Reality Gold

by Tiffany Brooks

  Maren’s eyes got huge. “You cheater!”

  “I didn’t think it was cheating at first,” I explained. “I brought it so I could check for advice about treasure hunting—and remember, before we got here none of us knew that searching for the gold would be part of the show. I was going to do it on the side, so I figured using the satellite for that wouldn’t matter.”

  “You keep telling yourself that,” Maren said.

  I hesitated. “Are you mad?”

  Maren rolled her eyes. “You might be the most touchy-feely person I’ve ever had to deal with. Do you like me, are you mad, can we be friends?”

  I must have looked hurt.

  “Oh, God. Moving on. Where’d you get this thing?” She picked it up and examined it. “It’s totally cool. Being rich does have its perks.”

  “Oh. Um. About that . . .”

  “Forget it.” She looked embarrassed. “Actually, it felt good to let all that stuff out. Sorry it was all directed at you, but confronting someone turned out to feel really good. Now that I’ve said all of it, it’s like it’s not inside me making me mad anymore.”

  “You’re so touchy-feely,” I said, which actually made her crack a smile. “Now for something not so funny. I want to look up Joaquin and see if he’s ever done anything shady before.”

  It took a while, but sure enough, we found something on a celebrity gossip site, which led us to another site, and then another, and it quickly became clear that if anyone had bothered to investigate Joaquin, they’d have known something was up. Not only that, but he was in his thirties. I’d thought he was a lot younger.

  I was steaming mad. Had he been hired on purpose? How could Deb have not known his history. I couldn’t sit still. I got up and paced.

  “Hey, calm down,” Maren said. “Show me this treasure site of yours.”

  When I logged in I noticed that I had a new message. DeadSea again, most likely, but I was oddly disappointed he’d only sent one message instead of multiple.

  But it wasn’t from him. It was from MrJackSparrow, and his message was short.

  MrJackSparrow: Get off Black Rock Island. Now. Before you get hurt. Don’t say I didn’t warn you

  I clicked the off button as fast as I could, a habit I picked up when I was constantly being confronted with things on my phone I didn’t want to see.

  Oh my God.

  Maren was staring at me. She’d read it, too. “What in the fresh red hell was that about?”

  I shook my head. My heart was racing. Someone—MrJackSparrow, probably—knew I was AnonGirl, and he knew I was here. That explained why MrJackSparrow had never been on any of the chats the way he usually was. He was here, watching me. I frantically cast my memory back, trying to remember if he’d ever given any clues about who he was.

  He had to be one of the crew members. It was the only explanation. But how? Phil had said they all came straight from Alaska—oh, wait. It hit me. Deb had described her B-team as out of work actors and friends and relatives of the crew. How had I forgotten that? MrJackSparrow could be here as a B-team member.

  Once again, I felt vulnerable because it was another example of how a person in charge of protecting us had ulterior motives. I felt sick.

  “I’ve got to get out of here,” I told Maren.

  I didn’t know where I was going, but I couldn’t stay in the hut. I felt like a target here.

  “But—”

  “Look Sean up. Watch his hospital video, okay?”

  “Okay, but—”

  I practically ran to the water’s edge, the urge to escape was that strong. The only thing stopping me from going full tilt was that Porter and Willa were up at the Snack Bar so they’d have a good view of me losing it.

  Someone called my name. “Riley!” It was Alex. She hurried down to meet up with me. “Are you okay?” she asked. “I mean, I’m sure you’re not, but relatively speaking.”

  I wasn’t, actually. I was tired of being jerked around. Tired of thinking things were one way and finding out they were the opposite.

  “Listen,” I said to her. “Can I trust you? I sort of think I can, because you got involved and helped Maddie, but on the other hand, you’ve done some sketchy things, so I’m not sure.”

  “What things?” Alex asked, offended.

  “Like how you insisted on voting Chloe out even though you guys were friends.”

