For Real (10 page)

Both women shake our hands enthusiastically, beaming at us with glossy, bubble-gum-pink mouths, and introduce themselves in thick Brooklyn accents. The one with the purpley-red hair is Jada, and the frosty blonde is Tawny. “What’s that about?” Jada asks, pointing at the writing on Miranda’s T-shirt.

My sister explains about Samir, and both women’s eyes go wide. “Whoa,” Jada breathes. “Which one is your ex? Is he one of the hot ones on the ground?”

“I wish,” Miranda says, and Jada laughs. “No, he’s not here yet.”

“I heard those guys over there are strippers from Vegas,” Tawny says. Anywhere else I’d question her sources, but here, it’s totally believable.

“What’s your story?” I ask. “Are you guys related?”

When I hear Tawny laugh, I understand the meaning of the word “guffaw” for the first time. “No, sweetheart,” she says, and it comes out sounding like
sweet-hawt
. “Jada and I used to be married to the same man.”

“Um, at the same time?”

She laughs again. “Ha! No, but that would have made it
more fun, wouldn’t it, Jada? At least we would’ve had a little entertainment.”

“Ron was handsome and rich as anything, but he was a
serious
snooze-fest,” Jada explains. “Tawny married him first, and six months after they split up, he married me. We were divorced before the year was over.”
Di-VAWCED
.

“Jada and I met in yoga,” Tawny chimes in. “It took us six weeks of sun salutations before we figured out we were gossiping about the
same
boring ex-husband.”

“And we’ve been besties ever since,” Jada finishes, just as we hear a familiar voice behind us.

“
Miranda?
What the hell are you doing here?”

We turn to face Samir, and I hear Chuck hissing, “Get this, get this!” Three cameras converge on us like seagulls on a stray French fry.

Samir stares at us for a minute, taking in our Team Revenge T-shirts. “Oh my God,” he says. “You have
got
to be kidding me.”

Miranda opens her mouth, presumably to rattle off a witty comeback, but then she notices the girl standing beside Samir, and her cheeks start turning very pink. For a second I’m afraid she’s going to lose it, but when she speaks, her voice is low and steady. “Funny, Samir, you told me you were auditioning with your
brother
,” she says. “Once a liar, always a liar, I guess.”

The girl is an Amazon—even in her flat running shoes, she’s at least ten inches taller than me. My eyes are level with her boobs. She tucks her caramel-colored hair behind her
ears like she’s embarrassed by this whole scene and extends her hand to Miranda. “Hi, I’m Janine,” she says. “Samir and I were scene partners for our Chekhov class last semester? I don’t think we ever officially—”

“Yeah, I know who you are,” Miranda says, her voice ice-cold. “I just didn’t recognize you with your pants on.” I suddenly remember her limerick:
He hopped in the sack with that ho Janine Black
.… Oh God, this is even more awkward than I thought it would be.

Miranda doesn’t shake Janine’s hand, and it hovers there in the air for a few seconds, her violet fingernails shining in the sun. Finally, my sister turns back to Samir. “Good luck on the race,” she says. “I would say ‘May the best man win,’ but that would require at least one of us to be a man.” Then she links her arm with mine and steers me toward the other side of the field. Despite her calm façade, I can feel how tense she is.

Two of the camera guys follow us, and the other stays behind to get a reaction shot of Samir and Janine. “That was great,” I tell Miranda quietly. “You totally threw him off his game.”

Miranda lets go of me and shakes out her hands, like she can fling excess emotion off her fingertips like water. “I cannot
believe
he had the nerve to bring her here. God, I can barely think when he’s around. Ninety percent of my brainpower goes into trying not to scream or punch him.”

“You seemed totally in control,” I say. “And all that energy is great. It’ll give us an edge in the race.” I give her arm a
little squeeze. “I know how much this part sucks, but once the race starts, we’ll get ahead of him, and then you’ll barely have to see him at all. You can do this.”

She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “I can,” she says. “I’m totally fine. Everything’s fine.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I spot Will walking past with the boob-grabby sound guy. He gives me a little eyebrow waggle—I guess he doesn’t want to be obvious about knowing me, since we’re being filmed. I eyebrow-waggle back.

Chuck’s walkie-talkie emits a crackle of static and some unintelligible words, and he claps a bunch of times to get our attention. “All right, everyone, come on over here and stand in a semicircle,” he calls. “Isis is on her way.”

I have no idea who Isis is, but she sounds important, so we follow Chuck to the other end of the outfield. He assembles us in front of a banner strung between two poles, rolled up so we can’t see what it says. The last team to arrive ends up standing next to Miranda, and I hear them introduce themselves as Zora and Aidan. They have exactly the same face, but Zora has a nose ring, dark eyeliner, and blue streaks in her dyed black hair, and Aidan looks more like someone who drinks a lot of chai and goes on road trips. If Zora is hard rock, Aidan is her acoustic version.

More garbled words hiss through Chuck’s walkie-talkie, and then a tall, elegant woman comes striding toward us from across the field. Presumably, this is Isis. Her hair is cropped incredibly short, showing off the perfect shape of her head and the swanlike curve of her neck. She’s wearing a filmy white top that contrasts beautifully with her dark skin,
and she glides across the lawn in her stiletto heels, which somehow aren’t sinking into the grass like a normal person’s would. She radiates the kind of glow pregnant women are supposed to have, but without the inconvenience of actually growing another human inside her body. As she takes her place in front of the banner, everyone stands up a little straighter. A makeup artist rushes forward to powder her perfect nose.

