Chapter 3 #4
“Do you want to hang out with us? I think we’re pretty much done with the beach for now,” she said, looking over her shoulder at Ryan and his friends still struggling to find the phone in the water. “But I think we’re probably going to get some dinner before the show starts.”
James also didn’t think he wanted to stay on the beach anymore. With any luck, he’d be able to go the rest of the week without seeing Ryan LeHane again, but he also knew that Ryan had a way of making himself seen. He shrugged and nodded.
“Yeah, sure.”
“I’m Cassidy, by the way,” Tattoos said. “This is Apricot, and Daisy.”
“I’m James. Nice to meet you all,” he said, but didn’t look at Daisy. The pleasantry did not extend to her.
They collected their things, shaking as much sand out of them as they could. Once they were a few yards down the beach they rinsed off in the ocean while James waited with their belongings.
“Who was that fucking douchebag, anyhow?” Daisy asked James after she pulled her T-shirt over her head. The water immediately soaked into the fabric of the shirt, and it clung to Daisy’s chest and shoulders as she wrangled dripping hair into a bun on top of her head.
“His name is Ryan LeHane. He’s another YouTuber.
His videos are mostly him pulling pranks on people like that,” James said.
He didn’t want to admit to the women that LeHane actually did have some talent because he had some videos where he played piano and sang original songs that were both catchy and cleverly satirical.
“How is that even a prank? Like, he wasn’t being smart or tricking us. He was just being stupid,” Cassidy said.
The women quickly dried with the sun beating down on the group as they walked to the nearest restaurant. All the buildings on the island were almost completely identical to one another.
And, James thought with a cold chill he couldn’t explain, they look nothing like the structures I saw that creature beneath.
The villas and dormitories had a clean, prefab look to them that back on any mainland would be denigrated as gentrification, but the bars, restaurants, and rental huts all had the same kitschy tiki bar aesthetic and were only identified by the handwritten signs outside them.
This restaurant had the uninspired name of The Smoke Shack.
A bit too on the nose, James thought as he watched smoke billow out from behind the counter. The woody smell of sweet smoked meat carried on the air and made his stomach grumble, stupid moniker or not.
The four of them got a table inside, where the air remained hot but at least they had some shelter from the sun.
A server with a high ponytail and a close-fitting Hawaiian T-shirt took their drink orders and disappeared into the back for their waters and sodas.
At least these hired models weren’t going to be handling pork, James thought.
He didn’t trust them with anything beyond bartending duties.
As he tried to get a look into the workings of the back of the house through the oscillations of the swinging door just to be sure there were real cooks back there, he thought he caught a glimpse of someone that he saw on Iron Chef America recently, but he wasn’t sure.
In this place, nothing could surprise him.
“Do you think this place has anything vegan?” Apricot asked, tapping through the menu on her phone that everyone pulled up from the QR code taped to the table.
“For real, Apricot? You’re going to keep on with that shit here?” Daisy asked.
“It’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle,” Apricot said. “And they said they could accommodate all dietary restrictions when we made the reservation.”
James almost said that not all the restaurants were suitable for all diets but that they could find the ones that adhered to their specific needs on the app, which he learned by reading and rereading all the festival information on his lonely flight in.
“See, I told you I could find something. They have fish here,” she said. James paused with his mouth open, but he swallowed his thoughts on the matter and said nothing.
“How are you liking the island so far, James?” Cassidy asked after the servers placed their respective plates down.
“I’m enjoying myself. I went jet skiing a bit and that was fun.”
“Where are you staying?” Apricot asked. The question sounded vaguely aggressive, and James immediately felt on guard.
“In the dorms,” James admitted. Apricot’s eyebrows went up.
“Really? Are they… nice?”
James didn’t like the way she said that, either.
“Yeah, they’re pretty nice. I mean, I don’t plan to spend much time there.
I was going to get one of the tents but my friend Steve, who’s another YouTuber, bailed at the last minute.
I mean, luckily, I hadn’t bought my ticket or anything just yet.
” The heat of embarrassment rose in James’ cheeks as he explained the situation.
None of them were going to verify where he was staying, so he could have lied, but James wasn’t a liar, as much as the internet often claimed otherwise.
Steve isn’t even here and he’s still embarrassing me? he thought but didn’t have time to dwell on it.
“It’s whatever.” James shrugged. “I have better things to spend my money on. And like I said, it’s pretty nice. It’s more like a hotel room than a dorm.”
“Yeah, there’s not much to complain about here, right?” Cassidy said. She sounded sincere.
“Except the fucking assholes who got invited,” Daisy said, somewhat distantly. She and Apricot were both scrolling on their phones.
“There is that,” James said.
“Why did your friend decide not to come, James?” Cassidy asked, looking up from her phone. She seemed more sincere, but he wasn’t sure he judged any of these women correctly.
“He thought it sounded too sketchy.”
Cassidy shrugged. “Yeah, I mean, it kind of did. My manager was worried about me coming, but I saw the lineup of the artists and there was so much positive confirmation—”
“And it was just too good to pass up,” Daisy said while her thumbs tapped away at her phone screen. “I mean, if it was bad then like, it’s bad for a little while, but if it’s good and you don’t go? What if you never get the invite again?”
“Right,” James agreed. “You only get some chances once.”
“Exactly,” Apricot agreed. “And, like, what are the chances that all three of us would be invited?”
James thought it was a good question. He and Steve at least had similar platforms, so it made sense to him that both of them got invited, but he didn’t recognize any of the women he currently sat with.
“They probably mined our data off of Ticketmaster or something like that,” Cassidy said. “Have you ever been to Burning Man, James?”
“Uh, yeah,” he said, trying to make it sound obvious. That was another festival that he was almost completely unable to afford and still went to anyhow. It was a miserable, dry weekend, but he got some good content for the channel out of it.
“That doesn’t prove anything,” Apricot said.
“Like I said, Lexi Kirkland went to Burning Man and Coachella and she didn’t get an email to come here.
It’s not based on mined data. It’s probably more about connections or something.
They want to get recognizable faces and names.
Maybe no one outside of L.A. would recognize our faces, but anyone who is in the know is going to recognize our last names or our parents. ”
“What are your last names?” James asked, regretting the question as soon as it left his mouth.
All three heads turned to him. Despite what Apricot just said about the three of them not being well known, they each bore a look of slight irritation.
“I’m Apricot Anderson, this is Cassidy Burns, and this is Daisy Palmer,” she said, gesturing to herself and her friends and emphasizing surnames.
The names all conjured images in James’ head of famous musicians and actors. “Oh, okay, so you’re all kids of celebrities?” He said it in a disappointed and judgmental tone like he would use if he were talking about them to Steve rather than saying it to their faces over dinner.
“My parents aren’t celebrities,” Apricot quickly clarified. “Not in that way, anyhow.”
But James knew the Anderson name was behind one of the biggest production companies in Hollywood. Apricot’s parents weren’t on-screen famous, but they were still rich, filthy rich, 1% rich.
Rich nepotism babies, James thought. They really will let anyone on the island.
“We’re artists, actors, models, things like that,” Cassidy told him, but she was looking at Apricot, who was working her jaw like she was warming it up for something.
“And who are you, James? I’ve never heard of you before.”
“Well, I’m still trying to make a name for myself because I wasn’t born into a famous one.”
“You say that like you think there’s something wrong with having a famous name,” Apricot said, but she spoke for all the women at the table. All three of them had their eyes on James now, waiting to see what he would say next.