Tim Fletcher got a text. Someone was always texting him. Great game. Great party. Great future. Great life. But this was weird and different.
Ask her what she did with the bracelet.
No name. No number.
He felt the rage flare instantly.
He knew something was up with that bracelet. Why hadn’t she worn it yesterday? Why had she acted so over-the-top calm when he pressed her on it. Too calm. It was a tell.
He should’ve trusted his instincts.
She’d been drifting for months. He’d discussed it with her parents. This was a dangerous time, right before college, for her to go off the rails. Some mistakes even privilege couldn’t fix.
He found in her usual hiding spot, studying in the always-empty overflow room on 3E. Why did she need to study? What the fuck for? What did that say about him?
“Do you have it today?”
“What?” she said, playing dumb.
He was done with that. “The fucking bracelet. Let me see it.”
“It’s at home.…”
“Bullshit. Do you think I’m going to let you make a fool of me?”
“Tim, come on, I—”
“Enough.”
He slammed his fist down so hard on the table the room went deadly silent the moment everything stopped rattling. Mary pushed away from her laptop, the little eye staring back blankly at her, and glared at Tim.
He smirked back. “No more lies. Not about Charlie. Not about the bracelet. Not about Caitlyn and that fucking wannabe Peter. Enough.” He leaned across the table. Slowly he said, “Where the fuck is my bracelet?”
Mary met his eyes. “I threw it in the lake.”
“Is that some kind of joke?”
Mary had the calm of a captain whose ship would sink no matter what she did. She folded her arms. “No joke.”
Then she braced herself.
Kenny and Charlie met in the Tech Lab.
“What happened?”
“We’re okay now.”
“That’s it? You get called to Morrissey’s office, and suddenly we’re okay?”
“What about you? Did you quit?”
“I don’t know. I think so.”
“What did it say?”
“It said okay.”
“That’s it?”
“Well, it also said bye.”
“That sounds good.”
“Then it sent me a picture of a grave.”
“Oh. For you?”
“For my mom. And me.”
“That’s sick.”
“Yeah.”
“And evil.”
“I know.”
Kenny almost said something, then didn’t.
“Are you okay?” Charlie asked.
“Not really.”
“Can I help?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Can you quit? Now that we’re in the clear?”
“It could take it back in a second.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t think we’re ever in the clear.” Then Kenny thought of Candace. “But there’s some good things, too.”
“Like?”
Kenny couldn’t bring himself to say. It was almost shameful, earning his first kiss through a game. He just shook his head.
“Was it worth it?” Charlie asked.
Kenny thought of the look on Eddie’s face, his world crumbling around him. Eddie was a jerk, long before the Game was in their lives. Who’s to say he didn’t have it coming? Kenny thought of the way Candace’s tongue felt, gliding along his own.
He saw the wall, smeared with bile in two words and four crossed lines.
Yet he meant what he said to Vanhi, that bile was always there, no matter how many people thought it had magically vanished. What had his father always said about infections in the ER? You have to lance a boil. The puss must come out. Or it explodes. Maybe the graffiti would start a dialogue. Lead to a crackdown on racist thugs at school. There were plenty.
So—was it worth it?
He tried to run the math, but in the end all he could say was “I have no idea.”
Mr. Walker sat across the street, down the block at the bus stop.
He’d been there for two hours, letting each bus pass on the half hour.
It was strange. He knew which one was his. He could ride the bus alone, even when his dad was still alive.
It was upsetting to hear his father’s voice this morning, but it was also nice. He didn’t understand the rules of being dead. He knew what his mom had told him, that it meant going away. She never said you couldn’t call, especially if it was important.
He wondered if his dad would call back again. Somehow, he knew the answer was no.
Earlier, when the Mexican kid left, Morrissey’s secretary had called him back in. She said it so nice, Mr. Walker knew something bad was going to happen.
“Mr. Walker, thank you for telling me what happened earlier.”
“Okay.” He fiddled with his overalls.
“Now, I need you to listen closely. You can’t work here anymore.”
“Ma’am?”
“You took bribes from a student. You let kids into a dangerous off-limits area. I can forgive you for washing away evidence because, well, just because. But the rest? Mr. Walker, you knew better, didn’t you?”
