The person near the pool had been taller. Lia was sure of it. Their hood had been pulled tight around their head, and they had carried nothing. Even here, safe in Devon’s house, their empty hands felt far more dangerous than any water gun could. Lia looked at the email.
“The person I shot at the park, the one who wouldn’t talk,” she said, “that was the one who scared me. This was just the one I saw following me, and I was never close enough to either for pictures.”
“You shouldn’t have been walking around alone at all.” He knotted and unknotted the strings of his hoodie. “And you sent that to me. It’s your email.”
“But I didn’t!” Despite the warmth of the house, she shivered. “What do the other emails say?”
“You tell me,” he said, handing over his phone again.
There was an email from after she left with Gem.
Devon, I can’t shake it. Something’s wrong with me. I keep seeing people following me. I’m trying to just focus on the game, and it’s infuriating. It’s so easy to stay alive, and all these idiots are just squandering their chances, going out alone and trying to hide in plain sight like they’re some sort of ninja. I’m tired of it. If they try to take me out, they’re in for a terrible surprise.
“This wasn’t me,” she whispered. “When would I ever say squandering?”
Devon shrugged. “Check your sent folder.”
“Of course.” Lia practically tossed his phone and pulled up hers. There were over a dozen emails from her to Devon, and none of them she recognized.
“ ‘Devon, Ben’s out. Idiot. I told him not to go anywhere alone, and I won’t let him ruin this for me.’ ” She shook her head. “I would never have called Ben an idiot.”
“But you sent me this,” he said. “I’m really not okay with playing games, Lia. You sent me these, and you never took my advice.”
“What was your advice?” she asked, pulling up one of his responses.
He had offered to come sit with her. There were paragraphs of text, things she didn’t know and things she did. Devon had sent her little puzzles and riddles, and he had offered to visit her at her house. The responses sounded like things she would say, but they were off. She had declined to meet him at her house, and he had said no to meeting at the park. He had confided in her. Told her he wanted to quit music.
And her response—or rather, the response from whoever was pretending to be her: “You can’t quit. Music is so useful.”
Lia stared at him for a moment and set her phone down.
“Is that really what you think I would say?” she asked. Then she sighed. “Do you really want to quit music?”
He glanced at her, brows a squiggly line above his eyes. “Is that really important right now?”
“It’s context,” she said. “Do you?”
“Yes.” He swallowed, eyes darting toward the kitchen, and nodded. “I don’t love it anymore. It used to make me happy, but now it feels like a chore.”
“Then you should quit,” Lia said. She traced his fingers and leaned her forehead against his shoulder. “You should quit and find something that makes you happy. Just because it’s useful doesn’t mean you have to do it.”
“Lia.” He sighed and touched her face, her shoulder, her leg, as if to check to make sure she was still there. “What is going on?”
“I don’t know.” She sniffed and rubbed the small scratch on her cheek. “Maybe someone is trying to get me out of the game?”
“Ben is dead, Lia.” He pulled back to look in her eyes, and his other hand came up to her face. “No one would kill over the game, or go through this much trouble over it.”
“Ben has been dead,” Lia said, “plenty of people were still playing, and I know for a fact I didn’t send you these messages.”
“Are you sure?” Devon pulled away from her when she scowled. “Okay, sorry. It’s just that it’s your email.”
Lia reared back, discomfort prickling over her skin. “You don’t believe me?”
“The last few weeks have been very hard,” he said. “It’s easy to forget things.”
“I didn’t forget having whole conversations with you.” Lia rose and stepped away from the couch. Her shoes scuffed against the old wooden floors of his house. The sounds of his dad cooking stopped. “I didn’t send those messages, and whoever you’ve been talking to wasn’t me.”
The evening jingle of the news undercut Lia’s bitter whispering, and Devon rubbed his eyes.
“What’s the simpler explanation?” he asked. “That you sent me these messages and forgot, or that someone did what—hacked your email and has been leading me on for a week and a half for no discernible reason?”
The simplest explanation was that she was a fool, then.
“You don’t know me at all,” she whispered. “Not even a little bit.”
And it hurt. No one got Lia. Gem did the most, but that was one person. Lia’s parents barely tolerated her love of games and deep ambivalence to school and sports, the only two things they did understand. Her teachers certainly didn’t get her, and for years Lia had built up this ideal in her mind. Devon Diaz—so smart and observant, he had to understand.
He couldn’t tell her apart from someone’s crappy idea of a joke.
Devon put his phone away and shook his head. He looked up at her.
“Hey, guys,” his dad called from the kitchen. “Come in here for a moment.”
Lia wasn’t sure she could take anything else happening today, but Devon tugged her gently into the kitchen with one hand holding her sleeve. He didn’t even touch her to do it.
She checked her Sent messages for other messages she hadn’t been a part of and found one not to Devon but to the Council.
The Council,
Will Abby’s death affect my standing if I continue playing?
Sincerely,
Lia Prince
The Council had never responded. It was such a bitter message to send. Lia never would have.
