Not Now, Not Ever

by Lily Anderson

  Ben whistled, handing me back the red sword. “Twins are an important part of the Star Wars universe.”

  I gripped the hilt until my knuckles cracked. “I’m aware.”

  Cornell elbowed Ben. “We should have hooked up the speakers out here. Can you imagine ‘Duel of the Fates’ dropping in here?”

  Ben’s eyes glazed with joy. “Chills, dude. Chills.”

  At least now I knew whose bright idea this challenge was.

  Isaiah sized me up as the fanboys tore themselves away long enough to hand him a sword and explain the rules. I could feel him taking an inventory of my sweat-drenched forehead, the scrape on my knee leaking blood.

  His smile unrolled slowly.

  Cornell’s whistle blew. Ben hummed something atonal and staccato under his breath. I heard someone shout “Beast Mode!” And then, shockingly, someone else called “Zay!”

  Bolstered by the recognition, Isaiah flew at me, and for a moment I was transported to the backyard of Aunt Bobbie and Uncle Marcus’s house on base at Travis. Isaiah and I were little, and we had both received lightsabers that year, although I couldn’t remember which of us had actually asked for one. Bobbie and my mom didn’t think that one lightsaber would be fun. Then one kid would be attacked and the other would be the attacker. Two lightsabers was basically a party!

  Except it wasn’t. Two lightsabers meant there was a winner and a loser. The only way to end a lightsaber fight was to end it past the point of bouncing back. You couldn’t just win. You had to salt the earth behind you, because otherwise someone was going to think it was a good idea to attack while you were coming out of the bathroom or when you were taking a sip of juice. Isaiah liked to strike the second both of your hands were full. He always aimed for the neck, like a tiny psychopath.

  It was no different now. I watched as the blue foam sword soared toward me, and I jumped backwards, spinning to catch his back. Our blades connected, sending a poof of chalk dust into the air.

  “Why don’t you let me win this one, Sis?” he asked, the smile wearing thin in his eyes. “You’ve already got two.”

  I spat in the dirt, rinsing some of the chalk residue off of my tongue. “Why don’t you actually win? Instead of wanting someone to give you a prize just for showing up.”

  He swung all of his weight to the side, like he was going to hit a home run with my rib cage. I parried and hacked toward his face. He blocked.

  “Why does it always have to be so personal with you?” he asked, his arms shaking as he held his sword in a bunt over his head. He shoved hard, throwing me backwards. “Nothing can ever just be fun. You have to be such a bitch. I’ve never done anything to you.”

  I rasped a laugh that I couldn’t feel. “Everything I’ve ever done has been compared to you. Everything I’ll ever do will be compared to you.”

  The blue sword swung low and Isaiah panted, the dust undoubtedly starting to clog his weak lungs. “You think I have any choice but to follow what you do?”

  “Then don’t!” I snarled, making a hasty jab for his middle and missing. “Make up your own mind!”

  “And what should I decide?” He whipped the dreads out of his face and swung his sword in a figure eight between us. “Go to college and get disowned? Enlist and hate the rest of my life? It’s a lose-lose and you know it.”

  “No one’s going to disown you. You’re the baby and you’re the brain. If anyone is supposed to go to college, it’s you.”

  “Yeah?” Swipe, block. Swipe, block. Spin away. “Then why is Sid telling me what to eat? Why are you pointing out when I can’t run fast enough to pass the BMT standard? My whole life is supposed to fit into this box just because yours does.”

  “My life does not fit into any box. Why the hell would I be here if it did?”

  “Because you want more. Not something. More. You’d be perfectly happy if you got shipped off tomorrow. And I’d probably die. If you really cared about going here, you wouldn’t be here skanking around. God, if the family knew that you were making out all over campus with some dude, they couldn’t hold you up as the paragon—”

  Rage lifted my leg up in a blur. The heel of my shoe connected with his solar plexus, folding him in half. With a wheeze, he collapsed to the ground and slid on his back, his face scrunched in agony.

  The whistle blew.

