Chapter Seven
Barra was trying really hard not to think about last night. She was really disappointed that she had not found the protection bracelet. The forest had been dense, and the night sky dark. Finding the bracelet would have been like finding an earring stud in a compost heap.
And then, of course, there had been Allie.
Not only had she not expected to bump into Allie in the jungle, but she’d also been completely unprepared for the moment Allie had flung herself into her arms. Barra barely had time to register the impact before instinct took over and she was holding her.
Properly holding her. Like that night in Big Sur.
Like that moment in that bathroom stall at Dominique’s wedding.
Every detail of the night had come swooping back in like a champagne buzz hitting hard. The way Dominique had found her through the crowd right after the ceremony. “You’re wearing a dress,” she’d said, gasping.
“I am,” Barra had replied, suddenly aware of every inch of exposed skin. She hadn’t realized until that moment that she’d worn a dress just for Dominique, to surprise her.
“Well, you look beautiful,” Dominique had said, smiling.
“I can’t compete with the bride,” Barra had deflected and then quickly added, “Brides.”
Dominique had laughed. “Good save.” Then she’d given Barra a quick wrist squeeze before Kiara’s voice had cut through the crowd calling her for photos.
Dominique had then winked as she pulled away, and Barra’s stomach had done that swooshing, weightless drop as if she’d just missed a step on a staircase.
Then Barra, who was still holding Allie, had panicked at the memory and nearly done something monumentally stupid to get Dominique’s face out of her mind, like kissing her.
But thankfully Allie had pulled away.
“How did you manage to get mud on your pants?” Tilly asked, wading into the breakers where Barra was standing knee-deep washing out the stains on her pants.
Barra looked down at the sodden cotton fabric she’d just twisted into a lopsided ball.
“Oh,” she said, thinking of an excuse. She wasn’t going to admit that on her way back from sneaking off into the jungle, she’d tripped over a root and had gone down knees first into something that had squelched.
Turned out she’d scuffed her sweatpants with mud.
No excuse came.
“I have no idea, actually,” she lied instead. Last night she’d swapped her sweats for shorts, and this morning no one had been any the wiser. “When I woke up this morning, my pants were out of my backpack and there was mud all over them.”
Tilly, who had just splashed water over her shins before straightening up, flicked her long blonde hair behind her shoulders and gasped.
“Seriously?” Her eyes were as wide as dinner plates.
“Do you think someone sneaked into camp and went through our bags?” Then she flicked her gaze back to camp, and Barra wished her brain had managed to conjure up a simpler lie, like tripping on the way back to Moon Pit. At least that was easily believable.
Barra wrung out the leg of her pants and heard herself say, “Well, this isn’t exactly empty land, is it? There are stretches of rainforest out here that people have barely mapped. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are indigenous communities out here.”
“And you think one of them could’ve wandered through camp without the camera crew or us seeing them?”
“It’s not impossible.” Though it probably was impossible.
“It’s terrifying to think someone could be watching us as we sleep,” Tilly muttered. Her freckles seemed to tighten with fear. Beneath the thousands of freckles that adorned her body, her skin was already pink.
Wait. Was she really that gullible? Then another thought occurred to Barra. Wasn’t Tilly a marine biologist and therefore had some sense of rationality and logic?
It appeared, yes. And also, no.
Tilly snapped her head back and shouted at Elodie, who at that very moment was walking toward the beach. Elodie’s cotton-candy pink hair glowed in the sun like a strawberry ice cream cone.
“Barra said someone came into our camp last night and went through our stuff.”
“What?” Elodie stammered.
“She woke up with her clothes on the ground,” Tilly said. “They were covered in mud.”
“Are you serious?” Elodie asked, frowning so deeply her thick eyebrows met in the middle.
Barra opened her mouth. Then closed it. This had gone too far.
But then she decided she was too tired. The sleep she had managed to get last night had been broken.
She’d been hit several times by the hard realization that once upon a time she and Dominique had lain side by side in an Outlast Her shelter.
“What’s going on?” Allie asked, walking toward them from the rocky side of the beach.
She was wearing a plum bikini that showed off a table-flat midriff and long, elegant legs that were still dripping seawater.
Barra quickly flicked her eyes down to her hands as they wrung out the remainder of the water from her pants.
She didn’t want Allie to catch her staring.
And she had been staring. Allie’s top was barely holding in her breasts.
“Did you hear what happened to Barra?” Tilly asked her.
“What happened?” Allie asked.
Barra inwardly groaned. Allie was the last person she wanted privy to this conversation. “Nothing serious,” she muttered, trying her best to seem as unbothered as possible.
Tilly, however, seemed very bothered. “It’s not nothing,” she said with such conviction that even Barra nearly believed her. “Barra thinks someone went through her backpack last night. Her pants were dragged through mud.”
“Mud?” Allie said, frowning.
“Yes, mud,” Barra replied quickly and then shook out her pants before draping them over her shoulder. There was a beat where Barra waited for Allie to out her. Allie hadn’t watched Barra fall, but she did know Barra hadn’t been sleeping.
Allie watched her for a second, then smiled. “Come to think of it, I did hear something last night,” she said, tapping her chin with a finger. “I wasn’t sure what it was, but thinking back now, it could’ve been footsteps.”
