Existence (17 page)

They have nothing to say on the subject of those who only want to love her.

She wants to warn Christopher not to sneak up on her again—that she's more dangerous than he knows, that she's forgotten how to play games that don't end in death. Instead she says, “Hey, stranger,” then
fakes a smile and twists around so they're face-to-face.

He kisses her.

A year and a half ago, Christopher was just the surprisingly hot rising star on the football team who'd sprouted up six inches over the summer and was the first boy in their class to sport actual muscles. Sarah had gone to school with him since she was little, but she barely knew him. She and Reena spent hours on the phone, giggling about the cute tufts of hair that curled over his ears, the cute way his shirt was always rumpled and his socks never matched, the cute sparkle in his emerald-green eyes, the crooked front tooth that made his smile
extra
cute . . .

Then he asked Sarah out for pizza, and they held hands under the table, and he walked her home and, just before sending her inside, asked if he could kiss her. After that, he wasn't Christopher-the-cute-guy-in-math, anymore. He was
Christopher
, the guy she could tell anything to, the guy who could always cheer her up when she was sad, the guy with the bottomless eyes and the soft lips and the Christopher smile, who she could keep kissing for the rest of her life.

She intends to.

Behind them, Reena clears her throat. Loudly. “Get a room, guys.”

Christopher grins. “If only.”

Sarah blushes. They haven't done much more than kiss yet, but when he looks at her, when he
touches
her . . . she's thought about it. A lot.

The bell rings for first period, saving her from further teasing.

“You still up for Sam and Louie's after school?” Christopher asks, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. It's their favorite pizza place, and the three of them used to go there a few times a week . . . before.

“Oh, crap.”

“You forgot,” Reena says accusingly.

“I . . .”

“We haven't gone for pizza together in
forever
,” Reena complains.

“Okay, drama queen. It's been like a week,” Sarah says.

Christopher squeezes her hand. “It's been like three weeks,” he
corrects her. “You promised.”

She did promise . . . but she also promised her firearms trainer that she would double her training time this week.

“I can't, guys. I'm so sorry. Tate has an appointment with this eye specialist and I promised I'd go with him to the appointment. You know how it is.”

Reena and Christopher exchange a look. Sarah pretends not to see it.

“Yeah,” Reena says. “We know how it is.”

“I'll text you when I get home?” Sarah says. “Both of you. Okay? Promise.”

“Yeah. Promise. Whatever.” Reena walks off to class without another word. Sarah searches Christopher's face, trying to figure out if he's mad at her.

“I would if I could,” she tells him. “You know that, right?”

He kisses her again, soft and sweet, and she closes her eyes and lets herself fall into his embrace. It's so warm, so comforting, that it's not until she's seated in English class pretending to listen to the teacher drone that she realizes: he never answered her question.

“No!” Shelly shouts, as Sarah again tries to reassemble the AR-15 assault rifle in under 60 seconds and fails. “Again, and do it right this time!”

“Sorry, sir.” Sarah sighs, taking the weapon apart and laying each piece neatly on the table.

Shelly is a short, stout Cahokian and retired marine who's in charge of making sure Sarah knows everything there is to know about guns and can hit a bull's-eye with her eyes closed. She prefers shouting to talking and makes Sarah call her “sir.”

She thinks Sarah doesn't have what it takes to be the Player.

Sarah knows this because Shelly says so, constantly.

Sarah stares at the pieces of the gun, trying to piece them together in her mind so her nervous fingers will know what to do.

“You waiting for an engraved invitation?” Shelly asks, and clicks
the stopwatch. Sarah scrambles for the barrel jacket, fumbles the magazine, and drops it on the floor with a loud clatter, and Shelly slams her hand against the table. “Forget it! This is a waste of time if you're not even going to try.”

“I am trying, sir,” Sarah says in a small voice. She's been screwing up all afternoon, firing shots several inches from the bull's-eye, forgetting her safety goggles, trying to load the sniper rifle with the wrong kind of bullets.

“You say that, but your mind is somewhere else,” Shelly accuses her.

It's true. Her mind is at Sam and Louie's, with Christopher, biting into a steaming slice of mushroom pepperoni and groaning at one of his terrible jokes.

“I'm sorry, sir.”

“If you want me to tell your parents you can't handle this . . .”

In the silence left behind the trainer's threat, Sarah feels a glimmer of hope. What if she can't measure up? What if the council deems her unworthy, and replaces her with someone else?

What if she simply stopped trying, and let it go?

But something in her—the same impulse that made her agree to Play in the first place—rebels against the idea.

“I said, I'm
sorry
,” she says forcefully, and, without waiting for permission, begins piecing the gun together again.

This time, she gets it right.

She assembles and disassembles the weapon 10 more times, her movements nimble and machinelike; then, after a quick break for food, she spends an extra three hours in the gym, working the punching bag and practicing her tae kwon do. Even when her martial arts trainer goes home for the night, Sarah keeps at it, only giving up when her muscles are screaming so loudly she can't bear to aim another kick.

Well past midnight, she stumbles into bed, thinking,
See? I can handle this
, and it's not until morning that she checks her phone and sees the flood of text messages from Christopher and Reena.

She forgot them, again.

Christopher doesn't text her back. Reena doesn't text her back. And when she sees them at school, they won't talk to her.

Sarah finally pins Reena down in the girls' bathroom. “What's going on?” she asks. “Are you seriously this mad I forgot to text you last night? I'm sorry, okay? I went to bed really early.”

“Oh, yeah?” Reena's washing her hands. She watches Sarah in the mirror. “Long, hard doctor's appointment with Tate, yeah?”

“Well . . .” Sarah hates using her brother as an excuse like this. “Yeah, actually.”

