Reality Gold

by Tiffany Brooks

  Dedicated to my father,

  who introduced me to Tolkien, but even more importantly, paid all my overdue library fines without complaint;

  to my mother,

  who proudly framed my first poem and hung it inside our front door for all the world to see as if it was a masterpiece (it was not);

  and to James,

  who has supported and encouraged me, mostly by repeating over and over, with varying degrees of love and exasperation, just finish it.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  About the Author

  1

  I’ve got my own version of Murphy’s Law, and it goes like this: if there’s something that will make a bad situation even worse, I’ll do it. My ex-friends called it Riley’s Law, and it’s the best explanation for why I was now crammed shoulder-to-shoulder with nineteen other teens on one of those ominous-looking military-style helicopters that always show up in disaster movies when the worst stuff is about to go down.

  Why—why—had I thought doing a reality show was the answer to all my problems? Would I ever learn to leave things alone?

  My back bounced against the cold metal wall. All the players were wiggling and vibrating against one another like a batch of lottery balls about to be released. I scanned the opposite row of my new rivals’ faces, yet not a single other person looked scared, sick, or even mildly nervous.

  Keep it together, Riley.

  Somehow, a stupid mistake from eight months ago had snowballed into this: me, hurtling toward a deserted island off the coast of Brazil, about to compete in a nationally televised reality show. Back in October—a lifetime ago—my friend Izzy and I did something dumb. I got suspended. Izzy got expelled. My sentence was lighter because my role was trivial, but my progressive San Francisco classmates—always on alert for signs of inequality—decided the school had gotten it wrong and our misdeeds were identical. The only reason I was still around, they argued, was because my parents were big donors to our school and Izzy had been ousted because she was a scholarship kid. There was a petition submitted to the headmaster, demanding my expulsion. The school declined, and the only wreckage would have been my own hurt feelings if I’d left everything alone.

  But because of Riley’s Law, I didn’t. I couldn’t.

  Instead, I decided I had to defend myself in an op-ed on the school website. The essay was well-written and impeccably argued. No one noticed any of that, though, because within hours the San Francisco Chronicle had picked the article up and decimated it. Decimated me. There’s a whole gentrification thing going on in the city right now, and my words were twisted and held up as proof of the spoiled mentality of the Bay Area’s one percent. Their warped interpretation: Wealthy Private School Student Demands Special Treatment.

  That was definitely not what I’d said, but it didn’t stop people in all corners of the Internet from flooding my Facebook page and raiding my Instagram, suggesting I go kill myself—but before I did, I should get surgery to move my eyes closer together, start a diet to fix my fat face, and grow some boobs.

  It was bad enough when it felt like my friends and classmates hated me, but suddenly the whole world was screaming about how worthless I was.

  Some creative snake even managed to download some photos of me before I made everything private. He slapped some Marie Antoinette–style comments on them and they went viral. Birthed by the Internet and tended to by trolls, this warped version of myself showed up everywhere. The meme of the girl in the red velvet party dress, holding her white-gloved hands out in disgust, under the caption You bought that on sale? I can’t even! That was me when I was ten, taken at my middle school’s annual holiday dance. It had been a really fun night; the dress was a gift, and when I twirled, the skirt puffed up like a bell. I felt like a princess. That sour expression had probably only flashed across my face for a second or two, and it was nothing more than an exaggerated reaction to the DJ playing “Oops I Did It Again,” which I secretly loved.

  Now when I hear that song or think of that night, I want to die.

  The helicopter suddenly banked right, hitting a rough patch of air. Across from me, two girls wearing tiny shorts with hair longer than their crop tops clutched each other and screamed. The one with the deep red hair looked familiar but I couldn’t think of why, which was driving me crazy because I usually remembered things like that.

  They were so casually entwined, as if they were best friends already. Once, that might have been me. If I’d been doing this show a year ago, I probably would have been right there next to them, commiserating over the awkwardness of it all, asking the girl with the red hair where she was from and complimenting the blond girl’s gold clover necklace.

  But now my instinct was to hold back. Becoming the butt of a national joke left me unsure of who I could trust. After the bad publicity prompted the headmaster to start making noise about how it “might be better for everyone” if I enrolled somewhere else, I withdrew and hid in my room while being homeschooled for the remainder of the year. At least, that’s what my mother called the rotation of counselors and tutors who cycled through our house. My father didn’t call it anything. By then he had basically washed his hands of me.

  And now September was coming in three short months, bringing with it a new school for my senior year and a chance for a fresh start. I wanted my future classmates to know something about me besides that garbage online, but countering a rumor is nearly impossible. As my tutor liked to say: a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on. But then I heard about this show. It was the perfect solution. Me, on television every week—the real me, looking friendly and nice and normal and nothing at all like an evil narcissist who bathes in champagne and the tears of poor people.

