Chapter 15
SEE, I TOLD YOU PEER PRESSURE WORKS. RIGHT?SAY IT WORKS. DO IT. COME ON, EVERYONE’S SAYING IT
SEYOON
Dean looks like he wants to kill me. Harsh.
He’ll thank me later, though. This is good for him, I promise.
As volleyball captain, I know one thing kicks asses into gear better than anything else: peer pressure.
All great things are created under pressure, after all.
Diamonds, the hit Queen song. Other things, probably.
I step back into the semicircle of contestants, camera operators, and other crew members that has formed around Dean. Even Blake and Garrett idle along the sides. Garrett turns to one of the cameras near him and stage-whispers like he’s the Crocodile Hunter.
What we see here is a fundamental component of the teenage hierarchy system at work: social pressure. Dean, a member of the lower tier, an underdog, some may say, is being forced to participate in a humiliation ritual in front of his peers; a common demonstration of the powers that be dominating—
“I can hear you,” Dean grits out. Garrett lowers his voice and steps farther away.
“Ignore him,” I say. “You know what to do.”
He gives me one last pleading look. I shoot him two thumbs-up. I wouldn’t be putting him on the spot if I didn’t think he could do it. Alright—if I wasn’t 85 percent sure he could do it.
Dean sighs in front of the tinder pile we collected earlier. His shoulders are tense, his movements stiff, as he hesitates with where to start. But then he grabs the fireboard and holds it in place with one foot. His eyes dart to mine. I nod subtly, and he gets back to work, more confident.
It’s dead silent as Dean positions the spindle into the notch of the board. Soon, the only sound filling the clearing is the grating of the spindle as he twists it against the wood. Shit. He’s still not doing it fast enough. I open my mouth—
Then shut it. Give him a chance, Seyoon.
The others aren’t as patient as I am, though.
“I’ve never seen it done at this… speed before,” Aeneas says.
“They’re going to have to make this an extended episode,” Vendredi whispers.
Dean, abruptly, drops the wood and sits back on his heels. My heart falls.
But he’s not giving up. He’s just pushing the sleeves of his crewneck sweater up, drawing my attention to his lean but surprisingly defined forearms. With elegant fingers, he pushes his hair out of his flushed face.
A bead of sweat drips from his temple, across his sharp jawline, and runs down his throat before disappearing under the collar of his sweater—
Oh.
CONFESSION TAPE—Beck McLaughlin, Contestant
Oh!
CONFESSION TAPE—Adin Zavary, Contestant
Oh.
CONFESSION TAPE—Carter Moxley, Contestant
Ugh.
I swallow, rubbing the side of my neck. Dean gets back to it, more aggressively than before.
Another minute passes. Then two. Then it becomes too painful to keep counting them.
I look up and spot Blake wincing, writing something down on her clipboard.
A note to trim this part in the episode, I hope.
Carter huffs in amusement, because of course he can’t even be bothered to laugh all the way. “Like I thought. Not even half the man your dad was.”
And it’s there, in the split second between when those words leave Carter’s mouth and the muscle in Dean’s jaw tenses, that I realize: The best way to inspire Dean into action isn’t through peer pressure. It’s through spite.
We’re more similar than I thought.
Dean rolls the spindle between his palms faster, harder, angrier than before. And smoke starts billowing from the fireboard.
I watch, transfixed, as he follows what I did yesterday step by step, transferring the ember onto the tinder, blowing carefully until it ignites into a flame. Soon, before all of us and the cameras, there’s a roaring bonfire.
“I did it,” Dean mumbles in disbelief.
“He did it?” Carter repeats, equally shocked.
The first thing Dean does is look at me, his eyes gleaming with excitement. The same feeling that expanded in my chest when I heard Joy Lata call the volleyball out loud for the first time balloons in me now. Pride.
“You did it!” I yell.
I tackle him. It’s a habit my less enthusiastic teammates have tried to train out of me, but I can’t help it.
We both go flying in the dirt. I roll backward and am up on my knees to punch him in the shoulder, laughing in equal parts surprise and relief.
“I knew you could! Well, you had me a little nervous there for a second, but you—sorry, sorry, forget all that. You did it!”
Dean’s laughing too, a breathy, soft sound I haven’t heard from him before. “Okay, okay, ow, thank you. I get it, Seyoon.”
There’s twigs and leaves in his curls. He’s blushing from exertion and smiling so hard I can barely see his eyes.
He’s beautiful.
And then somebody clears their throat.
