He thinks for a moment, then folds one of the copies from the top and slips it into my pocket.
“I don’t want—” I say, even though I’m deadly curious.
“Just take it,” he says. “Let’s just be in it together.”
I don’t look at the sheet, but I feel the pointed fold of its crease in my pocket whenever I move. The crowd parts, and I can see Eliza laughing with someone. Glancing our way.
How convenient that she disappeared with her bag just moments before the papers started circling.
“I can’t imagine who might have done this.” I look toward Eliza. “Will she stop at nothing to make sure the spotlight isn’t on her?”
George almost looks amused. “You think?”
“I guess you and your girlfriend have a lot in common, Mackelroy,” someone jeers, throwing a crumpled copy at George’s head. A spectator from the Corrander side of the beach sets his sheet on fire and taunts, “Mackelroy, I know you’re over there . . .”
George leans back stoically on his elbows as people around him skim through the words. I slip the folded piece of paper deeper into the crease of my pocket.
“Let’s get started,” Nell calls, drawing everyone’s attention back to the water. Beas and Thom return to settle in behind me, their lips and cheeks splashed red and blotchy. Smiling, dazed. Fingers interlaced. I take a soda bottle from George and pop off the top, wondering what it would feel like to ever be that happy.
Nine boys line up at the water’s edge, visible by the red and gold of their armbands.
Will’s is a marigold yellow that makes his arm looked ringed with fire.
He rocks on the balls of his feet, looking long and lithe. The bubbles from the soda fizz on my tongue. Out of the corner of my eye I can see Thom playing with the ends of Beas’s hair.
“Leroy’s the one with double gold armbands,” George whispers, and I find him easily.
“Race starts in three . . .” Nell says, “two . . .”
She sounds the signal. Will throws a handful of Variants over his head and leaps from the dock. He and Leroy take off, their lights practically colliding as they fight to take the lead. They are evenly matched, carving across the water in tandem, their lights reflections of each other.
They reach the other side in a handful of breaths, slightly ahead of all the others, and simultaneously turn back toward us. For a moment they become a single bright smudge in the distance. Then they separate into distinct lines again as they rocket back across the lake.
From this distance, Will’s spark looks like Mars next to Leroy’s crazed sun. Leroy edges dangerously closer to Will, and I wonder if anyone has ever gone down into the black water before. How difficult it would be to find them once their armbands hit the surface and were extinguished. My stomach twists.
They shove into each other and ricochet apart. A murmur goes through the crowd, but somehow neither of them goes under.
We rise to our feet as they near, and the closer they get to the beach, the closer they get to each other. Both sides of fans are yelling, our attempts at quietness forgotten, and one of Leroy’s golden bands reaches out toward Will. But Will sidesteps the shove at the last possible second, a move that appears to catch Leroy off-guard.
A second before they reach the finish, Leroy loses his momentum and splashes into the water. He emerges, sputtering, as the other racers dodge to avoid running right over his head.
Will steps triumphantly onto the beach, his arms still ringed with blood and fire.
A loud cheer erupts that I’m sure anyone within a mile radius can hear. He’s taking large, measured breaths, as if his lungs were wings expanding under his ribs. Leroy emerges from the water a moment later, his shirt slicked to his chest. Scowling, he accepts a beach towel and a handful of Embers from one of his teammates.
I hang behind George as the crowd pushes toward Will and knocks him around in congratulations, ruffling his hair, punching him in the arm.
But just before he’s hoisted into the air and carried away, he searches through the crowd until he catches sight of me. Grins until his crooked tooth shows. And I think that for the rest of my life I will never forget this night—?when under an empty ink sky, a boy who shone brighter than the stars stopped long enough to smile at me.
The crowd scatters into the night, leaving apple cores and soda bottles and tattered copies of “The Mackelroy Misfortune” strewn in the sand, but a few of us stay behind to hide the evidence of the race.
George collects the abandoned Mackelroy papers and then digs a hole to set them alight. He douses the flames with lake water until the words are dark ash blending into white sand.
“I better get going,” he says. “Don’t want to risk the wrath of Agatha Mackelroy.” He bids us all goodbye and lopes off into the trees, as if he doesn’t have a care in the world.
Beas and Thom crouch near the lapping water, stalling for time, drawing in the sand with the edges of sticks. “So when will I see you again?” Thom asks.
I’m not trying to eavesdrop, but their voices carry.
