I assume this means we’d be finishing the scavenger hunt at the same time, right?”
“Once we get the last clue, it’s an all-out war. Whoever makes it back to the gym first wins. One-two, the way it always is.” We team up now, and I destroy him later. That’s the gist of it.
I refrain from mentioning Delilah Park’s signing. That’s more than four hours from now. If we haven’t irritated each other to death by then, I’ll make up an excuse to slip away.
He pulls at another loose thread on his backpack, where the FREE PUPPIES! pin clings to fraying nylon. “I’m just wondering… what’s in all of this for you? If you want to win this badly, it can’t just be to beat me.”
“That’s… a good part of it,” I admit. It wouldn’t cancel out valedictorian, but I just know it would feel amazing to win our very last competition. I don’t want to be stuck in time, second best. “And I’d love the money for school.” Then I fire the question back at him.
“School,” he agrees, a little too quickly. “New York is expensive.”
“Right,” I say, unable to avoid feeling like he’s only partially telling the truth.
“Hypothetically, if I agree to this scheme of yours, let’s say you win the whole game. You get the glory. What do I get? Seems like a shit deal for me at that point.”
I consider this. “We split the money. Fifty-fifty. Regardless of outcome.”
A grin spreads across his face and dread churns in my stomach. This cannot be good. “What if we upped the stakes?”
“I’m listening.”
“A bet,” he proposes. “You and me. A bet to cap off our epic four years of academic bloodshed.”
“What, like the loser has to go naked under their gown at graduation?”
He snorts. “Seriously? Are you twelve? I was thinking something far more personal.”
I rack my brain. There are probably plenty of things McNair wouldn’t enjoy doing, but I don’t know him well enough on a personal level to guess what any of them would be.
Then I gasp, covering my mouth to conceal a grin when the idea hits me. “The loser has to write the winner a book report on a book of the winner’s choosing.”
“How many paragraphs?”
“Five, at least. Double-spaced, no fewer than three pages.” I cross my arms over my chest, aware this is the nerdiest bet in history. But wow, the books I could have him read… “Are you in or not?”
For a beat, neither of us blinks. In all our competitions, we’ve never placed a bet. There was always plenty at stake.
“As weird as it is to talk about book reports on the last day of school, it’s kind of perfect,” he says. “The only question is, should it be The Old Man and the Sea or Great Expectations? Or wait, I’d love to see what you do with War and Peace. Unabridged, naturally.”
“So many mediocre white men to choose from.”
“And yet there’s a reason they’re called classics.” McNair turns in the seat and sticks out his hand. “To mutually assured destruction,” he says, and we shake on it.
Despite our matching height, our hands aren’t the same size, which I had no reason to notice until now. His hands are slightly larger, his skin warm, freckled fingers woven between my pale ones.
“You really do have a lot of freckles.”
He withdraws his hand from mine and glances down at it in mock astonishment. “Oh, that’s what these are.” Then he drops his hands to his lap. “I’ve always hated them.”
“Why?” I know he gets embarrassed when I tease him about them, but I don’t think they’re unattractive or anything, though of course I’d never say that to his face. They’re just plentiful. “They’re… interesting. I like them.”
A pause. A lifted eyebrow. “You… like my freckles?”
I roll my eyes and decide to play along. “Yeah I do. I’ve always wondered if you have freckles everywhere.”
It’s nearly automatic now, the way I can make him blush like this. He really is so sensitive about them. Still, he clucks his tongue and says, “Some things are better left a mystery.” He runs a hand up and down his bare arm. “Get ahold of yourself, Artoo. We’re teammates now. If you can’t handle all these hot, hot freckles, then we might be doomed.”
It must be talking about them that makes me stare at his face a moment longer than I normally would. Because the thing is, I have wondered if he has freckles everywhere. In a purely scientific