The Legend of Total Drama Island

This story won five categories, including Best Reimagining, at the 2012 Wiki Awards!

This story is rated PG-13. There is some language or violence that may not be appropriate for people under thirteen years of age.

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

This story has a page on TVTropes.org

Announcements

The Thirty-second Night chapter has been posted. The Thirty-third Night chapter is scheduled for Saturday, 1 June. New chapters are normally scheduled to post bimonthly, usually on or about the Saturday nearest the end of the month.

Previous updates:

• 6 April 2019: Thirty-second Night posted (episodes 17-18)
• 9 July: Thirty-first Night posted (episodes 16-17)
• 4 July: Added character theme videos to Appendix B for Izzy and Leshawna
• 13 January 2018: Thirtieth Night posted (episode 16)
• 16 December 2017: Twenty-ninth Night posted (episodes 15-16)
• 22 July: Twenty-eighth Night posted (episode 15). The Labors of Heracles challenge concludes
• 17 June: Twenty-seventh Night posted (episode 15)
• 25 May: Twenty-sixth Night posted (episode 15). The Labors of Heracles challenge begins
• 4 February 2017: Twenty-fifth Night posted (episodes 14-15)
• 6 August 2016: Twenty-fourth Night posted (episode 14). The "halftime show", a.k.a. the Brunch of Disgustingness
• 14 May: Ten character theme videos added to Appendix B: Interns, Alejandro, Dawn, Ella, Courtney, Gwen, Heather, Izzy, Tyler, Sunshine
• 14 May: Tweny-third Night posted.
• 2 April 2016: Twenty-second Night posted
• 18 October 2015: Twenty-first Night posted
• 10 July: Twentieth Night posted
• 31 March: Nineteenth Night posted
• 27 November 2014: Eighteenth Night posted
• 1 September: Seventeenth Night posted
• 17 May: Sixteenth Night posted
• 30 March: Fifteenth Night posted
• 5 January: Fourteenth Night posted
• 2 September 2013: Thirteenth Night posted
• 7 July: added theme song videos for Brett & his mother, Chris and Cody
• 30 June: Twelfth Night posted
• 9 June: Caught the TV Tropes page up to the story.
• 4 May: Eleventh Night posted
• 2 March: Tenth Night posted
• 28 December 2012: Ninth Night posted
• 24 November: added the elimination table (Appendix A) which has its own subpage to reduce the potential for late arrival spoilers
• 28 October: Eighth Night posted
• 3 September: Seventh Night posted
• 30 June: Sixth Night posted
• 9 June: added theme song videos for Justin, Lindsay and Trent
• 28 April: Fifth Night posted
• 31 March: Added theme song videos for Bridgette and Geoff
• 25 March: Won five Wiki Awards, including Best Reimagining, out of eight nominated categories
• 26 February: Fourth Night posted
• 2 January: added theme song videos for Harold and Katie/Sadie
• 30 December 2011: Third Night posted
• 20 December: added theme song videos (Appendix B) for Courtney, Ezekiel and Owen
• 29 October: Second Night posted
• 11 September: added picture & footnote for Cody's self-image
• 4 September: Set up the Guessing Games on the talk page
• 3 September 2011: Official launch. First Night posted.

NOTE: Most if not all chapters will have polls on the talk page. You don't have to be logged in to answer polls.

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Dramatis Personae

Characters will be added to this section as they appear.

Staff

• Chris McLean: the host
• Chef Hatchet: Chris' aide
• Millie Stacey: Hostess of the TDI Aftermath show
• Alejandro: de facto Intern in Chief, and a former contestant on a failed elimination game show

Other interns (mostly college age), in order of appearance

• "Lightning": A tall, athletic black man
• Scott: A redheaded redneck
• Cameron: A little black man with a Ghandiesque look
• Staci: A heavyset woman with a thick German accent
• Jo: a faintly androgynous woman, apparently a formidable fighter
• Dawn: A tiny, wraithlike blonde woman with magical powers
• "Beardo": A hulking black man with a vikingesque look
• Ella: A beautiful, Disneyesque woman whose singing has magical properties
• Rodney: Another redheaded redneck, once described as looking like Scott on steroids. Easily smitten.
• Shawn: A nondescript man who practices emergency preparedness under the trendy mindset that one who is ready for a zombie apocalypse is ready for anything
• Sky: A dark-haired gymnast knowledgeable about joint injuries, apparently from experience
• B: A large, heavyset, possibly mute black man, apparently a mechanical genius.
• Leonard: A tall, lanky, black wizard wannabe who is trying to teach himself the ways of sorcery.
• Scarlett: A redhead who looks like an old-style schoolmarm, at least by day. Reputed to be unpleasant when sleep deprived.
• Carrie: A nondescript bottle-blonde woman
• Jasmine: An extremely tall Australian Aborigine woman, knowledgeable of martial arts
• Ryan: A huge black bodybuilder
• Ennui: A hardcore Goth who is not normally allowed to wear his Goth makeup because interns are not supposed to draw attention to themselves

Contestants

Alphabetically by team

The Screaming Eagles

• Cody: the science geek
• Gwen: the Goth
• Heather: the queen bee. Also called "the dragon girl" or "the Dragon Queen" in reference to her ethnicity, and additional terms in later chapters
• Justin: The Embodiment of Manly Beauty. Also called "The Incredible Hunk" or "the uberhunk"
• 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 bombshell. Also called "the uberbimbo"
• Noah: the bookworm
• Owen: the huge fat guy. Also called "the man-mountain", "the gregarious gargantua", etc.
• Sadie: the smart BFF. Also called "the butterball" (originally on the Muskies, switched during the first challenge). 2012 Wiki Award winner for Best Competition Story Portrayal of a Canon Character
• Trent: the guitar player. Also called "the axboy"

The Killer Muskies

• Beth: the nerdy farm girl (originally on the Eagles, switched during the first challenge)
• Bridgette: the surfer girl
• Courtney: the Type A Renaissance girl (sort of like 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" and "the scorner of laws"
• Eva: the sullen she-hulk. Also called "the musclegirl" and "the steel maiden"
• Ezekiel: the home schooled boy. Also called "the farm boy", "the prairie boy" and "Bible 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
• Tyler: the unskilled jock. Called "Red Jock" and "the jock of all trades"

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. Featured Character for December 2013
• Sunshine: Izzy's (presumably) imaginary friend
• Ravi: Sunshine's sister
• Dr. Leonard Kelley: A visiting doctor, based on Star Trek's Dr. McCoy.

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Prologue

Brett Tomlinson was playing a video game when his mother came home from work. Normally, they would have greeted each other simply; but on this day, 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 explained, “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.

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.

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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 Bunny, going along with spotted Petey.
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.

Episode #1: 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 Six, 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 sounds 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.

The next year, 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. 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 by confessing 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 13 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 said, shrugging his shoulders as he continued down the dock. He was tempted to complain, but his momma had taught him to not 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., she 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 13 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’ 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 boy 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.

.

Send In 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.

Cody's self-image (Illustration by Freefalling Lilacs

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

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 13 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 homeschooled 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, homeschooled 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 homeschooled 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 that 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.

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.

.

Lust(in) At First Sight

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 pinching 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.”

“Whatever,” Leshawna said to no one in particular. She stopped trying to approach Noah, which was Bridgette and Eva’s cue to release her, although the girls kept covert eyes on the apparently volatile homegirl 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 gets 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 other girls 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 glad-handing 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, your 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. Eliminations will be by plurality vote. In the event of a tie vote, I'll 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.

“We’ll mostly be running on a three-day cycle. The first day will usually be downtime, so 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’ 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 where 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 homeschooled farm boy 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 than 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” such as 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.

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 “repayment”. 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, I’m surprised she doesn’t forget how to breathe,” Geoff continued. “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 11^th and 12^th 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 twelfth bed arose, Izzy immediately said that the answer was obvious because there were, in fact, twelve girls.

“Who’s the twelfth?” 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 with a roll of 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 twelfth 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 grumbled with the air of one making a major concession.

Heather and Lindsay wound up monopolizing the spare bed’s storage capacity because, as the camp’s fashionistae, 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.

“Attention, 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 anyone 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's 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 hit. “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,” the bookworm 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 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 you 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 about animals that are good to eat, which it so happens that lampreys are. “They look kind of like eels, but their mouths are really weird. 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. Most of the other campers were looking on with varying degrees of curiosity and concern.

Chris noticed this byplay and found it good. “Gwen’s reaction,” he explained “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.

.

Leave All Hope, Ye That Enter

Finally, Chris led his young celebrities-in-the-making to what proved to be their final stop. The largest building in the camp, this could only be the main lodge. It 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 assumed 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's 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 could 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 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 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 her fingertip 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.

♫ STAR WARS episode IV - final theme on pipe organ ♫

Triumphal march (Throne Room scene) from Star Wars episode IV

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 the hulking chef turned away from the common area, he 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.”

As they headed out the door, Leshawna added, “Anyway, 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 hour was not late, so Brett’s mother paused a few moments to collect her thoughts, then resumed her tale.

.

Episode #2: 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 Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem over the P.A. system, at cabin-shaking volume.

Verdi - Requiem -

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.)

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 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 short-sleeved 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 had 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 sunscreen 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.

When most of the campers were again breathing normally, Chris said, “Okay, everyone, 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 Lady Luck likes you, and you 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,” the musclegirl 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 quickly 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 farm 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.” He then 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 would become 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.

After 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, the jock of all trades 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 that Hatchet would simply have to take.

Tyler splashed down in the boat’s wake, barely three meters astern. Hatchet quickly 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,” Bridgette said. “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, you 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 beheld the spectacle and found it good. Turning to the camera, he declared, “That is awesome television!” He then turned to face the Eagles and the remaining Muskies.

“Okay, 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 challenged.

“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.

“Whatever,” 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.

.

Third Night

The next morning, after they had breakfasted, Brett went to school whilst his mother went to earn their daily bread. That evening, after they had dined and Brett had attended to his homework, 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.

When Mr. Beanpole did not resurface after what seemed a reasonable amount of time, Courtney announced, “I’m going in,” and dived in to search for him. No one tried to stop her, for they had seen that the sharks would not harm her. The water was clear, so visibility was good.

After a brief eternity, Courtney resurfaced a little way off, took a few deep breaths, and sounded. She repeated this cycle several times, hopscotching about the area.

Finally, Courtney surfaced next to the boat. She said nothing, but slowly shook her head. Her expression was bleak.

Eva looked like she was going to be ill. Bridgette, who had seen this sort of thing before, closed her eyes for a moment, lowering her head slightly in silent tribute. Duncan grinned wolfishly and thought, Let’s see Mr. Ninja get out of this! Tyler seemed to be at a loss for how to react. Izzy actually looked bored, as if she saw people eaten by sharks six nights a week and twice on Sundays. Ezekiel closed his eyes and crossed himself, muttering a brief prayer.

Only Geoff spoke distinctly enough for the microphones to pick up. The party king was not known for eloquence, but at this moment his simple pronouncement somehow said it all:

“Aw, man! You need a new word for how much that sucks!”

From his vantage point high above, Chris clearly saw what had befallen Harold. “Ooh, hate to see that happen,” the host said, as if he was reading a weather report. When Courtney began her search, Chris, seeming pleased, ordered a camera crew to get into position near the boat to record the Muskies’ reactions when her search proved futile.

None of the teens on the cliff spoke, sensing that it would do no good. Whether Chris was truly that uncaring, or was baiting them again, seemed beside the point.

When Courtney finally returned to the boat, Chris turned to Sadie. “You’re up, Sadie,” he said, as if nothing had happened.

The butterball peered over the cliff to gauge the distance. She had a little diving experience, so she was fairly confident that she could hit the safe zone; but if she didn’t…

Sadie’s heart suddenly filled with a steely resolve that was most unusual for her. If she was going to die here, by Jiminy, she wasn’t going to die alone.

Sadie turned away from the precipice and walked up to Chris. “Chickening out, are we?” the host needled.

“I have to be on the same team as Katie,” the butterball declared in a tone that brooked no argument.

“No can do,” Chris replied with that ubiquitous bland smile. “The teams were scientifically selected according to your skill sets and personality types. You and Katie won’t generate enough drama if you’re on the same team.”

Sadie exploded. “You want drama? I’ll give you drama!” she cried as she locked eyes with the host, her fists balled at her sides. As one of those fists opened into a hand signal that Chris didn’t see and wouldn’t have known how to interpret, the butterball added, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you!”

In response to Sadie’s signal, Katie sprang from the cluster of Eagles and barreled into Chris from behind, even as Sadie stepped out of the line of fire, leaving a conveniently placed foot for Chris to trip over.

Chris McLean was an athletic man and would normally have had little trouble repulsing Katie’s charge, but the hive mind had achieved complete surprise. Nothing in the girls’ profiles had given any sign that they would respond with physical aggression to anything. When people believe they have nothing to lose, though, they become capable of any outrage because the connection between cause and effect is lost.

In a flash, Sadie was sitting on Chris’ shoulders as he lay prone on the ground. Katie, meanwhile, straddled his hips. Unable to get any leverage to buck the girls off, and with his arms pinned at his sides, the host was helpless.

Cold terror gripped Chris as he felt Sadie’s first touch on his scalp. Fearing the worst, he pleaded, “No! Not my hair! Dudettes, please!”

As Katie began tickling Chris on his ribs to stop him trying to mount a defense, Sadie began running her fingers through his hair. Chris made liberal use of gel in styling his hair, which made his “windswept” look easy to maintain; but Sadie now revealed the other edge of that sword, as her against-the-grain finger combing transformed Chris’ perfectly groomed coiffeur into an irregular, spiky mane, the likes of which is rarely seen outside of anime.

“Oh, yeah!” Justin cheered, pumping his fist. “Hit him where it hurts!”

“Mr. Hot Stuff ain’t so hot now, is he?” Heather jeered.

“Can we be on the same team?” Katie and Sadie asked their hostage in unison.

“If you don’t… let… me go,” Chris gasped through Katie’s skillful tickle torture, “you won’t… have… a team… at all… I’ll… kick… you both… off… the show!”

“And throw away all this perfectly good drama?” Sadie retorted derisively. “I don’t think so.”

“Besides,” Katie added, as Chris continued to writhe beneath her, “if we can’t be on the same team, we’d rather not be on your show anyway.”

“You go, girls!” Leshawna cried. “Show him who’s boss!”

“Yeah, it serves Chip right for being so mean,” Lindsay sniffed.

“I know, right?” Beth seconded.

Cody intoned solemnly, “Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.”

Katie, seeing no sign that Chris might be about to relent, leaned forward and quickly slipped her arms under his belly. She pinned the host’s arms to his sides below the elbows to supplement Sadie’s pin near the shoulders, and cried, “Double team!”

In an amazingly nimble move for such a heavy girl, Sadie pushed off on Chris’ shoulders and launched herself a little way into the air, wrenching her body violently about.

Katie was stronger than she looked, but she was no match for Chris. Without Sadie’s substantial bulk pinning him down, Chris needed only a few seconds to break Katie’s grip. His problem was that he didn’t have a few seconds. Scarcely had he sensed his chance when Sadie came heavily down upon him once more. Now, however, she was facing Katie, giving both girls unfettered access to those unprotected ribs, and Sadie promptly demonstrated that her tickle torturing was no less adept than Katie’s.

As the Eagles watched these BFFs demonstrate the gentle art of persuasion, Owen began to chant, “Katie… Sadie… Katie… Sadie…” The rest of the Peanut Gallery quickly took up the chant.

Chris knew then that he dared not make good on his threat to throw the clones out of the game, lest the other campers on the cliff back them up; for although Katie and Sadie were expendable, a “sympathy strike” could kill the fledgling show. If that happened, Chris would have to get a real job.

“Dudettes… please… no more!” the helpless host gasped desperately.

“Can we be on the same team?”

“The teams… are set… There’s nothing… I… can do!” the host pleaded, as he writhed helplessly and tears of agony began to trickle down his face.

“I don’t believe you for a minute,” Katie retorted, as she continued to tickle.

“It’s so not nice to tell people stories like that,” Sadie added, likewise giving Chris no respite.

“We can keep this up all day, you know” Katie said, her threat all the more chilling for its matter-of-fact tone. “It takes a long time for our fingers to get tired.”

“We used to have tickling duels all the time when we were little,” Sadie explained, “and we’ve tickled people into submission before.”

Finally, inevitably, Chris yielded.

“Okay, okay… you win… You can both… be… on the same… team!”

Katie and Sadie stopped their tickle torture, but kept him pinned for the nonce. “Promise?” the clones challenged in unison.

“I promise!” Chris cried, his tone a naked plea.

“That’s all we wanted,” Sadie said, as she and Katie released their prisoner and rose to their feet. The girls then hugged and squealed in delight.

“Wow,” Trent exclaimed softly, still scarcely able to believe what he had seen, “They look so sweet and innocent.”

“Well, now we know better,” Gwen observed with a smirk. With an effort, she had managed to suppress laughter, but her eyes were dancing.

“Hell hath no fury like BFFs scorned,” Noah said, his eyes still wide and his face a bit flushed.

There was a delay of a few minutes whilst Chris regained his composure after the attack of the clones and a valet team restyled his hair. The finished episode spliced in a confessional spot at this point.

“The profilers were seriously asleep at the switch,” Chris pouted in the confessional. “First Ezekiel, now Katie and Sadie, all the early-out cannon fodder is turning out way different from what I expected. What’s next? Gwen masterminding a grand alliance? Lindsay unleashing a third brain cell? Oh, well, all the more drama!”

On the diving cliff, Chris was once more camera-ready. “Katie, Sadie,” he said, “You’re both on the Eagles. Beth, since you’re the most similar to Sadie, you’re on the Muskies. Which means, Beth, it’s your turn to dive. You’re the last Muskie.”

“Goodbye, Beth,” Justin said, fixing the farm girl with his hypnotic gaze. “I wish I’d been able to get to know you better.”

Katie and Sadie started to protest, but Justin silenced them with a wink. The Bobbsey Twins nodded slowly, their mouths forming an “O” of understanding.

Heather also understood what Justin was up to. “I’ll miss you, Beth,” the dragon girl said with an apologetic look on her face. “You’re okay, for a nerd.”

As Beth’s resolve began to waver, some of the other Eagles joined in this mind game, crowding around Beth to say goodbye. It was a terribly callous way to treat Harold’s memory, and most of the Eagles would be mortified later, when they realized what they had done; but for now, they had a challenge to win, and all methods were fair. Besides, although they all knew what had happened to Harold, they hadn’t seen it close by, so it hadn’t really sunk in yet.

“Goodbye, Beth,” Trent said with a wistful smile. “I’ll write a song about you. I promise.”

“Maybe you and Harold can hook up on the other side,” Noah suggested. “You seem like his type.”

