My phone buzzes with a message from Anton HQ.
Lay low and await instructions. MY game isn’t over until I say it’s over.
Anton is losing control of his own creation. Rose is stomping him into the ground and leaving the scraps to the police. I can’t help but laugh out loud, making some tourists ogling the river glance nervously at me.
From my spot on the bridge, I watch the Coastguard's boats circling in the water. A helicopter sweeps past overhead with glaringly bright lights. On the embankment, contestants are led into waiting ambulances or sit wrapped in silver blankets that reflect the reds and blues of silenced sirens.
I figure that more than two dozen people have been rounded up by the police. That leaves about twenty-five of us unaccounted for. From my perspective, the game’s dead in the water. I can’t see how Anton is going to resurrect it now. It’s a shame. I really wanted that money.
But at least this whole experience has freed me from Jesse. I’m happy, honestly.
I keep prodding at my heart, like tonguing the gap left behind after you lose a tooth. It hurts and feels weird. But at the same time, it’s a good kind of pain, clean and sharp. Now that he’s gone, I can see that my relationship with Jesse wasn’t much different from my relationship with Amber. Both of them wanted to control me, and I clung to them both because I believed I needed someone.
Truth is, Jesse asked me out knowing who I was and what I did, then set about systematically trying to change me. He was always berating me for how I dressed, how much makeup I wore, how I styled my hair. He’d get jealous if I was photographed with another man. He’d accuse me of flirting if I so much as spoke to a boy. Bikini photo shoots led to a whole week of sulking and accusations.
On one side, I had Amber pulling me toward the glamour and vanity of her world, forever disappointed that I didn’t quite measure up. On the other, Jesse would have found something to be jealous of even if I’d washed off the makeup and dressed in a sack. It’s not fair that the sack gets to touch your body, he’d have complained.
I laugh at the thought. What a loser.
Even still, my treacherous heart aches at the thought that I’m alone. It whispers that, without Jesse, my escape route is gone. Coward, it says. It knows I won’t run without him. I’m too weary to keep fighting without someone to hold my hand.
You don’t need anyone, I tell myself. If I say it enough times then maybe it will be real.
I join the onlookers peering past the police barricade on the embankment. I look for Charlotte or Grayson. I don’t see them though. What I do see is the words projected on the bridge, cycling through their pattern that ends with DIE, DIE, DIE. Charlotte’s not as boring as I thought she was.
I look over the river wall. A projector sits by the water, abandoned by its operator. The ground’s all churned up by feet and boats. That’s when I spot someone farther down the river, crawling out from under the bridge supports. He’s covered head to toe in mud, so it takes me a second to realize it’s Grayson.
No way. He made it? I watch as he sneaks past the projector and tries to climb up the steps, but he has to go back down when a couple of paramedics walk past. Instead, he tries to scale the wall. He’s beyond muddy. It’s disgusting.
“What are you doing down there?” I call to him.
He pauses and sweeps his filthy hair out of his face. His expression is troubled, but when he sees me, he smiles. “Fancied a paddle, you know? Can you pull me up?”
“I’m not touching you. You look and smell like a sentient poo.”
He laughs at this. “For a second, you almost sounded human, Erin Love.”
I glare at him and point past the bridge. “There are some more steps over there.”
I scrape the dirt out from underneath my nails as I wait for him. He eventually finds the steps and emerges, walking stiffly with the claylike mud weighing down his clothes. We head away from the embankment as quickly as his condition will allow. He squelches with every movement, and I keep catching wafts of rotten eggs.
I gag as a particularly unpleasant smell hits me. “You’re going to need your little friend to bring you some clothes,” I say.
“What friend?”
I raise an eyebrow.
He exhales. “Oh, all right, you got me. But I lost my earpiece in the mud. And my phone.”
I silently offer him mine, noticing as I pass it over that Amber’s tried to call me a dozen times. Grayson wipes his hands on the sidewalk before taking it from me. I wait on a bench while he makes his call. We’re in a shiny built-up part of the city, surrounded by financial companies and expensive sandwich shops. Everything’s closed for the night, giving the street a deserted, end-of-the-world vibe.
“No, I’m OK. I lost my phone.” Grayson glances at me and lowers his voice to a whisper. “She already knew about you. I didn’t tell her anything.”
I close my eyes and pretend that I’m resting.
Grayson moves farther away so that I can’t hear his conversation. A few minutes later, he returns my phone. “She’s bringing me some clothes and a burger,” he says. “She’s getting you one too.”
“I don’t eat dead things.”
“More for me then.”
