Chapter Twenty-Eight
Sue-Ellen is the first to break the shocked silence. “Gone where?”
Damian looks at the sand as he shakes his head. “Their cabin is completely empty. Like, cleaned out. No computers, no clothing, no personal items, nothing.”
“But they’ll be back, right?” Trina says, her voice wobbling. No one answers her.
“Are you sure you checked the right place, bro?” asks Isa, holding Sue-Ellen close against his chest. Even her face is marked with worry.
“We’re sure,” Kei says.
“Well, where the heck did they go?” Sue-Ellen says. There is a long pause as we all look at one another, waiting for someone to have some answers. But all we have are questions.
“Are they coming back?”
“Did someone take them?”
“Were there any signs of foul play?”
“Are the cameras still rolling?”
“What are we supposed to do?”
Everyone is talking at once. Everyone except for me. It’s like my voice has been sucked into the void of dread blooming in my stomach.
“We don’t know any more than you do,” Damian says, moving to reclaim his seat beside Harmony. “It just looks like they up and left, and in a hurry.”
“Why do you think that?” Valeria asks, in a small voice.
“There was a half-eaten bowl of ramen on the table,” Kei says, sitting beside me, but not close enough for our bodies to touch. “Dishes in the sink, unmade beds. Stuff like that.”
“Did it look like—were there, like, signs of a struggle?” Giovanni asks, looking like maybe he doesn’t want to know the answer.
“No,” Damian says, shaking his head. “Nothing like that. All of their personal belongings were gone. Like, they packed up and left. Even the laundry hampers were empty.”
“And the canoes,” Kei adds. “They’re all gone. The lifejackets, too.”
I imagine them—Gabby, Tyler, Teddy, all the camera guys, and the rest of the crew—stealing away in the middle of the night, silently paddling, avoiding the path of the moonlight so they could remain clandestine in the darkness.
But why?
“Are we still being recorded?” Sue-Ellen asks. I look to the cameras mounted on stakes surrounding the fire pit. Their red lights glow in the blackness.
“The cameras are on,” Damian says. “But whether or not they’re being monitored…”
Sue-Ellen twists her body so she’s directly facing a camera. “This is really messed up, you guys,” she yells, maybe to no one. “Are you listening? This is not freaking funny.”
Trina makes a small noise, and then her face crumples. Her shoulders shudder with silent sobs. We all watch in stunned silence.
“They’re fine,” Kei says. “And they’ll be back. They’ll probably be here when we wake up in the morning.”
“Yeah, they’ll definitely be back,” Damian says, nodding a little too vigorously. “They said the lag in the production schedule was two days between shooting and airing, right? They have to come back tomorrow, or else the show will fall behind.”
“Couldn’t they be doing all that stuff remotely?” asks Sid.
“Maybe,” Damian replies. “But it’s not like they’re just going to leave us all here.”
“They already did,” Sue-Ellen says. “Seriously, if this was all above board, they would have said something. They wouldn’t have just left.”
She’s right. We all sink into despondent silence, each of us lost in our own darkness, as we watch the fire wither. Once it’s nothing but a few glowing embers, Sue-Ellen and Isa lead the exodus back up to the Bunkhouse.
In my bed, I pull the blanket right up to my neck and wait for Kei to return from the bathroom. When I hear him coming, I move over, marking a clear space for him in the bed. I prop myself up on my elbow, to signal I’m waiting.
“Night,” he mutters to me, as he climbs into the top bunk. Harmony’s eyes follow him, then turn to me, questioning. I shrug and fall back into bed.
I squeeze my eyes shut and take deep breaths to slow the torrent of questions flooding my brain. Where are the producers? Did something happen to them? Why is Kei acting like this? Have I ruined everything? What’s going to happen in the morning?
I kick the blankets down, suddenly too hot. I twist to my other side, searching for a cool spot on the pillow. The bed is too big for just me.
“Kei?” I whisper in the darkness.
“Mmm.”
“I can’t sleep.” I pause. “I’m scared.”
For a long moment, he doesn’t say anything. But then the bed creaks, and his legs appear over the side of the bunk. He slides down and climbs in beside me. He lies on his back, staring up at the bottom of the top bunk.
“Are you scared too?”
“No,” he says without looking at me. He sighs.
“It’ll be okay. Just go to sleep.” He turns his head and looks at me.
He sighs again, and lifts his arm, making space for me.
Before he can change his mind, I wriggle in, resting my cheek against his chest. His solidness and his warmth are immediately comforting, and I feel the tension in my body soften against his.
I match my breathing to his slow, even pace, and finally, sleep comes.
My first instinct, upon being suddenly and obnoxiously awoken the next morning, is to be annoyed, to complain, to push back. Until I realize what has woken me.
The bell.
I open my eyes to see Kei already half sitting up. He looks at me, his eyebrows raised. And then the whole Bunkhouse comes alive.
“Is that the bell?” Harmony asks, sitting straight up, totally awake.
Trina jumps out of bed. “Guys, it’s the bell!”
No one bothers to get dressed—we just grab our mics and head straight to the flagpole. I’m not sure how to feel. I cycle between excitement and frustration and curiosity and annoyance and then—
Bitter disappointment.
It’s not Tyler and Gabby at the flagpole; it’s Isa. He’s shaking his head, regarding us with pity. “You should see your faces,” he says, with a mirthless laugh.
“Not funny, bro,” I say, resisting the urge to throttle him. Even in this upside-down version of the show, I’m still committed to my character.
