Reality Gold

by Tiffany Brooks

  “Oh, no you don’t,” Maren said. “I’m shutting that down right now. You don’t get to talk about me. You can root for me silently if that’s what you’re into, but I’m done.” She smeared her palms together and then flicked her fingers toward Willa. “Buh-bye.”

  It wasn’t the first time I was jealous of Maren’s ability to be so quick and decisive. I, on the other hand, was all jumbled up. My mind went back to the second night on the island when we’d gone swimming, the first time Willa and I had done anything together. I thought I’d felt the tiny seeds of a new friendship growing. And then that day we’d searched all day for the treasure, when she’d encouraged me to go for Porter. It had felt genuine. How could I have been so stupid? Was I doomed to trust the wrong people no matter where I met them?

  I locked eyes with Willa. “Was any of it real?” I asked her.

  “Riley, come on,” Maren said. She tugged at my arm, trying to break my eye contact with Willa. “Don’t waste your time looking at the why behind all her tricks and lies. The reason she did those things didn’t matter. She did them. That’s the important part.”

  But I disagreed. The why was important, and I was thinking of my own history. I had written that op-ed. It was a fact; I’d done it. And now that I had some time and space to reflect on it, I could see how the message could have been interpreted the way it was. But the why in my case should have mattered a little bit. My intention hadn’t been interpreted correctly and that should have been part of the story.

  Willa came over to me and gently put both her hands on my shoulders. The gesture felt motherly, an odd way to describe it, considering she’d just spent the last twelve days conspiring against me and, in general, behaving like the least maternal inhabitant of our little lawless island.

  “Riley, I thought you of all people would be able to figure out what was going on. Boys are dumb—”

  “Hey!” Porter objected. We ignored him.

  “—so I knew he’d never notice any inconsistencies, but honestly, I kept waiting for you to call me out on it.”

  Maybe it was because I’d been starved for compliments for so long, but I took it in without even considering a buh-bye brush-off.

  She reached for Porter’s backpack, sliding it off his arm as if she had every right to it. Oh, right. Her fleece jacket. “Sorry to leave you all. Not. But you’ll be fine without me.”

  “You can’t go back,” Phil said. “It’s late. And dark. What if you fell and hurt yourself? What if you got lost? How would we find you?”

  Willa pulled a small black disc about the size of a quarter from her fleece pocket. “Lucky thing you gave me a tracker.” She pressed a button and a light blinked red. “There. Problem solved. Deb will be monitoring me, so if I stop or anything terrible happens, she’ll know. I’ll be fine.”

  “Pirates,” Phil blurted.

  Willa patted him on the cheek. “You’re sweet, but I’ll be fine, and honestly, at this point I’d rank a pirate raid as only slightly worse than whatever this is.”

  Seeing the tracker reminded me how curious it had been when the drone had found us the other day, way over on the other side of the island. Now I knew how we’d been discovered—Willa must have brought her tracker along.

  “It’s been fun,” Willa told us. “And it’s been real, but I’m sorry to say it hasn’t been real fun.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Can you do something for me?”

  She considered it. “Depends.”

  “You owe me one, Willa. You owe all of us.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Find AJ when you get to the village. Tell him to check Facebook. It’s really important. I sent him a message, because I don’t think he should miss out on this.”

  Willa laughed and looked around at the darkening sky and the branches that had nearly hit us. “Oh, yes, that would be a real shame,” she said. “But fair enough.”

  “And tell him this, too: we’re tripling the distance of the last sign. Okay? Got it?”

  “Got it.” She saluted us and turned to leave.

  “One other thing,” I called. “You said you were one of the few who were paid. We already know about Cody. Was there anyone else?”

  “Sean.” Willa didn’t elaborate, and in a few seconds, she was gone, swallowed up into the jungle.

