“I know! But”—she bit her lip—“I was a TAG kid. I should have known how to spell it.”
“TAG?”
“Talented and gifted.” She rolled her eyes. “And Ididknow how to spell it. I did!” She smacked London in the arm, as if they had implied she didn’t, and it shocked a laugh out of them. Women kept hitting them in Los Angeles, and they felt strangely okay with it.
“W-H-I-S-T-L-E,” Dahlia spelled now.
“Good job,” London said, smiling.
“Shut up,” she said immediately. And then, sounding serious, “My mom was so disappointed.”
“About a fourth grade spelling bee?”
She looked out the window again. “Yeah.”
And before London could say anything else, the bus stopped.
“All right, kids, time to head out!” Janet shouted from the front of the bus.
“Wait,” Dahlia said. “What? We were on the bus for like, two minutes.”
“Yeah.” London leaned over her slightly to peer out the window, not at all noticing that she smelled like peppermint. “Are we seriously here already? Oh. Oh god.”
Outside the window, the sounds of screaming preteens grew louder with each passing second. They jumped up and down, waving. London was . . . not ready for this.
But when they looked over, of course, Dahlia was smiling.
“Sweet,” she whispered. She waved back, causing the kids closest to their window to squeal even louder.
London leaned back in their seat and exhaled.
They had arrived at their first Real World Challenge.
It was a bar mitzvah. On the plus side, Adam Abramovitz was definitely going to be the coolest kid in his middle school for at least a week.
On the down side, Jeffrey was Dahlia’s group leader.
To be fair, she didn’t know Jeffrey that well. She still didn’t know anyone that well.
But sometimes you had gut feelings about people. And Dahlia had a gut feeling that Jeffrey was a giant jerkface.
“Dahlia.” He pointed at her once the twelve remaining contestants were broken into two teams of six and six. “You’re on hummus.”
“I’m on . . . hummus,” she repeated, her pen paused over her notebook. She did not need to take notes on how to shove chickpeas into a food processor.
“And whatever other appetizers you want to make. You’re the snack table. Make it pretty. All right, now, Ahmed—”
“Wait,” London, next to her, interrupted. “You saw Dahlia win the challenge yesterday, right? The fish challenge?”
Their group’s assigned main course today was salmon. Which almost made Dahlia laugh, when she saw the ingredients laid out on the temporary set the crew had constructed behind this fire hall. It was like she was living in a pescatarian hell.
“Yeah, and luckily she didn’t fall on her face yesterday. I’m not going to have our main course scattered all over the floor.” Jeffrey raised a condescending eyebrow. “This isn’t just for the judges; this is a real event.”
“What the—” Dahlia elbowed London lightly in the ribs to stop them. She was glad London was on her team, and appreciated them standing up for her, but now Jeffrey had actually embarrassed her, and she just wanted everyone to move on.
“Anyway, I believe I’m the team leader here.” Jeffrey glared London’s way, and from the corner of her eye, Dahlia saw their jaw clench. “Dahlia’s on apps. London, you’re on desserts. Now, Ahmed and Beth . . .”
Whatever. She could make a kickass hummus. She loved apps.
