Rush (10 page)

I scan down, frantic.

In celebration of Richelle’s life . . .

Miss you, Rich. xox

Thinking about Richelle while I study for finals . . .

There’s post after post from her friends and family and even people who say they never met her but knew someone who knew someone who knew her.

And there’s a post with a brief article from the local paper, outlining the circumstances of her death. I scan it, then go back and read it in more detail. She fell to her death trying to save a little boy who’d climbed out on her neighbor’s roof. She managed to save him but not herself. I stare at it. Read it again. Two things jump out at me: the fact that Richelle was on a roof when she was scared of heights and the date of her death.

“No.” I don’t understand. According to this page, Richelle died more than seven months ago. “No,” I say again, louder. It’s not possible that she’s been dead all that time. It’s not possible that she’s dead at all. We were healed. Luka and I . . . we came back healed. That’s what’s supposed to happen when we get pulled back from the mission. Luka and Richelle said so.

But Richelle’s dead. Has been for seven months.

This can’t be right.

I open a new tab and search the word
respawn. To generate or give rise to an entity or player after its death or destruction in the game
.

Luka and I regenerated; we came back with nothing more than a couple of scrapes. And Luka said he’s been part of the game for over a year, getting pulled again and again. He’d been hurt and healed again and again.
I
was hurt and healed. We got hit by the truck; we respawned in the lobby. We were shot by the Drau; we respawned in real life. But every gash and break and scrape disappeared when we came back.

It isn’t a game. It’s a nightmare.

I close that tab and return to Richelle’s page. It makes no sense. Richelle can’t have been dead for— I look at the page and check the dates again.

How can she have been dead for seven months when I just saw her Friday? I talked to her. Laughed with her.

My recollections writhe and twist.
The bracelet’s your con. The color’s your health. Don’t let it turn red
.

Red.

Images flash through my thoughts like a strobe light: The truck’s bumper, stained with cherry-juice smears. Blood on the ground. Blood on Luka’s broken arm. Blood staining my jeans dark crimson.

I wrap my arms around myself, trying to hold it together as I remember Luka’s look of horror when my con turned orange. And right before we got pulled back, Richelle’s screen was red. I saw it. We all saw it. They knew what it meant, but I didn’t. Oh God, I didn’t know.

Richelle is dead. She’s not coming back.

With a moan, I lower my head and press the sides of my balled fists against my forehead. My eyes sting. My throat feels thick.

I thought it was a game. Luka called it that. I know he did. Tyrone treated it like one. Richelle said he wants to sell the rights. . . .

But Jackson said it was no game. He said it was real, and that what we did determined our survival. I thought he was crazy. I
wanted
to think he was crazy.

I’m shaking as I grab my phone. No more texts. No more evasions. I call Luka’s number and when it goes to voice mail, I start to babble, “She’s gone. Oh my God, she’s gone. She’s dead. For real dead. As in
dead
. I need to talk to you. Please, Luka. I need to talk to you.”

I hang up and pace the length of my room as I dial his number again, my hands shaking. My stomach churns and rolls.

Voice mail again. My babbling is even less coherent the second time. And by the third, I’m not even talking, just breathing hard, willing Luka to answer.

Panting, I stare at my phone. I want to call Carly. I need to call Carly. But I don’t dare drag her into this. I can’t put her in danger. The thought of Carly dead like Richelle is more than I can bear. What if one phone call seals her fate?

I hear the slam of a car door. I look out to see Dad pulling away. I stare blankly for a second before I recall that at breakfast he told me he planned to do the grocery shopping. I’m alone, all alone, which is both a bad and a good thing. I don’t trust myself at the moment. If Dad hadn’t left, if he’d walked into my room right now, I might have told all.

At which point he probably would have done a room search for drugs and then hauled me to the ER at Rochester General for a mental health assessment.

Hugging myself, I rub my palms up and down my upper arms. I feel like the walls are closing in on me, like my skin is too tight, my blood too thin. I turn and stare at my computer and see Richelle looking back at me.

I dial Luka again. “Luka, please. I’m begging you, pick up. I need to talk. I need—”

Anger surges and I disconnect the call. I’m alone, and the only person who can help me deal with this is me. Have I learned nothing? Everyone leaves. Gram. Sofu. Mom—

In the end, you can only rely on you.

I drag on running gear, lace my shoes, fill a small water bottle and tuck it into the holster at my waist. I’m moving on autopilot, not thinking, just doing.

I don’t usually—
ever
—run in the afternoons. I don’t run on Sundays. But this isn’t just any Sunday afternoon.

Richelle is dead. Richelle is dead. Richelle is dead
.

The thought feels both immediate and distant at the same time. I stare at her picture on the screen and somewhere buried underneath my pain is the calm, cold voice of reason. I need to hide my tracks. The game can’t bleed into real life; Luka made that very clear.

At least this small thing I can control.

I stand up and walk over to my computer, double-check that I was set to private browsing, then close the window. I hit Reset. And then I say a silent word of thanks to Carly, who’s always trying to make certain that her multitude of brothers can’t find out what sites she’s been to. She’s the one who told me that my operating system could cache entries, even when I’m set to private browsing. And she’s the one who taught me the command to clear it. Not that I’ve ever needed it before, but she was insistent that one never knew when something like this would come in handy.

I type the command: Terminal: dscacheutil—flushcache.

All evidence wiped clean.

“Good-bye, Richelle,” I whisper.

I feel like a robot as I lock the front door, then run down the driveway. My music. I forgot it. I spin toward the house but can’t face going back inside. I spin back toward the road and slam into something hard. Hands close on my upper arms, steadying me. My head jerks back, I look up a good six inches, and my breath locks in my chest.

