Before He Was Gone: Starstruck Book 2 (4 page)

‘Let’s go over the PowerPoint print outs while we wait,’ Kenneth says, laying a bunch of papers out on the table. I sigh to myself. I don’t miss the coffee stain on the front of his pale blue shirt, but I can’t focus on the stupid presentation we’re about to give. K-Lame doesn’t know I’m going to be on
Deserted
. I told him I was going to volunteer with orphans in Cambodia for a bit.

I mean… obviously he’ll find out I’m on the show when the first episode airs at the weekend, but I didn’t want him asking all those questions I knew I wouldn’t be able to answer. 
It’s been bad enough trying to avoid all the
other
questions since the break up – the ones people yell at me on the streets and in the stores and through my car window when I pull up at the lights:

Alyssa, why did he break up with you? Alyssa, is it true he was cheating on you? Alyssa, will you have to give up your ticket to the Academy Awards?

‘Alyssa, are you OK to go through the stats on Excel?’ 

I nod distractedly. Being stalked by the photogs while I was out with Chloe and Noah the other night in New York wasn’t much fun, and neither was being slapped on the cover of
In Touch
with them. They were nice enough to fly me over to say goodbye and good luck, and while I didn’t see much of Noah - or Sebastian - at least Chloe and I got to spend more time together.

‘What if you meet a guy out there?’ she gushed over our second bottle of white wine on the balcony. We were watching Manhattan move from their pimped-up penthouse. ‘You can’t get more romantic than a desert island.’

‘Chloe, I’m pretty sure there’ll be
no one
to lust after while we’re all eating rats and growing hair in weird places and not wearing deodorant,’ I told her, though for some reason the guy’s face sprang back into my head then - the tall, ripped and sexy one I saw at the interviews.

He was the only other person there I made eye-contact with; still the only other human I can picture when I try to imagine what it’ll be like out there. I don’t even know if he made it through, but his face has been etched on my brain like a tattoo since I met his eyes.

Right now it’s November 03. It has to be today that they’re coming for me. I feel like I’ve had six coffees myself, I’m so on edge. There was another photo of Sebastian with the blond girl again this morning, too; this time on TMZ. They were just walking in their gym clothes again, but I thought I was about to wretch up my heart.

The door opens again and the clients walk in. We all stand up. They’re in suits, wearing shiny shoes, carrying laptop bags.

‘Nice to see you, gentlemen,’ Kenneth starts, offering them seats. Megan closes Instagram, puts her cell down next to me and gets up to offer them coffee and cookies. We shake their hands and even though they decline the cookies I take one myself - if only to stop my teeth grinding against themselves. I’m so anxious I’m about to puke.

My bag is waiting under my desk. My passport’s in it, my Prada flip-flops (a gift from a press launch), a summer dress and a sarong. I really don’t have time for this meeting. I want to head back to my desk and look up more survival skills on the Internet. I have a list of them ready to rock, even though each time I commit one to memory I get another thought rush in and take over it, like what the hell I’m going to do without tweezers or a razor.

‘Thanks for having us, guys,’ one of the clients says, meeting my eyes as he sits down.

I had a total mental block when it came to packing. They probably won’t let me have half the stuff I want or need, so in the end I just went with the basics. Originally I wore a necklace that Sebastian gave me, but when I Skyped with Chloe last night she made me take it off. ‘Do you want him to see you on the TV, obsessing over him?’ she said.

She was right. But I see his face every time I close my eyes… the way he made love to me the night of the wedding, tangling his hands in my hair as he drove into me drunk on champagne.

God.
I sit up straighter in my chair. My life is about to change. I won’t have to think about all this when I’m in Indonesia and I’m fighting for survival; the same way I won’t have to think about K-Lame and these pointless meetings.

The screen is on, blaring our presentation. The two clients are nodding in apparent interest and one is fiddling with his big brown Colorado beard. My nerves are making it way too warm in this room. I’m wearing a pantsuit – a navy-blue Calvin Klein tuxedo blazer and my favourite classic-fit pants to be precise. But I’ve stashed a low cut Zara sundress in my desk drawer so I can change right back into it after this meeting. 

I don’t care if it’s November and freezing outside - there’s no way the network spies are marching in later and dragging me off to the jungle in a pantsuit and heels. 
I’m prepared. I keep all kinds of outfits here in the office anyway. I never know -
knew
- when Sebastian might call me up for an after-work impromptu flight out of Denver.

The door opens again. ‘Alyssa?’

