Chapter 24: What Are the Odds

(True-but-unseen account)

If you are searching for a Chapter in which strangers meet, size one another up, and go to war, close this book now. Dear Reader, here is a riddle to carry across the asphalt. How many strangers does it take to make a team? The answer is none, provided they have met before. The rest of this Chapter is evidence.

"Everyone should just give up," said Matt Oscatt.

He said it from the middle of the best base in the yard, with his arms folded and the flagpole behind him, in the tone of a man who has been asked for directions by a tourist. "I mean it. I’m doing you a favor. I have never lost a game. Not once. Not cards, not chess, not the lottery my father’s company runs for the staff, which I’m not technically supposed to enter." He glanced at his lunchbox screen, which glowed 2000. "Save your coins. Go home. Oh wait, you can’t."

Nobody answered. In the yard, eight children and a snake and a whistle were doing the thing that people do when they are not sure who is allowed to touch whom: walking in careful circles, five feet from one another.

Pia was the first to try. She came around the sandbox in a wide, silent arc, aimed at the one spot where Matt’s three minutes had run out. The lunchbox on his hip beeped. He stepped off the base, still talking, and Pia lunged.

Her shoelace came untied in mid-lunge. She went down flat, and the sandbox’s lid, which had been resting against its hinge since the walls were built, swung shut on her shoulder with a flat clack.

"Oh," said Matt, not looking. "Sorry."

Owen tried next, from the left, with his eyes squeezed shut. A pigeon that had not existed a moment earlier flew through the space where Owen’s hand was going, and landed on his head.

"I said I’m sorry," said Matt, and he sounded fond. "It’s not you. It’s just how it is. The universe likes me. You’d think it would get embarrassed." He turned in a slow circle for the benefit of the whole field. "That’s a lesson, by the way. You can’t beat me. So don’t."

On the edge of the field, Hadjer watched a stray ladybug land on his collar, and noticed it did so with a certain respect.

"I hate him," she said, calmly.

"He’s twelve," said Arthur.

"I hated him the moment he said ’dibs.’"

A dry voice drifted across the yard, from the swings.

"Hey, Oscatt." Jaquan strolled up, scarf on, clipboard under one arm, and stopped a polite distance from the base. "I’ve been thinking. We should make a bet."

Matt tilted his head. "A bet."

"If you win, you slap me. Right in the face. As hard as you like. If I win, I take all your coins."

There was a moment of silence in which the entire yard waited for Matt to say yes. He could not lose. It was the single most generous offer anyone in the Game had made all day.

Matt’s face went through three expressions, and the last one was suspicion.

"Do you think I’m stupid?" he said. "I’m not falling for that."

"What? Why not?" said Jaquan, in an injured voice. "It’s practically a gift. You get a free slap."

"Nobody offers a free slap. There’s a trick."

"He’s right, you know," said Arthur, from the grass.

Matt turned toward the new voice, delighted. It was an unfamiliar sensation, being agreed with by someone he didn’t know. "Thank you. Finally, somebody—"

"You’ve got a luck problem," Arthur went on, and Hadjer, who knew that tone, closed her eyes. "Luck only works when there’s something to win. So you turn the Game into a zero-sum game, and every coin you gain is a coin somebody else loses, and everybody just agrees not to lose a single one. Then your luck has no one to take from. You’d always come out with nothing."

Matt stared at him.

"A what game?"

"Zero-sum."

"I’m twelve," said Matt, flatly, "and this is the second time today I’ve heard that word. What does it even mean? It sounds like a grown-up word. You’re a kid. Why would you know something like that?"

"Who was the first time?" asked Carter, who was standing close to Hadjer and trying to look like he was not.

"My father." Matt’s voice changed, very slightly. "He says it right before he takes something."

Nobody had a joke for that. Jaquan did, naturally, and used it anyway, because it had been his only coping strategy for twelve years.

"Oscatt’s right," he said. "It’s a terrible word. The last time my gaming buddy used it on me, my head hurt for a week. He explained it with a pizza. I’m still angry about the pizza." He sighed. "Ken_love, though. Hilarious guy."

Arthur flinched.

It was a small flinch, the kind a man gives when a coat he has hung up in another country suddenly speaks his name, but it was enough. His eyes went to Jaquan and stayed there.

"Wait," he said. "The game you’re talking about. Is it Eggs of the Twelve?"

"Yes," said Jaquan. "How did you know that?"

Matt had gone very still on the asphalt. Something inside him that had been working, slowly and without much hope, suddenly clicked into place.

"Wait," he said. He took one step forward, off the base, and nothing in the whole yard dared to tag him. "King_Jaquan. Is that you?"

"...Do I know you?"

"It’s him," said Arthur, to the sky. "Of course it’s him. The fool only changed one word."

"It’s a cool name," said Jaquan, defensively, and then, with the dawning horror of a man who has just realized the yard is full of witnesses: "Wait. Who the hell are you? And how do you know us?"

"It’s me," said Arthur. "You dofus. I’m Ken_love."

There was a pause.

"You are kidding me," said Jaquan, and for the first time all day, nobody could have said whether he was being sarcastic. He dropped the clipboard. "You’ve been offline for months. We thought you died or something."

"I didn’t die," said Arthur.

Carter, three feet away, developed a sudden interest in the swings. Hadjer looked from one to the other, and her eyes narrowed for the briefest second, then moved on. The shelf, she told herself, has become a warehouse.

"I got busy," Arthur said.

