The Grandest Game

Rohan proposes that he and Savannah work together in the next phase of the competition. Once they’ve eliminated the other players, they’ll dissolve their alliance and compete against one another. They pass through a mirrored hallway into a room containing an area for fencing, a rock wall, and a large whiteboard on which is a maze with three endpoints. At each endpoint is a game: tic tac toe, hangman, and checkers. Savannah scales the rock wall while Rohan examines the fencing sabers. She tells him that if he wants an alliance, he must hand over the longsword he has been carrying since the beginning of the challenge. She opens the silk fan; inside, it says “SURRENDER” (295). Suddenly, the power goes out, plunging them into darkness.

Lyra stands in darkness, mulling over Grayson’s words. Odette angrily comments that cutting the power without warning is unfair but typical of the Hawthornes. Grayson argues that if the outage were planned, there would have been clues that it was coming. Odette concedes the point. Since the mechanisms that control the various doors all require power, she suggests that someone unknown may have intentionally trapped them all.

Knox tells Gigi to stay still so that she won’t get hurt. He drops through the trapdoor, and she can indistinctly hear him arguing with Brady in the library below. Gigi thinks of the listening device she still wears around her neck. She thinks it’s likely that some outsider is on the island and has cut the power, and she says into the bug, “I know you’re out there” (301). A voice answers back, “No, sunshine, you don’t” (301).

Rohan notices that Savannah isn’t searching for a flashlight and realizes that she’s sure the outage isn’t part of the game. He accuses her of playing the game for a sponsor—one who somehow engineered the power outage. He hints that if she doesn’t accept his offer of an alliance, he’ll reveal this information to their hosts. Savannah points out that they’re far more likely to believe her than him. They return their attention to the game. When Rohan opens the birthday card, he recognizes the music it plays as “Clair de Lune.” The translation of the song’s title, “Moonlight,” gives him an idea. He asks Savannah to slowly close the fan. With his fingers on the embroidered letters, he realizes that “surrender becomes sunder” (306). Savannah finally agrees to an alliance with him, and they use the longsword to cut the fan apart.

Odette points out that if Hawthorne Island has another fire like the one that happened there many years ago, they’ll be trapped. Referring to Grayson and Lyra, she says that because once again “[a] Hawthorne and a girl who has every reason to stay away from the Hawthornes” (309) are on the island, that fear isn’t unreasonable. Lyra has a strange feeling that Odette’s remarks somehow relate to her father’s death. Lyra says aloud, “A Hawthorne did this” (309), and Odette asks whether those were her father’s exact words. Before Lyra can find out why Odette asked the question, Odette has a seizure. While they tend to her, the lights come back on. Lyra wants to push the emergency button, but Odette negates the idea. Lyra then suggests that it’s time to take their team’s hint.

Gigi is shocked by the words she just heard. A year ago, she encountered an attractive but dangerous man who used the code name “Mimosas.” He called her “sunshine,” and she thinks this is the same person. He claimed to know her half-brother, Grayson, and knew secrets about their family an outsider shouldn’t know. Grayson later told her to stay away from the man. Brady comes to tell Gigi that Knox pressed the hint button, and she goes back down into the library. She learns that to earn the hint, their team must open a puzzle box. Fortunately, puzzle boxes are one of her specialties.

Tearing apart the fan doesn’t help Rohan and Savannah in any way, but they have better luck when they find that one of the lint roller sheets has some spots that aren’t sticky. They dump the glitter onto this sheet and read the message “KING ME” (316). When they flip the checkers on the checkerboard over to “king” them, the game and the wall behind it split to reveal a locked door. They’re prompted for an audio code. Rohan opens the birthday card and it plays its song. The door opens, revealing the rocky shore of the island.

To earn their team’s hint, Lyra, Grayson, and Odette must draw one another and enter their drawings into a scanner. Grayson draws Lyra and scans the drawing. Lyra draws Odette. Odette tells them both to remember that love is “a gift and a comfort and a curse” (321). When it’s Odette’s turn to draw Grayson, she draws a calla lily instead. Lyra is shocked because in her dream about her father’s death, she’s always holding a calla lily.

Gigi fights against thoughts of Brady, Knox, and Mimosas, trying to focus on the many steps of solving the puzzle box. When she finally opens its central compartment, she finds two cotton balls and a note saying, “USE THEM” (325).

Rohan and Savannah make it to the still-empty docks. She challenges him to another “Truth or Dare,” and (already sure that he knows what she’ll ask) Rohan chooses truth. She asks what the secret society he works for is called, and he answers truthfully. In return, he asks her why she’s really playing the Grandest Game. She answers, “Revenge” (328).

Lyra tells Odette that she doesn’t understand what’s happening, and Odette gently replies, “I know you don’t” (329), and then tells Lyra that she should be the one to draw Grayson, because Lyra should draw “her” Hawthorne the way that Odette once drew hers. Lyra has many questions but focuses on the drawing. Once she finishes, the team receives the clue, “Shatter,” and Lyra thinks to break the lollipop. Inside its stick, they find a liquid. They brush this over the sticky notes, revealing the image of a spiral. When they find a matching spiral in the room’s mosaic tiles, Grayson pushes on the wall. All the tiles fall to the floor, revealing wires. They hook up their light switch. When they flip the switch, a door opens: They’ve escaped.

