Alternates: Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

The next part happens so fast, too fast, fast enough that it’s hard to believe it’s happening, and I’m sure my bewilderment will be believable because it is, at least in part, true. I keep my eyes on my book as the game starts, but Cab Cabrini has barely made it through his opening introductions before I hear someone wonder aloud what’s going on with Annalise’s face, and then a producer is frantically yelling for everything to stop rolling and Annalise is pulling her EpiPen out of her backpack and then someone thinks to cut the live feed to the studio and suddenly all of us are in a tizzy about what on Earth could have possibly happened. Thank goodness it’s not me who has to come up with the correct theory.

“Didn’t Annalise say at dinner the first night that she has a peanut allergy?” Keeley asks.

“And if she has an EpiPen it must be really bad,” someone else reasons.

“Maybe Eddie ate something with peanuts?”

“Maybe there are traces of something with peanuts in the makeup?”

“Is she gonna be able to compete?”

“What if it’s not allergies at all? Maybe that’s a new COVID symptom we don’t know about?”

“I don’t think so.”

“But how do you know?”

The words fly back and forth so thickly that I almost miss, fifteen minutes after the feed cuts, Morty walking into the empty sound stage. He moves with a long stride and an air of shocking calm for how crazy things just got. He climbs the stairs and holds up both of his hands, and as people notice him, they quiet one by one until Morty has the floor.

“Guys, I’m sure you have a lot of questions. What you just saw was very distressing. Annalise is already on her way to the hospital, which is only four minutes from here. She appears to have had an allergic reaction. We’ll keep you all updated on her condition, but because she used her epinephrine pen right away and she’s getting quick treatment, our on-staff medic believes she’ll be just fine.”

“So what do we do?” Mfoniso asks. “I don’t like the idea of just sitting and waiting to hear if she’s okay.”

“Neither do I,” Morty says, sounding genuinely concerned for Annalise’s well-being, “but we can’t exactly go down to the hospital and help out her doctors. We’re on an extremely tight shooting schedule, so as scary as it is, we just have to keep moving. We’re going to break early for lunch and tape this next game, along with the last two of the day, after we eat. If we’re really, really lucky, we’ll hear soon that Annalise is fine, but even if we don’t, we have to keep going.”

“What does that mean for Jake and Catie?” Joan asks, staring straight at Morty like she’s got nothing to hide. Which I guess in this case she doesn’t.

“It means they get to eat lunch early,” Morty says, “and, barring a miracle, they’ll be playing against Mickey instead.”

All the heads in the room swivel towards me, and now, belatedly, my stomach starts going through its roller coaster routine, and I realize, as clearly as if someone has printed the words on a piece of paper and handed them to me, that what you say right now will make or break you, Mickey Lewis. Deny, deny, deny.

“Can’t we wait?” I ask. “Reschedule her game to tomorrow? She shouldn’t lose out on the opportunity to play just because she has a peanut allergy.”

Morty shakes his head. “For health and safety reasons, even though it was in all likelihood an allergic reaction, we can’t allow Annalise to be unmasked around you guys or our crew until she’s gotten a clean bill of health and a negative PCR test from the hospital. And that’s going to take longer than our shooting schedule allows. Sorry, Mickey. I know it sucks to get pulled on this way. But Annalise will still be getting compensated as a quarterfinalist, so don’t worry about it, okay? Just focus and get your head in the game as best you can.”

I drop my gaze, trying to sound honest when I say, “I just feel bad.”

Morty nods. “I know. But keep your chin up and do your best. This is what you’re here for - you’re performing a valuable service for the show. Try not to feel bad, okay? It’s not your fault.”

I hear Rafa snort and turn it into a very convincing fake sneeze at the last second. Or maybe he actually sneezed, I guess I don’t really know, although considering it’s Rafa I’ve got a pretty good guess. A couple people bless him anyway, and the moment passes. I think, with a relief as palpable as a drink of water, that I did okay, and what I said made me and didn’t break me. At the very least I hope so.

