For Real (15 page)

“Okay, let’s strategize,” Will says. “We should find someone who speaks English and ask them what this stuff is that we’re supposed to buy.”

There’s a group of teenage boys loitering and smoking near the front of the market, and I point them out. “Maybe those guys?”

“Sure. Go for it.”

I look down at my feet. “Um, maybe you could do it?”

“They’d probably be more likely to help a cute girl than some random white dude, don’t you think?”

As much as I love that Will just called me cute, I feel anything but attractive right now. My butt is damp from the swimming pool, my hair is a bedraggled mess, and I have wet spots on the front of my shirt that make me look like I’m lactating. I don’t even like to ask for help at the grocery store at home, where everyone speaks English and I look relatively normal. But I’ve wasted enough of our time already today. If I can strip on camera, surely I can ask a stranger what an Indonesian word means. “Fine,” I say. “I’ll be right back.”

My palms start sweating as I approach the guys, and I wipe them on my jeans. At first nobody even notices me, but when the boys spot Greg and his giant camera, they all fall silent and look at me. I have no idea what to say, so I try “English?”

“Yes,” says one of the guys. He’s wearing a red baseball
cap and looks about my age. When he smiles into the camera, he reveals a gap between his front teeth.

“Can you tell me what
srikaya
is?”

His eyebrows furrow. I hold out the card and point to the word.
“Srikaya?”
I say again.

Comprehension dawns on his face. “Fruit,” he says.

“What kind? What does it look like?”

He struggles for descriptive English words. “Bump … green?”

That doesn’t sound like anything I’ve ever eaten, and there’s no way I’m going to be able to find it based on that description. “Can you show me? Inside?” I point at the market.

He looks at his friends. One of them shrugs and says something in Indonesian, and the rest of them laugh. I wonder if they’re talking about the wet spots on my boobs, and I cross my arms over my chest. Finally, the guy in the baseball cap says, “America? TV?”

“Yes,” I say, hoping that’s a good thing.

He nods. “Okay. We go.”

“You know what these other two things are, too?” I point to
bakpao
and
ikan asin
, and he nods again. I breathe a sigh of relief. I did it.

I gesture for him to follow me. “What’s your name?” I ask as we walk, hoping it won’t be something impossible to pronounce.

“Taufik.”

“Nice to meet you, Taufik. I’m Claire.” I can’t believe I’m having a more normal conversation with a random Javanese
stranger than I managed to have with a bunch of Middlebury students a few weeks ago. Am I getting braver? Or is it just that I know Taufik won’t understand a word I say if I start spouting media theory?

Will is standing over by the pink flag, and I bring Taufik over and introduce him. “He’s going to come in with us and show us what we need.”

“Nicely done, Claire.” Will grins at me, and a warm feeling spreads through my whole body. Maybe I’d be more willing to talk to strangers if I got positive reinforcement every time. I’m like a puppy, and Will’s smile is my liver treat.

While Greg presents a waiver to Taufik, I secure the instructions to my forearm with a hair band so I can read them hands-free. Then Will and I hold a water pan level between us while the woman in the print skirt fills it. It’s only a little deeper than a cookie sheet, and as soon as we take a step toward the market, it jostles and splashes all over my chest. Now I look like I’m participating in a wet T-shirt contest.

“Oh God, I’m so sorry,” Will says. But he doesn’t sound that sorry, and I wonder for a second if he dumped the water on me on purpose. A tiny part of me hopes he did.

Taufik looks confused as we hold out our pan to be refilled. “We go to market?” he asks.

“Yes,” Will says. “We have to bring this water.”

“It’s for a game,” I try to explain, but I’m pretty sure he still doesn’t understand.

Will and I carefully coordinate our steps this time, and we make it to the door without spilling. But once Taufik leads us inside, I lose hope that we’ll ever be able to complete this
challenge. The market is a dark, confusing rabbit warren of passageways, packed to the brim with shoppers. The roof is translucent, but it’s so dirty that hardly any daylight gets through. Fluorescent lights hover here and there like UFOs, reflecting the red paint of the stalls and casting a ruddy glow over everything. A man carrying a massive basket of chili peppers comes barreling out of nowhere and nearly tramples us, and we struggle to keep the water pan level. Taufik disappears into the crowd, his red baseball cap bobbing farther and farther away, and I have to shout his name five times before he hears us and fights his way back.

