Page 54 of The Most Dangerous Games

Not this particular girl.

Hannah’s voice drops.

“Why are you here, really?”

Wyatt smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.

He says, “I guess the best answer I can give you is that I want to see if I can do something great on my own, maybe some heroic feat like Luca’s. He was a good dude. I know it’s different with me, obviously, on account of me having a lot handed to me in my life.”

“By your parents, you mean?”

Hannah watches him, and Wyatt gets the uncomfortable feeling she’s already reading the parts of him he keeps locked away. He wants to tell her the truth about that. But he knows he can’t, at least not yet and maybe not ever. He wants this girl to like him as much as he likes her.

He is trying to be honest with her. Just not as honest as he could be. Even though this night does feel normal, so is lying for Wyatt Jordan.

“And you?” he says, turning it back on her. “MIT at your age? I mean, are you being serious? I figure you’re halfway to world domination no matter what happens. Why are you here?”

“World domination because I’m German?” she asks.

Nice going, Wyatt.

Smooth, no kidding.

“No, no, no,” he says, fast and loud. “I didn’t mean it that way at all. I was just messing with you, but in a good way.”

“I know that,” she says. “I already know you better than you think, Wyatt Jordan.”

No, you don’t.

“You didn’t answer my question,” he says.

Hannah exhales.

“Because I don’t think we survive as a species if we keep doing what we’re doing,” she says. “That’s not drama. It’s data.”

Wyatt shifts, trying to find something lighter.

“So you’re basically here to save Earth. Casual.”

Hannah almost smiles.

“Something like that.”

They’re standing too close. Not touching. But close.

She stares up at the stars already appearing in the sky.

“Could you believe how beautiful it was in Antarctica?” she says, spinning around wanting to see the whole sky at once.

“You could have been killed there!” Wyatt says. “We all could have!”

“Danger hides in beauty and beauty hides in danger,” Hannah says. “A woman named Belva Plain wrote that. You want a fun fact about her? She didn’t write her first novel until she was sixty-three years old. A late bloomer.”

Silence, knowing it’s time to turn around and head back, nightfall coming fast now. But even with that, Wyatt has the sense that neither one of them is in any hurry for this night to end, especially since they have no idea about what craziness The Host has in store for them in the morning.

“If she’s a late bloomer,” Wyatt says, “that makes her the opposite of you.”

Just like that.