Lunch, it goes pretty much without saying, is weird. From the moment we enter the Decameron cafeteria and have the freedom of movement to approach each other, I’m the most popular person on The Q, and although most of the conversation is still about Annalise and whether she’s alright and theorizing about what could have happened, people I know and people I don’t are clustered around me asking if I’m ready and what it feels like to be competing.

“I don’t know,” I say a lot.

“It’s not fair, but I don’t really have a choice,” I say a lot.

“I’m glad Annalise is still getting paid,” I say a lot.

I hardly know Catie, a dark-skinned girl with a round face and close-cropped hair, but she’s kind enough to come up and shake my hand when Yasmin, who is supervising our lunch hour, isn’t looking.

“It sucks that it had to happen this way,” she says, “but I’m looking forward to our game.”

Jake, who followed Catie up, laughs. “I’m not. Mickey scares the shit out of me.”

“Oh, come on,” I reply. “I don’t even know that much about Catherine the Great.”

Jake leans in conspiratorially. “Don’t tell Laurel this, but neither do I. I just think it’s cute when she gets worked up.”

Speaking of Laurel, I keep an eye on her and Rafa, but I didn’t see him make the switch in the cafeteria, and she’s not showing any signs of gastrointestinal distress as she eats. Toward the end of the hour, I catch Rafa’s eye, and he grimaces and shakes his head. Once I’ve finished my own lunch, I get up, put my mask back on, throw away my paper plate and napkins, and swing my backpack over my shoulder. Yasmin points me to the nearest bathroom. When I’m in there, I pull the can of peanut oil out of my backpack, wrap it in several layers of toilet paper, lift up some of the paper towels in the trash can, bury the wrapped can among the paper towels, and add a few more on top for good measure. I flush the toilet, wash my hands, toss in one last paper towel, and leave.

Ten minutes later I’m standing behind the champion’s podium with a mic wire snaking beneath my sweatshirt and a makeup artist I’ve never met before who introduced herself as Mimi is cracking open a fresh container of powder, tearing open a new plastic bag with a puff inside, and getting me ready for my TV debut.

Now that I have some time to take in my surroundings without a teleprompter in my face, I try to memorize every detail to recall to my dad later. The podiums are tall - they actually have platforms behind them that function like tiny elevators so everybody’s torso is visible above the platform, and mine is a few inches off the ground - and they’re shaped like big purple rectangles with shiny chrome trim. Cab’s podium, at a right angle from the contestants’, looks just like ours, although it has a big The Q logo across the front. The chrome trim also surrounds the game board, across from where we stand, where the categories and questions are displayed during the game. It’s so huge in person, probably three times taller than I am. The studio audience area is to our left, although of course there’s no studio audience right now, and it’s dark and hard to see compared to the brightness of the Q set itself. Between us and the game board is that impossibly shiny expanse of smooth flooring the color of a catmint flower. Once my makeup is done, I turn to Jake, in the middle, and Catie, all the way on the left near the audience.

“Good luck, guys,” I say.

“Good luck,” Catie responds, game face already on.

Jake grins. “Playing against you two? I’ll need it.”

And then Cab Cabrini is walking out, silver hair perfectly styled into a single wave over his forehead, charcoal grey suit and purple tie impeccably straight and unwrinkled, and when he introduces the three of us in his deep, resonant, vowel-stretching game show host voice, he says my name like I’m any other contestant. I look into the camera with a big smile and, as the shot lingers on me while Cab makes his way to his podium, I give the lens a little wave. Just a finger wiggle. Just to know that, back home, whenever this episode airs, my dad will see me waving at him.

“Welcome to The Q, the only game show where we give you the A, and you give us the Q! If you folks watching at home are just joining us, it’s been an exciting tournament so far,” Cab tells another camera with a winning smile. “It’s time to find out which of these three stupendous students will be joining Hank and Mark in the semifinals. Catie, Jake, and Mickey, welcome to The Q. Let’s take a look at those categories.”

