Their Vicious Games(2)

“Um… yeah,” Toni says reluctantly. “You know Pierce and Charles can’t bear to be separated.”

She looks onto the Green at our former classmates, all off to their own ivy-covered walks of life, and I nearly choke on my envy.

“Do you want to go?” I hear Toni ask distantly.

“No,” I say, even though of course I do.

“Please, I don’t think they’d mind. And she won’t be there. It’ll be me, Charles, Pierce, his brother, and Penthesilea. They won’t mind three extra people, and you can ask Pierce about, you know, the…” Toni trails off.

But I know what she’s going to say.

The Finish. She wants me to beg a Remington for entrance to the Finish.

“I think the invitations were already sent out. I heard some people talking about it,” I say. We both know who the “some people” are, but we never clarify. “And I’m not the kind of girl that they’d invite anyway.”

Not rich. Not white. Not flawless.

“You don’t know that. All kinds of girls get invited,” Toni insists, her hands tightening around mine. “You heard what they did last year for that girl from Phillips Exeter? She’s at MIT and she’s flourishing. She wasn’t even accepted to MIT. She just, like, asked when she won. And then, the year before that, it was a scholarship girl from Taft, and now she goes to Cambridge. They’re paying for everything, even her living expenses. Come on, Adina. They’re the Remingtons. If they can do that, they can get you back into Yale, easy.”

I know she’s right. The Finish. Three tests. That’s all it would take to get back into one of the most prestigious institutions in the world. There is no application. There is no entrance fee. No one even really knows what the selection process is or how it all works. But the girls who compete are handpicked, the best of the best, the cream of the crop, going head-to-head for the support of the Remington Family, and all that entails. Tuition. Influence. Power. Admittance.

And all on another level than the other families of Edgewater. The Remingtons know everyone, and everyone who doesn’t know them wants to. There are libraries named for them, think tanks that defer to them, government officials begging for their approval. I’ve never known what it’s like to have that much power.

For me, though, it would feel like begging, begging for something I already earned. That’s one thing I can’t do again. But if there was the right opportunity, if an invite was offered in such a way that I was just given a way to prove myself again… then, maybe.

“When would that even be possible, Toni? And don’t say the luncheon, because I’m not going.”

Toni leans in and whispers, “The bonfire.”

I give her a warning look. “Toni.”

“You can talk to him there. I’ll even set you up at the luncheon. Mention you so that you’re front of mind,” Toni says. She’s already eagerly forming a plan, more optimistic than I could ever be.

“She’ll be there. They’ll all be there,” I warn.

Toni scoffs. “Fuck them, who cares.”

She cares. I care.

I wasn’t like Toni, whose parents were D9 chapter presidents and Ivy-educated descendants of the Black elite from the Gilded Age. I was the daughter of the help, in the eyes of everyone else.

Still, the idea of showing everyone up one more time before I fade into obscurity is more tempting than it should be. To be invited to the Finish and win would show them all that I wasn’t the pitiful little upstart that cracked under pressure. And besides, I have nothing left to lose. With a long-suffering sigh, I say, “Come over at seven so we can get ready. Bring vodka.”

I’ll need a shot to be brave the way I’ll have to be to go where I’m unwelcome one last time.



* * *



“Do the shot and let’s bounce,” Toni insists, rocking back and forth in her excitement, a few hours later.

I grimace over my shoulder at her before I turn back to examine myself in my vanity. I look tired. I try to smile, to arch my neck, but give up quickly, reaching instead for the clear liquor next to the yearbook that I had a hand in making—the one that no one but Toni signed. I look at the pharmacy-developed photos of Toni and me tucked into the mirror frame as I pour. There were more but some are missing since March, ones that were full of the girls from the life I thought I had, a life that never quite belonged to me.

I throw the shot back and the burn wakes me up as it travels down my throat, not quite fire, but something close. Without the excuse of my former social calendar, I’m out of practice. I cough once, then twice, and Toni takes it as permission to swing a heavy fist at my back. I glare at her but her laugh softens everything inside me.

“You look nice,” I say. She does, ethereal in all white to match her feathered lashes.

“I’ve got to look better than nice,” Toni insists, her fingers curling into fists.

“Why? Do you have plans tonight?” I ask, surprised, leaning back against the vanity.

“I’m going to have sex with someone tonight. Maybe Franco,” Toni declares.

I fight to keep from rolling my eyes. So, this is just another extension of Toni’s crusade against her virginity. In some ways, it’s nice that something feels semiregular.

“Well, you’re going to be the prettiest girl there,” I declare.