They sat silently for a while. It had gotten dark, but they remained in the room, only a small band of light seeping in from beneath the door. Bryan stretched out his legs.
“But Quigley House,” Bryan said, standing up. He let out a long breath. “Sure. Why not.”
“Bryan—” Kendra said.
“You probably shouldn’t say anything now, otherwise I might change my mind. Just get me the application, okay? And get me all the information you have. I’ll talk to Jaidee. It’ll be okay. Fifteen grand is fifteen grand.”
He smiled against the dark, walked over to the door, and left the room.
* * *
In the Quigley House parking lot a few weeks later, dressed as a giant fly, Kendra guided her cousin and his roommate into the parking lot. The moment they parked, Christy rapped on the window, waved coyly.
“I know you,” she said. She was in a black-and-red cheerleader outfit, the skirt ending just below her pubic bone. She’d painted blood on her legs. “You know my sister, Alicia.”
“Alicia?” Bryan said. He stepped out of the car.
“Alicia Bladensburg.”
“Oh. Yeah, I know her sorta.”
Christy smiled, patted his arm. “I can’t believe you’re gonna do this. It’s crazy in there.”
“He’s gonna win,” Kendra said. She looked skeptically at Jaidee, who climbed out of the car. The guy was exactly as she’d pictured him: small, smug, distant. He was dressed in khaki shorts and a red Abercrombie T-shirt, and he didn’t introduce himself, just looked out toward the road. “He’s gonna be famous,” Kendra said, keeping her eyes on her cousin’s roommate.
“So this is what you do,” Bryan said. “Just stand out here in a costume.”
“Yep,” Kendra said. “We’re not supposed to talk.”
“At least he’s paying you.”
“It’s not so bad.”
They stood for a while longer. Jaidee rocked back and forth. Kendra thought he had an impatient face, creases joining at erratic angles. She wanted to go to him, sit him down, tell him that the world would be easier to navigate if he just stopped trying so hard.
“Be careful,” Kendra said, embracing her cousin. The fly-hair on her arms scratched his neck, and the eyes, which took up half her face, bumped into his cheek as he knelt down to hug her.
“Positive thoughts,” Bryan said, thrusting his fist victoriously in the air. “Win, win, win!” He looked at his cousin, grinned, said, “You know, I’m excited for this shit now. Never thought I’d be in this position, but why the fuck not? We’re gonna win some money. We’re gonna go earn that dough.”
Christy laughed. “Just remember that no matter how intense it gets, everyone survives.”
“Well, that’s a good pep talk,” Bryan said. “Hey, Jaidee, you hear that? Everyone survives!”
Jaidee turned around, looked at the group, frowned, turned back to the road.
“He’s preparing,” he said, tapping his temple. “He doesn’t rev up like me. He’s more, how do you call it, cerebral?”
“Well, good luck,” Sarah said. She’d been standing a bit behind the group. Her outfit—a vampire in a black veil—leaked blood, and she didn’t want anyone to get dirty prematurely.
“Thanks,” Bryan said. “But we don’t need the luck. We got the skill. Jaidee and me, we’re gonna obliterate this shit.”
“The others are already here,” Kendra said. “They came a little early. They should be up at the house already.”
“Well, okay then,” Bryan said, drawing in a deep breath. He looked over at Jaidee. “You ready?”
“Yeah,” Jaidee said, his voice small. “Let’s get this over with.”
“That’s the spirit right there,” Bryan said, winking at Kendra. He bent down, hugged her again. “I got this,” he whispered into her ear. “Don’t worry. I got this.” Kendra pulled back, touched her cousin’s cheek, then pushed him on down the road, smiling.
“Don’t you dare come back without that fifteen grand,” she called to him as he walked with Jaidee. “Don’t even think about it!”
The shed smelled strongly of cinnamon that day—Cory had made a fresh pot of cider, and along with the scented candles, it infused the room with the feeling of autumn though it was late spring. Kendra poured herself a cup, sat on the couch, sipped, thought about her cousin and Jaidee racing around the cells, trying to avoid traps, shock wands, dowels. It seemed impossible that the people with whom she’d danced during the end-of-season party would now be responsible for a family member’s wounds. It seemed ludicrous. They’d better take it easy. They still have to work with me here.
