“Me, too.” Ava leans back in her chair, yawning. “I’ll have the same breakfast, only with a chocolate milkshake instead of orange juice.”
Linda clears her throat. Gary snatches their menus and moves on. Linda pauses at their table, putting a gentle hand on each of their shoulders. “Don’t mind Gary. He means well. We’re all very glad you’re here.”
“Gary reminds me of my grandpa,” Ava says as soon as Linda leaves. “I hated my grandpa.”
To Mack’s surprise, beautiful Ava joins their table. She seems agitated, constantly glancing over at Rebecca’s full table. LeGrand sits by himself at the counter, frowning over the packet. He’s been staring at the same page the entire time. The tall, gangly guy with a friendly face offers to help Ray in the back, but Ray waves him off. Gangly joins their table, too. He sits straight, an eager smile on his face.
“Hey! I’m Brandon. Are you guys excited?” he asks. Now Mack knows his name, too. Brandon, Ava, beautiful Ava, LeGrand. She decides that’s enough names to learn. None of them matter anyway.
“For breakfast?” Ava asks.
Brandon laughs. “No. I mean, I’m excited for breakfast. I work graveyard. I haven’t had a real diner breakfast in years! But no. For the game. It’s gonna be fun, right?”
Beautiful Ava smiles, holding it carefully. She’s sitting with perfect posture and keeps looking around the room. Scanning the walls, and then the corners where the walls meet the ceiling.
“What are you looking for?” Mack asks, unable to help herself. The way beautiful Ava scans everything makes her nervous, like there’s something she should be looking for, too.
“Cameras. Surely they’d want this footage, too?”
Mack flinches, joining suit. But she doesn’t see anything that looks like a camera. “We haven’t signed everything in the packet yet,” Ava points out.
Beautiful Ava relaxes, her posture falling. She eyes Brandon critically. His features are blandly pleasant. Not handsome, not ugly. Skinny face, crooked teeth, small, kind eyes. There’s nothing threatening in him. She decides to respond to his question, since no one else has. But keep it friendly, not flirty. He’s not a good alliance. “Yeah, I think this is gonna be super fun!”
Mack and Ava don’t comment. It would feel like a lie to Mack to act excited. But she feels a little bad at the expectation on Brandon’s face, so she offers him a quick nod.
“I think it’s gonna be awful,” Ava says, reaching down to shift her right leg’s position.
Brandon laughs like it’s a joke, and Ava lets him.
As breakfast is served, Linda does exactly as suspected and proceeds to read the entire packet aloud to them. The only kindness is that she skips the legal documents in front. No one ever reads those anyway.
As soon as Linda begins reading the itinerary, LeGrand closes his with a relieved sigh and leans forward, listening intently. Mack doesn’t. She’s already committed all the relevant information to memory. The rest is just details.
Fourteen competitors.
Seven days.
A thirty-minute hiding window given at the start of each day—which is dawn.
Gameplay continues until dusk.
At dusk, everyone leaves their hiding spots and returns to base camp for their evening meal and sleeping.
“Will there be cabins? What are the room situations?” Isabella asks. She’s subletting an apartment from a friend of a friend and has two roommates, so it’s bound to be a step up from the modified closet masquerading as a bedroom that they gave her. She actually has to go through a bathroom to get to her room, so if one of her roommates is in the shower or on the toilet, she’s locked away from or inside of her own bedroom until they finish.
“Oh,” Linda says, pursing her lips. “It’s more of a camping scenario. There are toilets and showers, of course. And a covered pavilion with cots and bedding. It’s much easier than transporting you to and from the site every day. This gives you a lot more downtime.”
“Cots?” Isabella was wrong. It’s not a step up. How is she going to keep herself looking presentable the whole time? She needs a job out of this. “We’re sleeping outside?”
“Part of the game, I’m afraid.”
“What about eating during the day?” Rebecca asks. She envies people who don’t have to consider every single thing they ever eat.
“There will be supplies. You can take them into the park with you.”
“The park?” Ava sits up straight. This is the first detail they’ve been given about where they’ll be hiding.