“Really?” Tilly and Elodie asked at the same time.
“Yes,” Allie said. “Close to the shelter. I woke up at some point during the night and heard a noise. At first, I couldn’t figure it out, and then I thought, why can I hear a noise at all? Didn’t everyone from Season Five talk about how loud Barra’s snoring was? So loud that you can’t even—”
“I didn’t hear snoring last night either,” Elodie interrupted.
“Me either,” Tilly added. Then she flicked her gaze to Barra. “Did you get some sort of treatment? My brother uses nasal strips, and apparently they’re quite effective.”
Barra snored, but only when she was asleep.
“I was lying on my side,” she lied. “And I didn’t hear footsteps at all.
” She caught Allie’s gaze and tried to inject as much venom into the look.
What the hell was she trying to pull? She wasn’t exactly innocent either. “I think Allie must’ve been dreaming.”
But then Connie’s voice cut through the last of her sentence as she called, “WE’VE GOT A REWARD CHALLENGE, LADIES!”
ONE THING BARRA HADN’T considered about coming back for another season was that she’d have to participate in the grueling reward challenges.
Although in hindsight, there were many glaring oversights, like potentially losing her job at Hargrove Hazel was her partner. She should’ve told her the truth.
“A stalker?” Vivian asked, lifting one perfectly groomed eyebrow skyward.
Valerie nodded gravely. “Barra woke up to her pants covered in mud. They were lying outside her backpack this morning. Don’t think an animal can manage that.”
Vivian met Barra’s gaze and smiled in a way that told her exactly what Barra predicted. Vivian had watched the footage and knew what had really happened.
“Well, isn’t that something,” Vivian said, pressing her hands together in front of her lap.
The sun caught her ring, and Barra was immediately yanked to Big Sur, to Kiara slipping the ring on Dominique’s finger, to the sudden break in the clouds, and the blade of light striking the diamond so magnificently that it had glowed.
Barra shuddered and shut down that memory just as Vivian said, “In a place like this, anything is possible.” Then Vivian gestured toward three tall wooden frames that had been sunk deep into the sand.
Next to each one lay a long flagpole, stretched out flat on the ground.
At the base of the frame sat a huge, square wooden tank.
Thick ropes ran from the tank up through a pulley at the top of the frame and then down to the flagpole.
It took Barra a mere two seconds to figure out. The heavier the tank, the more the rope would pull and the higher the flagpole would rise.
“For this reward challenge, you’ll be competing in teams of four,” Vivian said before she pointed toward heavy clay urns lying beside each of the wooden platforms. There were different sizes, and Barra assumed different weights too.
The smaller, the lighter, but also the less water you could carry at a time.
“Here’s what you need to do: you’ll each carry an urn down to the shoreline, fill it with water, then carry it back up to your platform to pour into the tank.
Keep going until the tank is full enough to raise your flag.
The first team to raise its flag wins a reward. Sounds easy, right?”
No one nodded. They all knew better than to assume anything was easy on Outlast Her.
Vivian laughed, then clapped her hands ceremoniously together. “Now, do you want to know what you’re playing for?”
Of course, they wanted to know. They always wanted to know.
“Since you’ve gone only a day without food, we thought maybe you’d like a few essentials for camp: pillows, blankets, and towels. But then we thought it wouldn’t be fair if we made you run up and down the beach without offering you a feast.”
Barra nearly sighed. She didn’t care about luxury items; she wanted food. Yesterday’s breakfast of spicy chicken livers on brown toast felt like years ago.
There were cheers and claps. The thought of a feast made Barra’s mouth water. She risked a quick glance in Allie’s direction. But it seemed Allie wasn’t that excited. She was frowning deeply. No, actually it was a scowl. She was scowling.
But Barra didn’t have time to wonder why Allie would be upset because then a production assistant came running across the sand. He dropped a charcoal-colored bag into Vivian’s outstretched hand before sprinting off.
“Now, one from each pair will pick a rock to determine their teams. Sutton and Allie, you’re up first,” Vivian said as the cameras panned toward her again.
Sutton skipped forward, not once glancing at Allie. She then plunged her hand into the bag before she drew out a smooth orange stone.
“Orange,” Vivian said, stating the obvious as Sutton held up the stone. Then, with a flick of her blonde hair, she skipped back to Allie.
Barra heard her whisper to Allie, “Hope you don’t mind I went ahead and chose. Didn’t think we really needed to discuss who did what.”
Allie smiled softly, and for some reason, Barra felt a pang of protectiveness in her stomach. But then Vivian called her name. “Barra and Hazel, you’re up next.”
“You go,” Barra said quickly. She leaned closer to Hazel, who had her blonde hair in a plait behind her back and was wearing a snug grey Lululemon sports bra and matching bicycle shorts.
Dominique had a pair just like them. Her last Instagram post involved her and Kiara walking along the wide sands of Will Rogers State Beach, sipping on iced lattes, wearing matching Lululemon attire like they were brand ambassadors.
.. like they were newlyweds in their honeymoon phase.
.. like they were intent on making Barra miserable.
Barra flicked the thoughts away like a crumb and watched Hazel cross the space to Vivian in six easy strides. When Hazel stuck her hand into the bag, Barra held her breath.
Orange.
Fuck!