“There’s a reason I agreed to her deal, you know,” Lia said. “Even if you can’t figure it out.”
Devon downed the last of his soup, and behind the lip of his thermos, his mouth curled up.
“You liked watching me fail, didn’t you?” Lia asked, frowning.
“Aside from the fact that Abby fell, it was a little funny,” Devon said, smirking. “Admit it.”
Lia groaned. “I only missed because Omelet tackled her.”
“And you didn’t observe the whims of dogs and write them down with a full appendix?” He clutched his heart. “I’m disappointed. I could set up a target in my backyard, and you could come practice if you think it would help.”
He grinned as he said it, and a flickering heat filled her chest till her words felt hot and heavy.
“Are you inviting me over?” she asked.
“Actually, I was planning on betraying you and using you for target practice as revenge for getting me caught up in this.” He looked away. “Of course.”
“Of course,” Lia said, smiling. “I suppose I’ll just have to prove my worth this week.”
On Monday night, Lia made plans instead of sleeping. Her parents had been strict with Mark, but Lia was the second child. They had exhausted all their helicoptering, he used to say, and she was lucky they didn’t watch her like a hawk. They spent more time worrying about her on the Parents of Lions Facebook group than talking to her about her life. Really, Lia knew he just mattered more, so they paid less attention to her.
She left the house at five a.m. on Tuesday. Her parents snored right through it. She wasn’t going to kill Abby. They had made a deal, after all. She was just going to follow Abby and see if she kept her normal routine. She had nothing to fear, but maybe she would scope out new routes or invite a friend to journey out with her and Omelet. It was the perfect time for Abby to experiment with ways to stay alive in Assassins, which meant it was the perfect time for Lia to figure out how to get around those ways. The water gun she had gifted Abby would make it harder, especially now that Abby was on alert, but it would be a good challenge.
If she killed Abby, people would know how good she was. Devon, too, might not feel the need to remind her of obvious things.
Abby lived a good twenty-minute walk from Lia’s, and in the quiet dark before dawn, no one was about. Frosted grass blades snapped underfoot, leaving an inky trail behind her as she cut across yards and little neighborhood parks. No one locked their gates in Lincoln. Lia’s parents had only started locking theirs after binging five true-crime podcasts last summer.
Abby’s house was a peak-roofed shadow backlit by a neighbor’s motion lights. Lia waited across the street, huddled against a brick mailbox. Lia didn’t know Abby’s full schedule, but she knew Abby would walk Omelet no matter what. So she waited.
The motion lights switched off. The wind sliced through Lia’s scarf, burning in her nose. A fence creaked, wood rubbing against wood, and a car passed on the adjacent street. Light flitted through the hedges and houses, washing the windows of Abby’s house white, and the motion lights switched on again. Omelet’s soft ah-woo echoed across the quiet street. A light flickered on behind a covered window of the Ascher house, and a door slammed shut. Abby and Omelet emerged from the dark backyard.
Omelet’s safety vest glowed, and Abby reached up to turn on a lamp attached to her ear warmers. The brace on her arm was a bulge beneath her white sweatshirt.
They started off power walking. Abby kept one eye on the windows of her house until she turned the corner. Another early morning runner sprinted down a parallel street, setting off lights and yappy dogs, and Lia sighed. Lia crept after them, keeping close to the shadows between the streetlights.
“Maybe we’ll run a little,” Abby said, and scratched the malamute’s head. “Don’t tell Dr. Kim.”
And they were off, two ghosts racing down the streets toward the park. Lia couldn’t keep up. She wasn’t sporty, and even if she was, her footsteps would have been too loud. She didn’t need to follow Abby closely anyway. She only needed to know which paths Abby took.
She followed the slap-slap of Abby’s tennis shoes against the pavement to the rougher concrete of the park. Spindly trees crackled in the breeze, and Lia ducked into the safety of their trunks to hide, using her phone to see. She added “long path” to her notes about Abby. It was the one that didn’t cross the bridge.
Slap-slap, ah-whoo.