  I stood over Isaiah, feeling nothing but a black hole of anger spreading out of my chest and over my extremities. “If you want to live your own life, here’s your first lesson. Stop whining and make a choice. Stop letting other people make your choices for you. And do not ever fucking threaten me again.” I looked over my shoulder at Cornell and Ben. “You guys didn’t say ‘no kicking,’ right?”

  “An oversight,” Cornell said.

  I wiped the sweat out of my eyes. “Too late now.”

  *

  After a day of letting my anger cool, I was slightly less proud of the third blue ribbon taped above my bed. Annihilating Isaiah in amoeba tag had silenced anyone questioning my loyalty to my team and labeled me a straight-up cutthroat.

  But it turned out that kicking your own twin in the stomach to win a lightsaber duel was less beast mode and more … unhinged.

  Since he was the only other person who knew that I wasn’t actually a twin, Brandon was more understanding than most, seeking me out while everyone else kept their distance. As we walked back to the residence hall so I could shower and brush the chalk off my teeth, he had asked what Isaiah had said to provoke the attack.

  “I don’t want to be the thing he holds over your head forever,” he had murmured, after I gave him a rundown of the smack talk.

  “If it weren’t you, he’d find something else,” I’d said. “The point is that he shouldn’t be trying to extort me at all anymore. We agreed at the beginning of camp that if one of us got caught, we’d both go down. I thought we had a truce.”

  “Maybe he wanted to make sure you didn’t change your mind. Since you, uh, hate him.”

  “I don’t hate him,” I’d said instinctively. Grandmother Lawrence would never let hatred stand in our family. “I just wish I didn’t ever have to deal with him ever again. I would be fine if we could live in complete ignorance of each other’s lives.”

  My wish was more or less granted in the days that followed. Isaiah didn’t look at my side of the dining hall or stand too close to me in line. His team was always there to buffer us, to encircle him in a human shield.

  Which was great about fifty percent of the time. Maybe seventy percent.

  The rest of the time, the quiet stares and muttered comments stripped everything out of my head except for a single razor-edged line of Earnest: You seem to me to be perfectly heartless.

  32

  My eyes opened the morning of the first Melee skirmish to the same cement walls and the same view of Leigh tangled up in her zebra print sheets. The bathroom was silent when I went in to shower. I put on my lucky Angry Robot shirt and shambled to the dining hall with the rest of the pre-Melee zombies.

  Meg, on the other hand, was on red alert. It was entirely possible that she had found a stash of coffee somewhere and decided to drink all of it in one go. She had sent Brandon and Jams back to the buffet line twice to add more protein to their breakfasts. She squinted at all of our faces, searching for signs of sleepiness or fear. When I set my most recent Crap You Don’t Know list on the table next to my toast, she snatched it up before the creases even considered smoothing.

  “No studying,” she said, folding the paper down into a palm-sized square and tucking it under her plate. “You’ll psych yourself out. You already know it. If you tell yourself you don’t, it’ll all fall out of your brain.”

  “That’s not a thing that happens,” Galen said, shooting a panicked look around the table. “Is it?”

  “No, Galen,” Kate said. “Knowledge can’t fall out of your head. Unless it’s stuck in your gray matter at the time.”

  “You’ll be fine,” Hari said. Both of his elbows
were on the table. He speared a piece of honeydew from his plate and bit it in half. “And if you aren’t, we’ll all go home early.”

  “No, we won’t. Everyone is going to be great,” Meg said, her already sharp voice spiking into new realms of squeakiness—Minnie Mouse on helium. “Just remember to keep your answers short. If the proctors need more information from you, they will ask for it. Rambling is more likely to lead you to a wrong answer. Keep it short and sweet.”

  “And correct,” Hari drawled.

  “And profanity free,” Meg added, with a glance at Perla, who glared in return.

  “Best get it out of the way now,” Jams said, grudgingly shoveling a heap of fluffy yellow scrambled eggs into his mouth. “Piss. Bollocks. Assclown.”

  “Shit sandwich,” Leigh added.

  “Ew. We’re eating,” Kate whined.

