Chapter 23: Ready or Not

(True-but-unseen account)

If you are searching for a Chapter in which the rules are written down and handed out at the door, close this book now. Dear Reader, here is a riddle to carry into the next room. What is the only law every child has memorized by the age of seven, written down nowhere, enforced by nobody, and obeyed more faithfully than any statute ever printed? By the end of this Chapter, a man will tell you the answer, and he will be very pleased to.

Welcome to Stage Two still hung in the boarded-up room like a smell.

"I’m not playing," said Hadjer again. She said it the way you say it to a dentist.

"Nobody asked you to play, Miss Lotus," said the collector, kindly. "The Game of Life has started. Whether you play is a question for your account."

Hadjer did not take her eyes off him, but something had just clicked, and she spoke to the side, very quietly. "You said you read the contract. It was blank to everyone except me."

"Was it?" said Arthur, who was bad at lying and good at not answering. "Later."

She tried to put that on the shelf. The shelf, which had been filling up all evening, gave up and came off the wall.

"Somebody tell me what is going on," said Carter, from the doorway, "or I’m leaving."

The collector laughed. It was a pleasant laugh, and it went on slightly too long. "Leaving? Nobody is leaving. You’ll die in here with your nosy friends, if it comes to that. It generally doesn’t."

"This is wrong," said Hadjer. It came out low and furious. "You can’t move a game into somebody’s house and call it a clause."

"When I was about your age," said the collector, "I discovered that if I talk long enough, I can make anything sound right or wrong. Everything is relative, Miss Lotus, if you’re clever enough to make it so."

"Fair enough," said Arthur.

The collector turned and gave him a look of long-suffering annoyance, the look of a man whose elevator has just stopped between floors.

"You got me in trouble with the schedule, so I don’t like you," he said. "And you were never invited."

Arthur smirked. "Hadjer and I are a package deal."

"Then you’re co-signers." He said it the way a waiter says very good, sir. "Her debt is yours, her loss is yours, and her bell is yours. And you, young man, are a bystander within range of the contract, which makes you one as well. It’s in the fine print."

Neither of them could find the line to argue with. Carter looked at the back of his own hand, as if expecting something to be written there. Nothing was.

"Marks are for people who signed," said the collector. "You two, I simply keep track of."

He looked from Arthur to Hadjer, and his eyes lit with sudden mischief.

"When I was your age, I wouldn’t have been caught dead sitting next to a girl. Cooties." The hummingbird drifted up in front of his face, and he turned to its glass eye and spread his hands. "Do you remember the old, nice days, folks? We used to play all kinds of games. Kids today don’t even respect the traditional ones anymore."

His smile did something it had not done all evening. It reached his eyes.

"But we’re going to make them."

Then he tapped the brick with the toe of his shoe, and this time he moved it away.

The door swung shut with a click, and the house breathed out.

The boards slid off the windows as if they had only been drawn there. The lamp stopped on its cable and went out. The walls opened outward like the sides of a cardboard box, and the ceiling went up, and up, until it was only sky. The floor went hard and flat and gray. Painted lines ran across it: hopscotch squares, four-square boxes, a faded circle with the word BASE inside it in white. A chain-link fence rose out of the ground and ran off in both directions. There was a jungle gym, a sandbox, a row of swings, and a hedge cut into a maze. At the far end of the asphalt stood a low brick building with a clock tower, and above it the sun hung white and straight overhead, at noon.

Nobody in the yard had a shadow. The sun stood so high that every shadow lay folded under its owner’s feet like a dog that had been told to stay.

It smelled of floor wax, pencil shavings and cut grass.

Arthur’s borrowed copy came apart like a wet paper ball. One player, one body, the collector had said, in the tone of a man reading a sign. The snake, released into the air by a clone that no longer existed, fell in a gray line.

Arthur’s real body, which had been standing at the foot of what were now school steps, stepped forward on its own and caught it with a courtesy it had never been taught. Then the rest of Arthur arrived, with the whiplash of a man who has been on both ends of a phone call.

"...And rivers," he said, "are just rumors that found a slope. Hello."

"There you are," said Carter.

The snake wound once around Arthur’s wrist and turned its face toward the nearest fence post, thinking about leaving.

"Miss Lyra," said the collector.