The path wound through the narrow section of woods at the edge of the neighborhood, making the park seem bigger and more forested than it really was. It felt like some backwoods haven miles away from Lincoln.
Slap-slap, ah-whoo.
Lia crunched through the grass at the edge of the cracked concrete. Abby and Omelet began to round the bend, and Lia no longer had to creep so much. Someone was probably following Lia and pissed they couldn’t shoot her since she was too near Abby. During Assassins, few people went out alone, but Lia didn’t mind being alone. She had grown used to the loneliness. Mark was the sort of brother who was more apt to measure the Snickers they were about to split with a ruler than actually do things with Lia, and next year, Gem would be gone. Abby was just another classmate who knew what they wanted and had the means to get it. Lia hated the envy burning in her veins.
Slap-slap, woof.
Lia could barely even hear Abby and Omelet now. She started jogging, one ear tilted out of the wind to listen. Lia should have walked faster—everyone outpaced her eventually.
Omelet barked. Then came a thunk, as if Abby had kicked a rock. A groan, tree limbs bent back too far by the wind. Damp branches splitting underfoot.
Then Abby took off again.
Lia ran after her. Maybe Abby had seen her lurking in the trees. Lia neared a sharp bend in the path, Omelet’s bark growing louder and louder. Lia lengthened her strides, water gun in hand. She sprinted beneath a burned-out streetlight.
And tripped.
She went down hard. Her hands shot out and the water gun skidded across the sidewalk. Her chin smacked into her outstretched arm, teeth biting through her cheek. Gravel tore through the knees of her jeans. Lia groaned and rolled onto her side, eyes squeezing shut. Omelet whoofed and panted. He padded back and forth across the pavement. Lia shook her head.
“Not funny, Abby,” Lia murmured, crawling to get the gun. Everything ached, and her right ankle throbbed. There was a ringing in her ears. “Abby?”
No one answered. Omelet, still pacing across the path in front of her, whined. The path was empty in both directions.
This had to be payback for the bridge, but Lia had never thought Abby was the revenge type.
“Abby?” The skin on Lia’s hands looked like it had gotten the meanest rug burn she’d ever seen. “I don’t think I fractured anything, but we’re definitely even and you’re freaking Omelet out.”
Lia froze. The silence pressed in.
Abby would never leave Omelet like this, even if she were out for vengeance. Lia stumbled to her feet, and Omelet darted to the side of the path. Without the streetlight, Lia could only see his white fur. A dark stain marred his snout and paws.
Lia lurched after him. Abby lay off the path, facedown in the dirt. Her neck was twisted at an awkward angle.
“Abby!” Lia dropped to her knees and turned her over.
Blood soaked Abby’s face, all of her red and warm and still. It thawed the frost on the ground in a halo around her. It darkened the indent where her skull had been cracked open and stuck to Lia’s hands. It dripped down the rock that had broken Abby’s fall. Lia’s fingers fluttered near her jaw, desperate to find a pulse.
Nothing.
In the dark, alone with Abby while the 911 operator barked instructions, Lia saw eyes peering out from the darkness. She saw shadows darting toward her down the path. She saw the bloodstain on Omelet’s fur grow and
cover him. She saw everything, none of it real.
The flashing lights from the arriving ambulance didn’t help.
An EMT bundled Lia up in a silvery blanket and sat her on the path far from Abby. The path wasn’t wide enough for cars, so they had all come running through the woods, cutting straight across the park. The sun was only just rising, and all of them were washed in red. Abby’s parents arrived as the EMT finished cleaning her knee. A detective loomed behind them.
They talked to her and she answered, but she had no idea what she said. She had no idea what they said.
No, she hadn’t seen it happen.
No, she hadn’t been running with Abby.
Yes, they were playing that game and she was stalking Abby.
“I was just following a little ways behind, and then I heard…I thought…” Lia sniffed. “I thought she had kicked a rock or stubbed her toe, because I couldn’t hear her running, and then Omelet was howling, and I tripped on something, and then Omelet came over to me, and I knew Abby wouldn’t leave Omelet. She’d never leave Omelet, so I stood up and—”
“You tripped too?” one of the cops asked.
