Chapter Forty-Three
I wake up to the man with the phone, kneeling over me, yelling. Droplets of spit fly out of his mouth, backlit by the neon glow of the gas station lights.
I wake up to the sounds of sirens. The medics’ voices are muffled, like they’re underwater. I feel the weight of my body shift as we careen around a corner. I think of the cars outside, pulling over to let us pass.
I wake up in a bed in a brightly lit room. Through the window, I can see the pink morning sky. Everything hurts. I want to call out, ask for some water, but my tongue is too thick. Everything hurts.
I wake up to the sound of humming, tuneless and breathy. I try to turn to face the source, but my head’s so heavy, and my neck is so stiff. A woman’s face appears over me, crinkly pearl skin, kind blue eyes.
“Look who’s awake! How you doing, sweetie? Nope, don’t try to talk—let me get you some water.”
She disappears from my field of vision, and I’m able to take in some more details. The half-open curtain surrounding the bed. The ancient-looking TV suspended over the bed. The IV stand beside me, its cord leading into the back of my hand.
Also coming into sharp focus is the pain. It’s everywhere—my feet, my face, my back—burning, stinging, throbbing pain screeching through my body, making it impossible to form a coherent thought.
“You’re in the hospital.” The woman—a nurse, presumably—is back.
She hands me a glass of water with a straw.
I have trouble wrapping my cracked lips around it.
“That’s a girl,” says the nurse as I pull a small sip.
My throat is so dry it’s hard to swallow, but once I get the first couple of sips down, it gets easier.
“Good girl. My name’s Betty, I’m your nurse. What’s your name?”
“Cleo,” I croak.
“Cleo? Nice to meet you. Where’re you from, honey?”
“Vegas.”
“Vegas, as in Las Vegas?”
I nod.
“Well, you’re a long way from home, aren’t you? Do you know why you’re in the hospital?”
I try to think, but a thick fuzz covers my brain.
Thoughts start to form, but then they dissipate, like trying to grasp smoke.
I remember a parking lot. A patch of orange mushrooms. Kei.
And then the dam of my memory breaks, and it all rushes back: Sue-Ellen in the rocks, the swim, Garrett hitting the ground like a sack of stones.
“Cleo, are you okay?”
I’m seized by panic as I remember everything. “My friends,” I say, my voice cracking. “Please, my friends! They’re still on the island. Sue-Ellen is stuck in the rocks, and Kei passed out, and Damian and Giovanni—”
“Slow down, honey, it’s okay.”
“Please, my friends, they need help!”
“Okay, your friends, where are they?”
“The island, the camp. Lake, um…” What was it called? “Pearl Lake! Camp Mini…Mini…”
“Camp Minisaabik?”
“Yes!”
“That place closed twenty years ago.”
There is so much I need to say, with so much urgency, that I don’t know where to start. “Kei needs insulin!” is what comes out first.
Betty puts the glass of water on the bedside table. “You have a friend at Camp Minisaabik who needs insulin?”
“Yes! No! He’s not at camp, he’s on the beach. But they’re all out of food! And Damian and Giovanni are lost in the woods! And Sue-Ellen, she’s stuck in the rocks with no water. And the Silver Fox is dead, oh my god, please, help them!”
The hot tears sting my sunburned cheeks. Betty takes my hand and coos at me, and I blow long breaths through pursed lips until I feel calm enough to talk. I tell her the basics—how many people, the lack of food and electricity, how we were left for dead by the producers.
“Okay, honey, you just wait here, I’m going to get a police officer in here to talk to you, okay?”
It could be ten minutes or it could be ten hours that pass before the police officer arrives.
I’m so mired in panic that I have no sense of time.
The police officer is kind. He calls me Little Lady, which I would normally hate, but for some reason, it soothes me.
He calls for a search and rescue team immediately, and then he asks me to fill in the details.
I name all the campers, and then I tell him about the show, about Tyler and Gabby and the Silver Fox.
He coughs. “What was the man’s name? McFarland, did you say?” I nod. “Short fella? White hair?” I nod again. He leaves the room for a few minutes. I can hear him speaking in a low, serious tone in the hallway. He comes back in, rubbing his hands together.
“Don’t you worry, Little Lady, we’re going to find your friends, okay? We’ve got our best people out there, and they have water and food and medicine, alright? So, don’t you worry for another second.” He gives me a kind smile. “You’re a very brave young woman, you know that?”