“Oh, that would be so sweet,” Lindsay cooed. Unlike the others, Lindsay was completely sincere, for she liked Beth and hadn’t the wit to understand mind games, much less play them.

“Aww, that would be totally sweet,” Katie and Sadie cooed in unison.

Go ye heroes, go to glory,
Though ye die in combat gory,
Ye shall live in song and story.
Go to immortality!
Go to death, and go to slaughter;
Die, and every Cornish daughter
With her tears, your graves shall water.
Go ye heroes, go and die!

Had any other Muskies still been on the cliff, they might have been able to counter the Eagles’ tactic. As it was, though, Beth had to face the onslaught alone. The farm girl wasn’t particularly courageous or self-confident under the best conditions, so the outcome was never in serious doubt.

“I can’t jump,” Beth admitted to Chris. “I’m too scared.”

Chris placed a chicken hat on Beth’s head and directed her to the trailhead, where Alejandro waited to escort her to the base of the cliff; for the delays caused by Courtney’s search and Katie and Sadie’s persuasiveness had given the big intern time to return to the summit after escorting D.J. to the lakeshore.

“Cheer up, senorita,” Alejandro said as they hiked down to the base, “I’m sure you’ll get a chance to redeem yourself. But if you don’t mind my asking, what was with everyone saying goodbye like that? It sounded like they weren’t expecting to ever see you again.”

“Don’t you know?” Beth asked incredulously, but then realized that he probably didn’t. “Oh, yeah, you hadn’t gotten back from taking D.J. to the bottom.

“Anyway, Harold never came up from his dive.” Beth’s voice was quavering. The only reason she wasn’t in tears was because she still couldn’t quite believe what had happened.

“I see,” was the only response Alejandro could think of.

“And then, after Chris switched me and Sadie so she could be on the same team with Katie—”

Beth’s dolor fled for a moment as she remembered how the clones had convinced Chris to allow the switch. “You should have seen them own Chris. It was awesome!”

“I wish I could have,” Alejandro admitted with feeling. “McLean doesn’t treat the interns very well. He treats us like supplies instead of people.”

“Well, now we know that it’s not just the interns. He actually seemed happy when Harold… when Harold…” Beth left the thought unfinished, unable to say it.

“It was pretty much the same way when we were setting up the challenge,” Alejandro confided. “McLean had a bunch of us test the dive, but the safe zone was originally a lot bigger than it wound up being. There also weren’t as many sharks at first. The first few times we dived, we all hit the safe zone, or came down close enough that we could get into it or to the boat before the sharks got us. McLean kept making the safe zone smaller and smaller, a little bit at a time, and a couple of times he added more sharks. He said he was looking for ‘that little something extra’ that would goose the show’s ratings.

“As it turned out, that ‘little something extra’ was apparently blood. Finally, one guy dived and missed by wide enough a margin that he didn’t make it. All McLean said was that the challenge was good to go. So believe me, I know exactly how you feel.”

They walked in silence for a time, until Beth’s interrupted train of thought returned to the station.

“Anyway,” she said, “when I suddenly got put on the Muskies, I was the last one. I guess that’s where you came in. It was like everyone was expecting me to get eaten. I get that they were probably just messing with me so they could win the challenge, but how could they be that callous?”

“Like it or not,” the strapping intern counseled, “that’s the way these elimination games are played. If you’re serious about winning, you have to be ruthless. Alliances are fluid, and you can’t trust anyone for very long. On the other hand, you can’t win as a ‘lone wolf’, either, so you have to trust someone. The immunity you get for winning a challenge helps, but nobody’s going to win every challenge; and from what I’ve heard, you’re not going to be able to ‘bank’ immunities for when you need them.”

“Wow, you sure know a lot about these things,” Beth said admiringly. She wasn’t just admiring her escort’s genre knowledge, either, for Alejandro was ruggedly handsome and well-mannered.

“I should. I was on one of these shows a few years ago, and I also like to watch them.”

“Did you win?”

“Actually, we didn’t have a winner,” Alejandro confessed. “The ratings were bad, so the network pulled the plug on us just a couple of episodes after the teams merged. My show was a lot like this one, but the challenges weren’t as extreme. We also had to dive into shark-infested waters, but the sharks were really just for show. Our cliff was only about 20 meters high—I think the one here is something like 300—so the safe zone was easy to hit.

“Part of the ratings problem might have been that our show had a bland name. This show is called Total Drama Island. The show I was on was called Camp TV. Which one would you rather watch?”

“Yeah, I see your point,” Beth agreed.

“We had the same producers this show does, so they obviously think they’ve learned their lesson. Unfortunately for you guys, it looks like they may have learned the wrong lesson,” Alejandro added with a shake of his head.

“You said that we have to be ruthless to win this type of game,” Beth reminded her escort. “Were you ruthless on your show, or was that something you figured out later?”

Alejandro grinned broadly and chuckled at the memory. “Oh, you need a new word for how ruthless I was, but there’s more to it than that. The trick is to not look like you’re enjoying it too much, or you’ll lose the respect of the jury. If that happens, then you’re basically playing for second place. Of course, you might get lucky and end up in the finals against someone who’s even more despised, but you can’t count on that.”

GOOD ADVICE (Allan Sherman)

Alejandro counsels Beth

“I didn’t know we were going to have a jury,” the nerd girl admitted. “Chris didn’t say anything about that in the orientation.”

“Hmm. If he didn’t say anything about it, then I probably shouldn’t either, but I’ve heard that you will indeed have a jury vote. From what I’ve heard, though, the jurors won’t be just the contestants who get to a certain point. Apparently, all of the losing contestants will vote, so it’s even more important to not burn bridges when you find it necessary to backstab someone. And I do mean when, not if. The time will come.

“You might have an advantage, though. I heard that none of you were expecting to be in an elimination game in the first place.”

“Well, I sure wasn’t,” Beth admitted.

“So, there might not be a lot of people strategizing, at least in the early stages,” Alejandro continued, “which means that if you can, you might have a leg up. Watch that Heather chick, though. She’s got ‘conniver’ written all over her. On the other hand, you can’t necessarily trust the ones who look innocent, either. They really have the potential to blindside people, not to mention that they can get deep into the game just by flying under the radar.”

Beth shook her head as if to clear it. She was reasonably intelligent, but not remarkably so, and her escort’s info dump was a lot for her to digest.

“Wow, that sounds like a heck of a balancing act. How did you manage? Or did you?”

“I can guess what you’re probably thinking: ‘sadder but wiser’. But, no, I had it down to a science. You see, my father’s a diplomat, and he’s taught me a thing or two about how to manipulate people. Do you know the difference between being witty and being charming?”

“I don’t think so,” Beth admitted. “What?”

“A witty man can make you think that he’s the smartest person in the world,” Beth’s hunky escort-cum-tutor explained, “but a charming man can make you think that you’re the smartest person in the world.

“As for the balancing act, my competitors never knew what hit them. It didn’t hurt that I was also strong and athletic and able to charm the…"

Alejandro stopped short for a moment, a strange look on his face. Then he burst into laughter.

“What’s so funny? Beth asked.

When Alejandro had composed himself well enough to answer, he explained, “I was about to say, ‘I was able to charm the pants off the ladies’, but that would have been the mother of all epic fails.”

Beth’s eyes widened for a moment, and then she likewise cracked up at the absurdity of someone who supposedly understood diplomacy making such a ridiculous blunder.

“You can say that again!” she gasped between guffaws.

When the farmer’s daughter had somewhat composed herself, Alejandro’s demeanor turned serious and he said, “I assure you, that’s not what I was after—then or now!”

Beth was still grinning like an idiot. “Well, I’m not that kind of girl, anyway, so… so let’s not and say we did,” she suggested impishly.

“Works for me, amiga” Alejandro replied, giving Beth’s shoulder a quick, playful squeeze.

“Now, where were we?” the Latino lad asked rhetorically. “Ah, yes, owning my Camp TV rivals. In addition to being the most socially adept player, I was also very strong in the challenges. All things considered, I was so dominant that if Camp TV had been a fictional narrative instead of a reality show, people would have called me an unrealistic Gary Stu. Well, probably a Villain Stu. A shame that so few people saw it.”

A painful thought suddenly seemed to strike Alejandro, and he sighed. “I’ve just forced myself into a confession,” he added wistfully. “That same dominance that I was so proud of might have been part of the reason why the show’s ratings were so poor. People don’t like to watch one guy win at everything unless he's representing them in some way. It gets boring pretty quickly.”

The camper and the intern walked in silence for a time, with Alejandro now looking as dejected as Beth had been mere minutes before. The hunky intern finally broke the silence.

“Now I’m the one who needs cheering up,” he admitted. “So tell me, how did Katie and Sadie convince McLean to let them be on the same team? From what you said before, it sounds like my summer is diminished for not having seen it.”

Beth then told her escort about how the clones had bent Chris to their will, but nothing would be gained by repeating it here.

Soon after, these newly minted friends reached the lakeshore. Seeing the other Muskies assembled nearby, Beth went to join them and to explain how she’d come to be their new teammate. At about the same time, Alejandro received a call from a fellow intern, relaying Chris’ instructions to remain at the lakeshore until the diving phase of the challenge was finished. With nothing better to do for the nonce, the former reality show star sat down on a fallen tree to watch the remaining Eagles dive.

The finished episode showed nothing of Beth and Alejandro’s conversation, because the interns and the contestants weren’t supposed to socialize with each other. When the interns appeared on camera at all, they were expected to be little more than living furniture, and weren’t supposed to speak on camera except in emergencies.

.

Where Eagles Dare

As Beth and Alejandro began their hike to the lakeshore, Chris totted up the numbers on his clipboard. “Okay,” he announced, “Final totals for the Killer Muskies: eight successful dives, one failed dive and two chickens, with five divers hitting the safe zone.

“Eagles, let’s see if you can beat that. Heather, you’re up first.”

“No way,” Heather declared. “I’ll get my hair wet.”

“Excuse me?” Leshawna asked incredulously. “You can’t be serious!”

“Hello, Homie,” Heather retorted, “We’re on National TV. I have to look my best.” With a sniff, the dragon girl added, “It’s a hotness thing. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Ooh, them’s fightin’ words,” Justin pronounced with an expectant smirk, for he sensed an imminent catfight. No one heard or answered, though, for everyone’s attention was on Heather and Leshawna.

“Can you get any more full of yourself?” Leshawna challenged. “If you were afraid to jump, that would be one thing, but we’re not losing this challenge just ‘cause you had your hair did!”

“If she’s not jumping, then I’m not jumping,” Lindsay announced, and favored Heather with a glance and a curt nod that silently added, so there!

With a smirk, the dragon girl returned Lindsay’s glance and nod in kind, seeing that the blonde bombshell well understood this “hotness thing”.

“Oh, she’s jumping, all right,” Leshawna declared, addressing Lindsay but glaring at Heather.

“Back off, Ghetto Glam rap star wannabe!” the dragon girl demanded.

“Your mouth is writing checks your body can’t cash, call girl in training with shorts the size of an eye patch!” the homegirl retorted.

“You’re a great one to talk, you morbidly obese cow who can’t keep her paws off any guy with a pulse! Not that they’d want you.”

“Eating disorder poster child with collarbones that can cut glass and ribs that stick out farther than your boobs!”

“And me without my popcorn,” Noah quipped to Gwen, as the homegirl and the dragon girl continued to trade insults concerning each other’s tastes, attractiveness, sexual proclivities, intelligence, ancestry, social standing and probable place of residence in the afterlife.

“The popcorn isn’t the half of it. We should be selling tickets,” replied Lady Snark to Lord Snipe. “If push comes to shove, though, my money’s on Leshawna.”

“I doubt you’d find many takers,” Noah opined. “That’s a sucker bet if I ever saw one.”

“Well, at least I’m popular,” Heather declared in a tone implying that she expected this revelation to be the unchallengeable last word.

“You probably are, with people who don’t actually know you,” Leshawna shot back. “But I don’t care how many toothpick lovers want the only thing you’re probably good for, you’re jumping!”

Heather then spoke the Famous Last Words, “Make me.”

Leshawna said no more, but advanced on the dragon girl with grim determination. Heather instinctively gave ground, realizing that she was physically no match for Leshawna and fearing that the powerful-looking homegirl might throw her bodily off the cliff.

Step by step, Leshawna advanced and Heather retreated. So concerned were these adversaries with each other, that they lost track of their position.

“Uh, guys?” Sadie began uncertainly.

“Guys?” Katie repeated, with more urgency, a few seconds later.

Heather and Leshawna did not hear their teammates, so intent were they on each other. Moments later, Heather stepped back onto… nothing. She had reached the edge of the cliff.

Thrown off balance, with only her toes on solid ground, the dragon girl fell over backwards and plummeted, screaming, to the lake far below.

“Heather!” Leshawna cried helplessly, instinctively extending her hand although Heather could not possibly have reached it.

Those toes on the cliff, while not enough to support her, may have saved Heather’s life, for they stopped her falling straight down and possibly hitting the beach. Instead, her trajectory carried her slightly away from the cliff face. She still landed well short of the safe zone, in dangerously shallow water, but she was unhurt. Cursing under her breath, Heather scrambled ashore before the sharks could close.

Atop the cliff, the mortified Leshawna breathed an immense sigh of relief, for she understood only too well how close she had come to exacting a terribly disproportionate price for Heather’s vanity.

Heather had not technically been forced to dive, and that was apparently good enough for Lindsay. After taking a few moments to steel herself, the blonde bombshell dove gracefully from the cliff.

Gracefully at first, that is. When she saw that she was over-rotating, Lindsay’s composure deserted her. Abandoning her diving posture, she began frantically flailing her limbs in a desperate and not particularly effective attempt to control her orientation. Screaming the while, she completed her descent, ending with an utterly graceless splashdown. Chris wasn’t awarding style points, though. Lindsay was unhurt and in the safe zone, and that was what mattered.

Leshawna followed. After a short running start, she hurtled off the cliff and assumed a cannonball position.

Although not obese, Leshawna was not a slim girl, and the others would learn in due course that her weight was sometimes a sensitive issue with her. This was not one of those times, though, for she had thought of a way to put her bulk to good use. From this height, and with the cannonball posture, the homegirl looked to make a truly mighty splash. That way, if she happened to miss the safe zone and land near a shark (as long as it wasn’t one of the really huge ones) it might be scared off. This precaution proved useful, but not for the reason Leshawna had anticipated. The dusky daughter hit one of the floats marking the far edge of the safe zone, but her protected position made the impact a good deal less painful that it might otherwise have been.

Trent, Gwen and Cody followed. Trent made his dive without incident, but Gwen and Cody both missed the safe zone. Gwen, seeing that she was much closer to the safe zone than to the boat, quickly scrambled over the boundary. Cody was not so lucky, and nearly lost a couple of toes as his teammates hauled him onto the boat, snatching him from the jaws of the piscine predators.

Katie and Sadie were next to get the call. Having won the concession of competing on the same team, they actually made their dives together. The others thought this strange, but only because they didn’t yet know these two well. Although Katie and Sadie had their physical differences, psychologically they were virtually the same person—a fact that would become painfully obvious in due course.

The clones splashed down, seemingly without incident, into the safe zone. After a few moments, though, the water around the safe zone suddenly began to boil with activity. The sharks seemed to be in frenzy, enough so to complicate retrieval of the divers.

“What’s with those sharks?” Katie asked when she and her BFF were safely aboard the boat.

“I don’t know, but they seriously need to chill,” Sadie declared with a sniff.

“I know, right? They’re like totally having a cow,” Katie replied with a sniff of her own.

“Oh, totally,” Sadie confirmed.

“Uh, ladies?” Cody asked, interrupting the clones’ chatter. “If it’s not too personal, are either of you in… er, you know… your time of month?”

“If it’s not too personal?” Sadie repeated in disbelief. “How much more personal can you get? But anyway, I am… if you must know.”

“Oh, I totally am, too,” Katie squealed to her BFF. Turning to the science geek, she looked down her nose at him and said archly, “So now you know. Are you happy now?”

“Sorry to probe,” Cody offered contritely, for he couldn’t bear to have a girl mad at him. “The reason I asked is because I thought it might explain why the sharks got so worked up. They probably smelled traces of your, er… ’periodness’?”

Katie and Sadie blanched and their eyes widened in horror as the implications of Cody’s conjecture sank in. The clones realized with a qualm that, had they missed the safe zone, they would surely have met the same fate as Harold, and far more messily into the bargain.

Atop the cliff, Justin now answered the call with a beautiful swan dive that had everyone oohing and ahhing. Unfortunately, he, like Courtney before him, had better form than aim. The Incredible Hunk looked irritated with himself for missing the safe zone and thereby failing to score a point toward the winning team’s reward, but he didn’t seem concerned about the sharks as he swam calmly toward the boat.

The sharks swarmed around Justin, but instead of attacking, they playfully butted him and gamboled about him, as dolphins might. Indeed, these bloodthirsty creatures actually seemed smitten with Justin’s preternatural beauty. Justin smiled knowingly, as if he had been expecting this reaction, as he continued his leisurely swim to the boat.

His attitude changed abruptly, however, when a shark brushed affectionately against him, as an attention-seeking cat might. A shark’s scales are hard enough and sharp enough that sharkskin makes decent sandpaper; so even though the sharks still seemed to mean him no harm, Justin suddenly feared for his perfect, perfect skin. No longer calm, The Embodiment of Manly Beauty swam to the boat as if the devil himself were at his heels.

Only Noah and Owen now remained for the Eagles. Chris called Noah for the next dive.

“What’s the point?” the calculating bookworm asked. “We’ve already beaten them.”

“You can chicken out if you want,” Chris acknowledged, “But remember, each successful diver gets a crate of supplies for the hot tub. If you deprive your team of the 11^th crate, and that crate contains something important, it could cost your team the challenge. And then they’ll hate you. Besides, if you want the carts for your crates, you’re still tied for that.”

“It’s a calculated risk,” Noah replied. “I’m not in the mood to get et today. Besides, my teammates wouldn’t vote me off. I’m the only one with any brains.”

“Are you sure about that?” Chris needled. “Cody seems pretty smart, and he took the plunge.”

“Exactly,” the bookworm parried. “He dived, even after he saw what happened to Harold. How smart can he be? Besides, there has to be some redundancy in the supplies. Otherwise, you’d run the risk of neither team being able to complete the challenge.”

Chris, with one eye on the production schedule, decided that he’d had enough of this debate. “Fine,” he said, placing a chicken hat on Noah’s large (in more ways than one) head. “Your funeral.”

Noah, on the other hand wasn’t done yet, and seemed intent on having the last word. “No, it won’t be my funeral,” he sneered. “That’s the whole point of my not diving.”

