Nerve (16 page)

I nod.

She holds up her index finger. “First, you’re playing as a team with six other players. If one of you doesn’t complete a grand prize dare, you’ll all lose all your prizes. But don’t worry; there will also be a few icebreaker dares that are just for fun and optional.”

“Okay.”

“The other point to remember is that if you do anything that violates the integrity of a dare, NERVE may issue a consequence to make future dares more difficult.”

“Violate the integrity of a dare? What does that mean?”

She waves a hand dismissively. “Basically, performing the dare, but cheating somehow. Don’t worry, we’ll know it when we see it.”

Hey, I’m the girl entrusted with a spray-bottle of vodka, so integrity doesn’t sound like a problem. “Fine.”

Her eyes are bright. “Wonderful! Good luck, Vee. Oh, and our product sponsors would love for you to help yourself to as many of the toiletries as you’d like. You may want to freshen up again later.”

The screen blips off and the mirror reappears. My face is flushed and my eyes are shiny. Are they still filming me? Dumb question. The audience must think I look dazed. And why would I need to freshen up again? Will I be dumping more water on my head? Well, water or not, these are some quality items. Too bad my purse is still in Ian’s glove compartment. I fill up a small makeup bag with packets.

“Thank you, product sponsors,” I say to the mirror.

Out in the foyer, Ian waits with freshly combed hair and points to the room down the corridor. “We should head over there.”

Something about that interview left me feeling queasy, despite the goody bag of cosmetics I scored. The interviewer’s fake friendliness did nothing to calm me; just the opposite. Probably what it was designed to do.

I shrug. “I guess.”

Ian takes me into his arms. “You having second thoughts?”

Not about him holding me, I’m not. I sigh. “It’s kind of late to back out now.”

“The exit’s right here.”

“You’d lose the car. I’d lose fashion school plus all those other great prizes.”

“Well, we’d still have won something major,” he says with a soft glance at my face.

That should sound cheesy, but coming from him it doesn’t. Or maybe I’m just too far gone in crushville.

He kisses the top of my head as I nestle it into the spot between his neck and shoulder. Even after the running and fighting, he smells like sandalwood soap. I inhale deeply. The dare’s only for three hours. And look who I’ve got for a partner.

“Let’s play,” I say.

We walk arm in arm past the concierge desk. As soon as we’re in the corridor, laughter spurts from the lit room, which is down the hall to our right. I imagine a game of quarters or spin the bottle going on. Nah, too easy. NERVE probably invited those hookers Tiffany and Ambrosia to beat me up. In a muddy pit. With knives.

A few voices come from the doorway ahead, but nothing loud enough to make out. The left side of the corridor leading to the room is lined with armchairs, as if misbehaving club-goers are sent here for time-outs. The right side of the hallway is covered in an ornate wall-hanging that looks like it’s made of silk. I stop for a moment to admire the embroidered butterflies and flowers in gemstone colors. It’s fabric fit for an empress’s gown, and a hundred times more detailed than the meadow scene Tommy designed for our play’s scrim.

Ian nudges me forward to the open door, which stands at the midpoint of the corridor. The only other door I spot is at
the far end of the hall, and it’s closed. When we’re just about to reach the open room, where all the action seems to be, Ian pauses and whispers, “Maybe it’s better we don’t let whoever’s inside know we’re, uh, so together. Makes us more of a target.”

Target? We’re all supposed to be on the same team, right? But with NERVE, you never know, so I agree with Ian’s advice, and miss his warmth when he steps away from me. The chattering from inside halts the moment we pass through the doorway into a room that’s about twenty feet by twenty feet. So this is a game room? The left half is bare save for candy-apple-red carpeting. The right side is filled with several love seats, two on either side of a long coffee table made of glass. Instead of resting on a base, it’s suspended by silver cables. Sitting around the table are three girls and two guys, all in their teens.

“Hey,” Ian says as he heads to the empty love seat on the far side of the table.

I give them a small smile and take the spot next to him, tucking my makeup bag at my side. The seat bounces as if it contains mattress springs. I try to still it down, but it’s like being on a boat. With each bounce, the cushion sighs and pushes me back up. The other kids sit there bobbing too. Why would people pay extra to hang out in a weird room like this? Or did NERVE decorate it especially for tonight?

