Reality Gold

by Tiffany Brooks

  I had felt happy then. No, wait: I didn’t feel happy. I was happy. There was a big difference. I hadn’t been truly happy like that since I’d left the island. What a strange thing to realize, and how sad. Then it hit me: maybe that was partly why I’d wanted to come back here. Two summers ago, on this beach, I’d felt like myself—and that was the last time I had felt like me for a very long time. I hadn’t appreciated it at the time, but our time on Black Rock was a last gasp of normalcy before everything changed. If my life events were laid out on a chart, the trip to Black Rock would be the high point, followed by a series of points marking a severe downward trend: Miles’s death, my father’s shame and grief after failing his friend, my expulsion, and so on.

  Now that I thought about it, it was clear that’s what had pulled me back here—the desire to recapture that better time and to feel like me again. To remember what it was like to feel comfortable and free from worry, to remember that there had once been a me who didn’t do dumb things, who didn’t wake up feeling the aching blankness of loneliness.

  You know what? Growing up sucked.

  Behind me, I heard the sounds of camp. Phil hit the gong aggressively three times, his signal for everyone to make his day by getting to bed.

  Fine with me. I was happy to call time on this crazy day, too. I was the last one; no one was in the huts or by the fire pit, not even Maddie or Joaquin.

  “Get a move on, Riley,” Phil said. “Tomorrow’s a new day. You can spend all day figuring out the marker’s clues, but for now it’s lights out.”

  I was startled. Why would Phil have said the marker’s clues like that? Had AJ said something in his confessional last night?

  Phil must have noticed something was wrong. “What? Isn’t that your plan?”

  I was probably being paranoid. AJ wouldn’t have said anything.

  Still, something about the way Phil was watching me made me think he really did know we’d found something.

  Maybe it wasn’t AJ who had told him. There had been such a clear division between the Sol and Huaca teams today, it was conceivable that Cody, Alex, or Porter could have said something to the crew.

  God, how stupid. Maren had been right. We never should have let anyone from Sol come.

  22

  I got my chance to confront one of the Sol traitors sooner than I thought.

  I’d just squeezed the toothpaste onto my brush at the bathroom sink when Alex slid through the door. Sneakily, I noticed. I was still mad about today. The way she’d ignored me had seemed pointed. Was a simple hi really that hard to manage?

  “Did you tell Deb or Phil or anyone else about the shrine?” I asked, watching her in the mirror as I started to brush my teeth.

  She frowned. “What? No. Why?”

  I kept her waiting while I finished and spit into the sink.

  “Phil said something odd. It seemed like he might know we’d found something.”

  “If he does, I wasn’t the one who told him. What did he say?”

  She seemed genuine, but even if she wasn’t, it was obvious she wasn’t going to admit to it.

  “Never mind, it was probably nothing.”

  I rinsed my mouth and let the water run. I was still watching Alex through the mirror and I noticed she didn’t have any bathroom stuff. She didn’t wear—and didn’t need—makeup, so it was hard to tell the difference between when she was going to bed and when she was ready for the day. Unlike me, where it was obvious. I looked like a shiny naked Martian after I’d washed my face and gotten ready for bed. She did have one telltale sign, though: her blond hair was always in a ponytail during the night. It was like that now, so she must have already done her bedtime routine.

  So what was she doing here? I didn’t say anything else. I wondered if she even noticed I was giving her the cold shoulder.

  “I saw Joaquin with you and Maddie tonight. After the council,” Alex said. “What was he doing with you guys?”

  “I wasn’t telling him any game secrets, if that’s what you’re accusing me of,” I said, still watching her through the mirror. “He was just playing cards with me and Maddie.”

  “Cards?” she repeated incredulously.

  I was sick of this. I thought we’d become friends the other day. Well, maybe not friends, but we’d gotten along to the point where I thought things had overarched the team divisions. But now she was in here going on about Joaquin. Was this another way for everyone to accuse me of getting unearned advantages from the crew?

