Chapter Four
Savannah was, in fact, not ready. She’d always known that she would be uncomfortable in this game.
The sun would beat down on her neck, and the sand would chafe her inner thighs until they felt like two pieces of tenderized steak.
She’d also fully expected her hair to succumb to the intense humidity and her skin to suffer under the high UV.
But this? Being forced to run along the long, curved arm of one of the Paraty Bay Islands searching for a golden stone that was as elusive as the missing sock from every load of laundry was just cruel. Especially when that stone could hold the biggest advantage of the season.
“REMEMBER, CONTESTANTS, THE PERSON WHO FINDS THE GOLDEN STONE FIRST WILL SET THE PRECEDENT FOR THE REST OF THE GAME. IT IS THE FIRST AND BIGGEST ADVANTAGE THIS GAME HAS EVER SEEN BEFORE THE PAIRING. DON’T LET IT SLIP THROUGH YOUR FINGERS!” Naomi called.
Savannah had recognized her immediately from The Final Pound.
Naomi had spent the last five years whipping middle-aged housewives into the best shape of their lives.
Savannah had suspected Luna would be there after the author let a hint slip during her Book Time interview with Holly Mitchell.
It was the same interview in which Luna had called Savannah a literary bully.
The second Luna mentioned her little lakeside club with Kate and Wyn, Savannah immediately felt outnumbered, and everyone else probably did too.
A pre-built three-person alliance on day one was what Outlast Her fans would graciously call an execution.
Savannah wasn’t prepared for a beheading on day one, and what better way to stay out of the guillotine than to find that stone?
She sprinted along the stretch of powdery white sand toward the jungle, passing by Sloan and Ezra on their knees frantically digging a hole by a pile of sun-bleached driftwood that crisscrossed like an X. Idiots, thought Savannah, as if production would make it that obvious.
A canopy of wavy-leaved wild guava trees and purple bromeliads trapped heat beneath it, and Savannah couldn’t get a breath in.
It was like being in a sauna while wearing a wool sweater.
She had to lean against a mangrove tree, its roots snaking out like giant wooden spiders, just to catch her breath.
“How difficult can it be to find a golden stone?” someone declared from deeper in the jungle.
Savannah squinted through a curtain of hanging moss and spotted Maya Lin, the gymnast, scanning the floor.
She was the shortest contestant there, no taller than four feet eight.
Her eyes were closest to the ground. If she couldn’t find it, then who could?
“What do you think the stones are for?” Avery asked, walking beside her.
Surely the advantage was nothing more than being able to choose your own partner. Savannah nearly chirped in with her own theory, but instead she slunk further back into the shadows of a palm frond. If she were going to find the stone, she wanted to do it alone.
“Nothing good, probably,” Maya replied. “Advantages are only good if no one else knows about them. Otherwise, it’s like having a big bull’s-eye on your back.”
Savannah hadn’t thought about it that way. What if they were right? What if the advantage was actually a disadvantage?
Her eyes caught sight of something glittery and yellow. Maya’s comment flew out of her mind like a bird in flight. With her heart hammering against her ribs, she dove right toward a patch of sandbur grass, nearly slamming the ground with her knees.
“Fuck,” she cursed when she picked up a sulfur-colored snail shell.
She closed her fingers around it and squeezed.
Then she brushed the gritty shards off her palms before wiping at her forehead.
Sweat was beginning to drip into her eyes.
This humidity was insufferable. She considered taking a dip, maybe even just splashing water on her face, and would’ve if she hadn’t spotted Amy on a cluster of rocks ahead.
Amy was wearing frayed, knee-length denim cut-offs, a faded T-shirt with a graphic of a roaring lion’s head on the front, and a pair of red high-tops.
She looked like she was in a high school band.
At the same time, Savannah couldn’t peel her eyes off Amy as she leaped from one rock to the next with a gazelle-like agility that Savannah hadn’t expected. She was, in fact, mesmerized.
What are you doing? Savannah quickly shook herself out of her head. The humidity was clearly doing things to her prefrontal cortex. She retreated. But just as she stepped back, her foot landed on a pile of driftwood. It cracked like brittle bones.
Amy’s head suddenly snapped in her direction.
Her eyes narrowed and her lips puckered.
For a split second, it seemed like Amy was going to leap off the rock and walk toward her.
No, please don’t, Savannah thought, holding her breath.
This was not the time nor the place for Amy to get back at her for earlier.
Although Amy had every right to. Savannah had acted awful, and for what reason?
Didn’t shock make a person lash out before they had the chance to think? Because seeing Amy was shocking.
Amy was five feet away when she opened her mouth. “Did you—”
But her words were cut off by a squeal and then a very loud “FOUND IT!”
Savannah whipped her head so fast toward the voice that she heard a creak and then felt the burn of her cervical discs shoot like an electric current right down her arms. “Shit,” she muttered, squeezing her eyes shut. Then she squeezed them tighter when she heard Amy ask, “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Savannah muttered sourly. But she wasn’t fine.
Her neck was burning red hot. If this had happened back home after a tennis session, she would’ve called up her massage therapist, Alexis, and organized a sixty-minute deep-tissue massage and dry-needling appointment.
Out here she didn’t even have her pillow.
Just thinking about sleeping on a pile of leaves tonight was enough to make her consider quitting.
But then what would Marjorie say? Or worse, what retort would Abi spew her way at the country club’s next charity event? Abi had barely believed Savannah when she’d announced during their doubles game that she was going to be on the next season of Outlast Her.
