The Holdout

by Laurel Osterkamp

  I clench my torch tightly, dig my toes into the sand as I walk, and make my whisper fierce. “Joel’s been married for fifteen years! But what if he was gay? That’s not a reason to vote him out!”

  “I know that, but this is Bailey we’re talking about. He’s a military guy from a different generation.” Grant steps on a small rock and falters for a moment, but he quickly self-corrects. “We’re not going to change his mind, and I don’t want to be political. I’m trying to keep our alliance together so one of us can win.”

  I don’t respond. I set my face into a scowl and stare straight ahead. Grant taps my shoulder. “Robbie, you know I’m right.”

  I whip my head toward Grant. “Don’t call me Robbie.”

  Grant raises his fingers from my shoulder as if I’m a hot stove he accidentally touched, and I’m cursing myself in the same moment that I’m letting it happen. I try so hard to betray nothing, yet this time I couldn’t help but let my anger out. Only Ian calls me Robbie. Ian, who is a great big brother when he isn’t talking down to me. Ian, who is sweet and strong, and who never mentions how hard it must have been to come out during the early 90s in suburban Iowa. What will he think when he watches this at home, on his couch, with Eddie and their adopted son, Charlie, by his side?

  I sigh. “I know this isn’t your fault,” I tell Grant. “But voting someone out because Bailey’s a homophobe makes me really uncomfortable.”

  Grant reaches for my hand, gives it a tight little squeeze, and then quickly lets go. “Calm down, Robin. This isn’t a Pride parade, and I’m not Lindsey Graham.” Grant speaks just loud enough that only I can hear him. He keeps his tone light and friendly. “I get how you feel. I do. But Bailey’s right about one thing. If Joel made it to the end, he’d be very persuasive to the jury. He’s a lawyer for God’s sake. Do you want to be sitting up there with him? I sure as hell don’t. So if we have a chance to get rid of him now, I think we ought to. Besides, we need to keep our alliance cohesive at this stage in the game. When it’s our turn to vote out Bailey, I promise to draw rainbows and purple triangles all over the ballot. Okay?”

  I smile at the thought, but don’t say anything.

  I need to think. Joel reminds me of my cousin Monty: same age, same profession, same sort of temper that flames yet extinguishes quickly, and same ability to charm and make you laugh. Other than Grant, I enjoy talking to Joel more than anyone else at camp. He reminds me a little of home, and I feel slightly safer when he’s around.

  I’d vote for him to win the million dollars. There isn’t anyone here who would get my vote over Joel, which means Grant is right. Joel needs to be voted off tonight.

  What sort of game is this, where you make friends only to betray them?

  §

  A little over a week later the tribal merge happens. Luckily, our Lakas tribe goes into it with five people while the Tapang tribe only has four. Grant, Bailey, Beth and I maintain our alliance, and even though somebody from Tapang wins the first individual immunity, we manage to vote off another one of their original members.

  The day after our first Island Assembly as a merged tribe I’m lying on the beach, taking a rare break. I try never to be alone, because that’s when other people start conspiring against you. But if I don’t have a little downtime I’m sure to lose my sanity. I knew this would be difficult, but what I didn’t understand was how much I’d miss the opportunity to sit by myself, comfortable on my couch, with no company other than the television and my two lifelong friends, Ben and Jerry.

  The sand warms my back and the sun’s rays beat down on my face. Then there’s a shadow. I open my eyes to see the cause, and find Grant standing over me.

  He smiles. “Hey.” He says. “Whatcha doing?”

  “Solving world problems.”

  “Oh good,” he replies. “Somebody needs to.”

  “Well, I’m on it.” I pat the sand next to me, signaling him to sit. As much as I want time alone, I can’t seem rude or standoffish. It’s just not an option.

  Grant sits. “I think the next challenge is going to be a swimming one.”

  “How do you know?”

  He shrugs his shoulders. “I don’t know for sure. But we haven’t had one in a while. And I thought I heard Joe Pine mention something to one of the camera guys at Island Assembly last night.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Anyway, I hope so. You or I would have a good chance of winning.”