Gigi uses the cotton balls and nail polish remover on the lenses of the sunglasses. The lenses turn red, and when they look through them at the wrapping paper, they see three symbols. They search for these symbols among the symbols carved into the room’s shelves. Gigi suggests that they need to push all three symbols simultaneously. When they do, a hidden door opens. They step into a room with corkboard walls. In the walls are a series of pushpins; when they connect these using their yarn, the lights on the walls above cast a shadow onto the floor. The shadow draws their attention to a specific tile, which Knox pushes. The tile moves to reveal a staircase that leads them down onto the island’s rocky shore. The first hints of light are on the horizon, and they begin to run—but Gigi trips and falls.

Gigi hits her head hard. Knox returns to check on her, but Brady continues racing ahead. Knox slowly carries Gigi to the dock. They don’t make it in time. Gigi apologizes to Knox for slowing them down, and she tries to tell Brady that she’ll still find a way to get his mother medical care. However, Brady admits that his mother is fine; his story about her having cancer was a lie. He tells Knox that Severin did have cancer and died.

Grayson and Avery are concerned about Gigi’s injury; in addition, Avery seems to sense how emotionally wounding this experience has been for her. Gigi is taken aback by Savannah’s chopped-off hair, thinking, “Savannah [doesn’t] look like Savannah anymore” (337). She thinks about telling Avery and the Hawthornes about Mimosas being on the island, but something stops her. Avery tells Gigi’s team that the boat for the mainland will leave at noon. Savannah asks what will be next for the successful teams.

Despite Savannah’s lack of overt concern regarding Gigi’s injury and elimination from the game, Rohan can tell that she’s deeply affected by what’s happening to her twin. He mulls over Savannah’s claim that she’s in the game for revenge. As Jameson announces that the remaining players have 12 hours to rest before the game resumes and Xander distributes smartwatches to the five players still in the game, Rohan notices that Savannah’s gaze is fixed on Avery.

Odette asks if she can give up her spot in the competition to one of the eliminated players. Lyra and Grayson exchange a look: Both are shocked because Odette’s actions seem to contradict what she told them earlier about why she wanted to win the game. Lyra believes Odette is leaving because of Lyra, Grayson, and the mystery of what happened to Lyra’s father. When their hosts give the okay, Odette offers her smartwatch to Gigi, but Gigi refuses it. Odette gives her place to Brady, who says that this is the second time he has received a place in the game without earning it.

As the others begin to leave the dock, Odette, Lyra, and Grayson stay behind to talk. Lyra asks Odette about the legacy she said she wanted to leave her family, and Odette replies, “There are some legacies one does not wish to pass down” (343). Odette says that she knew she would leave the game when the power went out, or perhaps when Lyra saw her calla lily drawing. She explains that Lyra’s father’s words—“A Hawthorne did this” (309)—more likely refer to Anne Hawthorne, Tobias’s wife. Grayson protests that Anne died before he was born. Odette confirms that she worked for the law firm that represented Tobias and that she and Tobias had a romantic relationship. During this relationship, his supposedly dead wife returned. Tobias was shocked but agreed to use his relationship with Odette to accomplish the favor that Anne had returned to ask of him. Odette refuses to answer further questions.

Alone with Brady, Gigi confronts him regarding his lie about his mother. He tells her that he would “tell a thousand lies […] to get [Calla] back” (350). He refuses to explain how winning the game will bring her back, however. He asks Gigi to wait to tell anyone about the bug until the game is over. Gigi, now aware that his flirtation with her during the game was just a strategy, resists his attempts to charm her. When he calls her “Juliet,” she realizes that this is the second time he has done so and asks him how he knows her real name. He doesn’t answer. She realizes that he’s likely playing for a sponsor, and she suspects his sponsor connects to the Thorp family. Xander enters the room, and Brady leaves. Gigi knows she should tell Xander about the bug, but a plan forms in her mind, and she decides to wait.

Rohan showers and considers the information he gathered about the players remaining in the game. He then goes to Savannah’s room and confronts her with his conclusions about her motives for playing the game: Since the winner “is crowned on a livestream with half the world watching” (81), Savannah wants to take advantage of this publicity to get revenge on Avery. She agrees that this is true: She wants to reveal that Avery Grambs killed her father.

Lyra goes for a long run to tire herself out so that she can sleep. At the charred remains of the old mansion, Grayson finds her. He tells her that he intends to both keep playing the game and try to find out what happened to her father because the mystery clearly relates to his family. He confesses that he has cared about Lyra since she first called him, but he was going through a tough time then and was overwhelmed. He pushed her away, creating more pain for himself. Lyra can relate to this choice: She understands trying “[t]o prove that no matter how much you hurt, you’ll survive” (361). Lyra asks why he couldn’t find her, later, when Avery found her to give her the invitation. Grayson tells her that Savannah, Odette, and Brady received the three invitations Avery gave out but that Lyra’s invitation was one of the hidden ones. She thinks about the similarities between the note that came with her invitation and the notes with her father’s names on them and realizes that someone besides Avery was plotting to have her in the game. Forgiving Grayson fully, she kisses him.

Alone in the woods where she first found the bag, Gigi calls out, “I know you’re out there” (364) several times. She adds that she thinks Mimosas is there because “Eve sent [him]” (364), which can’t be good news. She threatens to tell Grayson or Xander about the bug. Suddenly, a hand clamps a sweet-smelling rag over her mouth, immobilizing her.

An unknown figure considers the situation on the island, trying to decide whether watching is enough or whether there are “problems to be solved” (366).