‘Right,’ Saurav said. ‘Just you and me, girl.’
Murray dismissed Saurav with a wave of his hand. ‘I need you to be okay with this,’ he said. ‘The network likes what you and Dylan have been doing. The plan is to make your arc a big feature of the season. The friend shit is really working.’
Well, wasn’t that great? I was successfully convincing a bunch of network execs that I didn’t want to jump Dylan’s bones. That I wasn’t going to have murderous fantasies about Amanda, or Jess D, or Kumiko, or Hero Nurse Dylan or whichever one of the Juliets he ultimately ended up picking. That, as his friend, I would be happy for them.
‘You’re getting much better at keeping your shit together,’ he went on. ‘But we can’t even consider you forJuliet on the Beach, let aloneWherefore Art Thou Romeo?, if you can’t prove that you can handle yourself with actual cameras around. Do you understand?’
Money. Sponcon. Financial security.
The possibility of finding some himbo that would help me get this hopeless crush on Dylan out of my system.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I understand. I can do this. But could I get some water, please?’
About half an hour later, I was ensconced in front of the monitors in an office chair that had clearly been made for a Dylan-sized man and not a Cece-sized woman. My water bottle was on the table, label carefully oriented so Saurav could capture the sponsor’s name. ‘Welcome to today’s group date!’ Z announced to the Juliets, who were standing lined up in front of one of the hedges near the Villa. ‘All nine of you have been invited along to spend some time with Dylan.’
They all cheered. After Love Jockey Hockey, I was amazed that any of them could possibly be excited about the prospect of another group date, but that was reality TV, I suppose. You did what you had to do to get what you wanted.
I glanced over at Saurav. He smiled and gave me a thumbs up, but then shook his head slightly.
Don’t look at him. Right.
‘Today, you will be divided into three groups,’ Z said.‘You’re here to win Dylan’s heart, so you’re going to build a love machine and throw your hearts right at him.’
The cameras panned over the Juliets as Z explained the rules: in their teams, they had to build their machine, and then they had to try and fire as many of their twenty plushie hearts as possible into a pool (also heart-shaped). Amanda was half-smiling, listening intently. Hero Nurse Dylan looked distinctly unimpressed. Lily was smirking, because of course she was.
The camera panned over Belinda. I leaned in, trying to see if her chipped tooth showed up on camera – God, was I a monster? I might be a monster.
In one of my classes, we’d talked about this concept called a panopticon: a prison where the guards could always see the prisoners but the prisoners couldn’t see the guards, so they never knew when they were looking. ‘If you don’t know when you’re being watched, then you have to behave like you’re always being watched,’ my tutor had said. ‘Imagine if there was a chance I was watching over your shoulder when you were working on your essays. You’d feel extremely guilty whenever you were procrastinating, but the thought of being under constant observation would stress you out so much that what you handed in would probably be terrible, anyway.’
It had reminded me of a group home, where you never knew when someone (a foster parent, a social worker, an older kid, a younger kid who was trying to look tough… the options were endless, really) was watching you, waiting for you to put a toe out of line, so you had to be vigilant all the time.
I’d never been in this position before. The guard, not the prisoner. The watcher, not the watched.
The Juliets knew they were being watched. There were cameras everywhere. But they had no ideaIwas watching them. They had no idea I was leaning forward like the worst kind of ghoul, trying to see how bad Belinda’s chipped tooth was. They had no idea that I was about to judge them. They had no idea that I could see Dylan standing there beside Z, smiling at each and every one of them like they were the only women in the world when I knew for a fact he was tied up in knots over the whole thing.
My eyes flickered over to Saurav. How much of this was he picking up on my face?
He shook his head again.Don’t look at me.
My fingers were shaking as I unscrewed the cap of my water bottle. I took a long swig and then—shit. Which way was the label supposed to go? If I didn’t get that right, how would the network ever trust me with something big?
I’m sorry, the network isn’t going to let us do our friend spots any more, I imagined having to tell Dylan.I freaked out over which way a water bottle label was supposed to face and they decided I wasn’t worth their time. See you never, I guess.
No. No. That wasn’t going to happen. I wasn’t in a panopticon. I knew when I was being watched. I knew Saurav was watching me right now. I had to keep it together.
I took another swig from the water bottle and then made my best guess at which way the label should be facing.
‘… groups of three,’ Z was saying. ‘Group one will be Parisa, Jess D and Kumiko. Group two will be Naya, Heather and Belinda. That leaves group three: Amanda, Dylan G and Lily Fireball.’
‘You better not get in my way, bitches,’ Lily said to Amanda and Hero Nurse Dylan. ‘Or there’ll be hell to pay.’
It’s for TV, obviously, she’d said when she pushed me into the lake.
Lily Fireball knew she was in a panopticon. She knew she was being watched. She counted on it. She was the perfect example of what I’d told Dylan, that he couldn’t hurt these women as much as he thought.
Thinking about that made me feel a little less dirty as the Juliets split off into their three groups. ‘What are you hoping to find out from this group date challenge, Dylan?’ Z asked. ‘What are you looking for?’
‘Well, believe it or not, having amazing skills in building love machines isn’t on my list of requirements for a potential partner,’ Dylan said.
