Page 34 of The Summer Show
I layered feta on my bread. “So. Tips. I need them.”
“We already know what the first challenge will be,” Ana said. “A battle royale to eliminate ten contestants. The rest of you will move on. Do whatever you can to wipe the others out. Hold nothing back. If you see a shin, kick it. If someone bends over, shove them. Pull hair. Slap. Anything. Where it gets tricky is that they throw a twist into every first episode. The first season was regular fighting. After that they added props and accessories to boost the thrills. It changes every season. One year it was spiders.”
The bread paused on its way to my mouth. I could handle one or two spiders as long as I was armed with paper to flick them outside. More than two and I would freeze up and let the spiders carry me to Shelob. “How many spiders?”
“All the spiders,” Yiayia said cheerfully.
“One time it was hairspray and matches,” Ana told me.
“Season five,” Lina said, slopping her bread in the salad’s vinegar and olive oil dressing. “It was like 1980s with the big hair and the crying.”
“One woman, her hair went whoosh!” Yiayia said.
Proyiayia gleefully mimed an explosion. “Big ba-da-boom.”
Fear and doubt skipped around me. What had I signed up for? Anything could happen, even exploding hair.
But wait—during all the kerfuffle, I’d forgotten to ask the most important question besides “Will all my medical costs be covered?”
“Does anyone know what the grand prize is? What does the winner win? There has to be something, right? A new car? Free chocolate for life, provided they only live ten more years? Exposure? Or does the winner just get to boost their social media brand, because I have to tell you, I don’t have one of those.”
The women exchanged glances.
“Who wants to tell her?” Lina said.
“Is it something bad? It’s something bad, isn’t it? Please tell me it’s not a box of spiders.”
Proyiayia flashed her gums. “One million drachmas.”
“Euros,” Yiayia said, correcting her. “We have no drachmas now because we wanted to be like the rest of Europe.”
“That’s about one million, one hundred USD,” Ana told me.
I loaded up another slice of bread. “Let me apologize to you all in advance.”
Yiayia slid the cheese plate closer to me. “For what?”
“Kicking Nick’s ass.”
thirteen
Twenty contestants. Only one of us could limp away with the prize. And here I was with the world’s thinnest competitive streak.
Winning was probably off the table, even if I did kick Nick’s ass, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t strive to stay on the show for as long as possible.
All I had to do was throw elbows and be flexible, according to Ana and her family. For a million euros I could throw a lot of elbows—even elbows that weren’t mine.
That evening the sun plunged into the ocean and filming commenced. The twenty of us had been in hair and makeup for what felt like hours, followed by wardrobe. When we emerged, we were gussied up in what were to be our costumes for up to ten episodes. Clip-on mics. Armor that wasn’t authentically bronze, but was made of something about the same color and included a cuirass, pauldrons, braces, greaves, helmet, and a battle skirt thingy that I didn’t know the name for but would definitely be Googling later.
Honestly? It felt like Halloween, but with an expensive costume designed to take a punch, not something disposable you could buy at Spirit Halloween. I was biting back the urge to say, “Trick or treat?”
Nick, on the other hand …
He owned his costume. This was a man on his way to the battlefield. He would steal someone’s wife. Start a war. Make good choices when the other team left a wooden horse at his gates. End the same war.
He oozed sex appeal and confidence.
Not me. If I was oozing anything, it was doubt.