“Yes.” Isla let out an awkward laugh that sounded way too forced. “You know, the same way people say they’re going to lose weight in the new year, or stop drinking wine on Monday, or start getting out into the dating field even though they’ve got a very nice vibrator in their bedside table, and they’ve forgotten what human contact feels like. I’m talking about other people, not me.” She then dragged her fingers down her cheeks, visibly mortified. “I was just joking.”
Tamsyn wanted to shush Isla with a kiss, because, damn, she was being so adorable. But friends didn’t kiss friends. So, she settled for a shoulder bump. “Sorry,” she said with a teasing lilt in her voice. “You can’t take the invitation back. I’ve already noted it in my mental journal.” She tapped her temple. “I’ll be showing up April 15th with my trusty backpack, ultralight gear, and all the ramen and tuna wraps your heart desires.”
Isla rolled her eyes. Then she leaned sideways toward Tamsyn, and Tamsyn’s heart felt like it was about to leap out of her chest. Not just because of the closeness, but because Isla’s hand had slid down to the dirt between them and somehow their fingers were overlapping.
Tamsyn pretended to be interested in the sky. Very interested. She studied the scatter of stars and tried to embrace the silence between them, but she could only do that for a minute or less before one of her fingers twitched.
Thankfully, Isla pulled her hand back and brushed dirt off her palm as if that had been the plan all along. “So, a high school teacher,” she said. It wasn’t a question, but it sounded like one. Not that Tamsyn hadn’t expected the topic to come up in conversation after Vivian had mentioned it at The Sending. Most people were shocked when they found out she spent her weekdays teaching natural selection to sixteen-year-olds. The day she’d shown up at Eastbrook High, Charley Heyns, the principal, thought she was a student and had asked her if she was lost.
“I know,” Tamsyn said, nodding. “Sometimes I can’t believe it either. Don’t get me wrong, I love my job, and I find it very satisfying, but I often wonder, what if I’d done something different?”
“Like what?”
Tamsyn shrugged. “I’m not sure. Maybe a doctor or a lawyer. The President of the United States. You know, dream big or go home.” Instead of running the country, she was confiscating vape pens and explaining why TikTok was, in fact, not a credible scientific source.
Sometimes Tamsyn wondered if that was why she kept signing up for extreme things like skydiving, mountain marathons, and scuba lessons. It was probably because she was bored. Or worse... predictable. Her mother was a high schoolscience teacher. Her dad had been the principal at Red River Prep in Canton before he retired with a plaque and a standing ovation. Education wasn’t just a job in the family; it was practically a hereditary condition. Tamsyn had gone to Southern Methodist University in Dallas and had earned her degree in biology before taking what felt like the easiest, most obvious next step.
Certification, then classroom.
“I always knew I wanted to model,” Isla said, looking at her feet. She wiggled her toes, which, like the rest of her, were perfectly engineered. “I used to spend hours lying on my bed swiping through fashion magazines, wishing I was as glamorous as the women in them.” Then she smiled, and Tamsyn swore she could see a glint in her eyes. “And it was also the one thing my sister would never be able to do. She’s five foot two on a generous day.”
Tamsyn tried to summon a clear image of Mallory. She remembered dyed blonde hair, pearls around her neck, and a deep plum dress. But she couldn’t remember how tall she was. Just that she looked absolutely nothing like Isla.
“But I’m thinking of retiring.”
“Retiring?” Tamsyn asked, frowning. “Aren’t you too young to retire?” She imagined Isla sitting at a small round coffee table, morning sun streaming in through double-hung windows, holding up the paper in one hand and a pen in the other while she carefully filled in the Sudoku. Tamsyn’s dad did exactly that every single morning.
Then the obvious hit her.
“Oh, you mean retiring from modeling?” Tamsyn said slowly.
Isla was just about to reply. Her lips were parting when a shout sounded loud and clear from the teepee.
Aggie came running out of the tent screaming at the top of her lungs, “SNAKE!”
Chapter Eleven
Isla wasn’t particularly fond of snakes, but she wasn’t terrified of them. But when Eric—the show’s resident reptile handler—emerged from the teepee with what looked like two feet of moving rope draped across his arms, she shuddered all the way to her toes.
“It’s just a carpet python,” Eric announced cheerfully, as if he were presenting a kitten instead of a snake. He wore cargo pants, a sun-bleached button-down rolled to his elbows, and a knit hat despite it still being hot at midnight. “They’re common here in the Flinders Ranges,” he added, squinting against the floodlights production had set up barely five minutes after Aggie had come screaming. Apparently, production took a snake in the tent very seriously, especially out here in the Flinders Ranges, where all snakes were deemed extremely dangerous until proven otherwise.
“They’re not venomous.”
“They’re not?” Aggie squeaked, hugging herself tightly. Petra hovered beside her, one arm over her shoulder while Josie stood on her other side. Isla had already given her best ‘it’s going to be okay’ look and was now standing at the periphery of the spotlight, squinting against the bright lights. Just like everyone else, she wouldn’t sleep a wink tonight.
“No,” he said, at the same time the snake looped and re-looped itself around his arm. Its body was thick and glossy, patterned with a wild zigzag of gold and black that shimmered under the lights. Its head swiveled, and its tongue flicked outin rapid, twitchy stabs. “They’re constrictors. They squeeze their prey to death.”
Aggie’s knees buckled ever so slightly. Petra seemed to anticipate this, because her arm immediately went around Aggie’s waist. Some would say Aggie’s reaction to a snake in her tent was a little bit of an exaggeration, but Isla would disagree. She couldn’t possibly imagine what it would feel like to have a cold weight against your legs, that you thought was nothing, maybe just a dream, only to realize it was in fact a nightmare. A horrible, scaly, beady-eyed nightmare.
“Don’t worry,” he said, smiling so wide his teeth glinted in the spotlight, which only made his accent seem even more Australian. “She’s still a juvenile. She prefers medium-sized rodents to humans. If you were a plump wombat, then you’d probably be in trouble.”
Aggie didn’t seem at all reassured. Not that Isla would be either. If one snake had gotten into the teepee, then surely an even larger constrictor, or something more venomous, could just as easily find its way in. Ugh. The thought made Isla feel physically ill.
“You know,” Tamsyn said, stepping closer. She hadn’t left Isla’s side since they’d come rushing toward Aggie’s blistering screams. “I once watched a documentary about a guy who kept three pythons in glass enclosures in his basement.” Her breath skimmed Isla’s bare shoulder. Or maybe it was just the gentle breeze picking up. Not that it mattered. Goosebumps erupted everywhere. Even in places Isla had never felt goosebumps before. “He fed them live rats and other rodents. And one day, when he wasn’t paying attention, the enormous Burmese python managed to lift its enclosure’s lid and get out. They found the guy three days later, dead, with his leg half swallowed by the snake.”
It sounded made up.
But then again, Isla didn’t know enough about snakes to argue with Tamsyn, nor did she particularly want to. She wasn’t sure what had shifted in the last few minutes, or why her stomach was suddenly fluttering when it hadn’t twitched before. Maybe it was Aggie’s scream, the way it had zipped through the campsite like a shockwave. Or maybe it had to do with Tamsyn grabbing her hand as they ran back to the camp. A hand she hadn’t let go of until production showed up with Eric.
