The Best Night of Your (Pathetic) Life Read Online Free Page B

about assessing current threat levels.
    There were maybe only ten or twelve teams, and only a handful that I thought mattered.
    Carson’s team mattered. Because Carson was on it. But also because they were pretty good competitors. Arguably a little more daring than my own team, a fact that made me sort of sad, but what could you do.
    Tom Reilly’s team—the skateboarder/slackers who still managed to get decent grades—mattered because they weren’t quite assholes, but weren’t good kids either. So, more daring than Carson’s team. Way less afraid of getting in trouble than me and my team.
    It was possible The Matts—our senior class prez and VP—and their team mattered because they were jokester types and clever if not book smart.
    Kerri Conlon’s car of towering girls from the basketball team mattered, though it was unlikely they’d do anything to jeopardize their scholarships to places like Seton Hall and Villanova and B.U.
    Anyway, I couldn’t worry about any of them just yet. At least not until after the first round, when I could see who was left for the second list. So the only team to worry about right out of the gate was Barbone’s. Not that there was much we could do. They’d either get 1250 to qualify or they wouldn’t. But I still wanted to be sure to not lose any opportunity to know how they were doing, maybe even to foil them, though I had no idea how.
    The real problem was this: I was pretty sure they would do
anything
to take home the Yeti.
    Anything.
    And they were the kind of kids who never got caught. Or if they did, the charges mysteriously seemed to go away. So they cruised through life acting like they had nothing tolose, an assumption I took issue with. From where I stood, they had
plenty
to lose. Cars, credit cards, iPhones, varsity letters. The real problem was that there was no one around who had the courage to take any of it away. And if none of
those
people—no parents or principals or coaches—had ever been able to take anything away from Barbone, how did I stand a chance?
    Leticia Farrice said, “When I throw the lists in the air, the countdown starts. If you don’t make it back here by six o’clock with twelve-hundred-and-fifty points, you’re eliminated. You’ll have until one a.m. for the second list
and the first list stays in play
, then we’ll tally points and declare a winner. Read the rules again so you don’t do something dumb.”
    I raised eyebrows at my team as if to say,
“See?”
    Patrick smiled and shook his head.
    Leticia brought the whistle to her mouth again, blew it once fast, and then threw a stack of bright orange papers into the air. Most fell right to the ground without fanfare but a bunch more fluttered down lightly, the breeze in the air catching on the staple and opening pages up to form wings.
    A sudden glimpse of my sister, off to the right of Leticia Farrice, leaning on a pine tree with a beer can in her hand, made me freeze. “My sister is here,” I said, and Patrick said, “Why?” then said, “I got this,” and took off to get the list.
    I pulled out my phone and texted Grace: WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?
    I looked across the parking lot as people ran for the list—snatching orange paper birds from the air—and for their cars and saw Grace pull her phone out of her pocket, then look up and around. Not finding me, she looked down again and typed. Grace had recently been “acting out,” as my parentsput it, and they were always talking about how to “handle her.” Most recently, my mother—whom I’d started to view as some kind of mostly benevolent but slightly maniacal dictator with whom all of my interactions would be good practice for my career in diplomacy—had followed Grace and her friends down to the river, to a party she’d been forbidden to go to, and had dragged her home then grounded her for a week.
    My phone buzzed.
    JUST HANGING OUT.
    I shot back: THIS IS FOR SENIORS
    Grace shot back: REPEAT: JUST HANGING OUT. NOT DOING