Page 29 of How We Play the Game
“Of course you do,” Ivan scoffs. Really?
“What you get is a cheat code. A shortcut,” Trieu explains. I think back to what Cassius told me earlier today, about my uncle Clive.I get why he’d maybe have a thing against shortcuts.
“Right now you’re at the bottom of the academy food chain. Ivan and, let’s face it, people like me and Kavi are much closer to the top.”
And that is something else that’s bothering me about this. I invited Trieu and Kavi to the war council, but mostly for advice on how to kill the rumor I started. I don’t understand what they get out of helping me keep it alive. I make that my next question.
“Believe it or not, but this was kind of our strategy coming in,” Kavi says.
“What?” I ask. “Your strategy was to wait for a complete social media Luddite to freak out in front of Brian so she gets disqu—”
“I need to stop you there,” Trieu says sharply, but not unkindly. “But you talk in legit paragraphs, and if we let you start describing things, I repeat, we will be here. All. Night.”
“Fair.”
“Obviously Trieu and I have collabed before, but we’ve been trying to scout two or three other people to form a pod within the academy.” Kavi eats another fry. Her nonchalance is admirable, but unlike Ivan it doesn’t feel like a performance. She’s just good at this, at conveying her thoughts in order. Maybe she’s born with it. Maybe it’s media training. “We’d keep an eye on each other, work together, cross-post to each other’s accounts, co-stream, all that jazz. At least until the final week.”
Ivan breaks the silence he’s kept up for a few moments to heave a loud sigh. “Teamwork makes the dream work,” he quotes solemnly. Very original.
“I mean, think about it.” Kavi ignores Ivan. “The thing about battle royales is that you can’t actually win them alone.”
That doesn’t ring true at all, but Kavi presses on.
“Katniss inHunger Games,” she says. “How did she win?”
I think about it for a moment. “She made alliances.”
“The students inBattle Royale. How did they survive?”
“They formed an alliance.”
“Squid Game?”
“They—Wait, no. That one doesn’t work at all.”
“Then it’s a good thing we’re not inSquid Game,” Kavi concludes, arms crossed across her chest.
This was not how any of this was supposed to go. I was supposed to stay in my lane, start strong on the concrete work of winning, and keep my eyes on that number one win with Cassius at the end of the summer. I was supposed to be enjoying my first night away from home, a seventeen-year-old in New York City with minimal supervision and all the sushi she could eat. OneGLRmatch, one party, a backpack full of bottles, and one massive internet coincidence later, I’m here.Everything happens too much, I think.I wish today were over.
Two blocks away or twenty, the long toll of a church bell rings loud enough for the sound to pass through the diner’s glass windows. I guess that’s the noise my wishes make when they come true. It’s midnight. Today is over, and I’m starting my tomorrow in a diner with three strangers, two of whom I’m pretty sure are about to turn my problems into their personal summer renovation project, and one of whom is Ivan.
I look up at him again and see in his face that he’s not kidding about going through with this. A fake relationship so neither of us spends the rest of the summer doing damage control on account of his green eyes and my big mouth.
“Please, Zora,” he says quietly. “Give me another chance.”
He is not begging; he’d never beg. But for the tiniest second, between the “please” and my name, I see something new. VANE’s mask just slipped—there!—and behind it, the real Ivan Hunt waved hello. He is cleaner and he smells good, but he is just as young and exhausted and, let’s face it, desperate as me. That desperate boy doesn’t perform for no reason. He does it because it makes people like him, because he needs that, and it obviously works. Kavi and Trieu are literally enjoying the fries of his emotional labor.
I rub my eyes. God, I’m sotired. When I look back, Ivan’s mask is back up, but my memory of what’s behind it lingers like the phantom toll of the last twelve o’clock bell.
There must be a Third Zora in here somewhere. A secret Zora, one that left her tools out for someone like Ivan to find and use them to widen the tiniest of cracks in my defenses. I can only imagine how smug he’d be if he knew she existed and that he was making progress. I make a mental note here, right now, to never let him know. If we’re going to fool the world, we have to perform like pros. Top of the leaderboard, the best to ever do it. So let’s do it.
“Fine.” I pick up the longest fry I can find and bite it clean in half. “But I’m not doing it for you. And we need to have some rules.”
CHAPTER TEN
THIS IS HOW we’re going to play the game. Think of us like a party of adventurers inDungeons and Dragons. I haven’t playedDnDwith other people, that’s whatBaldur’s Gate 3is for, but the concept is the same. The game has rules, we all have roles, we work together, and I swear to god if I have to explain thisonemore time, I will toss Ivan down a manhole and forget which one. So let’s run this back.
Cass is in the party. He may have missed the diner meeting, but when I woke up a few short hours later, I’m the one who had, like, five missed calls and a text message chain I had to scroll way far up to read. At first he thought someone had taken my phone; then he realized it was me but thought I was kidnapped and posting under duress; then he realized I was (sort of) in my right mind and asked all the questions I assumed he would. Like “was that literally the only thing you could think of,” “is thiswhat’s going to happen every time I leave you alone for, like, ten minutes,” and “How? How? What? Why? Zora. Zora! How?” And, listen … he’s got a point. The good news is that he’s not a snitch and he sees the logic in forming an alliance.
