by Lily Sparks
“RISE AND SHINE!” Kate’s voice cuts through my sleep as she snaps on the halogen light right by my face.
“It’s still dark,”
“It’s still morning. How’s the neck?” she asks chummily.
“Awful.” I’m unable to look her in the eye; her friendliness is so galling after yesterday. I instead shimmy down the ladder and start to follow Nobody toward the bathroom, but Jada stops us, pulling jeans over her pajama leggings.
“Don’t bother with the shower,” she mutters, sleep in the corners of her eyes. “Until after the obstacle course.”
* * *
What I can make out in the shivery light of morning doesn’t look fun.
After we hike up to the overgrown soccer field, Dave has us line up with the boys along a fat stripe of white spray paint. Across from us wait three chain-link fences, each about ten feet apart, and a grid of rope staked to the ground that leads up to a super tall sheet of plywood. Like, tall-as-a-house tall, with a square hole punched in it the size of a picture window. And that’s just what I can see from starting line.
“Campers!” Dave’s breath condenses in the freezing air. “Time for our morning obstacle course run! For our newcomers”—his eyes catch mine before he sips from a steel thermos—“we run the obstacle course every day. We run it because it will save your lives. Your activities cannot be linked back to any official channels—”
“CIA,” coughs Troy, earning a swift glare from Dave.
“Which means: when the time comes, and you go into the field to take your target out and you mess up, no one is coming to save you. No agency will claim you. You get caught, your prisons will report you as fugitives. To every authority outside this camp, you are just a Class A, doing what Class As do best. And the sentences on Class As are getting tougher every day.”
He points up to the obstacle course.
“That’s why all our lessons are based on learning general skills you can improvise with out in the field. We are training you to take care of yourselves. Because out in the real world, much like out on that obstacle course, there is no safety net.”
Wait, what? No safety net?!
“What did we come to camp to learn?” he yells.
“How to not get caught!” they yell back.
“What did we come to camp to learn?” he hollers right at me.
“How to not get caught!” I join in.
“All right! So! Pretty simple!” Dave continues briskly. “You’re gonna go straight through the course, one obstacle after the next, fast as you can. When the first person gets all the way through, they turn around and chase the person who finishes after them. You catch the person behind you, you’re done! Sit down and relax. But if they make it past you to the tree line, you have to go through again. Easy, right?”
The way the others laugh at this chills me. I never played a sport in school. I ditched gym whenever possible. Apparently, I chose wrong.
“What about the last person?” I ask.
“Last one automatically has to go again,” Dennis tells me, with a look on his face that speaks of bitter experience.
“On your mark!” Dave yells. “Get set. Go!”
We sprint forward and I learn how to climb chain link by watching Erik and Javier shoot ahead. (Throw your hands up as far as you can, hitch your foot up high, keep your knees locked at the top, and throw yourself down.) I’m winded by the third fence, and when I jump down I land in knee-deep, ice-cold mud.
“Effing GROSS!” Jada groans, landing with a squelch behind me. Nobody slogs past us and grapples up the grid of rope ladders toward the big square hole in the plywood wall. I chase after her, but when I scramble through there’s another plywood wall beyond it, with its own square window, placed even higher.
It has to be twenty feet off the ground.
Connecting the two windows is a narrow rope ladder that looks like a faulty bridge from an Indiana Jones movie. Below, just like Dave warned, is nothing but the ground, a plot of cold mud. The rope ladder creaks back and forth in the morning breeze.
“You have got to be kidding me,” I mutter, climbing out onto the first few rungs.
“Yo! Passing from behind!” someone calls.
And whoever is behind me proceeds to flip the ladder over. The black earth and white sky trade places as a roller-coaster scream tears out of me and suddenly I’m hanging upside down, the weight of my entire body pulling at my slippery hands and feet, as Kurt literally climbs over me. Once his weight shifts off the ladder, sky and earth blur as the ladder spins, then swings sickeningly back and forth, left and right, again and again, my cold clenched hands going needles-and-pins numb before it finally settles.
