The Legend of Total Drama Island

A TDI reimagining from the author of Legacy. Rated PG-13 for mature subject matter, adult situations, suggestive dialogue and mild profanity.

Announcements
Due to the amount of work I still have to do on this story, I have (somewhat) broken with my policy of not posting chapters until the story is finished. Interested readers can find more details on the launch announcement blog post.

I previewed scenes on my blog page every couple of months whilst the story was in development. For a complete listing of these previews, see the talk page.

The First Night chapter includes two subheadings (the use of which actually consistent with the 1,001 Nights model) so that people who prefer short reads don't have to tackle the entire 11,000+ word chapter in one sitting.

The Second Night chapter is scheduled for posting on Saturday, 29 October.

Previous updates:


 * 3 September: Official launch. First Night posted.
 * 4 September: Set up the Guessing Games on the talk page
 * 11 September: added picture & footnote for Cody's self-image

The First Night discussion section has two polls. Be sure to make your voice heard!

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Dramatis Personae
Characters will be added to this section as they appear.

Staff

In order of appearance


 * Chris McLean: the host

Contestants

Alphabetically by team


 * The Screaming Eagles


 * Beth: the nerdy farm girl
 * Cody: the science geek
 * Gwen: the Goth
 * Heather: the queen bee. Also called "the dragon girl", and additional terms in later chapters
 * Justin: The Embodiment of Manly Beauty. Also called "The Incredible Hunk"
 * Katie: the strong BFF. Also called "the Thin Twin"
 * LeShawna: the homegirl. Also called "the dusky daughter" in reference to her skin tone
 * Lindsay: the brainless blonde beauty. Also called "the uberbimbo"
 * Noah: the bookworm
 * Owen: the huge fat guy. Also called "the man-mountain", "the gregarious gargantua", etc.
 * Trent: the guitar player. Also called "the axboy"


 * The Killer Muskies


 * Bridgette: the surfer girl
 * Courtney: the Type A Renaissance girl (essentially a Mary Sue without the perfection)
 * D.J.: the kind-hearted brickhouse. Also called "the gentle giant"
 * Duncan: the juvenile delinquent. Also called "the Juvenile Hall alumnus"
 * Eva: the sullen she-hulk. Also called "the musclegirl"
 * Ezekiel: the home schooled boy. Also called "the farm boy" or "the prairie boy"
 * Geoff: the party king. Also called "the urban cowboy"
 * Harold: the walking encyclopedia. Also called "the beanpole"
 * Izzy: the fireball. Also called "the manic redhead", and additional terms in later chapters
 * Sadie: the smart BFF. Also called "the butterball"
 * Tyler: the unskilled jock. Also called "Red Jock"

Other

In order of appearance


 * Brett: a future camper, selected to compete in the first season of Total Drama Island: the Next Generation. He is near his 16th birthday when the story begins.
 * The Storyteller: Brett's mother, 33 years old, a former camper, competed in the first season of Total Drama Island
 * Sunshine: Izzy's (presumably) imaginary friend

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Prologue
Brett was playing a video game when his mother came home from work. Normally, they would have greeted each other simply; but today, Brett had news

“Guess what, mom?” he began excitedly. “I got accepted to that reality TV show I auditioned for!”

“Good for you!” his mother replied as cheerfully as she might. In truth, she had some reservations about what her son might be getting himself into, but she didn’t want to seem a wet blanket. After all, she had once been young.

“So,” she prompted, “Have they told you anything more about the show?” When Brett had made his audition tape, three months before, the producers had revealed only that the show would be some type of elimination game, it would be produced the following summer, and only high school sophomores were eligible to apply. The producers hadn’t even revealed what the show would be called.

“Not much,” Brett admitted. “The acceptance letter did say that the show will be called ‘Total Drama Island: the Next Generation’—”

His mother cocked her head at that name, but Brett did not notice.

“—and that the host will be some chick named Christin McLean,” Brett added.

“Christin McLean,” his mother repeated with a thoughtful look. “I wonder if she’s any relation to Chris McLean.”

“The letter mentioned that Chris McLean is Christin McLean’s uncle, and that he was the original host. I guess that’s where the ‘Next Generation’ part comes from.”

Brett’s mother nodded absently. She had heard that Total Drama Island was being revived after a seven-year run and a ten-year hiatus, but there were so many elimination game shows out there that she hadn’t made the connection to Brett’s audition.

“Lord, deliver us from the Chris McLeans of the world,” she intoned in mock prayer. Noticing her son’s quizzical expression, she explained, “He was so sadistic, you have no idea. It did boost ratings, though, I’ll give him that.”

“You watched the original?” Brett asked, noticing his mother’s apparent familiarity with the show.

“I didn’t just watch it,” she corrected, “I was there. In the very first season, when no one knew what to expect.”

“Coolio,” Brett exclaimed slowly. Recovering from his surprise, he asked, “Did you win?”

“No,” she admitted. “I did pretty well, but I didn’t win.”

“What was it like?” Brett asked. He was more than normally curious, for he saw that he now had an unlooked-for chance to gain an advantage on his future rivals. He doubted that any of the other contestants would have personal access to someone with first-hand knowledge of what they were likely to encounter.

“It’s a long story,” his mother warned. “A lot longer than I can tell you in one night.”

“Tell me,” Brett pleaded. “Tell me everything!”

Brett hadn’t been this excited to hear his mother tell stories since he was a toddler. It wasn’t just that he stood to gain a competitive advantage on the show, either. The other—the greater—reason was that, although mother and son had always been close, this was an aspect of her past that she had never told him about, nor even mentioned in his presence. Brett was not going to let her wriggle out of this.

As it turned out, his mother had no intention of wriggling out of it. True, she had never told her son about her experience at Camp Wawanakwa, but now the time seemed right.

“Go do your homework,” she told him, “and I’ll start after dinner.”

After they had dined and Brett had finished his homework, he reminded his mother of her promise. Brett sat in his favorite chair, and his mother sat on the sofa. She took a few moments to collect her thoughts, and then she began to speak.

First Night

 * It is my desire, it is my wish
 * To set out to sing, to begin to recite,
 * To let a song of our clan glide on, to sing a family lay.
 * The words are melting in my mouth, utterances dropping out,
 * Coming to my tongue, being scattered about on my teeth.
 * Beloved friend, my boon companion, my fair boyhood comrade,
 * Start now to sing with me, begin to recite together
 * Now that we have come together, have come from two directions.
 * Seldom do we come together, meet one another
 * On these wretched marches, these poor northern parts.
 * Let us clasp hand in hand, fingers in fingers,
 * So that we may sing fine things, give voice to the best things
 * For those dear ones to hear, for those desiring to know them
 * Among the rising younger generation, among the people which is growing up,
 * Those songs got about, those lays inspired by
 * Old Chris McLean’s false tongue, the depths of Eva’s fury,
 * The point of the knife of Chef Hatchet, a man with a far-roving mind, the range of Duncan’s bow,
 * The remote corners of Wawanakwa’s fields, the heaths of the Muskoka District.
 * These my father formerly sang while carving an ax handle,
 * These my mother taught me while turning her spindle,
 * Me a child rolling on the floor in front of her knee,
 * Miserable milkbeard, little clabbermouth.
 * There was no lack of songs in the Dock of Shame, nor did Heather lack magic charms.
 * In the songs the bonfire grew old, in the charms Lindsay disappeared,
 * In the lays Cody died, Bridgette in her frolics.
 * There are still other songs, magic words learned of,
 * Plucked from the wayside, broken off from the heather,
 * Torn from thickets, dragged from saplings,
 * Rubbed off the top of hay, ripped from lanes
 * When I was going about as a herdsman, as a child in cow pastures,
 * On honeyed hillocks, on lovely knolls,
 * Following dusky Blackie, going along with spotted Frisky.
 * The cold recited me a lay, the rain kept bringing me songs.
 * The winds brought another song, the waves of the sea drove some to me.
 * The birds added songs, the treetops magic sayings.
 * These I wound up in a ball, arranged in a clew.
 * I thrust the ball into my sled, the clew into my sleigh;
 * I pulled it home on my sled, on my sleigh to the threshing barn,
 * Put it up in the storehouse loft in a round copper box.
 * For a long time my lays have been in the cold, housed in darkness.
 * Shall I pull the lays out of the cold, draw the songs out of the frost,
 * Bring my box into the house to the end of the long bench
 * Under the fine ridgepole, under the lovely roof?
 * Shall I open my chest of words, unlock my song box,
 * Clip the end off the ball, undo the knot in the clew?
 * Thus I will sing a really fine lay, intone a beautiful one
 * Out of rye bread, barley beer.
 * If no one happens to bring any beer, serves no table beer,
 * I will sing from a leaner mouth, intone on water
 * To gladden this evening of ours, to honor this memorable day
 * Or to delight the morrow, to begin a new morn.
 * I will sing from a leaner mouth, intone on water
 * To gladden this evening of ours, to honor this memorable day
 * Or to delight the morrow, to begin a new morn.

The Tale of the Gathering
original tltle: The Not So Great Outdoors (or Not So Happy Campers), Part I

In the Muskoka district of northern Ontario, about a three-hour drive and a twenty-minute boat ride from Toronto, there is a summer camp called Camp Wawanakwa. This camp served the youth of Ontario for a generation, but eventually fell into disuse as population patterns shifted and better-equipped and better-located competitors emerged.

In The Year of Our Lord Two Thousand Seven, a television studio scouting locations for a new reality show rediscovered the camp. Its location, on an island in a large lake, was of particular interest to the show’s producers, who wanted to limit the cast’s contact with the outside world. So it was that Camp Wawanakwa echoed with the sound of human activity for the first time in 14 years, as a team of laborers cleared away undergrowth and refurbished the derelict camp to make it at least marginally fit for human habitation.

On a warm day in late spring, a camera crew and its subject stood on the camp’s decaying dock. The crew was focused on a dark-haired man of thirty-odd years. His longish hair had a windswept look, his face sported perpetual three-day stubble, and he was dressed in a grunge style. This was Chris McLean, an actor who was then at the height of his fame and who is still well known today.

Speaking to the camera, McLean addressed his future audience directly, speaking grandly about “the hottest new reality show” and identifying himself as the host. He briefly described the nature and structure of the show (an elimination game, although he never explicitly said so) and revealed that the winner would receive, in his words, “a small fortune which, let’s face it, they’ll probably blow in a week.” That was certainly a good bet, for the game’s grand prize was $100,000—a nice chunk of change, but not enough to change a person’s lifestyle, especially after taxes. Indeed, a dollar isn’t what it used to be; and even then, even a million pretax dollars, which was the grand prize in later seasons, wouldn’t have supported more than a lower-middle class lifestyle if you wanted the money to last a lifetime. No, most of the contestants weren’t in it for the money. They were in it because they wanted to be famous. Indeed, the show’s theme song was a vocal titled, “I Want To Be Famous”.

A well-appointed yacht approached the dock as the host completed his introduction with the confession that the contestants were about to discover that they had been deceived. These 22 teenagers, fresh out of their sophomore year of high school, had been led to believe that they were the finalists in a talent competition to be held at a five-star resort. They were not expecting to be living in a dilapidated summer camp for the next 11 weeks, nor did they have any inkling that the competition itself would actually be an elimination game. “So if some of them seem a little pissed off,” McLean confided to the camera, “that’s probably why.”

The boat docked, and the first contestant answered the muster call. This was Beth, a short, pear-shaped girl with a strange fashion sense. She wore her shoulder-length, light brown hair in a high ponytail—more like a pony leg, really, for it jutted from the side of her head instead of from the back. She wore an oversized, green and gold shirt festooned with a variety of pin-on buttons, and pale pink slacks.

From head to toe, Beth’s appearance signaled “nerdette” —mousy and plain, but not truly ugly. Emphasizing Beth’s nerdiness were her Coke-bottle glasses and railroad-track braces, her family apparently being unable to afford modern orthodontia. Beth would later reveal that she grew up on a farm, which explained her family’s limited means.

Beth’s manner was as awkward as her body. When McLean welcomed her to the island, the first words out of her mouth were, “Wow, you’re much shorter in real life.” Beth’s observation was true enough, but it demonstrated that she had much to learn about tact.

In conjunction with Beth, the next arrival served to illustrate the physical extremes of humanity. Whereas Beth was short, fair and dumpy, Devon (or “D.J.”, as he preferred to be called) was tall, dark and muscular, with a close-cropped beard of a thickness unusual in a boy so young. Muscular, in his case, did not mean muscle-bound, for he moved with the grace of a cat. D.J.’s size and ripped physique gave him an intimidating appearance glaringly at odds with his shy smile, soft voice and gentle manner. He wore a white skullcap over hair that was as short as his beard, but was otherwise dressed simply and unremarkably.

“Chris Mclean! It’s an honor to meet you,” the starstruck brickhouse said when he reached the host’s position.

“D.J.!” Chris replied as he fist bumped the huge lad. “Welcome to the show.”

Noticing the ramshackle buildings beyond the dock, D.J. asked uncertainly, “This is it?”

“You got it,” Chris replied.

“It sure looked a lot different in the recruiting brochures,” D.J. said, fishing for an explanation.

“Yes, it did,” the host replied unhelpfully.

“Whatever,” the gentle giant replied said, shrugging his shoulders as he continued down the dock. He was tempted to complain, but his momma had taught him not to talk back to his elders.

The next girl off the boat was a softcore Goth. Her short hair was dyed pitch-black and highlighted in teal, although her highlights tended to look green on camera. Her dark, cool-colors outfit consisted of a sleeved corset top that arranged her modest chest to its best advantage; a short skirt with a patchwork look; forest-green hose; and black, knee-high platform boots. Her pasty complexion was not the artificial, chalky white of a hardcore Goth, but the natural pallor of fair skin that rarely feels the sun.

Unlike Beth and D.J., Gwen carried no luggage. The contestants had been given that option, for some had brought more than they could carry in a single trip, and anything they didn’t bring off the boat in their disembarking shots would be offloaded later. The decision of which luggage, if any, the teens carried off the boat themselves would therefore depend on how they wanted to look to the viewing audience.

“Our Goth girl, Gwen!” Chris cheerily announced to the camera.

Gwen, surveying the ramshackle structures beyond the dock, could not believe her eyes. This place did not even faintly resemble the resort where she was expecting the contest to be held. “We’re going to be living in a summer camp?” she asked incredulously.

“No, you’re going to be living in a summer camp, McLean corrected. “I’ll be living in that tricked-out trailer over there,” he added, casually motioning to the accommodations in question.

Gwen did not have a sunny disposition under the best conditions, and this unpleasant surprise did not improve her mood. She knew how to be tactful, but was not now inclined to make use of that knowledge, so she came right to the point.

“I did not sign up for this,” she declared.

“Actually, you did,” Chris corrected again, as some intern of little note nor long remembered handed him what was presumably the standard contestant’s contract. Thanks to the magic of postproduction editing, the finished episode would make it look like the host had casually pulled the document out of his back pocket.

McLean opened the contract at a bookmark. Clearly, he had been expecting someone to react as Gwen had.

“Here it is,” the host pronounced rhetorically. Turning the page to Gwen, he asked theatrically, “Would you be good enough to read this bit for the camera?”

With the air of one calling a bluff, Gwen read aloud the clause Chris had indicated. The Goth smugly read the name of the resort where she had expected the competition to be held, but her heart skipped a beat when she came to the damning caveat:

“…or such alternate venue as the Producer may designate.”

