The Tournament Trilogy

by B. B. Griffith

  They are Grey, we are Blue. They are Gold, we are Blue.

  Maybe everyone got a folder, she thought. Maybe everyone would meet outside of her house, in the silent cul-de-sac this evening at 8pm, as instructed. Maybe it was a joke they were playing on her, a horrible joke. But if that was so, let her then enjoy these fleeting moments where she couldn’t be sure, where there still existed a possibility of something bigger than her, inviting her in. She went through class in a fog. Every flash of blue she saw mocked her, but nobody seemed to be laughing.

  There was talk of twin murders in Chula Vista, California, of a long running vigil there for a fallen team. There was confusion and a growing sense that Blue had been a power not long ago, but it had been stripped from them. There was a feeling of injustice. It was as if they were finding out about their favorite band mere days after they broke up. All of these whispers were getting louder.

  In calculus she sat next to one of the few people she ever talked to with regularity, a heavy girl named Kelsey, who took great care with her personal appearance and came from old Wyoming rancher money. She dressed in all of the right ways and with all of the right accessories, but was fighting an upstream battle solely because of her weight. She had few friends, but she acted as though she had a harem.

  “Are you all right, Ellie?” she whispered. “You look pale. Paler than usual, I mean.”

  Ellie flicked her a sideways glance. Kelsey was alternating looks from side to front like a nervous driver. Their calculus teacher, Mr. Zimmerman, didn’t take well to speaking out of hand.

  “I’m fine,” Ellie whispered quickly. “Just tired.”

  “Did you really go to Tamara’s party?” Kelsey whispered, her gaze full-on now, her overdone eyes wide.

  The shame of the night once more washed Ellie back into reality. TJ Elrey had left her spinning in the breeze in front of the entire social scene at Shawnee Mission. By all rights she should run away or drop out of school. She supposed kids had switched school districts for less. Ellie could only nod.

  “What are you, crazy?”

  Several rows turned and Zimmerman stared pointedly at the two of them for five dead-silent seconds in which Ellie blushed radish red. One girl giggled, which doubled the effect. His point made, Zimmerman continued with his lecture, undeterred. Kelsey was about to whisper again, but instead wrote on a corner of notebook paper. She shifted it Ellie’s way.

  What did you think was going to happen? she wrote, and she took on an exaggerated I-told-you-so face, even though she’d done no such thing. Ellie didn’t want to talk—or write—about anything right now, much less something that would force her to realize the moment in which thirty or so of the loftiest kids Shawnee had to offer saw her booted from a wannabe cheerleader’s party. But Kelsey looked as though she sincerely wanted to know about her, not the event itself, and that had to be good for something.

  I was invited, Ellie wrote in reply, on the corner of her own notebook. Kelsey bugged her eyes. She mouthed a silent question: Who?

  TJ Elrey, she wrote, punching the period harder than necessary. Kelsey furrowed her brow and turned her own notebook back, lost in thought. The rest of class the two of them sat side by side. Several times Kelsey looked to write more, but she thought better of it. Ellie began to wonder if Kelsey believed her. It occurred to her that the entire school may think of her as a liar as well as a failed party crasher—if they thought of her at all.

  After class Kelsey bustled up beside her. “TJ?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s not what he says.”

  Ellie stopped and stepped out of traffic. Kelsey followed.

  “People are saying things about this?” She’d half hoped nobody would bother. She’d never made any sort of splash before. Naturally, it had to be now.

  “I heard that Tamara said that TJ said he never invited you.”

  Ellie studied Kelsey for a long moment. She stood with her legs bowing slightly inward, her brand new, baby-blue designer bag bursting at the seams. Kelsey looked down.

  “Do you think I would ever, in my right mind, ever show up at that house if I didn’t have a reason? If I wasn’t invited?”

  “No. I’m just saying what I heard.”

  They walked in silence for a moment. “This blue stuff, pretty crazy,” Kelsey observed, shooting Ellie a quick glance out of the corner of her eye.