‘That’s me,’ I say as everyone looks to the stranger standing in the doorway. My heart wedges in my throat. He has a camera. ‘No…’ I start.

The bearded guy pulls off his beard. ‘Yes,’ he grins, flashing a set of pearly teeth that look way too white to be real. I know those teeth. I know that face.

‘Ed Bernstein,’ I say, ramming my hands through my hair and lowering my forehead to the table. ‘Awesome.’

’Awesome,’ Megan parrots. 
She’s smiling like the cat that got the cream when I look up, and so is Kenneth. The world moves in slow motion as Ed - the man who won ‘sexiest host of a TV show’ three years running - steps towards me. ‘This is no ordinary meeting, Alyssa Joannou,’ he says. ‘Or should we say Alyssa The Greek?’

‘I didn’t think orphans in Cambodia were really your style,’ Kenneth cuts in, leaning back in his seat smugly and folding his arms. I frown at him. I hope the camera catches his coffee stain.

‘All set?’ Ed asks, eyebrows arched and I nod, trying to smile as I stand up. ‘How well do you think Alyssa here will do on
Deserted?
’ he asks Kenneth.

‘I can answer that,’ Megan jumps in. ‘Alyssa is the brains of this company and she’s going win this competition, I know it!’

I feel my cheeks flush crimson but I’m being shooed out the door now and my pulse is throbbing. On wobbly feet I walk to my desk on my too-high heels and as I reach for my bag I see my sundress poking out of the bottom drawer.

Crap.

‘I was going to change my clothes,’ I say, spinning round and almost banging into a lens protruding in my direction. ‘Can I just go put my dress on real quick?’ As soon as the words come out, I realize how dumb that’s going to make me sound in the edit.

‘No can do, you know the rules,’ Ed says, shaking his head. I catch Megan mouthing the word
sorry
and I stick my tongue out at her. I don’t blame them for setting me up, though. This will make great TV. No wonder K-Lame had the cleaners in yesterday – I didn’t even think.

I’m escorted out of the office, straight to the elevators as everyone yells good luck and ‘don’t get savaged by a monkey’ at me. But when we leave the building and I’m hurried into a waiting black car with the ominous skull and palm leaves on the sides, my excitement is tainted momentarily. I’ve already messed things up, haven’t I? I’m going to a desert island in a Calvin Klein pantsuit after all.

‘The Raja Ampat islands are so remote that even some Indonesians have never heard of them,’ Ed Bernstein is saying into one of the cameras pointed at his face from our boat. All the girls are holding their hair back from their faces. His shirt is all caught up in the wind as we speed across the water and I hold a hand to the bandana tied around my shaved head.

The sky above us is so blue. Islands are dotted all around us. Some of them are just rock formations, jagged like knuckles on clenched fists rising out of the ocean. Every time we come close to anything with sand my heart rate spikes in case it’s the one. All my instincts are primed, like they were on that damn zombie camp.

‘There are over one and a half thousand small islands in the archipelago,’ Ed carries on, ‘and it’s here in the middle of the Coral Triangle that these ten individuals, from all walks of life, are about to be deserted. They’ve just flown six hours from Jakarta, folks, the capital city of Indonesia, to Sorong. They’re tired and hungry already and let me tell you, it’s pretty damn hot out here.’

The camera pans around us all. My senses heighten further as the saltwater splashes on my skin and the burning sun zaps at my head through the black fabric. My eyes fall on Alyssa across from me. She’s wearing a navy-colored suit and I almost want to laugh when I see it. She was probably shopping for that in some fancy store when they picked her up.

She catches me smiling and the deep brown pools pull me in, in the sunlight. I see that expression again - the half-amused, questioning look she shot me back in L.A. Her short, black hair is blowing out in all directions as she grips the side. Her nose is slightly upturned and her full pink lips, minus all the gloss look smaller than they did when I saw her before, or in the photo on the cover of that magazine. She looks normal. I pull my eyes away. She’s so striking. Beautiful.

I scan the crates between us. We all know there are supplies inside them ‘cause we can hear the chickens squawking over the roar of the engine. I’ve noticed two rafts are tied to the sides of the boat with ropes. There’s a spear, too, with a mask and snorkel attached to it by a cord.

‘The phenomenal coral wilderness beneath the surface of these still, turquoise waters make up the country’s largest national marine park,’ Ed enthuses, motioning around him. I notice a pretty blond girl’s eyes widen beneath thick bangs next to Alyssa. She looks a few years younger than me - around twenty-one, I’m guessing.

