I Am Alive (8 page)

In less than an hour, my perspective on life has changed too many times. I don’t have a certain conclusion about anything. All I know is that I want to stay alive, and press the red button at the end of this round, screaming “I am alive,” until I find Woo.

Leo shoots the boy on the Hoverboard in the arm. The boy falls back cinematically. Leo jumps on the board in his place. The Hoverboardz are easy to drive. You just swing in the direction you want to go, and it swings with you. If you want to speed up, you ride with one leg in the air as if you are riding rollerblades. It’s actually cool.

“Can I try it once, please?” Roger This pleads to one of the skaters. “I can trade it for my super power D7500 joystick.”

The skater boy looks annoyed, and speeds up.

“It’s the best joystick in the world!” Roger This shouts. “It doesn’t make your thumbs hurt.”

Leo is the only one who has a rifle. He loads it deliberately, so the others can see he has bullets. I try not to think how harsh it was, shooting the boy off the Hoverboard. I try not to think at all.

One girl with pink hair gazes at the rollercoaster and back to Leo. Then, she hovers toward us, as if reminding him she is doing this in exchange for Leo coming up with the rollercoaster solution. Eventually, we all have to help each other.

Other skaters follow the girl with pink hair. She seems to be the leader, with all those tattoos on her arms. The Hoverboarderz approach us, and pull us up to ride along with them. They are strong and well-built.

The girl with pink hair picks me up.

Leo signals for the rest of the skaters to go save those in the remaining bus, while someone else drives the Jeep. They hesitate for a moment. He fires his rifle, missing on purpose just to scare them. They swing fast toward the bus.

It makes me wonder what Leo is capable of when he opens his mouth.

I am clinging to the pink girl from behind, as if riding a motorcycle. She is much stronger and taller than I am. She controls the speed of the Hoverboard from her iAm too.

We speed up. One minute to explosion.

I can’t see Leo anymore. He is left behind. But I hear a bang. An explosion. Did someone fall to the ground, trying to run? Did someone mess up the speed?

It crosses my mind that it could be Leo, but it is unlikely.

What surprises me is that I tell myself that I don’t care if it is him. Little by little, explosion by explosion, I am starting to learn that everyone’s priority in this game is saving him or herself. Although we are seeking alliance at the moment, it doesn’t mean the pink girl won’t push me off the Hoverboard at any second, if it is her survival against mine. That’s why Leo shot the boy. I cling harder to the girl with pink hair, my short fingernails almost ripping through her jacket.

If I hadn’t switched the iAms, I would have never known about this world down here in the battlefields. I would’ve never known the truth about the evil Summit. I would have been preparing myself to become a good girl, looking for a boy to go to the prom with, then marry him, have children, and grow old without affecting the world. What a bore. I prefer the deadly adventure I am living now…and I will find you, Woo.

“Attention, please.” Timmy is standing behind a counter in a hotel, dressed as a receptionist, pushing the bell repeatedly. “Attention, you skater-haters-monkey-flying-slayers.” He is manicuring his fingernails, blowing air bubbles. “Since we don’t know where you got your machines, don’t think they will not explode when the time is up.” He gulps a piña colada and burps.

Almost twenty seconds left to the next explosion.

“Hang on,” the girl with pink hair shouts against the wind. Almost all of the skaters arrive. Every Hoverboard has two or three teenagers on it. We are circling around, keeping up with the minimum speed, and waiting for the rollercoaster to arrive at the lowest point of its route, so we can all jump down. Which is an extremely hard thing to do.

“Your Hoverboardz will explode in about…” Timmy looks at his oversized, loud-ticking watch. “Fourteen seconds.”

I hear the rollercoaster coming. My heart is racing. I feel something in my throat. I can feel the heat from the girl’s back against my belly. The top of my spine is heating up. Will I be able to survive the jump?

“Ten seconds.”

The rollercoaster is coming. The safety bars and shoulder harnesses are already open. Leo must have controlled it from his iAm. But Leo is not around.

