The breeze curls up again, hot and greedy. “Go,” I tell them. “Exactly like we planned it.”
We clasp hands for one heartbeat. All four of us, ready for war.
I walk out into the sun, alone.
Varsity
We sit in the very front row, on display. Lilia, the queen about to shatter. Piper on her right. New-girl Jade on her left. The flock fanning out on either side and one row back, whispers and laughing and unbuttoning one-two-three lower than they can get away with in the hall.
I unbutton one more than that and loosen my tie so the knot hits just under the made-you-look V. My silver crucifix glows against my skin.
New-girl Jade is brazen and brash and everybody already knows it.
“Game day on your first day. Lucky bitch,” says a flock-girl, poking between Lilia and me. “Have you ever—”
“The boys.” Piper cuts her off, so much sugar in her voice that Lilia’s lips do an anxious little twist. “Let’s tell her about the boys.”
“She’s going to meet them right after the game,” says Lilia.
“Seriously,” the first flock-girl says. “So thirsty, Piper. God.”
Piper doesn’t bother turning to whoever said it. “I’ve already got Duffy,” she says. “Just looking out for the new girl. In case she’ll slum it with a high school boy.”
“If I find the right one,” I say.
“Oh!” says Lilia, not even a sigh. Awake enough that I check her hands first, for blood. But she’s sifting through her bag and she comes back out with a lipstick that uncaps to rotting bright St Andrew’s blue. She draws one line on each cheekbone, under her eyes. Then she paints her right-hand girl, and Piper preens like Lilia’s anointing her.
“We’re going to kill them,” says Piper.
Lilia turns to me, on purpose, a spark almost like life in her dead eyes. So are you, she said when I said you’re fucking crazy. Like she already knew. Like she knows I’ll be the one who does the killing.
But then she stripes the lipstick across my cheeks, left-right, cold war-paint.
She doesn’t know anything. She’s dead and empty.
Past her, Piper says, “Doesn’t take much to get on your good side anymore, does it?”
“It’s not a competition,” Lilia sighs.
Piper nudges her too hard. “Everything’s a competition, sweetie. You know that better than anybody, don’t you?”
Lilia can swat away the rest of Piper’s needling bites, but this one lands. “Piper, God—” she starts, but then—
The St Andrew’s boys run out onto the field, fists and crosses, yelling loud. The whole flock flies up, and everyone behind us, too.
Right this blistering second the little field feels like a whole goddamn colosseum.
I’m on my feet. Screaming in my blue war-paint. Screaming with Lilia and Piper. Screaming so hard my throat bleeds.
Duncan—
—the alpha boy, leading the charge, eyes a startling piercing gray that sears everything he looks at even with his helmet in place. The boy whose father ruled this field once upon a time and whose brother will rule it next. The boy who holds all the power, the same way his family does, and decides who joins the pack. The best, the fastest, the one they all watch and obey—
Next to me, Lilia slips and grabs at Piper’s arm. Piper wrenches away and her sabre slashes the space between them and glances off Lilia’s thigh. She stops screaming to look down, and there’s a hair-thin red line on her skin. She screams again, louder.
Duffy—
—the favorite, the one who’d hide the body for Duncan if he killed. If. Piper’s perfect match. She shrieks so shrill for him that he turns and sees her and raises his fist. Piper stops for a breath and catches my arm behind Lilia’s back and says, “Jealous yet?”
Connor—
—the worst of them. The ugliest, the one everybody knows does the kind of shit only blond boys with director-producer fathers can get away with, the one who came so close to admitting it on Duffy’s Friday-night picture, damm banks, the slut did some cat scratch shit on ur arm, fukkin wild, that I can’t believe the rest of them haven’t taken him out themselves to keep their own names clean—
Banks—
—the biggest, towering tall and broad-shouldered. A defenseman. The kind of hair-trigger brute who can slam his fist against the spot where your ribs join together and you’ll forget how to breathe—
The rest of them: Porter, the goalkeeper, the one who guarded the door. Malcolm, Malcolm Duncan, the skinny sophomore who told his big brother yeah, I’m sure they’ll work, made the fucking drink myself. Ross and Lennox and Seward and O’Donnell: nobodies who don’t matter.
And Mack. Square-shouldered and clean-cut and honorable, eyes right ahead.
The boys from the white-sheets room on my sweet sixteen. All of them, and their ride-or-die brothers. Charging across the field in blue and white and battle yells.
I’m supposed to be afraid of them. Forget everything I thought I felt and collapse right here, weaker than Lilia.
I scream louder.
The boys circle together next to their benches, right in front of us. Close enough that if I wanted to, I could jam Piper’s sword into Connor’s throat before anybody could think about stopping me. If I went fast I could get Duffy, too, before the rest of them threw me down.
For a second everything flashes red. Stains that bloom from their chests and turn the whole field warm and metallic.
I raise one fist, just like Duffy did, and I scream with all my might. The boys crush close, yelling, crosses up and cracking together. Duncan and Duffy and Connor and Banks.
I know it better than I’ve ever known anything: every second in my whole life has just been practice for what I’ll do to these boys.
This is why I’m alive.
The Battle
Summer was right. I was right.
Mack is perfect.
Duncan’s the best on the team. Flashy and bold. An attackman who gets the goals and the glory. Duffy is his faithful eager dog, right there with every assist. Banks and Connor level the Vikings on the other end of the field, harder than they have to, and they slam chest-to-chest themselves just as hard every time the calls go their way.
But Mack runs the whole field. In better shape than all of them, even Duncan, and hungrier than all of them, even Duffy. He’s where they need him to be before they figure it out. And he’s the kind of good-game good-boy who puts out a hand for the boys from the other team when they’re gasping at the sky from one of Banks’s hits.
The crowd doesn’t notice him like they notice Duncan and Duffy and Connor and Banks. But Duncan and Duffy and Connor and Banks notice, and by the third quarter they’re punching him so hard I can see the proud bruises through his jersey.
When it feels right, I lean over to Lilia and say, “That boy,” and point. “Who is he?”
They shriek, all of them: Jade oh my God I knew it!
“Mack,” says Piper before anyone else can. “Well, I mean, you shouldn’t call him that. Not yet.”
“Yeah, same,” chirps one of the flock-girls, but Piper doesn’t bother with her.