The other stripper, Troy, whose dark skin is covered in geometric tattoos, is paired with cheating Janine. Vanessa, the other sorority girl, gets Steve, one of the nerds, and she stands a little apart from him, like the desire to attend Comic Con might be contagious. Samir is paired with Tawny. That leaves blue-streaked Zora to partner with Martin, the one I heard whispering about never having had a girlfriend. She’s a good six inches shorter than he is, but she looks very intimidating; when they stand together, he crumples in on himself so much that she looks taller. The thought of the two of them doing sexy challenges together makes me cringe.
When we’re all paired up, the cameras turn off for a minute while Chuck assigns us our crew people. For each leg of the race, each team will have a different camera operator and sound person, and we’re not allowed to go anywhere they can’t follow us, except to the bathroom. Today, our camera guy is Greg, who has an impressive mustache that curls up at the ends, and our sound person is a skinny, freckled guy named Terry. They look at me like I’m nuts when I ask them if they’re excited about the race, and I realize that for them, this is just another normal day.
Isis walks around the semicircle and hands each team a long pink envelope embossed with the show’s logo and sealed with Velcro. Then the cameras turn back on, and Isis says, “You each have your first instruction envelopes. Inside are your directions about where to travel first. As soon as I tell you to begin, you may open them and start racing. Who knows where in the world you’ll find your soul mate?”
“You want to open it, or should I?” whispers Will.
“I’ll do it,” I say.
“May the forces of love and luck be with you. Ready … set … race!” Isis shouts, and the sound of ripping Velcro fills the air.
“Read the instructions out loud,” Greg says, sticking his lens right in my face.
“ ‘Drive yourselves to Los Angeles International Airport in one of the cars provided and fly to Surabaya, on the island of Java,’ ” I read, my voice trembling a little with nervous excitement. “ ‘Once there, make your way by cab to Alun Alun Stadium, where you will receive your next instructions.’ ” There’s a wad of cash in the envelope, which I tuck into my pack with my passport. I guess we’re supposed to use it to pay cabdrivers.
“Java?” Will says. “Seriously? This is awesome. Let’s go!” He high-fives me, and we turn and sprint for our packs. As nervous as I am about the unknown challenges ahead of me and about being separated from Miranda, there’s another part of me that’s sparking with excitement.
The race has begun, and we’re off.
Except, as it turns out, we’re not. When we’re halfway to the stadium doors, heavy packs bouncing and jostling against our backs, Chuck raises a megaphone (where did that even come from?) and calls us back to the starting line. Some of the camera operators didn’t get the shots they needed, so we’re told to reseal our envelopes and enact the whole scene again. I guess this explains the Velcro. Isis repeats her cheesy tagline like she’s never said it before, and we rip into our envelopes with feigned hungry curiosity. Will reads our instructions aloud this time, and then we sprint for our backpacks … only to be called back a second time. If this is what racing around the world on television is going to be like, we might never make it as far as the airport.
The fourth time is the charm. I’m jogging along halfheartedly when Martin and Zora sprint past us, followed by Troy and Janine. Only then do I realize this time is the real deal. “Oh my God, go go go!” I scream to Will, and we fly out the exit and run toward a row of waiting black cars with heart-map decals on the windows. Will hops into the driver’s seat, but when I move to get in next to him, Greg tells me I need to sit in back so he can film both our faces. The sound guy crams in beside me.
“I don’t know where the airport is,” Will says to me. He does a quick search for a GPS, but of course there isn’t one in the car. “Do you have a map of LA?”
“Yup.” Miranda and I bought a bunch of maps in preparation for the show, and I pull open my pack, proud of myself for being so prepared … until I realize that map ended up in my sister’s bag. “Crap,” I say. “You didn’t bring one?”
“It’s in Lou’s stuff.” Will rattles off a string of words that will definitely need to be bleeped out.
Miranda’s coming out of the stadium now, and she slides into the driver’s seat of the car at the end of the row. “There’s my sister,” I tell Will. “Follow her, okay?”
