Tightrope

Ready or Not

"54... 53... 52... 51..."

I whirled around, my eyes scanning the terrain. "Fuck, shit, fuck, shit."

There were not as many places to hide in a public park as one might think. I mean, there was the classics; trees, bushes, or, if you were Knight and had clearly been dropped on your head as a baby, lying flat on your face in the middle of the grass and hoping you simply wouldn't be seen.

"What are you doing?" I demanded.

"If you can't see them, they can't see you," Knight recited. I raised an eyebrow. He was lying about five feet behind the counting Daria, and his black t-shirt wasn't exactly high-tech camo. "Besides, I wanted to stay close to the food." He stretched an arm out and grabbed a grape.

"Well, I refuse to be roped in with you," I said, searching for somewhere to hide. It would surprise no one that I was a slightly competitive person, and I had no interest in coming anywhere but first place.

"32... 31... 30..." called Daria, spinning in slow circles as she counted.

Hide and seek was perhaps not the most mature, grown-up game for teenagers to play, but everyone had seemed rather on board with the plan when Daria suggested it might be fun and offered to count first. I thought I would be awesome at it; I'd played with Alec, Kaelin, Harry, Liv, Austin and the rest of my cousins weekly as a child, but apparently, I'd just known all of the hiding places at her country retreat and did not simply have a hidden talent for, well, hiding.

I could spy the edge of Jonah's coat hanging from a tree branch—he was clearly perched amongst the leaves, and would likely be spotted immediately. Clearly, once he'd seen Knight's awful position, he realized effort was not required to avoid being the next seeker. I couldn't see any of the others.

"Ugh, shit," I cursed, jogging away from Daria as she reached the teen numbers with a nervous energy my gut. "Shitty, shitty ball sacks."

Bushes? Too obvious. Tree? Pathetic. Car boot? Out of the agreed upon perimeter.

There were limited spots within the confines of the agreed upon space. The greenery was an option, but not one that guaranteed, or at least semi-secured, a hide and seek victory. The rest of the terrain was made up of an old toilet block, a wooden gamekeeper's shack that I'd seen Callie duck behind earlier and other families and wine aunts gathered in their own picnic lunches. This was the route that Alex appeared to have taken, given I could see him wearing an awfully excessive sunhat, feminine sunglasses and a borrowed floral cardigan, clinking wine glasses for a boomerang.

Given I had spotted him immediately, it seemed that hiding place was far more related to flirting with thirty-year-old women than actually winning the game.

Daria's voice was singsong. "24... 23... 22..."

"Psst, Lena."

I turned towards the sound of the voice, which appeared to be coming from the old toilet block, but there was no one in sight, as if the voice had manifested from thin air. "Peeta Mellark?" I whispered back.

Jace's head popped over the top of the toilet block. He was on the roof. "What the fuck?"

I grinned up at him. "He's the master of camouflage, Jace. If we're going to be friends, I need you to get snappy on this Hunger Games trivia."

"10... 9..."

Jace waved at me impatiently. "Yeah, okay, done. Just get your ass up here. There's a gas cupboard round the back that you can climb."

I rounded the side of the old toilet blocks. They were run-down and filthy on the inside, as was customary for a local shit station that was likely cleaned only semi-regularly and was outfitted with metal toilets. As I walked past the men's bathroom, it smelt faintly of weed and had a suspiciously yellow-tinted puddle at the entrance. My nose wrinkled with distaste.