Lyra stood where the couch had been, in the sweatshirt with the hole in the cuff. She did not look at anyone. The collector crossed to her, and his voice dropped, but not far enough.

"You were asked to bring one. You’ve brought three and a snake. We’ll discuss your performance later. For now, uniform."

The sweatshirt changed. Gray became a yellow safety-patrol belt across her chest, with a silver whistle on a cord. The hole in the cuff stayed. Her mark flared, and she flinched.

"You’ll monitor the field," said the collector. "Blow the whistle on any broken rule. If you fail to blow it when you should, your mark will remember. It’s very good at remembering."

"Understood," said Lyra, to the asphalt.

A folding table stood at the edge of the yard with a gray plastic bin on it and a sign in marker: LOST & FOUND — RETURNED AT THE LAST BELL. Hadjer’s phone was already inside, face down, tagged HADJER L. She looked at it, and then at him.

"Anything with a battery goes in the bin," said the collector. "Recess is for recess."

"I don’t have one," said Carter.

The collector’s eyes moved over the worn knees of Carter’s jeans, the scuffed shoes, and the rectangle in his left pocket. "No?" he said, not unkindly. "Then that is a very small sandwich."

Carter’s jaw clenched in bruised pride. He had lied only to preserve it, though few would ever believe he possessed such a thing. After a moment he dug out a cracked, ancient phone with a taped-up back, the one he had used to message Arthur, and dropped it into the bin himself. It landed beside Hadjer’s with a small, embarrassed clack.

"Nothing?" said the collector to Arthur, who held up his empty hands.

"I travel light."

"You take our phones and keep a camera hovering over every head," Arthur said, and nodded at the hummingbird. "Funny."

"That isn’t a phone. That’s a witness." The collector smiled. "Cameras are for watching. Phones are for hiding."

Arthur looked at him properly then, and the window that opened in the corner of his eye was the same wall of question marks Voss had given him. He closed it. His face did not change. Hadjer, three feet away, watched his eyes go to something that was not there and come back, and added it to a shelf that was no longer on any wall.

She tried to flick her fingers, the way she always did before a Shadow Step. Nothing happened. There was no shadow to step into.

"A fair game needs fair light," said the collector, without turning around. "Noon until the Last Bell, Miss Lotus. The sun moves as the day does. You’ll get your shadows eventually."

A faded cap settled on his head as though it had been there all his life.

The first rule of play is that everyone knows it;

the last is that someone is paid to enforce it.

The others were already there.

They had been there since the walls came down, and nobody had noticed, because nobody had looked at the benches. A row of wooden benches stood against the brick wall of the school, and on every one lay a child, asleep, with a lunchbox at their feet. They were not ordinary lunchboxes. Each had a small gray screen set into the lid, and each screen glowed with the same number: 2000. Every child also had a faint mark on the wrist and a faint chemical sweetness on the breath, the leftover smell of whatever had put them to sleep. They had been taken the way the Game takes everything, which is to say without asking. Their phones had been taken too, in their sleep, and now sat in the gray bin by the flagpole in a neat row, each one tagged with a name.

The collector clapped his hands once, as a teacher does at the end of a nap.

They woke the way children do when they are not supposed to be awake: all at once, and in the wrong order.

A girl of twelve sat up first, and her hand went straight to her pocket. It found nothing. She had the stiff look of someone who had been alone for so long that she woke up alone even in a row of children, and she looked at no one. "My grandmother calls at four," she said, to nobody. "She’ll think something has happened. Where is my phone?" She did not yet know that something really had.

"Bliss Euphoric," said the collector, with a small bow. "It’s in the bin. You’ll get it back at the end of Stage Two. I’m told you have never once given up on anything, which I expect will be tiresome."

A tall boy of thirteen woke the way a person wakes in a hotel that has failed to meet his standards: offended, and already composing the complaint. His sneakers cost more than Carter’s rent. "Do you know who my father is?" he said.

"Matt Oscatt," said the collector, pleasantly. "Ask your mother. You have every right to know."

Of course Matt knew who his father was. His father was the reason he was here. The collector simply could not resist the insult.

Matt looked at the bin, the benches and the sky, and straightened his collar as though that would settle it.

