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by John David Anderson

  I had said the same thing less than a minute before, of course, but I wasn’t Rose Holland. She was taller than all of them, her face taut, lower lip tucked under her top teeth, and I realized this was the first time I’d ever seen her really, truly angry.

  Cameron unwound his arms and pushed Deedee away, nearly running him into the bay of sinks on the other side of the room.

  “We were just playing a game,” he said. “We made a little bet. He owes me.”

  Rose glanced at me. I shook my head. “He was about to dunk him,” I said. “He stole Deedee’s die.” She turned back to Cameron, glaring.

  Cameron shrugged and gave Deedee’s ten-sider a kick, causing it to skitter into a corner. “Whatever. The dweeb can keep it. We’re leaving anyway.” He took a step toward the door.

  Rose didn’t budge. “Not yet you’re not.”

  Cameron froze, only a few feet away from her. Obviously he hadn’t factored Rose Holland into the equation when he followed Deedee and me into the bathroom, but he wasn’t going to back down either. “You’re going to stop us from walking out that door? You’re a girl . . . loosely speaking,” he added. Noah snickered.

  “A girl who’s strong enough to knock your teeth out. . . . Loosely speaking.”

  Noah stopped laughing. Cameron thought about it for a second, swallowed hard and thick, it seemed, then blew her off with a wave of his arm. “I’m not going to fight you, if that’s what you’re thinking. I wouldn’t hit a girl. Even one like you.”

  Rose shrugged. “Fine. Then since you are in the mood to make bets, how about you and I make one. If you win, I’ll let you dunk all three of us. But if I win, you have to walk around school with a note stuck to your shirt the whole day that says whatever I want it to.”

  Deedee looked at me and sniffed. Cameron and his friends exchanged glances. I tried to catch Rose’s eye and ask her what the heck do you think you’re doing with a carefully constructed facial expression, but she wouldn’t take her eyes off of Cameron.

  He shook his head. “You’re kidding, right? That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.”

  Rose’s voice was like steel. “Take the bet or take a swing. I’m good either way.”

  Deedee and I stood next to each other, looking from Rose to Cameron and back again. Possible she was bluffing, but I didn’t think so.

  “She’s nuts, man. Let’s just go,” T said, but he didn’t move. He couldn’t. Rose was blocking the door. There was absolutely no chance of squeezing by. Not without her permission.

  “I’m serious. You want to walk out of here, you take the bet. Otherwise we just end it right now.” She looked down at her black boots, the toes scuffed gray. I wondered if she’d ever kicked anyone with those boots before.

  Cameron clearly didn’t think she was bluffing either.

  “All right. Fine. Whatever,” he said, mustering the necessary bravado to save face with his friends. “You want to roll the geek’s stupid little die again?”

  Rose shook her head. “No dice. This is Branton,” she said smugly. “There’s only one way to settle a bet around here, right?”

  “The Gauntlet? Are you crazy?”

  The three of us were sitting on a bench outside the cafeteria. Deedee was still shaking, the snot crusting over on his shirt sleeve. After Cameron and his friends left—only after Rose stepped aside and agreed to let them go—Deedee collapsed to the bathroom floor by the trash can and started sobbing. Rose knelt down and wrapped an arm around him, whispering, “It’s all right,” over and over. I picked up his die and put it in his hand, but he just grunted and threw it across the room, where it ricocheted off one of the urinals. It took a few minutes for him to calm down enough to stand up and leave the restroom, enough time for two other boys to come in, one of them at least having the kindness to ask if we wanted him to get help. Rose thanked him and told him everything was fine, she had it under control. Then she got a wet paper towel and helped Deedee wipe his face.

  We found the bench in the hall and put Deedee between us, propping him up on both sides. We were already ten minutes late to lunch, but it didn’t matter. Wolf wasn’t here and Bench was sitting somewhere else. There was nobody else who cared if we showed up or not.

  “We should just go tell Wittingham,” I said. “Forget this stupid bet thing. I mean, have you even seen the Gauntlet? There’s no way. It’s nuts. Totally nuts. This is insane.”

