Before He Was Gone: Starstruck Book 2 (17 page)

‘What’s with all this?’ I ask the guy in black
Deserted
clothing, who’s just erected a projector screen on the patch of sand next to the hammocks. Jaxx’s empty coconut husk is still on the floor, where it’s been for two days, and I kick it aside as the guy sticks a set of speakers down in its place and refuses to talk to me.

‘I hope you’re not going to make
me
watch an Adam Sandler movie,’ I say, and while he smiles he still says nothing.

Jaxx had to stay with me here after he was voted out. The cameras hovered, waiting for a showdown but in the end I swam to the reef, caught more snapper and rock lobster and we agreed we’d rather eat it and raise a toast to staying in the game this long, than spend all night ignoring each other and silently fuming. The jock’s a - well - a jock, but this is a game after all.

‘I’d rather Stephanie won that million dollars than Punk, any day,’ he said, cracking the lobster shell against his crossed knees around our fire. ‘At least she’s gonna do something good with it.’

‘What are
you
going to do with it, if you win?’ I asked him.

‘Fly to Homewood, Alabama,’ he said, but he face-palmed himself instantly. ‘I’m losing my mind.’

‘Is she still a ‘virgin?’

‘Only just,’ Jaxx said looking at the horizon. I almost spat out my lobster.

‘Seriously?’

‘You didn’t guess?’

‘Well, she wasn’t wearing a sign.’

‘I mean… you didn’t guess we hooked up at all?’

‘Maybe. I can’t really say anything on that subject, though, can I?’ I told him with a sigh. ‘Man. Makes you wonder how they’re editing all this.’

Jaxx bit into his lobster, looked thoughtfully out at nothing. ‘Guess we’re both in the shit. So what are
you
using the money for, if you win?’

‘I’m going to buy an island,’ I told him and he rolled his eyes.

‘Well, I’m never visiting it.'

I leave the
Deserted
crew guy alone to continue fiddling with his speakers, and climb the palm tree several meters away. There are only two decent sized coconuts up here but I’ll be needing everything I can get my hands on to keep my strength up. I couldn’t find any more lobster this morning, so I don't know how long the decent food will last. They haven’t given
me
any chickens. Or goats.

I look out across the calm blue ocean from the top; the way the blues blend into each other from the color of a bird’s egg near the shore, to the darker middle around the reef, to the almost purple further out, where the waves roll. For a moment I get a pang of missing the mountains, the open fields, the desert sands of Utah and Arizona. There’s so much more world out there; so many people. But here there’s only this. Only me.

And Alyssa.

Alyssa, who hasn’t been to visit me again. I don’t know why. For the last two nights I’ve waited, but she hasn’t come. Maybe she just couldn’t get away from Stephanie and Punk.

I go to slash the coconuts down with the spear, but as I reach up my arm a wave of dizziness causes stars to appear before my eyes and I almost lose my grip.

Damn.
I clamp my feet tighter to the tree, grab the branch, ride it out. The guy setting up his equipment isn’t even looking at me and there are no camera guys interested in yet another shot of me swiping at coconuts, but the adrenaline racing through me, plus the nausea makes me suck in deep breaths, slowly. I squeeze my eyes shut as the blackness tries to take me, fighting.

Focus. Stay in the moment.

My arms ache. I can’t remember for a second what the hell I’m doing, or where I am. All I know is that I can’t fall fifteen meters from this goddam tree and break every bone in my body.

The pills flash in front of me - red, in the jar. I haven’t taken them in a week. I picked them up from the beach, buried them under the sand by my water supply. I didn’t think they were making any difference, but I’m a goddam idiot. I should be taking everything I can get my hands on, no matter what. I have to win another challenge.

Alyssa’s face. I bring it to the front of my mind, re-trace her eyes, her lips, her hair. I hold her image with me, clear as day. Eventually the nausea passes and my head feels straight enough to climb down… slowly. 

I sink to the sand at the bottom of the tree, see the crew guy with some kind of tool kit walk past me without even acknowledging me. He climbs into the speedboat. Within a minute he’s heading off across the water and I pull myself up, lean hard against the tree, breathing in and out, in and out.

My legs are shaking but I force myself to walk in a straight line. The last time something like that happened out on the raft, I missed the whole jellyfish thing. I think the only reason they didn’t kick me off the show there and then was because they’d just lost Shan. It’s a goddam miracle I’m still here at all; and another miracle I’m alone on this island right now.

