Page 23 of How We Play the Game
Wait. Ivan ran away and went into someone’s room. On the girls’ floor. Without a key. And my door is still unlocked from when Cassius was in there.
That motherf—He’s in my room!
“Excuse me,” I say to both Emilia and Jake. “Thank you both so much for talking to me and the advice and …” I peek down the hall. No sign of Ivan coming out of my room. He’s still in there.
“No problem,” Jake says.
“And for telling that guy you knew me, even if he didn’t totally believe you, but I have to … I gotta—”
“Go,” Emilia says with a smile. “And forget that guy. Who actively chooses the nickname Chaz, anyway?”
“I know, right? Thank you!” I enthusiastically agree, then give them both an awkward military-adjacent salute before I peel off from the party and jog back down the hall with my heart racing. Maybe I was wrong before. Someone else could have left their door open. Ivan could be in their room, not mine.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I WAS RIGHT about one thing. My door is still propped open with the locking bar sticking out when I slow my jog at my end of the hall. I smack the door open, half expecting Ivan to jump out at me like a poltergeist. Nothing. The room is empty.
In the handful of minutes I’ve spent in the lounge, the sun has set, casting my bedroom in a bluish darkness split only by a streak of bright fluorescent light coming from the cracked-open bathroom door. I didn’t turn that light on. Even if I did, the motion sensor inside should have turned it off by now—which reminds me: I need to remove that sensor. I’m eco-friendly in a lot of ways, but I take long showers. With hair like mine, I kind of have to. That, and showers are the one activity during which no one outside of Norman Bates is likely to interrupt me and I can actually think.Note to self: Disable that sensor.
That’s a tomorrow problem, though. I can hear more of today’s problem rustling around in my en suite, accompanied by the tinny clink of glass bottles and—there! A toilet flush.
I grab the bathroom doorknob and fling it open, realizing a second too late that if Ivan really is in there using my toilet without my permission, it’s possible I’ve just walked in on him with his literal pants down. I quickly see that’s not the case, but it could have been. He still jumps with surprise and drops an empty plastic jug on the tile floor, where it bounces and rolls away until it’s stopped by a shopping bag with a huge hole ripped in the bottom.
“Shit, shit shit shit.” Ivan bends over to pick up the handle and drops another plastic bottle in the process.
“Ivan,” I say calmly, but not without menace.
Ivan looks up at me, visibly exhausted, upset, and desperate. Neat.
“Look, Zora,” he says, setting his bottles back upright. “Whatever Emilia told you about me—”
“What?” I interrupt. “Emilia didn’t say anything about you. We weren’t even talking about you.”
“Oh.” He looks puzzled for a moment. “Then, uh. Mind helping me out?” Ivan steps aside to reveal the collection of bottles he has clustered around the foot of my toilet bowl. All of them are some kind of alcohol. Cheap stuff, less useful as fuel for bad teen decisions and more for disinfecting an action movie protagonist’s bullet wounds when going to the hospital isn’t an option for plot reasons.
“You brought booze into my room?” My mouth drops open in sheer disbelief.
“To get rid of it!” Ivan says. “I was taking it downstairs, but the bag broke, so I panicked and ran in here to flush everything. Now help me trash these bottles or everyone is screwed.”
“No.” I shake my head. “This is a you problem. Get out. Now.”
“It’s an everyone problem,” Ivan argues. “And I can’t. I need to get them out of the building, but there are too many people.”
He has a point. The very nature of this academy means people will do anything to get ahead, and a blurry background image of a competitor holding alcohol is a guaranteed way to get them kicked out. Which makes it even more messed up that he’s brought these bottles to my literal doorstep.
Let me take a moment and pause the game here. Ivan looks genuinely terrified, and he’s right that getting rid of contraband booze means doing everyone at this party a favor. There aren’t a ton of bottles, maybe just enough to fit inside a tote bag, but we can’t recycle them in the bins on our floor. We will have to dump them somewhere outside.
Hold up—who is we? I am not in on this. Ivan can do whatever the hell he wants, but the first step of whatever he does has to be getting this out of my room. He may be doing the right thing, but I am not the one to help him do it. You’d think he’d have learned that by now.
“Lock the door,” I hear myself saying. “I don’t want anyone walking in. Anyone else, I mean.” Wait. Did I not just say I wouldn’t help him? I don’t know who’s in control right now, but it’s not the Zora I know.
“Got it.” Ivan steps around me and leaves the bathroom. I hear him reset the door lock and pull the door closed with a click; then he makes as if to turn my main dorm light on. I stop him.
“Don’t!” I say quickly. I haven’t turned that light on since I arrived for a reason. “The, uh. The light will show underthe door. I don’t want it to look like anyone’s in here,” I say. It’s only half a lie. The truth is I hate big ceiling lights. Always have. They’re harsh, too white, and they hurt my eyes. I’d do everything after 8 p.m. by lamplight if I could, and for the most part I do.
“Okay.” Ivan doesn’t argue. Without the smart retorts, his statements feel somehow unfinished to my ears.
“I have a backpack in the wardrobe.” I gesture toward that side of the room. “It fits more than you’d think. You grab that and I”—there’s a coarse roll of single-ply paper towels sitting on my bathroom counter; I grab that, as well as two of the bottles—“will use this to muffle the sound of the glass.”
