Not fun, but nothing to do about it.
I let Georgie buy the tickets. According to the lady at the window, the earliest train was completely sold out, and the next one almost as full. With a bit of wheedling (done so well by my twin), we were able to get on the second train. We bought our tickets and stepped away from the window…just to see the Green Machine standing behind us.
“Looks like we caught up with Beauty and the Geek,” Foster said, giving us a cocky grin.
“Looks like,” I said dryly. I decided I hated him. Beauty and the Geek indeed.
Georgie, always the peacemaker, smiled at them and then glanced around, tucking the tickets in her race fanny pack. “No sign of Houston?”
“Nope,” drawled Drew. “Think they might have gotten lost. We’re in the lead.”
I suspected that the cops would have gotten lost, too, if they hadn’t seen us head to the station. Jerks.
“Train’s better,” Georgie said. She squinted up at Foster. “Maybe they went to another train station. How far behind do you think the other teams are?”
He gave her an evil grin. “I checked and the next flight was at least one hour behind us.”
“Excellent,” she said, raising her fist for a fist-bump. They both gave her a bump and when I raised mine, they looked awkwardly at it and then both gave me a reluctant bump.
Yeah, I hated the cops.
~~ * * * ~~
Georgie and I sat on the floor at the back of the train station, eating power bars and watching the rest of the teams slowly roll in. Two by two, pairs dressed in brightly colored outfits and wearing backpacks wandered in and then raced for the ticket counter like it was going to disappear if they didn’t get there right away. It was kind of funny.
I mentally tallied teams as they arrived. The father-son blue team was the next to show up, and then the purple ladies with the red hats. Then brown, and orange showed up. As the other teams showed up, they settled in next to Georgie and I until we had a little circle of racers hanging out on the floor together at the back of the small train station, all chatting and talking together.
Well, mostly talking. I hugged my legs and listened in, content to watch people socialize without feeling the need to participate.
Everyone had tickets on the train ride after ours. We’d get in to Aguas Calientes almost a full hour and a half ahead of the others, which was exciting. We were in the lead…if you didn’t think about the missing teams.
The only teams missing were the Dr. Moms (in yellow), the pink BFFs, and the Houston team in teal. Oh, and the black team – the ones everyone had taken to calling ‘the One Percenters’.
“Do you think they’re really bikers?” Georgie asked the woman sitting next to her. It was Annabelle from the orange team, a sweet-seeming Southern girl. She sat in the lap of Jendan, her partner and clearly her fiancé, if the sizable rock on her finger was any indication.
“I think so,” Annabelle said, brushing a lock of blonde hair out of her face and offering her water-bottle to her partner. “I’ve seen cuts like those before.”
“Cuts?”
“You know, the jackets.” She gestured to her arm, as if indicating a lack of sleeves. “They’re called cuts. It holds all their patches and shows their affiliation or something.”
“How is it you know so much about bikers?” Jendan asked Annabelle, clearly amused. He rubbed her back absently, and it was clear he just liked touching her. It was sweet and made me a teeny bit envious of their relationship.
“I was a waitress. You get to know a lot of people,” she said in a teasing voice. “That, and I had a second cousin in the Hell’s Angels.” At my wide eyes, she giggled. “Just kidding, I watch a lot of Sons of Anarchy.”
I liked Annabelle and Jendan. Sure, they were a little touchy-feely, but they were cute together. It was obvious they were in love and they were on this trip to have fun. Plus, they seemed to be in a good mood, in contrast to Gwen and Elon, newlyweds who spent most of the night arguing with each other. Eventually, Gwen burst into tears and stormed off, and Elon stalked out of the train station.
So far, not my favorite couple.
Actually, Jendan and Annabelle were really the only ones I did like. Everyone else seemed to ignore me in favor of my glamorous twin, which was all right during social time. But when people talked strategy and then ignored me? It ticked me off.
