Ch 2; Lawon's secret(s)
We all recompose and get used to the new environment. Almost instantly things seem a little calmer with Dick gone. ...or maybe it's just my fears sub-siding. Whatever the case, it's time for the next veto.
Hear me out on this... I DON'T want my team winning the HoH. But now that our secret alliance is exposed, there's no reason we shouldn't fight.
Minutes before the HoH, I caught up with Porsche and Cassi separately. I told them very quickly not to win unless Dani or her team can still win. Who knows what the competition's gonna be like, but I figure if we can just stay in the middle until we know for sure one of the vets can win it, we can still lose the competition, but beat Dani's team in case they look like they're about to win.
It goes like this. Cassi figured this part out and told us afterwards, just in case we need it for the future.
Endurance; only falter if all of Dani's team has already fallen or quit.
Speed/agility; keep the amounts to a medium of all players
Trivia; get all the answers right until all of Dani's team are out
Puzzle (visible); stay as close to the same as the fastest person
Puzzle (not visible to other players); go all out
Skill/points; keep the point's right under the leaders
Estimation; make your numbers look like a pattern, but as accurate as possible
Logic; keep it at average skill level
...the estimation idea was mine. It really worked out for me this week!
As for the rest, the key idea is like I said earlier; only pull out and try to win if one of Team Dani is about to win. We have quite a few skills among us, but we've decided to limit our numbers to ONLY the three of us. Keith and Lawon... who knows if their word is good!
Our plan would have worked out great if any one of us were good at endurance! Unfortunately, we were the first three off. But, hey. I think we gave it our best go.
We had to hang upside down from a swinging bar. The backyard looked like a carnival! Me, Cassi, and Porsche got to enjoy caramel corn and being 'have's' for the week.
No, no. Not 'Halves'. Halves would be like saying we're half's, and that's just too much math for my brain. Big brother does this 'have' and 'have not' thing now. They sorta did it before, but instead of forcing the houseguests on 'big brother slop' or making them sleep in some super hard uncomfortable room, they made them eat PB&J all week. ...and they didn't have al cool name for it.
The three of us, plus the next 9 people who fall off get to be have's for the week. Out of the last five, four will be have not's. The last one stand-err... HANGing, win HoH for the week.
Thank god the vets won anyway. Bad news for Dani and her rat pack, cause now Rachel's in the driver's seat!
Through the week it was a battle of the Vets Vs. team Dani. Lawon and Keith quit talking to the three of us about game or an alliance or anything, and I maybe thought it was because one of them slipped for votes or safety or something.
We talked before the nominations, however. Turns out they both thought it was one of us that spilled to Eval.
"Well it wasn't me, and it definitely wasn't Melanie." Cassi explains. "You know, unless she was asking for a death wish..."
"I kept my mouth shut!" I assure them.
"I didn't say anything to anyone either." Porsche nods.
"Keith and I sure as hell didn't." Lawon defends. "So obviously, either someone out of our alliance found out and told him about it, or one of us is lying."
"Well wait a second..." Porsche starts.
God... there's too many possibilities. Too many of those 'wait a second!' moments, where we go back and realize we may have missed something.
"You say we're all telling the truth, but I haven't heard Keith say he didn't talk with Dick." Porsche points out, and we all eye him momentarily.
"I didn't." He says plainly, trying not to get a temper and cause a scene in the have-not room.
Keith was a have not, and Lawon was just in there when we came in. It seemed everyone else was talking game; making deals, kissing butt, all the typical 'don't put me on the block!' type thing. We were alright for now.
"What I want to know is why Dick didn't call your name when he was naming people from our alliance then." Porsche says, still squinting cautiously in his direction.
He shrugs.
Lawon was looking pretty quiet over there in the corner too. They were both suspects, regarding the three of us ladies. Maybe they're the floater type too, along with Shelly and Adam. ...or maybe they're on team Dani?
Kalia pretended to be in an alliance with us to get info and such. Maybe one or both of them are really on her side. But... considering that they haven't had any luck in this game so far... it seems highly unlikely.
So what is it? What are the boys hiding? Maybe they made a deal with Dick that we didn't know about. Maybe they made a deal with the all the vets and we didn't know about it! Maybe they made a deal with the devil! ...oh, wait. I already said Dick.
