by Erin Teagan
“You’re just like your father, you know. God forbid a Kensington has a real injury that requires some bed rest.” She snorts. “I want you to take it easy. You’ve got a nasty cut on your forehead that I had to glue shut, and a minor concussion.” She looks at me. “That’s no joke, okay?”
I take the medicine when she’s not looking.
Muscle Mindy is running circles around the medical tent with Isabel on her back when I step out into the sun.
“Hey, Amy!” she says, trotting past, and I don’t even correct her.
I hear Dad’s voice coming from the prop tent and I take my time walking over, still feeling a bit wobbly. He’s rummaging through the bin of fishing gear with the props guy when I step through the flap door. On one side of the tent is a long table divided into little squares with masking tape, one for each prop item. The stuffed squirrel is there, its little square labeled SQUIRREL, SCENE 7, DAY 4. There are a lot of random things, like a fishing net, a plastic gray mouse, bear spray, a Survivor Guy knife, three pieces of firewood, a snakeskin, the hook made out of a rock, and a cluster of dead yellow flies. The other side of the tent is a mess of stacked boxes filled with junk. The one next to me is overflowing with paper leaves of every color.
“Hey, Dad,” I say. “I’m back. Ready for another day on set.”
He rushes over and gives me a delicate hug, then looks at my head. “Does it hurt? Does Claire know you’re out of bed?”
“Just a tiny concussion. I’m fine.”
They let me back on the set for the day, but Claire and Muscle Mindy follow my every step. The makeup lady spends a long time fashioning a paper leaf bandage to go over my real one. Muscle Mindy gets one to match and basically does the entire morning shoot for me, except for the parts where Dad’s cooking up a swamp muskie for lunch while Jake and I are sitting on the beach of the lake. When there’s absolutely no potential risk of bodily harm.
The rest of the time, I sit on a camping chair a few feet away, under an umbrella for shade. Adam sits next to me and we watch Muscle Mindy fake-build a raft with my brother and Dad. I can’t even look at him. He stuck up for me at the ditch, and I blew it.
Rick interrupts the raft-building. “Mindy, maybe a little less grunting? We’re hoping to emphasize the strengthening father-son and -daughter relationships, not muscles.”
Adam crosses his arms and shakes his head. “I can’t wait to leave this place.”
I touch my head delicately, my injury throbbing under the bandage. “Why do you fight with him so much?” They’ve been at each other’s throats all morning. And I’m pretty sure it’s my fault. “You didn’t have to stick up for me, you know.”
Adam skips a stone across the lake. “I’m only here because my mom said I have to be. He’s not my real dad.”
“What?” I say. “Really?”
Adam sighs, tossing a pinecone into the water. “No. I mean, my stepdad is my real dad. Not him.”
I try to skip a stone across the chocolate lake water, but it just sinks out of sight.
“My stepdad never left me and my mom for some stupid show.”
A sharp pain shoots through my forehead. “He left you?”
“Four years ago.”
It’s when Survivor Guy started to get popular. I was eight when Dad started disappearing for weeks at a time for tapings. But he always came back.
“It’s like all of a sudden this guy I don’t know anymore wants me to hang out with him again. Like that’s going to make everything better.”
I wonder if his parents were fighting all the time and pretending they weren’t. I want to ask him if his dad ever stayed in hotels instead of coming home and sleeping in his own house. I wonder so many things, but then the raft-building scene is over and I don’t ask any of my questions. Because maybe I don’t want to know.
Everyone breaks for afternoon tea and I’m so tired and headachy and body-throbbing, I skip it and go take a nap in the camper.
When I wake up, it’s dark outside and I’m discombobulated. Did I miss dinner? Where is everyone? The set is empty and the dining tent is dark. The moon is full, casting shadows across the swampy ground. I step outside, looking for Dad and Jake. I see light pouring out of the cottage with the big screened porch, and what must be the entire crew crowded together inside.
“You’re going to miss it.” Laura comes trotting up, pulling off the gloves she uses to feed the animals. “It’s about to start.”
“What is?” I ask, but then I know. The announcement.