The next girl was younger, and she did not ask where she was. She sat up, counted the exits, found none, and began counting the people instead. "Pia Lindgren," said the collector, and she looked at him as though she had been waiting to be introduced to a rival.

On the fourth bench a small, quiet boy stared at his empty hands as if they had been robbed. "I was talking to someone," Owen Park whispered. "They’ll think I just disappeared. Or did they disappear?"

The last to wake was a boy of thirteen in a wool scarf and a winter coat, who sat up, looked at the white noon sun, and did not sweat. He had a clipboard under one arm and a calculator in his pocket, both of which the collector had left him on purpose. Paper isn’t a phone, the collector had decided, and neither are sums. He read the number on his lunchbox screen, checked it twice, and had already begun walking toward Owen.

"Jaquan Bing," said the collector. "Do try to behave until the bell."

"Behave," said Jaquan, flatly. "What a lovely, unrealistic word."

"Five children," the collector said, "and Miss Lotus makes six. And two uninvited guests make eight on the field. I do so dislike a schedule that changes."

A corkboard stood by the flagpole, and the hummingbird pinned cards to it one at a time, each with a small, neat thunk.

Hadjer, Arthur and Carter were each handed a lunchbox too, the kind with a cartoon on the lid and a small gray screen in it. The screen said 2000. Lunch money, the collector called it. Two thousand coins apiece, kept on the screen until the end of the day.

RULE ONE.The number on your lunchbox is what you hold. It starts as a loan of two thousand. Return two thousand at the Last Bell, or take a job.

RULE TWO.Tag. A touch takes half of what the tagged player holds. The numbers change at once.

RULE THREE.Backsies. Tag the one who tagged you, and take everything they hold.

RULE FOUR.Stand on a base and you can’t be tagged. Three minutes each. Crossed fingers call a Time Out. Three per player.

RULE FIVE.Players do not hurt players.

"That one’s the Game’s," said the collector. "Rule Three is mine. I’m rather proud of it."

"And the Last Bell?" Hadjer said.

He pointed at the clock tower. The hands stood at twelve. "Sunset, which is six o’clock on that clock. At the bell, you return your loan. Anyone who can’t becomes an employee. Anyone who ends the day ahead keeps the difference, paid out in real coins. And the player holding the most coins may name one debt, anywhere in the world, and the Game will pay it."

Carter had been turning to leave. He stopped.

"Any debt," he said.

"Any debt."

Carter walked to the fence and followed it. It was a long fence. He walked for a minute at a steady pace, past the swings, the sandbox, the jungle gym, around a corner he had not seen turn, and came back around the flagpole from the opposite side, a little out of breath, to exactly where he had started.

He looked at the collector. The collector, who had not moved, looked back.

"Doors are for people who have finished playing," the collector said.

For a while Carter said nothing. Somewhere in a boarded-up house that was no longer there, an envelope with a county seal was waiting on a counter. He had read it. He had read all of them.

"Fine," he said, and it cost him. "But I’m not cheating."

"Everyone says that at the beginning."

"Everyone here is going to cheat, aren’t they?"

"Every last one."

"Then I’ll be the only one who doesn’t." Carter’s voice was flat. "Everybody being crooked is no excuse for me to be."

The collector’s smile faded. It did not turn into a frown. It simply went somewhere, the way a light goes out of a window when someone has walked past it.

"That," he said, quietly, "is what I used to say."

Fair is a word that is easy at noon;

it tends to get harder by afternoon.

"In plain words," said the collector, who had noticed the faces. "The number on your lunchbox is what you hold. Touch a player, and the number moves, theirs down and yours up. At the Last Bell, you give me back two thousand. Anything above that is yours. Anything below, and you are mine."

"What is this place?" said Carter. He asked it of the collector, who smiled as though he had been asked about his children, and said nothing.

"He won’t tell you," said a dry voice from the bench. Jaquan did not look up from his clipboard. "It’s his favorite thing, and nobody explains their favorite thing out loud. I’ll do it. Don’t thank me. Seriously, don’t."

He held up one finger, the way a bored teacher begins a lesson on a Friday.

"It’s a Happy Place. Every supernatural creature can have one. Only one, ever, like a first love or a bad tattoo. It’s the place that makes you feel safest in the world, made real: walls, weather, floor wax and all. Inside it, the owner gets boosted and everybody else gets debuffed, hard. You can’t walk out, because the door is whatever the owner says it is. The only way out is to override it with a stronger one of your own."

