by James Frey
But it’s the stone, waiting for her answer.
“Yes,” Sarah says, because her people have summoned her to duty, and she’s been raised to believe that this is a call that demands an answer. She repeats the words that she’s carefully memorized. “Yes, I swear. I swear to take your lives onto my shoulders. I swear to serve the Cahokian people to the best of my abilities and beyond. I swear to Play.”
Players are supposed to have time to learn their craft. Time for training in weapons, meditation, languages, code cracking, pain tolerance, physics and computers and bomb making. Time to understand their responsibilities, then find a way to make their Playing their own.
Sarah has no time.
No one knows when Endgame will come: it could start tomorrow.
She’s not ready.
As days of grueling training turn into weeks, she’s unsure she’ll ever be ready.
So are her trainers.
At Sarah’s school, there’s a student trying to become a professional gymnast. She hits the gym for long hours before and after school, stays up all night trying to get her homework done, never has a free second for extracurricular activities, or friends and family, or any kind of life. Though she seems happy enough with her back handsprings and her array of trophies. Sarah has always pitied her—she doesn’t know what she’s missing.
Sarah does know. Her new schedule demands she wake before dawn for a 10-mile run and calisthenics, then cram in as much of that week’s subject—ancient Greek, hydrodynamics, explosives defusing—as possible before school. She sleepwalks through the day, stealing every free period and lunch hour she can to zip through the homework she no longer has time for at home. Then, after school, it’s straight to the training center for martial arts and firearms, a brief meal with her family or, if she’s lucky, Christopher and Reena, then more studying, then merciful, if brief, sleep.
Those are the easy days.
Some days she spends in seclusion, learning to withstand the burn of hot coals on her soft flesh, or trekking through wilderness with neither food nor water, depending on her wits and the bounty of nature to keep herself alive and find her way home.
She’s starting to feel like she lives at the training facility, a nondescript building only 10 minutes from her house, its lease owned by the Cahokian elders, its interior filled with workout equipment and weapons stores. She spends more time with the experts employed by the council, steely-eyed trainers who treat her like a machine, than she does with the people she loves.
More weeks pass, and her reflexes sharpen; her muscles harden; her skin grows insensitive to touch, her system inured to pain. Sometimes she feels like she’s turning to stone.
The new skills come easily to her, as everything always has, but the trainers are unsatisfied.
They’re always telling her how much harder her brother worked, how much more he wanted it, how they can tell her mind is somewhere else.
They’re right.
“What happened?” Christopher asks in alarm the morning she comes to school with a black eye. He raises a finger to the purpling bruise, but she ducks his touch.
“I walked into a door,” she mumbles.
The lies are getting lamer.
Eventually, he’s going to get tired of this and break up with her. Or she’ll do it first and put them both out of their misery.
That’s probably the right thing to do, but she can’t bring herself to consider it. She’s not that strong.
“Sarah . . .” He puts his arms around her, and she almost loses it. For two months, she’s stayed steady, she’s made herself hard; she’s lied to Christopher and Reena so she can steal time for her training; sometimes she’s even lied to her trainers so she can steal time for Christopher and Reena. She’s told herself that this isn’t so bad, that she can do it, that any day now things will get easier, life will get calmer, Tate will start speaking to her again, everything will start to seem normal again, even though it never can be. She’s told herself that being the Player is no different from being a starting forward on the soccer team or being president of the honor society—just a few more things on her to-do list, no biggie. She’s walled up the truth, locked it away, but now, in Christopher’s arms, she feels the walls crumbling. A crowd swirls around them, students grabbing things from their lockers, hurrying off to class, chattering and buzzing about all the important problems of junior high life. Sarah feels a sudden surge of hate for them, how easy they have it, how little they understand. She breathes deep, breathes in the smell of Christopher’s soap, tries her best to block them all out. Pretend that she and Chris are the only two people that matter. The only two that exist. He whispers in her ear. “Sarah, if something was going on with you, something at home, or wherever . . . you’d tell me, right?”
She feels the sting of tears, knows that if she holds on to him much longer, she’ll lose it completely. She’s so tired—of lying to him and to herself that she can do it all. But if she lets herself collapse, if she lets him be the strong one and hold her up while she cries, there will only be more questions, and more lies.
