The Real Real (18 page)

“What?” I say, the information sinking in through the fog of pain. “Oh my God! Can I see it?”

“What? Oh God.” She pats her pockets. “Oh shit. I may have thrown it out. Sorry—it said you got into Georgetown. Congratulations!”

“Thanks! That’s—wow! I need to call my parents. Do you have cell reception out here?”

“Sorry. No communication till we land back at JFK.”

She pulls her tube of zinc from her pocket and slicks a pink strip down her nose. “Fletch is really strict about that.”

“But I’m the first in my family to—I have to—can I fax them back at least?”

“Those are his rules. Fletch is going for total immersion while we’re here. I’m so sorry.”

Total immersion? It’s one thing to force us to pretend to be best friends; now we have to make it look like we’re orphans?

“I’m sure Fletch will want a scene of you celebrating somewhere chic when we get back—on us.”

I flash to Mom and Dad sitting with the acceptance letter, no way to talk to me, and my stomach starts cramping double-time.

“There!” Kara waves at the driver. I open my eyes to take in the massive catamaran we’re slowing to approach.

“That doesn’t have a bathroom,” I say with alarm.

Here’s what I need: water on me and in me that is not salty and a flushing toilet. Not bobbing canvas stretched out under a rapidly clouding sky.

“Okay, we’ll be in the speedboats out of frame, filming around you guys. So head on over to the brunch they’ve spread out for you four in the middle and enjoy!” We glower at her and one another. Kara lifts her bullhorn and clicks it on.
“I said, enjoy!”
she bellows.

Jase startles awake.

“Drool.” I point with disgust at the trickle on his chin.

He wipes at it with the shoulder of his T-shirt, and we all stand to unsteadily make our way to the ladder. To enjoy, exclamation point.

This must look awesome. Seriously, I bet Kara’s thanking every minute she spent getting that film degree. Who wouldn’t want to watch four green teenagers on four different sides of a catamaran, alternately hurl and moan?

I just want the ride to stop. I want my own bed, but I’d happily settle for a piece of cement in a jail cell if it came with steady horizon.

“I’m supposed to talk to you now.” I open my eyes to 179

see Drew sit down next to me. He drops his head back against the metal frame and closes his eyes, grimacing.

“How’d I get so lucky?” I curl back into my ball.

“Kara boated over and yelled it at me with her bullhorn.”

“I heard,” I say, eyes closed.

“Fine,” I hear him say angrily. What the hell?

“What the hell’s your problem, Drew? I was at the beach, you know. I waited for you.”

“You sure about that?”

My eyes fly open. “So you hooked up with Nico and you’re pissed
at me
?”

“Nico was wasted, and I had to take care of her. She was wasted because Jase has been ignoring her.”

“That’s not my fault,” I say quickly. “Besides, you don’t need Kara yelling at you with a bullhorn to cheer Nico up.”

“Nico was wasted.” He sucks down water from his bottle and lowers it between his crossed legs, his face twisting in disgust as he looks down at me. “And you have a fucking hickey, Jesse.” He gets up and uses the sail ropes to unsteadily walk to Nico’s corner. I look down to where he’s pointed, to my hip bone, where the black Asian disk holding together my bikini bottom has shifted just to the left of . . . oh God, a hickey. I lift my face over the choppy water to hurl whatever possibly could be left.

An hour later, Jase and I stand in wetsuits, watching the speedboat race toward a nearby island with Fletch, 180

Zacheria, Drew, and Nico for a heavily lit romantic stroll as the threatening sky suddenly darkens to match the inky chop of the surrounding surf.

“So, where are we going to snorkel?” Jase, relatively energized by his little nap, turns to Kara. “One of those cool reefs or downed sub sites near shore?”

“Here,” Kara says, studying a combination of her GPS

and clipboard.

“Here?” we both echo.

“Like, right here?” Jase repeats shakily. “We’re in the middle of nowhere. It’s probably even too deep to scuba here. I mean, what about sharks?” He grips the base of the sail overhead.

“I’m sure there are no sharks.” Kara forces a laugh as she scans the water behind us. “Are there?” she asks under her breath to the guide next to her.

“I mean”—he scratches at the back of his leathery neck—“I think we’ll have a better time inland, but—”

“It’s just b-roll.” She drops her GPS into her backpack and zips up her fleece. “We don’t have time to set it all up again inland before the storm.”

