Chapter Twenty-Seven
Indi
“Nine days,” Donna said. “Nine whole days since some psycho murdered Yuri and attacked his wife, and they still won’t let us leave this godforsaken place.”
I sat back on my bed and sighed, listening to her. She and Amy were in the room with me, keeping me company while Blake went and hung out with Keenan and Dean for a manly morning catch-up.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Amy said. “Like…how have they not caught the person who attacked the Tildens? It’s a small island! There’s only so many suspects. And how can they say the weather is too bad to let us leave? It’s literally sunny outside today.”
I nodded. “I know, but apparently the weather is really bad out on the ocean, and we just can’t see it from here.”
On the off chance we were being lied to for some reason, Blake and I had tried using the iPad again last week so we could look up weather reports and try to contact connections he had back on the mainland to see what they’d tell us. Unfortunately, the Wi-Fi was no longer working, and the inn owner told us it was due to the bad weather near the island, so we had to accept that it was true and we were simply stuck here for now.
“Maybe. But the filming? I can’t believe it!” Amy said.
She was referring to Ed’s insistence on keeping the cameras rolling. There hadn’t been any more attacks on the island since Elise, but we were all still frightened. Still, Ed claimed the network hadn’t canceled the show yet, and we were all supposed to keep working on it as per our contracts until we heard differently from the network.
God, I regretted ever signing that piece of paper.
“We should’ve never signed those stupid contracts,” Donna replied, echoing my thoughts. “It seriously can’t be legal to make us continue with the show after what happened. I don’t even want the money now! I just want to leave.”
“Apparently it’s perfectly legal,” I said with a deep sigh. “At least they aren’t making us do those stupid challenges anymore.”
“Or the useless group therapy sessions,” Amy added.
“Yeah, it’s so much better that they’re following us around with cameras and watching us jump at our own shadows instead,” Donna said sarcastically. Then she sighed. “Sorry. I don’t mean to snap. I’m just nearly at the end of my rope.”
“So is everyone else,” I said with a nod. “Did you see what happened to the Connellys? They decided to break up, and now they’re in separate rooms. Their marriage wasn’t exactly stellar, but I bet all this extra stress didn’t help.”
Addison and David Connelly had gotten into a massive blowout fight two nights ago, and David had wound up demanding a divorce, which Addison agreed to give him as soon as they could get off the island along with the rest of us. I hadn’t really bonded with either of them in our time here, but still, it was very sad that their marriage was totally over.
“No shit.” Donna rolled her eyes. “Even Keenan and I have been fighting way more lately, and I thought we’d actually make it after the first week or so. We were doing so well until all of this happened. The stress is getting to us.”
“Same,” Amy said. “It’s like everything is just falling apart.”
It seemed as if Blake and I were one of the only couples who weren’t on the verge of splitting at the moment. When the Ramirezs and Ashworths found out that they’d been eliminated from the running a week and a half ago, they’d ended up getting into big fights, and the same had happened between the Connellys when they were announced as the most recent eliminated couple. That, along with the fear and stress over recent events, had been the catalyst for their complete separation two days ago.
No wonder the network didn’t want to cancel ‘I Do Or Die’ yet. They were capturing so much drama for their weekly viewers with all of the couples’ fights being recorded over the last week—drama that stemmed from our collective fear after Yuri’s horrible passing.
It was sick. In my opinion, Ed Kramer and every last one of the Channel Nine network heads needed to be heavily medicated for their obvious psychopathic personality disorders.
And speaking of medication…
I looked at the clock on the wall and realized it was time for me to take my daily birth control pill. I’d been prescribed the pills years ago due to my painful, heavy periods, and I’d stayed on them ever since because for me, they had the nice little side effect of making me only have my period three times a year, even during the monthly sugar pill week when most women got a period.
“I’ll be back in a minute, ladies,” I said, standing up and smoothing down the skirt of my dress.
I stepped into the dim bathroom, turned the light on, and opened the cabinet to fish out the segmented plastic medication carrier I’d put all the pills into before coming to the island. Now that Blake and I were sleeping together, I needed to be extra careful to remember to take them. Before that, it wasn’t a huge deal if I accidentally missed one. I hardly ever slept with anyone due to my almost-perpetual single status, so there was barely any chance of unwanted pregnancy.
Now, things were different. If I missed a pill and a condom broke, I could wind up pregnant, and I would never want Blake to think I did it on purpose to trap him now that I knew about his wealth.
I squinted at today’s pill before I took it. I wasn’t sure exactly what made me do it. Something just seemed… off. I looked back down at the separate daily pill compartments, checking out all of them. Everything seemed fine.
Unless…
I turned the bathroom light off and looked at the pills in natural light only. Then my eyes widened.
“Donna! Amy!” I shouted.
