Reality Gold

by Tiffany Brooks

  “Tomorrow? The deal was that if any Demon wasn’t returned, I’d take all of them away.”

  Porter had been right—Deb wasn’t afraid to threaten punishment to keep us in line.

  “I’m sorry,” I told her. “I really am. But it’s unfair for all of us to lose our phones just because AJ is always hopping around like an idiot. It probably fell out of his pocket on the trail. Just give us a couple of hours to look for it tomorrow. Please?”

  Deb frowned, but then relented. “Only because it was the first time this happened. Next time, that’s it. No second chances.”

  My mind was racing. I’d assumed she wouldn’t really care about one lost phone. Now what? AJ couldn’t keep the phone, that much was clear, and what was equally as clear was that AJ intended to hold on to that phone. Cody would be our first problem. He had said he didn’t want any problems when it came to Deb and the phones, so he’d want it returned. If AJ refused, Cody would probably go straight to Deb and tell her about the shrine, and then it would be game over.

  Even if Cody didn’t tell Deb anything, we still had a Deb problem, because if AJ kept his, she’d take all the phones, which would mean that I wouldn’t be able to get online anymore. The satellite wasn’t much use without a phone. Goodbye, DeadSea chats. Farewell, insightful tips on map reading.

  Of course, I could tell AJ about the satellite and download his photos. I could also attempt to borrow his phone and use it with my satellite as needed. But then I’d have a whole new problem: AJ would have leverage over me. What was to stop him from turning me in? Sure, we were on the same side now, but it was early in the game. Things could change. He’d already shown signs of having an allegiance only to himself.

  But what worried me most of all was that if Deb found out about my satellite—ouch. She’d bounce me in three seconds. It would be another classic case of Riley’s Law in action: do the show to prove myself a trustworthy person, and instead, ruin everything by cheating.

  I’d have to convince AJ, somehow, to delete his photos and return his phone. I got up to go when Deb tossed another grenade at me.

  “One more thing. I saw you guys hiding from the drone camera. Don’t do that again. And if you find something juicy, don’t get any crazy ideas. You’re contracted with the show—whatever you find belongs to me. I’ll be watching you.”

  Deb: evil genius manipulator, or someone who just wanted to succeed?

  No matter which answer was correct, I already knew one thing: she was someone I didn’t want to cross.

  The rain started just as I left.

  21

  The rain kept up through the night and right on through breakfast. AJ and I both had rain jackets, but Maren hadn’t brought one. She decided to skip the shrine trip.

  “Wouldn’t want to get this beauty soaked,” she said, pointing to her T-shirt which read Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come.

  I hadn’t made any headway so far this morning in my effort to convince AJ to return his phone. As of now, he was flat-out refusing to even discuss it, so I decided to table it for the time being. I’d work on him while we were at the shrine searching for clues to the triangle’s location.

  But AJ and I hadn’t made it more than a few steps from our hut when Deb appeared.

  “Nope,” she said, spinning her finger around and then pointing toward the Huaca hut. “We’re waiting for the rain to clear and the second it does, we’re filming, which means no escaping into the woods today.”

  “But we’ve got to find AJ’s phone,” I complained. “You said you’d take all the phones away if we didn’t get it back. It’s not fair if you take them away without giving us a chance to find it.”

  Deb did a doubletake. “Are you in preschool? Life’s not fair, honey.” She paused. “But you know what? I’ll succumb to your persuasive argument and hold off on confiscating the phones.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, to holding off. No, to you having a persuasive argument. Lucky for you, though, I’m in a good mood, and I came over here to propose that exact proposition. See how nice I am? Since you can’t leave camp today, I’ll suspend my deadline and make it tomorrow by noon. You have a small reprieve, but that is a final, absolute deadline. If all the phones aren’t charging at twelve on the dot, I’m taking every single one of them back.”

  That was a relief. It made up for not being allowed to go to the shrine.