The only one that had focused on me was the guy from the One Percenter team, Swift. The hot one. I blushed thinking about him. He was probably up to something, too. Maybe he thought if he flirted with the ugly twin, he’d get somewhere with us.
The thought just made me bristle.
Georgie and I chatted with Jendan and Annabelle for a lot of the night. They both had a little more in common with my twin. Jendan, it seemed, was a former stuntman, and he and Annabelle had met on Endurance Island. I didn’t see the show when it aired, but now I wished I had. Were J&A (as we called them) as nice and friendly as they seemed, or were they playing dirty? I had no clue. They could have been really good actors and I’d still think they were being sincere. I wasn’t so great at reading people.
Reading fossils, yes. People? No.
Eventually, things quieted down in the bus station, and we curled up with our World-Races-issued jackets and went to sleep using our backpacks as pillows. I cuddled up next to my twin and before I went to sleep, prayed that we’d do well tomorrow in the race.
Surely we’d be in first place in the morning. With that much of a lead, we were poised to destroy the other teams in any sort of challenge that they might throw in our direction.
As I drowsed to sleep, I wondered what happened to the black team and Swift. Had they already gotten lost? Were they going to be the first ones out of the game?
Why did that send a note of disappointment through my body?
Chapter Four
“I’m wearing her down, I think. She only glared at me twice today.” — Swift, Team One Percent, The World Races
“Look,” Georgie said, grabbing my arm. “There he is! There’s Pachacuti.”
Lifting my eyes, I followed where Georgie pointed. I huffed and puffed in the thin altitude, trying to keep up with my sister as she ran forward. Peru was gorgeous in the morning light, but completely foreign to a California girl like me. Aguas Calientes was sandwiched deep into the mountains, and it felt like all the oxygen had been left below. It was going to take me some time to get used to the change in altitude.
The train had pulled into the town and the word that immediately popped to mind as I saw the town was ‘crowded’. Everything in Aguas Calientes seemed crammed around the main street of the city. Colorful banners and vendor booths crowded the walkways, and tourists wandered past. All around us, the green mountains rose high above the town, so tall that the peaks were lost in the clouds. The weather was gorgeous – crisp and clear and just a bit chilly, so we wore our Race windbreakers and a pair of red knitted hats with a pom-pom and ear flaps that Georgie had wheedled out of a local vendor. My twin made a joke that since we were tall and skinny and dressed in red, we looked like tampons.
Har de har.
We’d cut through town, squeezing past the vendors crowded around the train station, looking for the square. Sure enough, before a big yellow and red building stood a statue of a man with his arms extended. At the base of the statue’s feet, a man in Peruvian garb waited, holding one of the now-infamous World Races disks. From watching previous seasons, I knew the disk held the next clue and instructions for the challenge.
We greeted the man (who was wearing a hat similar to ours, I noticed). “Can we have our clue?” Georgie asked. He held it out and Georgie immediately handed it over to me. “You read.”
I took the disk from her and flipped it over, reading the instructions on the back aloud. “Follow the marked trail up to Machu Picchu. Look for your next clue at the Temple of the Sun.” I squinted up at the looming green mountain. Snaking up the steep green side was a tiny white
path that zigzagged back and forth. “Ten bucks says that’s our path.”
“Let’s go, then,” Georgie said. “We need to hustle. We’re not in first place.”
I shrugged my backpack off and tucked the disk inside it, frowning at my twin as I did so. “What do you mean, we’re not in first place? Everyone else is an hour behind us.”
“Except for four teams, right? Because they never showed up at the station. There must have been another train.” She nodded at the Peruvian guy with the stack of clues. “He’s standing in front of a stack of disks and I counted them while you were reading. There’s three missing. That means three teams are ahead of us and one team is nowhere to be found.”
Fourth already? And we just got here? I groaned as I finished zipping my bag and hauled it over my shoulders again. “How did they get here before us?”
“I don’t know, but we need to run,” Georgie said, her competitive side getting the better of her. She grabbed my hand and started to drag me forward. “Haul ass, Clemmy-pie.”
