Chapter 41 - 40 : Tug of War

Chapter 41: Chapter 40 : Tug of War

Rhett brought the mic up.

"Everybody who drove here today," he said. "I need your headlights."

The bleachers went quiet for half a second. Then the crowd by the doors moved first, turned around and ran for the parking lot, faster than any of the players had run in round one.

Hendricks caught Rhett at the gym doors. He had a flashlight in one hand and the permit in the other, already folded open to page two.

"Outdoor lighting needs separate approval." He put the flashlight on the line. "It’s right here on your own permit."

"It says lighting equipment," Rhett said. "I’m not renting lights. I’m not running power, I’m not putting up stands. I’m just asking people to park on the track. The track’s on the permit, page one, line seven. If their headlights happen to be on while they’re parked there, that’s between them and their car."

Hendricks looked at the permit, then at Rhett. Nineteen years on this campus, and he’d probably never seen anybody read a permit like a strategy guide.

"Engines off once they’re parked," he said at last. "Headlights can stay on. Engines can’t. One tire touches the grass and we’re done for the night."

"Deal."

The cars came onto the track one after another. A Civic missing half its bumper. Somebody’s dad’s pickup. A Jetta with one headlight out. A pink Beetle with a string of graduation beads hanging from the mirror. They lined up around the track in a ring, every one of them nose-in.

The headlights came on one at a time. The edges of the practice field went white first, and the light crept in toward the middle. Once the last car rolled to a stop, you could make out individual blades of grass at the fifty.

The bleachers lit up with camera flashes. Half the school had a point-and-shoot in the air.

Ryan Cho stood in the mouth of the tent grinning ear to ear, already filming on his phone. "This," he said, still filming. "This is going in the commercial. Sony cameras, student headlights. You watch. New York is going to lose its mind."

Rhett was already dialing another number.

"Bob. Remember how you said if I ever needed anything, I should call you?"

"I said that?"

"On camera. I’ve got the tape."

The laugh on the other end was loud enough that Rhett had to hold the phone away from his ear. "How many cars?"

"Every one you’ve got with working high beams."

"Give me forty minutes."

Rhett hung up. Forty minutes was enough time for a tug of war.

Rhett pulled six numbers out of the registration box.

The six captains stood in a row, and the other twenty-three stood facing them. Nobody had to explain what came next. Third-grade gym class. Two captains, a line of kids, everybody waiting to hear their name. Every single person out there had stood in that line once.

The first captain was Ben Whitaker from engineering, a tall sophomore with tape wrapped around one hinge of his glasses. He picked like he was ordering parts. Heaviest first. Then biggest hands.

After that it went the way gym class always goes. Big guys first. Then the ones who looked fast. Then friends. One number after another got called, and the line on the other side kept getting shorter.

Sierra didn’t get called.

She’d been first inside the twenty in round one. She’d spent three hours in a tree. She’d flipped SHARE. But tug of war was about weight, and she couldn’t have been much over a hundred and twenty pounds. The captains’ eyes passed over her, one after another, and landed on somebody else.

The chat lost patience first.

THEYRE SLEEPING ON 218

my whole childhood flashing before my eyes rn

PICK HER YOU COWARDS

The last pick went to 311. He already had Owen and Derek. There was one person left standing.

"I was gonna pick you first anyway," he said.

"No, you weren’t."

311 thought about it. "...Third."

Sierra laughed. It was the first time all day any camera had caught her laughing.

Twenty-nine players, six teams, and one of them only had four. Theirs.

Rhett laid out the rules. Three matches. Whichever team lost was out, all of it. The rope would run across the mud pit at the south end of the field, which had been sitting under a tarp all day since Facilities filled it that morning. The losing side went in, rope and all.

Ben Whitaker went first. Before it started he gave his team a thirty-second briefing. "Lean back. Forty-five degrees. Heels in. Don’t pull with your arms, pull with your weight. This is statics."

Five bodies went back in unison, at an angle you could have printed in a textbook. Somebody in the bleachers applauded.

The whistle went. Nobody on the other team knew any statics. All five of them yelled and yanked once, hard.

