The Inheritance Games, page 1
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Cover art copyright © 2020 by Katt Phatt. Cover design by Karina Granda.
Cover copyright © 2020 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Barnes, Jennifer (Jennifer Lynn), author.
Title: The inheritance games / Jennifer Lynn Barnes.
Description: First edition. | New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2020. | Audience: Ages 12+ | Summary: “When a teen inherits vast wealth and an eccentric estate from the richest man in Texas, she must also live with his surviving family—a family hellbent on discovering just how she earned her inheritance”—Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019054648 | ISBN 9781368052405 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781368053242 (ebook) Subjects: CYAC: Inheritance and succession—Fiction. | Wealth—Fiction. | Puzzles—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.B26225 In 2020 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019054648
ISBNs: 978-1-368-05240-5 (hardcover), 978-1-368-05324-2 (ebook)
E3-20200801-JV-NF-ORI
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
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
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
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CHAPTER 1
When I was a kid, my mom constantly invented games. The Quiet Game. The Who Can Make Their Cookie Last Longer? Game. A perennial favorite, The Marshmallow Game involved eating marshmallows while wearing puffy Goodwill jackets indoors, to avoid turning on the heat. The Flashlight Game was what we played when the electricity went out. We never walked anywhere—we raced. The floor was nearly always lava. The primary purpose of pillows was building forts.
Our longest-lasting game was called I Have A Secret, because my mom said that everyone should always have at least one. Some days she guessed mine. Some days she didn’t. We played every week, right up until I was fifteen and one of her secrets landed her in the hospital.
The next thing I knew, she was gone.
“Your move, princess.” A gravelly voice dragged me back to the present. “I don’t have all day.”
“Not a princess,” I retorted, sliding one of my knights into place. “Your move, old man.”
Harry scowled at me. I didn’t know how old he was, really, and I had no idea how he’d come to be homeless and living in the park where we played chess each morning. I did know that he was a formidable opponent.
“You,” he grumbled, eyeing the board, “are a horrible person.”
Three moves later, I had him. “Checkmate. You know what that means, Harry.”
He gave me a dirty look. “I have to let you buy me breakfast.” Those were the terms of our long-standing bet. When I won, he couldn’t turn down the free meal.
To my credit, I only gloated a little. “It’s good to be queen.”
I made it to school on time but barely. I had a habit of cutting things close. I walked the same tightrope with my grades: How little effort could I put in and still get an A? I wasn’t lazy. I was practical. Picking up an extra shift was worth trading a 98 for a 92.
I was in the middle of drafting an English paper in Spanish class when I was called to the office. Girls like me were supposed to be invisible. We didn’t get summoned for sit-downs with the principal. We made exactly as much trouble as we could afford to make, which in my case was none.
“Avery.” Principal Altman’s greeting was not what one would call warm. “Have a seat.”
I sat.
He folded his hands on the desk between us. “I assume you know why you’re here.”
Unless this was about the weekly poker game I’d been running in the parking lot to finance Harry’s breakfasts—and sometimes my own—I had no idea what I’d done to draw the administration’s attention. “Sorry,” I said, trying to sound sufficiently meek, “but I don’t.”
Principal Altman let me sit with my response for a moment, then presented me with a stapled packet of paper. “This is the physics test you took yesterday.”
“Okay,” I said. That wasn’t the response he was looking for, but it was all I had. For once, I’d actually studied. I couldn’t imagine I’d done badly enough to merit intervention.
“Mr. Yates graded the tests, Avery. Yours was the only perfect score.”
“Great,” I said, in a deliberate effort to keep myself from saying okay again.
“Not great, young lady. Mr. Yates intentionally creates exams that challenge the abilities of his students. In twenty years, he’s never given a perfect score. Do you see the problem?”
I couldn’t quite bite back my instinctive reply. “A teacher who designs tests most of his students can’t pass?”
Mr. Altman narrowed his eyes. “You’re a good student, Avery. Quite good, given your circumstances. But you don’t exactly have a history of setting the curve.”
