Reality Gold Read online

  “Cody?” No answer. “Zander?” More silence.

  Maren threw their bags to the side, plus a third. “Porter’s. We all know that dude jumped. Maddie?”

  A short, friendly looking blond girl wearing a T-shirt with a rainbow-colored cat on it raised her hand.

  “You?” Maren asked.

  Maddie nodded.

  “Okay, but speak up, cat girl. You want your stuff or not?”

  After the rest of the bags were claimed by Murch, Lucas, London, Rachel, and Annika, I watched in disbelief as Maren started rifling through the abandoned ones.

  “Are you taking their stuff?” I asked incredulously.

  Maren looked up. “This is a game, right? I want to win. There might be something in here I can use, and notice no one is stopping me.”

  It was true. Deb and Joaquin were leaning against the cockpit wall, observing but not showing any indication they planned to stop her. Joaquin even looked amused.

  Maren tossed me a bag. “Here. Take this one. That’s for saving me a dunking.”

  I felt a camera swivel toward me. I recoiled; I couldn’t do it. I wanted to, but there was no question how bad it would look if I was filmed taking other people’s things. That was the root of my infamy, after all. Spoiled, out-for-herself Riley.

  I left the bag right where it had landed, praying the camera had caught me refusing to take it.

  Maren continued to shove things from the jumpers’ bags into her own. I saw a book, a small box, some papers, and then my insides flipped. An orange booklet—I recognized it immediately. The subject was treasure signs and their interpretations, and among the dedicated treasure hunting community (a brotherhood of thieves, really) it was referred to as “the Cipher.” It wasn’t something a casual reader would come across. I’d only found it myself after months of researching, thanks to a recommendation on an obscure members-only website for treasure seekers. I hadn’t brought my Cipher—it was so loud and bright and obvious—but I had copied several of the pages into my notebook. Anyone who used the Cipher knew what they were doing, and even more importantly, the fact that someone had brought it meant they had more than a casual interest in the treasure. Just like me, they must have planned to search for it even before Deb had given the green light. I definitely had to find out who it was.

  I glanced out the window. Down below on the beach, the swimmers had made it to shore. Most of them had chosen Team Sol, judging by all the yellow bandannas being swirled around.

  Maren roughly plopped down in Taylor’s former spot, her nylon pack stuffed.

  “Gotta do me,” she said. There was a dark smudge of lipstick on her front tooth. I debated telling her, before deciding against it. She seemed like the kind of girl who would shoot the messenger.

  “Whose things do you have?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

  She shrugged. “Didn’t pay attention to names, just grabbed anything that looked interesting.”

  At least I knew whose bags they weren’t. I scanned the faces of everyone left on the helicopter. We’d probably all be on the same team, but just in case, I took note of who had their bags.

  The helicopter landed, sending a cloud of white sand into the air.

  “It’s go time,” Deb said. “Everyone out.”

  4

  I kicked off my sneakers and let my toes sink into the soft sand, taking it all in. Sparkling blue water, with a wide band of white beach that sloped up toward the green jungle. Really, it was a perfect and picturesque backdrop—all very Lost, minus the crashed airplane. Supposedly there was a storm on its way, but right now the sky was bright and crisp without any sign of trouble.

  This was it: the very spot where my godfather, Miles Kroger, had been murdered. You would never have known someone had died a violent death here if this beautiful, serene view was all you had to go on. It wasn’t that I expected to see signs of a crime scene, or even a memorial, but it was a little unsettling that something so savage could have occurred in such a peaceful setting without leaving a mark of some sort.

  Or maybe my discomfort came from the fact that in some ways it was hard to recognize this as the same place. Two years ago, this beach had been mostly deserted without any man-made structures—just lots of treasure hunting gear piled around a makeshift tent camp. Now it was Disney’d up: Incan-style huts and hammocks, fire pits and torch-lined paths. A giant gold gong glinted from the tree line. The sand seemed whiter, almost glittery. Even the jungle seemed greener, as if it had done nothing but rain since I left.

