Araminta stretches on the golden sand with the sun low in the sky, and the Iconic logo slowly unfurls across her elongated body.
Post-yoga, she walks straight past the pinned secrets with barely a glance. The camera zooms in, lingering on the nails of that snatched note and the scraps of paper still clinging to them.
She enters the kitchen, hair frizzing in her ponytail, her skin dewy from exercise, and piles fruit and vegetables into a blender.
Jerome joins moments after she sits down, his shirt crooked and eyes bleary with sleep.
“Morning,” he mutters, fetching a cup of coffee. “Look, I wanted to apologize about yesterday. I’ll be honest; I got defensive when Isko came at me like that and I threw you under the bus. It wasn’t right—especially for someone who considers themselves a feminist. So if I hurt your feelings, I want to say sorry.”
“Oh, that’s okay…”
“Did you know I took a class on women’s studies in college?”
“Umm…no, I didn’t.”
“Yeah, really great stuff. Really eye-opening. It influenced much of what we do at Soltek.” He comes to join her at the table, stifling a yawn as he collapses into the chair. “You know, it’s not often someone’s up before me. I really believe in rising with the sun—chasing the day and all that. No such thing as success at a late hour, am I right?”
She takes her time chewing on the seeds sprinkled atop her acai bowl. “Sure.”
“I don’t drink very often, that’s probably why you beat me. But you look so together and you drank twice as much as I did, and I’m struggling to stay vertical.”
“Keep drinking then,” she suggests. “I was always told the problems with alcohol only come when you stop. It’s a vindictive lover, throwing your belongings out the window when you leave her.”
“I was always told to eat my vegetables.” Rhys appears in the doorway. “Evidently our parents had very different styles.”
“There is something to ‘hair of the dog,’” Jerome admits.
“There’s another secret to my hangover cure,” Araminta confesses. “It’s called aspirin.”
Rhys laughs. “Well, I’m allergic, but I still don’t believe it’s powerful enough that you seriously woke up early, exercised, and made a healthy breakfast after last night.”
Araminta shrugs, a slight smile on her lips, eyebrow quirked. “I thought I made it quite clear last night when I listed my many successes, but in case it passed you by: I’m amazing.”
Rhys is still laughing after she leaves to shower.
“Gwyneth Paltrow might want to look out,” Rhys says.
Jerome had watched her leave and now turns as though only just remembering Rhys is still in the room. “I had no idea goop was a personality.”
“I think I can work with it.” Rhys stretches as though winning her heart, or at least her body, requires a level of dexterity.
“You like her?” Jerome asks.
“Rather her than Kalpana. I feel like she’d want to peg me against the wall to prove a point. Which I’m not averse to but I prefer to be on the other end of sex with a vendetta.”
“I’m not convinced she swings that way, dude.”
“I’m everyone’s sexuality, Jerome. I’m the intersection where all lines cross.”
Jerome chuckles like it’s the funniest line he’s ever heard.
Rhys gives no indication he was joking.
Later, when the sun has had an hour or two to burn away the night’s chill, Kalpana steps into its umber glow. She wears a long shawl in bold splashes of purple and red over a beaded orange bikini, large octagonal sunglasses perched on her nose, pink hair twisted into a clumsy knot, and the cameras skirt over her like they don’t know what to do with her. She is model beautiful but haughty and aloof and quirky to the point of disinterest. The audience is immediately on guard, grating against the implication she is trying too hard, and against her sneering superiority.
Kalpana clutches an iced coffee, condensation clinging to its sides; it nearly slips from her hands as she staggers at the sight of the wall.
She sees the missing card immediately.
Kalpana rushes toward it, pressing her eyes close like she might be able to see through the cards. She can’t, but she recognizes her own after a moment—always too much pressure on the pen, the cards too thick to press out individual letters, but she can see the hard bulges of her writing. Not hers missing then, but whose? And who took it?
