The Assassin Game (3 page)

“You got to go face down in the doo-doo.”

I huff. “Martin and Tesha swore they wouldn't tell!”

“Relax,” Marcia says. “They didn't say a word.”

I frown at her. “So how—”

“Guild knows everything, darling,” she purrs, her voice rich and low, with only the slightest hint of her Spanish homeland. “Soon as you accept that, the happier you'll be, young apprentice.” She winks one heavy-lidded eye, trying not to smile. “But what a trial!” She takes my hand and squeezes it. “You must forgive us. It was very tough.”

I clench my jaw, remembering the taste. “It was crappy, Marcia.”

She nods, serious. We look at each other. We scream. She hugs me.

“I'm in!” I yell, rocking her from side to side. Her long hair covers my face, smelling sweet and spicy.

“Of course you are!” she says, giggling. “My lovely, we are going to have a ball!”

We tip and roll off the rock, screaming some more, then picking ourselves up, still laughing.

“Oh!” I fling my head back to the sky, letting the relief run through my body. “I really didn't believe it was going to happen. I am so stoked!” I can be truthful with Marcia. She's probably the only one. With everyone else there's an element of cool that has to be maintained. I beam at her. “And there's a Summoning this afternoon! The Killer will be selected, right?” I delve for the book and flash it at her. “Is this your work?” I ask.

She tilts her head. “Some of it. Rules don't change that much year to year, but you've got to write them down in a new and exciting way. And sometimes there are little twists.”

“Hmm.” I flick through the book. “I bet there are. Nice font, by the way.”

She laughs. “Thanks, sweetie. Thriller was getting so predictable, come on…” Her mouth forms a pretty pout.

“So, the Summoning is in the caves?” I shake my head in wonder. “That's where you've been hanging out every autumn term?”

“No.” She stubs out the cigarette and flicks it to the grass, exhaling a dragon blow of smoke from her red lips. “This is new for us too. The oldies always used to meet there, back in the beginning, but then Ezra declared it out of bounds.”

I nod. “Because it's too dangerous? Because of the tides?”

“Tides and tunnels and sinking sand.” She shrugs. “Plus they used to drink and play dumb games.”

“Oh, I see,” I say, smiling. “And there'll be absolutely none of that with us.”

She raises an eyebrow. “It's a place we won't be discovered, won't be disturbed. That's the main thing.” She frowns at me. “Speaking about fun and games, have you had a chance to talk to Daniel yet? Properly.”

Instantly my excitement is dulled.

“No.”

Marcia sighs. “Did you see him over summer break?”

I say nothing.

“Message him?” She rolls her eyes. “Anything at all?”

“Don't start!” I groan at her. “He hasn't talked to me either. It takes two to tango.”

“Hmm. I don't think that's what you two were doing at the pool last term…” She tuts at me.

“It was just a stupid kiss!”

“Maybe.” Marcia shrugs. “But it's up to you to tell him you're not interested.”

“Why?” I moan.

She looks at me closely. “Because he is.” She puts a hand on my arm. “Interested. In you. Like that.” I look down, embarrassed, but she goes on. “You owe him the talk at least. He's a good friend, Cate. And let's face it, you don't have that many.”

“Thanks!” I snap. But I can't exactly argue. She's right on both counts.

She gets up. “Come on, we're going to be late.” She grabs her huge tote bag. “Ah! I cannot wait for you to see the cave. It looks so spooky! Spooky!” She elongates the
O
s as she swings the bag over her shoulder and heads up the path back to relative civilization again. “See you later.”

“Any tips?” I shout after her.

She turns around, frowns. “For Daniel?”

“No!” I shake my head. “For the Game.”

She laughs and sets off again. “Don't get Killed!”

I stay on the rock. “But what if it turns out I get to be the Killer, Marcia? Ever think what would happen then?”

This stops her sure enough. She turns around and blinks at me, face suddenly serious. “Then I would be afraid. Very afraid.” She does a little salute, laughs, and then turns, her hair swaying after her.

“You and me both,” I mutter.

