Chapter Eighteen
Tamsyn could barely keep her eyes open, let alone compete in a reward challenge.
Last night—or more accurately this morning—she and Isla had snuck back into camp only to be woken up after what felt like a second later by Kendall and Frankie brandishing an envelope like they were delivering a royal decree.
She’d never heard of a reward challenge taking place at the breaking of dawn, but then again, Outlast Her was never predictable.
“Today’s reward challenge will work a little differently from usual,” Vivian announced brightly. She was dressed in faded blue jeans and a charcoal tank top. She looked like someone who had gotten a delectable eight hours of sleep.
Tamsyn, on the other hand, not only felt like shit, but she was pretty sure she looked the part too. She squinted into the rising sun; the light already harsh as it bleached the red earth pink.
Beside her, Isla stifled a yawn.
“Instead of a reward, the winning pair will receive an advantage,” Vivian said.
The word advantage detonated across the group. Everyone perked up. Whatever sleep had clung to Tamsyn’s lashes fell away, and when she caught Isla’s eye, the model looked like she’d just smelled blood in the water.
Vivian smiled, clearly enjoying this twist. Tamsyn often wondered how much satisfaction Vivian got from watching the contestants suffer, and she almost always concluded that it was probably an alarming amount. “Do you want to know what the advantage is?”
“YES!” Barra, Josie, and Aggie shouted in unison.
“The winners of this challenge will have the chance to change the game entirely,” Vivian said slowly.
“They will be able to rearrange the pairs. Any pairs into new pairs. If they want, they can rearrange every single one of you. But they don’t have to.
They could choose to swap just one pair with another.
” She paused for dramatic effect. “It’s entirely up to them how much chaos they’d like to cause. ”
There was silence.
Then the words hit Tamsyn physically. She felt a jolt deep in her stomach, like she watched her phone slip from her hand and plummet into the ocean in slow motion. Like she missed a step in the dark or that moment right before impact in a minor fender bender.
Tamsyn’s gaze snapped to Isla. This was monumental.
Not only could they win and change the entire structure of the game, but they could lose.
Which meant they’d be at the mercy of whoever won, which frankly sounded worse than swimming in an ocean infested with jellyfish.
If they lost, there would be no more shared rewards.
No more strategizing together because they’d be strategizing against each other.
And worst of all, when Tamsyn pictured that final ceremony, she wasn’t sure she could stomach the idea of standing there beside someone else.
In fact, the thought sent such a chill deep into her bones that she shivered despite the heat.
“Now let’s get into the challenge.” Vivian gestured to a red dirt clearing where a web of thick, sun-bleached ropes stretched between several wooden posts.
Each rope was snarled into tight, complicated knots.
At the far end stood a narrow balance beam with a triangular pile of sandbags at the base, and beyond that was a raised wooden platform.
“Each pair will race to untangle a series of knotted ropes stretched across the course in a web. Once freed, you’ll retrieve a set of weighted sandbags and carry them across a balance beam. First pair to land all sandbags on their platform wins.”
When Vivian instructed everyone to get to their positions, Tamsyn had to do everything in her power not to take Isla’s hand and squeeze it. Instead, she leaned in close and whispered, “We’ll win it. We just have to win it.”
“Of course we’ll win,” Isla replied quickly. But even so, Tamsyn had heard a tiny tremor in her voice that didn’t belong.
A horn blared, and Vivian shouted, “GO!”
Everyone lunged for the ropes at the exact same time, and it was only when Tamsyn got close enough that she realized the whole thing was a layered mess.
There were three or more thick anchor points at different heights, and each one exploded outward into smaller knots.
It looked like a giant crocheted nightmare.
“I’ll get the big ones,” Tamsyn said, at the same time Isla began working on the smaller loops near the base. She tugged hard on the knot, hoping that somehow it would magically loosen.
“Don’t yank. You’re tightening it,” Isla said.
“I’m not.”
“You are,” Isla countered, her thumbs pressing into the tiny gap between two coils that sat close to her knee. She twisted, lifted, and suddenly one strand loosened. “Now pull.”
Tamsyn did. This time the knot shifted enough for the rope to slip loose.