  “You think?”

  Grant brushes some sand off my shoulder. His touch is warm, warmer than the sand and sun together. “We’re the best swimmers out here.”

  Earlier, Grant told me that he works as the high school swim coach in the town where he lives. I bet all the girls have a crush on him.

  “You’re an amazing swimmer,” I say. “But I can get really water logged.”

  He chuckles and leans in close. “It’s safe, Robin. Nobody else is around.”

  Nobody except the camera guy, of course. The omnipresent camera guy. I look at Grant with a widened, innocent gape. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  He rolls his eyes and looks towards the sky. “You can admit that you’re a good swimmer. I already knew you were, anyway. But even if I didn’t, I still wouldn’t hold it against you.” He speaks in an exaggerated whisper. “And I promise not to tell.” Now he raises his eyebrows and grins at me, like a little kid telling a dirty joke. I can’t help but return his smile.

  “Fine,” I say. “I’m a good swimmer.”

  Grant digs his toes into the sand and inches ever so much closer to me. “There,” he says. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  I shake my head and sniff in response, and Grant looks at me in fascination, as if he’s never seen anyone sniff and shake their head simultaneously. He seems so genuine that I’m almost convinced that I actually did something to merit his reaction.

  “So, what else are you good at?” Grant asks.

  I chuckle and sit up before he can lean over me and match his suggestive tone with a suggestive posture. “Oh no,” I tell him. “Your turn. I already confessed something. Now you.”

  “I don’t have anything to confess,” he says. “I’m actually a very boring person.”

  I pass my tongue over my teeth, and hope my breath isn’t too bad. He’s sitting awfully close. “Please. If that were true, you wouldn’t be here.”

  “Oh yeah?” He laughs. “Does that mean you have some juicy reason behind why you’re on this show?”

  “Not at all.” I run my fingers through my hair, trying to shed some of the sand that’s stuck to my scalp. Grant has changed the subject again by putting the focus back on me. I shouldn’t fall for it, but I admit it’s fun to have his attention. “My reason is really boring. I didn’t know what else to do. I have no career or family that I’m obligated to. I like the show, I like competing, I want the money, and I thought I might be good at it. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Hmm.” Grant eyes me up and down, as if he could decipher the truth by inspecting the sand on my arms and the dirt on my bathing suit. “I don’t believe you,” he says. “There has to be more to it.” He closes his eyes for a moment, and pretends to be deep in concentration, wrinkling his brow and biting his lip. He reopens his eyes and looks at me with unreserved confidence. “I think you’re here because you have something to prove.”

  A self-conscious chuckle escapes without my permission. “Like what?”

  He presses his thumb against my shoulder. “I don’t know. That you can handle adversity?”

  I pick up sand and let it fall through the spaces between my fingers. “And I have to demonstrate this on national television. Wow. I must have a lot to prove to a lot of people.” I keep my head down and watch the sand flow instead of staring at Grant to detect possible changes in his facial expression. If I see his face, he’ll see mine, and I can’t broadcast any truth or fear too blatantly.

  His hand lingers in the air before it lands on the back of my neck. My head sn
aps up and our eyes meet, shifting the mood between us like a cloud covering the sun.

  “Robin, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you.”

  I offer him a cautious smile. His hand is still lightly resting against my skin. Despite the heat, I have shivers.

  Grant moves away so he’s no longer touching me and looks off toward the ocean. “I’d tell you the reason why I’m here, but my reason isn’t like yours. It will make you think I’m weak.”

  Now I’m dying to know. I place my hand on his bare, sandy back, but I allow myself to do so only for an instant.

  “That’s okay, Grant. You don’t have to tell me anything. But whatever you say is between us.”

  He scratches his head, and then his hands come together. As he massages his knuckles the tension in his grasp is clear. “I don’t actually need the money,” he mumbles. “My parents died when I was young and they were loaded. So I just do whatever I want now. I drift.” He rolls his head and I hear a little pop. “This seemed like a good way to fill the time.”

