I close my fist around the slip of paper. Slowly, I turn to face him, unclenching my hand, revealing my name.
We hover in that space for a few seconds, frozen.
The color drains from his face. “Oh. Shit,” he mutters. “I can explain that.”
“I’d really love to hear it.”
He rubs at his eyes, jostling his glasses. “I’m so sorry. I—I didn’t mean for you to find out.”
“Obviously,” I choke out. “Have you had me the whole time?”
With a miserable nod, he says, “Since Cinerama. Yeah. I should have told you. I just thought—I thought you wouldn’t trust me if you knew.”
Irony of ironies.
“So what was your plan? Keep it secret until the end, then surprise me because I already trusted you? Soften me up, get me to let my guard down?” I shake my head. More than anything, it’s about the loss of trust, not the grand prize. “You know it’s not about the money for me anymore. Why wouldn’t you just tell me?”
He doesn’t say anything.
“Well, congratufuckinglations. You got me. So go ahead. Kill me.”
I hold out my arm for him, indicating he should swipe the blue armband.
“That’s not what I—”
“Just do it, okay?” I grit out. We both stare at it. Lightly, I nudge his shoulder, but he doesn’t budge, like he is made of metal instead of skin and bones. “Stop talking to your shoes! At least look me in the eye.”
When he finally wrenches his eyes up to mine, my stomach drops. He looks more pained than he has all night.
“Rowan,” he says, voice quaking, clearly trying so hard to sound gentle. He swallows hard. “Okay. You’re right. I wasn’t going to wait until the end at first. When we were in the record store, I had a moment where I thought, ‘This is it. I’m going to do it.’ But I couldn’t. I don’t know. We were getting along, and it was—forgive me—nice. It was nice. I liked spending time with you.”
“You say that like it’s such a shock,” I say, though I can’t deny how good it feels to hear it. “Like it’s so impossible to have enjoyed my company.”
He crosses his arms. “We both know your self-esteem isn’t that low. I’m sorry I wanted to spend more time with you. I’m sorry I wanted to keep you in the game—which, I might point out, was exactly what you did for me at Pike Place—so we could go up against each other at the end and so you could ultimately beat me, since that’s apparently the only thing that matters to you.”
“It isn’t.” It hasn’t been for hours.
Beneath his freckles, his face is a mess of angry red splotches. It isn’t cute. It’s fucking infuriating. This close to him, I can see all his freckles, plus a scar on his chin I’ve never noticed before. And I’ve never seen him with facial hair, but now that he’s been out all night, a dusting of auburn is beginning to grow in, and it doesn’t look terrible. Except that it’s Neil, and I despise him—don’t I?—and therefore it does.
“Up until today,” he says, “we only sort of knew each other. I knew you hate it when you don’t get enough votes for a measure in student council and that you like romance novels. But I didn’t know why. I didn’t know about your family or your writing. I didn’t know how much you like sad songs or why you love reading the books you do. And”—he sucks in a breath—“you didn’t know about me either. You didn’t know about my family. Do you know how many people I’ve voluntarily told about my dad?” He shakes his head. “Maybe five? And I trusted you with that. I haven’t trusted anyone with that, not for a long time.”
He’s apologizing. He clearly feels bad about it. Maybe it isn’t so awful that he kept this from me. Maybe we can move past it, keep playing.
The moonlight catches his face, and I can’t deny how lovely it looks.
“We shared some really personal shit,” he says. “Does that not matter at all?”
I’m blushing too. I can feel it. I’m thinking about what we talked about in the library. How it felt safe to have those conversations around him. How I liked playing with him, but more than that…
I wanted to kiss him, and I wanted him to kiss me back. That’s what I wanted.
What I want.
“It does matter,” I say, stepping closer. I don’t want to be at odds with him. The day flashes through my mind: the assembly, my Pike Place Market rescue, arguing over pizza. The record store and Sean Yee’s lab and Neil’s house, the place no one ever goes. My house, then, and the zoo and the library. The library. That dance. Then Two Birds, and singing while scrubbing dishes, and the open mic and how incredible I felt afterward.
