Before He Was Gone: Starstruck Book 2 (5 page)

Joshua. It sounds wrong for him somehow. The way he moves, I noticed it on the boat and when he rowed with me on the raft. His movements are almost fluid, like he’s a hunter… maybe some kind of animal. I’m watching him now, strapping palm leaves to the top of the shelter he's basically shown us how to construct in the space of almost three hours. 
He’s shirtless and sweaty under the hot sun, like all the guys, and apart from the tall one in the Abercrombie shirt called Jaxx - with a double X apparently - he’s got the biggest muscles here.

‘He’s so hot, right?’ Stephanie whispers as she wanders up to my side with more dried leaves to line the shelter with. I tear my eyes away
.

‘I hadn’t noticed,’ I reply and she grins. She saw me staring. It’s pretty obvious that everyone here has been sizing up everyone else since the second we stepped on that boat. When our rafts pulled up on the shore we had to work together to unload everything onto the burning sand. My arms ache already from lifting that crate of chickens.

As for my fellow castaways, the stereotypes are out in full swing. I know that’s how they planned it, but looking at them all is like looking at the cast of a grown-up
Glee
. I want to call Chloe already, just to share this. There’s the big black mother-figure, Mia, who’s already told us about her three kids and her house in Washington. Mia’s in her late-forties and she seems pretty proper… as in I can imagine her running a tight ship back home - maybe the kind of home with white carpet, where you have to wash every plate before putting it in the dishwater, you know?

Then there’s Colin. Colin is twenty-three, like me; a white geek wearing black-rimmed glasses. He’s studying medicine at Stanford, but he looks like he could barely unscrew the cap from a jar of vitamins. His arms are like sticks. Colin has already asked us all to call him Punk.

‘Why Punk?’ Shan - a writer from New York - asked, as we all watched him struggling to tie string around a chicken’s leg so it wouldn’t run away into the scrub. ‘Did you have a Mohawk at some point in your existence?’

‘It’s what the kids at school all called me. It kind of stuck,’ Punk explained.

‘You gave yourself a name that some
bullies
gave you first?’ Shan replied incredulously, but Punk just shrugged.

‘I like it. Colin sounds lame.’

‘Not when there’s a Farrell on the end of it,’ I followed without even thinking and everyone laughed, except Joshua, who was too busy hauling the rafts in from the water and securing them to a tree. He’s all business. He needn’t have bothered though; the rafts were taken away shortly afterwards. We’re stranded.

I’m pretty sure Jaxx has been chosen to fulfil the jock role. He’s huge. Aside from his Abercrombie shirt, his close cut brown hair is so neat against his forehead it kind of looks like it’s been painted on. His eyebrows, I noticed on the boat, are shaved in the middle. ‘Put some muscle into it, man,’ he’s saying now to Punk.

‘I don’t have any muscles, in case you haven’t noticed,’ Punk says, wincing with the strain as he fastens bamboo poles together as part of the wall on our shelter.

Shan snorts, lifting more leaves up to Joshua. Shan’s five-foot-eight-ish, kind of stocky with sandy-brown highlighted hair and the kind of look in his eyes that tells you if you cross him, you’re in trouble. He reminds me a little of Jack Black somehow, but younger. He’s already named my breasts ‘the pretty girls’ and asked if I had laser hair removal. ‘They confiscated my nail scissors,’ he tutted before, when he snagged a finger on some bark. ‘I’ll be horrendous at the end of this.’

I like Shan.

The Asian student, Karin, is working with Mike to build a fire. Mike is a Gulf War veteran in his forties – I think he’s the oldest one in the group. He hasn’t said much yet but he doesn’t seem all that friendly and he wouldn't take any instructions from Joshua either.

They’re further up the beach now with a tall, skinny girl who introduced herself as Journey. She’s got the longest hair I’ve ever seen, way past her butt. I had hair that long once, but my mom cut it off after I got chewing gum caught in it on a playground slide. It's just not practical. She'll be suffocating by the end of the week. 

