James Games (21 page)

“You don’t know what you’re doing,” she hisses. “All you do is make stupid decisions without thinking—”

“No.” I shake my head. “That’s not true. I was that way until recently. I’ve been more cautious ever since you forced me to go to that party naked. That’s not all, either. I used to want to just have sex for the fun of it, because I figured that was the most fun I could have. But I realized that there’s something even more fun than that.”

“What’s that?” Ellie, who seems genuinely interested, supplies.

“Caring about someone,” I say simply.

And then I turn and walk out into the sun. As soon as I’m out of earshot and I’m positive I’m not being followed Sigrid or any of her spies, I call Brooklyn and explain everything.

It takes a while. When I’m done, there’s a long silence from the other end. I hold my breath.

“Sigrid was my first friend at UCSD,” she says finally. “We were assigned roommates our freshman year.”

My stomach drops.

“But we do not accept hazing at Phi Delta Chi,” she continues. Her voice is heavy with sadness. “What she did was dangerous and cruel. Sigrid’s a complicated person, and I’ve always tried my best to be a friend to her despite her faults, but I have a responsibility to you girls. I’ll speak you her.”

“You can’t just speak to her.” I force steadiness into my voice. “That’s not gong to do anything. She’s insane, and—”

“Speak to her was a euphemism. I’m kicking her out of Phi Delta Chi.”

It’s everything I hoped for, but it still brings me up short. “Aren’t you…aren’t you worried about her dad?”

“I’ve been a model student at this school for four years. I stayed with them for an entire summer once. Had dinner with them every night. He loves me and Sigrid could never dream up a good enough story to get me in trouble.” She hesitates. “What’s more, I don’t think she would. Sigrid has no qualms whatsoever hurting people she dislikes, but I’ve never seen her do anything to harm someone she counted as a friend.”

“Oh, wow. What a fabulous character trait. There are like two and a half human beings in the universe she wouldn’t screw over. How nice.”

Brooklyn manages a laugh. “Thank you for telling me about this, Fiona.”

“Thanks for listening.”

~18~

It’s the sunniest of sunny California days, I’m currently boarding a ship for a 24-hour booze cruise, and I’m a nervous wreck. The latter is not a natural result of the former two. I suspect alien intervention.

“Sigrid’s out of the picture,” Iris tells me as I hoist my backpack full of spare clothes, a bikini, and two bottles of sunscreen up a boat ramp. The ship is big and glittering—it looks like the kind of boat that takes you to the Caribbean, not just around the bay for the night. The fee we each had to pay also makes me feel like I should be headed for the Caribbean, also I recognize that it most of it probably went toward booze. “So what are you so worried about?”

“I’m not worried. What do you mean, worried? Do I look worried? Should I get drunk? Do you think they serve alcohol at ten in the morning?” I say rapid-fire, holding up my phone to use the front camera as a zit-checking mirror and nearly tripping over the side of the ramp. Grace and beauty.

Iris sighs. “This is about James.”

“This is not about James! Why would anything be about James.”

“What’s about James?”

I shriek and lurch away from the owner of the very James-like voice who just materialized behind me, like the world’s sexiest ghost. I grab the railing. “You shouldn’t sneak up on someone like that.”

“I wasn’t sneaking up on you. I’ve been walking behind you all the way up this ramp.” James looks especially surfer-model-actor-Greek-god today, with the sun glinting off his hair. He has a few very faint freckles above his left eyebrow. I never noticed them before. If I connected them with a marker, they’d make a star.

“That counts as sneaking up.”

There are thirty girls in Phi Delta Chi. Thirty guys, handpicked by the seniors and approved by Brooklyn, have been invited to come along on the weekend cruise. It’s like a sex mill. James is always invited, but according to the seniors, he never comes.

Except for this year.

As soon as we drop off our stuff in our little seashell-themed rooms with little seashell-shaped beds, which will be full of sex come nightfall, I ask him about that.

He shrugs. “It seemed more appealing this year.”

“Better weather? Felt like getting some sun?” I press.

“Something like that.”

Why am I nervous? I should not be nervous. It’s not like I’m falling love with James and that new facet of our relationship is a lot more difficult to navigate than enemies-turned-friends-with-benefits. It’s definitely not that at all.

