Chapter Thirty-Two
I don’t gasp, or cry, or swear at this revelation, like the others do. I just squint through a haze of confusion, trying to piece his words together into something that has some meaning.
“Another body?” Trina says, her lip quivering.
“Like a dead body?” Harmony’s voice is high and thin.
“Who was it?” Kei says. His eyes flick to mine, but there’s no warmth in them.
“I don’t know. I didn’t recognize him. His face was a mess.” At this, a strangled sob bursts from Garrett’s mouth like a bark. He covers his face with his hands. Valeria quickly moves to his side, and puts her arm around him, murmuring words of comfort.
He composes himself. “I’m okay,” he says to Trina, before she can react. He wipes his eyes with the back of his hand and lets out a long, ragged exhale. “His face had been pretty badly beaten, but I don’t think I’d ever seen him, anyway. He was an older guy. Thick white hair. Nice suit.”
An image of the Silver Fox’s crinkly-eyed smile pops into my head, just as Sue-Ellen says “McFarland.”
“Who’s McFarland?” Garrett asks.
“One of the investors in the show,” Kei says. “He recruited me and Cleo. He came for a visit.”
“But if he’s an investor, why would they kill him? Wouldn’t they need his money?” Valeria says.
Garrett shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“Let me get this straight,” Kei says, turning to Garrett. “You’re saying that Tyler and Gabby couldn’t find a network, but they started filming the show anyway, what, hoping that they could get someone to pick it up?”
Garrett nods. “Like an ‘If you build it, they will come’ situation.”
“But none of this has actually been on TV?”
Garrett shakes his head.
“Which means—”
“None of this is real.” Sue-Ellen’s mouth sets in a hard line.
A sombre silence settles over the group.
“But why leave?” Valeria asks. “Why not just tell us and then we could all go?”
“Well, they killed that guy, so they were panicking. And Tyler kept saying the lancers were going to come.”
“The lancers?” Isa says, the word unfamiliar on his tongue.
“I think that’s what he was saying. He was rambling, wasn’t making a lot of sense, but he kept saying how they’d be dead if the lancers came.”
“Hold up,” Sid says, standing. “The lancers? Are you sure it wasn’t the Lansas? Because if it was, we’re fucked.” He starts to pace, holding his head with both hands. “Oh my god, oh my god.”
“What?” Trina pulls at his shirt.
“McFarland. Bobby McFarland. Oh, holy fucking shit, you guys.” Sid’s face in the darkness has turned ghostly white.
“Please,” Trina whimpers. “What is it?”
I have the sudden urge to stand and say, “Thanks very much, folks, that’ll be all for this evening,” but I can’t make my legs work, and my voice seems to have been swallowed up.
“The Lansas,” Sid says, speaking very slowly, like he wants to make sure we understand, “are the hired thugs of the Calaois gang. And Bobby McFarland is their boss.”
The campers are all registering some variation of the same reaction— slack-jawed shock, wide-eyed disbelief, brow-contorting confusion. But me, I feel like I’m zooming out, like I’m watching the scene from above, detached but curious.
“He’s an infamous motherfucker,” Sid continues. “I listened to a true-crime podcast about him. He’s done some dark shit.”
Kei closes his eyes tightly, shakes his head. “Wait, wait. So they owe money to god knows how many people, one of them being a mob boss, who they end up killing, and so they make a run for it in the middle of the night, leaving us here—”
“To die,” Isa finishes.
I can’t even process this revelation about the Silver Fox, or the fact that we’ve most certainly been left for dead; I’m stuck on what Sue-Ellen said. None of this is real.
Which means all of this—the cameras, the challenges, the votes—has been fake.
Which means I’ve been scammed. Again.
This time, I was supposed to be the one doing the scamming. This was not supposed to happen to me.
You can’t scam a scammer.
And yet.
I pray to disappear, for my limbs to petrify and become one with the log I’m sitting on, so I don’t have to face the truth of it all.
Because the truth is, I’m nothing but an idiotic, naive woman. I should have seen all of this coming, but I let myself get lost in my own story. I took my eye off the prize and I let myself get stupid because I had a crush on a boy. A crush.
