Small Game
Contents (41)
Dedication
for Q
and Flame
my survival partners
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Blair Braverman
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
Ashley wanted to be famous. That’s not an insult, it’s the truth. She said so herself on the first night, sitting cross-legged by the fire after the cameras left. Back when they were all still new to each other. She said, “I’m here to get famous, aren’t you?” Mara had never heard anyone talk about fame that way, like it was something you could earn and spend. But that was Ashley, or how she used to be. Practical, even in the woods.
The funny thing is that it probably would have worked. Ashley was magazine-gorgeous, with this earnest charm, like she saw everyone for who they wanted to be instead of who they were. Someone like that, once the world noticed her, she could write her ticket. She’d smuggled a folding comb in her bra and buried it behind camp, so she could smooth her long hair each morning before the camera crew came back. She said it was her job to look good.
Then there was Kyle. Kyle was an Eagle Scout, which meant a lot to him, although none of the others even pretended to care. A skinny kid with red hair and perfect posture. He was nineteen, from Indiana, and he had a way of waiting after people spoke, just a beat too long, to see if they were finished talking. It was meant to be polite, but it creeped Mara out. She had always felt most comfortable around people who ignored her.
Bullfrog was a carpenter from Michigan. He barely talked to his teammates those first weeks, though he talked to the cameras. He was a real anarchist type, old-school. The kind who wouldn’t call it anarchy, just country living or “fuck the government” or something like that. Mara didn’t understand why he’d want to be on a reality show. It took her a long time to make sense of Bullfrog at all.
There was a fifth guy, too. James. Probably out thriving somewhere. You wouldn’t think he’d be the most painful for Mara to think about, but that’s how it goes. He was the only one who got out in time.
THE SHOW WAS CALLED CIVILIZATION. THEIR CLOTHES WERE FAST-FASHION PREHISTORIC, canvas tunics and matching shorts, all dyed a dusty brown. And sandals made of thin leather, so they had to walk delicately, toe first, like girls playing fairies. The idea was that they’d found one another in the wilderness, this group of strangers, and over the course of six weeks would be tasked with building a new kind of community, something pure and sustainable and right. They would forgo all comforts, so that viewers didn’t have to. They would be one with the forest. They would find a way to live.