“So you decided to join us,” says a red-haired guy across from me. He has the overdeveloped biceps and jowly cheeks
of someone on steroids. One of those bulky arms winds around a deeply tanned girl with exaggerated curves and a hundred jangling bracelets. She rubs a bare foot along his shin. Beneath a glass coffee table, there are no secrets.

In the love seat next to theirs sit two more girls, one white, one Asian, each with at least five piercings. I recognize the white girl as the one who stole all that nail polish in the preliminary dare video. She’s huddled close enough to the Asian girl to suggest they’re “together” too. However, there’s no playing footsie with those safety boots. On our side of the table, a dark-skinned guy with super-short hair and tiny framed glasses sits with his arms crossed. Somehow he’s balanced himself in the middle of his love seat so it stays still. He’s cute in a Tommy sort of way, clean-cut with a trace of geek, but there’s no girl, or boy, with him.

Ian leans forward, holding on to the seat cushion for balance. “So, think they’ll send any Watchers to hang out with us?”

The guy with the glasses blinks. “The Watchers are there.” He points toward a camera mounted in the corner of the ceiling.

I examine my surroundings. Four cameras perch like hawks in the corners of the room. Between the cameras, black screens cover the top three feet of the walls. The surface beneath the panels is covered in richly textured wallpaper of gray with red geometric patterns. The only wall that appears slightly different
is the one next to the door, which has the same pattern but is more shiny than matte, as if it’s covered in paint rather than paper. Either way, it looks expensive, and ugly.

Ian reaches a hand to glasses-guy. “I’m Ian.”

The guy shakes Ian’s hand. “I’m Samuel.”

No one else pipes up with an introduction. Maybe the dare is to feel socially awkward. I wring my hands together.

The white girl with the heavy boots, whose piercings are mostly safety pins and bolts, barks out a laugh. She wiggles her fingers next to her face. “You scared, Thelma?”

I scowl at her. But if the worst I have to endure for the next three hours are Scooby-Doo insults, I can deal.

Ian nods toward the red-haired guy and his braceleted girlfriend. “What’s the best dare you guys got tonight?”

The girl giggles. “Definitely the porno store one. We had to pick up the merchandise and tell everyone what we thought about it.” She cha-chas her eyebrows at the red-haired guy.

Ian laughs along with her. I kind of smile. Yesterday a dare like that would’ve seemed impossible. Now I think they got off easy.

The Asian girl, who wears a pink Mohawk, scrunches her forehead. “Damn, wish we’d gotten that one.”

Her friend rubs her shoulder. “We can go tomorrow, cupcake.”

I try to settle into my seat by keeping my butt very still, but the tiniest movement causes a ripple. If this is the VIP
lounge, what kind of digs do the riffraff in the dance club downstairs get?

Ian glances around the table. “Did any of you guys meet each other before the live rounds?”

Bracelet-girl smiles at her guy. “Nope. Tonight’s been a blast. NERVE blows away those hookup sites at making hot connections.”

How much research has she done? I have to admit NERVE did well with Ian and me. All they had to go on was the application data, and whatever info they snagged from my ThisIsMe page. Did they contact Liv and Eulie too? When this is over, I’m going to interrogate my friends to figure out who said what.

Ian turns to Samuel. “How about you? Did they give you a partner?”

He shrugs. “Yeah. But she was allergic to lime Jell-O.”

Before anyone can ask for more details, Samuel’s phone buzzes in a normal ring tone way. No fair. After reading it, he gets up to close the door. When it shuts with a loud click, my gut tenses.

“Why’d you do that?” Bracelets asks.

Samuel smiles. “Cause NERVE offered me a fifty-dollar bonus.”

Bracelets’s red-haired boyfriend slams a hand on the table, causing the glass plank to swing away from him. Ian stops the table’s motion before it hits our knees. Can’t any of this furniture sit still?

Red-hair faces one of the cameras and holds out his arms. “Hey you guys, I woulda closed the door for thirty.”

I halfway expect the cameras to nod. Instead, the lights overhead dim. We glance at each other questioningly. One by one, we pull out our phones, waiting to see who’ll earn the next fifty dollars. My display remains blank.

Beeping sounds fill the room, causing a fresh round of chair bobbles as we sit up. The black panels on the walls flash scrolling lights that blink on and off like a pinball machine.

