Inside Straight

“Oh my God, tell me about it. This would be way more fun if it weren’t for the cameras.” They weren’t supposed to talk about the cameras in front of the cameras. They weren’t supposed to mention the elephant in the room.

Kate flopped on her bed. Watching her, Ana sat up, cross-legged. “Michael?” she ventured.

“He says his friends call him Michael.” Kate’s smile turned into a giggle. “Can you believe it? A freaking rock star. I wonder what he sees in me.”

Ana didn’t feel inclined to point out that she was thin, blond, cute, and the center of attention. Kate didn’t linger on the thought long, though.

She went on. “What’s he thinking? There’s too much at stake here to go screwing around. I know everyone’s thinking it, who’s going to end up sleeping with who before they even think about who’s going to win the show. But God, it messes everything up.”

“What did you guys talk about? You were out on the porch for hours,” Ana said.

“Were we? I didn’t notice.”

“If you don’t want to say—”

“No, it’s no big deal.” Her expression turned wry. “Mainly, he kept going on about how hard it is in the music business to meet girls who are honest. ’Real,’ is what he said. They’re all after him because he’s a famous rock star. I’m like, yeah, cry me a river, Mister Gold Record.” But she was smiling, and her gaze had turned inward.

Ana said, “Let me guess. He says you’re not like all those other girls. You’re ’real’ and he wants to get to know you better.”

“Not only that, he goes into this thing about how he flirts with all those girls because people expect it, because it’s part of the rock star persona, and that he actually gets tired of it.” She smirked. “He never seems to look tired when Pop Tart or Jade Blossom glue themselves to him.”

“Wild Fox said he heard there was a bet on that he wants to sleep with every girl on the show.”

Shaking her head, Kate said, “I don’t think he’s like that. I think he was serious about not being into the flirting. Just because everyone assumes he’s going to sleep around doesn’t mean he is.”

“You like him,” Ana ventured.

Kate shrugged. “Sure I like him. But do I like him? I don’t know. Not yet.”

Everybody—even Ana—looked at Kate and saw nothing but perfect. But her furrowed brow and pursed lips revealed something more going on under the surface. Kate certainly didn’t see herself the way everyone else did, and it made Ana warm to her.

Grinning, Ana hugged her pillow. “You want to wait and see who else shows an interest.”

“What?” Kate said, laughing.

“Come on, I saw you talking to John Fortune this afternoon.”

“I was asking him some questions.”

“Yeah, asking him some questions, not anybody else.”

Her smile turned shy. “Well, yeah, but—”

“But what?” Ana prompted.

“He’s definitely kind of cute.”

“Who else has been making eyes at you?”

“No one.”

“Jonathan Hive?” Kate rolled her eyes. Ana listed: “Stunt-man? Spasm?” That time, she winced. Then Ana said, “Berman?”

“Oh my God, no!” Kate threw her pillow at her, and Ana grabbed it, laughing. The pillow threw off a static tingle of energy.

They settled back, too weary to exert much effort, too wired to sleep, and stared at the faded shadows the bedside lamp cast on the ceiling.

After a moment, Ana said, “You should enjoy it.”

“Enjoy what?”

“All those interesting men are looking at you. Enjoy it.”

Ana couldn’t read Kate’s expression, her thin smile, the narrowed, sleepy gaze. She seemed to be working something out.

Then her smile widened. “It doesn’t mean anything if I can’t decide who to look at back.” She glanced over. Now that was a wicked look.

“Oh, now you can cry me a river!” Ana threw Kate’s pillow back at her, sending them both into a new fit of giggling.

For the first time since she’d arrived at the auditions, Ana started to relax.

~ ~ ~

Days passed. No telling when the next challenge would arrive—when the alarms would scream, when they’d all pile out of the house to the Hearts’ Hummer—and how stupid was it being Team Hearts? It was way too cute, way too obnoxious, like they were an ad for Valentine’s Day—and they’d fight about whether they had enough gas or who could read the GPS locator correctly. At least Ana’d been able to do that much for the team—reading GPS coordinates was part of her job back home. Thank goodness Hardhat had been able to drive their monstrosity of a vehicle. Wouldn’t that have been embarrassing, failing as heroes to the point of not being able to get the car started—all on national TV.

Ana thought she didn’t care. But really, she’d prefer not looking like an idiot on national TV.

After supper she went out to the backyard. The sky had turned dark, and the air had cooled, though it still smelled tangy, metallic. This whole city smelled like an industrial work site. At home, even after a day of working around oil rigs and diesel fuel, she could walk away from it and smell real air—hot, dusty, but real. She was homesick.