  I was talking quickly, I realized. I wasn’t as shaken up as Deedee, but then I wasn’t the one who’d been dragged into the stall either.

  Rose, on the other hand, seemed unfazed. “It can’t be any worse than having your head stuck in a toilet.”

  “But if you lose, then we are all going to have our heads stuck in the toilet,” I said.

  “I’m not going to lose.”

  “You don’t know that,” I said.

  “Neither do you,” she countered. “Besides, telling the principal won’t work. Trust me. This kind of thing happened at my old school all the time. You report it and it becomes your word against theirs. Maybe they get suspended, but probably not. Maybe you get blamed too. Doesn’t matter. Either way, it’ll probably end up the same as before. Or worse.”

  “It’s not like that here,” I insisted.

  “It’s like that everywhere,” Rose said. “This isn’t my first rodeo.”

  I shut up, remembering what she’d said before, about what it had been like for her in Chicago. Dozer—the bull was implied. I wondered how many times she’d been where Deedee was now, sitting on a bench, blurry eyed and trembling. Wondered if she ever had people on either side of her, holding her up, or if she had always had to sit up by herself.

  “What if he doesn’t even show?” I asked. Half of me suspected that Cameron only agreed to the bet to get out of the restroom before things got messy, before he found himself on his knees, looking for a missing tooth beneath the sink.

  “Then he loses. But don’t worry, he’ll show,” Rose insisted. “Word will get around. He knows what people will say if he doesn’t. You said yourself, the Gauntlet is the place where scores are settled.”

  “It’s the place where bones are broken,” I amended. “And there’s no way you’re going to make it all the way down. It’s impossible.”

  “I don’t have to make it all the way down,” Rose said. “I just have to make it farther than he does.”

  Sitting between us Deedee sucked up a noseful of snot. He looked hopefully up at Rose. “If you do win, what are you going to write on the note?”

  “First things first. I have to win,” she said. “Which means there’s one thing we’ve got to take care of.”

  My stomach lurched. “Oh God. Please tell me you know how to ride a bike.”

  “Of course I know how to ride a bike,” Rose scoffed. “I just don’t happen to own one.”

  THE RUN

  NOTES WEREN’T EXACTLY NEW. DESPITE WHAT DEEDEE MIGHT THINK, he didn’t invent them as a form of communication. I bet Ancient Egyptian schoolchildren shuffled little bits of papyrus back and forth, scratched up with hieroglyphics poking fun at the pharaoh. The Founding Fathers probably passed around bits of parchment with a poll on them: On a scale of one to five, how cool are you with the current tax on tea? I could see Shakespeare passing a note to some girl—or boy—with checkboxes that asked, “Art thou besmitten with me” or “Art thou besmitten with me-besmitten with me.”

  My parents used to pass each other notes back in high school. Afterward they wrote letters. They went to the same college right after graduation, but about halfway through my mother transferred to a community college closer to home so she could help take care of her father, Grandpa Steve, who had a stroke. During those two years my parents saw each other every other weekend, but they filled the spaces in between with writing. There was no Skype, no texts or Instagram, only email. And yet my father insisted on pen and paper, on the minty-bitter taste of envelope glue. Mom once told me that she thought Dad was an excellent writer—the
thing he was best at, really—and if it weren’t for those letters she probably wouldn’t have hung around. Dad’s words wheedled their way into her heart and got stuck there.

  When they got married there was no need to write to each other anymore. And when my father finally did go far enough away, they had nothing left to say, except How’s Eric? And Have you mailed the check yet?

  I sometimes wonder where those letters got to—the ones from college. Maybe Dad took them with him and they are stashed in some dilapidated shoe box in the corner of his closet. Maybe my mother recycled them along with credit card offers and coupons for takeout Chinese.

  It makes you wonder where they all go, all the letters and notes, the thank-you cards and the birthday invitations, the little missives scrawled along the edges of grocery lists, the doodles on the cardboard backs of spiral-bound notebooks. All those messages, so important, so pressing, so necessary.

