Page 16 of Rat Race

The semicircular stadium was filled to bursting. Watchers clutching popcorn and soft drinks alongside handmade signs for their favorite players. I spotted my name and face splashed across a few, some of my supporters even going so far as to have custom T-shirts, my own practiced smile staring back at me like a repeating mirror.

I searched the stands, finding my manager in the lower bowl beside the Mantene executives that’d signed off on my check. Sandy was a fucking cougar more interested in bagging herbarely legal assistant than she was the success of her clients, but she was also cutthroat.

Ruthless.

The kind of woman that could get shit done.

Which made us a perfect match.

She pulled her bottle-copper hair around one side, flashing her shoulder at me in an obvious order to move my hair off the back of my jacket.

I fought the urge to roll my eyes, complying with a fake-ass smile that earned me a thumbs up and a double-handed fake grab at her boobs with a smirk that I’d guessed meant she approved of my outfit.

Fucking perv.If I gave her half an inch, I knew she’d like nothing more than to be three acrylics deep in me.

As if.

Mine weren’t the only sponsors to show up for their players, not to mention the holographic adverts that played while the countdown ran on the massive screen above, warning the next heat of players that their time to enter the maze was rapidly approaching.

I even caught myself on one of them. Smiling like it was my birthday before applying a thick layer of Purrfect Pout lip plumper.

To be fair, I actually liked the product—though nowhere near enough to front the sixty-five-dollar price point. Besides, it wasn’t the lip plumper that gave me this signature pout. It was filler.

Duh.

The crowd was restless. Excited conversation and cheers turning into a welcome backing track as I waited for my chance to finally get my hands on the bitch. A task that’d be made more difficult by her sizable head start. But hey, I had always been good at catching up.

As it was, I didn't give two shits about the people behind me. As soon as I was placed in the large circle-shaped waiting area, my eyes sought her out.

It didn’t matter that everyone had glowing masks. Or that many of the costumes were…distracting, to say the least. I found her almost immediately.

Natalie Phillips.

Turns out that after a lifetime of living in someone’s shadow, you get pretty good at identifying them from behind. Especially after you factored in me chasing behind her as she raced ahead with her grubby little hands outstretched to grab ahold of literallyeverythingI ever wanted.

Well, except cheer captain. Shout out to Vic for that one.

She was dressed in a light purple two-piece outfit that reminded me of our old cheer uniforms, warm brown hair styled in a lightly curled bouncy ponytail with a glittering bow. Her mask, a matching purple one with hearts for eyes, was sitting securely over her face.

I fought the urge to roll my eyes.

Could you be any more cliche?

Talk about peaked in fucking high school.

I’d imagined running up behind her and attacking her when she least expected it more times than I could count, if only to pass the time.

It was the least she deserved after the humiliation she put me through. After theyearsof coming in second.

Unacceptable.

My face burned just thinking about it.

There was only one thing that stopped me. Murder was illegal. It wouldn’t bode well for an obvious front-runner such as myself to get banned from the Games before they even started.

I might not be a Legacy but I was as good as one—my mom worked in the Architects’ office for most of my life. That meant status. Prestige.

Even if I did miss out on the media perks.

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