When she managed to finally get to sleep, wedged between Sarah M. and Morgan, Sarah M. rolled over and elbowed her hard in the ribs. By that point, she was so exhausted that she couldn’t even muster up a kick back in retaliation. She just snuggled closer to Morgan’s sweaty body and hoped that she could fall back asleep for at least an hour.
What felt like fifteen minutes later, Brinkley was up, chattering excitedly to a sleepy Ky. Brinkley was going on and on about how invigorating it was to wake up with the sunrise. She was convinced that if she and Ky hiked a little ways back to the main trail, they could see the sun rise over the jungle treetops. And it would be “like, totally, breathtaking!”
She just wished that she would make up her mind one way or the other and shut up. But by the time that Brinkley finished her enthusiastic monologue about hiking to see the sunrise, everyone in the shelter was up. Looking worse for wear.
Morgan’s hair was matted and creased against the side of her face. She was only wearing a flimsy tank top because she’d slept on top of her shirt crumpled up in a ball. Sarah M. had tear tracks streaked down her dirty face. From the looks of it, she’d been crying all night long, probably because of her extreme paranoia about their surroundings.
Harper rose to a seated position. Her shoulders were so tight that they were pulled up almost to her ears from sleeping in such a cramped spot all night long. “Ugh. I would kill for a massage right now.”
Morgan glared at her.
“Hey, it’s not like I was hinting. I was just saying that my back is totally wrecked. I’m pretty sure I was sleeping on top of a rock,” Harper whined.
“Oh, yeah, try sleeping on a bed of ants,” Morgan shot back.
She pulled up her tank top to reveal a swollen trail of at least fifty ant bites. It started at her hip and went all the way up her back.
Harper recoiled. “Shit. That’s disgusting. Why didn’t you move or swat them away or something? You’re probably going to get some kind of jungle disease transmitted by insects.”
Morgan smiled back at her sarcastically. “Yeah, why didn’t I think of that? Maybe I didn’t move because you were lying on top of me the entire night.”
“God, don’t try to pin this on me. I wouldn’t have slept so close to you if Sarah wasn’t elbowing me in the face every ten minutes.”
Sarah M. shrugged. She wasn’t taking the bait. Instead, she was focused on sniffling and shivering in the corner of the shelter, most likely a ploy to get attention.
Harper could have cared less. “Hey, any idea what you want to do about food this morning?” she asked Ky as she interrupted the in-depth conversation he was having with Brinkley about the actual color of the sunset. (Was it orange, or was it tangerine?)
Ky grinned back at her. “Great question, sweetheart. I haven’t even gotten that far. Brinkley and I were just talking about how beautiful the sunset was. Have you seen it?”
She snapped, “No, and I don’t really care to. Why don’t you focus on something more important, like finding food for us so that we don’t starve to death out here?”
Ky’s face fell. But at least it got him to stop talking to Brinkley about how amazing it was to see the natural light spectrum in nature. Could she be any more boring?
Harper couldn’t take it anymore. There wasn’t one person that had any clue about what was going on. And you’d think that their “fearless leader”, Ky, would at least have put some thought into finding them food and water. But when she thought more about the so-called shelter he’d made for them the night before, it was obvious he was useless. Totally out of his element.
She stood up then winced in pain as she tried to straighten her back. She was just going to have to take care of this herself. No, she didn’t have a master plan to find food and water for the whole group and then come back like some kind of jungle superhero to save the day. Quite the opposite.
She was going to get the hell out of there and find her way back to camp by herself if it killed her. Which hopefully it wouldn’t, even though it seemed like a pretty big possibility given that she was stranded in the jungle. This was so not what she’d signed up for when she agreed to be on TV.
As she pushed her way through the “door” made of palm fronds, Brinkley called after her, “Hey! Harper, where are you going? If you’re going to find some food, I could come with you!”
She turned back to the group huddled together underneath the dark shadow of the shelter. “No, don’t worry about it. I’ll be right back. I just want to see if there’s any food or water nearby.”
So what if that was a flat-out lie? She didn’t have the energy to explain herself. She didn’t want to have to deal with anyone arguing with her and telling her how unsafe it was to try to find camp by herself in the jungle. Of course she knew that. But she was getting nowhere sleeping on the jungle floor and waiting with a group of useless idiots for some car to be sent out by production, which wasn’t even likely to happen.
There was no guarantee that anyone was going to come find them. Sure, the camera van was still parked in the same spot on the road. She assumed that all the cameramen were sleeping comfortably inside, snuggled in sleeping bags and eating delicious food like grilled cheese sandwiches, Doritos, and Twinkies.
She'd observed their morning routine and figured out that they got up around sunrise, give or take. She had just a few minutes to make her break before the pack of camera hounds was on them again, silently filming and judging their every move.
Just the thought of that disgusting junk food made her mouth water . . . She hadn’t eaten a full meal in years. And since she’d been living off rice for the past week, she was ravenous. That was normally something she could get used to and even learn to enjoy if she was losing weight for a reason, like a part in a music video.