  Maren and Maddie went to sign up for double chore duty to give AJ and I time to study the map. We cleared off the table in the Huaca hut and spread out all our papers and notes. I found the section on triangular symbol interpretation in the Cipher and explained what I learned from DeadSea about the starting point and direction. I had to push the guilt down while I did it—AJ was throwing all kinds of admiration my way because he thought I’d figured all of it out on my own.

  When I was done, he spun his pencil in the air absentmindedly. He dropped it after the second toss and didn’t bother picking it up.

  “What’s wrong? You don’t think I’m right?”

  “That’s not it,” he said. “All of that is perfectly logical and makes sense. But so what? Start in the triangle’s mid-point, walk a certain angle. All good. But where’s the actual triangle? We have literally no idea—it could be anywhere on the island, and until we figure that out, we’re pretty much screwed.”

  He was right. We had no leads, and limited time to search.

  “I need a break.” He went a few yards away onto the beach. He didn’t do much, just stood there, facing the ocean. AJ, mellow? That was the surest sign yet that we were in trouble.

  But that didn’t mean I was ready to give in. I picked up AJ’s map and thought back to DeadSea’s last piece of advice: context. All right. The only things that could give us context were the shrine and the map, and I only had access to one of them right now. The map. I’d start with that.

  Maybe it was because I was looking at AJ’s map with his own notes on it, rather than my own familiar notes, but something struck me.

  “AJ!” The excitement in my voice pulled him back inside without needing to ask why. “Look at your map. Notice anything? You circled areas that looked interesting. I thought it was a bad idea because it made an unnecessary mess. Or so I thought.”

  I picked up a pencil. “See these three hills at the top of the island?” I drew three quick lines connecting the three hills on the upper left side of the map. “Look at that—now it forms a triangular-shaped area.”

  He exhaled. “Freaking brilliant,” he said, a giant smile spreading across his face. “That’s it, that’s got to be it!”

  I was pleased, too. We had a lead! Even better, this development solved something that had been bothering me, which was that if someone—anyone—simply stumbled across any of the markers, they could immediately jump in on the trail and start searching for the treasure. What was the point of the map, then? Whoever had hidden the treasure had gone to a lot of trouble to hide it. Needing the map to interpret the markers made sense, because it tied them together. You needed the map to solve the markers, and vice versa.

  After lunch, the rain cleared. We got word it was challenge time.

  “I can’t believe we’ve been here five days already,” AJ said. “That means we only have a max of twenty-one days left, and possibly even less than that. We really have to get up to that triangle.”

  “We’ll have time,” I reassured him, although I was worried, too. One of us could get voted out, or Deb could put a stop to our island exploration time. We needed to get up there as soon as possible.

  Deb and the B-team had set up Huaca and Sol docks off the beach, and then as a team we were supposed to paddle a canoe back and forth to the beach, filling up a hollow golden idol with sand each time. Back at the float, we had to pour the sand into a second empty idol perched on a pedestal, and when it was filled with enough sand to reach a cert
ain weight a door in the pedestal swung open, revealing a key that was then used to open a locked treasure chest on the beach. My so-called advantage was that we got one scoop of sand ahead of time in the pedestal idol, which hardly mattered because strong, giant outdoorsy Cody made the Sol canoe fly between the float and the shore. They lapped our canoe more than once.

  In any case, I barely noticed that the canoes were the same as the one we’d found hidden by the beach, barely paid attention when Huaca lost, and barely cared when we voted off Lucas and London later at Council.

  Here’s what I did care about: Porter hadn’t looked at me during the challenge, not even once. Even worse was how much fun he’d been having with Willa and Alex. At one point during the canoe races he’d stood at the bow of the Sol canoe, balancing his feet on each side. Teasing and laughing, Willa had pushed him off and he did an exaggerated wobble before diving in.

  Way to take care of your back, I almost called out.

  Even Alex had completely ignored me, which was cold considering everything we’d gone through yesterday. Cody did say something to me, but it was a warning to “get cracking on the next clue.” It was pretty disheartening to be in a position where I was back on the outside looking in. The day was one big steaming pile of déjà vu, basically.

