Chapter 1: Max 1 MAX WHEN MAX STEPS out of the car at the bottom of the school driveway, the itch that has been crawling under her skin for the past three months finally calms for a second. Home, she thinks, and inhales deep, like a smoker taking a delicious drag of nicotine. Back where she belongs. The driver lifts her bags out of the trunk like they weigh nothing. They're matte black, scuffed on the corners a little. Everything Max owns is a little something or other: a little cracked, a little old, a little broken. She was embarrassed the first year she came here, even if she didn't admit it to herself, even though all the literature about the school oozed with the notion that the Gardner-Bahnsen School for Girls was different from most boarding schools. They took upward of ten, sometimes fifteen percent of their students on scholarship. Unspoken: So don't worry about the girls with their two-thousand-dollar monogrammed luggage, because you won't be the only one who doesn't have it! Some snotty part of her brain admonishes her. Don't act like this place isn't different. After all, that was what convinced Max she needed to be here, made her fill in all the forms by herself and ace the interview and then tell her bewildered parents that all they had to do was sign the paperwork. Gardner promised difference and delivered. Gardner girls don't just take AP classes and SAT prep tests and play the elite-college-acceptance game. They do all that and learn to become sailors, proficient archers, swimmers with sinewy muscles. They learn how to build fires, construct shelters, survive off the land. Outsiders sometimes laugh at them, at the concept of these rich girls who could never want for anything learning how to survive with nothing. But Max has seen it close up, how those rich girls here always seem to have something else burning beneath their skin, so that they don't mind ruining their manicures digging in dirt, how they will knock each other to the ground and finish off with a foot to the chest, just to win. And then there are girls like Max, who come from not a lot at all, who want more than the empty futures stretching out before them, who come to Gardner for access and achievement and that feeling that comes after you've thrown up every single thing inside you. What they all have in common is that drive, a willingness to push themselves to the brink, all in pursuit of greatness. Max slides her phone into the black nylon bag slung across her body as the driver slams the trunk and gets back in the car, already driving away before she even gets to her bags. Four stars, she thinks, a little irritated that he didn't offer to help get her bags off the gravel and onto the path at least. Then she rolls her eyes at herself. Spend enough time here, and at the eye-wateringly expensive camp she worked at all summer long, and some of those rich-bitch tendencies start to rub off. She'll give him five stars, like she always does, to prove to herself that she hasn't entirely forgotten where she comes from. There are other cars lingering, letting other girls out, but nothing like the rush of last year. Final years, first years, and new girls get to move in a day before everybody else, so all Max can hear is the sniffles of the eleven-year-olds saying goodbye to their parents for the first time mixed with the all-knowing laughter and yells of her senior classmates. Then one of those yells is aimed at her: "Wren! Wren, wait up!" She looks up from her bags, her heart rate kicking up a notch. Brooke Nielsen is running over, long dark hair pushed back by sunglasses, and Max lets out a long, slow breath. It's only Brooke. Brooke, she can handle. "You know I fucking hate when you call me that," Max says, finally hefting her bags onto the path. "It's your name, isn't it?" Brooke says, the tease so over the top. "C'mon, Wren Maxwell , aren't you happy to see me?" "Happy to see you go," Max says, but it's only Brooke, and she's no real threat to Max, never irritating enough to bring on Max's actual wrath. "Are you ready?" Brooke grins, those perfect shiny white teeth gleaming. Max does not tell anyone else how she has a weird thing about teeth, smiles. Like, she could think a girl was the most irritating, boring bitch, but if she had the right kind of smile Max would suddenly think she was so hot. Brooke does not need to be told that she's hot; she's conceited enough as it is. "Ready for our last year at this fucking place?" Brooke says. "Jesus Christ, yeah." "I was talking about the Cup," Max says, and Brooke groans. "Already with that shit? We just got here." She takes the handle of one of Max's cases and starts rolling it along the path. Max doesn't have to ask where Brooke's bags are--already magicked up to her room, by some person invisible to Brooke and girls like her. "Yeah, for our last year, which means it's time to find out which one of us will be the Tierney Cup champ." "If I say it'll be you, will you shut the fuck up about it?" "You're going to miss all this when we're gone," Max says, and then kicks at the back of Brooke's leg. "You'll miss me , at least." "Please," Brooke says. "I can't wait until I don't have to hear about the Cup ever again, or see your bitchy little face every day." Then she laughs. "Instead I will just be seeing the various bitchy little faces of whatever new bitches I end up at college with." "Say bitch again," Max says, and then they're walking in silence, concentrating on steering their way along the path that loops around the imposing school entrance and up to the dorms. Whenever she talks like that--plays along with her friends who talk about how much they can't wait to get to college--she feels bad for lying. But it's the kind of lie you have to tell to survive here, because even though they all agree that Gardner really is different, and even though they all defend their school to those outsiders who criticize it, it's still a little too much to admit that you love it. Too much for Max to admit that sometimes, she wishes she never had to leave this place. Max loves the brick buildings that house their classrooms, the assembly hall with its rows of benches, the dining hall and its vaulted ceilings. She loves the dorms, how they hum with a particular kind of energy, how they go so quiet around exam time and then explode after. She loves the Washington air and the trees that cover so much of the 130-acre grounds, the ocean on one side of them and forest on the other. She loves the rabbits that plague the campus, fairy-tale charming until they're not, until they're targets for hunting practice. She loves that when they go into town, the locals always look at them in that certain way, as if they're different. She loves that she is so far away from home that the place almost ceases to exist to her. When they reach the dorm blocks, they go straight for the last building in the U shape that frames the grassy courtyard where they lie out in hot weather. OXFORD is spelled out in white metal letters over the entrance, and a girl sitting on the steps stands as she sees them. "About fucking time," she says, launching herself first at Brooke, then at Max, dropping air kisses on their cheeks. "Safiya is already driving me insane." "Hi, Isobel," Max says. "I'm not even going to ask how your summer was." "Good, because it was terrible." Her accent has that lilt that Max has learned Isobel gets from spending time at the Delphy family's château in France. "You're so lucky you didn't have to spend the whole break with your parents." Max smiles, the careful, practiced smile she reserves for these moments. Oh, so lucky to spend months running around after a bunch of spoiled brats who squealed if a fleck of dirt got on them and spoke to Max like she was their personal maid, instead of at the ancestral pile with zero responsibilities. "Yeah, camp was a blast. So fun! Totally not jealous of you at all!" Isobel laughs, because nothing bothers her, but Brooke frowns. "Wait," she says, reaching over and tugging on one of Max's braids. "You didn't go to Nora's for the summer?" Max winces--her braids are so fresh that they still hurt, her scalp throbbing dully. She brushes Brooke's hand away and shrugs. "No, I told you. I need to fill out my résumé a little more. Camp counselor looks good on college apps." Brooke raises her eyebrows. "Oh, look at you, you little diligent student." "Can we go up?" Isobel says, the slightest whine in her voice. "I want to finish unpacking before dinner." Max is grateful for the out, not wanting Brooke to probe any further and figure out that camp is not the only reason Max didn't go to Nora's for the break. She realizes she's rubbing the charm on her necklace a moment too late, when Brooke has already looked back and noticed, too. But Max doesn't give her time to say anything, instead grabbing her bags and dragging them up the steps. "Come on. I don't want to miss dinner, either." Excerpted from The Tournament by Rebecca Barrow All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
