Chapter 5 : Final Two

Chapter 5: Chapter 5 : Final Two

An hour and a half. Four people left. Seven minutes of battery.

Ethan ran the math. Mac was doing stand-up and Maya was doing a statue, and neither of them looked close. Dylan and Sierra kept fighting and making up and fighting again, but their hands hadn’t budged. At this rate it could go past dark.

He needed to put pressure on the game. Pressure cost money.

All of his was sitting on the speaker.

He walked over to the edge of the stage. Kevin was sitting on a case of water, clipboard in his lap, hugging the little metal cash box he’d been paying out twenty-five-dollar prizes from all afternoon. He was still grinning from the Tyler thing.

"How much is left in the box?"

The grin vanished. Kevin’s arms tightened around the box. "Why?"

"Because your game’s about to have its best moment," Ethan said, "and it’s going to have Student Government’s name on it."

Kevin hesitated. "...Two hundred. That’s for the whole week."

"I need three hundred."

"I just told you I have two hundred!"

"A buyout." Ethan ignored that and lowered his voice. "First person who takes their hand off right now walks away with cash. Student Government presents. You announce it, on the mic, on camera. Biggest crowd of Welcome Week, the best shot of the day, and it’s you. Your report at Monday’s meeting writes itself."

Kevin’s mouth moved. Nothing came out.

He knew exactly what this was. From the second this kid had climbed on stage, the spotlight had been his. The sheet said Kevin Morales, but nobody in that crowd would remember Kevin Morales. They’d remember the freshman with the cash. And now the kid was sliding the mic, the camera and the biggest moment of the afternoon across the table to him. The juniors and seniors in Student Government had never taken him seriously. If he got up there, this would really be his show.

"...Fifty."

Ethan didn’t say anything.

He just looked at Kevin. No nod, no headshake, no expression at all. The crowd was yelling, Mac was doing a bit, a speaker somewhere was playing a song, and between the two of them it was quiet as a conference room.

Up on stage, Mac was answering some heckler. "Nah, bro, you right. If I was a six-year baseball star who worked out every day, this money’d be mine already." He glanced at the empty spot beside him. "...Wait. Where’d that guy go again?"

The crowd was cracking up at Mac. Kevin shifted on the water case. "Seventy-five. Come on, man, that’s already—"

Ethan still didn’t say anything.

Kevin clenched his jaw. "...A hundred."

"Two hundred."

"What?!" Kevin nearly came off the water case. "That’s the whole week! Tuesday’s trivia night, Thursday’s ice cream social, Friday’s bingo—"

"Kevin." Ethan’s voice was level. "Honestly. How many people are coming to Friday’s bingo?"

Kevin didn’t answer.

"Thirty? Fifty? They’ll grab the free soda and leave." Ethan tipped his head at the crowd. "There’s four hundred people right there. Every one of them is going to tell their roommate about this tonight. They’ll still be telling it in the dining hall next month. Nobody’s going to remember the rest of Welcome Week. They’re going to remember this. Spend the money where the camera is."

Kevin looked out at the crowd. Then down at the cash box in his arms.

"...Two hundred." He shut his eyes. "All of it. When the treasurer asks next week, I’ll tell her... I have no idea what I’ll tell her."

"Tell her you ran the best event of Welcome Week."

Kevin let out a long breath and started counting. "Three hundred," he muttered. "Unbelievable." But he was sitting straighter than before. As far as he was concerned, he’d just knocked a hundred off the price.

Ethan let him have it. The three hundred had never been a real number. You asked for three hundred so the two hundred you’d wanted all along felt like something the other guy had won. The silence had done the rest. Most people couldn’t sit across a table from somebody saying nothing, so they filled the quiet, and what they filled it with was their own money. Ethan had learned that one from Julian Vance, in a conference room about fifteen years from now, and it had cost him a company. Kevin would go home tonight remembering that he’d talked the crazy freshman down a hundred bucks. Good. Next time Ethan called, he’d pick up.

Ethan turned toward the camera. "Noah. Roll."

Kevin stepped up to the mic. The hand that had been shaking an hour ago now held up ten twenty-dollar bills, steady as anything.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" His voice rolled across the whole lawn. "SCU Student Government presents—the buyout! First person to take their hand off right now walks away with two hundred dollars cash! You’ve got ten seconds!"

Three hundred-plus people started counting for him.

"Ten! Nine! Eight!"

Mac cracked up and crossed himself with his free hand. "Two hundred? Man, I’m worth two-fifty easy." Maya didn’t even blink.

Dylan was looking at the money.

His arm had been aching for an hour and a half. A thousand dollars was nice, but there was still a big guy and a statue up there, plus his own girlfriend. Two hundred dollars was three feet away, and it was real.

Ethan didn’t need to see Dylan’s face to know where this was going. He’d watched grown men with term sheets in front of them make the exact same calculation.

"Seven! Six! Five!"

Sierra followed his eyes to the cash, then back to his face. "Don’t you dare."

"Babe. Listen—"

"Four! Three!"

"I’m doing this for you!" Dylan was talking fast. "I drop, it’s just you and them, so that’s basically—basically us winning together, right?"

"Two!"

Dylan’s hand came off the pelican.

He grabbed the two hundred out of Kevin’s hand and held it over his head. What he got back was a wall of boos so loud it drowned out the speakers.

Sierra looked at him. For a long time.

She scoffed. She lifted the hand she’d kept pressed to the pelican for an hour and a half and shook the numbness out of her fingers. Then she unscrewed her water bottle, raised it over Dylan’s head, and poured it out, slowly, every last drop.

