Games We Play

14: Limbo

"Yeah," I admitted. Even I couldn't lie that I was clinging onto knowing what was going to happen from here.

"Not coming?" she asked when I didn't get up to follow her. When I made an uncomfortable face, she chuckled and ran off to the board.

Clara stapled the long pages onto the board and the crowd quickly multiplied, growing larger by seconds. I already knew that only twenty students were going to be left in the tournament, with forty of us removed. The thought made me a little sick to my core.

I wondered if I'd make it. The third game had been easy for me, and our group scored well in the second game, despite my mistake. It was only in the first game that we'd done badly but aside from that, our team points were high enough that most people from our group would probably make it.

There was no way Armin's group would go down so easily after all.

Michelle swiftly ran out of the crowd after a few minutes and sprinted towards me. "So they've ranked it, from first to twentieth," she said, sweaty from the amount of people she just had to squeeze past.

"Drastic change of numbers."

"Well, a lot depended on those three games. And especially on the last one, that logical test thing. It's not like they can test how smart we are any other day."

"I suppose," I said. "So did you make it?"

"Yeah. The world was really looking out for me when it put me in Group 1," she joked. "I'm seventeenth on the list."

"Woah. That's amazing. You must've really aced that test."

"You don't need to be modest," she grinned.

"What?"

"You're on the list too," she laughed. "Fourteenth. And don't look confused at all - you're a genius. Plus you and I got pretty lucky with being in Armin's group - we had a good shot at making it. We scored really highly on the second Truth game thing so it gave us a lot of leverage."

I didn't know what to say. I dreaded these games more than anything but to hear I made it fourteenth out of so many students? It was satisfying in a bad way.

I didn't want to compare myself to others to feel better but that was what just what these games were about. Beating people. Who was the smartest? The fastest? The most popular? The sportiest? It was all a competition.

Yet the feeling was too good. Like Michelle had said, the competition recognized those who deserved it and worked hard. But I didn't want the validation.

The feeling was too good to last. I knew it wouldn't be long till someone better than me came and knocked me out with the other students who didn't make it.

"Wow. So who else?" I asked out of the sudden curiosity. I was suddenly competing - perhaps against all my own friends.

"Who do you wanna know?"

"Damien. Caius? Eduardo? ...Ales?"

"Damien sixth. Caius eighth. Eduardo second. Ales... nineteenth," she read off a picture on her phone that she'd just taken. "Oscar tenth. Leah third. Raj fourth. Summer fifth."

"Who's first?" the words couldn't stop themselves. But I wish they had, because for such an easy question, there, of course, had to be an even easier answer.

"Armin."

I bit back a laugh at the irony. He really didn't lie when he said that losing just wasn't something he did.

"How did he come first?" I blinked. "Did they explain the individual points system?"

She squinted at her screen. "Most of the people from our group and Group 4 are the ones who made it, based on the total team points. Individual points... it looks like they calculated it mostly from the test and the second game," she shrugged. "Maybe they took into consideration if we solved the clue that was made for us in the first game too."