  Maybe Wolf’s right and they never really disappear. Even after they’re crumpled and thrown away, they linger and become ghosts. Not the kind that hide up in the attic rattling your shutters, but the kind that follow you wherever you go, coming back to you like an echo, like when something leaves a bad taste in your mouth. I don’t know if that’s guilt or regret. My father would probably be able to tell me. My mom too.

  I do know that in the heat of the moment, people will say things that they haven’t thought through, things they don’t really mean. The words come from somewhere deep in the chest and take the first turnoff, bypassing the brain and heading directly for the mouth, and only afterward do you realize what a gonzo mistake you’ve made.

  Like . . . I don’t know . . . making a stupid bet that is probably going to get you killed.

  It was decided—through the passing of stealth sticky notes, of course—that Rose Holland and Cameron Cole would run the Gauntlet at five that same afternoon, only a week after Evan Smalls bruised his shoulder, sprained his ankle, and busted up his bike. It seemed too soon, too little time to prepare, but there was a threat of rain at the end of the week, which would only make the Gauntlet more treacherous. Besides, as Cameron was heard mentioning to his friends in the hall, this time of year was prime moose-hunting season.

  It was also decided—after some debate—that Rose would borrow my bike. Wolf’s had been broken since the summer, busted chain, and Deedee’s was too small even for him, a twenty-incher that his parents hadn’t realized he’d grown out of yet. If Rose tried to ride that little Schwinn, she’d look like one of those tricycle-riding clowns at the circus. My bike was old, but at least it was almost the right size.

  I only knew one person who owned a new bike. A black-and-gold Diamondback, twenty-four speed. It was Bench’s Christmas present last year. But as soon as I mentioned it, Deedee’s face turned green.

  “No,” he said. “We’re not asking Bench.”

  I opened my mouth to ask why, but then I realized. Because Cameron Cole knew about Deedee’s die. Which meant somebody had to have told him. Maybe that someone wasn’t Bench. Maybe it trickled down from somebody else. Like a game of telephone, whispered from ear to ear, jumping from text to text. It didn’t matter. Deedee was convinced that Bench had blabbed.

  “You don’t know for sure that he said anything,” I said, but Deedee shook his head again and looked at Rose.

  “Your bike will be fine,” she told me.

  “In fact,” Deedee added, “I hope he doesn’t even come.”

  That seemed too much to ask. The moment Cameron agreed to the bet, word spread like pinkeye, working its way through the underground channels. The first showdown of the year: Cameron Cole versus Rose Holland. There had been a couple of solo runs, like Evan’s, but no head-to-heads. Add to that that this was the first run between a girl and a guy in the history of the hill, and only the fourth time a girl had tried to run the Gauntlet ever, and it became plain as white toast that anyone who could sneak out of the house and make it to Hirohito Hill would be there to watch.

  Everyone but Wolf. He hadn’t been at school and Rose asked me not to call him. “I already know what he’s going to say. It’s best if he doesn’t even know.”

  It wasn’t my call. It was my bike, sure, and Deedee’s honor, but it was Rose’s bet and Rose’s body—her bruises and potentially broken bones. She didn’t want Wolf there for whatever reason, so I didn’t call. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t find out, of course. But maybe he wouldn’t find out in time to try to stop her.

  We met outside my house after school and I brought out Rose’s ride, a ten-year-old Huffy, once painted red, now looking more like rust. My mother snagged it for twenty bucks at a garage sale.

  Deedee had a can of barbecue Pringles in hand, munching nervously. “Oh. Now you bring them,” I said.

  Rose ran her hand along the frame of my bike. “We’ll have to raise the handlebars,” she said. “I’ll need to steer. And raise the seat too.”

  “You won’t need to raise the seat,” I told her. “You won’t even need to pedal. It’s got eighteen speeds, but you won’t need any of them.” The Gauntlet only had two speeds: way too fast and abrupt stop. “Steering is all that matters. And balance.” I thought about Bench’s formula for making it down the Gauntlet. “And not letting go.”

  “And faith,” Deedee added.