“Slowly,” I say, nodding to the water pan. Even inclining my head makes it splash.

After a while, Will convinces Greg to go ahead of us with the camera, effectively clearing a path for us. We pass massive white sacks full of spices, tables piled high with produce, crates filled with unrefrigerated eggs, and cookware dangling from hooks. Many of the stalls are selling things I don’t even recognize. There’s an overwhelming smell of seafood and spices and smoke and sweat. It’s all pretty amazing, and I wish I weren’t carrying this stupid water pan so I could actually look around.

Finally, Taufik pauses at a produce stall and holds up a baseball-sized object that looks kind of like a round, green pinecone.
“Srikaya,”
he announces.

“Awesome,” Will says. “Claire, where’s the money?”

“Crap. It’s in my back pocket.”

“Can Taufik get it out for you?”

I don’t really want a random stranger sticking his hands in my jeans. “I can get it. Stay really still …”

Painstakingly slowly, I reach behind me and try to tug the rupiahs out of my damp pocket. I’m almost in the clear when someone knocks my arm from behind, and I lurch forward, dumping the entire tray of water down Will’s front. I hear a gasp and a giggle behind me, and I whirl around to see Philadelphia and Blake. “Oh gosh, I’m
so
sorry,” Philadelphia gushes, making her best innocent face. “It’s so
crowded
in here!” Bizarrely, her eye makeup still looks perfect, even after swimming. Maybe it’s tattooed on.

I feel my face go hot—she obviously hit us on purpose—but I know I can’t afford to waste time by losing my temper. What she did is probably against the rules, but it’s not like I have any way to report her. “Come on, let’s refill this,” I say to Will through gritted teeth. As soon as Philadelphia and Blake pass us, concentrating on their pan of water, I pay for the weird green fruit and stuff it into my pack. They move right past the stall without stopping, so they probably still don’t know what they’re looking for. I think about bumping them back, but that’s not the kind of racer I want to be. I don’t want to win by playing dirty, unless it involves Samir.

We push through the crowd to the entrance, Taufik and Greg at our heels, and the woman in print refills our tray. Just as we’re about to head back inside, Miranda and Aidan sprint up, damp and out of breath. “Hey,” my sister pants. “God, our driver got so lost on the way here.” She looks down at my wet clothes. “I take it this isn’t your first tray of water.”

“Nope. But it helps if you get your cameraman to go in front of you. And watch out for Blake and Philadelphia; they’ll try to slam into you on purpose.”

“Thanks.” She holds out her instruction card. “Do you know what any of these words mean?”

I pull our
srikaya
out of my pack. “This is the first one. We don’t know about the others yet.”

“Come on, Claire,” Will urges.

Miranda looks slightly annoyed, but she says, “Go ahead. Good luck.”

We trundle back into the market, and Taufik steers us down a different aisle, this one lined with enormous tubs of seafood on ice. Fish with the heads and scales on have always creeped me out a little, but these are arranged so nicely that they’re actually kind of pretty. The floor is slippery with half-melted ice and slime, and the fishy smell is overwhelming. “We’re going to reek for the rest of our lives,” I say.

I expect Will to laugh and agree, but he has a frustrated look on his face and barely responds. “What’s the matter?” I ask.

He shrugs a little, and the water pan tips dangerously. “I just don’t think you should be giving hints to other teams,” he says. “It kind of defeats the whole purpose of the race, you know?”

I get that cold, twisty feeling in my stomach that always happens when someone I care about is mad at me. “But … she’s not ‘other teams.’ She’s my sister.”

“Claire, she’s not your partner anymore.”

“But she’s the whole reason I’m here. I have to help her beat Samir. I promised her I would, no matter what.”

“We haven’t seen Samir all day. He’s probably way at the back of the pack. Miranda doesn’t need your help beating him right now.”

“Well, yeah. But people form alliances on race shows all the time. What’s the big deal if I have an alliance with Miranda?”

“Alliances help both teams. It’s not like she’s done anything for us.”

“She gave us her cab after the first challenge!”