She thought about the money. Fifteen thousand dollars was a lot. It could certainly buy a round-trip plane ticket from D.C. to Lincoln. Maybe she wouldn’t even have to take John up on his offer. Maybe it’d be better that way, if Bryan just gave her a cut. Of course, she’d have to then tell him about Shawn (if her mother hadn’t already), and he’d tease her endlessly about having a horror-loving boyfriend (He’s perfect for you, Bryan would say. You can slice your wrists together and mix your blood in a pentagram and shit), and that’d be annoying, but it felt better than having John in control. Not that she didn’t trust John (who’d, strangely, had to make an emergency run up to Omaha and would miss her cousin’s tour), but something about the transaction seemed off to her. Something didn’t settle right.
She inhaled the cider’s steam, relishing the herbs. Sarah and Christy were out in the lot, talking about something or other. She didn’t care. She liked being alone. She closed her eyes, envisioned the conversation she’d have with Shawn.
Bryan won, she’d say.
No fucking way, he’d respond.
Yep, she’d say. And he’s giving me some of the prize.
Are you serious?
Guess what I’m doing with my share?
What?
Well, that depends. Do you mind coach?
Of course, Rae wouldn’t like it, would tell her that there were better things to spend her money on, more helpful things, but fuck her. There wouldn’t have been this money without Kendra, so if she wanted to spend it on a boy, she would spend it on a boy. Bryan would certainly give Rae some of it anyway. Her aunt didn’t have to worry about her.
She set her cider on the table. She was tired. Maybe she’d take a short nap. Just a few minutes. Nobody would care. Nothing was happening anyway. Everything would be fine. This was a good day. And it was about to get even better, she just knew it.
She awoke to the sounds of screaming. She sat up, thinking, for a moment, that she was back in the apartment. “Mom?” she said. She looked around, saw the chairs, the food table, the pot of cider, remembered. “Shit,” she said, heart thumping, thinking she’d missed the contestants’ return. “Bryan,” she said. She leaped off the couch, ran out of the shack, and found Christy on the ground, grabbing her leg. Sarah was crouched next to her.
“Should I call 911?” Sarah shouted.
“What?” Kendra said. Sarah looked up at her, pleading. On the ground, Christy writhed.
“I can’t move it!” Christy shouted. “I can’t move my fucking foot!”
Kendra breathed in the night air. Did they think they were going to get her again? This soon? It’d only been a few months since the last time. “Your foot, huh?” Kendra said. “Might want to try your upper body next time, mix it up.”
“I’m gonna go get ice,” Sarah said.
“Ice?” Kendra said, smiling. “She’ll get frostbite.”
“Kendra,” Sarah said, throwing her a deep, penetrating stare. “We’re not fucking around.”
Kendra’s mouth dried. She thought it was a bit messed up that they were staging this in the middle of her cousin’s tour. It seemed very rude.
“Okay, fine,” Kendra said, rolling her eyes. “What happened?”
“Just stay with her, okay?” Sarah raced to the shack.
Kendra knelt down. “Where are you hurt, Christy?” she said.
“I twisted my ankle, I think,” she said, panting. “Kendra, you gotta CB the house.”
“Your right ankle? This ankle here?” Kendra touched it, pressed down hard. Christy howled.
“What the fuck, Kendra?”
Kendra stepped back. She hadn’t expected such an ear-splitting reaction.
“Kendra!” Christy said. Her hair obscured half of her face. “Get on your CB! You need to warn them!”
“What?”
“You need to call up there!”
“Call up where?” Kendra said. She looked where she’d pressed on Christy’s ankle. It was swollen, puffy, at an odd angle from her shin. There were prosthetics in the costume room, but she hadn’t seen Christy put one on, and usually those took time. She would’ve noticed. “You’re fucking with me, right?” she said.
“Hurry up!” Christy said.
Kendra pulled out her CB from the fly costume’s left leg compartment. She pushed the orange button, said, “Hello?”
Static.