Big things on my mind and none of them are Daniel.

It's not like I don't feel for Daniel. I know what it's like to lust and lose someone; it sucks. I had that scene with Alex. Well, same but different. With Alex, we had that one make-out sesh, and then he expected me to come back for more, and remarkably, I didn't. I wanted to, I'll admit it, but he's messy with exes and way more in love with himself than with anyone else. He's also Popular, Hot, and A Great Kisser, but I just knew I shouldn't go there, not again.

To my terrified delight, Alex actually chased me a little afterward, which was a first for him, as far as I know. He turned the charm on again, and guess what: I didn't bite. He tried to act casual, but I think it rocked his world that I said no. Not something he's used to hearing.

And me? I was shaken up by the whole thing so much I ended up kissing one of my best friends on the rebound. Daniel. Ever accommodating. Now I'm terrified he might think we're something other than friends. Since we've been back at school, Daniel and I have only said hi, smiled, done the pleasantries. I hope he doesn't expect that we'll soon be whispering sweet nothings.

We won't. I like him as a friend, but I don't really fancy him. He's not bad to look at in a wiry, hipster kind of way. Scruffed-up hair, chocolate eyes. What's more, he's funny, he's clever and quixotic, and he keeps my brain ticking over. On the flipside, he's just too intense, and let's face it, he has issues.

If I was a social pariah when I was first at Umfraville, Daniel was the bug on my boot. Actually, he was probably the bug in the field in another county, he was so absent. It's your classic story of musical genius, I suppose. Crazy parents, prodigious kiddo, hours locked away raking a bow over strings. Zero socialization. School happened, and bullying came with it. His parents weren't rich and he went to some inner-city place with hundreds of kids. He was picked on, beaten up, humiliated, the full works. He says music got him through, and it certainly got him out. He won a scholarship to a private school, but the bullying didn't go away; his tormentors just had posher accents this time. I suppose some people are always victims. The way he tells it, this stuff follows him around. The truth is, when he was at the Lausanne, he had a mini-breakdown, and one of his teachers gave his parents a good talking-to. They pulled him out and sent him to Umfraville, in the hope it would give him some normal. Yeah, well.

He'd been here a term or two and Marcia interviewed him for the Loathsome Toad. The two struck up a friendship. She likes collecting loners and losers; she collected me, after all. And through her, Daniel and I became friends. Last term at the summer party, with end-of-term recklessness and the ache of rejecting Alex, Daniel and I became more.

Anyway…Marcia flits between different social groups, and last year, she dragged Daniel into the Game. I was sore at the time, because she didn't get me in too. But she said they'd only give her one choice of new member, and it had to be Daniel, because he needed it more. Now I'm in the Game, we'll all be in each other's pockets whether I like it or not.

Oh, hell. I have to speak to him. Soon.

But today, there is only the Game.

It is usually the law of the universe that when you have something to look forward to, time moves abominably slowly. It's always tough having school on a Saturday; it seems to go against the natural order of things. Saturday mornings should be for kicking back with several bowls of cereal and crappy kids' TV, lazily texting your mates to sort out the wheres and whens for meeting later in the day. But for the last three years here at Umfraville, I haven't been able to have the lie-in. I haven't been able to have the texting either, but I'll get to that later.

I can't really complain too much. Last year I had math and double French on a Saturday, which licked the sweat off a dead man, but this year I have it cushy: triple art. I love art; I get lost in it. Three hours always rushes by. Full immersion. There'll be no thinking about Danielgate or how my parents haven't called or wondering if I'll eat a proper tea tonight or sacrifice it for a guilty chocolate bar and a flatter stomach. With art, I just exist in the work, and it feels good.

And my art crew is pretty easygoing. Sure, we have some full-on prodigies here—like, kids who have exhibited in London and New York, and not just on their parents' fridges—but they're cool. Loony but chill. And Mr. Flynn is our teacher, which is most wonderful.