The bench.
How much of it was real? What happened at his house, yes, and what happened at mine. But everything else? Before I forgive him, I have to know for sure.
“I just need to know,” I say. “How much of today was real? Because what happened on the bench—we almost kissed, Neil.” That last part, I whisper it.
I didn’t want it to be an almost, I will myself to say. I wanted his mouth on mine and his hands in my hair. It wasn’t something I’d been imagining for months and months. I had no preconceived notions of what it would be like, and for once I wanted to turn off my brain and simply feel.
I don’t know how to explain to him how unusual that is for me.
He turns even redder. “I guess it’s good we didn’t. We just… got caught up in the moment. It would have been a mistake.”
A mistake.
He hunches his shoulders, turning slightly away from me. The shock of learning this was one-sided sends me backward a few paces. A boulder shoved into my chest. So I was played, then. After all these hours, I am still merely a game to him.
Hours. It’s only been hours. A mind can’t change that quickly—and yet mine did. I was so sure his did too.
I force my face not to fall, force my hands not to tremble. My heart, though—that’s the one I can’t control. When I was younger, I never understood it when someone’s “heart sank” in a book. It’s not physically possible, I told anyone who’d listen. Now I know more than ever before exactly what it feels like for a heart to sink. Except it’s not just my heart; it’s my entire body that wants to crumble.
He’s so embarrassed about what happened on the bench that he won’t even look at me, instead immersed in what must be a fascinating dip in the sidewalk.
“Rowan?” he says, as though he wants to make sure I heard him break me.
“Right. Right,” I say with more conviction than I feel. It’s too cold outside, and I hug my arms tight around myself. It doesn’t stop that sinking feeling. It doesn’t stop the pressure building behind my eyes or the way my voice sounds strained and high-pitched. “A huge mistake. Got it.”
“Glad we’re on the same page,” he says, but his words are clipped, and he sounds anything but glad.
“Good thing we came to our senses. I mean, you and me? In what universe would that have made sense?” If I force myself to say it out loud, maybe I’ll believe it. It has to make this hurt less. “The rest of the senior class would have had a field day with it.”
I think about all the moments I was too cruel, the times I pushed him away. If I’d done the opposite, would we be having this conversation? Or would it only be more painful?
“Can we—can we just drop it?” he asks. Stammering. “Please?”
“Sure. Fine.” I kneel down to open my backpack, searching for my keys. I can’t look at him right now. I don’t want him to see that I’m on the verge of crying. He doesn’t need more ammunition.
God, what is wrong with me? Neil McNair wouldn’t have been my perfect boyfriend. Under no circumstances is he the person I should have been with.
My fingers close around cool metal, and I make a tight fist around the keys to anchor myself. Maybe he deserves to win the game after all. He tricked me into thinking I had feelings for him, then somehow turned them real. He’s the true champion of Westview, ensuring this final competition would end with me utterly sunk.
“We only have two more clues,” he says, softly this time. He turns to face me. Fuck. I hope he doesn’t think he needs to treat me delicately now. I’m not sure what would be worse, the teasing when I confessed my ninth-grade crush, or this. “Let’s finish them up, and then we can figure this whole thing out.”
This is worse. Definitely this.
“There’s—there’s nothing to figure out.” I spring to my feet so quickly my head spins. I clutch the keys tighter. “We can go our separate ways now or at the end of the game or after graduation. Why drag it out? You and I don’t know how to be friends.” Vengeance fills me up, the way it has all these years. It has to replace the sinking feeling. The drowning. I want to hurt him back. And I know exactly where to jab right between his ribs so he’ll feel it the most. “The worst part is—I liked the person you were today! I liked spending time with you too. And that’s why it’s so upsetting you were holding something back the entire day. You could have told me so many times, but you didn’t. I thought you were different, but maybe you’re more like your dad than you thought.”