This whole time, it took me this long to realize; what would Lawon say?
"Maybe there's a twist."
That got Keith's attention, more than it did the others by the looks of it.
"I mean, let's just, play with this idea!" I suggest. "What if-"
"Okay, Melanie? There's a million 'what if's." Cassi sighs. "What if Dick pulled random names out of a hat and said they were in an alliance? What if he stood by the door and heard us talking? What if Dani wasn't the one who voted for him to stay? What if-"
I stop her there. "Exactly! I mean, not the other ones, but with the votes!"
Confusion.
"What if it wasn't Dani who voted Jordan out? What if there's an America's player?" I purpose.
This could lead to many many more 'what if's', but the main point is it would explain things a little better. America's player HAS to vote for whom America picks, and if someone's America's player, and voted separate, then obviously they've had other assignments to keep them busy, probably favoring Dick.
I explain my theory that America favored Dick, and then continue my thought process. "If only we knew for sure who voted Jordan out, we'd know if there's a twist."
"Or not." Lawon shrugs. "I mean, maybe it was just Dani."
"No, I know how Dani plays this game." Porsche contradicts, shaking her head. "She's not the type to really care about people who aren't any use to her anyway."
"Agreed." Cassi says immediately. "And let's be honest; how useful is her father gonna be if he's about to get voted out? We all knew it. Even Dick."
"See, I think Daniele's a rebel. You know, trying to tick off the vets..." Lawon trails.
"That's what I thought too, besides the fact that she owed him." Porsche explains. "But we know Dani is too 'high and mighty' to owe anyone anything, and if you really think about it... if she were to go against the Vets and prove she doesn't need them, wouldn't she TELL her alliance to vote with her?"
...whoa. I never thought of that...
"That's actually a really good point..." I sigh, speaking my mind.
"So are we saying for sure it wasn't Dani?" Keith asks, not catching up with our unraveling conclusion.
"I'm gonna say it's very highly unlikely Dani voted to keep him." I agree.
"Same." Cassi also oblige. "There's a better chance that someone's America's player.
Maybe, there's a shark in the water...
"Whatever the case, those teams are gonna rip each other's heads off." I start, trying to bring things back for now. "We have a while to lay low, not cause any scenes, and NOT talk about who voted Jordan out with ANYONE, okay? Let's think through this and intervene at our regular time, sound like a plan."
They nod. If we all stay here too long it'll start to look suspicious.
I sat in the pink room with Cassi later that same day. It was almost time for the veto, and I was giving her a back rub.
"So I was thinking about this mystery vote..." I start. She and I have a history of being blunt.
"And?" She questions, slightly tensing.
"And I think we have the wrong approach on this."
She sighs. I don't know if she was already relaxed or trying to calm herself down.
"No! Okay, listen... What if it's Lawon?"
"Mel..." She moans, clearly not in the mood for game talk right now. "I don't care if-"
I go on with my sentence sufficient. "He was pretty defensive of the fact that Dani was the one who voted to keep Dick." I explain. "Something just doesn't seem right."
"Too low." She breaths.
"Yeah... like his expectations of this game are suddenly too low!" I agree.
"No..." Cassi trails. "You rubbing too low. The stress is more up in my neck and shoulder region."
"Hey, I'm not a doctor. Gimmi a break."
I sat there and worked on her shoulders for a little longer before she suddenly blurted "Liar!"
"No! I'm seriously not a doctor Cassi!"
"No! Not you, Melanie! I mean, not Melanie you, but I mean- you!" She scrambles. "You're right about Lawon!"
"I am...?" I question.
"About there being something fishy about him." She finishes.
"Oh. Do tell!"
She reminded me of last week's veto. It wasn't so much the competition, but afterwards when Lawon argued with me like crazy! I put Jordan up instead of one of 'Dani's people', and he flipped out on me!
"I admit it would make sense that he'd go tell Dick about the alliance." I debate. "But if he's with the Vets anyway and they all voted for Jordan to stay, what good does it do for him to vote to keep Dick in?"
"Isn't it obvious?" She states, sitting up now. "Lawon's trying to frame Keith!"
Yes. That answers all the oddities so far. The reason Dick didn't call his name, why Lawon speaks for him about 'promises' and 'thinking it was us girls that spilled the secret'. Keith's clueless! He's letting Lawon take over his game, thinking he's safe, when it's pure and obvious sabotage.
