A Drop of Night(5)

Jules tugs out his other earphone and grins again, only I think he grins wider at Will, probably in the hopes of avoiding the debacle-that-is-Anouk. “Hey!” he says.

“Hey.” Will’s voice is low. He goes straight for the handshake. He only looks at me for a second before his gaze drops. His eyes are blue.

Jules is frowning, probably wondering what the odds are that everyone on this team is an asocial freak. I sit down on my suitcase. Will leans a shoulder against Jules’s pillar and looks out into the crowd. Incredibly awkward silence ensues. One of those silences where everyone knows they’re being awkward, but there’s nothing they can say to break it, and so they just freeze up and hope for a quick and speedy death.

Hayden Maiburgh shows up next. He’s just as tall as the rest of us, but he’s another type entirely. The type I like to avoid at all costs. He’s wearing a private school blazer and blue-mirrored aviators, and his hair’s been lacquered into a brassy swoop. He looks like he’s on his way to play polo or bathe in gold bathtubs of champagne, and he grins at us as he approaches, that sort of “Hey, losers” grin some people are born with.

“Hey, losers,” he says, and I almost spit out my metaphorical mouthful of water. He’s doing one of those fake bro handshakes with Jules, all splayed fingers and fist bumps. Except Jules has no idea how bro handshakes work, and I’m pleased to say the whole thing is failing miserably. Unfortunately that seems to please Hayden, too, like the handshake is a test and Jules flubbing it up settles the hierarchy. Hayden turns to Will, grinning, ready to do the whole maneuver again. Will is completely oblivious. He grips Hayden’s hand, harder than looks comfortable, shakes it once and goes back to gazing soulfully into the crowds.

I stay on my suitcase. Stretch out my legs and give Hayden a death glare when he glances down at me. Then I look away, like he’s too boring even for glaring at. Try to visualize the files in the blue folder, lining everybody up in my head:

Anouk Geneviève van Roijer-Peerenboom. Seventeen years old. Gymnast. Jerk. Speaks five languages fluently, has basic knowledge of eight more, nationally acknowledged teen academic studying art history at NYU. Recent graduate of St. Winifred’s Preparatory School in Manhattan. Can now also climb and scuba dive.

Jules Makra. Seventeen. Graphic design student. San Diego, California. Won a prize for drawing a chair or something.

Will Park. Seventeen. Engineering student from Charleston, South Carolina. Has nice eyes.

Hayden Maiburgh. Seventeen. Philosophy major at Cornell. That’s a joke. What does he philosophize about, weight lifting? Juice boxes? The plight of the 1 percent?

The fifth kid isn’t here yet. Lilly Watts. Sixteen. Sun Prairie, Wisconsin.

She arrives three minutes later, and I guess she walks up like a normal person, but it feels like she explodes onto the scene like an anime character, blowing everyone backward in whoosh-y streaks. She’s short and plump. She’s from the Midwest so I was kind of expecting a nun, but she looks like a hippie-indie Barbie, feathers in hair, colored wristbands, a bedazzled leather jacket with fringes. She’s also carrying the most enormous hiker backpack I have ever seen. It dwarfs her. Towers over her head.

She takes one look at us propped against pillars and suitcases like a tear sheet straight out of Vogue and her eyes pop wide. “Oh my gosh.” She spreads her fingers, palms downward. “You guys. We’re going to France.”

She does a little dance. Now she’s smiling right at me. “I was literally afraid today wasn’t Wednesday. I mean, I couldn’t find anyone, and this one time I slept all night and all day and missed an entire twenty-four hours, so I thought maybe I had slept through Wednesday and today was Thursday. I know, Seriously Lilly? But I thought it. Hi!”

She shakes Hayden’s hand because he’s closest, and she’s laughing and jabbering, and Hayden is smiling down at her a touch derisively. I wonder if Lilly notices.

Now she’s talking to Jules. He jokes around. They blab. Lilly does one of those shoulder dip things and says “Ohhh, me, too!” and I imagine they’re talking about their mutual mastering of the blinding toothpaste-commercial smile.

Lilly gets to Will. For a second she looks like she wants to hug his poor quiet self, but she tucks that thought back into a folder of good-deeds-for-later and instead grabs his hand in both of hers, beams at him, and tells him she loves his ugly coat. Right before she gets to me, I stand up.

“Hooray,” I say flatly. Do some jazz hands. “We’re arrived. Where’s Dorf?”

Lilly stops in her tracks. Everyone stares at me.

“We’re supposed to meet him here,” Hayden says.

“Did anyone else totally fail at the climbing wall part of preliminaries?” Jules says.

“Hi,” Lilly says, and waves at me, a tiny, frantic motion.

I pivot, scanning the faces flowing past. We’re right where we’re supposed to be, Terminal 4, Gate B-24. But the rows of gray waiting seats are empty. There’s no flight info up on the screen.

“Maybe we all slept through Wednesday,” Lilly says. She laughs, but no one else does. I’m actually freaking out a little bit. If I got the wrong day, the wrong time, the wrong airport, if I have to go crawling back home and find out that permanent marker does stick on stainless steel—

Something clanks behind me. The metal door to the skywalk, opening. I whirl, see four guys in black suits striding out. They’re dressed impeccably, but the rest of them is rough. I glimpse a tattoo snaking above a collar. Silvery scars crisscrossing a row of knuckles. One has an actual chemical-red Mohawk, six spikes rising in angry sunrays down the center of his scalp.