  Maren turned immediately on Phil. “Was there anyone who wasn’t paid to be here? Because right now my bank account is feeling a little ignored. You don’t think I would have spied for you like Cody did? Ten grand? I’d have done whatever you wanted for half that.”

  I caught Cody’s eye and gave him the signal to get moving. We’d wasted enough time.

  Before addressing Maren, Phil stared regretfully after Willa. “I still think she should have stayed,” he said, although he didn’t think so strongly enough to go after her. He fell in line behind Rohan and I moved quickly to join him. I wasn’t ready to talk to Porter yet.

  “Are you going to explain yourself or what?” Maren demanded of Phil.

  “You should be happy we inserted some paid moles into the game,” Phil said. “It meant better odds for each of you. As paid employees, Willa and Sean were ineligible to receive any prize, so it worked in your favor, if you look at it that way.”

  “I’m not looking at it that way, just so you know,” Maren replied.

  Phil sighed. “You have to understand we’d never done this before. We had no idea if anything would come of collecting twenty kids on an island in front of a bunch of cameras. What if nothing interesting happened? We needed to make sure we could pull together some story lines.”

  Story lines. That was the word Porter had used with me the night of the Truth challenge when he suspected Deb of feeding me story lines. I remembered how she fell apart after Joaquin’s departure, and how she said it had been a mistake when she’d allowed herself to be convinced to do this show.

  “Phil, who persuaded Deb to film the show here? Was it you?”

  “What?” He looked uncomfortable. “Why would you ask that?”

  Someone laughed. It was an eerie sound and it came from behind us; I turned, expecting to see Willa. Had she changed her mind, and come back to taunt us?

  But it wasn’t Willa.

  It was a woman, and I recognized her immediately—the cast member at the truth challenge who’d seemed so familiar. She laughed again, casually, as if it was the most normal thing in the world for all of us to come across each other in the middle of the jungle on a night where a storm was brewing. “Just tell her, Phil.”

  “Who the F are you?” Maren demanded. “Phil, what’s going on here?”

  I didn’t need Phil to answer. I knew where I’d seen her before.

  “Serena,” I said in surprise. “Right? You’re Miles’s girlfriend, Serena. Oh, wow. This is . . . unexpected.”

  I could hardly believe it: Miles Kroger’s girlfriend—or more specifically, his treasure hunting partner—was here on the island.

  Things were starting to make sense.

  34

  “Hello, Riley,” Serena said. She had the advantage of surprise, and she was holding a drone controller, which must have been how she found us.

  “Whoa,” Maren said. “You guys know each other?”

  Serena nodded. “We spent some time together two years ago.” She smiled again at an inside joke. “But we’ve talked since then.”

  I was slow today. “Wait, are you . . . ?”

  “MrJackSparrow, at your service.”

  “But . . .” I trailed off.

  “The mister threw you off? You can be anyone you want online. You of all people should know that. I was surprised to see you on the forum. I warned Phil that someone was popping up on Smokey Joe’s thread, asking all kinds of specific questions. We thought it was AJ. The girl I met two summers ago wasn’t particularly interested in trea
sure.”

  “How do you know Phil?”

  “We’re cousins. The show was my idea, actually. I needed to get back here, Phil wanted to get out of Alaska, and voilà! It was perfect.”

  “Did Deb know?”

  “Deb? No. No one knows. I was searching for the treasure during my time off.”

  Oh, that explained the boat.

  “It took me a long time to find all those clues that you guys breezed through. The last one—I couldn’t figure it out. I was sure we should go south. Why’d you decide to go north?”

  I wasn’t going to give anything away. Sure, I knew her, and now that I saw who MrJackSparrow was, we weren’t in danger, but that didn’t mean I was ready to trust her.

  “I followed the signs.”

  “So did I,” she said insistently. “But my reading said south. So why do you think we should go north?”

  I ignored her question. “Why did you threaten me? With that message on the site.”

