For Real (13 page)

“I just thought you were, like, slumming or something. I mean, you said you and Lou were trying to get
away
from your rich family.”

“Yeah, that’s another thing. Lou and I aren’t related. We’re just friends.”

A small bubble of hope rises in my chest. “So … there’s no CFO’s daughter?”

“There’s no CFO’s daughter. And there isn’t anyone else, either.”

His revelation makes my brain feel fizzy, like it’s been marinating in a glass of champagne overnight. As I sit there staring back at him with a goofy grin on my face, I imagine the fictional CFO’s daughter drowning in a chocolate fountain, a whole set of prawn forks sticking out of her flawless neck.

Will is available, and I’m going to make him mine.

By the time we land in Surabaya, I’ve been awake for thirty-four hours. The flight attendant cheerfully announces that it’s seven in the morning local time.

“Is it Thursday, Friday, or Saturday?” I ask Will. Remarkably, he slept through the landing of our second flight and only woke up when the wheels touched down.

He messes with his hair under his hat, then pulls a piece of gum out of his pocket and shoves it into his mouth. He doesn’t even have to rummage for it, and I wonder if he also worried about his bad plane breath in advance. Would a guy be concerned about that if he didn’t find the girl next to him at least a little bit attractive?

“I think it’s Friday,” he says.

“But we crossed the international date line, right? Did we skip ahead or back?”

Will rubs his eyes. “I have no idea. Thinking about it makes my brain hurt.”

We pull our packs down from the overhead compartment—somehow, mine feels like it’s gotten heavier since yesterday—and stumble blearily into the airport. On
all the race shows I’ve seen, it looks like the contestants zoom off the plane and straight into waiting taxis, but instead we’re routed down an endless series of hallways and into the line for passport control. Disappointingly, the Indonesian airport doesn’t look any different from an American one. I was hoping for palm-frond floors and walls made of orchids or something.

We answer some questions and have our passports stamped, and as we’re heading into the arrivals area, I spot Miranda waving at me from the end of the line. She was always better at sleeping on planes than I was, and she looks fresh and rested, though Aidan is rubbing his eyes under his hipster glasses. I don’t see Samir, and I pray he’s way behind us instead of ahead. Part of me wants to wait for my sister to get through the line so we can talk, but as soon as I think it, Martin and Zora zip past us, and Will says, “Come on, we better move.” He tugs me toward the exit, and I lose sight of Miranda.

The moment we step outside, the hot, wet air hits me like a slap. It’s so humid that it feels like we’ve just walked into someone’s mouth, and my shirt instantly starts clinging to my damp back. Will and I find the taxi line and toss our backpacks into the trunk of a blue-and-yellow car. I pray it’ll be air-conditioned, but when we slip inside, it’s even warmer. I wish I had changed into shorts on the plane.

“Alun Alun Stadium?” Will says, showing the driver our instructions. “Do you know where that is?” The guy nods enthusiastically. “Perfect. As fast as you can, please.”

“What day is it?” I ask the driver, but he just says, “Yes.”
Greg hops in beside him and somehow gets him to sign a release form agreeing to be on camera. Terry and all his sound equipment squish into the back with Will and me, and we’re off.

Logically, I know there are lots of countries where people drive on the left side of the road, but that doesn’t prepare me for the feeling of zooming into what looks like oncoming traffic. Every time a car flies by on the wrong side of us, I flinch. “Relax,” Will says, giving my knee a little squeeze. As if I could possibly do that with his hand on my leg.

We drive onto a massive suspension bridge, the cables glinting red-orange in the morning sun, and as I gaze out the window at the sparkling water underneath, it hits my sleep-deprived brain with renewed force that I’m actually here. I’m hurtling through a foreign country with a cute boy by my side, competing for a million dollars. I’ve never even been to Europe before, and here I am in Indonesia. And for this one moment, I’m not even that scared, just proud of myself.

“Holy crap,” I say to Will. “We’re in
Java
.” I leave out the cute boy part.

“Welcome to the other side of the world, Dominique,” he says. And then he
winks
at me. If this were a movie, I’d groan at how cheesy that is. But somehow it’s totally different when someone does it to you in real life. I start to feel even more overheated.

“Aren’t you dying in that wool hat?” I ask to distract myself.

“A little. But it’s my lucky hat. I have to wear it.”

“All the time? Or only when you’re trying to win something?”

