Alternates: Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

Between Keeley’s game and the game that should be Laurel’s, there’s a delay. I guess they’re waiting to see if Laurel is going to be able to compete. We check our watches and, sneakily, our phones. Ten minutes pass, then fifteen. People yawn, stretch, wonder aloud what’s going on, quiz each other on their trivia knowledge, and play rock-paper-scissors and 20 questions. At the twenty-minute mark, the door to the sound stage opens and Cab Cabrini walks in.

As if he were a drill sergeant, all twenty-eight of us sit up straight and perk up our ears the moment we see him. He laughs, a deep guffaw that echoes around the huge open space.

“This is why I like you guys,” he says. “The college students. The adults don’t do that when I walk into a room.”

Some of us laugh, but some of us don’t, and nobody says anything back.

“So we’ve got some production delays,” Cab says. “The producers are chatting with Laurel to see if she’ll be able to participate today. Even if she can, there’s a possibility that we’ll have to shoot the last quarterfinal game tomorrow morning, before the semifinals, for pandemic safety reasons. While they try to make those decisions, they sent me in here to keep you kiddos entertained.”

I really, really wish my dad was here. Or at least that I could text him right now and tell him that Cab Cabrini, too, calls people kiddos.

“Aren’t you part of that decision-making process?” Mark asks.

Cab laughs. “Oh, no, I’m just the talent. So, who wants to hear some stories about the weirdest contestants I’ve ever met on The Q?”

Enthusiastic yeses all around.

“So, back in ‘87, I had just started hosting The Q a few years earlier, and I was finally starting to believe I’d got the hang of it. Boy, was I wrong. Now, the game wasn’t quite so prestigious back in the day as it is now. If any of you have watched those old episodes, you’ll see the questions are easier and the quality of the gameplay isn’t quite so exciting. Oftentimes we’d get one person who knew what they were doing and two people who just wanted to be on TV, and the other two would get completely smoked. I’m talking games where one person would go home with something like 18,000 points and the others would have a couple hundred apiece. Now, this guy - I’m not saying his name for reasons that will become obvious to all of you shortly - seemed like he was going to be one of those. It was the last game of the day, and this guy, who’s just a normal, clean-cut, nerdy kind of guy, was blowing the other two contestants out of the water. And then the second round hits and he just starts playing terribly. He finds the Q Factor question, chooses four, and gets it wrong. Now he’s so far ahead at this point that he’s still in the lead, but by the end of the game he’s gotten enough wrong that he winds up in second place. This was back when our winner got a thousand dollars, second place was five hundred, and third was two-fifty. So this guy’s going home with five hundred bucks, not too bad, but I pull him aside after the show and ask him what went wrong, because he could have won, no problem. And this guy says to me, ‘Well, you see, Cab, I realized that if I won the game I would have to come back tomorrow and play again. But tomorrow’s Take Your Dog To Work Day at my office, and you’d have to pay me a lot more than a thousand dollars to miss that.’”

Cue the laugh track. It’s easy to get lost in the rhythm of Cab’s game show host voice, which, the more I hear him speak, appears to just be the way he talks all the time. He continues regaling us with stories of the wildest things he’s experienced on The Q until I check my watch again and realize almost an hour has ticked by since Keeley’s game ended. I’m sure the crew isn’t happy, and despite Cab’s significant abilities as a storyteller, I notice many of my fellow competitors starting to get antsy, too, shifting in their seats or murmuring amongst themselves. Cab, presumably honed by his decades in the entertainment industry, can tell he’s losing us, and he makes a graceful exit, letting us know we just have to hang on a little longer and he’ll go grab the producers for us. Once he’s gone, Jake clears his throat.

“This sucks,” he says.

“Woah, strong language,” Keeley teases. But Jake shakes his head.

“I wish they would just tell us how they’re making decisions,” Jake continues, “or let us go home until they’ve figured something out. It doesn’t feel right that we just have to sit here while they decide Laurel’s fate, and theoretically ours.”

Welcome to the alternate’s world, buddy, I think, but of course I don’t say it out loud.

Yasmin and Morty come in a few minutes after Cab leaves. Laurel is not with them.

“Thanks for your patience, guys,” Morty says. “We really appreciate it. A couple things: first of all, Laurel is back at the hotel resting up. Accidental gluten exposure can take a couple days to bounce back from, and she’s not feeling ready to compete. She asked me to pass on a message - hang on - here.” Morty pulls a piece of paper out of his pocket and reads from it. “Good luck to whichever alternate replaces me. There better not be any Russian history on the board I was supposed to have.”

A few of us chuckle at that.

“Regarding the alternate,” Yasmin says, “that will be Joan, but we won’t be recording that game - which, again, will be Mason, Haley, and now Joan - until tomorrow morning. It’ll be a late night for everyone tomorrow, unfortunately, but it’s vitally important that we do it this way.”

