Page 20 of Take Two

‘Fine,’ Mae said.

She wasn’t. Callie had gone on a date with Emma. Actually gone. And not said a word about it to Mae. No talking it through at all. They talkedeverythingthrough. Callie didn’t usually change eyeshadow colour without running it past Mae.

Was that what bothered Mae? That she hadn’t been consulted? That she was out of the loop?

She’d been so certain she understood Callie. That they were tight. Close. Bonded. That Mae was special to Callie and Callie to Mae.

And now Mae was staring at the door Callie had disappeared through, trying to understand. Callie. With a girl. What the hell was happening?

Twelve

Now

‘Callie! Come and watch!’

Callie trudged in, already cringing. Her stepdad sat in his armchair, remote ready to unpause. Hannah was sprawled across the rug, legs kicking in excitement.

‘It’s the assault course one,’ Hannah said, grinning.

‘Great,’ Callie muttered, sinking onto the sofa. This had been such a fucking humiliating day. She’d had no intention to relive it with a viewing. She never watched anything she was in if she didn’t have to. But her mother was insisting on ‘supporting her.’

And there Callie was, on screen, helmet askew, cheeks flushed.

‘Oh, good grief,’ she said. ‘Why was I already sweating?’

Brian tried not to laugh.

Hannah had no such restraint. ‘You look like you’ve been in the shower.’

Then came the first challenge: a sort of oversized obstacle course that Callie remembered as hard but manageable. On screen, though, the editors had leaned into chaos. Fast cuts, comic music, her slipping in the mud in a way she absolutely had not thought was that dramatic/hilarious at the time.

‘That didnothappen like that,’ Callie said, pointing accusingly at the screen.

Brian made a small, sympathetic noise. Christine didn’t even pretend to care about her mortification. ‘Replay that bit.’

‘No!’ Callie grabbed a cushion and held it to her face, peeking over the edge. The slow-motion close-up of her slide appeared anyway. Hannah wheezed with laughter.

‘This is brilliant,’ Hannah said. ‘I’m gonna make a TikTok about you and use this bit.’

‘Don’t make TikToks about me,’ Callie warned weakly.

Hannah laughed like that was a very good joke.

On screen, Callie reached the final obstacle and scrambled over it with a wild, involuntary yell that genuinely did sound like a startled farm animal.

‘Right,’ she said, ‘I’m not watching any more.’

‘You are,’ her mum said, tugging her back down gently. ‘You did brilliantly.’

‘Yeah, you’re hilarious,’ Hannah added.

Her stepdad shot Hannah a look. ‘Enough.’ Then he glanced at Callie. ‘She’s actually very proud of you.’

That familiar, strange feeling cropped up again in Callie. This was her family. Only, it wasn’t. Callie focused very intently on the stitching in the cushion next to her.

The post-challenge interview was next. They’d chosen the bit where she rambled about “letting the mud help you”, which she was fairly sure had made sense at the time but now sounded like nonsense spoken by a woman who’d had her oxygen restricted.

‘Oh, come on,’ she groaned.