The Game

by Linsey Miller

  “I would never have thought Gem snored,” he whispered.

  The bathroom door creaked, and Lia shot up. Devon chuckled.

  Gem groaned and rolled over. “Time?”

  “Time.” Lia yawned. “Are you going to school today?”

  “Emotionally, no. Physically, yes,” Devon said. He rifled through his bag. “I have orchestra rehearsal after, too.”

  “Relatable.” Lia sighed. “I can’t believe we were allowed to sleep in the same room.”

  Lia wasn’t entirely sure her parents knew about her eternal crush on Devon, but Devon’s knew. God, why?

  “I have used up all my sleepover goodwill, I think.” Devon pushed a pair of glasses onto his face and blinked, grinning. “Good morning!”

  Lia flushed. Yesterday was so hectic that Lia hadn’t thought about how her normal pajamas were a T-shirt and shorts, neither particularly nice. And now he was staring at her.

  “You look nice in your glasses,” she said, desperate for a distraction. She gently tapped the clear plastic bridge of his glasses. “They’re cute.”

  He rolled his eyes. “They make me look twelve.”

  “Yeah, but like a distinguished twelve,” Gem said. They scrolled through their notifications. “Like anime protagonist twelve, the sort who somehow runs a demon-hunting business or something.”

  “A twelve-year-old who knows how to file taxes,” Lia said.

  “I’m going to put on my contacts,” he muttered. “Never again.”

  “Wait.” Gem thrust their phone beneath Lia and Devon’s faces. “Look.”

  A handful of people online were talking about the police reopening Abby’s case now that all the lab work was back. There was only speculation, no evidence. All they had said was that they weren’t comfortable closing it as an accidental death yet.

  “I was there,” Lia said. “I heard her trip. I tripped. I had a bruise to prove it.”

  “They’re keeping their minds open so as not to miss anything, it says.” Devon handed Gem back their phone. “Ignore it. Thinking about it will just worry us.”

  “Sure.” Lia sighed, rubbed her face, and undid the short braid of brown hanging over her shoulder. “We definitely shouldn’t worry more.”

  They got ready in silence, trying not to wake up Harrison. When they were ready, Gem drove, and Lia sat in the passenger seat. She scratched her arms.

  “You’re definitely worrying,” Gem said as they pulled into the parking lot.

  Lia tugged her sleeves down over her hands. “If someone killed Abby, why didn’t they kill me?”

  Gem and Devon glanced at each other.

  “There’s no use in obsessing over it.” Devon slipped his hand between the door and Lia’s seat. His fingers gently curled around her arm. “Same rules as playing Assassins. Don’t go anywhere alone and stay on guard.”

  “My assassin made themselves known yesterday.” Lia let her head hit the back of her seat. “I hope that was my assassin.”

  “It was,” Gem said, “and they were just angry you caught them trying to be edgy.”

  Lia laughed, the sound an odd bubbling thing that she didn’t recognize, and followed Gem and Devon into school. The rest of the day went like that laugh—odd and fleeting. The teachers taught like normal, ignoring the empty seats and reading the announcement about grief counselors as if it were any other announcement. So quickly had the school buckled down and gotten over its grief.

  She escaped to the little outdoor path from the school to the library for fresh air between her first two classes. Eyes closed, Lia tilted her head up, inhaled, and choked. The sweet, sour scent of death rolled down the back of her throat. Lia shook her head and rubbed her eyes. A robin lay rotting in the bushes near her and Gem’s usual lunch table. She darted across the path.

  A body smacked into her.

  “Hey!” A hand closed around Lia’s arm. “Oh.”

  It was Faith, and she dropped Lia’s arm. Lia stumbled back. Her backpack fell off her shoulder.

  “Crap.” Faith held up her hands in surrender. “Sorry. I was just trying to slip past you. You looked pretty out of it.”

  Lia’s stomach was in her throat. “Sorry. Yeah. I just needed fresh air.”

  “Good luck,” Faith said with a laugh, and nodded to the bird. “Here. Let me help.”

