TOP 5
Neil McNair: 3
Rowan Roth: 3
Brady Becker: 2
Savannah Bell: 2
Mara Pompetti: 2
PLAYERS REMAINING: 38
MOST RUTHLESS KILL: Alexis Torres Aiden Gallagher, by way of breaking up with him
3:07 p.m.
MCNAIR IS QUIET for a few seconds. He’s been clutching his backpack in his lap, and he lets it drop down into the space near his feet. At first I’m convinced he’s going to tell me I’m being ridiculous, that teaming up is absurd. He frowns, then flattens his mouth into a straight line, then frowns again. It’s like he’s carefully weighing the options, the pros and cons marching along his face, messing with his features.
“I really hoped there’d be another way,” I say. “But if we both want to win, which I think we do, then…” I let him fill in the blank.
It’s not an easy suggestion to make. When we’ve worked together in the past, it’s usually been forced. In student council, on group projects, we were working toward the same general goals with completely different plans of attack. The White Man in Peril incident on infinite repeat. Savannah’s plot made it clear this is bigger than a rivalry, bigger than number ten on my list.
“What exactly would it entail, teaming up?” he asks, ever logical.
In the soft afternoon light, his freckles seem almost lit from within. He never looks like this beneath Westview’s eco-friendly LED lights. His eyelashes are glowing amber, and the effect is so startling that I have to look away.
“Help each other with the clues. Have each other’s backs.” It hits me that I have no idea who McNair’s target is, and that makes me uneasy. “Wait, who do you have?”
“Oh—Carolyn Gao.” Drama club president. She was incredible in last year’s production of Little Shop of Horrors. “And I know you don’t have me, but—”
“Madison Winters.”
He nods. “So if we do this, if we team up, what happens at the end? I assume this means we’d be finishing the scavenger hunt at the same time, right?”
“Once we get the last clue, it’s an all-out war. Whoever makes it back to the gym first wins. One-two, the way it always is.” We team up now, and I destroy him later. That’s the gist of it.
I refrain from mentioning Delilah Park’s signing. That’s more than four hours from now. If we haven’t irritated each other to death by then, I’ll make up an excuse to slip away.
He pulls at another loose thread on his backpack, where the FREE PUPPIES! pin clings to fraying nylon. “I’m just wondering… what’s in all of this for you? If you want to win this badly, it can’t just be to beat me.”
“That’s… a good part of it,” I admit. It wouldn’t cancel out valedictorian, but I just know it would feel amazing to win our very last competition. I don’t want to be stuck in time, second best. “And I’d love the money for school.” Then I fire the question back at him.
“School,” he agrees, a little too quickly. “New York is expensive.”
“Right,” I say, unable to avoid feeling like he’s only partially telling the truth.
“Hypothetically, if I agree to this scheme of yours, let’s say you win the whole game. You get the glory. What do I get? Seems like a shit deal for me at that point.”
I consider this. “We split the money. Fifty-fifty. Regardless of outcome.”
A grin spreads across his face and dread churns in my stomach. This cannot be good. “What if we upped the stakes?”
“I’m listening.”
“A bet,” he proposes. “You and me. A bet to cap off our epic four years of academic bloodshed.”
“What, like the loser has to go naked under their gown at graduation?”
He snorts. “Seriously? Are you twelve? I was thinking something far more personal.”
I rack my brain. There are probably plenty of things McNair wouldn’t enjoy doing, but I don’t know him well enough on a personal level to guess what any of them would be.
Then I gasp, covering my mouth to conceal a grin when the idea hits me. “The loser has to write the winner a book report on a book of the winner’s choosing.”
“How many paragraphs?”
“Five, at least. Double-spaced, no fewer than three pages.” I cross my arms over my chest, aware this is the nerdiest bet in history. But wow, the books I could have him read… “Are you in or not?”
For a beat, neither of us blinks. In all our competitions, we’ve never placed a bet. There was always plenty at stake.
