a little more harshly than I hoped. Bowling shoes are stacked in neat rows in front of our faces. I’m positive we’re out of sight, but I can’t hear anything Savannah’s saying.
“You can let go of me now,” McNair whispers.
Oh. It’s only then that I realize how close we are, and I’m still holding on to his sleeve. While I feel like I haven’t taken a normal breath in hours, his chest rises and falls in the steadiest way, that mysterious Latin phrase moving up and down.
I release my grip on him, trying as best I can to avoid contact with his skin as I sit back on my heels and busy myself with readjusting my sweater. I started sweating when I was spying, and being this physically close to someone else—even if it is McNair—isn’t exactly helping.
My mind is reeling. Savannah wants her army to go after McNair and me. As what, some kind of twisted revenge for being good at school?
McNair opens his mouth to say something, but I hold a finger to my lips. Slowly, slowly I creep to the left until I can just barely see the food court. The group looks like they’re wrapping up, heading back to their lanes. Whatever else they decided to do, I completely missed it.
I crawl back to Neil, who, much to his credit, is being both very still and very quiet.
“I’m lost,” he says. “Is this part of the game?”
“I’ll tell you what’s going on. I promise.” I check my phone. Our safe-zone time is almost up. “But not here.”
He claps his hands together and grins in this over-the-top way. “Does this mean I get to ride in your car again? Oh, Artoo, say it isn’t so!”
I roll my eyes. “Meet me back at my car as soon as they let us out. And make sure no one follows you.” I don’t want anyone to see us together.
A flicker of amusement crosses his face, but he nods. He has to be able to tell how serious I am about this. I can trust him.
I think.
* * *
“I would make a really excellent spy,” McNair says as I approach my car. He’s already leaning against it, one foot propped against the back tire. If he were anyone else, he might look cool. “In case you were wondering.”
I ignore him and inspect our surroundings to make sure no one followed us. After I left the arcade, Mara said I could still join her and Kirby, but I shook my head and told them I’d see them later. A heavy silence passed between the three of us, as though we were unsure how to navigate this new stage of our friendship where all our problems—my problems—were out in the open.
All I know is that McNair and I aren’t safe.
Now that he’s seeing another angle of my car, he notices my front bumper and draws in a sharp breath.
“Oh,” I say, wincing. “Yeah. I, um. Hit someone. This morning.”
“That’s why you were late?” He bends down to examine it.
“I was too embarrassed to say anything.”
Something unexpected happens then: his voice turns soft, his eyes full of something that, if I didn’t know any better, might be concern. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” I pull my sweater tighter around myself. “I wasn’t going very fast. My dress is the one that really suffered.”
“Still, I’m sorry. I was in the passenger seat when my mom got rear-ended last year, and the car was fine, but it rattled me. I didn’t realize, or I wouldn’t have given you such a hard time this morning.”
“It’s—thank you,” I manage, recognizing that this is maybe a normal conversation between two people with one who cares that the other didn’t die this morning. “I don’t see anyone. Get in.”
We shut the doors, but we’re too close to the bowling alley for comfort. I drive for a couple minutes in silence, weaving through residential streets until I find a parking spot deeper in Capitol Hill.
“You’re starting to freak me out,” McNair says when I kill the engine.
I let out a long sigh. “I know this is weird… but I heard Savannah Bell talking in the food court about us. She had a group of ten or twelve people, and they were planning to team up to take us out of the game.”
His face twists. “What? Why?”
“To be assholes? To get us back for being the best in school?”
“Technically, you’re second best,” he says, and I’m too anxious to be annoyed by it.