  Faith set down the stack of books she had been carrying. She bent over Lia’s backpack and picked it up, shoving a few of Lia’s books and pens back into the half-closed front pocket. She zipped it up and handed it to Lia. Her arm didn’t even shake.

  Carrying textbooks was practically weight training now.

  “Thanks,” Lia said. “You didn’t have to. It was my fault.”

  Faith’s head cocked to the side, her hair tumbling over her shoulder. She smiled. “I feel guilty, and Mrs. White always lectures us about how important volunteering is. Consider this altruism.”

  “Luckily we’re done with all that,” Lia said, turning around and relenting.

  “Hardly. I haven’t heard back yet,” said Faith. “But I have a four point two, so it should be fine.”

  Lia didn’t really know how to respond to that without starting a conversation, so she only nodded.

  “It would’ve been better, but AP World History was so pointless.” She picked up her books. “Did you take it? We’ll never need it.”

  Lia hadn’t, but she had liked the last geography and civics classes she took. AP classes were the bane of her existence, and she only took the ones her parents made her take.

  “You will,” Lia said. “Critical reasoning and all that. You might not ever need to know when things happened, but it’s the thinking that counts.”

  “No,” said Faith, checking her phone, “I’m pretty sure you mean ‘it’s the thought that counts.’ ”

  Lia did not mean that.

  “Sure,” Lia said. “You’re right.”

  Faith grinned. “Sorry about spooking you. See you in class tomorrow, I guess.”

  “Yeah, tomorrow,” Lia said, racing away. She was half worried about being late and half desperate to escape. She walked through the door to her next class with a minute to spare.

  Gem was already in their seat and chatting with a beaming Cassidy.

  “At least something good is happening,” Gem said, smiling at her.

  “What’s up?” Lia asked.

  “Nothing,” said Cassidy quickly. Her smile fell. “I got some good news.”

  Lia sat without arguing. Cassidy’s business was her own, but Gem leaned against their desk.

  “She won’t mind,” Gem said. “Really?”

  Lia winced. “Why would I mind good news?”

  It made her feel bad; she didn’t want her mere presence to take away from people’s joy.

  “I got offered the Governor’s Scholarship,” Cassidy said slowly, and she touched the little black and orange college pin on her shirt. “I was next in line for it apparently.”

  Because Abby was dead, the scholarship and the full ride that went with it were Cassidy’s now.

  “That’s great!” Lia sank into her chair. Bad things had happened, and here was the proof that hope lived. “I’m really glad you got it.”

  * * *

  The joy lasted until the end of school when Lia caught sight of Devon heading for her and Gem. Her shoulders tensed.

  “Breathe,” whispered Gem. “Most people prefer people who breathe.”

  “I hate you.” Lia managed to wave back at Devon. What even were they now? He told her he’d told his parents about her. He’d slept next to her. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” he said. “How are you?”

  “I’ve been better,” Lia said. “How are you?”

  He raised and lowered one shoulder. “You know. There were good parts to toda
y, but most of those were before school started.”

  “Oh?” Lia felt the heat in her cheeks, and turned so that he couldn’t see, pulling out her phone from her backpack. “Yeah, same.”

  He glanced over to Gem and smiled when they rolled their eyes. “What are you doing tonight?”

  “I’m not sure yet. Why?” Lia asked.

  “Oh.” Devon swallowed and blinked, an odd look settling over his face. “Wow. I thought you would be busy.”

  He mimed shooting a water gun at her, and she shrugged.

  “So,” he said slowly. “Between lessons and rehearsal, I’m going to be trapped with my violin forever. I have been trapped. I never even had time to really think about how to do this.”

  “Yes,” Lia said, glancing at their hands. “Your crowded high school agenda.”

  “Don’t laugh. I can’t even find my agenda. Who knows where I’m supposed to be now?” He laughed and ducked, hair falling over his eyes. “Do you want to come to orchestra rehearsal? You can watch. No one minds. People do it all the time, and you don’t have to stay for all of it if it’s boring. We could just spend some more time together during break and after.”

