Inside Straight

I sighed. “I guess it’s mostly getting rid of Matryoshka. He was a great guy. He didn’t deserve to go.”

Tiffani glanced in the mirror, then stuck her tongue out at her reflection. “I hate the way I look,” she said, then turned back to me. “Listen, this is a competition. There are rules, and we have to play by them. If we lose challenges, we lose teammates.”

There was a towel on the floor, and I picked it up and began folding it. “I know, I know. I just don’t get why we’ve been losing every challenge. I mean, we all try so hard. I just hate that we have to vote people off.”

Tiff grabbed a brush from my basket of toiletries on the counter. She closed the toilet lid, then sat me down and started working on my hair. “I don’t understand why you keep making your hair black with that crappy spray dye. You’ve got nice hair under this mess.” She sectioned off a chunk and started to braid it. It felt good to have her hands on me, even if she was just doing it out of habit. She had a bunch of sisters, and she’d told me they’d always braided each other’s hair.

The braiding was relaxing. “I’ve been feeling bad since Blrr,” I said. “Joe Twitch was… well, after he stripped you naked in like five seconds, I wasn’t going to have him in the house anymore, but Blrr was a good kid and a great housemate.”

“Her power was useless without the right conditions,” Tiffani said as she started braiding the other section of my hair. “The other teams are all thinking the same way. Who’s good in challenges, and who you can’t stand to live with. Though how any one could live with Stuntman is beyond me. He’s such a jerk.”

Tiff tied off my braid. I stood up and looked in the mirror. I used to love the way I looked in braids, but not now. They just made my face look rounder.

“You don’t like them,” Tiff said sadly. “It’s not them. It’s my face.”

Tiff stood on tiptoe and gave me a quick kiss on my cheek. “There’s nothing wrong with your face, Michelle.”

I blushed and looked down. I didn’t know if she felt the same way about me as I did about her, but my cheek was burning where her lips had touched it.

There was a hard bang on the bathroom door. “All right, you guys,” Ink said. “We’re coming in.”

The door swung open, and the floating camera crew started to file in.

“We were just leaving,” Tiff said as she slipped past them. I couldn’t slip past anyone anymore and had to stand there, like an idiot, until they backed out of the room.

~ ~ ~

The sound guy clipped a mic onto the neck of my hoodie. I sat in the Confessional chair and started pulling the braids out of my hair.

“You don’t need to do that.” Ink had changed her tats again. Now there were a series of typewritten questions on her arms. But she had kept the Mayan images on her face and legs. “They look nice. You’re one of the prettiest girls on the show.”

I shrank back in the chair. Well, as much as my girth would allow me to. No one thought I was pretty anymore.

“So, why do we always have to drag you into doing your Confessionals?” Ink asked.

The red eye of the camera blinked on. They were rolling again, sucking me into that meat grinder. I looked at Ink so I wouldn’t have to look in the camera again. It didn’t love me anymore. “I know I haven’t done as many Confessionals as everyone else. I guess I just didn’t have much to say.”

A disappointed expression slipped across Ink’s face. I knew I was making her job more difficult, but of all the things we did on the show, this was the one that made me most uncomfortable. Tiffani loved Confessional. I don’t know why. The Maharajah had started calling her the Little Nun because she was always in there. So we had all called her that—until the Maharajah got voted off.

“So, what do you think about the other contestants, now that we’re getting close to a reshuffle?”

I noticed that the end of one of the ties on my hoodie was frayed, and I started to worry it. My hands had been so beautiful. Now the nails were ragged and the cuticles raw. I heard Ink make a throat-clearing noise, and I knew I had to answer her.

“I guess… I guess I like most of the other players.” I glanced up and saw Ink frown at me. “I mean, I like my teammates. The ones that are left. And I think Dragon Girl is sweet, even if she is, you know, kinda young to be on the show.”

“What about Rosa Loteria?”

I looked away from the camera. I wished she hadn’t asked about Rosa. “Well, I don’t know her all that well,” I said. “I’ve only really seen her at press stuff.”

“But how do you feel about her?”

I sighed. I had to talk—it was in that damned contract. “I don’t think she cares about being a hero. She only cares about making money and being famous.”

“And that’s bad, right?”

I looked up at the camera this time. “No, it’s not bad to want those things. But this isn’t about getting money or being famous. It’s about being a hero.”

“Do you think Tiffani is heroic?”