29
Katya quickly shut everything down and sent us all to our cabins for lights out. She had Cody’s support, so I didn’t even get any time with Porter.
Morning came quickly. By now, our eleventh day here, we knew the drill: gong, stumble out for breakfast, suck down coffee, then gather by the boats to listen to Deb outline the day’s schedule. Joaquin was there, standing behind her. How had I ever thought he was attractive? His smile this morning seemed smarmy, not sincere.
“The boat leaves in half an hour for the challenge.” Deb was all business, although her clipboard had become something of a mess—scrawled notes and miscellaneous papers jammed under the clip every which way. “Oh, and you’ll need your bathing suits,” she added, without providing any other details. “Dismissed. Get your game faces on and meet back here in thirty.”
Nearly everyone left immediately to get themselves camera ready, but not Maddie. I watched her set a course for Joaquin. I was glad Alex had already left to get changed; I didn’t think she should interfere.
But then I changed my mind, and immediately wished Alex was there, because when Joaquin saw Maddie coming toward him, he gave her a quick nod and turned to talk to Deb, leaving Maddie hanging. Ouch. It was a sharp contrast to the mornings when he’d ruffle her hair or give her a playful arm punch.
Maddie stood still, a confused look on her face. I had a very bad feeling about this.
“Maddie, come on,” I called out to her. “Let’s go get our bathing suits.”
The challenge was basically a repeat of the last one, but this time instead of running through a maze we were looking for broken pieces of a gold statue in a submerged shipwreck. It was fascinating how the challenges themselves could be so lame but the actual sets so elaborate. Maybe it was a television thing—the backdrops dazzled the viewers so much they didn’t notice all the action was being recycled.
Each team had its own floating dock, and Joaquin had his own smaller one between the teams. Before the challenge started, Katya came to our float to show us how to use the scuba equipment. Having once had to go through an entire scuba certification course, I wondered whether this was a good idea. This show really played fast and loose with safety and supervision, though, so I shouldn’t have been surprised that this wasn’t any different.
Joaquin went through his usual pre-challenge speech. “As usual, there will be an immunity coin hidden in the depths,” he told us in full host mode, accent and all. “I don’t have to remind you how many treasure seekers have lost their lives in their pursuit of gold. Be safe, players.”
“You going to jump in and rescue me if my tank runs out of air?” Porter called out.
“Sure, Porter. If you need help, I promise to personally save you.”
Deb used her megaphone to inform all of us that divers were positioned nearby and our lives did not, in fact, rely on Joaquin’s possibly rudimentary swimming skills.
“Doesn’t mean I don’t love you, though, man,” Joaquin said.
“How about me?” Alex called defiantly. “Would you jump in for me?”
I cringed, thinking he’d take the chance to get back at her for last night, but his reply was milder than it could have been. “Sure, Alex, if you really needed it.”
Willa was next to ask if he’d jump in for her.
“Definitely,” Joaquin promised. “But only if you promise to post a pic for your millions of followers.”
“Would you rescue me?” Maddie called.
Oh, God. This was starting to spiral out. Say yes, I silently begged Joaquin. Just say yes. But he didn’t.
“Guys, don’t worry, you’re in good hands. No one will need saving.”
Anyone watching wouldn’t realize he’d just ignored her, but the contrast to their previous interactions was striking. Yesterday there was no question that he would have singled Maddie out to say he’d jump in first for her.
Maddie knew the difference. I knew it. Alex, too. But we were probably the only ones.
Deb was getting frustrated. She picked up her megaphone again. “As I told you, Joaquin is not going to be saving anyone. Furthermore, none of you is going to need saving because all of you are going to pay very close attention right now as Phil and Katya go through the instructions.”
I probably had more experience scuba diving than Katya, but I listened anyway. Then she went into the specific rules of the game.
