Existence (19 page)

“It's my fault, what happened to you,” she blurts.

He freezes. “What?”

“Not my fault, I mean, but I knew something was wrong, I
knew
it. And I didn't stop him. Samuel. I could have made him stop the trial, if I'd had the nerve. I could have saved you.”

Tate sits down beside her on the bed. He takes her hand.

“You can't be afraid to say what you think, to speak up for what's right. Not anymore. You know that, right?”

Sarah nods. She's never felt so small.

“But Sarah, you have to know it's not your fault. I
chose
to put myself in that room.”

“Yeah, when you were four years old,” she says. “What did you know?”

“Then, and every day after that,” Tate says. “Being the Player, it's not just like you sign your name on the dotted line and then you belong to your destiny. You
make
your destiny. Every minute, every choice, you build the life you want. The kind of Player you want to be. What
happened in that shed, it's no one's fault. It just happened. And it happened because of what I chose. Do you get that?”

She thinks about the woods and the wolves, about how she had no other option but to face them—but that facing them was still her choice. Playing was the choice she wanted to make. The only choice love will let her make.

“I do,” she told Tate.

“Good. Now brush your hair, put on something that looks nice, and go downstairs.”

“Why?”

“There's a surprise for you down there. To prove it—that you get to choose. I was wrong before, when I made it sound like you had to choose one or the other, your old life or your new one. You don't have to Play like I did, Sarah. Or like anyone did. This is yours now.”

“Do you really believe that?” she asks, so desperately wanting it to be true.

Tate nods.

“But what does that have to do with whatever's downstairs?”

He gives her a mysterious smile, and even with the pirate patch, he looks like the old Tate again. “Oh, did I tell you? I figured out what I'm going to do next.”

“As in tonight?”

“As in for the foreseeable future,” he says.

This is more than she hoped for. Maybe he finally filled out some of those college applications their mother has been stacking on his nightstand. Or even got a job. Anything would be better than wallowing.

“What is it?” she says, hoping he can't read the eagerness in her voice.

Now the smile widens into a grin she hasn't seen from Tate in months, mischievous and sparking with joy. “I'm going to help you, little sis. Help you Play. Not that you'll ever Play as well as me . . .” He says it teasingly, without any of the bitterness of the last months, and she feels free to tease him back.

“Not as well as.
Better
.”

Tate nods, and presses his fingers to her forehead. It feels like a benediction. “Better.”

Sarah puts on a dark green dress that sets off her auburn hair, layers foundation on her face to disguise the worst of the scratches, and goes downstairs. She stops cold at the bottom of the stairwell, and gasps.

The living room is festooned with streamers, the stereo is playing her favorite song, and standing in the center of the room, his arms wide as if waiting for her to step into them, is Christopher. He's always looked especially good in a suit.

“What are you—”

“Questions later,” he says. “First . . .”

Then she's in his arms, swaying to the music, drowning in his kiss.

“You're not mad? About the formal?” she says, once she's able to pull her lips from his.

“I was,” he admits. “And Reena . . . she was about ready to march over here and burn your house down, I think.”

“Oh God, Reena.” She's forced herself not to think about any of it, but now it all comes rushing back to her in a tidal wave of guilt and panic. Has she lost her best friend?

Christopher sees it in her eyes, and kisses her once on the forehead, then once on each eyelid. As he does, she can breathe again. “Don't worry,” he says. “Tate explained it to her just like he did to me. Oh, and when we're done here, she says you better text her back or she'll kill you.”

Sarah grinned, thinking that would be slightly difficult, given the state her cell phone was in. Then the full meaning of Christopher's words sank in. “Wait, so, Tate . . . explained it to you? Explained what, exactly?”

“You know, about the tryouts for the national soccer squad—how you've been training like a maniac, but you didn't want to tell us about it until you knew if you made it, because you didn't want to let
us down if you failed. Which is insane, by the way, because you could never let me down even if you didn't make it. But of course you made it!” He wrapped her in a hug so tight she could barely breathe. “I'm so proud of you, do you know that? Proud of me, too.” He laughs. “I can't believe I'm dating one of the ten best soccer players in the country.”

“Tate told you that too?” she whispered.

“Yeah, he said they had some last-minute tie-breaker tryouts last night. That that's why you missed the formal. And you made it.” He looks radiant, and she loves him for being so happy for her, and tries not to hate herself for the lies. “Promise me you won't forget me, now that you're such a big deal,” he says. “I know a lot's going to change now, with all the extra training and traveling, but promise me we'll find a way to make this work.”

“I promise,” she says, leaning her head against her shoulder, and she's not talking to him. She's talking to herself—swearing to herself that she'll lie to him only as much as she needs to, and only to spare him the terrors and sorrows he can't handle. She promises herself that she will give everything she can to her line—but not everything she has, not everything she
is
. She will choose the life she wants, which means choosing both lives, both halves of herself. The part of her that cares about school, that wants to be a good friend to Reena, that wants to lose herself in Christopher's arms, that's the part that will sustain her through what is to come. That's the part that will give her strength, and she won't give it up. She promises herself, and Christopher, that she won't have to.

“Was this your idea?” she says. “The streamers, the suit—like a formal of our own, right?”

He pulls her closer in. She loves the way she fits so perfectly against his chest, the way his arms make her feel so safe. “Right. Wish I could take the credit, but it was Tate's idea.”

It was the only answer that could have made her even happier than she already is.

“Can we dance again?” she asks.

Christopher restarts her favorite song and then wraps her again in his embrace, singing along softly in her ear. He has a terrible, off-key voice, and it makes her love him even more.
Six years,
she tells herself. Six years to survive, to fight, to work, to Play, to find a way to hold on to this—to
him
—no matter what. Six years of sacrifice that will all be worth it, if it means saving him and Reena and Tate from those horrors she saw in the fire. The specifics of the vision have already faded, but the message of the vision is still clear:
Play the game, or you will lose everything and everyone you love
.