“Whatever,” Chris replied, effectively ending the discussion. In the finished episode, a spliced-in confessional spot would reveal that the host had decided at this moment to make an example of Noah. Chris didn’t like being talked back to, and he had resolved to see to it that the Eagles’ 11^th crate contained a critical and unduplicated part. Then, after the Eagles’ hot tub failed, but before they cast their elimination votes, he would show them the footage of his clifftop discussion with the pretentious bookworm.

“Okay, Owen,” Chris said to the Jolly White Giant, “you’re the last one.”

Owen, like Noah, might have chickened out with 10 crates in hand. With Noah having already balked, though, Owen decided that leaving two crates on the table would be leaving too much to chance. He would have to take one for the team.

Steeling himself, Owen ran to the edge of the cliff and launched himself. He had seen Leshawna’s dive, and thought her “shark repellant” tactic a good one, so he decided that he would also make the biggest splash he could. Being bigger and fatter than the homegirl, though, Owen decided that he could do better than a cannonball. As he plummeted, and realized that he was probably going to miss the safe zone, Owen spread himself out and prepared for a belly flop. It would be painful, he knew, but he thought it was for the best.

Owen missed the safe zone by perhaps five meters, but he hit the water with the force of an exploding depth charge. His splash was not especially large—certainly not the skyscraping plume that everyone was expecting—but the water around him went white. Most of the sharks fled in terror, but those closest to the man-mountain did not, because they could not. Stunned, they drifted insensible into the depths.

Noah was still on the cliff top, and saw his chance. “Chris,” he offered, “I’ve changed my mind. I’ll dive after all, if I can still get credit for it.”

“So, you’ve grown a pair now that the sharks aren’t a threat?” the host needled.

“The odds have changed, that’s all,” Noah parried.

Chris considered for a moment, and passed judgment. “Well, I really shouldn’t allow it, but I’m too nice for my own good. Since you want special rules, though, I’m going to give you one. After all, there still has to be some risk.”

Noah eyed Chris warily, waiting for the host to drop the other shoe, and Chris did not disappoint. “You have to hit the safe zone to get credit for diving at all,” the host pronounced.

“Fine,” Noah agreed. The bookworm thought that he had gotten the better end of the deal, and was willing to admit that Chris had a point.

Chris removed Noah’s chicken hat. The bookworm turned toward the cliff’s edge, steeled himself, ran a few steps to the edge, and jumped. Chris looked disappointed when Noah splashed down in the safe zone to give the Eagles a perfect record of successful dives and a 6-5 win for dives into the safe zone.

After Noah had swum to shore, for Hatchet was under orders to not pick him up, the campers cooled their heels for a few minutes until Chris and his chauffeur arrived.

Chris led the campers a short way along the lakeshore, until they came to two piles of wooden crates. Each pile had eleven crates, all of the same size. Alejandro and a team of his fellow interns now wheeled some carts to one pile and removed three crates, apparently chosen at random, from the other.

Chris said to the campers, “Everyone on the Eagles dived, although some did need more ‘encouragement’ than others, and they also had more divers hit the safe zone, so they get the big pile and the carts. The Muskies had three people who either didn’t dive or didn’t survive, so they get the smaller pile.

“Take these crates back to camp. You’ll get additional instructions there. Don’t even think about trying to open any of your crates ahead of time, unless you want to be disqualified.

“You have until sundown to build your hot tubs, so don’t dawdle. And Killer Muskies, good luck. You’re going to need it.”

With that, Chris departed and the teams began to inspect the crates. Most weren’t very heavy, but were bulky enough that only Owen and D.J. could lift one without assistance. Most of the other boys, and a few of the girls, had the strength but not the “wingspan”.

“We need a team leader,” Courtney declared to her fellow Muskies. “Since we’re living in a summer camp and I used to be a CIT, I think I’m the most qualified. Any objections?” She was met with a collective shrug.

The teams set to work. As Duncan and Ezekiel pulled a crate off the pile, the farm boy said, “I don’t get why we lost the first part. They’re the ones with six girls.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Bridgette challenged. She and Eva had also been pulling a crate from the pile, and so had overheard.

“Yeah, enlighten us, Homeschool,” Eva added as the girls set down their crate.

These three had spoken loudly enough to get most of the campers’ attention, and the challenge was forgotten for the moment.

“Well, boys are much stronger and better at sports than girls,” Ezekiel explained innocently.

“Gee, I wonder who’s going home after we win the challenge?” Heather asked rhetorically.

“I don’t know. Who do you think?” Lindsay replied innocently. Heather rolled her eyes and bit her tongue.

Courtney stepped in to try to defuse the situation before it got out of control. “Even if that were true, which I’m not conceding, cliff diving doesn’t really play to those strengths,” she observed.

“Sure, it does,” Ezekiel replied. “Outdoorsy, action-y stuff is guy stuff. Boys have better eyes for distance, because back in the days of hunter-gatherer societies the men were the hunters and the women were the gatherers. We still are, really. And I can see girls chickening out of that dive, because it was scary and girls aren’t as brave as boys in most things, but…” The farm boy left the thought unfinished, for he had finally noticed Bridgette’s death glare but was unsure of what had brought it on. “What?” he said obliviously.

“I am going to make you eat… every… word,” the surfer girl vowed.

Several campers were backing away nervously, looking for all the world like they expected the two Muskies to call for dueling pistols.

“Would you like a glove to slap him with?” Gwen quipped.

Before Bridgette could respond, Eva stepped in. The musclegirl was in position to grab Ezekiel’s neck from behind, as she had with Cody the day before, but she wanted Sexist Warthog Boy to see her coming; so she interposed herself between Bridgette and Ezekiel, fastened both hands on the farm boy’s chauvinistic throat, and hoisted him aloft.

“I find this lack of faith disturbing,” Eva said. Her tone was mild and even, but her face was beet-red and her teeth were gritted—not from the strain of lifting Ezekiel, but from murderous fury only barely controlled.

“Still think we’re weak and cowardly?” Eva taunted after a few moments, in the same deceptively mild tone.

Ezekiel’s only response was some gurgling noises and increasingly frantic struggles to break Eva’s adamantine grip. Despite her rage, the steel maiden had enough presence of mind to relax her grip to the point where her prey could at least breathe, but she still denied him the grace of feeling solid ground beneath his feet.

When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail,
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When Nag, the wayside cobra, hears the careless foot of man,
He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can,
But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail—
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws,
They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws—
‘Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale—
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

“Okay, you little trilobite,” Eva demanded, dropping her mild tone in favor of one that better reflected how she truly felt, “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t dropkick you to the sharks!”

“Hasn’t there been enough blood today??”

All the campers (except for Ezekiel, of course) silently turned to Beth, for everyone had been taken aback at the intensity of the unassuming nerdette’s outburst. Although Beth looked more distraught than angry, her face was as red as Eva’s, and the tears that would not come during her conversation with Alejandro had finally begun to flow.

“Sorry,” Eva said, as she flung Ezekiel to the ground and her face began to return to its normal color. “Poor choice of words.”

“I know, right?” Bridgette said quietly, her own anger likewise blunted at the reminder of what bear and shark had wrought that day.

Eva turned back to Ezekiel. “This isn’t over, Homeschool,” she warned darkly, before returning her attention to the crate pile. Bridgette flashed Ezekiel an “I’m watching you” sign, followed by Courtney and some of the Eagles girls.

Courtney then went to the farm girl and asked, “You okay, Beth?”

“Do I look okay?” Beth asked in turn, for she looked and sounded perfectly miserable.

“I understand,” Courtney replied wistfully, “but we need everyone’s head in the game. We’ll have time to mourn later, but right now, we’ve still got a job to do.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Beth conceded, and her tears began to abate.

Seeing that the Muskies were getting back to business, albeit with a more melancholy air than before, Heather called on the Eagles to do the same. “Okay, everyone, let’s get moving. Ownage over, nothing to see here.”

As the other campers turned their attention back to the challenge, Duncan pulled Ezekiel aside. “Dude, you’ve got a lot to learn about the real world,” the delinquent said with a shake of his head.

“I don’t get it,” Ezekiel admitted. “All I did was call ‘em as I see ‘em. Back home, people appreciate that, eh?”

“You’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto,” Duncan replied. He looked quickly around to make sure that no one would overhear, then lowered his voice and added, “To be honest, I don’t necessarily think you’re wrong, but you won’t catch me saying that in front of the chicks.”

“Why not? Sure, that Eva’s a brute—she reminds me of Fat Broad in the B.C. comic strip—but I’ll bet you could take her if she wanted a fight, eh? Not that I actually think boys should go around beating up girls or anything.”

“That’s not the point,” the delinquent explained. “The point is that the chicks get to vote, too, and our chances of winning this challenge don’t look too hot right now. You’ve got a cool dude inside you screaming to get out, but you have to let this go. Otherwise, you might be setting yourself up to be the first one kicked off. We don’t outnumber the chicks anymore, and even if we did, it would only take one guy brownnosing for dates to give them the majority.”

“Gee, you’re right. I hadn’t thought of that, eh?”

No, of course you hadn’t, Duncan thought; but what he actually said was, “It would be a good idea for you to lay low for a while. Let Miss Goody Twoshoes be the team leader, since she’s the only one who seems to want to, do your part in the hot tub building, and maybe this will blow over.”

“Thanks, Duncan. Don’t get me wrong, but you’re not what I expected from a street tough. You’re actually kind of nice.”

Duncan’s comradely air vanished. “Let’s get one thing straight,” he said, glowering at Ezekiel. “Do not go around calling me ‘nice’. It’s bad for my street cred. Besides, just because I don’t respect law and order doesn’t mean that I don’t understand teamwork. I’m just a little more selective about who I call a teamie… teamie.”

Meanwhile, the Eagles were loading their crates onto the carts. Heather took it upon herself to direct traffic, for she was a “queen bee” at her school and so was used to wielding social authority. Most of the Eagles were as indifferent to Heather’s power grab as the Muskies had been to Courtney’s, but Heather’s presumption did not sit well with Gwen.

“Who died and made you the Grand Pooh-bah?” Gwen challenged.

“Shut it, Weird Goth Girl,” Heather snapped. “I don’t see anyone else stepping up.”

“That’s not the point. The point is that you can’t just declare yourself Queen of Hearts and boss us around.”

“We need a leader, so you would you suggest?” Heather asked with a faint but noticeable sneer. “You? That’d be a laugh.”

“Heather’s popular. What more do you want?” Lindsay added. Having recognized a fellow fashionista, Lindsay was sticking close to the dragon girl, as she had during most of their brief time on the island.

“Being popular doesn’t mean—” Gwen began.

“So, do you want to be the leader?” Heather interrupted. “No? Then what’s your damage?”

Before Gwen could answer, Heather raised her voice to address the Eagles as a whole. “Everyone’s okay with me being the leader, right? Right.” Turning back to Gwen, the dragon girl tossed her head and declared, “Sorry, Gothie, but the people have spoken. Silence equals assent. So go with the flow like a good little gutterpunk, and maybe you won’t get voted off the first time we lose a challenge.”

As the Eagles turned their attention back to the task at hand, Heather said to Lindsay, “We’ll have to keep an eye on her. Ugly clothes and ugly hair mean an ugly mind.”

“I know, right?” Lindsay replied. Being a gentle and goodhearted person, Lindsay didn’t actually dislike Gwen, but was in full agreement with Heather on the value of fashion sense as a predictor of character.

Heather returned to overseeing the cart loading operation, her leadership now unchallenged.

“Uh, Heather?” came a voice that was all too familiar, yet oddly subdued, as the Eagles loaded the last crate.

“What do you want, Ghetto Girl?” Heather snapped as she turned toward the voice. The queen bee’s resentment softened a bit when she saw the hangdog look on her adversary’s face.

“Look, I’m real sorry about what happened on the cliff,” Leshawna offered contritely. “All that stuff we said… none of that was anything a girl deserves to die for. I just lost track of how close we were to the edge.”

Heather answered, “Well, no harm, no foul, I guess. Apology accepted. Besides, it turned out for the best. I don’t know what I was thinking, being more worried about getting my hair mussed than about getting eaten by sharks, especially after we’d seen that it could happen. I just needed some, ah, ‘encouragement’. Your methods may have been a little unorthodox, but you can’t argue with success.”

“Truce, then?” Leshawna asked.

“Sure, truce. Just tell me one thing, though.”

“What’s that?”

“Would you really have picked me up and thrown me off the cliff? You looked like you were ready to.”

With a booming belly laugh, the homegirl admitted, “I just might have. But that’s all in the past. If you can forgive and forget, then so can I.”

“Deal,” Heather pronounced. “Now, we’d better get to hauling these crates back to camp. Let’s put that muscle of yours to better use than chick chucking.”

After Leshawna had left them, Lindsay asked, “Did you really mean that? That you’re going to be friends with Madonna?”

“Leshawna,” Heather corrected. “And no way. She’s going down. I’m not about to forget that she almost got me killed—literally.”

“Then why were you being all nice to her?”

“Have you ever seen one of these shows?” the dragon girl asked her microcephalic companion. When Lindsay confessed that she had not, Heather explained, “There’s an old saying: ‘Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.’ Besides, Homie did apologize like she meant it, so that gave me a good cover to make nice… for now.”

“Oh, I see,” Lindsay said. “I think. But, I’m your friend, right?”

“Of course,” Heather assured the uberbimbo. “As long as I don’t have a reason for you not to be.”

.

Build It, And He Will Come

Aided by their wheels, that most storied of the Five Simple Machines, it wasn’t overlong before the Eagles arrived at the camp and began unloading their carts. Their host and overlord was there to meet them.

“You’ve made good time, dudes,” Chris noted approvingly. “Before you get started, though, there’s something you should know.”

“And what’s that?” Heather asked, unsure of whether she really wanted to know.

“You can’t use your hands to open the crates,” Chris replied.

“So what are we supposed to do?” Leshawna challenged, “Tear them open with our teeth?”

“That’s one possibility,” the host replied unhelpfully.

“You’re frontin’ me,” the homegirl shot back. “What do you think we are, termites?” Chris did not deign to reply.

This conundrum had the Eagles stumped for a time, until inspiration came to Cody. The Science Guy told Owen about his idea, for the man-mountain was vital to the plan. It was possible that Owen could be in for some pain, and Cody didn’t want to run the risk of embarrassing him in front of everyone by announcing his plan without getting the larger boy’s buy-in. Diplomacy aside, Owen was immensely strong despite his poor physical condition, and he could probably have put Cody in the hospital without breaking a sweat, were he so inclined.

Owen thought Cody’s idea a good one, but also recognized the potential for serious pain if things didn’t go according to plan. The whale and the shrimp talked for a few minutes, fine-tuning the plan. At last, Owen agreed to try it. The two boys then approached Heather, who likewise thought the plan a good one.

“Okay, guys, here’s the plan,” Heather suddenly announced to the Eagles. “We’ll use Owen’s fatness.”

“Er, it was actually Cody’s idea,” Owen replied hesitantly.

“I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise,” Heather assured him. The truth was that she had intended to take the credit for herself if she could, but her wording was ambiguous enough to give her a face-saving out if she was called on it.

Heather gestured toward a large boulder protruding from the side of a small hill. This immense rock was perhaps three meters high, but easily scaleable from the buried side. “See that boulder over there?” she asked. Not waiting for a response, because the great stone was hard to miss, Heather explained, “Owen will climb on top of it. We’ll put a crate in front, and set it on its side. Then Owen will jump on it, and the lid should pop right off.”

The other Eagles expressed varying degrees of optimism about this scheme, and Heather continued. “We’ll need a mattress to put on the crate, because otherwise Owen might go right through the side and kill himself. More importantly, he might damage the contents. According to our science geek, the positioning is a little tricky.

“Trent, Justin, you’re with me. Everyone else, get one of the crates into position.”

As the other Eagles moved the first crate over to the boulder, Heather led the two boys into the girls’ cabin and pointed to one of the lower bunks. Gwen’s bunk.

“That one,” she said.

“Why that one, especially?” Trent asked. “Why not one of the beds closest to the door?”

“Because those belong to our teammates. This one doesn’t,” Heather lied.

Trent and Justin were satisfied with this explanation, having no reason to doubt it, and hauled Gwen’s mattress out without further protest. Indeed, the reason why Heather had chosen boys for this task was because the boys did not know which girl had which bed.

By the time Heather and her porters returned to the crate-opening site, both Owen and the first crate were in position. Trent and Justin laid the mattress atop the crate and retired to a safe distance.

“Remember,” Cody said to Owen, “You want to land as close as you can to the top edge of the crate. If you land too close to the center, you’ll just stave in the side. Could be messy.”

“Right,” Owen acknowledged. With a cry of “Geronimo!” the Human Wrecking Ball jumped into the air, assumed a cannonball posture, and came down like the proverbial ton of bricks on the crate. He landed just where he wanted to, and the crate lid popped off like a champagne cork, breaking in two against a nearby tree trunk. Fortunately, no one had been in the line of fire.

“Awesome, dude!” Trent exclaimed, a sentiment echoed by several of his teammates.

“Clever,” Chris said, sounding pleased.

“All right,” Heather said. “Boys, get the next crate into position. Girls, we’ll go over the inventory.”

A few of the crates required a second or even third pounding before they opened, but the operation otherwise went off without a hitch. When the last crate had been opened, Owen excused himself, waddled painfully to the boys’ cabin, and took to his bed; for even with the mattress cushioning his falls, the man-mountain’s derriere was now sore from the constant pounding, and he was still feeling the effects of his cliff dive, as well. None of the Eagles begrudged Owen his early departure from the challenge, for they weren’t going to need everyone to build the hot tub, and Owen had done his part.

Heather, meanwhile, went back to the girls’ cabin with Trent and Justin and replaced Gwen’s badly battered mattress, which was now very lumpy and had a couple of springs exposed. As the boys left the cabin to rejoin their teammates, Heather stayed behind to make up Gwen’s bed to more or less match its previous state, which Heather had been careful to note.

Construction of the Eagles’ hot tub was well underway when the Muskies arrived, hot and tired from carrying and pushing their crates all the way from the diving cliff without the benefit of carts.

With tongue in cheek, Chris chastised the Muskies for their slowness and gleefully pointed out that the Eagles were far ahead of them. The host also informed the Fatal Fishies that they would have to open the crates without using their hands, assuring them that the Eagles had faced and overcome the same restriction. Naturally, Chris did not tell the Muskies how their rivals had done this.

The Muskies pondered the question of how to open the crates, but did not have to ponder long before inspiration came to Courtney. She got her teammates’ attention and explained her plan, which relied on the strength of D.J. and Eva.

“Think you can do it?” Courtney asked.

“No sweat,” Eva assured her.

“What she said,” D.J. seconded.

