We Are What We Pretend to Be by Kurt Vonnegut

gesture; and Hope, apparently aware of his loving stare, and unprotesting, smiled whenever their eyes met.
    “Goody!” she exclaimed. “Now I’ve got a king at last. I’ll give you a hard time now.” She reached across the board to cap the piece that had made its way to the last row on Haley’s side. Haley dropped his hand over hers and gave it a fervent squeeze.
    Hope’s eyes widened, more with a look of surprise than with the ecstasy Haley had daydreamed himself into expecting. “How nice,” she said vaguely. “How very nice. Now can I have my hand back?”
    “I love you, Hope,” said Haley, his face hot beneath his sunburn.
    Hope looked alarmed and tugged to free her hand, but Haley only clasped it more tightly. “I love you, too,” she said finally. Haley rose in response, but Hope’s hand was limp and unresponsive. “Just as I love Annie and Kitty and the General,” she added quickly. “You’re just like one of the family.”
    “Not that kind of love,” he said weakly. He freed her hand.
    “I guess I knew what you meant,” she said, giving him a look of pity. “And I feel very flattered and honored that you should feel that way. I’m fond of you, too, Haley. But we’re awfully young to be thinking about being in love, aren’t we?”
    “We’re older than Romeo and Juliet,” said Haley peevishly.
    “Well, then, we’re just not made for each other, that’s all. It’s no insult to say that. Some people are made for each other, some
aren’t.” She frowned, apparently at the profundity of this universal law. “We aren’t, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
    “Who says we aren’t?”
    “I can feel it,” she said solemnly.
    Haley’s adoration turned to cool resentment. Hope’s platitudes came to him as cruel and senseless.
    “If you don’t like me, say so,” he said.
    “I do like you, I do,” she objected.
    “Why can’t we be made for each other?” he complained, and he swept the men from the checkerboard with the back of his hand.
    Hope jumped to her feet. “All right, you asked,” she said. “I could never look on you as anything but a baby because you act like one. Now pick up the checkers before you leave.”
    Haley slouched, standing there, listening to the sound of her footsteps moving down the hall, through the parlor, and into the sunroom. He started to pick up a checker piece, but threw it down again and marched through the now-empty kitchen and into the night. Her words rang in his ears, but he did not consciously consider them. He felt only the urge to walk away, to lose himself in darkness, to cleanse himself in silence. The moon had risen, and it shone between the fringes of cloud skeins that moved overhead.
    His feet carried him with a will of their own, over the hard earth of the barnyard, over the worn-slick planks of the barn floor, up a ladder, and into the cavern-like sanctuary of the loft. He felt his way through the narrow corridor that had been left between the stacked hay bales until he came at last to its end,
marked by the pale square of light from the small window overlooking the farmhouse. He sat beneath the window without first peering through it. He gathered his knees in his folded arms and rested his head against them. His eyes closed slowly, noting last of all a shred of white cloth tied to the wire of a nearby bale. A part of the jumbled, unpleasant past weeks, he shut it out with his heavy lids.

VIII.

    VIII.
    “Haley?” said a small voice.
    He opened his eyes reluctantly, looking up into the face of Hope, misty in the light from the risen moon. “How did you know I was out here?” he murmured.
    “I watched you through the sunroom window and saw you head for the barn. Haley, I didn’t mean to hurt you—not like that. Heaven knows you’ve had enough heartbreaks without—”
    “Thanks,” said Haley flatly. “You shouldn’t be out here, you know. It will just mean more heartbreaks for us if the General finds out.” He