12. Max

12MAX

“Finally.” McKayleigh stands up from the living room couch as we walk inside, lasered on Zane and Graham. “Y’all need to talk some sense into everyone.”

“About what?” Zane asks.

Corinne breathes out. “We found a gun.”

The word itself is like a shot. A gun. Stepping deeper into the living room, I can see it sitting in an open case on the coffee table. It’s small and black, the kind you can hold in one hand. I’ve never seen one up closer than in a subway cop’s holster.

“Where’d you find it?” Kira asks.

Aaron nods at the storage closet near the front door. “In there. Must be the owners’.”

That makes sense, at least. I’ve heard some of my parents’ most tone-deaf one-percenter friends talking about guns like they’re collector’s items. But when you add a gun to everything else that’s happened here …

“Did you guys find anything in the boathouse?” Corinne asks us.

I swallow, getting that buzzing feeling I always do when I’m just about to crack an interview subject. Except this time, it’s not excitement. It’s more like dread.

“There’s a boat,” I say. “But it looks like the cables are cut.”

McKayleigh gapes. “See? This is why we need to keep the gun! To protect ourselves!”

“From what, shoddy boat cables?” Corinne asks.

“Literally name one time keeping a gun around has made people safer,” Logan adds.

McKayleigh crosses her arms. “It’s a constitutional right.”

“Oh my god,” Logan groans.

“What? It is!”

“Did y’all find the phone?” Kira asks pointedly.

Elody rolls her eyes. “Does it look like we have help on the way, babe?”

“We didn’t find the phone,” Logan says. “But we found the charger. In McKayleigh’s bag.”

“Wait, what?” Graham’s eyes widen.

“For the last time,” she snaps, “I didn’t put it there!”

Elody reaches down and picks up the gun.

McKayleigh jumps back. “What are you doing?”

She smiles, catlike, and pulls a small black rectangle out of the handle. “Safety first, babe. I’m just unloading it.”

“Plot twist,” Aaron mutters.

“What, that I care about people not blowing their heads off?”

“No, that you know how guns work.”

Elody shrugs. “Grew up around them. Kind of comes with the whole trailer-trash thing.”

With a swift motion, she aims the barrel at my chest. My blood rushes. I know it’s unloaded, but still. She’s kind of terrifying. Elody laughs, clearly amused by my reaction.

“Can we put it somewhere safe for now?” I ask, trying to recover from that distinctly uncool moment. “And, you know, stop pointing it at people?”

“Any objections?” Corinne looks around the room, waiting. “Okay, then that’s settled. We put away the weapon of mass destruction.”

“Ugh. You guys are no fun.” Elody pouts, but she hands the gun over to Aaron, who puts it back where he found it in the closet.

Now that Elody’s not actually brandishing a weapon, I process what she just said. Trailer trash. It’s the second time she’s mentioned her childhood. Just now, she said it like a self-deprecating joke, but the way she pointed that gun … I wonder if there’s something darker there, some hurt she’s hiding.

A chorus of pings sounds through the room, and everything stops.

On my watch, there’s one new message from our Sponsor:

Now, what did I say about lying …

“We must have service again.” Corinne taps furiously at her watch.

Taking her cue, I type out a message to the Sponsor contact.

Where are you?

But when I press SEND, it fails. I hit RETRY, and then again. Nothing. I glance up to see a devastated look on Corinne’s face, like a mirror.

“It should be working,” she says. “I don’t—”

More pings cut her off as a new message hits each of our watches.

Time to vote

Which one of you is the liar?

There’s a link attached. I click on it, and it brings me to an app I don’t recognize, just a plain black screen with a box for inputting text. Another message:

Enter a name

You have 1 minute

A timer appears at the top of the screen, the seconds already disappearing. I feel a cold sweat break out under my shirt.

“I don’t think we should do this.” Kira’s eyes are dark with fear. “Something’s really wrong.”

“No shit,” Logan mumbles, but even she can’t muster her usual biting tone.