Gwen’s first impulse was to flip to the back page, to see if it had been signed in blood. Her second impulse was to tear up the contract before Chris’ eyes. That would be futile, she knew, since this cruel document was surely just a copy. Still, the host seemed to be enjoying Gwen’s discomfiture far too much, so she decided to get what enjoyment she could, as well. She snatched the contract from Chris’ hands and tore it up. It wasn’t easy, given that the contract was a substantial stack of paper, but Gwen managed it by imagining that she was actually rending McLean’s head from his body. She gave the host an evil smile as she did this, hoping to give him a hint of what she was actually visualizing.

Chris was not impressed. Receiving another copy of the contract from the same nameless intern (McLean having apparently expected someone to commit contractricide) the host flourished the undead document again.

“I am not staying here,” Gwen declared, turning back to the boat. The boat, however, had already left the dock, and was even now receding in the distance.

“Fine,” replied the unperturbed host. “But assuming you can swim all the way back, you do realize that there are some pretty heavy financial penalties if you back out now. Do you think your single mother can afford a long and costly legal battle which we will win?”

That hurt. Gwen’s mother was, indeed, raising two children alone. She was able to make ends meet, but little more; and part of Gwen’s motivation for this competition was to ease her mother’s burdens, most notably by being able to pay for her own college education. For anything Gwen knew to the contrary, the threatened litigation could have them all living under a bridge.

Defeated, the Goth trudged sullenly down the dock to where the other contestants stood. “Steaming little pile of crap,” she muttered.

Beth cocked her head. “Did you just say the camp was a ‘steaming little pile of crap’?” the farm girl asked innocently.

“No,” Gwen replied acidly, “the camp is a big steaming pile of crap.”

The boat came about and returned to the dock. The finished episode would suggest that the boat was shuttling between the mainland and the island, fetching the contestants one by one, but that would have been grossly inefficient. The truth was that, when the boat docked for the first time, all 22 contestants were on board, under virtual lockdown so they wouldn’t even see each other or the camp before disembarking. The boat would dock, deposit a contestant, steam away from the island for a few hundred meters, come about, head back to the island, and repeat the process. The only reason the boat left the dock at all after discharging its first passenger was so the finished episode could include a few shots of one contestant or another standing on the prow as the boat approached. The contestants chosen for this role were those who, based on their personality profiles, seemed the least likely to react negatively to the revelation that they would be staying at a dilapidated summer camp rather than a fancy resort.

The fourth contestant to arrive was a faux cowboy type who had probably never spent a day in the presence of livestock in his life. He wore sandals, jeans, a pink silk button-down shirt, and a ten-gallon hat. His shirt was completely unbuttoned, the better to show off his washboard abs. He would later reveal that he played football at his school, which explained his ripped physique, as weight training is par for the course in most football programs.

“And here’s our party king, Geoff!” Chris pronounced as the “cowboy” reached him.

“It’s great to be here, man!” Geoff exclaimed in turn.

“It’s great to have you here, man!”

“I’m totally psyched for this contest, man!”

Chris and Geoff continued in this manner for far too long, ending every single sentence with the word, “man”. They eventually tired of trying to out-“man” each other, and Geoff ambled down the dock to where the other contestants stood.

The boat docked again and a tall, model-thin, drop-dead gorgeous girl stepped ashore with regal bearing. Her straight, waist-length hair was unbound, and as black and glossy as jet. She wore a stylish maroon top that was little more than a sports bra, barely legal shorts, and open-toed, spike heel shoes. This was clearly a girl who could turn heads and enjoyed doing so.

Dramatically removing her sunglasses, the new arrival took in her surroundings. She appeared to be of mixed blood, with Asian features but pale skin, the vast majority of which was on display.

This “dragon lady” made no attempt to hide her displeasure. She stormed up to the host; and when she spoke, it was clear that she was used to getting her way, and that she was used to having others do her bidding.

“Welcome to the island, Heather,” McLean said with the bland smile that the contestants would get thoroughly sick of over the next 11 weeks.

“You cannot make me stay here,” Heather snapped as she stalked past. “I’m calling my parents.”

“Calling them with what?” the host asked with false pleasantness. “Have you forgotten that you will have no contact with the outside world?”

Heather did not turn back to face McLean, but she stiffened for a moment before her shoulders slumped in defeat. The host was right. Even if she still had the cell phone and other modern communications gadgets that she had been forced to surrender before boarding the boat, and even if the camp’s location didn’t turn out to be too remote for said devices to work, Heather wouldn’t have put it past the apparently unscrupulous producers to have a jammer or an “evil twin” going.

At least we’ll still be on camera, Heather told herself, noting the camera crews scattered about the dock area. That meant that the opportunity to become a celebrity—the main reason why she and most of the others had signed up for the show—was still intact. Somewhat mollified, the teen queen resumed her haughty bearing and glided along the dock to where the other contestants stood.

The boat next deposited a punk type with a wiry build. He wore a black T-shirt, emblazoned with a large skull design, over a long sleeved yellow undershirt. (Those long sleeves were there for a very good reason, which would be revealed soon enough.) His dark hair was styled in a green fauxhawk, and his face was heavily pierced. His skin was not pale, and this detail revealed him as a punk, as opposed to another Goth.

Duncan, for that was the boy’s name, was even more abrupt than Heather had been. “I don’t like surprises,” he told Chris, ominously pounding his fist into his open palm.

Chris’s smile lost none of its wattage. “Yeah, your parole officer told me that,” he acknowledged amiably. “And if you go around beating people up, or even threatening to, that’s a parole violation, right? And with your every move being recorded on camera, it’s not like there would be a lack of evidence, would there?” The host’s smile hadn’t changed one iota.

Duncan had been in enough fights to know when he was overmatched. Mustering a wry smile, he replied, “Okay, then.”

Duncan sauntered down the dock to where the other contestants stood, and sidled up to Heather. “Meet you by the campfire, gorgeous?” he suggested with a leer.

“You’re kidding, right?” Heather sniffed. “Try Weird Goth Girl, ‘cause you’re not getting any from me. Got it, Ugly Thugling?”

With a smirk and a voice dripping sarcasm, Duncan replied, “Wow, what a winning personality! Has anyone ever told you that you’re as beautiful on the inside as on the outside?”

“Get bent,” Heather snapped.

“I think that’s your role. We don’t have the right, er, ‘equipment’ to do it the other way around,” Duncan suggested, with another leer that left little doubt as to what he proposed to do if Heather were indeed to “get bent”. Duncan wasn’t normally quite so crude toward girls, but he had decided that he didn’t really like Heather, her hotness notwithstanding, and he wasn’t willing to let her have the last word in any case.

“Can you possibly get any more vile?” Heather sneered.

“Hey, toots, if that’s what turns you on, I can get as vile as you want.”

Heather did not deign to reply, turning back to face the arrival point and studiously ignoring the juvenile delinquent. Her wordplay on “ugly duckling”, though, had been more apt than she knew; for the day would come when Duncan would show himself to be more than just piercings and attitude, but that is another story for another time.

The boat approached the dock again, and the girl who now stood at the prow was obviously a surfing enthusiast. Tall and willowy, she was pretty in a “girl next door” sort of way. She wore her long, naturally blonde hair in a low ponytail that was more functional than fashionable; and she wore no makeup, for she held the view that all beauty is best the way Nature made it. She was dressed simply, with a sky-blue hoodie, jorts and sandals, and she carried a red and gold surfboard.

“Glad you could make it, Bridgette,” Chris said when the new arrival reached him.

“Great to be here,” Bridgette replied with a friendly smile. That smile faded, though, as she glanced around. “I thought we were going to be on a beach,” she said uncertainly.

“You are,” Chris pointed out, for the island did indeed have a beach of sorts—two or three meters of sand between lake and greensward. The beach was littered with detritus, some natural, some not.

“I mean a surfing beach,” Bridgette explained.

“Sorry, can’t help you there,” Chris replied, his bland smile suggesting that his inability to help didn’t really bother him. “I don’t recall the brochure ever mentioning surfing”.

“Oh, well,” the surfer girl said, sighing at this disappointment, “If I can’t surf, I guess I’ll just swim.”

“That’s the spirit,” Chris said.

As Bridgette hoisted her surfboard over her shoulder, the end of the board brushed against the side of Chris’ head, and he reacted as if he’d received an electric shock.

“Gaah!” he cried, flinching in fear, his hand at his temple. “Watch the hair, dudette!”

“Oh, I’m sorry!” Bridgette cried, as she reached out to smooth the tiny perturbation in Chris’ otherwise perfectly groomed hair. As she did so, she unwittingly swung her surfboard round and smacked the host painfully on the elbow.

“Darn it, that hurt!” Chris complained, sounding more like a seven-year-old than a grown man. Shooing Bridgette down the dock with hand gestures, he added petulantly, “Just go stand with the others and look pretty. And try not to hurt anyone else.”

As the chastened surfer girl moved to join the other contestants, Chris rubbed his injured elbow and grumbled, “I don’t get why they call it a ‘funny bone’. That was not funny.”

The boat docked yet again, and a beanpole who probably didn’t weight 50 kilos stepped forth. He, like D.J. before him, was dressed simply and unremarkably; and like Beth before him, he wore eyeglasses with thick lenses. Below his lip were a few wisps of hair that were presumably meant to be a soul patch; and upon his head, that great storehouse of useless trivia, was a crop of brick-red hair, for such records as are known hold that his line originated in the Orkney Islands, off the coast of Scotland.

This was Harold, son of Alan, who had taught his son well in wilderness lore, son of Gavin, son of Douglas, who was the first of his line to make his home in the New World, son of Lindsay, who found his fate on the banks of the Marne in the early days of the Great War, son of Bruce, son of Stuart, speaker of laws, son of Neil, son of Donald, who fought under Lord Nelson at Trafalgar, son of Kenneth, son of Malcolm, son of Scott, skilled in the ways of the sea, son of Wallace, son of Colin, who was well-versed in ancient lore.

“I thought this was supposed to be a talent contest,” Harold said uncertainly, with an asthmatic wheeze.

“I’m sure you did,” Chris agreed.

“So why are we at a crummy old summer camp?”

“Because you’re actually going to be doing summer camp-y stuff.”

“Excellent!” Harold cried, pumping his fist. “Prepare to gape in awe at my mad wilderness skills!”

“Whatever, Harold,” Chris said as Harold the Skinny sauntered down the dock.

The next contestant was, to make no bones about it, gigantic. He dwarfed all who had come before, except for D.J., and that dusky brickhouse was comparable only in height. Not only was this boy two meters tall if he was a centimeter, but he was also grossly fat, tipping the scales at a good 180 kilos. He was dressed simply, in shorts, sneakers, and what looked like a faux team shirt of some kind. He had a scraggly little mop of unkempt blond hair.

Owen, as this giant’s parents had christened him, had an uninhibited personality, to put it mildly. Picking Chris up like a rag doll, Owen cradled the host to his bosom and loudly proclaimed, “This is great”, “I’m so psyched to be here!” and many other exclamations of like kind. When it became apparent that Owen was likely to exult in this vein indefinitely, Chris pointedly asked the gregarious goliath to take his place with the others so that the contestant introductions could continue.

Attack of the Clones
The boat docked again and decanted, not the expected contestant, but two contestants. One was as skinny as a rail, with black hair and bronze skin, although whether her skin tone came from ancestry or lifestyle was not immediately clear. The other new arrival was shorter, very fat (albeit not as fat as Owen) and very fair. Her hair was dyed black and styled in the same high pigtails as her companion, for companions they clearly were.

These Bobbsey Twins wore matching outfits, with pink shorts almost as skimpy as Heather’s and black and white “prison striped” shirts. Even their luggage matched.

It is said that, “Growing old is mandatory, but growing up is optional,” and Kathleen and Sarah (or “Katie” and “Sadie”, as they preferred to be called), had not grown up. They saw the world with the innocent wonder of small children, and their personalities were even bubblier than Owen’s, if that was humanly possible. They were inclined to squeal in delight at one thing or another—a trait everyone else found grating until they learned to tune it out—and it took little to delight them.

After disembarking, Katie and Sadie paused a moment to take in their surroundings, and then began to chatter. When either spoke, the other tended to echo the thoughts of the first. Unquestionably, they had grown up together and had been inseparably close for a very long time.

“Oh, my gosh,” Katie gasped, unabashed joy writ large on her face. “Sadie, look! It’s a summer camp!”

Sadie’s face lit up like the sun. “Oh, my gosh, how awesome is that? I’ve always wanted to go to summer camp!”

“Oh, so have I! Don’t you love that about us?”

“Oh, I totally love, love, love it! I mean, it’s like we—“

“—like the same things, and we—“

“—each know what the other is thinking, and we—‘’


 * ”—can tell each other all—“

“—our secrets, and we—“

“—can totally be ourselves—“

“—with each other, and—“

“—now we get—“

“—to be at—“

“—summer camp—“

“—together—“

“All summer long!” they finally exclaimed in unison.

This remarkable display concluded, the “twins” dropped their luggage and hugged each other, squealing in delight for the first time of many. Retrieving their luggage, they finally, mercifully, pranced down the dock to join the other contestants.

It’s official, Gwen thought morosely. I’m in Hell.

As Katie and Sadie passed Chris, he looked toward the camera and genially admitted, “Well, I was going to introduce Katie and Sadie, but there really isn’t a lot left to say.” In a lower voice and a less congenial tone, he muttered, “Way to steal my thunder, girls. Sheesh.”

On the boat’s next stop, a short, somewhat skinny boy strutted off the gangplank like he owned the world. This legend in his own mind had short brown hair with long bangs nearly obscuring his green eyes. His most notable physical feature, though, was the All-Pro spitting gap in his teeth.

This was Cody, the troupe’s science geek. He projected an aura of coolness, or at least of what he perceived coolness to be, but it didn’t quite go with his outfit: a short-sleeved sweater, with a couple of stripes across the chest, over an off-white button-down shirt, the tails of which hung out over his cargo pants.

“The Codester! The Codemeister!” Chris declaimed as Cody approached and they flashed trendy hand gestures at each other, for Cody thought that he needed a “cool” nickname, and he was hoping that one of his suggestions would catch on by virtue of Chris using it for his introduction.

“Great to be here, Chris!” Cody replied.

As the cool geek, if there is such a thing, strutted down the dock toward the other contestants, he was mainly checking out the girls. There was a pretty, athletic looking blonde carrying a surfboard, for what reason Cody couldn’t guess; a dumpy, mousy, nerdy-looking girl who nevertheless was not without her charms; an identically dressed pair, one thin and one fat…threesome material, Cody thought, for he was nothing if not confident in himself; a hot Asian chick with a “master of all she surveys” air; and…well, Cody stopped there. He did not notice Gwen, who was standing at the back of the crowd. If he had seen her now, instead of later, events might have played out differently.

“I see the ladies have already arrived,” Cody said in what he imagined to be a suave tone. Assuming that he would have the pick of the crop—for who else here would be able to match his manly charms?—he strutted up to Heather.

“Out of your league, alpha geek,” Heather sniffed before Cody got too close, for she had guessed that he intended to chat her up.

Having struck out with the dragon girl, Cody decided to try his luck with Bridgette. She responded to his chat up lines politely and amicably, but nevertheless made it clear that she was currently more interested in meeting the remaining contestants.

Next off the boat was the obligatory blonde bombshell. This superabundantly endowed sun goddess, even prettier than Heather, sported a warm-colors ensemble consisting of stylized cowboy boots, a short skirt, and a halter top that seemed ready to fail at any moment beneath its titanic burden. Her only cool-color garment was the baby blue bandana that would serve her so well not two weeks hence, but that is another story for another time. Her long, straightened hair shone like sunbeams given form. Her skin was fair and flawless, and her face was made up subtly and skillfully.