“As weird as it is to talk about book reports on the last day of school, it’s kind of perfect,” he says. “The only question is, should it be The Old Man and the Sea or Great Expectations? Or wait, I’d love to see what you do with War and Peace. Unabridged, naturally.”
“So many mediocre white men to choose from.”
“And yet there’s a reason they’re called classics.” McNair turns in the seat and sticks out his hand. “To mutually assured destruction,” he says, and we shake on it.
Despite our matching height, our hands aren’t the same size, which I had no reason to notice until now. His hands are slightly larger, his skin warm, freckled fingers woven between my pale ones.
“You really do have a lot of freckles.”
He withdraws his hand from mine and glances down at it in mock astonishment. “Oh, that’s what these are.” Then he drops his hands to his lap. “I’ve always hated them.”
“Why?” I know he gets embarrassed when I tease him about them, but I don’t think they’re unattractive or anything, though of course I’d never say that to his face. They’re just plentiful. “They’re… interesting. I like them.”
A pause. A lifted eyebrow. “You… like my freckles?”
I roll my eyes and decide to play along. “Yeah I do. I’ve always wondered if you have freckles everywhere.”
It’s nearly automatic now, the way I can make him blush like this. He really is so sensitive about them. Still, he clucks his tongue and says, “Some things are better left a mystery.” He runs a hand up and down his bare arm. “Get ahold of yourself, Artoo. We’re teammates now. If you can’t handle all these hot, hot freckles, then we might be doomed.”
It must be talking about them that makes me stare at his face a moment longer than I normally would. Because the thing is, I have wondered if he has freckles everywhere. In a purely scientific way, the same way you’d wonder when the next big earthquake will hit Seattle or how long it takes chewing gum to decompose. Given they’re just as densely dotted on his arms as they are on his face, he must, right?
He has to know I’m not being serious. I don’t want him to think I’m calculating his ratio of freckled to unfreckled skin. Even if it’s in a purely scientific way.
“Your glasses are crooked,” I say, hoping this will return us to normal, and he adjusts them.
There. Except normal isn’t Rowan versus Neil; it’s Rowan and Neil versus the rest of the senior class.
This is probably a really bad idea.
* * *
Over a slice of what McNair declares is Seattle’s best pizza, we strategize. Well—first we argue. I start to pay for my food, but he insists on doing it since I’m the one driving us around. Then I begrudgingly agree to share my photo of the gum wall as long as he shares his photo of an umbrella. Until this point, we’d been equal. And I suppose we still are.
I’d love to decipher every clue right now, but McNair thinks it’s a waste of time. He wants to focus on what we know and figure out the rest along the way.
“There’s such a thing as planning too much,” he says, shaking red pepper flakes onto his pizza. Upper Crust is not the best pizza in Seattle, in my opinion. My slice has too much gooey mozzarella, not enough sauce. “Need I remind you of the summer reading incident?”
I grimace. Our junior English teacher had sent out a list of titles the week school let out, and I decided to read all five as quickly as I could so I could read what I wanted t
he rest of the summer. The day I finished, she emailed to let everyone know she’d sent the wrong list and “surely” no one had started yet.
“That was an anomaly.” I play the car card: if he wants to walk, he’s welcome to take off as soon as we finish eating, but I’m staying here until I figure out a few more. He relents.
At least we agree on a few of the more specific clues. Ice cream fit for Sasquatch is probably the yeti flavor at Molly Moon’s, Seattle’s most popular ice cream shop. And we’re pretty sure a place you can find Chiroptera, the scientific name for a bat, is the Woodland Park Zoo’s nocturnal exhibit.
“Do you have any idea what ‘a tribute to the mysterious Mr. Cooper’ could be?” he says. “It’s so vague. I googled ‘Seattle Cooper’ and only came up with a towing company, a car dealership, and a bunch of doctors. Or this one—‘a place that’s red from floor to ceiling’?”
“The Red Hall in the Seattle Public Library downtown,” I say without missing a beat. My parents have regular story times at the library, and I’ve explored nearly every inch of it. The hall is eerie but fascinating, a quirk in a building full of quirks. The Mr. Cooper clue, though, is as much a mystery as he apparently is. “Now I know why you were so eager to team up,” I say, shoving some of the excess cheese off my pizza. “You don’t know any of the hard ones.”