She would like to shout, to make a fuss, to hold them all accountable. But while she poured her heart onto those cards, one of them was less of a destructing secret and more of a hidden admission meant only for herself: I am terrified to be here.
A camera winks at her from a nearby pillar, and she can feel its glare like the hot air clinging to her skin. She is hyperaware of herself—of her posture, of her clothes, of her every breath.
Kalpana: I didn’t know whether to pretend I hadn’t even noticed. What if people suspect me just because I bring it to everyone’s attention?
In the end, she runs for Theo.
Theo: I think it’s mine. I mean…it could be. I was standing there…I feel genuinely, actually sick. Not just that it’s out there but that someone here took it—it might even be Kalpana. I…
“I can’t believe someone would do this,” he says. They are seated around one of the patio tables. The scent of the cypress trees washes off the beach, and even though it’s early still, the sun glares so intently that they can feel the heat even beneath the shade of the roofing. “I thought…I don’t know what I thought.”
“You thought we were all better than this,” Kalpana says, seething. “So did I. I thought we were all actually looking for a platform to prove ourselves on.”
Theo takes a breath and stares out at the horizon of the ocean. “It doesn’t matter. It’s a challenge, right? To prove that you’re above this? Well, I am. I’m here because I care about music. The others can do what they like, and they can even drag me into it if they want to. It doesn’t change the fact that I just want to talk about what I love most.”
Kalpana narrows her eyes and takes a long sip on her drink to avoid saying anything.
Kalpana: It would be the perfect cover wouldn’t it, if you’d taken someone’s card to pretend it was your own card taken?
“All right, let’s talk music then,” she relents. It’s hard not to—she is drawn to passion. And secure in the knowledge that her cause is the most noble, certainly the one most likely to change the world. She can indulge those who dedicate themselves to something lesser because she can see nobility in art too. It’s the very thing she fights for, after all—for capitalism to stop draining and spitting artistic talent back out like oil in pipes. “Why choose that as your medium?”
“It’s never a choice, is it? One day something simply moves you, touches you deeply, and changes you forever. You’re a poet too, right?”
Kalpana nods. “Yes, but the real thing—the kind with meanings and intention. Not some scrawled content on Instagram.”
“Why do you get to decide what counts as real poetry?”
Kalpana tosses her hair from her face. “I don’t, obviously, and I have a lot of respect for it as a gateway to get people into poetry. When I was growing up, my dad worked in a shop—it’s not like my house was full of poetry books and I discovered it through blogs and social media. But all art exists on a scale, and I think it’s ignorant to disregard the history of the art form like Insta-poets do. Movements happen for a reason. For me, it’s not that I’m an activist and a poet—my poetry is activism and my activism is poetry.”
Theo nods, satisfied and smiles.
Theo: This is exactly what I wanted from all this: conversations about art and passion that are filled with so much devotion, to outside ears they sound ridiculous.
“We’re all just trying to find different ways to talk about life, at the end of the day,” he says. “We’re all trying to spin our experiences into something collective.”
Kalpana considers him, wondering if perhaps he might truly have meant his earlier statement—that he cares so much about all this, his own secrets really are inconsequential. She admires that as much as she fears it because it’s an ideal she would spout but not one she could ever commit to.
And if he keeps shining such a bright, incomparable light, who knows what it might expose.
She needs to speak—needs to say something profound—because she cannot be left behind here. “I think all of us—whether it’s making art or food or an app or a post—when you boil it all down, isn’t it just screaming into the void: Tell me I am not alone? Maybe that’s what we’re all doing here—we’re all seeking that human connection.”
“Oh my god, we get it!” Rhys laughs as he jogs over, sea water clinging to the lines of his torso and the strands of his hair. “We’re all some ideal of passionate perfection! We all like whatever it is we’re claiming we like! We don’t need to talk about it all the time.”
He snatches a glass of water from the table and downs it.
“Some of us like talking about it,” Theo says grimly, eyes cutting to Rhys like he is something distasteful that the sea has discarded on the beach. “Some of us are only here to talk about it.”
