Stepping next to Missy, I place a hand on her arm, softly turning her toward me. I’m ready to make a speech worthy of this moment, but when I glimpse Missy’s waterlogged eyes and tight lips, something feels off. Her eyes shift and find the onslaught of camera crew members planting themselves in a half circle around us with Niall at their front.
Missy’s gaze settles on me, but her eyes won’t meet mine as she desperately tries to force her lips into a smile. But then her chin starts to quiver. It’s another Missy tell. One that’s telling me she is genuinely upset or sad, but I don’t know why.
Abandoning my speech, I lean closer to her, placing my fingers beneath her chin and tilting her face toward mine, eager to find out what’s hurt her. “Hey, you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she says. But I’m not stupid. If a woman saysfine, it means she’s got a hundred things swirling around in her mind, none of which merit the termfine. She makes an ugly snort, one I know she definitely wouldn’t want to be on camera if she had the choice, which confirms my suspicions. This, whatever this is, is genuine.
The pain I see in her eyes tugs at my heartstrings, and suddenly, I want to chuck all the cameras and microphones into the ocean just to give Missy a smidgeon of privacy. Instead, the cameras creep closer to our faces, making me question if they are filming a reality game show or a skin-care commercial.
On instinct, I stretch my arms around Missy, bringing her close to me and angling her away from the prying cameras. Yes, a minute ago I wanted the cameras to catch us in an embrace, but not like this, not when I can feel Missy’s body tremble beneath my arms.
Missy leans into me, letting me hold her. I swallow, feeling the warmth of her hand against my back as she reciprocates my hug. Her response is so automatic that I can’t tell if she’s doing it for the sake of the cameras or if she genuinely wants me to be here.
A cameraman circles us, until he captures a shot of Missy’s face just as she swipes at another tear. I can feel her stiffen as the cameraman pushes his boundaries, so I bring my arms farther up her back until they encircle her upper body, cocooning her from pushy camera operators. But when my eyes meet thecameraman’s, it’s obvious that he can tell what I’m doing, and he isn’t happy about it.
Just to give them something else to focus on that isn’t the tears falling from Missy’s face, I rub my hands up and down her arms. “Hey, it’s going to be okay.” I still don’t understand why she’s upset, but she nods as if somehow my words are soothing to her.
And then I hear the smallest sound, barely above a whisper. “Thank you.” Missy curls her head against my chest, and as I embrace her again, I can’t help but think how perfectly she fits into my arms. I have the strangest desire to bend down and kiss the top of her head, but the feeling is quickly overshadowed by Niall’s voice, breaking through my confused thoughts.
“Well, folks, it looks like tides are turning for Team Teal. What do you think? Will they make it to the end? Let us know by casting your votes for your favorite team by the end of the next Mayday Challenge.”
Chapter 13
MISSY
· DAY 9 ·
“Are you going to finish those, Mija?” Maria points to the two mussels that lie at my feet.
“They’re all yours,” I say, grateful that the food Colton, Bill, Heartbreaker, and I had gathered for breakfast this morning isn’t going to waste. We’re a little more than a week into this game, and already most of the teams, including Bill and Maria from Team Amber and Tearjerker and Heartbreaker from Team Ruby, have run out of the airplane meals they received from the various challenges and rewards. Lucky for them, they now get to slum it with Colton and I as we live off the island and ocean.
I look up at Tearjerker who is nursing a bandaged hand from burning his fingers by the fire last night. Both he and Heartbreaker sit across from me, Maria, and Bill as we sit on one of the dead tree trunks we’d positioned around the campfire on the first night of the show. We talk about last night’s Reward Challenge that happened just before midnight and how this morning we’d all been woken up before the crack of dawn to compete in yet another Reward Challenge. The show clearly has all sorts of ways to keep us on our toes, including sleep deprivation.
“I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised if Lime or Fuchsia got the game booster,” Heartbreaker grumbles, adding his two cents about our most recent Reward Challenge.
This morning, each of the five remaining teams were taken to various points of the island by theSunsets and Sabotagecrew. All teams had to complete a riddle that would lead us to the general location of a game booster. And since there was only one booster up for grabs, it was a race to see who could find it first. This was a big reward considering it had the ability to aid us in Mayday Challenge Three. Fortunately, Colton and I were quick to decipher the riddle, which led us to a rock formation half submerged in the ocean and half arced over the sand.
We knew from the solved riddle that what we were looking for was a pilot’s wings. We, along with the other teams, searched around the rocky formation for nearly two hours without any luck. And since Colton and I hadn’t found the wings, it meant that one of the other teams must have found it and stashed it away before anyone could see, making themselves less of a target.
If I had to guess, I’d say Team Lime found the booster. They might be amazing baseball players, but neither Joseph nor Tyrone were blessed with the gift of acting. Partway throughthe booster search, they went from laughing and teasing to awkwardly silent.
“I doubt Team Fuchsia has it. They might be clever, but they’re the laziest clever people I know,” Tearjerker says, taking a surprising dig at his allies, who are currently snoozing on their bunks in the airplane. The moment Team Fuchsia had reached the arched rock during today’s Reward Challenge, they found a spot under the shade of a tree and watched everyone else search.
Heartbreaker laughs. I look over at him just in time to see him use a finger to strip the fleshy mussel from its shell. The blood drains from my face. I wasn’t a fan of seafood to begin with, and now I’m convinced I might never be. Not too long ago, I’d taken my first bite of a mussel, only to walk in the jungle and dry heave. Needless to say, I’ve lost my appetite, despite being consumed with hunger.
I look away from the fleshy feast and across the beach, spotting Joseph and Tyrone as they walk through the sand toward the airplane, dripping with saltwater.
Huh?I thought Colton was with them. Joseph and Tyrone had convinced Colton to do swimming sprints with them halfway through breakfast this morning.
I scan my view of the beach, seeing everyone but him.
Thoughts of Colton make my stomach knot unpleasantly. We’d had our team interview a day and a half ago, and since then, I’ve managed to do a thorough job of bringing back my middle school dating tactics—staring at Colton when he’s not looking and ignoring him when he is.
I know I’m doing a poor job of keeping up my end of our “relationship,” and I know I need to step up my game, but I can’t bring myself to look him in the eyes after what I said about him on live television. Though the words I said were simple and kind, they left me feeling completely vulnerable.
I shift uncomfortably on the log and try to feign interest in a story Heartbreaker is telling us about a time he’d stolen seven Fruit Roll-Ups from a vending machine; all the while, the Team Teal interview with Niall plays on repeat in my mind.
What was I thinking?“Give me a compliment,”Colton hadsaid.“Let them think things are changing between us,”he’d said. And that’s what I’d planned to do up until the very last moment when I panicked, thinking that if I really wanted to show America that our partnership was turning into something more, then I should probably say something better than how I appreciated Colton’s wardrobe choices. And suddenly, the well-crafted words I’d practiced before the interview committed treason, leaving me with something so raw and real, I barely had time to process it myself.
