The elimination ceremony starts just after four in a room they’ve set aside for us off the second floor hotel bar. It seems unbelievable, but elimination ceremonies may actually be the dullest of all the dull things they make us do. Hours of sitting around, usually in uncomfortable clothes, to talk to Marcus for five minutes.
Priya is deep in conversation with Kady as I sit across from them, bored. I’m beyond annoyed at being made to further engage with Kady after the scene this morning, but I decide to be the bigger person and say, “I like your dress.”
“Yeah,” Kady says, “sure.”
“It wasn’t meant to be an aggressive statement, Kady.”
She looks up, meets my eyes. “We see through you,” she tells me, which is somehow a more effective way of getting under my skin than anything she said this morning. I feel the camera on me and instinctively know this will play out on television.
“What do you see?” I ask her, keeping my gaze on her steady.
“You think you’re above the rules. You think you’re special.”
“I am special,” I tell her, unable to stop myself. The cunt.
She shakes her head. “You’re so fake.” She goes to leave, but Priya grabs her by the shoulder and sits her back down on the couch across from me.
“You two need to work this out,” she says calmly. I stare daggers over at her.
“Tell Jac what she has specifically done that has made you so upset,” Priya continues.
When Kady doesn’t say anything after a few moments, I venture, “Is it just that I exist and won’t apologize for it?”
“You want us to hate you,” Kady bursts out, and I think she may not be far off. Self-sabotage is a song I know well.
I don’t say anything else, and eventually Marcus comes to get Kady.
A few minutes later, Henry collapses on the couch next to me. “Look at you,” he says, slinging an arm casually over me. The easiness gives me pause.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Have you been thinking about what you’re going to say to Marcus?” He takes a sip of my drink, something I don’t think I’ve ever seen him do before.
“Do you like my dress?” I ask, a clear attempt to rattle him.
“It’s not even in the top ten things I like about you,” he says without pause. The ease of him handling me, I realize, is new; it’s the way he treats the other girls. Before, there had always been a tension; a carefulness to how he approached me. Now, I could be any one of them that he’s flirting with. “You okay with playing shuffleboard during your time? You’re competitive so I figure that’s the right vibe for you, right?”
One of my eyebrows goes up. “Yes?”
“Okay,” he says, looking at me. He squints. “There’s something weird going on with your hair.”
I’m not surprised. I’ve run my fingers through it about ten times in the past minute, an unsettled reaction to the change in the air.
“Hang on,” he says, reaching forward and putting both hands in it. I go completely stiff as he combs it out. “Like that, I think.”
“Jac?” I turn around, and Marcus is at the side of the couch. I glance back behind and Henry has dived out of the shot, crouching down on the other side of the couch. I quickly look back to Marcus, who is frowning deeply. “Can I grab you?” he asks.
Then they make us film it again and ask us to try to “seem more realistic.” He’s wearing one of his many suits—this one is light blue and brings out the color of his eyes, his hair ruffled attractively.
He takes my hand, and I pull him over in the direction of the shuffleboard game, sinking back into my character with a flirtatious challenge. He accepts the game, twists my hand up to his mouth and kisses the backside of it. The tenderness of the gesture, the propriety of it. I get swept up in the act of it, in the magic of the 1.
“How’s this week going?” Marcus asks me, running his fingers along the surface of the shuffleboard table as we walk to one of the ends together.
“Great,” I lie. “I’ve always liked Chicago.”
“It suits you,” Marcus tells me. “What color do you want?”
“Red,” I say, reaching for the first puck. We pile all the reds and all the blues on the table beside us.
“Ladies first,” Marcus says.
Intently, I place my first puck onto the sanded table and use my hand to aim, then shove it across the surface of the board with all the subtlety of a raging bull. Predictably, it goes off the back and into the gutter.
“Easy, killer.” I glance up, lock eyes with Henry, who has followed the two of us and is standing out of sight behind the camera.
“Don’t know my own strength.”
Marcus looks at Henry, too, his glare dark. The intense stare between the two of them raises my hackles. “Your turn,” I say.
Marcus looks back at me, his expression light again. Smoothly, he pushes his puck across the table, too, and like mine, it ends up in the gutter.
“Tragic,” I say, getting into it.
“How about a bet?” Marcus says. “I win, we find a way to spend extra time together.”
“Really?” I ask. As far as I know, Marcus doesn’t have that kind of power.
“What do you think, Foster?” Marcus asks, eyes still locked on mine.
