Alternates: Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

I text my dad that I won my game but can’t tell him any of the specifics, and I get seven texts back, all of which consist of different amounts of exclamation points, and an eighth which just tells me he’s proud of me. That feels just as good as fifty thousand dollars, although I suspect it doesn’t feel quite as good as half a million would.

I insist on taking Keeley to dinner once the other two games of the day are done (both winners who I vaguely recognize from our very first day in LA but whose names - Natalie and London - I could not possibly have matched to their faces) to repay her for both her kindness and the Vietnamese food, and we go back to the taco place from the first night and absolutely stuff ourselves with tacos al pastor and she makes me quiz her on all of Shakespeare’s plays and most of Marlowe’s and Jonson’s works too. She tells me in no uncertain terms that she had fun last night but she has to study and sleep tonight, and that she can’t wait to win so she has a chance to play me in the semis, and I tell her I’m looking forward to it and that whichever of us makes it to finals buys dinner that night, and when we’re back at the hotel I follow her up to the sixth floor. I like Keeley a lot. I have fun with her, and she’s made it very clear she has fun with me. I don’t feel nervous or weird or anything when we hang out. Once we’ve said goodnight, I watch the door to her hotel room swing shut behind her.

And then I go and knock on Joan’s door.

She opens it a crack and then all the way and waves me in, watching me as I glance back and forth between the desk chair and the bed, trying to decide which is the more appropriate place to sit, and she doesn’t help me, just keeps staring from her place by the doorway, so I pick the desk chair, but then she goes and sits on the bed with plenty of space beside her so I get up and move to the bed.

“I didn’t expect you to win,” she says.

“Ouch.”

Joan shakes her head. “I know you’re smart. But you didn’t make the cutoff for the knowledge test, and I thought you were like Rafa.”

“Like Rafa how?”

“I thought you just wanted to be on an episode. In your case it was to meet your hero and be part of the show, rather than because you want to be an actor, but I thought that was all.”

“Um. It was, I guess, but I don’t know if it still is. I mean, I know you have a better reason for doing this whole plan than I do, but still, maybe when you play tomorrow you’ll feel things change too. I want to keep going. It’s fun.”

Joan shrugs. “Even if I have fun, I’m still doing this for Diane and Francis.”

“So maybe your reasons won’t change, I dunno. Why does it matter?”

To my immense surprise, Joan takes her glasses off and puts them on the bedside table. I hadn’t even considered that she could exist separately from her glasses, somehow. I realize how thick the lenses must be - without them, her deep brown eyes, normally as huge and wide and bright and intimidating as spotlights, are smaller, less inscrutable. I feel like, if I look long enough, there will be a pattern there too, just like there is in her games of rock-paper-scissors.

“It matters,” she says, “because I don’t want to have to compete with you.”

For the first time I notice that her hair is down, no braids or even a ponytail. It’s so much longer than I thought it was, a thick black waterfall that ends near her hips. She tilts her head to the side and some of that hair falls over her thin face so she looks like a mysterious hooded traveler who just rode into town in the middle of the night.

I hear words coming out of my mouth, which is strange, because there’s no way I’m saying them, because there’s no way I would say this, but somehow it’s my voice hanging in the air between us and sounding an awful lot like the question, “What do you want to do, then?”

“What?”

“With me.”

What the fuck, Mickey? What are you doing? There is already more than enough going on in your life as it is, you do not need to add whatever the hell you’re doing right now on top of it, and anyway you should probably be studying right now, and besides all that Joan has the power to make your life very uncomfortable if she so chooses because right now you’re the only one who’s run a sabotage, so you’d be a lot better off not messing with her hair or asking her what she wants to “do with you,” what the fuck are you even -

But then Joan is leaning forward, and I think for a second she’s going to kiss me, but she stops just barely short with maybe half an inch of space between us and leans her forehead against mine instead.

“I have to compete first,” she murmurs. “I have to make absolutely certain I’m coming home with enough to meaningfully help with the medical bills. That means finishing the quarterfinals. But I hope you’ll ask me that question again tomorrow night.”

“Oh. Um. Yeah, uh, I can do that. Happily. Sure.” Ah, awkward and stammering. Now that’s more like me. “Do you want me to go?”

“We should both be studying. But I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah, I’ll see you then.”

