For Real(24)
I give Miranda a quick hug and whisper, “Good luck, Mira,” and then I walk across the circle to Will, feeling my sister’s gaze on my back.
“Fancy meeting you here,” Will says with a smile when I reach him, and I look up into those piercing eyes. He seems like he’s pleased that I’m his partner, but maybe I’m just seeing what I want to see. If there really are going to be intimate challenges, he probably wishes he’d gotten one of the hot sorority girls. Or maybe Zora, with her edgy blue streaks, or statuesque Janine. Suddenly, my Team Revenge T-shirt seems childish and ridiculous.
“Isn’t this insane?” I whisper. “My sister is going to kill me. I’m the one who roped her into auditioning, and now she’s on a dating show with her ex. I feel awful.”
“Maybe running away from him will give her incentive to race harder,” he says. The adorable dimple in his right cheek peeks out at me, and I know that if it means keeping him as my “date,” I’ll race pretty hard myself.
While we’ve been talking, divorcée Jada has been paired with Will’s friend Lou, and the blond sorority girl, Philadelphia, has been paired with Blake, the blond stripper. When Isis reaches into her bag again and pulls out my sister’s name, I cross all my fingers and toes and pray she won’t be matched with Samir. “Miranda, your partner for this leg of the race is … Aidan,” she says. I let out my breath in a thankful rush as she moves to stand beside him, looking relieved.
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?”