He hung his head in shame. Even if he had lied about some of it, yes, he did do the things she said.
“I knew better,” he managed.
“That’s all, Mr. Walker. Get your things, and Mr. McMahon will see you out.”
Dragon: Roar!
“Ma’am?” he asked, not moving yet.
“What is it, Mr. Walker?”
“Well, where exactly do I go, Mrs. Morrissey?”
“Now? To get your things, from the staff.…”
“No, ma’am. Not now. Monday, I mean.”
Mrs. Morrissey sighed. I had been a brutally long day.
“That’s up to you, Mr. Walker. But it can’t be here. Understand?”
He nodded. It was awful. But it beat what the voice said could’ve happened. This was just what he deserved, for the things he’d done.
If he were smarter, if he weren’t such a Dumb Dingus, he might’ve been able to think his way out of this. As it was, he couldn’t quite connect all the events in his mind at the same time.
He let another bus pass, but he would get on the next one. He looked down the street again, at the windows he’d polished and the trash cans he’d emptied for all those years, and realized he felt sad to go.
Mary rubbed her throat. She touched her side gingerly.
She could tell on him. But she knew what would happen if she did.
Wednesday had been the anniversary of the crash. On this day, two years ago, they had pulled the plug on Mary’s brother in the ICU.
Six months later, she founded her school’s chapter of SADD in his honor. Caitlyn had warned her not to. “I know you’re sad, and this sucks, but really? Who’s gonna join a club that says you can’t drink?”
Caitlyn, Tim, Kurt, all of them. She was done. It had taken her years to unlearn the things her family had taught her. To unsee the world the way they did. But she had no idea what lay beyond. Whom to be. She felt like an atom on the verge of exploding, the forces holding her fragile world together only a hair stronger than the forces pulling it apart.
She needed to do something for herself. Something Tim would hate. Something he had told her not to do. A first step.
She knew what that was.
She walked down the hallway, past the bronze tiger with one paw raised in attack, to the bulletin board with the pen hanging by a chain. A notice said:
STUDENT BODY PRESIDENT—ELECTION NOV. 8, 2016.
Tim had always hated student council. You don’t represent these people, he told her. You’re not on the same planet with them.
He would really hate this.
She scanned the list.
A few names were on it now, but only the last one caught her eye.
Charlie Lake.
She was shocked. Then she was proud. She knew what it meant for Charlie to take a step—a big, public step—back into the world of the living.
She remembered his lips, the rough edge of the cut where he took the punch for a weak kid being attacked by a strong kid.
Good for him, she thought.
But then another voice in her mind said, You are not going to let another man get in the way of your dreams. Not again. You have to put yourself first. For once.
It was like the bracelet Charlie had tried to give her—well-meaning, but at the end of the day, same handcuff, different jailer.
This wasn’t about Charlie. This was about her.
But what would it do to him?
She didn’t know, and her hand hesitated.
Then she thought of Tim and signed her name at the bottom of the list.
Charlie watched the video on his phone. It came just like the mall video—OH SNAP—but this time it was Mary and Tim. The hand on the neck. The smack to the gut.
It erased itself, gone forever, the moment it had played.
He wanted to find Mary. But he’d seen her texts about him. She wasn’t interested.
His next instinct was to run to Peter. The night he showed Charlie that video of Kurt, Peter had offered Charlie some kind of secret information on Tim, too. Turning it down had seemed noble at the time, but Charlie wondered briefly if it was too late to get it back.
But he was done with the Game—he’d promised himself. Plus he couldn’t face his friends if he crumbled so quickly, the moment he needed something, after making such a big production of quitting. He would handle this himself.
He knew Tim had Geology next, Rocks for Jocks, and headed down the stairs two at a time to catch him before he went into class. Charlie saw his blond hair, a head above everyone else, and called out, “Tim. Hey, Tim.”
Tim turned around, and a raging look was in his eyes, as if the fight had started hours ago and Charlie had just showed up late.
Charlie went toward him, but before he knew it, Tim threw him backward, so hard that the lockers buckled behind him and a lock dug into his back.
Tim didn’t even bother to watch. He just turned and went into his class.
Charlie was a flea to him. A nuisance.
No kind of king, in this or any other world.