‘The underwater biodiversity here makes it a scuba diver’s paradise. But remember, guys, there will be no flippers and fins for your castaways. They’ll be surviving on the bare minimum, participating in a series of challenges to test their physical and mental strength and - perhaps the most testing thing of all - deciding on one person a week to leave the competition. Only one of these ten people will walk away with the million dollars.’

The blond girl smiles at me nervously. I note the perfect manicure, the tiny daisy dukes she’s wearing. I can see half a silver guitar on a chain around her neck. It looks like it’s been slit down the middle. Aside from that, the only way she could look any more ‘cheerleader’ is if they’d made her bring pompoms.

I smile back at her, look away, try to rein my judgements in. I can’t help assuming things about all these people and I’m sure they’re doing the same thing, but we haven’t been allowed to speak, or even look at each other so far. We were all taken back to the same hotel on Franklin Avenue - some arrived the same day as me, some arrived twenty-four hours later, and we were briefed in our individual rooms about flying in spread-out seats around a private plane.

When we arrived, we were made to put on the exact same clothes we were collected in, so the viewers at home will think we were just sent straight here. In truth we all got a pretty good feast last night. I ordered five things off the room service menu. 
I thought briefly of sticking some food between my ‘bum’ cheeks for the tough times, but Harri was right - we were all strip-searched before getting on the boat. I heard someone had a pair of nail scissors confiscated. I have no clue where they were hiding them.

I made a couple of calls to mom and my cousin Evan. All things considered I’m doing pretty good right now. I don’t know about the others. Some of them don’t look prepared at all, especially one scrawny white guy, who won’t stop rubbing the saltwater spray off his glasses with his sleeveless sweater. The nerd? He’s sitting next a huge black woman - the mother-figure, perhaps? 

The nerd nods with a head of frizzy brown curls as he catches my eye, just as a chicken’s loud squawk makes him jump. I look away before I laugh again. Does this nerd
know
he’s the nerd? Does the cheerleader know she’s the cheerleader? Damn... am I the homeless freak? Alyssa’s the celebrity, for sure. They’re probably hoping she’ll have some hissy-fit over a lack of tweezers, or a razor.

The boat stops and everyone stands up. I scan the island we’re closest to. It must be a mile away. The water between us is a shade of blue I’ve actually never seen before with my own eyes. On one end I can see giant black rocks, stacked and cluttered like swept up puzzle pieces, but for the most part it’s just thick jungle and bright white sand. Adrenaline flares through me as Ed holds up a hand. 
‘Castaways, we’ve reached our destination.'

The cheerleader looks green. 

‘This is as close as we’re going to bring you to your new home,' Ed says. 'Right now you have two minutes and thirty seconds to get everything you think you’re going to need for the next eight weeks off this boat and onto that island. OK. It's up to you guys, now. Work together. It all starts here. Good luck.
Go!
’

He’s barely finished talking before the ten of us are shooting into action and I’m throwing the bag they gave us all over my shoulder, grabbing for the spear. It doesn’t matter how many chickens are in those crates – with the spear I can feed us with fish for as long as we need.

‘Slash them!’ the big black lady yells at me, pointing at the ropes tied around the crates, though she doesn’t need to. I’m already on it. In seconds, the spearhead has sliced through them all and the others are pulling the tops off, checking what’s inside.

‘Throw them all over!’ one guy commands everyone as a camera swings up close – he’s taller than me, wide and clean-shaven, wearing an Abercrombie shirt. The jock.

‘Wait!’ I say, grabbing his wrist. ‘We need the rafts down there first, or they’ll sink.’ I dart to the other side, start untying the ropes holding the rafts on board. ‘Help me,’ I yell at the cheerleader who’s followed me, ‘and keep these ropes, we’ll need them!’

The jock shoots me a look of annoyance, but he starts helping us anyway. Together we loosen the raft in roughly seven seconds and send it crashing into the clear blue water. I turn around. The others have loosened the second one now on the other side of the boat. ‘Two people on each one, we need to stack them up!’ I say, pulling off my shirt in one movement, throwing it down to the raft and jumping  overboard with the spear.

The bathtub-temperature of the water shocks me as much as the cold would for a second, but I pull myself easily onto the bamboo slats. There’s a splash next to me. The cheerleader blinks against the saltwater and instantly her mascara runs, but before I’ve even helped haul her up beside me she’s yelling up for the others to start throwing everything overboard. ‘Get it down here, ya’ll!’

‘One minute left!’ Ed calls.