As Her Cytherean Hotness approached Chris, she flashed a dazzling smile for the first time of many, for hers was a sunny disposition not unlike Katie and Sadie’s, although her tastes were more sophisticated. She walked with grace, despite her top-heavy build.

It is said that the Creator suffers no mortal to be perfect. When Lindsay spoke, her voice was as pleasant as wind chimes, but her words suggested that her many gifts had included precious little in the way of brainpower.

“Ladies and gentlemen, Lindsay!” Chris announced to the camera.

Lindsay’s high-wattage smile gave way to an uncertain expression and a furrowed brow—even that looked pretty on her—as if she was trying to remember something.

“Okay,” this ethereal vision said to Chris, a famous actor whose face was probably more widely recognized than the Prime Minister’s, “You look familiar.”

Dear God, Chris thought, although he said only, “I’m Chris McLean.”

Lindsay did not react.

“The Host?” Chris prompted helpfully.

Still nothing.

“Of the TV show you’re on?” the now-exasperated host added.

“No,” Lindsay answered slowly, “That’s not it.”

Finally, something flickered to life behind Lindsay’s pale blue eyes. “I know,” she beamed in satisfaction, “You were the funny guy in that tennis movie! You were a lot taller then.” The haze of confusion passed over Lindsay’s face once more. “Are you the host or something?” she asked.

Chris was losing patience. “That tennis movie” (actually a movie about badminton) had been Chris’ big break, and his role therein was decidedly not comedic.

“Look, bra,” he began.

Lindsay looked down and inspected her straining halter top. For the first and last time in the 11 weeks the show would take to shoot, the other contestants were sympathizing with Chris, who looked ready to scream. After a seemingly eternal moment, the microcephalic goddess looked back up at Chris, satisfied that her clothing was in order, and smiled contentedly.

Chris chose his words with more care this time, avoiding anything that could be misinterpreted as an instruction. “Linds, you’re here because you’re pretty and sweet,” he told her. “Just try not to get yourself kicked off too early, OK?”

“OK,” Lindsay agreed, with an endearing smile. And with that, Princess Lindsay her Hotness, heir to the throne of Bimbonia, took her place with the other contestants.

The next boy to arrive had a rustic, unsophisticated air about him. His unstylish but practical outfit consisted of work boots, jeans, a heavy greenish hoodie variant, and a toque. He wore his hair in a mullet, and had a downy proto-beard on his chin. Lindsay and Sadie cringed at the sight of the newcomer, although the other teens either didn’t notice this or didn’t know what to make of it.

“Our home schooled country boy, Ezekiel,” Chris announced to the camera. Turning back to the new arrival, McLean said, “What’s up, Zeke?”

“I am, Mr. McLean,” Ezekiel replied. “I’m so up for this contest, I can’t even describe it, eh?”

“Hmph,” Chris grunted in surprise, “I didn’t think you’d know what that meant. I mean, home schooled your whole life, raised by freaky prairie people…to be honest, I figured you’d be our one-and-done guy.”

Ezekiel lifted his eyes to the heavens in mock supplication. “Just because I’m home schooled doesn’t mean I live in a cave, eh?” he replied in the exasperated tone of one who has gotten sick of explaining the same thing over and over. “We have Internet. It’s just dialup, but still… I understand trendy expressions, even if I don’t use them. And I don’t plan to be your sacrificial lamb, eh?”

“O…kay,” the nonplussed host said, buying himself a moment to recover from his surprise. “And you can call me ‘Chris’. Everyone else will.”

As Ezekiel continued down the dock to join the other contestants, Chris turned back toward the camera. “Well, well,” the host said with that bland smile of his, “It seems our lamb may actually be a lion. That’d be cool.”

Ezekiel’s handling of his introduction impressed at least one of the other contestants, for Duncan smirked and stepped up to meet the new arrival. “Dude, way to tell off the Man!” the delinquent exclaimed, offering a high-five that Ezekiel hesitantly met.

The boat departed, but failed to turn around at the usual point and continued on its way until it was nearly out of sight. This break from the routine left the teens who had already arrived some 20 minutes to chat and get to know each other a little better.

When the boat finally returned, it was moving at its top speed—much faster that it had on the previous trips. The reason became apparent when the sharp-eyed Geoff spotted a speck in the sky. As the boat approached, the urban cowboy was also the first to identify the growing speck as a hang glider, connected to the boat by a towline.

The boat was now as close to the dock as it could safely get at its current speed, so its pilot throttled back and turned aside. Whoever was on the glider dropped the towline and began to descend in wide, lazy circles.

The glider was now close enough for the people on the dock to make out a few details. Most notably, at this point, was that the glider pilot seemed to be clad almost entirely in red. A couple of minutes later, the spectators could see that the pilot was a brown-haired boy wearing a red tracksuit, white sneakers, and a headband.

“Our jock of all trades, Tyler!” Chris announced dramatically.

Tyler was now low enough to hear McLean’s announcement, and to make himself heard as well. “Great to be here, dude!” He called down, waving for the cameras. “Clear the runway!”

Chris retreated to join the contestants at the base of the dock. After a couple more circles, Tyler was low enough to make his landing approach. Waving once more for the cameras, he brought his legs down and forward in a landing posture.

And slammed squarely into the end of the dock, folding over it like a jackknife.

“Guh-dunge,” Ezekiel said, wincing in vicarious pain.

“That’s going to leave a mark,” Duncan smirked.

“Wicked crash, dude!” Chris called from the base of the dock.

Tyler could not speak, for he’d had the wind knocked out of him, but he gave a “thumbs up” to let everyone know that he was not seriously hurt.

Next to arrive was a short, stocky, buxom girl clad in a blue leotard and matching gym shorts, with white sneakers. Her arms were noticeably muscled, even at rest, and she wore her black hair in a short, midlevel ponytail. Her expression was sullen.

Eva, as this tough-looking lass was called, could have been a pretty girl. She had a classic hourglass figure, with legs that were reasonably shapely despite being as hard as iron, and she even had a beauty mark on her lip, but she didn’t seem especially interested in her appearance. She was content to keep the unibrow that Nature had given her, although even normal eyebrows might have looked like a unibrow with her perpetual scowl; the severe ponytail she wore probably wasn’t the most flattering look for her; and she wore no makeup beyond lipstick that matched her hazel eyes.

Eva acknowledged Chris’ greeting with naught but a grunt, her sullen expression as unchanging as McLean’s smile, and trudged down the dock. When she came to Cody and Harold, she thought that a good place to await the arrival of the remaining contestants. As she turned to face the end of the dock, she dropped her bag, which fell to the dock with a heavy clunk.

“What’s in there?” Cody asked, trying to make conversation. “Dumbbells?”

“Yes,” Eva replied, in a tone that was equal parts, “What else would it be?” and “Go away and leave me alone.”

“Cool,” Cody said in an aside to Harold, as Eva turned her baleful gaze back to the arrival point. “A Klingon chick.”

Eva overheard the science geek’s comment, and smiled a bit—a rare occurrence, as her new colleagues would learn in due course. The musclegirl knew little about the Star Trek franchise, but she had heard enough about it to know that the Klingons were postulated as a warrior race. Since that fit reasonably well with her self-image, Eva regarded Cody’s assessment as an honest compliment. He would never hear that from her, though, because it wouldn’t do for this pipsqueak to get the idea that she might be into him.

The boat steamed in once more, with a slim girl standing at the prow and waving excitedly. Her long, somewhat curly hair was a fiery Scotch orange-red, and her eyes were green. This is a very rare combination, but that was only fitting, for this girl was a nonesuch.

She wore a green halter top with a collar and a cleavage window. She was the only girl with a long skirt, reaching almost to her knees, but the skirt was of a curious design—covering most of her thighs on the outside but “barely legal” on the inside, it was knotted on one side and hung low on her hips, only partially covering her green, bikini-like panties. All in all, it looked like Izzy, as the new arrival was called, had simply wrapped a yellow-green towel around her hips.

When the boat came to a stop, Izzy rushed to the gangplank, but stubbed her toe and took a header off the boat. Recovering quickly, she executed a flip and landed catlike on her feet, just about as close to the end of the dock as she could have done without falling into the water. She straightened up from the deep crouch she had landed in, with an “of course, I planned that” look on her face, and then dashed up to Chris, for she was a bundle of energy.

“Izzy, glad you could—“

“Oh, it’s so great to be here, Chris!” Izzy interrupted, with a delivery slightly slower than an American-style auctioneer’s. “This isn’t really what I expected, but that doesn’t matter. I’ll knock ‘em dead no matter what, or I should actually say, no matter where. Is this a summer camp? I thought you were taller. Are these the other contestants? They look nice, well, most of them, anyway, but I’ll overcome them all. When do we eat? Oh, wow, did you see that mosquito? It was the size of a pterodactyl! Don’t you go biting me, Skeeterzilla, ‘cause I bite back! Grahr!”

Izzy bounded down the dock, leaving Chris to grumble about contestants who wouldn’t let him do his job. When the manic redhead reached her new colleagues, D.J. said, “That was a sweet flip you did when you came of the boat.”

“Oh, I can do back flips, too,” Izzy replied, demonstrating with a flawless back flip. “See?”

“Cool,” Tyler said. “I can do those, too.” The jock demonstrated, as Izzy had; but unlike Izzy, who had executed a flawless full rotation, Tyler executed a flawless rotation and a quarter, and so landed flat on his back.

“Oh, are you all right?” Bridgette cried as she rushed to Tyler’s aid, for hers was a heart of gold. Unfortunately, as she went to help Red Jock, she accidentally bumped Duncan. The delinquent flailed his arms desperately for a moment or two before toppling into the lake.

As Tyler clambered to his feet, seemingly none the worse for his second unfortunate encounter with the dock, Duncan began to muscle his way back onto the dock. The delinquent looked more bemused than angry, for he understood that Bridgette had meant no harm, and it wasn’t like he was going to melt.

“That’s what I get for standing so close to the edge,” Duncan said rhetorically.

As Izzy watched Duncan haul himself out of the water, his arm and shoulder muscles rippling beneath the soaked shirt that now clung to his wiry frame, the redhead suddenly looked to her side and said, “Sunshine, put your tongue back in your mouth. What will the viewers think?”

“Who’s Sunshine?” Bridgette asked.

“She’s me bud,” Izzy informed her.

Bridgette was confused for a moment, for there was no one in the direction that Izzy had been looking when the redhead had addressed “Sunshine”. Then, understanding dawned.

“Oh, I get it,” Bridgette said. “An imaginary friend.”

“She gets that a lot,” Izzy replied enigmatically.

Half the Goddesses of Olympus
On its next stop, the boat disgorged a boy who looked every centimeter a brain. A brain with no fashion sense. He had longish, dark brown hair in no identifiable style (for it is a common quirk amongst intellectuals to have little interest in personal grooming) and a generically brown skin tone suggesting native or Hispanic extraction. He wore high top sneakers that didn’t quite reach his high-water cargo pants. His layered top (a combination he probably hadn’t changed much since his mother was dressing him) consisted of a white, long-sleeved undershirt; a short-sleeved, misbuttoned blue button-down shirt, and a red, lightweight sweater vest.

As the boy approached, Chris declared, “Our bookworm, Noah!”

Noah gave no greeting, but came right to the point. “Did you get the memo about my life-threatening allergies?” he asked. This was no small thing to Noah, for some of his allergies—most notably to formic acid, the active ingredient in certain insect stings—were indeed life-threatening, as the other teens would learn before the contest was done, but that is another story for another time.

“I’m sure somebody did,” Chris replied unhelpfully.

Noah quickly scanned the decrepit buildings beyond the dock. “This doesn’t resemble the pictures in the recruiting brochures,” he pronounced.

“No, it doesn’t,” Chris replied, as if they were discussing the weather.

“So, then, we’re here because…?” Noah prompted.

“Because this is where the contest is being held,” Chris replied matter-of-factly.

Noah decided that he would get nowhere with this line of conversation. Having established that Chris had no shame, Noah decided to see if he might score points with some of his competitors.

“I see that’s not the only thing you’ve deceived us about,” Noah began enigmatically.

“What do you mean?” the host asked, his curiosity aroused.

“There was a pretty strong suggestion that only mortals would be competing,” Noah explained, as he moved to join the other contestants. “You’ve got half the goddesses of Olympus here. This, for example,” he continued, indicating Eva, “Is surely none other than Pallas Athena, goddess of war; and this,” he added, motioning to Gwen, “can only be Hecate, goddess of the night and patroness of sorcerers.” Coming to Heather, he turned and asked, “And who is this, if not Queen Hera?” Looking to Bridgette, who was once more holding her surfboard, Noah added, “I seem to have missed Aphrodite rising from the sea. I hope the finished episode shows that bit.”

“Silver-tongued devil,” the visibly blushing Bridgette said to no one in particular.

Nerdling knows how to spin a compliment, Heather thought. The finished episode would have her and others saying as much in confessional spots. The girls thus flattered savored the moment, and it was well that they did; for this was the last time that most of them would hear anything complimentary from Noah’s lips.

Noah came to Lindsay and declaimed, “Was this the face that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium? Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.”

“My name’s Lindsay, silly,” the uberbimbo deadpanned.

“Oh, me, me!” Izzy interjected, waving her arms to attract Noah’s attention. “If you want topless towers burned, I’m your gal!” With her characteristic rapid-fire chatter, the motormouthed redhead added, “Actually, they don’t really need to be topless. They don’t even need to be towers, come to think of it. Really, if you want to burn pretty much anything, I’m the chick you want to talk to.”

“Dude,” Geoff said to Noah, “You picked the wrong chick to butter up with fancy talk.” The urban cowboy didn’t know Noah’s reference to Helen of Troy (said to have been the most beautiful woman in the world) but he correctly surmised that it was a reference to something that was supposed to be flattering.

“If you’d been here when Lindsay arrived, you’d understand,” Geoff explained.

Noticing the murmured chorus of agreement, Noah concluded that Lindsay’s arrival must have been something “special”. As the contestants waited for the boat to return, Geoff drew closer to Noah and told the bookworm about the uberbimbo’s entrance, but nothing would be gained by repeating it here.

The boat returned and decanted a sturdy-looking girl of African descent. She was dressed simply, in jeans and a T-shirt that might have come from a mall kiosk. She was one of the stouter girls in the troupe, but not truly fat. She wore her shoulder-length hair in a fine weave, with the strands pulled back in a ponytail.

“Our homegirl, LeShawna!” Chris announced to the camera.

Turning to said homegirl, the host greeted her in schoolboy French, for LeShawna was the show’s token francophone. Born and raised in Montreal, she was fully bilingual, but French was her first language, and she would occasionally lapse into it when she was angry or afraid. On more than one instance during the course of the competition, she would find it necessary to ask other contestants to “pardon her French”, literally as well as figuratively.

As this minority “double play” strutted down the dock toward the other contestants, she called out, in a booming voice and a jive turkey manner, “What’s up, y’all? LeShawna’s in the house! Feel free to quit now and make it easy on yo’selves, ‘cause I came to win!”

“And the rest of us didn’t?” Noah smirked to Heather, who happened to be the one he was standing closest to.

“Lame,” Heather pronounced, as the homegirl reached the leading edge of the crowd.

Cocky though she was, it quickly became clear that LeShawna was also friendly, with an eye for the boys. “Yo, baby, how’s it shakin’?” she asked with a wink as she passed Geoff. Not waiting for an answer, she came to D.J. and offered a high five, saying, “Give me some sugar, my brother.”

“How’s it hangin’ Red Dude?” LeShawna asked Tyler, with a hand sign and a wink suggesting that she might be open to the possibility of getting to know the jock better. Coming to Cody and Harold, the jovial homegirl demonstrated her ability to walk and chew gum at the same time by fist bumping Cody with one hand and pinched Harold’s butt with the other.

