The Games
the rage boiling my blood. I hate this goddamn city. Kali Norris Everything is worn pale grey, t’s Friday, so Lyla and I are sun-bleached like Lyla’s hair, going to the games. She wears the light off chainlink blinding, cutoffs and her most intimidat- but Lyla is always losing my sunglasses. ing smile. I hear the arena before I see it. It’s a reaction to the city, to the It’s broad daylight, but people world. When I was young and are hot and furious, and it’s not furious, I guess that made sense like we have anything better to to me. We leave the apartment, do anymore. I nearly stop at the Lyla waiting impatiently as I door, but the thought of what turn the deadbolts. I wear a sumLyla would say about me getting mer dress like maybe this isn’t squeamish after all these years happening. drives me forward. This is who I chose to be. We started going to the We games in high school started Inside it’s baking, but when we were just going to the downstairs it’s even two shitty kids games in high worse, the sun kilning near dropping out. school when we the packed bodies so It was something were just two it’s hotter than hell. to do. A reason to shitty kids near sneak out, a way to dropping Maybe it is hell, I think, lightheaded, following feel as wild and violent out. Lyla to the bar. as our lives, a way to feel like monsters or survivors. And She passes over a steel wire and then it just never really stopped. gets us two draughts of rotgut We went while Lyla was pretendin her flask, to be passed back ing she was going to make someand forth, as though any sort of thing of community college, and communion is situationally apwhen my parents got divorced, propriate. She slides to the front, and her brother died. She cried for three days, and then, after dodging elbows and bodies. It’s mostly men here, but there are the games, she was better. enough women I never worry It is a twenty-minute walk in the too much about being killed. At baking heat. It has to be push- the front there’s a man with a ing a hundred degrees, but what broken nose, just letting it bleed, else is new? Old men on stoops and it’s sending the creatures in whistle at us, and I start to be the pit into a frenzy. The first is ready for violence, the heat and small and sleek, almost like an ermine, but wider, serpentine,
I
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