gold rush [the wilds, toni shalifoe]

chapter 3

"Leah," Rachel realised as her eyes widened slightly, Dot coming to rejoin the group as Hunter had finally calmed herself down from her surprise awakening. Before anyone could say anything else, the girl in questioned appeared with a phone in her hand and a guilt ridden look on her face.

"It's Jeanette's," Leah told them all, Hunter scrunching up her face as she realised just where Leah would have had to have been to be able to get a phone that Jeanette had concealed on her. Turning on her heel, Leah began to walk back towards the makeshift grave without saying another word.

All of the girls followed without question, Hunter jogging slightly to catch up to them as Toni raised an eyebrow at her. The blonde nodded slightly, almost as if she was non-verbally apologising for what had happened the night before. Toni paused for a moment before nodding back, accepting that this might be the closest thing she'd get to one.

"It was in her pocket," Leah told them all as she held on to the phone as if it was going to just disappear at any given second. "I heard it ringing, but it didn't seem real. Not that anything does anymore. So I followed the sounds and I, um..."

Dot shook her head as she looked at the grave of Jeanette before looking back up at where Leah was trying to find the right words to say.

"You frisked a dead body."

There was a painful silence as Leah nodded, and Hunter felt the bile rise in her throat at the thought of Leah having to dig with her hands to try and reach the phone that was ringing.

"But then when I finally dug it out of her pocket, it died in my hands," Leah continued, trying not to let her voice waver as she told the group the lie she had formed that morning. The phone did die in her hands, but not until after she had wasted a call on a man who wanted nothing to do with her. "The weirdest part is this is her second phone, the other one we lost out in the water. But this, this is an entirely different one."

Hunter's eyes shot up in surprise to meet Leah's, sharing the same confusion at why Jeanette would have had two phones and why she had kept this one a secret from them.

"One that worked, and one that she chose not to tell us about. Isn't there something like, vaguely messed up about that? Like not even vaguely but deeply."

"Let me see it," Fatin asked, reaching out to take the phone from Leah. The girl passed it over as everyone watched with close eyes to see what Fatin wanted to see. The girl turned it back and forth in her hands before looking up and addressing the rest of the girls again.

"It is kind of a sketchy phone," Fatin agreed but unsure what point they were all trying to prove here. Shelby echoed the sentiment out loud, unsure what the point of this was.

"So what exactly are we trying to say here?" The pageant queen asked them all, raising her hands in slight exasperation as she tried to avoid looking down at the grave they were crowded around.

"I don't know," both Fatin and Leah echoed, slumping too as they realised that they sounded like conspiracy theorists. This was no time for making up conspiracies but rather forming plans of how they were going to survive.

"I'm just wondering if the simplest explanation might be the right one," Shelby continued, trying to ease everyone's running minds. "So she had two phones, it's not that crazy. She'd been knocked around so bad, she probably just forgot. Jeanette wasn't just in shock yanno, she was dying."

Everyone paused as Hunter finally spoke up, having her own doubts but also knowing that they needed to all calm down as there was nothing that could be done now.

"I know plenty of people who have two phones, it really isn't that unlikely," Hunter spoke before Dot rolled her eyes and looked back at her with a slight annoyance. It might not have been rare for people like Hunter or Hudson that could afford two phones, but the majority of people she knew could barely afford to keep one running.