With a splash, Dale and Mallory became the only two contestants left hanging from the slippery monkey bars. They didn’t share much in common, besides their distaste for each other.
Dale was shirtless, muscular — but not absurdly so — and he gritted through the pain in his arms with an attitude like he owned that repurposed playground equipment. Mallory, tall enough to ride any rollercoaster — but barely — hung with her long brown hair in a ponytail. The beauty mark on her right cheek bounced up and down as she smiled through the pain.
They were competing in Realest Games’ weekly endurance competition. The goal was simple: be the last person hanging from the monkey bars. Their fellow contestants had slipped off and splashed into the pool below one by one, as the show’s producers flipped switches to make the challenge more difficult, like turning on and off a rain machine.
As Dale and Mallory hung their heads, they caught the reflection of each other’s eyes in the water below.
“Figures it’s you and me, Dale,” Mallory said. He didn’t respond, and she rolled her eyes. Mallory felt like Dale had been playing above-it-all since the show started.
“Da-le,” she sang, poking her head up to look at him.
“Would you shut up?” he said, adjusting his grip and keeping his head down.
“How are you feeling? For real,” she asked, without pause, “like, how much have you got left in you?”
They’d been hanging for about thirty minutes now.
“I could go for hours,” she bluffed.
He met her gaze and smirked.
“Same,” he said, and he bowed back down.
They spent another couple minutes in silence. The producers turned on the rain again in the hopes that they could wrap this up early and get lunch. The eliminated contestants murmured their predictions on the sidelines. A friend of Mallory’s called out a “You got this, girl!” And Mallory, happy to shout back her appreciation, adjusted her grip as she turned to face her. But a gush of rain rushed between her hand and the bar, and her right arm fell to her side.
The other contestants gasped, and Dale snapped his head up. Mallory winced. She was losing traction with her left hand too, and her left arm screamed for backup. Her whole body screamed for backup. She let that scream out through her mouth as she pulled herself up and threw her right hand back on the bar. Her friend cheered, and everyone on the sidelines clapped. The producers shrugged.
“Nice,” Dale muttered. She smiled at him, but after he looked away, he looked back. She was shaking, either from the cold or the nerves.
“What?” she said. He looked back down.
“Listen, Dale, why don’t we make a deal?” she whispered, “You let me win, and I’ll watch your back this week.”
“Yeah, right,” he replied. He’d heard from the other contestants that she wanted him eliminated more than anyone. And if she won this endurance competition, she’d have the power to send him home almost instantly.
“I’m serious,” she said. The rain continued to fall. “It’s not like you’re letting me win the whole show.”
He laughed.
“What are you trying to win this for anyway?” she moaned.
“The show?”
“Yeah.”
The producers turned off the rain. Droplets clung to Dale and Mallory’s faces.
“My mom’s sick,” he said, “Has been most of my life. Apparently, there’s a cure now. Some procedure.” He whipped his hair out of his face. “But it’s expensive.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, I’m not going to ‘woe-is-me’ but that week we found out,” he squeezed the bar a little tighter, “that was hard.”
They swayed in unison, almost seeing each other again for the first time.
“I think that’s why I’m closed off,” Dale continued.
“So chatty,” Mallory joked. He felt his arms giving out and willed them not to.
“We found out, and my friends just kind of dropped me. Laughed at me, honestly. Cause apparently doing a lemonade stand in the subway is stupid.”
“What? I’ve definitely had at least one subway lemonade.”
“I thought you were from Georgia?”
“Family trip to New York. When I was like nine.”
They both thought back to their tweenage-subway-lemonade-stand past.
“Was your stand by the Met?” she asked.
“Were you wearing a pink hoodie?” Dale asked at the same time, realizing he didn’t even have to. He knew it was her, the only girl who ever bought a lemonade from him.
“Life’s wild,” she said.
“You have no idea how much that meant to me,” he grunted.
“That?” she chuckled or grunted too. She was starting to lose feeling in her arms.
“I mean it didn’t cover a single bill,” he smiled, “but you’re the only person who bought anything, and,” he fixed his grip, “so I bought my mom a bag of chips from the vending machine.”
“That’s nice,” she said, starting to slip. She just couldn’t hold on any longer. The producers perked up and zoomed a camera in on her shaking hands. Her friend begged her to hold on.
“I owe you,” Dale said. She watched him close his eyes and release all the tension and ache in his body. He fell back and down into the pool. Mallory let go right after, falling to cheers and a winning bell.
The Subway Lemonade alliance dominated the rest of the season.
Nathan Vogel is a writer and — brace yourself — Florida man. His work has appeared in Points in Case, Slackjaw, and elsewhere. Follow him @nathanwritesfunny.
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