Her best friend whirls to face her. “You know, if you're cheating on Christopher or something, that's an asshole move, but you could at least trust me enough to tell me about it. I'm supposed to be your best friend.”

“Wait—what? Why would you think I could ever cheat on Christopher?”

“I don't know, how about because you're constantly sneaking off and lying about it?”

“I told you, I was—”

“At a doctor's appointment. With Tate. I know. Except for how we saw Tate at Sam and Louie's, drunk off his ass in the middle of the afternoon and chowing down on a whole pizza all by himself.”

Sarah doesn't know what to say. Her mind is too crowded with confusing, disturbing facts.

Reena and Christopher went for pizza without her? Like, on a date?

Tate's getting drunk? In the middle of the afternoon?

They know she was lying? They think she's been lying this whole time?

“Don't bother,” Reena snaps.

“What?”

“I know you're just trying to come up with another lie.”

“Am not.”

“Sarah, we've been friends since we were eight years old. I know you.
And I know when you're trying to lie to me. Not that you used to do that.”

“Fine,” Sarah says. “No more lies.”

There's a silence between them.

Because what's she supposed to say now? The
truth
?

“I'm not cheating on Christopher,” Sarah says. “I wouldn't do that. If you know me as well as you say you do, then you should know that.”

Reena sighs. “Yeah. Of course I know that. But then what . . . ?”

“I can't tell you.”

“Are you freaking kidding me?”

“You don't want me to lie to you, fine. But I can't
tell
you. It's complicated and . . . can you just trust me for now?”

Unexpectedly, Reena pulls Sarah into a hug. “I wish you could just tell me what's going on with you.”

Sarah buries her face in her friend's shoulder and blinks back tears. “Yeah. Me too.”

Reena steps back, all business again. “Whatever it is, you better not dump Christopher before the formal. I've spent way too long planning this double date.”

“The . . . formal?”

Reena rolls her eyes. “The spring formal? Only the most important event of the year? The dance we bought dresses for six months ago? The dance that's
this Friday
? Even you couldn't forget—”

“No,” Sarah says quickly. “Of course not.” She doesn't like that:
Even you
. As if Reena's expectations have sunk so low. And maybe they should have, because of course she's right.

Sarah did forget.

“It's going to be an amazing night,” she promises her best friend. “I swear.”

Reena talks to Christopher for her, and whatever she says works. He agrees to cut class and meet her under the bleachers that afternoon.

Neither of them has ever cut class before. They're good kids; they follow the rules.

Sarah is so tired of rules.

“I'm sorry,” she tells him again, curled up in his arms on the dewy grass. “I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry.”

“You said that already,” he says. “And I said I forgive you. And I trust you. Can we get back to the kissing now?”

“And I'm going to make it up to you—”

“On Friday, at the formal. I know. You said that too. Multiple times.”

“I just want to make sure you know that I would never . . .”

“Sarah.” He cups her chin in his warm hands. Their eyes meet. “I do know. Sometimes I just feel like . . .”

“What?”

“Like you're so far away. Like even when you're here with me, you're really somewhere else. Or you wish you were.”

He's partly right—she is somewhere else. These days she's always somewhere else. When she's with Christopher, she's thinking about fighting moves or ancient Cahokian mythology; when she's with her trainers, she's thinking about Christopher.

“I don't wish I were anywhere else but here with you,” she tells him, and it's the truest thing she's said in a long time.

When she gets home that afternoon, her parents are both in the kitchen, waiting for her. They have an elderly woman with them, her weathered face covered in scars. Sarah recognizes her as one of the council elders: Juliana, a former Player herself.

Sarah wonders at the scars, where they came from, and whether when she grows up her face will bear similar marks. She's never thought of herself as a superficial person, but she doesn't like the idea that her Playing will permanently mark her for all the world to see.

She's already had to explain away bruises and sprains—more lies for Christopher—but at least those heal and fade.

Every time she looks at Tate, she's reminded that some wounds don't.

She can't remember the last time a council member visited their home. Whatever this is about, it can't be good.

“What's going on?” she asks.

“Sit down, honey,” her father says.

She shakes her head. “Tell me what's going on first.”

Juliana points to a chair and says, with the imperious confidence of someone who's used to having her commands followed,
“Sit.”

She sits.

“This is the situation,” Juliana says. “We've received troubling reports of your progress, or lack thereof. We wish you to withdraw from school and focus solely on your training. You will come with me back to Illinois and we will provide a suitable—”

“What? No!” Sarah cries. She looks at her parents. “Are you just going to sit there?
You
think that's a good idea?”

“Sarah, your training is important. The stronger you get, the more likely you are to . . .”

Sarah knows how to fill in that blank.

The more likely you are to survive
.

She tries not to think about Endgame, and what it would mean. She doesn't even like to think about the trials of pain and strength and endurance that she knows to be in her future, as every Player must meet them. It was a pain trial that destroyed Tate, and he was so much stronger than she is, than she could ever be.

“I won't do it,” Sarah says.

Juliana looks untroubled by the argument. “But you must.”

She doesn't make an ultimatum. She doesn't say,
If you want to Play
, because they both know there is no
if
. Sarah swore the ancient oath. She agreed to do this, and that means doing whatever the council deems right. No matter how wrong they might be.

“There must be something else I can do,” Sarah insists. “Something to prove I don't need to throw away my entire life and go with you.”

Training in Illinois, away from her family, away from her friends, away from Christopher. No school, no future, no love. Just fighting and working and Playing.

She doesn't think she could survive it.

“There is perhaps one thing,” Juliana says, and something about the way she says it makes Sarah wonder whether this hasn't been the point of the visit all along. “Your first trial. The trial of the wolves. I understand you've been putting it off.”

“She's not ready,” her mother says loyally.