Rhys smiles in a way that is gentle and unsettling.
“Not to get away from the paparazzi? The bandmates?”
Theo’s jaw clenches. He runs his eyes over the man, knowing all he wants is a reaction and trying to work out why, even as he resolves not to give it to him.
When he speaks it’s with a dismissive finality: “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sutton, so why don’t you run off to whatever it is you were doing and leave us to discuss whatever the hell we want.”
One by one, they notice the missing card.
Isko: It’s not one of mine so who cares.
Araminta: Of course. My only surprise is that it happened so quickly.
Rhys: We should have just shared them all, like I said.
Jerome: I don’t see anything wrong with it, to be honest. If you’re in a competition, there’s no fault to be found in getting to know your adversary. Losing one point now could gain you ten in the future if you leverage it right.
Isko returns from the smoking area to find Rhys on the deck chair he had departed. He’s clearly just been swimming, and while most of the water has evaporated, it pools in the lines between his abs.
Isko is by no means out of shape, but Rhys’s muscles are so finely chiseled that he allows himself to admire them. For a moment, he imagines what it would be like to lap that salty water up with his tongue. A drone hovers nearby, and he’s sure the footage will make the final cut.
“I don’t bite, you know,” Rhys says. “Unless you’re into that.”
“Of course I’m into that.”
Rhys pushes his sunglasses down his nose to examine him. “A lucky man, your fiancé.”
“Indeed,” Isko says, pulling his shirt off and taking the next sun bed over.
Rhys: I’m an equal opportunity lover. I suppose pansexual if you want to get technical. But I honestly don’t much care for the person beyond the body. Sex and personal relationships are two very different things to me.
“How long have you been together?” Rhys asks.
Isko shoots him a look. “Do you actually care?”
“No,” Rhys says bluntly, not tearing his eyes from Isko’s.
Isko: Rhys is a flirt. But I’m not complaining.
“Then what are you really asking, Sutton?”
“I’m going to be very bored with a month on this island. And if there’s one thing I hate, it’s being bored.”
“All right, guys?” Araminta greets. A loosely woven white smock is thrown over her bikini that shows every curve of her skin underneath it. Someone as pale as she is shouldn’t wear white, but she makes it work. It washes her out, yes, but there’s something striking about it all that suits her.
Isko really wishes he weren’t noticing this now, but of course he is—this was the sort of thing he was paid to notice, not just as chef but friend and fashion-adviser and everything in between. But Araminta is not his former employer. Juliet Moncrieff is fun and flippant and careless and she knew what she was doing in all ways except the one that damned her. Araminta is contained and poised and purposeful in a way that hints at covering up a mess. And yet, Isko already feels that growing itch to be liked by her, to glow in her acceptance. And he can’t have that.
Isko: And then Araminta arrives because of course no moment on this island would be complete without the princess. And I’m in an open relationship, by the way. Just so that’s clear.
“Mind if I join?” She doesn’t wait for a response before she puts her cocktail glass on the table and pulls her slip off, perching on the edge of the seat next to Rhys as she slathers sunscreen on, her fingers dipping beneath the thin black cord of the microphone twisted around her body in a way that is almost explicit.
“Need a hand with that?” he asks.
She scrutinizes him before nodding. “Yeah, actually, if that’s okay.”
“I’m going for a smoke,” Isko snaps.
Rhys: That time, I wasn’t actually flirting. I have way better moves than the cliché sunscreen approach. But if it works? Well…
Araminta jolts as he touches her and Rhys runs his hands across her shoulder blades more than is necessary. After a moment she leans into his touch.
“SPF fifty huh?” he asks, flipping the bottle over.
“Have you seen me?” Araminta asks, lying her arm next to his. A network of veins is visible beneath her skin, whereas Rhys was tanned before arriving on the island.
“Vividly.” His smile is a slash of teeth.
As he finishes, she rises to open the umbrella near her deck chair. She’s taking no risks with this hot sun and she looks shocking there, on the screen, when every other reality show has bronzed gods glistening in the heat. She returns to her seat with her cocktail and takes an agonizingly long sip, pulling away with a whine.
