Body Games (A Games Novel) (2 page)

I did. After all, it was about seven at night California time. Judy wouldn’t be in the office. I’d leave her a nice voicemail thanking her for thinking of me, but no, I wasn’t interested.

To my surprise, the phone picked up on the first ring. “Judy Gish.”

“Um.” My mind blanked out. I hadn’t expected to actually talk to anyone except the machine. “This is Annabelle Tucker. I was just returning your phone call—”

“Oh, Annabelle! Thank God! I’m at my wits’ end here!”

“Listen, Judy, it was nice of you to think of me—“

“Before you tell me no,” she interrupted, “Can I tell you a bit about the season? Please?”

I chewed on my lip. I’d never been able to hang up on a telemarketer. Why had I expected to be able to hang up on Judy with a firmly barked “NO”?

“Please?” She asked again.

Sigh. “Okay. Go ahead.”

“Great,” she said, bubbling enthusiasm through the phone. “The newest season starts taping in three days and we’ve had a few unexpected drop-outs that have cleaned out our pool of back-up candidates. So we’re going through the cast list of your season and your name came up. This season will be
Endurance Island
:
Power Players.
You’ll be coupled up with an old friend —“

Couples? Old friend? “God, no,” I blurted. “I refuse to play with Kip again.”

“Hear me out,” she said quickly. “We’re pulling people from several different shows. It doesn’t mean that you’d be paired up with Kip. That’s just the marketing gimmick.”

“I still don’t—“

“We’re paying flat fees to all contestants this year to encourage people to sign up,” she continued on merrily, as if I wasn’t trying to shut her down. “Since this is going to be a highly competitive season, everyone gets twenty-five grand just for being on the show, even if you’re in last place. Jury members make fifty grand.”

I paused. That…was a lot of money. Last time I’d been on the show, they paid us $200 a day, and I’d been stoked at receiving a check for eight grand. Fifty grand was…crazy. “Why so much?”

“As I said, it’s going to be a tougher season.”

Like an idiot, I wavered. “I’m not exactly thrilled with how I was portrayed last season.”

“New season, new villains,” she chirped. “Plus, don’t you want the chance to redeem yourself?”

Boy, she knew just the right things to say to hit my buttons, didn’t she? I thought of the money. Fifty grand if I made it to the jury. That would make a huge dent in my mounting student loans. More than that, though…I could redeem myself.

I’d play hardball this time. No Annabelle the Make Out Bunny. I was reasonably athletic, reasonably likable…why couldn’t I turn things around?

Hell, I’d have to do better than last time. There was no place to go but up, really.

Still, I wasn’t eager to jump right back on board. I’d lose my (admittedly not great) job. I’d be back on TV and back on the minds of everyone. With the exception of today, things were starting to calm down again. Going back on TV would put me back to ground zero when it came to the public forgetting about me.

But…
fifty grand
.

“Are you still there, Annabelle?”

“I’m here. Just thinking.”

“We’d really, really love to have you on this next season. You’re a strong player and a very polarizing one.”

AKA,
you’re notorious and you won’t fly under the radar
. I was exactly the kind of player they loved, I supposed. If you can’t be great, be interesting.

I wavered even more. Still, I had to know a few things first. “Is Kip playing?”

Judy sighed. “I’m not going to lie. He is.” Before I could protest, she hurried on. “But! I can put in a request that you be on opposite teams, and wouldn’t you love the chance to play against him?”

More tempting words. And Kip was someone that definitely didn’t play under the radar, so he’d either end up running his team or getting the boot right away. I was hoping for the latter. How much would it stick in his craw if I lasted longer than him?

A whole hell of a lot.

My phone buzzed with an incoming text. I pulled it away from my ear and looked. It was from work.
Deenie called in again. Can you cover her shift tomorrow? 11-9. Thx!

Damn it. I’d worked seven days straight already.
Endurance Island
was starting to sound like a vacation. “Where is it filming?”

“Fiji,” Judy told me. “A few private islands. Totally lovely. Totally not the rainy season, either, so you don’t have to worry about that.”

Oh wow. Fiji for six weeks. I pictured white sands, blue waters…and fifty grand. “I have conditions,” I said after a moment.

“Name them,” Judy said quickly. “If you want to be on this season, we need to fly you out tomorrow. Like I said, we start filming ASAP and I desperately need to fill this hole in the cast list.”

“No Kip.”

“Noted. What else?”

“No slut edit.”

She paused for a moment. “That’s not exactly in my jurisdiction, but I can pass it along.”

Fair enough. I had no intention of giving anyone any sort of footage that would make me look questionable in any way. If I went back there, I was playing hard and rough. No more nice Annabelle. “And I want fifty thousand regardless.”

“You get fifty if you get on the jury.”

“Even if I don’t make the jury, I still want fifty.”

I could practically hear the wheels turning in her head. “Normally I’d have to refuse,” Judy began slowly.

“But you’re crunched for time and you need to fill a hole in the cast list,” I added helpfully.

“I…need to make a few phone calls.”

“I’ll wait.”

The phone clicked over and she put me on hold. As tinny hold music played, I gazed at my tiny apartment, thinking hard. I couldn’t believe I was even considering this. Kip was going to be on that island. I hated Kip. He was a jerk and a user, and I was the island bimbo.

Fifty grand, though.

I could turn Judy down. Go in and cover Deenie’s shift at the restaurant tomorrow and make a hundred bucks in tips, if I was lucky. Endure more customers recognizing me from the show. Ignore the second notices on my student loans that were now coming due since I’d dropped out of college.

Or I could spend six weeks in Fiji and make fifty grand.

Was fifty grand really worth it, though? I made a fool of myself last time. Wounded my pride, my ego, and my heart. My confidence, not strong after last season’s debacle, wavered. Saying no was safe. Saying no would let my life go back to normal. I could forget about stupid TV shows and jerks that used me for my vote, and the humiliation of being branded as a slut on national TV.