I trotted after her slowly, eyeing the path up the mountain. “Um, Georgie, I love you but I don’t think I can run all the way up that.”
“Just go as fast as you can,” she pressed. “If we move too slow, I’m afraid Green Machine’s going to catch up to us.”
“Damn it,” I grumbled, thinking of the smug faces of the two cops. “How do you always know what to say to get me moving?”
~~ * * * ~~
Judging by my watch, it took us two hours to climb the trail to Machu Picchu.
Judging by my legs and my lungs, it took fucking forever. By the time we got to the top of the trail, I was wheezing and exhausted, and Georgie was panting and covered in a fine sheen of sweat. I’d had two nosebleeds and my head was pounding so much that I couldn’t even enjoy the gorgeous scenery.
Seriously, so far, me and Peru were at odds with each other. All these mountains were kicking my beach-living ass.
“Holy…shit…” my sister gasped ahead of me. “This is…so freaking cool. Look around, Clemmy.”
My nose felt like it was about to start another high-altitude nosebleed, so I shoved some wadded Kleenex into my nostrils to plug them and did as she advised. I was speechless.
Machu Picchu was amazing.
We were up the side of the green mountain, and nestled amongst the ridges and rocks were buildings and walls and terraces of people who’d lived here hundreds of years ago. Stone ruins of old houses and temples scattered all over the side of the mountain. My paleontologist heart gave a little pitter-pat of excitement. Tourists climbed over grassy terraces and wandered around the stone buildings, spots of color amidst the green and gray rock that dominated the area.
“Wow,” Georgie breathed.
I agreed with that. Wow didn’t seem like enough to say to encompass the enormity of the ruins around us, but, yeah. Wow. “Do you think we’ll have time to explore?” I adjusted my glasses and peered around us. “Or should we just start looking for the Temple of the Sun?”
“There’s three teams ahead of us,” Georgie said, ever practical. “We can either explore and just decide to be last place and be happy, or we can look for the Temple and try to get ahead of those three teams and see if we can get first place.”
“Temple it is,” I told her. “This place is huge. How are we ever going to find anything?”
“Easy,” she said, and moved forward to a couple of tourists who were leaving the grounds. “Excuse me,” she called out, wearing her winning smile. “Can you tell us where the Temple of the Sun is?”
They pointed.
Georgie and I were off.
Machu Picchu was huge, but we were able to find the Temple with little issue, mostly because of the people milling around. When they didn’t understand English, we’d show them our disk and they’d inevitably point us toward where the filming was.
We ran up to the temple. Like the rest of Machu Picchu, there was no roof, and it looked to my eyes more like a castle than a temple. There were stone stairs to race up, and a rounded turret at the top. As we ran up the stairs, another team appeared in the doorway, a clue disk in hand.
“Ladies,” Swift said, and winked at me.
“Oh my God, Georgie Price, I fucking love you,” Plate said to my twin, pausing on the steps as we went up. He clutched his heart dramatically.
Georgie giggled.
I rolled my eyes. As we passed them, I noticed Swift rolled his eyes and gave Plate a shove, too. That made me smile.
Until he called out, “Good luck, Tiny.”
Then my smile turned into gritted teeth.
Georgie and I entered the designated area, only to find it occupied by several people. Two cameramen immediately zoomed in on us, a production assistant hovered nearby with a headset, and there was a man in an ornate feather headdress with a stack of disks.
As the first one in the room, I hesitated. The production assistant frowned and gestured for me to go toward the costumed man. Right. I stumbled toward him and gave him a small, awkward wave. “Um, hi?”
Georgie just laughed at me. “Can we have our disk, sir?”
He held it out. On the front was written ‘Team Challenge’. Georgie took it and handed it to me, and I flipped it over to read. My hands were shaking, from adrenaline, and altitude…and maybe that wink Swift shot in my direction. “The Incas were known for the architectural style of building called ashlar, in which stone is fitted tightly together without the use of mortar. For this challenge, you will find one of the designated areas and reconstruct a stone wall using the blocks provided. All blocks must be used except one, and no light can show between the bricks. When you have finished your wall, bring the remaining brick to the Incan lord and he will give you your clue for the next challenge.”