Six years of Playing, and then they can begin the rest of their lives together. It doesn't matter what destiny wants for her. It doesn't matter what she saw in the flames last night: so much blood, so much death.

Life is choice, and Sarah chooses to have it all.

Haf
z Alipa
a Sk, Aziz Mahmut Hüdayi Mh, Istanbul, Turkey

Marcus Loxias Megalos is bored. He cannot remember a time before the boredom. School is boring. Girls are boring. Football is boring. Especially when his team, his favorite team, Fenerbahçe, is losing, as they are now, to Manisaspor.

Marcus sneers at the TV in his small, undecorated room. He is slouched in a plush black leather chair that sticks to his skin whenever he sits up. It is night, but Marcus keeps the lights in his room off. The window is open. Heat passes through it like an oppressive ghost as the sounds of the Bosporus—the long, low calls of ships, the bells of buoys—groan and tinkle over Istanbul.

Marcus wears baggy black gym shorts and is shirtless. His 24 ribs show through his tanned skin. His arms are sinewy and hard. His breathing is easy. His stomach is taut and his hair is close-cropped and black and his eyes are green. A bead of sweat rolls down the tip of his nose. All of Istanbul simmers on this night, and Marcus is no different.

A book lies open in his lap, ancient and leather-bound. The words on its pages are Greek. Marcus has handwritten something in English on a scrap of paper that lies across the open page:
From broad Crete I declare that I am come by lineage, the son of a wealthy man.
He has read the old book over and over. It's a tale of war, exploration, betrayal, love, and death. It always makes him smile.

What Marcus wouldn't give to take a journey of his own, to escape the oppressive heat of this dull city. He imagines an endless sea spread out before him, the wind cool against his skin, adventures and enemies arrayed on the horizon.

Marcus sighs and touches the scrap of paper. In his other hand he holds a 9,000-year-old knife, made of a single piece of bronze forged in the fires of Knossos. He brings the blade across his body and lets its edge rest against his right forearm. He pushes it into the skin, but not all the way. He knows the limits of this blade. He has trained with it since he could hold it. He has slept with it under his pillow since he was six. He has killed chickens, rats, dogs, cats, pigs, horses, hawks, and lambs with it. He has killed 11 people with it.

He is 16, in his prime for Playing. If he turns 20, he will be ineligible. He wants to Play. He would rather die than be ineligible.

The odds are almost nil that he will get his chance, though, and he knows it. Unlike Odysseus, war will never find Marcus. There will be no grand journey.

His line has been waiting for 9,000 years. Since the day the knife was forged. For all Marcus knows, his line will wait for another 9,000 years, long after Marcus is gone and the pages of his book have disintegrated.

So Marcus is bored.

The crowd on the TV cheers, and Marcus looks up from the knife. The Fenerbahçe goalie has cleared a rainbow up the right sideline, the ball finding the head of a burly midfielder. The ball bounces forward, over a line of defenders, near the last two men before the Manisaspor keeper. The players rush for the ball, and the forward comes away with it, 20 meters from the goal, free and clear of the defender. The keeper gets ready.

Marcus leans forward. Match time is 83:34. Fenerbahçe has yet to score, and doing so in such a dramatic way would save some face. The old book slides to the floor. The scrap of paper drifts free of the page and slips through the air like a falling leaf. The crowd begins to rise. The sky suddenly brightens, as if the gods, the Gods of the Sky themselves, are coming down to offer help. The keeper backpedals. The forward collects himself and takes the shot, and the ball blasts off.

As it punches the back of the net, the stadium lights up and the crowd screams, first in exaltation for the goal, but immediately afterward in terror and confusion—deep, true, and profound terror and confusion. A massive fireball, a giant burning meteor, explodes above the crowd and tears across the field, obliterating the Fenerbahçe defense and blasting a hole through the end of the stadium grandstand.

Marcus's eyes widen. He is looking at total carnage. It is butchery on the scale of those American disaster movies. Half the stadium, tens of thousands of people dead, burning, lit up, on fire.

It is the most beautiful thing Marcus has ever seen.

He breathes hard. Sweat pours off his brow. People outside are yelling, screaming. A woman wails from the café below. Sirens ring out across the ancient city on the Bosporus, between the Marmara and the Black.

On TV, the stadium is awash in flames. Players, police, spectators, coaches run around, burning like crazed matchsticks. The commentators cry for help, for God, because they don't understand. Those not dead or on their way to being dead trample one another as they try to escape. There's another explosion and the screen goes black.

Marcus's heart wants out of his chest. Marcus's brain is as hot as the football pitch. Marcus's stomach is full of rocks and acid. His palms feel hot and sticky. He looks down and sees that he has dug the ancient blade into his forearm, and a rivulet of blood is trickling off his hand, onto the chair, onto his book. The book is ruined, but it doesn't matter; he won't need it anymore. Because now, Marcus
will
have his Odyssey.

Marcus looks back to the darkened TV. He knows there's something waiting for him there amidst the wreckage. He must find it.

A single piece.

For himself, for his line.

He smiles. Marcus has trained all of his life for this moment. When he wasn't training, he was dreaming of the Calling. All the visions of destruction that his teenage mind concocted could not touch what Marcus has witnessed tonight. A meteor destroying a football stadium and killing 38,676 people. The legends said it would be a grand announcement. For once, the legends have become a beautiful reality.

Marcus has wanted, waited, and prepared for Endgame his entire life. He is no longer bored, and he won't be again until he either wins or dies.

This is it.

He knows it.

This is it.