I start to cry, wheezing and gulping. He puts his hand on my forearm and makes soothing noises. Betty comes back, a concerned look on her face. She nods for the cop to leave and takes my hand. “Why don’t you call home?” she says. “That’ll make you feel better.”
Oh god, what am I going to tell my mom? That I squandered her only chance to save her home because I somehow thought I was smart enough, savvy enough, capable enough to scam my way to a solution? That none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been so stupid and so selfish?
“Come on, honey, I’m sure there is someone who is very anxious to hear from you.” She gives me an encouraging nod. I know she’s right. I tell her the number and she hands me the phone. I hold my breath as it starts to ring.
“Cleo?” she says. Her voice sounds so small and far away. My response is a choked sob. “Cleo, are you okay? Did you get kicked off the show?”
This makes me cry even harder. “Mom, I’m so sorry,” I sob. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay, honey, you never know how these things are going to go. Was it an audience vote? Or did the other campers vote? I’ve always thought it would be so much worse if it’s your peers voting you off—”
“No, Mom, it wasn’t that.” I take a deep breath. “The whole thing was fake.”
I tell her about Tyler and Gabby’s scheme, how they tricked all of us, and how I should have known better.
“And that’s not even the worst part,” I say, trying to steady my voice. I have to come clean and tell her about the house. It comes out in fits and spurts, but eventually I get the whole story out. I apologize five, ten, one hundred times. But she’s quiet.
“Mom, are you there?” A long pause. “Mom?”
“I’m here,” she says, her voice somehow even smaller. I wait for her to say something, but she doesn’t. And then I hear a little gulp, a small sniffle. She’s crying, too.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Oh honey,” my mom says. “I know it hurts. I know.”
“I thought—” I sniffle. “I thought if I was able to win, then you’d never have to know. And I feel so stupid, for all of it.”
“It’s not your fault, Cleo. Those people betrayed your trust.”
“It’s my fault for trusting them.”
She sighs. “You can’t go through life not trusting anyone. That’s no way to live. You’ve got to let people in, otherwise what’s it even all about?”
I nod, wiping my nose with the back of my hand. “I’m so sorry, Mom.”
“It’s okay. I was thinking it might be time for a change, anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“I hear LA’s nice.”
“Wait, what?”
“Well, you were going to go there, anyway, weren’t you? And if I don’t have the house to keep me here, then maybe I could go, too. A fresh start.”
The tears slip, hot and fat, down my cheeks. “Really?”
“That is, if you don’t mind your old mom cramping your style.”
I laugh. “Not at all.”
“There’s just one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Did you fall in love or what?”
I laugh, suddenly feeling a million times lighter. “I actually did.”
I’m telling her all about Kei when Betty comes back in the room with a little cup of pills. I tell my mom I’ve got to go, I love her, and I’ll be home soon.
Betty gives me a moment to blow my nose and wipe my tears.
“This one is so your foot doesn’t get infected,” she says, holding up a white capsule.
Oh. My left foot is wrapped in bandages.
“This one’s for pain—” she holds up a large, round pill “—and you’ve got an anti-histamine for your stings, and one to help you relax, okay? Down the hatch, here we go.”
I take the pills, and it’s lovely. All the physical pain melts away, and although I’m still anxious, it’s like my worries are separate from me. I can see them, I know what they are, but they aren’t a part of me. My aching muscles relax, and I slip into sleep.
I wake up to Betty placing a lunch tray on my bedside table. The beef is gray with a strange gasoline sheen on it. There are a few pieces of broccoli cooked to a lifeless green, and some clumps of mashed potatoes. It is the most delicious thing I have ever tasted.
“Any news?” I ask Betty, as she comes in to clear the tray.
“I promise I’ll tell you as soon as I hear anything.”
I watch some TV, a Canadian talk show hosted by four women who don’t seem like they’d be friends in real life.
Another police officer arrives, this one much less friendly, to ask more questions about Tyler and Gabby and the show, and lots about the Silver Fox.
I’m finding it hard to concentrate, though, so Betty suggests that he come back later, that I need to rest after my ordeal.
“My ordeal.” That’s what everyone is calling it.
At some point in the afternoon, the nice policeman strides into my room with a huge grin on his face. “Good news,” he says. I hold my breath. “We’ve located six out of ten of your friends. They have been transported off the island and will start to arrive here within the hour.”
A sob escapes my mouth. “Are they okay?”
“They’re hungry and tired, but they’re all okay. Thanks to you.”
I sob for a minute; my relief is so overwhelming. Betty holds my hand while I cry. But then I process his words. Six out of ten.
“What about the other four?” I ask, wiping my nose.