In the car, Marianne spotted a group of ponies. “Ponies this time!” she said to her parents. “Do you think they feel bad about themselves when they see horses?”

Her dad, in the passenger’s seat, grinned and suggested they go over flash cards together.

She wanted to say, “What’s the point?” but she just shook her head. “Too nervous.”

He turned on some opera they’d listened to. It was sort of sweet how excited he was that she liked it.

At the same time, why couldn’t her parents speak fewer languages and enjoy whatever was on the radio?

She was born into the wrong family. A fun, good, wrong family.

“Dad,” she said finally, “this is a little sad for today. Something cheery?”

Her mom fiddled with the controls in the front and, with a big grin, turned to the funk station.

“Alright, be there in a little less than an hour,” her dad announced. “Just passed Hell,” he said, which he said every time they passed the sign to Hell, Michigan, which famously read: Welcome to Hell.

Two hours until her own hell would begin.

The texts streamed in.

Several kids had reupped the post about the livestream, and it had been shared double the amount it had before.

Hey horse at least you’ll be the cutest girl there lol, one said, as if “dorky” kids couldn’t be cute. So annoying.

Thank you so much for sacrificing yourself for our enjoyment haha jk we love u xoxo. That one was from Julie.

Was Skyla watching with Julie? If she was, she wouldn’t let Julie text that. Right? Or were Marianne and Skyla on such bad terms lately that she didn’t care?

They’d hardly even talked since she joined the team.

Skyla had waved Marianne off that morning with a loud “You can do it!” and her dads came out outside, too, gripping their coffee mugs tightly and cheering Marianne on. That meant she and Skyla were okay, right?

Skyla would hate what she was bound to see: Marianne, being her true self again. Since she got the D on that crucial math test, what was the point of any of this, anyway? She could zone out, answer something ridiculous, brush everything off. That would give the kids watching from home the kind of show they wanted, right?

But when she walked into the school building where the competition took place and saw Mr. Garcia, Vi, and Dan looking around for the rest of them, waving her over once they spotted her, and happy to see her, she knew she couldn’t do any of that. And she even almost forgot she was angry at Mr. Garcia.

Almost.

“Welcome to Ann Arbor!” he said.

“Hey,” she greeted them. “Test me?” she asked Dan immediately, and he whipped some flash cards out of his jacket pocket.

Small groups of kids milled about the hallways, stopping at different check-in points to figure out who they had to play first and where.

A couple of kids walking by scowled their way, and she wondered if they were from Remington.