Chapter Thirty-Seven
I may have lost my will to live, but my lungs haven’t lost their will to breathe, and I use all the power in my legs to kick myself up toward the surface.
The pressure in my chest tightens like a vise as I rise up, my arms and legs flailing.
Underwater stars twinkle in front of my eyes, momentarily distracting me with their beauty, until I realize it means I’m about to pass out, so I kick as hard as I can.
I break through, gasping in sweet lungfuls of oxygen.
Sue-Ellen appears at my side, panicked. She grabs me from behind, looping her arm under mine to hold me across the chest. Even though I’m basically drowning, I’m still mad that Sue-Ellen is seeing me like this, so I keep kicking my legs, like I don’t need her help.
“For Pete’s sake, Cleo, relax. I’ve got you.”
Fine. I let myself sink into her. Kei is trailing behind us. We make slow but steady progress, her towing me, me a dead weight. After some time, I’m breathing normally again, and my cramp has subsided, so I break free of Sue-Ellen’s grasp.
Relief flows through me like a drug when I realize that the trees on the other side are much closer than the last time I looked.
We’re getting there. But then I noticed that the gap between us and Kei has widened considerably.
I squint at him. I can see he is still swimming, but it’s like he’s doing a charade of “swimming.” His arms lift up and crash down ineffectually, and he barely moves forward. He’s in trouble.
“Kei!” I cry, alerting Sue-Ellen. We both sprint back to him. It’s noticeably easier going with the current than going against it.
He smiles as he sees us coming. As I get closer, I notice his eyes have a faraway, unfocused quality. “Hi,” he says, like he’s surprised to see me. Sue-Ellen shoots me a look.
“Fancy meeting you here,” I say, looping my arms under his, while Sue-Ellen does the same on the other side. “We just need to swim a little further, okay?”
Towing Kei, even with two of us, is slow and hard, but knowing he needs me to get him there safely has given me a renewed sense of purpose. I know my body won’t give up as long as my mind doesn’t, so I don’t let my thoughts devolve again.
I watch the clouds as we make our slow progress. The sky is still a threatening shade of slate, but the rain has stopped and the wind has died down. The swim seems so much more manageable in these conditions.
At some point, I notice that Sue-Ellen is lagging. Her breath is shallow and laboured. I arch my back, trying to see her.
“Are you okay?”
“Fine,” she gasps.
“I can manage on my own again,” Kei says, pulling his arms off our shoulders.
I get a better view of Sue-Ellen. Her face is somehow both flushed and pale at the same time.
Behind her, the clear details of the shore come into focus.
There is a small stretch of pebbly beach, closed in on either side by rocky outcrops that extend into the water.
We’re close enough to see the individual branches of the trees.
Kei starts to flail again, so I grab him underneath both arms, propping his body against mine.
“Sue-Ellen, stop, just take a break for a moment.” She hesitates, but then she stops, mid-stroke, and comes to a slow tread. “We’re so close,” I tell her. “We can do this.”
“We can do this,” Kei echoes.
She nods.
“Just think of how good it’s going to feel to see Tyler in a prison jumpsuit.” She nods again, more enthusiastically this time. “We can’t let them get away with this. Come on, let’s get to shore.”
We lock eyes. All the animosity and mistrust that had been brewing between us suddenly dissipates.
With renewed energy, we make the final push, me towing Kei, Sue-Ellen swimming ahead. My muscles are leaden, and my lungs are protesting, but my head is clear. There is no other way but forward.
Sue-Ellen cries out. Her torso emerges from the water. She topples forward, but then she’s upright again. She has hit land.
I let my legs drift down. I hold my breath, preparing to sink under, but my foot makes contact with the squishy floor of the lake, solid land rising up to support my weight.
We did it.
I pull Kei onto the rocky shore, and then I stumble, gasping and crying onto the beach.
I lie beside him at the edge of the water, feeling the lake’s now gentle waves lapping at my calves and ankles.
I don’t know how long I stay like that—a long time.
When I push myself up, I see Sue-Ellen lying face down, her back rising and falling in a slow rhythm.
I claw at the plastic bag around my ankle.
I manage to extract the water bottle, and I take a long drink.
I only allow myself a nibble of my granola bar, even though my stomach is roaring with hunger.
The water and the sugar give me a little hit of energy.
I push myself up to sit, stretching my legs out gingerly in front of me.
Sue-Ellen moans as she rolls onto her back. “Are we dead?”