Then another, and another. Tamsyn caught Isla’s eye and winked.
Then she felt a flutter in her stomach that was way more powerful than any flapping butterfly wings when Isla smiled back.
A feeling she hadn’t ever experienced before Isla.
They ducked through the opening they’d made and stumbled straight into the second web. This one hung lower, forcing Tamsyn to crouch while Isla threaded an arm overhead to work through what could only be a particularly stubborn knot, because Isla was hissing like a snake.
But then they got through the second one at the same time Barra and Dominique did. Josie and Aggie were trailing behind. So too were Kendall and Frankie, who were still on web number one. There was no way they could catch up.
“These ropes are killing my fingers,” Isla muttered just as they got onto the third web. “My poor, delicate fingers.”
Tamsyn knew all about Isla’s delicate fingers, though they weren’t that delicate when they were...
She pushed that thought to the very back of her mind. Concentrate. Focus.
Which she did. Or at least tried to when they burst through to web number four, which was, frankly, monstrous. The ropes were sun-stiffened and crusted with red dust. The knots were pulled so tight they looked fused together. It was less web and more barricades.
Tamsyn resisted the urge to swear, especially since a camera had practically been pushed right up against her face. The viewers could probably see her pores. She wiped her palms on her shorts and then jammed her fingers into a gap that barely existed.
Behind them, Vivian shouted. “Barra and Dominique are out of the web!”
“What?” Tamsyn muttered, snapping her gaze sideways.
But Vivian was right. Dominique and Barra had just broken through their final knot and were running toward the balance beam.
“Shit,” she added under her breath, feeling her stomach loop.
And then loop again, which didn’t help even one bit.
Instead, the stress of falling behind made her fingers inept.
She fumbled the knot just as Isla undid hers.
“We can catch up,” Isla said, sounding positive.
But Tamsyn felt neither positive nor hopeful, not because she was a pessimist––on the contrary, Tamsyn was a full-cup kind of person––but because Dominique had already heaved a sandbag over her shoulder.
Even the most positive person in the world could see that they would never catch up.
UGH!
Finally, they pried their last rope free and sprinted toward the beam.
Isla grabbed two sandbags and held one under each arm.
Tamsyn did the same, except she hauled them over her shoulders instead.
Then they pivoted toward the beam where Isla went first. Tamsyn was close behind her.
But just as her foot came into contact with the wood, Barra’s last sandbag hit the platform.
“And the winners are Barra and Dominique,” Vivian called.
BY THAT AFTERNOON, the entire camp had shifted.
Barra and Dominique were only expected to make their final pairing decision the following day at The Sending, which meant everyone was stuck in this weird, limbo state of panic. No one wanted to look desperate. Though everyone looked desperate.
“Who do you think is going to crack first?” Tamsyn asked, glancing back over her shoulder to where Barra and Dominique were sitting on a flat stone as if they were royalty holding court.
Frankie and Kendall were tending to the fire and cooking the usual meal of beans and rice, even though it was most certainly Dominique and Barra’s turn.
And Josie and Aggie were sitting on the dirt at Barra and Dominique’s feet like they were about to whip out some jojoba oil and offer a complimentary foot massage.
Isla and Tamsyn were the only ones who hadn’t groveled for sympathy just yet. But Tamsyn knew there was only so much pretending they were above the whole begging thing they could do. The fact was that they were not above it.
“I think it will be Aggie,” Isla said, eyeing the blue-haired mom.
Aggie had just laughed a little too hard at something Barra said, but Tamsyn, who couldn’t even hear the conversation, knew with absolute certainty that it wasn’t that funny.
Barra’s jokes were like Swiss cheese; there were always too many holes in the story.
“I wish we had more cookies,” Isla added, looking down at the patch of dirt in front of her. Earlier she’d taken a twig and drawn a heart with their initials in it. Then she’d swept the evidence away before Tamsyn could ask her about it. “I would’ve given her the whole jar.”
“The whole jar?” Tamsyn teased, though frankly, she was considering giving Dominique her leather fringe jacket and her cowboy boots.
Just the other morning, Dominique had admired both, saying they looked chic.
If she wanted them, she could have them.
