The Last One Read Online Free

own justification onto this smile. Those who do not like Tracker for reasons of race or bearing—they’ve seen nothing of him yet other than his standing here, so their dislike can be only bias—will think cockiness. A particularly strident off-site producer will see this shot and think with glee: He looks evil.
    Tracker is not evil, and his confidence is well deserved. He has overcome challenges far more ominous than a quick, shallow river, and much more natural than what waits for him on the far side of the river: the first constructed Challenge.

    Across the river is also where Tracker will meet his eleven competitors for the first time. He knows there will be teamwork required, but he doesn’t want to think of the others as anything but competitors. He said as much in a pre-competition confessional, along with much else, but as the strongest contestant he will not be not allowed a sympathetic motive. Tracker’s because does not make the cut, and the clip inserted into this shot will be of him steely eyed before a white wall, saying only, “I’m not here for the experience. I’m here to win.”
    His strategy is simple: Be better than the others.
    Tracker lingers; the shot travels over the rushing current and through thickly leafed branches to where Waitress stares at a compass. She is dressed in black yoga pants and a neon-green sports bra that sets off the red hair falling in loose curls past her shoulders. A violet bandana is tied around her neck like a scarf. She’s nearly six feet tall and slender. Her waist is miniscule—“It’s remarkable her guts fit inside,” a troll will scoff online. Her face is long and pale, her complexion smoothed by a thick layer of SPF-20 foundation. Her eye shadow matches her bra, and glitters.
    Waitress does not have to cross the river, she only has to use the compass to find her way through the woods. For her, this is a challenge, and the shot conveys as much: Waitress stands, her curls framing her face as she turns in a circle and studies the unfamiliar tool. She bites her bottom lip, partly because she’s confused and partly because she thinks that doing so makes her look sexy.
    “Is the red or the white end north?” she asks. She’s been told to narrate her thoughts, and she will do this. Often.
    Waitress’s secret, one viewers will not be told, is that she never submitted an application. She was recruited. The men in charge wanted an attractive but essentially useless woman, a redhead if possible, since they already had chosen two brunettes and a blonde—not platinum blond, but blond enough, the kind of hair that would lighten in the sun. Yes, they thought; a beautiful redhead would round out the cast.
    “Okay,” says Waitress. “The red end is pointier. That has to be north.” She turns in a circle, biting her lip again. The needle settles at N. “And I need to go…southeast.” And though the points of the compass are clearly labeled before her, she says in a singsong voice, “Never eat shredded wheat.”

    She begins walking due south, then mutters the mnemonic again and angles herself to the right. After a few steps, she stops. “Wait,” she says. She looks at the compass, lets the needle settle, then turns left. Finally, she walks in the correct direction. She laughs a little and says, “This isn’t so hard.”
    Waitress knows she is unlikely to win, but she’s not here to win. She’s here to make an impression—on the producers, on the viewers, on anyone. Yes, she’s a full-time server at a tapas restaurant, but she starred in a candy commercial when she was six and considers herself an actress first, a model second, and a waitress third. Walking among the trees, she has a thought she will not speak: This is bound to be her big break.
    Back at the river, Tracker decides the rock is a relatively minor hazard, and that the known obstacle is better than the unknown. He springs. The editor will slow the footage, as though this were a nature