And, because that wasn’t weird at all and I’m definitely not thinking about it, I go back downstairs to my room and watch old episodes of The Q, shouting out the answers as if I’ve got a whole chorus of college students backing me up. Tomorrow, I realize, I don’t actually have to do anything. Rafa and Joan are in charge of the other parts of the plan, I don’t have to compete again until the day after tomorrow, and given Joan’s request (which I’m still not thinking about) to wait until tomorrow night to do - something - whatever it is - I’m not sure how much last-minute cramming I’ll be able to do, anyway. Even though I’m alone in a hotel room in LA, it’s easy to pretend, watching those old episodes, that I’m back home with my dad, or back on the empty sound stage with the everyone else, and the group chat is buzzing with so many messages that my phone sounds like a hummingbird, and I’m going to check it any minute now but I can feel the day catching up with me, and I wake up the next morning with both my clothes and the lights both still on and my laptop dead on the bed beside me.

The first thing I do is check the group chat. The flurry of messages was set off, thank goodness, by Annalise, letting us know she’s okay and that she’s not sure what happened to cause the reaction but that she’s healthy and, pending her test results, most likely virus-free. She’s upset that she didn’t get to compete but figures she shouldn’t complain about getting twenty-five grand for doing, quite literally, nothing. All the other messages are well-wishes and offers of support and commiseration that she won’t be on the show and a few people pointing out that she’ll still be in the promos so she hasn’t completely lost out on her star turn, and then toward the bottom Jake has recapped the results of the previous day’s games. And damn if it doesn’t feel good to see GAME THREE - WINNER: MICKEY on that screen.

The last message from last night is from Hank, with half a dozen likes attached, asking if the people who competed yesterday (and thus don’t need to spend their mornings cramming) want to get breakfast tomorrow at 8:00. I check the clock - 7:45. Technically enough time. I add my own like to the message and throw on some fresh clothes.

Hank, Jake, Rafa, Mfoniso, and Mark are already milling around in the lobby when I make it downstairs with my backpack at 8:01.

“Mickey,” Rafa says, turning his head toward me, “glad you could make it. We’re all going to that bagel place Mark mentioned yesterday. Were you there for that?”

“I don’t think I was.”

As our group steps outside, the morning sun flashes on Rafa’s glasses. “Oh, right, it must have been when you were competing. You’re so lucky.”

“You never know what will happen,” Mfoniso says, nudging Rafa. “Maybe they’ll need you to step in too.”

“Oh, sure,” Rafa says gamely, still looking at me. “But what are the odds of that?”

“So do you guys think today’s games will be easier or harder than yesterday’s?” I ask, avoiding Rafa’s gaze. Once everyone is safely engaged in a discussion about the relative merits of each of our games, I pull out my phone to message Rafa.

Dude. why do you keep doing that?

He responds after a minute or so, managing to keep up his banter with Mfoniso, who is laughing at all of his jokes, even as he texts me.

doing what?

I have to physically stop myself from rolling my eyes. You looked right at me and asked “what are the odds of that?” i feel like you’re trying to make me look bad, or suspicious, or something.

Rafa puts his phone away, and I grimace. Once we’re all ensconced at a picnic table on the sidewalk outside the bagel place and we’ve picked up our orders from the counter (a bagel and lox for me, and it’s one of the best I’ve ever had even though they went a little heavy on the capers), Rafa excuses himself for the restroom and that’s when I get a text back.

you know i’m doing this to get on tv. i thought you were doing this to meet cab or because it was your dream or whatever. and i thought we were both doing this to make sure joan’s family can afford to pay their medical bills. 

And then, after a minute, another text. i don’t like that you won, mickey. not one goddamn bit.

I feel the bagel in my throat and for a moment I think I’m going to choke. I start coughing, and Hank slaps me on the back. I manage to keep my bagel down, take a huge swig of water from my The Q bottle, and thank Hank.

“No worries,” he said. “If you were actually choking I could’ve given you the Heimlich.”

“Oh, for real?”

“Yeah, I was a lifeguard for a couple summers and it’s part of the training.”

“Woah, that’s cool,” Mark says through a mouthful of his own bagel. “Like at a pool, or -”

“At the beach.”

“Like Baywatch!”

Hank chuckles. “Yep, exactly like Baywatch. The training was actually just the Heimlich and the slow-motion running.”

“You guys watch Baywatch?” Jake asks. “I kind of thought it was a my-parents thing.”

