By the time we land in Surabaya, I’ve been awake for thirty-four hours. The flight attendant cheerfully announces that it’s seven in the morning local time.

“Is it Thursday, Friday, or Saturday?” I ask Will. Remarkably, he slept through the landing of our second flight and only woke up when the wheels touched down.

He messes with his hair under his hat, then pulls a piece of gum out of his pocket and shoves it into his mouth. He doesn’t even have to rummage for it, and I wonder if he also worried about his bad plane breath in advance. Would a guy be concerned about that if he didn’t find the girl next to him at least a little bit attractive?

“I think it’s Friday,” he says.

“But we crossed the international date line, right? Did we skip ahead or back?”

Will rubs his eyes. “I have no idea. Thinking about it makes my brain hurt.”

We pull our packs down from the overhead compartment—somehow, mine feels like it’s gotten heavier since yesterday—and stumble blearily into the airport. On all the race shows I’ve seen, it looks like the contestants zoom off the plane and straight into waiting taxis, but instead we’re routed down an endless series of hallways and into the line for passport control. Disappointingly, the Indonesian airport doesn’t look any different from an American one. I was hoping for palm-frond floors and walls made of orchids or something.

We answer some questions and have our passports stamped, and as we’re heading into the arrivals area, I spot Miranda waving at me from the end of the line. She was always better at sleeping on planes than I was, and she looks fresh and rested, though Aidan is rubbing his eyes under his hipster glasses. I don’t see Samir, and I pray he’s way behind us instead of ahead. Part of me wants to wait for my sister to get through the line so we can talk, but as soon as I think it, Martin and Zora zip past us, and Will says, “Come on, we better move.” He tugs me toward the exit, and I lose sight of Miranda.

The moment we step outside, the hot, wet air hits me like a slap. It’s so humid that it feels like we’ve just walked into someone’s mouth, and my shirt instantly starts clinging to my damp back. Will and I find the taxi line and toss our backpacks into the trunk of a blue-and-yellow car. I pray it’ll be air-conditioned, but when we slip inside, it’s even warmer. I wish I had changed into shorts on the plane.

“Alun Alun Stadium?” Will says, showing the driver our instructions. “Do you know where that is?” The guy nods enthusiastically. “Perfect. As fast as you can, please.”

“What day is it?” I ask the driver, but he just says, “Yes.” Greg hops in beside him and somehow gets him to sign a release form agreeing to be on camera. Terry and all his sound equipment squish into the back with Will and me, and we’re off.

Logically, I know there are lots of countries where people drive on the left side of the road, but that doesn’t prepare me for the feeling of zooming into what looks like oncoming traffic. Every time a car flies by on the wrong side of us, I flinch. “Relax,” Will says, giving my knee a little squeeze. As if I could possibly do that with his hand on my leg.

We drive onto a massive suspension bridge, the cables glinting red-orange in the morning sun, and as I gaze out the window at the sparkling water underneath, it hits my sleep-deprived brain with renewed force that I’m actually here. I’m hurtling through a foreign country with a cute boy by my side, competing for a million dollars. I’ve never even been to Europe before, and here I am in Indonesia. And for this one moment, I’m not even that scared, just proud of myself.

“Holy crap,” I say to Will. “We’re in Java.” I leave out the cute boy part.

“Welcome to the other side of the world, Dominique,” he says. And then he winks at me. If this were a movie, I’d groan at how cheesy that is. But somehow it’s totally different when someone does it to you in real life. I start to feel even more overheated.

“Aren’t you dying in that wool hat?” I ask to distract myself.

“A little. But it’s my lucky hat. I have to wear it.”

“All the time? Or only when you’re trying to win something?”

“All the time.”

“Does it work? Are you actually luckier?”

He thinks about it. “I guess I don’t really know, since I always wear it. But I bet my life would be worse without it.”

“Or maybe your life would be exactly the same, only your head wouldn’t be hot.”

Will gives me a very serious look. “Do I really want to take that chance? Think of all the terrible things that could happen. What if I took it off and then our cab broke down, and we had to sit here in the middle of this bridge for hours while the strippers and the bimbos passed us?”