Head down, I creep across the ladder to the second square window and get a leg through, clutching the wall so hard the plywood buckles in time with me. A length of rope hangs down below the second window and I watch as Kurt finishes rappelling down to the ground, with no harness.
“You can do this. You can do this. Get your feet flat on the wall,” I tell myself out loud, as if I’m some reality show contestant on TV. I grab the rope and back out over an almost two-story drop.
But this isn’t TV. This is me, a bag of meat, and gravity. I immediately slide down the rope. I have to clench my fists so hard the skin flays off my palms to grind to a halt, five feet from impact. When my raw fingers release the coarse rope, I drop hard into cold thick mud.
Three lanes of the same freezing wet dirt zigzag under a low grid of barbed wire. Getting on my hands and knees isn’t low enough, I have to sink to my belly, head down, face practically in the muck, to keep the wire from snagging my hair. At least there’s no way to fall. When I finally slog through to the end of the barbed wire run and heave myself back to standing, I’m soaked through and shivering hard.
And what’s waiting in front of me is … an apartment building? No. What?
I stagger closer. It’s yet another climbing wall, but dressed like a building: the detailed façade includes vinyl siding, a door, and three pairs of window frames nailed to the plywood. There’s muddy tracks, but no rope or ladder. How are we supposed to get up there?
Dennis shoots in front of me and throws himself at the door, grabbing the white lintel of the doorframe, one of his sneakers landing on the doorknob.
We’re supposed to free-climb up a thirty-foot tall fake building?
“MOVE, SIGNAL! YOU’RE IN LAST PLACE!!” Dave shrieks right in my ear, and I turn on him, wet, freezing, and as angry as I’ve ever been in my life.
“I can’t!” I blurt and Dave’s whistle drops from his mouth. “I’ll fall, okay? I can’t climb anymore. I am physically exhausted.”
Behind Dave, from the campers who’ve finished, I hear a low: “Ooooooh.”
“And how,” Dave says after a long silence, “do you think you’re going to feel after you murder and dispose of an adult body, Signal?!” He pushes his face close to mine, eyes unnaturally wide. “You think you’re going to be refreshed, Signal? No. You’re going to be ‘physically exhausted.’ You can’t clear a scene, you get caught. You get caught, you fry. Or hang. Or get a lethal injection. Or you learn how to MOVE YOUR ASS AND CLEAR THE COURSE.”
There’s a faint giggle from behind him and my face burns.
“Get back on your mark. You’re running again. All the way this time.”
No.
“Erik! Jada! Kurt! On your mark!” Dave snarls, and blows on his whistle, high and shrill.
“Last place, huh?” Erik calls, beating me to the starting line, his hair and the whole side of his head (including one of his dimples) plastered with mud. “I was first, you know. But Javier was second and got past me.”
“Yeah? Cool story. Hey—” I tap my cheek. “You got a little something on your face.”
Javier jogs toward us, and lands on the other side of me.
“Why are you running again?” Erik calls over to him.
“Extra credit,” Javier shrugs. “What, you nervous I’ll outrun you again? Be
cause you should be.”
“On your mark!” Dave yells. “Get set! GO!”
The first run of the obstacle course was the most grueling physical ordeal of my life. The second time is infinitely worse. Because now I know what’s waiting at the end.
When I get to the fake apartment building, Jada’s still rappelling down the wall and Erik is halfway up the apartment façade, climbing up the drainpipe. I guess Javier got through first. Kurt flies past me and I lurch after him, trembling with exhaustion.
I leap for the lintel and hoist one foot up onto the doorknob, throw my arms up for the windowsill and dig my fluttering fingertips into its ledge. My vision narrows as I try to pull myself up. I can’t, my arms won’t respond, I can’t—
A flash of muddy pink flannel in my peripheral as Jada passes me.
No. I cannot do this again. I’ve got to move.
I haul myself up so my hips are level with the windowsill and bring one foot up on the ledge, then reach up and grope above my head as I push myself upward, until I can grip the top of the window frame and pull myself up. So now I’m standing on tiptoe, on a thin wood windowsill, two stories off the ground.