“Lia, I already talked to your mom. She’s coming to get you,” Devon’s dad said. His laptop was balanced on top of a twelve-pack, and a muted news story played out behind him. “Cassidy Clarke died this afternoon.”
Lia grabbed ahold of the kitchen counter. She felt like she might pass out.
“What?” One of Devon’s hands twitched toward her, but he wrapped his arms around himself instead. “Our Cassidy?”
His dad nodded and laid one hand on his shoulder. “Yeah. Lia, I know you’re probably not okay, but your mom will be here in a few minutes to get you.”
“When…when did it happen?” Lia asked.
“A few hours ago I think.” He nodded. “Unfortunately, the news got there first, so if anyone sends either of you anything, it’s probably better not to look at it.”
Lia turned her phone off.
“Where was she?” Devon asked, staring at Lia.
She had seen too many crime shows to ignore his tone. She had been in that park twenty minutes ago.
He was thinking that maybe she had something to do with it.
“Pine Valley.” His dad sighed. “So definitely no more walking alone or sudden drives to get friends.”
Devon’s face fell and he opened his mouth, but the doorbell was ringing and a rushing sound was filling Lia’s ears, everything around her fading out until all she could think about was how Lincoln was so cursed that the news was just hanging around for the next dead kid.
Abby. Ben. Cassidy. Abby. Ben. Cassidy. Abby. Ben.
“Cassidy,” her mother’s voice said from the front door. “What a tragedy.”
That stalker at the park hadn’t been part of the game, and now Cassidy was dead. She shuddered. Devon grabbed her hand before she could follow his dad to the door.
“I was just worried,” he whispered. “
That could’ve been you instead of Cassidy. I wasn’t saying you had anything to do with it.”
But it felt like someone was. It felt like a lot of things had been leading to this, and Lia had only just been told she was losing a game she hadn’t been told she was playing. There was too much that didn’t make sense for it just to be that she couldn’t remember things. She knew who she was and what she was doing. She did.
Lia walked slowly to the car. There was an odd pinch to her mom’s face that kept her from looking at Lia. Once they were both buckled in and on the road, Lia screenshot all the messages, her photo folders without the photo sent to Devon, and the history of devices that had been using her email account.
“We need to stop by the police station before we go home,” her mom said. “To talk about Abby and Ben again now that Cassidy…”
Lia nodded, texted Devon her device history, and said, “Yeah, I figured.”
An iPhone in Lincoln, AR, with an IP that definitely wasn’t her.
“Just answer their questions,” her mom said. “It’ll be okay.”
Lia only nodded again. There wasn’t much she could say. There wasn’t much she could think. She sent a single message to the Council before she could rethink it.
Why didn’t you respond to that email?
Either the Council had a blanket policy not to respond to nonstandard questions, or—
A text from a restricted number popped up on her phone.
Why would we respond to someone not in the game?
Cassidy was all over social media, even though the news couldn’t report her name since she was a minor at seventeen.
Past tense was beginning to make Lia sick.
“They just want to talk with you since you knew everyone,” her mom said, fixing Lia’s hair and holding out her nice coat. She must have grabbed it before leaving the house. She must have known they wanted to talk to Lia before Cassidy’s death was even on the official news and not just Twitter. “What happened to your face?”
“Tree branch I ran past,” she said. “So that’s great.”
“Just answer their questions,” said her mom. “Don’t be smart. Don’t tell them more than they ask. I’ll be in there with you.”
As they parked, Lia shoved her bag into the back of the car. There was nothing in there to help her. If anything, her journal made her look absurd. She had stalked her classmates, and now someone was killing them. She had been one of the last to see Ben and one of the people to find him, and now she had been alone—for all she could prove—in the park where Cassidy was killed.
Abby looked even worse.
Would Gem and Devon simply blame trauma for Lia forgetting she murdered two people?
God, they all thought Lia had killed people.
The police station was crowded when they arrived. A few people lingered on the sidewalk, checking phones and pictures on big, professional cameras. A cop met them at their car and escorted them in, keeping their body between Lia and the street, and they were led through a back door. Lia swallowed, sinking into a chair as they were told to wait. Her mom sat with her.
“Is Dad coming?” Lia asked.
“No,” her mom said, “he’s looking into something else.”
They made Lia wait. It was at least thirty minutes after she sat down before a tall white man she vaguely recognized as Detective James came to greet them. He had spoken to Lia after Ben’s death.
“Mrs. Prince, Lia, thank you for waiting. Come on in here,” he said, leading them into a small conference room and shutting the door behind them. He pulled out a chair for Lia and gestured to one for her mom. He was in a wrinkled suit that might’ve been the one he had been wearing last time Lia saw him, but this time he didn’t pull at the knot of his tie. “How are you, Lia?”
“I’m okay, I think,” she said. “Thanks.”
Three dead—two times Lia had been there and one time she hadn’t.
“As you probably know, another of your classmates was found a little while ago,” he said, and set his elbows on the table. “Cassidy Clarke. Did you know her?”