I pass the projector screen, plus a beanbag chair they’ve put in front of it, move the canisters of water out of the way and start digging till the pills are in my hands. I twist off the cap, throw two back and chase them with water, swallowing more, thanks to the thirst that suddenly ravages my throat.

I’m about to fall into my hammock and surrender to my exhaustion when I notice a white envelope in the mesh, with my name scrawled on the front. I snatch it up, lift the fold. It’s a note.

Joshua. You may be disappointed to learn that you won’t be watching a movie while you’re on Asylum Island. But there’s another interesting twist to our game we think might take the edge off your boredom. Please report to your beanbag at sunset and await further instruction.

‘I think the best way is to wring the neck,’ I say, crawling across the chicken run on all fours towards the clucking, panicked hen. Stephanie’s holding another one against her but it’s pecking at her hands and wherever else it can reach.

‘I can’t do it. What if it doesn’t work?’ she says, wincing. The thing struggles and squawks in her hands.

‘Don’t let it get away, hold tighter!’ I say. I reach for the other one, only to have it fly over my head towards the other end of the bamboo run. Punk sinks to his knees to grab it, only for it to flutter out of his reach, too. ‘This is ridiculous!’ I vent in frustration. ‘It’s a million frickin’ degrees and we’re chasing chickens.’

It’s been days on end of just rice since Joshua left and we have no clue how many more are left. There’s no getting away from the fact that we’re going to have to kill more animals. Even Stephanie won’t deny it anymore. My spear
fishing’s improving - it's pretty good now, actually, but there’s never enough fish to satisfy all of us and the less protein we have, the weaker we’re getting. I’ve been sleeping later and later since Joshua stopped waking me up at the crack of dawn.

‘I want you in breadcrumbs with barbecue sauce,’ Punk says in a low, threatening voice as he makes another swipe for the hen. It zooms awkwardly between us and back to him. ‘With potato salad,’ he adds, and manages to catch it this time.

‘Hold on, tighter,’ I shout at him. Punk obeys, but the thing flaps wildly, making the camera guy next to me jump. I can see the grin on his face. He knows he’s getting great TV, even if he’s slightly spattered in poop by now. I hope he’s getting paid well.

‘OK,’ I say, catching my breath and getting to my knees. Both of them are gripping the birds around their bodies now, but the wings on Punk’s are working the air madly, whipping up the dust and sand. He holds it away from him. His face contorts.

‘What do I do with it?’ he says. For a second I imagine what Joshua would do if he were here. I decide he’d probably grab it from his hands and snap its scrawny neck in the space of three seconds, but that tactic is a little beyond my abilities. I’m trying not to show it but I don’t want to kill a chicken any more than I wanted the guys to kill the goat that time, but no one wants to make a scene after what happened with Journey – even if she
was
a plant, like everyone’s saying.

‘We haven’t had more than three eggs the whole time we’ve been here,’ I remind Stephanie, noting her distressed face. ‘And Jaxx ate all of them.’

She lowers her eyes at his name, like she always does. ‘OK, but I can’t kill it,’ she says. ‘I’ll cook it when it’s just… pink bits, but I can’t murder an animal.’

‘Yeah, that makes sense.'

‘I’ll do it,’ Punk says suddenly. We both look at him. He doesn’t look sure.

‘You blacked out…’

‘I won’t this time,’ he tells us. He still doesn’t look sure.

‘Well, why don’t we do one each,’ I suggest. ‘Punk, you have to hold its legs with one hand and put your other thumb under the beak.’

‘How do you know?’

‘YouTube.’

‘Like this?’ he says, gripping the bird’s legs in one hand. It goes to fly away from him and he only just manages to restrain it.

‘Hand around the neck, thumb under the beak and pull, hard!’ I repeat.

Punk closes his eyes. I see his thin arm tense; the horror on his face as he tugs with all his might and for a moment everything’s still. His eyes flash open. We all stare at it. The bird is silent. Then it squawks in his hands and starts flapping again, crazier than ever.

‘Oh… just give it to me already.’ I snatch the thing from his hands, clamp its legs together and before I can think, my fingers are under its beak and I’m yanking it till it pops.

‘I heard that,’ Stephanie grimaces and I realize I’m shaking with pure shock and adrenaline now, holding a dead bird. I drop it to my feet, but Stephanie’s holding out the other one at me.