  Actually, in a way it had rained, I realized. Money. The whole reason I’d heard about the show in the first place was because Deb had been drumming up investors and my father had been on her hit list. My father: Oz, the Great Wizard of Silicon Valley. Otherwise known as Albert Ozaki, he was the man who could bring any start-up from poverty to profitability—someone whose only disappointing endeavor thus far was, apparently, his daughter.

  “There had better be a green bandanna in that basket for me because there’s no way I’m partnering with those yellow idiots,” Maren said.

  Everyone who’d jumped off the helicopter was celebrating about a hundred yards away. They were a mass of activity, almost a single unit, hopping and jumping around either in excitement or in an effort to dry off. Maybe both. It wasn’t even nine in the morning yet, so it would be awhile before the sun would get hot enough to do any good.

  I held on tightly to my bag. I didn’t regret staying on the helicopter one bit.

  “Team Sol!” There were lots of celebratory cheers, some with a taunting edge, as if yellow unquestionably represented the better team and those of us on the green team had already failed the first test.

  Ha. Little did they know.

  With the exception of Murch, who had run full tilt off the helicopter when it touched ground, the rest of us were hanging back, taking everything in, making our way slowly to the baskets.

  “What’s up, chickens?” Porter heckled us, hooking his thumbs underneath his armpits. His yellow bandanna was tied around his upper arm over his white button-down shirt. “Did you have a nice ride? You like being nice and dry?”

  “Jealous much?” Maren asked.

  “I know you are, but what am I?” he shot back good-­naturedly. I couldn’t help smiling. He answered Maren, but from the way he’d been looking at me it seemed like I was the intended audience.

  Next to Porter, Murch was tying a yellow bandanna across his forehead, which meant at least one of the jumpers must not have chosen Team Sol. I didn’t have to wonder why there’d been an available slot on Sol for very long—hovering near the Huaca basket and sporting new green bandannas were the smallest, least athletic guys in the entire group. Sean was one of them, and so was Lucas, the soccer player who hadn’t wanted to risk his foot. If I were them, I’d have skipped out on Team Sol, too. Porter, Murch, and the other four Sol guys high-fiving each other were all the same breed—sporty, big, and loud. My new Huaca brothers seemed to be more of the hipster or nerd variety.

  We made our way past Sol to our basket, the six of us girls swapping tentative smiles as we pulled out our green bandannas.

  Good: it looked like we had a mix of personalities and strengths to cover whatever challenges Deb might throw at us. Annika and London were sporty, Maren seemed ready to fight, Maddie appeared sweet and fairly malleable, and at least two of the guys who’d jumped looked like they were pretty smart.

  We went around the team circle, giving our names. Besides me and Maren, our team included Annika, London, and Maddie, Sean, Rachel, AJ, Lucas, and Oscar.

  Variations of where are you from small talk bubbled up, and it was obvious we’d been pulled from all areas of the country.

  Annika was the first one to start talking about the game. “You guys, help me out. I’m so confused. There are two different prizes now?” she asked.

  “One f
or the winner, or winners, of the game,” AJ said, “and then a separate one for whoever finds the treasure. But I guess the same person or people could win both. It didn’t sound like there was any problem with that.”

  Annika scrunched her nose in puzzlement. “So if there are ten of us and our team wins one of the prizes, we’ll split it ten ways? Why would we even bother trying to find the treasure? It’ll probably be hard to win one prize, let alone two, and if we find the treasure we’d only get twenty-five thousand each. I’d rather focus on the main prize. Wouldn’t we all prefer to win the game and get a million dollars? After we split it that’s still a hundred thousand for each of us.”

  Maren snorted. I noticed the lipstick smear was gone and I wondered if she’d figured it out herself or if some brave soul had stepped up to tell her.

  Annika, understandably, reacted defensively to the snort. “What?”