OK, I'm going to just preempt the Mr. Flynn thing with you, because I know what you're probably thinking. Rest easy, folks. Before you go having those thoughts that something inappropriate is going on in my head about Mr. Flynn—or, yuck, something is going on in his head about me—don't even. We have a strictly platonic relationship. Granted, it's a little more than student-teacher, and we're both fine with that. I think Ezra and some of the other staff might have something to say about it, and I know my parents would freak if they knew that we're friends, because adults have filthy minds about these things. Actually, kids do too. My friends have given me grief about it, it's true. Marcia teases me more than anything. Daniel is more hard-line, but I think that's because he's jealous. Face it, I'm too boring to be major news within the general populace. And Mr. Flynn would back off wholesale if he thought we were seriously being gossiped about.

So, this is it: we hang out with each other sometimes. As I said before, he was the first person I felt any kind of connection with here, the only person who talked to me like I was someone. It started with me stopping by the studio to work in my spare time, but then there was nothing unusual with that. Most of the kids who are serious about art practically live there. But then I was working on a project with driftwood, and so Mr. Flynn would take me to where the best stuff washes up and help me lug it back from the beach to the studio in his bucket-of-bolts car. We talked about art and music and movies and London. We found out that we both laugh at the same things and are randomly freaked out by pomegranates. But mostly I bonded with him because he listened to my nonsense and insecure babble and because he kind of got me in a way that nobody here does. Oh, I know it sounds utterly boyfriend/girlfriend-y, and as if I have some loser-type of crush on him, so you'll just have to trust me. He's old anyway. Eighties kid. Thirty-five or forty, I don't know. Yes, he's fit. But in that way your mum would like. When I started being friends with Marcia and Daniel, Flynny and I kind of dialed it down, but he's still my favorite teacher, no doubt.

According to the clock, I get to the lesson five minutes late, which is skillful, considering I was loitering with Marcia just down the path from the studio. Mr. Flynn is in full flow when I enter, outlining the things we'll be covering in the upcoming term. He has an air of agitation about him. He arrived back to school a week late this term for reasons unknown. The rumors were varied—a split with his girlfriend, the death of a parent, or most juicily, an arrest. The kids are nothing if not imaginative here. I'll get the truth from him at some point probably.

He doesn't comment on my tardiness to class as I slip into my place in the studio and quietly begin unpacking my stuff. I'm glad to be home. And this is home.

The next three hours fly by, and when the bell for the end of school sounds, I'm floating so high above myself that it's a real effort to come back down to earth. But then I do, and I get that lovely excited feeling of having something even better to look forward to. The Summoning! As I gather up my belongings and glance out of the window for Marcia, Mr. Flynn walks by my table. He nods to the Guild's band on my wrist.

“You're involved with those shenanigans this term.”

I smile pleasantly as kids file out past us. “Do I detect a hint of jealousy?” I say, sotto voce.

He eyes me, face set. “Would I jump at the chance to be in your shoes? Er, no, Cate, I would not. Whatever devilry unfolds over the next few weeks is sure to be nothing but hard work for everyone else.” Then something in him relaxes a little. “But I hope you enjoy it.”

I fling my remaining things into my bag and stand up. Much as I like the chat, I have places to be. Everyone else has left by now, mostly to catch the bus back to the mainland.

Mr. Flynn puts a hand on my shoulder. My stomach jumps and I look at him, surprised. Physical contact between us is unprecedented, probably because he knows how it might seem to others.

“Just be careful, OK?” His eyes are gray, cool. “They throw some seriously stupid stunts sometimes. Don't get overinvolved.”

Ha, if only you knew what I was doing last night.

He removes the hand. “All I'm saying is, don't lose focus. It's an important couple of years for you, and you need to channel your energy.” The cool grays dart around the studio. “This is where you belong. We're going to get you into art school, aren't we?”

I nod, smile, but inside, my heart is flipping. Blimey. How about putting the pressure on first day you're back, Flynny? I've got two full years before I have to quit this joint and figure out what I'm actually going to do with my actual life. Unlike most people here, I don't have my every move planned out for me.