That was fair, so why did I feel like he’d gut-punched me?
“I am not without sympathy for your situation,” Principal Altman continued, “but I need you to be straight with me here.” He locked his eyes onto mine. “Were you aware that Mr. Yates keeps copies of all his exams on the cloud?” He thought I’d cheated. He was sitting there, staring me down, and I’d never felt less seen. “I’d like to help you, Avery. You’ve done extremely well, given the hand life has dealt you. I would hate to see any plans you might have for the future derailed.”
“Any plans I might have?” I repeated. If I’d had a different last name, if I’d had a dad who was a dentist and a mom who stayed home, he wouldn’t have acted like the future was something I might have thought about. “I’m a junior,” I gri
Mr. Altman frowned. “Actuarial science?”
“Statistical risk assessment.” It was the closest I could come to double-majoring in poker and math. Besides, it was one of the most employable majors on the planet.
“Are you a fan of calculated risks, Ms. Grambs?”
Like cheating? I couldn’t let myself get any angrier. Instead, I pictured myself playing chess. I marked out the moves in my mind. Girls like me didn’t get to explode. “I didn’t cheat.” I said calmly. “I studied.”
I’d scraped together time—in other classes, between shifts, later at night than I should have stayed up. Knowing that Mr. Yates was infamous for giving impossible tests had made me want to redefine possible. For once, instead of seeing how close I could cut it, I’d wanted to see how far I could go.
And this was what I got for my effort, because girls like me didn’t ace impossible exams.
“I’ll take the test again,” I said, trying not to sound furious, or worse, wounded. “I’ll get the same grade again.”
“And what would you say if I told you that Mr. Yates had prepared a new exam? All new questions, every bit as difficult as the first.”
I didn’t even hesitate. “I’ll take it.”
“That can be arranged tomorrow during third period, but I have to warn you that this will go significantly better for you if—”
“Now.”
Mr. Altman stared at me. “Excuse me?”
Forget sounding meek. Forget being invisible. “I want to take the new exam right here, in your office, right now.”
CHAPTER 2
Rough day?” Libby asked. My sister was seven years older than me and way too empathetic for her own good—or mine.
“I’m fine,” I replied. Recounting my trip to Altman’s office would only have worried her, and until Mr. Yates graded my second test there was nothing anyone could do. I changed the subject. “Tips were good tonight.”
“How good?” Libby’s sense of style resided somewhere between punk and goth, but personality-wise, she was the kind of eternal optimist who believed a hundred-dollar-tip was always just around the corner at a hole-in-the-wall diner where most entrees cost $6.99.
I pressed a wad of crumpled singles into her hand. “Good enough to help make rent.”
Libby tried to hand the money back, but I moved out of reach before she could. “I will throw this cash at you,” she warned sternly.
I shrugged. “I’d dodge.”
“You’re impossible.” Libby grudgingly put the money away, produced a muffin tin out of nowhere, and fixed me with a look. “You will accept this muffin to make it up to me.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I went to take it from her outstretched hand, but then I looked past her to the counter and realized she’d baked more than muffins. There were also cupcakes. I felt my stomach plummet. “Oh no, Lib.”
“It’s not what you think,” Libby promised. She was an apology cupcake baker. A guilty cupcake baker. A please-don’t-be-mad-at-me cupcake baker.
“Not what I think?” I repeated softly. “So he’s not moving back in?”
“It’s going to be different this time,” Libby promised. “And the cupcakes are chocolate!”
My favorite.
“It’s never going to be different,” I said, but if I’d been capable of making her believe that, she’d have believed it already.
Right on cue, Libby’s on-again, off-again boyfriend—who had a fondness for punching walls and extolling his own virtues for not punching Libby—strolled in. He snagged a cupcake off the counter and let his gaze rake over me. “Hey, jailbait.”
“Drake,” Libby said.
