It’s Jacqueline. She’s kneeling on her horse’s back, her arm looped through her reins to keep her steady. And in her outstretched hand, she has… a gun.
I’ve never seen a gun before in real life. The cold dark metal looks foreign to me, unreal, like it’s in a movie or television show. Threatening, but in a distant way. They use blanks in movies, though. I know just from looking at Jacqueline that she isn’t using blanks. Those are live bullets and she intends to put them through my body.
Poison is such an abstract way to die. It happens on a chemical level. You don’t see it happening so much as you see the aftereffects. But a bullet. That burns through flesh, destroys sinew, and explodes outward, ending life. That bullet is real.
This gun wipes away my last shred of denial. This violence, this death-game Finish is real. Real-real.
“Come on, Starlight!”
I flatten myself to the saddle and urge her faster, frantic, into the rapid current ahead. The river is only twenty feet wide, but it’s deep. Starlight stutters at the edge, and then she brays loudly at the sound of a gunshot over the water. Jacqueline curses at her poor shot, still too far away to properly nail me, but the gap is closing. I know only God will make Jacqueline miss a second time, so I can’t give her an opportunity. I click my tongue in Starlight’s ear, and for a moment she’s wild, tossing her head back and forth, still grabbing her bearings. My breath comes quicker as I lean in, lips near her twitching ears, begging, “Please, Starlight, move!” and thankfully she rushes forward, cutting a path into the river.
The sloshing water crashes over our heads as we enter the river, and I can’t breathe. I’m drowning, water rushing up my nose and over my eyes. But just as suddenly, Starlight breaks through the surface again and I gasp, air returning. I try to clear my blurred vision as she powerfully starts to cross.
But Jacqueline’s gaining on me. “I’ve got your number, Walker,” she spits, lifting her gun again, close enough for me to touch, close enough that a shot at this range to the head would kill me instantly. Jacqueline is nearly breathing on my neck, and I almost feel the chill of gunmetal against the nape.
I don’t second-guess my instincts. I turn in my seat, duck under the gun near my ear, and shove her hard in the chest with two hands. Jacqueline loses her balance and she crashes into the water, and for a second I think I might too as I lose my grip on the reins and slip on the wet saddle, inhaling another swallow of water. But I grasp for my reins again, and seconds later Starlight is already fighting her way onto the bank. I shouldn’t but I pull her to a stop to let her catch her breath, as I catch my own, turning back to the river to watch for Jacqueline. I still feel like I’m drowning, coughing and sputtering all over myself, fresh water and spit slicking my chin.
Her horse keeps on moving steadily toward the bank, but Jacqueline doesn’t burst from the water. I hold my breath, heart in my throat. Did I… kill her?
Hannah G is still on the opposite bank, screaming something that I can’t hear over the water, and I wonder then if she saw it all. If she saw Jacqueline try to murder me and just watched and waited, until one of us finished the other off, and suddenly, my chest is tight again and I can’t breathe, wondering if I did—but then a hand bursts out from the river. It’s Jacqueline, fighting against the current, clinging to one of the jutting rocks. And while I can breathe again, any relief is short-lived, and the minute Hannah G sees her, alive, she and her nails start across the river too. I turn on Starlight, urging her forward again toward the last and most dangerous of obstacles—the Taxis Ditch.
As I ride away, I hear Jacqueline screech, “FUCK, I GOT MY GUN WET.”
Graham’s advice rings in my ears. Stay on the outside of the path. Take the right in the fork. If I stay to the outside of the path here, I might find a way around the two-meter-deep ditch hidden behind a tall hedge. The Taxis Ditch is meant to serve as both an illusion and an obstacle, something easy that hides the impossible. The Taxis Ditch is what kills people, the obstacle we couldn’t even practice. Facing it when there’s another way would just be stupid. But can I trust him?
Then I remember, Graham doesn’t want me to win. Graham wants me to live, and that makes all the difference.
I take the right in the fork, and immediately crash through branches and brambles on a path that’s clearly been carved through the forest but rarely taken. It’s rockier and hillier than the racetrack so far, but through some of the breaks in the trees parallel, I can see the other girls racing toward the final obstacle, while I move freely, avoiding it.
There’s a moment where I think I’ve been tricked—where I wonder if I won’t come out the other side. But then I’m bursting free of the trees and merging onto the main path again. I don’t know who’s in front of me. Or who’s left behind. I just keep going.
When I reach the finish line, only then do I start to cry.
CHAPTER 16
I DON’T DISMOUNT FROM STARLIGHT so much as slide off, collapsing to my knees in the hard-packed dirt, gasping and wiping furiously at my cheeks with dirty hands. I bend over my lap, wet matted curls falling over my face as I try to stop the flow of tears, pressing the heels of my hands hard into my eyes. My heart thunders in my chest and I jump wildly when something touches my shoulders. I fall back, and only when I blink a few times does the blur of white in front of me turn into the shape of Saint.
“A towel,” Saint says softly. She’s not nearly as soaked as I am. Her face is dry, but her hair is still in a wet ponytail at the nape of her neck and she is wrapped in a robe. She holds a matching one over one arm for me.
“Thanks,” I rasp, voice sore from the screaming and rough waters that I swallowed on my way across the river. I wipe the towel over my face, hoping that the remaining dregs from the river covered my tears. I take a deep breath, inhaling the scent of fresh laundry, before I finally let the towel fall into my lap and see who else made it.
Penthesilea is here, of course, standing next to Third, a bottle of water in hand like she’s just finished a gentle warm-up. Saint is with me. Esme and Hawthorne are huddled farther down the grass. Esme can’t even hide her disappointment to see me alive. Leighton is watching, approval in every line of her body, and then there’s Graham. Graham, who stares at me with relief, and the urge to cry, Thank you, thank you, catches in my throat.
Saint holds out her hand to me and she pulls me up. She doesn’t bother to ask me if I’m okay. She knows I’m not. She’s not. I can see that for once she’s almost shaken, and I wonder what it must have been like, caught in the thick of riders like Esme and Penthesilea.
I avoid having to say anything to her because the sound of hooves grows louder, confirming I didn’t finish last, though the ranking barely seems to matter at the moment. I clench my hands into fists to stop the violent flinch that rockets up my spine. I turn on the defensive and watch as a waterlogged Hannah G enters. She looks satisfied for someone who’s come in sixth, and I don’t have to wonder why. She’s the only Hannah now.
And then comes Jacqueline, lying flat on her horse’s back, her face flushed bright red with exertion.
I take an unsteady step backward and then another, stumbling, my shoulder crashing into Saint’s as Jacqueline slides from her horse, and she has the gun and it’s pointed right at me. Her eyes are so wide that they’re nearly bugging out of her face, and her bottom lip is split, the pink aftermath of blood staining her chin like cherries.