"Sure," said Jaquan, in his driest voice. "That has nothing to do with your complete inability to finish anything. We practically had to carry you to level two hundred."

"Shut up."

"We held your hand, Ken."

"I said shut up!"

"Hang on," said Matt, who had stopped being cold at some point in the last minute and had not noticed. His voice was suspiciously close to a squeak. "If you’re Ken_love, and he’s King_Jaquan, then I’m..." He pointed at his own chest. "I’m NineLives."

Everybody looked at him.

"Whiskers?" said Jaquan. "You’re Lucky_Whiskers? You told us you were a twenty-five-year-old gangster with tons of tattoos! Where are your tattoos?"

"It was a persona," said Matt, going red, and the whole yard watched a boy who had just been called the heir to a fortune lose his composure over a cartoon cat. "It’s a strategy. People respect gangsters."

"You were my hero," said Jaquan, with great dignity. "I wanted to be just like you."

Matt burst out laughing, a real laugh, the first anyone had heard from him. "Well, we both grew up and became one anyway," he said, with a sweep of his arm that took in the fence, the bin, and the man with the hummingbird.

"We need to talk about you believing people on the internet that fast," said Arthur. "It’s a horrible idea."

"Fine. I’ll buy you any set you want once we’re online," said Matt. "So get over it already."

Jaquan’s face switched at once, like a lamp. The wounded dignity was gone, as though it had all been an act to get a free set. "Any set?"

"Any set."

"I forgive you completely," said Jaquan.

Arthur laughed at the whole thing, helplessly, with his hands on his knees.

A very small voice came from behind the slide.

"Um. For the record, I’m Bliss too."

Everyone turned. Bliss Euphoric was standing with a piece of chalk in one hand and a half-drawn base at her feet, looking embarrassed to have been noticed at all. "That’s my handle. Bliss. If anybody cares."

Jaquan’s mouth opened, and for the first time in recorded history, he had nothing to say.

"Wait," said Arthur, slowly. "You’re the loner who plays the Labyrinth. Solo. Every single night."

"It’s impossible to win it alone," said Jaquan. "It needs a full party. We’ve all seen the leaderboard, and it’s just her, attempt number nine hundred."

"I know," said Bliss, to her shoes. "I’m not good at giving up."

"I can’t believe it," said Jaquan, and it was the sincerest thing he had said all day. "Bliss is here too."

There was a short and happy silence, the kind that follows a long time spent looking for someone.

Then Matt straightened his collar, and the old smirk came back, a little faster than usual.

"It’s obviously my luck," he announced. "You’re welcome, by the way. My luck basically summoned the entire clan. Go ahead, tell me about your zero-sum nonsense and see if it beats that."

"That’s not what luck is," said Hadjer, flatly.

"It’s exactly what luck is."

Change a single word in a name, and you might fool a stranger;

but a friend knows the way you joke, and that is the danger.

The rest of the yard did not understand what had just happened.

Pia, who had counted four exits, one hundred and six bricks and seven children’s worth of weaknesses, had not counted on four of them knowing each other. She stood very still with her thumb on her lunchbox, running it through her head again, and failing to find an angle. Owen stood in his chalk circle, still holding the pigeon’s feather. Lyra, with her whistle at her chest, looked at the ground, and for one instant her lips twitched.

And over by the flagpole, with his cap hanging above him and the hummingbird at his shoulder, the collector had stopped smiling.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, to the lens, in a voice that was nearly steady. "We seem to be experiencing a slight irregularity." He lowered his voice. "What are the odds?"

"Pretty high, if you think about it," said Arthur. "A clan gets summoned by luck."

"It was my luck—" said Matt.

"The odds," said the collector, with something like real pain, "of four random children, chosen from four different cities by an algorithm I personally audited, all being members of the same online guild."

"Four," said Carter, who had no idea what a guild was. "And me. I don’t play."

"He’s a plus-one," said Arthur.

Jaquan picked up his clipboard, tore a page off it, and began to write something. "Ken," he said, "if we all agree not to tag each other, then every coin on every lunchbox stays exactly where it is, and nobody’s number moves. Zero-sum. That’s the pizza thing."

"That’s the pizza thing."

"Then I’m not going to tag you."

"Not going to tag you either," said Bliss, immediately.

"I’d obviously never tag you," said Matt, with great generosity. "I could, you understand. It would be easy. I just won’t." He paused. "Can we leave the whiskers out of it?"

"No," said everyone.

They closed in on one another without really deciding to, as people do around a fire. Arthur stepped across the asphalt and stood next to Hadjer, and the grass at his feet went a little yellow. He did not look down. Carter followed, with the air of a man being forced to attend a party. Bliss came last, and she hesitated at the edge of Hadjer’s wilting circle, where nobody had stood all day, and then she stepped over the line anyway, with her chalk in her fist and her chin up.

Six of them, in a ring, on a dying patch of green.

"We’re a team," said Matt, trying the word out. "Obviously. For tactical reasons."

"Obviously," said Jaquan.

On the far side of the yard, the collector turned slowly toward the corkboard. His fingers hovered above a blank card, and the hummingbird’s glass eye caught the light. He had a rule for greed and a rule for cheating. He had a rule for fingers crossed behind a back. He did not have, and he knew it, a rule against friends.

He took his cap off the flagpole, looked inside, as if an answer might be there, and put it on again.

"Again," he said, very quietly, to nobody. "It’s happening again."

TO BE CONTINUED...