Reality Gold

by Tiffany Brooks

  DeadSea: There was a shrine in the Abacos, the Friar Josef hunt. Is that where you are right now?

  AnonGirl: No

  DeadSea: I need to know where you are

  I quickly logged off. DeadSea asking for my location so boldly made me incredibly nervous. It also made me certain we’d found something very, very important.

  I headed for the cabin to return the satellite to my safe. I stayed out of view from everyone in the Snack Bar, but even from far away I could tell dinner was ending.

  “You have exactly half an hour to get yourselves camera-ready for the challenge,” Phil announced. “We’ll be meeting at the fire pit. We’re filming here tonight—not going to Challenge Island.”

  Oh, God. The challenge! I’d been so intent on getting to the satellite that I’d forgotten for a moment that we had to earn our stay on the island. Losing a challenge now would be devastating. Right after we’d found the shrine, to have to go home? We were so close to something huge.

  This must have been what Miles felt. I pictured him, gaunt and intense, arguing with my father, desperate to continue searching. Anger flared inside me—I should have convinced my father to help him. I knew now what it was like to feel the need to keep going. Just let me finish, Miles had begged my father. I really need to finish this.

  Cody had called me obsessed earlier, and the realization startled me. No doubt about it, I was starting to catch the gold fever.

  We all met at the fire pit. Sol sat on one side, Huaca on the other. Joaquin held court in the middle, the ocean at his back. It was a little weird that he always stood on the slant, thus putting himself lower than us, but the ocean backdrop probably looked better on film than the forest.

  “Tonight we are going to do things a little bit differently,” Joaquin said.

  “It’s only the third challenge,” Rohan shouted. “Everything’s different.”

  “Zip it, Rohan,” Deb called from the sidelines. “Joaquin, take two.”

  It took two more takes, but Joaquin finally made it to the explanation.

  “We are going to have an evening challenge for the first time. It’s time to play Truth,” Joaquin told us. “This is where you show us how much you’ve been paying attention, and how well you know your competitors. Everyone will be given a piece of paper and a pen. I will then ask a bunch of questions. The winner will give his or her team an edge in tomorrow’s main challenge.”

  I let out a breath. This wasn’t terrible. I wouldn’t be leaving tonight.

  Joaquin passed out some gold paper and pens.

  “And now for the first question. List at least three states where players are from.”

  Oh, okay. That was easy. I’d heard plenty of talk about hometowns. I wrote Ohio, Florida, and California.

  “Which player’s family trains search-and-rescue dogs?”

  I held my pen up but didn’t write anything yet. Cody would be a good choice, but he had talked about his ranch and hadn’t mentioned anything about search-and-rescue dogs being part of it. Who else? Wasn’t Maddie going on to Costa Rica after this to rescue sea turtles? She’d brought pictures of her pets here, which made her an animal lover. That would fit with having a lot of dogs around. Maddie, I wrote.

  The nightly heat lightning was back, fizzing in the distance behind Joaquin. No one reacted. We were all getting used to the strangeness of the island weather. Tonight it felt like storm lightning—the air was cooler than it had been, and even before the sun had gone down the sky had started to darken.

  Joaquin wasn’t bothered, either, but that was usual. He soldiered on, trying to make his questions sound as mysterious as possible.

  “Who owns several patents and invented something successfully sold in stores?”

  Hmmm. That one was hard. AJ was too obvious, and he definitely would have said something about that. What about that nerdy friend of AJ’s who’d gotten voted off the first night—Oscar? He seemed smart and math-oriented. But then I remembered how Cody had said something the other day about everybody having their own “side hustle” that needed funding. It was an oddly specific phrase to use, unless you were familiar with the funding process. And earlier today he’d called my father a VC, a venture capitalist. Maybe he’d needed funding for something he had a patent on. I wrote his name down. It was as good a guess as any.

  “Third question. Which three players have more than ten thousand social media followers?”

