Oh, yes, I remember where we're going next. France, yay! Thanks for reviewing, Nicky Haugh.

Sierra spent the next flight crying her eyes out. Cody had voted to have her out of the game, and she was heartbroken. The only people spared were DJ and Lindsay. Chris had apparently kicked Tyler out of First Class after Lindsay had invited him up there.

And then, during our flight, Izzy went to the cockpit, and suddenly, the plane began jolting all over the place. I curled into a little ball, leaning against the wall to steady myself, since the seatbelts were useless.

In a brief moment of peace, I heard Heather ask smugly "Having some trouble controlling your team, Alejandro?"

There was a pause, before Alejandro replied "Your attempts to insult my team are...cute."

"Whatever." was Heather's reply. "My girl power team is going to win. We don't get distracted by anything, especially boys."

When I looked up again, Heather was dragging a blubbing Sierra off by her ponytail. Obviously someone who was distracted by a boy. In fact, Cody had spent the plane ride hiding in the luggage hold, so that he didn't have to feel guilty about making Sierra cry.

Suddenly, Izzy's voice, in a decent Chef imitation came over the intercom. "Ahem, this is your captain speaking. If you'll look out your window, you'll get to see what happens when a plane does a somersault!"

Chef's voice came over the intercom. "Gimme that! Y'all might wanna hang on to something heavy."

Me and pretty much every guy in economy class clung to Owen.

We landed in a canal in Paris. Our only stop? The Louvre. Lindsay wanted one thing, to go shopping and find clothes for both herself and Tyler, oblivious to her boyfriend's more romantically-orientated approach to the City of Love.

Not to mention, when Tyler made his presence known to her, Lindsay narrowed her eyes and asked "Are you sure that's you? Cause you look slightly different in my head."

"Everything looks slightly different in her head." Alejandro muttered to Noah and I, making him nod and me laugh.

As usual, Chris had no time for any kind of sightseeing or shopping. "The first challenge is about to start. Everyone inside the Louvre!" He pronounced it "luve".

"I think you mean loo-vuh." Courtney pronounced.

"Whatever. Go already!"

Our challenge was pretty interesting. There were statue pieces hidden all over the museum. Each team had to find them, and then go to the courtyard and assemble them. Team Victory had the Thinker, Team Amazon had the statue of David, and we had the Venus de Milo. Oh yeah, and we had motivation. For us it was a yeti. Team Amazon had a bear with a chainsaw, and Team Victory had...
"Awww, look, DJ!" gushed Lindsay. "It's that baby seal you accidentally ran over in the Yukon!" And it looked majorly pissed. DJ was so scared he jumped into Lindsay's arms. Now that was a sight, tall muscular DJ held up by model-thin, weak Lindsay.

I tried to look at all the paintings we passed to get ideas. Luckily, Noah got the yeti off our back straight off. "Watch this, totally works on my dog." He held up an imaginary ball, and the yeti started acting like a dog. "Who wants the ball? Who wants it? You want it, don't you? Go get it!" He threw the imaginary ball, and the yeti followed it.

"Well played, Noah." Alejandro approved. "Now onwards!"

We were probably one of the least focused teams. I wanted to look at the artwork and only found one piece of the statue, and Izzy was even worse. She did nothing but mess around until Alejandro told her we were playing Statue Piece Bingo and Chef was winning. "We can't have that, can we?" Actually, then she ran off.

Our last piece, Venus' head, was behind a ton of lasers.

Tyler originally offered to get through them. "Guess who was captain of his gymastics team in Kinder Gym! It's Tyler time!" Then he knocked himself out running into a marble pillar.

Alejandro glanced at each of us. Then he said "Noah, you will have to move through the lasers. Owen's girth and my muscled chest will not fit. And no offence to you, Stephanie, but I've seen you in the physical challenges -"

"And I get as klutzy as Tyler under pressure." I finished. "None taken." I was glad Tyler wasn't awake to hear that comment. For an athlete who was so non-athletic, he had a ridiculous amount of confidence in his skills.

"Fine, let's just get this done." Noah said. "I don't think my imaginary ball trick will stop the yeti a second time." He mimed throwing again, and Izzy immediately ran off yelling "Oh, a ball! I'll get it, I'll get it!"

As Noah tried to get through, a voice filtered through intercoms, and music played. I didn't recognize the voice for a moment, because it was so pretty. "I love Paris in the springtime, j'taime Paris in the fall,

It's the city of love in the summer, but now it's just a bummer, cause,

Cody broke my heart and..." I realized after that part that it was Sierra's voice, doing the song for the episode.

We did have to join in, partially, after Sierra made her way through a verse about how boys would just break your heart, Owen spoke to Noah in rhythm. "Oui, my friend, you are going to make it through!"

