Crash (11 page)

He stares at me, like he wants me to say something, so I do. “Dungeon Master. Mastermind. Got it.”

His expression doesn't change and I start to feel like maybe I didn't get it. After a few seconds, he sits back in his chair, grins, and waves his fork at my plate. “Sorry, I get carried away. Eat.”

I eat. He eats and talks between mouthfuls, telling me about his new game. It's comfortable. Comforting. Almost normal. Except my mind keeps wandering into worry territory and I have to make a conscious effort to haul it back.

“. . . and I want to go in with a fresh perspective so I never check out reviews or cheat codes before the first time I play,” he says. “I don't want any preconceptions to influence my experience. I just want that first time to be with a fresh eye, you know?”

I nod and chew.

“So when I'm playing,” he continues, “it's trial and error. I fail and fail a bunch of times and I get stuck on a level until finally I figure it out, take a different approach, and get to the next level. It's about a clean slate, like if I knew stuff about the game beforehand, if I looked it up or asked people about it, I'd have all these biased notions going in and that could blind me to opportunities. My mind wouldn't be open.”

“Interesting philosophy.”

Luka shrugs. “I can't claim it. It's something Jackson told me when we first met. But I agree with it.”

I chew another mouthful and nod again.

Then I pause. Rewind.

“Wait, Jackson told you that when you first met him? Like the very first time you met? In the game?”

“Yeah, it was in the game.” Luka frowns. “We were in the lobby. Maybe the second or third mission. So no, he didn't tell me that the first time we met. He was being
his usual self.” He grins at me. “Cocky. Abrasive. Refusing to answer questions or answering with these cryptic non-answers. Then he starts talking about video games. To break the ice, I guess.”

“What sort of questions were you asking him when he burst into gaming verbosity?” I don't know why I think this is important, but it is. I feel like there's some sort of aha-with-harps-and-choirs moment here if I can just find it.

“Verbosity? Is that a word?”

“Google it.”

Luka snorts. “I was asking him about the”—he lowers his voice—“Drau. And about how we get pulled.” Again, he frowns. “I think the scores had shown up and I was asking about that. So instead of answering, he starts telling me about moving to different campaign levels in
Call of Duty
, saying that failure leads to knowledge by experience and seeing it from a different angle and a whole bunch of stuff like that.”

I stare at him. “It wasn't to break the ice,” I say slowly. “It was to explain himself.”

“What?”

“The way he never answers questions, never tells new recruits much about the game . . .” I exhale on an incredulous laugh. “He does it on purpose.”

“Of course he does it on purpose.” Luka holds his hands out to the sides. “He purposely doesn't tell anyone anything. Ever.”

“But not because of the reasons we thought.” When
we were in the caves and I didn't want our team to split up, Jackson made me think about strategy and see all the angles. I remember the way he looked at me, hung on my every word, like my decision, my
perception
mattered. Once I found out he meant to trade me into the game for his own freedom, I thought my decisions mattered that day because he was seeing what kind of leader I'd be. Now, I think maybe it wasn't that at all, or maybe not solely that. . . . The times he didn't tell me things and then watched my reactions, he was learning from them, using me to give him a new perspective, a fresh set of eyes.

I pick something up and absently nibble the edge. Luka makes this sound that's half growl, half laugh. I realize what I'm doing and gently place the spring roll back on his plate. “Sorry.”

“
No hay problema
.” He bites off half the spring roll, dumps a packet of plum sauce in the other half, swallows.

“The first time I got pulled, you never explained that much, either,” I point out.

“There's never much time to explain a whole heck of a lot when someone new gets dropped into the lobby,” he says. “And Tyrone told you stuff. He gave you the rundown of the whole scoring system.”

“Okay. That's true. But back to Jackson—”

“It's always back to Jackson.” Luka's tone is teasing, but I can't help thinking back to right after the first time I got pulled when I thought Luka might like me. He and Jackson had this weird exchange where it was like Luka was
warning him off, or maybe he was just being protective of me. I ended up thinking he might like Carly, then decided he liked both of us as friends and nothing more. I chalked up my confusion to being lousy at reading romantic signs since I was mourning while everyone else was learning the dating game.

But for a second, looking at him now, I feel like there's something else here that has nothing to do with who he's crushing on, something I ought to be able to see.

“So . . . back to Jackson,” Luka prods.

“It's always back to Jackson,” I mimic, bumping Luka's shoulder with mine. “So here's what I'm thinking . . . what if he didn't explain stuff because he wanted us to go in clueless, to discover things for ourselves. To
watch
us discover those things. You only get to go through the game for the first time once. Do you see?”

He gives me a look. “I'm the one who just told you that.”

“I'm not talking about a video game. I'm talking about the
game
game. You only get to experience that first exposure once. Jackson's been in it forever. He sees it all through jaded eyes. He might be missing stuff because he has all these expectations based on what he knows and what he's already experienced. But a new recruit is going to go through it for the very first time, and if Jackson tells them nothing, then their experience isn't tainted by preconceptions.” I pause. “Except one. The preconception that the Drau are evil.”

A frown flickers across Luka's features, followed by something else I can't quite name. Wariness, maybe. “Well, that's kind of the whole point of the game, isn't it?”

“Except it isn't a game,” I say softly.

“Isn't it?” He stares at me for a long moment. He opens his mouth and I think he's going to say something else. His look is so intense I start to worry. Then he just shrugs and grins and shovels in another forkful of food.

Because to him, these conjectures don't matter. To him, they aren't earthshattering revelations. But I'm the girl whose Sofu collected Japanese puzzle boxes, the girl who grew up solving them, and to me, this is another precious piece in the puzzle that is Jackson Tate.