  Ellie thought again of the folder inside her desk, but it was suddenly a piece of paper now, no more. She’d been a fool to think otherwise. She shifted her backpack to her other shoulder and nodded as she silently split off down a separate hallway.

  At the end of the day Ellie took a perfunctory look about the blustery parking lot for Kelsey. She felt she’d been too short with her and knew that neither one of them could afford to be on bad terms with the other. The snow had picked up; here and there students were scraping windows with whatever was at hand. She didn’t see Kelsey’s lime-green coat. Ellie muttered a curse. She wasn’t in the mood to apologize, and decided that she wouldn’t. A girl was entitled to be aloof.

  Ellie scraped the windshield of the minivan with an old CD case as the engine warmed up. She saw Tom Elrey walk out of the double doors and to his own car, accompanied by someone too tall to be Tamara, some other girl. She stared at him, daring him to look her way, and she thought about confronting him, even took a few steps away from her car before turning around again. She’d had enough of doing things just to prove to herself that she could. So much wasted time and energy when she knew that her own nerve was never the problem. It was something else, or the lack thereof. She was missing some chunk of personality that would allow her to glitter her eyes blue and wear push up bras and drink beers during lunch period.

  She just now realized how tired she was. Everything around her felt designed to put her to sleep; the heaviness of her coat, the deep barometric cold of the coming storm, the days darkening ever earlier. The fact that she had walked back to her car in the same footprints she’d made that morning struck her as wearying. Even her car engine rolled over sleepily before finally rumbling to life.

  The heaviness continued into the night, and so it was that she waited for eight o’clock, both out of sincere interest and because she felt so embarrassed that it didn’t much matter anymore if anything happened. She didn’t know what to expect, so she expected nothing. It was safest that way. Instead she sat on her couch, flipping through a magazine, but always with half an eye towards the clock.

  When the doorbell rang promptly at eight she was so flabbergasted that she simply stared at the door.

  It rang again. She heard the stamping of feet outside and a sharp exhale of breath.

  “The door!” Diane twittered.

  “I’ll get the damn door,” Mark huffed, creaking his way down the stairs before seeing Ellie standing right in front of it.

  “Ellbell? Who is it?”

  “I... uh... I don’t know.”

  “Some damn kid selling something.” He peered through the window. “You weren’t expecting anyone or anything, right?” He opened the door without waiting for an answer.

  There, in the soft white dome of the porch light, flecked with fat flakes of snow and breathing great blasts of foggy breath, stood the well dressed, unsmiling young man she had seen wandering the neighborhood in the dead of night three days before. He had a jacket draped over him like a cape, and one arm was in a cast. They stared at each other for several moments.

  “You?”

  “Hello, Ellie.” Max stood a polite distance away. He looked at Mark for a moment before turning back to her.

  “You know this man, Ellie?” Mark asked.

  Ellie knew that this was the man who had placed the folder in her room. His appearance before in the streetlight, his timing now... it was no coincidence. She was oddly relieved that something, anything, had actually happened at eight o’clock, but she fought down that relief. This was no elaborate school prank, no ruse to mock her. Still, she wouldn
’t be won over just because some guy rang her doorbell on time. She took a logical approach to the situation. Nobody had concerned themselves with her in the past, so why should they now? That left one option only: This man was deranged. He had found a way into her house, into her room.

  “No,” Ellie said. “But I’ve seen him lingering about the neighborhood. Hold him here while I call the police.”

  Mark’s eyes bulged as Max sighed and furrowed his sad brow upon itself. “That’s not necessary, I’m no danger to you,” said Max. “In fact if I’m to believe what I hear, and for the record I don’t, but if I’m to believe what I hear, you are the one who is dangerous. “

  Ellie paused as she held her cell phone, mid-dial. Mark sputtered and pawed at Max and eventually grabbed him by the arm. Max pondered his touch for a moment before returning again to Ellie.

  “Me?”