“Yeah, but that wasn’t exactly a sacrifice. It’s not like she needed it anymore. Plus, that guy was the worst driver ever.”

Taufik calls out
“Ikan asin!”
and points at a large basket of crusty dried fish that look like they’ve been pounded flat with a mallet, eyes and all. I seriously do not want those inside my pack, but I smile and call, “Thank you! One quarter kilo!” Very precariously, I manage to pass him some money.

As Taufik haggles with the fishmonger, Will says, “Look, I’m not telling you to freeze your sister out or anything. But you have to race for yourself. Think about how you’re going to look to the viewers if you keep helping her instead of trying to win.”

“I’ll look like a nice person.”

“The race isn’t about being nice. It’s about winning.”

I think back to my second audition, when I told Charlotte I wasn’t racing for my sister. I was so cocky then, but maybe Will’s right—now that I’m actually here, exhausted
and soaked through and reeking of fish, I’ve slipped right back into my old supporting role. How am I going to make my sister see how competent I am if I don’t stay focused and try to pull ahead? Plus, I can’t let Will down when he’s been so supportive. After all, he’s my partner now.

“You’re right,” I say. “Sorry. I’ll be more careful.”

“I’m not trying to scold you. All I’m saying is, I bet there are things you could do with half a million dollars, too. You just have to believe you’re worth it.”

Taufik appears at my side with the bag of dried fish, and I motion for him to tuck it into the side pouch of my backpack. “Okay, we’re almost done,” I tell him.
“Bakpao?”

He nods happily—either
bakpao
is something awesome or he can’t wait to be finished with us. Judging by the dried fish, it’s probably the latter.

It only takes about thirty seconds for a young woman with a basket on her head to crash into us and spill our water again. Taufik has started to get the hang of the game now, and he races back to the entrance, shouting for people to clear a path for us. When we get to the woman in print, Samir and Tawny are getting their pan filled. It gives me great pleasure to see that Samir is dripping wet and extremely pissed off. “God, hold it level!” he snaps at Tawny. “That means
parallel to the ground
, genius!” Then he turns to Will and me and asks, “Do you guys know what we’re supposed to buy?”

I angle my body away so he won’t see the fish and fruit in the mesh pocket of my bag. “Someone in there told us
bakpao
is pig intestines,” I tell him. “We don’t know what the other stuff is.” I feel kind of bad when Tawny sincerely
thanks us, but I can’t worry about her right now. Samir has to go, and someone will have to go down with him.

With Taufik and our crew forming a protective little pod around us, we manage to make it all the way to the other side of the market without spilling. Taufik leads us over to a cart near the exit and proclaims,
“Bakpao!”

Apparently,
bakpao
are big, pillowy dumplings. They smell heavenly, and when the guy behind the cart passes the warm, soft dough to Taufik, my mouth starts watering like crazy. He stares at it so longingly as he tucks it into the pocket of my bag that I tell him to get another one for himself, and he breaks into an enormous grin.

The exit is only a few feet away, and we move with exaggerated care through the jostling crowd. A pink flag is waiting for us just outside, and a bearded man nods as we present our water pan and our three items. When he holds out a pink envelope, I literally jump for joy.

Will rips open the Velcro and pulls out the instructions. On the card is a photo of a sculpture depicting an alligator trying to bite a shark. Greg leans in between us to get a close-up, and Will reads the text out loud.

Make your way by cab to this sculpture, which is the Cupid’s Nest for this leg of the race. Hurry—one team’s race around the world ends here!

“What’s a Cupid’s Nest?” I ask.

Will shrugs. “I guess it’s like the final check-in point? That’s really stupid.”

I hold the instructions out to Taufik, who is blissfully stuffing his face. “Do you know where this is?” I ask, pointing to the picture.

He swallows. “Surabaya Zoo.”

“Is that far from here?”

“Not so far.”

“Thank you, Taufik,” I say. “You’ve been incredibly helpful.” I reach for the second
bakpao
, and when the bearded check-in guy gestures that I can take it, I hand it to Taufik. He thanks me, and we run off to find a cab.

“I wanted that dumpling thing,” Will grumbles.

“Yeah, me too, but he deserved it. We can always go back for the dried fish, if you want that.”

“I’m hungry enough that that almost sounds like a good idea.”