I just need to get over to the drainpipe. It’s on the other side of the window next to the one I’m clinging to. I just have to take one big step from my window ledge to the next one. So easy. Don’t think about how far it is down. Two stories, but don’t think about it.
I turn my head slightly and glance down at the next windowsill. The muddy ground between swims up like a rising tide of dark water and my pulse throbs in my ears and I cannot move.
“SIGNAL!!!!” Dave screams from far below, “I COUNT TO THREE AND YOU ARE DOING THIS AGAIN, LAST OR NOT, I SWEAR—”
It feels like I’m moving in slow motion, as I swing my leg out over the churning ground, and rest my foot on the far ledge. I take a breath, shift my weight, and my muddy sneaker instantly slips.
The world leaps to the side, the ground racing to claim me.
And then it goes still again.
Someone has caught the back of my shirt. An iron arm winds around my waist, and as I’m pulled back to safety two dark eyes meet mine with a small cartoon tear beside them.
“I got you.” Javier’s voice is calm and unhurried as I wrap my shaking arms around his neck. “It’s okay, I got you.”
“LET’S MOVE IT, LADIES!” Dave bellows idiotically below us.
I cling to Javier as he expertly crosses the gap between the two windows, so we’re beside the drainpipe.
“NO HELPING!!!” Dave shrieks.
“It’s easy from here,” Javier says. “I’m right behind you. Okay? I’m not going to let you fall.”
“Okay.” But it takes a few moments before I can let go of him and reach for the drainpipe. From there it’s a short distance to the small platform of the fake roof. I climb out onto the roof the way a kid gets out of a pool, flopping onto my stomach, kicking my legs and rolling onto my back. Dave’s whistle blows distantly, but I’m too relieved to care.
There’s three tiers of fire escapes down the back of the fake apartment building. My legs wobble under me as I trot down them, ready to collapse. But just as I’m back on solid ground and turning away from the whole hateful course, I see Erik. Crouching down low. Ready to chase me.
Jada and Kurt passed him? Did he let them?!
So he could chase me?
The teen idol dimples deepen as he grins. I feint left, then jog right, but it doesn’t fool him. He leaps, long arms going wide, and then he’s on top of me, the hinge of his jaw digging into the top of my head, my face so tight against his neck I can feel his pulse drumming fast against my cheek.
We hit the ground together, hard, his sharp hip bones digging into me, his arms bound around my shoulders, my face against his throat. His muscular weight crushes down on me one moment, then pulls me under the next, again and again, as we roll over and over the crisp cold grass until we sprawl to a stop, me on top of him, his cat eye locked on mine with some expression I don’t understand. For a moment I can’t move. Then he smiles and whispers,
“Weakling.”
Dave’s whistling is hysterical as we untangle from each other. I’ve never been so dizzy. The ground bobs up and down, up and down, like I’m on a swing. Black magnetic filings eat through reality and knit into darkness, and all I know is I’m on the ground again.
* * *
“Here she comes.” Dave’s voice, annoyed. A few blinks bring full consciousness back, along with the mortifying realization that all the campers are crowded around watching me come to. Nobody kneels at my side, holding my hand awkwardly.
“You blacked out,” she explains. “For like, five minutes.”
“Someone needs to work on her stamina, huh?” Dave laughs to the group.
“No kidding, Dave,” I mutter.
“Javier and Kurt, you two run the course one last time. Then we’ll break for lunch. Signal, since I don’t especially feel like slapping a cast together today, how about you jog the field three times and join us once you’ve finished. Who wants to count her off?”
“I will,” Nobody volunteers.
“How about someone who isn’t dating her?” Dave snaps, eliciting a delighted “Daaaamn, Dave!” from Troy. Jada volunteers.
“Okay! Jada, you count her off. Javier, Kurt, let’s hustle …”
My head is still swimming as I get to my feet, I’m more hobbling than jogging my first lap. I watch the final run on the obstacle course: Javier moves through it so quickly. How was he behind me when I fell?
Did he purposefully lag behind to help me?