  “Ellbell, what on earth—”

  Mark trailed off just as Dianne Willmore shuffled down the stairs. “What’s going on here? Oh, hello. Who is this, Ellie? A friend?”

  “I have no idea who he is.”

  “You’ve got an idea,” Max said.

  Mark held Max much like a dog would a porcupine he never actually intended to catch up with. “Ell, aren’t you supposed to be calling the police?”

  “Police?” Dianne squawked. “What for?”

  “Everyone just hold on for a second,” Ellie said. “Dad, let him go.”

  Mark released his tepid grip on Max and stepped between him and Ellie. Dianne clutched her mug of coffee like a club. Max stood quietly, resting his free hand gently against his cast. Stray flakes of snow floated in from the darkness behind him and melted on the wooden floor.

  “I suppose you’re going to ask if this is serious,” Max said. “Is this a joke? Can it be? What’s all this mean?” His tone was almost mocking. “I asked too, when I was first given the folder. I can tell you all day long how real it is, but it won’t matter. The only person you need to convince is yourself. That’s the hard part.”

  “Is what real, Ellie?”

  Ellie couldn’t speak. His words were like blows of a hammer, each cracking the glass that she’d floated behind all day. All year, really. Perhaps in some form for much of her life.

  “Do you really want to do this in front of them?” Max asked. “Because if you do, I will.”

  “Dad, can I talk to him for a minute, please?” Ellie asked hollowly, her eyes never leaving Max.

  “I thought you didn’t know him, Ellie.”

  “I may know him. I don’t know,” she said, as if in a trance. Max never moved from his perch on the porch.

  “I will not leave my daughter alone with you,” Mark blustered, seeming to finally find himself. Max looked at him and raised his heavy brow.

  “Fine,” Max said. “Mark, Dianne, may I come in and have a word with the three of you?” He held his good hand out and gave a mock bow.

  Mark and Dianne blanched at being directly addressed, but it was Ellie that nodded to invite him in.

  Max stepped past the threshold and took a moment to appraise the room. He saw Ellie’s senior photo beside her sister’s, both of them grinning strangely next to the same tree. He saw a small ceramic zebra, sitting just outside of the fireplace, that looked to be glued together after cracking. He saw a delicate brass figurine of an ornate snake that balanced two weights across its snout. Max gently touched it to set it spinning.

  “Sit down,” Ellie said.

  Max looked for a place to sit on a living room couch that hadn’t been sat upon in years. He carefully set aside a decorative pillow and perched himself on a cushion’s edge.

  “You were slinking around here a few days ago.”

  “I wanted you to see me.”

  “Tell me why I shouldn’t call the police.”

  “Because you have an outside chance at immortality if you listen to me.”

  Mark and Dianne were mute, sitting on separate chairs flanking their daughter, who still stood.

  “You cannot possibly expect me to believe you. Think if you were in my position. This is... this is not what happens. Not here. Not to me.”

  “I was in your position, once. I do know. But to be completely honest with you, Ellie, I don’t have time for your disbelief, and neither do you.”

  Her parents turned as one to face her. Ellie narrowed her eyes.

  “See,” Max leaned forward and balled his good hand into a fist. “It used to be nobody knew who we were. There wasn’t enough of a whiff of the Tournament to start a rumor. We had a code. There were rules. Now... he gestured mutely at the television and then at Ellie’s parents in their evening robes, and he shook his head. “So I’m just going to say this. My name is Max Haulden. I am, or I was, a member of Team Blue.”

  “Blue? You mean this stuff on TV? Ellie, you know about this?”

  Ellie ignored her father and continued to stare at Max. “Everyone says Blue is gone,” she said.

  “Blue is gone.”

  “No, I mean they’re dead.”

  “So do I.”

  “Then what are you?” she asked flatly.

  “What am I? What indeed.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  Max’s eyes bored into her, his soft sadness gone in a flash and replaced by a cold, stony anger. Ellie almost looked away and to her mother, but she kept her nerve.