“Good call.” Will pulls out of the parking lot behind Miranda. When she looks back to check her blind spot, I try to wave at her, but I’m pretty sure Aidan’s head is blocking her view. She’s smiling at something he said, and for a minute I want to be in that car with her so badly it hurts.
And then Will says, “I’m so glad I got you for this first leg. Can you imagine being paired with one of the sorority girls?” He catches my gaze in the rearview mirror, and those eyes make my brain feel like a Cadbury Creme Egg that’s been sitting in the sun too long.
“Hey, just be glad both strippers are guys, so you’ll never have to be with them,” I say.
“I don’t know. On a show like this, a certain willingness to take off your clothes could actually be an asset.”
“There are other ways to get what you want,” I say. I have no idea what I’m even talking about, but it sounds pretty good.
Will quirks an eyebrow at me. “I’m sure you know all kinds of tricks. We’re going to kick some ass together, Claire Henderson.”
I grin back at him, and when my sister’s car pulls onto the highway and accelerates away from us, I’m surprisingly willing to let her go.
Will and I park in an airport garage and dash through the international terminal until we find an information kiosk. There’s really no reason to run at this stage of the game—I can’t imagine there are a lot of flights leaving for Surabaya, and everyone will probably end up bunched up at the gate—but it makes better television if we look like we’re in a hurry. I can’t believe how well Greg manages to keep up with us, given all the equipment he’s carrying. His camera alone looks like it must weigh fifty pounds. By the time we reach the kiosk, Will and I are both breathing hard, but Greg doesn’t seem winded at all.
“Can you tell us which airlines fly to Surabaya?” Will asks the woman behind the desk. She points us toward the Cathay Pacific counter, and we’re off and running again.
Martin the nerd and blue-streaks Zora are already there when we arrive. I look for Miranda, but there’s no sign of her. “Is anyone else here?” I ask Zora as Martin pays for their tickets.
“There are a couple teams over at the Singapore Airlines counter,” she says. Her voice is low and husky, like she spent last night screaming at a concert. “But the flights are supposed to land ten minutes apart, and we heard Cathay Pacific has better food.”
Martin steps away from the desk, and we take his place. “How many seats are left on the earliest flight to Surabaya?” I ask.
The woman behind the desk gives me a cold, penetrating stare, like I’ve asked her what brand of tampons she prefers, then starts typing away on her computer. Her hair is slicked into a perfect black helmet, and her cheekbones are sharp enough to cut diamonds. Just looking at her makes me feel disheveled and sticky—she’s probably never sweated in her life. “There are twelve tickets left,” she says in a clipped accent I can’t identify.
Since we have to buy tickets for ourselves and our crew, that’s only enough seats for us and two more teams, and the rest will have to take a later flight or find a different airline. “Do you think we should check out Singapore Airlines before we buy anything?” I ask Will. “Just to see?”
Philadelphia and Blake burst through the terminal doors and jog toward us, followed closely by Steve and Vanessa. When all four of them head toward our counter, Will says, “We better be safe and go with these.”
I’ve never been on an overseas flight before, and I wish I didn’t have to do it without Miranda. But
I slide my show credit card over the counter to the Ice Queen and say, “We’ll take four, please.”
“You can’t reference us,” Greg reminds me. “Tell her you want two, and then I’ll turn the camera off and you can buy another two.”
That seems convoluted, but I don’t argue. “We’ll take two, please,” I say.
As we move away from the counter with our tickets, Blake and Philadelphia step up to take our place. “We need to go to Serbia,” Blake says.
“I think it says Sur-bay-a,” Philadelphia attempts to correct him.
“Is that in Italy? I thought Serbia was in Russia.”
Will rolls his eyes at me, and I feel another surge of gratitude that I got him as my partner.
After we go through security, change our money into rupiahs, and get a snack, we still have three hours to kill. There’s nothing interesting in the terminal, so we end up sprawled on the floor at the gate, playing hearts with Zora and Martin. Zora asks about my Team Revenge T-shirt, and I tell her about Samir. “Is Aidan your brother?” I ask her.
