For Real

by Alison Cherry

  When Miranda shows up, I desperately want to run over and explain everything, but I can’t very well do that without blowing my cover with Samir. I’m hoping she’ll put the pieces together on her own when she sees me wearing my Team Revenge shirt, but she just shoots me a look full of anger and hurt from across the gate, and I know she doesn’t get it. I tug twice on my right earlobe and once on my left, the sign we always used at family functions to mean I need a break, meet me in the bathroom. But after ten minutes of waiting by the automatic sinks, I’m forced to admit that she isn’t coming. I guess Ken wasn’t kidding when he said she didn’t want to see me. I know I can knock Samir out of the race alone, but Miranda and I were supposed to do this together. It hurts to know that she thinks I’ve sided with the enemy when I’m really just trying to get rid of him for good.

  When we get on the plane, I put my earbuds in so Samir won’t try to talk to me again. Somehow, I totally forgot about the motivational playlist Natalie made me before I left for the race, and I listen to it on repeat for most of the trip, even the techno-ballad by Refried Death that I know she included just to annoy me. The songs make me feel like my best friend is cheering me on from a distance, like I still have an ally somewhere in the world, and by the time we arrive in Glasgow around two in the afternoon, I’m feeling pumped up and ready.

  Samir and I make our way through passport control, then out to the parking garage, where we spot a row of Around the World cars. I slide into the driver’s seat before he can get there, then spend several minutes meticulously adjusting the mirrors. When I can tell he’s gotten good and antsy, I finally say, “Oh no. Is this car a manual? I don’t know how to drive stick. Do you?”

  Samir heaves an exasperated sigh. “Oh my God, Claire, are you serious? How did you not notice that the second you sat down? Look at the freaking gear shift!” Miranda and Steve pull out in front of us and zoom off, and Samir punches the back of the seat. “Crap, they’re already ahead of us! Get in the back! How did you do so well on the last leg of the race when you don’t pay attention?”

  I shrug and switch places with him as slowly as I can. “Sorry, I’m really spacey today. I didn’t sleep very well.”

  “Well, pull it together. Do you think you can manage to navigate, or am I going to have to do that, too?”

  “No problem,” I say, unfurling the map. “I’m great with directions.” The moment we get to the highway, I call out a wrong turn.

  We’re one of the last couples to arrive at Glasgow Green. As Samir sprints toward the terra-cotta fountain, I lag behind, making exaggerated panting sounds. “I can’t keep up with you,” I complain. “Your legs are, like, twice as long as mine, and my pack is way too big for me. It makes it really hard to run.”

  “God, just give it to me,” he snaps. Samir’s not a big guy, and it delights me to see him struggle to run with both our packs. It’s pretty cool outside for July, but by the time we locate the kilt-clad local who has our next instructions, his forehead is dripping with sweat.

  I take a look at the world’s largest terra-cotta fountain, but I can’t figure out what’s special about it. I mean, it’s ornate and everything, but when it comes down to it, it’s just a big, orangey-red fountain. Who even keeps track of the sizes of various terra-cotta fountains? Probably the same people who try to get in the Guinness World Records books for stuff like skateboarding while holding a goat for the longest distance.

  I tear open our envelope.

  It’s time for Cupid’s Questions, the game that tests how much you know about your date! You’ve had hours in the air to bond, and if you’ve hit it off and gotten close, you deserve a reward! Enter one of our pink tents, where your Cupid will ask you a series of questions. You will both write down your answers, and if they match, you will earn a point. Rack up ten points to receive your next instructions!

  This should be pretty easy to drag out—Samir and I haven’t talked at all since we were paired up, so he hasn’t learned a thing about me. I head toward the row of small pink tents across the field, but Samir grabs my arm. “Memorize this, okay? I was born in Santa Barbara, but we moved to Hartford when I was two. My mom’s name is Shalini and my dad’s is Dev, and they’re computer programmers, and I have two older sisters and one older brother, and all of them are doctors. I’m allergic to cats and peaches, and my favorite color is red, and my favorite film is Fellini’s 8½, and I wanted to be an astronaut when I was little, but now—”

  I hold up my hand to stop him. “Samir, I’m not going to remember any of this. You can’t cram hours of bonding time into two minutes.”

