Terry Deitz, Woo Hwang and Jeff Varner sit together on the edge of the Ta Keo tribe’s work-in-progress shelter. The topic of the moment: Abi-Maria Gomes. Something happened yesterday, and whatever it was, it’s juicy enough that all three men are giggling and gossiping using indoors voices — such as Varner’s indoors voice exists. I don’t know what went down on the first day of Survivor: Cambodia – Second Chance, but if it involves Abi-Maria, I’m betting it was amazing, and I’m betting it involved some thunder. Two days earlier, when Abi-Maria arrives at my cabana at Ponderosa, a light rain has started falling on the beach. The blue, beautiful morning is slipping away, the sky now covered in a shroud of gray. Wind howls at the walls, picking up speed, slamming the door open. I sit in my chair, leaning against the entryway, trying to keep the harsh breeze at bay. “It really gives me a flashback,” Abi says, peeking out the window, thinking back on Survivor: Philippines, one of the rainiest seasons in the history of the show. “It seems similar.” It’s not just the weather that reminds Abi of her first season, either. When she looks out at her new season’s cast, she sees people reminiscent of enemies from the past. Take Kelly Wiglesworth, for instance. When Abi looks at the original Survivor runner-up and challenge dominator, she sees someone else: Denise Stapley, the sex therapist from Cedar Rapids, Iowa who won Abi’s season. “She really reminds me a lot of Denise,” she says. “She walks around in circles, in the water… she’s very quiet. She has this stoic face. I’m having Denise flashbacks with her.” I flip through the mental rolodex of Abi’s possible Denise flashbacks. Is she remembering Day 27, when Denise put Abi on blast at Tribal Council, so much so that she cried, hot tears rolling down her face as she watched her kowski Pete leave the game? Perhaps she’s thinking about the following Tribal three days later, when Denise refused to apologize for how she spoke to Abi, and even doubled down: “I think what was perceived as brutal was simply a group of people whose tolerance had reached the maximum.” I’m thinking about these memories throughout my chat with Abi, the start of a storm hissing outside the cabana, and I’m thinking about them two days later as Abi and Wiglesworth drag palm fronds together. Does she still see Denise on the Borneo veteran’s face? And if you’re wondering if Abi sees any of her other former cast mates when she looks out at the Second Chancers, guess what? “He gives me the Malcolm vibes,” she tells me about Worlds Apart veteran Joe Anglim. “That really worries me. Malcolm called me a Dementor, and said I have the grace of a mack truck, and he had the opportunity of going with me to the end, and he made a mistake by not giving me his idol when he had the opportunity to. Malcolm and I, even though we are buddies now, we have unfinished business.” And will Abi finish that business with Malcolm through Joe, given the chance? “Unfortunately for Joe, if he gives me the Malcolm vibes, then that’s it. He’s dead to me!” The way Abi says “dead” gives me flashbacks, as I remember her standing before Roberta “RC” Saint-Amour, hands on her hips, fire in her eyes: “I am your friend, but if you [expletive] with me, you are dead.” This is bad news for Second Chancer Monica Padilla. “Monica is giving me RC vibes, and I do not like that,” Abi tells me, her eyes wide, her smile even bigger, her voice high-pitched. “She laughs like RC. I’m just like, ‘Monica, stop laughing! This is not good for you!'” Sure, Abi knows that Denise, Malcolm and RC aren’t really here with her at Ponderosa, but hearing her talk about them, how she sees their ghosts when she looks out at her new rivals… well, it puts a big smile on this Survivor fan’s face. This is the same thunderous Tandang veteran who stormed through her first Survivor season by openly berating her tribe mates, bragging about receiving the royal treatment on spa day, bluffing about a fantasy immunity idol, among countless other assorted absurdities she unleashed on her march to a fifth place finish. Abi, easily one of the most memorable villains of the modern Survivor era, is sweet in person, but when she talks about others… well, let’s just say that Abi’s gonna Abi, and if you’re in the vicinity of her hurricane, you’re either going to laugh or you’re going to cry — and sometimes it’s going to be both. “I haven’t been able to talk to her yet,” Abi says of Monica. “She hasn’t been able to charm me yet. So we will see. But it’s her laugh. She laughs like RC. It’s freaking me out!” This is not Abi’s first freak out during Second Chance, either. The wind outside punches the door against my back, as Abi begins to tell me about the night she almost puked on Andrew Savage. ON THE NEXT PAGE: Experiencing Turbulence

One week before our conversation in Cambodia, Abi-Maria was at the Worlds Apart finale, sitting between two Survivor legends, doing everything in her power not to throw up on national television. On one side: Kass McQuillen, the chaotic Survivor from Cagayan who razed her original tribe and made her new allies speak llama, all on the road toward a third-place finish. On the other side: Andrew Savage, from the long ago season of Pearl Islands, his torch extinguished by the vengeful Outcast known as Lillian Morris. Savage, if not Kass, was in the middle of an anxiety attack, waiting to find out if he would make the cast of Second Chance. Abi could not sense his panic. She was too focused on her own. “I was freaking out,” she tells me. “It was so nerve-racking, the way everything played out, right in front of everybody, the camera right in your face.” In fact, she felt like she was “literally going to vomit,” and it’s a detail that Savage confirm. “Abi was sitting next to me,” he told me during our interview, “and she must have said 10 times, ‘Savage, I apologize. I am going to throw up on you.’ And she was dead serious! She was quivering.” You can see it on the instant replay: Abi-Maria, quivering, queasy and uneasy, barely able to look Jeff Probst in the eye. “He came over to the villains — Kass and I — and I didn’t think it would be both,” she says. But it was. When Probst confirmed that both of them made the Cambodia cut, Abi leapt up in the air and hugged Chaos Kass with all of her might… and then she realized what she was doing. “I was like, ‘Oh [expletive], I’m hugging the devil right now!'” Of course, there are people who would argue that Kass was hugging a devil, too. Abi’s moments of mayhem from her original season are many, and here are some highlights: She called Michael Skupin an idiot once and a moron twice; she repeatedly alienated ally and former Facts of Life star Lisa Whelchel, to the point that Lisa abandoned the alliance for greener pastures; she agitated the Dangrayne tribe so much that Denise, the season’s winner, who may or may not have warged into Kelly Wiglesworth ahead of Second Chance, once declared that Abi could not win Survivor. “If someone looks in the spirit of Survivor, they’re looking for a more balanced game,” Denise said at the Final Six Tribal Council. “Between the social, the strategic, the physical… I don’t think Abi has brought those fully to the table.” Abi was defiant toward Denise then, and she remains defiant now. “I could have won Philippines with the right group of people,” she tells me. “I had to play with the cards that were given me. I had an injury. Due to circumstances and lack of security in my game at the time, I played the way I did. I had to be the wildcard and play the crazy game. That’s how I made it to the Final Five.” “People look at me like I’m crazy,” she continues, “but I kid you not, if I had made it to the Final Three with Skupin and Lisa, I would have won that game.” Her first season isn’t quite ancient history, but it’s history all the same. That was then, and Second Chance is now — and visions of old opponents aside, Abi knows that in order to win the upcoming game, she has to be mindful of how she played the first time. “I’m not expecting them to like me or dislike me from the get go, but I do think I have a target on my back,” she says. “I’m sure I’ve rubbed people the wrong way by what they’ve seen and I’m sure they have their perceptions.” Indeed they do… and here’s what they think. ON THE NEXT PAGE: The Eyes on the Hurricane

When I speak with Joe and Wiglesworth, the Malcolm and Denise of Second Chance (wouldn’t that be something?), neither one whispers a word about Abi. Really, Wiglesworth whispers very few words at all, but that’s neither here nor there just yet. But Abi’s new RC has a hot take: Monica Padilla of Survivor: Samoa, speaking with me mere minutes after Abi leaves my cabana, says she sees two sides of the Philippines contestant. “She seems cool,” says Monica. “She seems like she would be fun to party with. But she also seems totally bat [expletive]. I don’t think she has any strategic play. I think she just wants to create a spectacle.” (Here’s a quick aside: The weather has calmed down considerably by the time Monica enters my cabana, but the moment Monica starts talking about Abi, the wind picks up again and blows water bottles off of the window sill. It dies down as soon as we move onto a new topic. Forget the walls, Jeff Varner; the storm has ears.) Later in the day, the other KW of Second Chance, Kelley Wentworth — the fifth person voted out of Survivor: San Juan del Sur and the woman who does not remind Abi of Denise — tells me that “Abi is just Abi,” and that could be a very bad thing. “I don’t know if she’s going to come after me because she wants to be the queen of the island,” says Wentworth, “but we’ll see.” Others look at Abi-Maria and see strategic upside. For example: Shirin Oskooi, the numbers-loopholing super-fan from Worlds Apart, and one of Abi’s fellow Ta Keo tribe mates. Shirin sees Abi as a perfect candidate for her proposed all-women alliance — “The Babe Brigade,” she calls it — for many reasons, the biggest one being Abi’s huge personality. “Give me some Latin spice,” Shirin tells me with glee. “I think her spiciness, which I love, can take a little bit of heat off of my quirkiness.” Add Vytas Baskauskas of Blood vs Water to the list of Survivors with an eye on Abi, although his purposes are a bit more nefarious. “Even though she’s abrasive and annoying, I think she’ll be a good pawn for me,” he says, wearing his signature smirk. “That’s someone I would want to keep around, to be honest. She just wants to feel safe.” Looking beyond Ta Keo, Abi has other possible friends in the game, like Stephen Fishbach, the lone representative of Survivor: Tocantins. Fishbach sees Abi as the type of player he’s looking to lean on. “I think my sweet spot is going to be smart, small women who are going to feel vulnerable, like I do,” he says. “People who might not be with these big guys who are voting on strength — someone like Monica, and someone like Abi.” And then there’s Jeff Probst. Almost 36 hours after my interviews at Ponderosa, the Survivor host and I sit across from one another, placing bets on which players will thrive in the season ahead, and which ones won’t. When it comes to Abi, he likes what he sees. “She’s smarter and more physical than we saw last time,” he says. “I was really impressed when we met before the game. She’s a really good flirt, and she’s really good at playing that card of, ‘I don’t understand. I don’t understand! It must be cultural.’ You don’t know if she really does or not.” Probst boils Abi’s chances down to two possibilities: “If she gets in with the right group, she could be a part of the group until the end. If she doesn’t? She’ll be out early.” In life, there are people who hate it when it rains, and there are people who can’t get enough, frolicking and bathing in the downpour when it comes. Likewise, on Second Chance, there are people who want to avoid Hurricane Abi at all costs, and there are people who want to run right into the eye of the storm. For both groups, Abi has some advice: Bring an umbrella. ON THE FINAL PAGE: The Snake in the Storm