Too? Abby ran everywhere. She couldn’t die from tripping.
Lia nodded, and a detective in a neat suit and wool coat glanced at her over the rim of his glasses.
Lia nodded. “It took me a minute to get up, and Omelet came over.”
Lia’s dad talked to the cops while her mom herded her to the car.
“Abby ran all the time,” Lia said softly, an ache that had nothing to do with her wounds spreading through her.
“She wasn’t supposed to be running,” Lia’s mom said. Her arm was tight around Lia’s shoulders, and her lips were set in a hard, thin line. “You shouldn’t have been out either.”
“Sorry.”
Her mom sighed and hugged Lia to her side. “No, no, it’s fine. I’m just glad you’re okay.”
They passed a crowd of onlookers, old neighbors bundled up in dressing gowns beneath puffy coats and people on the way to work clutching travel mugs in their hands. Nothing worth gossiping about ever happened in Lincoln, but an ambulance and a cop car at dawn must’ve been worth talking about. Lia tucked her face into her mom’s shoulder.
“So senseless.” Lia’s mom stroked her hair and tucked her into the back of their car. “Her poor parents. I was just talking to her mom yesterday. And for Abby to just…”
Lia could still remember the soft thrill in Abby’s voice as she told Omelet that maybe they would run a little.
“It’s not Abby’s fault,” Lia said quickly. “Even if she wasn’t supposed to be running, it’s not her fault.”
Her mom reached back from the front seat and took her hand. “Of course it isn’t. It’s just so senseless. She had so much ahead of her—she just got that full ride, you know. And now—”
“I don’t want to do this,” Lia said. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
Her stomach dropped. How could she have been so jealous of Abby? She was terrible.
Her dad opened the door and climbed into the driver’s seat before her mom could respond. “Home first, and if your head starts hurting, the hospital. Got it?”
Lia nodded. Once home, she stayed curled up in her room, half asleep, for the next three days. The ache didn’t vanish, but the roar in her ears that rose whenever she thought about Abby kept the silence at bay. She talked with Gem a lot, and she texted a bit with Devon. Even Ben called to keep her company.
By the time Abby’s funeral was only an hour away, Lia was trapped between a nausea-inducing dread and a sharp, stabbing fear in the back of her mind of facing the rest of her Lincoln. She had been avoiding the news and the internet. She didn’t want to know what was being said.
“Hey,” Gem said as they met up outside Abby’s church. “You okay?”
Everything felt muffled and distant, as if Lia were watching the procession alone and drowning beneath a thin veil of water. “Don’t leave me.”
“Never,” Gem said.
Lia managed a weak smile. Come May, everyone was leaving with plans and dreams. Everyone except Abby.
Lia sat in the back, Gem on one side and her parents on the other. People milled about, whispering to each other. The casket was closed, and Abby’s parents were sequestered behind the privacy of a sheer curtain that did nothing to block the sound of them crying. Omelet’s soft huffs peppered the proceedings.
Abby’s mom spoke, then Georgia, and one of Abby’s colleagues at the vet office where she volunteered.
Lia couldn’t cry. She stared at the dark wood of Abby’s coffin and kept a tight grip on Gem’s hand. Most of the school had come, and Lia could feel the stares.
“I wonder why it’s closed?” someone whispered behind Lia.
Someone chuckled. “I heard she cracked her head open. I bet they couldn’t fix that.”
“It’s stupid,” the other person muttered back. “A runner. Tripping. To death.”
A rushing sound filled her ears. Omelet’s ah-woo echoed through the room. Someone cracked their knuckles, bones snapping. Breaking. Like Abby’s.
It hadn’t been branches. It hadn’t been branches. None of the sounds she’d heard that morning had been branches.