Ten heels left the ground at once. The five of them slid forward still holding a perfect forty-five degrees, across the grass, over the lip, and into the mud, one after another, in order.

Four seconds, start to finish.

Ben sat up in the mud and took off his glasses. Both lenses were solid brown. He wiped them on the one clean patch of sleeve he had left and put them back on. "...Friction," he said. "I forgot to account for friction."

His lav mic sent it straight to the PA. Half the bleachers doubled over, and the chat filled an entire screen with FRICTION.

The five of them floundered their way to their feet, and the mud they threw around slicked the grass along the bleacher side of the pit.

The second match went two full minutes, and the losers went in one at a time. The last one wouldn’t let go even at the edge of the pit and got dragged three yards through the mud on his stomach.

The third match was 311’s four.

Across from them were five guys from the same frat as 117, easily a thousand pounds between them. Their captain counted heads across the rope and grinned. "Four? Bro. We’ll go easy."

A volunteer came over with a coin to decide who picked sides.

"Let them pick," Sierra said.

311 turned to look at her. She didn’t explain.

The frat captain didn’t even think about it. He pointed at the bleacher end. "This side. Closer to the fans." He spread his arms at the bleachers, which booed and cheered in about equal parts, and he soaked up every bit of it.

Sierra glanced at the grass on that end. The mud Ben’s team had thrown around was still sitting on it, shining wet under the headlights.

She pulled her three teammates in and talked for less than twenty seconds.

"Don’t try to outpull them. We can’t," she said. "When it starts, nobody pulls. Get low, sit back, dig your heels in, and just hold. They’re going to throw everything they’ve got at us in the first ten seconds. Guys like that always do."

"And then?" Derek asked.

"Then I say now, and all four of us pull once. It doesn’t have to be hard. It has to be together."

311 nodded. "I’ll call the count."

Owen said, "Mm."

Sierra wrapped the tail of the rope around her waist and took the anchor spot. Nobody assigned it. She just walked back there.

In the command tent, Dom leaned in to the monitor. "She just gave them the slick end?"

"She gave them the side they wanted," Rhett said. "Look at their captain. He hasn’t looked at his feet once since he walked up there. He’s been looking at the bleachers the whole time."

The whistle went.

The second the rope went tight, the four of them slid forward a yard. Two. 311’s heels plowed two grooves in the grass, and the lip of the pit was right in front of his toes.

Out past the caution tape, Mac, who’d been out since the coin flip, was hanging over the tape screaming himself hoarse. "OWEN! THAT’S MY ROOMMATE! OWEN!"

Sierra didn’t yell. She threw her weight back until she was almost flat, and the rope cut into her waist. In front of her was Owen. Owen didn’t make a sound. His hands were clamped on the rope. For two months those hands had been hauling cases of frozen patties around the dining hall kitchen every day, and now they didn’t slip an inch.

"Hold," 311 said under his breath. "Hold. Hold."

The rope stopped.

Ten seconds. Twenty. The frat’s chant started coming apart, and their front two had gone purple. They yanked twice more. Each time the rope gave half a foot, and each time it crept back. Thirty seconds.

The frat captain took one hand off the rope and turned to pump his arm at the bleachers, calling for noise. The bleachers obliged. It came up all at once.

Both his feet were still planted on that shining, muddy grass.

"Now," Sierra said.

"One, two—PULL!"

All four of them went back at once.

The captain’s feet shot out from under him. He pitched forward into his front two and knocked them to their knees. The back two tried to plant, but they were standing on the same wet grass. All five of them went into the pit, one after another, still holding the rope.

Forty-one seconds.

The bleachers went off in a wall of flashes. Mac went over the caution tape and two volunteers hauled him back, still yelling. "MY ROOMMATE!!"

Fifteen stacks went into the box. Fourteen left. Eighty-seven thousand.

Sierra let go and sat down hard in the grass. She opened her hands and looked at them. Both palms were torn open, and the blood had worked its way into the lines. A volunteer came running with a first-aid kit. She waved him off and wiped her hands on her tracksuit.

Two red streaks across the green.