Henry runs over to me as I limp over the finish line. “Did you hurt yourself?” he asks. His eyes are twinkling with the ghost of a laugh he doesn’t give in to.
“I’m fine,” I say. “Bad ankles, used to fall on them during softball. Probably just need to wrap it up tonight and wear flats.”
“That was . . .” Henry starts. “That was something. I’ll get medical.”
Charlotte hurries over. “She says she’s fine. Someone get Marcus over here. Jac, sit on the ground and grab your ankle.”
“What? No!”
Charlotte gives me a light smile. “I will hold you down.”
I sigh. I don’t want to put the weight on my ankle anyway, so I go down, in my muddy wedding dress. Other girls are crossing the finish line now, but the crew doesn’t have eyes for anyone but me.
“Jac!” I hear Marcus’s voice as Elodie hurries him over to where Charlotte is sitting with me. She smoothly moves out of frame as Marcus crouches down next to me. “Are you okay?”
“No,” I tell him, taking a deep breath. “I lost to Kendall.”
He laughs. “Your ankle?”
I shrug. “I don’t know,” I say. “I probably couldn’t run a marathon on it.” I smile up at him and he returns it before he reaches down and helps me back to my feet.
“I gotta say,” he tells me, “I think the dress looks better on you now than it did at the start.”
I stick out my injured leg pointedly, flexing it. When I’d torn the dress, the slit had gone a little higher than I intended. (Honestly, at the time, I think I look pretty fucking hot, but when it aired on TV later, I look unhinged—my hair is matted and I’m sweaty, covered in mud and bug bites, but right then, I’m pretty sure I’m on top of the world.)
“Not bad, huh?”
“I wouldn’t send you away from my room,” he says. The words send my pulse racing. When I had watched Shailene’s season, I had always liked how straightforwardly sexual Marcus was. (“At least if I’m going on this show, he’ll make sure I have a good time,” I told Sarah over Zoom.) “I have to go talk to the other girls,” Marcus whispers to me.
“Aw,” I answer. “Why?”
Even though we’re close, he takes my hand and kisses it. “I’ll see you for cocktails tonight, okay?”
Slightly dazed, I watch him go.
WE GO BACK to the mansion to clean up and get ready for the cocktail party later. Several of the girls are giving me looks of various coldness, and when I ask Rikki why, she whispers to me, “They thought you were faking your ankle injury for attention.”
I show her my ankle tightly wrapped with ice, which medical had confirmed was sprained at the obstacle course. “Yeah, this is all for show.”
Rikki shrugs. “I didn’t say I thought that. You asked.”
“You’re right,” I say, turning back to my reflection in the mirror. “But I’m not desperate like some of these girls.”
Rikki laughs. “And you wonder why they aren’t warming up to you.”
I glance back at her. “No need to make good points when I’m injured.”
“Just try to be nice tonight,” she suggests. “If you want them to like you.”
I think about it for a minute before I say, “I don’t though,” and we both giggle at that. “But I’ll try,” I say once we stop laughing. “To make nice.”
“It worked on me,” Rikki points out.
“Hon,” I say. “You were just drunk.”
“It’s the 1,” she tells me. “We’re all a little bit drunk.” Then she thinks about that for a minute. “I guess except that teetotaler from the season that was on when I was in high school.”
“Rikki, if you’re going to directly sniper me, could you at least wait until I’m standing over my grave so I make a clean fall?”
Even as she’s still laughing, she says, “Don’t say that to the other girls tonight.”
“Why?”
“Because it will alarm them.”
Cars come to get us at half past seven. My dress is one I’d thrifted beforehand, a long emerald green with the skirt flared slightly for maximum girl-next-door vibes, and my ankle taped, wearing the shortest kitten heels Rikki had brought along. We pull up to a hotel, a nondescript downtown LA spot, where we are ushered in and given champagne. We wait a bit for Marcus to arrive. There are so many of us still, a fact that Charlotte felt the need to bring up to me as we waited for drinks to arrive.
“I really think you should jump in there first,” she tells me. “Priya agrees.”
Priya is off talking to Aaliyah, but I doubt if there’s ever been a time in Charlotte’s life when she’s sought advice from Priya.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Seems a little aggressive.”
Charlotte laughs. “Aggressive is what Marcus wants. You watched last season, didn’t you?”
Yes, I had, and her point was well taken. Marcus had no interest in shrinking violets, and I need to make sure Marcus continues to notice me.
“I don’t know, Jac, it’s just really easy to fade to the background at this point in the journey.”