“Not true.” He points to something local, organic, and sustainable. “The compost system you introduced to Westview.”
Despite myself, I snort-laugh. “Please, I’m eating.”
It’s odd, though, eating pizza with Neil McNair. The window of the pizza place is semi-reflective, letting me almost see what it looks like, the two of us in public together. His red hair is slightly windblown, while my bun left windblown and leaped to natural disaster a couple hours ago.
After a few more minutes of bickering, we’re still stumped on the mysterious Mr. Cooper, but we’ll deal with that later. Our first stop as a team will be nearby Doo Wop Records for Nirvana’s first album.
We drop our plates into the compost bin (naturally) before leaving Upper Crust. Neil pulls out his phone to map the record store. In addition to all the regular social media and messaging icons, there are more than a few dictionary apps on his home screen.
“Merriam-Webster fanboy?” I ask.
“I’m more of an OED guy.” When I give him a blank look, he continues: “Oxford English Dictionary? It’s only the definitive record of the English language.”
“I know what the Oxford English Dictionary is,” I snap. “I just wasn’t familiar with the acronym. How often does that come up in daily life, anyway? When you need to whip out a dictionary… or five?”
He shrugs. “Somewhat often, if you want to become a lexicographer.”
“Oh,” I say, nodding like I know exactly what that is.
The corner of his mouth quirks up. “You don’t know what that is either, do you?”
“I’m trying really hard to not find you infuriating right now.”
“It’s someone who compiles dictionaries,” he says, and it kind of suits him. “I love words, and that’s what I want to do. There’s no better satisfaction than using precisely the right word in a conversation. I love the challenge of learning a new language, and I love discovering patterns. And I find it fascinating that words in other languages have crept into our vocabulary. ‘Cul-de-sac,’ ‘aficionado,’ ‘tattoo…’ ”
As he’s explaining this, his eyes light up, and he gestures with his hands. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him this animated, this clearly enamored with something.
“That’s kind of cool,” I finally concede. Because honestly, it is. “How many languages do you know?”
“Let’s see…” He ticks them off his fingers. “Fives on AP Spanish, French, and Latin. Would have taken Japanese, but they didn’t offer it, so that’ll have to wait until college. The romance languages, those are easy enough to learn once you have a foundation in one of them, so I’ve been teaching myself Italian in my spare time.” His lips curve into a smile. “You can say you’re impressed. It’s okay.”
I refuse to, but it’s hard not to be impressed when my knowledge of my mother’s first language ends at Spanish III.
Since the record store isn’t far, we decide to walk instead of hoping we’ll get lucky twice with Capitol Hill parking. We fall in step, passing a dry cleaner and a shoe store and a sushi place. Because we’re exactly the same height, our shoes smack the pavement in tandem. I bet we’d easily win a three-legged race.
Broadway is Capitol Hill’s main drag, a street where hole-in-the-wall restaurants and boutiques have slowly been replaced by Paneras and cat cafés. A few pieces of Seattle history remain, like the bronze Jimi Hendrix statue on Broadway and Pine, frozen mid–guitar solo, and Dick’s Drive-In. I don’t eat the burgers, but their chocolate milkshakes are perfection in a compostable cup. It’s also the center of queer culture in Seattle, hence the rainbow crosswalks, which we snap photos of and receive our green check marks.
“Can I ask you something?” he suddenly says. He looks uncomfortable, and I panic, worried he’s going to bring up his yearbook again. I’ll sign it right now if he does. I won’t make any sarcastic comments. “Why do you hate me so much?” It comes out so easily, no buildup. He doesn’t stumble over it, but it catches me off guard, makes me pause in the middle of the sidewalk.
“I—” I was ready to fire back a response, but now I’m not sure what it was. “I don’t hate you.”
“I find that hard to believe. You’ve been scoffing nonstop for the past half hour.”
