Chapter Nineteen Hell Is a Pop Quiz You Didn’t Study Enough For
Chapter Nineteen
Hell Is a Pop Quiz You Didn’t Study Enough For
It doesn’t feel real that Daniel and I go straight from the beach memorial to something as mundane as brushing our teeth together. Sharing the small space of the bathroom with Daniel feels almost too easy, as if we’ve been doing this dance of moving around each other our whole lives. In some ways, I guess, we have been. I try not to think about what it would be like to do this together for more than just a few days.
“You were right, Alice,” Daniel says.
“What?” I say through a mouthful of toothpaste. I spit into the sink. “Run that by me again?”
“Anton was murdered.” Daniel furrows his brow. “What you said earlier about the list of blackmail material you found, I think that seals the deal. Someone murdered the guy. And I overheard the producers when they were cleaning up the memorial. It’s like Lex said, we’re stuck here. The storm caused a lot of problems along the islands. An accident on a reality TV set isn’t even close to the top of the list for local law enforcement or the medical examiner. Backup isn’t coming anytime soon. We’re on our own. We have to figure out what’s going on here if we want to make it through this.”
I nudge Daniel aside to rinse out my mouth, and he tosses me the dental floss.
“Told you,” I say.
“We’ll have to play it safe, though. You said the blackmail list included cast and crew. That means we don’t know who we can trust. Anything we figure out, we share between us and Lex, and no one else.”
“Agreed. Stay sharp, Midas.”
“Same goes for you. Stay sharp, Slayer.”
—
Less than a week after I arrived at Dawn Tay’s Inferno , I find myself on the water again. First thing after breakfast, Leah and the other producers ushered us onto a fleet of speedboats that are taking us who knows where. The ocean spray is bracing, and I lean into it, not caring if the cropped floral tank that Leah foisted on me gets wet.
After yesterday’s challenge, I’m hoping that today’s challenge isn’t too out there, but those hopes are violently squashed when we’re split from our partners, escorted onto a floating platform, and positioned on a beam that extends over the water.
“Are we sure this is, like, safe?” Mikayla asks as she peers over the edge of the beam. “I mean, after what happened to Anton.”
“It’s safe,” Leah assures her. “We tested it on the PAs earlier today.”
“They’d better be getting hazard pay,” Daniel says, but Leah is already gone, shouting orders at the production assistants. They’re hard at work attaching buckets of slime to ropes hanging down from a wooden beam, suspending one bucket over each of our heads, but the vibe is different now. They’re working silently, not a smile to be seen. It’s clear that everyone is nervous and on edge. It feels like the calm before the storm.
“It certainly seems like the slime budget has skyrocketed,” I observe.
“Unless they’re just reusing yesterday’s slime,” Selena says. “Then it’s free-ninety-nine.”
There’s an edge to Selena’s voice today. The sunny smile she usually wears is gone. The other contestants look haggard and tense. Are they freaked out by Anton’s death, or feeling guilty for murdering him?
Mikayla in particular looks more frayed than usual. She’s managed to chew through an immaculately manicured nail, and her shoulders are hunched in, like she’s trying to shrink away from Trevor’s arms around her.
Jaxon and Brittany seem the least changed. They’re decked out in their standard cowboy getups, and their matching poker faces seem entirely focused on winning. I wish I could borrow some of that calm.
Soon enough, Dawn Taylor arrives on her own speedboat, a beacon of color in a flowy, bright-yellow pantsuit with matching yellow sunglasses.
“Babes, it’s go time!” she says, whipping off her sunglasses theatrically. “Today we’re in the sixth circle of hell: Heresy. And we’re putting you all to the test to see how well you know your partner! You’ll each get a board to write on. I’ll ask either the men or the women a question. Your goal is to mind-meld and write the exact same answer as your partner.”