“Long day?” Rhys jokes.
“I’m so bored! Why didn’t they give us anything to do?”
“I think that’s the point—they want to force us all to talk to each other.”
“Sticking us all on an island with nothing but other high-achievers and a well-stocked wine cellar?” Araminta asks, looking at him over her sunglasses. “They’re birthing chaos.”
Rhys tilts his head to the side and grins at the camera. “Good thing I thrive on chaos, then.”
“I can’t do this anymore,” Araminta declares after just half an hour of sunbathing. She leaps to her feet and pulls her crocheted dress back on. It’s hideously uncomfortable—who thinks knitwear is perfect for a beach? It catches the sand, it’s too itchy against her bare skin, and it’s far too warm despite the loose weave. But she’s paid her stylist enough.
And her publicist.
And her manager.
All those people who she can hear screaming in her head that no one wants to watch this. This show is her chance to rebrand herself, to force the world to reckon with the talent she knows she has. She wants to make herself synonymous with Rodin and Michelangelo rather than FaceTune and Pretty Up. But to do that, she needs as many viewers as she can get and she needs to be the fan favorite and she needs to make sure she’s getting screen time and votes for the challenges and she can’t rely on an edit, she needs to give them content they can’t ignore.
All this talk about returning to her artistic roots, but she’s an influencer to her core, and her heart beats to the sound of content, content, content.
“Come on,” she tells Rhys.
He snorts a half laugh. “Give me those come-hither eyes and I’d follow you anywhere, but I would appreciate some sort of explanation.”
She smiles, intimately, indicative of some sort of collusion. She uses this trick often—forcing a closeness into being that doesn’t exist. “I refuse to play into this absolutely shameless attempt of Eloise’s to cause friction. She wants us to be careful of who we trust? Screw that; I’m going to force us to trust each other—at least a little bit. And in the process, I’m going to find out who we’re trapped on this island with. Aren’t you curious?”
Rhys’s answering smile is one of delight. “Whatever you have planned, I am thoroughly here for it.”
The others are scattered around the island, uneasy and reluctantly summoned. Though they force smiles for the cameras, there’s an edge of irritation as they gather on those long, reclining sunbeds, the canopied ones that feel like soft padded islands of their own. They can barely look at one another without their suspicions soaring and anxiety taking hold…but they sit in a circle anyway.
Araminta fetches bottles of liquor—the sort that a cable network would try to hide but not this show, streaming carelessly with no regulator to complain to.
She pours tequila into the shaker without measuring.
Kalpana’s jaw twitches as she declines the cocktail passed to her and reaches for the whiskey instead. She swigs it straight from the bottle.
Kalpana: Everything Araminta does is so performative—can’t even gather us all without doing a little cocktail dance for the camera.
“Let’s get to know each other,” Araminta suggests.
“I think I know enough,” Isko sneers, but he takes a cocktail from her anyway.
“What did you have in mind?” Theo asks.
Araminta laughs and glances away. “You’ll think it’s ridiculous, but well, we have little else to do. What do we think of ‘Never Have I Ever’?”
Kalpana’s nose wrinkles. “Must we?”
Jerome gives her a look over the top of his glass. “Why, something to hide?”
“I’m down,” Theo says.
“Of course you are, Rockstar.” Rhys rolls his eyes. “For you this is a bragging game, right?”
“Like it’s any different for you,” Theo retorts and for a moment they stare, trying to work out if this is a challenge.
“I’m game,” Jerome interjects. “Though fair warning that there isn’t much I haven’t done. My college days at Stanford were particularly wild.”
“I’m sure,” Araminta says dryly, taking up her own drink. “All right, you know the rules—take a sip if you’ve done the thing. Never have I ever kissed someone.”
“That’s too easy,” Rhys says once they all lower their glasses.
“Oh, we’ll get there, but I’m starting small.”
