Rush The Game

keep my comment generic and say, “She’s dead.”
    Jackson nods. I take that as a sign that I can safely continue.
    “For seven months.” Every syllable is laced with my pain and confusion.
    Jackson nods again.
    “So I fought beside—”
    “Tsss,” Jackson hisses through his teeth. A warning. So apparently there are lines I have to be careful not to cross. No talk of fighting. Probably avoiding the mention of weapons or aliens is a plan.
    “So I met . . . what? Her ghost?” I ask.
    “No,” he says. He stops. I stop. We’re at the park, which is surprisingly empty for a sunny Sunday afternoon. He walks over to the swings and leans back against a wooden post, watching me. He’s long and lean, his black running gear outlining the muscles of his limbs.
    Angry with myself for noticing, I look away. The last thing I need to do is to think of Jackson Tate as anything other than a source of information.
    “You catch on quick,” Jackson says.
    “What does that mean?” My gaze shoots to his, except it doesn’t because his eyes are hidden. I wish I could see them. I wish I could tell if he’s looking straight at me or avoiding my eyes. My mom always used to say, if wishes were pennies . . .
    “It means what I said. That you catch on quick. I notice that you aren’t mentioning specifics.”
    “Does it matter?” I glance around at the empty park. “Who’s listening?”
    His smile is tight and dangerous. “Who knows? That’s the point. That’s the danger. They could be anywhere.”
    He’s talking about the Drau. Dread knots in my belly as I realize what his words mean: the Drau aren’t confined to the game. They could be here, in my world, my real world. I glance around the empty park. “Are you trying to scare me?”
    “No. I’m trying to answer your questions.”
    I give him the thumbs-up. “And doing a great job, too.” I slump down onto a swing, dragging my feet on the ground as I surge forward and back. “Why are you here, really?”
    “You called Luka.”
    “Yeah, I called Luka . To talk to him . What exactly does that have to do with you?” I pause, considering, and then feel the heat of mortification in my cheeks. “He called you? He asked you to come see me because I’m this crazy girl who won’t stop calling him?”
    Jackson laughs. The sound is low and a little rusty, like he doesn’t laugh often. I feel that laugh somewhere inside me, like butterflies. “Not because you’re the crazy girl. He called to tell me he was going to break the rules and meet you.”
    That’s a big deal. Even though I ended up here with Jackson, the fact that Luka was willing to break the rules for me feels like he was offering me a gift. “Why would he call to tell you that?”
    Jackson’s shoulder lifts in an easy shrug. “Either he wanted my blessing or he wanted me to talk him out of it.”
    “Which route did you decide to go with?”
    “Neither. I headed him off at the pass. Got to you before he could.”
    “Why?”
    He doesn’t answer right away, and when he finally speaks, I feel like he’s holding a lot back. “I trust myself not to screw this up.”
    Which tells me everything and nothing. Because he already told me that he’s not good at explaining, so he must mean that he trusts himself more than he trusts Luka to give answers that don’t break the rules . Or maybe—
    “So do the rules apply to everyone equally, or are you exempt?”
    “Depends on the rule.”
    “That’s not an answer.”
    “Ask a different question.”
    The first one that jumps into my head is: Why does Luka have Jackson’s number if we’re not supposed to have contact? I almost ask, but I can’t think of a way to do it that won’t make me sound like maybe I want Jackson’s number, too, so I let it pass.
    But thinking about that makes me wonder how Jackson got to me so quickly. Richelle said that people don’t get pulled from the same geographic regions, so how could Jackson be close enough to get to me before Luka?
    I remember the weird feeling I had yesterday when I was standing at my window, and a chill crawls up my spine. “Oh, no, no, no. Please tell me you are not some creeper guy.”
    “I am not some creeper guy.”
    I huff a sharp exhalation and narrow my question. “Were you watching my house yesterday?”
    “Yes.”
    “Spying on me?”
    “One of my responsibilities is ensuring the acclimation of new recruits.”
    “‘Ensuring the acclimation,’” I repeat. “You’re