  Lia exhaled through her nose, chest tight with joy. “Are we dating?”

  “We probably have to go on a date to do that.”

  She would’ve sworn he blushed.

  “So…” Gem studied their nails.

  He definitely blushed then. “You can stay, too. Do homework or chat or nap. It feels safer to be near you two.”

  Gem and Lia agreed to stay. It would be nice to put off going home, and Lia wanted to figure out who her assassin was without her mom looming over her shoulder. Gem and Lia picked a corner near the back of the auditorium, where the heat puffed out of a vent at random intervals and the overhead light didn’t flicker, and a dozen other friends picked uncomfortable wooden seats around them. Lia scrolled through her spreadsheet of everyone’s schedules. At least fifteen were theoretically free when Lia and Gem had seen the figure at the park.

  “Aubree, Bryce, Cassidy, Devon, Hunter, Jax, Jeremiah, Laurie, Mateo, Mercedes, Nicky, Noah, Oliver, Ryder, Rose, Stephen, Tamora, and Zack,” Lia said. “Plus anyone whose schedule changed since the game started.”

  “Who even is Aubree?” Gem asked, scrolling through their phone.

  “Transferred last year. Loves Hello Kitty.” Lia groaned. “I had way more information in my journal.”

  Lia reached down into her bag to grab her agenda, and left half of her textbooks on the floor.

  Gem snorted and glanced down. “Well, well, well.” Gem reached into Lia’s backpack and pulled a small leather journal from the very bottom. “Someone named Lia Prince is the worst.”

  “What the hell?” Lia took her journal from Gem and flipped through it. It was a bit beaten up, as if it had been living at the bottom of a bag for weeks, but she had emptied her backpack at home the day she thought it was gone. “No way.”

  The pages were as Lia remembered them, and a cold dread settled over her. Had she really missed this? Forgotten she had grabbed it?

  “It was not in there this whole time,” she said. “It couldn’t have been. I emptied this bag so many times.”

  Gem nodded, eyes wide. “Yeah.”

  “I did!”

  “I am sure you did,” Gem said. “Just like I am sure that trauma can affect memory.”

  Lia’s fingers picked at the fraying leather strings meant to keep the journal shut, and flipped open the journal to Aubree’s page.

  “Afraid of dogs and bees,” read Lia. “Great. My memory is terrible, our friends are dead, and someone I can’t figure out is going to take me out of the game.”

  Lia drew a line through everyone on the football and soccer teams. They had withdrawn and forfeited their upcoming matches.

  “Not to be a broken record,” Gem said, “but priorities. Mark off Ryder. He was tutoring. I can’t imagine Laurie getting her hands dirty, Jax is creepy but was on a date, and Mateo was streaming League all afternoon. His streaming schedule is in his bio.”

  Lia sank down into her seat and propped her feet up on the chair in front of her. “Okay, that helps.”

  They lapsed into silence. Lia watched the rehearsal, in awe of the way the players shifted from students to musicians. Devon tilted his chin and arched his fingers, preparing to play, and the tension seeped from him as the music carried across the auditorium. There was a purpose in the movement and calm in his face, and Lia couldn’t think of a time when she had ever felt how he looked. But still a sense of calm settled over her as Devon and the others played on. The instructor called for them to stop and spoke to the horn section. Devon lowered his violin.

  He caught her gaze every time he could, the crook of his smile lost in the stage lights.

  Gem groaned. “I’m going to run to Sonic and you can moon over Devon while I’m gone.”

  “You’re still in the game and there is a literal murderer running around,” Lia pointed out. “I should go with you.”

  “If you go with me, we won’t be let back into the school.” Gem raised one hand to Lia’s face. “I love you, and I understand your fear; however, I need a minute or two alone to eat jalapeño poppers in my car with no one to judge me.”

  “I only judge you when you eat all of them before I can have one,” Lia said.

  “And…well…I’m going to talk to May.”

  Lia’s face fell. “Oh.”