‘Way to go, Double G,’ Punk says as I take the hen and do the same with it quickly. As the pop sounds out for the second time I look up to see him a little green but looking at me like he’s seriously impressed. He’s never called me by the nickname Shan gave me before and for a moment as I pull myself together I miss Shan all over again. I know what he’d be saying right now; something about me knowing what to do with a big cock, probably. I smile suddenly. This is all so twisted.

‘Pass the machete,’ I say to Stephanie, shaking off my hands. She scrambles to her feet in the run and reaches for it. I know we need to chop the heads off so we can drain the blood out of them.

‘So gross,’ she mutters as I take it from her. She and Punk both turn their heads away as I bring the weapon down hard on the first one’s neck with all my strength and then go right in for round two. Blood spills around my feet as the heads roll but I pick the bodies up by the legs and poke Punk on the back of the leg with my bare foot. He spins around and I hold them out to him. His eyes bulge.

‘Face another fear,’ I tell him, grinning. ‘Carry these back to camp.’

On our way back along the tree line, Punk stops, points up at something. ‘Are those mangoes?’ he says in surprise. I’ve been trying to ignore the trail of blood he’s left behind him and Stephanie’s gone off ahead to start the fire, muttering something about living in an episode of
Game of Thrones
.

‘Oh my god, I think they are,’ I say, stepping over to the tree and shielding my eyes from the sun. ‘Maybe the rain brought them out – I haven’t seen them before.’

We’re both squinting upwards now and I can see the green fruit, smaller than the coconuts, clearly visible amongst even more green. ‘Good spot, Punk!’

‘Most of them are too high up,’ he observes, frowning. ‘Those ones look the biggest, too.’

‘Just pick the low hanging ones, for now,’ I say, taking the chickens from him. ‘We’ll have to make the most of them. Chicken and mango coming up!’

I realize what I’ve just said.
Low hanging fruit
. We need it to survive. It’s a little different to K-Lame assigning the term to potential cell phone customers in Denver.

I leave Punk to pick the softest ones; the ones I know won’t give us stomach cramps and walk the rest of the way with the birds. That life seems like it happened to someone else, now. I can barely believe the mornings I woke up and went to work and sat in boring meetings, watching the clock tick by between texts and emails from Sebastian. I thought I wasn’t relying on him for anything because I wouldn’t take his money, but I was relying on him to make my life more interesting. I could have spiced things up whenever I wanted, even before I met him, with or without the fame.

When I get back, things are definitely going to change. I want to get out of Boulder. The culinary course can wait. If I win this money I’m going to spend some of it on travelling first. I want to see, touch, twist my taste-buds round everything this planet has to throw at me; not sit festering away behind some desk, waiting for someone else to save me. Sometimes I see Joshua with me in my daydreams, wearing a backpack, pulling out a map, both of us laying our fingers anywhere down and just taking off in the direction of adventure.

I’m trying not to get carried away… I know this place warps reality. I still don’t know what those damn pills are for. But I guess if he says he’ll tell me everything I have to just trust that when he does, it’s nothing too bad. Either way, what Stephanie said before, about being lucky to have found him, won’t leave my head. I can’t even contemplate a world now, where I can’t just keep on getting to know Joshua.

I drop the chickens down by our makeshift cooking station, clean off the blood with fresh water from the pot and start pulling off the feathers. ‘Need some help with that?’ Stephanie asks, pretending to roll up her non-existent sleeves.

‘You can keep the feathers to stuff your leaf pillow with if you like,’ I say and she smiles, pitching in, looking dubious as she plucks alongside me but trying not to show it. Teamwork is vital now. None of us know who’s going to be the next to go – only that Joshua’s immune to the votes. She starts humming a song and I zone out.

I haven’t been able to go and see Joshua since the night I took the pills. A production assistant stopped me the next time I tried and said there were elements of the game that depended on me not going over there, and whereas I hadn’t really broken any rules, it was in everyone’s best interest if I didn’t do that again. I kind of felt like I was back in the office, getting reprimanded by K-Lame. I think next year they’ll probably write a new rule because of me.

I smile to myself as I go about gutting the chicken. I’m a game changer, a rule maker and breaker. A chicken-plucker, a stargazer and a wannabe spear fisherman. But I bet all they’ll see on TV is me dancing under those stupid trees in my bikini, boobs juggling all over the place, talking about designer purses and how I haven’t shaved my legs in a month.

‘Fruit salad, as requested,’ Punk says, dumping a shirt-load full of mangoes at my feet. I’m just about to tell him to help with Stephanie's chickens when a megaphone makes us all jump. ‘Castaways, please report to the challenge pitch,’ comes a female voice.

