All right. So...Dubai. I really want to go there, but I haven't managed to yet. Thanks for reviewing, The Phenomenal Flair, Nicky Haugh, Pokemon FTW, yeezynight14, Bloodylilcorpse and Guest D.

Even though we had the whole morning in Hawaii, no one got up to go swimming early, apart from maybe some of the really sporty ones. By the time I got up, most of the others were either still asleep or just emerging.

Sky actually had to wake me. She was already dressed by the time she got me up, so I could help pack up the tent and things, but she admitted that she'd slept later than usual. "If I was on my usual schedule, I probably would've gone for a swim," she said, looking a bit embarassed at admitting she hadn't, "But, you know, on a show like this where we're constantly changing timezones..."

I nodded. "Maybe we'll be lucky and our next location will be only five hours out of Hawaii, not thirteen!" I joked (Though I hadn't kept track of time differences before, I hadn't felt affected by them too much thus far).

Still, despite the faraway place, I got really excited when I heard where we were going. "We're going to...Du-by-eh?" Brody read out loud.

"Dubai?" I whispered to Sky as we got our travel tip. She gave a nod.

We were lucky enough to get on the first flight, but then again, it wasn't so surprising, considering we'd made it into second place. However, second place was still the first loser as far as the show was concerned. The Surfer Dudes got to have an awesome time on the flight in the best First Class section in the world. As for us, we had to sit a couple of rows behind the section, hearing their excited cheers and whoops.

But there was at least one team who was more envious than anyone else. They were right in front of us, so we heard it all.

"That hot tub should be ours!" Jacques complained. "How did we place fourth?"

Josee was cross, too. She saw herself as a failure, for not even attaining third place, or as she referred to it, "bronze". Then she took out a little object. I couldn't see it properly, but I heard Jacques say "Josee's replaced her lucky rabbit's foot with a pretty rock. Oh, our luck is bound to improve!"

Josee sounded very ominous, yet excited as she spoke again. "Forged from fire, this lava rock embodies my fiery determination to win!" Then, she gave the most evil cackle I'd ever heard outside of a cartoon. No, seriously!

"You mean our determination to win, right?" Jacques reminded her.
"Huh?" Josee's voice seemed back to normal. "Oh yeah, sure."

Well, I'd heard enough. It was time to do a good deed. I unbuckled my seatbelt and went over. "Um, did I just hear something about a lava rock? Because if you got it from Hawaii, you're probably going to have to get used to fourth place, because that thing won't let you win."

Josee stared at me coldly. "What are you talking about?"

I shrugged. "Just that taking lava rocks from their volcano's habitat is major bad luck. The only way you can get back in the running for the million dollars is to take it back."

But what a surprise, neither of them listened to me. Not even a multitude of bags falling on Jacques from the overhead lockers convinced them. In the end I gave up and flopped back down on my seat next to Sky.

It looked like my attempt to help out another team had helped, though. Sky was actually giving me a look that had no dislike in it. "That was a nice thing for you to do, Julie." she remarked, a slight note of surprise in her voice.

I shrugged. "Well, nice or not, it didn't work. Unless they come to their senses quickly, they'll end up coming in last during an elimination round and then they'll have lost their chance. The curse has already started – fourth is their lowest placing yet!"

The flight was pretty long, so I took a few walks. Pretty early on, I noticed Noah and Emma near the back, talking, so I went to hang out with their partners.

"What's going on?" I asked, interested.

"We were just talking about getting those two together." Kitty told me, pointing over to the other two.

"We don't think it's gonna be easy, but we can definitely do it!" Owen said excitedly.

"Well, let me know if I can help." I grinned. "I tried to make sure Shawn and Jasmine knew the other liked them on my last show. And speaking of, if either of you want me to hook you up with someone, just let me know and I'll see if I can help." As I spoke, I wondered if Owen was in a relationship or not. He had been for a while, but then he got dumped. I mean, there was a whole song about it.

As I thought that, Owen spoke. "Well, I'm fine. I got back with Izzy after she went back to being...well, Izzy."
I smiled again. "That's really good news! I'd wondered if that happened after the whole Brainzilla thing. I figured that you'd change your mind about breaking up with her. She's worth it, right?"

Owen gave a chuckle. "Totally right!"

Kitty giggled, too. "By the way," she added, "It sounds to me as if you do have some matchmaking to do, remember?"

I didn't know if Owen knew about the Best Friends, so I said "Oh, yeah, so I do! But it's going to take getting it out in the open to make anything happen."

After the seventeen hours of sleeping, wandering around and watching movies, we finally arrived and got to the Don Box. I pushed the button and Sky pulled out the tip.

"Serve or Squeegee." she read. "We either have to each return a tennis serve from a machine or scrub a whole column of windows. We'll have to wait in line for turns to return the serves, but it's only one from each of us."

"Yeah...well, it'll save us the most time if we just have to return one serve." I mused out loud. "I mean, for me, at least. How are you at tennis?"

"Well, all right." Sky said. "It's not my favourite sport, but I can return most serves."

Well, the Tennis Menace was not what we were expecting. It took us several tries to finish it – no one had finished by the time the other teams arrived, and even then, half the teams switched. In fact, the only reason the twins hadn't switched was because they couldn't stand the sound of the sponge on windows.

As it was, they actually managed to return both their serves before anyone else. Jacques had done a perfect serve, but Josee's couldn't have been much worse, so they switched.

We were second to return serves. Sky went up first, holding the racket tightly. Then she swung, and the ball bounced off her racket like lightning.

For me, I almost lost my grip on the thing, I swung so fast, but it happened. The racket stayed in my hand, and the ball bounced.

Then, we finally were told to take a taxi to a golden mall where we'd find the Chill Zone.

After we got out of the taxi, I stopped for a second at a store where a familiar face grinned out of tons of little gold statues.

"Look!" I nudged Sky. "Gilded Chris statues! I have got to find Sierra's blog when I get home so she can hear about this – she said on the show her mom has a major crush – she'll probably fly straight here just to get one!"

As it was, we ended up in sixth place. Not too bad of a placing, I guess – we were beaten by the Sisters, Reality TV Pros, Adversity Twins, Ice Dancers and Father and Son (how did they get ahead of us?). But the minute I was there, I could tell there had been some major screaming and throwing stuff earlier. Gold shards were all over the floor.

After Don announced our placing, that was when it happened. Josee came straight up to me and said breathlessly "How do we break the lava rock curse?"

I frowned. "What? You didn't believe me before. Why now?"

"Because we made fourth place again – you were right!" Josee said. "Just tell me!"

I shrugged. "I think we've got a free day here. You can use that to take it back to Hawaii. But it does run the risk of you not getting to wherever we're supposed to go next."

We weren't actually going to be setting off until early evening the next day, but there were still more teams to come before we could leave the Chill Zone.

When the Best Friends arrive, Don told them "You're the last to arrive." Both looked dismayed, until "My mistake! Here come Mom and Daughter now! You are still in the race!"

In walked the last team. "Hey hey hey, look who got their bling on!" Taylor announced as they stepped onto the carpet. Yeah, you got that. They didn't check in because...they'd gone shopping! I guess they'd made up their fight after the whole Taylor-never-won-anything...uh, thing.

Oh well. I was glad to have them out of the race. I mean, I chose to ask Sky to race with me instead of Amy. Taylor was almost as annoying.

Sorry, I know I'm taking ages with the chapters. I'm not very inspired at the moment. And I know it seems like I'm not doing much with the kept teams, but I do have plans for them next episode, so never fear!