Played

This Game Is Getting All Too Real

Sam Tracy likes to stay under the radar and hang out with his friends from the Rez. But when he saves rich suburban princess Riley Berenger from falling off a mountain, she decides to try to save him. Riley promises to help Sam win the heart of the girl he can’t get over, and suddenly Sam is mad popular and on everyone’s hot list. Except now Riley’s trying out some brand-new bad-girl moves and turning both of their lives upside down.

PRAISE FOR LIZ FICHERA’S YA DEBUT

HOOKED

“Fred is a likable heroine, both loyal to her community and determined to create a different life for herself….The high level of emotional drama will appeal to fans of contemporary teen romances, and readers with a special interest in books with Native American characters will be interested in the raw clash of cultures depicted in an Arizona community.”

—Booklist

“This is Fichera’s debut teen novel, and she immerses the reader in the culture of the Southwestern Native American way of life.”

—VOYA magazine

“I love Fred—she’s sporty, smart, stands up for herself and goes after what she wants.”

—Miranda Kenneally, author of Catching Jordan and Stealing Parker

“From the very first pages, this powerful story about the fight for tolerance, equality, understanding and love will have you ‘hooked.’”

—Megan Bostic, author of Never Eighteen

“I love this book so much!…Now that I’ve read it, I can say it’s one of my favourites I’ve read this year…It’s like Perfect Chemistry (one of my fave books ever!) and Catching Jordan and golf!”

—Jana, The Book Goddess

“Honestly, I did not understand what I was getting myself into when I picked up this book. It was crazy amazing! I was intrigued by the story because it was a new idea to me. It was great and I would recommend it to anyone who wants something cute that is a little bit different.”

—Gabie, Owl Eyes Reviews

“Hooked is exactly the right title for this one, because hooked is what I was from page one on. Liz Fichera has written a masterpiece about the troubles of high school, acceptance and how to be yourself.”

—Erica, The Book Cellar

“Hooked is one of the best contemporary YA novels that I’ve read since Pushing the Limits. It is a stunning story about what happens when two people from opposite ends of life fall for each other….Fichera’s words are compelling and gorgeous, creating a truly fantastic novel.”

—Bailey, I B Book Blogging

Books by Liz Fichera

available from Mira Ink

HOOKED

PLAYED

Played

Liz Fichera

www.miraink.co.uk

For Craig

Contents

Epigraph

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Acknowledgments

Discussion Questions

We know what we are,

but know not what we may be.

—William Shakespeare

1

Riley

Being the good daughter wasn’t easy.

First there was the guilt that gnawed at my self-esteem like a leech whenever I didn’t live up to my parents’ expectations. That guilt could be triggered by the smallest of things. Like when I snapped at Mom before school because I was late and she didn’t appreciate my lipstick shade, and she looked back at me with wide eyes as if wondering whether I was her real daughter or an imposter from outer space. Or when I pulled a B on a chemistry test (my least favorite subject) instead of the A Mom and Dad wanted. For the rest of the day, my anxiety was on overdrive.

Second, because I’ve had to overcompensate for my loser older brother for, like, ever, old habits were hard to break. The worse he behaved, the better I behaved, because I was the Designated Good Daughter, remember? So when Ryan would come home reeking of cigarettes and beer, or sometimes not at all, and Dad would corner me about him in the family room, I’d make excuses for him. “He had to go upstairs” or “He’s getting a cold” were my standbys as I feigned interest in whatever was playing on television. Being the perfect daughter, I got away with my little white lies, and my parents overlooked my brother’s shortcomings. It was easier that way. And even though Ryan had recently achieved Good Son status thanks to his new girlfriend, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had to continue to be the glue that kept my family together.

Which was why it made no sense that I’d been going out of my way the past few months to be the Undesignated Bad Daughter. It was like there was another person inside of me with her hands on the controls, pushing my arms and legs, my mouth. My brain. She was definitely stronger than the normal, good me. But this strong part of me kept my confused and frustrated parts together, the ones that I tried to keep hidden from everybody.