  For that tactic to succeed, though, I had to put myself out there. Be friendly. The girl sitting on my left, who’d introduced herself as Taylor, seemed like an easy person to start with; she’d been chattering away non-stop with nearly everyone else already. But when I leaned toward her to say something, we hit more turbulence and my forehead smacked squarely into hers.

  “Hey!” she pulled back, pressing her fingers into the bridge of her nose. The exclamation was hardly fair. I obviously hadn’t done it on purpose.

  Nevertheless, I apologized. “Sorry,” I said sheepishly, internally cursing myself for the false start. Doing this show badly would be worse than not doing it at all.

  “Hang in there,” Deb, the producer, shouted. She was tiny, but she had a big presence with her loud voice and a wild flash of dark, curly hair. “The wind currents always get unpredictable near the island, but it won’t be too
much longer in the air. You guys ready?”

  There were a lot of nods, some more enthusiastic than others.

  “Are you guys dead or what? A little spirit, please. I’ll ask again: You guys ready?”

  This time there were shouts and cheers. A guy in bright red Bermuda shorts near the back door put his fingers in his mouth to whistle, although the wind rush inside the helicopter was so loud I couldn’t hear it from that far away. He had short dirty-blond hair, looked very preppy, was named Parker or Porter—one of those first name/last name kind of names. Cute. We’d met at the airport when we’d both arrived at the door at the same time and had a couple of rounds of polite but awkward “You first,” “No, you.” Too bad I’d watched him later trying to catch the eye of the pair of new best friends huddled across from me.

  “Much better,” Deb said. “Now listen up, because I’ve got a surprise.”

  Oh no. I’d binge-watched enough reality shows in the last few months to know that last-minute bombshells never brought good news. Even more worrisome was how the film crew had suddenly jumped into action, swinging cameras onto their shoulders and scattering among the players to take up their filming positions.

  One of them knelt in front of me, so close I could see dark patches of stubble along his cheeks and a few loose threads unraveling from the neck of his black T-shirt. If I could see him in so much detail, his lens must be capturing my every pore.

  I swallowed nervously. I had definitely underestimated how unnerving it was to feel this level of scrutiny again.

  For a second the aperture in the center of the lens opened up and a reflection of my face flashed in the glass. I didn’t see any features, just fear.

  Breathe, Riley.

  There’s a game I play when my anxiety starts to kick in. Since it was a suggestion from my therapist, I resisted at first, but now I use it all the time. It takes up excess mental energy and forces me to be in the moment. It also feels way more productive than plain old deep breathing. Here it is: describe something in opposing ways and then figure out which description is correct.

  My participation in this show: ballsy attempt to rehab my reputation or a ginormous mistake that would lead to round two as the Internet’s favorite punching bag?

  Me: misunderstood girl, or spoiled Internet brat?

  I’d find out soon enough.

  2

  “Try to ignore the cameras,” Deb advised, which was virtually impossible. I could practically feel the lens touching me, the sensation of being stared at was that strong.

  I didn’t know the names of any of the cameramen, and I wasn’t about to ask. Part of Deb’s welcome at the airport had included the fact that the camera crew was off-limits.

  “Don’t talk to them, engage them, or worst of all, try to bribe them,” Deb had told us. With what? I’d wondered, before deciding I probably didn’t want to know much more about what that implied. She’d obviously meant sex or something illicit because we had virtually no possessions to bribe them with. We were hardly allowed to bring anything to the island—just the two bags we’d been supplied: the duffel for clothes and a smaller nylon square bag Sharpie’d with each of our names that we’d been told to stuff with our most important personal items.

  Deb clapped her hand against the back of her clipboard, eager to reveal her big surprise. “Guys, come on. Can I have you look over here, please?”

  I must not have been the only one transfixed by the camera, which was reassuring. I gave Deb my attention, glad to have something else to focus on.

  “As you know, for the next twenty-six days you’ll be living on Black Rock Island, competing against one another in challenges and games for a million-dollar prize,” she said. “You also know that the island is the long-rumored hiding spot for a priceless treasure, a trove of stolen Inca gold, which is why the contests you’ll face in the game are all inspired by the legends of Black Rock.”

  She paused. As a producer, she worked behind the scenes, but her flair for the dramatic meant she was also at home in front of the camera.

  “But here’s something you don’t know. We’ve added a twist to the game. Any player who wishes to do so will be allowed—and encouraged—to search for this treasure. All searches and discoveries will be part of the show, and there will be an extra two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for any player who finds the treasure or a substantial clue that leads to its discovery.”

  Wait, what?

  “Yeeeeehawwww,” a huge guy in an army-green tank top shouted, tossing his cowboy hat in the air. I didn’t usually support the idea of men in tank tops, but I’d make an exception in this case. He had incredibly huge biceps.