The Muskies set a crate on its side, and D.J. and Eva took up positions on either side, near the lid. On Courtney’s signal, both delivered powerful roundhouse kicks to the crate sides, just below the lid. Courtney’s plan was similar in principle to Cody’s, and the results were just as satisfactory, if less spectacular. With the crate squeezed between the opposing kicks, the lid popped neatly off and fell to the ground.

“Just like popping a pimple, eh?” Ezekiel observed.

“I know, right?” Beth replied.

“Well done, Muskies,” Chris said. “For what it’s worth, you came up with a plan faster than the Eagles did, so you’ve made up a little time.”

Like Heather before her, Courtney set the boys to moving the remaining crates into position and the girls to taking inventory of the opened crates. The crate kickers would do nothing else during this phase, because Courtney wanted them to save their strength; for although they had dealt with the first crate easily enough, it might be a different story by the time they got to the eighth.

After D.J. and Eva had opened the last crate, the Muskie girls finished checking their inventory against the parts list in the manual that they had found in one of the crates. Uncertainly, they checked the list a second time, and then frantically checked it yet again.

The boys, who had taken a breather after finishing with the crate hauling, rejoined their teammates and asked why the girls looked so uptight.

“We have a problem,” Courtney informed them. “We don’t have all the parts.”

“Can’t we work around it?” Geoff asked.

“I don’t think so,” Bridgette replied. “It’s a critical part.”

“Think outside the box,” Duncan counseled. He added softly, against any possibility that the Eagles might overhear, “Maybe we can swipe our missing part from the Birdies.”

“Absolutely not,” declared the scandalized Courtney. “I’m not a thief.”

“Well, I am, so you’re in luck,” Duncan countered. “This is no time to stand on principle, Princess. Do you want to win this or not?”

“Not at that price,” Courtney sniffed. “In any case, they got all their crates. Don’t you think it would be just a wee bit suspicious if they wound up missing something important?”

“What makes you think McLean is going to care?” Duncan countered. “His opinion is the only one that would really matter.”

“You do have a point,” Courtney admitted, “but it’s beside the point. Besides, even if it weren’t wrong in and of itself, I’m going to be running for office someday, and nobody’s going to dig up a video of me condoning theft.”

“If it turns out that they have an extra, would it be okay then?” Tyler asked. “They wouldn’t miss a spare, but they wouldn’t have any reason to hand it over willingly.”

“Besides,” Duncan pressed, seeing signs that Courtney was beginning to waver, “If you’re going to go into politics, you’re not going to get very far if you’re not willing to get your hands dirty. We don’t have all day. Once they install it, it’ll be too late. I won’t be able to lift it without being noticed.”

“I hate to side with the walking rap sheet,” Bridgette chimed in, “but he’s right. They say the first rule of politics is that if you have to choose between what’s right and what’s expedient, you do what’s expedient.

“Which is not to say that I approve of his plan,” the surfer girl added with a glare at Duncan, who seemed about to say something. “We made our bed, and we have no one but ourselves to blame if it’s hard to lie in.”

Courtney’s seeming indecision passed. “No,” she said with fresh resolve. “Bridgette’s right. We’ll work with what we’ve got, and let the chips fall where they will.”

“We won’t have a chance,” Duncan warned, “so why bother? We can just take it easy. Get a shower, take a nap, raid the kitchen and see if Hatchet keeps any actual food around….”

“Sounds good to me,” Geoff seconded. “It’s a nice day, and this is a beauteous island if you don’t count the camp. Maybe we could get to know each other a little better,” the party king suggested with an admiring glance toward Bridgette, who reacted shyly.

Eva countered, “You’re assuming the Eagles will do a good job with their hot tub. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”

“Eva’s right,” Izzy chattered. “We’ve got nothing to lose by trying, and we don’t know that Chris won’t make allowances for the fact that we don’t have all the parts, so let’s do this. All this talk is getting kind of boring.”

With that, the Muskies set to work, knowing that the odds were against them but determined to do their best. Izzy and Ezekiel would be primarily responsible for the grunt work of building the tub body—Ezekiel because farm life had given him plenty of experience with simple construction projects, and Izzy because Courtney was hoping to burn off a little of the redhead’s manic energy. Courtney also assigned Tyler to help with the tub body, but after several accidents with the hammer, Courtney thought better of it and “demoted” Tyler to ferrying parts and tools as needed.

The Muskies, like the Eagles, didn’t need everyone, so Courtney asked the crate kickers whether they wanted to knock off early, for she didn’t know how much all that hard kicking might have taken out of them. Neither D.J. nor Eva were willing to “slack off”, as Eva put it, so Courtney assigned them to carry parts or work on the tub body at their discretion.

Courtney initially assigned Duncan and Geoff to work on the tub’s systems. This proved to be a mistake; for although Geoff meant well, he was very distractible and spent more time rambling about trivialities and admiring girls (especially Bridgette) than working. Finally, Courtney replaced Geoff with Bridgette on the systems detail and sternly told the party king to stay out of everyone’s way.

“Harsh-ness,” Geoff complained, but he did as the tiny tyrant commanded.

At the crack of dusk, everyone jumped as Chris blew an air horn amplified by a bullhorn. The campers would learn all too quickly that this was their host’s preferred method of getting everyone’s attention, especially as a wakeup call.

“Okay, time’s up,” Chris said. “Eagles, fetch Owen and we’ll see what you’ve got.”

No one spoke as Chris inspected the Eagles’ hot tub, which now had steam rising from it. Everything appeared to be in order, and the craftsmanship looked good.

“This,” the host pronounced at last, “is an awesome hot tub!”

The Eagles cheered, and several exchanged high fives. With characteristic exuberance, Owen picked up the rail-thin Katie and the model-thin Heather like rag dolls; and after initial protests, they now perched contentedly on his meter-wide shoulders.

“Okay, Muskies,” Chris challenged, “let’s see if you can top this.”

As the Killer Muskies stood nervously by, waiting for the axe to fall, the host inspected their tub. It, too, appeared to have been assembled competently, but Chris had noticed something. He tested the water and rendered his judgment.

“The water’s cold. You were supposed to build a hot tub, not an aboveground pool.”

The Muskies’ incomplete supplies had not included a heating element.

The Eagles let out a collective sigh, only now realizing that they had been holding their breath during much of the inspection.

“The winners are… the Screaming Eagles!” Chris declaimed.

“Killer Muskies, what can I say?” the host asked rhetorically. “It sucks to be you, but we all knew this could happen when you left three crates of supplies on the table. I was kind of hoping that you’d try to steal the Eagles’ heating element like Duncan wanted to. That might have made for some good drama, especially if you’d gotten caught.

“But, what’s done—or not—is done. At tomorrow night’s elimination ceremony, one of you will become this game’s most pathetic loser of all.”

At dinner, Harold’s fate dominated conversation. A single question, with variations, was on everyone’s minds and lips:

“What have we gotten ourselves into?”

After dinner—a vile excuse for Salisbury steak with slimy gravy and greasy, gristly meat—the Eagles departed for their hot tub party. The Muskies remained in the lodge and began to discuss the next night’s elimination.

“Do we even know that we’ll have to do this?” Bridgette asked. “We’ve already lost Harold, may he rest in peace. Isn’t that enough?”

“I asked Chris, and he just said, ‘The show must go on’,” Courtney replied, rolling her eyes.

“Great. We’re going to be down two players right off the bat,” Bridgette said, shaking her head.

“But that’ll leave the producers with an empty episode slot, won’t it?” Geoff asked.

“Maybe they’ll do a return at some point, or an extra reward challenge,” D.J. speculated.

“Maybe,” Courtney conceded. “But none of that’s relevant right now. We need to decide who to vote off.”

“Homeschool, obviously,” Eva suggested.

Before Ezekiel could rise to his own defense, Duncan asked, “Why ‘obviously’? He did everything we asked of him in the challenge. What more do you want? It wasn’t his fault that we didn’t have all the parts.”

“What we want is for him to treat us with respect,” Bridgette shot back before Eva could.

“How can he treat you with respect if he isn’t even here?”

“You know what I think?” Eva snapped. “I think the reason you’re defending him is because you’re as bad as he is. I heard about how you propositioned Heather when we first got here. If it had been me, the crawdads would be picking your bones clean as we speak.”

“You've got it backwards,” Duncan replied with a smirk. “I didn’t proposition Heather, she propositioned me. Her ideas were too kinky, though, so I turned her down. And why would I ever want a Neanderthal Woman like you? At least Heather’s hot.”

In a trice, Eva was on her feet, as were Bridgette and Izzy a moment later. As the surfer and the redhead struggled to restrain Eva, the musclegirl shouted at Duncan, “Let’s see if you have a little more respect for girls after you’ve become one!”

Courtney stepped in and asserted her authority. “Guys, this isn’t getting us anywhere! Eva, you’ve got to try to control your temper!” Duncan, quit baiting her, or next time we might not try to stop her!”

“That’d be worse for her than for me,” the delinquent smirked. “If she wants to bring it, let her.”

“Enough!” yelled Courtney. “Unless you want to be voted off! Everyone can see that you’re just making trouble!”

“Fine,” Duncan grumbled, for he sensed that Courtney’s threat was not idle. “Sorry, Eva. Truce?”

Sensing that she was perhaps not entirely blameless in this matter, Eva nodded curtly but made no other reply. Bridgette and Izzy released her, but continued to keep a wary eye on her.

With cooler heads having prevailed for the nonce, the Muskies returned to the question of whom to vote off. Several names were suggested, and the discussion grew heated at times. In the end, though, the Muskies failed to reach a consensus and decided to sleep on it.

The next evening, as the last vestiges of twilight faded on the western horizon, the Killer Muskies gathered at the bonfire pit for the elimination ceremony. When they were settled in before the blazing fire, Chris appeared before them, holding a tray of marshmallows in his right hand. He spoke solemnly:

“Marshmallows are a summer camp staple, toasted over the fire for a tasty, gooey treat. At this summer camp, however, the humble marshmallow is something far greater, for it represents life.

“Figuratively speaking, you are all on the point of death at this very moment, and only these marshmallows can save you. On this tray are nine tasty tokens of life, but there are ten of you, which means that someone will be left without. That person has, for the purposes of this contest, been ‘condemned to die’. That pathetic reject must walk the Dock of Shame, board the Boat of Losers, and depart this Isle of Tears—forever.

“When I call your name, come up and claim you marshmallow, and rejoice that you have lived to fight another day. I will first call, in no particular order, the names of those campers who had no votes against them.

“The very first marshmallow ever awarded on Total Drama Island goes to…”

Chris paused for dramatic effect. He had already said that the order wasn’t significant for the first group, and it was pretty clear who was probably safe and who was at risk, so it wasn’t clear why he thought there was much dramatic tension to milk at this point. Most likely, he just wanted more screen time for himself, although the campers didn’t yet know that he was a dyed-in-the-wool narcissist.

“Eva. Come and get your marshmallow.”

The steel maiden rose and strode to Chris, then stopped to await further instructions, for she didn’t know whether the host had any ceremonial flourishes planned. As it turned out, he did. Motioning to Eva to present her toasting stick, Chris impaled a marshmallow upon it and told her to stand behind him.

The camera-mugging host took his sweet time calling forth the next survivor.

“Geoff.”

The urban cowboy did as he had seen Eva do.

“Duncan.”

The street tough followed his teammates’ examples, meeting Eva’s glare with a self-satisfied smirk.

“Courtney.”

The Muskies’ nominal leader received a well-wishing gesture from Izzy as she rose, then walked over and collected her “life is sweet” token.

“Bridgette.”

Bridgette rose, and stumbled slightly as she began the short walk to Chris’ position. Although no one could have known, this was a portent of things to come, but that is another story for another time.

“Izzy.”

The manic redhead all but vaulted up to Chris.

Chris surveyed the remaining campers for a moment, and then intoned, “Only three marshmallows remain. Each of you four had votes against you. Beth, D.J., your refusal to dive contributed to the parts shortage that wound up costing your team the challenge. Ezekiel, you did your part in the challenge, but your sexist remarks pissed a lot of people off. You may have made some enemies today. Tyler, you also did your part in the diving phase, but you nearly got most of your teammates killed in the process, and you were pretty useless in the hot tub building.

“I will call the remaining survivors in order of increasing vote totals. With one vote against, the seventh marshmallow goes to…”

Chris paused again to build tension. Although some of these pauses would be shortened or omitted in the finished episodes, he couldn’t know in advance where this would be done, so he usually erred on the side of more screen time for himself. Finally…

“D.J.”

The gentle giant collected his prize and joined his fellows.

“With two votes against, the eighth marshmallow goes to… Ezekiel.”

Bridgette and Eva glared at the prairie boy as he joined the ranks of the blessed, although Eva had not actually voted against him.

The finished episode had a spliced-in confessional spot at this point. “I’ve had problems with my temper for as long as I can remember,” Eva admitted in the confessional. “When Homeschool made those chauvinistic remarks about boys being better at sports and all, I was ready to personally throw him to the sharks. I know that sounds harsh after what happened to Harold, but that’s how I felt. But he did do his part in the challenge, like Duncan said, and I’ve had time to cool down. Plus, Courtney was telling us that most sexism and racism and all those other ‘-isms’ come from ignorance, not malice, so I guess he deserves another chance.

“But if he keeps it up,” Eva added, now affecting a bad imitation of a Southern U.S. accent, “ah do declare that ah will most surely beat his little country bumpkin face in.” Eva’s attempt to imitate a demure, antebellum Southern belle was unconvincing, to say the least, and the effect was rather grotesque.

At the bonfire, Chris looked sternly at Beth and Tyler, both of whom were looking suitably nervous. “One of you,” the host intoned solemnly, “is about to become that most pathetic of God’s creatures: the very first to be eliminated from an elimination game show. The other will survive to ponder what might have been.

“With three votes against, the final marshmallow goes to…”

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

.

Fourth Night

The next day was not a school day, so Brett and his mother spent the day engaged in their own affairs. That night, after they had dined and Brett had finished what homework he had for the weekend, he approached his mother and asked to hear 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.

Now, there was real tension for Chris to milk, and he certainly wasn’t going to waste the opportunity. He took a deep, theatrical breath, and slowly lifted his free arm. In the finished episode, dramatic music began at this point.

Ten seconds had passed since the host had last spoken. With his arm now extended, Chris’ forearm continued its upward journey.

Twenty seconds. Chris’ forearm was now vertical. The music swelled.

Thirty seconds. Chris extended his arm again and pointed at Beth for a moment, before pointing at Tyler, and back at Beth, and back at Tyler. In the postproduction soundtrack, the dramatic music segued to ominous choral chanting.

Forty seconds. Tyler looked ready to scream, and Beth looked ready to faint.

Worthless are my prayers and sighing,
Yet, good Lord, in grace complying,
Rescue me from fires undying!

With thy favored sheep O place me;
Nor among the goats abase me;
But to thy right hand upraise me.

While the wicked are confounded,
Doomed to flames of woe unbounded,
Call me with thy saints surrounded.

Low I kneel, with heart submission,
See, like ashes, my contrition;
Help me in my last condition.

Finally, Chris handed down the verdict.

“Tyler,” quoth the host.

As the jock breathed an enormous sigh of relief and collected his treasure—never before had a simple marshmallow tasted so sweet to him as it would this night—Chris turned once more to Beth.

“Beth, you have been voted off, so—”

“But the team’s already a player down,” Beth pleaded desperately. “Shouldn’t I get to stay, since Harold didn’t survive the challenge?”

“IF I MAY CONTINUE?” Chris thundered testily, “Assuming you’re quite finished stealing my scene?” The chastened nerd girl fell silent, hanging her head.

“As I was saying,” the host explained, his voice now at normal volume but still carrying a testy tone, “you have been voted off, so you would normally be out of the game at this point. However, comma, the Muskies are already a player down because Harold was a ‘casualty of war’.

“Now, Beth, I should let the vote stand because you stole my line,” Chris said sternly. “But because I’m such a nice guy,” he added (a claim that would have drawn open laughter by the end of the competition), “I will overlook your egregious breach of reality show etiquette. This time.”

Chris reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew what appeared to be a wad of paper towel. Slowly, theatrically, he opened this wad to reveal the tenth marshmallow.

“Beth, come and get your marshmallow,” Chris commanded. Grateful beyond words, the nerd girl did as she was bidden.

As Chris impaled the “bonus” marshmallow on Beth’s toasting stick, he smiled slightly and told her, in a tone that almost sounded as though there could be real humanity behind it, “You have your reprieve, Beth. Make the most of it.”

His brow furrowed in puzzlement, Brett asked, “But if Beth knew what happened to Harold—I assume he got eaten, although I don’t recall that you ever actually said so—then why would she be so desperate to stay on the island? It seems to me that she would have jumped at the chance to escape.”

“Remember,” his mother replied, “Chris told us that most of the later challenges wouldn’t be as dangerous as that one. He’s not the most honest guy you’ll ever meet, but we didn’t know that at the time. Besides, after seeing where his priorities lay, I think we were afraid of what he might have done to anyone he thought was trying to get voted off.

“And, we were still desperate to be famous. Beth, probably more than most.”

The night was still young, so Brett’s mother paused a few moments to collect her thoughts, and then resumed her tale.

Episode #3: The Tale of Campers vs. Somnus

Original title: The Big Sleep

The day following the elimination was an off day. The campers were invited to partake in various aspects of summer camp life—swimming, arts and crafts, exploring the woods around the camp, and so on—but there was nothing on the agenda related to the competition. When someone asked Chris whether he was going to do anything to memorialize Harold, the host replied, “He paid his money and he tooks his chances. Besides, he got what he wanted, even if it was posthumous. The episode got great ratings, so he’s famous now.”

That response didn’t sit well with the campers. True, they had barely known Harold, but they didn’t like the idea of him being treated with no more respect than a paper towel that has served its purpose. Was this how they could expect to be treated if they should meet with an accident on the show? Where was the fame in that?

Only Duncan and Izzy didn’t seem to have a problem with it. Duncan didn’t mind because he cared little about ceremony. “Death is a reality of life,” was all he said. Izzy had no objection because… well, nobody really knew what that one was thinking. Weird Red did seem to be of two minds about it, though, and argued the point at some length with “Sunshine”, during which she appeared to change her opinion several times.

Failing to get a satisfactory response from Chris, the campers approached Chef Hatchet, for they had learned that he was a Special Ops veteran and were hoping to appeal to the “leave no man behind” mindset. Chris’ hulking aide wasn’t sure he could do the task justice, since he hadn’t known Harold any better than the campers had, but he agreed to conduct a memorial service that afternoon. He also suggested that the campers make a memorial marker of some kind in the meantime, and they thought that idea a good one.

So it was that the campers spent the rest of the morning making the marker. Ezekiel made a sturdy wooden cross, using parts from the Muskies’ failed hot tub. Noah suggested an inscription and Izzy burned the words into the wood, using a large magnifying glass that she had brought to the island with her. (“You never know when you might want to burn stuff,” she said.) Everyone marveled at how nimbly and effortlessly the redhead wielded that beam of burning light as she seared in the inscription, not in simple block letters, but in florid Edwardian script.