It’s a fairly long walk to the subway station where she’s meeting us. We head into an upscale part of town packed with expensive bars full of media types. The subway station’s on a street of what seem to be mostly high-end home-goods shops. Even though we arrive late, there’s no one here. We wait outside, a puddle of dirty water gradually forming around Grayson. He smells of rotting vegetation.
There’s still no word from Anton, and our smart cams and bracelets remain offline. At least it means we can meet Grayson’s friend in the open, rather than having to risk an enclosed underground space where our cameras won’t pick her up. Fresh air is the one thing stopping me from puking right now.
Eventually, a girl in a black hoodie appears from behind us. It’s the same jogger who tripped me up. She’s wearing a mask so the only part of her that I can make out is her dark eyes.
“So, introductions,” Grayson says. “Lenny meet Erin, Erin meet Lenny.”
“For goodness’s sake,” Lenny grumbles, shoving a bulging carrier bag at Grayson. “What happened to not telling her my name?”
He blinks. “What’s she going to do?”
“I could tell Anton about her,” I say, sitting down on the curb and stretching out my calves. “You’re not allowed to have help.”
They both gape at me.
“I didn’t say I was going to.” I shrug. “Just that Lenny has a point.”
“Stop using my name,” Lenny says.
“Relax. The whole system’s down, so you’re not being recorded.”
Lenny continues to stare at me, then turns to Grayson. “There’s a phone in the bag. I’ll call you later.”
“But it is interesting that you’re helping him,” I continue. “What’s in it for you?”
“Not doing this.” Lenny walks off, stomping down the road in her ugly-ass sneakers. She pauses to glance at Grayson, then huffs dramatically and quickens her pace.
Grayson’s bewildered expression follows her. “Did I say something?”
“You really are clueless, aren’t you?”
“Um, yes?” he says. “Do you think I should go after her? I mean, we’re not dating, so maybe that’s a bit too much, but I don’t want her to—”
“Yes, go after her!”
“You’re right. I’ll be back in ten, yeah?” He carries the bag she gave him by one handle. One of the burgers spills out as he jogs after her.
I sit there on the dirty sidewalk and ignore the whispers as a group of men in nice suits are forced to weave around me. Rain starts to fall in a fine mist. I turn my face up to the sky. It’s strangely peaceful. But it’s not too long before my moment of calm is interrupted by the sound of a taxi pulling up. A door slams. The tap-tap of high heels approaches. Amber clears her throat.
“You’re ignoring my calls,” she says.
“And you’re tracking my phone’s location.”
Amber is wearing an outfit almost identical to mine. Wet-look leggings and a T-shirt that she’s pulled down off one shoulder to reveal a leopard-print bra. Her hair’s like mine too, only bigger. And her makeup’s heavier, accentuating her swollen upper lip and her rounded cheeks. Nearly everyone who passes by ogles her. Unlike me, she seems to enjoy the attention.
“Why are you sitting down there?” she says, fluffing her hair. “Someone might take a photo of you looking all homeless person.”
“Unlikely,” I say. “Besides, the game’s probably over.”
“That’s not what Anton said.” She waits for me to ask when she spoke to Anton, but I don’t. “I was worried, so I gave him a call. He’s adamant he’s going to stop this Rose nonsense. In fact, he was on his way to intercept the culprit. That’s good news, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. I don’t suppose your bet will pay out if the game’s canceled.”
Her expression goes ugly, but then she pulls it back with a forced laugh. “Don’t joke about that sort of thing, Erin. Now, come on, let’s get you tidied up. Your hair’s an awful mess.”
I thrust both hands into my hair and scrub at my scalp, feeling the tangles forming around my fingers. Then I drag a hand across my lips. It comes away pink with lipstick.
Amber gasps like I’ve torn out her intestines and used them as a scarf. “What are you doing?” she cries. “Oh my god, this is a disaster.”
“I’ll never be enough for you,” I cry, much louder than I intended. A sob makes its way into my voice, which surprises me.
Amber holds out both hands like she’s placating an angry bear. “Have you eaten anything? I have some dried apple slices in my bag.”
“I don’t want any apple! I don’t want any of this. I just want…”
What do I want? I honestly don’t know anymore.
“We’ll fix your face and hair,” Amber says gently. “And I’ll buy you a coffee to perk you up. Why don’t you have some caramel syrup as a treat? You’re getting a lot of exercise running around, after all. Then we’ll talk tactics. We can still win this, Erin.”
Numbly, I let her help me to my feet. I try to convince myself that this is what I want. Security over freedom. In six months, I’ll be eighteen, and maybe things will be different by then.
Deep down, though, I already know that nothing changes unless you force it to.