“Hello?” Kendra said. “Hello? Hey, you guys. Don’t you have things to do? My cousin is up there.”
“Kendra!” Christy screamed.
Kendra’s chest tightened. Something wasn’t right. That ankle. That bruising. And something in Christy’s voice. Her head spun. “We need help here?” Kendra said into the CB. “Christy’s . . . hurt?”
“Kendra?” It was Cory. “Kendra. What’s happening?”
Kendra didn’t respond, just handed the CB to Christy.
“Cory,” Christy said, breathless. “There’s a blue pickup. It just raced down the street. I tried to wave it down, but it didn’t stop. I jumped out of the way, must’ve landed wrong.”
“A blue pickup?” Kendra said.
“He’s up there now,” Christy said. “He wouldn’t stop.”
“Shit,” Cory said. “I’ll send medical down.”
“Some lunatic,” Christy said. “Just watch out.” She handed the CB back to Kendra.
Sarah returned, her breath coming out in short rasps. She knelt down, held an ice pack to Christy’s ankle. “It’ll be okay,” she said.
“Cory?” Kendra said into the CB. Something below her stomach was scratching at her. It was the same scratch she’d felt right after the police had come to their house, told her about her dad’s accident. “I don’t think this is funny,” Kendra said. “Tell John that I don’t think this is fucking funny at all.”
“Stay put,” Cory said. “Just stay put.”
“I’m coming up there,” Kendra said, thinking once again about Bryan whipping through the cells, dodging her coworkers, getting shocked, punched, struck. “Sarah’s here,” she said. “I’m coming up there.”
“Just stay put!” Cory said.
“Sorry,” Kendra said.
She threw the CB next to Christy, tore off the fly costume, and ran.
Outside the house was the pickup truck, glossy and smooth against the early night stars. Breathless, sweaty, she shouted, “Cory!” Kendra rushed inside the main house, shouted again. Nobody answered. The house was deathly quiet; it looked strangely hollow without people, the tables and chairs and lamps and rugs all seeming to fade into one empty yellow-red dome. She ran upstairs to the control room. The door was wide open. Nobody was inside. She walked in, heard all her exhalations, all her footfalls. Thirty black-and-white screens blinked back at her, the top row snowed-out.
She looked.
Each screen with images was uninhabited except for screens 21–24. These screens were marked cell 5.
“Shit,” Kendra said, looking at a center monitor.
A tall, long-faced man stood in the center of the cell, pressing the blade of a knife to Bryan’s neck. Around him were actors in various stages of costume along with crew members and the other contestants. It looked, Kendra thought, like a Halloween party.
“Just punch him or something,” Kendra said, staring at Bryan. “Can’t you tell that the knife is plastic?”
But was it? She thought of Christy’s ankle, twisted and swollen. She thought of Sarah’s eyes, crazed and panicked, and the blue pickup, shining bright against the moonlight. She thought of Cory’s voice: Stay put.
Kendra searched for an intercom button. None was marked. She pushed random buttons and screens 4, 5, and 6 turned to snow. “Fuck,” she said.
“Listen, sir.” Cory’s voice came from the center monitor, number 22. Kendra raced to it, put her hands all over the screen. “We’ve called John. He’s on his way. But in the meantime, what can I do for you?”
“I need John!” the man said, his voice rough. He pulled Bryan closer, choking him.
“He’s coming,” Cory said. He inched closer to the man.
“Stay back,” the man said.
“Okay, okay,” Cory said, stopping. “But I need to know what you want.”
The man spat. Kendra thought it looked strange, like he’d practiced spitting in front of a mirror or something. He was a bad actor. He rested on melodrama. Her shoulders relaxed.
“Please,” Cory said. “If you could just put down the knife.”
Maybe this was all for her? she thought. This big, elaborate show? But it didn’t seem like John to waste so many resources just to trick her. And how would he have known that she’d run up to the control room, that she wouldn’t listen to Cory and stay put?
