The Winner's Game(47)

“Yeah, it’s really huge,” I tell her. “I bet if you squeezed it, it would squirt on the car window.”

“I hate you both!”

Ann isn’t as loud as Bree, but just as mean. “And I hate both of you more than either of you could ever imagine. I wish I was an only child.”

“Well, I wish…!” Bree is panting. She looks really mad. Like a rabid dog backed into a corner. She’s staring right at Ann. “I wish you were dead.” After saying it, she crosses her arms and turns away from us.

Mom’s got a really tight grip on the steering wheel, but she doesn’t make a peep. She’s mad, though. I can tell that. Honestly, I wish she’d just say something. I know from watching her and Dad that whenever she stops talking, it means she is going to have an even worse explosion later.

Not like fireworks, more like dynamite.

As we get closer to Cannon Beach, Mom surprises us by pulling off the highway at a state-park lookout spot just north of town. The place is pretty cool, actually. Mom and Dad brought us here once before to look at the cliffs. It has an awesome view of the ocean because it’s sort of a peninsula. From the right spot, you can see all the way down to Haystack Rock a couple miles away.

“What are we doing?” I ask.

“Get out,” orders Mom without looking at anyone.

For a second, I wonder if maybe Mom is so fed up with us that she wants to push us over the edge onto the jagged rocks below.

Nah, she’d never…

I quickly dismiss the idea and climb out to find that Mom is busy collecting rocks near the fence at the edge of the cliff. From the looks of it, she already has five or six of them in her hands, all roughly the same size. “Here,” she says, handing one to each of us. “We’re going to have a little contest. I want to see who can throw the farthest.”

“Why?” asks Bree.

“Because. It’s fun.” The way she says it, it doesn’t sound fun.

“I like contests,” says Ann, “because I like winning.” She weighs the rock in her hand, and then casually tosses it in the air. When she catches it, the look in her eye says that she really doesn’t want to lose to me or Bree. Not now. Not ever. In one quick motion she cocks her arm, and then lets the thing fly. It sails over some shrubs, then over the edge of the cliff, and eventually plunks down in the wet sand at the edge of the surf. “Beat that.”

Bree’s eyes are suddenly on fire and her face is red. She chucks her rock as far as she can, but it lands short of Ann’s.

“Weak,” Ann tells her, grinning.

“Are you referring to your heart? Or your brain?”

Now Ann’s face turns red, too, but she doesn’t reply.

“I’m gonna beat you both,” I tell them before I throw my rock. I may be younger than them, but I’m the only one who plays baseball. The edge of the water is less than the distance from outfield to home plate, and I’ve made that throw a hundred times. I give it my all, and just like I planned, my rock splashes down in the water behind the first wave, at least twenty feet beyond Ann’s.

“No way!” she yells angrily.

“You suck,” says Bree, talking to me.

“That was only round one,” says Mom as she shuffles along the fence and gives us each a new rock.

We quickly launch them again. Ann has enough strength to match my first throw, but my second one is better than hers by several feet. Bree’s reaches the water too, but is last again.

“One more time,” says Mom.

“Don’t try too hard,” whispers Bree while Ann is winding up. “Remember, your heart can’t take it.”

After hearing Bree’s comment, Ann hesitates at the last second, messing up the motion of her throw. Her rock doesn’t even reach the ocean.

Ann drops her hands to her side, knowing she will lose the round. “You’re such a jerk.”

Bree smirks. “I know you are, but what am I?”

“Did you really just say that? We used to say that in like second grade. Grow up, Bree.”

While the two of them are going at it, I take a run at the edge of the fence and throw as hard as I possibly can. My rock reaches the same distance as my last throw, which I assume will be enough to beat Bree’s.

My sister, however, is more determined than I gave her credit for. She sprints toward the cliff with a rock in hand, whips her arm as she reaches the fence, and then stops to watch the thing fly. Somehow—from either a gust of wind or sheer dumb luck—her final throw beats mine by a couple feet. “Ha!” she screams, pumping her fists in the air. “The ultimate champion!”

I lost? To her?