“There’s a storm coming?” I shiver.

“Oh my God, you two need to relax. Come on, the sooner you’re in the water, the sooner you’re out. Jesse?”

“And then we can go back to the hotel?” All I can think about is a hot shower. Right now I’d shoot a man for a hot shower.

“Yes.” Kara takes my hand and guides me to the edge 181

while holding on to the sail with the other, the wind whipping our hair every which way.

“Fine,” I sigh, pulling my spit-filled mask down and feeling it suction to my face. “Let’s get this over with.”

I take one last look at all three cameras pointed at the stretch of black water in front of us and jump in to—

FREEZING! “Freezing!” I sputter to the surface. “My legs are going to crack off!”

“KICK!”

“ENJOY!”

“YOU’RE HAVING FUN!” Everyone yells down at me.

My teeth chattering, I flop my feet behind me in the plastic fins for all I’m worth and, shakily shoving the snorkel into my mouth, put my face down to look into the water. Total mistake. It’s dark as hell and goes down forever. Screw sharks; a Transformer could be stretching up on its tippy toes and would still have a mile of cover to eat me.

I whip my face up as I hear a shriek and see Jase surfacing a few feet away in a splatter of hysterical splashing.

“Aah! Aah!” Water flies everywhere, including into my snorkel. I spit it out and take a breath while the spaz flails closer.

“FUN, JASE, FUN!”

Screw this. I kick my fins out toward the ladder while my arms still have enough circulation to guide me, and suddenly Jase is climbing on to my head like a crazed 182

puppy. “Stop!” I scream, trying to throw him off.

“Sharks! Sharks!” he squeals.

“Sharks?” I manage, salt water flooding into my nostrils and mouth as I fight to stay afloat with Jase literally scrambling up onto my shoulders. I feel two hands reach down and lift me up and into the boat. Jase is plopped next to me. The two of us sputter, cough, and shake as we try to get a full breath.

Kara looks down in disgust. “In the film world, you guys wouldn’t last two minutes.” She tosses towels at us.

“There were sharks?” I chatter to Jase.

“In his head.” The guide un-sticks the masks off our blue faces. “But now you know how far you can carry your boyfriend here.”

I am woken from the darkest depths of dreamless sleep by Trisha’s laughter. Moaning, I pull the pillow from under my head and hold it over my ears, trying to sink back to where there is no Kara, no cameras, no everyone. The mattress starts to vibrate under me from blasting music in the next room.

“Come on, bitches!” The bedroom door slams open.

“Last night in Me-hi-co! Make it count!” The overhead blares on, and I open one lid to see Trisha running over to the window to yank Nico’s hand. Sleep mask dislodged, Nico turns to me, blinking awake as we both register the people making their way noisily into the penthouse.

“Trisha, what the hell?” Drew stumbles through the 183

rapidly growing crowd to our bedroom doorway with Jase and Rick, bleary-eyed, behind him. “It’s four in the morning.”

“Dude, we have to be on a plane in a few hours,” Jase croaks. A bunch of local guys shove the boys into the room as they roll a Corona keg the three feet to my bed, its metal lip scraping the tile.

“No!” Melanie whips off the covers and marches over to them. “Not in here. Trisha, at least keep it out there.”

Trisha drops Nico’s hand and spins to Jase. “You’re no fun anymore. None of you are!” Trisha crosses the room to tug up the face of the guy pumping the keg and plants her lips on him, his eyes bulging in surprise. She throws her arms around him and his friends cheer, gathering as he tosses her gruffly onto our bed. I roll out and onto the floor, crawling away as more people cram in from the living room for the show. Standing, I dart along the stucco to where Melanie and the boys huddle by the bedroom door. A swerving man grabs Nico around the waist and she pushes him off, her unicorn tumbling to the floor as she jumps behind an alarmed Jase.

We look through the chanting melee to see Trisha’s leg suddenly flop limply over the side of the bed. Drew pushes Melanie, Nico, and me into our bathroom and, pointing to Rick and Jase, the three dive in to get her. Shouting erupts as I scramble toward the bathtub, clutching Nico and Melanie as Trisha stumbles in, her arm dangling over Drew’s neck. Jase throws the door closed, and Rick locks 184

it, the two of them sliding down with their backs braced against it as men yell and pound. Drew flicks on the light.

