“The Elders,” he said, breathless. “There were two of them talking. They didn’t see me, but I heard them, and then they went this way. Hurry!”

“Wait! I don’t understand.”

But he only ran faster, leading us toward the back corner of the gym.

“Reg, slow down! You heard the Elders talking about what?”

Finally, he stopped next to a small door along the side wall, under an inconspicuous red exit sign.

“About this,” he said, pushing against the bar that spanned the door.

It opened with a metallic bang, followed by a whoosh of crisp night air.

Thirty-Six

Choosing Sides

There was this tiny moment—just a fraction of an instant—when I felt like a star making her debut onstage. Bright lights poured in through the doorway like a spotlight, and a hush fell over the room.

Except the spotlight was actually the glow of stadium lights from the football field at the end of a long, topless tunnel, and the hush was not for me but a reaction to the sound of the door slamming open.

And then the instant was over, as the crowd stampeded toward the tiny exit. I had to move or get trampled, and I was moving. I tried to stay within sight of Reg and Poe, running on either side of me down the broad patch of grass between the two towering walls that led to the field. But the swell of escaping humans soon overwhelmed us, and Reg and Poe were lost in the waves.

The walled path between the gymnasium and the football field had seemed comically wide the first time I’d seen it, but with hundreds of people trying to cram through it all at once, the space seemed claustrophobic, the sheer brick walls endless and inescapable.

Our best hope was to run for the opposite end of the football field, where the public usually came and went through the high archway. The people of Nowhere moved instinctively in that direction, and my feet pounded the grass alongside them. Beyond the archway was a wide-open parking lot and escape in every direction. The Elders could not chase us all, and if they couldn’t catch everyone, they would have to abandon the plan.

But as we spilled out into the end zone and got our first full view of the field, my vision of escape, that bright light at the end of this night, winked out and turned to blackness. At the other end of the field and all along the sidelines, awaited an entire army in black hunting gear.

I didn’t have time to wonder why the Elders had unblocked the door or why they’d talked about it in the open, where Reg or anyone could overhear. And now I didn’t have to wonder at all, because the answer was obvious. The arena wasn’t a way out. It was a trap.

I knew this move.

I had played this move.