“I told you, everything’s fine.” It comes out more harshly than she intends, and Christopher recoils. She angles her face away so he can’t see the sheen of tears in her eyes. She spots Reena picking her way through the crowd, waving eagerly as she approaches. The open, trusting look on her face makes Sarah’s heart clench. “I’m late for homeroom,” she says brusquely, and before Christopher can stop her, she rushes away.
She gets better at making up excuses.
Intensive French lessons in preparation for an imaginary summer abroad, a nonexistent international math competition to study for, a doctor’s appointment for Tate, a surgery for Tate, rehab and therapy for Tate—it’s easy, at least, to make up Tate-related excuses, because Reena and Christopher know how angry and miserable and damaged he is, if not why. They are endlessly kind and understanding, and Sarah hates herself for lying to them.
And even then, even after all she’s given up and all the energy she’s thrown into her new mission, it’s still not enough.
“Honey, your trainer’s a bit concerned about something,” Sarah’s father says, as the four of them dig into his Sunday special: spaghetti and meatballs. It used to be Sarah’s favorite part of the week, but now she’s usually too busy for Sunday family dinners, and Tate almost always eats in his room.
“Which trainer?” Sarah asks, mouth full of pasta. She has a different trainer for each specialty—which means that even after nearly six months, they still feel like strangers.
Her parents exchange a glance. “Well . . . all of them,” her father admits.
“Oh.”
“They think you’re too distracted,” her mother says. “That you’re not focused enough on your training.”
“Are you kidding me?” Sarah feels like she’s going to explode. “I’m giving everything to this! What more do they want from me?”
“Last weekend you went to the mall with Reena when you could have been working on your Chinese,” her mother points out gently. “And I know you’ve been staying up late talking to Christopher on the phone when you need your sleep”—she held up a hand before Sarah could interrupt—“and I understand: you’re juggling a lot; you’re doing the best you can. But your trainers have suggested we make a few changes. Maybe it’s time to rethink the question of school—”
“No,” Sarah snaps. “No way. I’m not dropping out of school.”
“It would just be for a year or so, until you get your feet under you,” her father says. “And it’s not exactly dropping out. You already know everything they’re teaching you anyway. Your lessons here would—”
“No!” Sarah feels like a child having a temper tantrum, and wishes she knew how to let herself go that way, wishes she could have a temper tantrum, fists pounding, tears streaming. Then they would know how she feels, and they would stop this. “I’m giving everything I can to Playing, but I can’t give up my whole life. Tell th
em, Tate.”
Tate flinches, like he’s surprised they know he’s there. Like he was hoping he’d turned invisible.
“No comment,” he mumbles, and fidgets with his eye patch. The doctors say he’s ready to be fitted for a fake eye, but Tate refuses. He doesn’t want to pretend everything’s normal, he says. And he doesn’t want to give his family, or anyone else, the luxury of pretending either.
Sarah presses on. “You didn’t have to drop out of school. You graduated.”
He shrugs. “Lot of good it did me.”
He’s 18 now, and was expecting to spend the next couple of years focused solely on Playing. Sarah knows he never looked any further than that. Certainly not toward college, or a career. Tate has only ever wanted to Play. Now he lies in bed, listens to music, and promises his parents he’ll figure out what to do with his life. Someday.
“You’re not your brother, honey,” her mother says.
Tate snorts into his spaghetti. “That’s for sure.”
Sarah doesn’t know whether she wants to cry or use her new krav maga prowess to flip over the table and jam a fork into his neck. But either way, she’s lost her appetite. She pushes back from the table and rises to her feet. “Thanks for dinner,” she tells her father, in a tone that says, Thanks for nothing. “But apparently, I’ve got work to do.”
She’s standing by her locker when a shadow falls over her. Strong arms scoop her up and two hands press over her eyes, shutting her into darkness.
She flinches.
“Guess who.”
She recognizes Christopher’s warm voice just in time—she was about to flip him over her shoulder and slam him to the floor. She’s tensed for violence all the time now; her trainers have taught her to always be searching the shadows for enemies, to always be on alert for those who want to destroy her.
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.”