He smiles at me differently, now.

He came to that beach party because he thought Sigrid had done something to me.

I’m starting to suspect that I mean something to him, and I hate how unspoken it is. I want things to be blunt and clear and outspoken, always. I drown in murky waters.

We hit the buffet first. There is unlimited soft-serve ice cream, which I discover at the same time that I discover my unlimited capacity for soft-serve ice cream. Iris, who is evil, dares me to eat four cones and I do, because I’m an amazing individual with many talents. Afterwards I have to moan on my bed for a little while before I can rejoin the others, but James does rub my back. Silver linings.

The gossip of the day—Sigrid and Amber getting kicked out of Phi Delta Chi.

They say she was caught with drugs.

They say she was caught with a professor.

They say she was caught hanging a freshman by her ankles from the top of the Social Sciences building.

Nobody seems to know that I’m the reason she’s gone, and for that I’m grateful. After dinner, Brooklyn pulls me aside. She made sure Sigrid knows that if she tries to slander me to her father, the whole of Phi Delta Chi will stand beside me. With only Amber to back her up, even Sigrid can’t get me kicked out. At least, according to Brooklyn. I’m still waiting for the inevitable knife in the back.

But on this ship, for now, I’m safe.

The other passengers—a few middle-aged couples, a family or two with some screaming kids tossed in, one pair of grandparents—didn’t realize what they’d gotten themselves into. I’ll never forget their expressions as the entirety of Phi Delta Chi minus Sigrid plus thirty hot guys swarmed the pool on the deck for the first time. The expressions of people who stared into the abyss and the abyss spilled its beer on them.

Iris claims a chaise lounge on deck and stretches out to tan. Mags spends the next two hours in the hot tub, even though it’s warm out. James and I steal some grapes from the dining hall and see how many we can toss into each other’s mouths from a few feet apart, only hitting one of the middle-aged couples twice. A few of the older girls stare at us in bald amazement—James has probably never been seen doing something so uncool since he was a year old and had to eat mushed carrots—but I’ve decided not to hide our friendship anymore. At this point, if Sigrid and her minions are going to drive me into the desert and leave me there, they’re going to do it no matter what kind of fruit I throw into James’s open mouth.

There’s a bar by the pool. Because I am endlessly classy, I wait until four o’ clock before ordering my first drink. They have mojitos, margaritas, and sangrias. I dance absently to the live reggae group as the shirtless guy behind the counter makes my drink. Then, since the air’s cooled off and I no longer run the risk of heat stroke, I wedge myself into the oversized hot tub along with Mags and three sophomore girls.

One of them, a girl with long braids, leans toward me through the bubbles. “Can you get James to come in here?”

“Yeah!” whispers a girl in a bright yellow bikini. “You guys get along now, right? I heard you got stuck together doing some school project.”

“I
guess
I could call him over.” I preen for a moment, enjoying the thought of myself as the James-whisperer, before leaning over the edge of the hot tub. “James! Come join us.”

He glances over from his spot by the bar, an extremely doubtful look on his face, but after I beckon him so wildly I crack my elbow on the side of the tub, he peels himself up and walks over.

The fact that James Reid has deigned to join a group of girls in the hot tub quickly becomes relevant information to everyone on the ship. We’re joined by several others until we’re packed like sardines, two girls fighting over who gets to be the one to sit next to James. I wish I had a pair of broadswords to toss them.

James frowns at me, and I wink at him.

“Nobody pee in here,” I warn the group at large.

Soon people are babbling questions at James. Most of these girls have never even spoken to him before, but I was the one who broke the ice and gave him a human face.

“Do you know what you’re doing after you graduate?”

“Do you like strawberry ice cream?”

“Have you seen the new Marvel movie?”

“No, yes, no.” He reaches up to rub the back of his neck, a gesture he pulls when he’s uncomfortable, but accidentally bonks the girl next to him in the head. “Shit. Sorry.”

“It’s okay. I’m metal-plated. Pure steel.” She smiles up at him, tapping her scalp. She’s a cute blonde with a button nose and James is smiling back at her. One line and she’s earned herself a James smile. But she’s probably also eats toilet paper for breakfast, so.