Jada, sitting on an ancient hay bale with a faded archery target clinging to it, holds up two fingers as I pass by.
“I’m starting my third lap,” I gasp.
“I’m the one counting.”
“Yeah, well, it’s my third lap,” I insist, and stagger on, quietly furious, as Dave leads the others off the field. My head is getting light again and it’s an effort just to stay upright. Maybe Jada will let me just call it a day so we can go eat.
I turn back to the hay bale, and she’s standing. Something about the way she stands, shoulders back, arms at her sides, makes me stop. And that’s when she runs toward me.
I try to run but my side seizes, and she overtakes me, yanking my hair, pulling my head back and pressing something hard and sharp to my cheek.
An arrowhead. From the hay bale.
“I told you,” Jada snarls in my ear. “Be a slut, get cut.”
Chapter Six
Crown of Weeds
The sharpened arrowhead presses into the thin skin over my cheekbone, the white clouds above us the only witnesses to whatever comes next.
“This is pathetic,” I sputter, bluffing wildly. “You know I’ve got a girlfriend. Who’ll be pissed if you hurt me.”
“You didn’t look like you had a girlfriend when you were rolling around with Erik.”
“He grabbed me.”
Wrong answer.
The arrowhead cuts a stripe below my eye as I step hard on her foot. I twist away but she pounces and I’m sprawled out in the grass with her crouching over me, forearm pinning down my neck, the arrowhead jerking the corner of my mouth into a perverse half-smile. A single hot tear of blood winds down the side of my face.
And then a voice rings out across the field:
“Jada?” Erik’s voice is infuriatingly calm, almost laughing. “Why is Signal on the ground?”
She just stares through me, hand tensed, until footsteps land in the grass just above my head.
“Girl stuff,” Jada says darkly. “We’ll just be a minute.”
“Yeah, well, Dave wants to see her.” Erik yawns. “And he’s going to notice if parts are missing.”
“Wow.” Jada glares up at him. “You’re as bad as Javier. Maybe let Signal fight her own battles?”
“Not much of a battle.” Erik’s voice shifts from calm to cool. “She fainted ten minutes ago and she
’s unarmed.”
“I just want to make her face match her girlfriend’s.” My stomach lurches as Jada goes on. “Or would that bother you? Is that why you came racing up here to check on precious princess Signal?”
“Jada,” Erik sighs. “Why did you lie to me?”
She’s thrown. “What?”
“When you said you’d never be with a guy who only cared about looks. That was a lie.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“So why mess up how she looks? Why ask if that would bother me? Kind of seems like you think I only care about looks.”
“Of course you only care about looks,” Jada laughs angrily. “Are you kidding me? That’s how you work, how every guy works!”
“So all guys are like your stepbrother.” Erik must be crouching down because his voice moves closer, like he’s just beside me. “They see a stack of parts instead of a person, and they’re constantly on the lookout for a better stack of parts?”
“Damn it, Erik.” Her arm on my neck shifts, just for an instant. I’d jerk away but the arrowhead is still in my mouth, the point rattling between my teeth. “You think I’m blind?! Ever since she got here you keep staring at her, you’re obsessed with her—”
“Jada,” Erik says. “Look at me.”
And then she does. Up close, the transformation is remarkable: her eyes had been remote before, but when they lock with Erik’s her face softens. She looks younger, and desperate from pain.
“If you think I see you the way your stepbrother did, but you still want to be with me, then on some level you’re accepting your stepbrother’s view of you,” Erik’s deep voice continues.
“Shut up!” Jada snarls. A tear flashes down her face and hits my neck, warm as a summer raindrop.
“I know you gave up everything to get away from him,” Erik goes on. “But he’s hiding in every guy you meet. You still see the world through his eyes, whether you’re looking at Signal or at me. Is that why you’re angry?”
Jada’s lip jerks, her chin dimples. She sits back on her heels, and I immediately roll to my side and wobble to my feet, expecting any minute for her to pounce on me again. But when I look back Jada is rocking back and forth, head hanging between her knees, sobbing. When my eyes meet Erik’s he mouths, Go.