Reality Gold

by Tiffany Brooks

  “Why’s that?”

  “The gold is ransom that a village had to pull together to free their king from a Spanish conqueror,” I said. “It’s actually a sad story, because they were ready to pay it, but before they could get it to his captors, the king was killed. The local priest confiscated the treasure for the crown and then hid it here so the villagers couldn’t reclaim it.”

  “Harsh,” Willa said. “But ransom—that’s interesting. Whatever’s hidden must be really valuable. I’ll bet it is jewelry.”

  I thought about the origin story again. It was harsh. But even harsher was that random people like me could swoop in, find it, and keep things that were, essentially, blood offerings. No wonder so many wanted to believe that anyone who plundered the treasure would end up cursed. I’d gotten so caught up in the logistics of the hunt itself that I’d forgotten the sacrifice and loss that had been at the heart of the backstory.

  Was this right? What I was doing . . . was it fair? I had never questioned the ethics of my search before, but now that I was actually in the mix, literally getting my hands dirty, small doubts were bubbling up. What gave me, of all people, the right to claw it from the ground where it had been kept safe for hundreds of years?

  Miles had looked at it differently, of course. He believed it was his duty to find the gold. He felt tied to it, and he’d tried to convince my father that he’d been chosen to find it—which had only made my father more certain that Miles had lost his mind.

  The drone must not know where we were because it had stopped its methodical searching and had begun flying in a random pattern.

  “Ugh, this is going to take forever.” Willa wiggled into a sunny patch. I joined her, and the two of us lay side by side on our backs, knees pointing to the sky.

  “I wish this place wasn’t so far away,” Willa sighed. “It’s so pretty here. I’d love to bring Justin up here for a photo sesh.”

  I ignored the sesh part and focused on the non-Porter part. “Justin?”

  “Look, we got the cutest pictures on the beach the other day.” Willa held up her phone so I could see the screen and started swiping through her photos. Willa and Justin on the beach. Willa and Justin swimming. At the Snack Bar, horsing around. In the hammock, and on top of Sean’s cliff. That one surprised me. I thought we’d all been avoiding that spot out of respect for Sean, but apparently not.

  “You should go there with Porter sometime,” she told me.

  “Oh, I . . .”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know if there’s anything there with Porter.” It felt odd saying it out loud. I was glad we were facing the sky and not each other, because seeing those images of Willa and Justin made me realize how far away I was from experiencing something like that. Even when we’d been “together,” if it could be called that, Porter and I hadn’t been sharing time so openly the way they had.

  I paused. “Anyway, I had this weird thought that you guys might be together?”

  In light of the pictures she’d just showed me, it felt like a stupid observation, made even stupider by her reaction.

  “Us?” Willa laughed. “Me and Porter? Oh my God. No. Porter’s like a brother,” she added dismissively. “But why’d you say there was nothing there? Is this about the other night? When we took that quiz?”

  My heart beat a little faster. What did she know about that?

  “He was so mad at me after that,” I admitted. “I don’t get it. I guessed it was him, that’s all, and even if I had known, what does it matter?”

  “Oh, you know guys. They like to be all manly. I think he was worried you’d felt sorry for him and that was the only reason you were paying any attention to him. Or that Deb had told you to do it. I told him he was being stupid, don’t worry. You should talk to him when we get back.”

  “Maybe.”

  It looked like the drone was moving further away. Not too much longer until we could start searching. Willa laughed and put her hand over her eyes to get a good look at me. “I can’t believe you thought I might be with Porter.”

  I frowned. “Why? Is that so crazy? Is there something bad about him I need to know?”

  “Oh, no. Porter’s totally cute. But you’re so sharp about nearly everything else. I’m surprised you got that so wrong.”

  That startled me. “What?”

  “It’s true. You’re so quiet and sometimes it’s hard to even know if you’re paying attention, but then bam! You come out with something that shows you’re way ahead of everyone else. Like the bags, that first day. You’d solved the problem before anyone even knew there was an issue.”

  I hated compliments because I never knew how to react, but I was saved from saying anything dumb when Willa noticed the drone was actually leaving.

  “There it goes,” she said, standing up and brushing herself off. “Back to work.”

  Willa and I didn’t end up spending too much time in our assigned area; it was pretty flat, so it wasn’t hard to search. We checked in with AJ, who assigned us a new place a little further toward the water.

  Willa wasn’t up for it. “Let me have the map for a minute,” she asked AJ. “I’m going to take some scenery shots with the map and this gorgeous background, okay?”

  Maren had been taking a water break with one of the few bottles we’d remembered to pack before our hasty exit. She threw a disparaging look at Willa, who was now arranging the map on top of some scattered wildflowers.

  “What’s the matter?” Maren asked. “Your milkshake can’t bring all the boys to the yard unless your Snapchat story is perfect?”

  “What would you know about milkshakes?” Willa shot back. She waited until Maren was out of earshot, and then said to me, “Actually, she’s sort of growing on me now that she’s starting to look edgy in a cool way instead of like an outcast dreaming about the day she becomes a school shooter.”