She held up a weight belt. “Everyone needs to put this on before going in, and you’ll need to clip this tether onto it. When you have sixty seconds left on your time, we’re going to tug the line once. At thirty seconds, we’ll tug it again twice, and when your time is up you’ll feel three quick tugs in a row. That’s the signal to come up. Anything you do after that will be disqualified, so don’t bother trying to stay down any longer. You have plenty of air to stay, so it’s not dangerous, but there’s no point. Just come up when you get the signal.”
I went first on Huaca. The shipwreck was hyperrealistic, and by that I mean it was what someone who had never seen a shipwreck would imagine it to look like. In real life, the ships are covered in sand and algae and barnacles, barely more than lumps on the ocean floor. But I got it—rotting pieces of green wood wouldn’t impress anyone, so instead we had two precise halves of a new ship that had been split and submerged in perfect condition under the clear blue waves.
The thing I love about being underwater is the thing most people hate. I love hearing my breath. The heavy rasping in and out. Breathing is something you never think about, you just do, but when you’re underwater that’s almost the only thing you hear. There’s something about the weightiness of everything underwater, too, that makes me appreciate being above the surface. Everything feels a bit lighter and more wide-open after a dive.
Our strategy was for me to simply get the layout of the wreck so we could decide as a team which sections to search. The boat really was elaborate—sleeping cabins, a galley, living quarters. I made some mental notes on the more complex parts of the wreck—the galley was full of compartments—and when I felt the tug letting me know my time was up, I kicked my way to the surface.
AJ was next. The clock was paused while we were on deck, so the transition wasn’t as rushed as it usually was.
“Start in the galley,” I told him, unhooking the tank and weight belt. He took the tank from me to test the airflow. “There are a lot of doors and places where things could be hidden, some tables and chairs all piled up, too. Something could be under those.”
“Will do. Wait, where’s the belt?” AJ asked. He wasn’t quite ready to go. The goggles were on his forehead, and his flippers still off to the side.
I looked around. That was weird. I’d unhooked the belt and let it fall, but it wasn’t anywhere on the deck. Then I heard a splash off the side of the boat.
“Why is Maddie going?” Maren asked. “Isn’t it AJ’s turn?”
There were a few long, drawn-out seconds where I tried to process what was going on. Missing belt, Maddie jumping in out of turn without all the equipment. Oh, God. She was testing Joaquin. She wanted him to save her. I could almost imagine the romantic fantasy she’d cooked up in her head—Joaquin urgently diving down to pull her from the depths.
“Give me the tank!” I said to AJ.
“What the heck? We agreed I would go second.” It wasn’t really hitting AJ yet, either, what was going on, but despite his complaints, he handed me the tank. Katya was on the radio, frantically calling Deb.
“Did she jump in on purpose? Is she trying to sabotage us?” Maren demanded. And then she smiled. “You know, if that’s true, I almost have some respect for that girl now.”
I didn’t have time for any of that. I stepped off the float and plunged feetfirst into the water.
Maddie had sunk almost straight down, which is actually hard to do. You need to know how to let the air out of your lu
ngs and you need to do it slow enough so that you keep sinking rather than pop to the surface. She was staring upward, toward the floats—ominous black squares above us that blocked out the sunlight.
I made it down to the wreck near where she was standing, pulling out my mouthpiece and giving it to Maddie.
“Breathe,” I ordered, the word coming out as a blob of sound accompanied by a stream of bubbles. There was a minute where I wasn’t sure she would take it, but she did, taking a breath and then passing it back to me. She looked so scared and confused.
Two wetsuited swimmers in full scuba gear appeared. One of them pulled the weight belt off Maddie and hooked arms with her, kicking upward. The remaining diver pointed up and I nodded.
Things on the surface had devolved into chaos. Deb’s boat was moored to the Sol float, and the swimmers had taken Maddie over there. I grabbed a towel and sat on our float between AJ and Maren, watching the whole thing. Cody was pacing back and forth, obviously concerned what the disruption of the challenge meant.