“Even though we can be pretty darn sure that Annalise and Laurel had unfortunate adverse reactions to allergens,” Morty says, “we absolutely can’t take the risk that these events were related.”

I force myself to shut my eyes so I don’t look at Joan or Rafa in absolute panic. I feel my stomach doing all its roller-coaster flips, dips, drops, and dizzying spins in quick succession and wonder if I’m about to throw up, although I assume if I did I’d get pulled out of the semis and Rafa would have to replace me, which I’m sure he’d be just thrilled about, so I take a deep breath and grip the arms of my seat until the nausea passes. Without high-resolution security camera footage pointed right at him, which I doubt there is, they can’t prove that Rafa switched the sandwiches, but they can almost certainly prove that Annalise’s puff was covered in peanut oil, and then the question of how it got there leads back to the alternates, because who else would have a vested interest in Annalise not playing? Well, Jake and Catie, I suppose, but without knowing until taping day that they were going to be playing against Annalise, how would they have been able to get their hands on peanut oil? This was a terrible plan, I think, and now it’s all coming apart around me, this must be what they felt like in Pompeii as they watched Vesuvius erupt, and oh fuck, what am I going to tell my dad if I have to call him to come bail me out of jail? Who am I kidding, I probably won’t survive jail in LA long enough for my dad to come bail me out.

“You can’t be too careful in the midst of a pandemic,” Yasmin says, “so you’ll all be expected to take and turn in a rapid test this evening at the hotel. We’ll send a PA around to grab them at ten tonight, so make sure you’ve done your test before then or you won’t be allowed to compete. Results will be in by morning, so we can safely go ahead with our last quarterfinal game as well as the semifinals.”

Oh, right.

I open my eyes in time to catch Joan and Rafa sharing a glance. It looks like Joan’s soda plan is going to work out after all, at least if she can manage to get access to someone’s rapid test besides her own.

The producers direct us to the on-set medics, who give us our rapid tests, and they send us home after that, and when we get back to the Jewel, there’s a surprise waiting for us in the lobby.

Keeley, at the head of the group like always, is the first to notice, and she gasps and cries out, “Annalise!” and runs over to the tiny girl sitting in one of the velvet armchairs, who rises to meet Keeley’s bear hug. The rest of us follow Keeley over, exchanging overlapping greetings and exclamations that very quickly rise to a roar. Annalise is giggling and blushing and turtling into her sweatshirt, like she’s flattered by but uncomfortable with all the attention.

“Guys, guys,” she says, “I didn’t die or anything.”

“But you could have!” Keeley says.

“Only if I hadn’t had my EpiPen on me.”

“Aren’t you mad you didn’t get to compete?” Mark asks.

“Well, yeah, of course. But…” Although Annalise is wearing a mask, the corners of her eyes crinkle like she’s smiling mischievously. “The Q is paying for my hospital visit and I still get twenty-five grand. If that happened every time I had an allergic reaction, I’d get a job picking peanuts.”

I feel a lump in my throat that I can’t explain, although at the very least I know it’s not a peanut allergy. Annalise is so cheerful considering everything she’s been through in the past day. She’s probably just relieved to be okay and excited to plan what she’ll do with all that money. She didn’t do a single thing to deserve this. Not to me, not to anybody.

I say my goodnights and flee upstairs to my room, citing the need to study. Other people follow me up, so it doesn’t seem that weird, I hope. In the safety and privacy of my room, I feel my eyes begin to well up, and in an attempt to distract myself, I take my antigen test and place it on the bedside table so I won’t forget. When that doesn’t work, I cry. I’m inches from calling my dad and telling him everything. I want, so badly, for him to see me on the show and be proud of me, and even so, I very nearly press the ‘call’ button. To stop myself, I browse local restaurants on my phone instead. I order takeout from an upscale burger joint across the street because I could really, really use some comfort food right now. I watch half an old episode of The Q online before going across the way to get my food. As I’m waiting for them to bring me my paper bag, I check the group chat and see a message from Joan.

Hello, all. If anyone was hoping to be in bed or has other plans at 10:00 tonight and wants me to deliver their rapid test for them, please feel free to drop it off at my room this evening. I’m in 607.

A bunch of people have already liked the message. That answers the mystery of access, at least. The more I read and re-read Joan’s message, the more expertly calculated it feels, from the slightly stilted style to the appeal to a reasonable bedtime to the tactful reference to “other plans.”

Damn, I think, rubbing the last of the tear stains off my cheeks, she’s good.