“Believe it or not, we’re alive.”
“I think I might prefer death at this point.” She rolls onto her side, groaning from the effort. “How’s he?” She nods at Kei. His chest is rising and falling in a slow rhythm.
“Sleeping, I think.” Not passed out in insulin shock, I hope. “How long did that take us?”
She squints up at the sky. The clouds have cleared a little bit, but a haze is still blocking the sun. “I don’t know. A long time. That current really screwed us.”
“Like four hours?”
“At least. Maybe five.”
“How far do you think we drifted?”
“No idea.”
I shift, bending my knees gingerly so I can lean forward and stretch my lower back. I look around, but all there is to see are trees, rocks, and water, which would be fine if they were the trees and rocks and water I recognized from the first day, but they aren’t.
“How long do you think the walk is going to take?” I ask, and Sue-Ellen shoots me a murderous glare. “I’m just worried we’re going to get stuck in the woods in the dark.”
“We have so much time. It’s not much later than noon, right?” She slowly pushes herself up. “Look, we have plenty of time, and we need to recover from that swim. Plus,” she says, looking at Kei, “he’s not going anywhere anytime soon.”
“Should I wake him? Make him eat something?”
“I don’t know. Should he take some insulin or something?”
“I don’t know.” I bite my lip, watching his chest rise and fall. I squeeze his shoulder. “Kei?”
He doesn’t respond, so I shake his arm a little, and say his name louder. His eyes flutter open. “Kei, can you sit up a little? Time to eat something.”
He nods at me but makes no attempt to move. “Here,” I say, moving behind him, and hoisting his chest up so it rests in my lap.
“Have some food,” Sue-Ellen says, retrieving his granola bar from the plastic bag tied to his ankle. She breaks off a piece of the bar and brings it to Kei’s mouth. “Can you eat that?”
He takes the bar, and nods when she asks if he wants more. She feeds him, bite by bite, until the bar is gone. And then he falls back to sleep.
We sit there watching him, neither of us speaking our greatest fear into existence. I take the chance to ask something else that’s been on my mind.
“Why are you doing this? Why did you volunteer to help me?”
She pulls a face. “I don’t want to die on that island, either, you know.”
“I know. But—I thought you hated me.”
Sue-Ellen sighs. “I don’t hate you. I mean, you’re annoying, but I don’t hate you. I guess—” She looks up, speaking to the sky. “I guess I was jealous.”
“What? Why?”
“Uggghhh,” she moans. “I just was, okay? Don’t make me talk about my feelings.”
“Why did you come on a reality dating show if you don’t want to talk about your feelings?”
She sighs. “Okay. I guess I was jealous because you just showed up, so much like me in some ways—we’re both actresses, both blondes—”
“Mine’s out of a box.”
“Yeah, no shit. It looks like hay, no offence. Anyway, you were like me, but you were also everything I’m not—sweet, skinny, you have this great relationship with your mom, and the only guy that liked me also liked you. It’s like he knew you were the better version of me.”
“Are you for real?” I scoff. “For one thing, you’re like, the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.
I’m the lesser version of you, one hundred percent.
For another thing, I’m skinny because I can’t afford groceries because my boyfriend stole all my money.
And as for my mom, she’ll be on the street if I don’t win—”
It hits me again that there’s nothing left to win.
Sue-Ellen’s eyes flash wide. “That’s heavy.”
“Yeah.” I feel heavy. “I mean, I love my mom so much, I really do, it’s just—”
“Don’t worry, I get it,” she says. “I’ve got a sob story about my mom, too.”
“Let’s hear it.”
Sue-Ellen stares out over the water and is silent for a long time.
“Well,” she says, tentatively, “my mom nagged me so much about my weight that I started dieting when I was seven, and was fully anorexic by the time I was thirteen, which she loved, by the way. She was so proud of how thin I got. But it wasn’t sustainable with all the swimming, and I loved swimming more than anything, even more than being skinny, so I started to eat what I needed to.
When I qualified for the Olympics, she said I’d better go on a diet so I wouldn’t look fat on TV, so I basically starved myself, and then I had to quit swimming altogether to go to a treatment centre. So, yeah, that’s my mom.”
I want to hug Sue-Ellen, but I know she won’t allow it, so I just say, “I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah. It is what it is. Can you let me rest now, please?”
“For how long?”
She closes her eyes like she’s trying to gather strength. “As long as it takes,” she says through clenched teeth.
