Page 95 of The Summer Show
“I don’t get it,” I told Murder Goose. She was sitting in the chair beside me in Ana and Thanos’s backyard, while the other plebeian geese waddled around the garden, targeting bugs for assassination. “Did I do something wrong? Did he not enjoy the hospital bed ride?”
She pecked the cherry out of my hand and gobbled it down. I reached for another and she took that, too.
I messaged him again.
Did you win last night?
No reply this time. Not even bubbles to indicate that he was typing and then having second thoughts.
“Is this a third-act breakup even though we’re not together, or did I just read him wrong in the first place?” I asked Murder Goose.
She responded by jumping onto the table and taking over the cherry bowl.
My emotions were going haywire. I sat super-still to compensate and waited for them to even out. If I moved even a muscle, I might do something dumb, and I was desperately trying to be an adult about this.
Chill out. Go to the show tonight. Take it from there.
Good advice from me to me.
Hopefully I’d take it.
thirty-four
Being a member of Greece’s Top Hoplite’s audience felt surreal. Partly because up until now I had been one of the warm bodies performing in the arena. But mostly because we were the only audience. Just us. Eighteen of the original twenty. The rest of the seat fillers would be added during post production, with the help of CGI. A fake audience for a show predicated on a lie: that every contestant had an equal chance of winning.
Of course I’d messed up their plan.
The biggest question was whether Nick would be a no-show tonight. My instincts leaned towards no, but my instincts had proven themselves to be undetermined when it came to Nick Merrick.
The other discarded contestants buzzed with conversation as we waited for the show to start. Of course it wouldn’t be anything like watching GTH on TV. No ads, for starters. The flow would be weird, with stops and starts. The cameras would have a better view than we would.
Memo plopped down next to me wearing sneakers so white I saw stars. “You are not dead!” he said with the unbridled joy of a quokka.
“Can’t get rid of me that easily.”
He laughed, complete with knee-slapping. “You are very funny.”
Nice to know I was entertaining. “What happened last night?”
“They brought in a monkey to take your place.”
Alarming, yet intriguing. “A monkey? Are you serious?”
“Besides the dog, Paris has a pet chimpanzee that he dresses as his child. He put a t-shirt with your name on it on his chimpanzee.”
“Really?”
He flipped over his phone and cued a video dated last night. There was Ape Kathleen, chowing down on bananas like it was her job.
“I do like bananas,” I admitted. “Who was eliminated?”
“The monkey, but only because she threw kaka at Effie.” He turned off the phone. “Okay, they are getting ready to start now.”
I was shocked. “But where are the sets?” The amphitheater was bare, apart from former contestants and the warm bodies that formed the judges and crew. As far as I could tell, the only challenge happening here tonight was charades.
Maybe I would get to see Nick’s robot and worm after all.
“They are waiting for the contestants to arrive before they bring them in, but they are very exciting, I promise.”