It explains all of our 'wait a minutes'. All, except for one.
"Why...?"
We weren't chosen for veto. Did I mention Dani and Dominic are on the block? ...Dani and Dominic are on the block. There. I mentioned it. And you know, we don't really care. We'll be weakling floaters and vote off who the Vets tell us. Unless by some miracle Dani comes off the block AGAIN, we assume she'll be leaving this week.
While we were outside watching, I told Porsche about our memory of last week. She put two and two together, and came up with the same conclusion.
"THAT LIAR!" She whispers.
"I KNOW!" I reply.
"Rachel! You have correctly answered the question!" Brendon shouts "Please pick two more contestants to go against each other!"
"Kalia and Daniele!" She answers instantly.
"We can't talk about game or nothin with Lawon or Keith." Porsche points out.
"Definitely."
It sucks that Kalia won HoH. We were really hoping to get rid of her this week. Rachel now had to pick a replacement nominee, and since she couldn't put up her first choice...
"Keith, please join Dominic on the chopping block."
"CLEARLY!" I drag when Porsche suggests there's something going on with Keith that we don't know about. "And I bet you Lawon know what it is, and is trying to throw him under the bus!"
We sat in the pink room on Cassi's bed. Porsche was on her bed right next to hers.
"Well this is good." Cassi concludes. "We let them go rough it up, and stay under the radar until they've thinned out the numbers."
It wasn't good enough for me.
"I really want to know why Keith stayed hanging like that during the HoH, and WHY Lawon feels he needs to throw him under the bus." I wonder aloud.
"I was thinking that too when it came down to him and Rachel. Why not just fall instead of going on slop for a week...?" Porsche adds.
"I think we just need to let this run its course. Whatever the case, we're done dealing with Lawon or Keith regarding this game. Agreed?" Cassi establishes.
"Sure." I smile.
"No problem."
Keith and Lawon are involved with the Vets. In a very bad manner. It seems like the three of us are the floaters, wading right next to Shelly and Adam. Cassi was absolutely right though, we need to avoid any snooping. Curiosity killed the tiger, after all.
Jordan pulled me to the side during a friendly match of corn hole; her and Jeff against me and Shelly. Jeff was up right now, and Shelly was intensely staring at the board.
"Who are you voting out...?" She asks in hushed tone.
"You tell me." I reply before she steps up for her turn.
I take my throw, and the bag hits Jeff's purple bag and pushes it in. ...oops!
"Aww! Aw, common Mel!" Shelly accuses in a teasing manner. People liked to pick on me in this house, maybe cause I'm just so adorable :3
"Dominic." Jordan states on her walk to the back of the line. "And can you let Porsche know when you talk to her please?"
Jordan doesn't mind talking to me or Cassi, but for whatever reason she and Porsche never really bonded. I'm sure Rachel and Brendon have talked to Adam and Shelly already, so that only leaves us three.
"Three plus three plus four in alliances that I know of, and four wild cards... yep, fourteen. That covers everyone!" Porsche double checks. We all know how reliable my math skills are, after all.
We were sitting in the pink room again, just us two.
"You figure you have the three vote-able Vets, plus the three of us..." I count, referring to votes to evict Dominic.
Porsche holds up six fingers.
"And we really can't know where Shelly and Adam are at, but we can probably say they're voting with the Vets again..."
"Should I count them as positives?" Porsche asks.
"Leave them out right now, just to make sure." I inform, and then continue with my counting. "Keith and Dominic are on the block, so we can't count them, so I guess that's it for for-sure votes for Dominic."
She nods. "As for Keith, Dani and Kalia aren't going to vote out Dominic, so that's two for him."
"Plus Lawon, after the thing with him framing him..." I add
Porsche waits before putting up three fingers.
"So really even if by some miracle Shelly Adam vote to evict Keith..."
"It looks like Dominic is going!" I excite.
Cassi then opens the door and enters the room. "Someone sounds excited." She observes.
"We were doing math." Porsche begins
"Math? Wow Mel, I've never seen you so excited over something that involves numbers and solving!"
"Ey." I point. "Shut up!"
She and Porsche laugh, and give in and join them.
"No seriously, what were you two talking about?" Cassi asks after situating herself.
