Read Body Games (A Games Novel) Online

Authors: Jessica Clare,Jill Myles

Tags: #reality tv, #Romance

Body Games (A Games Novel) (18 page)

“Here!” Kissy called, and I looked down the row to see her dump the rest of the kava back in her throat.

“Kissy’s done with her food! Red team moves on!”

I looked over at Jendan worriedly. He was eating methodically, but slow. I leaned over the table, looking down the line. Leslie and Emilio were eating slowly too, and Alys was doing better than Jendan, but not by much. I tipped back my head and gulped the rest of the
kava
, ignoring the grit and the numbness it left behind.

“Annabelle is done,” Chip crowed.

I pretended to wipe my mouth as I stepped away from the table. “Go faster, Jendan,” I whispered, then moved to the bench to sit next to Kip and Kissy. Three people down, two more spots to go.

I clasped my hands together and watched my partner intently. He was trying to eat faster, but I could tell he was struggling. Once you got past the salty squishiness of it and the grit of the sand, it wasn’t that bad. Theoretically. But poor Jendan was looking rather pale as he continued to shove clusters of sea grapes into his mouth, chewing. He’d pause, get extremely quiet, then grab at his drink, and then look just as ill all over again.

“Alys is finished!” Chip called. “We have one more spot left! You guys need to pick it up!”

Alys clapped her hands and bounded over to sit next to me on the bench.

I pressed my hands to my mouth, watching Jendan eat. I couldn’t see anything left in his bowl, but the others left - Saul, Emilio, and Leslie - were trying to eat faster.
Please, please
, I mentally chanted.
Come on, Jendan. It’s just seaweed. You can do this
.

As I watched, utterly tense, Jendan grabbed a huge mouthful and began to choke it down, then grabbed his
kava
cup and swigged it. His eyes bugged for a moment and his throat worked, and I was sure he was going to throw up. Then he gave his head a little shake and flipped his bowl. “Done!”

Chip raised his hands again. “Jendan is the last one to move on!”

I gave a happy squeal of delight and rushed to my partner’s side, flinging my arms around him. I didn’t care that I was pressing my body against his in front of everyone else - I was just so thrilled he’d soldiered through. “Great job!”

“Just…don’t jostle me too much,” he said faintly.

I immediately pulled away from him. “Sorry. You did great, though. Really good.”

He nodded, hands on his hips and took a deep breath.

“All right,” Chip said as the plates were cleared. “Red team moves on. Blue team moves on. Half of the purple team -Alys - moves on. The green team is eliminated. Alys, if you lose the next round, your team is out. Everyone that’s done, sit down on the bench. Everyone else, let’s go back to the table for round two.”

“God. Can’t we have five minutes to digest?” Jendan said, sounding a little breathless. “I’m still trying to keep the other shit down.”

“You can do it,” I encouraged. “It’s not so bad. The worst part is over, I promise.”

He nodded.

Five new covered platters were put in front of us. The pungent smell wafted up again, making my stomach churn.

Under the table, I crossed my fingers that it would be something benign and edible.
Come on
,
Endurance Island
.

“Annnd go!”

I pulled the lid off of my platter…and stared.

Something black and sinewy was twisted up in a bowl of liquid. Something with eyeballs and claws and a whole lot of stink.

“What the fuck is that?” Kip asked, aghast.

“This is a Fijian delicacy,” Chip said. “Boiled bat.”

“Mine still has eyes,” Kissy cried out. “We supposed to eat those, too?”

“Everything but the bones,” Chip agreed. “First three to finish move on.”

I stared down at my plate, thinking hard. I’d given Jendan a hard time about his stomach but…I did not want to eat this. Two milky, boiled eyeballs stared up at me and I wanted to gag.

I hesitantly picked it up by one clawed wing, examining it. “Where do you start?”

Kissy grabbed hers, held it up to her mouth, and crunched into it. Loud.

I winced.

Jendan turned around, bent over, and vomited.

