The Lies About Truth

“Which team did they give you?” I asked, since she wasn’t wearing her jersey yet.

Candace rolled her eyes. “Pirates. I always want to be a privateer and every year, I get stuck with this ugly blue jersey. Privateers just sound more sophisticated than pirates.”

I knew one blue-jerseyed pirate—me—who had zero plan to be sophisticated. I’d rather be on Candace’s team than let her cozy up to Max somewhere on the island.

“Jealous?” Max asked as we walked away.

“Nope.”

“Liar?” he asked again.

“Yep.”

Maybe I understood Gray better right then than ever before. Jealousy was fast on the take.

“There’s no need,” he assured me. “Old news.”

Candace wasn’t the only roadblock we met. Everywhere we walked, we overheard conversations.

“Damn. That kid looks like his brother.”

“Who is his brother?”

“Trent McCall.”

“Oh.”

“The girl with Max . . . was she the one in the front seat?”

“Think so.”

“Shitty hand to be dealt.”

We tried to ignore them, but every comment was a barb that dug into our hearts. Especially the people who said, “Who’s this Trent dude?”

Only the person who loved Pirates and Paintball more than any of you! I wanted to scream.

Moving away from the bulk of the crowd, we tested our weapons in the little area they’d set up. The weapons were sound, and much to my relief, I nailed the target. Feeling satisfied, I asked Max to toss me my jersey.

“It matches your eyes,” he said as I slid it over my Goonies sweatshirt.

“I’d still rather be on green with you.”

With everything done, we needed to rendezvous with Gina and Gray. When I spotted them near the water stations, I snuck up and mimicked Trent’s animated voice from years past. “Pirates and Paintball!”

That made them both whip around with a smile.

“Nicely done,” Gina said.

“One of us had to say it,” I told her.

Gray raised one hand and placed the other over his heart. “I hereby declare the banner passes to Sadie Kingston.”

“Hear, hear,” Max chimed in.

“You guys know being nice doesn’t mean I won’t shoot your asses out there, right?” I teased them.

“Ladies and gentlemen . . . the warrior is back,” Gray said.

I was back. And I wasn’t the only one.

Trent had been the nucleus of our friend family. When we lost him, we lost our chemistry. Little by little, as we remembered the things we’d loved and shared with him, the genetic material began to reemerge. We were still a makeshift group without him, but a group. If we kept this up, going back to school would be easier.

If we kept this up, life would be easier.

The announcer blew the air horn and called, “Five minutes until Pirates and Paintball. Please listen up for a reading of the rules.”

We tuned them out, knowing the rules backward and forward. Pirates and Paintball differed from most paintball games. It was typical Capture the Flag style, but had a kill-shot rule that allowed everyone to play a little longer. A hit to the face or chest—a kill shot—put you down, but any other hit on the body required two shots before you were out.

Max screwed the new CO2 cartridges onto our guns and dumped extra paint into his pockets. Gina and Gray did the same.

It wasn’t until the official call to assemble into teams that Gray put on a blue jersey from his bag, and Gina put on a green. Gray cut challenging eyes at Max, slung an arm around me, and asked, “Ready, teammate?”





CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT


Max swore, but it was more like a Nertz swear than a worry swear.

I mouthed, This is going to be so fun, and he blew me a kiss. Confident. Happy. Not jealous. In control of who he was and what he wanted. Ironically, he was all those things without looking like an imitation of his brother.

People weren’t perfect, ever, but sometimes moments were. That one was flawless. It wormed its way into my history and onto a piece of mental paper.

Max McCall stepped into the sun and out of Trent’s shadow.

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