less of an asshole,” Persey said, overcoming her usual (permanent) reticence to speak up. “Since she helped get you out of there.”
Mackenzie just rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”
“I would have figured it out eventually.” Shaun’s face was once again stony and devoid of emotion as he pushed himself to his knees. Shaun-bot had rebooted. He looked Kevin up and down, then tilted his head to the side as if discovering something for the first time. “Why aren’t you suffering from oxygen deprivation like the rest of us?”
Kevin’s smile deepened. “Because the O2 never dropped in my coffin.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Totally fair,” Kevin replied. “I never typed in a code. That’s what made it drop, right?”
Shaun looked confused. “You mean, you never even tried to escape the room?” Lack of effort did not compute.
“I figured someone else would do it for me.” He gave Persey a thumbs-up. “Thanks.”
“Well, I thought I was going to die,” Mackenzie said, still reclining on the sofa. “Which is impressive.”
“Impressive?” Riot asked.
“Yeah. That’s one crazy effect! To make us think we’re actually asphyxiating?”
Was she trying to convince herself that it was just an illusion, or everyone else? “I don’t think that was a special effect,” Persey said slowly.
“Oh, come on!” Mackenzie laughed with practiced charm. “Do you think that was real?”
Persey shrugged. She wasn’t sure if that’s what she was saying, but the whole episode had left her uneasy.
“We didn’t actually almost die,” Mackenzie continued. “This is just a game. No one actually wants to kill us.”
You sure about that?
“I mean, they couldn’t actually.” She laughed again. “We’d sue.” Mackenzie swung her right leg over her left, bouncing it jauntily. “I still might. Sue, that is. But it would be worse if someone was actually trying to suffocate us, so that means it had to be staged.”
“Actually staged?” Riot asked, with a wink in Persey’s direction. Heat rose from her neck to her cheeks again, despite her best effort to suppress it.
Mackenzie narrowed her eyes at him. “Yes. Also, who’s smoking weed?”
“Who do you think?” Kevin replied, but his eyes were fixed on Persey.
Mackenzie marched over to Wes and whipped the blunt out of his hand. “Gimme that.” She took a long pull.
“There needs to be a serious investigation into this when the competition is over,” Riot said as he rebuttoned his vest. “Our SAT scores aren’t something you can just download from the dark web. Who released this information without our permission? Or, more accurately, who stole it?” His near-death experience seemed to have less of an effect on him than the possibility that “the Man” had somehow infringed on his sovereign rights.
“The most important question,” Shaun began, “is who was out first?”
“Not me!” Neela cried, her buoyant mood recovered. “Persey and Wes were here when I arrived.”
“It was just a lucky guess,” Wes said, retrieving his weed from Mackenzie’s outstretched hand. “Leah’s repeated use of the word ‘scholastic’ caught my notice. I’d been waiting to put that clue to good use.”
Persey stiffened. Did Wes just imply that he solved the puzzle first? “Um…”
“What was yours?” Shaun asked him.
“Fifteen twenty, but I don’t like to brag,” Wes said without the kind of hesitation with which an actual humble person might speak.
“Not bad for the lesser Ivy,” Riot said. “But fifteen forty gets you into Harvard.”
Persey wanted to point out that Neela scored higher than either of them, and that her own was probably the lowest of the group and yet she was the first one to figure out the puzzle, but it wasn’t worth it: letting these privileged egomaniacs underestimate her was for the best. She had to win this competition, had to get the prize money. Without it, her future looked bleak.
Arlo tugged absently at the hem of her Slytherin shirt. She’d been uncharacteristically quiet since the challenge ended. “What the hell are you guys talking about?”
“Their SAT scores,” Neela answered. “In relation to the challenge we just faced.”
“What?”
“The code to get out of the room.” Riot eyed her closely. “It was your SAT score.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“Um…” Riot turned to face the rest of the group. “Anyone not use their SAT score to open the door?”
No one raised a hand, and as Arlo scanned their faces, slowly turning from one to the next, Persey watched all the color drain out of her face until her skin was a sickly shade of green.
“What. The. FUCK!” Arlo screamed through clenched teeth. “What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck?”
“Um, are you okay?” Persey asked, stepping forward. Arlo