that. I don't want it to sound like I'm blaming him—I don't want to hold a grudge. Nobody's the same at fifteen as he was at twelve, so it wouldn't be fair of me to be angry at whoever he's turned into since then. But for my own health (and for Zoe's until I throw in the towel and get addicted to sleeping pills instead of depending on her), I just can't be around him. I'm sorry.

If you don't want to keep writing while a reconciliation isn't on the table, I understand. But I hope you'll keep writing anyway. I will as long as you do.

I'm going to be walking around the region for a while to deliver some photos I promised to people (can't trust the mail not to crush them). Next, the only specific thing left on my to-do list is to get some shots at Gyarados Lake, which I've put off long enough. I'll have to think about where to go after that.

Until I hear from you again, I hope you see the mountain.

Yours truly,
Luke

November 10th, 1993

"Wendy… just, no. Luke's a violent narcissist. People like him don't change."

Wendy stared in disbelief. Three long years later, and this still wasn't the Aaron she'd known from her earliest memories and earlier. He wasn't even the same imposter from that miserable day at the hospital. The face, mature and knowing, showed no hint of the judgment-compromising rage from last time, only an air of pity. The words, though nearly the same, disturbed her all the more for the dispassionate confidence in the new, post-pubescent voice. It made her sick. She had to look away to collect herself.

There were no trainers in earshot. They were all either sparring their Pokémon in the outdoor gym's arena or hanging out on the bleachers. Aaron had been among the former when she arrived, and had kept her waiting for twenty minutes after that. This line of thought wasn't calming her down after all, so she got it over with.

"I don't know if you remember," she said, "but last time, when you called him a 'psycho,' I told you why I thought you were lying."

Aaron said nothing. He closed his eyes and hung his head.

"Well? Do you remember?"

Aaron sighed. "Yes. You thought I couldn't pretend to be friends with someone I hate for two years. I could. I'm not proud of it, but I could, and I did."

Wendy could have torn her hair out. "Aaron, please! I was there too! What makes you think I wouldn't have noticed that?"

"Wendy, do I have to spell it out for you?"

"Spell what out?"

He snapped his head up and looked her in the eye. "It's the same reason you didn't notice what he was the whole time: You're not hard to fool."

Wendy froze stiff.

"Sorry," said Aaron. "That came out worse than I meant. The thing is, you only see the best in everyone. You don't question anything about them. You just assume everyone's as sincere, well-meaning, and good as you are. That's not a bad thing. It's why everyone likes you. But… it makes you vulnerable to people like Luke."

Wendy stayed frozen. She had known this about herself for years—about her chronic inability to see past people's literal words—but had never reckoned with the implications. She'd never considered how this might fundamentally, categorically made her unqualified to judge character. It had never stuck out as potentially the missing piece of the puzzle.

…It couldn't be, though, because Aaron couldn't have been telling the truth, not then and not now. There was no way Luke had tried to beat Aaron to a pulp simply because that's who Luke was. Nothing else fit that explanation. Her mouth opened in the hope of delivering a retort.

All that came were sputters. "But… but Luke's not like… he never…"

She wasn't a reliable witness. She never had been. Because she was that easy to fool.

She fought to keep to her eyes dry. She wouldn't allow herself to cry in front of the imposter. Even if it turned out he was right the whole time—which he absolutely wasn't because that was impossible—he was still the imposter.

"Come on," said Aaron. "Let's sit down."

Still unable to voice any sensible objection, she dragged her feet after him. They went behind the gym's clubhouse, where he sat against the wall. So did she, though she pointedly kept him on the other side of her pack. She fixed her eyes dead ahead at the trees.

"All right," said Aaron. "Here's the thing. You liked Luke, Luke liked you, so you got Luke at his best. What you saw was how he acts when he wants someone to keep liking him. Whenever you weren't around, I got the rest of him."

Wendy couldn't believe Aaron was angling for sympathy. She still didn't say anything.

"Whenever Luke didn't get his way about something—and I mean anything—he got angry. No sense of proportion whatsoever. Whenever you or I voiced an opinion about what we should do next, I got an earful later, or worse."

Leaving even a single detail to her imagination was too much. She found her voice again, at least for the moment. "What's 'worse?' No hints. If you're accusing him of something, accuse him of it."

Aaron sucked in a breath and let it out. "Shoving, usually. Sometimes spitting. Every other month or so he'd try to throw a punch, but pushing back was always enough to get him to quit it. Till the last time, anyway."

