my balloon. No popping.
“At the end of this round, we will narrow it down to eighteen contestants. Yes, over half of you will be eliminated. The first to find their balloons will advance to the next round.” He takes a breath and raises a hand. “Any questions?”
We all shake our heads.
“On your mark! Get set! Go!”
All at once we jump in, some shitty canned music playing overhead.
It’s havoc. Balloons of all colors are flying everywhere.
And then it hits me when I feel it squishing through my toes. It’s not just balloons in this pool.
It feels like . . . jelly.
I take a whiff as I push through. And then I see it. Sticky, sweet, lime Jell-O.
Screaming. Shouting. Fights break out, and overhead Wang shouts, “No fighting!” And there’s the sounds of latex sliding together, Jell-O sloshing, and the even more jarring sound of balloons popping. All over.
I grab for the two balloons I saw before and notice the first one says “SHVETA PATEL.” I wade over to the other one and grab it before the kid on my foursome, Silas Chen, can. I grin when I see the name on it. “PENELOPE CARPENTER.”
“Whose are those?” he asks me, sifting frantically through the balloons and handfuls of lime shit.
“Not yours.”
“You’ll give me mine if you see it, right?”
“Yeah.”
I whirl in a different direction and dive through a sea of lime and latex as a woman throws herself at me. She’s crying, tears running down her face, a glob of jelly between her tits. “This is so nasty!”
“Fuck you!” someone screams behind me, and more balloons pop. “Give me that fucking balloon! You asshole!”
So much for keeping it clean.
“Our first contestant, Greta Waltz,” Will says solemnly, “has been eliminated.”
I can’t see any more balloons with writing on them from my vantage point, so I straighten and look for Penny. She’s all the way on the other end of the pool, slowly and carefully going through each balloon. I start to wade toward her, sloshing through Jell-O as I go. As I do, I run across a girl in a sari who’s practically buried to the nose in balloons and trying to keep her head above them. “Shveta?”
She almost doesn’t hear me, the noise is so loud. “Yes?”
I hand her her balloon.
“Are you serious?” She lifts it up and stares at it. “Oh my god. Thank you.”
I keep wading through the chaos to get to Penny as Will Wang announces, “We’ve found our first contestant, ladies and gentlemen! Shveta Patel from New Jersey!”
He proceeds to give a long rundown on Shveta’s background. All the while, I’ve got my eye on the balloons around me as I make my way across the pool.
Five more people are disqualified, one from my athletic foursome, who I see stalking to the edge of the wall with the rest of the losers, muttering curses under his breath. Then I see Ace. I watch as he squeezes a balloon in his hands, popping it.
“And yet another one bites the dust!” Will Wang cries. “Ace Moulder is on a tear, people. He’s already sent three people to their doom. The rest of the contestants better hope that their balloons don’t end up in his hands!”
Fuck. But I’m still in it. As I get closer, I notice Penny is looking a little more worried. She’s still methodically checking each balloon, but there’s a little crease on her forehead, and she keeps looking up at the losers’ wall, as if she can see herself there.
“Penny!” I shout.
She doesn’t look up.
Right. She doesn’t go by that name.
“Penelope Carpenter!”
She looks up this time, and her eyes light when she sees the red balloon in my hands.
Just then, out of nowhere, Ace comes up behind me and makes a dive for the balloon in my hands. I yank it away in the nick of time, but I lose my grip on it and it floats into the air. I grab for it, but it’s just out of my reach. It floats aloft, toward Ace.
Who’s grinning at it.
He holds his hands up for it, and it floats right to his fingertips.
Shit.
Clenching my fists, I run for him and dive onto his shoulders, taking him down under the waves of latex and lime. Away from the eye of the cameras, I deliver a punch to his throat that makes him choke out all the air in his lungs. When I surface, there’s a spotlight on me.
Will Wang’s annoying voice blares: “Would you look at that, people. That’s