“Good point,” I say. “Why don’t you keep it on for now.”

We wind through the streets of Surabaya, past storefronts shaded with slapdash, corrugated-metal awnings and topped with tiny apartments. All the roofs are made of red tile, and everyone seems to have a balcony, even if they don’t have a front door. A man comes out to sweep in front of his shop and shoos away a couple of chickens. When we stop at a light, a woman passes in front of the car lugging an enormous basket filled with unfamiliar red objects. I think it’s food, but I can’t tell if it’s produce or fish.

Eventually our cabbie pulls up beside a long, oval field surrounded by a tall iron fence, scrubby trees, and multicolored flags. “Alun Alun,” he announces.

I don’t see any sort of marker that indicates we’re in the right place, but Martin and Zora are getting out of another cab farther up the block. “How much do we owe you?” I ask, pulling out our rupiahs. They’re bright jewel tones, purple and blue and green. I hope we’ll have some left over so I can keep one as a souvenir.

Our driver rattles off something in … Indonesian? I can’t believe I don’t even know what language they speak here. In any case, I don’t understand it, so I fan out the money and extend it so he can pluck out the correct change. He extracts two bills, and I hope he hasn’t taken more than the ride was worth.

“Thank you!” Will calls as we sprint away with our backpacks. Or, rather, Will sprints, and I shuffle along as quickly as I can. I swear this backpack has gotten heavier.

Now that we’re out of the car, the box of pink envelopes at the other end of the field is hard to miss. Standing off to the side is a large crowd of locals who cheer when they see us and an American guy in a pink Around the World shirt, jabbering angrily into his phone. He must be one of the producers. Farther down the field are a couple guys in fringe pants and gigantic lion-head masks decorated with peacock plumes. They’re performing a spinning, squatting dance while a couple musicians accompany them with bells and some sort of wind instrument that sounds like an out-of-tune oboe.

Will extracts a pink envelope from the box, rips it open, and reads the instructions aloud.

At the end of a wedding in the nearby Marquesas Islands, it is traditional for the guests to lie facedown on the floor while the bride and groom walk over their backs and get out the door. In homage to this, one member of your team must crawl one hundred meters while the other team member rides on his/her back. The rider may not touch the ground at any time, or you must start over. When you have completed this task, the head lion dancer will give you your next instructions.

I stare at Will, sure he must be teasing me for the comment I made on the plane about riding him. “It does not say that.”

“See for yourself.” He holds it out.

It really does say that. I suddenly don’t feel the least bit tired. “I seriously have to ride you?”

“Well, I could ride you, if you’d prefer. It doesn’t specify which team member should be on top.” His mouth quirks into a teasing smile, and that insane dimple peeks out at me.

I might die if this conversation goes on for one more second, so I try for the first time to channel Dominique. My kick-ass alter ego wouldn’t let this situation embarrass her. There’s nothing scary or intimidating about sitting on someone’s back. “All right, I’m on top,” I say. “Let’s go.”

Zora is already climbing onto Martin’s back over by a pink flag in the grass, which seems to mark the starting line. There’s another flag way down the field; it turns out a hundred meters is kind of a lot. “So … how do we do this, exactly?” I ask Will when we’ve joined them and shed our packs.

He drops down onto all fours. “Hop on, cowgirl.”

Gingerly, I sit down near his hips, facing sideways. I don’t even want to touch him with my hands, in case he feels how sweaty they are. “Is this okay?” I ask.

“Are you going to be able to hold your feet off the ground? I think you should straddle me.”

Greg’s right in my face with the camera, and I can imagine millions of viewers roaring with laughter at my expression. Dominique straddles people all the time, I remind myself. I take a deep breath, swing my leg around, and squeeze Will’s hips tight between my thighs, then tuck my feet up under his perfect butt. “Sorry if I’m too heavy,” I say. “Rest whenever you need to.”

“Oh, please,” he says. “My backpack is heavier than you. I got seriously lucky having you as my partner.” I know he’s talking about my weight, but I pretend he might mean it in other ways, too.

