“Oh snap,” Plate said. “Penalty challenge time!”
I looked over at Georgie with worry. She shrugged at me, her eyes wide.
“So we pick one of whatever is in the box,” Swift said. “And I guess one team is going to have the penalty challenge?”
“I guess?” I stared at the box warily. The thought of a penalty challenge made me uneasy. Whoever got the penalty could lose the entire game, especially with another double-elimination.
“You girls pick first,” Swift said.
I looked at him, worried. “Why us?”
“Because you found the lady here,” Plate agreed, gesturing at the costumed woman. “And age before beauty.”
Georgie snort-giggled. “Fine, we’ll pick.” She elbowed me. “You pick.”
Why did everyone want me to pick the damn thing? With a sigh, I stepped forward and moved toward the box. The lid was a heavily-carved wood decorated with ornate swirls. I ran my fingers over the surface for a moment, then opened the box.
The interior was lined with a plush red velvet. There were two envelopes inside, both resting on their sides and branded with the World Races logo.
Two.
That meant three teams had already been here and selected their envelopes. We were officially the last two teams.
Shit. I stared down at the envelopes in horror. How had the others gotten ahead of us? Had we taken the wrong path? Maybe the taxis had allowed them to get here faster than the bus we’d taken? A hundred possible scenarios raced through my mind.
“Well?” Georgie asked.
“There’s only two.”
“Fuck,” Swift said, and he stalked away, hands on his hips. He was clearly upset.
“Dammit,” Plate said. “How the hell did they get here ahead of us?”
“Well, come on,” Georgie encouraged, antsy. “Pick one!”
I reached forward, my hand hovering over the envelopes. As I did, I realized one was…slightly thicker than the other.
Oh God. The penalty was still here. If I picked the other envelope, the guys would get stuck with the penalty. Fourth place might have a chance to slide into third place, but fifth? With a penalty? There was almost no way.
If I left it for them, they’d be out of the game.
If I took it for us, we’d be out of the game.
I looked over at Swift. His hands were on his hips and he was staring off into the misty trees, his back to me. I looked over at Georgie. My twin was biting her lip, her hands clasped under her chin. She practically quivered with excitement.
I was going to ruin the race for someone. My stomach felt like a knot.
“Pick already!” Georgie bellowed in my ear.
I’m sorry. I closed my eyes and picked an envelope.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“I feel completely gutted. I don’t know what else to say but totally, utterly gutted.” – Swift, Team One Percent, The World Races
My fingers closed around the thicker envelope and I held it out to Georgie. The knot in my stomach had migrated to my throat, and I couldn’t speak a word.
She plucked the envelope from my fingers as Plate moved forward and grabbed the envelope for his team. I watched in silence as Georgie opened it, her eyes scanning the contents. Her face fell. “Penalty. We got the penalty.”
I swallowed hard and nodded.
I didn’t know if Swift was lying about his dad being sick, but I knew if he wasn’t and I’d given him the penalty? I’d never be able to forgive myself. Georgie would be hurt, but she loved me. She’d understand my choice.
I hoped.
“Shit,” Plate said, peering over her shoulder to look at the notes. “That sucks. Is it something we can help you guys with?”
“I—I don’t know,” Georgie said. Her voice wobbled a little. I sniffed.
Swift’s arm went around my shoulders. He pulled me against him in a fierce hug. “You girls got this. I know you do. Read it out loud, Georgie. If we can help you, we will. We’ll all limp to the end together.”
“Penalty time,” Georgie read aloud. “You and your partner must both perform this penalty task. Go to the South Heavenly Gate. This marks the entrance to the infamous HuaShan Plank Road. Harness up and walk the plank to the end of the trail. There is a cave at the end and two World Race ribbons for your team to collect. Once you have both ribbons, you can move on to your next task.” Georgie looked up at me, worried. “Can you climb, Clemmy?”
