Gotcha! by Shelley Hrdlitschka
Gotcha! This title is not only catchy (albeit slightly cheesy,) it is also the name of the traditional graduation game Slippery Rock High. This game has been banned by the school because of, uh, incidents that happened in the previous years. But who are this year’s grads to break a tradition? The rules of Gotcha is more or less like this: each player is handed a bead and the name of their victim, and once you are tagged, you must surrender your bead and you are officially out of the game. The goal? To be the last one standing – or, in this case, the last grad left in the game. Sounds boring? Well, throw in a $2000 cash prize that can go towards your college fund, and you’ve got yourself a bunch of graduates battling it out. But with so many students fighting for the reward, it’s every savage – I mean, contestant – for themselves…And sometimes, that means you have to turn your back on your friendships, morals, and the civilized person that you’d thought yourself to be.
And who knows that better than Katie? Katie, an honour roll graduate student with a seemingly bright future, a girl who had not wanted to but felt pressured to join Gotcha – but as time went on, her “I-don’t-care” attitude soon turned into a desperate need to win the game. Elected secretary of the grad council, it is Katie’s responsibility to keep guard the money of the Gotcha game until a winner was declared. But money was tight at home, and Katie made a decision to entrust the money to her dad to “invest” in hopes of gaining money to buy the perfect grad dress, and perhaps even a decent college fund – a sudden act of greed that she soon regretted. The truth about her dad that she had been unwilling to admit to herself came back and haunted her – and she never saw trace of the grand prize money again. And she will definitely be in some really deep [censored] if she is unable to cough up the money when the time comes. Unsurprisingly, Katie will do anything to get out of this mess – even if it means becoming a savage and slave to the game and sabotaging everything that she treasures, because Katie needs to win.
Not want; need.
Roni, 15
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