Melanie starts to cry. Nico, white-faced, clutches her hand as she stares at the shaking door with wide eyes.

Trisha curls up on the floor as Drew slides the bathmat under her head. “Jase left and Fletch left and nobody . . .

nobody . . . ” She passes out.

“We have to get her out of here.” I feel for her pulse like they do on TV. “She needs help.”

“She’s just passed out,” Jase says, still catching his breath as the door shakes behind him. I pull a towel off the rack for Nico, and she drapes the thick terry cloth over Trisha’s legs before sitting Melanie down next to her on the tub’s edge.

Jase pulls up his knees for better leverage. The thumping of the music gets louder, and we hear glass shatter.

“Making themselves at home,” Drew huffs from where he stands, leaning his weight against the shuddering wood over Jase and Rick.

“My jewelry’s out there,” Nico says quietly.

“So are our passports and wallets,” Drew adds.

“Doesn’t this bathroom have a phone?” He looks back over his shoulder.

“It doesn’t. No phone, no hair dryer.” Melanie lifts her head from Nico’s shoulder and reaches for some toilet paper to wipe her eyes.

Nico smiles thinly. “So calling on that’s out, too.”

“I’m just saying because the boys have one and we don’t,” Melanie sniffs.

“What about Kara and them—they should check on us,” Nico tries.

“Not till breakfast. That’s in, like, three more hours.”

Rick knocks his head back against the finally still door.

More glass breaks. More cheering. And there’s the sound of women laughing. “Great, they’re inviting the whole country over,” Rick mutters.

“This sucks.” Nico feels her naked ring finger. Rick, then Nico, even Melanie, everyone starts to nod.

“It does,” Drew agrees.

“I thought it would be different,” Nico murmurs.

“Instead it’s just . . . ” She trails off.

“So why are we doing this?” Jase asks as I re-prop up Trisha’s head. “So we can spend our golden years beating the crap out of each other for a measly few thou on a challenge show?”

Trisha’s eyes open to half-mast. “I want my senior year back,” she moans into the bathmat. Nico blinks at the ceiling.

I look around the room at the seven of us. Scared.

Exhausted. In way over our heads. “So all in agreement.

If we get out of this bathroom in one piece, we’re quitting?”

Everyone’s hand shoots up, even Trisha’s.

REEL 13

My spine aching from fits of cramped sleep on unforgiving terra-cotta tile, I grimace as I shift to find a non-ouchy position in the bucket chair where I landed a half hour ago. At dawn, we finally emerged into our only recently abandoned but thoroughly trashed suite. Standing there in the mess of bottles and feathers, staring at all that was left of our belongings—Trisha’s tin of bruise concealer and my splayed physics text—no one talked about our pact. No one talked at all.

Which brought us silently here, to the lobby—in our pajamas.

I wearily watch as Kara reaches the potted fern by the couch, pivots sharply on her heels, and does an about-face, 187

her cell clamped in her tensed hand. In twelve paces she’ll hit the table of gratis guava juice and pivot again. Nico digs her own hollow-eyed groove between the rattan coffee table and the bellhop station. Rick crosses her path on a diagonal, and Mel and Trisha make parallel lines on the far side of the concierge’s desk. The only people not pacing are Fletch, who’s completely horizontal with his feet up on the coffee table, and me, because there’s no path left.

Oh, and Drew.

Drew, who, now that crisis has been averted, is sitting as far away from me as the square footage of this massive atrium will allow. If he had shoes, I’m confident he would have chosen a seat in a lobby down the road.

“No. We have to be able to leave the country
today
!”

Kara cries, slowing to a stop to restate our case for the thirtieth time. “It’s not these kids’ fault their room was robbed.” She shoots another glare at the serenely smiling staff behind the desk. “You have to help us. . . . Well, then, have the ambassador call me back. . . . You said that twenty minutes ago!” Slamming her phone shut, she beelines for Fletch, tapping the splayed
Maxim
serving as his sleep mask. He startles awake beneath earmuff-sized Bose headphones, and she manages to keep it together while he slides them off with a loud yawn.

She crouches beside him, and I watch her face contort as they whisper, her voice rising, “But, I only went along with pushing drinks because you said they’d be watched!”

“They were watched.” Fletch sits up, cracking his neck 188

with a quick side tilt of his head. “And you need to check your tone.”

Stung, she lowers her voice again. “I meant chaperoned. Safe.”