“Never have I ever slept with a friend’s partner,” Kalpana says.
Araminta, Rhys, and Theo drink.
“But they were polyamorous; they both knew and were fine with it,” Araminta says.
Rhys raises his glass to Theo. “Looks like it’s just us two that are trash then.”
But Theo shakes his head. “It’s really not something I’m proud of.”
Rhys snorts. “Shame is an indulgence of one’s own self-importance.”
Theo: I hate him. I might actually hate him.
“Never have I ever had a threesome,” Jerome says, an eagerness to his tone that implies he was not happy to be left out of a moment.
When everyone drinks, he hesitates just a moment before joining, his eyes startled and watchful.
“Let me correct myself,” he rushes and his eyes land on Araminta. “Never have I ever had a threesome with a married couple who are friends with and the age of my parents.”
Araminta’s glass doesn’t move but the tension braids between them like a thick rope, fraying only with the strain of who might break it first.
“Come on, Araminta,” Jerome says delicately. “We’ve all read the articles.”
“Speak for yourself,” Theo says, glowering at him but catching the eye of the camera over his shoulder instead. It makes a better shot.
The others are almost wary, fingers curled into the fabric of the chair, distracting themselves from their unease with a sip of a drink or adjusting their hair. They had not considered this unequal footing: that some contestants might be in the public eye and that some amongst them might already know something about their competition.
“It was a foursome, actually,” Araminta says matter-of-factly. Unlike them, she had considered this at length, and when she is faced with it, the petty accusations run off her skin like every headline ever did. “Their chauffeur also joined but he wasn’t famous so the paps cut him from their shot. I guess they thought he was just giving us a ride and not giving us a ride.”
Rhys laughs and that delighted grin is back.
Rhys: I might have to marry this woman.
Kalpana takes a quick sip before she speaks—unlike the others, she uses words that are not pointed but quick and sharp like a surgical incision. “Never have I ever been sued for endangering women and then tried to slut shame one on live television.”
Jerome turns so abruptly his drink spills over its lid with the jerky movement. He seems on the cusp of saying something but cannot manage to pull the words together past his shock and rage.
Araminta swivels to face her with wide, startled eyes, and for a moment Kalpana worries she has overstepped, pointedly attacking back without checking with her first.
But Kalpana doubles down. “Go on, aren’t you going to drink?”
Jerome’s eyes flicker with fury: not merely that she has said this but that there is only one way she could know. He glares her down as he says: “Never have I ever taken one of the cards from the wall.”
The pivot takes everyone a moment—a moment in which they almost miss Rhys taking a long sip from his cup.
“Oh my god, what?” Kalpana cries.
“Of course it would be you,” Isko says with a half laugh.
Isko: There’s something attractive about such recklessness, about the idea you might make terribly bad decisions for one moment of fun.
“Whose card was it?” Jerome asks.
Rhys tries not to make it clear, but his eye catches on Theo. He’d been expecting anger—not resigned expectation—and it takes him by enough surprise that he hesitates. They all clock it.
“Mine,” Theo confirms, voice quiet and breathy, like a long exhale of relief. “Go on then, you might as well get it out.”
“Are you sure about that, Rockstar?” Rhys asks, brow furrowing in a way that might be concern if he weren’t the one who created the wound Theo now bleeds from. “This might as well be dynamite.”
“If you’ve read the card, it’s a bomb that’s already ticking. No sense lingering in anticipation.” Theo’s voice is tight.
“I could promise not to tell anyone.”
“I’d never trust you.”
Rhys takes the folded card from his pocket, its edges jagged. It is astonishing to see it like that—all this suspense and here it is, an ordinary scrap in someone’s pocket.
He holds it out to Theo. “If you want it known, you read it.”
Throughout, Theo has been nowhere near as angry as anyone else might be. But now he is positively outraged, tendons in his neck tight, nostrils flaring.
He snatches the page from Rhys and turns to Kalpana, presenting the card to her like he cannot bear to look at it.
