Love & Other Disasters(15)

“Hey.” Dahlia turned back toward them. “Did you ever get to record your first solo interview? Introduce your pronouns?”

London nodded. It had been surprisingly easy, talking to a camera instead of a table full of strangers. They were choosing, consciously, to not think about the fact that that camera would be broadcasting their words to millions of people. Because that still seemed surreal. “You get to do yours?”

Dahlia shrugged. “Yeah. It was boring.” The warmth in her eyes dimmed. The bus lurched suddenly out of the studio parking lot. And as the silence between them stretched, just as in the hotel bar, London again felt that desire to bring her back.

“So I’ve been thinking,” they started, scratching at their neck. “Whistle. It’s a pretty hard word to spell.”

She blinked at them.

“I keep thinking about it, and it’s like when you stare at a word too long and it starts to look weird, you know? I’ve started questioning whether I know how to spell it, now, let alone in fourth grade.”

Dahlia laughed, loud and bright, and London’s body began to relax.

“I know! But”—she bit her lip—“I was a TAG kid. I should have known how to spell it.”

“TAG?”

“Talented and gifted.” She rolled her eyes. “And I did know how to spell it. I did!” She smacked London in the arm, as if they had implied she didn’t, and it shocked a laugh out of them. Women kept hitting them in Los Angeles, and they felt strangely okay with it.

“W-H-I-S-T-L-E,” Dahlia spelled now.

“Good job,” London said, smiling.

“Shut up,” she said immediately. And then, sounding serious, “My mom was so disappointed.”

“About a fourth grade spelling bee?”

She looked out the window again. “Yeah.”

And before London could say anything else, the bus stopped.

“All right, kids, time to head out!” Janet shouted from the front of the bus.

“Wait,” Dahlia said. “What? We were on the bus for like, two minutes.”

“Yeah.” London leaned over her slightly to peer out the window, not at all noticing that she smelled like peppermint. “Are we seriously here already? Oh. Oh god.”

Outside the window, the sounds of screaming preteens grew louder with each passing second. They jumped up and down, waving. London was . . . not ready for this.

But when they looked over, of course, Dahlia was smiling.

“Sweet,” she whispered. She waved back, causing the kids closest to their window to squeal even louder.

London leaned back in their seat and exhaled.

They had arrived at their first Real World Challenge.

It was a bar mitzvah. On the plus side, Adam Abramovitz was definitely going to be the coolest kid in his middle school for at least a week.

On the down side, Jeffrey was Dahlia’s group leader.

To be fair, she didn’t know Jeffrey that well. She still didn’t know anyone that well.

But sometimes you had gut feelings about people. And Dahlia had a gut feeling that Jeffrey was a giant jerkface.

“Dahlia.” He pointed at her once the twelve remaining contestants were broken into two teams of six and six. “You’re on hummus.”

“I’m on . . . hummus,” she repeated, her pen paused over her notebook. She did not need to take notes on how to shove chickpeas into a food processor.

“And whatever other appetizers you want to make. You’re the snack table. Make it pretty. All right, now, Ahmed—”

“Wait,” London, next to her, interrupted. “You saw Dahlia win the challenge yesterday, right? The fish challenge?”

Their group’s assigned main course today was salmon. Which almost made Dahlia laugh, when she saw the ingredients laid out on the temporary set the crew had constructed behind this fire hall. It was like she was living in a pescatarian hell.

“Yeah, and luckily she didn’t fall on her face yesterday. I’m not going to have our main course scattered all over the floor.” Jeffrey raised a condescending eyebrow. “This isn’t just for the judges; this is a real event.”

“What the—” Dahlia elbowed London lightly in the ribs to stop them. She was glad London was on her team, and appreciated them standing up for her, but now Jeffrey had actually embarrassed her, and she just wanted everyone to move on.

“Anyway, I believe I’m the team leader here.” Jeffrey glared London’s way, and from the corner of her eye, Dahlia saw their jaw clench. “Dahlia’s on apps. London, you’re on desserts. Now, Ahmed and Beth . . .”

Whatever. She could make a kickass hummus. She loved apps.

“Remember to take this seriously,” London muttered to her, scribbling in their own notepad. “This is a real event. For thirteen-year-olds.”

Dahlia suppressed her snort.

After Jeffrey had finished his orders, London and Dahlia both bolted for the table at the back of the temporary set, like rushing to get the back seat in a school bus, claiming it before heading over to collect their ingredients.

The reality of a challenge like this set in pretty quickly once the judges had given their spiels and the cooking actually got underway. The food didn’t necessarily need to be Michelin-star quality; you simply needed to make a shit ton of it in a short amount of time. Dahlia was all for it. Just building blocks, over and over. Consistency was her jam.