Lies. Stupid, obvious lies. This was the kindest, gentlest boy in the world he was talking about.

Unless it only looked that way because I can't see through people. And I did see him draw blood at the end.

No. Shut up. That's not it. Shut up, shut up, shut up.

"The one thing he obsessed over the most was how he thought the Gym Challenge was impossible for us. He tried over and over to get me to agree we should quit and focus entirely on exploring, photography, anything but battling."

Ridiculous. "You expect me to believe he only talked about this with you?"

"Yes. You're the one who came up with that 'promise' we made. The thought of disappointing you scared the shit out of him. But he figured if both me and him said we should give up, then you'd feel like you had no choice but to go along with it. The longer I told him 'No,' the longer he had to pretend to try to keep up with training, and the less stable he got."

Wendy bit her lip. This was getting too similar to what she'd heard from Luke himself—and from Nadine, too. Her fingers dug into her arms as she struggled to keep them from shaking. Even as she predicted how Aaron would answer, she tried to argue. "What do you mean 'pretend?' He worked at it every spare minute. He was like a machine!"

Aaron took another deep breath. "…I was going to get to that. For starters, he only bothered when you were in earshot. Any time we were one-on-one? Nothing. Just whining and arguing. And when he actually had to get his Pokémon out, he learned every trick in the book to keep things short. I caught him once teaching his team to feign fatigue. He started having them take dives in battles just to get us out of the Gym faster. Absolute crazy-person stuff."

Wendy tried to reject each sentence as she heard it as absurd, but the thought wouldn't leave her head: Can I honestly say I would have noticed it if it was happening? It was torture. She couldn't prove any of this to be a lie.

Then she recognized her lifeline: People could fool her, but not Pokémon battles. As long as it pertained to moves and monsters, nothing escaped her notice or her memory. She scoured her brain for Luke's losses and for signs of anything amiss about them. If she could remember every last one of them and find nothing, she could tell Aaron where to stuff this nonsense.

She lost.

Two scenes, never before adjacent in her head, now stood out like sore thumbs. Olivine and Cianwood Gyms, months apart. An un-Luke-like rapid snapping of the fingers followed by a command for an attack. "Zoe, Psybeam" in Olivine, "Gordon, Stomp" in Cianwood. Then, inexplicable hesitation and disobedience by the Pokémon. Struggling and taking hits while Luke called again for the same moves.

Finally, knockouts that had caught Wendy by surprise for how early they were.

She buried her head in her hands. How Aaron didn't take her reaction as a cue to shut up, she didn't know.

"I know now I shouldn't have kept quiet while all this was happening. I guess… I was afraid of upsetting you in my own way. After how hard you took it when Nadine quit, I didn't want you to go through that again. I fooled myself into thinking if he really started trying, if he got even a little caught up, maybe he'd get some confidence and start being more like he acted around you. I was wrong. I'm sorry."

Wendy didn't want apologies. She wanted retractions. She was about to beg for them.

"I really did think he could catch up. Obviously, he wasn't on the same level as you or me, or even Nadine before she quit. But he was smart enough to learn a thing or two. I kept trying to convince him he was getting better, that he could do it if he just took the next step for real, but it was like talking to a wall."

Talking to Luke was nothing like talking to a wall. He heard more than you even meant to say.

Unless that was only with me and I had no idea what he was really like because I don't know what anyone's really like.

No. No. No. Shut up. No.

"What kills me is how it could have been all four of us at the Plateau. Luke and Nadine getting their qualifiers in, maybe winning a few, then cheering us on in the knockout rounds. And if you and me had been training together from day one till now, we could have been facing each other in the—"

"Enough."

Wendy rose to her feet and hoisted her bag. She might have walked off on the spot if Aaron hadn't stood up and gotten in her way.

"Okay," he said. "I know it's a lot. Just let me say one more thing: You do not want to get back in touch with someone like Luke. Narcissists don't know how to be real friends—they can only fake it. Sooner or later, you'll get hurt."

Wendy knew she had to say the one thing which might get him to stop talking to her. She just had to fight her gag reflex to say it.

"…You're probably right."

Aaron nodded. "See you around back home, maybe."

She said nothing and made no sign. He waited for a few moments, then headed toward the dirt oval without another word. She wasted no time herself in returning to the trail.

