Page 132 of Alice Chen's Reality Check

DETECTIVE:No. It sounds like you’ve all been through quite an ordeal. We may want to reach out to you later, so please stay available via phone. I’d like to extend my thanks to you, Mr. Cho, and Mx. Wex for your cooperation and—

ALICE:Wait. I’m sorry, Lex’s last name isWex?

DETECTIVE:Yes. It is.

ALICE:Wow. Thank you for this key piece of information.

DETECTIVE:Please leave.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Hell Is Saying Goodbye

Eleven minutes is how long it takes to explain everything to Dawn Taylor and the rest of the crew. Dawn, with the world-weariness of someone with a long and storied career in Hollywood, takes it in stride.

Eleven hours is how long it takes for the local authorities and paramedic teams to get clearance and make it to the island after Leah calls them. It turns out they’d been trying to come here ever since the eliminated contestants alerted them a couple days before. Once she’d left the villa, Selena had led the other contestants and some of the injured crew in staging a coup. They’d managed to get their phones back and get in contact with the mainland. Unfortunately, their calls had coincided with the last wave of the storm, so no one could get to us until now.

In short order, many things happen at once. After ten days of having the island all to ourselves, insulated from the outside world, suddenly the pristine white beach we’d landed on is crawling with people.

Daniel and I give our statements separately and then together. I immediately track down Lex after I find out their last name. They tell me that it’s “a bit” that they have “fully committed to.”

Afterward, a team of very apologetic and stressed-out representatives from FlixCast arrives. We’re reminded of our NDAs and our contractual obligations, then given our phones and our updated travel itineraries to go home.

The real icing on the cake is getting to see Peter Dixon hauled out.He’d spent the last day or so locked in the villa’s makeshift hold—the pantry—with a bunch of granola bars and H2Whoa for sustenance. I manage to catch a glimpse of him as the authorities lead him away to be officially taken into custody. His hair is frazzled, his linen shirt is rumpled, and he’s glaring mutinously at everyone around him. Freya and Bryan are being escorted just behind him, Freya sobbing quietly and Bryan cursing out everyone who gets within three feet of him.

“Fuck you, and fuck you, and especially fuckyou,” Bryan spits out when he sees me, Daniel, and Chase watching.

“Which one of us do you think gets the special ‘fuck you’?” Daniel asks us.

“Probably Alice,” Chase says. “She figured the whole thing out.”

Peter Dixon looks back at Bryan. “Knock it off,” Peter Dixon says. “There’s no need to be rude.”

“Oh, really? Most of all, fuck you!” Bryan says. “If it weren’t for you and your big ideas, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“Shut your mouth,” Peter Dixon snarls, finally losing his cool. His face is turning lobster red. “That was all you. I didn’t do a damn thing.”

“No, you didn’tdoanything. You just planned and funded it all,” Bryan says.

“Shut up, Bryan,” Freya hisses.

“No, no, please keep talking,” says the detective dryly as Peter and Bryan continue to bicker over Freya’s protests. He directs them to a boat waiting at the dock. “I’mveryinterested in what all of you have to say.”

Finally, as the sun sets, the boat sails out of sight, and it’s over.

—

Afterward, Daniel and I wordlessly head back to the villa, where we stumble into our suite, exhausted beyond belief.

At the very top of the volcano, when I didn’t know if we’d make it out alive, it had been so easy to hold on to Daniel, the boy I’d wanted so badly to beat in high school becoming the man I’d come to careabout so much.

Surviving this show feels like a gift, but one I’m not sure what to do with. Could Daniel and I work?

I technically still live with Chase. We share an apartment and a bank account, among many other things. Plus, Daniel doesn’t live in our hometown anymore, and while the flight to see him might be short, realistically I don’t have the money, time, or vacation hours to visit him all that often. And of course, my mom needs me. I can’t just hop on a plane and leave her to visit Daniel.

Daniel and I would be looking at a long-distance relationship borne out of a short and intense eight-day partnership on a reality show. I don’t know how any of this would fit into my regular, everyday life. My brain, usually so good at logistics, is spinning up all the ways it’s impossible for us to be together.

And most importantly, I don’t know what Daniel wants.

---