Did it matter at this point? We were firmly in fifth. But I didn’t want to completely give up and disappoint my twin. “I can try.” I looked over at Swift, and his gorgeous, concerned face. “You and Plate should go on ahead. If it’s climbing a trail, it’s not something you guys can help us with.”
“She’s right,” Georgie agreed, sounding more like herself. “You guys go on ahead. We’ll do the task and see you again at the finish line.”
“You sure?” Plate asked. Swift just looked at me.
I nodded. “We’re sure.”
Swift immediately grabbed me and pulled me in for a brief, hard kiss. “Win this, Tiny. I know you can do it.” He smiled, pressed his forehead to mine, and then released me.
Georgie moved to my side as the guys raced off with their clue, consulting the paper. “Are we fucked?” she murmured to me in a low voice, waving to the guys.
“Pretty sure.” I watched the blurs of them blend in with the rest of the tourists.
“Question for you, Clemmy.” Georgie’s voice was neutral. “Did you know which envelope had the penalty in it when you picked?”
The knot returned to my throat. Did I lie to my twin and hope she didn’t pick it up? Or confess and deal with the fallout? I thought of Georgie’s meltdowns earlier in the race. The tantrums, the tears, the worry over her. Was my choice going to lead to a rift between me and my twin, now that we were so close again? I looked over at her, at her face so similar – but so different – to mine.
“His father has cancer,” I whispered, ashamed of my choice. I’d picked a guy over my twin. Tears pooled in my eyes. “I couldn’t pick us knowing that.”
Georgie’s long, lanky arms wrapped around my neck. “You big softie,” she told me. “We’re going to lose this race, aren’t we?”
“We could always try the penalty,” I told her, hugging her tightly. Tears slipped down my face – both from relief and love for my twin, who was being understanding as heck.
“Maybe the next challenge is a hard one. Maybe we can still catch up.”
“Then we should get going,” I said between sniffles.
“Don’t cry, Clemmy.” She rubbed my shoulder affectionately. “It was a hard choice, and you picked with your heart. I can’t hate on that.”
“I was worried you’d be mad at me,” I admitted. “Or that you’d think I was making the decision with my lady-parts.”
She giggled. “Lady-parts? What are we, twelve? And no, once there’s cancer in the mix, that’s kind of the trump card.” She gestured at the busy courtyard. “Come on. Let’s find that Heavenly Gate the penalty mentioned. We can weep all over each other at the finish line.”
“Sounds good.”
~~ * * * ~~
We asked around and eventually flagged down a tourist that spoke a bit of English and had a map. Sure enough, we found the area marked South Heavenly Gate, and I worried, because the mountain seemed steeper and a bit more fearsome in this area. The clue had mentioned harnesses, hadn’t it? Still, I had done the zipline and that was scary as hell. And I’d done the bungee—
Well, after Georgie had pushed me.
But I was slowly conquering my fear of heights, wasn’t I? I could do this. It couldn’t be that dangerous.
A woman was waiting for us, in one of the traditional costumes we’d seen twice so far, and the beautiful, spiky beaded headdresses. She gestured nearby. “Please place your bag here,” she said in heavily accented English. It was a tiny cave off to one side of the path. Ahead, the walkways grew very narro
w and there was a crowd of people on every inch of the path. Oh man. Fear prickled through me. “I hope we aren’t going to have to elbow past people on that skinny path,” I told my twin as we shrugged off our race backpacks. “It’s barely three feet wide!”
“It’ll be fine,” Georgie assured me.
We left our bags behind and stepped in line with the rest of the crowd. I looked over the edge of the metal railing and whimpered. Between the trees and a few rocky crags, it was a very long fall off the side. “I don’t like this.”
“You can do it,” Georgie said cheerfully. “I promise you can do it.” She reached out and squeezed my sweaty hand.
I nodded, not trusting my voice. I could do this. I would just stop looking over the side of the mountain. That was all.