Regret hits me immediately. Again with this stellar ability I have to tear him down. It made me strong the past four years, but tonight it only makes me feel small. This isn’t me. At least—I don’t want it to be.
I watch his face as the remark hits him. His eyes grow dark, and his mouth opens slightly, like he might say something, but nothing comes out.
“That’s a shitty low blow, and you know it,” he says. “If we’re talking personal flaws, what about you?”
I take a step back. “What about me?”
He throws his hands up. “Rowan! You’re sabotaging yourself. You’ve been doing it for years. That high school success guide?”
“I hadn’t thought about that in forever,” I say quietly, wondering why I suddenly feel on the defensive yet again.
“You made that list when you were fourteen. Of course you’re going to want different things now. You’re a different person. You’ve grown and changed and that’s a good thing,” he says. “When we were at the zoo, were you actually high, or were you using that as an excuse because you were anxious about meeting Delilah?”
“No,” I insist, but suddenly I’m not sure. That tiny slice of relief I felt—is that what it was?
“Spencer? Kirby and Mara? Your writing, the thing you want to devote your entire life to? You said it yourself. You’re so worried the reality won’t measure up to what’s in your head that you don’t even try things that scare you, and you don’t realize there’s a problem with your relationships. Because if you don’t have to confront it, then it doesn’t exist. Right?”
I’m shaking my head. “I—no. No.” I got onstage tonight at the open mic. And Kirby and Mara, we’re okay. We’re going to work things out. Neil doesn’t know that, but I’m not about to tell him. I don’t owe him anything. I don’t have to convince him that he’s got me all wrong.
He straightens to his full posture. Exactly my height, and yet somehow he seems so much taller right now. “You’re standing in your own fucking way, and until you realize that, you won’t ever be happy with your reality.”
I only have one more comeback.
“If we’re not friends,” I say, my voice this horrible choked sound, “then why are you still here?”
His face is a mix of pained emotions. Hurt, confusion—regret? Maybe that’s wishful thinking on my part.
“Good question.”
With that, he puts his back to me, shoulders hunched against the wind, and walks away.
And then I’m on my own in the cold, dark night.
HOWL STANDINGS
TOP 5
Neil McNair: 14
Rowan Roth: 13
Brady Becker: 12
Mara Pompetti: 10
Iris Zhou: 8
PLAYERS REMAINING: 13
12:27 a.m.
IF PIKE PLACE Market really is haunted, the ghosts would be out right now. I feel a little ghoulish myself as I slump through downtown, past the commercial district and along the waterfront. It’s colder out here. Windier.
I hug Neil’s hoodie tighter around me, wishing it belonged to anyone but him. It’s annoying that it still smells good. Curse you, good-smelling hoodie I can’t take off without freezing.
My feet ache from all the walking. I parked at the market, which was empty, the shops long closed, but then I needed to clear my head and figure out what the hell happened and what the hell I’m supposed to do now.
I must be obsessed with Neil McNair because even with him gone, he’s all I can think about. The worst part of it is this: he wasn’t wrong.
That success guide is four years old. Just because I’m not 100 percent who I wanted to be at that age doesn’t mean I’m not successful. Deep down, maybe I’ve known that all day, but the guide was such a comfort to me, the idea that I still had a chance to cross something off.
Nothing about today, about tonight, went as planned, and until our fight, it was okay. Great, even. I’ve clung to my fantasies and convinced myself the reality can’t measure up.
I allow myself to think something I never have before: What if the reality is better?
I just… don’t know how to fix this about myself. This flaw, Neil called it. If I manage to finish Howl by myself, then we’re done competing forever. He goes off to New York and I go off to Boston, and if we see each other in Seattle when we’re home on breaks, maybe we’ll have a moment of sustained eye contact, a nod, and then a quick glance in the opposite direction. If something happened between us, he would be just another thing that ends after high school. Our schools are more than four hours away from each other. (I looked it up earlier.)
