For Real (29 page)

“Correct!” our Cupid says. “One point. Question two: what is Samir’s hometown?” I write “Santa Barbara,” assuming he’ll write “Hartford.” He does, and we miss the point. Samir glares at me.

I do my best to get all the answers wrong—I even write that Samir has a cat named Peaches—but I’m not able to slow down the process that much. Dating Miranda for a year has given Samir a surprisingly large cache of information about me. He knows what year I was born, the name of my high school, and the name of the bookstore my dad owns. Somehow, he even knows that otters are my favorite animal. The only question he gets wrong, in fact, is my favorite color. I had always assumed Miranda never even thought about me while she was at Middlebury, but it seems like she actually talked about me a fair amount. I wish I’d known that sooner and that I hadn’t found out like this.

It only takes Samir fifteen minutes to earn us our next pink envelope. We have to wait a few minutes before opening it—Robby has to refilm our Cupid asking all her questions from the front—and in that time, we see several other teams dash off to the next challenge, including Will and Janine. I wonder if they played the Question Game on the plane or if they slept snuggled together. I wonder if he’s making her feel like she’s the only girl in the world who matters. Does she know this is all a game to him, or is she falling for his act, just like I did?

Finally, Robby lets us open our envelope.

Shortly before her wedding day, it is traditional for a Scottish woman and her friends to perform a ritual called “blackening the bride.” The bride dresses all in white, and her friends take turns throwing anything they want at her, such as molasses, tar, feathers, manure, and rotten eggs. Walk north to the middle of the field marked with an Around the World flag, where the female team member must change into the white clothes provided. Then the male team member must completely blacken her from the neck down using only his hands and the available sticky substances. The female team member may not assist him. You will receive your next instructions when no white fabric is visible!

I know I need to stop thinking about Will, but for the briefest of moments, I consider what this challenge would’ve been like with him as my partner. I gladly would have suffered through tar and rotten eggs if it meant he’d have to touch every tingling, eager inch of my body. But that’s just the thing—he’d
have
to, and that’s not the same as wanting to. Touching me would be another task to complete, and any other body would do just as well. I’m sure he’ll be very happy with Janine’s.

“Ew,” Samir says as he stares at the instructions. “I have to touch manure and tar with my bare hands?” I can’t believe he’s complaining about his hands when I’m going to be coated from neck to toe, but I swallow my annoyance. I can’t let him start to doubt that I’m on his side.

There are makeshift dressing rooms set up along the edge of the field, and I take my time swapping out my clothes
for a white T-shirt and white scrub pants that are several inches too long. My bra is bright green and my underwear is black, and both show right through the fabric, but after the pool challenge in Java, I’m past caring about that. When I make my way out onto the field, I see that Martin and Steve are almost done blackening Zora and Miranda. Will and Janine are only about half done, and she squeals like a three-year-old as he dips his hands into a bucket and lovingly rubs something sticky onto her flat stomach.

I find a spot as far from them as possible, and Samir joins me, lugging two heavy buckets of brown goo. “I’m pretty sure this one is chocolate syrup and this one is pudding,” he says. “I wasn’t sure which would be easier to spread. Are you ready?”

“I’m as ready as a person can be to have her sister’s ex paint her with pudding,” I say. “Do what you have to do.”

It’s kind of funny to see Samir grimace as he cups his hands and scoops up some chocolate syrup, trying not to drip on his perfectly creased jeans. But it becomes less amusing very quickly when he tips the cold syrup down my back and drops of it crawl inside my collar like curious insects. I hold my arms out to my sides, close my eyes, and wait for it to be over. To distract myself, I think about being back home on the couch with Natalie, watching
Speed Breed
and eating banana muffins and regaling her with stories about all the absurd things I’ve done on this show. I just need to get through today, and then it’ll all be over. But it’s hard to think anything but
ew, ew, ew
when someone you hate is massaging chocolate pudding onto your butt.

Samir is a meticulous worker, and Tawny and Troy have arrived by the time he covers my last patch of ankle. He calls another kilt-clad guy over to check his work, and I spin around slowly, causing my chocolate-covered clothing to stick to my skin in new and horrible ways. Half my hair has come loose from my ponytail and is plastered to my neck, and I can’t lower my arms without making horrible squishing noises with my armpits.

“Jolly good,” proclaims our inspector. Do people actually
say
that in the UK, or is he just doing it for the benefit of the cameras? He hands me a tiny towel, barely larger than my mom’s dish towels, and sends me back to the dressing room to change.

I can’t figure out a way to pull the gooey shirt over my head without smearing chocolate pudding all over my face and hair, so I find my nail clippers, hack through the collar, and rip the T-shirt all the way down the front like The Hulk. I rub as much of the pudding off my arms as possible, but the towel is saturated in seconds, so I resort to lying down on the ground and wiping my arms on the grass. I can barely stand to put my normal clothes back on over my sticky skin, but I can’t very well do the rest of this leg of the race topless, even if that might win me some sort of special award from Isis.

Samir is waiting with our next pink envelope when I come out, literally tapping his foot with impatience. “What took you so long?”

I hold out my arms, which are still streaked with pudding. “Um, this?”

“God, Claire, now is not the time for preening. We’re in a race, not a beauty contest. I thought you wanted to beat your sister.”

“I do,” I say, pleased that he still believes that’s my goal.

“Well, so far you suck at it. She’s been gone almost ten minutes. If you really want to get ahead, you have to make some sacrifices, okay?”

I bite back all the retorts that spring to mind and give him my best penitent smile. “Sorry, I’ll try to go faster.”