She nods. “We’re twins, but we got adopted into different families when we were babies,” she says. “We just found each other a year ago. We thought the race would be a good way to bond, but … not so much, apparently.”
“Man, that sucks,” Will says.
“What’s your deal?” Zora asks him, and only then do I realize I don’t even know why Will’s here. The one time we had an extended conversation, I was too distracted by his trivia game—and, let’s be honest, his face—to ask.
“Lou’s my half brother, and our dad’s the CEO of a pretty major company,” Will says. “Totally stereotypical bigwig, with the private jet and the expensive cigars and the country club membership and everything. He’s been grooming me to take over the family business my whole life, but the thing is, I have zero interest in business, and neither does Lou. When we told him we wanted to start an arts nonprofit instead, he threatened to cut us off. So … we’re here for the money.”
“Wow,” Zora says. “That’s rough.”
“My dad even has my future wife picked out, if you can believe it. She’s the CFO’s daughter. She’s gorgeous, but she’s literally the most boring person I’ve ever met. He’s always trying to shove us together at company Christmas parties and stuff. Last time I saw her, she spent an hour talking about the problems she was having with her maid. I wanted to puncture my eardrums with a prawn fork.”
I stare at Will, suddenly more intimidated by him than ever. I can’t believe I didn’t know any of this. I thought he was just a regular guy who went to NYU, and now it turns out he probably grew up vacationing on a private island. How could a childhood like that produce someone so normal? But now that I know what to look for, his backpack does look more high-tech than mine, and his jeans look more artfully distressed.
I try to picture myself on his arm at a black-tie company Christmas party, but the whole thing is too ridiculous for even my imagination. I’d probably trip in my high heels and fall in a chocolate fountain or something. The CFO’s daughter would never do that. She probably has impeccable table manners, speaks twenty languages, and uses some sort of billion-dollar yak’s-blood zit cream that makes her skin look like rose petals. How could I ever compete with someone like that, boring or not? I don’t even know what a prawn fork is. She probably has her own monogrammed set.
I tune back in as Martin asks, “Which company does your dad run?”
Will gestures toward the cameras, then lowers his eyes. “I’d rather not say, if you don’t mind. He’s not a bad guy, and I don’t want to get him into trouble. That’s just not the kind of life I want, you know?” There’s an undercurrent of pain in his voice, and it makes me want to reach out and put my hand on his cheek. I manage to restrain myself.
The gate agent announces that preboarding is beginning for flight 372 to Hong Kong with continuing service to Surabaya. My heart is suddenly in my throat as we get in line—I’m about to sit next to Will for twenty-five hours. What if we run out of things to talk about right away and I have to deal with an entire day of awkward silence? What if I fall asleep and drool on his shoulder or exhale horrible plane breath in his face? Would it help if I went to sleep with gum in my mouth? Probably not—knowing me, it would end up in my hair. Just in case, I rummage around in my pack until I find a piece, which I tuck into the pocket of my hoodie for easy access.
Greg turns off his camera to board the plane, and as soon as his lens cap is on, Will’s friendly, easygoing demeanor disappears completely. He’s strangely quiet as we make our way down the jet bridge and onto the plane, and maybe it’s the horrible lighting, but I notice that he’s starting to look a little green. “You okay?” I ask as we reach our row. “You don’t look so hot.”
That’s a total lie. He still looks incredibly hot.
“I’m fine,” he says, shoving his backpack into the overhead compartment. “Do you mind if I take the aisle?”
“No, I like the window.” I scoot into my seat, and he plunks down beside me and stares straight ahead. When he doesn’t say anything for a good fifteen seconds, I try, “This must be really different from what you’re used to, huh?”
He looks confused. “What?”
“Flying coach.” When he still doesn’t react, I continue, “I’m sure this is nothing like your dad’s private jet.”