I want to tell Kirby and Mara, but I don’t know if I can put what happened into words yet. And despite everything else, I’m glad I got onstage and read my writing. Another thing Neil McNair is inexorably tied to.
Fuck it.
I whip out my phone and hit the familiar icon on the home screen.
“Rowan?” My mom picks up after the third ring. They always celebrate deadlines the same way: getting incredibly wasted. They keep a bottle of twelve-year-old scotch in their office for these occasions. “It’s late. Is everything okay? We just opened the scotch—”
“I’m writing a book,” I blurt out.
“At this very moment?”
“No—I mean, I’ve been working on it for a while.” I chew the inside of my cheek, waiting for her reaction. There’s some shuffling in the background, and I can tell she’s put me on speaker. “It’s a romance novel.”
Silence on the other end of the line.
“And I know they’re not your favorite, but I really love them, okay? They’re fun, and they’re emotional, and they have better character development than most other books out there.”
“Ro-Ro,” my dad says. “You’re writing a book?”
I nod before realizing they can’t see me. Ugh, talking is hard. “I am. I—might want to do that. Professionally. Or at least I’d like to try.”
“That’s incredible,” my mom says. “You have no idea how cool it is to hear that.”
“Yeah?”
She laughs. “Yes, the fact that having us as parents hasn’t ruined the writing magic for you? That’s kind of awesome, if you think about it.”
And maybe it is.
“It’s a romance novel,” I say again, in case they didn’t hear me the first time.
“We heard you,” my dad says. “Rowan, that’s”—a pause, and some exchanged murmurs between them—“I’m sorry if we ever gave you the impression we thought it was… a lesser genre. Maybe it was because you started reading them so young, and we thought it was this cute, funny phase you were going through.”
“It wasn’t.”
“We know that now,” my dad says.
“I love what you do, and I love those books,” I say. “And I know I have a lot to learn, but that’s what college is for, right?”
Predictably, my
dad laughs at this non-joke.
“Full disclosure,” my mom says. “We’re both a little tipsy. But we’re so glad you told us. If you ever want either of us to read it, we’re more than happy to.”
“Thank you. I don’t know if I’m there quite yet, but I’ll let you know.”
“Are you doing all right? You won’t be out too late, will you?”
“We’ll probably be asleep by the time she gets home,” my dad says, “if the scotch does its job.”
My mom lets out a low whistle. “This is almost as bad as what happened after that D. B. Cooper book. I think that was whiskey, though.”
“The what?” I ask.
“Riley tried to solve the D. B. Cooper case in one of the Excavated books,” my mom says. “Do you remember? We were so upset when our editor didn’t want to publish it. She didn’t think it was kid-friendly.”
“D. B. Cooper… That was a Seattle thing, right?”
“You don’t know the story?” And when I tell her no, she explains it to me.
This is the legend of D. B. Cooper: In 1971 a man hijacked a Boeing plane somewhere in the air between Portland and Seattle. He asked for $200,000 in ransom and parachuted out of the plane… but was never found, even after an FBI manhunt. It’s the only unsolved case of its kind.
I’d read the book in manuscript form, but must have forgotten about it when they had to shelve it. And Neil wouldn’t have known about it either.
“We even worked with the staff at the Museum of the Mysteries,” my mom says. “That creepy old building downtown?”
“It’s just as creepy on the inside,” my dad says. “And weird, too. It’s half museum, half bar. So they keep it open late.”
Suddenly, everything clicks into place. God, I love my parents.
“Rowan?” my mom says, with enough urgency that makes me think I must have zoned out. “Rowan Luisa, when do you think you’ll be home?”
“I probably won’t be too much longer.”
“Have fun,” my mom says, and they start giggling again as we hang up.
The Museum of the Mysteries. If I still cared about Howl, I’d get this view clue and then go there. Good to know, I guess.
Today Tonight Tomorrow Page 23