Nearby, Martin and Zora are trundling off. Zora’s pretty small, too, but Martin’s face is the color of strawberry jam, and there’s a drop of sweat hanging off the end of his nose. I doubt it’s from exertion—he’s probably as mortified by this as I am.

Will starts crawling, and he’s much faster than I expected. Ten feet into the ride, I give up on protecting my sweaty hands and brace them against his shoulders. “You okay up there?” he calls.

“I’m good.”

I’m slipping to the left a little, and I lean the other way, trying to balance. “Hey,” Will says as I overcorrect, “this might be easier if you lie all the way down on top of me.”

“Lie on top of you?” Oh God.

“Like a piggyback ride, but horizontal.” He stops for a minute and waits for me to reposition myself.

The suggestion kind of makes me feel like my head is going to explode, but Martin and Zora are way ahead of us now, and another cheer goes up behind us, signaling the arrival of a third team. Slowly, I lower myself down until my boobs are pressed flat to Will’s back. I lay my cheek between his shoulder blades, breathing in the heat rising from his skin and the smell of his detergent and fresh sweat. I lock my arms around his torso for balance and wonder if he can feel how fast my heart is beating.

“Comfy?” he asks, and the vibrations of his voice rumble through my whole body.

“Ready when you are,” I say.

Will was right—we’re able to go a lot faster like this. I close my eyes as his body shifts and flexes under mine, and just for a second, I allow myself to imagine pressing this close to him because he wants me there, not because it’s part of a game.

The ride ends way too quickly.

When we hit the finish line, Will lets out a whoop. “All done,” he says, reaching back to pat my thigh. “You can get off now.” I don’t want to, but I do.

Will stands up, brushing the dirt off the knees of his jeans and rotating his wrists. His face is pink with exertion, and it makes him look cuter, if that’s even possible. “Did I hurt you?” I ask him.

“Nah. You’re like a tiny baby koala.” He runs over to the lion dancer, who pulls a pink envelope out of the pocket of his fringed pants and hands it over. Will opens it and reads aloud:

Make your way by cab to the Hotel Majapahit and find the swimming pool. In Java, it is traditional for couples to pay a fee of twenty-five rat tails to the Registrar of Marriage before their wedding. In homage to this, you must search the bottom of the pool for twenty-five rat figurines, which you may trade for your next instructions.

Rat tails? Ew. I make a mental note never to get married in Java.

“That sounds easy,” Will says. “How hard can it be to find twenty-five figurines on the floor of a pool? It’s not like there’s anywhere to hide them.”

We sprint back to the starting line to collect our backpacks and see that two other teams have arrived. Steve is already crawling with Vanessa perched cross-legged in the center of his back like a queen riding an elephant. Troy and Janine are having a little trouble with logistics; they’re about the same height, and she can’t seem to keep her mile-long legs off the ground, no matter how she contorts herself. I still don’t see Samir at all—maybe Miranda and I won’t have to do a thing to knock him out of the competition. Then again, my sister’s not here yet either.

Just as I think that, a taxi comes screeching up to the curb, and Miranda and Aidan pile out with their camera crew. “Hey,” my sister calls. “You guys need a cab? You can have this one.”

“Yeah, thanks.” I give her a hug as Will and our crew squish inside and start talking to the driver about our next destination. “How was your flight?” I ask my sister.

“Miranda, come on,” Aidan calls.

“I gotta go,” she says breathlessly. “I’ll talk to you later.” She blows me a kiss, and then she’s gone.

I slide into the car next to Will feeling a bit let down—seeing my sister in tiny, rushed snippets is almost worse than not seeing her at all. “So, the driver knows where the hotel is?” I ask.

“He nodded and said okay when I showed him the instructions,” Will says.

“I guess we’re good, then.” I pat his head. “Thanks, Lucky Hat.”

But half an hour later, we’re still driving around, and I swear the same droning song has been playing on the cabdriver’s stereo the whole time. I have no idea where the hotel is supposed to be, but I’m starting to feel like we’re going in circles. Did Miranda know how awful this cabbie was when she handed him off to us? I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t try to sabotage me, but I guess I can’t be certain, now that we’re not technically a team. “Didn’t we already pass that store with the blue awning?” I shout to Will over the music.

