Endgame Novella #2 by James Frey Read Free Book Online

hear anything when she’s like this.”
    She does hear, of course. Every word, every snicker. When she turns inward like this, lets her mind unspool from her body, her senses only grow sharper.
    She will not dignify them with her attention.
    They don’t matter.
    Nothing matters but maintaining her focus.
    Proving to herself that she can find her inner calm, no matter how dire—or irritating—circumstances may be.
    Breathe in.
    Breathe out.
    â€œWhat’s your problem with her, anyway?”
    â€œShe’s a snob.”
    â€œNot to mention a wimp.”
    â€œHow’s she supposed to save our line when all she does is sit around and meditate?”
    â€œ I heard she hasn’t even killed anyone yet.”
    â€œ I heard they tried to make her, and she cried.”
    Someone snorts. “We’re all doomed.”
    â€œIt’s not like she’s the Player yet .”
    â€œYou guys, I still say she can hear us.”
    â€œShe’s out of it—look, I’ll prove it.”
    Something hits her cheek, cracks sticky and foul. A raw egg, by the smell of it.
    Thrown, by the voice of it, by Aman Dhital, her second cousin, who’s been an obnoxious little worm since birth.
    Shari doesn’t open her eyes. She doesn’t let their words disturb her, or the globs of yolk dripping down her face. She doesn’t let her mind lose its purchase on peace and calm, up there in the clouds.
    But she does dig her hands into the earth, choose a solid, smooth stone one inch in diameter, and fire it with perfect accuracy at the center of Aman’s forehead.
    There’s an indignant squeal of pain, then a storm of footsteps as the boys take flight.
    Breathe in.
    Breathe out.
    Smile.
    Someday, Shari will be the Player.
    This has been true for as long as she can remember. It is the first true thing she knew about herself, along with her name and the rosewater smell of her mother’s skin. “You will be our Player, meri jaan ,” her mother would whisper, wrapping her in soft blankets and rocking herto sleep. “You will make us proud.”
    The Makers decreed it, when she was still a bulge in her mother’s belly, still half dream. The Harrapan elders read the signs, in the chai leaves and the stars, and they knew Shari would be one of the chosen.
    In two years, when the current Player lapses, she will be the Player of the 55th line, the Harrapan Player, as were Helena and Pravheet and Jovinderpihainu and Lavilninder before her. At 13, she became old enough to be eligible for Endgame, but there can be only one Player at a time. Shari will not take over the role until the current Player turns 19. She is 14 now, and for the next two years, she will train, she will wait, she will live in this strange limbo, pretending at a normal life and waiting for her destiny to begin.
    This is her honor; this is her burden; this is her life.
    It is a lonely one. Shari would never admit this out loud—and if she did, who could believe her? With seven brothers and 13 sisters, most of them all living in the same house, with her aunts and uncles, with her father’s many wives, with cousins scattered all through Gangtok, with the telltale Jha features reflected back to her wherever she looks, with a life so crowded that solitude is nearly impossible, how can she be lonely?
    And yet.
    Family is family; they love her without knowing her. As for beyond her family, there are those who know her as a future Player and keep their distance through fear or respect. There are girls at school who dress and speak like Shari, whisper eagerly about her every move, but never get close; there are boys who disapprove of the kind of Player she intends to be, who want a warrior, not a thinker, who mistake her silence and stillness for frailty. Then there are those who don’t know what she is—only an inner cadre of Harrapan know of Endgame, the Player, the Harrapan stronghold in the Valley of