They came rushing into the bathroom. “What’s wrong?”
I held up the pill container. “Someone’s been messing with my birth control!”
Amy’s eyes widened. “How do you know?”
“Because the regular pills are a really pale yellow, and the sugar ones are white. There’s crappy lighting in here that kinda makes everything look yellowish,” I said, gesturing toward the ancient bathroom light fixture. “So I guess that’s why I didn’t notice this before. But my pills are all white now. They’re all sugar pills. Someone replaced the rest!”
A lot of other women might notice that their birth control was either wrong or screwing up when they got an early period out of the blue, but like I said earlier, I hardly ever got mine, even when I only took the sugar pills for a week once a month. Even if I did get it, I still probably wouldn’t suspect anything—I’d just think it was random breakthrough bleeding. Every woman knew that could happen on the Pill occasionally, no matter where they were in the cycle.
“God!” Donna said. “Why the hell would anyone do that? As if we need any more shit right now!”
“I can think of a pretty good reason why,” I said grimly. “Obviously no one thought the show would turn out like this, with all the death, fear and obvious possibility of cancellation once the network gets their shit together.”
Donna wrinkled her brows in confusion. “So?”
“So it was originally meant to go for a couple of months—plus with mid-season filming break we’d be here for nearly three months unless we got voted out. Maybe some asshole sneaked in here near the start and swapped out all my BC pills. Maybe even swapped all of the female contestants’ pills, if they’re on it, in the hopes that at least one couple might get pregnant and leave the show because of that. I remember our contracts saying we’re allowed to leave for medical reasons.”
“Jeez, that’s horrible, but it makes sense. Some assholes would do anything to win, even if it means getting others eliminated in the slimiest ways,” Donna replied. “I should go check my own pills.”
“We’ll come with you,” I said. Amy nodded. “None of us should be walking around alone right now.”
“True.”
“Would you mind if we made a quick stop first, though?” I asked. My face was so hot with anger now that I felt like my entire head was about to explode. “I think I might know who’s behind this.”
Donna held out her hand. “Sure. Lead the way.”
I’d only met one person on the show so far who seemed vile enough to want to sabotage other women. Vanessa, that Category 5 Whore-icane who thought it was acceptable to cheat on her husband and attempt to seduce unavailable men.
I strode up to the second floor of the inn, where I knew she and Jay were staying. Donna and Amy trailed behind me, and I told them my theory on the way, along with the story of how Vanessa had tried to seduce Blake.
When we arrived, I sharply rapped on the door. Vanessa answered, pulling her face into a bored expression when she realized it was us. “What?” she said, pulling her black satin robe tighter around her waist.
“Hoping it was someone else? Another married man you could try to sleep with?” Amy said from my left.
Vanessa rolled her eyes at her, then sneered at me. “Get over it, honey. Stop bitching to everyone.”
I narrowed my eyes and held up my pill case, fuming. “I know you’re sabotaging me, Vanessa. And I bet you’re doing it to every other woman on the show who’s on birth control. Hoping we’ll get pregnant and drop out? It’s ridiculous. And for the record, I still can’t believe you even care about winning the show anymore. A man died! You might have no soul, but the rest of us just want to go home.”
Somehow she managed to look even more bored despite my scathing words. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“We’re talking about the fact that you’re the only person we can think of who’s nasty enough to try something like that,” Donna cut in.
“Am I?” Vanessa arched an eyebrow. “How do you know it isn’t Little Miss Infertile here? Maybe she’s just so crazy about not being able to have a baby that she thought she’d make everyone else do it instead.”
She sneered at Amy, whose face immediately dropped.
“How dare you,” I hissed. We all knew how sensitive Amy was about not being able to conceive a child with Dean. “You’re awful.”
Vanessa shrugged. “Maybe. But you’re just plain stupid. Sure, I wanted to win the show, but why would I do it that way? I mean, you know I wanted to hook up with your man as well. So why would I fuck with your birth control?” she asked. “That could result in you falling pregnant to Blake, and the joyful news might fix whatever’s wrong with your marriage. Why would I want that if I want him? Do you think a woman ever managed to convince a guy to leave his wife by ensuring the wife got pregnant?”
She gave me a sickeningly sweet fake smile as I thought about what she said, taken aback. She was right. I’d jumped to conclusions in assuming she was the saboteur. It wasn’t her; it didn’t make sense. I just assumed it was her and wanted it to be her, because I couldn’t stand the woman.
“Oh,” I mumbled. “Right.”
“Why don’t you look at your friends? Whoever switched your pills was obviously in your room,” Vanessa said, looking at Donna and Amy in turn. “Or better yet, look even closer to home.” She smirked before delivering her final words. “Ask your husband...”
Then she slammed the door in our faces.