The line moved slowly, but we eventually got to the front to get our harnesses. A man with quick fingers strapped me in and handed me two wires with carabiners attached to the ends. “There are two lines,” he said in the bored voice of someone who has given the same directions a hundred times. “You clip one to top line, and one to bottom line. Clip, clip.” He made hand gestures in case I didn’t understand his English. “Always stay connected with one line. Understand?”
My heart thundered in my chest. I looked back at Georgie.
She gave me a thumbs up and a nod. “You can do this, Clem.”
Okay. “Got it,” I told the guide.
He gestured ahead of him. “Get on the path.”
I stepped ahead, around the rocky face of the wall. The path turned sharply and…disappeared. I stared at the side of the mountain. “Um, where is the path?”
“See the chains? Clip, clip,” he repeated, gesturing at the side of the mountain. I could see a series of hooks and chains lacing the wall like an ugly necklace, but I didn’t see anywhere to put my feet. My heart hammered even louder.
“See the board, Clem?” Georgie said behind me. “There’s a board to put your feet on.”
I squinted, then pulled out my monocle and held it to my eye. I was fear-sweating like a beast, and had to rub the thing on my shirt before putting it to my eye again. Sure enough, there was a tiny wooden plank a few feet below the chain harnesses drilled into the side of the mountain.
One plank. Sometimes two. Never more than eight inches wide.
That was the path. The freaking Plank Trail. I got it now.
“Clip, clip,” the guide said, and gestured at the chains on the wall. He grabbed my carabiners from me and began to clip me.
“NOPE,” I bellowed, jerking away from him and staggering a few steps backward. I crashed into my twin and we both thumped onto the side of the mountain. “Fuck no. I am not doing that.”
“It’s just a little path,” Georgie soothed.
“It’s too little!” I shrieked. “Are you kidding me? My feet are bigger than those planks!”
“That’s why you have to clip to the wall—“
“NOPE.” My trembling hands jerked at the harness. I was going to be sick if I tried to go out there. And what happened if I got stranded? Who would go rescue me? Another person that had to clip in?
Hell to the no. Just no. Absolutely not.
“I am not doing this,” I said, and the guide started to help me out of the harness.
“If we don’t do it, we get a penalty,” Georgie told me. There was a plea in her voice. “The card says it’s a three hour penalty if we don’t do the task, and we still have to complete the other challenges.”
“I can’t do it, Georgie. I can’t. We’re already in last place,” I told her. My hands were shaking so bad I had difficulty putting my monocle back in my pocket. The sight of all that open air and the tiny, tiny plank hugging the side of the mountain? That was going to be in my nightmares. “I can’t,” I said, and started to cry again. “I’m sorry.”
“Hey, it’s okay,” she said, shrugging out of her own harness. She handed it back to the guide, and then put her arms around me. We pushed our way through the tourists, back out to the entrance of the path where we’d left our bags. “It’s all right.”
“I’m sorry,” I sobbed. “I don’t want to fall off the side of the mountain just to end up in fourth or fifth place anyhow. We’re already in last. It’s stupid to do the challenge.”
“I know,” she soothed. “We had a good run, didn’t we?” Her hand patted my back, my braids.
“We did.” I swiped at my face. “I’m so sorry, Georgie. I wish I was stronger—“
“Shut up,” she said, nudging me. Even that small push made fear knock the breath out of me, and I clung to her. “You were an awesome badass of a partner, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
I hugged my twin close. “I love you, Georgie. You’re the best sister a girl could ever have.”
“I love you, too, you big nerd. Now, since we have to wait three hours, we might as well see if we can find someone selling noodles. I’m starving and we might as well go out in style.”
Hand in hand, we headed back to the pavilion, defeated but united.
Chapter Thirty-Four
“I guess I never really thought about what would happen if the girls got eliminated. I keep looking around for Tiny. Damn. This sucks.” – Swift, Team One Percent, The World Races
“Red team?” Chip gave Georgie and I a sorrowful look as we stood before him on the mat. “I’m sorry to tell you that you have been eliminated from the race.”
