Page 63 of How We Play the Game
“That is one hell of a mixed metaphor.”
“I know. Know what else I know?”
That’s rhetorical, right?
“I know that if it were me with you all summer, you wouldn’t be waiting for me to show up today. I would be there, here. Whatever. I would have done anything to help you, but you made everything so much harder for yourself. Why, when we could have done it together?”
“Because you didn’t need me! All you have to do—all people, all boys like you have to do—is show up, get good, and nobody sees any problem with you! You get to be standoffish and unapproachable, and I don’t have that luxury. I have to bend and twist myself into the exact right shape or people are going to assume the worst whileinsistingit has nothing to do with what I look like. Your default is belonging. Mine is proving. Ivan understood that I didn’t make things hard for myself. He knows I have to be anything and everything all of the time and it still might not work.”
For a moment, Cassius is silent. Then, quietly, he speaks again. “It’s not like I asked for it to be like that. It’s not like that’s my fault.”
I stifle a yawn. Not because this is boring, but because doing something normal like sitting in a chair and arguing with Cassius reminds me of how few energy-sucking things I actually did with my time before I came to the academy. It strikes me, for the first time today, that I am tired. No, not just tired. I’m exhausted. Keeping this up, pretending with Ivan, getting betrayed, fueling this grudge … it’s all so muchmore than Before Zora would have attempted to juggle. This is the most normal I’ve felt in months, and like a marathon runner stopping halfway through the course, everything in front of me looks so much harder than if I’d not taken this time to sit and talk—I should have kept running. Stopping is what hurts. Stopping and this conversation.
“I think, for me,” Cassius begins, sounding like he’s about to change the subject, “the hard part was seeing you with him all summer when you knew how I felt.”
“About what?”
Cassius levels his gaze at me, his eyes daring me to continue to treat him like he’s stupid. “You know,” he says.
He really is so honest, his feelings so straightforward. Maybe that’s exactly why I never did anything even though I knew, and yes, I’m realizing now I definitely knew, that he liked me that way. Of course I fell for Ivan instead of him. I’m a winner, and I can’t win if there’s no game to play in the first place.
“I do know,” I admit. “And I know I said sorry before, but that was kind of flippant, so I’m sorry. For real this time. You deserved better from me, as a … friend.”
I let the word settle between us, imagining it trying to get cozy in the silence like a dog scratching at a blanket before lying down to sleep. I take full responsibility for being a bad friend, but I won’t apologize for not wanting Cassius back. God knows I have enough to apologize for besides that.
“Okay.” Cassius nods. “Thank you,” he adds. “I should go.”
“Are you sure?” I ask, though I think we’re both aware that I’m the last person he wants to talk to after I dropped the rejection bomb.
He nods instead of answering me. With a few leggy strides, he’s back at that too-small door, ducking under the frame to save the top inch of his skull. “Hey, Zora?” he asks before closing the door.
“Yeah?”
“Good luck today.”
“Thanks.”
“And for what it’s worth … I think he’s going to show up.”
“How do you know that?”
“Becauseyouwould,” Cass says, cold and correct. “And you two are exactly the same.”
Ouch. I think he knew that would hurt me, but didn’t say it only to accomplish that. Cassius isn’t cruel, he’s honest, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s right—am I just like Ivan? Would I show up today if the roles were reversed?
It’s an impossible question to answer. I would never have been in Ivan’s shoes in the first place. I would never—what? Find an unorthodox way to get what I want and pursue it single-mindedly? Trick strangers into liking me with lies? Align myself with a soulless executive in exchange for a shortcut to the top? Yes, I would! I absolutely, 100 percent would, and have, and Cassius is right once again.
Ivan and I are exactly alike, and that means he’s going to face me onstage today. And he’s going to be exactly as angry, driven, and focused as I am. I’m staking my future on boxing my own reflection, and I truly have no idea which one of us is going to win the match.
Knock.I briefly wonder if this is the Wizzard employee with the news I’ve been waiting for, but something about theconfidence behind the knock makes me think maybe no. But who else would come to visit me today, here?
“Come in?”
Similarly tall, but otherwise different from Cassius in every way. Uncle Clive’s summer beard is gone, hiding the patches of premature gray that speckle his face and making him look as young as he is to my eyes, for once.
“Hey, little sis,” he says. It’s nothing he hasn’t called me before, but it hits especially hard today. My mom was estranged from her family by the time she had me, so I never got a good look at what Clive looked like as a kid, but I imagine they looked alike when they were younger. Which means he—and she—looked like me. We have the same narrow black eyes, the same squared-off chin. Now that he’s beardless, I notice his ears are connected like mine, his bottom lip is dark like mine. I’ve tried so hard to distance myself from whatever family connections I have, mostly because they don’t seem to last that long, but something about seeing Clive now, for the first time this summer, really reminds me that blood can cross any distance I attempt to make. No matter where I go or what I do, I’m undeniably Clive’s family. And he’s mine.
Or something like that, I don’t know. I’m feeling mushy today. Vulnerable. I blame Cassius, and I hope I can snap out of this before it’s time for the match. But in the meanwhile … while I’m sitting here and Clive is staring at me from the doorway … and while Cassius is mad at me and Ivan abandoned me and Trieu and Kavi both aren’t really supposed to talk to me right now and Brian is counting on me and I’m so, so close to being who I wanted to be all along but light-yearsaway from being who I want to be when I get it … I could really use a hug. From my family.