I take my paper bag and leave the burger place and walk back to the Jewel and eat my burger (fried onions, mushrooms, horseradish aioli - it’s pretty good) and the whole time, despite my best efforts to redirect myself, I’m thinking about Joan. Thinking, mostly, about her telling me to ask her that question again tomorrow - tomorrow is today, now - and her dark flyaway hairs and her wide open eyes and her braid twirling around her long fingers and those same fingers closed around my wrist and her forehead against mine. I’m not sure why it is that I can’t stop. If I were a little younger it would be easy to write the whole thing off as a gay crisis, and I have had a lot of gay crises in my life upon seeing a lot of pretty people of a lot of genders, but it’s hard to call it that exactly when Keeley is right there, willing and eager and adorable and not invading my every conscious moment and unraveling every last nerve in my body. No, it’s a Joan crisis specifically, and that is something I’ve never had to deal with before. I suspect it’s going to require some sort of strategy, at the very least because I’ll need to focus during my game tomorrow and I just finished my burger without really tasting most of it.

I do a little studying, but I don’t retain too much. Once 10:00 has come and gone and I’ve descended to the lobby and given my antigen test to a gangly young PA with dark circles under her eyes and I’m sure, if Joan’s managed to do her soda sabotage, it’s done already, I ride the elevator up to her floor and knock on the door to her room.

It’s opened just a crack, after a moment, not by Joan but by Rafa, whose glasses have slipped down his nose somewhat, giving him, until I realize what’s going on, the appearance of having a set of extra, heart-shaped eyes.

“It’s you,” Rafa says shortly.

“Um, yeah. Hi. It’s me.”

From within the room, I hear Joan say, “We were just talking about you. Come in.”

“Okay, yeah-”

“I was just leaving anyway,” Rafa says. “Good night, you two.”

He brushes past me into the hallway and doesn’t hold the door, so I barely catch it in time before it latches. I come in, take my mask off, and sit next to Joan, who has changed into her pajamas: a pair of navy blue sweatpants with SMITH printed down the left leg and an oversized t-shirt.

“What’s up?” I ask.

“You want to know what we were saying about you, right?” she asks in reply.

I feel my face heat up, but I nod. Joan rearranges herself so she’s facing me. “He doesn’t trust you,” she said. “And he doesn’t think I should either.”

“He told me as much at breakfast this morning,” I admit, weirdly grateful to be able to tell someone. “He thinks I should have lost.”

“I don’t know why he expected you to think of intentionally losing your first game.”

“Me neither.”

“But I agree with him that it is suspicious if the show uses all of us and all three of us win. That looks like foul play.”

“Well, what about you? Don’t you want to win for your sisters?”

Joan shrugs. “I’m not sure. I believe as long as I get to the semifinals I’ll have more than covered the cost of the bills. And what Rafa was saying has some merit.”

“I guess so.”

“So do you plan to lose your next game?”

I consider lying, and then I consider telling the truth, and then I look at her face and decide I can’t do either. “I’m not sure yet.” She’s just silent, looking at me, and I clear my throat. “So, uh, have you decided whether or not you trust me?”

Joan raises an eyebrow at me. “I’m not sure yet.”

“Oh.”

There’s a silence. I watch the digital clock on the nightstand tick over from 10:30 to 10:31. The silence stretches. I rub the back of my neck.

“I guess now isn’t really the best time,” I say, “because you didn’t get to compete today, but I figured I would take you at your word from last night and just kinda go for it. You told me to ask you again tomorrow, and tomorrow is today, so - that doesn’t make a lot of sense said out loud, but you know what I mean. Did you - I mean, do you want to - I think my exact wording was ‘what do you want to do with me’ but that’s a weird way to put it, too. Um.” I swallow hard. “Joan. I -”

“Now’s a fine time,” she says. “I know for a fact that Rafa and I are competing tomorrow, so there’s nothing else I need to do tonight. But before we do anything, make a wish.”

“What?”

“It’s ten-thirty-two.”

Obediently, I close my eyes and think hard about it, although a wish rises to the top of my mind with little effort. I wish for everything to please, please, just be okay. For me. For all three of us. For my dad. For Joan’s sisters. That’s it. That’s all I want. I just want everything to be okay.

I don’t open my eyes until Joan is already kissing me, and then I only do it because the feeling of the kiss knocks me so completely off balance that for a moment I’m convinced the whole room with us in it must have been turned sideways or spun around. It’s strange to see her with her eyes closed, long black eyelashes across her cheeks, so dark they look like cracks in the rich brown earth of her face. I have to go almost cross-eyed to look at her up close like this, so I close my eyes again and enjoy the feeling of her lips - warm, sweet, a little chapped - on mine. She kisses like she does everything, precisely and methodically and without any particular thought, as far as I can tell, to how I feel about the situation. Which, maybe this is just a me thing, or maybe I’m in an altered state right now between the stress and the out-of-whack sleep schedule, but regardless of why, I’m beginning - or more likely continuing - to find Joan’s completely unselfconscious style kind of hot.