  “Yeah, cards. Crazy eights, go fish. Ever heard of them?” It suddenly occurred to me. “Wait, are you the one who said something to Porter about me?”

  “What is with you tonight? Why are you suddenly so paranoid people are talking behind your back? I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  “The other night Porter was acting strange. He said something that hinted at how everyone is obsessed with determining how much help I’ve been getting from Deb, and now here you are, all concerned about Joaquin talking to me, so . . .”

  “Oh. Wait, no,” Alex said. She leaned against the sink, looking relieved. “You’re talking about game stuff. That’s not why I’m here. Listen, forget about the game for a second. This is serious.”

  And unexpected.

  “Joaquin is . . .” She cleared her throat. “I mean, you can tell he’s kind of a perv, right?”

  I frowned. It was true, at the beginning I felt a little uncomfortable around him. There was that time where he’d made fun of me for not realizing he wasn’t actually Portuguese, but he’d never made me feel dumb for it after that, and it had even seemed to connect us in a weird way. Like how he’d come into the hut to play cards. He’d been funny, but even more, he’d been acting like a friend, which was more than I could say for some people.

  “I don’t like the way he behaves with the girls, especially Maddie.” She held up her hands in a defensive gesture. “I don’t mean that in a team advantage way.”

  “What do you mean behaves? He hangs out with us, that’s all. Isn’t that literally his job?” I asked.

  “Not exactly,” Alex said cautiously.

  Now she was the one making me feel dumb. Dumber than Joaquin ever had. Whatever she was trying to do was backfiring. Or maybe not—maybe she was intentionally trying to mess with me, make me doubt one of the only people who’d felt like a solid ally.

  “He’s old. And kind of famous. Why would he do anything weird?”

  She sighed. “Maybe this was a mistake. I wanted to help. Let’s pretend that you and I are here on vacation, and I came in here to give you a heads-up about some guy at the all-­inclusive bar who might be a creep.”

  “Thanks, I guess?”

  “Better safe than sorry, right? Grab me if anything ever feels off. Forget about any of this team BS and just say I’m supposed to be somewhere else. Like the girls are all taking a picture together and you need me there, too, or something. Okay? Same goes for Maddie.”

  “Sure,” I said, pretending I didn’t know this had to be a game ploy to mess with my head. For good measure, I added, “I’ll tell Maddie.”

  Alex nodded and left. It wasn’t until the door swung shut that I realized I probably should have told her that I’d do the same for her, in case she’d meant it for real. Oh, well. It didn’t matter; nothing like that would ever happen to pretty, self-sufficient, zombie-apocalypse-survivor Alex.

  Anyway, I had bigger things to worry about. It was pretty clear that I was going to have to tell AJ about my satellite if I wanted to preserve access to it. I felt sick about it. I was definitely worried how AJ would react to the news: Would he get mad? Would he tell everyone? If he did either of those things, it was all over for me. At the very least, he might find a way to use the satellite for his own advantage at my expense.

  Still, even with all that looming over my head, I held on to hope
that tomorrow couldn’t possibly be worse than today.

  23

  Food poisoning. That’s what came with the new day. So yes, if that was any indication, then today was definitely going to be worse than yesterday.

  AJ, Maren, and I were going through the breakfast buffet when Phil suddenly ran past us with his hand over his mouth. He left a trail of knocked-over chairs in his wake.

  Justin was next, and he didn’t make it to the trees. He threw up into the sand outside the Snack Bar. Maddie ran off toward the Huaca Hut, wailing about how if she even saw vomit it would make her throw up, too, and the next thing I knew almost everyone who had been sitting at the tables was now leaning over, clutching their stomachs. Porter, too, I took some satisfaction in noticing. He ran out before he did anything too embarrassing, though. Rohan and Cody followed, although not as urgently. They were both big guys; maybe the sickness wasn’t affecting them as fast. I didn’t see Alex, Taylor, or Willa. They were either fine, or they’d gone down before Phil.