Journey helped us tie the goat to a tree with some rope when we got here and then she performed some kind of weird blessing on it. She also said her parents are conservationists who brought her and her twin brother Echo up in Nepal. 
Right now she’s wearing just a gray, ratty bra and some billowing patterned fisherman’s pants. She’s stacking twigs and gathering seaweed like some kind of moving image from a beachside yoga retreat website. I think Journey has probably been cast as ‘the hippy’.

I roll my eyes at the way my mind is already reeling with all these assumptions about people. But what’s not funny at all is how hot I am in my dumb pants. I roll up the bottoms up again. Already the sand is clinging to the fabric as well as my skin. My hair is stringy from the saltwater, tucked up in the bandana. They gave us all one, like they always do on this show. They all have the logo on them - the skull and palm trees.

‘He looks like he’s lived in a jungle before,’ Stephanie says. She’s still talking about Joshua.

I turn to her as one pant leg promptly rolls down again. ‘I was actually thinking he looks more like an animal than a man,’ I tell her.

‘My gosh, you’re right. He’s
totally
an animal,’ she replies, grinning at me with teeth that are cutely crooked along the bottom. ‘Wait till the hair grows back on his head - he’ll match his own tattoo.’

I look to Joshua’s flexing bicep as Shan and Punk lift another palm leaf three times their size up to him. Punk’s glasses are almost knocked off his face in the process. The tattoo is a black and white image of a roaring lion’s head, peeking through what appears to be canvas. The canvas has been ripped by the claws on one giant paw.

‘You want to come get more padding for the beds?’ Stephanie asks, just as Joshua catches us staring at him from up on the roof. ‘We can look for the immunity charm while we’re at it,’ she adds with a wink.

‘Sure,’ I say distractedly, rolling up my pants yet again. Finding the charm means you’re immune to being voted out, whenever you choose to play it. But what I
really
want to do is run into the ocean. I can feel the sweat trickling down my back in a line. I know we’re all feeling the same way but setting up our camp is a priority and no one wants to be the first to admit they’re beat already. I follow Stephanie to the side of the shelter and into the jungle.

The flora is thick, with more shades of green than I’ve ever seen. It’s like a botanical garden back here, with no roof. Flowers and shrubs add vibrant reds and yellows and it’s a little like walking through an oil painting. It’s so totally beautiful, everywhere; even though it’s hotter than hell.

A camera guy is on our trail. Stephanie’s whipping off her tank now, revealing a white sports bra I’m jealous of instantly. She looks every inch the stranded cheerleader as she glances at the camera; what with her daisy dukes and manicure that will probably only last five seconds longer than Shan’s. 
I like her. She and Shan are the only ones who’ve really spoken to me so far, with the exception of Joshua when he pulled me onto the raft. He’s been pretty quiet since then, with everyone, except to guide the building of the shelter. He seems to know a lot about what we need to do here already. He must’ve watched way more YouTube videos than me.

‘So, Stephanie, where’re you from?’ I ask as I start picking up soft fallen leaves and holding them to my chest. ‘Do I detect a southern twang?’

‘I’m from Homewood, Alabama. Know it?’ She looks at me through a cascade of wavy, strawberry blond hair, eyebrows raised to her bangs.

‘I’ve heard of it, sure, Birmingham?’

‘That’s right. I’m a singer. Well, I wait tables too, but I’m a singer really. I know you know about that? You dated Noah Lockton’s drummer, right?’ She shoots me a sly smile.

‘Right up until he ditched me,’ I say.

‘What’s he like?’

‘Who, Sebastian?’

‘No, Noah Lockton. I heard he’s a really nice guy, but he hasn’t ever dated anyone famous, except for Courtney Lentini, right?’