“Hey, I'm curious,” Luka says, eyes on his plate. “Did you and Jackson ever figure out why the game was lagging on the last mission?”

“No, why?”

His eyes meet mine and something in his expression reminds me of the day he tackled Carly on the field. When he caught me watching, he looked guilty. I thought it was because he felt awkward for having fun when the fate of the world was at stake. But his expression now is exactly the same, and I don't know what to make of that.

He shrugs and pushes some veggies over to bump up against his rice. “Just curious.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

THE NEXT MORNING, JACKSON DROPS ME OFF AT THE HOSPITAL'S front doors and heads off to park the Jeep. I wait for him by the bank of elevators.

I've been there maybe two minutes when I get this weird sensation crawling along the back of my neck. The lobby's warm, and I'm wearing my down coat, but I shiver anyway. For a second, I think the creepy feeling is just because I'm back in the hospital, which isn't exactly my happy, happy place. But it's more than that. It's the shiver-up-my-spine feeling I get when someone's watching me, the same feeling I had in the hall at school the day Marcy tried to pass Jackson her number.

I turn. There are people everywhere. No one looks like they're paying attention to me.

Still, I can't shake the feeling that unseen eyes are locked on me.

I shift so my back's against the wall and there's no one behind me, then I scan the lobby. There's no one watching me, not that I can see. I wait for the creepy feeling to pass. But it doesn't. It amps up until I feel like a million centipedes are skittering over my skin. I rub the back of my neck just to prove to myself there's nothing there.

“Miki!” The Queen Bee, Marcy Kern, and her head lady-in-waiting, Kathy Wynn, stand in front of me wearing matching hunter green jackets. Cute. There's a part of me that isn't even surprised. At school lately, it's seemed like they've been following me, watching me. Everywhere I turned, there they were. In the halls, the caf, out behind the school under the giant oak my friends and I claim as our own. It got bad enough that I actually had this crazy down-the-rabbit-hole kind of nightmare. Lizzie was there, telling me
they
were watching, but she never said who they were, and then Marcy grew to gigantic proportions and Kathy shrank and shrank to the size of a thimble.

I told Luka I suspected Marcy was a shell.

Luka countered that her eyes aren't Drau gray and that I was having nightmares about her because she wanted to get into Jackson's pants.

Maybe he was right. But the last time I had this creepy vibe at school, I looked up to find Marcy right there, watching me.

And now she's right here.

Either way, Marcy and Kathy are among the last people I want to see right now.

“I'm sorry to hear about your dad,” Marcy says, actually sounding like she means it. “And Carly . . . Oh my God, so terrible.” I'm startled to see tears shimmering in her eyes. “Is there any change?”

“She's still in a medically induced coma.”

“That's what Kelley posted this morning.” She pauses. “And your dad? How's he doing?”

Again, I'm startled. She sounds like she actually cares. I glance at Kathy. She stands in Marcy's shadow, head down.

“I don't know yet. I'm on my way up to see him.”

Marcy touches my arm. “I hope you have good news.”

“Thanks.” An awkward silence hangs between us, then I ask, “So what are you two doing here?”

“We're picking up Kathy's mom.”

I glance at Kathy. “She was in the hospital? Is she okay?”

“She's a surgical nurse,” Marcy says.

“Right.” I sort of remember that from when we had career day a couple of years ago. I try to remember if Kathy told us about her mom, or if Marcy did the talking for her that day, too.

The elevator doors slide open.

“Hi, Mrs. Wynn,” Marcy says with a smile.

I turn. Mrs. Wynn steps off the elevator. She's the nurse I spoke to outside the waiting room the night of the accident. I stare at her, suddenly remembering that I had the creepy being-watched vibe that night, too. Was it before I
spoke to Mrs. Wynn, or after?

“Hey, look who I found,” Jackson says, striding toward me. Beside him is Luka.

“Thought I should come by and see Carly,” he says to the ground, hands shoved deep in his pockets, shoulders hunched. It's no stretch to figure out that Luka isn't exactly comfortable with this plan.

With a quick good-bye to Marcy, Kathy, and Kathy's mom, the three of us get in the elevator. As the doors slide closed I look up to see Marcy and then Kathy glance back over their shoulders as they walk away.

I'm up before dawn the next morning, donning my running gear, tying my shoes with meticulous care by the light of my bedside lamp. The house is silent. There's no one here. I didn't let Jackson sleep over last night even though he wanted to. Even though I wanted him to. I need to be strong. I need to cope.

My life hasn't been this out of control since Mom died, and the anxiety and misery that haunted me for the past two years are right there beneath the surface, ready to leap if I give them the slightest opportunity. So I have a choice to make: I can wait for the beast to pounce, or I can head it off before it has the chance. I choose the latter and let myself out the front door, the wind slapping my cheeks, my breath puffing little clouds.

The sky's dark, the air frigid. Doesn't matter. I run my favorite route, my tunes playing, keeping me going, my
thoughts focused wholly on putting one foot in front of the other. Nothing else exists for me, not right now. I'm in the moment,
this
moment. And it's this break from everything else in my life that's going to keep me sane.

I run until I hit the wall, the bonk, the moment when I know I can't run any more, exhaustion taking hold, legs burning, lungs craving oxygen that doesn't seem to reach them. Stopping isn't an option. Giving up isn't an option. I push through, using the techniques I've honed over two years, telling my body it isn't feeling what it thinks it's feeling, somehow making it all the way back to the house . . .