I look up at one of the cameras mounted on the wall. Are they watching us? But there’s no way. Because then they would know that Cole is dead, and they still haven’t sent help.

Another message whooshes in:

If you don’t vote, you’re canceled

Aaron starts to type, tongue poking out from the side of his mouth in concentration.

“What are you doing?” I ask, embarrassed by the panic in my own voice.

“Voting.” He gives a final tap. “I’ve seen horror movies. I don’t feel like waiting to find out what ‘canceled’ means.”

Corinne stands, walking closer to one of the cameras on the wall. She looks into the lens like she can see our anonymous Sponsor through it and asks slowly, “What does ‘canceled’ mean?”

I hold my breath, waiting for another ping to pierce the silence. But five seconds go by, then ten, and there’s nothing.

“Maybe they can’t hear us,” I say, relaxing slightly. If the messages were prescheduled somehow, then maybe the producers don’t know what happened yet. Maybe this is just the worst timing ever.

And then, a new message flashes. A screenshot of what looks like a computer desktop with ten folders, one with each of our names.

Let’s just say none of you are very good at keeping secrets;)

My mind is a film reel spinning to a stop.

Corinne looks up from her watch. “What the actual…”

“Is this supposed to be blackmail?” Logan erupts.

Graham drums his fingers on his thigh, frantic. “Thirty seconds. What do we do?”

“Vote, obviously,” Elody says, and then, seeing Graham’s shocked expression: “Do you want to wait and see what those folders are supposed to mean, babe?”

“We should do it.” Zane’s tone is calm, but there’s fear in his eyes. “It’s probably just another dumb challenge, anyway. I bet those folders are empty.”

He starts to type, and Graham and McKayleigh follow his lead. Logan gnaws on a thumbnail, staring at her screen with a haunted look. I look down at my own, mind buzzing. Who do I vote for?

Twenty seconds.

When I look up again, I find Kira staring. My breath catches. She bites her lip, glancing quickly up at the cameras and then back down at her watch. Wait, she’s not going to vote for me, is she? I thought we were starting to rebuild a shaky trust this morning, but now I’m not so sure.

Fifteen seconds.

People are starting to finish voting. I look around the group, the Sponsor’s question playing in my head on repeat. Which one of you is the liar? Most of them, probably. But …

McKayleigh catches me watching, her fingers freezing midtwist in her long red hair. I think of her refusal to answer the question earlier, her insistence that she’s an open book. Then, I think of the way she looked at Kira last night, like she was some sad little creature on the side of the road, hurt and helpless. Like Kira was beneath her.

It’s the exact same way that she’s looking at me right now.

I type out McKayleigh’s name as the timer hits ten seconds. I hesitate before pressing ENTER, gripped by the feeling that once I do, there’s no turning back.

Five seconds.

Does McKayleigh deserve to get canceled—whatever that means?

Four, three …

And then another thought hits me, dark and twisted: if I don’t vote for someone, the person getting canceled could be me.

Two …

I hit ENTER.

One.The timer goes off, sending a staticky feeling over my skin. My watch switches to a new screen, a graph with each of our names listed, bars growing as the votes get counted. Then, they stop, the results frozen.

My eyes go straight to my name in the middle of the page. Only one vote, thank god. I relax for half a second before anger starts to flare. One vote? I look at Kira, but she’s looking down at her screen, her fingers pressed against her mouth.

I check the rest of the graph. Graham has one vote, then Logan has two, and at the very top is McKayleigh, her bar stretching out for four votes. Wait, that’s only eight. Someone didn’t vote.

“Seriously, y’all?”

McKayleigh’s holier-than-thou tone confirms it right away: she’s the abstainer.

“Is this because someone planted the charger in my bag?” she asks. “I said I didn’t take it!”

Before anyone can argue with her, another message pings:

Time’s up

Now, I promised secrets, didn’t I?

Well bless your heart, McKayleigh, but it’s time to spill yours