We sit up. Everyone’s watching us, their faces ranging from amused to shock, with the exception of Carter, who looks constipated.
All at once, the cameras and mics and fill lights surrounding us are too much.
I have to glance down to make sure I haven’t had a wardrobe malfunction or anything with how naked I feel.
I scramble up to my feet. Dean quickly follows. There’s about three milliseconds of opportunity for me to prevent an awkward conversation here, and I pounce on it.
“It’s starting to get cold,” I say, nodding to the dimming sunlight. “Since none of you could get a fire started yourself, you’re all welcome to sit by ours and warm up.”
Beck gasps. “We can tell ghost stories around the fire.”
Adin sighs. “If only we had marshmallows.”
“We have those protein bars,” Aeneas offers.
And that’s enough to distract them from poking fun at whatever… that was. The others hurry to grab their food and weather blankets, and in the moment of solitude we have, I turn back to Dean, still conscious of Cameras A and B capturing every second.
“You did great,” I say.
“Well, I had an okay teacher.” He scratches the back of his head, and a leaf comes loose. “Thanks for believing in me.”
He must be aware of the cameras, too, but he sounds sincere.
My small, reserved smile stretches wider. “You gave me a good reason to.”
The others are returning now, and something settles in the air that feels like we’re wrapping up for the night.
Dean and I have completed everything on our list, and it’s getting too dark for the others to catch up.
I’m confident we’re in the lead, which means I can finally relax.
I take a spot in front of the fire, patting the dirt next to me for Dean to sit.
“Know any good ghost stories?” I ask.
“I don’t believe in that stuff.”
“You’re no fun.”
I’ve always wanted to go to a slumber party.
I imagine they’re like this: loud, with multiple conversations overlapping one another, only interrupted by laughter.
I don’t really get invited to those, though.
You need a group of friends for that—close friends, who you trust won’t judge your tiny apartment, or be weirded out by your unwelcoming dad, or mind sleeping on the ground because you only have a tiny twin-size mattress.
I have my teammates, of course, but they’re not all the “hanging out after practice” type.
Besides the weekly coffee runs the gymnastics girls do, but Mallory said her car only fits five, unfortunately.
Which I get. And the post–track meet arcade nights, but the one time I went, I got a bit too excited about beating Danny Bluth at air hockey, and I think they forgot to tell me about any team-bonding activities after that.
There’s a lot of people in track, so it’s easy to lose count. I understand.
While I’ve never been to a slumber party, I’ve had plenty of sleepovers.
With just one person: Amelia. Because Amelia thought our apartment was cozy, not cramped, and if Appa’s passive-aggressive comments were too much and we didn’t feel like squeezing into my tiny bed, she’d just invite me to spend the night at hers.
Even though I’m having fun now, sitting cross-legged in front of the fire, with the stars above our heads and the flickering firelight illuminating everyone’s faces, I feel a pang of nostalgia for all the slumber parties I missed out on, and grief for the sleepovers with Amelia I’ll never have again.
I’m toasting one of the mushrooms Dean and I “foraged” today over the fire, when somebody sits at my side. Vendredi.
She’s smiling, albeit hesitantly. “Hey,” she starts, her voice barely above a whisper.
Beck and Adin are arguing about Bigfoot’s origins too loudly for anyone to hear us, and even if they could, Siddharth’s nervous pleas for them to stop are too distracting.
But there’s a camera a few feet away trained on us that I think she’s wary of. “Um, I wanted to apologize.”
“Huh?”
“About the other day. When you wanted to sit with me and Beck, but I iced you out.”
The pang in my chest turns into a hole. I feel my heart caving into it like a plane cabin depressurizing. “Oh, that?” I say, straining my voice to sound normal to her and the clip-on mic below my chin. “Pfft. No apology necessary. I hardly remember it.”
I remember it.
Vendredi holds her knees up to her chest, tucking one braid behind her ear. “Still, it was really rude of me, and I wanted to explain.”
My mushroom’s burning in the fire. I keep rotating it over the flames so I have something to do with my hands. “Seriously. All good. You don’t need to justify not wanting me to sit with you guys, I—”
“I was trying to convince Beck to be in an alliance with me,” Vendredi says, “and I was worried you were going to swoop in and snatch her up before I could. That’s why I brushed you off.”
I sit back. “What?”
“Beck has two parents who are former contestants, and she’s been on reality TV before. I needed her on my team, bad.”
My stomach stops trying to eat itself. It wasn’t about me. “Oh. Oh.”