As the producers pass out whiteboards, Dawn Taylor continues, “For each mistake you make, our lovely assistants will pull a lever and drop a bucket of slime on you. You can make three mistakes, but on the fourth, you and your partner will be dropped into the ocean—and the first couple who hits the water is out of the competition. Welcome to Heresy, bitches!”
“I’m starting to think I didn’t need to read all of Dante’s Inferno for this,” I say.
“SparkNotes is always the way to go, babe,” Selena says.
“Wait, this is based on a book ?” Mikayla says. “No one told me that!”
An air horn blasts, and more than a few contestants jump at the sound.
“Let’s get started!” Dawn Taylor says. “First question. Ladies, what’s your greatest fear? Gentlemen, I want each of you writing down what you think your partner will say.”
Oh, god. Daniel and I never talked about this. There’s no way he could possibly know what my greatest fear is. I’m not even sure what my greatest fear is. Failure? Losing my mother? Going back to high school, but I’m naked? I have a lot of fears. It’s part of the package deal that comes with being a naturally anxious person.
I just have to game the system and think about what Daniel might guess about me. I’ll pick something generic that most people are afraid of. Snakes? Snakes. Everyone’s afraid of snakes, right? I mean, probably not zookeepers or veterinarians or those people who keep twenty snakes as pets. But it’s as good an answer as any.
Mikayla is apparently afraid of cacti, which makes no sense, but who am I to judge? Trevor pumps his fist in the air when he gets it right.
Ava puts down “yellow jackets,” and Noah nails it.
Selena writes “power outages,” which I think we all knew after the night of the storm, but Chase somehow totally misses the mark and instead puts “racoons.”
“You said their little hands were creepy,” Chase objects.
“Creepy, not scary !”
I’m looking forward to seeing Chase get slimed, but of course he enjoys it, laughing and pretending to take a shower in it, which makes the entire crew crack up.
When it’s my turn, I turn my board around: “Snakes.”
Daniel makes a face as he turns his board around, and I see his answer scrawled onto the whiteboard: “Losing.”
“Ouch. Extra sad, given that this answer brings you one step closer to losing,” Dawn Taylor says. “Sorry, Daniel, it’s slime time!”
An assistant yanks on a rope, and a bucket flips over, dumping slime all over Daniel. He chuckles good-naturedly and shakes it off.
The game continues.
“Ladies, how many kids does your partner want to have?” Dawn Taylor asks.
Selena turns her board around: “0”
Chase reveals his: “5”
Selena shrieks as the bucket of slime is dumped on her head.
Then it’s my turn again.
“Alice, you put, let’s see. Two and a half?” Dawn Taylor asks.
“The statistically average number of children—never mind, it was dumb,” I say, scrubbing my board clean.
But then Daniel flips his board around, and by some miracle, there it is: “two point five.” Daniel sees my shocked expression and winks.
For the next few questions, our strategy of cramming about each other pays off. I recall that Daniel’s parents are lawyers. He remembers that my best friend is Cindy. Not everyone fares as well. Jaxon and Brittany end up on the brink of elimination along with Selena and Chase.
As the challenge progresses, I fall into the rhythm of competition. When I’m waiting my turn, I take the chance to observe the people around me. Most of the crew members, including Lex, just seem burned out or angry, probably because they’re being forced to work through a tragedy. I notice that Seth seems more focused on his couples than ever, intently watching Mikayla and Trevor like he’s trying to telepathically send them the right answers.
Finally, a question about how Jaxon really feels about Brittany’s parents knocks the two of them out. She thinks he adores them, but Jaxon thinks that his mother-in-law “looks and acts like if Cruella de Vil was a vegan.”
“Ooh, I’m so sorry, but it’s curtains for the two of you,” Dawn Taylor says.
“Wait, no !” Brittany cries, but the plank drops out from under her. She plummets into the water below, with Jaxon just behind her. We hear Brittany’s shriek as she hits the water.
“Jaxon and Brittany,” Dawn Taylor says, even though they can’t hear her from where they’re treading water, “your time in my inferno is over. Get the hell out of here!”