"Um, no, my friend, that thing just burned off my shoe." Noah replied.

"Oui, my friend, you will..." I sang. "Get the piece and we'll win this one and win the next and fly First Class and make the merge and win the mil and then spend!"

After I was done, I heard Sierra singing again. "Oui, my friends, all I did was love him true!..." The song wasn't interesting, really. It was just Sierra moping because Cody tried to vote her off. Look, did I care when anyone on this show voted for me, even if it was someone I liked?

We got to the courtyard at the same time as Team Amazon, and then we ended up getting our pieces mixed up with theirs.

"You did that on purpose!" Heather accused.

"You think we want our pieces mixed up?" I scowled. "I don't know what your problem is with our team – I know it's us, you don't pick on Team Victory – but cut it out, it's getting old." I was lying – I knew she had some kind of rivalry thing going on with Alejandro and therefore, treated him and the whole team like crap.

We only came second in the end, very close to Team Amazon and far ahead of Team Victory, who ended up getting their statue shattered after Lindsay had done most of the work and nearly finished the Thinker alone.

I won't go through what Lindsay and DJ actually did to choose who went home. DJ wanted to quit, but Chris wasn't having any. He made both of them pick a model and design an outfit. Then he, Heather and Owen would judge. The person with the worst design would be eliminated. Lindsay actually tried and picked Tyler, while DJ chose Gwen.

"Nothing personal, but I hate models." Gwen scowled. "And getting stared at."

"You'll be perfect." DJ smiled.

At that moment, Cody led a still crying Sierra back, saying he didn't know how to stop her crying. Eventually, Cody just lost his temper and yelled "Enough! Sierra, put a sock in it!" Sierra was so surprised at gentle, quiet Cody yelling that she actually stopped.

Cody told her straight that he hated the way things had been going that day, mainly because she'd stopped invading his personal space. He said he found it annoying, but the crying was what he couldn't cope with. "I want things back to the way they were. Kind of how I'd prefer a slap to the face to a kick to the chestnuts-"

Sierra threw her arms around him. "Shut up! Just shut up!" she said in her old exuberant tone. "You had me at 'sock'!"

I felt sorry for Tyler when he showed off Lindsay's design. His hair and clothes were horrendous. Noah and Alejandro took one look at him and burst out laughing. Then Tyler fell off the runway.

DJ's design wasn't a proper design. Gwen came out in one of his shirts and hats, wearing her usual outfit underneath. Then she tossed the shirt off and walked away, scowling.

And the judges' decisions? They all agreed that DJ's shirt was perfect, and Lindsay's design was a mess.

Poor DJ! "What? I won? NOOOOO!"

I didn't say a proper goodbye to Lindsay, mainly because she wanted to spend her majority of the screentime left on the episode saying goodbye to Tyler. But I was going to miss her. Althought I got to know her a little on the second season, just like on the first, I'd missed the chance to appreciate her presence on a season, although Bart had confided to me that he thought she was "a babe", even though she was three years too old for him and taken.

I was still having trouble talking to Alejandro after I'd known he'd seen the picture I'd drawn. I just had to hope the tension would ease soon and that he hadn't thought much of the picture, anyway. But I was dying to ask, just to clear things up.

Finally, about half an hour after we were back in the air, I got up the courage to ask the question. But I couldn't do it with DJ and our teammates there, so I took a deep breath and said "Alejandro? Could I talk to you for a second? Somewhere quieter?"

He was pretty okay with that, so we went to the common area, since no one was there at that moment. "So, you saw the picture in my sketchbook." I said. "I just wanted to..." I trailed off.

Alejandro just gave me his usual smile – calm and charming. "Are you asking me whether I caught the implications of the picture?" he asked calmly. "I was very impressed, actually. I don't know anyone else of our age who can capture a likeness so accurately."

"I didn't mean anything to do with either of us, specifically." I began to babble. "It's just, with that eyepatch, you sort of had this look like one of those sort of pirates who are extremely charming and likable in movies, that would be much better suitors for their female captives than those upper-class fiancees they always have..."

Alejandro chuckled. "I assume that I should take that as a compliment." he said, his green eyes locked with mine. "Stephanie, don't assume the worst. The drawing shouldn't affect any kind of friendship we have. I don't think of you any differently, except that I now know how talented you are."

I fought not to blush, although it wouldn't show up with the foundation I'd used to make my skin contrast against my clothes. "Thanks." I mumbled. "So...does that mean...we're friends?"

"I consider us friends." Alejandro answered. "Do you?"

I managed a smile. "I guess."

Yeah, yeah, we all know that last thing about being friends was a total lie, but Stephanie doesn't! I write by the universe of the game, and because Stephanie's approach to the game isn't as sneaky as most antagonists', she'll probably take some time to figure it out.