  Not to mention, we’d lost two out of three challenges so far, and with Sean out of commission from his accident, it meant we were down to four players: me, AJ, Maren, and Maddie. Sol still had seven players left.

  “Tough day,” Joaquin said as we boarded the boat after Council.

  I definitely agreed. It had been a very tough day, and without a challenge designed to suit our strengths, tomorrow was likely to be even tougher.

  For the first time, we didn’t congregate by the fire pit after dinner. I don’t know what the Sol team was doing, but whatever it was, it sounded fun, and a lot rowdier than anything happening on our side of the beach. AJ was nowhere to be found, presumably off somewhere avoiding me. Our earlier excitement over cracking the triangle clue had been replaced with a disagreement over returning his phone, and after the challenge he’d shot down any attempt I’d made to convince him. And Maren . . . well, Maren was just being Maren: making herself scarce because she was grumpy that we had lost the challenge and overly annoyed that “cutesy-pie” Maddie had been the one to survive the vote. If I had to guess, she’d probably retreated to the hammock I’d seen her in yesterday.

  That left me and Maddie in the Huaca hut alone, so Joaquin offered to entertain us with stories from the production side. He got a pack of cards out of the game corner, and I cleared all the treasure notes off the table.

  “This is all a costume, you know. My outfit. The costume designer picks out my clothes every day. Usually the things she wants me to wear are fine, but I drew the line at the shark’s tooth necklace,” Joaquin said, touching the plain tooth-free leather cord he wore. “That was a little much, you know? No one wears those anymore.”

  That was about as deep as his “gossip” went. We played a few rounds of cards, and he didn’t offer anything more salacious than a few passing observations on the cameramen, none of whom we knew well enough to find interesting. I hadn’t thought of it before, but Joaquin was something of a floater. Not really part of the crew, but not part of the cast, either.

  Terrible card player, too. Maddie was killing him at crazy eights.

  “I think I’m going to take a walk,” I told them, and it wasn’t a lie. I did take a walk—right to my cabin to get the satellite. If I wanted to keep getting help from DeadSea, I’d have to answer his questions about the shrine eventually.

  The Wi-Fi was quicker than before, which meant I wasn’t wasting a ton of battery while the satellite searched for a signal. I’d noticed the battery was draining faster than I expected it to. I had no way of charging it, so when it ran out, that was it.

  I hesitated. I really shouldn’t waste time online, but on the other hand, the Internet speed was so fast that I could do a quick sweep of social media to see what was going on back home.

  I’d gotten rid of my Snapchat account—it had been too painful to see all my former friends goofing around together in their stories, and no one was sending me any direct Snaps. But I could still log into Facebook and Instagram. I didn’t bother going to Facebook, but Instagram didn’t disappoint. Some funny memes, a couple of birthday posts. I stopped scrolling. Wait a minute. My pulse quickened. Someone had tagged me in something. That hadn’t happened in a long time.

  I clicked. I saw the picture first—me, of course, in my famous red dress, and I let out the breath I’d been holding. What a letdown. I’d been tagged by Hanna Bilter, a girl from Shaw. People tagging me on my own picture had happened a lot at the beginning of the scandal, and back then they could semi-plausibly claim they were doing it to alert me of its existence. But at this point, eight months later, tagging me like that was obnoxious. It was just a way of reminding me that I’d messed up.

  But then it got worse. She had tagged three other people, too. Two of them were private, but AnnieBellaForTheWin’s profile was visible.

  Oh, God. One of her posts was taken at my new school—I recognized one of the buildings in the background. The other two girls must be students there, too, and one of them had commented Is this her? followed by the laughing-crying emoji.

  I felt sick. I knew my new classmates would hear of me somehow, but I didn’t expect to actually witness someone identifying me. It was so mean-spirited. If I showed my mother she wouldn’t understand the intent behind it, because adults didn’t get it. You already knew that picture was out there, honey, she’d say. What does it matter if girls from your new school see it? They’ll probably see it soon enough anyway.