“You better.” He rips open the envelope and reads aloud:

Make your way to the Chimney Sweep, a famous Glasgow pub. Chimney sweeps are thought to bring good luck at weddings in the UK, and they are sometimes hired to kiss the bride. In the back room of the pub, you will find several replica chimneys much like the ones real chimney sweeps face daily. Both team members must enter a chimney together and search for the loose brick on the inside of the walls, behind which lie your next instructions
.

I hope none of the other teams are claustrophobic, or this challenge is really going to slow them down, and it’ll be impossible to stay at the back of the pack. I mean, it’s not like I’m a huge fan of tiny spaces, but at least I’m not going to have a panic attack or anything.

Wait a minute. A panic attack.

I picture the way Will acted that first day on the plane, sweating and shaking and hyperventilating, and I’m struck
with a brilliant idea. I must be grinning unintentionally, because Samir says, “God, why do you look so creepily
happy
? Is squeezing yourself inside a filthy, sooty chimney your freakish idea of
fun
?”

I just smile at him. “The soot won’t bother me,” I say. “I don’t mind playing dirty at all.”

The pub isn’t one of the landmarks listed on our map, but there are tons of people strolling around Glasgow Green, and Samir and I ask random strangers where it is until we find someone who knows. Everyone stares at my sticky arms like they’re afraid I have some horrible skin disease, but it doesn’t even bother me. When I think about how nervous I was asking Taufik for help in the Indonesian marketplace, I can’t figure out why I was so scared. It’s weird how things that once seemed like a huge deal just fade into the background when there are bigger concerns to worry about.

I navigate us through Glasgow, hoping Samir has a bad sense of direction and won’t notice we’re taking a very circuitous route to the pub. When we finally arrive, Martin and Zora are on their way out, covered in soot and clutching their next envelope. Samir curses. “We’re
so
behind! If you’d just listened to the stuff I told you before we went in that idiotic Cupid tent—”

“It’ll be fine, Samir,” I say, cutting him off. “We’ll search quickly, okay? There can’t be that many bricks inside a chimney. We can still catch up. We’re not even in last place.” He
pushes in front of me and shoves the door open, and I give the camera a little wink as soon as his back is turned.

To my dismay, there’s a bagpiper inside the pub—that sound has always reminded me of dying cattle. But aside from that, it’s a gorgeous space, paneled in carved dark wood that looks like it’s been polished smooth by hundreds of years of rubbing hands. At first I’m surprised by the number of people drinking this early in the afternoon, but they all raise their glasses to us in unison and shout
“Sláinte!”
when we walk in, so most of them are probably hired extras. I pause to give the drinkers a little salute before Samir practically drags me into the back.

There are four replica chimneys in the room. Through the openings where fireplaces would normally go, I can make out four pairs of feet, including my sister’s red sneakers and Will’s blue ones. As we pass Miranda’s chimney, I hear a muffled voice say, “Reach behind my head … no, wait, ow, not there!” From Will and Janine’s, I only hear high-pitched giggling, which makes my stomach squirm. A producer points us toward the chimney across from my sister’s, and Samir crouches down by the opening.

“How are we even supposed to do this?” he asks. “There’s barely room for one person in here.”

“I guess we just have to squeeze. Should we go in front-to-front or back-to-back?”

Samir frowns as he eyes my pudding-smeared arms. “Back-to-back. I don’t want your skin touching me.”

I’m pretty sure that isn’t going to work, but in the interest of killing more time, I say, “Great, let’s go.”

Samir goes in first, and then I do an awkward hop-scoot-crawl into the bottom of the chimney and worm myself upright. Once I’m standing, our bodies take up the whole space, and there isn’t any room to raise our arms and search. The back room of the pub is pretty dark to begin with, and now that we’re enclosed by sooty black walls, it’s impossible to see anything at all. Samir sneezes, and his head cracks into mine. The tiny enclosure is already starting to heat up from our breath and the warmth of our bodies, and I can tell it’ll be stifling soon. Until this moment, I hadn’t even noticed that Samir was wearing cologne, but now the smell is so overpowering it makes me want to gag. How could Miranda have wanted to get close to this guy on
purpose
?

“Okay, this clearly isn’t working,” Samir says. “We need to turn around.”

There’s no room to maneuver, so I crouch down while Samir repositions himself, then skid my back up the sooty wall until I’m vertical again. Standing front-to-front is even worse; I can feel Samir’s hot breath on my forehead, and when he reaches out to search the soot-covered bricks behind me, his chest presses against my boobs. I forbid myself to think about what Will and Janine are doing inside their chimney.

“Be methodical,” Samir orders, like he has a PhD in chimney searching. “I only want to do this once.”

“Trust me, you’re not alone,” I mutter.

I make a show of searching for about two minutes before I start breathing harder and faster, channeling Will on the
plane. Then I start swaying a little and stumble into Samir like I’m growing unsteady on my feet. “Watch it,” he snaps.

“This space is really, really small,” I say, making my voice tremble.

“Thank you, Captain Obvious.”

“No, I mean,
really
small. And hot. Are you hot? I feel super warm.”

“Not really,” he says.

I breathe faster. “Samir, I feel weird. I need to get out of here. I need air.”

He sighs impatiently. “You can have all the air you want once we find the brick.”

“No, I need it
now
. I can’t breathe. I feel like the walls are closing in.” I stagger, crashing into Samir’s chest and knocking him back against the wall. “Oh my God oh my God oh my God …,” I chant in a high-pitched, hysterical voice.

“Claire, chill out! Just take a deep breath, okay? You’re fine. We need to do this.”

“I can’t, I can’t do this. I need to get out of here.” I deserve an Oscar for this performance. Before Samir can protest, I duck down and crawl out of the opening, panting so hard I really am starting to get dizzy. I curl up on the floor with my head between my knees, cursing the insidious bagpipe music that’s trying to eat my brain from the inside.