“Now!” the girl with pink hair yells. We jump in the air like fools diving out of a plane without parachutes. What the hell am I doing? Dying on a rollercoaster? It feels like my heart is jumping with me, almost bursting out of my rib cage and throat. On the way down, it falls like a heavy bowling ball, down into my feet. I land upside down in the rollercoaster. The girl with pink hair lands straight in her seat next to me. I am glad I didn’t break my back or neck. I hear people thudding against the seats everywhere, dropping like flies with no wings, and I hear a couple of explosions as well. Not everyone survives.

I have to admit that if this is an actual and legal game in the world out there, people will pay tenfold for it. The owner of the deadly amusement park will have to mention that the price of the tickets don't cover death certificates and burial fees.

Everyone for himself. Some people won’t make it until tomorrow morning. Sadly, Leo might be one of them.

“Five,” Timmy announces. “S.E.C.O.N.D.S.”

Suddenly, a boy falls from the sky, into the seat in front of me.

“Four.”

It is not Leo.

“Three.”

It’s the boy Leo shot. He is still alive, but in pain. Someone saved him and brought him along.

“Two.”

I look up, and to the side. Leo is flying in the air, landing down like a wrestler doing a five-finger frog splash.

“One.”

Leo is in the seat in front of me, next to the boy he shot, then saved.

A feast of exploding Hoverboardz surrounds us like the worst fireworks you could think of. The rollercoaster runs closer to the point where it takes the slope upward again.

“This Trickster is mean,” the girl with pink hair says.

“No kidding,” I mock her.

“I mean really,” she explains. “According to the rules, those of you who were in the Jeep should not have their Hoverboardz exploded. You changed vehicles with the same speed when you jumped from the Jeep to the Hoverboardz. To you, the board was a new vehicle, just like the rollercoaster.”

“But it wasn’t just us on the Hoverboardz,” I say. “So it is a confusing situation. Not that you expect this loony Trickster to be fair.”

“Thank you,” Timmy cheers. “For calling me loony and unfair. Me flattered.”

The audience cheers too. The viewers love Timmy. They don’t call my name like last time. When the audience is entertained, they forget about you so fast. It’s always about what’s next. Their thirst is unquenchable.

I see a boy screaming from the crowd that all these rules about the School Exploding Speed Bus game weren’t fair. The camera zooms in on him instantly, and Timmy announces that the boy is a Monster who has managed to forge his results.

“Traitor,” The crowd screams, pointing the finger at the boy. “Monster!”

Of course the boy isn’t a Monster. It’s the Summit’s way to play us all. If you object or question the rules, the easiest thing would be turning you into a Monster.

Leo, panting in the seat in front of us, raises his iAm up high, showing us a message without turning his head back to us.

The message says: SHUT UP, LADIES.

The girl with pink hair laughs. My mouth is wide open.

Leo scrolls down. IT’S BEEN A ROUGH DAY.

“I never thought he had any sense of humor,” the girl with pink hair tells me. “I am Bellona, by the way.” She has to shout against the speed of the rollercoaster.

“I am Decca,” I say.

“I thought you were Pixie three minutes ago,” she muses.

“No. I am Decca.” I insist.

“The rules, people!” Timmy shouts in the microphone. “Or me will blow me up some Monsters.”

The rollercoaster reaches the slope upward, and Leo manipulates it from his iAm and speeds it up more.

We are rolling high, with blood rushing from my face and the sun shining straight into my eyes. We push the red button and scream:

“I AM ALIVE.”

I guess Leo doesn’t have to say it anymore. The audience pardoned him, thinking of him as mute or something. Will I ever know why he never utters a word?

I let out a big scream and repeat the phrase, since it makes me feel much better:

“I AM ALIVE, WOO.”

The question is… for how long?

Most of us want to talk about what just happened, and compliment each other for staying alive. But Leo pulls me, as usual, away from the crowd. He has just operated on the boy he shot, pulling out the bullet. Now he writes on his iAm, telling them that he and I have things to take care of. I don’t want anyone to think there is something going on between us.

I am also curious about Bellona and her fellow skaters. We count sixty-six survivors, so we decide to separate and meet up when the Summit notifies us about the next round of games. The rules demand a ten-hour rest between each game.

They will not be broadcasting from the battlefields for a while. There is no point in that. Viewers can watch recaps and other shows while we rest. No one wants to watch the Bad Kidz’s boring and uninteresting lives inside the fields. No one wants to see the outranked alive. The cameras are still on though, in case the Trickster finds something interesting to share, and for the die-hard audience.