  I only half listened as everyone started throwing in their favorite curses. A glint of something shiny outside of the front window caught my attention. It took a moment for me to realize it was the sun refracting off Wendell Cheeseman’s head. He was standing with Trixie and Ben. Trixie had an R2-D2 resting against her leg. Only after I saw the large canvas duffel slung over Ben’s shoulder did I realize that the R2 must be Trixie’s luggage. Because of course she would have a droid suitcase.

  Except why would they have their suitcases out now?

  “Balls,” I blurted out.

  “I already said ‘bollocks,’” Jams said, exasperated.

  I nudged Brandon in the side and jerked my head toward the window. He set his fork down with a clatter and shoved the hair out of his eyes. “Meg, what’s going on out there?”

  Meg didn’t turn around. “Don’t worry about it.”

  His mouth flattened into a scowl. “Meg.”

  She gave him the same pitying look that Crumbs had. That Don’t mess with me, kid look. Being the youngest had to suck. Everyone was ready to cut you down just for asking questions.

  “Focus on the Melee, B,” she said. “You’ve got forty-five minutes before the first skirmish. We can talk afterward.”

  I looked over at the Team Four table, where Faulkner sat alone with her team. I examined a piece of my toast, which was actually browned and crisp on both sides this morning. And Jams’s scrambled eggs weren’t dripping between the tines of his fork. Hari had a fruit salad on his plate.

  Since when did we have fruit salad?

  “Who made breakfast?” I asked.

  Meg threw up her hands. “Guys, let it go. They’ll be fine.”

  “Why do they have to be fine?” I asked. “Why aren’t they fine now?”

  “They got caught out of bounds,” Hari said, impassively eating another piece of melon. “The rules apply to everyone.”

  “Huh?” Hunter asked. “Who got caught?”

  “Trixie and Ben are going home early,” Meg said, the words leaden. “They weren’t upholding the rules.”

  “They were found in Fort Farm this morning,” Hari said.

  “Who found them?” Galen asked.

  Hari blinked at him. “Excuse me?”

  Galen’s eyebrows went up indignantly. “No one is supposed to be out before breakfast, so who found them in Fort Farm?”

  Hari scowled. “Does it matter?”

  “It doesn’t,” Meg said.

  “It does if the person doing the snitching wasn’t punished when they also had to be breaking the rules,” Jams said.

  “There are so many flaws in that logic,” Kate said.

  “Let it go,” Meg said, in her own version of the Lawrence clip, every word like the snip of scissors. “They will be fine. They will crash at one of their parents’ places until they’re ready to go back to California. Now can we please focus on today’s skirmish—”

  “Did they steal the binders?” Hunter asked.

  “What?” Meg cried. Her cheeks turned an offended pink. “No. Why would they steal the binders?”

  Jams sat back, crossing his arms. “Why do they have to go home when the person who stole the binders is presumably still here?”

  “Because the person who stole the binders had more sense than to have sex in a field,” Hari said to his plate.

  “Hari!” Meg snapped.

  “Sorry,” Hari said, totally forgetting to sound apologetic. “It’s too stupid to be believed. Especially for two geniuses. If you Messina people acted half as smart as everyone says you are—”

  “Good riddance,” Perla said pertly. “Breakfast is edible for once, and we’re going up against Trixie’s team today. Now they’ll be butthurt that their counselor is gone and we can beat them while they’re weak.” She looked around at the nine unsmiling faces surrounding her and huffed. “Jesus. There’s no winning with you people, is there? Silver lining? Hello?”

  *

  We were led past the super modern glass walls of the theater building and around the corner to a squat brick building that I’d passed dozens of times without truly knowing what it was.

  The hallways were plain and narrow, with a vague dusty smell that made me think that there had been carpeting until recently and the sweet mustiness of freshly cut wood that had to mean that there was a scene shop behind one of the closed doors.

  Hari pulled open a heavy door and propped it open. On the other side was a smallish black box theater—black walls with rubbery black floors and bulky unfiltered Fresnel lights strapped across the ceiling, casting a yellowy wash over the furniture. Two long tables sat across from one short one, all of them empty except for adjustable microphones.

