Chapter Nine
The tent life might’ve made Finn a little too comfortable, because for the first time, I wake up before him.
I don’t expect it, assuming when I blink awake that he’s probably munching on his breakfast already. But when I stretch my arms over my head and sit up slowly, I see the human-sized lump still in a sleeping bag beside me. I check the clock on my sat phone, fearing we’ve both overslept somehow, but find we have almost an hour until our go time. We get to set off for the checkpoint five minutes after Harper and Evan’s go time, with each team ranked below us in the cooking challenge leaving at five-minute intervals after that.
I look back at the guy on his side facing me, his upper torso and head out in the open. Sometime in the night, he appears to have taken off his sweatshirt, and now he clutches it against the side of his face. With the sweatshirt on top and sleeping bag underneath, his head is squeezed in a Finn sandwich. Wonder what that’s all about.
My gaze travels over his features. No trace of Waking Stern Face exists now, with his long, light brown lashes fanned over smooshed cheeks, full lips parted and twitching ever so slightly as if he’s forming words in his dreams. It brings a grin to my face—just for a second, before I realize that I’m watching Finn sleep and smiling at him like a super creep.
As if needing him to sleep in the tent with me last night wasn’t humbling enough. I don’t need him worrying that I’ve actually taken his apology as a confession of love and think we’ll be exchanging promise rings woven out of pine needles.
Hell, I don’t even know if he’ll still be nice to me today—if he was just doing whatever it took to calm down his mess of a partner in her moment of weakness and in the light of day, when I’m not actively breaking down, he’ll resume grumpy business as usual. Nothing I can do but wait and see.
I slip out of my sleeping bag as noiselessly as I can and exit the tent. Finn hasn’t even flinched by the time I’m zipping the flap shut behind me. I make it all the way through my morning routine, clothes on and makeup ready, and am halfway through a protein bar breakfast before I hear a peep from him. And it just about scares the ever-loving shit out of me.
“Did I sleep too late?”
I whirl on him. “Well, damn, good morning to you, too!” I yell, as if my volume can make up for his previous lack thereof.
His head jerks back, eyes still blinking against the bright morning sun. “Uh, morning. What time is it? You’re never up first.”
Even though I thought the exact same thing upon waking, I scoff. “Okay, rude, and we’ve only woken up together on two mornings! That hardly justifies a sweeping claim like ‘never.’?” His blank expression gives me nothing. “It’s quarter to nine. I can pack up the tent while you get ready.”
When he doesn’t point out that it takes him approximately two minutes to “get ready,” nor argue that he should pack up because he knows how it all gets put away correctly, I wonder if Finn actually meant everything he said last night. If he wasn’t faking for the sake of my fragile mental state. Twenty minutes later, when we hit the trail promptly at our go time—map to the checkpoint we got last night in hand, GoPros rolling, our camp packed up and on our backs once more—I’m almost convinced this change of pace is actually going to last.
Not any change in literal pace—we’re still hoofing it, and I feel a little like a corgi trying to keep up with a greyhound as I follow his lead. But I’m not even mad about sweating my ass off under the hottest sun since we’ve been here, because my teammate is actually talking to me.
“Did I overhear correctly the other night,” Finn asks, “that you were an extra in a movie?”
I press a hand to the stitch in my side as we continue speed-hiking uphill and try to hide the panting in my voice when I reply, “You did.”
“What movie?”
I think about the last time I told someone this, a classmate in Intro to Theater at Oliver, because I thought it was a funny anecdote about my brief stint as a professional child actor. Then I learned I was talking to an actual former professional child actor, who’d played the youngest sibling in a big soap opera family since she was six months old. And who did not find my story funny.
Finn feels like a very different audience. “Uh, it was called Racing Heart? It was based on the true story of the racehorse called Million to One, who won the Triple Crown against all odds—including, if you ask me, a pretty cursed name. I was seven and Granny Star took me to the audition, where she got hired as an extra too. And keep this between you and me, but I even had a line.”
The breath Finn expels sounds almost like amusement, but I can’t see his face to tell for sure. “Why does that have to be kept secret?”
“I just want everyone here to treat me like a normal girl. Not to be swarmed by fans and the media.” I’m totally channeling my soap-opera-child-star classmate.
“Of course.” I smile at his ability to play along, even as a little wariness still lurks at the edges of my mind. Are we really having a friendly conversation like it’s nothing? “So do you remember the line?”
“Of course,” I echo, then clear my throat before delivering it in a small-child voice with the exaggerated Kentucky accent the filmmakers requested. “?‘That sure is some horse.’?”