“I’m not sure. They’re all starting to look the same.” He leans forward. “Excuse me, sir? Hotel Majapahit?”

The guy nods. “Yes, yes.”

“You know where we’re going?”

“Yes.” But then he does a U-turn, which doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

Will leans back and lowers his voice. “What do we do? Should we get out?”

“I don’t know. Do you think we’re really behind?”

“Maybe. But other people might have gotten lost, too.”

We pull up beside another cab, and to my relief, our cabbie yells something out the window to the other driver. I don’t understand any of it, but I assume (and hope and pray) he’s asking for directions. Then he does another U-turn, cranking the wheel so hard Will flies into the sound equipment.

By the time we get to the hotel, we’ve been driving around for an hour, and I’m pretty sure I recognize the auto body shop down the street as one we passed five minutes from the stadium. Martin and Zora sprint out the lobby doors as we go to pull them open, and we spot Troy and Janine getting into a cab down the street. I can’t believe they’ve managed to do two challenges in the time it took us to get here. “This sucks,” I mutter to Will.

We ask the woman behind the front desk where to go, and she signs Greg’s waiver and directs us toward the back of the hotel. The pool area is gorgeous, tiled in a warm terra-cotta color and surrounded by palm trees and potted ferns. We’re the only ones here, except for a producer and a Javanese guy dressed in a sarong and holding a stack of pink envelopes. Cushioned beach chairs under canvas umbrellas line the edge of the pool, and when I see them, my exhaustion hits me like a punch to the face. All I want to do is curl up in the shade and let the soothing sound of the breeze rustling through the palms lull me to sleep.

Will approaches the edge of the pool and looks down into the turquoise-blue water. “Oh God,” he says. “Now I get why this is hard.”

Every single inch of the pool’s floor is covered with tiny animal figurines. There must be thousands of them. From here, I can pick out a few orange tigers, a couple of bright green parrots and frogs, and some white polar bears. But most of the animals are various shades of gray and brown, the same colors as rats.

“Are you kidding?” I say. Then something else occurs to me. “Oh God, I’m not even going to be able to see which ones are rats without my glasses.” In the rush to pack for the race, it never even occurred to me that I’d need to buy prescription goggles.

“Can we tie them to your head somehow, so you can swim with them on?”

“There’s an extra pair of shoelaces in my bag,” I say. “I’ll give it a shot. Why don’t you go ask that guy where the swimsuits are?”

I’ve managed to craft a functional glasses-holding device by the time Will comes back empty-handed. “That looks … good,” he says, then bursts out laughing. “I mean, you also look like the biggest nerd I’ve ever seen.”

“Shut up, this was your idea. Where are the swimsuits?”

“There aren’t any. The producer says we have to swim in whatever we brought.”

I stare at him. “But … I didn’t bring a swimsuit. They said we didn’t have to. Do you have one?”

“Nope.” He slips off his shoes. “Come on, we’re wasting time.”

I can’t very well swim in my jeans, and my cotton shirt will never dry in this humidity. I start pawing furiously through my bag, looking for the sports bra and shorts I know I packed, but I can’t find them. And even if I did, where would I change? Maybe I could go inside the hotel and find a bathroom?

“Claire, come on! What are you doing?” Will says.

“I’m looking for something to swim in, but I can’t—”

And then I glance up, and my brain shuts off.

Will is standing in front of me in nothing but a pair of black boxer briefs. His torso is wiry but subtly muscular, and his smooth, damp skin glints in the Java sunshine. As I try not to stare at the chiseled lines leading down from his hipbones, I hear Isis’s voice in my head: We have some seriously steamy challenges in store for you.

For a second, all I can think is Thank you, God.

And then I think, Millions of people are about to see my lucky smiley-face underwear.

“We’re wasting time,” Will says. “We have to find those rats and get out of here. Just take off your clothes, okay? It’s no big deal.”