You see, being the good daughter wasn’t something I wanted. It was just the way the universe arranged things. No rhyme or reason. I’d give anything for a do-over, a chance at some normalcy. A chance to make mistakes and not always feel like bad behavior meant I deserved banishment to a black vortex.

“Just one teeny prick, Riley. Maybe two, at most. Between your eyebrows. You’ll never feel a thing,” Drew said. “It’ll make you look hot.” Drew Zuniga had been in dance club with me at Lone Butte High School since freshman year. She was pretty much my only friend, but I was a quality-over-quantity kind of girl—at least, that’s what I told myself. It made my friend situation seem Zen instead of serving as reminder that I wasn’t very popular, despite having a popular older brother. We had gotten into the habit of chilling at her house after dance practice. It totally beat walking home, especially during the hotter months which, in Phoenix, Arizona, was pretty much every month. And walking was for freshman. The best part was that Drew had gotten a car for her sixteenth birthday and could ferry us around. I had to wait three more months before I’d get to pick out my own car, which was as good as waiting for forever. Today we were standing in her bathroom as I watched her point a clear syringe-like thingy at my face. It was freaky crazy, actually, but Drew was my friend. I trusted her.

The syringe was filled with some type of BOTOX concoction, pilfered from her dad’s medicine cabinet. Dr. Zuniga was a plastic surgeon and brought home BOTOX injections for Mrs. Zuniga, who, in her defense, did look like she could fit in with the popular seniors at our school. From a distance, at least.

“But this is creepy.” I leaned away from the shiny pointy end as far as the edge of the bathroom counter would allow. “You don’t even know what you’re doing.”

“Sure I do!” Her brown eyes widened with indignation. “I’ve watched my dad do it a ton. One time I even practiced on an orange. It’s just a tiny prick.” She paused. “And one time my dad even did it on me. Right here.” She pointed to her chin.

“No way.”

“Way. See how smooth the skin feels?”

I squinted at her chin. It did look a little different, maybe rounder. Softer. It might have been my imagination but I thought Drew’s chin used to look square. Like a boy’s. “But this stuff is supposed to be for moms. With wrinkles,” I said.

“And you’ve got a few already, I hate to tell you, chica.” Drew’s eyes swept over my face in full I’m-not-really-a-dermatologist-but-I-play-one-on-TV mode.

“Where?” I turned toward the mirror.

“Right there.” She pointed to the skin between my eyebrows, which, okay, had a few stray blond hairs that needed plucking.

“Those are freckles.” I frowned at her. Teeny orangey-brown spots dotted my forehead like a dartboard.

Drew ignored me. “It’ll tighten that skin right up. This stuff is totally preventative. You’ll see.”

I swallowed as my knees weakened. I could use a little help, that much was certain, but would it make me look pretty? Jenna Gibbons-pretty? Jenna Gibbons was without a doubt the most gorgeous girl in our sophomore class. To make matters worse for every other girl at school, she had a twin sister, Jeniel, who looked exactly like her but wasn’t as outgoing—which was a good thing, because two perfect Jennas on the planet would be more than any girl could handle. With their wavy black hair and killer blue eyes, the twins could seriously be teen models. Why did some girls have all the luck? “But won’t it leave a scar?” I said, weakening beneath Drew’s unrelenting gaze.

“No scars. It’ll just leave a little red mark. Like an ant bite. It’ll be gone by tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” My voice rose. “What about tonight? My mom will freak.”

Drew’s eyes rolled. “Your mom will be at work, like always.” Her hand—the one holding the syringe—lowered.

I swallowed again. Drew had a point. No one would see me. Dad would work late on a case or a trial like always, too. Ryan would be at Fred’s house, where he was living practically 24/7. (By the way, Fred was a girl. Fred was short for Fredricka, but Fred hated her name and insisted everyone call her Fred—and who could blame her? She had an old-lady name, even though she was one of the coolest junior girls at school, in my opinion.)