  “Well, it’s better than nothing, isn’t it? Tell me about yourself really quickly.”

  “We’re wasting time. Let’s just go in there and do the best we can, okay?”

  “The best we can isn’t going to cut it if we don’t know anything about each other, Claire! God, it’s like you want us to lose!”

  I try not to smile. “I’m sure they won’t ask us anything that hard.”

  “What’s your favorite food? What’s your favorite band?”

  It would look suspicious if I refused to tell him, so I’ll just have to hope they don’t ask those questions. “My favorite food is coffee ice cream, and my favorite band is Rhetorical Impasse, okay? Now come on!” I push into a tent before he can stop me.

  Our “Cupid,” a blond woman in her twenties, is wearing feathered wings and a white polyester robe that ends midthigh. She’s also carrying a quiver of plastic arrows, which snags on the fabric of the tent every time she moves and makes her scowl in a very uncherubic way. Samir and I sit down in a matching pair of red vinyl armchairs, and our Cupid hands us red dry-erase pens and mini whiteboards with little hearts around the borders. This is almost as cheesy as the Love Shack. Robby positions himself across from us with his camera, next to Cupid.

  “Question one,” she says with a thick Scottish accent that makes me want to laugh. “How many siblings does Claire have?”

  Crap—Samir obviously knows the answer to this question. When our Cupid dings a little bell after fifteen seconds, we both hold up our boards. Mine says, “One.” Samir’s says, “One sister: Miranda Henderson.” He’s clearly angling for extra credit. What a suck-up.

  “Correct!” our Cupid says. “One point. Question two: what is Samir’s hometown?” I write “Santa Barbara,” assuming he’ll write “Hartford.” He does, and we miss the point. Samir glares at me.

  I do my best to get all the answers wrong—I even write that Samir has a cat named Peaches—but I’m not able to slow down the process that much. Dating Miranda for a year has given Samir a surprisingly large cache of information about me. He knows what year I was born, the name of my high school, and the name of the bookstore my dad owns. Somehow, he even knows that otters are my favorite animal. The only question he gets wrong, in fact, is my favorite color. I had always assumed Miranda never even thought about me while she was at Middlebury, but it seems like she actually talked about me a fair amount. I wish I’d known that sooner and that I hadn’t found out like this.

  It only takes Samir fifteen minutes to earn us our next pink envelope. We have to wait a few minutes before opening it—Robby has to refilm our Cupid asking all her questions from the front—and in that time, we see several other teams dash off to the next challenge, including Will and Janine. I wonder if they played the Question Game on the plane or if they slept snuggled together. I wonder if he’s making her feel like she’s the only girl in the world who matters. Does she know this is all a game to him, or is she falling for his act, just like I did?

  Finally, Robby lets us open our envelope.

  Shortly before her wedding day, it is traditional for a Scottish woman and her friends to perform a ritual called “blackening the bride.” The bride dresses all in white, and her friends take turns throwing anything they want at her, such as molasses, tar, feathers, manure, and rotten eggs. Walk north to the middle of the field marked with an Around the World flag, where t
he female team member must change into the white clothes provided. Then the male team member must completely blacken her from the neck down using only his hands and the available sticky substances. The female team member may not assist him. You will receive your next instructions when no white fabric is visible!

  I know I need to stop thinking about Will, but for the briefest of moments, I consider what this challenge would’ve been like with him as my partner. I gladly would have suffered through tar and rotten eggs if it meant he’d have to touch every tingling, eager inch of my body. But that’s just the thing—he’d have to, and that’s not the same as wanting to. Touching me would be another task to complete, and any other body would do just as well. I’m sure he’ll be very happy with Janine’s.

  “Ew,” Samir says as he stares at the instructions. “I have to touch manure and tar with my bare hands?” I can’t believe he’s complaining about his hands when I’m going to be coated from neck to toe, but I swallow my annoyance. I can’t let him start to doubt that I’m on his side.