“We need an activity. Who wants to blow up a beach ball and get in the pool?” I ask. There’s more room in the pool. Many glorious unoccupied feet. Metal Plate looks like she could use a few extra inches of space between herself and James.

Mags leans over to whisper in my ear. “You need to get out? You have this expression like you’re too hot or something.”

“I have a better idea!” Metal Plate claps, splashing me. “Let’s play Truth or Dare.”

This suggestion is received with general approval. I sink lower and blow bubbles.

Guess who she picks first.

“Truth or Dare?” Metal Plate giggles, prodding James’s arm.

He hooks his elbow over the side of the tub, looking incredibly bored. “Truth.”

Ms. Plate consults with her friends. “Okay. Why did you quit acting?”

It’s the one thing I’ve been burning to know lately, the one thing I hoped James would eventually trust me enough to tell me. The fact that this girl is brazen enough to ask him in front of a crowd annoys the heck out of me, even though it’s exactly something I would have done a month ago.

James is quiet for a moment, the water bubbling up over his chest. “I changed my mind. Dare.”

Everyone exhales, disappointed. Plate recovers. “All right, then. I dare you to kiss me.”

My jaw drops. So does everyone else’s. This girl really is a pre-Damien clone of me. Which, at the moment, is a distinctly not good thing. Someone elbows Plate and she tosses her hair back.

“What? Sigrid got kicked out. Everyone knows she was the only one who enforced the Games rule. Now that she’s gone, I don’t see a problem.” She cozies up to James. “How about it? One kiss won’t kill you. I’ve heard you’re pretty good at it.”

Who the hell else has he been kissing? I sink lower in the water, keeping just my eyes out like a crocodile.

James looks at me. Then at all of us, me with my murder-stare and everyone else with hopeful wide eyes, because if he kisses Metal Plate, it means he might kiss them too. His expression is inscrutable. Then, without saying a word, he hoists himself out of the hot tub.

“Oh.” Plate blanches. “I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s fine. It’s not you. There’s just something I’ve realized,” he says, and walks away across the deck, to where the reggae band is arguing over which song on their list they’ll play next. He says something to the singer, who shrugs and hands him the microphone.

He clears his throat into the mic, which gets everyone’s attention. Almost everyone who came with us on the cruise is here, swimming or drinking or lying around, and James making an announcement is on the same statistical probability rung as a Sharknado.

“I have an announcement to make,” he says simply.      

“What’s he doing?” Mags whispers to me, tugging my arm.

But I have no idea.

“I know you guys do this competition to get me to take you out on a date,” he continues. “And I’ve gone along with it for a while now. But the truth is, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t force myself to like one of you just because you had the best Halloween costume or whatever. And you shouldn’t have to hold out hope for something that’s not going to happen. What’s more, I…”

He looks straight at me, his jaw tight. I’m frozen. Everyone’s frozen.

“I can’t do this anymore,” he continues, “because I’m in love with Fiona.”

I shoot straight up out of the tub, spraying everyone around me with water. He did not just say that. I’m hallucinating. My single margarita went straight to my head. That’s the only option, because there’s no way James Reid just declared his love for me in front of my entire sorority.

The members of the reggae band high-five. The other girls in the hot tub have clumped together on the opposite side, as far away from me as possible, like a multi-limbed mass of Fiona hatred. Metal Plate looks like she might cry. I can’t look at James, but a little fire has sprouted in my heart, blowing this way and that.

Did he mean it?

Did he really mean it?

And then Brooklyn’s beside him, taking the mic away.

“I have to say this is an unexpected announcement,” she says, composed as ever. “But it’s also one that I support. I know the Games have been part of our community for some time now, but I always felt that they detracted from the real reason Phi Delta Chi exists. Competition is fun, but we are sisters first and foremost. Which is why I don’t want anyone given a hard time over this. People who show unkindness and disrespect here will be invited to leave Phi Delta Chi—as others have been.”

She passes a meaningful look over all our heads.

“The Games have never been the reason that Phi Delta Chi existed. If you joined for that reason alone, you’re welcome to leave. If you have anything to say, I ask that you direct it at me and not Fiona or James. Thank you.”