Atrius’s fingernails are black, painted to hide the spray paint that’s always under them. He picks at the chipping polish idly. This is boring.
Jaden and Logan talk sports. It’s a relief, having common ground. No one talks about the game awaiting them.
Christian, like Isabella, still hopes they’ll meet the organizers. Linda has dropped a few hints—this is going to be an annual event—and he wants in. He can imagine living in this beautiful town. Marrying someone. Rosiee pops briefly into his mind, a fantasy of backyard BBQs and anonymously adorable children filling itself in around her. Someone once told him that mixed-race kids are the cutest and he’s never been able to stop thinking about it. He’s not sure if that makes him racist. But he’ll be a good dad, a good husband. He’ll take Linda’s job. And he’ll never have to go door to door again. He’ll burn a clipboard in that BBQ, ceremoniously.
Ian breaks first. He rushes out, taking grateful gasps of cool air. He tells himself this whole thing is an experience. A study. He’ll use it all in his writing. His head swims as an older woman gently guides him into the next room.
Cold showers are offered. Hot showers are offered. Decadent platters of food. Salt scrubs. Massages. LeGrand stays on the couch. Mack stays in the pool until everyone else has moved on. As she walks to the showers through a cloud of perfume left in Rebecca’s wake, she has an idea.
She scrubs but uses no products. Refuses the massage—after so many years of being untouched, she worries she might freak out or cry—and the accompanying scented oils. Her deodorant is unscented. She smiles to herself as she sits alone, separate, in her robe. She’s going to be invisible in every way possible.
In the end, twelve contestants get massages. They wear beaded masks, so they can’t see that the older woman massaging them cries silently the whole time. She wishes the other two had allowed her to perform this kindness. It’s the only thing she can offer them, the final gift of gratitude for what they’re going to do.
* * *
—
“Holy shit,” the prank girl says, accurately summing up how they all feel as the bus pulls to a stop in front of giant wrought iron gates. The last rays of daylight are streaming nearly horizontal through the trees to suffuse the whole scene with verdant intensity.
Above the gates, a faded and chipped sign bids them WELCOME TO THE AMAZEMENT PARK. Rusted circles that once held bulbs surround each word, with streaks of dark red trailing down like tears. But the old sign doesn’t go at all with the gate. Where the sign is amusement-park garish, left to rot, the gate itself feels older but perfectly maintained. There are symbols worked into scrolling metalwork, a pattern. Mack can almost make sense of it, can almost—but no. Her eyes glance off the points of the gate, unable to focus on what’s there. It’s like they want to look anywhere else.
She’s tired, though.
Everyone is pressed against the windows, trying to pierce the dense wall of trees surrounding them. Almost lost in the green is a ten-foot-tall fence made of metal cables, complete with razor wire at the top. It screams Keep out. But it doesn’t bother Mack, who breathes a sigh of relief. The game isn’t inside. Doubtless there will be buildings, but she doesn’t have to hide inside. Her fear—not her worst fear, because after what happened to her family she doesn’t have one of those anymore—was that they’d be in a house. This? This is different. She’ll be okay. She can handle this.
She has to.
Linda keeps her back to the park. She doesn’t look out the windows. “We’ll go directly into your base camp. Please remember that it is only for use from sundown to sunup. There are no free spaces, no time-outs. If the sun is up, the game is on.”
“Can we go into the park tonight? Explore?” Ava asks.
“You’ll remember the extensive liability waiver you all signed. The park is abandoned and has been for decades. Some of the structures are unsafe. There are gaps in the walkways, uneven concrete. Lots of places to trip and fall if you don’t have enough light. It’s definitely not ADA compliant.” Her smile is sickly sweet. Ava stiffens. Mack twitches with discomfort at the false concern. She suspects Ava is the most physically capable person here, but she shrinks into herself instead of saying as much.
Linda claps her hands together once, emphatically. “Besides, no one gets an advantage. You’ll all start at the same time. You’ll police each other to make certain no one sneaks off in the night.” She winks. “What an adventure!”
“So let’s go!” Jaden says.
The bus driver’s hands are clenched around the steering wheel. “Sun’s still up.”
“Nah, man, it’s—”
“I will not open the gates until the sun is down.”
“That’s okay,” Brandon says, trying to cut the odd tension left in the wake of the bus driver’s emphatic response. “Can you tell us about the park?”
Mack leans back, tuning out Linda’s chirpy summary of a family fun amusement park that ran for a couple of decades in the middle of the last century. Linda’s not going to give them any useful details. She’s made that clear. And they’re keeping them out of the park while they can see well enough to gain some sort of advantage.
Ava slides into the seat next to Mack. She points out the window. “That’s a person, right?” What Mack had taken for a rock is actually a statue. There’s a hint of a head, the barest form of a human. And, at the base, one perfect dismembered white hand, pointing back the way they came. Mack nods toward it.
“Well, that’s not creepy at all.” Ava sits back. “One week in a crumbling, probably dangerous old theme park. Still not the worst summer vacation I’ve ever had.”
“Me, neither,” Mack whispers.
“Did you see the other Ava getting cozy with Jaden? Think people are going to form alliances?”
A glance reveals beautiful Ava sitting closer than necessary to Mr. Muscles himself. Mack shrugs. “Only one winner. What good would a partnership do?”
Ava nods thoughtfully. “True. So if I need help in there…”
Mack shrugs again.
“Fair enough. But…” Ava puts a hand over her heart, her face shifting in exaggerated earnestness. “If you need help, Mack, I promise, I’ll feel real bad for you when you get out.”
Mack snorts a laugh. Ava, satisfied, watches through half-hooded eyes as the sun finally sets and the driver gets out to open the gates. The hinges squeak, the only sound in the heavy summer evening. The rest of the park looks weathered, but the fence is well maintained, though again it doesn’t match the significantly older gate.
“On our own in the game, fine,” Ava whispers. “But look. I know I’m paranoid; I still think they drugged us. And if that shit goes down again, I have your back. Will you have mine?”