Whilst all this was going on, Cody remembered something that Eva had mentioned during their first day on the island, and that gave him an idea. The science geek offered his brainchild to Eva for her inspection, and the musclegirl granted her services for it. Cody then told everyone else what he had in mind, and his proposal met with general approval. Ezekiel set to work altering the cross to fit the new plan, shortening and reinforcing the crosspiece and adding another section to the bottom.

Cody’s plan required a length of heavy chain, or something comparable, so Courtney—selected for the task because her polite yet assertive demeanor seemed the likeliest to get a favorable response—told Hatchet of the plan and asked if a suitable chain was available. Hatchet directed her to the boathouse, giving her a hacksaw and permission to cut to length any suitable chain that she might find there.

After Courtney had rejoined her fellows, Chris, who had by now got wind of the planned service, gently chided his aide. “You’re going soft, Chef,” he needled.

“Chris,” Hatchet replied equably, “Let me put this in terms you can understand. Those kids aren’t robots. If they’re preoccupied with what happened to Harold, they might just go through the motions for the next few challenges. That probably wouldn’t be good for ratings, am I right?”

Chris’ reaction plainly showed that this unpleasant possibility had never occurred to him.

Seeing that he had flummoxed his boss, Hatchet smiled ever so slightly as he finished his point. “On the other hand, they barely knew the guy, so it’s not like they’re going to wear sackcloth and chant laments all summer. If we give them their memorial service, that’ll help them to move on and get their heads back in the game.”

“I see what you mean,” was the only response Chris could muster.

Not long after, Izzy finished the inscription, which read:

HAROLD McGRADY V 1991 - 2007 Met with the first day, taken from us the next

And below that was the famous Lord Byron quotation,

God grants his favorites early death

this being the line frequently misquoted as, “Only the good die young,” which doesn’t really mean the same thing.

[S]he seared in the inscription, not in simple block letters, but in florid Edwardian script

Courtney organized a detail for the short jaunt to the boathouse. Cody and Eva would both go, because they knew best what was needed. They would need the cross, which wasn’t all that heavy but was fairly bulky, so D.J. volunteered to carry it. A few others would carry various tools and fasteners from the hot tub challenge, on the chance that they might prove useful.

Cody, noticing that Gwen was not assigned to the boathouse detail, asked her to join them; for he, like Trent, was smitten and was hoping to get to know the Goth better. Gwen agreed, having no reason to refuse; and at that, Trent quickly offered to join the detail as well.

As the detail walked to the boathouse, both Cody and Trent tried to chat Gwen up. The Goth responded civilly but coolly to Cody, showing a clear preference for Trent’s company. Her reaction to Trent was warm but shy, for she had little experience with admirers and was certainly not used to being the apex of a triangle.

As luck would have it, the boathouse inventory included a long chain that seemed heavy enough for Cody’s plan, but not too heavy to handle. D.J. cut off three meters of this chain, and Ezekiel fastened it at its center to the bottom of the cross using a long, heavy bolt the campers found in the boathouse. Another such bolt connected the ends of the chain, providing a handle that was easy to grasp tightly.

When the campers tested the assembly, the chain turned out to be too heavy, so D.J. cut off some links from each end and they repeated the test. On the third try, the test results were satisfactory, and the marker was ready.

Whilst Cody and Eva supervised this work, Trent continued to chat up Gwen, since their assistance wasn’t currently needed. They talked mostly about their hometowns and their schools, for Trent could see that Gwen wasn’t very outgoing and didn’t want to drive her back into her shell by getting too personal too quickly.

When the boathouse detail returned to camp with the finished marker, the campers ate a pasty gruel that passed for lunch, and then pursued their own interests for a time whilst Hatchet made simple boxed dinners for everyone.

In the midafternoon, Hatchet called the campers to assembly and the group hiked to the diving cliff, arriving to find that the interns had set up a lectern and folding chairs for the service. The lectern was equipped with a wireless microphone and small loudspeakers. Hatchet bade the campers take seats, propped the marker against the lectern, and began the service with little preamble.

The scripted part of the service was somewhat generic because nobody, least of all Chef Hatchet, had known Harold well enough to personalize it properly. In any case, the campers were mourning Harold not so much because he had been Harold as because he had been one of their own.

When Hatchet finished, he offered the microphone to anyone else who wished to speak. Most of the campers had little to say, although several felt the need to say something.

Only Courtney and Lindsay spoke at length. Courtney, that aspiring politician, gave a long-winded speech full of generalities and platitudes that she thought would fit the occasion, because she, like everyone else, hadn’t know Harold well enough to get any more specific. Lindsay, looking fetch in a modest black bikini (for she had come to the island armed with bikinis for every conceivable occasion), spoke glowingly about how “Gerald” had rescued her from the stag beetle on the first day at camp. Recalling the incident as best she could through the filter of her terror that day, the uberbimbo’s account of Harold dispatching the insect made it sound more like a pitched battle against a thousand-kilo, armor-plated killing machine.

When there was nothing more to say, Hatchet took the marker and, after laying it on the ground near the edge of the cliff, returned to the lectern and bade everyone stand. Eva then stepped forward and strode to the marker.

Like Tyler, Eva was a track and field star at her school; but whereas Tyler was a sprinter, Eva competed mainly in the “field” side of the sport, with the hammer throw being her best event. It was that revelation that had given Cody his idea for placing Harold’s memorial marker. Dropping it from the boat would have been simpler and more precise, but the boat wasn’t big enough to accommodate everyone.

Grasping the marker assembly by the makeshift handle that linked the two ends of the chain, Eva twirled it around a few times to build enough momentum so the crosspiece wouldn’t scrape the ground. Then, after the elaborate windup characteristic of competitive hammer throwing, she cast the marker out over the lake, toward the descending sun whose afternoon gold was now showing the first touches of sunset orange.

The marker hit the water somewhat farther out than the spot where Harold had been last seen, but reasonably close. Within a few moments, the weight of the chain pulled the bottom of the cross down, and the cross now bobbed upright on the water. Satisfied with her handiwork, Eva rejoined the others.

Some interns handed out the boxed dinners, and the campers ate their simple meals as they watched the sun set, chatting or contemplating according to their mood. When the color had faded from the sky and the light began to fail, the interns fired up some lanterns and escorted everyone back to the camp.

Due to time constraints, the finished episode reduced the day’s activities to a montage, set to an abridged version of “Siegfried’s Funeral Music”. Over the next few weeks, Harold’s memorial marker slowly drifted until it contacted the edge of the safe zone, where it remained.

Richard Wagner - Siegfried Funeral March (HD)

[T]he finished episode reduced the day's activities to a montage

The next morning, Bridgette awoke before dawn. The sky was getting just light enough to see inside the cabin, so sunrise couldn’t be too far off, but neither was it imminent.

Bridgette briefly considered her options, then swung out of bed and dropped to the floor as quietly as she might so as to not disturb Beth, who had the bunk below hers. Although sunrise was still almost half an hour away, the surfer girl had decided against trying to fall back asleep because, courtesy of Chris, she had experienced a variety of harsh wakeup calls since coming to the island. Better to start the day on her own terms, she thought, even if that meant losing a few extra minutes of sleep. Besides, she felt rested enough, despite tossing and turning all night.

Bridgette quickly dressed and tiptoed toward the cabin door. About halfway to her destination, she stubbed her toe, stumbled and nearly fell.

Somehow, she managed to not cry out that this unpleasant surprise, but couldn’t stop a whispered oath escaping between her gritted teeth. Worse, in the course of catching herself, her other foot had come down heavily onto the uncarpeted wooden floor, and that graceless footfall echoed like thunder, or so it seemed to her.

She froze for a few moments, listening. When none of the other girls showed any reaction, she resumed her sneak to the door, hopeful once more that she might exit the cabin without awakening anyone.

“Brynhild?” queried a familiar sweet voice.

Too late.

“Shh. Keep it down, Lindsay,” Bridgette whispered urgently. “We don’t want to wake up anyone else.”

“Oh, right,” Lindsay whispered back. “What are you doing up?”

Bridgette skulked closer to Lindsay’s bunk, which was just below Heather’s, so she could whisper more quietly and still make herself heard. “I just happened to wake up early, that’s all,” the surfer said. “Chris is probably going to wake us up soon, anyway, so I thought I might as well go out and watch the sun rise, or something.”

“Cool,” the uberbimbo replied. Then her face lit up like the coming sun, and she added, “Ooh, I just thought of something. As long as I’m up, I can get a shower with all the hot water I want!”

“Go for it,” Bridgette encouraged, then crept out of the cabin without further incident.

Safely out of the cabin, Bridgette began to stroll around the camp, pondering on where the best vantage point would be for sunrise viewing. Just as she decided that the dock would do as well as anywhere, she spotted Ezekiel emerging from the washroom. Well, Bridgette thought, the homeschooled boy did live on a farm, so he was probably used to getting up early. Lindsay was going to be disappointed, though, if he had used up all the hot water.

Bridgette began to walk briskly toward the Arts & Crafts tent, hoping to hide behind it until Ezekiel went elsewhere; for she had no desire to socialize with him, but neither did she want to be rude about it. She had almost reached the tent when she heard him trotting toward her in those heavy boots of his.

Bridgette sighed. This was apparently not going to be her day to do anything unnoticed.

“Morning, Bridgette,” Ezekiel called softly. “You a morning person, too?”

“Not especially,” she admitted, trying to think of a polite way to get rid of her unwanted attendant. “I just happened to wake up early this morning, that’s all. Of course, Chris seems intent on turning us all into morning people.”

“Early to bed and early to rise,” Ezekiel recited, “makes a man healthy and wealthy and wise.”

“That sounds like a line from something.” Bridgette prompted.

“Ben Franklin. Poor Richard’s Almanac.”

“I should have known,” the surfer girl admitted, for in truth that collection of simple sayings did seem like something a farm boy might be familiar with.

“So,” Ezekiel asked, “are you out and about for a reason?

“No, not really,” Bridgette answered simply. She didn’t want to tell him her purpose, such as it was, lest he ask to join her.

“Me neither,” the farm boy admitted. “I’m used to being up before the sun, but since this isn’t our farm, there really ain’t nothin’ for me to do ‘til everyone else gets up, eh?”

“No, not—would you look at that!” Bridgette exclaimed softly, eyes wide with wonder.

Ezekiel turned to follow the surfer’s gaze just in time to see an adventurous lynx duck back into the forest from which it had briefly emerged. “That’s one big pussycat, eh?” he said.

“Now that was worth getting up early for,” Bridgette pronounced. She had never seen a lynx in the wild and had never expected to, for she had heard that they were very shy.

“What was worth getting up early for?” Geoff asked as he approached. He had just emerged from the boys’ cabin and had spotted his teammates. Having sharp hearing, he had been able to make out part of their conversation. “What’s this about a big cat?”

“A lynx, I think,” Bridgette explained, motioning to where the beast had been. “Right over there at the edge of the woods, just for a few seconds.”

“Coolio,” the urban cowboy said. “Wish I could have seen it. So, guys, what else is up?”

Bridgette much preferred Geoff’s company to Ezekiel’s, and the urban cowboy’s arrival had given her a reasonably polite way to ditch the prairie boy. Besides, three was a crowd.

“Hey, Geoff, do you like to run?” she asked.

“Depends on who I’m running with,” he replied, cocking his ten-gallon hat at what would have been a rakish angle with smaller headgear, but which wound up looking comical. “So, that’s a ‘yes’, bra,” he added over Bridgette’s poorly suppressed giggle.

“I can run pretty well, too,” Ezekiel volunteered.

Bridgette hadn’t expected Ezekiel’s remark, but it wasn’t likely to derail her plan, so she said, “I was thinking that we could take a run along the lakeshore. If we push ourselves, I think we can get to the diving cliff and back without missing whatever slop Chef is going to call ‘breakfast’ this morning.”

“So, basically a race,” Geoff surmised, with an appreciative glance at the surfer girl. “I’m cool with that.”

“I was hoping you’d be,” Bridgette replied with a smile that could have meant any number of things.

“Mind if I join you?” Ezekiel asked, sensing that he was about to get left out.

“Dude,” Geoff replied, “I hate to be cruel, but three’s a crowd.”

“Now, Geoff,” Bridgette admonished with a wink, “If he thinks he can keep up, we shouldn’t freeze him out. After all, he is on our team.”

Turning to Ezekiel, Bridgette added, “You can race with us on one condition. If I win, we don’t hear any more about how boys are supposedly better at sports than girls. Deal?”

“Sure.”

“Then let’s get started.”

Despite his assurance that he could run well, Ezekiel quickly fell behind. He was physically fit, but that’s not the same thing as being athletic, and his five-kilo work boots weren’t designed for running. Geoff and Bridgette, by contrast, were highly athletic and were wearing sneakers. Furthermore, Bridgette had set an aggressive starting pace precisely so that she and Geoff could be more or less alone. Geoff might have been able to go even faster, but he was content to pace Bridgette because she had dropped enough hints that he could guess her true intentions. And so, when the surfer girl glanced back to see that Ezekiel was a good hundred meters behind, she and Geoff slowed their pace enough to allow something resembling normal conversation. Ezekiel thus fell no farther behind, but neither could he close the gap without the risk of burning himself out.

Most of the island was bathed in the orange-yellow light of early morn, but the three Muskies remained in shadow as they approached the base of the diving cliff. They had felt the sun for a time, for the camp was on the southern shore; but the island was laid out like a tilted board, with lowlands in the east and highlands in the west. It would be late morning before the sun was high enough to illuminate the entire western shore.

Chris had exploited this unusual topography for the cliff diving challenge. He had set the campers on a long, circuitous trail that masked how much elevation they were gaining, the better to shock them when they reached the top and saw how high the cliff really was. That was in the past, though. In the present, the island’s sundial-like profile kept the western shore in predawn chill, although the runners’ brisk pace stopped them feeling any discomfort.

“Geoff, hold on,” Bridgette said as she suddenly pulled up.

“What’s wrong?” the urban cowboy asked as he came to a stop and saw the uncertain look on his companion’s face.

“I smell smoke.”

Geoff experimentally sniffed the air. “I think you’re right. Something’s burning.”

As Geoff and Bridgette began to scan their surroundings for signs of fire, Ezekiel arrived and asked, “Is something wrong?”

“We smelled smoke,” Geoff informed him. “If there’s a fire around here, the Chrismeister probably needs to know.”

There was a light breeze, so the three moved cautiously upwind, toward the diving cliff. Thanks to said breeze, they could be fairly certain that they were approaching the fire source, but they still couldn’t see any sign of it. Finally, Ezekiel spotted something.

“There,” he said excitedly, pointing to a cleft in the cliff base. “I think that’s it. Looks like a campfire or something, eh?”

“I don’t see anything,” Bridgette confessed.

“It’s hard to see. The smoke’s about the same color as the cliff, but it’s right over there.”

Bridgette and Geoff stood behind the farm boy and sighted along his extended arm. Sure enough, they could now make out a thin, wispy plume of smoke rising from the bottom of the cliff. What might be generating that plume, though, was not visible from their current position.

The campers approached at a jog and scrambled over a large, flat boulder that was high enough to conceal a nook in the cliff face, as well as to provide a measure of protection from the elements. In the center of this space was a small, banked, driftwood-fueled campfire. Curled close by the fire, presumably for warmth, was—

“Harold?” Bridgette gasped. “It can’t be!”

“God be praised,” Ezekiel said softly.

Bridgette, Geoff and Ezekiel dashed up to their teammate and gently prodded him awake.

“Dude! We thought you were a goner,” Geoff admitted.

Harold, who was by nature a light sleeper, had begun to awaken even as his teammates arrived, and was already reasonably lucid. “And why would you think that?” he asked sourly. Not waiting for an answer, he added, “I told you that I have mad skills. I told you that I know how to take care of myself. But did anyone listen? Did anyone even consider the possibility that I might be able to handle sharks? No, you just left me for dead in the middle of the lake. Gosh!”

“But Courtney looked for you, and she couldn’t find you,” Bridgette protested. “And everyone who was still on the cliff saw you get eaten. We had no hope!”

The morning air still had a bit of a chill and Harold began to shiver slightly, for he was dressed only in his swimming trunks. Seeing his teammate’s distress, Ezekiel removed his hoodie and offered it to Harold, who accepted it with thanks. Ezekiel had dressed in layers, so he would be warm enough without it.

“Maybe that’s what they thought they saw,” Harold speculated, “but I can do a wicked remora impression.”

“Whatever, dude,” Geoff replied, although he was as curious as the others. “We’ve got to get you back to camp. A lot of people are going to be stoked to see you.”

As the reunited teammates began the hike back to camp, for Harold’s bare feet were not equipped for running in the local terrain, Bridgette said to Harold, “Okay, so you were holding onto the shark like a good little remora, but Courtney was searching for a long time. How did you manage for so long without being able to come up for air?”

“It’s really very simple,” Harold explained. “You see, all I had to do was—”

Bridgette banged her head painfully against the low cabin ceiling as an amplified air horn blast jolted her and the other campers awake.

“Rise and shine, everyone!” Chris called with disgusting cheerfulness. “Challenge today! Anyone who’s not out here in ten minutes will be disqualified!”

When the campers, most of them still drowsy, had assembled in front of the cabins, Owen asked, “So, what’s for breakfast?”

“You’ll find out,” Chris assured him, “after you complete a 20-kilometer footrace around the island perimeter!”

Even as several campers drew breath to protest, the host added, “Time’s a-wastin’! The sooner you finish, the sooner you’ll eat. Not to mention that team glory is at stake. Go to the dock, turn right, and just follow the shoreline. The dock is also the finish line. Come to the main lodge when you’re done.”

“Wha—what, you mean we don’t get breakfast first?” asked the appalled Owen.

“Ask one of your teammates who actually listened,” Chris replied with a condescending air. “I don’t like to repeat myself.” Seeing that all the campers were still standing where they were, he testily motioned toward the dock and said, “Like, now, dudes.”

“Can’t we at least change into proper running shoes?” Heather asked.

Chris said only, “You were supposed to be prepared. If you’re not, that’s your problem, not mine.”

Resigned to their fate, the campers jogged to the dock to begin the race. Heather noticed that Justin and Lindsay had found each other, and gave every sign that they might stay together over the entire course. That wouldn’t do, the dragon girl thought, so she joined them after a brief sprint.

“Hey, Hunkstin, you’re not going to stay with Lindsay the whole way, are you?” Heather asked in a tone of veiled disapproval.

“What’s your damage if I do?” The Incredible Hunk replied, for in truth that was more or less his intent.

