Page 88 of Never Date A Player
I clamber over the side, and—Holy mother of God! My limbs lock, hands curling into claws. I’m in the Arctic, ice cubes burning my flesh. I clench my teeth and book it to the other side, my arms and legs moving like sticks. I hurl myself over the edge and land on my ass with a sting.
Hop-sprinting, I attempt to circulate warmth into the Popsicles that are my legs, and head for the mud ditch just ahead.
People exit the brown moat, groaning and covered head to toe in splatter. A few unfortunate souls look like swamp monsters. My first step inside explains why contestants appeared to be moving in place. The mud acts like quicksand. With each step, I stumble and sink, the bottom sucking my shoes like a sponge. My quads burn, my back aches—this is by far the most strenuous obstacle up until now.
Our team planned for walking through mud by lacing our shoes snugly and triple-knotting so we wouldn’t lose them. I emerge on the other side exhausted, but with all my clothes. I’m covered in brown goop and shaking because the mud was freaking cold, and after the ice bath, I really didn’t need it. I ignore the chunk of dirt I swallowed and jog, picking up speed as my limbs warm.
I’m not sure if others have dropped out, or simply lag behind, or if I’m in between heats, but the competitors along this swath have thinned. Lewis appears strong just ahead and is rapidly approaching the obstacle that psyched me out during training, because there was literally no way to prepare for it.
Dangling live wires hang from a wooden edifice, constructed for the sole purpose of shocking the crap out of people.
Some runners slow, possibly to determine how others cross successfully.
I kick it up a notch.
Lewis looks back. “Chin tucked, arms in front. Run hard!” he yells before bursting into the wires a few seconds ahead of me.
We couldn’t train for the electrodes, but we talked about them. Lewis and Zach agreed the best strategy is to not slow. You slow, you’re more likely to get hit by a pulse.
I’m doing as Lewis says, running full force when a guy on my left, using some sort of dodging strategy, jerks with a yelp and drops like a stone.
My pace falters, fear messing with my head, and a zap spears my bad arm, radiating pain down my side. I scream and nearly fall.
Hands braced on my knees, I look up, blinking. My side got hit by a pulse, that’s all. My arm is not in fact falling off.
Lewis is yelling from the other end for me to run. I raise my arms in front of my face and battle-cry my way out and into his arms. He squeezes me to his chest—then shoves me with a hard push onto the next stretch of the race.
Miles of rocky incline lie ahead. Lewis passes me, but we’re both moving fast compared to the others. Like the shale outcropping at the cascades, the rock forms steep, sharp stairs.
Center of gravity, legs instead of back. I repeat Lewis’s instructions in my head and push until my legs burn. It works because I’m catching up to him.
A big, beefy guy blocks my path up ahead. He has more muscle on one forearm than I do on my entire body, but he’s slow. I swivel a fraction at the top of a boulder and round him.
Something happens. The guy loses his balance and uses me to regulate, or he makes a blocking move. The only thing I know is that my ponytail gets yanked back, sending my center of gravity to hell.
This time, no sound erupts from my mouth. I’m just falling—arms windmilling. I land with a crunch on my hand and elbow, my knee taking the next brunt.
Competitors race past, the sound of panting and hard footfalls in my ear. One guy raises his eyebrow as he passes. “You okay?” he calls.
I gulp in air and clamber to my feet. Blood gushes down my knee and there’s a good chance I broke something in my hand, but everything else seems in working order, including my temper.
Motherfucker. Where the hell is the added security the coordinators hired?
I scale the few feet I dropped back and cut ahead of the people who passed me a moment ago. My face burns, sweat pouring down my temples. I shouldn’t be using this much energy until the finish, but I’m behind because of that fall.
The next mile is downhill, which I take at a dangerous speed the big guys don’t risk, including the one who made me tumble. He glares as I sweep past him, the road wider here; he can’t grab me for support or a boost. Logically, I probably shouldn’t run this fast either, but the fear is gone, which will either help me or get me killed.
I slip by Lewis several minutes later before we reach another set of obstacles. We’ve completed a dozen or more. I’m praying this is the last cluster. Although my adrenaline surges, and my stamina is solid, I can’t help but worry about my hand. It throbs, and I’m not sure how I’ll manage the last obstacles without the use of it.
A field of logs looms ahead. I leap from one to the other, maintaining my balance. My hand is no help during the next exercise, a barbed wire crawl, so I use my elbow to scurry beneath.
Lewis glides by me on the right. He’s got a hundred pounds of height and muscle on me, but he moves like a damn lizard, his stomach flat to the ground. His gaze goes straight to my arm and the hand I’m not using, his mouth twisting as he speeds past. He didn’t see me fall, but he’s perceptive. Too perceptive.
I emerge on the other side behind him, but I make up time in a short sprint segment, until I arrive at the log carry. The wood is as thick as my torso, two feet in width, and I have to lug it a hundred feet.
Using my good hand and the wrist of my bad I lift the log, and nearly crush my toes as it slips and crashes to the ground. Lewis taught us to prop the logs on our shoulders, but that’s out of the question with one hand. I manage to wrestle the weight on my chest in a squat—good arm combination. I’m panting by the time I drop it and follow the shouts toward what I assume is the home stretch.
We’ve been racing for a couple hours and I am so close to finishing. I mean, I had hoped I could, but I never knew for sure.