  All of that was true, but it was the why of the interaction that was so upsetting. Hanna must have been telling people about me, and by AnnieBella’s comment, it was obvious that my former friend wasn’t saying anything nice. And furthermore, Hanna didn’t just tag those girls and let it go at that—she’d tagged me, too, so that I knew. She might as well have added Good luck at your new school, loser followed by that same emoji.

  Great. Life in SF was still terrible, and now I’d messed things up with Porter here. I logged off. I wasn’t in the mood anymore to face DeadSea’s questions about the shrine. I’d get back to him tomorrow when I found something new to report.

  I wrapped the satellite back up in the sweatshirt I’d brought to hide it and went to the beach. I wasn’t ready to call it a night yet.

  The sky was clear after the rain, as if it had been scrubbed clean. It seemed as if the stars were shining brighter than any night so far.

  I buried my toes in the sand and listened to the waves sloshing quietly onto the shore. It was strange, but for the first time, I was missing my old friends. I’d missed them before, of course, but there had always been a layer of anger at them for abandoning me. Now that anger was aimed at Porter, so only the feeling of loss remained, undiluted.

  “That guy is so not worth it,” a voice said from behind me. Maren wasn’t exactly who I had hoped would join me, but it seemed like she was in a good enough mood.

  “Who?”

  “Nice try. Mr. Preppy the Third.”

  “Oh. Him.”

  If Izzy had been here, she would have sat me down, pulled out her mini blender, whipped up some chocolate milkshakes, and called out all of Porter’s flaws.

  “He’s a goofball, and I don’t mean that in a good way. And that’s just for starters. Ever notice how Mr. Preppy is always making sure people are paying attention to him?”

  It startled me. Had I said that thing about calling out flaws out loud?

  “It’s like he’s putting on a little bit of a show, you know what I mean?”

  I snorted. “True.”

  I went silent for a minute, remembering all the things I’d shared with Izzy. I missed that. I missed he
r. I said to Maren, “My friend would always do that. Find the tiniest things wrong with a guy after he’d been a jerk.”

  “Well, sure. It’s a solid strategy.”

  Maren flailed her arms and wobbled around, mimicking Porter on the canoe. “‘Whoa, whoa, whoa . . . SPLASH!’ I mean, come on.”

  “I definitely hope they filmed that,” I agreed. “And from a bad angle.”

  “You know, I actually started to like that guy a little better when I thought he was into you. I thought he might be different, cooler, since he preferred you to those perfect girls on Sol.”

  “Wow, thanks,” I said sarcastically. “Huge compliment.”

  “Oh, come on, you know what I mean.” Maren flopped down next to me.

  “Actually, that’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me.” I picked up a shell and tossed it into the water. “Come to think of it, it might be the nicest thing anyone has said to me since we got to Black Rock.”

  Except for Willa. She’d said a few nice things. Not that I was going to mention her to Maren. Anyway, proportionally speaking, Maren’s “compliment” was probably nicer, since it was harder for her to say.

  “Take it when you can get it. I might not be feeling so friendly later.”

  Were we getting along? It was a miracle. We sat for a few minutes, tossing shells, listening to the waves.

  Doing things that friends might do together.

  “Is your hair really that color?” I asked. “Not purple, obviously. Is it really black?”

  Maren’s disdain was palpable. “What’s it to you?” she asked. And then, just like that, she got up and left.

  Ouch. She really was like Izzy, actually: willing to ditch me so quickly for a tiny mistake.

  I kept tossing shells, but not so mindlessly anymore. Faster. Harder. Now I could hear them hit the surface.

  Unbidden, a memory of an early morning I’d spent on the island came back to me. I remembered waking up one morning during that trip two summers ago when it was still dark. It was so quiet. No talking, no city noise, just the quiet slosh of the waves sliding onto the shore. I’d unzipped my tent as silently as possible so I didn’t wake anyone and tiptoed down to the high-water mark. I’d sat there for a while, all alone. It was so peaceful. The sun wasn’t out yet but then suddenly it was, a bright orange ball bubbling up through the horizon. A bird began to sing, loud and steady, almost as if it was talking only to me.