  Inadequate words of sympathy loiter in my head, but I don’t release them. “How did they die?” I ask softly.

  He takes a deep breath and turns his face towards mine. “They died in Iraq. But not in combat or anything. They were working with Halliburton and they got killed by a roadside bomb.” His eyes tear up a little, but he blinks it away. “I was a senior in high school and I was staying with my grandparents in Connecticut, but as soon as I turned eighteen I left, and I’ve been on my own ever since.”

  “Are you an only child?”

  Grant shakes his head no. “I have a little sister. She was twelve when I took off, and I’ve only seen her a handful of times since then.” He rolls his shoulders back and stretches out his neck, as if releasing physical tension could diminish the pain of what he’s trying to say. “Last I heard, she ran away to Mexico to live with her druggie boyfriend. My grandparents have no idea where she is… ” His voice trails off and he switches course. “I haven’t talked to my grandparents in months. They blame me for Molly’s disappearance. They say I failed her. If I had been around more, been more of a role model, maybe she would have been okay. But she’s been in and out of rehab and she’s a total mess.” His chest rises and falls, and he dares to meet my eyes. “That is, if she’s even still alive. We don’t know. Of course, we hired a private detective when she first disappeared but he hasn’t found anything. My grandparents are convinced Molly is dead and they’re angry with me for that.”

  I shudder. “They can’t put that on you. You were just a kid yourself when your parents died.” I almost mention my own mother’s death and how my brothers and I dealt with it, but I stop myself. This conversation is about Grant.

  “I could have done better for her.” He squeezes his eyes shut before his lids rise back up. “Being a kid is no excuse. I should have been there for Molly, and now I can’t tell her I’m sorry. So I guess I’m here because I don’t know where else to be.”

  His normally dark eyes are especially black as they pool with ache, and I long to make it better. Before I can figure out how, he laughs and shakes off his mood, like rainwater from a tarp. “Want to hear the really twisted part? Part of me thinks I’m doing this so I can reach out to Molly. Like she’ll see me on television, and decide to come home. How sad is that?”

  “Maybe it will work.”

  He smiles in appreciation. “Don’t tell anyone, okay?”

  I marvel at his ability to smile. What else is he hiding? What other painful secrets lie behind his cheerful façade? “It’s our secret,” I say.

  Grant was right. The next challenge involved swimming and I won individual immunity. Grant came in second.

  “Did you throw the challenge?” I asked him afterwards.

  He scrunched his face in confusion. “Why on earth would I do that?”

  “To seem less threatening and to put me in the spotlight.”

  He sighed. “Don’t be so paranoid, Robin. I got a cramp and it slowed me down. Relax and enjoy your victory.”

  So I did. Besides, Grant won the next challenge, and the one after that was won by Bailey, who must actually be a robot in disguise. My theory is he had some top-secret surgical implants during his time in the military. How else do you explain a guy in his seventies having perfect balance and unrelenting endurance?

  Whatever. I don’t care, because the short version of the story is that as long as people in our alliance continue to win, we can pick off the remaining members of the Tapang tribe. True, I’m as anxious to vote off Klemi as I was to start tweezing my eyebrows in the eighth grade (we’re talking blonde unibrow), but luckily my need for immediate gratification has diminished since my middle school years. So I’m biding my time.

  There are six of us left: Me, Grant, Beth, Bailey, Klemi, and Henry, the last member of the Tapang tribe. Henry is a physics student at Princeton, and he meets every stereotype you would expect from an Ivy League genius. He’s slight, nearsighted, bad at the physical challenges, and even worse at social skills. But he can talk circles around us, and half the time I wonder if he just operates on his own, separate whiz kid plane. Grant says we’ll vote him out next, but I’m thinking Klemi should go first. She has a better chance of winning a final individual immunity than Henry does.

  But before the next immunity challenge there is a reward challenge. I’m wondering what it will be as we line up behind a roped off obstacle course.

  “Welcome, Castaways!” Joe Pine is wearing his usual blue safari shirt, his dark hair is styled just enough to look attractively windswept, and his well-chiseled cheeks are freshly shaved. Meanwhile, the rest of us look like exhausted, homeless beach dwellers. Only because we are.