  Oh, God. I winced, but there was a smidge of truth to the description. All that dark makeup and Maren’s affinity for black—her clothes, her hair, her lipstick—had been a distraction. But now, with her toned-down hair pulled up in a high ponytail and any heavy makeup hidden by a pair of round, mirrored sunglasses, she looked actually interesting. Not strange. Even her T-shirt was a little mellower today. It just said Nope in big block letters.

  From a nearby hill, AJ was waving us over. Willa opted to ignore him, but Maren and I went to see what he’d found, walking and then breaking into a run when we saw how excited he was.

  AJ stood next to a pile of moss-covered rocks. Not rough, natural rocks—perfectly rectangular blocks of stone that had once been stacked on top of each other to form a tower. The years had taken their toll, and the pillar had crumbled and allowed the island to overtake it.

  “This is it, one of the points of the triangle,” he told us excitedly, and now that we knew what to look for, it didn’t take too much longer for the three of us to find the other two points. They marked out an area about as big as a baseball field, and we quickly identified the midpoint spot and which direction to go.

  “Ready?” I asked AJ. “In seventy varas, we’ll know if we’re on to something.”

  “Let’s do it,” he replied.

  My heart thumped as we counted off the paces.

  24

  What happened next was thrilling, although it brought equal parts excitement and frustration. First, the excitement: we found the third marker just over the crest of a nearby hill. It was exactly where DeadSea had said it would be—seventy paces from the center point of the triangle. Our frustration came from the fact that the marker had been dug up already, and it was out in the open, fully visible. A shovel, a discarded water bottle, and a few giant piles of earth immediately told us that someone had gotten there before us—and from the look of it, possibly not too long ago.

  AJ let out a string of curse words, grabbing the shovel and banging th
e flat end on the ground over and over.

  It was official. The shrine and the marker had been discovered by someone who knew how to read treasure signs. MrJackSparrow—it had to be. How far ahead of us was he? If he’d been here weeks ago, the black market might already be lit up with the gold. I watched AJ slamming the ground with the shovel and I felt the same rage when I realized that if it was true—if the gold was really gone—Miles would have died for nothing. I felt wronged, suddenly, the same way I’d felt after that article had come out.

  Not fair, not fair, not fair.

  AJ spent some time in panic mode, throwing the shovel around and generally freaking out. I knelt down to inspect our new clue. The marker itself was just like the first two—just a small, flat, square stone. There were fewer carvings on this one: two squiggly lines that were obviously the sign for a river. There was a C inside the river, and at the bottom was a straight line. That was it.

  Cody had guessed how long it had been since MrJackSparrow had found the marker in the shrine by feeling the dirt, so I tried it. These piles were more like soil. Darker, and not at all dry and dusty. A light coating stuck to my fingers.

  I had to yell AJ’s name a few times to get his attention. “Can you stop?” I asked, when I finally had his attention. “This is important. Look at these piles—they’re still a little damp. I think the marker wasn’t dug up too long ago.”

  AJ calmed down and took a handful. “You’re right. It feels pretty fresh, even being exposed to the sun and air. Only the top layer is dry.”

  “Someone could have been here recently,” I said. “Like maybe even today.”

  “This is great.” AJ said the word great at the exact time I interjected with the opposite opinion: terrible.

  We look at each other in disbelief.

  “This guy is close,” I said. “Maybe even watching us right now. Someone—most likely this guy—killed Miles over the cave discovery. And now we’re in his way? I definitely wouldn’t be using the word great.”

  “Are you kidding me? It’s awesome that we’re so close. Now we have a shot. You’d rather be safe if it meant losing the archaeological discovery of a lifetime?”

  I looked at him in disbelief. “Um, yes?”

  “Nah. You’re looking at this all wrong. Think of it this way: Cody thought the shrine marker had been found weeks ago, right? That means it took this guy weeks to figure out something that took us a day. A day! This guy is a hack, not some dangerous mastermind. What did you call him back at the shrine? Jack Sparrow? I know I made fun of you for it, but I’m glad you brought him up, because Jack Sparrow is a joke of a pirate and this guy is a joke of a treasure hunter. And if the name fits . . . am I right? Let’s see if Sparrow figured out where to go next.”

  Maren and Willa had been keeping their distance while AJ spun out, but now they came over to look at the marker. I made a rubbing after they inspected it, and then AJ and I both took some pictures.

  “You can’t really figure out what this thing means, can you?” Willa asked. She nudged the marker with her sneaker, as if afraid to touch it. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  AJ was suddenly all business. “Sure it does. And not only do I know what it means, I don’t even need to look at my Cipher to check. It’s simple. We go straight that way until we hit a river.”

  “Not just to a river,” I pointed out. “The letter C is inside the river, not next to it. That means we’re supposed to cross it and go—”

  “Fifty varas,” Maren cut in. “And I’m going to need some credit for remembering that the letter C means fifty.”

  “Lots of credit,” I said, but I was distracted. AJ had begun to walk east in the direction he’d just indicated. He wasn’t even bothering to make sure the rest of us were coming.

  “We’re not even going to discuss whether we should keep going?” I called incredulously.

  He didn’t stop, just yelled over his shoulder, “What’s to discuss? Come on, let’s go.”