They appear one by one on the screen. Great American Novels. Opera (all three of us wince at that one). 19th Century Painters. Rhyme And Reason (that one makes me smile - it’s a classic The Q category where all the answers rhyme). And finally - I can hardly believe my luck - World Capitals.

“Mickey, since you’ve been assigned to the champion’s spot, you’ll start us off.”

“Oh, um, I’ll take World Capitals for 500 points, please.”

A picture flashes up on the screen: thick vegetation and coconut palms in the midst of a rainstorm. “If you’re planning a visit here, make sure to pack your umbrella, because it rains over 300 days of the year in this Micronesian capital.”

I press the buzzer the moment the last syllable is out of Cab’s mouth - every buzzer guide I could find online advises to keep mashing the button until somebody is called on. My podium glows purple, and I can’t help but smile, picturing Keeley yelling it out along with me.

“What is Palikir?”

Cab nods and smiles, and I feel something warm and hungry bloom inside my chest. Up until this very moment, I could honestly tell myself that I just wanted to be on the show, that I deserved to be here and that the injustice of being an alternate justified the means and that it would kill my dad if I never got to play. Sure, half a million dollars would be really, really nice, but even twenty-five grand would put a massive dent in my student loans. It was just about the love of the game, that’s all. I could still tell myself that now, I guess, but now I know I’d be lying.

“That’s correct,” Cab says. “Pick again.”

I want to win.

I don’t think I could describe every second of the game, no matter how badly I want to, because while I’ve never actually gotten blackout drunk in my life, this feels like what I imagine getting blackout drunk probably feels like. I’m a little dizzy. The set is huge and bright and I can sense, as I’m answering questions, that I’m not actually forming new memories of them, or at least that my memory formation is like a series of disjointed snapshots rather than a smooth, continuous video. I remember that, despite there being a World Capitals category, Ljubljana never comes up. I remember Jake knows a lot about opera and I remember even he seems surprised about that. I remember getting the hang of the buzzer so well that I get on a hot streak and answer every question in World Capitals and half of them in the Rhyme And Reason category too, although I get one of those wrong because, as it turns out, “a huge cold-climate ungulate in the picea family of trees” refers not to a “beluga tsuga” but the much simpler “spruce moose.” I remember Cab and the judges laughing and Cab suggesting that sometimes it’s hard for smart people to see what’s right in front of them when I guess “what is a beluga tsuga?” because belugas, and all cetaceans, for that matter, actually are even-toed ungulates, but tsugas are hemlocks, not spruces. I remember laughing along with Cab and the judges and feeling my face heat up with embarrassment at messing up the question and a little bit of pride at Cab Cabrini calling me smart. I remember I don’t find the Q Factor question - Catie does, in the second round, in the science category, and she picks a factor of three, which triples her score, but she was in such a distant third that she barely surpasses Jake, who takes second place back quickly.

When my memory-making machine comes back into video rather than snapshot mode, I’m staring at the question board at the Final Factor category, the game-ending question where all three contestants get to bet as many of their points as they want.

“And today’s Final Factor category is… The Bible! Contestants, you’ll see that the top of your podium is displaying a screen where you can write in your bets. Please take a look at your fellow contestants’ scores and bet accordingly.”

I’m about to bet a good chunk of my points - I’m a religion major, for God’s sake, pun intended - but then I glance over at the scores.

Catie’s got 1500 points.

Jake has 6100.

I have 13000.