“ ‘Hate’ is a really strong word. I don’t hate you. You”—I wave my hand in the air as though the right word is something I can wrap a fist around—“frustrate me.”
“Because you want to be the best.”
I grimace. The way he says it makes me feel immature about this whole thing. “Well—okay, yes… but it’s more than that. Most of what we talk about is completely harmless, but you’ve never been able to stop with the snide remarks about romance novels, and that’s not teasing to me. It just… hurts.”
His grip on his backpack straps loosens, and he ducks his head as though in shame. “Artoo,” he says softly. “I’m so sorry. I really thought… I really thought we were just teasing each other.” He genuinely sounds sorry.
“It doesn’t feel like teasing when you go out of your way to make me feel like garbage for liking what I like. I already have to defend it enough with my parents, and with my friends. Like, I get it, ha ha, sometimes there are shirtless men on the covers. But what I’ll never understand is why people are so quick to trash this one thing that’s always been for women first. They won’t let us have this one thing that isn’t hurting anyone and makes us happy. Nope, if you like romance novels, you have zero taste or you’re a lonely spinster.”
When I finally stop talking (thank God I stop talking), I’m breathing hard, and I’m a little warm. I hadn’t expected to get so worked up about it, not on the day I’m meeting literary goddess Delilah Park, and not in front of Neil McNair.
He’s staring at me, eyes wide and unblinking behind his glasses. He’s going to laugh at me in three, two one.…
But he doesn’t.
“Artoo…,” he says again, even quieter this time. “Rowan. I really am sorry. I—I guess I don’t know much about them.” He changes course, using my real name. Then he lifts a hand until it’s hovering above my shoulder. I wonder what it would take for him to lower it. I remember the Most Likely to Succeed photo shoot, how he was so opposed to touching me. As though it would convey some kind of fondness we have never had for each other. Mutual respect, sure. But fondness? Never.
He drops his hand before I can contemplate it anymore.
“Apology… accepted, I guess.” I was all ready to fight back. I’m not used to peace talks. “Can I ask you something?”
“No. You can’t.” Maybe this is meant to lighten the mood, by the way his mouth quirks up as he sa
ys it.
I push at his shoulder, gently. It’s the way I’d touch a closer friend, and it feels so strange that my stomach flips over. I’m not even sure if McNair and I are capable of being friends, or if it even matters. We’re leaving in a couple months anyway. I don’t exactly have time for new friends.
“Why do you hate them so much? Romance novels?”
He gives me another odd look. “I don’t.”
UPPER CRUST PIZZA
June 12 03:18 PM
ORDER #: 0102
SERVER:JENNIFER GUESTS:2 TABLE:9
DINE IN
1 VEGGIE VENGEANCE
$2.99
1 PEPPERONI PIZZAZZ
$3.49
SUBTOTAL
$6.48
TAX
$0.65
TOTAL
$7.13
TIP
$2.50
VISA CARD XXXXXXXXXXXX1519
MCNAIR, NEIL A
THANK YOU!
3:40 p.m.
THE TEMPTATIONS ARE playing inside Doo Wop Records, one of a handful of things that makes me feel as though I’ve stepped back in time. The whole place is a tribute to the 1960s, with vintage concert posters on the walls and private listening booths in the back.
“You fit right in,” McNair says, gesturing to my dress.
“I—oh.” It’s such an un-McNair-like thing to say that it takes me a while to form a sentence. “I guess so. I like old clothes and old music. Are you… into music?” It seems like a basic fact to know about a person: brown hair, brown eyes, would do questionable things to have been able to see the Smiths play live.
“Am I into music?” He scoffs at the question as we head down an aisle marked ROCK J–N. “Was Hemingway the greatest writer of the twentieth century? Yes, I’m into music. Mostly local bands, some that made it big and some that haven’t yet. Death Cab, Modest Mouse, Fleet Foxes, Tacocat, Car Seat Headrest…”
“Did you see Fleet Foxes at Bumbershoot a few years ago?” I ask, ignoring the Hemingway comment. Just for that, I’ll pick an extra steamy book for him to read when I win.
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