The lights are replaced with the image of Gayle, the woman who just interviewed me, and a guy in his thirties with a shaved head, indie band T-shirt, and the kind of donut earrings that leave permanent damage.

Together, our masters of ceremony shout, “Welcome to the grand prize dares!”

The screens alternate between their image and the word WELCOME! along with graphics of fireworks and a staccato song that I recognize as the theme from last month’s game. The camera shot eventually settles on the hosts, who stand on a small stage, surrounded by folks with the semi-delirious expressions I’ve come to associate with Watchers. The male emcee introduces Gayle and then himself, Guy.

He wags a finger at the room of players. “To reiterate the rules: You’re playing as a team now, so if one of you quits, no one wins any prizes.”

The girl with the safety pins makes a fist and glares around
the table, stopping at me. “If anybody wusses out, I’m coming after you.”

I suddenly feel the need to go to the bathroom.

The camera goes to Gayle. “We’ll get things started with a few icebreaker dares. So let’s relax and have some fun.”

I want to ask the others what they’ve been offered for their grand prizes, but figure it would be like asking someone’s weight or bra size, so I say under my breath to Ian, “I wonder how big the audience is now.”

Guy smirks from the overhead screens. “Good question, Vee. You have a ton of new admirers. Care to guess how many? Oh, let’s make a game of it, shall we? Whoever guesses closest wins a hundred dollars.”

We throw out estimates from twenty thousand (my guess) to half a million (red-haired guy’s guess). Guy and Gayle grin at each other before Guy announces that someone named Ty wins, which turns out to be the red-haired guy. But our hosts won’t tell us what the exact number is. Still, since the second-highest guess was a hundred thousand, it means a lot of people are tuned in.

That should make me feel all kinds of famous, but all I can wonder is how much the audience is paying to watch seven teenagers in a VIP lounge with unstable furniture. And what are they expecting to see?

Gayle claps her hands in fake excitement. “Okay, your next icebreaker comes from the audience.”

Her image is replaced by flashing letters that say LOOK WHO’S WATCHING! along with the rat-a-tat theme music. The screen comes up with a group of kids huddled in a small space that looks like a dorm room. A long-haired girl with glassy eyes reads aloud from her phone, “Time for some quick intros to start things out friendly. For fifty bonus dollars each, go around the room to state your first name and what city you’re from.” She pumps her fist. “Go, Wolver—” The image cuts out.

Fifty bucks to tell the other players my name? Too easy. There’s probably some trick behind this, but I can’t figure it out. Intros could even work in our favor. Didn’t I read somewhere
that it’s more difficult to be mean to someone once you see them as a fellow human being? Not that these guys are planning to attack us. Who knows, maybe I could even become friends with some of them. Not chummy enough to do any kind of pervy dare together, of course. More like being able to laugh about this afterward at a NERVE reunion party, the way players from last month did in those epilogue videos.

We go around the table. Asian, pink Mohawk girl is Jen. Her friend who threatened me about wussing out is Micki. They’re from Reno and make some cracks about joining the mile-high club on the charter plane NERVE flew them into Seattle on. Bracelet girl with the bronzer addiction is Daniella; she and her partner, Ty, are from Boise, and were also flown in immediately after their last dare. We already met Samuel, who lives in Portland.

When I introduce myself, Micki rolls her eyes. “What kind of name is V? Your parents couldn’t spring for more than one letter?” She laughs along with Jen, Ty, and Daniella.

I raise an eyebrow. “Your parents named you after a mouse?” So much for budding friendships.

I can tell the rusty hamster wheel in her brain is trying to devise a comeback, but before it can, the panels light up with our emcees’ beaming faces. Gayle tells Ty to open a door on the far wall behind him, and then to open the red cabinet (and only the red cabinet) inside.

Ty remains seated. “How much will you pay me?”

Guy smiles. “You and your friends may have whatever you find inside the red cabinet, first come, first served.”

Ty jumps up and examines the patterned wall farthest from the furniture. There’s no obvious door. He raises his shoulders to the camera. “Is this a trick?”

Probably more of an IQ test. On the wall, one of the spirals lights up like an elevator button. When Ty pushes it, a pocket door slides open. I swivel my head to check out the wall behind me. How many hidden doors are there? From the number of spirals, it could be quite a few.