These Deadly Games(5)
“I’m not mad,” I said.
“I know,” she mumbled. But she kept moping.
My heart sank. Maybe I shouldn’t have called her a twerp. I was only joking. Sure, sometimes Caelyn annoyed the heck out of me. But I loved her to death. She had this way of brightening a room with her boundless energy, always showing off some funky new fashion creation, always a willing opponent when I wanted to play a game. When Dad made her go quiet and small, I hated him for stifling her spark. It blazed again once he left, thank God. But now she was acting all weird.
“Hey.” I flicked her arm. “What’s wrong?”
Her cheeks flushed to match her nose. “Nothing.”
“Liar, liar, pants on fire.”
She merely snorted.
The light turned green, and I hit the gas, giving us both whiplash. Oops. “Sorry. Aren’t you excited about Frost Valley?”
“I don’t want to go on this stupid trip.”
My jaw dropped. “Um, excuse me? A sleepover a hundred miles away from any parentals is basically a thirteen-year-old’s dream come true.” She only shrugged, so I went on, “There’ll be sledding! And zip-lining!”
Caelyn cringed. “I’m afraid of heights.”
“Since when?” She’d dragged me onto every roller coaster at Six Flags last summer. I still had flashbacks of my feet suspended over blue skies, and that terrible drop in my stomach after cresting each peak. I’d sucked it up to make her happy. But now her eyes were brimming with tears. Something was bothering her … and it wasn’t the prospect of dangling from ropes.
“What’s really going on?” I whipped around a curve, imagining Zoey smugly cracking her knuckles after landing a kill.
Caelyn shook her head. “I don’t want to get into it.”
“Aw, c’mon, Cae. You can tell me anything.”
She rubbed her eyes and sighed. “Tessa and her friends are gonna pull some prank on me. I know it.”
Ah. Tessa was the ringleader of a group of catty girls in Caelyn’s grade. Caelyn had been so excited to turn thirteen and create an Instagram account—she dreamed of being an influencer with her chic handcrafted creations—but Tessa quickly ruined it for her, commenting with mockery and insults on each photo.
Yet another spark stifler. The world was full of them.
“Did you overhear her planning something?” I asked.
“No…”
“Well, then, you’re probably being paranoid.” Just like I was with Zoey. “Don’t worry about Tessa. Just stick with Deja and Suki.” They’d been a steadfast trio since kindergarten.
“They’re going next weekend.”
“Oh, shoot.” Since Frost Valley was only so big, they split the eighth grade into three groups to go on consecutive weekends. “Did you ask to switch groups?”
Caelyn nodded. “Yeah. But they wouldn’t let me. Then they’d have to let anyone who wanted to switch, switch.”
I floored the gas to make a yellow light. We were only a couple of blocks from Caelyn’s school now. “Well, if Tessa tries anything, laugh it off.”
Caelyn screwed up her face. “What?”
“I’m serious. Think of it like a game. The more she upsets you, the more points she gets—”
“Oh, please.”
“No, really! And the more points she gets, the meaner she’ll get. But if she sees you don’t give a shit, she won’t get any points, and she’ll get bored and move on to someone else.”
“It’s not a game.” Her voice trembled as she wiped away a tear. “She’s always picking on me.”
“Yeah, well, she can probably read you like a book. Whenever you get upset, you turn bright red or start crying right away. That’s, like, the mother lode of points.”
“Shut up.”
“I’m serious, Cae. If she does anything to you, just laugh and walk away.”
“I can’t.” Caelyn raised her voice.
I stopped at a stop sign across the street from her school. “Well, why not?”
“Because I can’t just laugh it off. Not everything is a game. She’s so mean, and all her friends egg her on. Maybe you’re a good actress. Maybe you can pretend like everything’s fine when it’s not. But I can’t.”
Her barb sucked the wind from my lungs, and I froze, gawking at her. Did she know? How could she know about that? She was only eight years old when it happened, and I never told her the truth—I never told a soul.
“We’re going to have to move soon,” she went on, “you know it. I heard what Mom told you. One more missed payment, and the bank will take the house, and we’ll have to move in with Grandma Rose. And all you can think about is your stupid video game.”
I let out a deep exhale, my heart pummeling my rib cage. She didn’t know. But since when did she resent MortalDusk? Video games were my refuge from the guilt that would otherwise slither through my mind like a serpent eager to feed. I thought games were a distraction for Caelyn, too. But maybe I’d buried my head in the sand so deep I didn’t realize how they affected her.
The car behind me honked, and I jumped. “Dammit.” I drove into the school parking lot. “Well … think of it this way.” I kept my tone light as I pulled up behind the lineup of cars dropping kids off. Two huge coach buses stood at the front of the line, and kids and teachers clustered next to them, white puffs of steam escaping their mouths as they chattered excitedly in the crisp morning air. “If we do move, you’ll be rid of Tessa forever—”