The phone line clicked over. “The producers say I can offer you fifty grand no matter your placement as long as you sign an agreement that you won’t mention your compensation to the other contestants.”

How could I say no to that? “When do I fly out?”

~~ *** ~~

Twenty-four hours later, I was caught up in the
Endurance Island
whirlwind of contestant preparations prior to filming. There were waivers to sign, contracts to look over, basic prep work, medical tests, and grooming. By the time I emerged from the offices, my hand hurt from signing and initialing documents, my arm had been stuck with half a dozen shots, my hair was blonde again (“So the audience can remember who you are!”) and I was waxed within an inch of my life. I was TV ready.

Except for one thing — my clothing.

“Don’t I get a bag of supplies at this point?” I asked the production assistant shepherding me toward a plane.

She slapped a mask into my hands. “This is for when you arrive in Fiji. Your flight is going to take you from LA to Fiji direct as an overnight. Once you get there, a production assistant will be waiting for you on the island. Your flight has been staggered with the other contestants so no one arrives at the same time. In the event that your flight is delayed, production requires that you put on your mask as you disembark the plane so you don’t catch sight of any of the other contestants.”

I stared down at the black-shaded goggles in my hand. It looked like a dive mask with the lenses filled in. They expected me to wear this through the airport? I mentally pictured myself wandering blind through the crowded airport. Yeah, fat chance. “Clothing?” I reminded her again. “No one’s even measured me for sizes. I remember that from last time.”

“Oh, that.” She waved a hand. “If you read in your contract, it said that clothing would be handled in-game.”

“What paragraph was that in?” I asked, tucking the mask into my shoulder bag. The contract had been two hundred pages long and I’d signed so many varied wavers that I felt like I was being mortgaged. I’d tried to read every page shoved in front of me, but I’d eventually been worn down and gave up, just signing as they stuck documents in front of me.

“Pretty sure it was in Section B, paragraph twenty-three,” she told me and handed me another clipboard to sign. “Good luck in the game!”

~~ *** ~~

Luckily for me, the plane arrived on time and I didn’t have to stumble through Nadi Airport blindfolded. The waiting assistant was polite, and when I got in the car, it was time to put on my blindfold. I dozed off in the back seat and woke up when the car stopped and I was ushered into a small, echoing room.

“You can take your mask off now,” the production assistant told me.

I did, wincing at the bright fluorescent lights. I was in a hotel bathroom, the decorative motif a tiki-style, complete with bamboo-edged mirror and leafy plants in the corner next to the toilet paper. I peered into the mirror, wincing at the red lines on my cheeks that the mask had left.

“You can fix your hair and make-up in here,” the assistant told me. “When you’re ready for your pre-game interviews, go through that door there.” She pointed at a door on the opposite end of the bathroom, labeled “AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY” with a paper sign. “They’ll notify me when your interviews are done and I’ll come and get you.”

“Okay, thanks,” I told her, and picked through the beauty supplies left on the counter. After rubbing my cheeks for a few minutes to reduce the red line left by the mask, I finger-combed my hair, not entirely used to being a blonde again. I swept my bangs over to the side of my face and pulled the rest of my hair into a knot high on my head, similar to how I’d worn it the last time I was on
Endurance Island.
I’d learned from my last stint that less makeup in pre-and-post interviews meant less commentary on how ‘whorey’ I looked in real life. With a little bit of eyeliner and lip gloss, I was ready.

I knocked on the door before opening it, and stepped out onto a tiny patio. More potted plants had been set up around a folding director’s chair, and in the distance, the blue waters of the ocean tumbled onto the sand in a rhythmic pattern. The two men adjusting their camera tripods gestured for me to sit in the seat of honor. I sat, clasped my hands on my knee, and waited.

“All right,” said the first man. “You know how this goes. Give us some good sound bites and we’ll get you out of here faster.”

“Got it.”

He tilted his camera and pointed at the lens. “Remember to talk to this, not me. And speak clearly,” he said as the other man came up to me and began to tie a microphone onto the neck of my t-shirt. “Give us a brief intro about you. Job, age, et-cetera.”

I smiled at the camera. “I’m Annabelle Tucker, I’m twenty-two, and I’m going to college at Texas A&M. Well, I was. Right now, I’m just waiting tables and taking a bit of a break.” My smile turned awkward. My break was so I could get over my issues from the last season of
Endurance Island
, and here I was again. Was I stupid? I must be. “I was previously on
Endurance Island
, season four.”

“What’s your strategy this time around?” He sounded completely bored, as if my strategy were the last thing he wanted to hear about at the moment.

“Well.” I tilted my head, wondering how much I wanted to lay out on the table. Then, I decided that I might as well put it all out there. Anyone that watched the show regularly would remember me (unfortunately) so there was no point in hiding facts. “Last season, I was extremely gullible and fell for a guy. I thought we had a real thing, but I didn’t realize until after I watched the show that he was using me. So I figure this time, I’m going in with a new, five point strategy.”

“And what are those five points?”

I held up my hand and ticked off the first finger. “Be less gullible. This time around, I’m not trusting anything that anyone says. If they tell me something, I’m going to assume there’s an angle.” I ticked off the next finger. “Play hard. Last time, I played hard, too, but this time, I’m going to give it a hundred and twenty percent.” I ticked off another finger. “Play for
me
. Last time, I played so me and my guy —” I grimaced at the thought and continued, “- could get ahead. This time, it’s just me.” Another finger. “Fight dirty. No one else plays fair, so why should I? Nothing’s off the table. Except for number five.” I wiggled my spread hand at the camera. “Number five - absolutely, positively no romance this time.”