Daniel Abraham - Inside Straight

I glowered at my reflection. I’d been using a colored hair spray to change my platinum hair to black. The shade did nothing for me—turning my skin sallow rather than the pale olive luminescence which had earned me hundreds of thousands of dollars in modeling contracts. But no one had recognized me thus far. The dark hair alone wouldn’t have masked my identity—but my wild card did.

The face staring back wasn’t the one I knew. The upward-slashing cheekbones, so beloved by photographers, were buried under chubby pink flesh. The sculpted jaw line that had once made my neck look even more swanlike was obscured by a roll of fat. Only my eyes were unchanged. I called them dog-shit brown. They were fringed with one of my genetic quirks—a double row of long black lashes.

I was a freak of nature long before my card turned. I’m taller than average, and my legs and arms are abnormally long for my body. In short, I was a photographer’s dream. I’d been modeling since I was a child. My parents had leased me out to the highest bidder and exploited me like carnival barkers peddling Siamese twins.

But then my card had turned.

Things were different now. People didn’t stare at me in the same way. And when I did catch someone’s eye, now there was usually a breathtaking look of pity there.

Ink banged on the door again. “Michelle, you have a contract. Everyone else has already done their Confessional.”

“Can’t I go to the bathroom in peace?” I put the toilet lid up and let a small bubble rise on my fingertip, then let it drop into the water with a satisfying plop. It looked pretty until it hit—as iridescent and apparently insubstantial as any soap bubble. But I’d given it plenty of density, and it sounded convincingly turdlike. Unfortunately, it was heavy enough that it chipped the porcelain, but I decided that no one would be likely to notice. That should keep Ink from bugging me for a few minutes.

Then I felt crummy. Ink had been nice to me.

At least it still felt good to bubble. It tingled and sang in my bones and skin. Bubbling pulsed through my blood and throbbed like another heartbeat. Sometimes I thought I’d go crazy if I didn’t get to bubble more often—but the bubbling made me skinnier, and I couldn’t afford to be recognized.

“Are you okay?” Ink sounded worried.

“What’s going on?” I heard Tiffani ask.

I flushed the toilet and opened the door.

“You’re supposed to do a Confessional after Discard,” Ink said. She had changed her tattoos, and they scrolled across her arms like a crazy Mayan tally board.

“Are you okay?” Tiffani asked. She gave Ink a pleading look. “Can you guys give us just a few minutes?” If she had looked at me the way she was looking at Ink, I’d’ve agreed to anything. “Just have them turn on the shower cam. We’ll keep in range. I mean, it’s the bathroom. How far are we going to go?”

Ink snorted. “Fine. You have five minutes, and then I’m coming in with the whole crew.”

Tiffani and I went back into the bathroom and closed the door. The light on the shower cam blinked on.

“Okay, so why are you so depressed?” Tiff asked.

I sighed. “I guess it’s mostly getting rid of Matryoshka. He was a great guy. He didn’t deserve to go.”

Tiffani glanced in the mirror, then stuck her tongue out at her reflection. “I hate the way I look,” she said, then turned back to me. “Listen, this is a competition. There are rules, and we have to play by them. If we lose challenges, we lose teammates.”

There was a towel on the floor, and I picked it up and began folding it. “I know, I know. I just don’t get why we’ve been losing every challenge. I mean, we all try so hard. I just hate that we have to vote people off.”

Tiff grabbed a brush from my basket of toiletries on the counter. She closed the toilet lid, then sat me down and started working on my hair. “I don’t understand why you keep making your hair black with that crappy spray dye. You’ve got nice hair under this mess.” She sectioned off a chunk and started to braid it. It felt good to have her hands on me, even if she was just doing it out of habit. She had a bunch of sisters, and she’d told me they’d always braided each other’s hair.

The braiding was relaxing. “I’ve been feeling bad since Blrr,” I said. “Joe Twitch was… well, after he stripped you naked in like five seconds, I wasn’t going to have him in the house anymore, but Blrr was a good kid and a great housemate.”

“Her power was useless without the right conditions,” Tiffani said as she started braiding the other section of my hair. “The other teams are all thinking the same way. Who’s good in challenges, and who you can’t stand to live with. Though how any one could live with Stuntman is beyond me. He’s such a jerk.”

Tiff tied off my braid. I stood up and looked in the mirror. I used to love the way I looked in braids, but not now. They just made my face look rounder.

“You don’t like them,” Tiff said sadly. “It’s not them. It’s my face.”

Tiff stood on tiptoe and gave me a quick kiss on my cheek. “There’s nothing wrong with your face, Michelle.”

I blushed and looked down. I didn’t know if she felt the same way about me as I did about her, but my cheek was burning where her lips had touched it.

There was a hard bang on the bathroom door. “All right, you guys,” Ink said. “We’re coming in.”

The door swung open, and the floating camera crew started to file in.

“We were just leaving,” Tiff said as she slipped past them. I couldn’t slip past anyone anymore and had to stand there, like an idiot, until they backed out of the room.

The sound guy clipped a mic onto the neck of my hoodie. I sat in the Confessional chair and started pulling the braids out of my hair.

“You don’t need to do that.” Ink had changed her tats again. Now there were a series of typewritten questions on her arms. But she had kept the Mayan images on her face and legs. “They look nice. You’re one of the prettiest girls on the show.”

I shrank back in the chair. Well, as much as my girth would allow me to. No one thought I was pretty anymore.

“So, why do we always have to drag you into doing your Confessionals?” Ink asked.

The red eye of the camera blinked on. They were rolling again, sucking me into that meat grinder. I looked at Ink so I wouldn’t have to look in the camera again. It didn’t love me anymore. “I know I haven’t done as many Confessionals as everyone else. I guess I just didn’t have much to say.”

A disappointed expression slipped across Ink’s face. I knew I was making her job more difficult, but of all the things we did on the show, this was the one that made me most uncomfortable. Tiffani loved Confessional. I don’t know why. The Maharajah had started calling her the Little Nun because she was always in there. So we had all called her that—until the Maharajah got voted off.

“So, what do you think about the other contestants, now that we’re getting close to a reshuffle?”

I noticed that the end of one of the ties on my hoodie was frayed, and I started to worry it. My hands had been so beautiful. Now the nails were ragged and the cuticles raw. I heard Ink make a throat-clearing noise, and I knew I had to answer her.

“I guess… I guess I like most of the other players.” I glanced up and saw Ink frown at me. “I mean, I like my teammates. The ones that are left. And I think Dragon Girl is sweet, even if she is, you know, kinda young to be on the show.”

“What about Rosa Loteria?”

I looked away from the camera. I wished she hadn’t asked about Rosa. “Well, I don’t know her all that well,” I said. “I’ve only really seen her at press stuff.”