  “Oh.” Guilt flashed across Alex’s face.

  “Yeah. Oh. She probably trusted you as much as I do, so you see my problem, don’t you?”

  “I did want Chloe out. I felt bad about it. I liked her a lot, but she lives near me. Or more accurately, where I used to live.”

  “So?”

  “The other night you asked how I knew so much about how slimeballs like Joaquin behave. It has to do with that. There was an . . . incident. Everyone was on his side. They said I asked for it, because I snuck out to go to a party with him. Because I was drinking, I deserved it. My parents didn’t want to believe it, but they had to, eventually. And when the police refused to charge him, we didn’t have a choice. We moved. I didn’t want to hide my name, so it was all public.”

  I really didn’t know what to say. I’m sorry was ridiculously inadequate.

  “I didn’t want to deal with all of it on camera if Chloe remembered who I was. It was pretty big news, at least in Ohio.”

  “I wish I hadn’t doubted you. You were so straightforward with us about Joaquin. I should have trusted you for that alone.”

  But even more than feeling sorry about Alex, I was mad. Deb had pulled us together on purpose, all of us exiled misfits, and for what? Not because she cared. She wanted us to find one another, all of us as unstable as sticks of dynamite.

  “I have a story, too. I used to think it was the worst story in the world, but now? Not so much. Come on. Let’s go find Deb. I’m tired of her putting us in danger.”

  We got Rohan to convince one of his crew friends to bring us to the crew village. It took some doing. Not only were we not allowed there, but we weren’t supposed to be transported anywhere without Deb, Phil, or Katya signing off on it. Great, they cared about some rules, but only the ones that made things inconvenient.

  The crew village was extremely disappointing. I’d pictured it having all the same beach decorations that we had. Instead, everything was ugly and cobbled together, as if the set designer had spent all the budget on our camp and had to resort to slapping wood slabs together with duct tape over here. I inspected every crew member we passed for signs of a reaction, but we came across very few people and none of them seemed interested in our presence.

  It wasn’t hard to find Deb—we followed the yelling. She was inside what must have been her office, screaming into a phone. Her clipboard was facedown on the floor, its pages scattered in all directions as if it had come to life and thrown a tantrum.

  Her mood didn’t improve when she saw us. “What are you doing here?”

  “We came to see about Maddie,” Alex said. “We’re worried about her. Is she okay?”

  “Okay-ish,” Deb said. “She seems to be mad at the two of you, actually.”

  Deb was so matter-of-fact. All her manipulating had led to this, and she didn’t seem to care.

  “We’re not the ones who did anything wrong. Your host did, and I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. How do you live with yourself?” I said. “She is literally the sweetest girl, and you’re the one who hired Joaquin and put her—us—in his way. Alex with her history. Me with mine. You had to know I’d feel flattered by the attention. And who knows what everyone else is dealing with that he was ready to exploit. You wanted fireworks. You were hoping something like this would happen. The only thing you care about is the show.”

  “Yeah? You think so?” Deb asked angrily. “You should write an op-ed about it. That would be an awesome
idea.”

  “Maybe I will.” We stared at each other for a minute.

  “Are you done?” she finally asked. “Because I have a question for you. If I only cared about the show, would I have fired the host?”

  “You fired Joaquin?” Alex asked. “Because of Maddie?”

  “Yes. He says nothing happened between them, and she claims the same, but it’s obvious that his presence was causing her to act irrationally and put herself in danger. I fired him. Whether there was impropriety happening yet, it was likely headed that way.”

  “So . . . is there still a game?” I asked uncertainly. “We can’t do the show without the host.”

  “You see my dilemma,” Deb said flatly.

  Wow. I wasn’t sure what to say.