“I’m kidding.” Drake smiled. “You know I’m kidding, Libby-mine. You and your sister just need to learn how to take a joke.”
One minute in, and he was already making us the problem. “This is not healthy,” I told Libby. He hadn’t wanted her to take me in—and he’d never stopped punishing her for it.
“This is not your apartment,” Drake shot back.
“Avery’s my sister,” Libby insisted.
“Half sister,” Drake corrected, and then he smiled again. “Joking.”
He wasn’t, but he also wasn’t wrong. Libby and I shared an absent father, but had different moms. We’d only seen each other once or twice a year growing up. No one had expected her to take custody of me two years earlier. She was young. She was barely scraping by. But she was Libby. Loving people was what she did.
“If Drake’s staying here,” I told her quietly, “then I’m not.”
Libby picked up a cupcake and cradled it in her hands. “I’m doing the best I can, Avery.”
She was a people pleaser. Drake liked putting her in the middle. He used me to hurt her.
I couldn’t just wait around for the day he stopped punching walls.
“If you need me,” I told Libby, “I’ll be living in my car.”
CHAPTER 3
My ancient Pontiac was a piece of junk, but at least the heater worked. Mostly. I parked at the diner, around the back, where no one would see me. Libby texted, but I couldn’t bring myself to text back, so I ended up just staring at my phone instead. The screen was cracked. My data plan was practically nonexistent, so I couldn’t go online, but I did have unlimited texts.
Besides Libby, there was exactly one person in my life worth texting. I kept my message to Max short and sweet: You-know-who is back.
There was no immediate response. Max’s parents were big on “phone-free” time and confiscated hers frequently. They were also infamous for intermittently monitoring her messages, which was why I hadn’t named Drake and wouldn’t type a word about where I was spending the night. Neither the Liu family nor my social worker needed to know that I wasn’t where I was supposed to be.
Setting my phone down, I glanced at my backpack in the passenger seat, but decided that the rest of my homework could wait for morning. I laid my seat back and closed my eyes but couldn’t sleep, so I reached into the glove box and retrieved the only thing of value that my mother had left me: a stack of postcards. Dozens of them. Dozens of places we’d planned to go together.
Hawaii. New Zealand. Machu Picchu. Staring at each of the pictures in turn, I imagined myself anywhere but here. Tokyo. Bali. Greece. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been lost in thought when my phone beeped. I picked it up and was greeted by Max’s response to my message about Drake.
That mother-faxer. And then, a moment later: Are you okay?
Max had moved away the summer after eighth grade. Most of our communication was written, and she refused to write curse words, lest her parents see them.
So she got creative.
I’m fine, I wrote back, and that was all the impetus she needed to unleash her righteous fury on my behalf.
THAT FAXING CHIPHEAD CAN GO STRAIGHT TO ELF AND EAT A BAG OF DUCKS!!!
A second later, my phone rang. “Are you really okay?” Max asked when I answered.
I looked back down at the postcards in my lap, and the muscles in my throat tightened. I would make it through high school. I’d apply for every scholarship I qualified for. I’d get a marketable degree that allowed me to work remotely and paid me well.
I’d travel the world.
I let out a long, jagged breath, and then answered Max’s question. “You know me, Maxine. I always land on my feet.”
CHAPTER 4
The next day, I paid a price for sleeping in my car. My whole body ached, and I had to shower after gym, because paper towels in the bathroom at the diner could only go so far. I didn’t have time to dry my hair, so I arrived at my next class sopping wet. It wasn’t my best look, but I’d gone to school with the same kids my whole life. I was wallpaper.
No one was looking.
“Romeo and Juliet is littered with proverbs—small, pithy bits of wisdom that make a statement about the way the world and human nature work.” My English teacher was young and earnest, and I deeply suspected she’d had too much coffee. “Let’s take a step back from Shakespeare. Who can give me an example of an everyday proverb?”
Beggars can’t be choosers, I thought, my head pounding and water droplets dripping down my back. Necessity is the mother of invention. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