Apparently Blackout Mickey is really, really good at The Q. Even if Jake bets it all, there’s nothing he can do. He can’t catch me. So I write in a polite little zero, and the answer is just the names of the two people Jesus told to be fishers of men (who are Peter and Andrew?) and all three of us get it right and Jake, to his credit, did actually bet it all so he comes close to my score but not quite. And then The Q’s theme is playing again as Cab announces that Mickey Lewis from Princeton University will be playing in the semifinals, and somewhere I hear Morty’s voice, as distant and echoey as if he’s at the bottom of a well, or maybe as if I am, saying, “And we’re out!” and then I’m face to face with Cab Cabrini. Now that I’ve come back to myself, I do have the decency to feel terrible for a second.

I can’t believe I did this.

“Congratulations, Mickey,” Cab says, offering his hand for a shake. “That was one of the best-played games I’ve seen in a while. I can’t wait to see what you do in the semifinals.”

I had to do this to get to meet him.

I shake his hand with a smile.

I can’t believe I got to do this.

“And both of you are amazing players,” Cab says, letting go of my hand and moving down the line. Jake gives a rueful laugh as he shakes Cab’s hand.

“It’s alright, Cab, you can say it: we got our butts kicked.”

Catie laughs too, although hers doesn’t sound quite as real as Jake’s does. “Yeah, I’ll be honest,” she says. “I kind of wish it had been Annalise.”

“I really hope she’s okay,” I reply, which isn’t even a lie. I’m kind of surprised at how few lies I’ve had to tell to make it here. I’m more than kind of relieved about that.

“As do I,” Cab says, finally getting around to Catie’s handshake. “Well, thank you all for such an exciting game. I believe Morty’s frantic hand gestures mean he wants you to put your masks back on now. Sorry, Morty!”

We all share a final chuckle at that one, and then Yasmin appears to get Jake and Catie’s mics off of them and I pose for a few pictures with Cab - which, if Decameron ever lets me have access to them, are going to be my profile pictures on every social media site for the rest of my natural life - and then I get my own mic removed and rejoin Jake and Catie, and all three of us walk back to the empty studio together. When Yasmin opens the door for us, maybe it’s just because I’m used to it by now, but even with the chill, it no longer strikes me as the open throat of some horrifying grey show-biz beast. I look up and see the same black metal grid of lights that hangs over The Q, and at the twenty-six other college kids who burst into applause and whoops as soon as they see me and Jake and Catie, and at the expansive grey floor that could shine with just a little bit of polish, and I fight the urge to spread my arms wide and dance around like I’m in Singin’ In The Rain. This place is just an opportunity where a game show used to be and where another one might be someday and where, in the meantime, there’s me. There’s me! Me, a semifinalist on The Q Student Showcase! Me, whose name Cab Cabrini knows and whose hand Cab Cabrini shook! Me!

“You,” Keeley says, leaning over the row in front of her to talk to me when I sit back down, “were incredible! I knew you were a force to be reckoned with.”

I can’t fight the smile that I’m sure has made it all the way up to my eyes from under the mask at this point. “Thanks, Keeley.”

“What did it feel like?”

“I kind of blacked out, I guess, but the parts I remember felt good. Except beluga tsuga.”

From across the room, Jake and Laurel burst out laughing in unison. “Yeah,” Jake says, all good humor, “what the fuck was that? I thought you made up the word tsuga!”

“From the look on his face, Cab did too,” Laurel adds.

“When I worked at the hardware store, I had a coworker who was way too into trees and wood and stuff, so I picked up a lot from him. Unfortunately not enough to know the difference between hemlock and spruce, though.”

“I think that’s what got Socrates killed,” Rafa says, pushing his glasses up his nose and sending heart-shaped reflections bouncing dizzily off the floor and walls and seats.

“So you’re in the semifinals now,” Joan says. “That means you’re guaranteed to win at least fifty thousand dollars. How does it feel?”

I take a second to consider my response and then say, “I feel like a million bucks. Or fifty thousand, at least,” which is enough to get a laugh from everybody, and it means I don’t have to say the real answer, which is that it feels like a damn good start.

Might Makes Write and all the writing shared herein are licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.