Page 24 of House of Deceit

She throws up her arms. “Well, I don’t know! Don’t pressure me.”

“If you come up with any, let me know. Until then, I have something to give you.”

“I want to get to know you. I have to bare my soul to you, so I’m going to need the same from you.”

Having a feeling she won’t let this go, no matter how difficult this will be for me since I’ve never opened up to a contestant before, I agree.

“Fine, agreed.”

From the inside of my jacket, I pull out a thick, dark blue notebook with the outline of a mansion on the front in gold leaf, along with an embroidered “Season Ten.”

“This is for anything you want to write down during the season. Little things you’re noticing around the house, your cast mates, whatever. It’s the only thing you’ll get to study before the finale, so it’s important to keep up with it.”

Her fingers trace the cover.

“I can’t believe this is real. I’ve seen the copies of these in ads on the internet, but I never realized how much better the real ones would be.” She keeps tracing, not looking up. “How did I get here?” she asks, whispering to herself.

The air in the room changes, her mood seeming to drop. My professional side wars with the personal side. Unsure of how to support her, I hunt for anything to say.

“You’re here because half a million dollars would be really nice,” I say, floundering.

“I don’t just mean here on the show, I mean here”—she motions to herself—“in life.”

I understand what she means. I don’t know when it happens exactly, but there’s a point where it feels like you have all the time in the world and you’re striving toward your dreams and what you think you’re supposed to be doing.

And then one day, you look up. You look around.

Your life is nothing what you expected. The job that was taken as a stop gap has somehow become a career. The relationship that doesn’t really fit has become an engagement, or worse, a marriage.

“It seems like you’ve had a hard time of it lately, and I’m sure that has been stressful. From what I heard of your interview, it sounds like you had some pretty shitty boyfriends, as well. Maybe this show is going to be the thing you look back on in ten years and you say ‘Man, if I hadn’t taken that leap, I wouldn’t have everything I’ve ever wanted.’”

She looks up at me with her dark blue eyes and smiles. “I’m normally not all over the place like this, emotionally. It’s been a hard few months. Thank you for rolling with the punches.”

“What’s a wrangler for, after all?”

“I bet you’re wishing I was an emotionally stunted man at this point,” she says, trying to push humor into the slightly awkward moment.

“No. I didn’t find anyone else in that stack who I thought could win.”

She rolls her eyes. “That’s right. You need to win just as much as me. I forgot.”

Her words sting, like a snap of a rubber band to the arm. While true, I need to be a better wrangler for her. More in tune with what she needs. Before I can retort, she motions to the notebook in her hands that matches her eyes.

“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure to keep up with this. Is this the only one we get or can I get more if I fill it?” she asks. I can see the wheels turning in her head as she starts to think about the game once more.

“This is the only one you can have, so write small.”

She nods, flipping through the empty pages until the words on the first few pages catch her eye.

“What are these?” she asks, reading them.

“Those are the rules of the game and the schedule for when things will be airing. The eliminations are live, but the contests are filmed earlier in the day, so we have time to edit the footage for the program in the evening.”

She turns the notebook around and pushes it in my face.

“What about that one?”

Unsure which rule she means, I read through the list again. I proofed it before the books were printed, but maybe I missed something.

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