I pivoted on my heel, throwing myself toward the amoeba. Faulkner took the bait. I could hear the feet pounding behind me. I darted between clusters of other runners and heard Lumberjack Beard announce another three people being absorbed. I didn’t know how many of us were left.
I careened between the observers, ignoring as Lumberjack Beard cried foul above me. Isaiah’s back was to me as I swept around him. I could see his shoulders hiccup as he breathed—incorrectly—from his chest. I reached out, grabbed a fistful of dreadlocks, and pulled him backwards.
“Are you still in play?” I shouted into his ear.
“Are you insane?” he screeched back.
I tightened my grip on his hair and chopped up my words. “Are you still playing?”
“Yes! Jesus!”
I dropped his hair. Before he could protest, I gripped his wrist and tugged him onto the field. Hunter was hopping near the rest of our team, stuck to his remaining flip-flop. Leigh scooped up his hand, cackling over the music. A girl in striped pajama pants was joining hands with Faulkner, who was rallying her troops together again. The chain was nearly long enough to span the entire meadow.
Isaiah tugged on my arm. I wouldn’t be able to hold him for much longer. I had one chance to make this work.
“Victor Onobanjo has been absorbed,” Lumberjack Beard called. “Would that I had a trumpet for you, Onobanjo. Three players left.”
I scanned the field for the third person. A girl with a long ponytail was bouncing from side to side, debating the safest route.
I bolted for her, forcing Isaiah to follow. Her eyes went wide as she scampered, thinking that she was being targeted by a small chain. Together, Isaiah and I chased her toward the last person on the end of the real chain, the scrawny kid who’d stumbled in the lobby. His hand shot out, his fingertips grazing the girl’s elbow.
I dug my heel into the dirt and spun, following the line of the chain in the opposite direction. Isaiah was pulling so hard that my shoulder was threatening to pop its socket. My hands were sweating, loosening my grip on him in clammy increments. Lumberjack Beard was talking, but I couldn’t break my focus long enough to listen. I watched as the line of the amoeba started to break apart. They were going to swarm us.
I flung myself hard to the side, stretching my arm as far as it would go while still holding on to Isaiah’s wrist. I ran as fast as I could, making a full circle in the dirt while Isaiah frantically tried to shake me off.
My lungs burned. I could taste dust and salt on my lips. My ears were clogged with dubstep and screams and the static from the bullhorn.
I let go.
Isaiah and I careened away from each other, both momentarily airborne. I collapsed to the ground, my palms slicing against dead blades of grass. Isaiah landed on his feet and staggered. He pressed his hands to his chest like he was taking inventory of his organs. He seemed satisfied that everything was in place.
And then Faulkner appeared behind him and set one hand on his shoulder.
He looked at me and swore.
Sorry, bro, I mouthed back.
The whistle sounded again. Game over.
“I’ve just been informed that our first winner of the Cheeseman trials,” Lumberjack Beard boomed from the treetop, “is Ever Lawrence from Team One!”
My body went limp. My hands and feet stung in dubstep throbs, but I could feel myself smiling.
Brandon appeared above me, his hair mussed, his dark eyebrows drawn together above his nose. His cheeks were flushed and shining.
“So,” he panted, extending an arm to help me up. “You know parkour.”
“Not, like, a lot,” I wheezed, carefully taking his hand while my palms screamed. My legs resisted straightening, but Brandon was stronger than he looked. I swayed into a standing position and took my hand back, blowing a cool breath over the broken skin. “Why do you speak Latin?”
He coughed, stuffing his hands back into his pockets. “I took two years of it. It was that or Mandarin.” He glanced up at my face and sensed more questions coming. “Messina Academy. It’s pretty much as weird as people say it is. Weirder, really.”
“You go to—” I tried to take a step and hissed. Brandon gripped my elbow to keep me from tipping over. “Balls. I need to find my shoes.”
“Leigh’s getting them,” he said. His head popped up. “Cornell’s coming this way with your ribbon.”
I craned my neck to see past him. Cornell and Bryn Mawr were striding across the field. The audience had given up on participating. There were already scads of people marching back through the trees.
“Brandon,” I breathed, turning my head discreetly toward his shoulder. “I need you to promise me something, right here, right now.”
His Adam’s apple rose and fell with a gulp. “Okay?”
“You are prepared to do this terrible thing?” Shit. Accidental Wilde. I barreled ahead, trying not to let my mortification show. “Do not, under any circumstance, let Cornell shake my hand right now. Or at any point until I have taken a bath in Neosporin.”
His laugh was an abrupt rising sound, like footsteps running up stairs. “I can do that.”
15
Even with Meg pushing our wake-up call forward to our new weekend schedule, I could barely drag myself out of bed the morning after amoeba tag. My palms were scabbed and the soles of my feet burned as I set them against the carpet.
By the time I made it to the communal bathroom with my towel and ziplock bag of toiletries, Bath and Body Works steam was pouring out of all four beige shower stalls. The smell was aggressively fruity, like being punched with candied apples and vanilla frosting while pretending worse smells weren’t hanging out around the corner.
I had come to expect having to get ready out of order. For all of Rayevich’s state-of-the-art facilities elsewhere on campus, the bathrooms were plain and barely functional. I had a hard time believing that the same shower stalls that my fellow campers and I had to share would serve twice as many students in the fall. How could anyone ever be on time to anything?
Unless everyone was like Leigh and adjusted to waking up predawn to shower in peace.