Alyssa’s looking overboard with one of the sacks of rice, waiting for instruction. ‘Drop them!’ I shout and she and the black woman let three go in quick succession. I catch and stack each one as the nerd wrestles with a coil of heavy rope next to them. I can hear the others loading up on the other side now. ‘Evenly,’ I say and we start arranging the rice around the edges to balance the weight. A camera guy floating around us on a yellow kayak is trying his best to catch everything we’re doing without falling overboard in our wake.

‘We need the goat!’ Alyssa says above me. The sound of her voice for the first time in reality makes me smile as her face disappears and reappears with another girl – a studenty looking Asian girl with her hair tied in pigtails. They’re holding a small goat over the side, yelling at us to catch it now.

The nerd is lowering himself over the boat with the rope over his shoulder. He’s looking at the water like he’s terrified. ‘Get in, hurry,’ the cheerleader urges him and he whips off his glasses, plunges in with a gasp, just as Alyssa drops the squirming goat over the side, into my arms.

It’s heavy and it bleats as I catch it. I shove the thing quickly at the cheerleader. ‘Hold onto it,’ I tell her. They’ll edit this good with some hardcore dramatic music, no doubt.

‘Help me!’ the nerd splutters, doggy-paddling over to me. I reach down to yank him up in one movement and he coughs beside us, tangled in the rope. His curls are a flattened wet mess on his head as he fumbles to put his wet glasses back on.

‘Get the paddles! Slash the ropes,’ I instruct him, shoving the spear at him and turning back up to Alyssa.

‘Catch the chickens!’ she yells at me. She and the mother-figure are each holding an end of a crate over the boat now, waiting for me to catch it.

‘Forty seconds left, guys, don’t leave anything you’re going to need!’ Ed instructs. ‘This is your last chance.’

‘OK, drop it!’ I shout up. Alyssa releases the crate instantly and turns back for her own bag, slinging it over her pantsuit blazer. The squawking assaults our ears as I catch the birds. They’re louder than the goddam goat as Alyssa clambers onto the side of the boat and drops to the water beside me like a cannon.

I put the crate down, reach a hand out to her as she swims with difficulty to the raft in all her clothes. Her fingers clasp around mine till she gets her grip and in two seconds she’s flying upwards towards me. She falls against me, swiping the wet hair from her face.

‘Did you get the chickens?’ she asks as I put my hands on her shoulders to steady her.

‘We got the chickens, Alyssa.’

’You know my name?’

‘I’ve seen you before,’ I say. Up close, her deep brown eyes are shining with what I think is laughter and something about her makes me want to laugh, too. This is crazy.

She pulls away from me, shaking her head. She’s pulling off her soaking blazer now, ordering the cheerleader to hold on tighter to the squirming goat. The Asian student has disappeared and I know the raft on the other side will be holding her and the others by now.

‘Time’s up!’ Ed Bernstein yells as the mother-figure hits the water with a force and starts swimming towards us. She almost knocks the camera guy off his kayak in her waves and it takes both Alyssa and I to hoist her up this time.

‘Great job everyone!’ Ed declares from the boat. ‘It’ll take even more teamwork to get to your island and start setting up camp. The sun sets approximately four hours from now. Remember, you have no watches, no clocks. You have to learn to read the sky.’

I know how to read the sky. Do these people? I look on as the other raft holding five others, plus pots, pans and rice floats out from the other side of the boat. They hold their hands up to us and we all do the same.

‘We need to move fast,’ the Abercrombie jock yells, but the nerd is already distributing our paddles and laying the spear back down next to me. I meet his eyes through the lenses of his glasses. He’s giving me the spear like it’s mine, like he simply borrowed it. A moment passes between us. Some sort of hierarchy is establishing itself already and it’s only been less than three minutes. I try not to smile. I guess I know how to use it. May as well keep it close.

‘Everyone, pitch in,’ I say, picking up a paddle.

‘Not her, she needs to hold the goat,’ Alyssa tells me, grabbing my arm and motioning to the cheerleader, who’s still struggling with the animal. I contemplate taking the goat instead, or telling the mother-figure to hold it, as she’s clearly stronger. But we’ll reach the island faster if the biggest people paddle. Time is precious. We’ll be fighting the twilight before we know it.

‘I’m Stephanie, who’re you?’ the cheerleader asks me as I settle myself cross-legged on the bamboo at the front. Alyssa sits next to me, dunking her paddle, looking out at the island. Her wet, salty hair is dripping all over her skin and she’s shining. The beat of my heart is still hard on my ribs. I focus on the palm trees; the way the sand is so dazzling from here it’s almost blinding. There's no going back. I’m really doing this.

‘I’m Joshua,’ I reply.