“All the time.”

“Does it work? Are you actually luckier?”

He thinks about it. “I guess I don’t really know, since I always wear it. But I bet my life would be worse without it.”

“Or maybe your life would be exactly the same, only your head wouldn’t be hot.”

Will gives me a very serious look. “Do I really want to take that chance? Think of all the terrible things that could happen. What if I took it off and then our cab broke down, and we had to sit here in the middle of this bridge for hours while the strippers and the bimbos passed us?”

“Good point,” I say. “Why don’t you keep it on for now.”

We wind through the streets of Surabaya, past storefronts shaded with slapdash, corrugated-metal awnings and topped with tiny apartments. All the roofs are made of red tile, and everyone seems to have a balcony, even if they don’t have a front door. A man comes out to sweep in front of his shop and shoos away a couple of chickens. When we stop at a light, a woman passes in front of the car lugging an enormous basket filled with unfamiliar red objects. I think it’s food, but I can’t tell if it’s produce or fish.

Eventually our cabbie pulls up beside a long, oval field surrounded by a tall iron fence, scrubby trees, and multicolored flags. “Alun Alun,” he announces.

I don’t see any sort of marker that indicates we’re in the right place, but Martin and Zora are getting out of another cab farther up the block. “How much do we owe you?” I ask,
pulling out our rupiahs. They’re bright jewel tones, purple and blue and green. I hope we’ll have some left over so I can keep one as a souvenir.

Our driver rattles off something in … Indonesian? I can’t believe I don’t even know what language they speak here. In any case, I don’t understand it, so I fan out the money and extend it so he can pluck out the correct change. He extracts two bills, and I hope he hasn’t taken more than the ride was worth.

“Thank you!” Will calls as we sprint away with our backpacks. Or, rather, Will sprints, and I shuffle along as quickly as I can. I swear this backpack has gotten heavier.

Now that we’re out of the car, the box of pink envelopes at the other end of the field is hard to miss. Standing off to the side is a large crowd of locals who cheer when they see us and an American guy in a pink
Around the World
shirt, jabbering angrily into his phone. He must be one of the producers. Farther down the field are a couple guys in fringe pants and gigantic lion-head masks decorated with peacock plumes. They’re performing a spinning, squatting dance while a couple musicians accompany them with bells and some sort of wind instrument that sounds like an out-of-tune oboe.

Will extracts a pink envelope from the box, rips it open, and reads the instructions aloud.

At the end of a wedding in the nearby Marquesas Islands, it is traditional for the guests to lie facedown on the floor while the bride and groom walk over their backs and get out the door. In homage to this, one member of your team must crawl one hundred meters while the other team member rides on his/her back. The rider may not touch the ground at any time, or you must start over. When you have completed this task, the head lion dancer will give you your next instructions
.

I stare at Will, sure he must be teasing me for the comment I made on the plane about riding him. “It does
not
say that.”

“See for yourself.” He holds it out.

It really does say that. I suddenly don’t feel the least bit tired. “I seriously have to
ride
you?”

“Well, I could ride you, if you’d prefer. It doesn’t specify which team member should be on top.” His mouth quirks into a teasing smile, and that insane dimple peeks out at me.

I might die if this conversation goes on for one more second, so I try for the first time to channel Dominique. My kick-ass alter ego wouldn’t let this situation embarrass her. There’s nothing scary or intimidating about sitting on someone’s back. “All right, I’m on top,” I say. “Let’s go.”

Zora is already climbing onto Martin’s back over by a pink flag in the grass, which seems to mark the starting line. There’s another flag way down the field; it turns out a hundred meters is kind of a lot. “So … how do we do this, exactly?” I ask Will when we’ve joined them and shed our packs.

He drops down onto all fours. “Hop on, cowgirl.”

Gingerly, I sit down near his hips, facing sideways. I don’t
even want to touch him with my hands, in case he feels how sweaty they are. “Is this okay?” I ask.

“Are you going to be able to hold your feet off the ground? I think you should straddle me.”

Greg’s right in my face with the camera, and I can imagine millions of viewers roaring with laughter at my expression.
Dominique straddles people all the time
, I remind myself. I take a deep breath, swing my leg around, and squeeze Will’s hips tight between my thighs, then tuck my feet up under his perfect butt. “Sorry if I’m too heavy,” I say. “Rest whenever you need to.”

“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.