  Everyone would get the first two. Willa and Sean. But who else? I went through everyone one by one, and then I remembered how on the first day Murch had been talking about a fantasy football app. Maybe when he’d said my app he’d meant it was literally his. Had to be him, unless Maren was running some weird Goth Tumblr.

  “Who was in a skiing accident, nearly died, and broke his or her back?”

  Oh. That one was terrible. Who might have broken their back? Everyone here looked healthy. Athletic, even. Wait . . . athletic. Porter had told Justin he hadn’t committed anywhere for lacrosse yet. And he’d staggered and made that yelp when he’d thrown me in the water. Too flimsy? I looked at Porter quickly—he looked fine. Murch loved football, but he was a bit overweight. Maybe he’d been fit once, before the accident. No. He hadn’t really said anything about ever playing sports for his school. I didn’t want to, but I wrote Porter’s name down.

  There were a few other questions that might have been hard if they’d been asked earlier in the game, but by now all of us knew Rohan spoke Portugese and Lucas would be playing soccer in college.

  “Who was expelled from school last year?”

  I tried not to react. I was sure this question referred to me, although technically it wasn’t quite true. I’d been given the option to withdraw so the expulsion wouldn’t show up on my transcript. I wrote my name down anyway.

  “We’re going to tally up the answers, and when we come back we’re going to set up bowls with each of your names in front,” Deb told us. “Every time you get an answer right, Joaquin will put a gold marble in your bowl. The most marbles wins. If there’s a tie, we’ve got extra questions.”

  When Joaquin and Deb left, crew members filed around the campfire, all of them dressed in gold robes and wearing gold face paint. They didn’t say anything, just stood in the firelight. It was haunting, and the fact that Deb hadn’t announced or explained their presence made it even eerier.

  We all stayed very, very quiet.

  Some of us, like Maddie, kept our gaze down, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the costumed crew. Oddly, even with the gold face paint one of the women looked familiar. Then I remembered Deb had told us that actors made up part of the B-team, and I gave a silent prayer that I had realized that I’d probably recognized her from an episode of SVU or Grey’s Anatomy before trying to smile or signal her, the way I’d almost done with Willa.

  When Joaquin appeared to announce the results, the crew silently disappeared into the woods.

  “Nope. Not creepy at all,” Cody said, which lightened the mood a little bit.

  Joaquin said some host-speak about community and knowledge, and then dispensed with the easy questions first. Nearly everyone was rewarded with marbles.

  “Now for some of the trickier questions. Which player raises search-and-rescue dogs?” Joaquin paused. “Maddie. Only two of you got that right. Maddie, of course,” he said, dropping a marble in Maddie’s bowl, “and Riley.”

  “The patent owner? Again, only two right. Riley guessed correctly again, as did the mysterious patent owner himself: Cody.”

  Lots of surprised whispers.

  “Most of the rest of you guessed AJ,” Joaquin told us. “Cody, feel like sharing your invention?”

  It turned out to be an obscure tool that hunters used to line up the crosshairs on a scope. Impressive, but not really applicable to any of the rest of us, so Joaquin moved on quickly.

  �
�Congratulations, Cody, for what sounds like a clever invention, and to Riley for guessing correctly,” Joaquin said. “How about the three players with the social media followers? Most of you knew about Willa and Sean, but only a few of you knew about Murch’s football app.”

  “Oh, football,” Willa said dismissively as Joaquin distributed a few gold marbles. “I never would have paid attention to that.”

  “You sure about that, Willa? How about for three point eight million followers?”

  Her mouth dropped. “Three million?”

  I had a feeling that if Murch was still around Willa would be circling him.

  “As for which one of you suffered a catastrophic injury—”

  “Me,” Porter interrupted. Oh, wow. It was him. I tried to make eye contact but he didn’t look my way until Joaquin announced I’d guessed correctly, and that’s when he shot me a quick glance, frowning and confused. And then—did I read this right?—maybe a little bit mad. But why would he be angry?