“Where did you learn English?” Noah asked in a tone that suggested he wasn’t really interested in the answer. “From 1970s ‘blaxploitation’ movies?”

“Excuse me?” LeShawna demanded in a tone that implied, “You really do not want to go there.”

Undeterred, the bookworm snarked, “The producers will probably manipulate the editing to turn us all into stereotypes, but you seem intent on saving them the trouble.”

“What did you just say to me?” the homegirl asked, rolling up her sleeves to reveal biceps that were probably bigger around than Noah’s thighs. “Oh, no you didn’t! I’ll show you stereotypes, sucka!” she added as she advanced on the bookworm, with the apparent intention of beating him to steaming pulp. It was all that Bridgette and Eva could do to restrain her.

“Easy, girlfriend,” the straining Eva hissed through gritted teeth. “Flying off the handle is my shtick.”

“Okay people, settle down,” Chris called down the dock, having noticed the altercation but not the words that led to it. “There’ll be plenty of time for infighting later.”

“Fine,” LeShawna said to no one in particular. She stopped trying to approach Noah, which was Bridgette and Eva’s cue to release her, although they kept covert eyes on her until they were satisfied that the incident had truly blown over.

LeShawna, for her part, cast a sidelong glance at Noah and saw that the bookworm had turned his attention back to the end of the dock, awaiting the next contestant. Having apparently made his point, he now seemed content to ignore LeShawna, so the homegirl decided to let the matter drop.

The next boy off the boat was clearly an ax man—a guitar player. He was dressed casually, his most remarkable garment being a semi-camo shirt featuring short, camo-pattern sleeves but a solid, light greenish torso. Emblazoned on his chest was a black handprint, the significance of which he never bothered to explain. He wore a large backpack in lieu of luggage, and carried what could only be the case for an acoustic guitar.

His manner was laid-back and unaffected. His black hair, longer in the bangs than elsewhere (the better to cover his high forehead), went oddly with his green eyes, which is not to say that the effect was in any way unpleasant. Like Geoff, he sported a cleft chin.

“Our ‘wandering minstrel’, Trent!” Chris announced to the camera. Turning back to the “minstrel”, Chris said, “Glad you could make it!”

“Great to meet you in person, Chris!” Trent replied. “I’m a big fan of your work. Not to be a suck-up or anything, but I still think you got robbed when you didn’t win Best Supporting Actor for Badminton: The Movie.”

“Ah, a connoisseur of great cinema,” Chris declaimed, offering a fist bump which Trent happily accepted. “I can see that we’re going to get along great.”

Trent finally looked past Chris, and immediately wished he hadn’t.

“This is it?” the musico asked incredulously.

“You got it,” Chris replied affably.

“But there isn’t even a stage,” the perplexed axboy pointed out.

“Actually there is,” the host corrected, “but that’s not where most of the competition is going to be.”

Seeing that Trent was about to say something else, Chris cut him off. “Long story, but we’re on a schedule. I’ll fill you all in after everyone get here, so how about you go to the end of the dock and wait with the others?”

“Okay, then,” Trent said uncertainly.

Walking down the dock toward the other contestants, Trent quickly scanned the crowd. There would be plenty of time to get to know everyone, he thought, so he was mainly sizing up the girls, to see if any appealed to him enough that he should try to stake an early claim.

He found one.

Stopping beside Gwen, Trent smiled at her. “Dark as night and pale as moonlight,” he said, with frank admiration in his voice. “It works for you.”

Gwen quickly looked away. In truth, she found the sincere admiration in Trent’s voice—so very different from Noah’s faintly theatrical tone when the bookworm had compared her to a Greek goddess—deeply flattering, but it was too soon. Being something of a loner, she’d never had anything resembling a boyfriend before, and precious few admirers, so she was unsure of how to proceed, and it wouldn’t do for anyone to think she was easy. The safest thing to do, therefore, if not the most satisfying, was to retreat into her shell.

Whoa, Cody thought as he looked toward this pair, for he had overheard Trent’s remark. I can’t believe I didn’t notice that Goth chick before.

The boat approached yet again, with the 11th and final girl standing at the prow and waving politely.

“Our Ms. Do-it-all, Courtney!” Chris announced.

Chris offered Courtney his hand as she stepped off the gangplank, for her profile suggested that she would be appreciative of such a gesture without merely accepting it as her due or interpreting it as condescension. Sure enough, Courtney politely thanked the host for his gratuitously chivalrous gesture, although she seemed to have little to say to him otherwise.

Courtney was not the spectacular beauty that some of the earlier arrivals were, but nevertheless managed to turn her share of heads. She spent a good deal of time outdoors, judging by her well-tanned skin and the touch of sunbleaching in her shoulder-length, chestnut-brown hair, which she wore loosely.

Courtney did not appear to be especially fashionable. She wore a short, lightweight grey sweater over a more expansive off-white blouse, the combination bearing an unfortunate resemblance to a chambermaid’s uniform. At least her calf-length, olive green pants didn’t reinforce that image.

Courtney also wore high-heeled sandals, but even with this enhancement was one of the shortest contestants in the troupe. That meant little, though, as the others would learn quickly enough. Napoleon was short, too.

Courtney joined the other contestants and engaged in polite introductions with a number of them. The girl knew how to work a room. When she revealed later in the competition that she planned to run for public office one day, that revelation would come as a surprise to no one.

Courtney’s gladhanding and amiable chitchatting ceased abruptly, as did all other conversation, when the last contestant arrived.

The 11th and final boy was, for want of a better description, a god among men. He had a ripped physique—not the exaggerated muscle definitions of a bodybuilder, but perfectly toned and proportioned manliness—that rippled under his tight T-shirt. (He also wore old, nondescript blue jeans and sneakers, but none of the girls noticed those until later.) His shortish hair was straight, glossy and raven-black. His skin was a flawless bronze, his teeth a flawless white, and his eyes—oh, those eyes—beckoning sapphire wells that a girl could drown in if she wasn’t careful, and maybe even if she was. In short, every girl present desired him on sight.

The boys’ reactions to the new arrival were mixed. Some were disdainful of the “pretty boy”; some admired his ripped physique, knowing that a guy didn’t get that way without a lot of work, whatever his natural gifts; and some saw a dangerous rival who might damage their own chances of hooking up with someone. Nobody was concerned that the newcomer might easily recruit girls into alliances, but that was only because everyone still thought that the coming competition would be a talent contest, rather than an elimination game.

Chris introduced Justin, for that was the name of this unearthly vision, and conversed briefly with him, but none of the girls noticed anything more than his name. Justin’s voice was unremarkable, for the Creator does not suffer true perfection in mortals.

As Justin concluded his business with the host and moved to join the other contestants, it quickly became clear that he was aware (for how could he not be?) of the effect he had on others. Indeed, the way he walked seemed to be not so much “walking” as the continuous, flowing striking of a series of poses. As he passed the girls, Sadie fainted dead away, and more than one other looked ready to follow suit. When the Incredible Hunk reached Lindsay, his “runway walk” came to an abrupt end.

Oh, wow, Lindsay thought, suddenly feeling weak in the knees yet unable to tear her gaze from that sapphire abyss that was Justin’s eyes, ''a guy as hot as me. Never thought I’d see the day. Could he be The One?''

Oh, wow, Justin thought, suddenly feeling weak in the knees yet unable to tear his gaze from that cerulean abyss that was Lindsay’s eyes, ''a girl as gorgeous as me. Never thought I’d see the day. Could she be The One?''

Chris whistled sharply to get everyone’s attention. “All right, dudes and dudettes,” the host announced, “now that we’ve introduced everyone, we need a cast photo for Marketing. I want you all to come out onto the dock, right about to where I’m standing now, and arrange yourselves however you like. Just make sure we can see everyone.”

As a cameraman traded his video camera for a still camera and began to set up on the prow of the yacht, Chris directed traffic on the dock to ensure that the 22 teenagers were packed closely enough for the camera’s field of view to cover everyone. The shorter contestants (mostly girls, naturally) sat in the front row, in a variety of poses. Most of the others knelt or stood, with some leaning in toward the center of the camera’s field of view. Owen and D.J. stood in the back because they towered over everyone else.

With everyone packed in together, the decrepit old dock was sagging alarmingly, especially around the titans in the back. As Chris took up a position in the foreground, intending that the cast shot should include a headshot of him, the contestants were listening nervously to the noises issuing from beneath them. In their minds’ eyes, they had vivid images of the decaying dock collapsing and dumping them all into the lake.

The cameraman took his sweet time preparing. When he was finally ready, he called to everyone to smile. Most of the teens managed smiles, despite their misgivings.

The cameraman called for a second picture, then a third. By this time, most of the contestants were convinced that the dock would fail at any moment, but the ancient timbers were apparently stronger than they looked. Or felt. Or sounded. When the cameraman was finally finished, the teens gratefully and hurriedly quit the dock for the safety of solid ground.

As the yacht left the dock for the last time, Chris led the contestants through a short stretch of woodland to a clearing dominated by a large campfire pit. There were 11 tree-stump seats to one side of the fire pit, and the host invited his charges to take seats if they wished.

“Some of you,” the host said, “have asked why we’re at this crummy old summer camp instead of the five-star resort that you were expecting. The short answer is that your ability to adapt to unexpected twists is one of the things you’re being tested on.”

“But what does that have to do with a talent contest?” Trent asked. More warily, he added, “This is a talent contest, isn’t it?”

“Actually, no,” Chris replied. “Despite what you were told, this competition is actually an elimination game.”

It was all Heather could do to stop herself grinning from ear to ear. While she was confident that she would have done well in the talent contest that everyone had been expecting, she was even more confident now, for she was an aficionado of elimination game shows. They might as well write me the check now, she thought with elation. Living in this lame summer camp is going to be worth it.

After pausing briefly to let his revelation sink in, Chris continued. “In a few moments, you will be divided into two teams. Every three days, those teams will compete against each other in various types of challenges. The winning team will get a reward, and the losing team will have to decide which of its members to send home. That decision will be made by plurality vote. In the event of a tie vote, I will decide how to handle it. There is no set tie-breaking procedure.

“Any questions?”

Katie raised her hand and asked, “What’s a plurality?”

“Do you know what a majority is?” Cody asked the “thin twin” in turn, before Chris could respond.

“Sure. It means more than half.”

“Well, a plurality is similar, except that you don’t need more than half. You just need more than anyone else has.”

“Okay,” Katie said, with a nod of her head.

“Somewhere around the midpoint,” Chris continued, “or when one of the teams gets too small, the teams will be merged, at which point it will be every camper for themselves.”

“Camper?” Lindsay asked.

“You’re living at a summer camp, so you are now officially campers,” Chris explained. “At the end, the last camper standing will win the grand prize of one hundred thousand dollars.

“As a general rule, we’ll be running on a three-day cycle. The first day will usually be downtime, where you can just be yourselves for the cameras. Today is an exception, because you have to get oriented and settled in. The challenge will be on the second day, with the voting and elimination ceremony on the third day. There will be a few cases where the elimination is on the same day as the challenge, but we’ve tried to give you the extra day whenever possible so you’ll have time to consider your decisions, because you don’t get mulligans here.”

“What’s a mulligan?” Lindsay asked.

“It’s a golf term,” Harold explained. “Basically, it means a do-over. Its origin is unknown, but the story I’ve heard is that a foursome compensated their carpool driver—named Mulligan—by giving him two shots off the first tee.”

“Fascinating, Harold,” Chris said in a tone suggesting that he wasn’t the least bit fascinated. “Now, when I call your name, I want you to stand over here,” the host continued, indicating a space to his right. “Beth…Cody…Gwen…”

The dumpy farm girl, the science geek and the Goth did as they had been instructed.

“Heather…Justin…Katie…”

The dragon girl, the Incredible Hunk, and the skinny girl-child likewise took up positions at Chris’ right hand.

“LeShawna…Lindsay…Noah…”

The ample homegirl, the brainless blonde beauty, and the bookworm took their places with their new teammates.

“Owen…and last but not least, Trent.”

As the man-mountain and the axboy joined their new teammates, Sadie’s eyes widened in horror.

“There must be some mistake,” Sadie cried desperately. “Katie and I have to be on the same team! One on one is one thing, but we’re never on opposite teams. We can’t do it!”

“It’s true,” Katie added, her own eyes wide now that the awful truth had sunk in. “There’s no way we can play tough against each other! It’s like having to play with one hand tied behind our backs. How can we help our teams like that?”

“Not my problem,” Chris replied unsympathetically.

“It’s so unfair,” Sadie complained, tears welling in her eyes. “You’re just setting us up to get kicked off first!”

A sudden thought seemed to strike the butterball, and she regarded the host with narrowed eyes. “It’s because I’m fat, isn’t it?”

Chris’s seemingly permanent bland smile vanished. He had shown irritation a few times before; but now, for the first time, he looked genuinely angry.

“If you play the ‘oppressed minority’ card on me again,” he warned darkly, “you’ll be out of here so fast it’ll make your head spin. Capisce?”

Realizing that Sadie had provoked the host to the point that he might do something rash, the clones said no more, but looked sadly at each other, resigned for the nonce to one or both of them being early outs.

“Don’t sweat it, hon,” LeShawna said as she gave Katie’s shoulder a light, reassuring squeeze. “It’ll be all right. When this game is over, you’ll still be tight, right? Besides, you can be tough without being mean.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Katie sighed, accepting LeShawna’s reassurance but not really convinced.

Chris turned to the newly constituted team. “As I was about to say, before I was so rudely interrupted,” he said, with a quick warning glare at Sadie, “you are now the Screaming Eagles!”

An intern planted a battle standard in front of the Eagles: a red banner with a silhouette of an eagle, wings back and talons outstretched as if to grab some terminally unlucky gopher.

“Eagles,” Noah observed disinterestedly. “A popular, traditional mascot.”

Chris turned back to face the remaining 11 teenagers, some of whom had now claimed seats recently vacated by members of the Eagles.

“Now, when I call your name, I want you to come up and stand over here,” the host said, indicating a space to his left.

“Bridgette…Courtney…D.J….”

The surfer girl, the diminutive dynamo, and the dusky brickhouse took their places at the host’s left hand.

“Duncan…Eva…Ezekiel…”

The fauxhawk-crested delinquent, the dour musclegirl, and the home-schooled farmboy did as they had seen their new teammates do.

“Geoff…Harold…Izzy…”

The urban cowboy, the beanpole, and the manic redhead likewise did as they had been bidden.

“Sadie…and, last but not least, Tyler.”

The butterball and the jock of all trades joined their new teammates, Sadie with a dejected look across the way to Katie.

“You,” Chris said to the second team, “are now the Killer Muskies!”

The intern now planted the Muskies’ battle standard, a green banner sporting the Muskies’ logo: a slim, torpedo-like fish, wheeling about and with its jaws agape, its mouth filled with large, needle-like teeth.

“What’s a muskie?” Sadie asked.

“It’s short for ‘muskellunge’,” Harold began.

“Do you know what a pike is? The fish, not the weapon?” Izzy asked before Harold could continue. Not waiting for a response from Sadie, Izzy explained, “Well, a muskie is the biggest, baddest type of pike. They can get as big as a man, sometimes. They’re ambush hunters that skulk around and when they see a tasty little fishie, they dart out and it’s down the ol’ muskie hatch. Bye, little fishie!” The motormouthed redhead said all this in slightly more time than it had taken Harold to say, “It’s short for ‘muskellunge’.”

The teams assigned, Chris led the campers to the camp proper. As they walked, Duncan sidled over to Courtney.