  I thought about my mom’s assumption that I was spending the summer working at the theater. I hadn’t expected that to be partially true.

  Team Two filtered into the room, and I realized instantly that Perla was right. Every team member looked shell-shocked at the loss of one of their counselors. But there was no time to pity them.

  Cheeseman was striding into the room, buttoned up in a lumpy blue suit and chatting somberly with a Latina woman about my height, who wore a heavy necklace like plated armor across her chest. She was probably my mom’s age, with lines spiderwebbing out from the corners of her eyes and plum-colored lips. A shorter man with a silver goatee and matching slicked-back hair brought up the rear.

  The three of them sat down at the small table facing us. Meg, Hari, and the single counselor from Team Two all rushed away to have a seat at the back of the room. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Brandon disappearing under his hair.

  “Good morning, campers,” Cheeseman said into his microphone. His voice was uncomfortably loud in the speakers. “Welcome to the first round of the Tarrasch Melee. Before we get started, my fellow proctors will introduce themselves.”

  “My name is Dr. Celeste Benita,” said the woman, her face breaking into a smile. “Serving as a proctor for the Tarrasch Melee each year has been my honor for the last seven years.”

  Cheeseman turned to face her, although his mouth stayed aimed at the microphone. “The last seven years that you’ve been the dean of students at Rayevich?”

  “Of course,” Dr. Benita said with a sparkling laugh. “I suppose I forgot to mention that, didn’t I?”

  My stomach dropped. Jesus. None of the counselors had mentioned that one of the “proctors” would be the actual dean of the freaking college. Didn’t she have more important things to do than run a trivia contest?

  “As some of you may know,” said the short man at the end of the table, “my name is Dr. Stuart Mendoza. I helped to cofound Camp Onward when I was a professor here, and I have proctored the Melee every year since. I have the great fortune of being the principal of the Messina Academy for the Gifted.”

  I couldn’t stop myself from looking down the table at Brandon. His skin was jaundiced under the harsh stage lights.

  Great. One of our proctors had kicked him out of school. No pressure.

  All three proctors set tablets down and swiped them open. The speakers echoed with a teeth-rattling buzzing sound that
made my heart squeeze to a stop. One of the girls on Team Two yelped into her microphone.

  “Sorry,” Cheeseman said, sheepishly. “That’s the sound of the buzzer. The volume’s up a little high.”

  Dr. Benita smiled. “Let’s get started, shall we?”

  I had assumed—or maybe hoped—that the first skirmish would be more of a breeze, considering Team Two’s emotional disadvantage at having lost a cocaptain that morning, but the following two hours were a backbreaking game of trivia tennis.

  I remembered enough of the symbolism from the assigned reading to make it through six questions in a row about the literature section before the heat got passed over to Kate. Perla managed to keep from swearing at the proctors. I figured she had realized that they were, in fact, capable of destroying her entire future if she got snippy. No one cried until we were declared the winners, when one of the girls from Team Two finally broke down, her first sob echoing in her mic. None of her teammates moved to console her.

  I expected to be forced to shake hands with the losing team, like it was a peewee sporting event, but instead Meg and Hari hustled us out of the building so fast that I was sure they thought that the proctors would take back our points if they heard us say anything that wasn’t the answer to a question.

  “After lunch, you’ll have the rest of the afternoon off,” Meg said, after we were safely out of the building and she and Hari had congratulated us. “Unfortunately, you’re still not allowed to wander campus without supervision, but I did get permission from Professor Cheeseman for us to use the library again. Hari and I will split up. If you want to be in the quad, you can stay with him. Or, if you want to go to the library, you can come with me.”

  “And if we want to be left alone?” Perla asked.

  “You can go to your room,” Meg said in that sticky-sweet way that I was pretty sure meant she was picturing dismemberment.

  Brandon took my hand. “Sci-fi section?”

  33

  “Why does it feel like a thousand years since the last time we were here?” I asked, as we passed under the binary clock into the science fiction section. I hadn’t been sure if Meg would actually let us go unsupervised, but she hadn’t given it a second thought. Probably because all of the adults who could fire her were busy setting up for the day’s second skirmish.