“Please,” he says. “Don’t make me humiliate myself further. Isn’t this bad enough already?”
She hesitates but he seems resigned, so she nods and takes it. With a wavering voice, she reads: “I think I hate my bandmates.”
No one was expecting it—not the simplicity of it, no inner turmoil but a simple fact, nor that it might inexplicably have nothing to do with any of them.
But they do recognize it for what it is: career suicide.
The edit lingers on their silence, the waiting mics and tense cameras clinging to the heavy stillness.
And finally, under his breath, Rhys breaks it: “Boom.”
Slowly, Theo stands and strides away.
Theo’s destruction ignites something in them, secrets spilling like a dam has burst. They pour so quickly it is difficult to push past their onward flood to the realization they are hardly secrets at all and certainly not as catastrophic as Theo’s. But they pretend they are—they gasp and frown and needle information like if they throw enough of themselves into it, they might snatch attention back from Theo, whose unraveling they cannot allow to draw the cameras away from themselves.
Araminta spins tragedy, as though it is not well documented and readily available. Her absent millionaire father brought back to panic attacks and heartbreak—the things that might make her absurdity relatable.
Jerome’s are all sex, like he can see Theo’s fall in popularity and snatch the vacancy for expected island playboy.
Rhys’s are horrendous—affairs and lies, thefts and drama—cementing the pain inflicted on Theo as another in a long line, the sort of things that will have the camera glued to him.
Kalpana’s horse has never been higher, moralizing so intently they struggle to even pretend to believe it—that she has never used palm oil, not had sex in a year, that the Australian on a Portuguese island has never even traveled in a plane. Isko abstains completely, running across the island in a fruitless search for Theo, desperate to be the shoulder he cries on, begging to steal some of the limelight of his scandal for himself.
By the time the TV alarm rings again, they have all drunk past the fear of the cameras and the proven consequences of those secrets glowing on the walls. Araminta’s head is in Kalpana’s lap, her feet in Rhys’s. Isko is curled in the corner, practically horizontal, and Jerome stumbles to the kitchen for a drink he doesn’t need.
Araminta blinks sleepily, Kalpana’s fingers still in her hair, not even aware she had been toying with the blond curls until she jolts as though caught.
Theo returns to the summoning call of the alarm, stony eyed and exhausted.
Theo: I don’t know what to say. I…I feel like I should deny it. To apologize and pretend it’s not true. More than anything I’m just sorry to the fans. I’m sure we’ll get through it—the band isn’t breaking up—but, yeah, fame has not been good for us. I don’t think I like who they’ve become, and I’m sure they don’t like who I’ve become either.
Eloise appears on screen, too shiny and polished for their drunk eyes.
“Good evening, contestants!” Even her voice is refined, the cheeriness too honed, the delivery too perfect. “I hope you all enjoyed your first day on the island. Today we have a mini-challenge for you. Mini-challenges won’t win you points, but they might give you an advantage in the next group challenge. Only one of you will get to do a mini-challenge each day, and our audience have spent the day voting on who they want it to be.”
The contestants tense. If they are not here for the money but fame, then these challenges matter more than the grander ones—they are the popularity test, the metric of how much screen time they’re getting, of how they’re being received.
“And our first contestant is…”
Later they’ll hate it, the way they lean forward in their seats, the anticipation. They’d like to believe it’s for show, not a desperate need to be chosen. Not necessarily to be liked, but to be the gravitational center the cameras and the public turn to. They do not merely wish to be famous; they wish to be more famous, to shine brighter and bolder and finally—finally—have the world agree on what they have always known: that they are essential.
“Araminta.”
It’s not only disappointment, it’s rage. Sudden and violent, Kalpana’s fist twisting the fabric of her shawl, Rhys’s jaw clenching, the sharp tendons in Jerome’s arms.
They would rather cling to their anger as something righteous than admit their jealousy.
Araminta gives a modest, almost shy nod of her head.
Isko: Of course it would be her—the last person who needs an advantage, or even the cash prize.