“Hey, Princess.”

“My name’s Courtney. I would prefer that you call me that…Duncan, is it?”

“Yeah. Anyway, teamie, we have to keep Malibu Barbie and Iron Klutz apart at all costs.”

“Okay, I assume that by ‘Malibu Barbie’ you mean Bridgette, but who’s ‘Iron Klutz’?”

“Tyler,” replied the Juvenile Hall alumnus. “The guy in the red track suit.”

“Why would having them together be a problem?” asked the puzzled princess. “They both seem nice.”

“Nice isn’t the problem,” Duncan explained. “The problem is that they’re both majorly clumsy. Put them together, and they’ll be a disaster waiting to happen. If you hadn’t been one of the last people off the boat, you’d understand. I don’t know what McLean was thinking, putting them on the same team.”

“Thanks,” Courtney replied uncertainly. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Reaching the camp, Chris motioned to two large structures with the campers’ luggage piled in front and said, “These are your cabins. Boys have the one on the left, and girls have the one on the right. Now, some elimination games keep the teams separated between challenges, but we don’t have that kind of budget, so you’ll be able to mingle with your rivals if you’re into that sort of thing.

Katie and Sadie’s spirits rose noticeably at that. They might be stuck on opposite teams, with the likelihood of being early outs, but at least they could still do what BFFs do between challenges.

As Heather and Lindsay headed into the girls’ cabin to stake early claims to the best beds—ideally something with a view of the lake, if such was available—Geoff cast what he thought was an unnoticed eye toward Bridgette and called, “Yo, Chrismeister! Will there be a chaperone in this facility?”

Chris replied, “You’re all 16 years old, the same age as—“

“I’m only 15,” Sadie corrected, raising her hand to be sure the host noticed her.

“That’s true,” Katie confirmed. “Her birthday’s not ‘til almost Midsummer.”

Chris did not acknowledge the Bobbsey Twins directly. “As I was saying,” he began testily, with a glare at the clones who were getting on his last nerve by this point, “you’re all 16 years old or will be turning 16 during the course of this competition, which is the same age as a Counselor In Training at a regular summer camp; so, apart from me and my aide, whom you’ll meet later, you’ll be unsupervised.

“You’ve got one hour to get settl—“

A tremendous scream suddenly erupted from the girls’ cabin. This was no mere, “Eek! A mouse!” scream, but the scream of a girl in mortal peril, and with an ungodly set of lungs into the bargain.

For a moment, the campers were stunned into inaction. Recovering their wits, the teens ran for the cabin. Chris shrugged his shoulders and headed for the main lodge.

The hour was growing late, so Brett’s mother left off her tale, and suggested that he prepare for bed.

.

Second Night
In the morning, after they had breakfasted, Brett went to school whilst his mother, who had neither spouse nor partner, went to earn their daily bread. That evening, after they had dined and Brett had attended to his homework (for that was the price his mother had set for continuing her tale), Brett asked his mother to tell him more about her experience on Total Drama Island. Brett sat in his favorite chair, and his mother sat on the sofa. She took a few moments to collect her thoughts, and then she began to speak.

The rescue force arrived at the threshold, as ready as they would ever be to face whatever awaited them.

Heather had taken refuge on an upper bunk. At the far end of the cabin, Lindsay stood cowering on a chair, and her manner suggested that it was she who had uttered that terrible scream. Standing in front of the chair was an enormous black…something, rearing menacingly and displaying its gigantic mandibles. It was a large male stag beetle—harmless, but looking like something straight out of Hell. It was probably more afraid of Lindsay as she was of it, if such a thing was even possible.

“What is it? Kill it! Kill it!” Lindsay cried desperately.

D.J. was one of the first on the scene. Taking one look at the beetle, he turned to flee. Finding the door blocked by people who had arrived after him, the apparently fainthearted brickhouse wedged himself into a corner and tried to appear as inconspicuous as possible.

Most of the would-be rescuers seemed unsure of what to do. The beetle looked too large to easily crush underfoot, especially with so many of the teens wearing only sandals or other light footwear. Besides, most of the campers didn’t know what those evil-looking mandibles might be capable of, and weren’t keen to find out. Ezekiel’s heavy boots would have filled the bill nicely, and Eva wouldn’t have hesitated to pound it flat with one of her dumbbells, but those two were stuck at the back of the crowd that had gathered around the doorway.

Duncan presently broke the glass on a box containing a fire axe. Apparently, he proposed to cleave the insect with it.

He never got the chance. As Duncan moved to fetch the axe, Harold reached into his pocket and pulled out a soft pleather case. Opening it, he withdrew a shuriken. As the beetle spread it wings to take flight and Duncan began to approach with his axe, Harold nonchalantly flicked his wrist and sent his spiked messenger on its errand.

It is not clear whether Harold’s shuriken would have pierced the beetle’s tough outer shell; but with its wings spread, the insect was vulnerable. The shuriken skipped off the floor several centimeters behind its target, caught the beetle on the upswing, and transfixed it to the chair leg. The beetle struggled briefly, and then was still.

I’m going to have to watch this dork, Duncan thought, as he would later reveal in the confessional. There may be more to him than meets the eye.

Lindsay was suitably impressed. Hopping down from her chair, she embraced her knight in shining T-shirt. “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you,” she said, before planting a lipstick imprint on Harold’s flushed cheek.

“Any time,” Harold replied, somehow managing to sound at once smug and humble. He meant it, too. For “rewards” like Lindsay had just given him, he would have moved mountains for her.

Releasing her rescuer, Lindsay turned, crouched down—not bending over, for her skirt was very short—and curiously inspected the late beetle. “What is that thing, anyway?”

“A stag beetle”, Harold informed her didactically, “so named because the male’s mandibles resemble a stag’s antlers. The name actually refers to any of a number of species of the genus…”

As Harold discoursed in a professorial tone, Lindsay’s interest quickly faded and her eyes began to glaze over. Her face took on the look of childlike confusion that the other teens would come to know so well.

Seeing what was happening, the late-arriving Geoff interrupted Harold, who was continuing his lecture seemingly unaware of Lindsay’s reaction.

“Dude, I think you’ve lost her,” the party king told The Answer Man.

Harold looked at Lindsay, possibly for the first time since he began answering her question, and seemed to deflate. “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he sighed.

“Cheer up, dude,” Geoff said, giving Harold a fraternal swat between the shoulders as he led the beanpole away. “She’s on the other team, so it probably wouldn’t have worked out anyway.” When they were out of the cabin, Geoff added, “And there’s no way she’s making it to the merge. She’s crazy hot—”

“Tell me about it,” Harold interrupted, remembering Lindsay’s show of gratitude. Her embrace and kiss had been clearly platonic, expressing gratitude rather than affection; but it had been an embrace and a kiss, nonetheless.

“—But she’s so dumb,” Geoff continued, “I’m surprised she doesn’t forget how to breathe. She’d be great for a fling. For a steady girlfriend, not so much.

“Now, Bridgette, she seems like the real deal. Courtney, too.” Geoff seemed to be struck with a sudden thought. “In fact…Harold, is it?”

“Yeah.”

“Mind if I call you ‘Harry’?”

“To be honest, I prefer ‘Harold’.”

“Fair enough.” Geoff’s brow furrowed. “Now, where were we?”

“I think you were about to say something about Bridgette and/or Courtney,” Harold informed the urban cowboy.

“Oh, yeah.” Geoff rummaged through his memory for a few moments and retrieved the interrupted thought. “Anywho, I think Courtney might be more your speed. She seems like the kind of chick who might appreciate a dude with a lot upstairs.”

This seemed to Harold a most fruitful line of discussion. Although he loved to play the professor, he could also be an attentive student. Geoff seemed like he would be popular with the ladies, so Harold thought he might learn a thing or two on that topic by picking the party boy’s brain.

“Speaking of the distaff side of our team,” Harold prompted, as he and Geoff headed back to their cabin, “What do you think of Izzy?”

“I don’t really have a read on her, yet,” Geoff admitted. “She seems nice, but something seems a little off. I’m not sure what. Whatever, she’s obviously a real fireball. I doubt you’d be able to keep up with her. I’m not even sure I could. She is hot, though.”

“Eva?”

“Eva’s good. Not the prettiest face on the block, but she’s got great curves. But the first time you got her mad, she’d snap you like a twig. Leave her to dudes who can take some punishment.” “And, for the sake of completeness, how about Sadie?” “Seems like a sweet little butterball, but I have a feeling there might be more to her than meets the eye. You saw how she tried to guilt the Chrismeister into giving her what she wanted. Accusing him of having it in for her because she’s fat…that’s hardball. She is fatter than hell, but she’s pretty enough if you don’t mind that. Kind of an ‘anti-Eva’, if you know what I mean. And she is on the rebound, sort of. If you see something you like in her, I’d say, ‘Go for it.’ The worst she can do is say, ‘no’. Not like Eva. She could do a lot of things worse than say, ‘no’.” Geoff and Harold reached the boys’ cabin and found the settling-in process in full swing. Most of the boys had claimed their beds and were unpacking, making small talk as they made themselves at home. The cabin had 12 bunk beds, so questions regarding the berthing arrangements had focused mainly on who would have upper bunks and who would have lower. The boys quickly decided that Owen should have the 11th and 12th beds to himself because Owen was huge, the beds didn’t look especially sturdy, and nobody wanted an upper bunk that might collapse beneath them at any time.

Presently, Owen and Tyler heard the call of nature and went looking for a restroom, for the cabin had no toilets. Cody, meanwhile, returned to the girls’ cabin to see if he might rectify an earlier oversight and chat up that cute little Goth.

In the girls’ cabin, meanwhile, Heather and Lindsay’s plans to grab the best beds had come to naught. Even without the Beetle Incident cutting short their scouting time, one bed was much like the next and none had a view that was in any way remarkable, so there was little to choose. As a result, the main berthing question was who should bunk with whom.

When the question of what to do with the 12th bed arose, Izzy immediately said that the answer was obvious because there were, in fact, 12 girls.

“Who’s the 12th?” Bridgette asked, although she suspected that she knew the answer.

“Sunshine, of course,” Izzy replied. “You met her. Don’t you remember?”

Anticipating the other girls’ questions, Bridgette explained, “Izzy has an imaginary friend named Sunshine. Apparently, ‘Sunshine’ is hot for Duncan.”

“Whatever,” LeShawna said as she tried and failed to picture Izzy making out with Duncan, for the homegirl assumed that “Sunshine’s” attitudes were merely a proxy for Izzy’s.

“Since when do imaginary friends need real beds?” Heather asked, rolling her eyes.

Izzy shook her head sadly and said, “People are so intolerant.”

“Be fair, girl,” LeShawna admonished. “This ‘Sunshine’ isn’t even a contestant, so by rights, she shouldn’t be here at all.”

“Sorry, Sunshine, I tried,” Izzy said to the air. “Yes, the boys probably do have an extra bunk. No, you can’t sleep there. Trust me, you don’t want that kind of reputation. Yes, I know you’re into Duncan, but you have to be realistic. You just met the guy.”

“I know, guys,” Courtney said, “We could use the 12th bed as a luggage rack. With all due respect to ‘Sunshine’, an imaginary girl should be just fine with an imaginary bed.”

“You just don’t get it, do you?” Izzy pouted. She said no more, for she could see that this was a fight she couldn’t win.

“It’ll be okay,” Courtney reassured the grumpy redhead. “Nothing against Sunshine, but LeShawna’s right. She’s not a contestant. In any case, I’m sure the luggage won’t bother her, and I don’t imagine she weighs much, so the bed should be able to take it. But don’t take my word for it. Why don’t you ask Sunshine?”

Looking skeptical, Izzy said, “What do you think, Sunshine?” There was a moment’s pause.

“Well, I still don’t like it, but Sunshine says it’s okay,” Izzy said, with the air of one making a major concession.

As it turned out, Heather and Lindsay wound up monopolizing the spare bed’s storage capacity because, as the camp’s fashionisti, they had brought far more luggage than the other girls. They would get few chances to show off their mammoth wardrobes, though, because the producers’ need to be able to splice stock footage into the episodes as filler, not to mention their plans to manipulate the editing to tell whatever story might strike their fancy, meant that the campers would be required to wear the same outfits most of the time.

After the girls had finished unpacking, most left the cabin. Some went looking for anything resembling a washroom, for purposes ranging from makeup touchups to answering nature’s call. Others went looking for Chris, to see what might be next on the agenda.

Gwen was one of those who had remained in the cabin. She had one of the lower bunks, and now sat on the edge of her bed, brooding. Although meeting that guitar player had been nice, the day had thus far been mostly a string of disappointments. Perhaps the worst of these was finding herself in an elimination game. Although Gwen wasn’t especially knowledgeable of the genre, she did know that such shows tended to stress social interaction, and that loners usually fared poorly.

Gwen sighed. Chris probably thought that she had “early out” written all over her. So much for becoming famous, she thought bitterly.

“Hi, Gwen.”

Gwen gasped and all but leapt to her feet at the unexpected sound of a male voice in the girls’ sanctum.

Recovering her wits, and embarrassed at her reaction, the Goth glared at the skinny little geek who had startled her. Noah? No, not Noah, he had bronze skin. Cody, that was it.

“Shouldn’t you be in the boys’ cabin?” Gwen asked caustically, her hands on her hips and ice in her voice.

“I never really got a chance to meet you earlier,” Cody admitted, with his goofy gap-toothed grin. “That was a terrible oversight on my part, and I wanted to fix it.”

Cody’s eyes widened as he suddenly felt an iron grip on his neck, and he whimpered a little as his feet lost contact with the ground.

“Boys allowed by invitation only,” Eva pronounced, her voice betraying only the slightest strain at the effort of hoisting the science geek aloft. Turning her gaze to Gwen, who was looking a little nervous at Eva’s display of power, the musclegirl asked mildly, “Is this guy bothering you? Because if he is, I’ll be happy to show him the door.”

“And if I’m not bothering her?” Cody asked hopefully, with a nervous chuckle.

“Then I’ll open the door first.”

“Uh, that’ll do,” Gwen told the self-appointed palace guard, her expression uncertain. “I don’t think we need to hurt him. Thanks, Eva.”

“Any time,” Eva replied. Despite her suggestion that she was inclined to throw Cody bodily out of the cabin, she lowered him to the ground and allowed him to leave under his own slightly unsteady power. The camp was equipped with a public address system and, when the settling-in period had expired, Chris turned it on, making sure there was plenty of feedback squeal to get everyone’s attention.

“Okay, campers,” he announced over the loudspeakers, “Meet me in front of your cabins, and we’ll continue the orientation with everyone who’s still alive after that little emergency in the girls’ cabin.”

About ten minutes later, Chris brought his young charges to the washroom.

“Some of you have already discovered the communal washroom,” the host began. “It has a few Bronze Age flush toilets, sinks and no-frills shower stalls. It does have hot water, sort of, but I pity any of you who happens to be taking a shower when someone turns on a faucet.”

Lindsay raised her hand and Chris, anticipating the brainless beauty’s question, said, “The ‘communal’ part means that you’ll all be using the same facilities, so anyone who has a problem with that will just have to deal with it. Likewise, you’ll have to work out the scheduling, if any, for yourselves. If that happens to involve some over the top drama, then so much the better.

“You may have also discovered that the cabins don’t have electrical outlets. The washroom does, for those of you who use powered beauty aids. Likewise, if any of you have basic MP3 players or other types of noncommunication gadgets that the producers didn’t see fit to confiscate, you can charge them here.