Finally, when all the cameras are in place, the woman unleashes a radiant smile on us—God, she must bleach her teeth twice a day. “Hi, everyone,” she says. Her voice is lower than I expected, purring and musical. “My name is Isis Everleigh, and I’ll be your host. You are the best of the best, chosen from a pool of thousands of contestants, and I’m expecting some fierce competition as you circumnavigate the globe. Each leg of the race, you’ll be sent to a different country, where you’ll complete a series of challenges before finding your way to a check-in point for a rest. The last team to arrive at each check-in point will be eliminated, and the first team to complete the entire race will win … 
one million dollars
.”

Everyone whoops and cheers at the mention of the prize. I picture myself and my sister pushing in front of Samir and Janine and crossing that finish line first, our hands clasped together as Isis beams down at us and says, “Claire and Miranda, you are the winners of
Around the World
.” For a moment, it feels possible, and a little flash of excitement zings through me, overpowering the nervousness churning in my stomach.

I grin at Miranda as Isis reaches out with her perfect, manicured hand and pulls the cord on the banner behind her. It unrolls with a satisfying zip, revealing the logo of the show we’re going to win.

And then I register what I’m seeing, and I stop breathing.

The logo is a map, as might be expected from a race-around-the-globe show. But the map is pink, shaped like a heart, and flanked by two cartoon Cupids about to loose their arrows into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Across the bottom of the banner, in curling script, is the tagline:
Where in the world will you find
your
soul mate?

Something is terribly, terribly wrong with this picture.

“Welcome, everyone,” Isis says, “to
Around the World in Eighty Dates
.”

For about five seconds, there’s dead silence. Then Zora says, “I’m sorry,
what
? You want us to
date
each other?”

Yup. That pretty much covers it.

As if her outburst has given the rest of us permission to speak, a chorus of heated, whispered conversations breaks out all around us. Miranda grips my arm hard enough to bruise, and I can feel that she’s trembling. “Did you know about this?” she hisses.

“Are you
kidding
? Of course not! Do you seriously think I’d bring you on a dating show now? Do you think
I’d
audition for one
ever
?”

“Oh my God.” Miranda rakes her fingers through her hair. “I can’t do this, Claire. This isn’t what I signed up for. Can we quit? What does our contract say? I skimmed over all those parts with the tiny type. Why didn’t I read the whole thing? You’re always supposed to read the whole thing! Do you think it said something about this?”

“I don’t know,” I say, and my voice sounds like it’s coming from very far away. My sister’s rare display of panic feeds my anxiety, and the whole world suddenly starts tilting beneath
me. I struggle to come up with something reassuring to say, but I can’t think of a single good thing about this situation. My sister may have to cozy up to the person she hates most in the world. And I, at the age of eighteen, have to go on my first few real dates with total strangers, some of whom are
Vegas strippers
, in foreign countries, on national television. This might actually be my worst nightmare.

We didn’t rock the auditions. I didn’t impress the casting team with my theory about reality TV being a great equalizer. Miranda’s here because the producers want drama, teeth and claws and screaming fights, and maybe, if they’re lucky, a dramatic, sappy reconciliation between her and Samir. And I’m here because I’m awkward and inexperienced and totally ridiculous in this context. I’m the one they’ll underscore with sad tuba noises.

I am on this show for comic relief.

I taste acid at the back of my throat, and for a moment I’m sure I’m going to be sick. In a desperate attempt to distract myself, I look around the circle to see how the other teams are reacting. The African American stripper shouts out, “Hells yeah!” and high-fives the blond one, and the sorority girls giggle in unison. The geeky guys are whispering heatedly, and I catch the words “boobs” and “terrifying” and “never even had a girlfriend,” which makes me feel a little better. I seek out Will’s eyes, expecting to see my shock and dismay reflected there, but he looks infuriatingly calm. Did he guess the twist from the auditions somehow? Maybe all the signs were there, and I missed them. How could I have been so stupid?

Isis’s soothing voice cuts through the chaos. “I know this is an unexpected development,” she says, somehow managing to convey sympathy, superiority, and rabid excitement all at once. “But if everyone could calm down, I’d love to tell you more about our show. That’s not the last exciting surprise I have in store for you today!” If this is what all her “exciting surprises” are like, I don’t want to hear any more, but I don’t think I have a choice.

“First of all,” Isis says when everyone has quieted, “please turn and look at your partners.”

We do, and my stomach twists at the scared-rabbit look in my sister’s eyes. I want to be strong for her, to promise her we can still take down Samir, but I’m not sure I have any leftover strength to give. As Miranda stares back at me, her face softens a little, and I realize I must look as bad as she does. At least we’re in this together.

“Now say good-bye,” Isis instructs. “The person you’re looking at right now will not be your partner as you race around the world.”

I try to shout
“What?”
but all that comes out of my mouth is a breath. Across the circle, one of the strippers says, “Later, bro,” totally impassive. Aidan mutters,
“Seriously?”

Isis produces two pink silk pouches embroidered with the heart-map logo and the labels
GIRLS
and
GUYS
. “All teams will be composed of one girl and one guy,” she explains. “I’ll be randomly selecting your dates for the first leg of the race. At each check-in point, there will be a Proposal Ceremony, during which you will choose your own dates for the next leg in the order you arrived. We have some seriously steamy
challenges in store for you, so look around and pick out the racers
you
think are hottest. You’ll want to race quickly so you can snatch them up before someone else does! There will also be special prizes awarded throughout the race for making sparks fly! Let’s get started—are you ready to meet your first dates?”

The strippers and the sorority girls cheer. “This is the worst thing ever,” Miranda whispers. “What if I get Samir?” She sounds like she’s going to cry.

“Odds are you won’t, right? And it’s not like you guys are going to pick each other at the Proposal Ceremonies, so you’ll be safe after today.” I grab her hand. “Listen, no matter who they pair us with, I’m still going to help you take him down. That’s the reason we’re here, and we’re always going to be a team, okay?” Miranda nods, but she doesn’t look reassured.