The crowd came apart. Shrieks, whistles, guys slapping their knees, a girl in the front row with both hands over her mouth saying oh my God about ten times in a row.

Dylan stood there with water running off his hair, still holding up ten soggy twenties.

She pressed the empty bottle into his open hand.

"Keep it," she said, quietly. "Now I know what I’m worth."

She turned and walked off the stage. Dylan stood frozen for two seconds, then went squelching after her. "Babe! Babe, wait!"

Hendricks watched them go and cleared his throat. "...That one’s off too."

"Cut."

The red light went out. Noah’s hands were shaking, and not from nerves. He was laughing too hard.

Ethan checked the bar in the corner of the screen. About five minutes left.

Two people left on stage.

Maya was standing exactly the way she had at the countdown. Mac took a little bow for the crowd, fished a fourth bottle of water out of Kevin’s case, twisted the cap off with his teeth, and took a long, happy swallow.

Ethan looked at the bottle in Mac’s hand.

He leaned back against the speaker, and for the first time all afternoon, his shoulders came down.

After that, the stage went quiet. The sun slid down behind the library roof and turned the whole lawn orange, the crowd swelled past five hundred, and the two hands left on the plywood stayed right where they were, side by side, low on Captain Pete’s belly.

Every so often Ethan had Noah roll for thirty seconds. Sweat on Mac’s forehead. Maya’s profile, perfectly still. Somebody in the crowd holding up a pizza box lid with TEAM MAYA scrawled on it. Cut. The bar in the corner shrank a little more.

Somewhere around the two-hour-fifteen mark, Mac’s stand-up started running out of gas. The bits got shorter and further apart, and in between them he shifted his weight from his left foot to his right and back again, until finally he crossed his legs and stopped talking altogether.

Ethan glanced at the four empty bottles lined up at the edge of the stage.

"Noah," Ethan said. "Roll. And leave it on."

The red light came on. The last bar was a sliver now. Four minutes, maybe less. He was betting the ending would come before it ran out.

Somebody in the crowd figured it out first. "He’s gotta pee!"

Five hundred people figured it out at once.

"Hold it! Hold it! Hold it!"

"Y’all are NOT helping!" Mac yelled at them, legs locked tighter. "Y’all know the one word you don’t say to a man in my situation?"

A frat guy in the front row unscrewed a bottle of water and started pouring it slowly onto the grass. Sssshhhhh.

"BRO!" Mac’s voice cracked. "That’s a crime! Officer!"

Hendricks turned his face away. His mustache was shaking hard.

Mac shut his eyes and started chanting to himself. "Sahara Desert. Sahara is dry. Death Valley. Dry. A real dry cracker—"

At the other end of the line, Maya spoke. It was the first thing she’d said in an hour and a half.

"There’s a porta-potty by the Sigma tent. About forty yards."

Mac’s eyes opened. He turned his head very slowly to look at her. "...Why would you tell me that?"

Maya’s face didn’t change. "Just information."

The crowd fell apart, and Ethan had to turn around and put a hand over his face. She hadn’t said one word of trash talk in two hours. She’d just told him exactly how far away relief was, and now Mac wasn’t going to be able to think about anything else.

Mac started negotiating. "Maya. Sis. Let’s split it. Five hundred each, we both walk, everybody keeps their dignity."

"No."

Mac stared at her for two seconds. "Daaaamn," he practically wailed. "MAYA!!!"

The crowd started counting for him, counting how long he could last. One, two, three... By forty, Mac was up on his toes. By sixty, his bottom lip was trembling.

Noah’s voice drifted out from behind the camera, very small. "Battery’s going crazy."

"Don’t stop."

Eighty. Ninety.

Mac opened his eyes. He looked at the stack of cash on the speaker. Then at the little blue plastic building forty yards away. He took a deep breath.

"I came here today for some free pizza," he told five hundred people, very solemnly. "I am NOT leaving my dignity on this lawn."

His hand came off the pelican.

And then he ran. Two hundred-plus pounds of man jumped straight off a waist-high stage and sprinted for the porta-potty. The crowd split down the middle to let him through, five hundred people screaming him the whole way down the lawn.

Ethan was watching too. The second Mac hit the crowd, he heard Noah behind him.

"No, no, no, no, no—"

He turned around. Noah was jabbing at the power button. The screen was black. Nothing. He looked up, white in the face. "Dude. It died the second he let go. We didn’t get it. We didn’t get the ending."

Hendricks was already up on the stage, one arm raised. "That’s off. The winner is—" He paused and looked down the line. "—Miss, what was your name again?"

"Maya."

"—Maya!"

Five hundred people made enough noise to rattle the lawn. Maya finally took her hand off the pelican’s belly, shook it out, and for the first time all afternoon, really grinned.

Noah didn’t see it. He was still staring at the black screen, holding the camera in both hands. Then he realized somebody next to him was laughing. He turned. Ethan was leaning against the speaker, shoulders shaking.

"What are you laughing about?!"

"Because that’s the best ending we could’ve gotten."

"We didn’t GET the ending!"

"Exactly," Ethan said. "So nobody who watches it online will know either."

Ethan picked the stack of twenties up off the speaker, walked over to Maya, and handed her the whole thing.

"Congratulations. Go buy something with a fast processor."

She took it and glanced at the camera in Noah’s hands. "You’re not filming this?"

"Battery’s dead." He shrugged, all innocence.

Maya studied him for a second, that problem-set look back in her eyes. "Convenient."

Noah, hugging the dead Handycam, finally got his breath back. "So how’s anybody online supposed to know who won?"

"They’re not," Ethan said. "They’re going to guess."