  There are makeshift dressing rooms set up along the edge of the field, and I take my time swapping out my clothes for a white T-shirt and white scrub pants that are several inches too long. My bra is bright green and my underwear is black, and both show right through the fabric, but after the pool challenge in Java, I’m past caring about that. When I make my way out onto the field, I see that Martin and Steve are almost done blackening Zora and Miranda. Will and Janine are only about half done, and she squeals like a three-year-old as he dips his hands into a bucket and lovingly rubs something sticky onto her flat stomach.

  I find a spot as far from them as possible, and Samir joins me, lugging two heavy buckets of brown goo. “I’m pretty sure this one is chocolate syrup and this one is pudding,” he says. “I wasn’t sure which would be easier to spread. Are you ready?”

  “I’m as ready as a person can be to have her sister’s ex paint her with pudding,” I say. “Do what you have to do.”

  It’s kind of funny to see Samir grimace as he cups his hands and scoops up some chocolate syrup, trying not to drip on his perfectly creased jeans. But it becomes less amusing very quickly when he tips the cold syrup down my back and drops of it crawl inside my collar like curious insects. I hold my arms out to my sides, close my eyes, and wait for it to be over. To distract myself, I think about being back home on the couch with Natalie, watching Speed Breed and eating banana muffins and regaling her with stories about all the absurd things I’ve done on this show. I just need to get through today, and then it’ll all be over. But it’s hard to think anything but ew, ew, ew when someone you hate is massaging chocolate pudding onto your butt.

  Samir is a meticulous worker, and Tawny and Troy have arrived by the time he covers my last patch of ankle. He calls another kilt-clad guy over to check his work, and I spin around slowly, causing my chocolate-covered clothing to stick to my skin in new and horrible ways. Half my hair has come loose from my ponytail and is plastered to my neck, and I can’t lower my arms without making horrible squishing noises with my armpits.

  “Jolly good,” proclaims our inspector. Do people actually say that in the UK, or is he just doing it for the benefit of the cameras? He hands me a tiny towel, barely larger than my mom’s dish towels, and sends me back to the dressing room to change.

  I can’t figure out a way to pull the gooey shirt over my head without smearing chocolate pudding all over my face and hair, so I find my nail clippers, hack through the collar, and rip the T-shirt all the way down the front like The Hulk. I rub as much of the pudding off my arms as possible, but the towel is saturated in seconds, so I resort to lying down on the ground and wiping my arms on the grass. I can barely stand to put my normal clothes back on over my sticky skin, but I can’t very well do the rest of this leg of the race topless, even if that might win me some sort of special award from Isis.

  Samir is waiting with our next pink envelope when I come out, literally tapping his foot with impatience. “What took you so long?”

  I hold out my arms, which are still streaked with pudding. “Um, this?”

  “God, Claire, now is not the time for preening. We’re in a race, not a beauty contest. I thought you wanted to beat your sister.”

  “I do,” I say, pleased that he still believes that’s my goal.

  “Well, so far you suck at it. She’s been gone almost ten minutes. If you really want to get ahead, you have to make some sacrifices, okay?”

  I bite back all the retorts that spring to mind and give him my best penitent smile. “Sorry, I’ll try to go faster.”

  “You better.” He rips open the envelope and reads aloud:

  Make your way to the Chimney Sweep, a famous Glasgow pub. Chimney sweeps are thought to bring good luck at weddings in the UK, and they are sometimes hired to kiss the bride. In the back room of the pub, you will find several replica chimneys much like the ones real chimney sweeps face daily. Both team members must enter a chimney together and search for the loose brick on the inside of the walls, behind which lie your next instructions.

  I hope none of the other teams are claustrophobic, or this challenge is really going to slow them down, and it’ll be impossible to stay at the back of the pack. I mean, it’s not like I’m a huge fan of tiny spaces, but at least I’m not going to have a panic attack or anything.

  Wait a minute. A panic attack.

  I picture the way Will acted that first day on the plane, sweating and shaking and hyperventilating, and I’m struck with a brilliant idea. I must be grinning unintentionally, because Samir says, “God, why do you look so creepily happy? Is squeezing yourself inside a filthy, sooty chimney your freakish idea of fun?”

