Chapter Five
Isla woke up feeling exhausted. Her eyelids were slow and heavy, as if they’d gained weight overnight.
Her body was stiff and over-aware. And despite the thick duvet, the soft mattress and pillows so plump her head sank into them like wet sand, she hadn’t been able to get a decent night’s sleep.
At all. It wasn’t comfort that was the problem, but rather the proximity to Tamsyn that had kept her awake most of the night.
Every time Tamsyn shifted, stirred, or even breathed, Isla had felt a nudge against her ribs.
A nudge that had turned into a full-body spasm when Tamsyn had stretched across the mattress sometime in the early hours and flung an arm unconsciously over Isla’s waist. Isla had clamped her mouth with her hand because, seriously, her first response was to yell.
And only when she had been sure she wasn’t going to make a peep, she pinched the duvet between two fingers and slid herself sideways until Tamsyn’s arm had slipped free and dropped back onto the mattress.
Isla had also considered sleeping outside on the dirt.
Although red dust and scorpions weren’t exactly high on her list of things she wanted on her body.
So instead, she’d lain there, at the very edge of the mattress. Awake, counting Tamsyn’s breaths.
Isla yawned and stared at the dull beige glow of the teepee ceiling. Then she glanced sideways. Tamsyn was still sleeping. Her black braids were spread across the pillow.
Without making a sound, Isla slipped out of the teepee and headed straight for the creek at the edge of the camp.
The sky was a pale blue, the ground dusty and rust-colored and scattered with flat shale that shifted if you stepped wrong.
Clumps of spinifex dotted the clearing like little explosions of green.
A few river red gums leaned over the creek, their pale trunks peeling in long ribbons that curled onto the ground.
One massive ghost gum stood just off the center of the camp, and further back were scraggly white cypress pines.
Isla wasn’t much of a camper, and Season One of Outlast Her felt more like Tom Hanks lost on a beautiful island, but this, she decided, would do.
With the rest of the contestants still asleep, the creek murmuring quietly, and the ranges glowing red, Isla could understand why people romanticized survival shows.
There was something peaceful about them.
“What are you doing?” said a voice nearby.
Isla snapped her head toward the creek to see Petra already in the water. Isla couldn’t tell whether she was sitting or standing chest-deep in the water. “Morning,” she said.
“Morning,” Petra echoed and scooped water onto her already sunburnt shoulders.
Isla walked to the water’s edge and crouched down. “I guess this will be my new morning skin routine,” she said, dipping her hands in and bringing cool water to her face. She dabbed her cheeks and forehead. “How did you sleep?”
Petra shrugged. “Not bad,” she said, then stared over Isla’s shoulder toward the makeshift shelter everyone had rushed to construct yesterday before the sun went down.
It was a low lean-to wedged between two river gum trees.
Dominique had lined the ground with flattened cardboard-like sheets of eucalyptus bark and a scattering of leaves that looked comfortable only in theory.
“Though, to be honest, I think it’s worse sleeping on hard ground the second time around. Everything hurt less the first time.”
Isla nodded. The first night on that island in the Philippines had felt euphoric.
A spider could’ve crawled over her face, and she would’ve been fine.
She’d even pinched herself ten times before she finally believed it wasn’t a dream.
Only after a week of rice and beans and hard bamboo had she felt the deep, bone-level exhaustion settle in.
“How was sleeping in luxury?” Petra asked, tilting her head toward the teepee which sat just a few feet away from the main shelter. The flaps were still closed. Tamsyn was still asleep.
“Good,” Isla lied and considered offering her spot in the bed to Petra for tonight, but as easy as that sounded, it wasn’t.
In a game like Outlast Her, every single decision came with a consequence.
“Fine. Tamsyn snores.” It was a stretch.
Tamsyn breathed loudly at best. But lying felt better than reliving the nightmare of last night.
Tamsyn had tried to cuddle her. The audacity.
“So do Barra and Aggie,” Petra said, half laughing, half fake-crying. “Why do you think I’m out here? I’ve been up since before dawn. Barra sounds like a train.” She said it so loudly that Isla was surprised her voice hadn’t jostled anyone awake.