  The Snack Bar looked like a crime scene. Muffins and sliced fruit were splashed across the tables, mimicking the trails of vomit on the ground.

  “Riley, step away from the muffin,” Maren instructed. I hadn’t realized I was still standing exactly how I’d been when Phil ran out, holding a blueberry muffin in midair. I didn’t even put it back, I just dropped it. There was worse in the sand at this point.

  The three of us stood on the side, like late arrivals to a car wreck, unsure what to do or how to help.

  “Let’s go,” AJ said, low and urgently.

  “Now?” I asked. “We can’t leave everyone like this.”

  “Oh, are you suddenly a doctor?” Maren said. “Yes, we can, and besides, I definitely don’t want to eat whatever it is that’s zombifying everybody.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said. It had to be from the food. I felt fine. It looked like Maren and AJ did, too. If it was an airborne illness the odds were at least one of us would be feeling it.

  The camera crew was busy capturing the scene in all its glory. They hadn’t been afflicted, which supported the idea this was a food-based incident because they never ate with us. It actually seemed like they might be enjoying the chaos. This was probably a highlight for them—it was their job to get good footage, and the buffet scenes this morning were anything but boring.

  Deb and Katya, on the other hand, were not having a good time. They were deep into what looked like a heated argument. Deb was waving her clipboard around without regard to some of the pages that were fluttering loose and floating to the floor.

  Deb. Oh no. What if she confined us to camp again?

  “Quick, you guys,” I hissed. “Let’s go before Deb sees us.”

  It was tempting to run, but we kept calm and the three of us quietly made our exit. We slipped away unnoticed, or at least, that’s what we thought. We had just passed the first marker and we were on the straight shot up to Black Rock when we heard Willa’s voice.

  “Wait up,” she called.

  “Are you freaking kidding me?” Maren said, not even quietly.

  “I know, I know,” Willa said, when she got closer. “You probably wanted to be alone, but I think you’ll be happy to see me. I’ve got something good.”

  Somehow Willa always had the perfect outfit for every occasion. I pictured her at home packing for the trip, creating and laying out entire outfits and photographing them the way magazines do. Today’s attire must have been conceived as the “hiking look.” She was wearing a white button-down safari top, a variation of the ones Joaquin wore, but hers was flimsy and sheer and revealed a cargo-green bikini top underneath. Her jean shorts were like mine, if you didn’t count the four inches’ more coverage I had past my crotch. Oh, and aviators and a messy bun pulled everything together. It was hard not to be jealous, because even if all those things were lifted off her and attached to me in a paper-doll move, I still wouldn’t look the same. Hair too straight and thick to be messy-casual like that, face too heart-shaped for aviators, boobs too flat for that bathing suit top to even stay up, and so on.

  She held out something electronic: a black square with a charging cord attached.

  “While you guys were at Council last night, Cody got Rohan to persuade someone from the crew to bring him a charger and cord that would work for your phone.”

  “Man, Rohan’s got connections,” Maren said. Admiringly, I noticed.

  “Yeah, he’s always talking to the crew when no one is looking. Paid off this time, too. Since you can’t bring your phone to the charging station, you can use this.”

  AJ plugged his phone in. “Yessssss! It works.”

  I hadn’t even thought about AJ’s phone battery dying—I’d been so worried about the satellite. Good for Cody for thinking about it.

  “I wasn’t going to come,” Willa said. “Plowing through the jungle isn’t really my thing, but since everyone else on my team is sick, they sent me. I’m supposed to deliver a message, too. Cody says find the gold, or we’ll have to gamble that the shrine counts as a substantial clue.”