  It seemed to me there was plenty to discuss. The presence of the potential murderer, for one thing. We were hungry, tired, and thirsty—not at our best, and we didn’t even have Cody or Rohan with us to offer decent protection. Easy prey.

  Maren threw up her hands. “Well, what else do we have to do?” she asked me.

  “For starters, we could try to avoid getting murdered!”

  “Oh, come on. Don’t be such a drama queen. This guy doesn’t exactly seem to be hiding his discoveries. Kind of seems like someone who’s sure he’s the only one looking.”

  I shook my head. “Even if that’s true, he’s not going to be happy to see anyone on his trail. Look at AJ. He practically turned feral right in front of us. You’ve never known the history of this treasure, so you don’t understand how huge this is, and how far people will go to cover it up. I think we should think about hitting pause. Be safe about it.”

  “Because you’re the expert?” Maren shot back. “Aren’t you forgetting it’s your father who knows it all? Not you? Just go back if you want to give up.”

  Willa tugged at my arm. “She’s right. Let’s go back, Riley. Come on.”

  Like AJ, she didn’t wait for me to answer; she just started walking south. That left Maren and me smack in the middle of two people walking in opposite directions.

  “Go on,” Maren said. “You’re basically her bitch now anyway. Take one of me in front of this tree, now over here, no not that angle,” she mimicked.

  “What do you care? Stop judging me for hanging out with other people. You’ve made it perfectly clear you don’t want to be friends.”

  “Be friends? Oh my God. We aren’t five, hanging out in the Lego corner.” Maren rolled her eyes. “Wanna be my friend? Okay cool, now we’re best friends forever! Because that was the last time I remember deciding on my friendships like that.”

  “That’s not what I meant! My point is that you obviously don’t care about me, so I don’t understand why you aren’t just leaving me alone. Let me hang out with who I want to hang out with and stop the commentary.”

  She gave me a dismissive look. “Whatever. I can do that, no problem. But you need to do something, too. Stop pretending you even care whether I like you or not.”

  I did care, though. That was the surprising thing. She’d been pushing and pushing at me, but her antagonism was more engagement than I’d had with anyone in months.

  “I like you enough not to see you killed by a psycho treasure hunter!” I said. “Isn’t that enough?”

  There was a mini standoff where we glared at each other before splitting up. She went east, I went south. What were we going to do, argue all day over which of us cared the least about the other? I didn’t even understand how we’d gone from disagreeing over AJ to fighting about that.

  Willa was waiting farther downhill. I caught up to her.

  “Listen, I don’t think we should leave them,” I said. “I meant what I said before. This treasure is worth millions, and someone is out looking for it. We don’t know how far they’re willing to go to get it. AJ and Maren could be in danger.”

  “Yeah, and we might be, too. Which is why”—she tipped her head south—“we want to get going. Back to semi-civilization. So come on.”

  “I don’t know . . .” I was torn. If AJ was right and MrJackSparrow wasn’t smart enough to immediately decipher the clue, we had time to go back to camp and re-group. Which was great, but that didn’t solve our Deb problem. She must have sent the drone out after us, which meant she’d likely be angry at us for running off. There was nothing to stop her from confining us to camp for the rest of the game, and this might be the last time we were allowed to search freely. The trail was hot—maybe I was crazy to think about returning to camp now and jeopardizing such a good lead.

  “Think about it. What if someone is out there?” Willa asked. “What are we going to do, throw a sneak
er at them? No thanks. I’m out.”

  She started to leave. I watched her for a second, and my first thought was that it made a good picture: her back to me, with the jungle as a backdrop and the wide, blue sky above. My second thought was more reasonable, which was that as bitchy as Maren was and as annoying and single-minded as AJ was, there was a good chance they were walking right into a dangerous situation. I couldn’t just ditch them.

  And I had more than a shoe. I had a shovel. I went over and picked it up. The blade was pretty sharp, too.

  Willa kept walking. I was definitely worried about not following her. She was my connection to Porter, but I couldn’t abandon AJ and Maren and what might be my last chance to find the gold.

  Willa was the one who reconsidered. She caught up to me just as I was entering the forest.

  “You win,” she said simply. “But if I die without ever making it online to find out how many followers this show brought me, I’m blaming you.”

  “Deal.”

  It took us about fifteen minutes to reach the river, and we could see AJ and Maren ahead of us. Along the way I kept an eye out for signs of anyone else, or any movement, which proved to be difficult because the wind was starting to blow and everything was moving. I tried not to think what the tree branches might be trying to tell me. Don’t be stupid, I imagined them saying. Turn back now while you have a chance.

  AJ and Maren hadn’t crossed to the other side yet. On the map the river had been drawn as if it was a narrow stream, but this was a raging, rushing flow of water. From the pounding whoosh that came from downstream, it sounded as if it churned into an impressive waterfall.

  Willa and I made our way down the riverbank to join the other two, who didn’t seem all that surprised to see us. Nor did either of them bother to say hello. Instead, AJ took off his sneakers and tied the laces together, draping them over his shoulders like a scarf. He stuffed his phone in one of the shoes.