Variant

I jumped to my feet and set out. I ran, crouched down, gun forward, from a juniper thicket to a boulder, to a tall patch of grass. I was angry, and I could feel adrenaline pumping through my body. I hoped Isaiah was at the flag.

The shooting at the hill continued, and I could hear lots of voices calling for medics.

“One minute!” the bullhorn blasted.

I was in the same situation as before-all alone, hadn’t fired a shot, and now I needed to charge the hill.

I took a breath and then ran, ignoring cover. The hill was right in front of me, but I didn’t see anyone, and no one was shooting at me. I heard a voice at the top. “Medic!”

Charging forward, I crested the steep hill. Two people turned, looking surprised. One was Dylan. I shot them both-wildly, firing and screaming at the same time.

Dylan swore. He couldn’t see it under my mask, but I was grinning from ear to ear.

I dropped to my knees, waiting for someone else to shoot at me, but no one did.

Reaching for the flagpole, I wrapped my left hand around the rope.

“Game over,” the bullhorn yelled. “Society wins.”

“What?” I jumped to my feet, searching for the ref with the horn. Oakland was standing under a pine at the bottom of the hill, his hand holding a stopwatch. I scrambled down the rocky mound toward him. Curtis was already ahead of me.

“He killed the last two, didn’t he?” Curtis said. “Everyone in the Society is dead!”

Oakland shrugged, smug. “That’s not how you win. At the end of five minutes, the Society flag was still up.”

“That’s-” Curtis stopped himself, and then turned away, his hands balled into fists.

Mason appeared at my side. His camouflage was wet with white splatters.

“Nice shots,” he said, pulling his mask up onto the top of his head. He grinned. “We’re going to have to work on your approaches, though. The suicide charge isn’t always the best tactic.”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

Mason nodded and laughed. “Yep. I just wish you were ten seconds faster.”

That night the V’s gathered in the cafeteria, doing our best to turn it into a ballroom. Rosa had collected lamps from several of the dorm rooms, and she and a couple others were making new shades out of construction paper. A few of the guys were cutting long sheets of butcher paper into strips for streamers, and Jane and I were working on a banner. It looked like a bunch of little kids had decorated their bedroom.

“So why are you always the medic?” I asked, painting where she had instructed me to.

She smiled. “Because I don’t like lying in the dirt.”

“Really?”

“No, not really,” she said with a laugh. “I don’t like being in the squads.”

“I get that,” I said, leaning back to stretch. “All of my moments of brave heroism have come when I was working alone.”

Jane laughed. “I wish I’d been there to see that.”

“It was very awesome.”

“We still lost.”

“That makes it even better,” I said, dipping the brush in more paint. “It’s not nearly as heroic if you win. I was Bruce Willis blowing up inside the asteroid, or Slim Pickens riding the bomb.”

She pushed her red hair behind her ear so she could see what she was doing. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“There aren’t a lot of movies in here,” I conceded.

“That’s got to be pretty hard on you,” she said with a laugh. “All you do is quote movies.”

I shrugged. “When you spend a lot of time alone, you watch a lot of TV.”

“You have to remember,” Jane said, moving the conversation back to the original topic, “that the gangs were formed less than a year ago. Before that it really was chaos in here. Our old paintball teams never used squads. It was just us. I got used to being on my own.”

I nodded and then set my brush in a cup of water.

“Jane, what did you used to do before you came here?”

She looked up at me from the side of her eye and then focused back on the banner. “Why do you want to know?”

“Just curious,” I said. “I think you’re interesting.” While that was true-I really did find Jane fascinating-ever since the paintball game I’d been thinking about what Isaiah had said. Maybe he was right-maybe I was concerned only about myself. I didn’t know how to fix that, but I thought I’d start with Jane.

“What did you used to do?” she asked.

“I moved around a lot,” I said. “Foster care. No idea who my dad was. My mom took off when I was five, I think. Left me with a babysitter. Never came back.”

She set down her brush. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” I said. I didn’t want Jane to think I wanted pity. “I don’t really remember her. Anyway, since then, I’ve just bumped around. Bluff, Elliott, South Side. Not exactly the hot Pittsburgh tourist spots.”

Jane reached across the banner and put her hand on mine. “Isn’t this place a little better?”

And for a moment, I couldn’t think of a single reason I’d want to leave.

“What about you?”

She frowned. I was worried that she’d move her hand, but she didn’t.

“Baltimore,” she said, her green eyes no longer on me.

“You said that before,” I coaxed.

“I was homeless.”