  “Threaten you? That wasn’t a real threat. Just some motivation. I wanted some time to catch up. But it’s a good thing you didn’t listen because I may have been headed in the wrong direction.”

  Serena was a lot more intense than I remembered. She had been the normal, reasonable one when I’d been here last. Now she seemed as intense as Miles had been; she’d picked up his torch and was carrying it for him. But there was an important difference between the two of them. She didn’t seem to be doing it for Miles or for any sort of duty to the gold. She was doing it strictly for herself.

  “So we’re just letting her join us?” Cody asked. “I mean, sure, why not? Everything else is crazy.”

  “Let’s just find the gold,” I said. “That’s what’s important, and Serena knows things. She might be able to help.”

  We arrived at a rocky area near the northernmost point of the island. This was more like it. Lots of places a marker, and a treasure, could hide. Our best shot was along the rock wall.

  Beside me, Cody stiffened.

  “Did you hear that?” he asked.

  We all stood still, listening for something other than the sound of the forest. Then, without warning, there was a whoosh from the woods and Cody and Rohan were body-slammed to the ground. It happened immediately and in slow motion at the same time. It was hard to understand what was happening.

  Men emerged all around us.

  “Stay where you are! We’ve got you surrounded,” one of them called out.

  He turned on a flashlight and waved it toward the water. There was an answering light in the distance.

  Pirates.

  35

  The men quickly overpowered the rest of us. They tossed our bags in a pile on the nearby beach, and then tied our hands together and forced us to splash out to the waiting boat. It was larger than the motorboats that had shuttled us back and forth to Challenge Island—this one had a cargo area beneath the deck that was accessed through a square hatch. One of the men flipped the hatch open and pushed Cody toward it first.

  “Now the rest of you. Get down there and stay quiet,” he ordered.

  What would happen to us? Panic had turned my blood ice cold. Were we going to die? Was this it? I thought about all the times in the past year I wanted to disappear. Now I couldn’t imagine not fighting to stay alive.

  I nearly slipped down the ladder, bumping into Alex. She barely reacted, and her face was blank, defeated. What had happened to that fighting spirit? We needed her to snap out of it and become her warrior self again.

  From the noise overhead, it was clear some of them were leaving. One of the larger guys sat at the top of the ladder where he could watch us and keep an eye on the island. He wasn’t huge, but he could definitely give Cody a run for his money. The others had taken the gun, but he wouldn’t need it; he was strong enough to handle a bunch of bound prisoners.

  “Against the wall,” he told us, almost unnecessarily. There wasn’t too much space for us to go anywhere else. I was next to Porter, so close that I could feel his body moving in and out with each breath. I put my head on his shoulder. A few hours ago I’d been doing my best to avoid him, but now everything had changed. I didn’t even want to consider that we might not have time together outside this dungeon.

  “What do you want?” Phil asked the pirate.

  “What do you think we want? The gold.”

  So much for AJ’s conviction that pirates were simply ordinary robbers. These guys had been watching and waiting, and they wanted the treasure. I tried not to worry that none of them had covered their faces. It was a bad sign they weren’t afraid we could identify them.

  “Which one of you is going to show us where to find it?” the pirate asked. “And don’t lie. We know you are following the map.”

  Phil reluctantly raised his hand and I felt a flush of gratitude, and then fear. I didn’t want one of the only adults to be separated from us. Phil pointed to Serena. “I need her, too.”

  “But—” I started to say something, but Phil shook his head sharply, signaling me to be quiet. I didn’t particularly want to leave the safety of my friends, but on the other hand, these bandits weren’t going to let us go until they had the treasure. If I helped, it might go faster. But Phil shook his head again and mouthed the word no.

  The pirate pulled Phil and Serena up and pushed them on the deck. There was a splash and then the sound of all three of them walking through the water.

  A few minutes later, we heard the guard come back. He paced on deck, not bothering to come below.

  “Y’all, our best chance is to get this guy down here and then rush him,” Cody said.