“This is a race, remember? And you look like our best chance to win. If you let Lindsay slow you down, that would be bad for our team and probably bad for you.”

“I see your point,” Justin confessed. “See you at the finish, Linds?”

“Oh totally!” Lindsay assured him. “See you later, alligator!”

“In a while, crocodile!” Justin called back as he left her and Heather.

“I don’t get it,” Lindsay confessed to the dragon girl.

“Never mind. It’s not important,” Heather replied, resisting the urge to roll her eyes.

Trent and Cody quickly located Gwen, and the three of them ran as a group for a time, with both boys trying to chat up the Goth. After a while, these three passed Tyler, who had slowed to a walk whilst he tried to catch his second wind; for the overenthusiastic sprinter had sprinted (naturally) to a big early lead, only to burn himself out in short order.

Red Jock’s distress gave Gwen an idea. She saw that Cody was having more trouble than Trent in keeping their current pace, so she began to pull ahead of her suitors. Gwen had excellent endurance but was no athlete, so there was some risk that she might burn herself out as Tyler had; but she saw an opportunity to politely ditch Cody in favor of her preferred companion, Trent (much as Bridgette had done, or rather had dreamed of doing, with Ezekiel and Geoff) without looking too eager to the axboy.

The plan worked like a charm. Both boys matched Gwen’s new pace, but Cody proved unable to maintain conversation at that pace; so as the three passed Courtney, he slowed his pace to match the onetime CIT and began to chat her up. The tiny Muskie made a nice consolation prize, Cody thought, and he saw nothing wrong with an idle “sleeping with the enemy” fantasy. Granted, there would be no sleeping and Courtney wasn’t really an enemy, but that’s the way it is with figures of speech.

Cody’s Plan B, though, went no better than his Plan A. When Courtney realized that she could converse with Cody at their current pace, she quickly concluded that it meant she wasn’t pushing herself hard enough, so she too left Cody in her dust.

Shot down a second time, Cody slowed to a walk. He saw no realistic chance of winning the race, but neither was he in any real danger of finishing last and thereby becoming an elimination target. Nor did he see any appealing girls in the vicinity. Cody did a quick mental calculation and realized that he could simply walk the rest of the way and finish the course in time for lunch, so that is what he decided he would do. Unless, of course, another winsome girl—Leshawna, perhaps—happened to catch him from behind.

Déjà Vu

Bridgette, Geoff and Ezekiel had run together for a time, with Geoff taking the opportunity to chat Bridgette up and Ezekiel remaining silent, apparently content simply to tag along. The homeschooled lad wasn’t a particularly strong runner, though, and had gradually fallen behind.

Once, twice, now thrice Geoff had detoured to inspect natural features that he found particularly fascinating. The first time, Bridgette humored him and made the brief detour with him. The second time, she reminded him that they were in the middle of a challenge, but again made the detour with him because she had a reason beyond the obvious for wanting to keep the urban cowboy with her. When Geoff began a third detour, though, Bridgette’s patience was at its limit.

“Geoff,” she admonished as they began to veer from the shoreline, “We’re in the middle of a challenge. I don’t mean to harsh your mellow, but if you want to run with me you’re going to have to keep your head in the game.”

“It won’t take a minute,” the party king protested.

“A minute could make a difference,” the surfer retorted, “and this isn’t the first time. All those minutes could be adding up.”

“Come on, Bridge, don’t be so serious.”

“Oh, all right,” Bridgette answered with a sigh. “But this is the last time.”

Almost since the race began, Bridgette had felt an uncanny sense of déjà vu. The morning run toward the diving cliff, Geoff and Ezekiel running with her, Ezekiel being unable to keep up… except for Geoff’s distractibility, everything was very much the same as she had seen it in her dream. Bridgette believed in certain paranormal phenomena, and she was hoping against hope that if she could hew as closely as possible to the events of her dream, then she might get the same payoff.

So it was that, as they approached a certain place at the base of the diving cliff, the surfer girl asked Geoff to make a small detour with her.

“Now who’s not keeping her head in the game?” the party king needled.

“Touché,’ Bridgette replied. “But this is important to me. I really think we need to check it out. Both of us.”

His curiosity aroused, Geoff assured his running partner, “I’m cool with that.”

The two Muskies approached at a jog and scrambled over a large, flat boulder that was high enough to conceal a nook in the cliff face, as well as to provide a measure of protection from the elements. Although Bridgette was quite certain that she had never been to this spot, everything looked exactly as she has seen it in her dream.

With one exception: there was no sign that any human had ever been there.

Bridgette lowered her head and closed her eyes for a moment. As she dropped a tear or two, she whispered, too softly for Geoff to hear, “I tried, Harold. Rest in peace.”

As Bridgette wiped away her tears and she and Geoff returned to the racecourse, the urban cowboy said, “You looked disappointed. What were you expecting to find?”

Bridgette then told Geoff about her dream, but nothing would be gained by repeating it here.

“Aw, that’s a bummer,” Geoff said, trying to console her. “Well, you tried. I’m sure Harold appreciates it, wherever he is.”

Four hours after the race began, most of the campers had completed the course and were now killing time in the main lodge, where Chris had told them to wait until everyone finished. Izzy had finished first, nipping Justin at the proverbial tape after tailing the Embodiment of Manly Beauty for most of the course so she could watch the undulations of his manly can for an hour and a half. Chris did not declare a winner at that time, though, meaning that victory would apparently go to the first team to have all its members finish. By this measure, the Muskies still appeared to have the advantage, as long as the chubby Beth could outrun either Sadie or Owen, but it was by no means a certainty.

Courtney was pacing in the space between the benches, impatiently waiting for her team’s stragglers and mentally preparing a suitable tongue-lashing for when they finally did arrive. The fact that there had been no breakfast waiting for the campers when they finished their appetite-building run only added to her irritation. Apparently, nobody would get to eat until everyone had finished.

Geoff was chatting up Bridgette and Izzy, although the redhead appeared distracted. Perhaps she was trying to listen to her imaginary friend as well as to her teammates, or perhaps she was trying to listen in on Trent telling Gwen about the song he’d written the day before.

Duncan, D.J. and Ezekiel were sitting together, with the delinquent teaching his teammates how to play five-finger fillet. D.J. proved a formidable opponent in Duncan’s knife game despite his timid manner, for the brickhouse had excellent hand-eye coordination and, being a football player, was accustomed to dealing with minor injuries. Ezekiel had less natural talent than the gentle giant, but farm life had given him tough hands and he was willing to face the prospect of a few superficial wounds for the sake of fitting in.

Katie had rested for a few minutes and then, after getting assurances from Chris that she wouldn’t lose credit for her seventh-place finish, had returned to the course to encourage Sadie.

Over the next hour or so, the stragglers came in. Tyler, after recovering from his early burnout, had eventually settled on an interval sprint technique, sprinting for a couple hundred meters and then walking until he felt ready for his next sprint. By somewhat curbing his enthusiasm, he had made decent time over the latter two-thirds of the course.

Next in was Sadie. With Katie at her side to set a pace that would require the butterball to push herself, Sadie was able to not only complete the course, but to do so in a time that wasn’t entirely disgraceful. More importantly, she came in several minutes ahead of Beth, who was the last of the Muskies. Upon reaching the finish, Sadie dropped to the ground for a bout of dry heaves, but after that she was proud of herself for accomplishing a feat that she would never have thought herself capable of.

Some 15 minutes after Beth finished, Noah sauntered in. The bookworm was not the sort to physically exert himself a whit more than any situation required; and he, like Cody, had realized that he could safely walk most of the course. After Noah came the last two walkers, Heather and Lindsay. These two had run for a time, but between their running-unfriendly shoes and the fact that they were poor runners in any case, they had eventually decided that they had little to lose by just walking the rest of the way.

Owen failed to finish. The man-mountain had collapsed some five clicks from the finish, complaining of shortness of breath, nausea and numbness in his arm, so a squad of interns had borne him on a stretcher to the infirmary tent. There, Chef Hatchet, whose talents were as diverse as Chris had claimed, examined him and determined that Owen was not, in fact, having a heart attack despite showing most of the symptoms. Owen was discharged from the infirmary and came to the lodge at about the same time as Noah, seemingly none the worse for his ordeal.

All in all, the 20-kilometer race was a decisive victory for the Killer Muskies.

Noticing that Chris hadn’t said a word since the last campers finally arrived, Courtney prompted, “Well, are you going to announce the challenge winner?”

“I don’t recall ever saying that was the challenge,” Chris pointed out.

“Excuse me?” Leshawna challenged in a dangerous tone, with a glare suggesting that Chris shouldn’t get too comfortable with his face the way it was.

“Maybe it should have been, seeing as some of you weren’t trying very hard,” the host admitted, “but the truth is, I was just messing with you.”

“Oh, so you’re funny now,” Eva snarled. “Well, Katie and Sadie showed us how to deal with you, but tickling’s obviously too good for you. Maybe you’ll learn some manners if Leshawna and I pound you into the dirt!” The musclegirl glanced at the homegirl, who responded with a look that said, Count me in.

“If you try that,” Chris warned, “then you won’t get your share of this!” He gestured to the serving counter, where a couple of interns pulled back the shutters to reveal a glorious turkey buffet with all the trimmings. It would have been mouth-watering in almost any setting; but in this excuse for a summer camp, after four days of the slop that Chef Hatchet called “food”, it seemed like the ambrosia of the gods.

Chris’ prank forgotten, the campers fell upon this bounty like a pack of wolves.

Almost 90 minutes later, even the legendary teenager appetite could take no more. As the campers lounged in the lodge, with several groaning at the realization that they had overdone it, Chris appeared before them.

“Now that you’ve had breakfast, lunch and dinner all at once,” the host announced, “it’s time for the physically demanding challenge!”

“Must… control… Fist of Death!” Leshawna groaned. The implied threat was an empty one, for at the moment the homegirl could barely stand.

“You’ve got to be kidding!” Heather protested. “We’ll be puking left and right!”

“You say that like you’re not used to it,” Gwen sniped.

“Shut it, Weird Goth Hag!”

“Settle down, campers,” Chris said. “‘Demanding’ isn’t the same as ‘strenuous’. In fact, this will be the easiest challenge you’ll have all summer, so nobody’s going to be puking, which is good because anyone who does will be disqualified.”

Seeing that he had everyone’s attention, Chris let the anticipation build for a moment before revealing the challenge: “Whoever can stay awake the longest will win invincibility for their team.”

Noah, irritated that he’d been suckered so easily, asked, “So you mean the 20K run and the turkey-eating frenzy were all part of your evil plan to make it harder for us to stay awake?”

“You got it, dude.”

“Have fun at your first elimination ceremony,” Duncan taunted. “I can do three days standing on my head.” With a smirk, the delinquent added, “And my dad said I’d be sorry for all that late-night partying.”

“Yeah, I figured some of you might last a long time,” Chris admitted. “The thing is, we don’t have a long time, so we laced everything in the buffet with a mild sedative.”

If Chris felt the 21 angry glares burning into him, he gave no sign until Bridgette said what everyone was thinking. “Let me get this straight. You’re saying that you drugged us?” Miss All-natural-all-the-time asked indignantly.

“That’s right, bra,” he affirmed. Finally appearing to notice the phalanx of death glares, the host added defensively, “What? We’re on a schedule. Anyway, that’s why we had to put in the ‘no puking’ rule, so that nobody would try to purge before the sleepytime stuff can kick in. Toss your cookies for any reason, and you’re out. Also, that buffet is the only food you’re getting until we have a winner, so if you lose your lunch it won’t be replaced.

“The challenge begins now. Come with me to the fire pit.”

As the campers stood and began to file out, Izzy’s stomach entered full insurrection mode. She had matched Owen almost bite for bite, the difference being that Owen was an obese giant and Izzy was a slim girl of medium height.

“Emergency! Make way! Comin’ through!” the unstable redhead shrieked desperately as she dashed for the door. The others immediately cleared a path, for they could well guess the nature of the emergency and didn’t want to be caught in the blast.

Izzy had barely reached the cabin threshold when she lost her hopeless battle and projectile vomited a stream of buffet components that looked bigger than she was. Most of the other campers—especially those who feared that they, too, had overindulged—had averted or closed their eyes and covered their ears, lest the power of suggestion overwhelm them.

“Crap!” cried Izzy, now on all fours, as she pounded her fist upon the earth in impotent fury. She actually used a far stronger word, but nothing would be gained by revealing it.

“Well, that was quick,” Chris observed with a shake of his head. “And I thought Izzy would be one of the contenders, being such a bundle of energy. But rules are rules. I said ‘no puking’, and I meant no puking.”

Izzy saw one chance. “Can’t you cut me some slack since I won the race?” she pleaded as she rose to her feet.

“You’re kidding, right?” the host answered with a sniff. “But you still have to come to the fire pit with us.”

“Crap!” Izzy cried as she stamped her foot upon the earth in impotent fury, although this time “crap” was the word she actually used.

The campers exited the lodge without further incident, but they hadn’t gotten far before another crisis arose.

“Oh, my gosh,” Katie exclaimed desperately, her breathing ragged and her face drawn and ashen, “I think I’m going to lose it!”

Justin immediately moved to stand before his teammate. Gently cupping Katie’s face in his hands, he looked into her eyes and said, “Stay with me, Katie.”

Suitably distracted by Justin’s beautiful face and heavenly touch, Katie’s face began to return to its normal complexion and her breathing to its normal rhythm as Justin began to lightly stroke her cheeks. He then said in a gentle, honeyed tone, “You can do this. Stay with me. Think… think about what you’d like to do with me.”

Justin was no longer looking into Katie’s eyes, for her eyes were now only half-open as those magic fingers moved from Katie’s cheeks to her scalp and ran lightly through her jet-black hair.

“Oh, wow,” Katie cried softly, too rapt to say anything more articulate.

‘Oh, wow’, indeed, the other girls thought, for none were immune to Justin’s spell.

Cody sidled over to Noah and asked, “Taking notes?”

Noah nodded and said, “Believe it. That’s how it’s done. I’ve read about these techniques, but I’ve never seen them demonstrated live.”

Justin’s fingers moved from Katie’s scalp to her neck, from her neck to her flanks, always stroking from top to bottom, relying partly on distraction and partly on the power of suggestion to convince Katie’s gorge to be content where it was.

The afternoon sun was warm, and Justin had broken a light sweat. He was close enough to Katie that she could smell his manly scent as she closed her eyes and abandoned herself completely to his touch. Her breathing had again become ragged, but not from her forgotten gastric distress.

Justin had moved in a little closer when he began to stroke Katie’s flanks. Forgetting where she was, Katie was now emboldened to lean in, hoping for a kiss. When she did so, though, Justin lightly put a finger to her lips.

“I’m sorry, Katie, but I can’t do that,” he said gently. “Nothing personal, but my heart is already set on someone else. You understand.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” she replied with a sigh, not even trying to hide her disappointment now that the spell was broken. Placing a hand on her belly, which was now becalmed if still uncomfortably distended, the Thin Twin brightened and said, “Thanks, anyway. I feel a lot better now.”

“Glad I could be of… service,” Justin replied with a wink.

Chris turned to a camera and said, “Ratings gold.”

As the campers reached the fire pit and began their vigil, Sadie asked her BFF, “What was it like with you and Hunkstin? You’ve got to tell me everything!”

“Believe me, I’ll tell you everything,” Katie assured her BFF, “as soon as I can think of a way to describe it. It wasn’t like anything I’ve ever felt before. His ‘someone else’ is so lucky, I can’t even tell you.”

Lindsay, meanwhile, had gone to The Incredible Hunk and, grasping his arm, led him to the edge of the clearing. “Justin, that was really sweet how you kept Carrie in the game,” she said admiringly, “especially with the chance that she might barf all over you. And it was even sweeter how you stayed loyal to your ‘someone else’.

“So tell me, is this ‘someone else’ someone I know?” Lindsay cooed.

As Justin’s gaze met Lindsay’s, he replied, “I think Your Ultimate Lady Gorgeousness knows the answer to that. Katie’s sweet, but she can’t compete.”

“Yes, I did know,” Lindsay admitted coyly, “but I wanted to hear it from Your Ultimate Lord Hotness. So… any chance you could show me what you did for Kayla? I mean, of course I saw it, but I’m sure that’s not the same.”

“Believe me, I’d love to do that for you sometime. Lots of sometimes. But not here, not now,” Justin replied softly.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s relaxing. This challenge is about staying awake, so we don’t want to get too relaxed.”

“Katie didn’t look too relaxed at the end, there,” Lindsay suggested impishly.

“Yeah, she was getting pretty excited,” Justin admitted, “But for this challenge, I’m not sure that’s a good thing, either. It uses up energy. Katie had nothing to lose because she was about to be DQ’ed.”

“Oh, there you are, Lindsay,” Heather said. “I was thinking, we could talk and keep each other awake.” Only now seeming to notice His Gorgeousness, Heather added, “Oh, hi, Justin. Way to take one for the team.”

“Believe me, it…” Justin began, but checked himself. He had been about to admit that he had enjoyed rescuing Katie, but feared that such an admission might alienate Lindsay (which might well have been Heather’s intent) and that was something he couldn’t bear. Justin had naturally had more than his share of girlfriends; but because he insisted on having only one at a time, he was used to seeing girls be catty for his sake. He didn’t like that, but neither did he worry much about it, as a rule; he merely accepted it as the price of being God’s gift to women. It was different with Lindsay, though, and Justin was determined to do whatever he must to stay in her good graces.

“…it’s important to put the team first,” Justin finished. Nice save, he told himself.

“You can go with Heather, Linds,” Justin assured his crush girl. “I’ll be all right. I have my own plan for the challenge.”

“Cool. See you around,” Lindsay replied. Then, without warning, she wrapped her arms around Justin’s neck and gave him a quick peck on the cheek before going with Heather.

Trent had naturally sought out Gwen and suggested that they could more easily stay awake by talking to each other. So it was that they sat upon the ground, and talked and talked and talked. They talked about their hometown friends and the friends they’d made on the island. They talked about historical events and current events. They talked about the arts and popular culture. They talked about hopes and dreams. They talked about the sun and the moon and the stars. They talked, in short, about pretty much every subject under heaven.

‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said,
‘To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—
Of why the seas are boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings.’

Most of the campers became drowsy over the rest of the warm afternoon, for they had nothing at all to do. The only entertainment options available to them were the society of their fellows or simple games that they could devise on the spot. For all that, only one camper fell during this time: Owen. He had barely lasted an hour, having virtually eaten himself into a coma at the buffet. He and Izzy had wolfed down so much, in fact, that the producers had been obliged to hastily bring in more food so that everyone else would be able to eat their fill.

When night fell, and there was little to look at save the mesmerizing bonfire, and the sedative began to take hold… that was when campers began to drop like flies.