‘Oh god, what now?’ Stephanie says, dropping her bird and wiping down her hands. I shrug, doing the same, and we rinse off and head for the path. I can’t help the sense of fresh dread that washes over me every time we’re brought to the challenge pitch.

We’re led to our bench.

The projector screen doesn’t surprise me anymore, but seeing it outside of the council meetings as we sit down at sunset is a little mysterious.

‘Guy and girls,’ Ed Bernstein starts, folding his arms and walking up and down in a line in front of us, ‘sorry for the short notice, but we have a challenge with a truly fantastic reward for you this evening. We’re going to give you a little taster of what that might be, right now, so you have a better idea what you’re playing for.’

The screen flickers to life in front of us and a guy appears. Stephanie gasps beside me and puts a hand to her mouth. Tears spring to her eyes instantly. ‘Cory,’ she whispers, sitting forward on the bench, leaning towards the screen. I turn back to him. The kid looks sixteen, maybe seventeen. He’s got sandy blond hair, a slight dimple in his chin. Her brother?

‘Stephanie, I’m so proud of you,’ he says as his Southern accent sounds out around the pitch. ‘There's so much to tell you about the guys, and Homewood. I wrote a new song since you’ve been away - me and David want you to sing it next open mic. You’re gonna have some new fans after this,’ he grins. ‘I can’t wait to tell you how…’

He’s stopped mid-flow as the video pauses tauntingly and Stephanie loosens her grip on my arm.

Ed beams at her. Tears are streaming down her cheeks. My heart is pounding for a number of reasons; mostly because it’s obvious this kid is super important to her and if Stephanie’s got a message from someone close, who the hell is going to be talking at me? My intestines tangle and plummet with excitement and terror all at once. My sister? No… Chloe? Noah? They’d be obvious choices, for the ratings.

The screen flickers onto another video and this time Punk reacts. His face breaks into a grin as the woman, slender and wrinkled round the eyes, baring the exact same crazy curly hair as him starts talking.

‘Colin, you’ve done your father and I so proud,’ she starts, a little awkwardly. I notice her mannerisms are so similar to Punk’s – even the way she sniffs a little after talking, like a rabbit. ‘We’re so pleased you’ve made it this far. Aunt Jeanine is selling cupcakes with your face on them at the…’

Again the image is frozen and Punk groans, slaps a hand to his forehead. ‘Cupcakes with my face on them. Really?’ he says and I can’t help the snort that comes out of me, even though my insides are still churning up like crazy.

‘Want to know where those cupcakes are being sold?’ Ed asks him. ‘Stephanie. You must be dying to know what’s happening in Homewood by now?’ OK, Alyssa. What’s happening in your world?’

The sick feeling rising up in my stomach multiplies in a millisecond as Sebastian’s face flashes up on the screen.
What the hell?

Just seeing him makes my blood run cold. His eyes are smiling like Cory’s were; like Punk’s mom’s were. But there’s something I know behind that look – the look he always puts on for a camera when he’s nervous, or under pressure, or doesn’t want to be somewhere at all.

‘Alyssa,’ he starts. ‘Hey baby. Wow. You’re even more of a goddess than I gave you credit for. Watching you go all tribal is kind of sexy.’ His white teeth are lightning bolts. ‘I miss you,’ he says, leaning forward to the camera. I notice he’s wearing the leather band I bought him around one wrist. His hair looks longer, his skin isn’t as tan. I remember it’s winter where he spends most of his time - a million miles away.

Sebastian is winter. 

My breath catches in my throat and tears flood my eyes all of a sudden. Why couldn’t they have asked Chloe, or my own mom to do this? He’s my
ex
. We’re not even together.

He’s still speaking. ‘I want you to know everything’s going to be OK. It doesn’t matter what’s happened. The only thing you have to know is…’

The screen freezes. Of course it freezes.

‘Sebastian Moreno,’ Ed says, almost too excitedly. I keep my eyes to the floor, blinking back the tears. I won’t let them see they’re getting to me. I’m the celebrity here. That’s why they’ve done this. Anything to do with Noah Lockton’s band will get this show’s ratings up and they don’t give a crap how much they mess with me in the end. Anger’s making me shake. What the hell was with all the
hey baby
and
I miss you
anyway? He broke up with
me
. Did they make him say that?

‘Castaways,’ Ed says, as Stephanie squeezes my shoulder in excitement. The lights are flashing on the pitch now and somehow I know I won’t like what’s coming next, either.