  “Are you all wondering who the troublemaker was who faced expulsion?” Joaquin asked.

  “It’s me.” I gave a quick outline of the story. Everyone was impressed, which just proved how easy it was to manipulate reality. Just a few key words—edibles, busted, expelled—and suddenly I seemed a lot edgier than I did five minutes ago.

  “You? Damn, girl,” Rohan said. “Got that one way, way wrong.”

  “Apologies to Murch, in absentia, because most people guessed him.”

  There was a lot of laughter. Not from Porter, though. Or me.

  “Congratulations, Riley. You, of all the players, guessed every answer right. For your attention to detail, your team will be rewarded with an advantage in tomorrow’s challenge, which will be announced then.”

  I got a hug from Maddie, a fist bump from AJ, and nothing from Maren. Predictable responses, all three.

  In the distance, thunder rumbled.

  “Uh-oh, that’s not good. Haven’t heard thunder here before,” Deb said. “Quickly, let’s do some confessionals. Riley, AJ, and Taylor—you guys are up. Taylor and AJ, how about you wait with Katya in the Snack Bar while I start with Riley. The rest of you, please return to your team huts or your cabins.”

  “Hey, Riley.” Porter had gotten up from his side of the fire pit and was coming over to talk to me, but I went cold hearing him say my actual name. What happened to Frisco?

  “How did you guess that about me?” he asked. And not in a friendly way, either. Even worse, before I could even answer, he shot out, fairly accusingly, “Have you known the whole time?”

  “What? No!”

  “Seems like something that would be hard to guess. That’s why it was one of the hard questions. But you knew it.”

  What the heck? Or, more appropriately, WTF? Since when did being a good guesser become a crime?

  “I didn’t know it. I guessed. I don’t understand—are you mad about something?” My mind skittered around, trying to think what I could have done. “Because I didn’t come to dinner?”

  “I’m just trying to figure out if you were being real with me before, or if that was some kind of, I don’t know, story line. I heard some things tonight that got me confused.”

  “Things? About me?”

  It looked as if he was going to say something but decided not to.

  What? I wanted to scream, but I kept myself in check. Or mostly in check. My voice was a little shaky.

  “What is going on? First you get all formal and Riley me, and then hint at a strange rumor, which is probably a lie, so . . .”

  “Riley,” Deb called out. “You’re up.”

  Great. Deb and her perfect timing.

  “Just a minute,” I snapped, but Porter had already taken a few steps backward.

  “Better go,” he said, in that condescending frat boy voice he’d used the first couple of days. “Duty calls, and you can’t disappoint Deb. Or yourself. Right?”

  And then he turned around and walked toward the Sol hut, leaving me standing there unsure what had just happened.

  Wait! Tell me what’s wrong, I wanted to call after him. Tell me what I did, and let me explain. Don’t shut me out. Don’t try to bring me to the beach alone this afternoon and then refuse to talk to me a few hours later. But no self-respecting girl says things like that in real life, let alone in front of an eager line of cameramen. That would be social suicide. Screenshot heaven.

  So I stayed silent, turned around, and pretended everything was fine.

  I’d had a lot of practice doing that.

  20

  “Trouble in paradise?” Deb asked. She motioned me to sit on the log across from her. I took my time, going around the long way instead of stepping over it. Sitting for a one-on-one interview was really not ideal right now, not if I wanted to keep pretending everything was fine.

  “This whole paradise is trouble,” I said after I’d sat down. “So yes, you could say that.”

  “Whoa. For someone who just won a challenge, you’re in a pretty bad mood.”

  “But that’s the way you want it, right?” I asked. “All of us feeling a little bit like we’re on the edge?”

  “Is that what you think I want?”

  “Don’t you?”

  The air had gotten noticeably cooler, and a breeze was starting up. I wished I had a sweater.