  “You all have been out here for 31 days. Anyone can tell you: that’s a long time to go without seeing or speaking to your family. Well, today we have a special surprise for you.”

  Now I know what’s about to happen. Every season when it gets down to six people, they bring in the players’ “loved ones” to team up in some sort of reward challenge. It’s the perfect way to manipulate our already unstable emotions and get us to cry. Silently I vow not to dissolve into a pool of tears like past players have, because it seems so silly. I go weeks without seeing my family all the time, and that’s a GOOD thing. However, the other players are already reacting. I guess I’m not the only one who knows what’s coming, because Beth gasps and brings her hands to her face, Klemi widens her eyes in anticipation, Bailey inhales deeply, and Henry shifts his weight from foot to foot. I can’t see Grant’s reaction, but I’m curious. Is he hoping one of his grandparents is waiting to see him? Or maybe he’s thinking that against all odds, Molly is about to come out and shock him with her reappearance.

  Joe continues. “I can tell all of you are anxious to see your surprise. Well, I won’t keep you in suspense. Beth, your husband Mike is here.”

  Mike, a paunchy, balding guy in his forties comes running out, and Beth squeals and jumps into his arms as if he was Ryan Gosling in a wet t-shirt. They lock in a passionate embrace. I look away to give them some privacy, and see instead the large camera zooming in to capture their intimacy.

  Joe continues to call out family members. “Klemi,” he says, “your sister Irena is waiting for you.” Irena comes running out, and she’s a cleaner, less emaciated version of Klemi. Of course they’re both gorgeous, and they grasp each other in a tight, full-body hug that is sure to thrill all the male, heterosexual viewers with a pulse.

  Next comes Henry’s mom, who is very put-together in a pair of khaki shorts and a fitted black t-shirt. She looks like she never has a hair out of place, but that doesn’t stop her from squeezing Henry like he’s still her baby. Henry rests his head on her shoulder and his body wilts, as if all the stress has been sucked out of him. After that Bailey’s daughter appears. She’s tall, broad, and has the same tough exterior as her dad, but when Bailey sees her his face actually betrays itself and shows some vulnerability. Everyone is emotional
and ecstatic, touching each other's faces and speaking softly in familiar terms, and I’m nearly in tears myself, watching the reunions.

  Joe directs his attention to Grant. “Grant, I’m afraid I have bad news for you. We contacted your best friend, Cody, and he wanted to come, but his work schedule wouldn’t permit it. He said to wish you a lot of luck.”

  Grant’s face remains stoic, but I can see the hurt behind his unyielding expression. I want to reach out to him and tell him he’s not alone, but Joe addresses me first.

  “Robin,” he says. “You must be wondering who is here for you.”

  I exhale in relief. I was worried for a moment that my news would be the same as Grant’s. But no. Is Ian here? Or, possibly, my dad? Surely not Ted?

  “Robin,” Joe says, “Say hello to your cousin Jack.”

  Jack comes running out, and his hug is quick and strong. He looks like every picture I didn’t know I had stored of him in my mind. His smile is for me, and there are no ulterior motives or hidden agendas. He is the first person in a month that is unquestionably on my side; he is the only one here who knows who I really am. Damn it. The tears start to form, but I laugh them away. I look at him in confusion. He answers my silent question out loud. “Ian and Eddie’s adoption finally came through,” he says. “They had to go to China. Otherwise he would have come. Ted had to work and your dad sprained his ankle.”

  I hug him again. “Thanks for being here.”

  “Are you kidding? It’s a free trip to the Philippines and a chance to be on national television. I should be thanking you.”

  Joe explains the reward challenge. We are to navigate our way through the rope course while carrying buckets of water. The ropes are set up so we have to climb over and under them, making it virtually impossible not to spill. Once we get to the end of the course we dump our remaining water into our designated tank and go back for more. When our tank is completely full a flag will automatically rise and the first team to raise their flag wins.