For Real(31)

“Oh, please,” he says. “My backpack is heavier than you. I got seriously lucky having you as my partner.” I know he’s talking about my weight, but I pretend he might mean it in other ways, too.

Nearby, Martin and Zora are trundling off. Zora’s pretty small, too, but Martin’s face is the color of strawberry jam, and there’s a drop of sweat hanging off the end of his nose. I doubt it’s from exertion—he’s probably as mortified by this as I am.

Will starts crawling, and he’s much faster than I expected. Ten feet into the ride, I give up on protecting my sweaty hands and brace them against his shoulders. “You okay up there?” he calls.

“I’m good.”

I’m slipping to the left a little, and I lean the other way, trying to balance. “Hey,” Will says as I overcorrect, “this might be easier if you lie all the way down on top of me.”

“Lie on top of you?” Oh God.

“Like a piggyback ride, but horizontal.” He stops for a minute and waits for me to reposition myself.

The suggestion kind of makes me feel like my head is going to explode, but Martin and Zora are way ahead of us now, and another cheer goes up behind us, signaling the arrival of a third team. Slowly, I lower myself down until my boobs are pressed flat to Will’s back. I lay my cheek between his shoulder blades, breathing in the heat rising from his skin and the smell of his detergent and fresh sweat. I lock my arms around his torso for balance and wonder if he can feel how fast my heart is beating.

“Comfy?” he asks, and the vibrations of his voice rumble through my whole body.

“Ready when you are,” I say.

Will was right—we’re able to go a lot faster like this. I close my eyes as his body shifts and flexes under mine, and just for a second, I allow myself to imagine pressing this close to him because he wants me there, not because it’s part of a game.

The ride ends way too quickly.

When we hit the finish line, Will lets out a whoop. “All done,” he says, reaching back to pat my thigh. “You can get off now.” I don’t want to, but I do.

Will stands up, brushing the dirt off the knees of his jeans and rotating his wrists. His face is pink with exertion, and it makes him look cuter, if that’s even possible. “Did I hurt you?” I ask him.

“Nah. You’re like a tiny baby koala.” He runs over to the lion dancer, who pulls a pink envelope out of the pocket of his fringed pants and hands it over. Will opens it and reads aloud:

Make your way by cab to the Hotel Majapahit and find the swimming pool. In Java, it is traditional for couples to pay a fee of twenty-five rat tails to the Registrar of Marriage before their wedding. In homage to this, you must search the bottom of the pool for twenty-five rat figurines, which you may trade for your next instructions.

Rat tails? Ew. I make a mental note never to get married in Java.

“That sounds easy,” Will says. “How hard can it be to find twenty-five figurines on the floor of a pool? It’s not like there’s anywhere to hide them.”

We sprint back to the starting line to collect our backpacks and see that two other teams have arrived. Steve is already crawling with Vanessa perched cross-legged in the center of his back like a queen riding an elephant. Troy and Janine are having a little trouble with logistics; they’re about the same height, and she can’t seem to keep her mile-long legs off the ground, no matter how she contorts herself. I still don’t see Samir at all—maybe Miranda and I won’t have to do a thing to knock him out of the competition. Then again, my sister’s not here yet either.

Just as I think that, a taxi comes screeching up to the curb, and Miranda and Aidan pile out with their camera crew. “Hey,” my sister calls. “You guys need a cab? You can have this one.”

“Yeah, thanks.” I give her a hug as Will and our crew squish inside and start talking to the driver about our next destination. “How was your flight?” I ask my sister.

“Miranda, come on,” Aidan calls.

“I gotta go,” she says breathlessly. “I’ll talk to you later.” She blows me a kiss, and then she’s gone.

I slide into the car next to Will feeling a bit let down—seeing my sister in tiny, rushed snippets is almost worse than not seeing her at all. “So, the driver knows where the hotel is?” I ask.

“He nodded and said okay when I showed him the instructions,” Will says.

“I guess we’re good, then.” I pat his head. “Thanks, Lucky Hat.”

But half an hour later, we’re still driving around, and I swear the same droning song has been playing on the cabdriver’s stereo the whole time. I have no idea where the hotel is supposed to be, but I’m starting to feel like we’re going in circles. Did Miranda know how awful this cabbie was when she handed him off to us? I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t try to sabotage me, but I guess I can’t be certain, now that we’re not technically a team. “Didn’t we already pass that store with the blue awning?” I shout to Will over the music.

“I’m not sure. They’re all starting to look the same.” He leans forward. “Excuse me, sir? Hotel Majapahit?”

The guy nods. “Yes, yes.”

“You know where we’re going?”

“Yes.” But then he does a U-turn, which doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.