Isla snuck a glance back, but nope. Everyone was still asleep. Tamsyn included.
Petra waded a little deeper into the creek and then let herself sink under. Isla watched the surface ripple and then smooth where she had been. Isla counted a second, then two, before Petra popped back up. “So refreshing,” she said, slicking her hair away from her face.
It did look refreshing. Enough for Isla to briefly consider slipping out of her pale-yellow matching pajama set with daisies embroidered onto the hem and dipping in the water.
It was still early, yet the dry morning heat was already settling in.
Unfortunately, Isla was only wearing bikini bottoms, and despite Petra being brave enough to swim without a top, Isla didn’t feel like getting caught skinny-dipping by the camera crew.
Her breasts had been on display enough times during her career as a model.
So, she backed up a few steps and sat on dry ground.
Fine, rust-colored dust clung instantly to her damp ankles and turned the water droplets into tiny streaks of mud.
The Flinders Ranges were beautiful, but honestly, Isla preferred soft sand to whatever red stuff this was. Sand at least pretended to be comfortable and didn’t stick to absolutely everything.
“What’s up with you and cowboy boots?” Petra asked, flinging her wet black hair into a bun above her head. She did it so quickly, so masterfully, Isla had barely blinked before Petra leaned back and floated. “I heard your little conversation yesterday.”
“Our conversation?” Isla asked, frowning.
“What did you hear?” It didn’t actually matter what Petra had heard; it mattered what Isla was going to do about it.
At some point, everyone was going to find out that Isla and Tamsyn had slept together, and that Isla had pretended it hadn’t happened, and worse, that she’d acted like she didn’t even know Tamsyn.
“Something about a night together.” Petra arched a perfectly shaped eyebrow, which Isla suspected had been laminated, only because Isla had hers done a week before she flew out to Australia, and she recognized the feathered, brushed-up shape. “Did you two hook up?”
Isla felt her cheeks heat up. She also felt a prickly sensation crawling up the back of her neck, not too different from the one that usually appeared right before a runway show.
Petra’s question made her nervous. If Isla were honest and admitted to sleeping with Tamsyn, what would that mean for her game?
If she confessed her mistake of pretending she didn’t know Tamsyn, would Petra think she was too devious to be in an alliance with, or would she find the whole thing amusing?
But Isla didn’t have time to comb through her thoughts because suddenly, a noise sounded behind them.
There was an agonizingly long yawn that Isla knew belonged to Tamsyn without even looking back.
“Good morning,” Tamsyn said, stretching her arms sleepily above her head.
Isla looked back just in time to see Tamsyn’s top lift up, exposing a smooth strip of stomach and the faint lines of her ribs.
Her eyes lingered for a second too long.
Two seconds too long. Long enough to notice one half of a heart tattoo sticking out from under her top. Which, frankly, was long enough.
Isla quickly snapped her head away and focused intently on an unremarkable rock sitting by her toe. When she looked up at the water again, Petra waggled her eyebrows at her.
Isla scowled.
Petra seemed unbothered. She flicked her toes and turned her attention to Tamsyn, who wandered toward the water’s edge. Isla tried her best not to look at Tamsyn’s legs. Really, she did. But no rock, or tree, or distant ridge could compete with the way Tamsyn’s calves curved under the morning sun.
“Morning to you too,” Petra said. “How did you sleep?”
“Amazing,” Tamsyn replied, folding herself in half to skim the water with her fingertips.
Her braids tumbled toward the creek, dark as spilled ink, almost brushing the water’s surface.
“But I do feel a little cheated out of my first night. I always imagined my Outlast Her debut would involve more suffering.” Then she glanced at Isla through the gap between her legs and smiled so deliciously, so devilishly, Isla was convinced Tamsyn knew exactly what she had done last night.
The whole arm slung over Isla’s waist had to have been on purpose.
Isla didn’t smile back. She felt like she was being punished for lying. Which yes, she probably deserved it. If she’d known the reward was a teepee and a bed, which basically gave them enough privacy, she would’ve thrown the challenge.