“Speaking of confiscating gadgets, if any of you managed to get anything past ‘customs’ that you’re not allowed to have here, this is your last chance to surrender it. If you try to keep any contraband and we find out later—and with cameras recording your every move, we will find out—that will mean instant elimination, forfeiture of any prize money you may have earned, and a lawsuit. If you come clean now, though, the only penalty is to be embarrassed on national TV, and you’re going to have plenty of that this summer, anyway.

“As you know, you’re not allowed to have anything with any capacity for communicating with the outside world, whether it be a smartphone or a semaphore flag. So, does anyone want to take advantage of this amnesty offer?

“Anyone like, for instance…Courtney?”

Courtney jumped as if she’d been jabbed with a cattle prod. “Me?” she asked incredulously. “I wouldn’t try to…”

The Type A half-pint’s eyes widened in horror as realization dawned. “Oh, gosh, my PDA! I forgot all about it! You have to believe me, I’d never try to cheat like that!”

“Sure, you wouldn’t,” Duncan retorted with a knowing smirk. “I know your type. You’re not the first goody-goody girl with a wanton wench on the inside screaming to get out.”

“That’s okay, Courtney, I believe you,” Chris assured her. “The producers deliberately let a few contraband items slip by so I would get to call people out. You should have seen the look on your face. It was priceless.”

Ignoring Courtney’s death glare, Chris asked, “anyone else?”

“That presumably explains why I still have my cell phone,” Noah suggested with a bored look, refusing to be embarrassed.

“Anyone else?” the host prompted again.

There was a pause, and then Katie hesitantly raised her hand. “Uh, Chris? Sadie and I still have our iPods,” she said, with all the contrition of a girl about to face the Last Judgment.

“Girls, girls, girls,” Chris clucked, shaking his head in feigned disappointment. “What am I going to do with you two? You’re running out of wrong feet to get off on.”

Even without this reminder, the clones knew that they were on thin ice with the host, so they said nothing and just stood there, looking apologetic.

Turning his attention back to the campers as a whole, Chris said, “Okay, that should be everything that the producers missed on purpose. If anyone else has any ‘forbidden fruits’, now’s the time to come clean.

“Yes, Lindsay?”

“I brought a pomegranate off the boat. Does that count?”

As Chris brought his hand to his forehead, Gwen sniped, “Wow, a four-syllable word. I’m impressed.”

“Thanks, Glenda,” Lindsay said, hearing but not understanding.

Chris’ shoulders were heaving slightly, and he was making little whimpering noises. It looked and sounded like he might be sobbing, but in truth he was trying to stifle laughter.

Before Chris could finish his facepalm and answer the brainless blonde bombshell’s question, Noah asked, “Did you eat any of it?”

“Part of it,” Lindsay told him obliviously. “I was saving the rest for later.”

“Well, then, you’re in luck,” Noah assured her. “That means you won’t have to stay in the underworld year round.”

“Is that a hotel or something?”

As Noah mimicked Chris’ facepalm, Harold sidled over to Geoff and said, “I see what you meant.”

Bridgette, not hearing Harold’s comment or not knowing what to make of it, said, “What Noah meant, Lindsay, is that you don’t have to give Chris your pomegranate.”

“Cool,” Lindsay replied with an endearing smile.

As soon as Chris trusted himself to speak normally, he instructed Courtney, Noah and the Bobbsey Twins to fetch their forbidden electronics. After they had done so and surrendered these items to an intern, Chris led the campers to an outhouse that had a general appearance of advanced decay.

“This outhouse is very important,” the host said, “and not just because it’s an auxiliary toilet for when you get the runs and can’t get into the washroom.”

LeShawna opened the outhouse door in the wistful hope that the interior would look more inviting than the exterior. Seeing something that she was certain didn’t belong there, she turned to the host in shock.

“There’s a camera in the potty?? What kind of perverts are you people?”

“As I was about to say,” Chris told the campers, expecting LeShawna’s reaction but not caring, “the real importance of this outhouse is that this is where you will record your confessionals, which no elimination game would be complete without. You can go in there to record your innermost thoughts, or just to get something off your chest. Confessionals are a great way to get screen time, so don’t be shy.

“Press that red button to remotely turn the camera on, and again to turn it off. That’s the only control you can access, because the camera’s settings have been pre-optimized, and we don’t want you fiddling with them.”

The next stop was a large tent that housed two cots and a variety of medical supplies and equipment.

“This,” Chris said, “is the infirmary. This is where you can come to get fixed up if one of the daily hazards of camp life gets the better of you. In addition to treating things like burns, sprains and dislocations, which more than one of you will probably have before the game is over, we can remove porcupine quills, lance boils, set broken bones and resuscitate drowning victims; and we can also treat life-threatening allergic reactions, food poisoning, arrow wounds, bear maulings, recreational pummeling by the local Sasquatch (whom we like to call “Sasquatchanakwa”), snakebite from the deadly Eastern Diamondbacks that frequent these parts, accidental impalement (assuming you’re not killed outright and all your internal organs are intact), bubonic plague from flea bites, West Nile from mosquito bites, Lyme Disease from tick bites, Flesh Eating Disease from horsefly bites (and if thought that mosquito was big, Izzy, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet), Muskoka Meningitis from leech bites (and the lake surrounding this island is called Leech Lake for a reason)…all the everyday hazards of camp life. Totally routine stuff, really. It’s so commonsensical it hardly seems worth mentioning, but Legal said we had to tell you.

“The infirmary’s not set up for major surgery, though, and we’ve got a couple of half-liters of blood on hand, but not enough to give anyone a transfusion; so if a bear slices your arm off, or if a pack of wolves pulls out your intestines and plays tug-of-war with them, or if you’re making out in the woods and a chainsaw-wielding psycho slashes you, or if one of the giant man-eating Leech Lake lampreys gets hold of you and sucks you dry, we probably won’t be able to help you.”

As Chris recited the litany of mishaps that were beyond the infirmary’s capacity to set right, his usual bland smile gave way to a dazzling full smile of the sort that television news anchors use for major disaster coverage.

“What’s a lamprey?” Justin asked Owen, who happened to be standing next to him.

“They’re like leeches on steroids, except that leeches are worms or something, and lampreys are a type of fish,” Owen explained, for he was a hunting and fishing enthusiast. Moreover, the blond behemoth was very knowledgeable of animals that are good to eat, which it so happens that lampreys are. “They look kind of like eels, but. They don’t even have jaws.”

With a shrug, Owen added, “I didn’t think they attacked people, though. Maybe the ones they have here are different.”

Chris then led the campers to a nondescript building that was larger than the washroom but smaller than the cabins.

“This,” he informed them, “is the Tuck Shoppe. Basically, it’s an on-site convenience store. You can get all sorts of stuff here to make your lives a little easier. You’ll pay captive audience prices, but this isn’t a perfect world.”

Chris led the campers away from the campsite proper, a little ways up the shore to a small building with a secondary dock.

“This,” he said, “is the boathouse. This is where we store canoes, life jackets and suchlike when they’re not in use, and it also serves as a general maintenance shed. You probably won’t be spending a lot of time here, but a couple of challenges might bring you here.”

Gwen opened the door to see what sort of gear the boathouse held, and recoiled. The place looked like a medieval torture chamber, with chains, huge hooks, harpoons, claws and teeth and other body parts from various dangerous animals that were probably trophies, things that were probably bottom fishing pots but which bore a disturbing resemblance to iron maidens, worms that were probably meant for live bait but didn’t really look like familiar earthworms…and the unmistakable stench of blood, from Gwen could only guess what.

“What’s wrong, Gwen?” Trent asked solicitously.

Fighting to control her gorge, Gwen replied weakly, “It’s a little more ‘Gothic horror’ than I was expecting.”

“No offense, but I thought Goths were into that sort of thing.”

“Not like this. Well, the hardcore Goths, maybe,” she assured him, finally starting to regain what little color she normally had.

Chris noticed this byplay and found it good. “Gwen’s reaction,” he told the campers, most of whom were looking on with varying degrees of curiosity and concern, “illustrates why we will also be using the boathouse as a detention facility if any of you step too far out of line. Sadie, for example,” the host added, remembering their altercation at the bonfire site.

“That explains the harpoons,” Duncan quipped.

“And you think putting your teammates down will help us win…how, exactly?” Courtney asked Duncan with a glare, but the delinquent pretended not to hear.

Finally, Chris led his young celebrities-in-the-making to what proved to be their final stop. The largest building on the campsite, this could only be the main lodge. This was the most inviting-looking building the campers had seen since arriving on the island, and it appeared to be better maintained than the camp’s other structures. It didn’t hurt the campers’ first impression that the sun was low in the sky, so the teens believed that Chris had brought them here for dinner—their first meal as reality show stars.

Chris led the troupe into the lodge and, when everyone was inside, called out, “Yo, Chef, come out and meet our vic…er, contestants!” Noticing that many of the campers were now eying him warily, Chris looked up at the rafters and whistled innocently.

Inside the lodge were two long tables with bench seating. At one end was a large, rough-hewn stone fireplace with an enormous set of moose antlers displayed above. The wall opposite the entrance was largely cut away, although this opening was currently shuttered so the campers couldn’t see the kitchen that presumably lay beyond. A long counter was affixed to the far wall, just below the cutout area. There was a double door to the kitchen, a swinging door for when the kitchen was in use and a lockable door for when it was not. The cutout shutters slid aside, and several pairs of eyes widened at the sight of the camp chef. He was a tall, hulking, black (“I’m Canadian, so don’t call me African-anything,” he would later say) mesomorph, even more muscular than D.J. He appeared to have a shaved head, although his traditional chef’s hat made it difficult to be certain. He also sported a deeply cleft chin and an all-Pro spitting gap in his teeth. He looked over the campers with a scowl, for his was a sour disposition not unlike Eva’s.

Although many of the campers were taken aback at the chef’s appearance, those who had been to summer camp before reacted with more aplomb, for they had known what to expect.

“Why do summer camp chefs always look like escaped serial killers?” Courtney asked rhetorically—and softly, lest the chef hear her and slip “a little something extra” into her tea.

“I don’t know, why?” Lindsay replied innocently, for she was standing close enough to hear Courtney’s remark.

“I was speaking rhetorically,” Courtney informed the uberbimbo.

“What does ‘rhetorically’ mean?” Lindsay asked, struggling with the pronunciation.

“It means I wasn’t expecting an answer.”

Lindsay looked confused. “So why did you ask, then?”

Although Courtney was well bred and polite, she did have a bit of a temper. She was also very bright, and highly intelligent people tend to regard sarcasm as a virtual birthright, so her first instinct was to respond caustically. As she opened her mouth to fling a barb, though, she caught herself. If Lindsay was truly as stupid as she sounded, the poor girl couldn’t help that, and in any case probably wouldn’t recognize sarcasm when she heard it. Courtney therefore bit her tongue and said only, “I was just thinking aloud.”

“Oh. Sorry, Connie.”

“It’s Courtney.”

“That’s what I said, wasn’t it?” Lindsay replied, looking confused.

Courtney resolved to avoid conversing with Lindsay whenever she could do so without giving offense. The uberbimbo would probably be gone soon enough, and wasn’t worth the aggravation in the meantime.

“Ahem,” Chris cleared his throat theatrically, with a glance at Courtney and Lindsay. “If you gossip girls are finished…”

Chastened, the girls gave the host their attention.

Now addressing the entire troupe, Chris said, “This is Chef Hatchet, so called because…well, I don’t want to spoil the surprise. In addition to preparing your meals, he is also my aide, so you’ll see him doing support work at most of the challenges. He’s perfect for this show because he’s a real ‘jack of all trades’. That means he can do the work of 20 people, but we only have to pay him one salary. That’s how a low-budget show like Total Drama Island was able afford a host as illustrious and expensive as me.”

“Here’s how it works,” Hatchet said gruffly and loudly. “I make it three times a day, and you’ll eat it three times a day. And I don’t want to hear about ‘special dietary needs’. This ain’t no five star restaurant, so you eat what I give you, or you don’t eat.”

Bridgette raised her hand and said, “Does that mean I’ll have to eat meat? I’m a vegetarian.”

“Girl, did you hear a word I just said? Hatchet thundered. “’Cause I don’t recall saying that I wanted to hear about special dietary needs, and that goes double for preferences! It won’t kill you to stuff down a few animal byproducts!”

Hatchet’s expression then softened, and his glare gave way to an unpleasantly expectant smirk. In a normal tone, he said, “Trust me, the carnivores won’t have it any easier than you.”

After giving the campers a moment to make of that statement what they would, the hulking chef said in a drill sergeant style, “Tonight’s main course is sloppy Joes. So grab a tray, get your grub, sit your butts down, and don’t give me no lip! Y’hear?”

“The teams will sit together at meals,” Chris added. “Eagles at the table nearest the door, and Muskies at the table nearest the kitchen.”

The campers dutifully queued up, grabbed their own buns and other peripherals, and filed passed Hatchet as he doled out the sloppy Joe filling and the sides, olive drab beans and something that probably used to be potato salad.

As Noah received his portion and turned away to find a seat, Chef said, “Not so fast, Scrawny. Give me your plate.” Noah did as he was bidden, and Chef gave him a second scoop of filling. Hatchet apparently intended that the skinny campers should bulk up, for he also gave extra portions to Cody and Harold in due course. Nor was this treatment limited to boys, for Hatchet likewise gave larger portions to Heather and Katie, probably because he suspected them of being anorexic.

As the queue moved along, several of the campers got the feeling that something was not quite right with the filling. Proper sloppy Joe filling consists of ground beef in enough sauce to give it a “slushy” texture. Chef’s filling, though, had more of a semisolid texture, solid enough to require a scoop instead of a ladle, and solid enough to somewhat retain its shape on the bun. Likewise, the sauce didn’t seem to be impregnated evenly throughout. All in all, it looked like Chef had used “mystery meat” instead of ground beef. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite mysterious enough.

“Is this dog food?” Tyler asked with a grimace as he and Harold took their seats, safely out of earshot from Hatchet. “Because it sure looks like it.”

“It might be,” the beanpole replied, warily eyeing his own his sandwich. “But if it is, it could be worse, I guess.”

“Worse?” Tyler repeated incredulously. “Dude, we might be eating dog food. How could it be worse?”

“Years ago,” Harold explained, “the government heard that a lot of poverty-stricken old folks were having to eat dog food because they couldn’t afford anything better, so Parliament passed a law saying that dog food has to be fit for human consumption.”

“So you’re saying it’s okay to eat this slop?” Red Jock asked dubiously.

“Yeah, I guess so. It’s gross, but it won’t actually hurt us.”

As Hatchet plopped a scoop full of “sloppy Joe innards” onto Gwen’s bun, the Goth did a double take. It was surely nothing more than a trick of the light, but…

“I hate to be predictable and complain on the first day,” she said, warily eyeing her tray, “but I think mine just moved.”

“You have a fork. Work it out,” Hatchet replied gruffly, as he plopped a measure of goop onto Izzy’s bun.

“Cool! Mine just moved, too!” the redhead cried. Spreading her right hand under the tray to free her left, she snatched up her fork, held it poised high over her head in an exaggerated combat readiness pose, and exclaimed, “En garde, Sir Joseph of Sloppia!” With that, Izzy plunged her fork into the mass, which convulsed once and was still.

Izzy quickly licked the end of her finger and made a “chalk one up for me” gesture, then turned to face Gwen, who was looking more than a little disturbed at this tableau.

“Camp food’s not so bad,” Izzy informed the Goth with a reassuring smile. “You just have to show it who’s boss.” The possibly unstable redhead then strode to her seat, humming the triumphal march from the end of the original Star Wars movie.