A boat whisks Brittany and Jaxon away, and all that’s left of them is a lone cowboy hat bobbing along in the ocean.
“Now let’s heat things up,” Dawn Taylor says, doing a shimmy. “Gentlemen, what’s the hottest part of your partner’s body?”
What part of my body does Daniel find the hottest? Oh, god, just kill me now. It doesn’t help that I’ve racked up three mistakes at this point.
“Eyes,” I write, praying that it’s a generic enough answer to work.
We flip our boards.
Daniel has written “brain.”
“Because you’re so smart,” he explains weakly.
“Brains aren’t a body part, they’re an internal organ! That doesn’t even make sense!”
The plank beneath me gives away, and suddenly I’m plummeting into the water like a cartoon roadrunner, my legs and arms flailing frantically. I make a little squeaking sound as I smack against the surface butt first.
The ocean water is deceptively cold and sharp, and I flounder for a moment before I break the surface. I paddle over to the platform and pull myself up alongside Daniel.
“You okay?” I ask, my hand going to the now-soaked bandages.
Daniel places his hand over mine. “I’m fine. You’re freezing.”
He puts his arm around me and pulls me close. As always, he’s warm, and the heat of him starts seeping into me almost immediately. I press closer to him, and not just for the cameras.
“Good effort, Slayer,” he says, and offers me a fist bump.
“We live to fight another day,” I say. I hate losing, but with Daniel, somehow, he takes the sting out of it.
Chase and Selena drop into the water after us, so we all end up on the losers’ bench together.
“Hey, secret alliance is back at it again,” Chase says cheerfully, completely missing the fact that we’re united in being at the bottom of the competition.
“Speaking of secrets, I’ve got some hot goss,” Selena says, leaning in. “Mikayla said that she heard Peter Dixon and Dawn Taylor really going at it, screaming at each other. But last night I saw Peter Dixon walking by with a fancy box of French pastries. Like croissants and madeleines and stuff. I think he was headed to Dawn Taylor’s suite, so I guess they made up?”
At that point, we hear a scream, followed by a splash. It looks like Mikayla and Trevor were dropped into the water. That makes Ava and Noah the winners. They’ve won a romantic night toasting s’mores and getting cozy by the fire pit at Villa Paradiso, plus the dignity of not getting dunked in the ocean.
The temporary break in the storm ends sooner than expected, and we end up cresting over choppy waves that make our speedboat shudder and shake. My fingers are wrapped so tight around the safety bar of the seat in front of me that my knuckles have gone white. After a particularly brutal jolt, I nearly lose my grip, but then Daniel wraps an arm around me, his hand covering mine.
“Can’t lose my partner to the ocean just yet,” he tells me.
I smile up at Daniel, but then my heart catches in my throat. Behind us, over Daniel’s shoulder, I spot Trevor glaring at us. He’s mad, and I’m not sure why—until I realize that he’s sitting alone. Mikayla has opted to sit with her producer, Seth, and with the boat being tossed around violently the way it is, the two of them are clinging to the safety bar and each other. They’re arguing about something, but I can’t quite make out what. Anton’s messy scrawl pops up in my mind’s eye.
Mikayla—cheater, hounds the crew members…
The boat fights another wave, shuddering and breaking my train of thought.
“We’ll have to stop the boat up over here,” the speedboat driver shouts back to us. He drops us off over by the labyrinth. As the rain picks up, we make our way across the beach toward the villa.
I glance back at the labyrinth. Despite the storm, several members of the crew are working to dismantle it.
“They’re taking the labyrinth down already?” I ask Leah.
Leah shrugs. “They’ve got to strike the set. Half of it’s going to be reused for tomorrow, but it needs a complete overhaul.”
I’ve watched enough detective movies to know this is bad news. The scene of the crime is being disturbed. The back of my neck prickles as we walk farther and farther away from the place where Anton was killed.