  “Yeah, she said she wanted to talk, and I don’t really want to do that with an audience,” Gem said, their smile slipping. “I’ll text you when I get to my car, when I get to Sonic, and when I get back. There’s this stairwell right behind the stage. I should get back during their first break, and you can let me in through there.”

  “You’ll lock the car, right?” Lia asked.

  “Of course,” Gem said. “And Mr. Jackson is almost always on his porch right now, so it’s not like I’ll be alone.”

  The man who had lived across from the school for the last decade was practically a volunteer security guard for the parking lots at this point, but to get to the car, Gem would have to walk down the street. They wouldn’t be on school property.

  “I’ll be fine,” Gem said. “I’ll be on the phone with May for most of the time. Don’t worry.”

  Lia tried not to worry. She really did. She waved at Devon from her spot in the back of the auditorium and focused on her homework. Gem texted twice as promised, and when Gem was in the lot and about to walk back, Lia slipped out of her row. Devon glanced at Lia as she climbed onto the stage.

  “Gem went to Sonic and is out back now,” Lia explained. “Is there some sort of secret door back here?”

  “Oh, yeah.” He grabbed his water bottle and led her to a crooked metal door behind the curtain on stage right. “This leads to that back lot but the door locks automatically, so you can open it but don’t let it close behind you.”

  Lia peeked over the edge of the stairs down into the dim hall. The back lot was a swathe of cracked concrete between the school and a neighboring housing community, and it wasn’t technically school grounds. Most students used it when they arrived too late to find a spot in the student lots. “Creepy. I never knew this was here.”

  “We use it to leave,” Devon said, tapping the graffiti-covered cement walls. “And keep it a secret so no one catches us skipping.”

  Lia snorted. “Like you ever have. Thanks.”

  “Just save me a tater tot or something,” Devon said.

  OMW, Lia sent Gem. She jogged down the stairs and opened the door. No Gem. She checked her phone—nothing.

  Lia propped open the door to the back lot with a rock. The area was mostly empty, only a few people lingering on porches and in driveways. Lia sprinted to the lot.

  Gem’s car sat empty and off in the
middle of the lot.

  And Gem, unmoving, sat propped up against its side.

  Lia froze. Hot, sticky fear prickled over her skin and clogged her throat. There was no one else around, and no reason why Gem would ever sit on the ground. Lia forced one leg forward. Then the other.

  “Gem?” she called, voice shaking. The hair stood up straight on Lia’s arms.

  “I messed up,” shouted Gem. “I’m out.”

  “Gem,” Lia croaked. “What the heck?”

  “I got tagged and my leggings are wet. If I stand up, it’ll look like I peed myself.” Gem stared up at Lia. “What’s up?”

  Lia let out a strangled laugh. “I thought you were dead.”

  “Crap. I’m sorry.”

  Lia sank down next to Gem, still laughing. Gem snorted. “Is it really that funny?”

  “No,” Lia said, gasping for breath. “But you’re not dead, so…”

  “I was foolish!” Gem gasped and swooned, lying across Lia’s legs. “They have killed me mother. Run away, I pray you!”

  “Okay, calm down, Macbeth.” Lia hugged Gem tightly, then pushed them off. “You’re getting me all wet.”

  “It was Nelson Zook, and his water gun’s tank was basically a bucket,” Gem told her. “Macduff’s son, actually.”

  “I only watched the play because you were in it.” Lia stood and helped Gem up. “Let’s go, Macduff.”

  Lia delivered Devon a few tater tots, then left, removing the rock from the door and rejoining Gem in the car. Lia let Devon know that Gem was out

  Bold of them to do it so close to school, Devon texted as Gem drove Lia home. Get home safe.

  You too, Lia said. It was a good excuse to get together while it lasted at least.

  We don’t need an excuse to get together.

  Lia grinned and tucked her phone away. “It wasn’t Nelson the other day, you know.”

  Nelson was a stout kid with lanky brown hair and a love of neon hoodies. His family had lived and died in Lincoln for over a century. The tradition must have run too deep in his family for him to quit even with the ban.

  “Yeah, our park stalker was too tall,” Gem said.