Lia leapt to her feet and ran out of the church. Her hands shook as she pushed open the doors. Her feet thudded across the marble entry hall, and she shoved her way into the cold. Lia collapsed on the top step of the stairs leading down to the street and pressed her hands against her eyes. The dark behind her eyelids was the same dark in Abby’s dented head. The sunlight burned.
The door opened behind her. Two sets of footsteps stopped next to Lia. Devon and Gem.
“You’re breathing too fast,” Devon said. There was no judgment in his voice, and his fingers brushed her hands. “Try to control it.”
Lia drew a short, shuddering breath through her nose. “How can I control it when something as simple as tripping killed her?”
“Okay, don’t think about that part,” Devon said.
“I need a distraction,” Lia said. “I need to do something. I can’t sit still. I can’t stay home. I can’t just think because I’ll end up thinking about her. And what they’re saying. If they’re saying that stuff here, what are they saying at school? When they’re alone?”
“They’re saying they’re scared,” Gem told her. “They’re saying they’re sad. They’re saying the world doesn’t make sense. They’re saying the game is tainted because Abby was excited about playing it and now she can’t. They’re sobbing in the school bathroom and needing parents to come pick them up.”
Gem sat next to Lia. “They are not those two idiots who were sitting behind us.”
Lia pulled her hands from her eyes and took a slow breath. “I don’t have anything to do. I don’t have anything to think about. They excused me from school, but I can’t not think about Abby if I’m thinking about nothing. Does that make sense?”
“Sort of,” Devon said. “You had a lot of nots in there.”
“I did!” Lia sniffed and laughed, the sound ripping out of her throat until she wasn’t sure why she was laughing at all but it was all she could do to keep from crying. Lia covered her mouth with her hands.
“I need something to do,” she said. “I need something to fill up this space in my head or else Abby will fill it up. Talk to me about something. The game. Is anyone out?”
Devon sighed. “They were considering banning the game.”
“The school isn’t in charge of it,” Lia said. “How could they cancel it?”
“Anyone found playing would get in-school suspension.” Devon wiped Lia’s cheeks with his hand and flicked a damp eyelash aside. “My mom said the PTA brought it up.”
“I bet half of them were those busybodies speculating on what happened before y
our parents got you out of that park,” Gem said. “The news even interviewed them.”
Lia rubbed her nose. “I saw them when I was leaving.”
“Why were you following Abby?” Devon asked. “We made a deal.”
“I wanted to see what path she would take so we could set up there when the deal was done,” Lia said. “I didn’t want to come back and have nothing.”
Gem laid their cheek against the top of Lia’s head. “You want to keep playing Assassins?”
“What else do I have if I don’t?” Lia asked. “Why was I even there if not?”
“I think you have a lot, but I don’t think you’ll listen to me when I say that,” Gem said. “I’ll keep playing, but no more early-morning solo runs, okay?”
Lia nodded. “I don’t think I can go back in there.”
“I’ll tell your parents,” Devon said, squeezing her hand before heading back into the church.
“Yeah, I don’t blame you,” Gem said once he was gone. “It was really stuffy. Not enough dogs.”
“There should’ve been a lot more,” Lia said. “Like fifteen, minimum, and then people could’ve adopted them. Abby would’ve liked that.”
“She would have,” Gem said. “I know you want to keep playing the game, but please don’t do anything else that could get you killed. You’re my best friend, and I love you.”
Lia relaxed against Gem.
“I love you, too,” she said. “No more dangerous things. I promise.”
Hello, Lia Prince.
Our condolences, but if we know you as well as we think we do, this message will be much appreciated. Your new target is Leo Liu.
Happy hunting,
The Council
Lia and Gem waited in the main office after asking to talk to Mrs. White, the principal. When they said it was about Assassins, several of the secretaries glanced up.
It was the first time Lia had visited the principal. She sat in the principal’s office on a hard wooden chair with a cushion tied to the seat, the sort of chair she normally only saw at her grandmother’s dining room table, and Gem sat next to her. Mrs. White sat behind her desk, fingers laced beneath her chin.
The Game Page 4