Daylight was failing when Wendy first gave thought to where she would sleep that night. Ecruteak proper was only a mile off, but she felt absolutely drained, so she looked for a clear spot to camp. After a meandering, distracted search, she had her spot picked out, her tent set up, and her fire kindling.

A sudden chilly breeze made her rub her arms. It was getting on in the year. Yesterday, she had regarded the thought of one last winter spent sleeping outdoors with fondness: something to brace for and relish. Now it seemed only a cold and lonely prospect.

There was a decent remedy for both aspects: Wendy let Sharpy out of her ball. Then, without a word, Wendy got on both knees and wrapped her arms around her warm, pudgy fairy Pokémon. Sharpy's arms weren't made for hugging back, but she mumbled a rhythmic, comforting noise and gently swayed back and forth. This day more than any other, Wendy needed to soak in the presence of the one friend she knew to be exactly what she seemed.

She wasn't done with the hug for some time. Thankfully, Sharpy never tired of it. When Wendy did let go, Sharpy hummed in her usual manner of requesting a song to sing. Wendy decided a folk tune would be best. Facing the fire again, she whistled the first few bars of Let Me See Them Falls Again, and Sharpy joined in. It was a fine duet. Wendy let her take over the melody while she hummed the accompaniment. This let her sink back into her thoughts, and in a calmer state of mind.

One thing she settled on immediately: Aaron's words were not to be taken at face value. Just because he correctly pointed out her pathetic credulity didn't mean anything else he said was right.

With that in mind, she dismissed the diagnosis of "narcissist" as assuredly as she'd dismissed "psycho" in 1990. She'd never known Luke to rank anyone's suffering below his own—it was more like the exact opposite, especially when it came to Zoe. Even if he could fake all the cares he'd shown Wendy herself when Nadine left, no "narcissist" would undergo the pains she'd seen him take to spare Zoe from bad dreams. On this count, at least, Aaron was guilty of being a malicious liar at worst and not-a-doctor at best.

The problem was the way everything else seemed to fit.

She already knew from Luke's own admission that his falling out with Aaron ultimately stemmed from the Gym Challenge. Could she dismiss the possibility that Luke had chosen to live a lie to deal with the pressure? The memory of what might—might—have been two thrown Gym matches made it impossible to ignore. It stung to imagine him going so far to avoid talking to her about what was wrong, as if she would think less of him for knowing his limits.

But even if the alleged fakery of effort stung her, it was nothing compared to the thought of Luke putting up a façade of friendship over a year-plus of… plain bullying Aaron. This was the one part she didn't know she could forgive if it was true.

But she told herself again: Do not take Aaron's words at face value. She had to piece together a minimal, most-probable narrative, shorn of any possible bias from Aaron.

The narrative went something like this: Luke found it impossible to compete and wanted to quit, but felt he couldn't lose face. At some point, and to some degree, he began hiding his actual, diminished level of effort and/or commitment to getting all eight Badges. Wendy didn't notice, but Aaron did. Aaron pushed him to try harder, and Luke eventually exploded.

This left only one question mark: Between Luke and Aaron, who had actually done what during that period of mounting tensions?

Hours later, the fire was out, Sharpy was back in her ball, and Wendy was lying awake in her sleeping bag. She ran over all the same points, all the same evidence, all the same doubts in her head. Nothing brought her any closer to knowing what to think. Even when at last she decided it was time to give up and go to sleep, a sudden gust shook the fabric of the tent, and she found her eyes wide open again. Back to square one.

Another hour later, she was still at square one.

She sighed, stuck out her hand, and found her pack. She dug for one of Luke's envelopes by touch and pulled it out, holding it directly above her eyes. It didn't matter that it was too dark to see. Whichever exact letter this was, nobody like the bully Aaron described could have written it. It was real. This was what she wanted to believe in.

It should have been enough. For anyone who could trust her own judgment, it would have been. But that wasn't Wendy. The only way to get her answers now was to see Luke in person. He no longer had a say in the matter. She would hear his version of the story in full, look him in the eye while he told it, suppress her incurable naïveté to the end… and judge.

Her eyes welled up. She squeezed them shut and pressed the letter to her chest, hoping against hope he would forgive her for whatever followed. She promised to make it up to him somehow, after she found him innocent.

Wendy was on her fourth day of people-watching outside the Ecruteak City Pokémon Center. The first two days had been the toughest, since she hadn't gotten used to how the sight of every teenage boy who walked by triggered the same mental exchange:

Is that him? Followed by, No, hair's the wrong color. Or, No, eyes don't look right.