I make myself stand up; the only force more powerful than my shame is my need to not be here.
I shuffle toward the path, vaguely registering both Harmony and Kei calling my name.
Harmony comes to me, takes my arms and pleads for me to stay and help plan the search for Damian and Giovanni.
I tell her I can’t, I’m sorry. I’m on autopilot as I find my way to my bunk, where I pull the blankets over my head.
Under the covers, the sounds of my shallow breath and beating heart are amplified, creating a comforting rhythm.
I feel the world moving further and further away. Finally, sleep takes me.
I wake up to Kei’s smiling face, and for the briefest moment, I’m flooded with happiness. “Time for breakfast, let’s get you up,” he says, like he’s speaking to a small child. And then I remember. I close my eyes again. After a little while, I hear another voice. Trina.
“This can happen with shock,” she’s saying. “Try to get her to take some water and let her rest. She’ll probably snap out of it by lunchtime.”
I roll over and pull the blankets up to my chin.
The next time I wake, Sue-Ellen is jostling me. “Christ on a bike,” she says, an edge of frustration in her voice. I open my eyes. “There you are! Rise and shine, honey, time to rejoin the land of the living.”
I stare at her blankly. I want to tell her that I haven’t been asleep the whole time.
How, in the middle of the night, I watched the shadows move on the walls as time did its sluggish march forward.
How I listened to the soft snores of my fellow campers, while tendrils of shame unfurled inside me, gripping my insides like a nightmare, until I slipped mercifully back into oblivion.
But the words don’t come. I hear her frustrated sigh as I close my eyes, and I wish I could do something—anything—to show her I’m not as weak as she thinks I am.
But I can’t.
I sleep until I can sleep no more. I try to keep my eyes closed but they force themselves open.
A dull, late-afternoon light filters through the window, casting long shadows on the walls.
I look for patterns in the grain of the plywood.
I see the face of a Yorkshire Terrier, the side profile of a man with a very weak chin, Chewbacca.
I hear the front door creak open and I clamp my eyes shut.
I don’t want to talk to anyone. But the footsteps come right for me.
A warm hand grips my shoulder and gently rocks me. I smell coconuts and sweat.
I open my eyes. The light is dim, but I can clearly see the whites of Kei’s eyes and teeth in the gloom. He’s chewing his lip, his face stern and serious.
“What is it?” My voice sounds far away.
He looks down. “I have some bad news.”
“What is it? Are you okay?” I push myself up onto my elbows. My arms feel weak supporting my weight.
“I’m fine.” His voice is flat. He looks me in the eye for the first time in a long time. “You know that smell in the storeroom?”
I nod, wrinkling my nose, as if I could smell it right then and there.
“I figured out where it’s coming from. It’s the rice. The extra sacks— they’re all rotten.” I open my mouth to speak but no words come out. “They must have gotten wet at some point,” Kei says, shaking his head. “So we’re running out of food.”
“How much do we have?” I whisper.
“A day’s worth, maybe two.”
“Oh my god.”
“Yeah.” He sighs again. “And Damian and Giovanni still aren’t back. They’ve been gone for two and a half days.” This jolts me. Two and a half days? How long did I sleep? How could I have just gone to bed when our friends are missing?
“We have to get off this island,” I say to Kei. He nods, his expression so serious it scares me. “The raft—is it done?”
He shakes his head. “We gathered some logs, but none of them are right. We can’t get it to work.”
I heave a sigh. I feel so helpless. Everyone has been out there, working to get us out of here, and I’ve been in bed, doing nothing, except proving what a weak, useless piece of shit I am.
Fuck this.
Suddenly, I’m struck by a realization, like a bolt of lightning out of the clear blue sky.
It isn’t love that’s the problem; it’s scam artists and con men and letting them get away with their bullshit—that’s the problem.
What if love—the thing that I thought had made me weak, that made me ignore every red flag that was punching me in the face, as well as all my internal pleas for self-preservation—what if love could make me strong?
“I’ll swim across the lake.”