by Katie Dozier
The air smelled like sticking my nose into the base of a gardenia, even though I was a distance from the actual blooms. Combined with all the flowers outside the gates, there had to be more petals than there were grains of sand back on Cocoa Beach.
At the heightened sound of rushing water, I tore my eyes from the modern side to the right of the carriage to take in an enormous fountain. I’d never seen the Eiffel tower in person, but this one had to have been nearly as tall, and carved out of white marble. There were many figures of voluptuous women carved out of the sides, and the water rippled and glistened from surprising curves. At the base of the tiered fountain, dozens of swans posed with their black beaks cocked, as though they were perfectly aware that their home was the most beautiful fountain in which a swan had ever lived.
Was that amazing mansion that Katherine Egg had shown out there somewhere, and would I get to see it too?
A speck of water brought me back to some version of reality. Then I noticed the little modern pin pricks all around the carriage that, although discreet, must have been cameras. I’d always wondered how come the contestants, AKA “Comets,” could act so terribly at times even though they were always being recorded. Now I understood that they forgot. I’d been on all of five minutes and had already overlooked the cameras. The entire Universe was a distraction and the cameras were all but invisible.
I didn’t know exactly where we were going, but just as I’d think we must be coming to the end of the immense spectacles on either side of the carriage, there would be another one. A giant building the shape of a white grand piano on my right was answered on the left side by a gothic stone castle. A crystal palace on my left; a trio of red pyramids on my right.
I was torn between wanting to ask the driver—or was it coachman? Footman? I really should’ve rewatched Downton Abbey before coming on—where we were going and not ever wanting the most magical ride of my life to end. It was like that time I’d gone with Dad to see some super rich guy’s model railroad set when he was interviewing him for Florida Today . Every single detail fit with either the modern or palatial theme, but instead of being miniatures, it was all larger than real life.
Just as I was working up the courage to ask, we stopped at the edge of a rocky cliff coastline. The bridge dead-ended on a glass loop, under which an enormous white waterfall churned over mammoth shards of green, purple, and red gemstones. The water then plunged hundreds of feet below into what looked more like a white ocean than a white lake. The cliffs along the palacial side were rolling green, dotted with flowers and lined with castles, I saw what looked like a train hurling its steam into the air.
On the right side, I heard urgent screams whirling closer. I scanned for the source and discovered an enormous cork-screwed roller coaster that spiraled down the waterfall. There were furnished glass cubes built into the sides of the cliffs, and a large neon enclosed ferris wheel that glittered with prisms in the bright sunlight.
“Here we are,” said the driver, while tapping me on the leg. I doubted that it was the first time he’d tried to wake me out of my amazement. Walking seemed remarkably outdated amidst the feeling that the Universe was smack up against the border between what was real and what was magic.
When I finally stepped out of the carriage, I was intoxicated by the smell of fresh cream. But what hit me even harder was what I now saw far out in the middle of the ANS Ocean.
I’d never seen anything that glowed so much. It looked like it was made of a billion woven glow lights, as the circle rose high above the white water surrounding it. Silver petals encircled the base, and the effect was such that it was somehow both planet and flower all at once. It was at the center of it all, the heart of the living breathing organism that was the new America’s Next Star Universe.
“Solar Stadium,” the coachman smiled. “Now you’ve just got to choose how to get there.”
“The Core, right?” I whispered, as if it was some secret password. Not even sure if I was allowed to mention it “onstage” as E.T. had called it.
With white-gloved hands, the coachman held a large silver platter with a lid on it. With a ding, an assistant uncovered the tray, revealing a little pot of dirt, a glass with wisps of blue smoke, and a tiny sandcastle.
“Choose one,” he said. E.T. appeared off to the side, and whispered something to the coachman . Afterwards, the coachman angled the side with the sandcastle closer to me.
What do these things possibly represent, I asked myself. A nd what could they possibly have to do with getting all the way out to Solar Stadium.
Dirt could represent land, I supposed, but I didn’t think the idea of somehow taking the land out to the middle of the sea would really work. I feared that if I picked that one, I might be eliminated before I even got to actually compete, like this one girl a few seasons ago.
Katherine Egg had said in her season ten preview that the challenges would be different, that the stakes would be way higher, the talents would be downright dangerous. I was about to find out that her words had not merely been hype.
If the dirt represented getting there (or not getting there) by land, could the jar of blue smoke represent air? That seemed even more scary than inexplicably trying to get there on land.
“Make a choice!” E.T. said, managing to show his art of somehow both whispering and shouting all at once.
Kara gave me an encouraging nod, then gave Blondie a treat, who was laying down along the glass bridge. I put my hand on the side of the tray while I tried to think.
“Excellent choice,” the coachman said, as he pressed my hand over the sandcastle. The shape dissolved in my sweaty palm. “The sea it is then.”
E.T. smiled at me and gestured hundreds of feet below, where the only thing churning more than the water was the turbulence in my stomach.