Alex was standing between Maddie and Deb, loudly insisting that Maddie needed to see a doctor.
“I told you guys she’d be the last one standing when the zombies get here,” AJ said, nodding at Alex. “That chick is a closet badass.”
Maren shook her head in defeat. “Yeah, too bad that badass is on the other team, because guess what, we just lost. One of us is leaving tonight.”
She was right, but I couldn’t shake the idea that we’d lost more than just a challenge.
30
Back at the Huaca hut, AJ couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to sneak off and run up to the marker.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “Are you with me, or what? I can’t tell.”
If AJ were a painter, he would dip his brush in a single color.
“I’m with you,” I said. I didn’t want to get into it, since Maddie was crashed out on the couch nearby, but I didn’t think we should leave. Things at camp felt . . . unsettled, and if Deb came by to check on things and found us gone, I had a feeling it would be the last straw. “I think there are other things that might be a little more pressing—”
“There aren’t,” AJ shot back.
“I want to go home,” Maddie said. Until that point, she’d been completely silent. I’d actually thought she was asleep. “Where’s Deb? I need to tell her I’m quitting.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on there,” AJ said. “Quit? Your little stunt back there was cray, but nothing to quit over.”
“Cray is definitely not on your approved list of words,” Maren told him. “And if she wants to quit, let her.”
“Why do you care, anyway?” Maddie asked. “You were probably going to vote me off tonight, so I’ll leave now and save you the trouble.”
I cringed. Maddie had been the natural choice to go—AJ, Maren, and I had a partnership—but after today’s events it felt mean to vote her off. She was obviously going through something.
Maren pointed out that Maddie had single-handedly lost the challenge for us. “So heck yeah we’re going to vote you off. But sure, quit and save us the trouble of a vote.”
Maddie sank even further into the couch. Maren had spent most of her time with her sketch pad last night, so I wasn’t sure how much she knew of what had gone on.
“Fine. I’m going to pack,” Maddie announced. I accompanied her to the cabin.
“This is your fault,” she told me. “He’s ignoring me because you and Alex embarrassed us. And now he doesn’t want anything to do with me. You saw him! He won’t even speak to me.”
It was obvious that Joaquin was acting so terribly toward Maddie because he knew it had been wrong, and he was shutting it down now that others knew about it.
“I’m sorry, I really am. But I think Alex is right. Joaquin really shouldn’t have been—”
“Now I’m going to have to watch myself be humiliated on TV when this show comes out,” she interrupted. “I wish I could smash every camera to pieces and shred every single bit of film so it’s as if I were never here—”
She started to cry. This was all very familiar, very painful territory. How many times this year had I wished I could disappear? Not leave. Not kill myself. Simply cease. That’s all I wanted: not to be visible anymore. Exiting was too much work and in its own way, too public. I’d just wanted to be erased from the world.
I understood, too, why Maddie was worried about having to watch the show. Seeing it was going to be hard. Sometimes when I’m online, a meme of me pops up, and every time it feels as if I’ve been physically slapped.
We reached the cabin.
“I can’t stand the idea of getting voted off in front of Joaquin. I’ll be so embarrassed. I can’t deal with that, I really can’t. It’ll make me feel like such a loser.”
Maddie yanked her duffel bag out from under the bunk bed and began to fiercely cram her clothes into it. I left when she took her album of pet pictures out of the safe. I hated the reminder of that first day. When she’d told me about it, she’d been so cute and innocent.
So much had happened since then.
I made it back to the Huaca hut just when Phil came by to give us some bad news.
“If Maddie quits now, your team will still have go to Council for a vote. I’m sorry, but that’s the way—”
“Yeah, okay, you delivered your tidings of joy,” Maren told him. “Now get out of here and leave us alone.”
Strangely, he did.
“That really sucks,” AJ said after Phil left. “I can’t believe one of us is going home tonight.”
“No freaking way,” Maren said. “That’s not happening. Let me tell you how this is going to go down. Maddie wants to leave, and we want to vote Maddie off, so it’s simple: we force her to suck it up and stay for Council.”