Besides, I’d overheard Shelley McMahon say at lunch that other girls at school had tried BOTOX, even Jenna Gibbons. That was why I remembered. That was why I was standing in Drew’s enormous bathroom, pressed against the double marble sinks, inches from a sadistic-looking syringe, squinting into about one hundred obnoxiously steaming-hot vanity lights. Maybe there was something to this BOTOX frenzy? And maybe feeling pretty was just as important as being pretty. “Okay,” I heard myself say. “Do it. Between my eyes. Just once.”

Drew flashed a triumphant smile, her thumb ready at the end of the pump. “Trust me, after you see what this will do, you’ll be begging for more.”

“Won’t your dad notice it missing?”

She shrugged. “He hasn’t so far.”

Then she positioned the syringe inches above my forehead.

I sucked in a breath.

“Lean back,” she said, reaching for my neck with her other hand.

Every nerve, muscle and brain cell in my body told me that this was stupid and wrong, but I wasn’t in control. It was that other girl inside of me, the fiercer, spunkier one who’d been calling the shots—no pun intended—lately. That voice inside my head kept telling me that I needed to be cooler, more spontaneous. Different. Definitely different. So I leaned back, closed my eyes, tilted my head and begged for different.

“Ouch,” I said when the needle pierced my skin, freezing my forehead like it’d been doused with dry ice. Then the feeling spread to the rest of my face. “This so better be worth it,” I said to Drew through gritted teeth.

Drew took a step back, still holding the syringe in her right hand. She reached inside a jar on the counter that was stuffed with cotton balls.

“It feels like my forehead is on fire.”

She dabbed my skin with one of the cotton balls and some other liquid that I couldn’t see. “Don’t worry. It doesn’t last.” She took a step back, still studying me, and tossed her ponytail over her shoulder.

“Better not. I’ve got the leadership conference this weekend.”

Drew frowned. “Good gawd! Total dorkdom, Riley. You might as well wave the white flag on your social life right now.”

“And what social life would that be?” I didn’t bother hiding my sarcasm. Besides, it wasn’t as though Drew had a better social life than I did. Otherwise, why would she be hanging out with me? “It’s my parents’ fault. They’re making me go,” I added, which was a complete lie. “And it looks good on college applications.” Now that was true. It was pretty hard to get into the Art Institute of Chicago—that was my dream—so I figured I’d need all the help I could get, especially since I was kind of mediocre at anything besides art classes, at least as far as my grade point average was concerned.

“Whatever.”

I ignored her frown.

But then Drew smiled. She finally said what I longed to hear. What I never heard. “You look different already.”

I wanted to believe her. No, scratch that. I needed to believe her. It gave me hope. It lifted weight off my shoulders. For a moment, it was as if my life had real possibilities. Potential. Magic.

Welcome to the inside of my crazy head.

2

Sam

My buddy Peter and I hitched a ride in the bed of Martin Ellis’s pickup. Martin drove and Vernon Parker called shotgun. There was a party tonight somewhere near the Estrella foothills. When you lived way out on the Rez like we did, sometimes that was as close to real excitement as you got.

Going out beat the alternative, which was stay home, watch my grandmother weave baskets on the front stoop and pretend that my heart hadn’t been pulverized into a thousand pieces.

Martin’s truck chugged its way along a single-lane dirt road. The sun had already begun to set and by the time we reached the foothills, the sky would be as black as a bruise. Someone would have already started a campfire and (hopefully) someone else would have brought beer—just a can or two apiece, but that was probably all that anybody could sneak from home.

Peter and I clung to the sides of the truck as Martin charged up and out of bumpy washes that snaked across the Sonoran Desert. Peter was another Rez kid and a junior at Lone Butte High like me. Despite being fifty pounds lighter, he was as tall as I was. That’s why our legs kept knocking whenever Martin sped like a madman over the washes. Across the truck bed, Peter kept giving me the stink eye from behind his wire-rimmed glasses, even as his glasses kept slipping down his nose.