  Rohan disagreed. “At least one of them has a gun, you saw that, right?” he pointed out. “Maybe this guy does, too.”

  “Who needs a gun?” Alex said. Her voice was tinged with hysteria. “We’re all tied up. If they want to kill us, they could bring the boat out to deep water and sink it. We’d all drown!”

  That shut everyone up. What would we say? Each of us seemed to be coming to the understanding that our situation was dire. My satellite had a tiny bit of juice left. If I could get to our bags somehow, I might be able to use it. I wondered if Willa had made it back to camp, and if she had, if she’d bothered to give AJ the message.

  “If Willa told AJ—” I started to say.

  The man on deck stomped above our heads, a command to keep silent, and we stayed that way for what felt like an eternity. It could have been an hour, or two, or four. There was no way of knowing. Then suddenly, on deck, the guard called out to someone. There was a thud as someone jumped on board, and then words were exchanged in Portuguese.

  “Shhh!” Rohan said.

  His mouth dropped open. “Hey. They aren’t pirates,” he hissed.

  “Say what?” Cody asked, voicing my own disbelief.

  “I think they were hired,” Rohan said, listening again. “Wait, this is crazy. Serena and Phil aren’t prisoners. It sounds like these guys are actually working for Serena.” He paused again, his expression turning from disbelief to anger. “You’ve got to be kidding me. All of them are looking for the gold right now, together. Phil, Serena, and the pirates. Jesus.”

  “What about us?” I asked.

  “Hold on.” Rohan listened intently, and then explained what he heard. “This whole kidnap thing was a show. They staged it so we wouldn’t know they were in on it.”

  Maren snorted. “A show within a show. The irony here is killing me.”

  “Don’t say killing,” Alex snapped, momentarily coming to life.

  “Actually, this is the best news we could get,” I said. “If they went through all this trouble to get us out of the way, then they must be planning to let us go. It would have been much easier for them to get rid of us without the charade. Right? Do you see what I’m saying? I’m right, aren’t I?”

  Cody nodded. �
�Logical,” he said. “And, yes, hopefully true.”

  “We can’t sit here and let them get away with it,” Alex said. I was glad she was getting her spirit back.

  The voices outside stopped, then there was another voice in the distance.

  “Shhhh,” Rohan said, listening. “Hold up. I think they found something. Someone’s asking for an axe and a shovel.”

  Something was dragged across the deck, followed by more splashing. We all held our breath and tried to figure out if they’d left.

  “Are they gone?” Alex asked. “Both of them?”

  “Sounds like it,” Rohan said. “No footsteps.”

  Then there was a scuttling noise overhead, moving quickly across the deck. It grew louder as it came closer. I recoiled, prepared for the worst. Suddenly, the door slammed open.

  It was AJ. Willa had pulled through! She’d told him where we were.

  AJ scurried into the cabin. Nearly all of us cried out in relief when he began to cut our ties loose with a pocketknife.

  “Got your message,” he said when he reached me. And then in typical AJ fashion, he focused right away on the treasure. “I told you the smart money was north. Deb’s here, too, with Harry and the infrared camera. Deb’s in a rage about Phil. At first we couldn’t figure out what was going on, so we watched them for a while, and man, I would not want to be that guy when Deb finally gets her hands on him. It took me a long time to figure out where they’d stashed all of you. But guess what? It looks like they found the final marker, the one with the triangle.”

  I told AJ about Serena, and how she was Phil’s cousin, the mastermind of the whole plan, as well as MrJackSparrow.

  “She’s toast,” AJ said. “Come on, let’s go.”

  I was torn. Phil and Serena had found the triangle—the final sign! Everything we’d been working for. But who knows how close to death we had just been. Shouldn’t we escape while we had the chance?

  “Me and Cody can take these guys,” Rohan said, cracking his knuckles. “They got us before because they caught us by surprise, but now it’s our turn.”