“We figured,” Georgie said, a bright smile on her face. “We had fun, though.”
“A lot of fun,” I agreed, and looped an arm around my twin’s waist. “It brought us closer together.”
Chip nodded sagely. “No tears? You girls are taking this well.”
Georgie cocked her head and gave him a playful look. “That’s because this isn’t the end for us. We’ve made some great friends here, and friendships that will last a lifetime. We’ve become closer than ever, and I think it’s reminded us what’s really important in life – the people you surround yourself with.” Georgie threw her arms around my neck and held me close.
“This isn’t the last you’ve seen of the Price twins,” I agreed with a nod. It sounded like an appropriately cocky sort of thing to say.
Truth was, we’d blubbered out all of our tears earlier over noodles. We’d sat in the shade of a red-ribbon covered tree, chowed down on food, and wept over our loss. Then we’d composed ourselves, joked around through the last two individual challenges (and racked up a crapload of penalties with our goofing), and then sauntered our way to the finish line sometime around sunset.
Chip chuckled, and then made a cutting motion with his hand. “That’s a wrap,” he called out. Immediately, an assistant rushed forward with a bottle of water and placed it in Chip’s hand. “Get me out of this fucking place,” Chip called. “The altitude is making me frizz like a damn poodle. Where’s my helicopter?”
“No helicopter, I’m afraid,” his assistant stammered. “But we have a private cable car waiting to take you back down the mountain—“
“Whatever,” Chip said sourly, storming off. “This fucking show. God. You guys are so damn cheap.”
Georgie smothered a giggle as the assistant trotted off after Chip.
“I don’t know what he’s so grumpy about,” I murmured to my twin. “It’s not like they tried to get him to cross that stupid plank bridge.”
“Hi ladies,” one of the production crew said, approaching us. She waved us off to one side. “Come this way and we’ll tape your exit interviews. Then we’ll get you to a hotel room.”
I paused, craning my neck and looking around. There was always a crowd at the finish line of each leg of the race. In addition to the other racers, there were several crew, cameras, assistants, sound guys with microphones, and locals that stopped to watch the taping of things. I was really only interested in one face, though – Swift’s. I wanted to talk to him before we were shuffled off into loser land.
A glimpse of dark hair and a black t-shirt am
idst the crowd caught my eye, and I saw Swift’s handsome face. He was standing behind a pair of tourists who were taking photos of the finish line, and stepped forward. The expression on his features was frustrated, his mouth a flat line.
“Go talk to him,” Georgie whispered to me, and gave me an encouraging nudge.
I nodded and pulled away from her, heading toward Swift. I wanted to tell him that it was okay. That I’d done it on purpose, because he needed the money and I was fine. That there was nothing to worry about. And to wish him luck.
Before I took two steps in his direction, the production crew member stepped in front of me and put her hand up. “Sorry, Clementine, but you know the rules.”
“Rules?”
“Eliminated contestants can’t talk to contestants still in the game.” She shook her head at me, frowning like I’d just piddled on the carpet or something. “Please stay with me and we’ll get you to your exit interview.”
“Oh, but…I just want to tell him good luck,” I said, glancing over at Swift again. Surely this wouldn’t be the last time I’d talk to him? We hadn’t even exchanged phone numbers.
“Well, the Black team is currently in third place, so you can see him if he makes it to the finish line,” the production assistant said, taking me by the arm and steering me back away.
Third place was good, I reassured myself as Georgie and I were shepherded away with the rest of the crew. They could still win this thing, and after Plate and Swift won, we’d all go out for a nice celebratory dinner. Hopefully.
~~ * * * ~~
“Can you imagine looks on the Red Hat ladies faces when they realized they came in fourth place and not third?” Georgie wiggled her feet against the edge of the bubble-bath filled tub and then puckered her mouth, trying to frown in imitation of one of the elderly ladies.
I rolled my eyes. “I wish it was the Green Machine instead of the Red Hat ladies. I can’t believe those jerks are going to finish ahead of us.”