The skaters leave together, as I follow Leo into the forest. Even though I don’t really care about whatever he wants, I don’t mind exploring. If Woo is hiding in the Playa behind the Summit’s back, I will have to explore every inch of it in the free time between the games – assuming that I am still alive.

The Playa is humongous. It’s hard to imagine it was an amusement park for children many generations before. I was told the Playa is much scarier after the games end; so scary that the Summit prefers to close it down for the whole year, until the next games. Where are you hiding, Woo? I should start looking for you.

Leo trots forward, wearing his backpack, with his rifle tucked under his jacket. He doesn’t look like he had a
rough day
. He looks like a mad kid with a gun, about to blow up a school. But he also looks like he knows where he is going. Since he was able to manipulate the rollercoaster, there is a great chance he has been here before. I have no idea how, but he could help me find Woo.

We walk next to a big screen mounted on a tree with a wide base, watching Timmy interviewing ranked teens. They are talking about what they want to make of their bright futures — I wonder how Eva feels about being an Eight right now.

Most of the broadcasting screens are mute at this stage. We can listen to the sounds through our iAms, though.

Using eye language, Leo orders me to mute my iAm.

“But of course, my lord,” I say, playing Cinderella until I figure out who it is. “We have to talk about where this relationship is going.” I try to keep up with his pace. I hope he doesn’t think that the kiss in the Speed Exploding School Bus was real. Boys always get ideas from trivial things like that. It’s not like I am not allowed to kiss a cute boy who I just met on live TV before I die. “By the way, I prefer boys who talk,” I tell him. “Especially those I have kissed to save their sorry asses.” He keeps on walking. “I am kind of your princess charming. I kissed you and saved you from exploding; that’s like bringing you back from the dead.”

Leo turns around abruptly, snatches my iAm from me, pushes the mute button then gives it back to me, bumping it against my chest. He writes a message on his iAm and shows it to me:

YOU KISSED ME TO SAVE
YOUR
ASS.

“Oh yeah? Then why didn't you open your mouth and say you're alive?” I sneer at him – I find myself checking out his ass, non-metaphorically.

I blink. He is so athletic. I lose focus on whatever humiliation I was planning to bring down on him. Since I spent most of my childhood with Woo, I didn’t interact with many other boys. I was shy, and utterly invisible to the boys in school. Finding myself in the presence of Leo, a boy who girls swoon over, is really uncomfortable, even in a game of death. I think that's the whole point. Death has made me appreciate things, lust for things. It has made me unapologetically go after what I want. I might have only few hours to live, after all.

“I came here to save a friend, by the way.” I say with my hands on my waist. I don’t know why I act like that, but I want to camouflage my silly superficial attraction to his looks. "So I don't really have time for you. I mean seriously, talking to a set of chattering teeth is more fun than you."

Leo writes on the iAm: I HAVE A BETTER IDEA. SAVE YOURSELF.

“Not funny.” I stick out my tongue.

OH IT WAS FUNNY. Leo writes on his iAm: YOU KNOW WHAT’S NOT FUNNY? I HAVE A BOMB IN MY MOUTH.

I gasp, taking a step back, reminding myself that although he saved us, I need to take care of myself. He grabs my arm roughly, squeezes it, and writes another message and shows it to me:

YOU ARE GOING TO HELP ME.

I try to free my arm, but I can’t break his grip. I stare at his closed mouth, realizing that I was walking next to a bomb all day--not in an attractive way, but in a Grim Reaper kind of way. My eyelids throb, and my lips heat up.
I kissed a bomb, and I liked it!

One of those flying iSees sneaks up behind me, then it orbits over his head. It looks awful, like an actual eye taken from a dead body, with its tail made of swinging flesh, as though it wasn’t cut off properly. Wait, it is a real eye. When it flies, it sounds like when you press the zoom button on a camera. Leo notices it, and backs off. It is spying on us at a time when televising should be at a minimum. I can see us on the screen. Leo doesn’t hesitate. He loads his rifle with one hand and shoots the eye, then the screen. I don’t mind that. There is nothing on the screen that we can’t see on the iAm.

“Okay,” I say. “So how does this bomb in your mouth work?”