“We’re back,” Charity said, and without thinking, Linda reached out to pull her friend close, taking the rain smell into her body. “You don’t hate me,” she whispered. “Right?”
“We’re blocked in,” Brandon said. “There’s a fucking mudslide on the road.”
“Wait… A mudslide?” Linda pushed back from Charity’s embrace. “You can’t go around it?”
Brandon ran his hand through his perfect, wet hair. “Would I have come back to this hellhole if we’d been able to go around it? No. I would be dropping this chick off and heading back to my private cabin.”
“What about Becca, Leo, and Jazz?” Linda said. “Did they get out okay?” She chewed her lip. “Will it be open by the time we’re supposed to leave?”
“What am I? Nostradamus?” Brandon said.
Deja swept her hand against Brandon’s shoulder. “It’ll be fine, Brandon. We’ve got an extra room. I’m sure the forestry service will start clearing that up as soon as possible.”
“You let them know we were going to be up here, yeah?” Brandon said.
“Of course.” Deja’s voice came out reassuring, kind. Not at all like Deja. “I’ll have Tatum show you to a room.”
Tatum stepped out from behind his camera and motioned for Brandon to follow him up the stairs. Once they disappeared beyond the view of the stairwell, Deja folded her hands and turned to the contestants.
“This doesn’t change a thing. We’ll make this part of the show. Charity, do your thing.” Deja winked. “I know you will whether I tell you to or not.” She turned to Tristan. “Why don’t you take your ladies into the den to celebrate?”
Tristan forced his face into a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Of course. Ladies, let’s go.” He reached out toward them, and both Sabrina and Marion stepped forward to take an arm. They shared a glower, so Linda looped her arm in his instead. Deja advanced ahead of Tristan, with a portable boom and camera. Linda gave the lens her best bullshit smile, too.
In the parlor, Tristan filled shiny pewter goblets with champagne. “To love!” he said as they clinked their cups and swigged. The champagne tasted metallic, but Linda swallowed it before her throat had a chance to react. Tristan patted the two spots beside him on the couch. Sabrina and Marion rushed to fill them, leaving Linda standing.
“Now, I need you ladies to get along,” he said. “We’re going to be here a while longer, it seems.”
“You already told us we’d be here a week.” Marion counted on her fingers. “It’s been, like, two days.”
“Mud isn’t permanent or anything.” Sabrina clapped her hand on Tristan’s thigh. “I can last longer than a mudslide.”
Staring out through the parlor door into the hall, Linda frowned as she tried to parse the weird conversation. A hand reached around the frame. Linda started to call out, but Charity’s face followed the hand as she peeked into the room. She caught Linda’s eye and held one finger up to her lips. Linda smirked. Charity placed a hand against the air of the door, mimicking a mime pressing at glass. She fake-pounded, her face straight even as Linda lost her composure and laughed out loud. In the eerie manor, laughter felt wrong as it echoed, but it helped her chest lighten.
Tristan, Sabrina, and Marion looked up at the same time.
“It’s nothing.” But when Linda stuck out a hand and leaned into the wall, her hand sunk through the wood, just like her foot had done. She shrieked, and Charity rushed forward to grab hold of her waist and keep her from falling into the house. Linda yanked free her hand as Sabrina jumped up to help. The wood popped back to solidity.
Linda examined her hand; it was covered in the same pink slime the dart had set free. Charity pulled her jacket off and handed it to Linda.
“Wipe that shit off,” she said.
“What is it?” Linda’s lip curled. It reeked of rotting meat.
“Probably fungus. We’d better get you cleaned up.”
“Could be the same material the producers used to trick us elsewhere,” Sabrina muttered.
“We did no such thing,” Deja said, but Linda ignored the protestation.
“I’ll do it,” Tristan said, and he took hold of Linda’s elbow and led her out of the parlor, through the long hall to the downstairs bathroom before she could utter a single word. He stopped before the bathroom sink and examined her.
“Sorry you were last.” He ran the creaky water faucet. “I don’t mind a catfight, but those ladies would never forgive me if I let fighting stand.” He grabbed a hand towel and wet it under the cold water. Linda dropped Charity’s jacket to the floor, a blue puddle, and Tristan wiped at the slime.
“That’s fine.” Linda glanced to the bathroom door. “I shouldn’t have attacked her.” But unlike her prior scripts, her heart wasn’t in this one. Something had ignited in her out there, faced with Marion’s rude words, and it was then she realized: she felt more natural when lunging toward the woman than she did when playing nice, like she had done the rest of her time on the show. Her stomach flip-flopped as a thought passed through her: Is that what I am? She blinked, and her father’s face, bloated with death, appeared. Her eyes flew open.
“I know tensions are high,” he said. “I couldn’t sleep a wink with all the crying you ladies were doing.”
“Is that what was keeping you up?” Linda said, then held back her desire to say more. “What crying?”
“All night. Weeping.” Tristan finished wiping away the mess and dropped the towel into the sink, not bothering to clean up after himself. “Was it you?”
Linda imagined herself weeping in bed as she had done as a little girl on so many of her father’s whiskey nights. She hadn’t cried when her father died, nor since.
“I don’t cry,” she said. “I didn’t hear anything.”
The color drained from Tristan’s face. “Then who?”
“Marion?” The most probable person, the one Linda had seen cry the most.
“No, she was with me.” He said it without meaning to.
Linda felt her mouth lift into a knowing half-smirk. “You think we don’t all know that?” It was a cruel thing to say, but Linda was glad she said it. She watched Tristan’s expression morph from planned smolder to confusion, then to fear, then to anger, his nostrils flaring.
“Were you spying?” he whispered, his voice tinged with red.
Linda leaned forward. “We’re being watched all the time. If you think we have any modicum of privacy, then you’re more stupid than I thought.” She found again a straightness of posture and affixed a glamorous nonchalance to her demeanor.
“Lovely,” he said, and his lips turned down in the first genuine frown she’d seen on him. “You’re a gem. Glad I chose you.” His lips flattened. “You don’t have the friends you think you have. You know that, right?” With that, he turned and slammed his way out of the room, disappearing up the stairs, while Linda stood, stunned, the water running pink down the drain behind her.
