Page 63 of Alice Chen's Reality Check

I shake my head, dislodging that train of thought. Enough wasting time. I’m here for my mom. The rest is just noise. My course of action is clear. I grab the bucket from the red barrel and start racing down the beach.

Thanks to the crash course on island-based competitions Cindy and Tara had put together for me, I knew there was a good chance that I’d be doing some kind of water transfer challenge—a classic on the showOperation: Bikini.The trick is to assess the distance and account for how much water is going to spill out of the bucket. In this case, there’s about fifty yards between the barrel and the ocean, which means that each trip is going to be time-consuming and exhausting. If I rush, I run the risk of spilling most of my water and flaming out. My best shot is to go slow and fill my bucket to the brim so that I can cut back on the number of trips I take.

When I tip my first bucket of water into the red barrel, it sloshes at the bottom, barely making a dent. This is going to take forever. I look down at the barrel as if it can tell me its secrets. Then I realize, technically, there’s no rule against moving it closer to the ocean. I brace myself against it so I can tilt the barrel onto its bottom edge and half push, half roll it toward the water.

There. It’s much closer.

But it’s still a large barrel. After five minutes, I’m covered in sweat. After ten, I’m starting to get blisters. After twenty, I can’t even feel the blisters, so at least that’s something. And after almost thirty minutes, on my last trip, my arms are shaking, and my fingers can barely maintain their grip on the bucket. I stumble forward, nearly dropping it, but manage to catch myself and dump the water in.

Immediately behind me, a spray of red fireworks goes off.

“Crap!” I yelp. Okay, I get why Dawn Taylor didn’t like that.

“Alice, you’ve made your choice,” Dawn Taylor says solemnly. “Now you wait.”

—

The waiting is its own form of torture. After the challenge, I’m taken to what I can only describe as a party room, with a fully stocked bar and plenty of plush armchairs facing a view of the dense forest behind Villa Paradiso. It’s absolutely gorgeous, but despite the luxury I suddenly find myself in, my mind is a mess. I’m already kicking myself for wasting precious minutes making my choice. Of course, Daniel is going to make the same decision, and knowing him, he’ll do it with twice the speed and strength that I have. Damn it.

When the door swings open, my heart leaps. I’m expecting it to be Daniel, but instead Selena bounds in.

“Alice, hey! That was a tough one today, huh? But we did it!” she says, holding up a hand for a high five. I hesitate, and she lowers her hand. “Too soon? Sorry.”

“It’s cool.” I manage a weak smile. “I mean, it’s not. But that’s between me and Chase.”

“That’s fair.” Selena sighs, sinking into one of the armchairs beside me. “It’s just, I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking. I guess I just assumed when I saw you with Daniel that you and Chase weren’t exclusive. I really had no idea that the two of you were engaged.” Selena shakes her head. “Not my best moment. I am so, so sorry about how things wentdown, and I really regret hurting you like that.”

She might just be a good actor, but to me she sounds genuine. Still, that doesn’t mean I want to be having this heart-to-heart with her right at this very moment.

“We really don’t have to talk about this,” I say.

“But hey,” Selena says, brightening. “You and Daniel are hot together. I can absolutely see the chemistry between you two. The way he looks at you—girl, let me tell you. He never looked at me that way.”

“We really,reallydon’t have to talk about this,” I repeat. I contemplate climbing out the window to escape this line of conversation. “Can we talk about literally anything else?”

Selena laughs. “Okay, I hear you. How about mimosas?” She doesn’t wait for me to answer before she leaps up, snags two flutes, and starts pouring.

“Selena, when you said it was a tough one today, do you mean you had a hard time deciding, or that you had a hard time filling the barrel?” I ask.

“Filling the blue barrel, duh!” she says. “Don’t get me wrong, I’d love some cash right now, but I’m on this show for my career. Dropping out won’t do me any favors.” She casts me a sideways look. “And I know what he did was wrong, but I feel like I have a real connection with Chase, you know? Just like how you have a real connection with Daniel.”

“Mm,” I say. I don’t bother to correct her, but I do take the mimosa she hands me.

The magnitude of my choice is starting to sink in. Did I make the wrong call? There’s no way Daniel decided to fill the blue barrel. But what if, for some bizarre reason, he did? How am I going to face him? To distract myself, I take a sip from the champagne flute, focusing on the sensation of the bubbles and the tart orange juice sliding across my tongue.

Selena raises her flute and takes a huge swig. “Ugh, I needed that. I don’t think I could’ve handled much more today. I barely slept.”

I take a real look at her. She’s so gorgeous, almost impossibly so, that it hadn’t really occurred to me that she might’ve had a rough night and not be looking or feeling her best. But there are bags under her eyes, dark enough that her makeup doesn’t quite mask it, and her hair doesn’t have its usual shampoo-commercial sheen.

“Rough night?” I ask.

“It was awful. Chase and I had to keep getting up to barf.” Selena rubs her temple. “I’m not usually someone with a weak stomach. I mean, usually I can mix tequila with wine and eat jalapeño poppers all night! This felt way more like a bad case of food poisoning.”

I’m about to tell her that she was literally poisoned, but the mic pack digging into my back reminds me of what Lex said yesterday.

“Maybe having everyone eat raw cow eyes that were sitting out in the sun all day wasn’t the best idea,” I say instead.

“I know, right? You’re so lucky you didn’t get sick.”

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