For Real(22)

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 fa?ade, 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 checkin point for a rest. The last team to arrive at each checkin 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?”