“This sounds hard,” Georgie whispered to me.
“Nah, it’s rocks and piecing stuff together,” I told her. “We’ve got this.” After all, wasn’t that what I did for a living? I tucked the disk under my arm and down the stairs we went.
The cordoned areas were marked off on one of the green-covered terraces, and jumbled into a pile on a big World Races mat were cubes upon cubes of rocks. Off to one side was a big wooden square marked with our team color. I noticed three other displays that had been completed, and the rocks were stacked carefully inside the big wooden square, like tight fitting puzzle blocks.
Georgie made a sound of dismay and picked up a stone. “Do we just grab and start shoving?”
“No,” I said, climbing onto the pile of rocks. “I’m going to sort these into shapes and sizes, and you need to go study one of the others and look for a pattern.”
I hated to say it, but I mostly wanted Georgie out of my hair. I worked best when I could concentrate, and I knew my twin. She’d poke through the blocks and chatter the entire time. I needed quiet, and I needed to think. So as Georgie wandered off to look at the other puzzles, I began sorting blocks. Small squares went in this pile. Big flat squares went in this one. Medium-sized rectangles went in this one. There seemed to be several different shapes, but no unique rocks. That was good. I could work with that.
When I had everything sorted, Georgie moved to my side and put her hands on her knees, watching me crawl around on the ground, fitting together rocks. “Tell me how I can help, Clemmy.”
“Okay,” I said, sitting up. I pushed my glasses back on my nose. “We have eight different kinds of rocks, right?”
“Right?”
I grabbed the pile closest at hand. It was the small, rectangular bricks. “Go and count how many there are of this kind in their puzzle. Count both sides, and make sure you don’t count the bricks twice, all right?”
“Okay,” she said, a frown on her face.
“I’m going to take another brick and count how many there are in the others. We’re going to compare our count to everyone else’s count, and whichever one we have an extra of, we know that’s the additional bogus piece. Then it’s just following the pattern t
hat the others have and putting them together.”
Her eyes lit up. “You’re so smart, Clemmy!”
“Just practical,” I told her, and stifled a groan as I saw another team climb the stairs to the Temple of the Sun. “But we can’t tell anyone what we’re doing, and we need to hurry.”
As I saw the other team race over – freaking green cops – I raced over with my twin to the examples completed. I nudged Georgie as I did. “Look super confused and scratch your head a lot, okay?”
She winked at me, and then bit her lip as she put her hands on her hips, and gave a gusty sigh of frustration. “This puzzle sucks,” she declared loudly.
Attagirl. I started counting and set to work. By the time we got to the second set of blocks, I figured out which one was the extra. I carefully set it aside without being too obvious, since the cops were watching us. Then it was just figuring out the repeating pattern, which wasn’t too hard to do once you figured out which way the blocks turned. I had Georgie keep standing in front of our display so the cops would have a hard time seeing it, and I worked, hauling rocks and pushing stones into place.
We had to catch up to the black team. No way was I going to let those guys beat us. Not on the first day.
Chapter Five
“I wish she wasn’t that cute. I’m here to win a million dollars, not flirt with the girls. And yet here I am, shooting myself in the foot constantly.” — Swift, Team One Percent, The World Races
“Are we done? I think we’re done,” Georgie declared, studying our wall.
I hefted the lone brick we had left and studied it myself. It looked pretty damn good, and we’d powered through that challenge. If this was how all the race challenges were going to be? We could smoke this competition. “We’re done,” I told her. “Let’s go turn in.”
We raced back up the stairs to the Temple of the Sun. Behind us, three teams were working, and I knew that three teams were ahead. The rest of the group was somewhere else, probably still climbing the long trail to Machu Picchu.