  I weakly joined in the cheering. Over the past year I’d learned a lot about how to keep a low profile, and the key is to do just enough so that you fit solidly inside the norm of what is expected. Going camo, I called it.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t want to search for the treasure. I did. That was the problem. In fact, the chance to sneak around the island on my own and search for the treasure was another big reason I was here. Finding the gold—now that would really be an accomplishment, possibly even more important than transmitting my true self onto television screens across the country. Forget spoiled, entitled, or selfish, if I found the gold, the first ten pages of a Riley Ozaki Google search would be nothing but sunshine and rainbows. I’d be celebrated, not shunned. Sought out, not exiled.

  I might even—dare I hope—impress my father, who had been involved in the last failed treasure hunt on the island.

  But now that part of my plan was in jeopardy. I’d planned to search alone, in secret, without any competition. During casting auditions, Deb had explicitly told me the treasure wasn’t going to play any role in the competition, and I’d counted on that. I had some inside info on where the gold was hidden, and I wasn’t about to share it with a bunch of yahoos who probably thought all they had to do was run around the island and start digging when they found a giant X marking the spot.

  The guy on my right—black skinny jeans, beanie, definitely a hipster—seemed particularly jazzed about the prospect of finding the treasure.

  “Maybe I’ll just keep the gold,” he said. “It’s probably worth more than the two-hundred-and-fifty-grand prize, right? Finders keepers.”

  I was too shocked to respond right away. Just keep the gold? As if finding it would be the simplest thing in the world? The last person who had searched the island for the treasure had been murdered, the specifics of which I happened to know pretty intimately because (a) that treasure hunter was my godfather and one of my parents’ oldest friends, and (b) I had been with him on Black Rock Island about three weeks before he’d gotten hacked into a million pieces.

  So, yeah, treasure hunting wasn’t quite the no-big-deal Deb had made it out to be. People had freaking died doing this. Gold fever was a virus, my father always said, and once people caught it they became reckless—or worse.

  “I’m just throwing this out there, but how, exactly, would you keep it for yourself?” I asked my new opponent. It took some work to keep the hysteria out of my voice, because I’d already been thinking of the treasure as mine. It was obscene picturing this guy’s hands—or anyone else’s—all over it. I didn’t even plan on touching it. The finding part was more important to me than the keeping part, and in fact, I hadn’t thought too much about the particulars of what would happen right after I made the discovery. Instead, my mind always sped past that part to imagine the final outcome: a pile of glinting gold, a crowd of admirers, and exploding flashbulbs.

  “I guess I’d take what I could carry,” he said. “Stuff whatever could fit into my pockets.”

  We both evaluated his tight jeans at the same time.

  “You might want to wear bigger pants,” I advised. “Because, let’s say you find it, you’d have to hide it from Deb. You probably wouldn’t be able to keep more than
a coin or two secret. Not worth it. You might as well take the cash prize.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “True. Hey, do you think if some of us work together to find the gold we can split the prize money? I’m Sean, by the way.”

  I paused for a second. Would hearing my name trigger any sort of recognition?

  “Riley,” I said, glad we’d only be using our first names on the island. Less identifiable. I waited to see if there would be a reaction, but he just nodded.

  “Cool,” he said.

  I was relieved, although it wasn’t totally surprising. Simply hearing my name wasn’t usually enough for someone to realize I was the “Can’t Even” Girl—which was nice, but also only temporary, because the second anyone looked me up online they’d immediately get the goods. There was no way to separate your online self from your real-world self anymore. Both versions converged into one, whether you wanted them to or not. Still, I was going to take it as a good sign that the first person I’d given my name to hadn’t reacted upon hearing it.

  The trick was going to be getting through today without being recognized. If I did that, I’d be anonymous the entire time I was on the island. I hadn’t dared to think too much about it because I didn’t want to jinx it, but so far so good. We’d turned over our phones and tablets and computers at the airport in preparation for three weeks in a screen-free, no Wi-Fi zone. Or, rather, everyone else was preparing to be unconnected during our island stay. I had different plans.

  My bag held a small Wi-Fi satellite receiver I was attempting to smuggle onto the island to help me decipher clues as I searched for the gold. Designed to look like a makeup compact, it had passed undetected in this morning’s search for contraband, which was actually kind of funny. I had spent hours stressing over getting that thing past the security check, and it had turned out to be a nonissue. Instead, it looked like having a bunch of newly deputized treasure hunters to compete against was going to be the real problem.

  Just when I nailed one problem, another arrived to replace it. Or, to apply a phrase my mother had grown particularly fond of overusing this year: when one door closes, another one opens. Whenever she said it, I always silently added and hits you in the face.