“Oh, ha. Right.” But he doesn’t elaborate. He just stares at the blank video screen on the back of the seat in front of him like he wants to be left alone.
As I turn toward the window and watch the waves of heat rising off the tarmac, it occurs to me that maybe Will was only acting sweet and flirty earlier because we were being filmed. After all, this show is centered on romance, so he probably knows he’ll get more screen time if he’s nice to me. Maybe he’s even angling for one of those special prizes Isis mentioned for getting close to your partner. But the cameras will probably stay off during the flight, and if he’s only pretending to like me, I’m in for an even more uncomfortable twenty-five hours than I’d feared. A knot of anxiety tightens in my stomach, and I start missing Miranda like crazy.
The moment the plane begins taxiing toward the runway, a weird noise starts up nearby, like someone’s taking quick, wheezy, gasping breaths. At first I think it’s a fussy baby, but when I turn to look, I realize the sound is coming from Will. His eyes are squeezed shut, his skin has a clammy, grayish pallor, and he’s digging his nails into the armrests so hard he’s making little dents in the rubberized plastic. There’s obviously something really wrong with him.
I touch his shoulder. “Will, what’s the matter? Are you sick? Do you need a doctor?” There’s always one on board in movies, but does that happen in real life? Are there enough doctors to go around?
“Not sick,” Will whispers. “Just really hate flying.”
I’ve never seen somebody have a panic attack before, but this must be what it looks like. And as scary as it is to see him fall apart, I’m relieved that his sudden withdrawn attitude has nothing to do with me. As the plane starts picking up speed, Will makes a low, terrified sound in the back of his throat, and when the wheels leave the ground, he gasps and crumples in on himself. Very gently, I loosen his death grip on the armrest and give him my hand to hold instead. He clamps his fingers around mine so tightly it hurts, but I grit my teeth and let him squeeze. His fingers are ice-cold and sweaty.
“What can I do?” I ask. “Do you want some water? Should I get a flight attendant?”
He shakes his head. “It’s okay. There’s nothing to do but wait it out.”
“How long does it usually take for you to calm down?”
There’s a small bump in the air, and he gasps again. “Depends,” he says in a strained voice. “Sometimes half an hour. Sometimes more.”
“How are you going to do this race if you’re afraid to fly? We have to be on planes, like, every other—”
He winces. “Claire, you’re really not helping.”
/> Wow, I am officially the worst partner ever. “Sorry, sorry. Forget I said that. Maybe you could do deep-breathing exercises?” My fifth-grade teacher made us meditate together first thing every morning to “clear our minds and center ourselves,” and although I’ve always thought it was kind of stupid, maybe there’s something to it after all. I stroke the back of Will’s hand rhythmically with my thumb. “Here, try it. Close your eyes. Now breathe in through your nose for three counts, then out through your mouth for five.”
He tries it once, way too fast. “I feel really stupid.”
“No, you have to do it slowly. I’ll count with you, okay? In, two, three … Out, two, three, four, five. Good, that’s it. Again. In, two, three …”
I coach him through a couple minutes of slow breathing, and by the time the plane levels off, Will’s grip around my hand is starting to loosen. A bit of color has returned to his face, and a proud little voice in the back of my mind shouts, I did that!
“You’re looking better,” I say.
“I feel better. Thank you so much.”
“Of course,” I say. “Now that you know what to do, the rest of the flights should be easier, even if I’m not with you.” The thought of him holding some other girl’s hand as he tries to calm down makes me feel a bit sick, but I try not to show it.
“Keep distracting me,” he says. “Ask me a question or something.”
I’d really like to know more about Prawn Fork Girl, but that doesn’t seem like an appropriate topic. “What’s NYU like?” I ask instead.
“Not that kind of question. Something fun.”
“Oh. Okay.” I scour my brain for something Will might find clever. “Um, if you could choose a superpower, what would you pick?”
He doesn’t hesitate even for a second. “The ability to transform things into cheese.”
For Real Page 8