"I told you! Math!" Porsche repeats. "We were just counting the votes for the week."
"Ohhh, yeah. Aren't you a little too happy Mel?" She asks, with the subtext of 'you're gay'. "What does it matter to us if Keith or Dominic go?"
Porsche didn't really follow, or think much of it.
"Eliminating Dani's alliance?" I guess. "They are our target, aren't they?"
"Yeah. Just checking." She nods and smiles, but looks in my eyes to make sure I'm serious.
...yeah really.
"So these are going to be a slow couple weeks coming up girls..." Porsche says, interrupting the silence. "What are we gonna do?"
"Treadmill, corn hole, cards, improv! Uh... I don't know. It'll like a paid vacation!" I smile. "Except, like, we can't leave, and we get to watch people rip each other's heads off."
"I'm cool with that." Cassi smiles.
"Mel... you and your crazy imagination!" Porsche laughs, then does a small eye roll.
Being HoH makes you safe for the week, but there are countless downsides to being placed in such a position. ...getting candy is not one of these downsides. Anyway my point is, now that I don't have that pressure on my shoulders, everything just seems so un-important.
"And by a vote, of 9 to 2... Keith?" Julie teases.
Keith froze for a second.
"You are safe."
He sighs in relief, and the live audience laughs.
"Dominic, you have been evicted from the big brother house." Julie finalizes.
After standing and hugging Dani for about two years, he finally grabs his bag and heads out the door.
"Finally..." I breathe to myself.
Dani glares at me, and I remember how sensitive of hearing she has.
HoH time! The backyard looks like a sickening replica of my high-school swim team pool.
It was actually a pretty cool competition, minus the math part (Haha! Minus! Hehe!) Each person had a swimming length. It was a standard row, with a giant piece of aquarium glass dividing it in half down the center. This blocked the competitors from going over it, but there was a hole that you could easily fit through to get to the other side. The objective is to grab numbers and mathematical signs like plus, minus, divide, and multiply from the big pile on one side, swim them to the other, and try to make the longest equation that's closest to zero.
It's not like there were any zeros in the pile though, so I couldn't stick with my original plan of placing random numbers and saving a 'times zero' for the end. Also, there were no two of the same number. You can't do 'plus 10 minus 10' or anything like that. The numbers didn't even go that low! They shot up in the hundreds, with about fifty one being the lowest I saw. No round numbers either, not that having them would make it any easier for me anyway.
And you know what? I don't read math language to begin with, so trying to figure out what was what with chlorine water in my eyes didn't help at all! There were numbers all over the bottom too, which I saw Kalia dropping tons of numbers and minus signs. ...or are those divide?
On the other hand, I think I swam faster than even Brendon! My slender figure helped me fit through the hole faster, which probably greatly helped since I don't have big muscle muscles.
My strategy was to hold two or three boards in one hand, use them in a flipper-like manner with a breast-stroke formation to blast me to the hole. A few dolphin kicks get me straight through the hole without any realignment, and then I just threw the numbers on my side!
...I may have had as many numbers and signs on my side as there were on the bottom of the pool, now that I think about it.
But the numbers were too confusing to figure out anyway, as I stated earlier. Way to go big brother! Combine my high point with my rock-bottom weak point. My numbers ended up being some wired ass negative decimal, and since I couldn't have negatives or numbers that weren't whole, ...well clearly I didn't win this HoH.
Not that I was trying to win. But swimming with the boards like that and through the hole and everything and all in all and ect ect? It was a fun edition to my vacation.
"Porsche, your score is too high." Rachel says in her theatrical reading voice. "You have been eliminated from the competition, leaving Jeff and Daniele.
Her number was one of the less-extreme ones compared to some of the others. Me and Jordan were the only ones that turned out with negative decimals. Cassi managed to be the only one with a positive decimal, and the most everyone else's numbers were somewhere in the 100-300 region. Porsche had 20, Brendon had 13, and Jeff had 2.
Rachel was adding up Daniele's final score on the big calculator...
"Daniele, your final score totals to 2. Since your score is higher, you have won head of Household." Rachel reads flatly, without a tinge of excitement in her voice.
"YES!" Daniele cheers and jumps for joy, along with her partner in crime Kalia.
We all sort of fake smiled, besides Rachel, who we all know is going up for getting rid of Dominic.