‘Pretty much,’ I say. Courtney Lentini is another pop star on Noah’s label. She’s alright but she also kind of took advantage of Noah’s fame before he came to his senses and got together with Chloe. ‘We grew up together. I’m friends with his brother, too.’

‘The one who was in the accident?’

‘Yeah,’ I say. I shudder instantly at the memory of seeing Jack with all those tubes sticking out of him.

‘What really happened with all that?’ she asks, tightening the bandana around her head. I hesitate, looking at the camera. Some of it was in the news, some of it wasn’t. I know Noah will be watching, and maybe some of the band’s fans. I plan not to talk about him, obviously, but it doesn’t mean people here won’t bring it up.

‘I don’t know how he does it,’ Stephanie says, picking up a big branch and dropping it again as a bug crawls out.

‘Who?’

‘Noah Lockton. I wouldn’t be with some
nobody
if I was up there with
my
name in lights.’

I frown at her, picking the branch up myself. Chloe’s not just some
nobody...
 not that I’m going to talk about my best friend when a camera’s in my face. ‘So, let me guess. You want to be famous,’ I say. ‘It’s not all that great, you know.’

Stephanie’s eyes widen in front of me and I notice they’re almost the same color as the shallows on the beach. ‘Are you serious?’ she says. ‘You have power as a celebrity, Alyssa. You can make changes.’

I’m about to reply to what actually surprised me, when a figure behind us casts us into shadow for a second. ‘Cocktails are served on the beach,’ comes a male voice. We spin around and Stephanie gasps.

‘Seriously?’

Joshua smiles, shakes his head. ‘No.’

He’s standing on the sandy pathway, jeans hanging low beneath his cut abs, perspiration tracing the lines of his six-pack. He’s got his hand above his eyes against the sun, his black bandana tied around his shaved head. For the first time I take in his other tattoo; the one on his right hip, snaking up across his abdomen. It’s a tribal print of swirls, black like the lion’s face. He’s eyeing up the tall palm tree we’re standing under.

‘You should probably be careful where you situate your gossip station, ladies,’ he says, pointing upwards. ‘You know, falling coconuts kill a hundred and fifty people a year.’ He leans down, starts sweeping up more dried leaves and I watch the muscles flex along his back before turning to look up at the coconuts and stepping backwards.

‘We weren’t gossiping,’ Stephanie tells him, but he doesn’t look like he’s listening now.

‘We need to get the beds made up and the fire going before sunset,’ he says thoughtfully, without looking at us. ‘I’m guessing we have less than an hour.’

He strides away with the leaves, and I watch his rock hard ass in his jeans for way longer than I have to. So do Stephanie
and
the camera guy.

‘
Animal
,’ Stephanie whispers again, grinning.

‘Five star luxury,’ Alyssa quips, getting to her knees in her pants and crawling into the shelter. ‘Now, who wants the silk sheets and who wants satin tonight?’

‘I’ll take the satin,’ Shan answers, following her.

‘I was hoping you’d say that,’ she replies. ‘I brought my silk pyjamas with me and I
do
like to match.’

I crawl inside, almost bump into her head as she spins around again. ‘Sorry,’ we say at the same time. Up close, no make up, her cheekbones are blushed anyway from today’s sun. ‘It’s a little tight in here,’ she says, meeting my eyes.

‘I love a good tight space,’ Shan follows, ‘especially a dark one.’

‘Unnecessary!’ she laughs, turning to thump his arm and he pouts at her.

We’ve laid down the leaves and spread them out, covered what we can with moss and dried seaweed. The production team provided a stack of bamboo for us to build with and luckily the team pulled together to do an OK job, but my hands are chaffed from layering so many palm leaves on top. I crawl further in with my bag, watch Alyssa roll her pant legs up for the hundredth time, swiping at a fly.

I’ve noticed how everything about Alyssa is animated all the time. She’s the kind of chick you need to look at, even when she’s not demanding attention. She’s crawling around now with Shan, spreading more leaves, bunching up her blazer to make a pillow. They’re hilarious together already; like someone in a boardroom matched them up for comedy value without them even knowing it. Wouldn’t surprise me. Everything’s planned here.