Chapter Thirty-Four
♪ Under The Bridge ♪
* * *
T he image of Veronica Stylo swan diving on last season’s old stage popped in my head. But here I had to be hundreds of feet up—it would’ve been a way more extreme dive than even that one Pocahontas did in the Disney movie. Then there was the tiny detail that the idea of shoving myself head first anywhere was so much harder since Mom was gone.
A dozen men in black suits showed up on the scene, I suspected not as part of the actual show. More Astronauts, I guessed.
“Do we have approval?” E.T. shouted to the suits. They huddled like overdressed football players for a few seconds, then one of them nodded.
Approval for what , I thought. Though I hadn’t even really meant to pick it, if I had an advantage in either of the three, maybe it was the sea? I’d lived on the Banana River my whole life and grew up blocks from the ocean. And even if most of my water interactions were just sitting on a beat-up old row boat tethered to our dock, listening to music, I’d spent way more time in a boat than in the air.
The screams of roller coaster riders filled the air again, and this time, I let my eyes follow the track, and squinting, I saw that the corks seemed to stop all the way at the glittering Solar Stadium. Could that have been how I would have made it to the island stadium if I’d picked land? Sure, I wouldn’t have loved getting on that (I was too high up on the glass bridge as it was), but I’d always loved Space Mountain at Disney World, and thought of roller coasters as a kind of safe fear. A scare that was decidedly less real than being forced to dive hundreds of feet into the water.
“Ella,” E.T. called out. He was standing by a small rectangular glass room that I swear hadn’t been there only moments before. Behind him, the box had cogs and wheels and looked like the workings of a clock.
When I approached, he gave me a little shove into the glass box, and before I could protest, the door snapped shut behind me. As I started moving down, alone, the walls started to feel like they were closing tighter around me. Before I was entirely underneath the bridge, I saw Kara crossing her fingers and attempting a hopeful smile in my direction.
Under me, the mil
ky water was getting closer and closer. Could this glass box really be waterproof? Was my first challenge on ANS going to be like Houdini, seeing if I’d be alive and able to escape from a box after tumbling over Niagara Falls?
I held my breath as I heard the smack of my glass room hitting the white water. In an instant all I could see was white. My mouth opened to scream, but there was no sound, not that anyone could’ve heard me anyway. The glass box now felt like a coffin.
I touched my face and realized it was dry. The glass was so clear and the water so white that it had felt like I was surely drowning in it. But then I saw a flash of color, teal glitter, that against all the white was the most intense blue I’d ever seen—like the entirety of the blue of the sky had been condensed into this flapping object. It grew bigger, and more flashes of glittery blue surrounded me, and for the first time I felt the glass room lurch forward instead of just down. I don’t know if I was hallucinating at this point, but just before I caught a shard of sunlight in the glass, I thought I made out a face among the glitter.
The room moved toward the light, the milky water became a stream flowing in front of me instead of a pool engulfing me. I saw the colored light of the gemstone shards, and realized I was just behind the waterfall, at the top of the cliff. Overhead, I could just make out the figures of all the techies. What gave me hope was thinking that Kara was up there, wanting me to make it through whatever else this challenge would throw at me. And Huck was rooting for me, even if he had no idea the danger I was in that very second. And possibly from somewhere a lot higher than the glass bridge, Mom.
“Hold on to the bar,” came E.T.’s voice from my Beam Bracelet.
I frantically searched for anything to hold on to, just as I realized that a glass bar was rising from the floor, like a microphone at an awards show. Just as I bent down and had it with one hand, not easy to do in the black leather heels they’d put me in, the elevator (as I now finally realized it was) shot down. My hands slipped along the tube, but I knew my grasp was the only thing keeping me from smacking my head on the glass ceiling. I tried to focus on the distant shapes resting on the water coming closer and closer.
The glass room came to a lurching halt on a curved beach with neon blue sand. The effect of the whitewater and blue sand was dizzying, like if one day I woke up and the sky was white with inky blue clouds. When the door shot open, I practically jumped out of the elevator, armed only with my intensified claustrophobia and newfound fear of heights. Just as I was leaving, a hairline crack in one corner caught my eye. How close had I been to real danger? Had that crack in the glass been there all along?
I tore off my heels and walked out on the beach, expecting all the techies to be flocked along the sand like seagulls in Cocoa Beach. But while I saw evidence of many people far out on the water, a cruise ship honked its horn, yachts and sailboats cruised the water, and the zippy hums of speed boats vibrated in the air—there seemed to be no one and nothing on the beach. With all the sand and nothing else, it felt like being in the sand timekeeper thing the Wicked Witch used in The Wizard of Oz .
Oh god , I thought. Am I really expected to swim? I tapped at my Beam, hoping for any instruction, but was met with a blank, silent black face.
From sea level, Solar Stadium looked both bigger and even further away. I knew there was no way I could possibly swim out there, I could barely run a mile without wanting to die, let alone swim one. I squinted around the perimeter of the beach, desperate to see anyone or anything.
