“No,” said Shar. She flexed her bicep and kissed it like she was a professional body-builder. I prayed she would be the first of us Bellamy would eliminate.
“Your son has a cute name,” I said to Mylar, turning so I didn’t have to look at Shar. “I’ve never heard the name Cason before, but I like it.”
“Me too,” said Vanessa. “It’s such a cute name. Really sweet. Like Mason, but even better.” She flipped her hair back and smiled warmly, reinforcing my fear that she was going to be very tough competition.
“There’s kind of a funny story about his name,” said Mylar, brightening. “When I was pregnant with him, I wasn’t sure if his dad was my boyfriend Jason, or my other boyfriend Casey. They were both like ‘Are you going to name the baby after me?’ and I was like ‘Sure, Honey, of course I will’ so I named him after both of them, in a way. If he had been a girl, I had that covered too. I was going to call her Jasey. It’s so cool when you find a simple solution to a tricky problem. You know what I mean?”
I waited for Shar to say something mean, but all of us were silent. The pedicure atmosphere had ruined everyone’s appetite, even my own. I found my mind wandering to Pete. I wished I was back home in my own apartment or his, relaxed and comfortable. This room with these girls felt like the furthest thing in the world from who I was or what I wanted to be.
“You know, I think I’d like to borrow some of that polish as well,” Shyla said, scooting her chair over to Angie and Vanessa’s side of the table.
I got up and went out to the balcony to call Pete. Before he even had the chance to answer, the patio door slid open and Fran, the woman who had interrogated me, was standing in the doorway glaring at me. I don’t know how she appeared so quickly, but it confirmed the suspicion Vanessa had voiced earlier that we were already being thoroughly spied on.
“Who are you talking to?” she asked.
I shoved my phone in my pocket and turned to her. “Um, I was just going to call my neighbor. He’s no one important. Just a neighbor. I was expecting a package today and wanted to make sure it got brought inside,” I lied.
“No cellphones. Sorry.” She held out her hand to confiscate it. “You’ll get this back when it’s time to go home.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes. Didn’t anyone tell you this already?”
“No.”
“Hand it over,” she said, continuing to hold out her hand.
So I did. And I went back inside, pulled up a chair alongside the others, and painted my toenails.
Chapter 7
“You sure you don’t want to go anywhere?” Pete asked me
.
“I’m positive,” I said, pulling the old blanket on his couch around my shoulders.
“So? Tell me about your weekend.”
I closed my eyes. It was Sunday night and I was exhausted. It felt like I’d been gone for a couple of weeks instead of just a couple of days. “Do I have to?” I asked, inhaling his blanket. “This smells like fabric softener. It smells like a summer cloud.”
“I washed it today.”
“It smells a little bit like violets. And a little bit like oranges.”
“Emma, what happened? Did you get on the show?”
I sighed. “I think so. I have a bad, bad feeling that I did.”
“When will you know for sure?”
“Probably tomorrow or Tuesday. They want to move really fast.”
“You don’t sound excited.”
“Is it that obvious?”
“Tell them you changed your mind.”