Page 22 of The Baking Games

For instance, Leo said his biggest challenge is being timed. It makes him nervous. I can use that information in challenges by trying to divert his attention. Is it mean? Maybe. Will it help me win? For sure.

When dinner is over, we all head back upstairs to our rooms. Dan said our first challenge is tomorrow at lunchtime, so we all need to rest up. I’m not nervous; I’m looking forward to it. Tomorrow is day one of the rest of my life.

SAVANNAH

I lay in bed for hours, staring at the ceiling, watching the live oak trees dance in the moonlight on the ceiling above me. I have learned a few things since coming to The Baking Games just a few hours ago.

One is that Lainey Loudermilk is one of the most annoying people on the planet. She has an entire bedtime routine that takes over two hours. She was constantly plucking, tweezing, and scrubbing her face and had some sort of contraption she put on her head to ensure her hair didn't fall during the night. It was a very strange thing to see such a young person do. I try not to engage with her, fearing that I might sock her right in the nose. That's not my personality. I'm a happy, positive person. I get along with just about everybody. Well, except for three of the people who are currently in this house with me.

I also noticed that Maggie, the sixty-five-year-old widow on the other side of the room, snores quite loudly. I like her. She seems very nice. I think we're going to be friends. But her snoring is keeping me awake already, and I can't imagine how I will handle this for several more weeks.

Well, if I'm lucky. If I stay in the competition. It's something I'm trying not to think about. You can get very psyched out coming into a house full of people who are just as qualified as you are, if not more. And then when you're stuck in there with your horrible ex-boyfriend and your rival from school, well, let's just say this isn't the most comfortable spot I've ever been in.

Unable to sleep, I get up, slip on my fluffy cat slippers, and decide to walk down to the kitchen. I put on my robe beforehand because I don't need anybody seeing me in my short little nightgown. I can't sleep with a lot of clothes on, but I would never sleep naked. After all, what would happen if the place caught on fire? I'd have to run right out into a street full of people I barely know, wearing nothing but my birthday suit. No, thank you.

I'm proud of my body. It's a good one. It's keeping me alive and everything, but it's definitely not supermodel status. I don't need to show this thing off on the street outside the house, so I wear the least little bit I can, which is my short little nightgown with puppies and kittens on it. It looks like something a third-grader would wear.

There are two kitchens in this house. The kitchen that we ate dinner in is the communal kitchen. It's much like a regular kitchen would be in a house and probably came with this one when it was built years ago. It has been remodeled to make it bigger and more functional. Then there's the industrial kitchen, which we haven't seen yet. From how it was described, it has multiple stations so that everybody has their own workspace with all their own equipment.

I'm looking forward to getting in there. I love working in an industrial kitchen, but the one at the grocery store where I work isn’t exactly that. Half the time, the oven doesn’t work, and Big Thelma smacks it with her size ten shoe to get it going.

Yeah. I’ve really been living the dream.

I had anticipated when I got out of pastry chef school that I would go to work at some fancy restaurant, get all the experience I needed, and then open a chain of bakeries. I never imagined that I would find myself getting up at the crack of dawn to go make cupcakes for some little girl's birthday party while being under the tutelage of Big Thelma. It's not exactly the dream I had for myself when I was working all those nights in pastry chef school.

I'm slightly hungry because of the terrible lasagna they fed us for dinner. I don't know who made that, but they obviously had not attended a quality culinary school. It tasted like somebody who had just learned what lasagna was earlier in the afternoon made it.

I go into the communal kitchen and am surprised to see no one there. Maybe I’m the lone night owl in the house. Of course, I’m being closely followed by my cameraman, Vinny. He doesn’t say much, but he’s always on me like a duck on a June bug, as my grandma used to say. Dan told us that sometimes we’d just be filmed by the stationary cameras, and other times the cameramen would follow us. So far, I haven’t seen any camera women.

The thing about the cameras is we aren’t allowed to talk directly to them unless they ask us a question. We’re supposed to pretend they aren’t there. That’s impossible to do so far. Having someone tail you wherever you go is much weirder than I thought it would be. Maybe I’ll get used to it eventually, but I highly doubt it. Still, I’d rather be here in this house with my rival and my ex than at the bakery tomorrow with Big Thelma and her huge oven-whacking shoes.

I look around the kitchen for any kind of snack. There’s a pantry area that appears to be locked. No idea why, and I can’t ask anybody because we can’t talk to producers unless we want to leave the competition. They said we’d have a fully stocked pantry, but what good is that if they lock it after hours? Some of us like to eat in the wee hours of the morning to cover up our emotions, thank you very much.

From what I understand, we’ll start doing something called “confessionals” tomorrow. They’ll take some of us, one by one, into a little soundproof room and ask us questions about how things are going.

So, I’m on my own in my efforts to find food. I feel like a raccoon searching the local dumpster behind the gas station. I open each cabinet and the refrigerator, but the pickings are slim. Then I see what I think is the edge of a bag of chips peeking out of one of the upper cabinets in the corner of the kitchen.

I can hear them singing to me, calling my name, ushering me to them. I walk over and stand on my tippy toes, trying in vain to get my hand to even come close to the red bag, but no such luck. I’m not a tall person. I decide the best course of action is to climb up onto the counter and get onto my knees. Vinny doesn’t seem like he’s planning to stop me. I assume he’d watch me fall to my death off the roof if it made for good ratings.

First, I have to reach the counter. I find a small, foldable stepstool wedged between the refrigerator and the cabinets, so I slide it out and unfold it. I glance at Vinny, who isn’t making eye contact and probably hopes to get the day’s best footage of a small red-haired woman falling from the counter and splitting her head in two.

I step up onto the stool and then raise one knee to the counter, followed by the other knee, all while holding onto one of the cabinet pulls. Those chips are within my grasp! I can already taste their salty goodness on my tongue.

I carefully maintain my grip on the knob and pull myself up to a standing position on the countertop. Don’t worry, I’m wearing socks. And I will wipe the counter with a disinfectant after I get my prize. I’m not an animal.

I open the cabinet, and that’s when the devastation starts. It’s not a bag of chips. It’s a bag of those little square cheese crackers, which I hate. I think they taste like feet.

“Ugh,” I groan, closing the cabinet and starting to make my way back down. But God, or the Universe, or perhaps even the devil himself, has other plans. I feel it happening in slow motion. Socks are not the thing you wear on a slippery granite countertop. It seems very logical now that I think about it, just before my imminent death.

I’m petite. Short, actually. Short people shouldn’t be high up. We have to fall further. It’s just science, I think.

First, one foot slips from under me, and then the other foot is like, Oh, cool, we’re gonna kill her today.

I fall, seemingly hanging in mid-air, going backward straight for the original hardwood floors that stretch around the huge house. Wonder how hard they really are. I’m about to find out.

But then I don’t find out. Someone catches me. Someone large and strong and warm. Someone who smells like my favorite men’s cologne from high school.

I land with a thud in these foreign arms, the breath knocked out of me for a second, and that’s when I finally look up.