“Hey,” Jackson says.

I RUN. JACKSON RUNS BESIDE ME. WE DON’T TALK. WE DON’T even look at each other. No, that’s not quite true. I sneak sidelong glances, not trusting myself to speak yet.

He’s not wearing the aviator shades anymore. He’s switched them out for a pair of wraparound Oakleys, black on black, the lenses so dark that I wonder how he can see through them even in the sunlight.

We’ve done a mile before I ask, “What are you doing here?”

“Running.”

“Just once, can you be something other than an asshole?” I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to hurt anyone as much as I want to hurt Jackson Tate in that moment. I imagine punching him in the head.

“You want to punch me in the head,” he says, and when I stop dead and turn to stare at him, he shakes his head. “No, I can’t read your—”

“Mind,” I finish for him. “So you’ve said. More than once, I think. I’m not sure I believe you. After all, I could hear you in my mind. What’s to say you can’t hear me in yours?”

“Me. I’m saying it. And I’m telling you the truth.”

“The truth? Would you recognize it if it bit you on the ass?”

He smiles a little but says nothing.

I sigh. “Why are you here, Jackson?”

“I’m here for you, Miki. To try and help you figure things out.”

My breath catches, then rushes in to fill my lungs. “Only if I ask the right questions.”

He gives a short nod. “True enough.”

I start running again, afraid that if I don’t, I really might hit him. Or dissolve in tears. Neither option will lead to anything good. I’m out of control and I don’t like it. My feet pound the sidewalk, the rhythm familiar. I cling to that familiarity, letting it ground me. I think that if I don’t hold on to something, my sanity will slip away.

Richelle’s dead. I want to know how and why. I want to know how it’s even possible. Those are the questions I need to ask, along with dozens of others. I need to do it in a way that doesn’t break the rules Luka alluded to. And since Jackson’s so fond of nonanswers, I need to do it in a way that’ll get me what I want. I center my thoughts, using every trick Dr. Andrews, my grief counselor, taught me. Breathing. Visualization. Distraction.

“Plotting my demise?” Jackson asks, turning his head toward me for a second as we run.

“Something like that.”

“I’m not good at this, Miki.”

“At what?”

“Explaining.”

My laugh is short and hard and dark. “No shit.” I feel a little bad as soon as I say it. He’s trying. Sort of. I should meet him halfway.

“Does it break the rules if I say her name?”

“It breaks the rules for me to be here at all. But there are breaks”—he pauses—“and there are
breaks
.”

We run side by side, keeping a steady pace. After a few minutes, I ask, “Who makes the rules?”

“Let’s just say . . . they’re decided by committee.”

He said something like that before, when I asked him who decided on the name for the con.

“Are you on that committee?”

He makes a sound somewhere between a grunt and a laugh. “No.”

He slows to a walk, and I slow with him.

“What happens if we break the rules?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer, either because he doesn’t know or because he doesn’t want me to know. Whatever the consequences are, they worry Luka enough that he won’t even talk to me. Or not. Maybe there are no consequences; maybe it’s just an amorphous threat that’s holding Luka hostage. I’m not brave enough—or maybe it’s that I’m not foolish enough—to take the risk. So I come at things from a different angle. I keep my comment generic and say, “She’s dead.”

Jackson nods. I take that as a sign that I can safely continue.

“For seven months.” Every syllable is laced with my pain and confusion.

Jackson nods again.

“So I fought beside—”

“Tsss,”
Jackson hisses through his teeth. A warning. So apparently there
are
lines I have to be careful not to cross. No talk of fighting. Probably avoiding the mention of weapons or aliens is a plan.

“So I
met
. . . what? Her ghost?” I ask.

“No,” he says. He stops. I stop. We’re at the park, which is surprisingly empty for a sunny Sunday afternoon. He walks over to the swings and leans back against a wooden post, watching me. He’s long and lean, his black running gear outlining the muscles of his limbs.

Angry with myself for noticing, I look away. The last thing I need to do is to think of Jackson Tate as anything other than a source of information.

“You catch on quick,” Jackson says.

“What does that mean?” My gaze shoots to his, except it doesn’t because his eyes are hidden. I wish I could see them. I wish I could tell if he’s looking straight at me or avoiding my eyes. My mom always used to say, if wishes were pennies . . .

“It means what I said. That you catch on quick. I notice that you aren’t mentioning specifics.”

“Does it matter?” I glance around at the empty park. “Who’s listening?”

His smile is tight and dangerous. “Who knows? That’s the point. That’s the danger. They could be anywhere.”

He’s talking about the Drau. Dread knots in my belly as I realize what his words mean: the Drau aren’t confined to the game. They could be here, in my world, my real world. I glance around the empty park. “Are you trying to scare me?”

“No. I’m trying to answer your questions.”

I give him the thumbs-up. “And doing a great job, too.” I slump down onto a swing, dragging my feet on the ground as I surge forward and back. “Why are you here, really?”

“You called Luka.”

“Yeah, I called
Luka
. To talk to
him
. What exactly does that have to do with you?” I pause, considering, and then feel the heat of mortification in my cheeks. “He called you? He asked you to come see me because I’m this crazy girl who won’t stop calling him?”

Jackson laughs. The sound is low and a little rusty, like he doesn’t laugh often. I feel that laugh somewhere inside me, like butterflies. “Not because you’re the crazy girl. He called to tell me he was going to break the rules and meet you.”

That’s a big deal. Even though I ended up here with Jackson, the fact that Luka was willing to break the rules for me feels like he was offering me a gift. “Why would he call to tell you that?”

Jackson’s shoulder lifts in an easy shrug. “Either he wanted my blessing or he wanted me to talk him out of it.”

“Which route did you decide to go with?”