Danger Island
“Sean, wake up. We have to talk. I think Alicia is going to defect from our alliance.”
Sarah heard the voice, it was somehow familiar, but it wasn’t a voice that should be in her bedroom with her and there was definitely no Sean in her room. She was sure of that because no boy, or girl, had ever slept over at her house, much less in her room.
“Come on, wake up!” the voice persisted. This time she thought she felt the speaker’s breath on her cheek. Confused and a little afraid of what she’d find, Sarah slowly opened her eyes.
Something was very wrong. The dingy white popcorn ceiling of her room was not there. She was staring up at a pale blue sky through a canopy of palm fronds. Instead of the rainbow print comforter that she’d outgrown five years ago but was still using because, as her mother put it, “it doesn’t have holes and we’re not made of money”, her body was covered by some sort of woven grass mat. As she saw it, she realized she was also not on her lumpy old mattress but on another, thicker, harder grass mat.
As shocked as she was, she had the feeling that she’d seen all this before…but where? Then she saw Olivia, crouched next to her at the foot of her sleeping platform. Not Olivia from two doors down, who was two years older and always mean to her, and not Olivia from third period art class either - that Olivia didn’t know she existed.
It wasn’t possible, but crouching next to her with her dark braided hair, giant brown eyes and island tanned skin was Olivia “the Legal Assistant from Cleveland” from Sarah’s favorite reality TV show “Danger Island.”
Sarah opened her mouth to speak and got her next shock. The voice coming out of her mouth was not hers, not even close. It was male, deep, adult, raspy. She quickly put her hand over her mouth and that almost caused her to scream. It was not her small, pale white hand that came to rest on her face, it was the large, rough, hairy tanned hand of a man.
Her mind was racing. What could possibly be happening. And then she saw the small parrot tattoo on the back of the large man hand that had replaced hers, and the pieces began to fall into place, although the conclusion she came to made no sense.
Sean and Olivia are team mates and on again off again lovers on Danger Island. Olivia was calling Sarah “Sean”. And everything else - but especially the parrot tattoo on her man hand —pointed to Sarah somehow no longer being the shy lonely teenager living in a drab outdated room in suburban Phoenix. Instead she was now living on Danger Island inside the body of Sean “the Hedge Fund Manager from Dallas.”
Sarah had no idea how this was possible. It was probably just a dream, a dream born of all the romantic fantasies she’d had about Sean this season. But then wouldn’t she have been transported into Olivia’s body so that her fantasies might be realized?
Sarah was turning this question over in her head when Olivia’s voice jolted her to attention. “Sean, this is no joke. I’m not going to lose my chance at a million dollars because you’re too lazy to get up!”
Sarah had never been good at acting, but for ten episodes she’d followed Sean’s every move and every seductive line of dialogue intently, so she was pretty sure how he’d respond to Olivia in this situation. She put her man hand gently on Olivia’s arm, gave her a warm and reassuring smile, and said “okay, beautiful, I’m sorry, here’s what I propose we do…..”