  I just smile at him. “The soot won’t bother me,” I say. “I don’t mind playing dirty at all.”

  The pub isn’t one of the landmarks listed on our map, but there are tons of people strolling around Glasgow Green, and Samir and I ask random strangers where it is until we find someone who knows. Everyone stares at my sticky arms like they’re afraid I have some horrible skin disease, but it doesn’t even bother me. When I think about how nervous I was asking Taufik for help in the Indonesian marketplace, I can’t figure out why I was so scared. It’s weird how things that once seemed like a huge deal just fade into the background when there are bigger concerns to worry about.

  I navigate us through Glasgow, hoping Samir has a bad sense of direction and won’t notice we’re taking a very circuitous route to the pub. When we finally arrive, Martin and Zora are on their way out, covered in soot and clutching their next envelope. Samir curses. “We’re so behind! If you’d just listened to the stuff I told you before we went in that idiotic Cupid tent—”

  “It’ll be fine, Samir,” I say, cutting him off. “We’ll search quickly, okay? There can’t be that many bricks inside a chimney. We can still catch up. We’re not even in last place.” He pushes in front of me and shoves the door open, and I give the camera a little wink as soon as his back is turned.

  To my dismay, there’s a bagpiper inside the pub—that sound has always reminded me of dying cattle. But aside from that, it’s a gorgeous space, paneled in carved dark wood that looks like it’s been polished smooth by hundreds of years of rubbing hands. At first I’m surprised by the number of people drinking this early in the afternoon, but they all raise their glasses to us in unison and shout “Sláinte!” when we walk in, so most of them are probably hired extras. I pause to give the drinkers a little salute before Samir practically drags me into the back.

  There are four replica chimneys in the room. Through the openings where fireplaces would normally go, I can make out four pairs of feet, including my sister’s red sneakers and Will’s blue ones. As we pass Miranda’s chimney, I hear a muffled voice say, “Reach behind my head … no, wait, ow, not there!” From Will and Janine’s, I only hear high-pitched giggling, which makes my stomach squirm. A producer points us toward the chimney across from my sister’s, and Samir crouches down by the op
ening.

  “How are we even supposed to do this?” he asks. “There’s barely room for one person in here.”

  “I guess we just have to squeeze. Should we go in front-to-front or back-to-back?”

  Samir frowns as he eyes my pudding-smeared arms. “Back-to-back. I don’t want your skin touching me.”

  I’m pretty sure that isn’t going to work, but in the interest of killing more time, I say, “Great, let’s go.”

  Samir goes in first, and then I do an awkward hop-scoot-crawl into the bottom of the chimney and worm myself upright. Once I’m standing, our bodies take up the whole space, and there isn’t any room to raise our arms and search. The back room of the pub is pretty dark to begin with, and now that we’re enclosed by sooty black walls, it’s impossible to see anything at all. Samir sneezes, and his head cracks into mine. The tiny enclosure is already starting to heat up from our breath and the warmth of our bodies, and I can tell it’ll be stifling soon. Until this moment, I hadn’t even noticed that Samir was wearing cologne, but now the smell is so overpowering it makes me want to gag. How could Miranda have wanted to get close to this guy on purpose?

  “Okay, this clearly isn’t working,” Samir says. “We need to turn around.”

  There’s no room to maneuver, so I crouch down while Samir repositions himself, then skid my back up the sooty wall until I’m vertical again. Standing front-to-front is even worse; I can feel Samir’s hot breath on my forehead, and when he reaches out to search the soot-covered bricks behind me, his chest presses against my boobs. I forbid myself to think about what Will and Janine are doing inside their chimney.

  “Be methodical,” Samir orders, like he has a PhD in chimney searching. “I only want to do this once.”

  “Trust me, you’re not alone,” I mutter.

  I make a show of searching for about two minutes before I start breathing harder and faster, channeling Will on the plane. Then I start swaying a little and stumble into Samir like I’m growing unsteady on my feet. “Watch it,” he snaps.