Chapter 42 - 41 : High Beams

Chapter 42: Chapter 41 : High Beams

The volunteer was still trying to hand Sierra a roll of gauze when the horns started out on the access road.

Not one or two. A whole string of them, one after another, all the way from the intersection to the parking lot gate.

The first one through was a cream-colored Cadillac. Bob had half his body out the window and one hand on the horn, and he never took it off. The cars behind him still had sticker sheets on the windows and dealer plates on the bumpers, and every one of them had its high beams on.

One. Ten. Twenty. Somebody in the bleachers started counting out loud.

Around thirty, a line of Toyotas showed up in the convoy. Leading them was Ray, who ran the Toyota lot across the street and had spent last month fighting Bob for every customer on the boulevard. Now his cars were in the same line as Bob’s.

Forty-one of them. They made a second ring outside the first, and their high beams shot right over the roofs of the students’ beaters. The practice field went from bright enough to see to bright enough to squint.

Bob climbed out of the Cadillac and hollered at the command tent. "You said every one with working high beams! I emptied the showroom!"

Rhett came out of the tent and nodded toward the Toyotas. "And those eleven?"

"Ray invited himself." Bob dropped his voice. "Says his daughter’s been watching online all afternoon and if he didn’t show up he shouldn’t bother coming home. Don’t tell him I said thanks."

Hendricks walked the outer ring with his flashlight and checked every tire. Forty-one cars, a hundred and sixty-four tires, not one of them on the grass. On his way back he passed the mouth of the tent without slowing down and left one sentence behind him. "Next time, file for lights."

The final was Red Light, Green Light again.

Fourteen players stood on the goal line. A hundred yards away was the giant pelican. That morning it had stood in the sun. Now it stood in the headlights of more than a hundred cars, and its shadow ran longer than the field.

The rules were one sentence. Last one standing, or first one to touch the pelican.

The first few rounds went fast. After a whole day of it, nobody’s legs were taking orders anymore. One guy was frozen perfectly until a flash went off in the bleachers right in his face. He blinked, and his head jerked with it.

Psssht.

Rhett said only one thing over the PA. "Flashes off, please."

Nobody in the bleachers used one again. Three hundred people, not one.

Eleven. Eight. Five. Owen got sprayed at the fifty. He looked down at the red on his chest, said "Mm," and walked himself off. Mac was waiting at the caution tape with his arms wide open.

Three.

Two.

The last two were 218 and 506.

506 was Derek.

In the command tent, Kevin had ended up behind Rhett at some point, and he’d gone pale.

"Rhett," he said, right into Rhett’s ear. "506."

"What about him?"

"He’s one of mine."

That was when Rhett finally turned around.

The day he’d sent Kevin out to find the plants, Rhett had made a point of not asking who they were. If he didn’t know, he couldn’t go easy on anybody, not when he was reading tips, not when he was setting rules, not when he was calling red. All day long he’d known there were ten of them out there. He’d never known which ten.

"And Jenna," Kevin said. "The one who was crying at the table. They’re not even together. They met on Tuesday. That whole thing in the gym, they improvised it on the spot."

Rhett thought back to the third row in the gym, two pairs of hands clasped across the table. From the day we signed up, I knew I could trust you. The girl’s voice had been shaking when she said it.

"That was improv?" he said. "I almost bought it."

"That’s not the point." Kevin sounded close to tears. "They’ve got this exercise in acting class. It’s called statue. You hold one pose for an hour, and blinking counts as losing. Derek won it freshman year. Whole class."

Whatever had been on Rhett’s face was gone.

A plant takes the hundred thousand.

Nobody knew now, but somebody would eventually. Ten plants, ten mouths, plus Jenna, plus Kevin, plus the blooper reel. The day somebody dug it up, the headline would write itself. The $100,000 Fix. And from then on, whatever he shot, somebody in the comments would ask the same question. Are these plants too?

He’d bought insurance on the vote. Insurance on the server. Insurance on the sunset. He’d never once pictured a plant making it to the final two. There’d been too many things to think about these last few weeks, and this one had slipped straight through the cracks.

"What do we do?" Kevin asked.

Rhett ran through every way out. Stop the game? Seventy thousand people watching, and on what grounds? Disqualify Derek? Then he’d have to say on the spot whose guy Derek was. Get word to him to lose? How was that any different from a fix?

Every one of them was a dead end.

"I don’t know," he said.

Kevin froze. In all the weeks since school started, it was the first time he’d heard Rhett say that.