“Jendan’s out,” Chip cried, raising his hands up again in dramatic fashion. “Annabelle needs to move on if Blue Team has a hope of surviving!”

Shit! I didn’t blame Jendan - hell, I wanted to throw up just looking at the damn thing myself. But I had to do this if we didn’t want to go to Judgment. As I hesitated, Alys and Kip both tore into their bats, wings flying. I had to do this. Had to. I swallowed hard and broke off a wing, wincing when the meat stretched and pulled. Tough. Ew.

“Sorry, Annabelle,” Jendan murmured as he moved past me to the loser’s bench.

“S’okay,” I said, and shoved one wing into my mouth before I could think better of it. The taste wasn’t nearly as bad as the smell. Kind of like chicken, if chicken was…really gross. I closed my eyes and pulled the claw out of my mouth, dropping it back in the bowl.

“Kissy’s finished with hers! She moves on to the next round.”

I opened my eyes and stared down at the older woman, who was picking at her teeth with a dirty thumbnail. How the hell had she finished so very fast? Next to her, Kip was wolfing his down, and even Alys’s cheeks were pouched out like a squirrel’s as she desperately chewed.

Frantic, I grabbed the body of the thing and crunched down like I’d seen Kissy do. I couldn’t be last. I couldn’t. But…that was a mistake. I felt tiny bones shatter in my mouth and that overwhelming smell filled my nostrils. My gag reflex kicked in and I choked. The next thing I knew, I was hunched over and vomiting onto the ground.

“Annabelle is out! The blue team will be going to Judgment with the green team.”

I heard a few half-hearted cheers from the people at the table as I wiped my mouth. “Can we stop eating?” Alys asked in a wobbly voice. “Please?”

“Yes. We have our two losing teams,” Chip said proudly. “Let’s all get ready for Judgment.”

I finally righted myself and gave Jendan an ashamed look. I messed it up for both of us. Now, as I watched the looks flicking back and forth between the other contestants, I suspected we were doomed.

When I moved to Jendan’s side, he put an arm around my shoulders and hugged me to him again. “I’m sorry,” he said. “If I hadn’t lost it, we’d still be in that challenge.”

“It’s not your fault,” I told him. “We all have weaknesses. Ours is just…food.”

I didn’t blame him, either. He had a weak stomach and had still made it to the second round. I prided myself on how hard I was playing, and I still puked like a fool. No one to be blamed but myself, all because I’d rushed.

We waited in the hot sunlight while the production crews set up the Judgment area. Out came Chip’s podium, the benches, and the bushy greenery that was set up to make it look like an honest-to-goodness jungle set. Off to one side, the voting booth was set up, and camera-men took their places as we sipped water and waited. That was the thing about filming reality TV. On the actual show, it looked instantaneous. Out here, it took them a good hour to set up, and that was an hour that we had to stew on what we’d done wrong.

It was also an hour in which everyone else got to plot with their partners. I glanced over at Kip and Kissy, and their heads were together, talking low. Ditto Saul and Alys.

Only two teams could vote this time, so a split vote would mean a tie. If it went to a challenge, I was confident we could beat Leslie and Emilio…as long as we didn’t have to eat anything else. But I had a sinking feeling in my gut. Leslie and Emilio weren’t the strongest team. Emilio was in shape, but Leslie was older, cranky, and tended to be one of the slowest ones on an obstacle course. Meanwhile, Jendan and I were both fast and strong. Other than this challenge, we’d done well in almost all of them.

If it was me voting, I’d vote for us because we were more of a threat. Which didn’t fill me with confidence.

“You look worried,” Jendan said to me, wrapping his arms around my shoulders and hugging me from behind. Even though we were nude, it didn’t feel weird to me. “It’s going to be okay, whatever happens.”

“I am worried,” I admitted. “There’s no reason for them to keep us strong.”

“What about Kip? Will he vote to save you?”

I looked over at my old partner. Good ol’ Kip. He had a shit-eating grin on his face and kept looking over at me, leering. “Something tells me that’s not going to happen.”