As the campers sat, warily regarded their dinners, Geoff elected to tempt the gods. Turning toward Chris, who had returned to the lodge after a brief departure, the urban cowboy called, “Yo, my man! Can we order some pizza?”

Hatchet gave no sign that he had overheard Geoff; but as he turned away from the common area, the hulking chef abruptly swept his arm in the campers’ general direction. There was a metallic glint in the air, and Geoff suddenly felt a breeze where he was not used to feeling one.

The campers, looking disconcerted, looked toward the doorway. Next to the door, a butcher knife yet quivered slightly, its point embedded in the wall. Impaled upon that knife was Geoff’s hat. Only now did Hatchet look in Geoff’s direction, fixing the urban cowboy with a “don’t mess with me” glare.

Hatchet had extensively practiced that backhand, no-look knife throw, for he was a summer camp veteran and well knew how to impress the younger generation. Nor had it truly been a “blind” throw, for Hatchet had a wider field of peripheral vision than most people, and so could fix his eye on a target without appearing to do so. The campers, though, would learn none of this until much later. In the meantime, Hatchet’s demonstration had the effect he desired, and it would be some time before any of the teens dared to cross him again.

The campers ate without further incident, the legendary teenager’s appetite eventually overcoming any concerns about the food’s uncertain origins. Conversation flowed freely as the campers got to know their teammates better and speculated on what lay ahead.

“What do you think they’ll make us do tomorrow?” Bridgette asked Geoff, who was sitting catty-wampus to her.

“I dunno,” the urban cowboy replied easily. “But it’s the first challenge. How hard can it be?”

“You’re tempting fate,” warned Courtney, who was sitting next to the surfer girl, two seats down from Geoff.

Even as those Muskies spoke, a similar tableau played out at the Eagles’ table, with the genre-savvy Heather warning Katie and Trent against assuming too much.

Courtney and Heather’s dismal warnings, though, went largely unheeded. The consensus was that the campers would probably be eased into the game, since none of them had really wanted or expected to be in an elimination game in the first place.

By the time the teens began to return to their cabins, night had fallen. As LeShawna reached the door, she turned back to look once more at the lodge’s common area. As she did so, she noticed Eva approaching, looking sullen as usual.

“Hey, what’s up, girl?” LeShawna asked pleasantly.

Eva passed by without acknowledging the homegirl’s salutation in any way, her perma-scowl as unchanging as a mask.

“Oh, it’s going to be that way, is it?” LeShawna huffed indignantly.

That was all that the finished episode showed. The producers thought the game would seem more dramatic if it looked like the campers—especially the opposing teams—were at each other’s throats most of the time, and they pegged the largely unsocial Eva as a natural to wear one of the black hats. In truth, though, this is what happened next:

“Wha—?” Eva said, as if coming out of a fog. Realizing that she had just snubbed someone terribly, she turned back to LeShawna and said, “Oh, sorry. I was lost in thought.”

“A penny for them.”

“Probably the same sort of thing as everyone else is thinking, wondering how we got stuck in a lame summer camp playing a lame elimination game, when we were supposed to be trying to become rock stars or whatever.” With a small, sardonic smile, the musclegirl added, “I’ll bet I could do a guitar smash for the ages.”

“That wouldn’t surprise me a bit,” LeShawna said with a grin. “Just don’t tell that to Trent.

“Anyway,” the homegirl added as she and Eva headed out the door, “If you don’t mind my saying so, you looked like you could use a friend, even if we are on opposite teams.”

“I don’t think it would work out,” Eva replied simply.

“Why not?”

Eva sighed. “I’ve seen your temper. Mine’s even worse—a lot worse. At least you had a decent reason for going after Noah on the dock. I’ll do that for much less. I’m a little surprised that I’ve never put anyone in the hospital.”

“’Roid Rage?” LeShawna asked uncertainly. “I’ve heard of it.”

“I get that a lot,” the musclegirl confessed, “but no, I don’t take steroids. It would be a convenient excuse, but I had anger management problems before I was working out. Fact is, I started working out because I was hoping to channel that anger into something more productive. It didn’t really help, but I keep working out because it turned out that I enjoy it.

“As for the steroids, just because I want to out-pump guys doesn’t mean I want to become one.” In a rare moment of whimsy, Eva struck a preening pose and added, “It wouldn’t be good for my girlish figure.”

“I hear you. If I had goods like yours, I’d want to keep them, too.” Striking the same pose Eva had struck moments before, LeShawna clarified, “Not that there’s anything wrong with what I do have.”

Eva didn’t actually share that opinion, but managed to bite her tongue before she could say so. LeShawna had offered her friendship; and even though Eva wasn’t inclined to accept that offer, there was no reason to throw it back in the homegirl’s face.

“You know,” Eva said, when she had thought of something diplomatic to say, “You could be a bodybuilding champion if you set your mind to it. You’ve got the frame for it.”

“Yeah, but I don’t like to sweat. Well, not from that, anyhow,” the homegirl added with a wink.

“Yeah, I saw how you were working the guys when you got here.”

“You should try it sometime. You might like it.”

“Sometime,” Eva agreed, “but not here. It would just be a distraction. Just because this game isn’t what we were expecting doesn’t mean I’m not in it to win it.”

“So, you’re going to stick to your own team?”

“I think that’s for the best. If we both make it to the merge…we’ll see.”

“Have it your way,” LeShawna said, with a little shake of her head and a note of disappointment in her voice. “If you change your mind, you know where to find me.”

“Yes, I do. You’re kind of hard to miss.”

“That’s me, all right. Big, loud and proud,” LeShawna proclaimed with a grin as they entered the girls’ cabin.

“To each, their own,” Eva replied.

A few hours later, the boys were in their cabin, changing into their sleepwear after an evening bull session. As Duncan removed his shirt, D.J. noticed that the delinquent’s arms were covered with long, thin, straight scars, mostly on the outsides.

“Hey, bro,” the brickhouse inquired curiously, “Where’d you get all those scars?”

“Knife fighting,” Duncan answered matter-of-factly.

With D.J. looking like he was about to faint, Noah snarked, “Looks like you could use more practice.”

“That’s a great idea,” Duncan agreed with a wolfish grin. “Thanks for volunteering to be my practice partner.”

“No, thanks, I’m good,” Noah replied as nonchalantly as he might. In truth, the bookworm was sore afraid, for he sensed that Duncan’s threat was not idle.

“So, you really are as smart as you look,” the delinquent said with a more genial smile, suggesting that Noah had been wrong and the threat had, indeed, been idle. In a conversational tone, Duncan confided, “Let me tell you something. If you’re in a knife fight, and you get out of it without getting cut, that doesn’t mean you’re good. It means you’re lucky.”

“That one’s not from a knife, eh?” Ezekiel noted, pointing to a thicker, irregular keloid below Duncan’s left shoulder. “How did you get that?”

“That one’s from a broken bottle.”

Unsure of whether he really wanted to know the answer, Trent asked, “Have you…have you ever killed anyone?”

“Nah,” the Juvenile Hall alumnus assured him. “Don’t get me wrong, I could if I had to, and knife fights always have that potential, but it usually doesn’t come to that. Usually one fighter gets cut a few times, can see that the other guy’s better than he is, and either gives up or runs away.”

“Do you ever give up or run away?” Noah asked, feeling brave again.

“I might not be around today if I didn’t. It’s like poker—you’ve got to know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em. Let’s just say that I win more than my share.”

Brett was confused. “Mom?”

“Yes, dear?”

“You said you were on the show, but you haven’t mentioned yourself.”

“Actually, I have. In those days, I was still using my first name. I started going by my middle name when I entered college, and that was before you were old enough to have permanent memories.”

Although Brett knew his mother’s first name, he almost never heard or saw it, so it hadn’t come to mind unbidden. Thinking about it, Brett now recalled that this long-unused name did, indeed, match one of the contestants.

“So, why were you talking about yourself in the third person?” he asked uncertainly. “You don’t usually do that.”

“I was a different person then,” his mother explained. “You made me grow up before my time. That’s partly why I started going by my middle name.

“Besides, I think it makes a better story this way. Just humor me, okay?”

“Sure. Whatever,” Brett conceded. It was no skin off his nose, and in any case he didn’t want to discourage his mother from telling him the rest of her tale.



The Tale of the First Challenge

 * Original title: “The Not So Great Outdoors” (a.k.a. “Not So Happy Campers”), Part II

The next morning, their first at Camp Wawanakwa, the campers awoke to the end of the world.

Reality show producers don’t like their contestants to be well rested, because sleep-deprived people have less emotional control. Likewise, a harsh wakeup call makes people feel less rested, other things being equal. And so, at the crack of dawn, Chris played the “Dies Irae” (“Judgment Day”) section of Guiseppe Verdi’s Requiem over the P.A. system, at cabin-shaking volume. thumb|300px|right|First wakeup call
 * Dies Irae, Dies illa
 * Solvet saeclum in favilla:
 * Teste David cum Sybilla.
 * Quantus tremor est futurus,
 * Quando judex est venturus
 * Cuncta stricte discussurus.
 * (This day, this day of wrath
 * will consume the world in ashes
 * as foretold by David and the Sybil.)
 * (What trembling there shall be
 * when the judge shall come
 * to weigh everything strictly.)
 * (What trembling there shall be
 * when the judge shall come
 * to weigh everything strictly.)
 * to weigh everything strictly.)

Not long after, the campers, some still wide-eyed and twitchy from their apocalyptic wakeup call, filed into the lodge for breakfast. Chris was at the door to greet his young charges, his carefully practiced bland smile concealing his glee as he looked on his handiwork and saw that it was good.

Breakfast consisted of eggs runnyside up, with delicately carbonized bacon and a heavy bread toasted golden-black. The beverage options were lake water that still tasted of the disinfecting chemicals, horrifically bitter grapefruit juice (the news of “Ruby Red” grapefruits having apparently never come to this corner of Muskoka) and milk that was noticeably over the hill. As the teens ate, Chris called for attention, and announced that they were to assemble in front of the lodge in one hour, to begin the first challenge.

“Some of you,” the host noted, “have suggested that the first challenge won’t be anything too hard. And you’re right, it’s not all that hard, if by “hard” you mean physically strenuous or tough to figure out.

“The problem with easy challenges, though, is that they’re not good for ratings; and since Total Drama Island is a new show, we need to do something to grab the audience’s attention. One way to do that is by showing a lot of female skin and feminine curves, so you’ll need your swimwear. As for the other way we’re going to goose ratings…”

Chris paused a few moments for dramatic effect, and then dropped the other shoe. “You are about to find out why you had to sign all those waivers to be on the show. Your first challenge will be one of the most dangerous of all.”

At the appointed time, the swimsuit-clad campers assembled in front of the main lodge. Most of the girls wore bikinis, some more revealing than others. LeShawna, Beth, and Eva, though, wore one-piece swimsuits, and Bridgette sported a shortsleeved wetsuit designed for cold-water surfing. LeShawna’s swimsuit, monogrammed with an “L” above her bosom, nicely flattered her ample yet feminine frame; Eva’s swimsuit might as well have been her leotard; and Beth sported a ruffled, all-covering bathing suit that would have been at home in her great-grandmother’s closet.

The boys all wore standard, discreet swim trunks in various color schemes. Justin had originally appeared in a barely-there male bikini; but the sight of The Incredible Hunk wearing nothing but bikini briefs had left the distaff side of the camera crews and the intern corps (not to mention the female campers) unable to function, so Chris ordered Justin to change into something less revealing. One of the interns, a strapping Latino lad named Alejandro, happened to wear the same size of trunks as Justin, and had a pair on hand, so Justin borrowed that.

For the same reasons that the campers would be required to wear the same outfits most of the time, the producers didn’t want anyone tanning over the course of the game, so a platoon of interns now slathered the fair-skinned campers with enough sunblock to shield a nuclear reactor.

Another intern, recognizable as such by the bright red pullover shirt that all interns wore, presently appeared driving a two-seat ATV. Before settling into the empty seat, Chris said to the assembled campers, “The challenge venue is about four clicks up the trail. Alejandro and company will show you the way. And don’t feed the bears.” Chris and his chauffeur then headed up the trail in their ATV, leaving the campers and their intern escort to walk.

Not quite an hour later, the campers and the surviving interns escorting them arrived at the place where their host awaited them. Most of the campers were out of breath, for they had been running for their lives over the last 300 meters or so after one of the interns became bear bait. Only Tyler and Eva seemed none the worse for their terrifying sprint, for the former was a star sprinter at his school and the latter had the constitution of Wolverine. On the other extreme was Owen, who, being badly out of shape, had been severely overtaxed to the point that he dropped to all fours and yielded up his breakfast.

“Okay, everyone,” Chris began when most of the campers were again breathing normally, “here’s how your first challenge is going to work. You’re going to dive off this cliff into the lake. Simple, right?”

The campers nodded or murmured in agreement. While diving from the cliff might be scary, depending on how high the cliff turned out to be, it seemed very simple and straightforward.

“Good,” Chris continued. “To make this more interesting for the viewing audience, we’ve stocked the lake with psychotic, man-eating sharks—“

“Sharks are neither psychotic nor sane,” Harold broke in didactically. “They don’t have that kind of brainpower.”

“Don’t interrupt me again, Harold. Now, as I was saying—“

“I was only trying to help,” Harold complained petulantly, “and it’s just as easy to get these things right. Gosh!”

The host’s seemingly perpetual smile gave way to a scowl. “Harold, do you want to be thrown off the cliff instead of jumping? The interns haven’t had a lot of practice, and I can’t guarantee their aim.”

“Fine, have it your way. Gosh!” the walking encyclopedia exclaimed again, throwing his hands in the air.

“Maybe Harold just wanted to see what it took to get that pasted-on smile off your face,” Gwen suggested.

“But why bother stocking the lake with sharks?” asked Noah, who wasn’t the type to respect effort when a reasonably similar result could be had with less work. “Wouldn’t it have been a lot less labor to just let a luckless leaper live with the likelihood of leaving the land of the living as a light lunch for those allegedly legendarily large Leech Lake lampreys? Oh, silly me, it’s not like they’re actually real, LOL.”

“Now look, you lame little loser,” Izzy replied without missing a beat, with a smile and a wink to inform Noah that she was playing along and not insulting him, “I’ll allow that I like to let loose a long alliterative line as well as anyone, but just because this is supposed to be a kid’s show doesn’t mean we need to turn it into a Dr. Seuss routine. But if you’re lucky, and live through the ‘life in the balance’ leap and Leech Lake’s legendary lampreys don’t lunch all your scarlet life liquid and lap up the last of your lymph, you’ll laugh last, ‘cause I’ll let you alliterate as long as you like.”

Chris, forgetting that he had been about to chastise Harold for interrupting him and Gwen for snarking at him, said, “Okay, bro and bra, it’s not like I wouldn’t love to listen to your little alliter-off, but we’re on a schedule.

“As for the lampreys, they’re definitely real, but all they do is suck out all your bodily fluids. That’ll kill you, of course, but it’ll leave your corpse pretty much intact, and that’s not photogenic enough for reality TV. If anybody does meet their maker here, the viewing audience will expect a spectacle—blood in the water, floating body parts, blood-curdling screams, desperate hopeless flailing, slo-mo instant replay, the works.

“Now, as I was about to say before we got off track, if you don’t want to become shark chow, you’ll need to dive into the safe zone that we’ve cordoned off. It’s called a ‘safe zone’ because we’re reasonably sure that the sharks haven’t figured out how to get into it. If they have, well, then I guess I told you a story.” “Excuse me?” LeShawna challenged. The host’s “assurances” had contained far too many qualifiers and caveats for her peace of mind.