  I shook my head. “He’s not thinking straight. He wants to win the most money he possibly can, but pointing Deb toward the shrine isn’t the way to do it.” Willa hadn’t been there when we’d found the shrine, but I assumed since she was here now, her team had pulled her into their side of the partnership and she knew about our discovery. “The second anyone official hears about this, a bunch of archaeologists will swarm the island and we’ll be kicked off. No more show, which means no million-dollar prize. Sure, Deb could award us the treasure prize—which is a big if, since we weren’t technically there first—but even if she does, it’s small and it’ll be split up a bunch of ways. Not worth it.”

  “Yeah, I get it, and that’s why I brought you the charger,” Willa said. “Solve the puzzle, find the gold, and we’re all a lot better off.”

  “Great,” AJ said. “I can’t let you come, though, unless you sign my NDA.”

  “Got a pen?”

  So much for all Willa’s prior legal concerns. When AJ produced the form, she signed it without a second thought.

  “Let’s get a group selfie before we start,” Willa said, which we posed for, some of us more reluctantly (Maren) than others. That wasn’t the last selfie. Or the last video. All along the trail, Willa tried new angles and new backdrops. She pulled me in for some, which made me self-conscious, even though a few days ago I’d been fantasizing about this exact scenario. It was Maren, sighing loudly every time, who was ruining it.

  Eventually we made it to the upper left-hand side of the island, and we easily found the wide-open area marked on the map. The rolling hills covered in long grass reminded me of the headlands across the Golden Gate Bridge back home. Willa had her camera ready, of course, but I didn’t hold it against her this time—the colors in this view were meant to be captured. Blue water sprinkled with glints of yellow sun, wind-whipped whitecaps, and a bright green edge of land. And best of all, no tourists contaminating the scene.

  AJ was less patient. “Selfie time is over. Let’s fan out,” he said. “What we’re looking for first are the three triangular peaks pictured on the map. They could be hills or rocks, so basically please pay attention to anything that sticks out of the ground, okay? Once we find them, we’ll be able to find our starting place, go seventy paces, and hopefully that’s where we’ll find another stone marker.”

  “Hills? Rocks? A stone marker?” Willa said, as if hearing those words for the first time. “I thought we were looking for gold.”

  A look of remorse flashed across AJ’s face; he was obviously regretting his decision to allow Willa to tag along.

  “Uh, I’m going to look over there.” He pointed to the right. “Maren, you take the spot below me, and why don’t you two head toward the coastline? Be careful, though, it’s likely to be a cliff, or at least a steep drop to the shore.
”

  I loved how he was bundling me with Willa because he and Maren didn’t want to deal with her. It’s funny how sometimes circumstances, not personality, determine if someone is popular or simply someone to put up with. Up here, Willa was exactly the same, but she wasn’t the star. She was actually pretty annoying. I think she was feeling it, too, mostly by her willingness to attach herself to me, the likeliest to be awed by her.

  Focus, Riley. I looked for bumps or anomalies in the land.

  We had to find something today. This might be our last chance to do a search. We’d snuck off; Deb might be mad, and if so, she’d retaliate by either taking the phones away or confining us to camp. Of course, Cody’s deadline was hanging over my head, too.

  My heart sank when I noticed a drone flying in the distance.

  “Get down!” I said to Willa, pointing at the drone. How had it found us? I signaled to Maren and AJ. Hopefully it was too far away to have spotted us.

  Willa and I hid under a tree, flattening ourselves onto our stomachs so we could peer through the branches and watch the drone. It was moving slowly, going back and forth in a grid pattern. We settled in for what was probably going to be a long wait.

  “What sort of gold do you think it is? I was hoping we’d find some crowns or rings and things,” Willa said. “Wouldn’t it be awesome if we got pictures of ourselves dripping in all this fabulous jewelry?”

  Everything was so visual to her. It was actually pretty fascinating the way she framed every situation in photographic terms.

  “I don’t really know what the treasure is made up of,” I said. “Maybe jewelry. Maybe chalices or little statues? Things that could get melted down easily.”