The animal trainer and I squeeze inside. Dad’s standing next to the fireplace while Rick is perched on the hearth talking to the crew about how to survive quicksand. Dad’s stunt double and Muscle Mindy are each roasting six marshmallows at once on long sticks, passing them back when they’re browned. They’ve got all the dangerous jobs. I push through the crowd, and when Mindy waggles one in front of my face, I can’t help myself. I take it.
“Okay!” Rick claps and whistles until the crowd quiets. “I’d like to turn it over to the man himself, the real-life Survivor Guy who not only outsmarted a sea of hungry sharks as a young boy, but managed to convince the wildlife service that manages the Great Dismal Swamp to host our crew for this production. George Kensington!”
Rick sweeps an arm in Dad’s direction and pulls him up onto the hearth, jiggling his shoulders and knocking him in the head like they’re best buddies.
Jake comes up beside me. “Big news, Ali!”
My mouth is full of marshmallow and I grunt, “Will someone please tell me what’s going on?”
Rick is standing off to the side now, holding a rope attached to a banner or something that’s rolled up above the fireplace mantel.
Dad clears his throat and I attempt to wipe the sticky marshmallow from my hands, but just manage to spread the mess to my shirt. I fantasize that Dad’s about to announce he’s taking a break from Survivor Guy to come home and be with his family for a while. Survivor Guy’s success may have meant we got a new pool, but Dad hasn’t even been home long enough to swim in it. And what’s more important than family, right?
“Good evening, crew!” Everyone claps until Dad raises his hand for them to stop. “I hope everyone’s planning on a nice soak in the hot tub tonight for those sore muscles.” He winks and everyone roars with laughter. “But, seriously, a lot of magic’s been happening this week.” He points to a man in a Survivor Guy safari hat by the door and then to the chef standing next to him. “Daniel caught a bluespotted sunfish with a fishing spear, and Lou made a fantastic pot roast for dinner.” He looks to the other side of the room. “Bianca taped some amazing footage at the lake today, and Samuel made a snorkel out of a hollowed twig.”
Everyone claps, the chef takes a bow, and Bianca waves, a camera not hefted to her shoulder for once.
“We’ve come a long way since our web series days,” Dad continues. “Getting picked up by a network made us the top-rated survival show, leaving Me in the Wild in the dust and”—Dad has to talk louder over the hoots and hollers—“last week I signed a new contract”—the crew erupts in cheers again—“for another fifteen episodes.”
Jake grabs my hand and squeezes it. “When?” I say to him, pulling out of his grip. “When does the next season start? He’s coming home first, right?”
“But a few changes are going to happen,” Dad says. The room falls completely silent and I can hear the bugs singing in the swamp. There must be a billion of them.
Rick pulls the rope and the banner tumbles open, revealing the words SURVIVOR GUY AND SON: THE NEW GENERATION, MONDAYS AT 7 P.M. in giant skyscraper-size red letters. Jake is jumping up and down like he’s at a concert, bumping me with his elbow. Survivor Guy and Son?
“That’s not all,” Dad says. “Most of you know this already, but for those who don’t—”
Rick pulls the rope again and a second banner unfurls, this one with a black and white drawing of a fancy triangle building with a SURVIVOR GUY, INC. sign on the front of it
. At the bottom, it says SAN DIEGO, CA.
“I’m moving to San Diego!” Jake yells in my face. “And I’m going to be Survivor Son!”
“What?” I say. “We’re moving?” And nobody asks me? What about Harper? And archery? I’m supposed to just leave everything behind and start over again? Does anyone know what that could do to a teenage girl?
Somehow everything is so loud all at once, I’m suffocating. Champagne is being passed over my head, dripping onto me. And then everyone’s singing the Survivor Guy jingle so loudly I can’t hear the bugs anymore.
“Dad says you can join us when you turn eighteen too!” Jake says. “It will be a whole Survivor Guy family thing!”
I feel sick, dizzy, the room too hot and full. Because I realize that we’re not moving. Just Dad and Jake. He’s splitting up the family. He’s leaving me and Mom.