In fact, she could have her firstborn if it meant she and Isla wouldn’t be separated.
Isla buried her face in the shallow gap between her knees. “Do you think Aggie is going to tell them about us?” she muttered. “I feel like she would auction off her own reflection if it bought her another day in this game.”
Tamsyn glanced back toward the throne.
Aggie had shifted a little closer, and Barra was nodding earnestly at something she was saying.
Tamsyn couldn’t make out the chatter, but she couldn’t help but feel a swoop of panic low in her belly.
What would Barra and Dominique think if they knew?
Then she thought of Survivor, of Rob Mariano and Amber Brkich.
The golden couple whose relationship had been viewed by many as an unfair advantage.
Would Dominique and Barra be as bothered as Lex and Kathy were?
“She won’t if we don’t give her a chance,” Tamsyn said, already dusting her palms on the sides of her legs. “So let’s just go and get it over with.”
Isla nodded. Yet neither moved. And for good reason. Tamsyn could think of several more ghastly things she’d rather be doing: a root canal without anesthesia, licking the floor behind the counter at Starbucks, or public karaoke.
Then Barra threw her head back in a booming laugh, and Isla let out a sigh so strong Tamsyn was surprised it didn’t pick up red dust. Isla stood first, and Tamsyn followed.
“Look who the cat dragged in,” Barra said when they approached. Her voice was syrupy with smugness, and her sapphire-blue eyes glinted with the undeniable thrill of someone who held all the cards.
Tamsyn had to do everything in her power not to roll her eyes.
“We were starting to think you weren’t going to make your proposal,” Dominique said, smiling with her head cocked to the side.
“Oh,” Tamsyn said. She glanced at Aggie, who was smiling so sweetly that Tamsyn felt suddenly certain that the woman would one day be the head of the school’s PTA.
In her four years of teaching, Tamsyn had learned one thing—no one feared the principal quite like they feared a well-organized PTA mother. “You’re listening to proposals now?”
Barra laughed and snapped her fingers.
For a split second Tamsyn wondered what the hell Barra was doing, but then Aggie and Josie popped to their feet and scurried off without protest. Tamsyn watched in awe as they headed toward the path leading to the watering hole.
What kind of Outlast Her sorcery had this advantage unlocked?
The ability to dismiss grown adults with a single snap?
“We want to stay together,” Isla said plainly.
She didn’t sit. She didn’t smile. And she sure as hell didn’t try to soften it.
She just stood there with the sun basking on her lean shoulders.
Her dark hair was piled on top of her head.
She looked so infuriatingly gorgeous that Tamsyn nearly forgot the purpose of this whole thing.
All she could think about was kissing her.
But then Barra chuckled, and the Isla spell Tamsyn was under was suddenly broken.
“Everyone does,” Barra said. “Which is funny, right? I literally had nightmares before the show. I was so scared I’d end up paired with someone I didn’t like.
Someone who annoyed me so much that it would ruin the entire experience.
” Then she nudged Dominique with her knee. “And then that fear came true.”
“Ha,” Dominique sputtered. But she was smiling. “You’re the pain in the ass.”
“Me?” Barra gasped.
“I distinctly remember saying I couldn’t work with you,” Dominique said, looking infectiously amused. Even Tamsyn couldn’t help smiling at these two women teasing each other. “Your snores sound like a freight train, and every time you laugh my eardrums threaten to burst.”
Barra’s laugh was so explosive that the leaves of the gum tree above them actually trembled. “But we’ve grown,” she declared, still grinning.
“We have,” Dominique agreed. Her voice softened, just slightly.
“We’ve learned to love each other even when one of us is insufferably annoying.
” She shot Barra a wink. Not a romantic one.
Dominique was happily engaged. Tamsyn was fairly certain that after the show, Barra would be getting a very special invitation to their wedding.
“Well, it’s not me,” Barra rumbled out a laugh that somehow always seemed impossibly big for someone so wiry. “I’m delicious. Like an apple pie. There’s nothing annoying about apple pie.”
Dominique rolled her eyes and then laughed. When the laughter finally died down, she turned her focus back to Tamsyn and Isla. “Now why don’t you two give us a good reason we shouldn’t separate you?”