Today Tonight Tomorrow
PLAYERS REMAINING: 38
MOST RUTHLESS KILL: Alexis Torres Aiden Gallagher, by way of breaking up with him
3:07 p.m.
MCNAIR IS QUIET for a few seconds. He’s been clutching his backpack in his lap, and he lets it drop down into the space near his feet. At first I’m convinced he’s going to tell me I’m being ridiculous, that teaming up is absurd. He frowns, then flattens his mouth into a straight line, then frowns again. It’s like he’s carefully weighing the options, the pros and cons marching along his face, messing with his features.
“I really hoped there’d be another way,” I say. “But if we both want to win, which I think we do, then…” I let him fill in the blank.
It’s not an easy suggestion to make. When we’ve worked together in the past, it’s usually been forced. In student council, on group projects, we were working toward the same general goals with completely different plans of attack. The White Man in Peril incident on infinite repeat. Savannah’s plot made it clear this is bigger than a rivalry, bigger than number ten on my list.
“What exactly would it entail, teaming up?” he asks, ever logical.
In the soft afternoon light, his freckles seem almost lit from within. He never looks like this beneath Westview’s eco-friendly LED lights. His eyelashes are glowing amber, and the effect is so startling that I have to look away.
“Help each other with the clues. Have each other’s backs.” It hits me that I have no idea who McNair’s target is, and that makes me uneasy. “Wait, who do you have?”
“Oh—Carolyn Gao.” Drama club president. She was incredible in last year’s production of Little Shop of Horrors. “And I know you don’t have me, but—”
“Madison Winters.”
He nods. “So if we do this, if we team up, what happens at the end? I assume this means we’d be finishing the scavenger hunt at the same time, right?”
“Once we get the last clue, it’s an all-out war. Whoever makes it back to the gym first wins. One-two, the way it always is.” We team up now, and I destroy him later. That’s the gist of it.
I refrain from mentioning Delilah Park’s signing. That’s more than four hours from now. If we haven’t irritated each other to death by then, I’ll make up an excuse to slip away.
He pulls at another loose thread on his backpack, where the FREE PUPPIES! pin clings to fraying nylon. “I’m just wondering… what’s in all of this for you? If you want to win this badly, it can’t just be to beat me.”
“That’s… a good part of it,” I admit. It wouldn’t cancel out valedictorian, but I just know it would feel amazing to win our very last competition. I don’t want to be stuck in time, second best. “And I’d love the money for school.” Then I fire the question back at him.
“School,” he agrees, a little too quickly. “New York is expensive.”
“Right,” I say, unable to avoid feeling like he’s only partially telling the truth.
“Hypothetically, if I agree to this scheme of yours, let’s say you win the whole game. You get the glory. What do I get? Seems like a shit deal for me at that point.”
I consider this. “We split the money. Fifty-fifty. Regardless of outcome.”
A grin spreads across his face and dread churns in my stomach. This cannot be good. “What if we upped the stakes?”
“I’m listening.”
“A bet,” he proposes. “You and me. A bet to cap off our epic four years of academic bloodshed.”
“What, like the loser has to go naked under their gown at graduation?”
He snorts. “Seriously? Are you twelve? I was thinking something far more personal.”
I rack my brain. There are probably plenty of things McNair wouldn’t enjoy doing, but I don’t know him well enough on a personal level to guess what any of them would be.
Then I gasp, covering my mouth to conceal a grin when the idea hits me. “The loser has to write the winner a book report on a book of the winner’s choosing.”
“How many paragraphs?”
“Five, at least. Double-spaced, no fewer than three pages.” I cross my arms over my chest, aware this is the nerdiest bet in history. But wow, the books I could have him read… “Are you in or not?”
For a beat, neither of us blinks. In all our competitions, we’ve never placed a bet. There was always plenty at stake.