After a few more moments, she leans back, opens her eyes, takes her glasses off, and says, “Good?”

“Good,” I reply.

“More?”

“More.”

More. Much, much more. Once I’ve gotten my center of gravity and at least a few of my mental faculties back, Joan closes her eyes and smiles a little as I kiss her jaw, her neck, her collarbone. She lets me take her hair out of its braid and comb my fingers through it until it falls in thick waves onto the pillow beneath her head. I can feel my heart pounding in my throat, so loud and fast it almost hurts and it makes it difficult to swallow, but it doesn’t matter because Joan pulls her t-shirt up over her head and undoes the top button of my shirt, waiting for me to do the rest, and I am more than happy to oblige. Her skin is warm and soft against mine, and I do my best to kiss every inch of it. I must be going too quickly - it must be obvious that I’m irrationally terrified that this is going to stop at any second and I have to make it all count - because she lays a hand on my shoulder and tells me to stop.

“Sorry.” I’m apologizing preemptively. Joan shakes her head.

“Calm down. It’s only me.”

“That’s why I’m not calm.”

She laughs softly. “Okay. But slow down.”

I try. I guess I must manage it, because she doesn’t have to tell me to slow down again, but even though I know there’s a clock on her bedside table and a watch on my wrist, I don’t look at either of them. Moments blur and stretch into each other and time feels like taffy. My lips on her jaw become my lips on her thigh without me really understanding the steps in between. Joan is quiet the whole time, and the only metric I have for figuring out whether she’s enjoying herself is to glance up occasionally from between her legs and look at her face. Over the course of several minutes she goes from watching me intently with those wide brown eyes to head tilted back, eyes shut, lips parted, breath getting faster, so I decide I’m doing fine and close my eyes and get back to work. A few minutes more and I hear her breathe out in a long hiss, and a shiver runs through her, and I smile against her and wait until she’s too sensitive and pushes my head gently away.

“Good?” I ask.

She nods, almost businesslike, and I try not to laugh at the faraway look in her eyes as she does. “Good.”

“More?”

She presses her lips together, considering. “For me or you?”

“Both. Either. Neither. What do you want?”

She shrugs. “I think I’m done, but if you -”

“You don’t have to,” I say quickly.

“I will.”

“But do you want to?”

The faraway look in her eyes is gone, and even without her glasses magnifying her gaze it still fixes me to the spot. “That’s a silly question,” she says.

Joan, quiet and unflustered, or at least not visibly flustered, knows exactly what she’s doing. I’m still not keeping track of time but it can’t take long. Jesus Christ, I think I love her, and then I forget myself for a minute. I know my face is flushed as I lay next to her and try to catch my breath, and she pulls a tissue from a box beside the bed and wipes her fingers clean. Then, she says, “Are you staying?”

“Do you want me to?”

“I want you to decide whether or not you’re staying.”

“That’s not an enthusiastic yes.”

“Nor is it a no.”

I think I’d be getting frustrated right now if I weren’t still floating about twenty feet above the room. “I don’t think I can move,” I say.

“Then you’ll stay.”

I manage to wriggle under the covers despite the lack of any gravity tethering me to the bed, and I lay there with my eyes closed trying to let my breathing and my heart rate stabilize as Joan puts her pajamas back on and brushes her teeth and turns the light off.

“Good night, Mickey,” she says.

“Good night.”

As I drift off, I’ve managed to slow my breaths down. But right up until the moment I fall asleep, I can still feel my pulse in my throat.

In the morning, Joan gets up before me. The producers emailed her and the other two contestants from what was supposed to be Laurel’s game asking them to come in early to get their wardrobe, hair, and makeup done so that they can start taping the moment the rest of us arrive at the studio.

“So you know for sure Rafa is competing today?” I ask, scrolling lazily through my phone, still naked beneath Joan’s sheets, as she paces around getting ready for the day.

“Mm-hm. Why do you ask?”

“You mentioned it last night. I’m assuming it was the soda?”

“Yes.”

“I’m impressed that actually worked.”

“Of course it did.”

She rifles through her backpack one last time, zips it up, and slips her arms through the shoulder straps. I watch the way she moves, sharp but unhurried, and wonder if she’ll let me sleep here again tonight. I think I’d do just about anything to make that happen.

“I’ll see you later,” she says, opening the door.

“Out of curiosity, before you go, whose test did you spoof? Do you know, or did you just pick at random?”

She’s halfway out the door, but she turns back to me, right before she pulls up her mask and shuts the door, and there’s the sweetest little smile on her face when she says it.

“Keeley’s.”

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