“Oh, it is,” Hank assures him. “Mark and I are just secretly elderly.”

“I prefer ‘old soul,’” Mark says.

I take another long drink of water and text Rafa back. What are you going to do?

i’m going to lose my game. what are you going to do?

Won’t losing on purpose look more suspicious?

I can practically see Rafa’s hot vampire smile when my phone buzzes and I see that he’s replied to me. not if you’re a good actor.

And he is. I don’t really know the people competing in the games before lunch, and with the pressure of the puff completely off my chest, I get to kick back and shout out the answers with everyone else. I also get to watch Rafa carefully out of the corner of my eye, just in case. What he said this morning unsettled me, and even though he’d have to be an idiot to go to the producers when he’s just sent me texts that would implicate the hell out of him, too, I’m not going to risk letting him out of my sight. So I get to see him handing his glasses to Laurel to try on, and I get to hear him talking to her about what’s for lunch today and how the gluten-free options are in the Decameron cafeteria. And I get to feel bad, worse than I did about Annalise, even though I don’t have any direct hand in this part of the plan. Laurel is a lot of fun to be around, and I’ve enjoyed the bit parts I’ve gotten to play in her and Jake’s spectacular debates. Unlike Annalise, who I’ve only spoken to occasionally, I feel like I know Laurel: her brashness, her sense of humor, her love of Russian history. If Russian history comes up in the game she’s supposed to play, I think I might not be able to handle it.

I take a deep breath, and then another, and listen to Cab Cabrini tell one of the contestants on the monitor that she’s wrong. I can handle it. Of course I can handle it. After all, as much as I like Laurel, and as much as I feel like I know her, Joan is her replacement. And as much as Rafa freaked me out earlier, he is right about one thing: this whole plan, at its core, is designed to get Joan behind a podium.

“Hey, you alright?” Keeley asks me. She’s sitting in front of me today, and she’s turned all the way around in her seat, chin resting on the back of it.

“Yeah, I’m…” How to describe it? “Not feeling too great. I was so beat last night that I fell asleep with my clothes on, and I guess I’m still not at a hundred percent.”

“That’s the worst,” Keeley says, somehow managing to commiserate brightly, which I would have thought would be an oxymoron. “You don’t think you’re sick, do you?”

“I don’t think so, no.”

“Okay, good.”

“How are you?”

“Oh, my god, I’m so nervous I could scream,” she says. “But it’s gonna be so much fun. Watching y’all yesterday I was so jealous, it looks like a blast.”

“It is,” I agree. “An absolute blast. You’re gonna have an amazing time.”

“Totally! But I will say I wish I’d gotten to play before lunch. I feel like my nerves are just completely building up right now.”

“I get that.”

The game on the monitor ends, and Yasmin appears to bring us to the cafeteria. I get in line at the sandwich station right behind Rafa, who’s right behind Laurel, who considers the menu for a moment before ordering a BLT on gluten-free white bread, and the cook writes BLT GLUT FREE on the edge of a paper plate in permanent marker, and Rafa tells Laurel that sounds awfully good right about now and orders the same thing on regular white bread, and the cook writes BLT REG on another plate. Laurel goes off to get a drink and Rafa offers to wait for their food if she’ll get him a ginger beer and she says she’s not sure they even have ginger beer and Rafa insists they do so Laurel goes off to look for it but tells Rafa, bumping his shoulder with hers as she does, that if she can’t find it he’s getting ginger ale from the soda machine instead. One BLT comes out, and then another, and Rafa thanks the cook at the sandwich station and turns his back to everyone so he’s facing the wall and, almost as quick as blinking, picks up the sandwiches from each plate and switches them. Then he walks up to Laurel and hands her the BLT GLUT FREE plate, and she thanks him and hands him a bottle of ginger beer, which it turns out they had after all. I, with my tuna melt in hand, wander over to the drinks area and pick up a bottle of ginger beer for myself. I’ve never tried it before, but I guess now is as good a time as any, and anyway they say ginger is supposed to settle your stomach. I think I could use that right now.