The constant noes were bad enough, but the worst part by far was trying to keep her hypothetical, conjured-up present-day Luke out of her head as she surveilled these strangers. This needed to be the work of reality and memory, not fantasy.

But she could handle it. After all, this was the fourth day, not the first, so she was finally getting numb to it. Dull aches, not sharp pains. When even the aches were too much, though, she allowed herself to walk around the city. Since she knew from recent experience that every minute counted, she had an insurance policy in place: a short note she'd left with the nurses the morning she got back into town.

Luke, if you get this, please, please, please stay where you are for about twenty minutes tops and I'll never ask you another favor after today.

Obviously, this carried the risk of his immediately fleeing the scene. The better outcome would be if she spotted him first and closed the distance before making herself known. That kept the ball in her court, so to speak. Not that she thought it was in his character to run when they'd already locked eyes, but she was absolutely prepared to tackle him if she had to.

As Wendy, during a break, walked down a row of shops that dated back to the days of the emperors, she reflected on two points. One, "tackling" was an insane way to imagine arranging a heart-to-heart conversation with someone, even if she were to bet that puberty hadn't pushed him too far ahead of her, physically speaking. Two, and as Luke would have put it, taking breaks from her watch was simply asking for less luck.

She sighed. If Luke were a wild Pokémon with a trail to follow, she bet she could have managed an honest-to-goodness dawn-to-dusk search with only the briefest of diversions for biological needs. When it came to sitting and waiting for someone, she felt utterly lacking in stamina.

As she often had over these last four days, she distracted herself by going over the logistics of the situation. She didn't know Luke's itinerary, but it was a fair guess he wasn't taking the shortest, simplest route from Goldenrod to the Lake of Rage. If he were, he either wouldn't have mentioned his deliveries at all, or he would have framed it as something he was doing on the way to his next shooting destination. Odds were, he was at least taking the Loop counter-clockwise first.

The advantage she held was that he was virtually guaranteed to pass through Ecruteak before going east to Mahogany Town and the Lake. The other way meant climbing up the mountain path to Blackthorn City, then west through the Ice Path on top of that. Nobody did this who wasn't trying to prove a point.

Therefore, he would be coming through Ecruteak. And while it was technically possible that he'd reached here before she did and was already gone, he would probably then have taken a detour west instead of the direct way east to the Lake for the reason she'd already established, and would subsequently have to come back through here. Now that she had reassured herself of the fundamental soundness of her assumptions for the twentieth time, she reexamined the arithmetic.

If he went the long way around the Loop with no days of rest, the earliest she could expect him in Ecruteak was… the 18th or 19th. Four or five more days. On the other hand, he could have gone clockwise to Violet and backtracked, in which case he could show up any second. However she looked at it, she had to be ready to catch him any time between right now and… if he went as far as New Bark, early December.

All this assuming he didn't skip the Pokémon Center.

She felt exhausted.

Wendy was on her sixth day of people-watching. It felt like hundreds of trainers had entered and left the Center this morning alone, and not one of them was Luke. She knew she had to stay focused, though, since each minute was more likely than the last to finally be the one.

Just then, something caught her in the corner of her eye.

She jerked her head left. There was a boy standing on the other side of the street, facing away from her. He had what looked like camera bag slung over his shoulder, and he was holding a tripod. Something about the back of his head sent a jolt up her spine.

He turned around.

Wrong face. Not Luke.

Whoever this person was, he gave Wendy an odd look. It took her a moment to realize this was because she was staring at him in undisguised disappointment. She blushed, then leaned her head in an attempt to make it look like she was trying to see something behind him. Whether or not it worked, he walked away.

Wendy rubbed her eyes. She needed a break—it didn't matter that it was only ten in the morning; she needed a break. She left her post and started picking turns at random down the cobblestoned streets.

She passed a shrine, no rare sight in Ecruteak, but this one caught her attention. Its posts were decorated with carvings of the Legendary Dogs chasing each other to the top, which she swore she remembered seeing before. A few steps into the courtyard, it hit her: They had come here to pray on New Year's Day, 1990, when they were eleven—the start of their last year together. She approached the main hall, open to the public, and the box for offerings on the dais therein. After a minute in line behind the tourists, it was her turn.

If she remembered rightly, she had stood in the center with Aaron on her right and Luke on her left. She dropped a hundred Pyen coin into the box, rang the bell, and put her hands together.

