‘These are the rules,’ Z said. ‘You’ll be playing a modified form of hockey in order to jockey for position in Dylan’s heart. But we don’t have an ice rink to play ice hockey, or a pitch for field hockey, or any hockey sticks, so we’ve had to improvise. Instead of a stick, you’re all going to play with – one of these!’
Someone off camera threw a cheap plastic pink flamingo at him. He missed.
‘Cut!’ the director said. ‘Go back. Do it again.’
‘Instead of a stick, you’re all going to play with – one of these!’
Z missed the flamingo again.
It took seven tries before he finally caught the flamingo on cue. ‘And instead of a ball, you’re going to play with – this!’
Luckily, it only took three tries for Z to catch the stuffed love-heart toy. Unluckily, by that point, I’d put flamingo plus heart plus stick-related-sport together in my mind and realised just how hackily they were plagiarisingAlice in Wonderland.
I caught Dylan’s eye again and shook my head, as if to say, ‘This is ridiculous.’
‘I know,’ his pained smile replied. ‘I had nothing to do with this. I swear.’
‘The goal is just that: goals!’ Z went on. ‘The team who scores the most goals by the end of the game will get special alone time with our Romeo tonight.’
‘But they’ve already been eliminated!’ Naya protested. ‘Why should they get time with him?’
‘This is an unprecedented year in human history, and this is an unprecedented season ofMarry Me, Juliet!’ Z said. ‘We’ve already had so many firsts this season! Who’s to say that we couldn’t see more? Like a contestant re-entering the competition?’
My heart leaped.
People say that phrase – ‘my heart leaped’ – a lot. It’s a cliché. It’s one of the phrases that your brain skims over and doesn’t think about too hard because you’ve heard it a million times.
But there was no other way to describe it. It felt like my heart had suddenly rebelled in my chest and decided to dislodge itself from behind my ribcage and tried to force itself out my mouth.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
I couldn’t feel like this. I wasn’tallowedto feel like this.
‘Oh my God,’ Marija murmured next to me.
I forced myself into some Jenifer breathing. Even if Team Convent did win and Dylan was allowed to bring someone back into the competition, it wouldn’t be me. It wasn’t me he’d been talking about when he’d said, ‘For a moment, I could see it.’
He’d said, ‘Don’t stop being my friend.’ Not ‘I made a mistake, date me, Cece.’ The exact opposite, in fact. He’d been very clear that he hadn’t made a mistake.
I had to shove down the fact that when I’d reached over and put my hand on his, I’d been able to see it. Him and me.
I was beginning to understand why he’d panicked and eliminated Marija. I was considering turning around and running into the lake just to cool off and calm myself down.
‘I don’t think you’re going to get a chance to go fishing in the reject pool, Dylan,’ Lily said, saccharine sweet, taking the flamingo that a PA handed to her and slinging it over her shoulders like Harley Quinn’s mallet. ‘I’ll make sure of that.’
When we were sixteen, Ayo and I were living in the same group home. There was another girl there, Fiona, who decided that she hated us.
I couldn’t tell you why. Maybe one of us had said something she didn’t like, or hooked up with a guy she did. Maybe she was a junior white supremacist, and I was collateral in her war on Ayo. Maybe she was jealous that we’d formed a friendship that she wasn’t part of. Maybe a combination of those things, or some other secret reason of her own, I don’t know. Either way, she hated us, and she was determined to make our lives miserable.
We were both pretty good at ignoring her. But there was one place where Fiona was inescapable, and that was at school: specifically, in PE.
‘You going to pay attention to me now, bitch?’ she’d said to me once, tackling me to the ground in a game of touch footy, putting her knee in my back and grinding my face into the dirt. ‘Try ignoring me now!’
‘Get off!’
‘Not before youeat dirt.’
I hadn’t thought about Fiona in a long time. She’d been horrible, but so had a lot of people. I’d blocked her out.
