Page 56 of Alice Chen's Reality Check

“We’ve got this,” Bacon says. He pounds the table as he chews the cow eye.

“You’vegot this,” Firefly replies, rubbing his shoulders. “Remember when our ice chest got a crack in it at Burning Man, and we lost all our food and we ended up eating that unflavored whey protein for three days? This is just like that!”

Kendall is struggling through the cake. “This is a culinary atrocity.”

“Would you rather be eating the raw cow eye?” Tarun shouts back at her, holding up his plate.

Kendall looks at the half-eaten mess he’s left. “You said you had ithandled!”

“I did, but I—” Tarun tries to finish, but nothing comes out.

Or rather, nowordscome out.

Instead, he clutches at his stomach briefly, and then half a cow’s eye erupts out of his mouth and plops onto the sand.

“Ohmygod!” Brittany says, jumping back to avoid it.

Jaxon isn’t as lucky, and some of the eye splatters onto his boot. “Shit,” he chokes out, and then he dry-heaves once before projectile vomiting.

“Selena? Babe?” Chase says behind me. There’s a sheen of sweat on Selena’s luminous golden skin, and she’s starting to turn green. Chase braces her, but he isn’t looking too hot either. Both of them start to double over, Selena gripping the table’s edge and Chase stumbling next to her.

“Make sure you get this!” Dawn Taylor yells, pointing a cameraperson to our table.

The threat of Chase and Selena joining Jaxon and Tarun in this impromptu group activity is enough to send everyone scattering.

Ava and Noah are trying to make their escape when Selena hurls directly in their path, bits of the Gluttony Challenge splashing all over their Birkenstocks.

“Ew, ew, ew!” Ava moans.

“Hey, get over here and start cleaning!” Bryan shouts at the PAs. They race to grab cleaning supplies—all except for one.

“Anton, you’ve got to help too,” Freya says, prodding him.

“No way. I didn’t sign up for being on the cleanup crew,” he says with a laugh.

“Seriously, you’re not going to help us out?” Noah asks, gesturing from Anton to himself and Ava. “This is your chance to step up and show your bosses that you’re good in a crisis. People remember that kind of thing when it’s time for promotions or bonuses.”

“Nah, I’m good here,” Anton says. He pats one of the PAs on the shoulder as he leaves. “Have fun, buddy.”

The PA he ditched mutters, just loud enough that I catch it, “Fuckin’ asshole.”

“Alice, you need to get out of here,” Daniel says urgently. He shuts his eyes as if he’s in pain.

“What’s happening? Are you feeling sick, too?”

He nods. “It’s not going to be pretty. Go save yourself.”

The thought is tempting, but Daniel looks so miserable. And we’re a team—I mean, we shook on it. I can’t leave him here to barf on camera.

“Come on, we’re going,” I say.

I take his hand. He really must not be feeling well, because he doesn’t put up a fight as I steer him back toward the villa. In the chaos, no one tries to stop us.

We’ve gone another few yards when he pulls back.

“I can’t take another step,” he says.

“Good thing you don’t have to.” I point at the trash can I’ve led him to, not too far from the catering tent. After I nudge the trash can closer to Daniel, I stand in front of it to shield him from camera view. Then I politely study a palm tree a few feet away and ignore anything I hear for the next couple of minutes.

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