Chapter Six
Adrienne had watched enough Outlast Her to know that camp always sorted itself into something that resembled a hierarchy.
At the top of the food chain were the providers.
These were the women who knew how to handle an axe, who gathered dry driftwood and sun-bleached twigs, and the ones who built the shelter from the ground up.
They were always moving, fixing, always trying to make the place marginally more livable for everyone.
Adrienne highly respected the providers.
But she was not one of them.
Then, below them, were the social players. The listeners, the mediators. The women who remembered birthdays, allergies, kids’ names, and everyone’s favorite restaurant order because they asked the questions, paid attention, and acted as if they genuinely cared.
Adrienne would rather smear a dollar-store lipstick tester directly onto her lips than listen to someone recount their daughter’s third Ms. Rachel-themed birthday party. Did that mean she didn’t have a social game of her own? Definitely not.
And then came the floaters. The perfectly pleasant but mostly forgettable wallpaper contestants who got barely any airtime.
These women never made it to the top, and for good reason.
They were unmemorable. Adrienne couldn’t remember any of the floaters’ names in any of the previous seasons because they didn’t matter.
Then, last, at the very bottom of the Outlast Her pyramid, were the liabilities.
The women who did absolutely nothing to help around camp, who complained about eating rice and beans, and who pulled a face every time they were tasked with water bottle duty.
The women whose names became attached to phrases like easy vote and dead weight.
Some would say Adrienne fell within this bracket, but in fact, she was sitting comfortably above all of them, occupying a tier entirely on her own.
She may not have the skills or the drive to build a shelter.
She could think of several better things to do than getting splinters in her fingers.
And she might not collect firewood, or even volunteer to fill up everyone’s water bottles.
But she was watching. And listening. Her ears were on the ground, so to speak, and her eyes were constantly tracking everyone around her.
For example, she knew that Eden had already snuck off with Hallie to an old stone outcrop half-hidden by salt-stunted shrubs and discussed forming an alliance with Safiya and her pair, Carmen, though neither of them trusted Carmen.
Poker players had poker faces. She’d also watched Niko whisper into Sienna’s ear this morning and overheard her mention Isla’s name.
Then, just a few minutes ago, right before Adrienne had meandered to the beach to lounge on the sand, she’d spotted Hallie and Stevie sneaking into the brush with Niko, and as far as Adrienne could tell, they were trying to get in with Isla and Eden.
Adrienne had knowledge. And in her opinion, that meant she held all the power.
Smiling at her own cleverness, Adrienne stretched her arms far over her head until she could feel the pleasant pull of her stomach muscles.
She didn’t have to open her eyes to know her ribs were poking out like the slats of a fan or that her skin was looking all dewy and glowing after she’d spent the morning exfoliating using handfuls of coarse golden sand she’d managed to find only in the surf.
By the end of these four weeks, she was going to look more ripped than Demi Moore in G.I. Jane.
A shadow suddenly blocked her sun. Heat dropped off her cheekbones like a curtain falling, and that pleasant orange glare behind her eyelids vanished to darkness.
Then a voice said, “You can at least pretend to help out around here.”
Adrienne opened one eye, but only because she recognized the voice. Anyone else and she would’ve pretended she was in a deep sleep until they wandered away.
“Everything’s done,” Adrienne said, suppressing a smile.
She knew Valerie coming over here to talk to her must have taken a great deal of effort, and she didn’t want to scare her away.
Not after Valerie had spent all of yesterday afternoon and last night dodging her as if Adrienne carried some highly contagious nineteenth-century disease.
But no matter. Adrienne wasn’t bothered.
The chase was usually the fun part anyway.
“There’s always something to do,” Valerie said, planting her hands on her hips.
The breeze coming off the water pushed loose strands of hair across her face, and she impatiently tucked them behind her ears again.
“You can wash the rice pot, or collect shells for bowls, or be actually useful and find more sticks for the fire because we’re constantly running out. ”
Adrienne regarded her for a moment. Valerie’s hair was thick, and although she had it tied in a pony, a few wavy strands kept escaping.
She wore a faded navy Sitka T-shirt with a large moose printed across the front.
The sketch was cracked from too many washes.
Underneath that shirt were small breasts, a toned stomach, and a tattoo above her left hip bone.
Adrienne had noticed all of that yesterday after the swim from the boats to the beach.
She’d looked Valerie up and down and had rather enjoyed how it had made Valerie squirm.
Adrienne sat up, bent her legs, and held her knees with her arms. Then she patted the pebbles beside her. “Sit.”
Valerie did not sit. Instead, she took a step back as if Adrienne might bite.
Sensible. Adrienne was, in fact, a biter.
“Oh, come on,” she said, smiling. Adrienne had once been told she had a very magnetic smile.
Princess Victoria of Sweden had whispered it against her mouth in the Royal Box at Wimbledon during a particularly brutal game between Djokovic and Nadal.
“We’re partnered together, and nothing is going to change that.
Well, unless we go to The Sending and neither of us wants that, do we? ”
“We’ll get there quicker than you think if you don’t start helping out around camp,” Valerie shot back. She tilted her chin slightly defiantly, and Adrienne felt a little jolt in her stomach. She did love a good gunfight, and that wasn’t a bad shot.
“Then amuse me,” Adrienne said, patting the pebbles again. “You owe me after lying to me. Keeping me company is the least you can do.”
The shock on Valerie’s face was adorable. “Lied to you,” she spluttered. “What do you mean I lied to you?”
“Fine,” Adrienne said, flourishing a hand in the air like it would conjure up the word she intended. It appeared that it did. “Deceive,” she said. “You deceived me.”
“Deceived you?” Valerie gasped so loudly a few heads turned toward them. Adrienne ignored them all and stared at Valerie with a gaze that refused to back down.