Chris ignored the homegirl and continued. “For each one of you who jumps and actually survives, your team will receive one crate of supplies for the second part of the challenge: building a hot tub. One crate per diver means that, if too many of you chicken out or get eaten, your team runs the risk of not having enough supplies to complete the challenge.

“As a bonus, the team with the most dives into the safe zone will get carts to haul their crates back to camp for the building phase. The losing team will have to haul their crates to camp using nothing but good, old-fashioned muscle power. That’ll be a lot slower, and you won’t have unlimited time to build your hot tubs, so you want those carts.

“Tonight, the team with the best hot tub will get a wicked hot tub party. Tomorrow night, the team with the suckiest hot tub will be sending someone home.” All was silent for a moment, save for the host’s evil stage laughter.

The campers peered over the cliff to see what they were up against, and were taken aback when they saw that the diving cliff was a good 300 meters high. To make matters worse, with the midmorning sun slanting into deep water, the campers could see that Chris hadn’t been joking about the sharks. The waters outside the safe zone seemed thick with them, ranging from nasty-looking little buggers no bigger than a man to leviathans that looked like they could down a fully loaded canoe at a gulp.

“Killer Muskies,” Chris announced, “Since Owen’s not finished puking his guts out—“

“I’m right here!” the overexerted Owen gasped between dry heaves.

“—You’re up first,” Chris finished, without acknowledging Owen’s protest.

Not surprisingly, none of the Muskies seemed particularly eager to take the lead. Finally, Eva volunteered Bridgette.

“I think Surfer Girl should go first,” Eva suggested. “She’s the one who knows water sports.”

Bridgette accepted Eva’s charge without protest. “Fine. It’s no biggie,” the surfer girl said, projecting confidence that she did not feel as she peered over the cliff to gauge the distance. “It’s just…an insane cliff dive…into…shark-infested waters.”

Bridgette backed up a few steps, held her arms out, took a deep breath, and stood still for a moment to mentally prepare herself.

“Show us how it’s done, girlfriend!” Eva called in encouragement.

Dropping her arms, Bridgette ran forward and launched herself off the cliff in good form, splashing down gracefully in the middle of the safe zone.

“Bull’s-eye! Nice work, Bridgette!” Chris announced over his bullhorn, mainly for the benefit of those campers who weren’t able to get close enough to the edge to see the dive. With Bridgette in the water to provide scale, the campers noted with relief that the safe zone, which looked so tiny from atop the cliff, was actually large enough that it probably wouldn’t be especially hard to hit.

After Geoff and Eva made their dives without incident, Izzy took the plunge, and became the first to miss the safe zone. When she splashed down, the sharks swarmed through the area. Izzy did not resurface.

“Come on, Izzy,” Bridgette urged, her voice scarcely above a whisper.

Almost a minute had passed. There was still no sign of Izzy.

With the three Muskies on the boat fearing the worst, a shark breached the surface, leaping like a salmon, with Izzy astride its back like a daughter of Poseidon. Izzy and her reluctant steed splashed down and disappeared, only to breach again moments later, then disappeared and breached yet again.

“Yee-ha! Ride ‘em, cowgirl!” Geoff shouted in encouragement, as the Muskie and the shark continued their duel.

After a good two minutes of this aquatic rodeo, the shark finally breached close enough to the boat for Izzy to vault safely aboard. She “stuck the landing” as gymnasts say, turned to the camera, and curtsied.

Chris next summoned Ezekiel. The homeschooled boy peered over the cliff, backed up a few steps, took a deep breath, and quietly recited a Biblical passage that he later identified as Psalms 23:4:

''“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.”'' Ezekiel took another deep breath, ran to the edge of the cliff, and completed his dive without incident.

Next up was Duncan. With a shrug of his shoulders, the delinquent jogged to the cliff edge without protest and launched himself as casually as he might. Truth be told, the only reason he didn’t simply step off the cliff was because the safe zone—indeed, safe water depth—was too far away for that, and suicide wasn’t really conducive to looking cool. Once airborne, though, Duncan did his best to maintain a blasé attitude, keeping his arms at his sides and maintaining a “standing” posture as best he might. (This is actually the safest way to dive from a great height, but Duncan didn’t know that.) He splashed down feet first in the safe zone—a little too close to the near edge for comfort, but in the safe zone nonetheless.

When Duncan was safely on the boat, Chris announced, “D.J. You’re next, big guy.” The brickhouse dropped to his hands and knees, peered over the edge of the cliff, and shuddered. “I can’t do it,” he said, hanging his head as he regained his feet.

“Afraid of heights?” the host speculated.

“Yeah, but that’s not the real problem,” D.J. confessed. “ I’m afraid of the water. Have been since I was a little kid. Besides, if I jumped and missed the safe zone, I might have to defend myself against the sharks. I might even have to…” Tears began to well in his eyes.

“I might even have to hurt them,” the gentle giant finally managed to gasp out. “I couldn’t bear that!”

“Fine. Here’s your chicken hat,” Chris replied unsympathetically, placing said hat on D.J.’s head. “The Chicken Walk is thataway,” the host added, motioning to the trail they had taken earlier that morning to get to the cliff top. Alejandro waited patiently at the trailhead, for Chris had stationed him there on the assumption that at least one camper would refuse to dive. The campers did not know the way to the bottom of the cliff, so any “chickens” would need an escort. Later in the season, when the campers better knew the lay of the land, Chris became more inclined to leave them to their own devices in such situations.

As D.J. began his “chicken walk”, Chris said, “Courtney, you’re up.”

Courtney took a deep breath, ran a few steps, and arced gracefully off the cliff. Her form proved to be better than her eye, though, and she missed the safe zone, splashing down to the right and a little short.

Strangely, the sharks seemed to take no notice, even though one happened to be fairly close. They continued to ignore Courtney as she swam placidly to the boat. As Courtney’s teammates pulled her onto the boat, Bridgette asked, “Not that I’m complaining, but what’s with those sharks?”

“Professional courtesy,” Courtney explained smugly. “I’m going to be a lawyer someday.”

Chef Hatchet, piloting the boat, overheard this exchange and informed Chris by radio.

“Note to self,” grumbled the irritated host, “Next time, use crocodiles.”

Returning to the business at hand, Chris called on Tyler to jump. With an enthusiastic shout, Tyler took a long running start and launched himself into the air.

Tyler had very strong legs, more enthusiasm than skill, and had made little effort to learn from those who had gone before. As a result, he badly overshot the safe zone. As he entered the second stage of his descent, he could see just how badly he had misjudged the distance; for below him lay, not the safe zone, but the boat, its deck crowded with terrified Muskies.

“Incoming!” cried Duncan. He and his teammates would have taken cover, but there was nowhere for them to go. Courtney abandoned ship, but she was the only one who could do so safely. Izzy considered following Courtney’s lead, but then thought better of it. The other Muskies could do nothing but await destiny.

Hatchet, piloting the boat, could not see above him, so he had only the teens’ reactions to tell him what was wrong. He gunned the engines, but the overloaded boat responded sluggishly. Depending on where Tyler landed, there was a real possibility that he might have an unfortunate encounter with the propellers, but that was a chance Hatchet would simply have to take.

Tyler splashed down in the boat’s wake, barely three meters astern. Hatchet hastily cut the engines back, and began to bring the boat about. The boat was close enough that, with Courtney pushing and others pulling, the Muskies were able to get Tyler aboard almost before the sharks realized what had happened.

Safely aboard, the “human cannonball” found himself confronted with a sea of angry glares. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, he thought, and decided that his best course of action was to play dumb. Tyler looked at his teammates and, as innocently as he might, asked, “What?”

“Dude, what were you thinking?” Duncan asked. “If you’d hit this decrepit little tub, you’d have gone through it like tissue paper.”

“Dumping the rest of us back into the water with the sharks,” Eva added.

“They’re right,” said Bridgette. “This boat isn’t very big, and it’s just made of wood. If you’d hit it, you’d have probably sunk it.”

“Not to mention getting yourself killed—literally—in the process,” observed Courtney, who was now back on board. “Broken neck, fractured skull, take your pick.”

Suitably chastened, Tyler hung his head. “I guess I should have paid more attention to you guys’ dives,” he offered limply.

“Gee, ya think?” Izzy asked with a sniff.

Geoff, who didn’t like to see people picked on, rose to Tyler’s defense. “OK, guys,” he said, “I think that’s enough piling on. Yeah, he could have gotten us all killed, but the point is, he didn’t.” The other Muskies, having made their points, let the matter drop.

At the top of the cliff, Chris had seen the spectacle and found it good. Turning to the camera, he declared, “That is awesome television!” before turning the face the Eagles and the remaining Muskies.

“OK, guys,” he said, “Learn from Tyler’s mistake. We can’t afford another boat.”

Chris’ failure to mention the contestants that Tyler’s blunder had put at risk did not escape the teens. “Your concern is touching,” Noah sneered.

“Oh, yes,” Gwen sneered, as caustically as Noah had. “It’s not like human life is worth anything, but we can’t have anything happen to the boat.”

“I’m glad you understand, Gwen,” Chris responded cheerily.

“You don’t care about us at all, do you?” Heather demanded.

“Do you really want me to answer that?” Chris asked with a smile, clearly enjoying the repartee.

Nobody rose to the bait, but the campers on the cliff now respected Chris less than before.

“Ah, well,” the host finally said, deducing that the teens weren’t going to say anything else camera-worthy. “Back to business. Harold, you’re next.”

Harold misjudged his dive and missed the safe zone by a fair margin. The sharks swarmed, and then all was still. There was no sign of blood or struggle, but neither was there any sign of Harold.

The hour was growing late, so Brett’s mother left off her tale, and suggested that he prepare for bed.

Prologue Notes

 * Brett is named after the author's closest friend. The character was originally named Brendan, for no special reason.
 * Naming the revived show Total Drama Island:the Next Generation is a reference to the 1987 revival of Star Trek as Star Trek: the Next Generation.
 * Christin McLean was created by Sunshineandravioli. Used with permission.

First Night Notes

 * The invocation that begins the interior story also begins The Kalevala (as compiled by Elias Lonnrot and translated by Francis Peabody Magoun, Jr.), which is usually described as the Finnish national epic but is really more a collection of traditional songs arranged into something resembling a continuous story. In the modified version presented here, which first appeared in the author’s Featured User interview for the September 2010 newsletter, TDI character and place names replace the original mythic Finnish names.
 * A “clew” is a ball of string, yarn, etc.
 * The opening chapter is expected to be the story's longest (almost 12,000 words including the invocation) because the contestant introductions are written as if the reader has never heard of Total Drama Island. The subheadings (the use of which is consistent with the 1,001 Nights model) are provided for the benefit of readers who have difficulty getting through a very long chapter in one sitting.
 * When Total Drama Island (then called Camp TV) was in development, the show’s original premise (alluded to by Harold upon his arrival and Lindsay in the first challenge) was that the contestants had been duped into believing that they were finalists in a national talent search. This reimagining retains that original conceit.
 * Most of the longer contestant introductions expand on the canon version, but are otherwise similar.
 * The phrase, “of little note nor long remembered” is a reference to The Gettysburg Address. The pertinent line is, “The world will little note nor long remember what we do here today…”
 * Signing a contract in blood is a traditional part of the procedure for selling one’s soul to the devil. Gwen suspects that she has died and gone to Hell.
 * Because the Storyteller is Canadian, she uses metric units of measure.
 * An “evil twin” is a device that cybercriminals set up near a Wi-Fi hot spot to intercept Internet traffic, usually for the purpose of stealing passwords or personal information.
 * Harold is introduced with the full genealogy typical of medieval Icelandic sagas, befitting his status as the canon franchise’s master of arcane lore. These genealogies were actually useful to the sagas’ original audiences. Since most major figures of the sagas were real, well-documented people, with some few appearing in multiple sagas, contemporary audiences could recognize family characteristics from these genealogies, deduce character from the quality (or lack thereof) of the pedigree, and fit the person into a known historical context.
 * “The Great War” was the original name of World War I.
 * Owen is bigger in this story than in the original. The canon Owen weighs 296 pounds (134 kg) and appears to be about 6 feet tall (180 cm). The Storyteller, however describes him as being at least 2 meters (6’7”) tall. To keep him suitably fat with that extra height, this Owen weighs 396 pounds (180 kg).
 * The Bobbsey Twins were the protagonists of a series of children’s books written between 1904 and 1979. Despite their physical differences (for they were fraternal twins) they were basically duplicates of each other.
 * “Katie” is a traditional diminutive of “Kathleen”, and “Sadie” is a traditional diminutive of “Sarah”. How do people get to “Sadie” from “Sarah”? Probably the same way they get to “Peggy” from “Margaret”.
 * The "Cody's self-image" picture is actually that of Gabe Patterson, a contestant in Lilac's competition story, Total Drama Island: For Your Entertainment. Used with permission.
 * The description of Lindsay as “Cytherean” is a reference to the Greek goddess Aphrodite. The Goddess of Sex (as she was known to the ancient Greeks; it was the Romans who shifted her portfolio to romantic love) was often called “the Cytherean” because she was believed to have risen from the sea near Cytherea (modern Cyprus).
 * The canon version also has Chris describing Ezekiel’s parents as “freaky prairie people”. The author interprets this phrase as code for “Bible thumpers”, especially since “Ezekiel” is itself a Biblical name. This story’s characterization of Ezekiel does not include the canon version’s social ineptness because the author regards that aspect of the “home schooled” stereotype as unworthy of perpetuation, so religiosity replaces social ineptness as an aspect of Ezekiel’s archetype. (He’s still a sexist, though.)
 * Lindsay and Sadie’s reaction to Ezekiel is a reference to their canon phobia toward bad haircuts, which this reimagining retains.
 * Ezekiel’s remark, “guh-dunge” in reaction to Tyler’s crash is a reference to the comic strip, B.C., by the late Johnny Hart. In that strip, “gdunge” is the onomatopoeia word for a collision. Given B.C.’s increasingly religious content in Hart’s later years, it seems like a comic strip that Ezekiel’s bible-thumping family might be attracted to.
 * The moniker “Red Jock” for Tyler is a play on “Red Jack”, another name for Jack the Ripper.
 * The Sunshine reference is a last-minute addition. Sunshine was originally scheduled to "debut" about midway through the team phase.
 * The line Noah speaks to Lindsay is a famous quote from Christopher Marlowe’s play, The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus (commonly rendered as simply Doctor Faustus).
 * Skipping over repetitive content with phrases such as, “but nothing would be gained by repeating it here” is a staple device in The 1,001 Nights.
 * LeShawna is a francophone (i.e. a person whose first language is French) because a scene in a later episode requires that one of the campers be from Montreal. LeShawna was chosen because her name, while not actually French, at least sounds French.
 * Chris’ description of Trent as the troupe’s “wandering minstrel” is a reference to the song, "A Wandering Minstrel, I" from the Gilbert &amp; Sullivan operetta, The Mikado. This song is also Trent’s theme song in the author’s compilation, Total Drama Island, by Gilbert and Sullivan.
 * “Musico” is the Italian word for “musician”.
 * In the canon version, Courtney was the only contestant whom Chris helped off the boat. So it is here.
 * The initial composition of the teams is the same as in the canon. The contestants are called to each team in alphabetical order.
 * The team names have been changed because the author never liked the name, “Killer Bass” and didn’t want to change one team name without changing the other.
 * The canon states that all the contestants are 16 years old, but in this version they have all just finished their sophomore year of high school. This is similar, but allows for 15-year-olds with summer birthdays (i.e. Sadie). The canon actually alludes to this with the revelation that Katie has a driver’s license and Sadie doesn’t.
 * Each chapter ends with a cliffhanger instead of an elimination ceremony, ala The 1001 Nights.