  “You need to relax,” Rose said, looking at Deedee and pointing to the can of chips. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

  I didn’t want to say, but as Captain Dramatic handed over the Pringles, he immediately launched into a lecture on the history of the Gauntlet and its storied atrocities. “The worst that can happen? Let’s see. In oh-four, Jimmy ‘Breaker’ Beeker earned his nickname on the hill. Compound fracture. The bone sticking out, blood-black gore and everything. And in oh-eight some kid named Carlos from another school nearly lost an eye to a tree branch. He had to have surgery and wore a patch for three months. Everyone calls him Cap’n now. And supposedly thirty years ago, a kid who lived in the neighborhood near the bottom actually died.”

  Rose stopped, hand stuck in the can of chips. “Are you serious?” She looked at me. “Is he serious?”

  “He didn’t die going down the hill,” I corrected. “He had leukemia. He passed away in the hospital. Kids just tell that story to scare other kids.”

  “I’m telling you what I heard,” Deedee insisted. I took a moment to appreciate the irony. This is how we got in this mess to begin with. People telling other people what they heard.

  “First to die while biking down a hill. Not a record I want.” Rose straddled my bike. It still looked too small for her. She was a real-life Goldilocks. Nothing quite fit, but she didn’t let it deter her. She steered the bike down the driveway and Deedee and I watched her pedal up and down the street a few times, looking not-too-wobbly. Then she asked us to stand out in the middle of the road and pretend to be trees so she could practice weaving in between us.

  “No,” Deedee said. “I don’t want to be a tree.”

  “Do you want your head stuck in a toilet?” Rose fired back.

  The toilets in the boys’ bathrooms were cleaned once at the end of the day and by then the smell was beyond atrocious. There was a reason somebody put a sticky note on one stall that read Now Entering Chernobyl, Population 0. It was not the kind of bath you ever wanted to take.

  We took our places in the street and I closed my eyes as Rose whipped past. Her green jacket brushed against me, but that was as close as she got to knocking me over. She maneuvered around us half a dozen times, only riding over Deedee’s foot once. He was almost positive she broke it, but that was just Deedee being Deedee.

  Afterward the three of us sat in my garage and finished off the chips. I felt a little better. Rose had shown that she was capable of consistently maneuvering between two trees. Or at least two humans posing as trees. On a straight, level, paved road. Going five miles an hour.

  There was a chance she would survive. I sucked the red barbecue powder from my fingertips.
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br />   “You know what this is like?” Deedee said as Rose funneled the crumbs from the can into her mouth. “Game of Thrones. Like when you have a trial by combat and you get to choose your champion. That’s exactly what this is.”

  “Your parents let you watch Game of Thrones?” Rose asked. I couldn’t tell if she was impressed or appalled. Maybe she was just jealous.

  “Of course not,” Deedee said. “But I got the books from a used bookstore and I read them late at night while my parents are asleep.”

  I smiled. This kind of deviousness surprised me coming from him. “And how is this anything like Game of Thrones?” I asked.

  “Well, in the books if you’re accused of something, like poisoning a king or stabbing your cousin, you can call for a trial by combat to defend your honor. But you don’t have to do it yourself. You can choose the person who will fight for you.”

  “And you chose me,” Rose said, smiling. She reached over to punch Deedee playfully, leaning over me. Her hair smelled like coconuts.

  “Technically you volunteered,” I corrected.

  “And how does it usually turn out? This trial by combat?” Rose asked.

  Deedee scratched his head. “Honestly? Somebody gets their head smashed in.”

  We all let that thought sink in. Deedee forced a smile. “It’s pretty good stuff, though,” he added. “Really bloody.”

  I asked if I could borrow the books when he was done.

  At 4:35 we started our quiet walk to the hill. I volunteered to push the bike, saying Rose should save her strength, get focused, or whatever it was people did before they plummeted to their death. We passed a gas station and Deedee insisted on stopping and getting a pint of milk. “For when you win,” he said. “Like in the Indy 500.” Rose said okay, as long as it was chocolate. In the end she ended up drinking it on the way to wash down the barbecue chips.

  Up ahead you could see the outline of Hirohito Hill peaking above the houses like a green sunrise. A couple of kids from BMS passed us riding their own bikes. I saw one of them point and say, “There she is. That’s Rose Holland.”