I shook my head. “We can’t do that.”
“Why not? Council is in two hours. She can’t stick it out here for two more hours? Of course she can.”
“It’s not that,” I said. “Something happened with Maddie and Joaquin last night.”
“What?” AJ asked.
Maren frowned in disgust. She knew what I meant. “What a turd,” she said.
“What am I missing?” AJ looked back and forth between the two of us, confused. “What happened with Maddie and Joaquin? I don’t get it.”
“I always thought that guy was sketchy,” Maren said. “Why has he been hanging out with us at night when he could be with people his own age at the crew village? And he was always with the girls. It was weird. Getting the picture now, AJ?”
“I guess so,” he said hesitantly.
Maren rolled her eyes. “Of course you don’t really know what we’re talking about. Freaking guys.”
I was of the opinion that AJ didn’t get it because he was, well, AJ. But I saw her point.
“We can’t make Maddie sit through Council and then vote her out. That would be really mean.”
Maren nodded sullenly, and then lashed out, kicking the chair Maddie had been sitting in earlier. It toppled over. “Well that sucks, because if we let her walk, then I know you guys are going to vote me off,” she said angrily. “You two have this whole treasure thing going on.”
“I don’t know what we’ll do,” I said, the same time as AJ said, “Probably.”
Maren let out a shout of frustration, loud and sudden enough to stun AJ and me into silence.
A minute or two passed and then Maren spoke. “Can I say one thing?”
Her voice sounded so different when she wasn’t on the defensive. Suddenly, I remembered the other night, when I’d been passed out on my bunk. Maren was the one who’d been talking to me, I realized. The face who’d reassured me everything would be fine. I felt an unexpected burst of affection for her.
“I came here to win. I really wanted that prize money. I’m sorry
if I came off aggressive sometimes, but it’s just me and my mom, and I don’t see how going to college is possible, financially.”
Oh, God. I tried to say something but only a squeak came out.
“And you know how bad student loan debt is. Well, maybe not you.”
She meant me, obviously. I understood the animosity now over my father’s treasure hunts, which suddenly seemed incredibly frivolous. And so did my op-ed, for that matter. Even my infamy wasn’t the most horrible thing a person could go through, I was starting to realize. It was like here on the island I’d blinked and my vision had cleared, showing me something I hadn’t seen before. No one would ever convince me that my exit from Shaw and the subsequent deep freeze of my social life wasn’t unfair, but maybe, just maybe, I hadn’t needed to let it ruin everything. I listened to Maren’s story while I thought about Alex and Maddie and all the things we had all been through, all I could think was What was wrong with me? What urgent need had compelled me to insist to everyone that I was in the right? The whole thing would have faded away if I’d just taken my suspension and resumed school without complaint. Sure, it hurt that my classmates were so willing to force me out, but I could have privately acknowledged their concerns that my father’s donor status had helped keep me at school and moved on.
“If Riley and I find the treasure, we could split the prize with you,” AJ offered. “This game has a lot of rules, but I never heard one say that a winner can’t decide to split the prize. We can ask at Council.”
Rules. Council. This game had a lot of protocol. Suddenly, I got an idea. There might be a way to use the rules of the game to our advantage. The three of us could stay, while sparing Maddie the embarrassment of an ugly voting ceremony.
“Hold that thought,” I said. “We can come back to it later, but right now I think I know a way we can convince Maddie to get voted out at Council without it being embarrassing for her.”
For the first time at Council I didn’t look around and silently make fun of the decor. Instead, I appreciated the solemnity of the ritual in a way I hadn’t before. Still, I could barely stand to look at Joaquin, so I couldn’t even imagine how hard it was for Maddie. She’d agreed to come to Council though, once I explained the plan. If it worked, I’d found a way to let Maddie go home without the embarrassment of withdrawing.
Reality Gold Page 24