  Deb picked up her clipboard and started to sort the papers. “There’s a lot we can do during editing. I’ll pull together some film magic. I poured my heart and soul into this show, and I’m not going to walk away from it now. I never should have let myself be convinced it was a good idea, but I did, so now I’ve got to fix it. And if I could find outside funding and convince the network to keep us going after a major accident and an outbreak of food poisoning, I can figure this out. I’m going to need a day or two to figure out the best way to restructure the remaining challenges, but after that we’ll be good to go.”

  She tucked the neatened papers under the clip. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say that curse is real. This island has been against me from the start. Equipment broken, things stolen, unpredictable weather. Maybe firing Joaquin was the sacrifice I needed to make for Lady Luck to get some wind at my back.”

  Deb shooed us out the door. “Now go on back. I’ve got challenges to re-design.”

  I’d come over here ready to reveal my satellite and the fact I knew someone on the crew was messing with me, but now I couldn’t. It didn’t feel as if I needed to, either. I’d been wrong—she did care about us, she just wasn’t that good at executing the details.

  “Well, that went better than I expected,” Alex said on our way to the boat.

  I nodded, and now that Deb was going to re-do the upcoming challenges, it meant I’d have time to search for the gold at least once more. I’d have to convince Cody it wasn’t interfering with the game. If he was with me, I’d feel safe. And the best way to mute MrJackSparrow’s threat was to find the gold first.

  32

  Maren was waiting for me at the Huaca hut when I got back. “Where have you been? I thought you’d tried to swim home.”

  She had watched Sean’s video. “I think it’s time we take a little bit more control of things. I’m going to call a team meeting.”

  We went to the fire pit and she banged the gong. “Announcing our first all-team meeting!” she called. “If you want to survive another day, you’ll get your butts over here, and I’m not even exaggerating.”

  There were so few of us left, it didn’t take long for everyone to arrive. I tried not to care that Porter was looking at me and trying to signal that he wanted to talk. I wasn’t even going to consider it, especially not after Willa came up and hugged him from behind.

  He shook her off in annoyance, but it was too late.

  “There’s some very messed-up stuff going on,” Maren said when we had all gathered close enough to talk. “And I know we don’t all like each other, but too bad. When you hear what Riley has to say, you’re going to freak. Let’s get this out in the open,” she went on. “Last night, someone stole AJ’s immunity coin out of his safe. And it wasn’t me or Riley, which means it was one of you.” She pointed at each of the Sol team members one by one. “So which one of you did it?”

  “How could we get into his safe?” Rohan said. “You’re crazytown if you think any of us did that. If someone actually took it, and you’re sure that dingbat didn’t just lose it somewhere, then it had to be someone on the crew.”

  “Maybe,” Maren said. “Or maybe you convinced one of them to do it for you. That’s your MO. Don’t even try to deny it.”

  “No one is going to admit it, but we’ll know who did it when they try to use it,” Cody pointed out.

  “Or maybe someone took it to screw AJ,” Maren countered. “And then they chucked it in the ocean. Then what? How will we know who it is?”

  “Forget it, Maren. Cody’s right. No one’s going to admit it,” I said.

  “I don’t care if anyone admits it. I just want everyone on notice. I’m watching.”

  What good did watching anyone or anything do? I felt like all I’d been doing this entire time was watching everyone and it had gotten me exactly nowhere. I gave a quick report on the other things that were happening, starting with Joaquin’s exit. When it came to telling them about Sean’s video, I couldn’t tell them I had my own Wi-Fi connection, so I let them think I’d seen it at the crew village.

  Alex looked confused because she knew that wasn’t true, but she let it slide.

  “You know, I thought something fishy happened to that guy,” Rohan said. “I’d seen some of his videos. He was never as lame as he was on top of that cliff. You don’t get a million views if you’re uncoordinated enough to slip and mess up a pretty straightforward jump.”

  “He really thinks someone tried to kill him?” Cody asked. “For real?”

  “That’s what he said in the video. He seemed pretty sure of it.”

  Out of all of us, big strong Cody looked the most concerned by this news. “Did he say anything else?”