Maybe it’s no big deal for him, but it is for me. I hate myself for my nerves and my modesty, and I know I’m wasting precious minutes. But if I’d known coming here would mean that everyone I know would get to see me strip on television, I never would have auditioned. I’m beyond exhausted, there’s a camera in my face, Will is standing in front of me practically naked, and I’m suddenly so overwhelmed that I’m sure I’m going to cry.

“I just … I can’t …,” I say, and my voice comes out so small it’s almost inaudible.

“You can,” Will says firmly. He grabs my shoulders and looks me right in the eyes. “The producers want you to make this into a big deal, but you’re not going to let them win, are you? You’re stronger than they are. You’re going to do this challenge with your head held high, and it’ll be over before you know it. Plus, you have absolutely no reason to be embarrassed about taking your clothes off. Trust me.”

He doesn’t say it in a flirty way, and that’s what makes me believe he really means it. He’s not trying to hit on me; he just thinks it’s an empirical fact that my body is fit to be seen by strangers. I suddenly don’t feel like crying anymore.

“Come on, Dominique,” he says quietly. “Let’s go swimming. Nobody else is looking. It’s just you and me and the water, okay?”

If Natalie and I were watching this show at home and we saw some girl fall behind because she didn’t want to swim in her underwear, we’d be disgusted. Nat would probably throw Cheez-Its at the television and shout, “Suck it up, wimp!” I’m sure none of the other girls will have trouble with this challenge—the sorority sisters are probably dying to get out of their clothes, and Miranda’s always bragging about how she skinny-dipped in some reservoir in France. She won’t expect me to face this challenge head-on, and I picture the respect that will dawn in her eyes when she hears how far her innocent little sister was willing to go to stay in the race. This is my first chance to prove her wrong about me, and I’d be stupid not to take it.

I slip out of my shoes and socks, then turn away from the camera, pull my shirt over my head, and unclip my mike. My bra is dark purple, which won’t be see-through in the water, and I tell myself it’s the same as a bikini. I wriggle out of my jeans and toss them onto a deck chair. And then I join Will at the pool’s edge, holding my head high like Dominique would.

Who cares if I have a shoelace tied around my head like the biggest dork in the world? Who cares if my butt is covered in neon-colored smiley-faces? If I act like I’m the hottest thing ever, like nothing I’m doing is ridiculous or scary, maybe everyone else will be fooled.

“Cute undies,” Will whispers. He takes my hand, his fingers warm and strong as they lace through mine, and we jump into the pool together.

Things are better once I’m in the water. Will scours the deep end for rat figurines while I take the shallow end, and we’re far enough apart that I almost feel like I’m alone. After the exhausting, sweaty day we’ve had, the sensation of cool water against my bare skin is heavenly.

“Got one!” Will calls after a couple minutes. He holds a figurine up above his head.

“Let me see.” I swim over, and he drops it into my hand. It’s about the length of my palm, gray with a long pink tail. As I hand it back, I catch Will sneaking a peek at my chest, just like he did to Miranda at the auditions, and I suddenly like this challenge a lot more.

“Cool,” I say. “Twenty-four to go.”

Will runs his fingers through his spiky, wet hair—he looks different without his lucky hat—and then his hand dips back into the pool and settles on my waist. “You doing okay with this?” he asks, low enough that I’m not sure Terry’s boom microphone can hear him. He’s so close I can feel his breath on my cheek. A little shiver goes through me, and it has nothing to do with the chilly water.

“Yeah,” I whisper back. “Thanks.” He smiles at me, and then he dives back down, and he’s gone. I hope he’s checking out my legs underwater.

My glasses-on-a-string contraption works surprisingly well, and over the course of the next half hour, I find ten rats. Will scrounges up the additional fourteen. As I towel off and struggle into my jeans, Will presents the rats to the man in the sarong and stands there in his dripping boxer briefs, waiting for our next instructions. While he’s turned away, I can’t help staring at the muscles in his smooth, tan back, but then I catch Greg filming my face and smirking, and my cheeks heat up as I turn away. But my embarrassment does nothing to squash my good mood—conquering my fear has invigorated me, and I smile and hum to myself as I pull on my shirt. If I could get through this, maybe the rest of the “seriously steamy challenges” won’t be a problem.

Maybe I’m more ready for this race than I thought.