Dad spots me from his perch on the fireplace, his smile dropping. When was he planning on telling me? He jumps into the crowd, coming for me, but I wedge myself backwards past the crew clinking their glasses with their life-is-perfect smiles. I push past Muscle Mindy and the chef and the guy that speared a fish. And then Adam’s there, looking at me sad and sorry like I’m a two-year-old who just dropped her Popsicle in the sand. I swing away from him, out the door. Dad calls my name, but I keep walking, hoping I can find a patch of quicksand to swallow me up whole.
Twenty-Three
When Dad and Jake get back to the trailer, I’m trying to sleep, wishing the thin curtain between me and the rest of the world was a hundred-pound door with a thousand bolt locks. I shut my eyes tight and keep them closed, even when I feel the curtain open and hear someone breathing into my space. It’s Dad. He touches my ear and I pretend I’m in a coma.
“Ali-Gator.” He nudges my shoulder. One, two, three times.
When he gives up, I feel the whoosh of the curtain closing. I open my eyes and turn over to look out the window at the swamp.
Dad and Jake are talking about their big move in the kitchen area. Jake wants to know if he can bring girls to the Survivor Guy set. Dad only wants to talk about the Pacific Islands.
“FACT!” Dad says. “They actually have flying fish there. And sea turtles like you wouldn’t believe. You ever swim with a dolphin?”
I hear cabinets thumping closed. Snacks being opened and ice cubes in glasses. They’re still celebrating. Without me.
It’s windy outside and I watch as a paper coffee cup tumbles past my window. I can see the back side of the leaves and the trees bending with the force of each gust.
“How’re we going to get my bed to San Diego?” Jake asks.
I picture Jake’s room empty and my stomach tightens. How could Dad split up the family like this? I always thought the separation was Mom’s fault, because of her bad moods when Dad was around, rolling her eyes when she thought I wasn’t looking, never letting anyone forget when Dad was late or missing something important. But—maybe I was wrong all this time. She must have known that Dad was leaving us. And maybe that’s what she meant when she said I wasn’t ready for the set. That I couldn’t handle this. She wasn’t trying to control me. She really was trying to protect me.
I stare out at the wind-whipped trees, wishing that my phone had one second of service, just one bar, just enough so I could call my mom to come get me. But I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I know, I’m opening my eyes and everything is dark in the trailer, and the rain hitting our roof sounds like golf balls of hail. Outside, the set is deserted, and small limbs have cracked off the trees and littered the ground. A bolt of lightning illuminates everything for a second and I see the trees are dancing and I can’t believe there are any leaves left on them at all with this much wind. I can feel it against the trailer, trying to push us to the swamp water, and I grip my mattress. I peek under the curtain and hang upside down into Jake’s bunk.
“Just a storm,” he says, half asleep.
There’s another explosion of thunder and lightning and I flip back up. The trailer sways, the wind sounding like a truck stuck in the sand. I open my tiny window and let it in. It’s moist, earthy, and smoky. Suddenly nobody is in bed anymore, the set coming alive with headlamps. They’re converging on the dining tent, which is about to collapse, its stakes flailing in the wind. “Jake?” But when I peek into his bunk, he’s out cold. How can anybody sleep through this?
“Dad?” I call, but then I see that the crew has it under control and I feel the pull of sleep on my bruised body. I close my eyes for a minute, and the shouts from set and the sounds of the storm on the swamp mingle with my dream of Harper and pop tarts and alligators in cages.
I don’t know what time it is when I open my eyes again, but the set is empty and the very reddish tip of the sun is peeking through the trees. I struggle to shut my window. The air is so much cooler, now that the storm went through. The dining tent is upright again, a dozen more stakes than before securing it in place. My stomach aches from only having a marshmallow for dinner. And then I remember Dad’s big announcement and wonder what Harper will think when she sees it on the news today. Probably that I never tell her anything. That I’m keeping secrets. Maybe even lying to her. And the bad thing is, she’s mostly right.
There’s a light on in the back of the dining tent and my stomach squinches up with hunger. I open my curtain and launch myself from my top bunk onto the floor. Jake doesn’t move. He’s still covered in fly bites from the first day. How will he ever be Survivor Son if he can’t even take a fly bite? Grandpa once got stung fifteen times by a hornet and still managed to kill it and eat it for dinner, as he described in chapter sixteen, “Bugs, Protein, and You.”
