Me, I was content to people-watch and chat with Abby. People came up and slowly introduced themselves, but I let Brodie be the chatty, friendly one. That was what he was good at. The others were nice enough, though, and I chatted with all of them while we waited for our flight. The strong girl team? I learned Summer and Polly were Olympic beach volleyball players. The strong guy team, Joel and Derron, were vets from Afghanistan. Hal and Stefan were the other guy team, both TV weathermen and married to each other.
And after Brodie had gotten to know everyone, he zoomed right back to Tesla's side. She seemed to take all his attention with a pleasant smile, and I couldn't tell if she was just tolerating Brodie, or if she was genuinely interested in him.
Her bandmate was sitting right there, so it was awkward for me to watch Brodie hit on her right in front of him. Were Tesla and Liam in a relationship? I guessed not, but I had no way of knowing. He glanced over at Tesla and Brodie occasionally, but seemed bored by them.
Actually, he seemed bored by pretty much everything – cameras, teams, airport, you name it. He ignored everyone. He just put a pair of earbuds in, listened to music, and stared out the window. I thought I was kind of unfriendly, but out of all the racers, he was the only one that hadn't come by to say hello.
And I certainly wasn't about to go over and get friendly with him.
"Flight 1222 to Reykjavik, now boarding," an airline attendant said in a smooth voice, interrupting the hum of voices.
I yawned, remaining in my seat as everyone else leapt to their feet. I had never understood the rush to get onto the plane. After all, seats were assigned. It wasn't like shoving to the front of the line changed your priority. So I sat and waited for the crowd to disperse and for Brodie to reappear.
After a few minutes, the sea of legs cleared and I noticed only two people still sat, waiting for the congested crowd to disperse. Me, and Liam. I ignored him, getting to my feet and shrugging back on my heavy backpack.
Brodie returned to my side in a cheery mood. "Isn't this awesome? We're on our way to our first destination!"
"It's pretty exciting." I studied my brother as we got to the back of the line. Tesla had moved to Liam's side and was nudging him with one of her metal-covered boots. "You didn't make an alliance with them, did you?"
"Tesla and I talked about it," Brodie told me. "They're in second place, so it'd be smart."
"Brodie Short," I hissed at him. "Did you or did you not see that guitar-playing a**hole knock me to the ground and steal second place from me?"
"I’m sure it was a mistake," Brodie said easily. My brother had zero killer instinct. "And Tesla told me that Liam was pretty remorseful about it."
"So remorseful he didn't even bother to come over and apologize? Oh, I'm sure he's just dripping with regret," I snapped back to him.
"He can hear you," Brodie told me in a low voice.
I glanced over and saw both Tesla and Liam staring in my direction. Tesla seemed to be amused, but Liam was impossible to read. For some reason, that just made me more irritated. "I know they're listening," I said, in an even louder voice. "And in case they didn't catch it all, I said, the guitar-playing a**hole knocked me to the ground and stole second place."
I was so loud everyone turned and stared. The look Liam shot my way could have withered foliage. And cameras swung in my direction.
Brodie shushed me again.
I elbowed him. "Why are you taking their side? I'm your partner!"
"You're my sister," Brodie said, and reached out to rub a noogie in my blonde pigtails.
I yelped and backed away from him.
"You're also holding up the line," Tesla called from the back.
I danced away from Brodie's grasp and we pushed forward with our passports and tickets.
The plane was a big one, though because of the rules of the game, we couldn't fly anything but coach. Since we had last-minute bookings, we ended up with whatever seats were available – which meant the ones that no one else wanted. Single seats spread all over the plane, and middle seats.
Brodie and I were split apart. Brodie was somewhere in the back, and I was a middle seat towards the middle of the plane. I stuffed my enormous backpack into one of the overhead compartments and sat in my seat, twitching nervously at the sight of the two empty seats next to me. Maybe neither one would be filled and I could relax on the flight. It was going to be a long one - over ten hours in the air.
An elderly man came and sat in the aisle seat, squashing my hopes of having my small row to myself. I closed my eyes and rested my head on the headrest of my seat while waiting for the plane to take off as people milled around us, pushing bags into overhead bins and getting comfortable.
Just as I started to get comfortable, the man to my left got up to let someone else in. I blinked awake, and looked up in horror at Liam's unsmiling face.
He pointed at the empty window seat next to me. "That's the guitar-playing a**hole's seat."
I ground my teeth and said nothing. Instead, I simply got out of the row and gestured for him to enter. He did, and I could immediately tell that it was going to be an issue. For one, Liam was tall. His arms and legs barely fit into the small, squeezed seat, and he practically oozed into my middle seat. Nostrils flaring with irritation, I ignored it. He didn't want to sit next to me, either, after all.
I sat back down in my seat with a thump and buckled in.
Next to me, Liam stretched, and his elbow practically jostled me in the side. To my left, the elderly man slid his shoes off, then proceeded to unbutton his pants. After they were undone, he gave a sigh of pleasure and leaned back, as if to go to sleep.
And the damn plane hadn't even taken off yet.
It was going to be a long, long flight.