Rhett pulled the headset mic to his mouth, then let it drop again. There was only one thing he could do. Keep calling red and green, and stand in front of the screen and watch, the same as the other seventy thousand.

Out on the field, both of them were about ten yards from the pelican.

Rhett let the green lights run long. Three seconds. Five. Eight. Neither of them dared take a big step. When the light went red they froze at the same instant, and they froze equally well. Another green. Another red. Still equal.

When Derek froze, not even his eyelids moved. There was nothing on his face at all. A plaster figure standing in the headlights.

The chat started getting nervous.

is 506 even human

BLINK. BLINK YOU COWARD

hes not breathing. someone check if hes breathing

Sierra froze differently. She was breathing. You could see her chest rise and fall. Her hands hung at her sides, balled into fists, and blood leaked out between her fingers and dripped onto the grass one drop at a time. But her feet never moved. Not once.

Six yards. Five.

"Red light!"

They both froze.

One second. Two.

Somebody in the bleachers ran out of patience first.

Out of three hundred people, hardly any of them wanted 506 to win. They wanted the girl who’d been stabbed in the back in the gym, the girl who’d torn her hands open on that rope.

"506! YOUR SHOE’S UNTIED!"

Derek’s eyes didn’t even drop.

Then came the keys. A couple of sets at first, then half the bleachers holding up their car keys and shaking them, a wall of jangling, and somebody started up the chant from the chat. BLINK! BLINK!

Derek didn’t blink. His jaw set a little tighter. Other than that, nothing changed.

Rhett called green. Each of them inched forward half a step. Red.

This time a set of high beams on the track started flicking on and off, aimed straight at Derek’s face. On. Off. On. Off.

He kept his eyes open right into it, open until tears ran down his face, and he still didn’t blink.

A few people in the bleachers actually started applauding him.

Hendricks glanced over at the tent. The rules covered the players. Not one line of them covered the bleachers. Rhett didn’t have anything either.

Green. Half a step. Red.

In the front row of the bleachers, a guy stood up, held a car key over his head, waggled it at everybody around him, and pressed the button.

Less than five yards behind Derek, on the track, sat the Civic with half its bumper missing.

Its alarm went off.

WEE-OO. WEE-OO. The horn joined in, blast after blast, right at the back of his skull.

Derek’s shoulders jumped.

Just once.

Psssht.

Half the bleachers cheered and half of them booed. The chat went straight to war.

THATS CHEATING

is it though. show me the rule

CIVIC GUY MVP

506 deserved better than that

Derek stood where he was with red dripping off his chin. He laughed first, wiped his face, then turned to the bleachers, put a hand on his chest and took a full, deep bow. A proper curtain call.

That did it. The half that had been booing started clapping too. Jenna ducked under the caution tape, ran out and threw her arms around him.

In the tent, Kevin slid down a tent pole until he was sitting on the ground.

Rhett let out a long, long breath. He hadn’t won that. A Civic with half a bumper had won it for him.

"Write this down," he said. "Next time, the plants are out before the final. All of them."

Kevin looked up from the ground. "There’s gonna be a next time?"

Out on the field, only one person was still standing.

Above the box, the man from Sony took the last stack out of the aluminum case. The case was empty. He didn’t let go right away. He held it up first, in the glare of all those headlights, and then dropped it in.

One hundred thousand.

The boom lift brought the box down slowly until it hung half a yard in front of Sierra. Clear acrylic, filled halfway up with cash.

Nobody in the bleachers said a word. Three hundred people were waiting.

Sierra didn’t move. She didn’t jump, she didn’t cry, she didn’t throw a fist in the air. She just stood there looking at the box, her hands hanging at her sides, still dripping. Everything had gone out of her.

Rhett pulled off his headset, grabbed the handheld mic off the table, and walked the length of the field until he was standing in front of her. He cupped a hand over the mic and kept his voice low enough that only she could hear.

"You earned this," he said. "Since September, nobody out here has worked harder than you. Right?"

Sierra raised her eyes to him.

She thought about the last time. The whole world watching Dylan let go for two hundred dollars and leave her standing there alone. She thought about today. Three hours in a tree. The SHARE card on the table. The rope cutting into her waist. The leg that had almost given out on her a minute ago.

Every single time, she hadn’t let go.

She took a deep breath and took the mic out of his hand. Her blood smeared across the black grip.

She turned to the low camera on the finish line.

"I’m—"

Her voice caught. She swallowed and waited a second.

"I’m Sierra."

She paused, and her chin came up.

"Not anybody’s girlfriend."

The whole practice field erupted in a roar loud enough to shake the bleachers.