I’m going home. I’ll stay with Harper until Mom comes back. I just can’t be here anymore where my dad has his own little girl to drive his golf carts and play horsey with. And where everything is staged and scripted and fake. I’m such an idiot for believing he was the real thing when everyone else knew the truth. I guess I know him about as much as he knows me. I belong with Mom, where no one will expect me to climb branchless trees or leap over bogs. Where the crowded halls of middle school will be the closest I get to surviving in the wild. Where I’ll never have to worry that she’ll leave me for someplace with fancy flying fish.
I put a sweatshirt over my muddy Sweet Treat Bake Shop shirt and zip my bag closed, tossing it onto my bunk. Hopefully someone can take me on a boat back to the inlet. Call me a cab. I’ll even take a bus. And as soon as I have service again, I’ll call Mom.
I won’t try to say goodbye to Ronnie and Theo. Or get to explain myself or say sorry. They’ll just remember me as some selfish girl that lies to people’s faces.
The camper is still dark, Dad sleeping in his room, his snores penetrating his closed door. I look out the window, my stomach growling again, and decide there’s time for one more walk.
When I come out of the camper and cross the little bridge to the dining tent, the wind is whipping with the scent of evergreens and—I pause, because again, I smell smoke, and I wonder where it’s coming from.
“Hello?” I say when I step inside.
“Breakfast’s at seven,” the chef calls from behind the privacy screen that separates the kitchen from the dining area, steam coiling overtop.
“Need help?” I ask, taking the closest seat, weak from the walk over on such an empty belly. I mean, how long does it take to succumb to malnourishment? Two hours? Twelve?
The chef comes around the screen, wiping his hands on a towel, a crackling walkie-talkie hanging from his apron. “Hey!” he says when he sees me, rushing over. “I never told you how worried I was when I heard what happened the other day. Pretty brave of you to take that jump, you know.”
I smile. “Or stupid, I guess.”
“Risk taker. Just like your dad.” He pulls the walkie-talkie off his apron and brings it to his ear, listening to a fuzzy voice. He holds up a just-a-minute finger to me.
I breathe in the sugar-sweet smells filling the tent
, but then I snap to attention when I hear something on the radio.
“Did he just say wildfire?”
Chef hangs his walkie-talkie back on his apron. “I’ve been listening to the emergency alert channel since the storm came through. There was a small fire on the other side of the lake, but it’s mostly contained already. Lightning strike.”
“But not all the way contained?”
He waves me off with a laugh. “They deal with this all the time, I’m sure.” He bustles back to his kitchen and returns with two steaming bowls in his hands, putting one onto the table in front of me. I take a drippy bite of something hot and soupy. I gag. My body just rejects bad food.
“Not a fan of grits?” His radio squawks as he walks back to his kitchen, but I can’t make out the words.
“Uh, no, I love it,” I call after him, attempting another bite. But I’m distracted, listening to the wind outside, wondering what “mostly contained” means. A plop of grits lands on my bare leg.
“Chef?” He’s coming back to the table with honey and brown sugar and butter, lining them up in front of me. “Shouldn’t we be worried? About the fire?”
He pats me on the head. “They’ve probably put it out by now.” He sits next to me, diving into his own bowl of grits. “I’ve got bear claws in the oven, but they need another fifteen minutes.”
I stare at him.
“The pastry,” he says. “In honor of the bear tracks scene later this morning.”
I smile, being polite, because by then I’ll be on a bus home. I wonder if they’ll have to kill off my character to explain why I’m gone. Maybe they find my scattered clothes near the bear den and assume I’ve met a grisly end, just like Betsy Sue’s son.
A splintering sound crackles through the air, and even though I’ve never heard it before, I know for sure it’s a tree falling. And not just any tree, by the sound of it. A big one. The chef and I leap up, circling each other, not sure where to run. It sounds like it’s right over us and it’s going to demolish the tent. I’ve never read anything about surviving a tree fall, so I just hightail it toward the door, because maybe if I can see the tree, I can dodge it. I’m halfway there, the chef gripping me by the forearm, when we hear the tree smash to the ground, and the sound of something exploding in its wake.