Surveying the area, Ezekiel noticed that Courtney had begun walking in place. Actually, he thought, that didn’t do it justice. She was virtually jogging in place.

The prairie boy rose from the log he had been sitting on and walked over to the former CIT. He knew that he was in hot water with the Muskies’ girls, and he realized that he would have to redeem himself somehow if he expected to get deep into the game. Courtney seemed as good a place as any to start.

“Hey, Courtney?”

“What is it?” she answered, a bit more shortly than she had intended. Although Courtney believed that Ezekiel was guilty of mere ignorance, not malice—indeed, it was she who had argued that Ezekiel’s sexist remarks weren’t reason enough to vote him off after the first challenge—that didn’t mean she particularly wanted to socialize with him.

“You’re going to wear yourself out if you keep that up, eh?”

“Why? Because I’m a ‘weak, helpless girl’?”

“I didn’t say that,” the Bible boy protested.

“It so happens,” Courtney sniffed before Ezekiel could say anything more, “that I think the best way to stay awake is to keep moving.”

“Sounds good, eh?” her teammate agreed, “But you’re spending a lot more energy at it than you need to. Like I said, you’re going to wear yourself out. Besides, if you exert yourself too much, get the blood really pumping, the sedative will hit you that much harder. Better to take it easy, and take our chances with a gradual effect.”

Courtney didn’t know what response she had expected from the farm boy, but that wasn’t it. Disarmed, she left off her semi-jogging and asked, “So, what would you suggest?”

“Well,” Ezekiel offered, “we could just stroll around and talk, if the other girls haven’t convinced you that I’m the devil incarnate.”

Courtney considered his offer for a few moments, and then accepted.

“Maybe we misjudged Ezekiel,” Courtney would later say in the confessional. “Sure, some of his attitudes are kind of medieval, but he seems to mean well and he does seem to be thinking of the team. With a little re-education—okay, a lot of re-education—he just might make a teammate that we’d actually want to have around.”

As the other campers tried to stay awake in whatever ways seemed best to them, Courtney and Ezekiel strolled sedately around the Muskie side of the clearing, talking mainly about things that related in some way to the homeschooled lad’s perception of gender roles. It didn’t take Courtney overlong to discover that Zeke (as she had asked, and been granted, leave to call him) had a sharp mind, although that virtue was well camouflaged beneath his unrefined speech and mannerisms.

As they talked, Courtney quickly learned that Ezekiel was not merely parroting doctrine. He had actually given thought to why gender roles in farm country were the way they were, and he had some skill in defending them. Most notably, he had a perfectly good reason, namely the biological phenomenon of sexual dimorphism, for his earlier and now infamous statement that boys were “much stronger and better at sports” than girls.

Courtney had taken biology and so understood the concept of sexual dimorphism, but she hadn’t been joking when she told her teammates that she was going to be a lawyer one day. She was a debater on her school’s speech team, honing the rhetorical skills she would need to succeed as a trial lawyer, and she knew how to acknowledge the reasonableness of an opponent’s point without conceding the point.

Courtney acknowledged that boys, in general, were stronger than girls. This was a readily observable fact, and there was nothing to gain by trying to deny it. In turn, Courtney was able to convince Ezekiel that there would always be exceptional individuals like Eva. Courtney was not willing to concede that boys were inherently better at sports than girls, but that was another battle for another time.

When Ezekiel suggested that boys’ and girls’ intellects were suited to different pursuits, Courtney acknowledged that girls were not as likely as boys to be attracted to the sciences, for example; but she pointed out that lack of interest was not the same as lack of aptitude, and she questioned whether he might be confusing the two. Courtney further questioned whether the well-documented gender gap in such fields was really a matter of predisposition or of cultural expectations. Ezekiel, for his part, offered arguments such as the fact that boys, on the whole, are known to have better spatial perception skills than girls, whereas girls tend to have better language skills. Girls were certainly inclined to talk more than boys, he observed.

From time to time, their debate would grow heated and their voices would begin to rise. Each time, one of these teammates would notice and warn the other; for although it was one thing for their fellow Muskies to overhear and more easily stay awake thereby, it would not do to offer the same benefit to the Eagles on the other side of the campfire.

The two Muskies did more than just debate. They also talked of what life was like in their hometowns, and Courtney used this “compare and contrast” discussion to instruct Ezekiel on how to profitably conduct himself with girls who were more cosmopolitan than the farmers’ daughters that he was used to dealing with.

Heed my words, Loddfafnir, listen to my counsel;
You’ll be better off if you believe me;
Follow my advice, and you’ll fare well:
If you have faith in a friend of yours,
Go to find him often;
Brushwood and grass will soon grow
On a road no travelers take.

Heed my words, Loddfafnir, listen to my counsel;
You’ll be better off if you believe me;
Follow my advice, and you’ll fare well:
Always be faithful, never be the first
To fail a friendship;
Grief consumes the heart that must take care
To keep itself concealed.

Heed my words, Loddfafnir, listen to my counsel;
You’ll be better off if you believe me;
Follow my advice, and you’ll fare well:
If you are wise, you’ll exchange no words
With fools you find on your way.

If a man’s no good, he will never give you
Your rightful reward;
A worthy man will help you win
Favor and fame.

True bonds are formed where men keep faith
And don’t hide their hearts.
Anything is better than a breach of friendship—
A real friend will say what you’d rather not hear.

Heed my words, Loddfafnir, listen to my counsel;
You’ll be better off if you believe me;
Follow my advice, and you’ll fare well:
If you want to win a woman’s friendship
And be in her good graces,
Make fair promises and fulfill them—
Who tires of treasure if he gets it?

Heed my words, Loddfafnir, listen to my counsel;
You’ll be better off if you believe me;
Follow my advice, and you’ll fare well:
Don’t mock a guest, and never make fun
Of a man you meet on the road!

Those already arrived are often unable
To tell a newcomer’s kin;
You’ll never find a man without a fault
Or one so evil he’s no use at all.

The sayings of the High One heard in her hall
Are helpful to sons of men, harmful to giants.
Hail to the speaker, hail the one she taught!
They’re lucky who have the lore,
Happy if they heed it!

Alliance

As Courtney and Ezekiel continued their “nature vs. nurture” colloquium, Heather scanned the clearing to see how her teammates were faring. Gwen and Trent were chatting softly, not in the furtive tones of secrecy but in that soft, gentle tone that signals strong attraction. The first hookup of the summer, Heather mused. Guitar Boy could do better. Oh, well, there’s no accounting for taste.

Cody and Noah had been sitting together, presumably talking about whatever nerd boys like to talk about. Nuclear physics, maybe, or perhaps girls who were hopelessly out of their league. No matter, because they weren’t talking anymore. Noah looked like he wouldn’t be in the running for long, and Cody was already down.

Owen was snoring loudly. Leshawna had almost fallen early, as well, but Heather had noticed and had talked with her a while under the false guise of friendship. They parted company after a time, but their conversation was apparently just what Leshawna needed. The homegirl had rallied, and now seemed to be going strong.

Justin stood at the edge of the firelight, facing away from the fire. He and Lindsay would have been the first hookup, if their reaction to each other at the Gathering was any indication, but Heather had no intention of allowing that. Heather had a plan, one that could be damaged if Lindsay and Justin were allowed to finish falling in lust, so the dragon girl had been doing her best to keep Lindsay occupied. Heather had been able to do this subtly thus far, but could see the time coming where she would have to interfere more directly. With Justin apparently preferring to be alone with his thoughts for this challenge, Lindsay was sticking close to Heather for the nonce. The two fashionistae had been talking about… well, fashion, mostly. And cosmetics. And hair care.

Katie and Sadie’s chatter had dried up, and they were starting to nod gently. Suddenly, Sadie shook her head as if to clear it, and then prodded her BFF into alertness. The Bobbsey Twins had managed to keep each other in the running so far, but appeared to be fighting a losing battle.

Heather decided that it was time to make her move, whilst the clones were still lucid.

“Lindsay,” Heather said, “I have an idea. Go get Katie and Sadie for me.”

“Sure, Helen.”

“It’s Heather.”

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

Heather gritted her teeth as she summoned the willpower to not facepalm in front of Lindsay, but managed to keep her voice mild. “Just go get them.”

Lindsay went over to the Bobbsey Twins and began to converse with them. After a solid 20 minutes of nonstop chatter, Lindsay finally remembered why she had gone to see the clones, and brought them to Heather.

“Hey, Heather, what’s up?” Katie asked.

“I’ve been thinking,” Heather began. “In these elimination games, there’s safety in numbers, and I’ve watched a lot of these games, so I know how the strategies work. If you guys join Lindsay and me, we should be able to cruise all the way to the Final Four, as long as our team does decently in the challenges.”

“What if someone else makes an alliance, too?” Sadie asked.

“That’s not likely to happen for a while. Remember, none of us were expecting to be here in the first place,” Heather pointed out. The Bobbsey Twins nodded and rolled their eyes at this.

“So, there probably won’t be much strategizing going on for a while. We’ve got a chance to take control of this game if we act now,” the dragon girl continued.

“Gee, Heather, I don’t know,” Katie protested. “Isn’t it kind of underhanded to be plotting our own teammates’ demise?”

“I know, right?” Sadie seconded. “It’s not like we’ll get to vote off any of the Muskies.”

“That’s why no one will see it coming if we act now,” The Girl Who Would Be Queen explained. “By the time people get wise, it’ll be too late. Don’t get me wrong; I get the ‘one for all and all for one’ bit. It sounds great in theory, but in practice it’s shortsighted. Let everyone else be shortsighted and wait until the merge to start making alliances, and we’ll have the advantage.

“Besides, the other team looks more athletic than ours. That hasn’t hurt us yet, but it still could. If we start sucking at the challenges, we’ll have to ‘plot our own teammates’ demise’ anyway. Would you rather decide who goes, or have it decided for you in a way that you might not like? That’s why we have to do this now, so we can be safe.”

Katie and Sadie found this argument persuasive, and it wasn’t long before they agreed to join forces with Heather. Only then did the queen bee, seemingly as an afterthought, formally ask Lindsay if she wanted to join. The uberbimbo agreed with the unthinking enthusiasm of a puppy.

“Now, remember,” Heather admonished her new posse, “Don’t go around telling people that you’re in an alliance. They’ll figure it out sooner or later, but advertising it won’t get us anything.”

Katie, Sadie and Lindsay dutifully pledged that they would not.

“One more thing,” Heather said, “I should be the captain of our alliance, since I’m the one with the genre knowledge and the strategic skills to get us through.”

Katie, Sadie and Lindsay agreed to this as well, for the queen bee’s sales pitch had given them no reason to doubt her.

“Final Four, here we come!” Heather declared.

Katie, Sadie and Lindsay swept their captain up in a group hug and squealed in delight. Heather would have covered her ears, but her arms were pinned at her sides, so she could do nothing but endure the sonic daggers in her brain as best she might.

Heather later recorded a confessional spot, which the finished episode placed immediately after the scene where she forged her alliance. “I can’t actually take my three stooges all the way to the Final Four,” she admitted. “Tweedledum and Tweedledumber will probably back each other no matter what, so it would be too dangerous to have them both in the Final Four with me, and it would be suicidal to have them in the Final Three. One of them will have to go before then. Probably Fatty Lumpkin, since she’s out of place in my little clique. After all, I’m hot and fashionable, Lindsay’s hot and fashionable, and Katie can be made hot and fashionable. But, we’ll see."

Heather then winced and rubbed her temples, adding, “Note to self: never do anything that will make all three of them happy at once!”

Cody had been an early casualty in the Awake-a-thon. He had initially planned to sit with Gwen, but Trent had beaten him to her, and the science geek had begun to sense that he had no chance with the Goth in any situation where Trent was around. Admitting defeat, Cody had sat with Noah and talked with him, mostly about the girls in camp, until the science geek lost his battle to stay awake.

Having slept for a time, Cody was now awakened by someone nibbling on his ear. Not only that, but this unidentified campmate also appeared to be spooning him. Cody at first entertained the thought that perhaps Gwen was having her way with him. That fantasy crashed and burned when the nibbler spoke softly… in a male voice!

In a fluidly athletic move that no one in camp—least of all Cody himself—would have thought him capable of, the science geek was on his feet in a flash, spinning around and instinctively assuming a defensive crouch. On the ground before him, right next to the spot where Cody had been sleeping, was Noah.

Previously lying on his side, the bookworm was now propped up on one elbow, his head raised and his eyes half-open. Looking toward Cody, he said:

“Wha—?”

Then Noah sank back to the ground, his eyes closed, and he began to snore.

Cody relaxed. Noah, it seemed, was “guilty but not responsible”. He had clearly been dreaming.

Why does my lady eye me circumspectly—
With piercing glance, as though she would dissect me?
I swear by heaven, and may God’s truth protect me,
I shun that vice of which she may suspect me.

The sky will flood to harvest corn and wine,
The air engender tangled elm and vine,
The sea throw game to huntsmen from the brine—
Before the sins of Sodom count as mine.

Satisfied that he would not have to defend his honor, Cody now recalled what the sleeping Noah had whispered into his ear. A name had been on the bookworm’s lips—a girl’s name. Not just any girl’s name, though, but the name of a girl on the island. A common name, to be sure, so it wasn’t clear whether he had been dreaming about one of their campmates or someone in his hometown, or perhaps some celebrity.

Cody resolved to find out, if he could. Noah was not known to be crushing on anyone in camp. If he was doing so secretly, that might be a useful thing to know.

As the sky on the eastern horizon began to lighten, heralding the approach of a new day, eight Eagles and six Muskies had succumbed, but the Eagles had started with a one-player advantage. The fallen included all three of Heather’s new allies, which the queen bee found irritating but neither surprising nor disturbing. Heather had recruited Lindsay and the clones because she thought she could dominate them, not because she thought they would be especially strong in the challenges. In any case, Heather was still feeling reasonably good about the outcome, despite the weakness of her vassals, for who would have blamed her for failing to anticipate what none could have foreseen?

Owen, you see, had a particular fondness for baked beans with maple syrup; and when he spotted that dish in the buffet spread, he had assaulted it with abandon. The man-mountain had an inefficient digestive system under the best of conditions; and with his gut full of beans, you could almost have run a car on the gas he generated.

This dish also had the curious effect of predisposing Owen to sleepwalking. So it was now, as the gregarious goliath rose to his feet and strolled away from the campfire. As it happened, his path took him past the place where Gwen and Trent were keeping each other awake.

The Goth and the axboy were still conversing on whatever topics struck their fancy. They were already sensing a real bond between them, and Trent was starting to wonder whether it was too soon to ask Gwen out on a date. As they chatted about increasingly personal matters, they took little notice of Owen. That would be their downfall, for as the man-mountain passed them, he expelled a cloud of Baked Bean Byproduct.

Under normal circumstances, Gwen and Trent would have found this development revolting, nothing more. These were not normal circumstances, however, for their sleep deprivation and the sedative had weakened them more than they knew. Furthermore, Owen’s fart on this occasion was unusual in that it was nearly silent, belying its toxicity, so the budding couple had no warning. In short, both were overcome and slumped to the ground. The challenge rules did not distinguish between sleep and gas-induced unconsciousness, so Gwen and her would-be beau were “out” in more ways than one.

Earlier in the night, Heather had eavesdropped on Gwen and Trent—just to help her stay awake, she told herself—but had found their conversation largely uninteresting, so she had stopped listening in lest it start to do her more harm than good. She was close enough that she could hear the Goth and the axboy talking, but far enough away that she had to listen intently to understand what they were saying, so their conversation became white noise.

When Gwen and Trent abruptly stopped generating “white noise”, Heather’s attention snapped back to them. She turned just in time to see the luckless pair keel over as Owen walked by. Moments later, Heather flinched and wrinkled her nose in distaste as Owen’s bean residue reached her. It packed a punch even at this distance, and the dragon girl had a nasty feeling that she knew what had happened to her teammates.

With Gwen and Trent down, things were suddenly looking bad for the Eagles. Four Muskies were still awake: Courtney, Duncan, Eva, and Ezekiel. For the Eagles to pull this one out, Heather would somehow have to outlast them all. Alone.

No, Heather realized, she was not alone, after all. Justin was still awake, facing away from the others, standing stock-still at the edge of the firelight. Come to think of it, The Incredible Hunk hadn’t so much as moved a muscle in some time.

Just then, a light breeze arose. As this zephyr swept fresh, clean air over the camp, Heather could hear Gwen and Trent beginning to revive. She paid this little heed, though, for another event commanded her attention. Before the horrified queen bee’s eyes, Justin silently toppled over. He had been literally asleep on his feet.

Now, Heather was truly alone.

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

.

Fifth Night

The next day was not a school day, so Brett and his mother spent the day engaged in their own affairs. Brett had no homework, having dealt with it the day before; so that night, after he and his mother had dined, he asked to hear 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 remaining campers gained a respite as dawn came and went, for the natural rhythms that induce a person to awaken when morning comes and to sleep at night was now their ally after being their foe for so long, and the sedative had largely run its course.

Just as dawn broke, Chris, looking fresh and chipper, arrived for his second turn at supervising the challenge. He and Chef Hatchet were watching over the campers in shifts, Chris during the afternoon and evening, then Hatchet during the late night and the small hours, and now Chris again for the morning.

Not long after Chris returned, some of the fallen campers began to stir. The host dismissed the losers as they awoke, with orders to wait in the main lodge until the challenge was done.

The dawn of a new day and the increase in activity around the bonfire did not come in time to save Courtney. The sedative had hit her hard, just as Ezekiel had warned her that it might. When she could no longer keep her feet, the onetime CIT had parked her sofa warmer on a rock that looked nice and uncomfortable in a last-ditch attempt to remain conscious. Ezekiel, who was still holding up well, stayed at her side and tried every trick he could think of to keep his etiquette tutor awake, with limited success. For almost three hours, Courtney persevered through sheer willpower, but there comes a time when the body says “enough”; and when that moment comes, even the most steadfast will counts for nothing. So it was that Courtney fell scant minutes after Justin.

After Courtney succumbed, Ezekiel carried the pocket princess to a more comfortable spot a little closer to the fire to better protect her from the predawn chill, and gently laid her down there. If anyone noticed this gesture of rustic chivalry—the softer side of his sexism—they gave no sign. After doing what he could to make his teammate comfortable, the farm boy joined Duncan.

Despite Chris’ earlier statement that no one would eat until the challenge was done, the losing campers filtered into the lodge to find a no-frills breakfast waiting for them. Whether this surprise was pleasant or otherwise was very much a matter of opinion, for the meal’s quality was in line with what the campers had come to expect from Chef Hatchet. That is to say, most of the teens wouldn’t have fed it to their dogs if they wanted their dogs to be happy and healthy.

As the campers contemplated their failure, Lindsay, Katie and Sadie sat together and talked about the elimination that they now seemed likely to face.