But the fact that she couldn’t have food even if she wanted it was killing her. She could have really used a decent breakfast if she was going to hike for hours through the jungle to get back to camp.
Fuck it. She’d just have to see this like another boot camp class at Spectrum. She had to dig down deep, find her inner warrior, and beat its ass, like her boot camp instructor, Skyler, always screamed at the class.
She set off down the trail that they’d driven up the night before, checking quickly over her shoulder that no cameras were onto her. This shouldn’t be too difficult. All I have to do is trace the road back, and I’ll eventually end up at camp. I just have to pace myself. No big deal.
She must not have been paying enough attention when she was holding on for dear life on their ride into the jungle. She’d been hiking for at least an hour, but she could have sworn that she’d passed the same broken tree on the side of the trail at least twice.
The first time she told herself she was just being paranoid. Channeling the crazy ass Sarah M. It was a big jungle, after all. There were probably tons of broken trees split down the middle on the side of the trail. But after she had passed the tree for a second time, she decided to put her theory to the test. She took off one of her earrings and laid it on one of the roots of the tree.
Sure enough, at least thirty minutes later, she was back at the tree, staring down at her earring . . . exactly where she’d left it. The good news was that she had her three-karat diamond Tiffany earring back. The bad news was that she was lost. In the middle of the jungle. Without any type of communication. Without any clue of how to find the camp or even how to get back to the group.
Chapter 13
Brinkley
Brinkley’s Confessional: I know I’m not supposed to talk to you guys or anything, but can I ask you if you know what’s going on? We’re like totally lost out here in the jungle, and I’m getting really worried because Harper hasn’t come back yet. I know, I know, this is supposed to be a one-on-one interview with the camera, but we really need help. We don’t have a
ny food or any water, and I’m not sure that Production knows we’re out here. I know I’m breaking the rules, but if you could pass this message on . . . Just, please, tell someone we’re here.
Brinkley ran her fingers through her hair, which was a mistake. Her hair was covered with some kind of slime that had hardened into a crust. It must have been dripping down on her all night long through the holes in the shelter roof. She pulled her hand out of her hair and wiped the sap off on her shorts.
“So, like I was saying, I’m really worried about Harper. She said she was going to look for food, but I think that was at least two hours ago. Do you guys think we need to go out and look for her?” Ky looked up from where he was sitting on a rock next to the shelter. The group hadn’t moved since Harper had left hours before. She had wanted to get a head start looking for food and water, but Ky had insisted that she wait for Harper to return.
And he was right. It wasn’t smart to send out two people separately into the jungle. It wasn’t even a good idea to let Harper go by herself, but everyone had been too tired and disoriented that morning to protest. From now on, the group had to stick together. It was the only way they could make sure that production found them and brought them safely back to camp.
“I’m worried, too. But we decided that we all have to stay together. We probably should go look for her, but I don’t want to leave the camera van in case production sends another Jeep up for us.” Ky rubbed her shoulder as he spoke.
Gosh, it was sweet that he was so optimistic. She loved the fact that he didn’t crack under pressure—the polar opposite of Cooper, who was known to have a total meltdown and throw things at the TV if his team lost. She couldn’t even imagine Cooper stranded out here in the wilderness with her. He’d probably get angry and try to hike back to camp by himself.
Suddenly, she had a thought. “Look, I know this may be a long shot, but do think it’s possible that Harper tried to go back to camp by herself? I don’t want to accuse her or anything, but she’s not always a team player . . .”
She shouldn’t have said anything. She shouldn’t have hinted that Harper might have tried to ditch the group.
Morgan cut in, “You know, I really wouldn’t put it past her. But even though Harper is a total selfish bitch, she’s not smart enough to try to figure out how to get back to camp by herself. I’m thinking that she probably got lost when she was looking for food. We really need to go out and look for her. Besides, it would give us the opportunity to look for food and water ourselves. We need to eat something to keep up our strength.”
Sarah M. spoke up. Her voice was high and tinged with hysteria. She raised a shaking finger and pointed it at the three cameramen who stood not ten feet away filming their every move. “If it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t be in all of this trouble!”
Brinkley tried to shush her. As much as she wanted to scream and cry and shake the cameramen to get them to help, she couldn’t. She hissed at Sarah M., “What are you doing? You know you’re breaking the rules! You’re never supposed to talk to the cameramen, and you can’t point or look into the camera. It was in the contract.”
Ky watched Sarah M. with alarm. From where Brinkley sat, his concern wasn’t unfounded. She stared as Sarah M. paced back and forth like a caged animal.
Sarah M. shrieked, causing her to jump back in surprise, “No, you know that they’re all doing this on purpose! They know exactly what’s going on! They could help us, but they don’t want to!”
Brinkley didn’t want to feed into Sarah M.’s panic, but her words did ring true. It was infuriating that the cameramen were there, filming every second of their crisis in the jungle.
The only comfort that she had was that if something went really, really wrong, God forbid, then the cameramen would have to intervene. Like if one of them was attacked by a wild animal or broke their leg, the cameramen would have to help. Wouldn’t they?
