“Here,” LeGrand says. They’ve walked long enough. They’re far from the fence, far from the gun waiting there. Is the whole fence guarded? It has to be. The odds that there would be a guard on watch exactly where they appeared were too small. LeGrand wonders how they’ll sneak over, why they’re wasting time with Jaden, but Mack wants to check for Ava and Brandon wants to find Jaden, so who is he to argue?
They all stare up at the skeletal structure LeGrand brought them to. The swing chains hang heavily down, nothing drifting, nothing moving. That’s perhaps the most unnerving thing about it. A structure built for movement, for joy, rusted and stripped to stillness.
“He’s up there?” Brandon squints upward. “How?”
“Climbed the chains.” LeGrand stares upward, too. He’s good at climbing trees, but this is a very different skill. Mack certainly can’t do it. It’s nothing like scrambling up the water heater and climbing into rafters. Brandon grabs one of the chains, the whole structure shaking and groaning metallically as he climbs a couple of feet before stalling out and dropping back to the ground.
“So do we wait for night? For him to come down?” LeGrand asks. “Do we need to wait for him?” They’re wasting time, and LeGrand doesn’t want to be rude, doesn’t want to push them, but they only have this day and this night before the morning comes and resets everything.
“No,” Brandon says, and there’s a strange new quality to his voice, a sort of dreamy vacancy. Maybe the train has finally ground to a halt. “No, we can’t wait.”
* * *
—
Brandon’s father had another family.
Grammy believed in telling the truth, so she never lied to Brandon. His mother was a teenage dropout, and his father visited every time he was in the area on business. When she fell pregnant, Brandon’s father insisted she keep the baby. She had, of course, thought it meant he loved her and wanted a family together. Grammy didn’t agree. She knew that men like him didn’t have families with girls like her daughter.
But Brandon’s mother saw it as a fresh start. The beginning of a new life. So she kept the baby, and got a job at the local gas station, a way of passing the time until her true love left his other family and joined them.
He never did. But he did check up on them, keep tabs on them, stop by enough that she could never settle into another relationship, never give up the hope of him.
Brandon was six when she died. He took up his mother’s torch and spirit of infinite waiting. His father came once a year, spent a day with him, disappeared again. Brandon lived for those visits.
But between visits, he had Grammy. A kind, practical woman, raised on a farm, as blunt as the tools she used to help her family break the hard earth and coax potatoes free.
When Brandon was twelve, recently dumped back on his grandma’s doorstep after a day of fishing with his dad, bereft, knowing it would be at least a year until the next bright shining few hours with him, Grammy patted him on the shoulder.
“He doesn’t love you,” she said matter-of-factly. “He didn’t love your mother, either, and I don’t want you to spend your whole life waiting for something he can’t give. Men like that, people are things to them. That’s why he can pick you up and drop you as easily. But you’re not a thing, Brandon. You’re wonderful, and if he can’t see that, he’s broken. Not you. Don’t ever forget it.”
Her words had stung. Brandon ran and cried in his room, but after he cried, he felt…relieved. Like someone had taken a burden off him. He didn’t have to try to make his dad stay, didn’t have to try to earn his love, because it wasn’t possible.
So Brandon kept going to school, getting bad grades because his brain didn’t work well for school things. He took his mom’s old job at the gas station, and he watched television with Grammy at night, and it was okay, really, because he didn’t have to do anything to earn her love. He just had it. Even after she died, at least he had the memory of it. But it wasn’t quite enough, so when he got a call from his father, he couldn’t help that old lure of happiness, that old twist of hope.
That hook cast into the water, snagging him.
And because of that call, Brandon knows something LeGrand and Mack and Jaden don’t.
He knows exactly where his invitation to the competition came from.
Brandon understands that Jaden isn’t his father. Obviously, on some level, that’s clear. But Jaden set people up to die. Sydney, maybe Rebecca, and definitely the pretty Ava and his friend Ava.
His friend Ava who loved him. And Jaden will let Mack and LeGrand die, too, and he won’t care, because to him, they’re all just things.
Brandon feels like a thing for the first time in his life, like Grammy was wrong all those years ago. Brandon is a thing to be used and discarded, and this is it. The final place where unwanted things are dumped. He’s trapped with the devil, his friends are dying, and he can’t—he can’t— He can’t.
He can’t.
So he jumps and grabs one of the chains, and he climbs.
He climbs for Ava. For Mack and LeGrand. For his dreams of roommates and pizza parties, a shared life. And, inexplicably, the kindest gas station attendant in Pocatello, Idaho, who has never set foot in a gym, manages to climb the chain all the way to the top. He scrambles for a grip, and when a normal person would be terrified of the fall, he stays calm until he finds a lip on the circular platform above himself. Just enough to fling his leg up and roll onto the top of the swing ride.
“What the fuck?” Jaden demands, curled fetal style in the center of the platform, sweating and sunburned and perfectly safe. He gets on his hands and knees, face red and furiously contorted.
“You killed them.” Brandon turns his head to the side to stare at Jaden. He doesn’t quite see him, though. He sees a white smile and a swig of beer, a lure sent flying into the water.
“What are you talking about? Why are you up here? This is my hiding spot!” Jaden’s having a difficult time puffing himself up to be threatening without standing. He’s adopted an awkward crouch, balancing on the balls of his feet.
Brandon looks upward. Up here, they’ve broken through the surrounding trees, and there’s nothing above him but sky. Clear blue, so blue it makes his eyes tear up and everything blurs. It’s a nice blue. A good blue. An honest blue.
He closes his eyes against the brilliance. There are monsters, real monsters in the world. His friends are dying. They’re all going to die. And his father knew, he’s sure of it, and once Mack and LeGrand are dead, there’s no one left in the world who cares about him. But if one of them wins, then in a way, Brandon wins, too, doesn’t he?
Making sure that happens is the least he can do. The only thing he can do. The only thing that makes sense in an absolutely broken reality.
“You killed them,” Brandon repeats, not opening his eyes. “There’s a monster out there. And you got both Avas killed.”
“Don’t be a jackass,” Jaden scoffs. “Did that bitch put you up to this? Listen, it’s only a game, and if they got out, then—”
Brandon grabs Jaden’s ankle. The other man is yanked off balance in his crouch, and as he teeters, Brandon rolls, using Jaden’s momentum to launch him off the side of the platform.