  “Yeah, he gave a weather report right after sharing the details of his attempted murder,” Maren said sarcastically. “What other things could possibly be important enough to talk about after that?”

  “It is very strange how so many things are going wrong,” Rohan said. “I told you how people on the crew are quitting. They’re scared. Not because of a so-called curse. They’re scared they’re going to get blamed for some of it. A drone is missing, and remember that camera that got smashed our first day? It cost something like a hundred grand, and someone here had to have done it.”

  “It’s hard to say what is really going wrong, and what’s being manufactured to make us think is going wrong. Deb could have been stirring up problems on purpose. Rohan wasn’t wrong when he said they were pitting us against each other and hoping for drama.”

  “That’s a little paranoid, don’t you think?” Willa asked dismissively.

  I stiffened.

  “I mean, why bother? There’s plenty of drama during the challenges.”

  That really wasn’t true. The teams had been so mismatched on a few of the challenges that Deb had admitted she was going to have to resort to television magic.

  “You’re insane,” Rohan told Willa, saving me the trouble of responding. “Or you’re being intentionally argumentative. Out of all of us here, you’re the one most familiar with Hollywood. You have to know this is how it works.”

  “I’m not an actress,” Willa countered. “I’m an influencer. A trendsetter. It’s a thing.”

  “Yeah? Well, you can literally go throw your trendsetting butt off Sean’s cliff if you actually believe Deb hasn’t been playing with us the whole time,” Rohan said. “Someone’s screwing with us, and it’s only a matter of time before something goes really wrong, and one of us joins Sean in the hospital.”

  “Dammit,” Cody said. He put his hat on and off, off and on. “Dammit!”

  “Dude, chill,” Maren said.

  “It was me,” he said. “I broke the camera. I also wrote up a couple of reports on stuff that happened after hours, when the cameras weren’t around.”

  Everyone’s expressions of outrage were perfectly synchronized.

  “I didn’t think anyone would get hurt! Man, this is terrible. I’ve been used.”

  “Who asked you to do it?” I asked. “Deb?”

  “That’s the thing,” Cody said. “I d
on’t know.”

  “Good idea,” Maren said. “Play dumb. That’ll really help.”

  “I mean it. I didn’t actually see anyone. I got instructions of what to do and went through a hiding spot in the woods. Before we got here, someone left an envelope of cash—ten grand—at my house, with a note telling me I could keep the money no matter what, but if I wanted another ten grand after the show was over, all I had to do was a couple of things. I assumed it was a producer asking. If not Deb, someone at the network. It had to be. Who else would go through all that effort? When Rohan talked about creating drama, it all made sense. I just figured it was part of the show.”

  “I saw you there,” I said, thinking back to that night. “Didn’t I? That night we got so drunk.”

  “The night you got so drunk, yes. That day there was a note with those bottles, and all it said was ‘Enjoy.’”

  “Did you push Sean?” Maren asked. I tried to remember if I’d seen Cody on the beach, but I couldn’t recall.

  “No, ma’am. I certainly did not. That was someone else.”

  I looked at Maren. I’d just remembered something. “What if Sean saw someone at the cliff? Or what if he didn’t actually see anything, but someone thought he did? Remember, the boat was on the other side. Sean might have had to walk past it to get to that cliff. Whoever was there might have thought they’d been seen, and they pushed him so he wouldn’t tell.”

  “So what, though?” Rohan asked. “What’s the problem with being seen? Yeah, if they weren’t part of the film crew they weren’t supposed to be there, but it’s not worth killing someone over.”

  “Maybe it was,” I said. “If it was someone who’d be out of place or someone we knew and we could tie them back to doing something they shouldn’t be, it might be enough trouble.”

  “Yeah, I see your point,” Rohan said, “but no show is worth injuring Sean like that. No way.”

  “What if we’re looking at it wrong? What if it’s not someone trying for ratings?” I asked. “What if it’s someone who is here for the treasure? They may have killed before.”