Page 47 of The Most Dangerous Games

“Yes,” Jack says. “I was scared.”

Rupert nods like that matters.

Jack adds, “I kept moving anyway. I didn’t turn back. I flushed it, wrapped it, kept moving, and I kept telling myself: not today. About half a mile up I ran into an incoming med team, they gave me an antivenin.”

Jack isn’t going to share with the kid everything about what he was feeling on the trail in that moment, how fueled he was by his anger at Tipton for leaving him the way he’d left Luca.

Only he and Tipton knew about that.

For now, anyway.

“There’s this country singer I like named John Anderson,” he says to Rupert. “And he’s got this one line that sticks with me, something like: Living scares me worse than dying.”

Rupert Chadwick surprises everyone by standing.

Then the fourteen-year-old, perhaps the shyest of all of them, surprises the room a second time by tapping his water glass with his spoon to get their attention.

Jack can see how nervous he is. Everybody close to Rupert can. But the ones who have taken the time to get to know him have begun to learn how much there is to this boy.

“I’d like to say something about Luca,” Rupert says. “Because we all know we feel him in this room with us tonight, even though he isn’t.”

The room has gone completely silent. Jack keeps his eyes on Rupert.

The boy swallows hard. Then again. Takes a sip of his water, then takes in so much air Jack wonders how he could fit it all inside that skinny body.

“I wasn’t with Luca for very long, none of us were,” Rupert says. “And he wasn’t the only person in this room who’s gone out of their way to make me feel less homesick. But . . . he was a lot like my dad.”

Jack sees the boy’s chest rise and fall. Sees him flush. Is afraid Rupert might start to cry.

Come on, kid.

You got this.

Rupert keeps going.

“I watched Luca and learned how a grown man is supposed to act,” he says. Smiles as he looks at the women in the room. “Or just how an adult is supposed to act, period.”

The only sound in the room is the voice of Rupert Chadwick, trying to hold himself together.

“He wanted this so badly,” Rupert says. “He wanted to make his own son proud, he told me that. I hope that maybe someday I can meet his son and tell him that. Tell him how much his dad loved him.”

Another deep breath. Jack sees Rupert’s eyes start to fill up.

“But in the little time we had together, Luca treated me like a son. He wanted the first prize as much for me as he did for himself.” He pauses. “But mostly he told me to believe in myself even when I wasn’t feeling anything like that.”

Rupert says, “I can hear his voice, even now in that thick accent of his. Sii coraggioso. That means ‘be brave’ in Italian.”

He pauses again, his voice thicker with emotion than ever.

“Luca said that’s the way you say it to a man,” Rupert says.

He picks up his glass again and raises it to the others, and probably gives the first toast of his young life.

“To Luca,” he says.

Now he cries.

He’s not the only one.