  I hadn’t realized that I’d ended up next to Maren, and people were looking at her and then at me, possibly lumping us together because of the whole helicopter/bag episode. I edged toward Maddie, who was hovering on my other side. I’d definitely prefer to be associated with Maddie. It wasn’t like I could go camo with Maren. Getting linked to her would pretty much be the opposite.

  “First of all, ten of us won’t make it to the end. Obviously,” Maren said. “So you don’t have to worry your brain with all that pointless math.”

  “Why ‘obviously’?” London interjected sharply, her long cornrows swinging over her shoulder. “Deb hasn’t explained every single rule yet. Ten could make it.”

  London and Annika had been sitting together, and now here she was speaking up for Annika, so it was a perfect illustration of how the same thing could happen with me and Maren. I shuffled even closer to Maddie.

  Maren rolled her eyes. “Did you bother to watch a single episode of Survivor? Because this show is definitely going to copy at least half of it,” she said. “We’re going to do a bunch of contests and after each one we vote someone off until one person is left. Duh. If you were on that show, I bet you’d be the one who shows up not knowing how to make fire even though that’s literally always how they break ties.”

  Maddie gasped. “We have to know how to make fire?”

  Maren shook her head in exasperation. “For God’s sake. This had better not be a contest of intelligence or we’re doomed.”

  AJ jumped in. “Calm down, everyone. I got the four-one-one—”

  “Talk like a normal human, please,” Maren interjected.

  AJ was untroubled by the correction. “I got the deets—”

  “Nope,” Maren said firmly.

  AJ adjusted his account again. “Here’s the story. We’ll be doing a series of challenges that have a treasure theme to them, but they won’t have anything to do with the actual treasure. Then if we want, on the side, we can search—”

  He continued talking, going on about team dynamics and strategy and the ratio of optimal group numbers most likely to yield the highest rate of return. Well, at least one of us was smart. He was animated and obviously very passionate, which saved him from being completely boring, but still. No one wanted to think about getting voted off so soon after arriving.

  I tuned out. Next to me, Maddie seemed to be ignoring AJ, too. She was staring up at Black Rock.

  “Are you nervous?” I asked her, thinking of her anxious reaction to Maren’s fire-building comment.

  She nodded hesitantly.

  “At least you got to keep your bag,” I said. “That means you’re better off than most of the players on the Sol team.”

  Maddie smiled gratefully. “Yeah, I know! I brought a photo album with pictures of all my pets. I’d be so sad if I lost that. It’s going to be hard to be away from home so long.”

  Maddie seemed really, really young. She was short, and her oversized cat T-shirt and long-ish shorts made her look even younger than she probably was. We had to be at least seventeen to participate in the show, but if I’d run into her on the street, I would have guessed she was fifteen, tops.

  “Plus it’s scarier on the island than I thought it would be,” she said. “It’s pretty, but we’re so far away from everything.”

  I nodded. True. The isolation was going to take some getting used to. When I’d stayed on the island last time, there had been a boat to take us over to the mainland for quick breaks when we got tired of camping. This time, we’d be confined to the island until voted off.

  “At the hotel last night the receptionist told me there was a curse on this island. That freaked me out. Have you heard that, too?” Maddie asked.

  “Supposedly seven must die before the treasure can be found,” I said.

  “Wait, it’s true? That’s so creepy! Have people actually died?”

  “Yeah. Six so far.” I shivered involuntarily, thinking of Miles. To deflect, I attempted a joke. “Only one to go—”

  I stopped talking, distracted by the Sol team. They were huddled together, a few of them stealing furtive glances our way.

  Maddie turned to see what I was looking at. She frowned. “Hey, what are they—”

  She hadn’t even finished her sentence before the Sol boys started running toward us. Maddie yelped and immediately ran, her fight-or-flight instinct obviously more well-tuned than mine, because I froze.

  Porter was headed my way. He stopped short right in front of me and grinned. “Riley, right?”