It surprises me how easy it is, I guess. That’s what’s making me feel dizzy and unsteady like the floor is rising and falling beneath me, like I’m on the deck of a ship during a storm, or maybe like I’m standing on the back of something huge and breathing and alive. This place is a television studio - shouldn’t there be cameras and microphones everywhere, observing and recording every whisper, every motion, every moment? Shouldn’t there be a producer waiting behind a potted plant or under a table to leap out and yell “gotcha” and call the cops on us? But then there’s so little about this that looks suspicious if you don’t know what’s going on. Two people get the same sandwich and the plates get mixed up. A girl with serious allergies has an allergic reaction. Joan checked when we first thought of the idea - a lot of cosmetics have tree nut oils in them. There’s no way to know for absolutely certain that Eddie’s powder didn’t have any cross-contamination with some arachis hypogaea cleanser or whatever. It’s bad luck, a string of terrible coincidences, but in the end The Q, no matter how much it means to me or anybody else, is still a business, and the bottom line for them is either pay out a few thousand dollars extra or don’t have a show. And the only thing that matters is having a show. There’s no time to look into every mishap too closely.

I hope.

This mishap rolls in slowly, like the storm clouds to the deck of my ship. I sit far from Laurel and Rafa, so I can’t hear what they’re saying, but I can see it happen as if I’m watching a silent film. Laurel eats half of her sandwich and waves her hands like she’s commenting enthusiastically on its quality, Rafa points at his and makes some comment, Laurel shrugs, Rafa gestures for her still-untouched sandwich half and takes a bite, his eyes go wide, her eyes go wide, they frantically examine the labels on their plates, and Laurel makes a swapping motion with her hands, and Rafa shrugs, nods, and flags down Yasmin, who is finishing her own lunch as she walks around monitoring our social distance.

A few minutes later, Laurel is being led in the direction of the bathroom, beginning to clutch her stomach already. Rafa makes eye contact with me, and the image flashes into my head of him taking a bow as the curtain closes. He doesn’t need The Q for his star turn, I think. That was some of the best acting I’ve ever seen.

Laurel wasn’t scheduled to play until the last game of the quarterfinals, as it turns out, so although we all notice her absence back on the empty stage after lunch, the producers don’t tell us anything about it, probably hoping she’ll recover in time for her game. It falls to Rafa to tell the tale for the rest of us, then, about how they ordered the same thing at lunch and someone in the cafeteria mixed up the sandwiches, so Rafa’s gluten-full bread ended up on Laurel’s gluten-free plate. Such a stupid, annoying thing to have happen, right? So easily avoidable? But, then again, such an easy mistake to make, you know? There are sympathetic nods and hopes for Laurel’s well-being.

In the second game after lunch, it’s Keeley’s turn behind the podium. She’s in the middle, with a guy on either side of her, neither of whom I know, although they’re introduced as Jon and Mohammed. Each of them is definitely over six feet, and Keeley, who I think is a fairly normal height, looks as diminutive between them as Annalise does in her gigantic sweatshirt. Even the elevator lift can’t quite get her to their height, although she grins the entire time it raises her up. The chipped tooth isn’t visible on camera.

Cab announces the categories. The Enlightenment. Broadway Musicals By Character. Technology. Japanese History. All About Animals. As the game plays out, the shouted answers come thick and fast at first, but they begin to thin out as we realize we, as a collective, are getting most of them wrong. Usually one or two people will know it, or someone will claim it was on the tip of their tongue, but usually the rest of us won’t. The categories themselves are no more difficult than your standard The Q fare, although Technology is broad enough to pose a challenge, but the questions are definitely the hardest we’ve seen so far. The consensus, before the second round even starts, is that this is a really tough board.

And Keeley is absolutely smoking her competition, and all of us watching from the empty studio, with a smile on her face. She gets every question in the Broadway category correct. She beats the boys to the buzzer on most of All About Animals, half of The Enlightenment, and a third of Technology. By the time the first round ends, she’s already looking uncatchable, and when she finds the Q Factor question in a Pop Music category in the second round, bets two, and doubles her score, Jon and Mohammed’s fates are sealed. With the exception of a few of the adults on the regular version of the show, the famous The Q players who won thirty, forty, fifty games in a row in their day (before the show implemented its controversial twenty-five game limit for a champion), Keeley may be the best player I’ve ever seen.

When it’s all over, the camera zooms in on her shaking hands with Cab, and now that chipped tooth is visible. And, in a move that I’m sure is just Keeley being Keeley but feels, in that moment, to my stunned brain and my pounding heart and my frayed nerves and my memories of the night before last, like it’s just for me, she looks over Cab’s shoulder and gives the camera an exaggerated wink.

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