Their Vicious Games(10)

Toni starts to nod frantically, and then she stops midbreath. I look back and freeze.

“Impressive takedown,” Pierce says. Awe remains in his eyes, the same look he gave me after we stopped hooking up and I took off.

“It was very dramatic,” the figure to Pierce’s left says. I know him as well as anyone can know a Remington.

Graham Remington is Pierce’s one year older, much more disappointing, brother.

We all knew by grade seven that Graham wasn’t going to be the bright Remington heir, though I assume that his parents knew from birth, since they named him Graham instead of giving him the spot in the Pierce line of succession. Where Pierce is fair, tall, and beautiful, Graham is weathered, short, and regular. He isn’t ugly by any means, but decidedly just cute. What really solidified it, though, was that he “settled” for Yale.

“Was it?” I challenge. “Esme is a bully.”

“Yeah, yeah. You’re the little defender that could,” Graham says, his eyes veined with redness—he’s so high. “God, Esme looked like she was going to either claw your eyes out or shit herself. No in between.”

Graham toasts his liquor bottle to me, and my lips curl back against my will.

“You handled her remarkably,” Pierce says, meditative.

“She thinks that her money and status make her untouchable,” I say quietly.

Pierce hums once more. “Do you agree?”

He asks it casually, but suddenly it feels important. Like there’s another question underneath, a question I thought I had no chance of being asked after how this night has gone. I know the answer I want to give, but I can’t let my eagerness ruin it now.

“In a way. Life is a competition. You win or you lose in every situation you face, right? In that situation, with Esme, like your brother said: I won. But that’s almost never the case. Not with people like Esme. We’re not on the same playing field.”

When he looks at me again, his gaze is just that bit sharper, that bit more meaningful, and then he says, “We could be.”

My breath catches in my chest.

The Finish.

“Four, don’t,” Graham warns. “Adina—Adina, isn’t it? She’s a good girl.”

I was a good girl. Except for one moment. Now I’m a desperate girl.

“Maybe good girls should get to win sometimes too,” I say.

Graham snaps, with more authority than I thought he could possess, “What are you even doing, Four? She doesn’t have what it takes.”

I don’t know what happens in the Finish. The only girls who have ever gone were girls like Esme. Girls who have more than me, but less than what being associated with a Remington could get them, because there are levels to this sort of thing. Access and wealth.

What I do know is this: Girls who win go to school, with all the resources the Remingtons can provide, and do the impossible. One girl became a House rep, another a Fortune 500 CFO, another the provost at Duke. Each of them went on to be someone.

I want to be someone. I don’t just want to go to Yale, I want to dominate it. I could take it further. Be greater than them.

And this boy—given everything—has no right to tell me otherwise.

“I do have what it takes,” I say evenly, swallowing my frustration. I take another step toward Pierce. I tilt my head back just the tiniest bit, the same way I did when his eyes went half-lidded. “More than any of them. More than you, even.”

Pierce lights up, eyes bright with a feverish enthusiasm. “You accept and you don’t get to back out. You get it, right?”

He sounds serious but I am too. Besides, my mother didn’t raise a quitter.

Before I can accept, the back door of the car swings open and Penthesilea finally slips out.

There’s a strange lull that falls over everything, dampening the tension in the air. Penthesilea is backlit by the light of the bonfire. The golden headband in her hair sparkles, and she’s wearing soft girl clothes, a white button-down tucked into sunflower-yellow corduroy shorts.

“What’s going on?” she asks, her voice lilting and measured. “Is there something wrong?”

No one says anything. Pierce’s good mood dips. He’s not looking at me anymore, and I know that I’m losing him. He walks up to her, hands reaching out, “Pen, hey, it’s just bullshit—”

Penthesilea looks at me directly. “Adina, are you all right?”

She knows my name.

Only then does a hot curl of liquid shame curdle in my belly.

I just hooked up with this girl’s boyfriend in the woods. I’m relying on the strange intimacy between me and him now to get an invitation to my own future. Pierce’s arm hooks around her waist and he drops his chin atop Penthesilea’s hair.

“I—” I start and stop. “I’m fine. Toni, please.”

Toni steps forward immediately, grabbing my hand even though I can’t look away from Penthesilea. I can still feel her boyfriend’s hands on my hips. I can still feel the sear of his lips on the curve of my neck.

Toni pulls me away, and we march through the Red Sea of students, right past Esme as she sneers, “Later, nobodies.”

I flip a middle finger at her because I can, because the Finish, a brief, beautiful life raft, has vanished back into smoke and mirrors and the glittering of Esme’s collar.