‘I think we’re supposed to sleep naked to preserve body heat – what do you think?’ Shan asks her. ‘Is your birthday suit as delightful as
that
one?’

She rolls her eyes as he flops beside her. ‘I don’t think we’re going to have a problem with the cold,’ she says, lying on her back and swiping her forehead. ‘If anything, things are going to be too hot.’

She’s right about the heat. The sun is starting to fade but the humidity levels aren’t. I oversaw the construction of ten sleeping spots right next to each other from mounds of sand covered in palm leaves, with barely any space between. It's set back a little, so most of the sand flies should leave us alone. But we won't be able to avoid them all. We're already bitten. 

The shelter is long, and too low to stand up inside. We’ve covered it sufficiently enough to keep out any rain, I made sure of that, too. I had to build something similar one time when I was out in Utah, assisting a crazy cowboy with a horseback wilderness adventure tour. 

Everyone’s starting to crawl inside now. Veteran Mike flashes a look I don’t miss at Shan when he almost bumps into him. ‘I ain’t sleeping with no one’s crotch or nose up in my face so if it’s OK with you, I’ll take the end spot,’ he announces. We all watch as he throws his bag at the far end near the bamboo wall and then lies down. I look around the group. Everyone’s eyebrows are raised.

‘Guess I’ll sleep next to you then, Mike,’ I say, ‘though I can’t promise I won’t snuggle up to you if it
does
get cold.’

‘I also have a range of night time services,’ Shan adds.

‘You just try it,’ Mike scowls, folding his arms and shoving his bag under his head as a pillow.

Stephanie throws her own bag down. ‘Mind if I go next to you, Joshua?’ she says. I shrug, keep my face neutral as she directs her blue gaze at me, blowing her bangs out of her eyes. She’s on all fours. She’s caught the sun on her cheeks, too.

‘Sleep where you like, there's a spot for all of us,’ I tell her and Alyssa’s eyebrows raise like Shan’s do in the direction of a fixed camera pointing straight at us from above. They attached it as soon as we were done building. We’ve been told to ignore it, same as all the cameras. We’re not supposed to look straight at them and even if we attempt to talk to any of the crew, we’re told they won’t talk back. I guess Alyssa The Greek is used to cameras in her face, though, dating that drummer dude from Noah Lockton’s band. She hasn't thrown any hissy fits yet. In fact, for the most part she's been the one who's looked the most excited to be here.

‘I should take the other end,’ Jaxx cuts in to my thoughts. ‘I’m six foot five and I weigh two hundred and fifty-five pounds. I should probably lessen my chances of flattening someone in the night.’

‘You can flatten me anytime, Abercrombie,’ Shan tells him and Jaxx frowns.

‘Does it really matter where we sleep, seriously?’ Punk pipes up, wiping his sweater over his forehead as he crouches in the entrance. He’s so pasty white he’s almost transparent. ‘We’re all going to be lying awake starving unless we start cooking some of that rice.’

‘He’s right,’ the mother-figure Mia says from outside. ‘I volunteer as chef.’

‘I volunteer as second chef,’ Alyssa follows, crawling out and jogging off to where we’ve already stacked our limited cooking gear near the unlit fire. I notice how she almost trips on her falling pant legs as she runs and I hide a smile as I follow her. So does a camera guy who’s been hovering outside.

There are, I think they said, almost seventy camera-operators here, and that’s not including the team who’ve also been sent to set up the challenges we’re going to have to take part in. There’s hair and make up for Ed Bernstein; there’s the catering crew, the pilot who flies the helicopter over us periodically to get aerial shots. I think the crew must be staying on another island close by. There’s only one we can see from here. I took myself on a recce of our surroundings when we got here and it looks like we’re alone on this one; though I spotted a couple of closed-off areas.

