Chapter Thirty-Two
Olivia
I rubbed my eyes and stepped out of the bathroom, yawning as I headed over to the cupboard. Dec wasn’t in the room, but I wasn’t concerned. He was probably either still at breakfast or hanging out with Mark somewhere. I liked that about him—as much as he adored me and took care of me, he also understood that couples didn’t always have to hang out with each other every second of the day, and he had his own friends and interests outside of me. I guess this was what a healthy, adult relationship looked like.
Aside from the reality show, the fake marriage, and the fact he was still legally married to my own mother.
As I selected an outfit for the day, I chewed my bottom lip and frowned. The triclosan issue was still playing on my mind, much like it had for the last week or so. Dec and I had spent almost every free minute we had trying to figure out who might want to poison me, but we’d come up with zilch. We’d gone through every contestant and every crew member, trying to think of motivations or reasons to specifically target me, but we hadn’t come up with anything. I guess neither of us should apply to work as FBI agents anytime soon, because clearly, we weren’t the best detectives.
“Bingo,” I muttered to myself, pulling a pretty cream-colored blouse out of the cupboard. I hadn’t worn it in a while, and it would go well with the black jeans I’d picked to wear.
When I was all dressed and ready, I checked the clock and sighed. I had an appointment with Dr. Donnelly later this afternoon for more tests to see if the triclosan was out of my system, but until then, I had five hours to kill.
An idea suddenly came to me with a flash. There was a little makeshift archive room downstairs next to the main producer’s room, and it contained all the contestant files. I knew this because Mom mentioned it when she was dealing with Shayla all those weeks ago. I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought of this sooner, but those files might be a good place to look in order to find information on who might be trying to hurt me. For all I knew, one of the remaining contestants could have a criminal history or something similar; something which could make them more likely than the others to try and poison other contestants. It was a very long shot, but at this point I was willing to look anywhere and do anything to figure out what was going on.
I headed downstairs to the first floor and slipped into the little archive room. From the voices floating out of the main producer’s room next door, I could safely assume the show workers were all busy with the meeting Mom mentioned earlier, and thus no one would catch me in here rifling through all the files.
I pulled out the female contestant files first, mostly focusing on the particular women who were still on the show or had only recently left. It didn’t make sense for the poisoning culprit to be anyone who’d been eliminated closer to the beginning of the show, seeing as they literally wouldn’t have been on the island to continue doing it to me.
Frowning, I flipped through Isobel and Emily’s files. Nothing jumped out at me. Then I picked up Hayley’s file. She was gone from the show now, after last night’s elimination, but it still could’ve been her attempting to make me sick until she was voted out.
Unfortunately, nothing jumped out at me in her file, either. She was the embodiment of ‘basic’. Sighing, I dropped the women’s files and pulled out all the men’s files. After going through all of them, any hopes I had of discovering the culprit began to fade. There was nothing in these little dossiers. No one seemed to have any sort of criminal history or untreated mental illness, and I guess anyone with that sort of history probably wouldn’t be allowed on the show anyway. So maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.
Frowning, I picked up a file belonging to a man named Ross Minette, which I’d only just noticed. There’d never been a contestant on the show called Ross, at least not this season, but it said ‘2017’ on the front. I opened it to see his name crossed out in red marker, and someone had written a note on the side. Dropped out last minute. Replaced by Dec Marin.
Oh. That made sense. This was the original twelfth male contestant who’d been selected for the show only to drop out mere days before filming began.
My frown deepened as something new occurred to me. When I went through all the women’s files, I hadn’t come across any unfamiliar names. In fact, now that I thought about it, I was sure there were only twelve women’s files—the other female contestants I’d met on the show, with me as the twelfth one. But with the men’s, there were thirteen—all the male contestants plus Dec, and also the dropout who Dec replaced.
So who did I replace? Where was her file?
I counted the women’s files carefully just to make sure I was right, and a moment later, I sat back on the floor, my nose wrinkling with confusion. There were definitely only twelve files on the female contestants, and there was no record of another woman who’d dropped out at the last minute to be eventually replaced by me.
What did that mean? Was there simply never a dropout contestant? If so, what did that mean?
My breath hitched as I realized the most obvious answer to that question. It meant my mom actually wanted me on the show all along, and she lied and guilt-tripped me in order to get me here. But why? Why would she want me on the show? It didn’t make any sense, at least not for any reason I could think of.
I set my lips in a grim line.
Obviously, Mom was hiding something…