Ky tried to talk Sarah M. down, but she wasn’t having it. Her voice kept getting louder and louder, her screams more and more shrill. Within a few minutes, she was having a full on episode. She was crying and shaking and rocking back and forth, yelling about how the crew had turned against them.
Brinkley put her hand on Sarah M.’s shoulder and said to her in a soft, steady voice, the same voice she used to calm down a horse that was out of control, “Hey, why don’t we go look for Harper? She’s probably found food and water by now. So all we have to do is go look for her, and then we’ll be on our way back to camp. We’ll all be safe. Together.”
As she spoke, Sarah M. nodded her head up and down in a slow rhythm. Brinkley kept her eyes locked on Sarah M.’s. Within a few seconds, Sarah M. started nodding with her. She began to calm down and finally stopped screaming.
“So what do you say, Sarah?” Brinkley asked.
“Yes.” Sarah M. spoke so softly that she had to strain to hear her. But a ‘yes’ was all she needed. They had to get away from the shelter and find food and water as soon as possible.
Sarah M. had let the conditions get to her. She was probably suffering from some pretty bad dehydration, like they all were, poor thing. She just needed a little food and a good drink of water, and she’d relax.
“Brinkley’s right,” Ky said, even though she had already used her brilliant horse-whispering skills to calm Sarah M. down.
With Ky’s guidance, the group set out to search for Harper. The only problem was that they had no clue what direction she’d gone in. Ky wasted a good ten minutes looking for clues around the shelter, like a footprint, a scrap of clothing, or a lock of Harper’s hair.
She didn’t want to point out that it seemed improbable that Harper would have lost a lock of her hair or a piece of her clothing just a few feet away from the shelter..
And while searching for footprints was a pretty decent idea, it was a total loss. The area surrounding the shelter had been trampled flat by the three cameramen that had been filming the group nonstop since the Jeep had broken down.
Brinkley decided to intervene. “Hey, I can’t see anything fresh here, Ky. I think we should just head back down the trail the way we came. That makes sense to me. It doesn’t seem like Harper would go off in a new direction. She probably just backtracked to see if she could find some fresh water or something to eat.”
The group trudged in a single-file line back down the trail. They passed the broken down Jeep, the camera van, and the fork in the road where they had split off to drive deeper into the jungle. But there was no sign of Harper. There was no sign of anything, other than a few tree frogs that she was convinced were poisonous.
What was it she’d learned back in biology class? The more brightly colored the frog, the more poisonous they were? Or maybe that had more to do with brightly colored birds being more aggressive. She couldn’t remember for the life of her.
She was about to speak up and ask Ky if he knew anything about poisonous frogs when Sarah M. sank down to the ground in front of her. She rushed to her side, thinking Sarah M. had twisted her ankle.
“Sarah, are you okay?” she asked breathlessly as she tried to lift her to a seated position. Sarah was as responsive as a sack of rocks. She lay like a rag doll in the center of the trail. Brinkley tried to remember her first-aid training from 4H. Even though it was supposed to be used on animals, it would probably work the same for humans.
She grabbed Sarah M.’s wrist and felt for where her pulse should be. There was nothing. But then again, she knew nothing about taking someone’s pulse, so who knew if she was doing it right?
She called out to Ky and Morgan who had hiked about twenty feet ahead. They hadn’t heard Sarah M. collapse because they were so deep in conversation. They had no idea that one of their group members had gone down.
“Guys! Stop! I think it’s an emergency!” Brinkley rasped.
Ky and Morgan looked back in alarm. T
hey raced back down the trail to where she crouched by Sarah M.’s side. Morgan was on her in a flash. She rolled Sarah M. onto her back, opened up the first few buttons of her shirt, and leaned down to listen to her breathing.
Brinkley was impressed. As she saw Morgan go through all of the CPR motions, she started to remember more and more from her 4H first-aid training.
That’s right. You were supposed to check the airway, give breaths, and then pump the chest. A-B-C.
She felt like such an idiot. She couldn’t believe she’d forgotten that, not when something that urgent had happened. She looked up at Ky nervously to see what he thought about her dropping the ball under pressure.
Now he was finally going to see her for who she really was—a timid, shy girl that could never make decisions in a split second. She could never take control of a situation. No, she had to sit back and wait for someone else, someone more competent, someone like Morgan to save the day.
But Ky seemed even more frightened than she felt. He crouched on the other side of Sarah M. as Morgan began breathing into her mouth, pinching her nose tight.
He stuttered, “D-d-do you think she’s going to be okay? I’ve never seen anything like this before, except on TV. This is really, really bad.”
Brinkley put her hand on his arm. “Hey,” she said softly. “Don’t worry about it. I know that she’ll be okay. I bet it’s just because of exhaustion and dehydration. This used to happen to girls at cheerleading camp all the time when they didn’t take a break or drink enough water.”
It wasn’t Ky’s fault that he hadn’t been able to help Sarah M. She was right next to her when she collapsed. She should have done something right away instead of sitting there like a deer in front of headlights, potentially leaving Sarah M. to die.
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