For Real(73)

“It’s over there!” Samir screams, pointing toward the back of the abbey just as Tawny and Troy rush past us on the way to their car. “We looked over there! How did we miss it?”

“Crap! I don’t know!” I try my best to sound as panicked as he does.

Tawny and Troy’s engine starts up, and Samir runs toward the graveyard with Robby at his heels. “Hurry!” he shouts over his shoulder at me, and I do. I have to keep myself between him and that envelope for as long as I can.

But it’s no use. Samir dashes up and down the rows of graves like a sugar-high toddler, throwing boxes open, and he finds the last envelope in less than a minute. “It’s right here!” he shrieks, waving it in my face. “You were searching this side of the graveyard. Why didn’t you see it? Are you blind or something? God, you suck! We could have been done an hour ago!” He sprints toward the car, not even checking to see if I’m following.

“I’m so sorry,” I pant as I run after him. “But at least we have it now, right?”

“It’s too late now, Claire!”

I pray he’s right, but Tawny and Troy hardly have any lead at all. “Maybe it’s not. Just stop for a second and open the instructions! We have no idea where we’re supposed to go!”

Samir tears the envelope open so forcefully the instructions rip down the middle. He reads the two pieces and then thrusts them at me in disgust.

Make your way to the front entrance of Drumlanrig Castle in Dumfries, the Cupid’s Nest for this leg of the race. Hurry—one team’s race around the world ends here!

Samir flings himself into the driver’s seat and starts the car before Kanesha and I have even shut our doors. “You’ve cost me half a million dollars, you bitch,” he fumes. “I hope you’re proud of yourself.”

I am, I want to tell him, but I need to save that for the finish line. Instead I say, “It’s not over yet. Just drive, okay? Maybe someone will get stalled on the way to Dumfries.” For a second, I’m afraid he’s going to turn around and slap me. But instead he just peels out of the parking lot so fast our wheels spin and a literal cloud of dust flies up behind us.

Half the roads we have to take to Dumfries are barely wide enough for two cars to pass each other, but Samir barrels down them at such a breakneck pace that Kanesha and I slam into each other every time he turns. I hold my breath basically the whole way, praying no one else’s car really does break down on the side of the road—at this rate, we actually might catch up to Tawny and Troy. Though if Samir keeps driving like this, it won’t even matter if my plan succeeds, because we’ll all die in a fiery crash before we make it to the castle. “God, Samir, slow down,” I say. “Even if we’re in last place, I’d really like to make it there alive.”

Samir slams on the brakes so hard the car skids. My head snaps forward and then back as my seatbelt engages, and Robby’s camera nearly flies through the windshield. “You don’t have to stop entirely,” I say, rubbing my whiplashed neck.

But Samir isn’t paying any attention to me—he’s staring out the front window, both hands on his head like he’s about to tear out his hair in chunks. “Are you freaking kidding me?” he sputters.

Because the road is completely full of sheep, big and fluffy and huggable, like an animated movie come to life. There are about twenty of them milling around on the asphalt like they don’t have a care in the world, and it’s such a perfect, absurd roadblock that I burst into hysterical laughter.

“What is wrong with you?” Samir screams. “There is nothing funny about this!” His face is the color of a strawberry, and there’s a vein throbbing on his left temple. He blasts the horn, but the sheep don’t even bother to look up, which makes me laugh even harder. After all the difficult things we’ve been forced to do, my sister’s ex is about to have an aneurism over farm animals.

“I’m sorry,” I gasp, “but everything about this is funny.”

Samir rolls down his window. “Move it, *s! Do you want to be roadkill? ’Cause I will run you over! Don’t test me!” He inches the car forward in what I guess is supposed to be a threatening gesture. A couple of sheep deign to glance up at him for a minute, but they just gaze at the car sleepily, then go back to what they were doing. A couple of them start nibbling on the grass at the side of the road.

Samir opens the car door and strides out into the flock, waving his arms like a deranged windmill and screaming obscenities, and Robby scurries out after him to document his nervous breakdown. Even when Samir plants both his hands on one of the sheep’s butts and tries to push it off the road by force, it refuses to move. I’m laughing so hard now I can hardly breathe, and Kanesha is starting to giggle, too. Miranda’s going to die when this episode airs.

Just when I think things can’t get any funnier, one of the biggest sheep turns around and stares straight at Samir, then lowers its head and starts running right at him. Samir’s eyes bug out, and he shrieks like a kindergarten girl with a bee up her dress as he bolts for the car. He dives through the open door headfirst, sprawling across both front seats in an incredibly undignified way. “That psycho sheep is trying to kill me!” he pants.

Samir’s skinny ankles are still hanging out the door when the sheep stampedes right past him and heads for the fence at the other side of the road. When it reaches a post, it starts rubbing its head against the wood as gleefully as Will was rubbing Janine’s stomach this morning. It makes a happy bleating noise, and tears of laughter start streaming down my face. I so hope Robby managed to get Samir’s flying leap on camera. I can picture it being played over and over in slow motion, underscored with faux-heroic music. For once, I won’t be the one who’s portrayed as ridiculous.