Already the sun is lowering ahead of us. Yellow streaks are splashed across the sky, making the ocean orange. It’s so damn remote here that the only things we can hear when everyone stops talking are the waves and the rustling palm trees. I’ve seen a lot of the U.S, but there’s nothing there like this that I’ve ever seen. Not even in Hawaii.

Alyssa helps Mia arrange the cooking pots. Jaxx and Mike fetch the flint to try to make the fire. 
‘Get the insect repellent!’ Stephanie shouts after them as they wander off towards the necessities box, just behind the tree line.

The production team gathered us up before we left and told us that the necessities box would be located by the well – the only place we’re allowed to drink water from on the island. In the box are bottles of insect repellent, sunscreen, condoms, flint, feminine hygiene products and contact lens solution. This stuff is never shown or talked about in the edits but I’m guessing a bunch of bitten up, scratching and sunburnt people wouldn’t make for very good TV.

‘Is anyone experienced in lighting fires?’ the hippy chick, Journey asks as the breeze picks up her crazy-long hair.

I wait for someone - anyone - to step forward. No one does. ‘Did you get the tinder?’ I say eventually and Punk’s eyebrows raise as I kneel on the sand in my jeans. I know he sees me as some kind of leader already, ever since he handed me the spear on the raft. He seems like a nice kid, too. He’ll be good to keep on my side.

‘Tinder? I have the app on my iPhone!’ Stephanie laughs, twizzling her guitar necklace.

Journey looks confused. ‘Wait - there’s an app for lighting a fire now?’

‘No! It’s a dating app! You swipe people…’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, I’m sorry. Here – I got all this.’ Journey points to an assortment of coconut husks she’s laid by the sticks and seaweed. Behind her at the makeshift cooking station I can see Alyssa laughing as she pours rice from one of the sacks into a giant pot and Mia pours the well water in after her. I notice how Alyssa laughs with her whole body, not just her mouth. The cameras love her. I avert my eyes as she catches me looking.
Damn.

Stephanie’s brow furrows to my side. ‘I never learned how to build a fire,’ she tells us quietly, watching as I reach for the sticks. They all look on as I construct an A-fame with three of the bigger branches and layer smaller ones around it in the sand. The camera guy scurries over for a close-up the instant I reach for the tinder.

‘You have to make a birds nest shape with it, see?’ I say, molding the wiry coconut fur into a round shape and denting the middle with my thumbs.

‘Why?’ Stephanie asks, watching my hands move.

‘The middle bit holds the magnesium from the flint,’ comes a voice. ‘You have to scrape it in, that’s what starts the fire.’ Alyssa. She’s beside me now, dropping to the sand in her rolled-up pants. She still hasn’t taken her shirt off, but she’s tied it up around her waist in a knot and her midriff is glistening. 
I notice the milky white of her stomach, the indent of her bellybutton above her pants as she starts to arrange more sticks around the frame I’ve made. 

‘Help me,’ she orders Stephanie, who sets to work instantly. 'We're lucky they gave us this. Would've taken days with just sticks and rocks for friction.' 
I sit back and 
Alyssa shrugs when she sees my raised eyebrows. 

‘I camped out with Jack and Noah a lot,’ she says, ‘in the national parks, in Colorado. You’re not allowed to make fires in all of them but we had enough practice in their yard with all kinds of things. We almost set fire to their tree house once,’ she grins. ‘Not a good day. Here, may I?’

She gestures for me to give her the birds nest and then takes the flint and steel knife from Mike, who’s handing them out to her now with a look of amusement on his grouchy face. I realize what she’s just said. ‘Colorado?’ I say. ‘I thought you were from New York?’

‘What? No, I’ve lived in Boulder my whole life!’ she tells me. ‘Why did you think I lived in New York?’