“Yeah.” Lia took a breath. “She sat in front of me in a few classes, and she’s been in a few more since freshman year.”
“But you didn’t know her well?” he asked.
The room was off-white and bare, and the soft sound of her mom’s breath rumbled in Lia’s ear. There was nothing in there to look at except James. She didn’t have anything to do with Cassidy’s death, but her heart hammered away anyway.
“No, she was in choir and she was really good in history.” Lia shrugged and crossed her arms, shoving her shaking hands underneath them. “She just got the Governor’s Scholarship. She was really happy about it.”
Detective James nodded. “Her parents mentioned that. They also mentioned a game that the seniors play in secret. A game about killing each other.”
“Assassins,” Lia said. It wasn’t really a secret. The students just liked pretending it was and that they were mysterious killers. “She was. Most people in Lincoln have played it.”
“It’s why you were following Abby the morning she died, right?” he asked.
“Yeah, she was my team’s first target,” she said.
“Have you remembered anything else since we spoke last?” He jotted something down on his notebook, his gaze never quite finding hers. The way his wrinkles and beard trembled as he spoke kept his expression unreadable. “Anything at all that might be helpful?”
The back of her neck prickled, and her stomach rolled. She felt exactly as she had in the park, watching the shadowy figure watch her, except now there were emails on her phone she hadn’t sent. There was a picture of someone she didn’t know in her email. There were two people who had been following her.
She shook her head. “No, I’m sorry.”
“You know, it’s weird,” the detective said, laughing softly and leaning back in his chair. “I’ve worked here for twenty years, and I can’t place you at all. Saw your brother Mark play in the state finals as a junior. I could pick him or Abby or Ben or Cassidy out of a crowd. You, though? There wasn’t even gossip about you until you were found with Abby.”
Lia picked at her shirtsleeves. “I’ve never really done anything worth remembering.”
“No,” he said, “you haven’t.”
He pulled a small folder out from under his notebook, the white edges of a photo fanning out from within it. He pulled it out to reveal a small pink water gun lying in the grass.
“I wasn’t in Lincoln till a few years ago,” he said, turning the photo so that she could see it right side up. “Folks talk about Assassins like it’s real assassins, but most of it’s harmless. All fun and games. Most of the people in that room out there played it. They said this was fairly usual—girl alone in a park with nothing but a water gun and flashlight after school. You have one, right?”
Lia nodded. “Mine’s blue.”
“Yeah, this was Cassidy’s.” The pink gun was identical to the one Lia had seen in that photo sent to Devon.
“You were pretty beaten up when you found Abby.” His gaze darted to her cheek and then back to his folder. “Bruised knees, hands, and one bad one across your calves.”
“I tripped,” Lia said. “Like Abby.”
“Which is weird since there was nothing to trip over.” He pulled out another picture, this one of a small knife. It was the dull short kind that came with a full set of silverware in fancy lunch boxes. A few people at school used them. They only just passed the “no knives” rule because they were no more dangerous than the plastic ones in the cafeteria. “Do you recognize this?”
“No,” Lia said, even though she could think of only one reason for why he would ask.
He laid another two photos before her, this time one of a tree, where a thin circle of bark had been worn away from th
e trunk. The other was of a pale, battered leg, which was marred by a narrow red line across the shin. “At least, there was nothing to trip over when we got there, but it was just you and Abby in Pleasant Pines.”
The back of Lia’s throat grew hot and damp. Her mouth watered. She whispered, “Is that her leg?”
“You had tried to take her out the day before, hadn’t you?” he asked. “But you missed, she got hurt, and it almost got the game canceled. It was you who convinced Principal White not to ban it.”
Lia closed her eyes.
“And Ben Barnard, bless him, got taken out of the game right before he was killed.” Pages rustled, and a photo slid across the metal table. “According to friends, he got shot in the hand.”
Lia shook her head. “I saw his hand. I can’t see it again. I don’t want to see it again. Please take it away.”
“How did you cut your cheek?” he asked.
“I was running,” she said. “From my assassin. They chased after me when Gem dropped me off at home.”
Her mom sucked in a breath. “You were supposed to stop playing.”
“Everyone was, but you didn’t,” said James. “And you were running through Pleasant Pines, right? Near Pine Valley pool?”
“I was on the phone with Devon,” Lia said. “I didn’t see Cassidy at all.”
“You sent him a picture, too. You didn’t just talk to him.”
Lia opened her eyes, and James covered up Ben’s picture with a different one. Cassidy, face hidden by her hood, splayed out in the grass next to one of the cement tables near Pine Valley pool. Red stained the corner of the table. The pink water gun lay in the grass next to her. Lia gagged.
“No…no, Cassidy wasn’t there when I was there,” Lia said, stammering. “There was this other person following me, and I shot them, but they didn’t stop to exchange information. We’re supposed to exchange information when we get a kill, but they just kept following me, so I ran. Cassidy wasn’t there. There wasn’t anyone else there.”
The Game Page 13