I scoot back, gently lowering Kei’s head and shoulders to the ground.
On shaky legs, I hobble up to the tree line where the ground is a little softer.
I lean back against a tree trunk and close my eyes.
It’s so quiet. The only sounds are the wind rustling through the trees, the water rolling onto the shore, and the occasional bird.
I listen for human sounds—engines or voices or industry—but there’s nothing.
The next thing I know, Sue-Ellen is nudging my leg with her foot. I open my eyes. She’s backlit, which means the sun has finally made an appearance.
“Come on. We fell asleep. Time to get going.”
I stand up and stretch. The fatigue is still heavy in my muscles, but the nap did me good. I walk, more steadily this time, to where Kei is sleeping. I stand over him for a moment, taking him in. Like he can sense it, he opens his eyes, looking right at me, and smiles.
He eases himself up to a seat, hugging his knees into his chest, making a ledge to rest his head. I crouch down, rubbing my hand against the smooth skin of his back.
“You guys saved my life,” he says. His voice is muffled between his legs. I breathe a sigh of relief that he’s lucid.
“You can thank Cleo for that,” Sue-Ellen says.
He lifts his head. His face is pale, but his eyes are focused again. “You’re my hero,” he says to me.
His praise makes me glow, but I try to contain it. I still don’t want to look like a lovesick asshole in front of Sue-Ellen.
“Here, have something to eat,” I say, offering my granola bar.
He holds up his hand. “I’m good. Just some water.”
We chat about our strategy for the hike as Kei takes small sips from his water bottle.
We’ll stick to the shoreline until we come to the beach we left from on the first day.
The sun is out in full effect, so it’s going to be hot, but it’s the surest way to the trail.
Or, at least, that’s what Kei says, and Sue-Ellen agrees, so who am I to argue?
We trudge up the beach toward the rocky outcrop I saw from the water.
From this vantage point, I can see that they’re actually giant boulders, forming a sizeable barrier, and climbing them will be a feat in itself.
We start to clamber over them, carefully choosing our hand placements and footfalls.
It’s slow going, and between the effort and the sun beating down, our hands and feet become slick with sweat.
It takes so much longer and it’s so much harder than just walking the same distance of flat ground, and by the time we get past it, we are spent.
“That sucked,” Sue-Ellen says, wiping her forehead. She looks ahead, and nods to the next crop of rocks just up the beach. “Should we go into the woods, see if we can get around it?”
Kei takes a gulp of water. He nods ahead. “Those rocks look more manageable. Let’s stick with the devil we know.”
Thankfully, these rocks are smaller and easier to traverse, though the field of rocks is much bigger, the length of the beach at camp, at least. The sun is merciless, and without any protection, I can feel my skin crisping with every passing minute.
The bottoms of my feet are smarting on the hot, jagged boulders.
“I need some shade,” I call, when we’re about halfway. I head for the tree line and sink down. The cool of the shadow is instant relief. Kei and Sue-Ellen follow, and we sit in silence, staring over the water, lost in our own thoughts.
I think of Tyler and Gabby. Is this what they envisioned, when they left us? This ragtag rescue crew? Or did they even think of us at all?
“Do you think it was ever real?” I ask. “Like were they even trying to make a real show?”
“I’ve asked myself the same thing,” Sue-Ellen says.
“Me too,” Kei says, “and I think they were. I mean, why go through all the trouble to get us here and hire staff and organize challenges and all that, if they weren’t actually trying to make a show?”
“So they’re evil and incompetent,” Sue-Ellen says.
“A winning fucking combination, if I’ve ever seen one,” I grumble.
But I’m also mollified. Somehow, the idea that they were trying to make Camp Couple-Up, that it wasn’t all fake, is comforting to me.
Like, if they had just been smarter, then we never would have gotten scammed.
This subtle shift of the blame from myself to them is a relief, like letting air out of an overfilled balloon.
“We should keep going,” says Sue-Ellen, hoisting herself to her feet. Kei stands next, offering me his hand.
And we start walking, Kei and I in the lead, with Sue-Ellen trailing close behind.
“Fuck!” Sue-Ellen’s cry pierces the stillness of the afternoon.
I turn to find her wincing in pain. Her leg has slipped down between two rocks.
“Fuck, this really fucking hurts!” she wails.
She pushes with both hands into the rock to dislodge herself.
She looks up at me, her face rigid with terror. “Fuck!” she gasps. “I’m stuck!”