All That Lives Must Die

Robert started mouth-to-mouth, and got one boy breathing again.

The other Falcon team members groaned, threw up, and slowly regained consciousness.

“That was too close,” Eliot whispered.

Jeremy glanced at his wristwatch. “Saving these folk be all well and good,” he murmured, “but there be three minutes. We can still get the flag.”

A gunshot cracked through the air.

The arcs of water and fire on the obstacle course stopped and only swirls of smoke and fog remained.

Mr. Ma strode onto the field. He clicked his stopwatch, made two marks on his clipboard, and then announced: “That is time.”

Fiona approached him. She felt dizzy again, her feet uncertain. Maybe she’d gotten a lungful of that gas. . but something definitely felt wrong.

“Mr. Ma, there has to be a mistake,” she said. “We have three minutes.”

“I do not make such mistakes, Miss Post.” He narrowed his dark eyes to slits.

“No, sir,” Fiona said. There was no way she was going to say he was wrong. She glanced back to Jeremy, who looked incredulous, shook his head, and pointed emphatically at his watch.

Jeremy might have been sneaky enough to set back his watch, but there was no way he’d be stupid enough to try such a simple lie on Mr. Ma.

“Could you please check again?” Fiona asked.

Mr. Ma stared at her. It felt just like when he stared at her that first day in the Force of Arms class-when he’d fought her.

“No,” he said.

“That’s not fair!” one of the boys from Team Falcon said. “We had a perfect record.”

“Had.”

Fiona understood then what felt so wrong. The rules of gym class were brutal, but in their own way fair (even if Mr. Ma was apparently cheating). The rules stated that if neither team reached their flags before time ran out, then both teams tallied a loss.

A loss for Falcon was no big deal. A little wounded pride. They were still at the top of the rankings.

But for Team Scarab, a loss bumped them below the passing/failing cut off.

She turned to the teammates. Robert glared after Mr. Ma. Eliot shook his head and wandered back to the locker room. Amanda slumped to the ground. Mitch ignored them, and kept helping some of his still-groggy classmates. Jeremy and Sarah crossed their arms and looked at Fiona as if this were her fault.

It was. She was their team captain, after all. It had been her decision to save lives instead of going for some stupid flag.

And what if she had gone for the flag? She’d bet Team Falcon would have died. . and that gas would have ignited and blown them all to smithereens.

There had to have been a way to win, though.

Or did there? What if Mr. Ma was just trying to kill them?

There was only one thing she knew for sure: They had to win the next match, or they would flunk out of Paxington.

SECTION VI. DITCHING

58 PERFORMANCE

Eliot stood on the sidelines. He was scared. There was no shame to admit that. . not under these circumstances.

He’d faced Lords from Hell, stood up to a gigantic crocodile, the Hordes of Darkness, and a mother who was Death incarnate, and put up with a sister whose abrasive personality was probably what she used to cut through high-carbon steel.

This was different.

This was a live audience.

Eliot had watched the other students go first. It had all been arranged by Ms. DuPree. One by one, they were supposed to go onstage between sets at the Monterey Jazz Festival. . in front of people who knew music and had just listened to professional signers, jazz quartets, and the most inspirational folk singers that Eliot had ever heard.

Eliot reread the program clutched in his sweaty hands: “Hear California’s finest young musicians sing and play their souls out for you!”

Eliot hoped that was a metaphor. Although given the way things worked at Paxington, he wasn’t taking anything for granted.

“Practicing alone is one thing, playing for your classmates another,” Ms. DuPree had told them on the bus ride out. “But when you stand in front of a real audience-you’re going to sink or fly, baby.”

So here Eliot was: On a sunny day in the wings of the open-air theater, waiting to go on next-just him, about a billion stage lights. . and three thousand people in the audience.

Ms. DuPree stood next to him and listened, as entranced as he, to Sarah Covington onstage, singing what she’d described as a “torch song.”

Sarah wore a dress as red as her hair. The fabric was tight and sparkled. A bass and piano accompanied her as she lamented about a man who had treated her so badly, but he could make her shiver with pleasure, and how she still loved him.

It was sad. It felt real to Eliot, as if Sarah had been through it all and still wanted to love this guy-even if it was a doomed relationship.

She held one last long note, reached out to the audience, and hung her head.

The crowd gave her a thunderous round of applause. Many stood.

When she looked up, though, all traces of her agony had vanished and she smiled and waved to her admirers.

There were hoots and yells for an encore.

Ms. DuPree leaned close to Eliot so he could hear her over the noise, and said, “That is how it is done. She gave them everything, lost nothing, and got something more precious than gold.”

Eliot shot her a quizzical look back.

“Her moment in the spotlight, completely loved by them all,” Ms. DuPree said as if this answered everything.

Eliot examined the audience and saw they did love Sarah at that moment.

He was also certain that clapping and love could easily turn to disgust and boos if they didn’t like someone’s performance.

Sarah bowed once more, and then exited the stage. The curtain fell behind her. She sauntered to him and Ms. DuPree, all sparkles and grinning. She smelled of perspiration and Brandywine perfume.

“Knock ’em dead,” she told Eliot. “You’re better than all of us put together, you just don’t know it.” She said that like it was part compliment, part annoyance-and then she smiled at Ms. DuPree and whirled back to the dressing rooms.

Ms. DuPree gave him a gentle push forward.

Eliot moved, although his legs now seemed to be glued to the floor. It took all his strength to walk to the curtain, and then push through. . where he froze.

The three thousand people who had been applauding before looked expectantly at him. There was a polite smattering of claps.

Which stopped as Eliot continued to stand there.

Like a complete dork.