Finn is silent for a moment before he looks at me over his shoulder, as if he was waiting on me to say more. When I don’t, he says, “That’s it?”
I nod. “I’m in the credits. ‘Child at Racetrack Number Two.’?”
“I hope you were fairly compensated for your hard work.”
“Twenty-five bucks for the day,” I say with a fond smile. “Granny Star took me to Walmart right after, and I spent it all on Polly Pockets.”
He looks back at me again as we turn around a bend in the trail, and I nearly stumble at the sight of his smile. No teeth showing, but it still packs a powerful punch of wow. All twinkly eyes and a dimple in one cheek. No wonder he doesn’t smile often; he’s flat-out dangerous this way.
“Classic child star, blowing your paychecks with no eye toward the future,” he teases. Teases! And without even a hint of actual derision. I’m aghast. Agog. Whatever A-something words can capture the weight of this moment and its effect on me.
Finn, apparently, has no idea what his casual banter is doing to me. Let alone his face. “You’ve mentioned your Granny Star a few times. Why do you call her that?”
This helps settle my heart rate somewhat. “Her name is Starla Lee Hart, and she came up with her own grandma name. It always fit her. She’s an actress—I mean, was.” That familiar lump forms in my throat. I’m terrible at remembering the past tense. But I don’t want that word, was, to just sit there like a lead balloon, so I hurry on past it. “Worked at a dinner theater in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, not too far from here, actually. She also did community theater productions on the side, and she’s the one who got me to start acting, took me to all kinds of auditions with her. She was the only person in my family who understood me, who embraced all parts of me. I’m not quite sure who I’d be if not for all the time I spent with her growing up. Um.” I give a nervous laugh. “You didn’t ask all of that, but yeah. It was her name because she said so, but also because she was the star.”
“Not asking doesn’t mean I didn’t want to know,” Finn says, gentleness in his voice. It’s a balm to the soft, tender parts of me that never expect to be heard and understood—especially not from this unlikely source. I almost want to check that he hasn’t fallen victim to some rare Appalachian parasite, one that drains all the unpleasantness from its host’s body. He continues without taking his gaze off the trail ahead. “I take it she isn’t around anymore.”
“Correct. I miss her,” I add quietly and without really meaning to. I don’t know the last time I said as much out loud, if ever. The vulnerability in just those three words is a shock to my system, and I react instinctively, trying to smooth it over. “But it’s fine. It’s been a few years, and she was sick for a while. People lose grandparents all the time.”
When Finn stops, I almost walk into him, but catch myself with a foot of space left between us. His face is all frowny sternness again as he looks down at me. “None of that has to make it okay, or means you can’t miss her.”
“I…” I thought the appropriate words to tie up the conversation would come to me if I opened my mouth, but they simply aren’t. And if I think about what he said too much longer, Finn will have to go search for a bucket to pour his puddle of a partner into and carry me the rest of the way to the checkpoint. So I change course, slapping a fragile smile over everything inside. “Can we keep walking? We’re going to lose that five-minute head start over the next team.”
After one more lingering look that surely sees way too much, Finn nods, letting me walk ahead of him. He also allows me to change the subject entirely, even answering when I ask questions about his life. Answers on the shorter side, and definitely less emotional than the whole feelings dump I just let out, but I think that’s best for both of us. I learn that he’s an environmental sciences major with a focus on conservation, which tracks with pretty much every other thing I’ve learned about him so far. He’s never been to New York City nor seen a Broadway show, which is a crying shame since he lives much closer to the holy land of theater than I do, but I guess people can have different priorities. When he tells me about his little sister, Frannie, the softness coming through his voice is so startling—and sweet—I nearly trip on my own boots.
I forget all about our cameras until he makes a passing, softly grumbly comment about how Frannie will probably be mad it took him this long to mention her on TV. I feel a twinge of disappointment, and something almost like regret, realizing that all the personal stuff I said might not stay between me, Finn, and the forest. But at the same time, it’s kind of freeing. Having put a bunch of words I haven’t let myself say, feelings I haven’t let myself feel, so candidly out in the open.
Still, I grow quieter by the last mile of the three we have to hike to the checkpoint, whether from a new consciousness of the potential worldwide audience, or simply the fact that I don’t have any more breath to spare to be cute and entertaining. Finn doesn’t say much either, but I can see him looking from side to side, taking in the gorgeous mountain views all around us.
When we hear the voices of Wild Adventures folk, it’s not a moment too soon. It’s hot as balls out here, and between the sun, the speed-walking, and the conversation that distracted me from all of it the majority of the way, I’m a sweaty, heavy-breathing mess.
