My face reddens in the dark. Because now they’re talking about me.
Chase takes a step closer. The dark water moves from his knees to ring around his ankles.
“Oh, Roger,” Chase drawls, as if he’s talking to a small child. “Maybe we’ve been thinking about the whole Catalyst thing all wrong.” He adjusts his armband, which is the color of a glittering bruise. “In fact, perhaps we should be grateful. Because now none of us have to worry about smelling you and your gross sister.”
Roger jumps onto Chase and starts pounding his chest. Chase wrestles him off, thrashing about until they both fall with a loud splash. By the time Chase stands, dripping and spluttering, his armband extinguished, Will has placed himself in the center of the fight with arms extended. A Corrander player holds Roger as he struggles to break free.
“All right, then,” Nell says nervously. She claps. “Let’s move on. Chase, Roger, you’re disqualified. Boys’ round starts in ten minutes.”
The crowd dissolves, and we return to our pieces of driftwood, where George and Thom hold court over our shoes.
“Roger and Chase are disqualified?” George asks. He looks at Thom. “That improves our odds on Larkin versus Cliffton.”
“Should we up the ante?”
“It’s definitely going to be between the two of them.”
Eliza sniffs. “You better not pick against Will.”
“I’d never pick a Larkin over a Cliffton,” George says. “That’s like aligning with the darkness.”
“I don’t get it,” I whisper to George, settling back into my seat.
“Oh,” George says. “Leroy Larkin’s father invented the largest number of Variants, after Dr. Cliffton. So the sons of the two most prolific Variant inventors are about to face off.”
“Victor Larkin actually invented the Tempests,” Beas adds. “But their families aren’t exactly chummy.”
“Because they’re competitors?” I ask.
“Because Dr. Cliffton’s always careful about which Variants he introduces. They’re usually subtle and harmless,” George says.
Eliza smoothes her hair. “And we can’t always say the same about what the Larkins have brought us,” she says cryptically. I think again of the Variants that were left off the list at school.
“Well, with that,” George says, picking up his bag, “I’m going to find a nice secluded spot in the woods to take a whiz.”
“Try not to get murdered by someone from Corrander,” Eliza says sweetly.
“We’re going to go find a nice secluded spot, too,” Beas says, pulling Thom’s hand and grinning.
When Eliza realizes that this means we are going to be left alone together, she pointedly picks up her bag and leaves without another word. By the time I turn my head again, she has vanished into the crowd.
A hint of chill hits me, as if the Embers are starting to fade away. I settle back onto my log, wishing I had my red coat as one more layer between me and their world.
I’m still sitting alone when the murmuring starts. There’s a rustle of papers being passed, the wheel-turn of silence, and then reactions of gasps and giggles. I pretend not to notice as heads raise to glance in my direction. And then, one by one, they all look away. As if I’m not what they were searching for.
The moon moves out, full and bright, behind the dark smear of a cloud. I hear something that sounds like “Margo’s here tonight” and “Who found this?” and “It’s always been ripped out of the copies I’ve ever seen.” By the time the papers are passed to me, I’m filled with dread.
It’s hard to tell where the stack came from. No one is walking around to distribute it—?it’s just distributing itself, passing from person to person like sparks catching. I take the papers and glimpse the heading—?“The Mackelroy Misfortune”—?just as George returns, whistling.
It takes me a moment to understand what I’m looking at. The title is printed in the upper right corner. “The Legends of Sterling, 203–208.” It’s the same pages that were torn out of Dr. Cliffton’s book.
I look up at George and cringe.
“Whatcha got there?” he asks, and takes the stack from my hand.
He chews on his bottom lip as he reads it, but otherwise his face doesn’t change.
“My mother would flip her wig if she knew this got out” is all he says. Then he looks around to see people’s heads bent over the mimeographs. He hides the remaining sheets away in his bag. “But . . . too late now, from the looks of it.”
