“Who?” Harper said.

“Keya.”

“Nice?” Phoenix said. “Do you get that she and her bionic knives are going to wipe the floor with you?”

“If you want to get rid of someone who has an unfair edge, why don’t you vote him off the island?” Harper pointed at me. “Did you see Chef JJ and his mom together? Now that’s unfair.”

I didn’t say anything. What could I say? It was true.

“Yeah, but she hates him,” Phoenix said. “I mean, did you see his onions?”

“What if it’s just an act?” Harper said. “Ever think of that? You know, to try to prove she doesn’t favor him when she does?”

“If you think it’s so unfair, how come you won’t do anything about it?”

“Two reasons…” She counted them off on her fingers. “One: I’m not a whiner.”

“I’m not a whiner.” Phoenix jammed his hands in his pockets.

“Whatever you say,” she said. “And two: he’s never going to win.”

“What are you, psychic?” I said. “You don’t know who’s going to win.”

“You’re right. But I can tell who won’t win: the kid who was so nervous, he turned green before the first challenge. That’s the kid who’s going to choke.”

“I’m not a choker.”

“We’ll see,” she said.

Something burned at the back of my throat.

With Harper and Phoenix watching me, I walked out of the greenroom and headed for the men’s bathroom at the end of the hall. There was a bathroom in the greenroom, but I wanted to be someplace I couldn’t hear them talking about me.

I turned on the sink, slurped some water from my hands, then splashed cold water in my face.

The tip of my nose was sore, and it looked red in the mirror. Great. Just what I needed, a pimple right in the middle of my face.

I wet a paper towel and scrubbed at the spot. I don’t know why. I knew I couldn’t scrub it off. And I was just making it redder.

I gave up and went into a stall to use the bathroom. When I came out, Terrence was leaning against a sink looking at his phone.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

“How you feeling?” he asked, not looking up from the screen. “Second day can be rough because that first jolt of adrenaline’s gone.”

Static screeched out of the headset resting around his neck, and he yanked up the mouthpiece. “Hey! Didn’t I tell you to watch it by that amp?” He pulled on the headset and listened. “No, no. Don’t touch it. I’m coming right now…”

Terrence continued giving orders as he gave me a wave and walked out of the bathroom.

It wasn’t until I started washing my hands that I saw the phone.

Terrence must have put it on the shelf above the sinks when he got the call on his walkie. I stood there for a second just looking at it.

Terrence was busy. Who knew how long before he noticed he didn’t have his phone? And what if somebody had taken it by then? The right thing to do was to bring it to the set.