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The Game
Author: Linsey Miller

 

    SUBJECT: The Game Begins

    I am ready to kill or be killed. This email serves as the official notice that I, [NAME HERE], am entering this year’s round of Assassins. I understand that I must send this email before midnight Wednesday and that I will receive the rules, my team members’ names, and my target’s name Friday at 12:00 p.m.

    The game begins Friday at 5:00 p.m.

    Wish me luck,

    [NAME HERE]

 

   “This is it,” Lia said. She added her name to the email and read it over one last time. “Think we’ll be the first?”

   “I didn’t wake up at five to not be.” Gem launched themself off the bathroom counter and peered over Lia’s shoulder. “It’s simpler than I thought it would be.”

   “Dramatic, though.” Lia nudged Gem in the side. “Do yours. We’ll send them together.”

       Every March, in the anxiety-ridden weeks before colleges sent out acceptance decisions, the seniors of Lincoln High went to war. The game was the last great equalizer before the seniors went their separate ways.

   And Lia—who had been planning her Assassins strategy since ninth grade, who had color-coded it red in her planner, and who had never been the best at anything—had already hung on her closet door a practical pair of running shoes, a black T-shirt she only mostly cared about, and a pair of leggings that wouldn’t feel like sandpaper if they got wet.

   Not that they would. She just liked to be prepared.

   “Gem Hastings reporting for murder.” Gem took a step back and raised their phone.

   This year, the invitation to play was taped to the back of the bathroom doors. Few teachers ever ventured into these bathrooms, and even if one did, every bathroom was the same. Powder soap dusted the damp counters and inspirational posters decorated the dented stall doors. The invitation was a large poster of the white Lincoln High lion overlaid with three concentric circles in blood red. At their center was a QR code.

   Assassins wasn’t a school-approved event, but it was tradition. Anyone who wanted to play would know what this poster meant.

   “Scanned,” Gem said. The email opened, and they filled it out. “Three.”

   “Two,” Lia said, thumb hovering over the SEND button.

   It was only a game, but it was the game. It was hunting season for seniors. It was permission to stay out late with friends and teammates. It was the last chance for Lia to be good at something instead of being stuck in the shadow of her older brother.

   “One,” they both said.

       The emails sent.

   “I hope we’re on the same team,” Lia said, “or else we had better get used to murdering each other.”

   Gem snorted. “Should I not have already gotten used to that?”

   Lia and Gem had been best friends since third grade—after an incident with the school-issued square pizza and May Barnard’s face—and had been inseparable ever since, even though Gem’s loathing for May had shifted to a crush this last year.

   “Look at us!” Gem spun Lia to the mirror and rested their chin atop her head. “We’re going to win.”

   A crack in the mirror split Lia’s long face in half and made her green eyes uneven. Behind her, Gem’s tall, muscled form was split and squished.

   Their phones dinged with the same message:


Hello, Lia Prince & Gem Hastings.

    Welcome to the game and happy hunting.

    The Council

 

   “Think this means we’re on the same team?” Gem asked.

   “Maybe.” Lia shook her head, rubbed the back of her neck, and picked up her backpack. “It means that whoever the Council is knows us well enough to assume we’re together right now.”

   “You know,” Gem said, turning away, “even if we don’t win, it’ll be a good way to spend time together before next year.”

   “We’ll win.” Lia shook her head at her shattered image in the mirror. Gem won lots of things—best grades, theater tournaments, and test score competitions. The only award Lia had ever gotten was for attendance. “I just wish the Council told us everything up front.”

       No one knew who the Council was or how they were chosen, but the rumor was that it was three seniors handpicked by the previous year’s Council. Everyone in Lincoln knew each other and their deepest secrets, so Lia had always assumed that rumor was true. The town was too small to keep such a mystery for so long.

   “I bet it’s Gabo,” Gem said. “He loves stuff like this.”

   Gabriel Gutierrez, math genius and theater nerd, was one of Lia’s guesses for the Council, too. His older brother had won Assassins seven years ago and had given him all his old notes. Gabriel even had a hand-me-down tricked-out water gun.

   Mark, Lia’s older brother, had placed third but had never told her anything helpful.

   “Don’t worry,” Lia said. “The Council always teams up friends, families, and crushes to keep the real fighting to a minimum.”

   In the years before the Council became anonymous and focused more on the teammate and target assignments, friendships had been ruined and relationships dashed due to Assassins.

   “I hope we get May as a target,” Gem said as they joined the crush of students in the hall.

   Seniors opened bathroom doors and tugged their friends inside. Lia kept an eye on the ones who vanished inside for only a minute, noting their names or descriptions. There were 317 seniors, and Lia had spent all last year figuring out who would play. She had been left with fifty definites.

   She had documented their daily schedules and which classrooms they were in this semester. Her journal was filled to the edges with names, maps, and by-the-minute timetables. Lia clutched it to her chest and wound her way upstairs to the biology lab with Gem.

   Gem opened the door. “Stalking everyone?”

       Lia waved her journal. “Not everyone, and it’s all stuff they say aloud. It’s not like I’m following them home. Stalking makes it sound weird and illegal.”

   Once the game was on and Lia had her first target, she would be following them home, but even she knew that sounded creepy.

   A student snorted behind Lia, and she turned. Faith Franklin was frowning at her, her eyes going from Lia’s muddy shoes to the soda-stained journal in her hands.

   “Not illegal, Prince,” Faith said. She was always immaculate from her pin-straight brown hair to her pure white tennis shoes. “Definitely weird, though.”

   Lia hadn’t bothered documenting Faith; the girl hated games as much as she hated mess. Faith sat at the first bench in the biology lab and pulled out a bullet journal bursting with stickers and notes. Hannah, who sat behind her, pulled out some new calligraphy pen to show her. Lia dropped her journal and half-chewed pen onto a bench next to Gem.

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