  I nodded. What was happening? I felt a flutter of hope. Had I been right that we’d shared a connection? I’d cut myself off from friends and romance for so long that I might have been reading the signals wrong, but it had to mean something that he’d picked me. At least, I hoped it did.

  “Don’t make this hard, okay?”

  I was flustered. “Don’t make what hard?”

  I didn’t know what else to say, but it turned out he wasn’t interested in talking, because before I realized it, he had bent down, leaned into me, and flipped me over his shoulder.

  He grunted in discomfort, and my immediate reaction was to feel embarrassed. I nearly apologized for my 115 pounds being too much of an inconvenience before I snapped out of it. Still, it was a surreal feeling. Half an hour ago I’d thought he was cute, and now here I was bent over his shoulder, face-planted against his back. It was as thrilling as it was objectionable, because any hope for a normal initial interaction had just been hijacked. I couldn’t tell: Should I be glad, or mad, that he had targeted me?

  I was still holding on to my bag with one hand, but I pulled on his shirt with the other. I kicked my legs hoping all the movement would make him give up, but he kept walking straight toward the ocean. The cowboy with the muscular gym-rat body—Cody, I’d heard someone call him—had managed to catch Maddie, but the other boys were having a hard time with the three other girls. Maren was not having it, and Annika and London were holding off any would-be captors by going back-to-back and crouching down in an attack position. Well, good for them. As for me, it looked like I was going to be getting wet. When we reached the tidemark, I reluctantly tossed my bag onto the dry sand where it would stay safe.

  Porter advanced steadily into the water until it reached his knees, taking rough, giant strides so I was wet from being splashed before he even tossed me in. I hated myself for squealing when my back hit the waves.

  The water was warm, even warmer than the air, thank God. I sunk underwater to take a second to collect myself. I had to admit, I felt flattered, but I was pretty sure that wasn’t how I was supposed to feel. It was probably a big violation of girl power to smile and flirt with someone who’d just unceremoniously dunked you.

  But girl power be damned, because when I sat up and started to undo my braid, Porter was smiling at me, and what can I say? He was cute. I smiled back, but then he turned around and raised his arms in a sign of victory to the girls on his team waiting up on the beach. There w
ere only four girls on that team: Willa, Alex and Taylor, and another blond girl named Chloe. In any other group, Chloe would have been eye-catching, but next to Willa and Alex she was merely pretty. Poor Taylor, though. As predicted, her hair had not survived the jump. Skinnier, shorter, and smaller than the other girls, she looked like a sad, wet cat who’d been caught outside in the rain.

  Willa started clapping for Porter and the other three girls joined in.

  Oh.

  It burned, but had I really thought we’d shared a special moment? Even discounting how he was obviously playing up to those girls, he and I were on opposite teams. We weren’t supposed to share moments or anything else.

  I realized suddenly that there was a camera guy only a few feet away, standing calf-deep in the waves, capturing every second. Frustration overwhelmed me. Great. Five minutes on camera and I was already looking stupid.

  Usually my emotions don’t affect my expression—a fact that everyone is quick to list as a personality flaw—but when Porter turned back around he did a double take.

  “Hey, don’t be mad. Everyone on our team got wet, now you’re wet, no big deal. Now we’re even.”

  He held out his hand. Normally I’d have taken it immediately. I’d have been grateful for it. I would have felt special. A good-looking guy had picked me—me!—out of a group of girls. That was something, wasn’t it? Something valuable?

  Yet looking at him standing there with his wide, confident stance and his arm only halfheartedly extended, his attention clearly elsewhere, I got mad. And when I get mad, that’s when I stop thinking straight and do all the crazy things that end up getting me in trouble. I’d pushed that instinct down all year—a relatively easy thing to do since my social life consisted of close to zero interactions—but now I couldn’t take the slight.

  So instead of allowing him to pull me up, I grasped his hand with both of mine, put my feet on top of his for leverage and then yanked him down into the waves next to me. Through the rush of the water, I thought I heard him yelp.

  I waited for him to sit up. “Okay,” I told him. “Now we’re even.”