“If you feel like you’re missing out, you can always give up your reward,” Isla suggested, not looking at Tamsyn, who straightened slowly, rolling her shoulders back. She’d take Barra’s snoring over Tamsyn’s closeness any day.
“I nominate myself,” Petra said, lifting her hand.
“I have no problem sleeping on a soft mattress. Last time I played, our shelter was basically a shallow trench lined with branches and covered in a tarp we tied with rocks.” She reached back, squeezed her trapezius, and winced.
“It took me six massage sessions to get the kinks out of my neck.”
Tamsyn laughed. “I’ll think about it.”
Once again, Isla considered giving up her side of the bed tonight and was just about to offer it to Petra—though the other contestants might see that as a favoring tactic to establish an alliance—when Janelle’s voice ripped through the clearing. “HELP! HELP ME!”
Her shout was so desperate and pathetic that Petra charged out of the water. Tamsyn too. Isla jumped up so fast that dust flew all around her. Just as Janelle was shouting again, the three of them were flying back toward camp.
“Get it away from me!” Janelle shouted. She was perched on top of a narrow sandstone ridge. Her toes were gripping the edge, and her arms were out, windmilling for balance. Her brown hair was tousled, and the cargo shorts she slept in were inside out. “Shoo! Shoo!”
At first, Isla couldn’t see what Janelle was talking about or trying to shoo away.
But then Kendall walked over and squatted in front of the rock to look at something on the ground.
The next moment, there was a bug sitting on her palm.
A chunky-looking beetle with a long, thick snout and a bumpy brown body.
“It’s just a wattle pig weevil,” Kendall said, smiling. “They’re completely harmless.”
Isla walked over to get a better look. She wasn’t scared of bugs.
Never had been. As a kid, she used to collect cockroaches in her insect habitat and proudly showed them off to the horrified neighborhood kids.
Mallory used to call her Bug Girl, even in high school, but then it was more of a reference to her eyes, which were a little further apart than most.
“They feed on black wattle leaves,” Isla said, remembering what Tony had told them at the survival workshop the day before yesterday.
“When they get scared, they often drop to the ground and play dead.” She reached a finger toward its back.
But before she could touch it, the weevil tumbled off Kendall’s palm in what could only be described as a death-defying leap.
Its little legs flailed before it landed with a soft thump on the dirt.
The weevil wasn’t anywhere near Janelle, but still she screamed a shrill, high-pitched sound that stabbed Isla’s eardrums. Then she jumped backward as if she’d been shot from a cannon.
Tamsyn, who Isla hadn’t realized was standing right behind her, let out a small, half-choked whimper.
Isla turned to look at her over her shoulder and was surprised when she saw that Tamsyn’s eyes looked like they were about to pop out of her face.
Not to mention her pupils were extremely dilated.
If she didn’t know any better, she’d say Tamsyn was scared of bugs.
But that didn’t make sense. Anyone who wore cowboy boots surely wasn’t undone by a little bug.
“Not a fan of bugs?” Isla asked. She almost laughed, but thought that would come off as insensitive.
The camera crew was focused, and she wouldn’t want the viewers to think she wasn’t compassionate.
Last season she’d come off as the villain.
This season she wanted to be seen in a more angelic light, hence the daisies.
An innocent flower, if there ever was one.
“Not usually,” Tamsyn said, brushing a hand down her leg. “But that thing is hideous.”
Isla shrugged. Everyone had their own opinion. “I think they’re kind of cute.”
Tamsyn’s brows scrunched. Then she cocked her head to the side and studied Isla for a minute, which made the air feel a lot thicker than it had been before. Then she said, “You really confuse me, Isla Stone.” Without another word, she turned and headed back to the teepee.
Once again, Isla caught herself staring at the woman’s backside. The woman’s effect on her was undeniable. Her heart shouldn’t race this fast. In fact, it shouldn’t race at all. Which was why tonight Isla was going to give up her space on the mattress inside the teepee and sleep somewhere else.