“Sure.” I nod, tight-lipped, and make a run for the door. I glance back and see him still watching me. Something's off. Maybe he was late back because of some hideous trauma during summer break? I'd kind of thought it was just a music festival.

As I jog past the Main House courtyard, I see crowds boarding the two buses bound for the mainland.

I head toward the clock tower quad, which comprises the library building and the upperclassmen common room. Just off the common room there's also a long hallway lined with doors leading to the much-envied “study rooms.” Major upperclassmen perk. I'm so stoked to finally have a study. It doesn't look like much—a basic, teeny-tiny office shared by two students. But my study is central to my life here at Umfraville, it's where I work, but it's also my bolt-hole and a place to hang away from the masses.

A few people are still milling about, but the small study I share with Marcia is empty. I dump my art stuff on my desk and take a glance at my laptop to see if I have any new IMs on the Umfraville intranet.

Yes, intranet. Umfraville is weird and trying in many ways because it's on an island and it's an island that we only get off once every few weeks. What's even worse, however, is that we are cut off from the real world in a much more significant way. We have no phones, no Internet.

I know. Can you imagine teenage life without them?

I'm exaggerating slightly. There is phone reception here—patchy, in the north of the island, almost two miles away from the school buildings—but use of mobiles is strictly forbidden anywhere. We have to hand our phones in when we get here, and we're only allowed them back for the rare Saturday exeats off-island. There is a coin pay phone in the dorms and one more in a cold porch off the common room.

Of course, we have computers…and laptops, tablets, e-readers. It's not the Middle Ages here, and with the kind of special kids we have, it's not like you can deny people access to the World Wide Web. However, Ezra is completely against ninety-five percent of the Internet. His view is that Umfraville is an academy of excellence, and his prodigies have no business being distracted by the junkyard of the web. We have a school intranet, set up and policed by the technology teacher, Ms. Lasillo. Through this we have instant messaging, the Loathsome Toad newspaper site, and access to timetables and shared files. And once a day during evening study time, you can get online to the rest of the world for a whole sixty minutes—send emails home and visit approved (read: educational) sites. But no social networking, no gossip pages. It would probably be easier to find information on how to build a homemade bomb than watch a movie trailer or look at shoes. Of course, if there's something that you particularly want to peruse that is behind the firewall, you can make your case to Ezra and maybe he'll let you have a peep. Supervised, usually. Because Ezra knows that once there's a chink in the armor, a leak in the dam, before we know it, the whole world will come crashing down on our shoulders. And what are we, here, if not protected from the world?

Of course, one does not run a school full of geeks and freaks and expect that someone won't try a hack or two. Oh yes, there have been many. But Ms. Lasillo is extremely good at her job and takes a personal pride in staying two steps ahead of her pupils. According to what Marcia picks up (or what I pry out of Mr. Flynn), most of the time she's successful, and when she's not, it's mainly because she wants to see just where the hacker will go. She tracks them because that's all useful information to make the security tighter and, crucially, knowing what makes that kid tick.

Yeuch. I think it's all rather creepy, and even if I were clever enough to do it, I'm happy to stay put in my cage. The drug of aimless surfing is a hard habit to break, but you certainly have a lot of time on your hands for worthwhile stuff.

No messages for me. I'll wait until this evening and see if either of the parentals has fired off an email to me. I doubt it.

What with Art Coma and the prospect of the Summoning, I'm too buzzed to be hungry for lunch. But I'll show my face. Pushing some pasta around a plate is one way to kill time before I have to head down to the caves. I shut the door to my study and head back toward Main House.

The sun is out, but there's a chill in the air, and the smell of salt hangs heavy. I breathe it in deeply. I ease earphones in and crank up the volume. This feels great. So very great to wander around this place and actually have something happening.

The buses depart just as I pass through the courtyard, and there's not another soul around. But I know my fellow assassins are here—somewhere. I watch the last bus disappear down the road that leads to the causeway. A bubble of excitement fizzes up inside me, and I quiver with nerves and delicious anticipation. I turn and head for the Main House—