“Stop it,” he yelled over the grind of the engine.

“Stop what?” I yelled back, tasting a thin layer of dust on my lips.

He shook his head. “Stop thinking about it.” Peter and Martin were the only ones I’d told, but I was pretty sure everyone on the Rez knew. Even though the Gila River Indian Reservation stretched forever in just about every direction, it was microscopic, if you know what I mean. Sometimes the biggest places could be the tiniest.

I shrugged and looked away from Peter, preferring to stare across miles of brown desert and dried tumbleweeds as if it were the most exciting scenery in the whole world.

As usual, Martin continued to drive like a maniac. Frankly, I was surprised his old man’s truck could do more than thirty-five. If the truck were a hospital patient, someone would definitely be reading it its last rites.

I turned away from Peter and focused on the wake of dust that swirled like a minitornado behind us in the darkening sky. If Peter referred to That Which Shouldn’t Be Named one more time, I was seriously thinking about ripping off a truck panel. It was bad enough that Peter even thought it. But he surprised me.

“I can’t believe you’re gonna bail on us this weekend.”

I breathed easier and looked at him. “I know. Can’t help it. My mom wants me to go.” Total lie. My parents, my dad especially, had stopped being interested in what I did at school ever since I’d started going to Lone Butte High. Not sure why, exactly. But it was better for all of us when they stayed out of my business. Besides, they both worked all the time at the casino on the Rez and Mom was studying for her master’s degree whenever she wasn’t working, so it was probably easier that they didn’t have to worry about me. One less hassle.

“Why don’t you tell her that you don’t want to go? Martin, Vernon and me, we’re gonna drive down to Coolidge. Supposed to be a fair in town or something. Maybe even a rodeo.” His eyebrows wiggled. “Maybe even hot rodeo queens.”

“You wish,” I said.

“A dude can dream. What else I got?”

I laughed. But then I dragged my tongue across my lips, tasting more dust. “Too late for me, anyway,” I said. “Already paid for it.” Another lie.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.” What I didn’t share was that Lone Butte High School had paid my registration fee to the Maricopa County High School Leadership Conference. They’d paid the fees for the two sophomores, two juniors and two seniors with the highest GPAs. I happened to be one of the two juniors. Sucks to be the other sixty students who were invited but had to pay out of their own pockets. Now all I had to do was show up to school tomorrow morning and board the bus. It would get me to Monday and put about 250 miles of desert between me and the Rez.

“What do you want with some leadership bullshit?” Peter said. “You need someone to tell you what you already know?”

I swallowed. The truth? I really didn’t know. My guidance counselor at school, Mr. Romero, had told me about it. He’d said things like conferences and awards looked good on college applications. He’d said I had to be more of a game player, especially since there was a good chance I was going to graduate early and colleges were already starting to inquire about me. Me. Sam Tracy, the smart kid from the Rez. Unfortunately I stunk at playing games. Just give me something in black-and-white, minus the sugarcoating. Minus the doublespeak.

A part of me knew I couldn’t stay in-state, and I think Mr. Romero would just about blow a gasket if I didn’t apply to college, not when my SATs were among the highest in Arizona. Too bad that looking good on paper was more important than simply being smart enough.

I closed my eyes and tried to ignore Peter, even as he teased me for the rest of the ride about being the biggest nerd on the Rez. It was probably true.

Peter was lucky he was one of my best friends. Otherwise I would have tossed him out of the truck, which was pretty easy to do when you were my size.