“Then we’ll go to a challenge,” he said softly. “And may the best man or woman win. I won’t hold it against you if you win. We all have to go at some point, and it’ll be fair and square.”

Except I had my secret word from Pandora’s Box -
kere kere
- and I wouldn’t make it fair. I could automatically oust him.

Or I could just not use it and go head to head with my stronger, more athletic partner. And then I’d go down as the dumbest player on
Endurance Island
twice in a row.

I was screwed no matter which way you looked at it.

“All right,” Chip said, and pointed at the benches next to him for the Judgment nominees. “Everyone take your seats.”

Jendan and I moved to the bench and I felt awkward sitting in the front instead of in the back. I didn’t like being up for Judgment. Not one bit. It felt intensely vulnerable, and I wondered if this was how Alys had felt with her neck on the chopping block so many times.

“It’s time for Judgment,” Chip said, clutching the edges of the podium and leaning forward ominously. “Up for nomination are the Blue team and the Green team. We’ll start with the Blue team. Why do you think you struggled so much with this challenge after dominating all the others? Jendan?”

My partner looked over at me, and then at Chip. He shrugged. “I think our stomachs are used to coconut, taro and water and little else at this point,” he said. “A food challenge should have been awesome, and instead, we just couldn’t keep it down. I know I’m disappointed.”

“Annabelle,” Chip said, turning to me. “This is your first time up for Judgment. Does that make you one of the strongest players left in the game?”

Internally, I winced.
Way to point a bulls-eye on me there, Chip
. “I don’t know about that. Strongest, no. Maybe one of the luckiest. And I can’t be that strong if I’m up here now.” I gave him my sunniest smile. “Right?”

“Yes, but you’ve made it this far. We’re past the halfway point.”

I simply shrugged. “I don’t see myself as one of the strongest players, no. Look at Kip and Kissy. They’re definitely stronger. Kip’s never been to Judgment at all, and Kissy destroyed all of us in that challenge.”

Their eyes narrowed at me and I continued wearing my angelic smile.
How ya like that target?
In theory, it was a bad idea to call out another team, but I knew they weren’t going to vote for us anyhow.

Chip turned toward the Green team. “Emilio? How are the team dynamics with you and Leslie? Are you struggling or working well together?”

“Struggling,” Emilio said flatly. “Leslie wants everything done her way on the beach. Which is fine for a while, but when you don’t catch any food and you have to sleep in the sand, it gets old, Chip.”

“If you would listen to what I said,” Leslie said tightly, “then we wouldn’t be sleeping on the sand.”

Emilio just rolled his eyes and looked at Chip. “What did I say? Unless you do things her way, she’ll make you miserable.”

“Leslie, do you think you’re being unreasonable?”

“Of course not,” she said, crossing her arms over her bare breasts. “I just know I’m right, and I refuse to waste time with his silly ideas.”

Emilio rolled his eyes again.

“Well. With that, it’s time for our teams to vote. Red team, please proceed to the voting booth.”

Kip and Kissy got up, proceeded to the booth, and wrote on a slate. They didn’t even look as if they’d debated it. Next, the Purple team - Alys and Saul - went to vote. Again, there was little debate.

Yeah, we were doomed.

Once both teams were seated again, Chip hopped down from the podium and went to retrieve the slates. He returned to the podium, picked up the first one, and looked at us grimly. “I’ll read out the votes. These are for the team you wish to remain in the game.” He flipped around the first slate. “One vote for the Green team.”

No surprise there. I watched Emilio and Leslie exchange looks.

“Second and last vote — Green team. Green team, you are safe.”

I glanced at Jendan. He didn’t seem surprised by the results either. We’d known we were screwed the moment we lost the challenge.

Chip turned to us. “Blue team, this means you have been Judged. Now, you will compete against each other to determine who will stay and who will continue on in the game. Do you have anything to say before we proceed?’

Jendan looked at me, a faint smile on his face. “Just that Annabelle was the best partner a guy could ask for. I’m sad that we’re parting today, but happy for whichever one of us moves on.”

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