Burke Forrester’s spray-tanned face splits with a smile as we approach. I see Harper, Evan, Zeke, and Enemi already here, but no other teams yet. Still, when Finn starts to run the last stretch to Burke, I feel obligated to do the same, finishing this marathon of a challenge off strong. When we reach the orange flag, I’m fully dripping in places I didn’t know had sweat glands. Can my fingernails sweat? My inner ears? Something to investigate another day, when I’ve showered and my fingers aren’t too sweaty to operate Google.
Finn is barely breathing heavily, but his face shines all over. So the guy does perspire, after all.
“Finn, Natalie, welcome to the second checkpoint! How was your night?”
As I’m calculating in my head what I could say, because my partner hasn’t been especially chatty in these little interviews, he actually throws me a bone. Or his unpleasantness-feeding parasite does.
“Good. I got the most sleep I have so far,” Finn offers. “Natalie almost had to wake me.”
Did I? I just let out a winded laugh.
Burke gives a livelier, if over-the-top, chuckle. “Well, your rest paid off. You two have arrived in third place! Meaning you move on to the next leg of the competition. Congratulations!”
I feel myself sway, both relief and exhaustion hitting me, but an arm slips around my waist in the gap between it and my pack. I blink dazedly up at Finn, who is looking down at me with…concern? A different expression from the ones I’m more used to, like contempt and consternation.
“You okay?” he asks quietly, as though he doesn’t want any of this to be a scene for the cameras. The echo of him asking the same last night sounds in my head, along with his commitment to try to be a better teammate. Is this just…that? Him trying to keep his partner standing up straight so he can stay in the competition? Or does he actually care about my well-being?
Does it matter?
I try to shake the thoughts from my head before meeting his eyes. “Fine. I think I just need some water.”
Meena and Cammie, who came in fourth yesterday, run up to the checkpoint then. His arm still locked around me, Finn leads me off to the side where the crew has set up some camp chairs. With him this close, I’m suddenly hyperaware of how gross I am. My sweat is surely getting all over him. Jesus H, I haven’t showered in days—if you don’t count a rain drenching—while also doing more physical activity than my body normally gets in months. I can practically see the cloud of stink and filth around me, like that one Peanuts character no one wants to hang out with.
Pre–Wild Adventures Natalie would be too disgusted for words, probably mortified enough to toss a towel at Finn and run off, hoping to never see him again in this life. But it’s amazing how fast my standards have changed. Yes, I’m still wearing eyeliner, and they’ll likely be building snowmen in hell before that stops. But giving off a normal physiological response after trudging through a forest on a hot day with the majority of my body weight strapped to me? I can live with it. And something tells me Finn can too.
A towel would still be nice, though.
“Can we get some cold water?” Finn calls out to the nearby crew. I know he likely means for drinking, but pouring a whole Gatorade cooler over myself like a coach who just won The Big Game sounds heavenly. Or cannonballing into a nice, cold pool. As Finn unceremoniously pushes me into a chair, pack and all, the idea feels more fantastic by the second.
A water bottle appears before my face and Finn goes full dad mode, demanding that I drink half of it as he sits in the chair by mine.
“Bossy,” I mutter, bringing the bottle to my lips for a sip.
“Not sorry,” he answers. I smile around the mouth of the bottle, just a little.
I chug as instructed while one by one, the remaining teams check in. Zeke and Enemi somehow ran from their campsite fast enough to come in first again, passing the two teams with earlier go times before either of us had even hit the main AT, and I almost don’t want to know what their prize will be this round. If it involves soap, I might get violent. Harper and Evan were next, and after us were Meena and Cammie, Daniel and Luis, then Karim and Max. Jay and Tia were ranked last in the cooking challenge yesterday, and once they showed up last to the checkpoint, Burke delivered the news that they’d been eliminated.
We say our goodbyes to them, and temporary goodbyes to Zeke and Enemi, who are off to get massages at a fancy mountain spa. I’m not at all a simmering pot full of jealousy, closer to boiling with every minute I spend in this unrelenting sun.
The rest of us are hanging out by the shelter, and we’ll camp as a group once again tonight. While the others split off, some building their tents so they have a place to rest, others digging into the snacks brought out by production, I’m plotting.
“What’s that expression for?” Finn’s voice is wary as he approaches, carrying an open can of Pringles in one hand and using the other to pop the chips into his mouth.
I don’t know what expression I’m making, but I know what the mission in mind is. “Where can a girl go to bathe around here?”