She couldn't pray now for what she'd prayed for back then, which was the same thing as the year before that: that she and her friends would get all eight Badges. None of them had spoken their wishes aloud, of course, but she had assumed they would all ask for the same thing. Knowing what she did now, she had to wonder what Luke's prayer had been.

She pictured him standing there, eyes shut tight, hands pressed tighter. Whatever it was, it was something he wanted badly. He opened his eyes but kept his hands together. It was a serious expression. Firm determination. It was something that usually showed in his actions, rather than in his face, so it stuck out now.

Except, it might not be determination. In fact, it wasn't. It only looked that way because young Wendy wouldn't have taken it as anything she didn't want to see.

It was resentment.

Wendy's lower lip trembled. Realizing the line was waiting, she ducked away.

That wasn't a memory, she told herself. It was your imagination. Not a memory.

When she was outside the shrine again, she tried to get a grip. It wasn't easy.

Was it always going to be like this? After all she'd done to get Luke back, to make those good memories bearable to remember, were they now ruined again, beyond hope of repair? Was the very thought of him going to be cause for second-guessing forever?

This couldn't go on. It was driving her mad. She needed other things to do and think about before the waiting and doubting crushed her. There was plenty of work she could be doing for the JCS instead of torturing herself like this. Even picking a cardinal direction and walking that way for a week would be enough.

But then she'd miss her chance. That would be worse. And distractions would only be a band-aid. There had to be something she could do to get the answers she needed that didn't depend on her waiting here for two, three, who knew how many more days. Heck, weeks.

She blinked. The question came to her out of the blue: Why was she treating this case like there were only two witnesses?

Nadine. Not only had she quit for basically the same reason as Luke, but when she'd first explained it to Wendy, she'd framed it as something between her and Aaron before correcting herself. Pressure from Aaron, corrected to pressure from how good at battling he was, then clarified to include Wendy as well. Was the reality truly two corrections away from the first thing that came to her?

And the critical detail, the one Wendy couldn't believe she'd dismissed until now: Nadine hadn't talked to Aaron since she left. Not a word in five whole years, while their families lived a block and a half apart.

Wendy needed a payphone. She booked it to the first booth she saw, then remembered that Nadine would be in class. The best time to call her house would be after dinner. She didn't relish another afternoon of waiting, but at least she could count down the hours on this one.

She walked back to the Pokémon Center, and decided to wait indoors this time. She took a seat in a corner where she could watch both the doors and the wall clock.

It was seven thirty on the dot: well after dark. Wendy got up, went to the payphone, dropped in a coin, and dialed one of the three phone numbers permanently etched into her brain. It rang once. Twice. Thrice. Her anxiety mounted with each ring, but in the middle of the fifth, she heard the voice she'd been hoping for.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Nadine. It's Wendy."

"Oh, hey! What's up?"

She sounded great. Wendy felt awful to risk changing that. "Uhhh… Something I wanted to talk to you about."

"Yeah?"

"It's… um…" She gritted her teeth. "…I talked to Aaron again a few days ago."

Silence.

"He, uh, wasn't too pleased to see me. And he told me some things I… have trouble swallowing. About Luke, I mean. Things I really don't think or want to think are true." She squeezed her arm with her free hand. It was time to cut to the chase. "It's making me wonder about him. Aaron, I mean—mostly Aaron. And… uh… I wanted to ask if there's anything… you'd want to talk to me about… about him."

More silence.

But then, "Well…"

Wendy heard more voices on the other end. "—Hold on," said Nadine, cutting herself off.

"Is that Mike?" asked Mrs. L'Enfant from across the room, it sounded like.

"No, it's Wendy,"

"Oh, wonderful! Tell her we can't wait to see her again!"

"Yeah, of course. Will you let me…? Okay."

Nadine spoke to the phone again, but in a low voice. "I'm sorry, but I'd really rather not talk over the phone. Next time you're in town, maybe?"

Wendy's answer was immediate. "I'll be there in four days."

"Oh!" She sounded startled, but mostly in a good way, it seemed to Wendy. "Uh, okay, great. Let's see, that's… Saturday. Perfect."

"Okay." It was a sore decision to risk missing Luke here, but not a difficult one to make. This was something she knew she could do.

"I'll see you then, all right?" said Nadine.

"All right. See you."

Wendy hung up. She could already tell this sense of foreboding would sit heavily on her until she got to Cianwood. First, though, she had to write a proper letter to leave at the front desk.