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“Still, I’m sorry. I was in the passenger seat when my mom got rear-ended last year, and the car was fine, but it rattled me. I didn’t realize, or I wouldn’t have given you such a hard time this morning.”
“It’s—thank you,” I manage, recognizing that this is maybe a normal conversation between two people with one who cares that the other didn’t die this morning. “I don’t see anyone. Get in.”
We shut the doors, but we’re too close to the bowling alley for comfort. I drive for a couple minutes in silence, weaving through residential streets until I find a parking spot deeper in Capitol Hill.
“You’re starting to freak me out,” McNair says when I kill the engine.
I let out a long sigh. “I know this is weird… but I heard Savannah Bell talking in the food court about us. She had a group of ten or twelve people, and they were planning to team up to take us out of the game.”
His face twists. “What? Why?”
“To be assholes? To get us back for being the best in school?”
“Technically, you’re second best,” he says, and I’m too anxious to be annoyed by it.
“The way Savannah phrased it, it was like getting back at us after all these years. They sounded pretty serious about it. And Savannah said—” But then I break off, realizing I was about to tell him how she tapped her nose. I’m not sure I can explain to someone who isn’t Jewish, who’s never experienced this, how equating Judaism with wealth is anti-Semitic. Centuries ago, Jews weren’t allowed to own land and could only make a living as merchants and bankers. It evolved into a stereotype that we’re not just rich, but greedy, too. “That she, um. Has you now.”
McNair nods, tugging at a loose thread on his backpack.
“But from
what I could tell,” I continue, “they were going to have someone kill her just to take your name.”
“Who?”
“I didn’t get to hear. That was when you interrupted me.”
“And—you don’t know who has you, either?”
“I do not. As I said, that was when you interrupted me. Keep up,” I say. “They’re all going to be out to get us. And they don’t care about sacrificing themselves for the cause, either. It’s clearly not about the money for them.”
A brief silence falls over us. McNair’s brow is furrowed, as though trying to make sense of Savannah’s plan.
I don’t know how to explain to him that the longer I stay in the game, the longer I remain in high school, the longer I don’t have to face the reality that I didn’t turn into the person my fourteen-year-old self wanted to be. On Monday morning, I want to walk right back into homeroom with Mrs. Kozlowski, debate with McNair during AP Government, joke with Mara and Kirby at lunch. I’m not ready for the world beyond Westview yet.
Or maybe I don’t need to explain. Maybe he feels exactly the same way.
“Well… shit,” he says finally, and despite everything, it almost makes me laugh. It’s such a resigned thing to say, and McNair has never been resigned about anything, not as long as I’ve known him. “What do we do?”
It’s weird he asks this. Not just because he uses “we” as though we’re a unit, but because it’s exactly what I’ve been wondering: How are we going to deal with it?
I summon all my strength to utter this next sentence. Given every time we’ve been tied together throughout high school, maybe my suggestion is fitting. I’ve been going over it in my head since I heard them talking, and I’m pretty sure it’s the only solution. My jaw is tight, my throat rough as the words climb up it, fighting every urge for self-preservation.
“I think we should team up.”
HOWL STANDINGS
TOP 5
Neil McNair: 3
Rowan Roth: 3
Brady Becker: 2
Savannah Bell: 2
Mara Pompetti: 2