‘I thought I saw you…’ I start. I shut my mouth. I’m not about to say I saw her there on the cover of
In Touch
, but I guess I just assumed she’d be based there or L.A, or anywhere but Boulder. I guess I assumed a lot about Alyssa.

Jaxx sits down, watches her intently as she starts scraping bits of the flint from the block, straight into the birds nest. ‘You had coconuts in Colorado?’ he asks and Shan rolls his eyes.

‘You can use a bunch of stuff for tinder,’ Alyssa replies without looking up. For a moment we all just watch her scraping, scraping, scraping and building a silver pile and I try to bring back a memory of my father doing the same, over five years ago. 

I know he must have done this, back somewhere in Virginia. We camped for a month straight when we tackled some of the Appalachian Trail, fighting off the yellow jackets and chiggers, trying to live off Snickers bars and Ramen but burning up to six thousand calories a day as we hiked with all our gear. I left the entire food sack once to outwit a black bear coming at our asses. That’s how I know bears like freeze dried noodles… some of them.

A flurry in the corner of my eye pulls my attention away from Alyssa’s hands. Stephanie’s grabbed the insect repellent and she’s spraying herself everywhere. Mike’s on his feet, grabbing her arm. ‘Are you crazy, child, do that over by the water!’

‘Yes,
dad
,’ she mocks.

‘Well, do you want to burn the whole camp down?’

‘There’s no fire!’ Stephanie reminds him, just as a huge spark flies off the block Alyssa’s holding and sets the magnesium powder in the coconut nest alight. Alyssa falls back against me. I spring up and my hands grip her forearms from behind.

‘Woman make fire!’ Shan yells out, jumping up, batting his fists to his chest like a caveman and everyone claps and whoops noisily. I have to hand it to her – I’m impressed. And my hands are still on her arms.

I release her and she kneels forward again, places the blazing nest carefully under the A-frame. The twigs start to catch. I shuffle in to blow on them, just as she does the same. For a second stray strands of her hair brush my face before we both retract sharply.

‘Nice work, B-list,’ Jaxx grins, settling down on the sand. He’s tied his bandana around his head now, too. His bare chest is streaked with dirt and scratched already from our building efforts.

‘B-list?’ Alyssa cocks an eyebrow at him, swipes a hand across her forehead. Firelight is dancing in her eyes.

‘Well, you’re not A-list, but you’re not Z-list, are you?’ he answers, scratching at a sand fly bite. ‘Oh, I don’t mean to be offensive, I’ve just seen you on the TV with that
Peter Pan
singer and all? I’m guessing you’re somewhere in the middle. Maybe you’re more of an M-list.’

‘Look who learned his alphabet,’ Shan says, folding his arms. ‘Did you bring Elmo with you, Abercrombie?’

Alyssa stands up again to bring the cooking pot over to the fire. I half expect her to slap Jaxx across the face on the way past but she doesn’t even look pissed. 
‘Who says I’m not starting my own list?’ she says. 

She stirs the pot as Mia sits down in our circle, but on the way back, she starts shuffling out of her pants on the spot.
 

Shan claps his hands. ‘Is it orgy time already?’

‘Sorry, but I’m dying in here,’ she says. ‘I need to do something with these.’

‘Want me to help?’ He gets to his feet. ‘Would’ve been easier with my scissors…’

‘Yeah, anything, seriously.’ She’s out of the pants now, standing in some purple lace panties with the shirt still tied around her waist. I try not to stare because I know the jock is, but I can’t help running my eyes up her long, lean legs in the firelight, right up to where the creases of her ass cheeks meet the tops of her thighs.
Damn.

‘We can make some cute shorts with these, island style,’ Shan says, studying them thoughtfully like a tailor. ‘Shame though, Calvin Klein – what are these worth exactly?’

‘Doesn’t matter. TJ Maxx sale.’

‘Ok… well, shorter the better then, with that ass,’ he says, reaching out and pretending to slap it as she jumps away laughing. I have to agree.