On screen 22 was a zoom button and a small joystick. Kendra pushed the button and angled the joystick toward her cousin’s face. It was a gory mess, blood splashed everywhere but his eyes and mouth. Sweat rained down his cheeks. He breathed in chunks, every inhalation pressing the knife blade closer to his throat. “Christ, Bryan,” she whispered. “Just kick him or something. Just elbow him in the gut. He’s harmless. Look at him. You can take him.” But maybe he wasn’t allowed to attack? John had told her that in most cells an attack by a contestant meant immediate disqualification. But then: What was he supposed to do? Just stand there while his teammates gawked? It didn’t seem fair.
She looked at his lips. They were moving. She couldn’t make out what he said.
She angled the camera around to the crowd, found Jaidee and the other two contestants, all slimy and panting. They stood a few feet from Cory, whispering. She zoomed in.
“It’s part of it?” the white guy, Victor, said. “It seems pretty real.”
The woman, Jane, shook her head. “Maybe?”
Victor looked at Bryan, squinted. “Where would the envelopes be? On the dude with the knife?”
Yes, Kendra thought. Obviously he has the envelopes.
“It makes sense,” Jaidee said. “They couldn’t expect us to find them in the dark like that, right?”
“But time’s been up for a while.”
“No,” Jaidee said, gesturing to the west wall. “Look.”
Kendra looked at monitor 25, the scoreboard with the countdown clock. It said 3 min, 22 sec. She looked back at Bryan, saw that the drops rolling down his cheeks weren’t sweat—they were tears. He’s afraid? she thought. Like, genuinely? She zoomed the camera onto the blade at his neck. The knife, now just a gray, pixelated blob on the screen, pressed at the surface of a large, dark mass. It was difficult to determine if it was doing any damage: the camera image was too grainy, and Bryan was covered in so much fake blood that all the darker spots looked the same. She squinted, put her face up to the monitor. The knife-blob wobbled; one end looked slightly darker than the other. She got closer. There was something happening. From the one edge of the gray mass, a thin stretch of dark now streaked. It wasn’t clumpy like the rest of the patches, but tiny and narrow, like a crack on the screen. She zoomed out, looked at Bryan’s face, gasped.
“Oh my god,” she said, feeling dizzy, unsteady, short of breath. “Oh my god.”
“This is the last cell before the final,” Victor was saying. “Isn’t it a little convenient that this happens when we’re so close?”
“Guys.” It was Bryan this time. “Guys. Please. Don’t do anythin
g dumb. I think this is real. I feel—”
“Are you a part of it, Bryan?” Victor said, his nostrils flaring. “You’re the alternate. You were picked by Quigley. Are you a part of all of it? Getting us this far and making us lose?”
“Stop talking!” the knife guy said. With his left hand, he felt along Bryan’s neck—pinching, scratching—before resuming his bear hug.
“This was all planned?” Jane said.
“Guys,” Cory said. “This isn’t part of the game. Please. Trust me.”
Kendra stood paralyzed, her hand stuck to the joystick, her eyes fastened to the blade and the blood. She knew she needed to do something. She needed to shout, run down to the cell, save her cousin, but right then, she couldn’t move, could hardly breathe.
“Of course you’d say that now,” Victor said. “But the clock is still running.”
Cory looked at the clock, shook his head. “We forgot to turn it off,” he said.
“Convenient,” Victor said.
Kendra concentrated. She slowly peeled her fingers from the joystick. If she could just focus on small things, one at a time, she could make it down to the main stairs. She could call the police. She could CB Sarah and Christy. She could get help. Then she could run to Cell Five, maybe sneak behind the guy. Maybe—
“I’m not buying it,” Victor said, his voice low. “This guy’s a lousy actor and it doesn’t add up. We’re right there. Right there. Just through that door. The envelopes have to be on him.”
“Guys,” Bryan said, his voice hollow. “Guys, no.”
“Everyone, shut up!” the knife guy said.
“Just put the knife down,” Cory said. “Everything will be fine. We’ll get you money. We’ll get you whatever you need.”
“This is hokey bullshit,” Victor said, looking at the clock. It read 1 min, 3 sec. He turned to Jaidee, bent down close. “Listen,” he said. “We can still do this. We’ll do it together.”
No! Kendra thought, regaining her breath. No!
“No,” Jane said. “Listen, we’re done. Let’s not. We can’t—”
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