“Yeah, fuck you, Madrid,” Giovanni says, thrusting his middle finger into the air at Isa.
Isa drops the bell, and starts toward Giovanni, but Sue-Ellen pulls him back by the arm.
“When are you going to understand?” Isa spits. “They are not coming back. It’s done.”
“I agree with Isa,” Trina says, red creeping up her neck. “They’re not coming back, guys. It’s obvious. We’ve got to get out of here!”
This is met with a chorus of protests. “They’ll be back,” Damian says, a well-worn refrain at this point. “This is a test, for real.”
Damian’s confidence has always felt like a touchstone, something solid to hold on to, but it’s starting to feel tenuous.
“What if,” he says, holding up a finger, “what if the test is for us to figure out how to get off the island?”
Trina sighs, shaking her head. “Damian,” she starts, but Kei cuts her off.
“Maybe,” he says, slowly. “In any case, we should start working on getting out of here.”
Damian nods. “I’ll go exploring, see what I can see. It’s a big island— who knows what we’ll find. For all we know, there are other people here with us. I bet there’s a Tim Hortons on the other side of the island, full of friendly Canadians, ready to help us.”
“I’ll go with you,” Giovanni says.
“That’s great, thanks guys,” says Kei. “I’ll make breakfast. We’ll all feel better on a full stomach.”
“We will all feel better once we are off this fucking island,” Isa says.
“Enough, Isa,” Sue-Ellen says, under her breath.
The campers disperse, unusually quiet.
“This is so fucked up,” Harmony says in a low voice, surveying the scene.
“I know,” I say, with a sigh. “I don’t have a good feeling about any of it.”
“Me neither.” Harmony leans in closer. “And, like, I want to believe Damian, but I don’t know, I’m not sure this is part of the show anymore.” She leans back, crossing her arms across her chest, like she’s trying to warm up, despite the heat of the morning sun.
I nod. “It’ll be alright,” I say, parroting Kei.
“Do you really think so?”
“Yeah, for sure.” Harmony’s face is tight with worry. “For sure,” I repeat. “I mean, we have food, we’re all young and healthy, and we’re not even that far from land.” Her face brightens a little bit. “We’re going to be fine.”
She nods. “Thanks, girl,” she says, leaning in for a hug. “You want to go chill in the hammocks?”
“I should help Kei with food prep.”
“Are things okay with you two?”
“Yeah, I think he’s just stressed about everything that’s been going on.”
She nods, and winks at me. “Go get your man.”
I decide, as I walk to the Mess Hall, that I’m going to get Kei into the storeroom. I rehearse our conversation—how I have to drive home the point that as long as the cameras are running, we need to stick to the plan. But when I get to the Mess Hall, I quickly change my mind.
He’s at the counter, cracking eggs into a stainless-steel bowl. He doesn’t even look up.
“Do you need some help?” I ask.
“I’m good,” he says.
I stand there for a moment longer, searching for something I can say to make things right between us. He turns his back to me, a clear signal that our conversation is over.
I hurry away from the Mess Hall. Maybe I should just give up.
Kei has been so miserable with me since the night in the Treehouse, and I die a little bit every time I have to force him to kiss me or hold my hand or sleep beside me in bed.
My desperation wafts off me like a stink, and maybe I should just walk away and preserve whatever shred of dignity I have left.
I find Harmony at the hammocks, and I climb in beside her, word-lessly. She leans her head against mine. “It’s going to be okay,” she says. “It’s all going to be okay.”
I manage to keep a brave face through breakfast, wincing every time Kei laughs at someone else’s joke, but by the time I’ve cleaned my dishes I can’t hack it anymore.
Fighting back tears, I beeline to the Bunkhouse and pull on my bikini.
I run down the beach path, choking back sobs, until my feet hit the water.
I only feel the hot tears on my face for a moment, until I dive into the cold, dark lake.
I hold my breath for as long as I can, only surfacing to fill up before going under again.
I open my eyes, but there is nothing to see in the murk.
I force myself to stay under for a count of ten before I allow myself to come up for a breath, my legs propelling me forward in the darkness.
I take a breath and then go down for twelve.
I come up gasping, my heart pumping. Back down for fifteen.
At twenty, stars crowd my peripheral vision.
At twenty-three, I burst through the water, my lungs starved of oxygen.
I stay up just long enough to catch my breath before I plunge back under.
After a while, my mind quietens, and I come back into my body. The fiery ache of my muscles, my lungs clenching in protest. I flail through the water to get back to shore, pulling up onto the beach like a ship running aground. I lie there, panting, the gentle current of the lake lapping at my legs.
I imagine my body melting into the earth, dripping around the rocks and soaking into the sand underneath. I’m not sure how long I’ve been lying there when I hear a voice say my nickname. “Cleopatra Jones.” I open my eyes to find the faces of Damian and Giovanni hovering over me. “You okay?
“Yeah,” I croak. I push myself up with jelly arms. “What are you guys doing?” They’re both wearing backpacks and clutching walking sticks.
“We’re going to get the lay of the land, see what our options are for getting out of here,” says Damian, extending a hand and pulling me up to standing.
“Oh. Okay. Cool cool.” I’m feeling woozy, so I brace myself, hands on my thighs.
“You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah. Hey, watch out for bears!” A goofy laugh escapes my mouth. I’m trying to sound light and fun, but from the look on Damian’s face, it must be giving ‘unhinged.’
“What?”
“Nothing, never mind.”
Damian pulls me in with one arm for a hug. He ruffles my hair, peering at my face. “You good, Jones?”