She opened her eyes. Amy was standing less than two feet away.
Her hair, which earlier had lain flat under her hat, was rising up like a soufflé.
She had a riot of caramel-blonde curls that made her cornflower-blue eyes pop.
Her brows were pinched with genuine concern.
UGH! How infuriating! Savannah gave Amy’s soft, empathetic face one glaringly sharp look and turned on her heels back toward the beach.
“Alright, everyone,” Naomi called, gathering them all up with a swoosh of her muscly arms. “Brenda found the golden stone. Well done, Brenda.”
Savannah massaged her knuckles into the muscle just below her skull as she watched Brenda walk to stand beside Naomi. She didn’t clap with the rest of the contestants because she was too busy nursing a pinched nerve and wondering how she was going to make twenty-eight days without Alexis.
“Did you hurt your neck?” Amy asked softly, stepping into her peripheral vision. “It looked like you hurt your neck earlier.”
“I didn’t,” Savannah lied, dropping her arm rapidly to her side. Amy was the last person she wanted to tell about her neck problem, or the wreck that had caused it.
Five years ago, after a late-night dinner at Buvette in the West Village, her Uber had crossed the intersection at 42nd Street only to be bulldozed off the road by a trust-fund kid in a Range Rover who had blown a red light.
She’d spent six agonizing weeks recovering at NYU Langone, lying flat on her back with a fractured thoracic spine and a femur in traction.
The only way to stay sane was to read. Anything from Elin Hilderbrand to Judith McNaught to Lisa Kleypas and Sandra Brown.
Then one night, Jackie, one of the young nurses, had convinced Savannah to do a book review of the Duke’s Filthy Secret.
It had been filthy, very filthy. She did the review, and the internet had gone completely crazy over it.
So Savannah had done another review. Then another.
Within months, her Instagram page was blue-checked with nearly a million followers, and she was being invited to Reese’s Book Club and The Today Show.
“I got whiplash once from a tandem zipline in Tuttle,” Amy whispered under her breath while Naomi checked that the stone Brenda had claimed to have found was in fact the real deal. “I know some helpful stretches. If you want, I can show them to you.”
“I don’t need your help,” Savannah said out of the corner of her mouth. What she needed was for Amy to stop talking to her, or better yet, stop being nice. It made the guilt in her chest balloon. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m trying to listen to what Naomi has to say.”
Amy scoffed, then muttered under her breath. “The only reason I’m even being nice to you is because we have to be in this game together for the next twenty-eight days.”
Savannah rolled her eyes. Ugh. Not only did she doubt Amy would make it that far, but she also thought librarians were supposed to be excellent at keeping quiet.
She imagined Amy standing in the autobiography section, shushing teenagers in a lovers’ quarrel with her finger pressed to her lips.
Lips. Savannah found herself turning her head just enough to study Amy’s lips.
She’d read enough romance books to count off a hundred adjectives to describe her lips: rosebud, plush, Cupid’s bow, split-ripe, pillowy, succulent.
Thinking through the adjectives as she stared at Amy’s lips made Savannah realize how clichéd every one of those descriptions was.
She jerked her head away, but only after catching sight of Amy crossly folding her arms over her chest. “You can offer me the same courtesy, you know. It’s called respect.”
And it was only right. Savannah should apologize.
She should set things right. Amy didn’t deserve to be treated like some mid-century plague.
But as much as Savannah felt the prick of her own conscience, she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
Because frankly, Amy had rubbed her the wrong way two months ago under the glittering lights of Barnes & Noble when she’d pointed out that Savannah had cut in line.
If anyone could hold a grudge that long, it was Savannah.
“Fine,” Amy muttered when Savannah’s silence stretched on for too long. Then she stepped to the side, moving between Maya and Sloan. Maya was completely dwarfed by the supermodel and her unfairly long, slender legs.
“Now that our golden stone has been found, it’s time to tell you exactly what Brenda has won,” Naomi announced with a gleaming smile. She paused long enough for Savannah’s nerves to fire up. “In past seasons of Outlast Her, your pairs were left entirely up to fate.”
Oh no. Savannah felt her heart sink to her stomach like an anchor.
It sounded like Naomi was going to mention a change in the pairing process, and Savannah couldn’t think of anything worse.
She had a one-in-eleven chance of being paired with Amy.
Those weren’t great odds, but they were surely manageable.
What if this advantage ruined that? Those odds were about to skyrocket.
“But not this time.” Naomi smiled, and suddenly that gleaming smile looked menacing. Had this been Naomi’s idea? Did her need to fill Vivian’s shoes require such a big change from previous seasons? “Instead, Brenda will personally hand-pick the partners for every single one of you.”
Brenda’s jaw nearly dropped to the ground.
“Me?” she gasped, frowning so hard that no amount of Photoshop could edit away the panic.
Savannah would be panicked too. To hold the fate of eleven women in her hands, well, even Savannah didn’t want that much control.
But was being at Brenda’s mercy any better?
Naomi fetched a velvet bag off the pedestal to her right and then tugged at the drawstrings. “There are six teams. Six colored buffs. Whenever you’re ready.”
Brenda faced the group. There was a scene in Chasing the Lane where Brenda pushed an exhausted Sofia through an insanely hard ladder set, and at the peak of the final broken 400 sprint, Sofia had sunk like a stone to the bottom of the fifty-meter pool.
The look of terror on Brenda’s face right now was worse than it had been then. Much worse.
“Alright,” Brenda said, picking out a burnt orange buff. “The first pair I’d like to pick is...”