  I brought my knees up to my chest. “There’s been some speculation that the best outcome for you is one where we’re all rolling on the sand punching each other out and calling each other sluts,” I said.

  “I’m not going to lie. That would be pretty great television,” Deb shot back. “Reality gold, as they say. It would certainly live up to our show’s title. Is a scenario like that in the works? Let me know when and I’ll make sure our best crew is there to capture it.”

  “Yeah, I’ll get right on that.” The camera light was shining on me, lighting up my face and every bit of my sour expression. I didn’t care. It actually felt good to be openly cranky.

  “Whoa. Joking! Did your sense of humor fly back to San Francisco?”

  I flinched. What a cruel trail of words: San Francisco led to Frisco which led to Porter, which led to, what? Dumped? Ignored? Ditched? Nothing good at the moment, that was for sure.

  “Porter asked me if I was running some story line with him. Where would he get that idea? It sounds like something you or someone on the crew would say. And he seemed to know about me. You said you wouldn’t tell.”

  Deb was silent for a minute. From the team huts I could hear Porter’s voice and Willa laughing. Not the most pleasant soundtrack.

  “Let me ask you something, Riley. Put yourself if my shoes for a second, and look at what we’re doing here from my point of view.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do you think I want from you and the other players? If you were me, the producer of a television show, the very first one that you are getting executive producing credit for after many, many years working way down low on the ladder, what would you want?”

  “I’d want the show to be good.”

  “Obviously. And not just good: great. But specifically, what would you hope for so that the show turned out great?”

  I thought for a second.

  “Everyone to do what I say? I don’t know.”

  “Nope,” Deb said. “Bad producers micromanage the story lines. The good ones let interactions unfold. Yes, you go into filming planning things out, mapping the bones, structuring some of the action, but the bottom line is that for a great show to come together, great things have to happen along the way. Sure, sometimes we prod people along, but this isn’t a scripted show, which means the way it’ll jell is not because everyone starts doing things I order them to. It’ll come together when the cast finds its own chemistry. And yes, that chemistry could come from everyone calling each othe
r names, but the point is that I don’t know, and it’s not up to me. It’s up to you. And Maren, and AJ and Porter. And Willa. And Cody. Cast members with charisma who become central to the daily action.”

  My mother pulled this move all the time, where she’d talk to me like an adult after I’d thrown a fit about something, as if to shame me into immediately seeing her point. And then she’d throw in a compliment for good measure. Me, charisma? Nice, but Deb was going to have to do better than that. She wasn’t my mom. It was going to take more than this for me to feel like we were on the same side.

  “You weren’t one of those cast members at the beginning, I’m going to be honest with you. But now, I’m interested. I don’t often say that, because I really don’t like surprises, but look: you just won a challenge. You, the girl we barely filmed two days ago because we thought you’d be the first one gone. No one else even came close to touching you tonight.”

  “Oh.” I felt myself softening while simultaneously hating myself for it. Two compliments? That’s all it took for me to turn to mush?

  “The best advice I can give you right now is that everyone has strengths. Everyone. And not all of them are obvious, which you saw tonight with yourself. You’re an observer, a collector of information. Put that to good use, because whatever you are good at is what’s going to keep you around, and that’s what’s going to make interesting television. That’s what I want, bottom line. I want great TV. The players—you—finding your strengths, well, that’s the recipe for great TV. Not slutty catfights.”

  “But what if slutty catfights are another one of my hidden strengths?”

  Harry snorted behind the camera.

  “Well then,” Deb said, “by all means, don’t hold back. But now it’s time for some housekeeping. Anything you want to tell me about today?”

  “No.”

  “No? You sure? How about the Demon? We’re one short at the charging station. Whose is missing?”

  I tried to be casual. “Oh, that was AJ’s. He thinks he dropped it when we stopped for a water break. We’re going to go back and look for it tomorrow.”