3

Riley

Mom dropped me off in the Lone Butte High School parking lot early Saturday morning with my overnight bag. The sun was still rising over the horizon, bright as an orange slice. Small bonus: Mom had just gotten off her hospital shift and her red-rimmed eyes were clouded with fatigue, one of the drawbacks to being a doctor, but a major advantage when you didn’t want her to notice stuff. It helped that we had to drive into the sun. That was probably why she hadn’t commented about my fave tie-dyed pink baseball cap being tugged superlow over my forehead. I had to hide the results of Doctor Drew’s secret BOTOX concoction handiwork. I was lucky it hadn’t turned into an infection or a rash or worse. It looked like a couple of ant bites, just as Drew had warned me. She’d conveniently forgotten to tell me, though, that my forehead would feel like plastic. Whenever I wrinkled my nose, my forehead stayed as frozen as stone. Most people wouldn’t notice, but most people weren’t my mom.

“When should I pick you up?” Mom yawned as I opened the passenger door of her Mercedes. Two yellow school buses waited next to the curb, their engines idling. Students had already begun to board. I recognized a few from Lone Butte, a couple sophomores and juniors, but nobody that I knew well. Most of the ones that I didn’t recognize were from other Phoenix schools. One guy was actually wearing a cowboy hat so I figured him for Queen Creek, way out in the boondocks where people still had ranches and dairy farms. Kind of lanky-cute in a Jake Gyllenhaal way.

“Tomorrow night,” I said. “We’re supposed to be back here by six.”

“What time did your brother get home last night?” she asked, her eyes narrowing with newfound sharpness.

I pulled the rim of my cap even lower. “Not late,” I lied. “Probably around ten.” Another lie. More like midnight.

Mom smiled, just like I’d known she would. “Good. Well, have a good time. Where are you going again?”

“Woods Canyon,” I said, but the door had already shut. I had left all the brochures and information about the leadership conference on the kitchen counter, perfectly stapled and organized with pink paperclips and Post-it notes, and, seriously? She’d signed my registration form two weeks ago, so it wasn’t like she didn’t already know. I didn’t want to have this conversation with people staring at us from the bus windows. That was kind of why I didn’t wave, either. I mean, it wasn’t like she was dropping me off for my first day of kindergarten or anything.

Life would be so much better when I got my own car.

Instead, I pulled out my cell phone from my pocket and fired off a text while I walked to the bus:

The conf is @ Woods Canyon. Info on the kitchen counter. Bye. Love u.

I hoped she got the message. Mom didn’t totally get texting and hated that she had to pull out her reading glasses to see the keys. But I wasn’t going to call her when I was within spitting distance from the bus. Even though the windows were tinted, I could see the outlines of faces staring down at me and I was a little distressed to see that almost every seat, at least on the parking lot side, was taken.

Two seconds later, Mom surprised me with a reply: Okay. Have a nice time. Love you back. Always. Mom

Mom always signed her texts Mom as if I didn’t know it was her.

I reached the front of the bus and drew back a steadying breath. Maybe going to this conference was a lame idea, after all. I mean, what normal teenager goes to a leadership conference on a perfectly good Saturday? I should be at the mall with Drew.

I hoisted my bag higher on my shoulder. It wasn’t really a backpack but it wasn’t luggage, either. It happened to match my pink baseball cap. Pink, in case you hadn’t noticed, was my all-time favorite color. Given the choice of pink and anything else, I always went pink. Cheesy, I know, but the color was one of the few things in my life that made me happy. Whenever I saw shades of pink, I smiled inside. I kept waiting to graduate to a more mature color preference, like blue or retro green, but it just wasn’t happening. Maybe when I left for college.

Scott Jin stood at the bus door with a clipboard. His eyes dropped to his sheet when he saw me, presumably to find my name. Scott knew me through my brother, like most upperclassman. I think he may have been on the golf team with Ryan before he traded golf for Math Club and Debate, but he always dressed like he was ready to play—brown shorts with perfect creases and golf shirts buttoned right up to his neck. “Riley Berenger,” he said, very official-like, without looking at me. “You’re in bus number one. This one.” He pointed to the door with a blue pen.