“What do we actually expect of the greatest amongst us? Well, for one thing, we expect them to be talented in their field. So Araminta, today we’ve devised a test just for you. And what’s a bigger challenge for influencers than handling a social media crisis? Head on down to the confession booth because we have quite the simulation for you!”
Araminta’s smile has fallen long before the final word leaves Eloise’s lips.
Araminta: You know, there was a moment there when I thought I might actually get to sculpt something.
Anger morphs into vicious, acidic glee—their competition torn down if not in blood, then humiliation.
Kalpana: Oh, that’s embarrassing.
Araminta stands and smooths out her dress with shaking hands. Swallowing her indignity, she follows Eloise to the challenge.
The others break into laughter the moment she’s gone.
Isko gives a wry shake of his head. “Imagine being here, surrounded by such talent in so many important areas and thinking you can stand amongst them with something like influencing.”
Kalpana refrains from commenting.
Kalpana: It’s difficult because I don’t think she’s on par with us, but I’m also very aware that influencing in the way that she does is a woman-dominated activity that takes time and effort. Male influencers are seen as charismatic. Women are seen as hot—it’s sexist.
But the contestants don’t see what the audience does: Araminta in the booth, handling the challenge with a steely determination. A fake company being truly canceled online, and there is Araminta with a cold smile and quick eyes, tapping buttons, spinning their unethical supply chain crisis into not only a resolved solution but an opportunity for growth, generating messages of support and gaining thousands of new followers.
It’s what she does, when she’s at the end of the firing line, a crisis, an accusation threatening to drag her down. She doesn’t just come out of it unscathed, she glows.
One day, a true tragedy might just make her radiant.
When she returns to the others, Eloise appears on screen to praise her performance. “Having successfully completed your challenge, you may take down any two notes without point reductions or disqualifications.”
Araminta rushes to that wall.
Kalpana: Oh fuck. Do you know the damage she could do?
Jerome leaps to his feet almost instinctively, like he might run and tackle her. But all they can do is watch with tense, anguished anticipation.
Araminta rips two of her own cards down and throws them straight into the fire.
The contestants glance at each other, clearly thinking the same thing: what’s she hiding that is worth more than exposing the competition?
Isko: Odds are, most of those cards are going to stay on the wall. So, of course, taking someone else’s card is worth more than burning your own.
Rhys: Just when I thought she couldn’t be hotter, now she has secrets.
Afterward, Araminta is quiet and subdued—the sort of collapsing thing that might be anger and might be upset, but the men do not even notice. Kalpana does though. With a silent nod and a few glances, an effortless exchange takes them away from all that chatter.
Together, they head to the smoking area.
Theo sits on the beach watching the dark, encroaching waves.
Theo: I can’t believe it only took twenty-four hours of being here for my life to implode.
The others continue talking around the firepit.
“I appreciate it, you know,” Isko says to Rhys. “The boldness in taking the card, in revealing it like that with a quiet sip.”
Rhys shrugs. “Like I said, I hate to be bored.”
“You know, I’m the same,” he says, standing without taking his eyes off the other man. “I’m going to bed. Are you coming?”
“Excuse me?” Rhys says, sitting up a little straighter, his shirt unbuttoned in a way that makes him look already disheveled.
“I’m bored,” Isko says. “And I do so hate to be bored.”
Rhys’s eyes light up. “All right then.”
The two vanish up the stairs, door echoing shut as the episode fades to an end.
@DestroyTheNameAlice
Oh my God WHAT??? Theo if you let this break up RiotParade we will NEVER forgive you! I followed this band for years, it means too much for too many of us and I can’t believe you would do something like this! #Iconic
@FionaReeves_
Not me coming into Iconic thrilled at the existence of a reality show that doesn’t revolve around romance just to scream as Isko and Rhys head upstairs #Iconic
@RiotParadeOfficial
Hi all, we’re as surprised by the revelations on #Iconic as everyone else. It’s difficult to come to a consensus when Theo is still on the show and we can’t talk to him but rest assured, all bands have their difficulties and Theo still has our FULL support. We’ll work it out when you’re back home, pal—until then #TeamTheo—love Al, Dante and Tyson
@NewsBeats
Rioting against themselves? Indy-rock singer Blu Tanner seen at Umbra Records with members of RiotParade—could the band be looking to replace frontman Theo Newman following his #Iconic revelation?