"Do you have one?" said Arthur.

"A kitchen. Hell Kitchen. Don’t ask." Jaquan looked at the schoolyard. "It’s weaker than his. I checked. Twice. I’d love to be wrong about things more often."

"Mr. Bing is very well informed," said the collector.

"I’m very well read," said Jaquan. "It’s a sickness."

Hadjer looked at the fence, at the sky, at the clock tower that had never been there, and put one more thing on the shelf. There was no override. Nobody in this yard was strong enough to have one.

The hands on the clock stood at twelve.

"When the bell rings, you get one minute to hide," said the collector. "Then I say the words, and the yard is open."

The bell rang. It was a real bell, brass and bright, and for one second every child in the yard went perfectly still, the way children do when a bell rings, whether they want to or not.

Then they scattered.

Most of them ran for the hedge and the jungle gym. Matt Oscatt did not run. He walked, unhurried, to the painted circle beside the flagpole, the best base in the yard, stood in the middle of it, and said, "Dibs."

The word landed on the asphalt like a dropped plate. The circle gave a faint ring, the sound of a glass being struck.

"Dibs is binding," said the collector, without turning around. "Playground law."

"Rock, paper, scissors for it," said Jaquan, drifting over, deadpan, with his clipboard under his arm. "Best of seven. Winner takes the base."

"I’ll accept that ridiculous request," said Matt. "I can’t wait to see your face when you realize I can’t lose."

They threw on three, and Matt’s paper covered Jaquan’s rock. Jaquan changed to scissors, and Matt threw rock. He changed again, to paper, and Matt threw scissors. It happened seven times, and it went the same way each time: whatever Jaquan threw, Matt threw the one thing that beat it, at the same instant, with a bored face and no sign that he had looked. By the third round Pia had stopped counting. By the fifth, a few yards away, Bliss found a four-leaf clover in the grass, looked at it, and, without knowing why, put it back.

"Seven," said Jaquan, to nobody. "I’m not saying it’s rigged. I’m saying the universe has a favorite, and it’s wearing very expensive shoes."

"It’s called skill," said Matt from the base, and then, with a thin smile, he added, "And luck. It’s my passive."

"It’s called a problem," said Jaquan, and walked off, entirely unbothered, in his scarf, in the noon sun, toward the smallest child in the yard.

Owen was crouching behind the swings with his arms around his lunchbox. Jaquan crouched beside him and drew a circle on the asphalt with a piece of chalk. Then he wrote BASE in it, in nearly the right handwriting.

"Fifty coins," he said. "It’s a base. A real one. Totally safe. I’d never lie to you."

"It looks fake," said Owen.

"It’s legit. It only looks like this because this is a Happy Place, and this is how things look in a Happy Place. I’m just trying to be friendly!" Jaquan looked wounded. "I could have kept it for myself. I’m giving you a fighting chance, because you look like you only won the first stage out of pure luck."

Owen looked at the circle. Then he looked at Jaquan, who was deadpan and sarcastic, and who could not possibly be serious. Owen decided that nobody would joke about something this dangerous, so the circle must be real. He held out his lunchbox, and Jaquan tapped his against it. Owen’s screen dropped to 1950. Jaquan’s rose to 2050. Owen stepped into the circle and stood very still, like a boy who had just bought a roof.

Lyra stood ten feet away with the whistle at her chest. She saw all of it. She looked at the gap between the swings for a very long moment, and she did not blow.

The collector watched Lyra not blow. He watched Jaquan walk away. He took a slow breath, and a card appeared on the board with a thunk.

RULE SIX.Bases are painted by the Game. Nobody else’s chalk counts.

"I do love that part," he said. "Every rule I have is somebody’s idea. It’s only a question of whose."

"Isn’t that cheating?" said Bliss, outraged, from behind the slide, where she was drawing a base of her own. "Your rules just change?"

"Rules are made, dear," said the collector. "And one of the main reasons they get made is somebody cheating a perfectly fair system."

He took off his cap and hung it on the flagpole, over Matt Oscatt’s head, and smiled his first honest smile of the day.

"Ready or not," he said.

TO BE CONTINUED...