“Yes,” Adrienne said. “I told you I was coming onto Season Ten of Outlast Her and you said nothing. Not a single word. You could’ve been honest and told me you were cast too.”
“How is that deceiving you?” Valerie said, looking completely flabbergasted.
“It just is,” Adrienne said matter-of-factly. Wasn’t deceit subjective? If Adrienne felt deceived, then surely it was so.
“You’re ridiculous,” Valerie said, shaking her head. She turned to move away, and Adrienne found herself unwillingly shifting as if to catch her, like a firefly that she could put into a glass bottle and stare at for her own amusement.
Adrienne was just about to shoot a glare when Eden’s voice thundered across the beach.
“We’ve got a challenge!”
Adrienne whipped her head back in time to see Eden brandishing an envelope in the air.
Her stomach grumbled as if on cue. A challenge meant reward, and reward meant food, and she was surprisingly hungry.
She leaped up before Valerie could walk away and slung her arm over her shoulder.
Then she ignored the way Valerie stiffened and whispered in her ear.
“Let’s win this challenge. I’m starving. ”
“WELCOME, CONTESTANTS, to the first-ever challenge of Season Ten.”
Adrienne clapped with the rest of them, though with a little less enthusiasm than the others.
Mostly because she was still trying to comprehend the ginormous obstacle course that towered behind Vivian.
Was that a hamster wheel of death? And that wall had to be two stories high and as smooth as a gum tree’s bark.
Were they actually expected to climb over it?
She would be lying if she said the whole thing wasn’t terrifying.
Watching the challenges on screen had always made everything seem somewhat achievable.
Last season on Outlast Her: Redemption Island in the Azores, Adrienne had watched Tiffy Gonzales single-handedly roll a massive circular wooden drum through deep sand while rain had lashed violently sideways and thought, how hard can that really be?
The answer, apparently, was extremely. In real life, the challenge—especially this horror of an obstacle course—was aggressively bigger.
Adrienne was beginning to wonder if she’d ever win a reward, and worst of all, she was beginning to think the whole pair swap thing had been a cataclysmic mistake.
Valerie was the shortest contestant here.
If Adrienne had to rely on Valerie scaling that wall to win the reward, they’d be fucked.
“Hallie,” Vivian said, tilting her head toward the firefighter. “You set an Outlast Her record yesterday.” She paused for impact. Adrienne found Vivian’s pauses a little too long and a little tedious. “You started the fire within thirty minutes of arriving on the island.”
Everyone clapped. Adrienne included, but once again hers was more of a forced politeness than actual genuine elation for Hallie. Seriously, what was so special about that?
“Valerie,” Vivian said, turning toward her. As she turned, her tortoiseshell sunglasses hanging from her neck caught Adrienne’s eye. Jacquemus, if she wasn’t mistaken. Adrienne approved. “How does it feel to be back in the game?”
Valerie, who was standing on the other side of the mat, inhaled before she said, “Different. Last time, half the contestants were returning players, so the playing field felt more even.” Her gaze skimmed across the group, touching nearly everyone except Adrienne.
“This time there are only two of us, so naturally I feel a little more exposed.”
“And the swap?” Vivian asked, tilting her head in such a way that the sun caught her blonde hair and turned it a buttery gold.
Adrienne had expected Vivian to give her wife some sort of acknowledgement—Adrienne was watching with hawk eyes—but there had been nothing.
Not a wink. Not a smile. Nothing. Maybe Sienna was right.
Maybe there wouldn’t be any favoritism. “How does it feel to be so wanted that another contestant gave up her original partner to be with you?”
A few heads turned toward Valerie again. Adrienne’s included. She watched her closely and could practically see the gears turning in her head. In fact, she could see them trying hard not to jam. “I think it’s a little too early to know whether being wanted is a good thing out here.”
Wasn’t being wanted always a good thing?
“Adrienne,” Vivian said next.
Adrienne, who had known Vivian would turn toward her, braced accordingly.
She pushed her chest out and forward, tilted her chin just a fraction, and ran her tongue over the faint fuzzy film coating her teeth.
Coco Rocha had once said a good model should know her angles, her lighting, and be there to inspire the photographer, and Adrienne had taken it to heart.
If the cameras were going to pan to her face, she wanted to give them her best angle.
“What was the thinking behind that swap?” Vivian asked. “Are you a Valerie Lang fan? Or do you two know each other?”
Honesty was either a life raft or an anchor. “Can it be both?” Adrienne asked.
“Can you elaborate?” Vivian asked, raising an impeccable eyebrow skyward.
Adrienne glanced sideways, catching a few surprised looks along the way. She stopped her gaze at Valerie, who was staring dead ahead. Fine. It seemed Adrienne had to carry the question all by herself.
“We briefly met in Porto Cervo two months ago,” she said.
It was the truth. Their encounters aboard The Valentine had always been brief.
She didn’t mention The Valentine or the fact that Valerie was the engineer and that she had asked her father to fire her.
Nor did she mention their first encounter when Valerie had fallen and Adrienne had heroically saved her, only to be treated like some irritating tick on Valerie’s arm.
“I told her I was a fan.” This was technically true.
“When I saw her on the Saints boat, I couldn’t think of a better person to play this game with. ”
Was that true? Certainly not. But she knew how reality television worked.
The editors loved a good full-circle narrative, and the viewers would lap it up like honey.
It made her look gracious. It made her look humble and, best of all, if Valerie continued looking at her with that disgust on her face, it would make Valerie look like a total villain.
Vivian looked ready to ask another question, but then decided against it.
Adrienne felt a little drop of disappointment in her stomach because she had a lot more to say.
Her disappointment then turned to dread as soon as Vivian stepped to the side and flourished a hand toward the obstacle course of doom.
“Let’s get to today’s challenge,” she called.