In the distance, I seemed to spot something silver. From where I was standing, it was little more than a speck. And a speck was a hell of a lot more than I had to work with at the moment, but the waterfall was in my way. I’d have to chance swimming in this milky liquid for a few minutes to get over there. If I had forgotten that I was being filmed from cameras I couldn’t see at every second, I may have stripped my dress off. It’s hard to imagine an outfit less suited to swimming than a black leather gown with a pouffy train.
I willed my legs into the liquid, and was struck somehow by the softness of it. It was the exact opposite of the water at Cocoa Beach, where the frigid saltwater would sting if I’d shaved my legs at any point in the last week. It was warm and thick and though clearly liquid, something a lot different than just water. As I began to paddle I was surprised by how effortlessly my shoulders sliced through the white ripples. I was making good time towards the speck, which soon became a blob that took the shape of a real object.
Could that really be an oar? I paddled faster towards it, but stopped when I remembered the obvious fact that an oar is only halfway towards an a ctual means of transportation that could get me to Solar Stadium. That’s when I realized two things:
I wasn’t propelling myself anymore
I was floating
My voluminous dress had been inching towards my waist and somehow inflated. I poked a fold, and it was squishy with air. They say no man is an island, but with a dress that functioned as a boat, and an oar scrounged from the beach, I was pretty darn close.
Chapter Thirty-Five
♪ Deus Ex Machina ♪
* * *
I must’ve looked like the human equivalent of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang sailing on the ocean. I started to try to paddle a bit, but the effect wearing a huge inner tube spun me into an immediate circle. I tried again, a bit more gently, but my dark leather dress just made a bigger loop than my first attempt.
After some time, I managed to get some forward momentum while accepting that the best my wayward vessel could manage were sweeping curves. But I quickly realized that was the least of my problems. A tsunami arrived with little warning, flipping me over and trapping me under my dress. I used the oar to beat back the leather, and once I could breathe again, looked for the source of the wave. And there was nowhere for my pale skin to hide from the sun.
A purple cruise ship that had once been on the horizon, was now in front of me, creating a startling amount of wake, and there were even more boats headed in my direction seemingly oblivious to my presence. My pruney hands already ached from using the oar, and I saw the beginning of a blister. My skin was growing more red by the minute, the ache of sunburn already present being my proof that I had been in the water for at least a couple of hours.
I waded for a moment, fiddling with the snaps on my skirt, and wishing for my little rowboat or even a lowly body board that they’d sell to tourists at Ron Jon’s Surf Shop back at Cocoa Beach.
In fiddling with the snaps on the leather, I accidentally popped one off.
“Crap!” I screamed, though of course no one could hear me. But then I had a thought, and with a yank that required most of my remaining hand strength I undid the snaps holding my inflated skirt to the corset top. I pushed it in front of me, realizing that the skirt was not only big enough to hold onto and kick, but actually to climb on to—nevermind that it was an awkward ascent.
Instead of trying to fight through the big boats, who would have only been able to identify me, if at all, as a little speck in the water, I changed my course to be circling one that would curve out to the stadium. In one section of the circle I’d planned, the wave of an enormous silver speed boat propelled me in the perfect direction, where I washed up to the side of the dock that surrounded Solar Stadium. From its glittery base, the imposing structure seemed taller than anything I’d ever seen before.
And even though I was a withered mix of soaking wet and sunburned, with blisters covering my hands, and wearing just a corset top and underwear, I was determined to climb the mountain in front of me all the way to the top.
I remembered the cameras just long enough to pose like Moana with her oar and call out, “Is that all you’ve got?”
Chapter Thirty-Six
♪ The Long and Winding Road ♪
* * *
O nce I had finally ambled onto the dock, I saw E.T., with Kara, the other nearly identical assistants, and the suits following behind. I wondered how long the journey had taken them, pr
esumably having arrived via the Core, and having been stripped of any way to tell the time, also wondered just how long I’d toiled in the milky white waves and under the sun. My Beam still offered no clues as to what the hell I was supposed to be doing.
Then an invisible door opened.
“Alright, let’s get you in there,” E.T. said, as if it was encouragement. As if he hadn’t likely been key to designing the series of events I’d just scraped by in.
Kara at least gave me a silent smile, and appeared to mouth, “Good job.” When Blondie bounded up to me, E.T. snapped a few times and an assistant took her out on a short leash. I shot him a look of compassion that didn’t really make sense, as he was a dog, but that’s how much I was desperate for a friend besides Kara even though I’d only been in the Universe for a few hours.
After putting a sheet of plastic down on the leather, I was ushered into a golf cart that whizzed around. The only thing I was certain of was that this had to be the part of the Core under Solar Stadium as it was a cavernous, beige area as unphotogenic as me trying to recover from the most athletic moment of my entire life.
I ran my tongue across my lips and felt the dry cracks. I tried to clear my throat to ask for some water but found it too dry even to summon a cough.
From the back seat the feeling of something so cold against my shoulder that it almost burned jolted me forward. It was just Kara handing me a small bottle of ice water from the back seat. I couldn’t help but notice that E.T. shot her a reproachful look, or maybe that was just his constant expression.