Kennard flicks through reports of the episodes, tracing drama like motives. It’s a tangled web, too many intersecting lines, too many things he’d dismiss as inconsequential if he hadn’t seen for himself how they exploded on screen. The suspects burned bright and bold, and he wouldn’t put it past a hot flash of temper to be all the explanation they’ll need. But that would be difficult to cover up. If Rhys was murdered, to make it a mystery like this, with all these cameras, he suspects he’s looking for a plan, a rage that seethed from the very first episodes.
He returns to Theo.
“I wouldn’t have expected you to be the one to go after the body like that. That was a very decent and brave thing you did.”
Theo shakes his head, eyes wincing shut like he cannot reconcile himself with such words.
“Especially with someone like Rhys.”
Nothing.
“So much happened on that show, but it was all rather contained, wasn’t it? Except for you, because for you there were repercussions. Your life was crumbling, episode by episode, and you were just stuck on an island, waiting for the dust to clear.”
Nothing.
“And I think many people would argue Rhys was the one who set it all in motion and made it all come crashing down at the end.”
Now a breath, and Theo looks up with reluctant despair.
“No, Rhys just got tangled up in messes that already existed. Sure, he may have helped bring them to everyone’s attention, even made some false accusations. But it all would have come out eventually. Blaming Rhys would make him a scapegoat for other people’s problems.”
But, Kennard notes, scapegoats can be led to slaughter all the same.
Maes takes her seat in the interview room, repressing a shiver. Metal table, one-way mirror, everything shiny and gleaming and so very cold. She doesn’t miss this, but here she is, pulled from the digital team because Kennard and Cloutier thought Kalpana would respond better to a woman. They’re probably right, however much she resents them for it.
Kalpana clutches her arms across her chest and regards Maes with a challenging gleam in her eye. It’s like she can’t believe she’s here, that Rhys even had the audacity to die.
“You were the last one to speak to Mr. Sutton.”
“Allegedly,” Kalpana snorts, leaning her chair onto its back legs.
It’s quite a claim given it’s the video racking up the highest views—the last conversation, possibly the last clue.
“Could you explain what you mean by that?”
“Theo tried to save him. Maybe he was conscious, maybe he said something.”
“The microphone didn’t pick anything up.”
Kalpana gives her a withering look.
“Do you know of many microphones that work in that condition? Things that fall off cliffs tend to break.”
“Are you talking about the microphone or Mr. Sutton?” Maes asks quickly. Maybe too quickly, because Kalpana looks like she’s reappraising her.
Then she shrugs.
“You don’t seem particularly upset about his death. The others are quite broken up about it.”
Kalpana’s teeth grind.
“I tried to save him too, you know. Theo wasn’t the only one.”
Apparently irritating her is the only way to get answers. “None of you seem to understand that a man has died. In fact, the whole world is treating his death like the latest entertainment. We are not the whole world—we’re the police. We are investigating a murder. If you weren’t too busy posturing and thinking of your next witty retort, you might realize one of you is likely going to be put away for this. And you, Kalpana, given that little encounter right before he tipped over the edge, are our prime suspect.”
Kalpana’s chair slams down as she throws herself forward, leaning across the table, lip twitching even before she speaks.
“Rhys Sutton was a horrible man who was too busy yelling at me to realize how close he was to the edge. And I’d expect the police to be smart enough to notice he was covered in blood when he found me. If you’re looking to, what was it? ‘Put someone away’ for this?” she sneers. “I’d look at whoever broke his fucking nose and I’d start thinking the word manslaughter.”