Once we landed in Keflavik Airport, the airport was a mess of running, shoving people. Brightly-colored shirts paired up as soon as they got off the plane and ran through the terminal, heading for the charter flight that would take us to Greenland. Brodie and I had to wait as the Rednecks and the Rockers got on the first flight out, thanks to their footballs.
We were stuck in the back of the pack with Myrna and Fred, the elderly couple who’d had the misfortune to get the other high number. They were nice enough, but conversation was kind of awkward, and Brodie wasn't his normal super-chatty self. I knew why - he didn't see them as someone worth allying with. He didn't think they were strong. And I wasn't the social one on our team, so it was a long wait.
Eventually, our chartered flight arrived, and we took the tiny airplane to Kulusuk in Greenland. As soon as we landed, Brodie shoved my backpack in my hands and we dashed down the stairs, pushing ahead of Myrna and Fred. I tried not to feel bad - it was a race, after all. We'd gotten our coats out while the flight was going, and had zipped up in anticipation of the cold weather.
The airport was ridiculously small, the tarmac covered with snow. The terminal itself seemed about the size of a one-room gymnasium. Directly behind it, steep mountains rose. From the other side, the icy water of the bay rippled.
Standing in front of the terminal was a man in an enormous fur-lined parka, holding a flag emblazoned with The World Races logo and standing on a World Games mat. Camera crews swarmed the area, filming as we tromped down the steps of the airplane and crossed the snowy tarmac. It was bitterly cold, the wintry breeze biting through the layers of clothing that I wore.
"Come on, Katy," Brodie encouraged, racing ahead of me despite the snow and ice on the tarmac. I followed at a slower pace, holding onto my enormous backpack. I wasn’t as big as Brodie, and it was a hefty load for someone of my stature to carry. Not that my brother noticed - he dashed to the race station ahead of me and then shot me impatient looks until I caught up.
As soon as I stepped onto the mat, the man in the coat held out a disk. "Welcome to Kulusuk," he said, his accent thick. He smiled, his weathered face friendly, and I smiled back.
Brodie snatched the disk from him and raced to the side so he could study it, turning away.
I gave the man an embarrassed look, thanked him, and then followed Brodie. We'd have to have a talk about manners after this leg was done. There was playing a game, and then there was just flat-out rude.
Brodie was reading the writing on the back of the disk without me. I peered over his shoulder, but couldn’t see anything, so I poked my brother in the side. “Hello, partner over here?”
He glanced at me, then finished reading the disk and handed it to me reluctantly. The front was the logo of The World Races, a bright grid in the shape of a globe and the name of the show. I flipped it over and read it aloud. "Go to the sled rentals in Kulusuk—“
Brodie jogged in place, clearly ready to get going. “Are you done? Come on. You can read it on the way there.”
I ignored him and kept reading. “—You'll receive a map and a dog team. From there, drive your dog sled out to the marked location on the map. Individual challenges will follow.” I squinted up at the snow-covered mountains nearby. “A dog sled, huh? Should be interesting."
"Should be fun," Brodie said, with a huge grin on his face. "Come on!"
We didn't see a taxi waiting for us, so we hiked into town. It wasn't far from the airport, though the ground was rocky and covered with snow. The village spread out before us like something from a movie, and I was fascinated. This was really damn cool.
"Come on, Katy," Brodie yelled back at me, trotting a good distance ahead. "This is a race!"
I gritted my teeth. Okay. Brodie kind of sucked as a partner. He acted like I was a liability instead of his sister. I knew my brother was competitive, but this was getting annoying. "I'm coming," I yelled back at him.
When we found the dog sled place, we didn't see any other teams. Oh no. That was a bad sign. There were only two sleds left, which meant Myrna and Fred were the only ones behind us. I tried not to worry as an attendant led us to our dogsled and began to explain how to sit on it and how to drive, and how to control the dogs. He'd be riding with us, he explained, but both Brodie and I would have to drive the sled for a distance.
I sat on the sled first, while Brodie volunteered to drive us out of town.
"How far are we behind the other teams?" Brodie asked immediately.
"Bout a half hour," the man told us. "Some of them had trouble with their dogs."
I tried not to look excited at that. Brodie didn't even try. "Hold on," he called out, getting in the musher's spot on the sled as I clung to the blankets piled onto me. "We're going to try and make up some time." He turned to face the dogs. "MUSH!"
The sled leapt to life and I clung to my seat, praying Brodie wouldn’t get us killed.
We passed two teams on the way to the next location.
One had stopped to look at their map, and the other was struggling with the sled itself. Brodie whooped and hollered at the sight, drawing their attention with his loud cheers. I cringed again at my brother's thoughtlessness. The way he was acting was totally going to bite us in the ass if he wasn't careful.
We switched out drivers at the halfway point, and I clung to the sled as the dogs leapt to action. The other teams were now behind us - following us, Brodie told me - but it didn't matter as long as they were behind. I mushed the hell out of the dogs, leaning in to the sled to give us as much advantage as possible. The cold wind whipped at my face, chapping it underneath the goggles the race had given us, but I didn't care. We were catching up!