  “The they you speak of are dead. Murdered. But there are three members to every team, each with their own specific purpose. I was the third. I lived.”

  “This John Northern person that everyone is talking about—”

  “And Nikkie,” he shot back. “—Nicole. Nicole Hix.” His voice tightened a hair. “People seem to forget about her. She was the true heart of the team.”

  “Who killed them?”

  “The short answer is nobody knows for sure.”

  “What’s the long answer?”

  “You don’t deserve the long answer. Not yet.”

  This man had swung the deciding blow. The water had burst through, like a washing machine destroyed in cycle, slicking the floor and leaving her sopping and exposed.

  “This is really happening,” Ellie whispered.

  “Now then. Are you ready to answer my question, Ellie?” A hard edge nicked into Max’s voice. “You have no idea how precious the time is that you are wasting here.”

  Ellie sat back and crossed her hands over her chest. She wanted to find a blanket and roll up in it and think about things for a decade or so.

  “Can you follow orders?” Max asked.

  “What the hell kind of question is that?”

  “Just answer.”

  “Under what circumstances?”

  “Can. You. Follow. Orders?”

  “Any idiot can follow orders!”

  Max smiled. “I knew it,” he muttered. “That’s what I said, when he asked me. But you got a different folder that I did.”

  Mark stepped in. “What the hell was that? Some sort of test? If this is the way you kids want to get involved with all this nonsense, that’s your business, but leave my daughter out of it.” Dianne nodded absently and clutched her empty mug in front of her. Max turned to them, nearly surprised to still see them there.

  Max sat back and stretched his neck. “Your daughter has already been given her ticket to this carnival, believe it or not. That question was for me. And we’ll leave it at that.”

  “Young man, you come in to my house, I don’t know you from Adam, and you’re cryptic as hell. I don’t know if you’re threatening us, or lecturing us, or if you’re just casing the joint for later when you come back with your hoodlum friends, but it’s time you left.”

  “How many people do you know, Mark?” Max asked blankly. “In your whole life, how many people have you ever really known? Not many, I bet. I can guess at the kind of life you lead. It’s probably mostly within the four corners of this house. Maybe the four corners of this neighborhood. You have no idea what lurks out
there.”

  “Don’t talk to my parents that way. You have no idea who we are.”

  Max shrugged, not quite conceding the point. “I see now why you have nightmares.”

  Ellie’s eyes widened. Max picked up the newspaper from its place on the coffee table, the same newspaper Mark read every morning before handing it to Dianne, who perused it before settling on the crossword. On the front page, the headline read Who Was Blue?

  “Ellie, you can read the news, or you can make the news. Very few people get the opportunity to make the news, but you do. The choice is yours.”

  “Why?” Ellie whispered. “Why me?”

  “You were put on a list, years ago. Why? I’d like to know myself, frankly. I guess that somehow, someway, you did something when the right person was watching. Maybe you looked them right in the eye without knowing who they were and gave them pause. Maybe you made them smile, or frown. Maybe you reminded them of their own daughter. Who knows? We’re noticed because we’re noticed. Now, how I ended up knocking on your door, instead of any one of thousands of others... only you can answer that. And when you figure that out, tell me.”

  “Get out of my house!” Mark roared, and he gestured furiously, but he seemed at a loss as to what to do beyond this.

  “Do you want me out of your house?” Max asked, cocking his head at Ellie.

  Ellie froze.

  “This is going to be a problem, Ellie. I see in your eyes that you believe me. You know. But your family... If you take this commission, you place them in harm’s way. If you say yes, people you’ve never even heard of, and who live on the other side of the world, will immediately hate you. The way things are going,” he nodded at the newspaper and at the television, “entire countries full of people will want your blood, and they may never even see your face.”

  Max looked directly at Mark and Dianne in turn, but he spoke still to Ellie. “Everyone you know and everyone you love is fair game. Your family stands a decent chance of getting hurt and a smaller, but no less real chance, of getting killed.”