“It looks like Heather was right,” Sadie observed. “We’re going to have to vote somebody off.”

“But who?” Katie asked. “Having an alliance means we should vote together, but I don’t know who she’ll want to kick off.”

“I know,” Lindsay said, “I’m pretty sure Helen wants to get rid of Jen.”

“You mean Gwen?”

“Yuppers.”

“Makes sense,” Sadie mused. “They don’t seem to get along, and I can’t really think of any reason to keep Gwen around.”

“Me, neither,” Katie seconded. “Apart from the fact that she’s into Trent, I don’t think she really wants to be here anyway.”

“Do any of us, really?” Sadie countered. “I mean, seriously.”

“Well, there’s the money,” Lindsay suggested, “and the chance to be famous.”

“Yeah, but you know what I mean,” Sadie replied.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Anyway, sounds like a plan,” Sadie concluded. “Unless we hear differently from Heather, we’ll try to send Elvira back to whatever castle she crawled out of.”

“Vampira?” the incredulous Lindsay later said in the confessional. “And people say I’m bad with names!”

At the bonfire pit, Heather could see the proverbial handwriting on the wall. She had already caught herself starting to nod off more than once. On the other side of the clearing, Eva was sitting alone. Iron Woman also appeared to be fading, but still looked like she was in much better shape than Heather felt.

Ezekiel and Duncan were now sitting on a log, talking about Heather could only guess what. The homeschooled farm boy still appeared to be in decent shape, and Duncan…

That’s weird, Heather thought. Not only was Duncan showing no sign that he might fall asleep any time soon, but he actually looked more awake now than when the challenge began. The delinquent looked restless and fidgety.

Even though it was now full daylight, Chris had ordered the interns to continue tending the fire, presumably in the hope that its warmth would make the last four campers drowsier. Heather, deciding that she had no chance if she continued to sit, rose to her feet and began to pace. A few drowsiness-induced stumbles later, the queen bee decided that mental, not physical, stimulation was what she needed.

Heather crossed the clearing, intending to join Duncan and Ezekiel. She had no real desire to socialize with either of them, but was hoping that conversation might help her stay awake. Eva might have been a more pleasant companion (or less unpleasant, at least), but she was currently sitting alone. Conversation would be as likely to help Eva as Heather, and Heather didn’t like her chances against the steel maiden if it came down to a matter of strictly physical endurance. The boys, on the other hand, were already conversing, so they would presumably gain nothing if Heather joined them. Heather, on the other hand, would gain not only the stimulation she needed, but possibly also some insight into the two Muskies that might enable her to manipulate them if the need should ever arise.

“Heather, where are you going?” Chris asked.

“I’m going to join these manly dudes over here,” the dragon girl replied sweetly. “They look lonely.”

“I don’t think so,” Chris retorted dismissively.

“Oh, we don’t mind,” Duncan assured the host with a leer. With his best imitation of Heather’s voice (which is to say, a bad one) and a stereotypical Far Eastern accent, the delinquent added, “She so horny, love us long time.”

It was all Ezekiel could do to stop himself laughing aloud as Heather treated Duncan to the frostiest scowl in her repertoire. The boys also got an unnoticed death glare from Eva, although the musclegirl remained silent.

“You’re not looking at the big picture, dude,” Chris explained. “Seriously, we can’t have the viewing audience thinking that the teams actually get along with each other, can we? Where’s the drama in that?”

Four flabbergasted campers stared at Chris as though he had just grown another head until the host said to Heather, “Go back to where you were.” Heather, sensing that resistance would be futile, stalked back to the log she had been sitting on most of the night.

“Anyone with half a brain could see that Heather was about to go down for the count,” Chris sniffed in the confessional, “and that the only reason she wanted anything to do with Duncan or Ezekiel was because she was hoping to stay awake by talking to people. But we’re on a schedule here. We have an elimination tonight, so we have to get this challenge over with.”

By mid-morning, it was over. When Heather finally fell, Chris escorted Duncan, Eva and Ezekiel to the lodge, leaving a couple of interns behind to keep watch over those campers who were still asleep. At the lodge, Chris formally announced that the Killer Muskies had won the challenge, and told those Eagles who were present that they had to decide whom to vote off that night. He then left the campers to their own affairs.

Having found breakfast unsatisfying, Owen decided that it couldn’t hurt to ask for more. The shutters to the kitchen were open, so he thought it likely that Chef would be able to hear him.

“Hey, Food Dude,” the blond giant called into the kitchen. “You got any of the baked beans with maple syrup left over from the buffet?”

From somewhere within the kitchen, Chef Hatchet called back gruffly, “You need to lay off the beans, fat boy. Your gut gas put Ghoul Girl and Ax Boy down for the count last night. Might have cost your team the challenge.”

Oh, crap, Owen thought. Suddenly feeling intensely nervous, he turned round and confirmed his fear: most of the other campers in the lodge had overheard, and some of his teammates were not reacting well.

His skin crawling from the angry glares boring into him, Owen turned back toward the kitchen and petulantly called, “Nice of you to hang me out to dry in front of everyone!”

“Your problem. Deal with it,” came the disembodied reply.

“Ladies,” Sadie said to her allies, with sly smile and furtive tone, “I think we have a fifth vote.”

“Who?” the microcephalic Lindsay asked innocently.

Sadie explained patiently, “Owen. Right now, he’s got to be feeling pretty nervous about his chances of staying in the game, so we’re going to show him that he can save himself by voting with us. I’ll talk to him as soon as he leaves the lodge.”

“I’ll come with,” Katie volunteered.

“Sure, I’ll come, too,” Lindsay offered.

“Sorry, Lindsay,” Sadie replied, “but I don’t think you should. Remember, Heather doesn’t want us to advertise that we have an alliance. It might look suspicious if all three of us cornered Owen. He’d probably like it, but still. With just Katie and me, no one will bat an eye because we do everything together anyway. What you can do, Linds, is talk to Justin when he wakes up. Just ask him to vote with you against Gwen.”

“Piece of cake,” Lindsay assured the butterball. “He’s into me, so I’m sure he’ll want to help me.”

“Great,” Katie broke in. “That’ll make six votes, which is all we need.”

“Just don’t tell him about Owen,” Sadie warned. “You don’t want to give him a reason to not vote with you. Got it?”

“Got it,” Lindsay assured the butterball again. “I ask Justin to vote against Glenda, and I don’t tell him what Odo did.”

Sadie’s warning struck Katie as unnecessary, and it got the Thin Twin to thinking. “You seem awfully worried about Owen,” Katie told her BFF.

“Heather’s put a lot of faith in us,” Sadie explained. “We need to show her that her faith isn’t misplaced. Besides, Owen’s as strong as an ox. We might need that in a future challenge.”

“Are you sure those are the only reasons?” Katie needled.

“What do you mean?” Sadie asked, in a tone that seemed a little defensive to Katie.

“Admit it,” Katie challenged, a knowing smile softening her words. “You like him.”

“And if I do, so what?” Sadie challenged in turn. “He’s nice, he’s a lot of fun, and he’s big and strong. And he can’t help it if his digestion is bad.”

“I know, right?” Katie admitted, having gotten the rise that she wanted out of her BFF. “It’s not like I said there was anything wrong with it.”

“Oh, there’s totally nothing wrong with it, if that’s what you like,” Lindsay seconded. “We can’t all be hot, or else how would anyone be able to appreciate hotness? Besides, he is a lot of fun. And like you said, he’s strong as a fox. Or is that crazy like an ox? I can never keep all those sayings straight.”

“There goes Owen,” Katie said, effectively ending the discussion, for she had spotted the man-mountain leaving the lodge. “C’mon, Sadie, let’s go talk to him.”

By early afternoon, all the campers had awakened, although some then went directly to their cabins to sleep in an actual bed. Heather was one of these, skipping lunch because she was not hungry. Not bothering to change out of her normal clothes, she slept fitfully through most of the afternoon in what was little more than a series of catnaps, until Katie and Sadie finally awakened her for good.

“Sorry to wake you up,” Katie said, “but we need to know who you want to vote off.”

“Not to mention that you still have to vote, too,” Sadie added.

In no mood for a lengthy discussion, Heather sighed and said, “I guess we’ll get rid of Gwen,” as she turned on her stomach and buried her face in her pillow.

“Good,” Sadie said. “That’s who Lindsay thought you’d want to vote off.”

“Chef told everyone that Owen might have cost us the challenge,” Katie added, “so we talked to Owen, and he’ll vote with us.”

“Lindsay went to talk to Justin,” Sadie chimed in, “so he should be the sixth vote.”

Heather suddenly sat bolt upright, banging her head painfully on the cabin’s low ceiling. “I’d better check on them,” the dragon girl said, as she jumped down from her bunk and was out the door before either clone could say another word.

Heather’s concern, of course, was that if Lindsay and Justin were alone for any significant time, they wouldn’t be discussing voting strategy. As the dragon girl dashed around the camp, the thought occurred to her that she should have asked the Bobbsey Twins if they knew Justin’s whereabouts, but it would be a serious loss of face to go back and ask them now. Luck was with her, though, and she spotted Lindsay and Justin near the dock. They were sunning themselves and conversing idly.

“Oh, there you are Lindsay!” Heather exclaimed as she approached. “Don’t you need to get ready? You have to look your best for the ceremony.”

“The ceremony isn’t until after dinner,” Justin pointed out. “And that’s not for another two hours—”

“Two hours?” Lindsay repeated in alarm. “Oh, my gosh, I do have to get ready!”

As the uberbimbo fairly sprang to her feet, she said to her lust interest, “Sorry, Justin, but it takes time for a girl to fix up right.”

“No apologies needed,” Justin assured her. “It’s a little different for dudes, but I totally understand. After all, if being as gorgeous as we are were quick and easy, then everyone would do it.”

As Heather tugged Lindsay’s arm in a not-so-subtle suggestion that they take their leave, the uberbimbo smiled her endearing smile and said to the uberhunk, “From the moment I first saw you, I knew we were meant for each other.”

“Me, too. See you around.”

That night, after dinner, the Muskies departed to enjoy their reward—a bed and breakfast stay aboard the same luxury yacht that had brought them to the island—and the Screaming Eagles assembled at the bonfire for their first elimination ceremony. Chris appeared before them and, because it was the Eagles’ first elimination, gave the same introductory speech as he had given to the Muskies three nights before, but nothing would be gained by repeating it here. As he had on that earlier occasion, the host first called forth those fortunate souls who had no votes against them.

“Sadie.”

With a squeal of delight, the butterball bounded up to Chris. She needed no prompting to present her toasting stick, for all the Eagles had by now heard about the ceremony’s mechanics through the grapevine. Upon receiving her marshmallow, she took her place behind Chris.

“Justin.”

The Embodiment of Manly Beauty rose to his feet and strode forward with his distinctive series-of-poses gait. After receiving his talisman of life, Justin moved to take his place behind Chris, and favored Sadie with a polite smile as he did so. The butterball’s eyes fluttered as if she were about to faint.

“Lindsay.”

The sun goddess bounced up to Chris and received the blessing that was due her, and then moved to stand immediately in front of Justin. A moment later, she playfully leaned back into him.

Justin took the hint, and placed his hands on Lindsay’s hips. Since he was a good deal taller than she, Lindsay’s gesture afforded Justin a birds-eye view of her cleavage-intensive chest, although whether this was by accident or by design was not clear. Neither of the budding lustbirds noticed Heather’s glower.

“Trent.”

The guitarist ambled forward and collected his survival prize.

“Cody.”

The science geek imitated Trent as best he could, but the difference wasn’t hard to see. Whereas Trent had the relaxed gait of the naturally mellow, Cody’s was the rehearsed, self-conscious strut of the poseur.

“Heather.”

The dragon girl was still notably sleep-deprived. Although she had been able to cosmetically conceal the bags under her eyes reasonably well, she now trudged stiffly up to get her marshmallow, in stark contrast to the elegant glide with which she had first stepped onto the island less than a week since. Months later, when she saw the finished episode, Heather would cringe at this moment.

“Noah.”

With a self-satisfied smirk, for he had regarded his safety as a foregone conclusion, the bookworm collected his prize.

“Leshawna.”

The homegirl swaggered up to Chris. Presenting her toasting stick, she declared, “Put her there!” and received what she had earned.

“Katie,” Chris finally pronounced, summoning the last of the voteless wonders. He had called Sadie first and Katie last in an attempt to make them sweat a little, as well as to see if they could bear to be apart that long. It didn’t really work, though, because the Bobbsey Twins knew perfectly well that they weren’t at risk. Not this time, anyway.

Katie bounded puppylike up to Chris and received her marshmallow, then bounded over to Sadie. The BFFs then hugged each other, squealing in delight.

Chris fixed the last two Eagles with his gaze. “I have only one marshmallow left,” the host intoned solemnly. “The one who gets it will remain in the game. The one who doesn’t must walk the Dock of Shame, board the Boat of Losers, and make the Voyage of the Damned all the way to Loserville—population, you.

“Each of you racked up a lot of votes. Owen, you’re in the bottom two because some people think you cost your team the challenge when you gassed Gwen and Trent. Gwen, you’re in the bottom two because… well, because some people just don’t like you very much. That’s the only reason I can see.

“Whatever. The Boat of Losers awaits its first passenger—Total Drama Island’s most pathetic loser of all. And so, the final marshmallow of the night goes to…”

This being the Eagles’ first elimination, Chris drew it out and hammed it up every bit as much as he had done for the Muskies’ first elimination ceremony three nights before. This time, though, there were no special circumstances to save the unlucky camper who was voted off. As Chris mugged the camera, Owen was sweating bullets, but Gwen just looked resigned.

After milking the tension for a solid 45 seconds, Chris finally called Gwen forward. “Next time,” Heather muttered softly as the Goth received her sugary benediction.

After dispensing the final marshmallow, Chris said to the condemned giant, “Owen, the Dock of Shame awaits. It’s your last scene, so don’t be shy about milking the drama." Turning to the survivors, the host added, “The rest of you, enjoy your marshmallows. You’re all safe… for tonight.”

As Owen approached the “Dock of Shame”, which was the same dock the campers had arrived at five days since, he could see that it was lined with tiki torches for the ceremony. At the end of the dock waited the same small, tug-like boat that had retrieved the divers during the ill-fated first challenge. Now, as then, Chef Hatchet was in the pilothouse.

The Boat of Losers was equipped with a bell, which Hatchet slowly rang in imitation of a funeral bell as Owen made his way down the dock. The small boat listed visibly as the scion of Brobdingnag stepped on board.

The prisoner comes to meet his doom;
The block, the headsman, and the tomb.
The funeral bell begins to toll—
May Heaven have mercy on his soul!

For most of the eliminations, the producers spliced in a confessional spot either immediately before or immediately after Chris announced the verdict, with one (or occasionally more) of the campers giving their thoughts on the elimination or explaining why they voted the way they did. Eva had that role for the first ceremony, as has been told of before. For this night, the role fell to Heather.

“I would rather have gotten rid of Weird Goth Girl,” Heather admitted in the confessional, “but booting Owen is a pretty good consolation prize. He’s nice, but he’s also a fart machine, so it’s sure going to smell a lot better around here.” As Heather grimaced at a particularly noxious outhouse odor, she added, “And this place needs all the help it can get.”

After the Eagles had toasted and consumed their marshmallows, they did not linger at the fire as they would after some later ceremonies, for most of them wished to catch up on lost sleep. As the survivors dispersed, Heather collected her posse and berated them—not too loudly, for she did not wish to be overheard—for failing to oust Gwen as they had assured her they could.

“I don’t get it,” Katie admitted. “We should have had six votes. The four of us, plus Owen and Justin.”

“Did they actually say how they would vote?” Heather asked.

“Owen did,” Sadie replied.

“And what about Justin?” Heather asked again, with the sinking feeling that she may have interrupted Lindsay when the uberbimbo was actually doing something useful.

“No, he didn’t mention it,” Lindsay answered with a shake of her head.

“Did you ask him to vote against Gwen, like we talked about?” Katie asked.

“Oh... I knew I forgot something!” the uberbimbo admitted. “But I did remember to tell him about Odin.”

Sadie groaned in disappointment and whined, “That’s the part you weren’t supposed to tell him!”

“Oh, no!” Lindsay exclaimed, as she realized what she’d done. “Sally, I’m so sorry. I know you liked him.”

“Well, that changes things,” Heather admitted. “We can take out Gwen next time. Sadie, if you really were into Owen, then it’s just as well that he’s gone. If we’re serious about winning this game, then we don’t need that kind of distraction,” the queen bee explained, looking pointedly at Lindsay. “Keep your eyes on the prize.”

With nothing more to say on the matter, the four retired to their cabin to catch up on lost sleep.

“Mom?” Brett asked.

“Yes, dear?”

“From what you said, Harold’s funeral was like, the day after the first episode. How would Chris know if the episode got good ratings? Or was he just saying that because he didn’t want to be bothered?”

“The show aired five nights a week, with half-hour episodes in the time slot between the evening news and the start of prime time,” his mother explained, “except for the introduction episode, which was an hour-long special on a Sunday night. Once the network got into the regular schedule, Monday’s episode showed a challenge, and Tuesday’s showed the elimination along with whatever politicking there might be and enough personal byplay scenes to fill the time slot. Wednesday’s episode was a review called “TDI Aftermath” that was shot in a studio and hosted by Millie Stacey, as she was known in those days. That was before success went to her head and she changed her first name to ‘Blaineley’ because she didn’t think ‘Millie’ sounded diva-ish enough, I guess. That was also before her first marriage, so she was still using two names instead of four like she does now.”

“Blaineley Stacey Andrews O’Halloran?” Brett asked.

“The one and only. Anyway, that episode would have things like exit interviews with contestants who’d been recently eliminated. Thursday’s episode was the next challenge, and Friday’s was another elimination.

“The show eventually built up some lag time, but the earliest episodes aired almost as they were shot. The first challenge episode aired the next day, probably at about the same time as the first elimination ceremony was actually taking place… so, yeah, Chris might have had time to find out what kind of ratings the first challenge got. Or, he might have been guessing based on the premiere’s rating, which would certainly have been available by that time. Or, like you said, maybe he just said the first thing that popped into his head because he couldn’t be bothered.”

“Funny,” Brett mused. “From the way you talk about him, it sounds like Chris was pretty wrapped up in himself, what with chewing Beth out for ‘stealing his scene’ and all. You’d think that he might have done the service to get more screen time for himself.”

“That’s a good point, now that you mention it,” his mother conceded. “He probably hadn’t thought of that. Or maybe he had, but still didn’t want to do it because preparing the service would have required him to do actual work. We’ll probably never know.”

The night was still young, so Brett’s mother paused a few moments to collect her thoughts, and then resumed her tale.

.

Episode #4: The Tale of the Dodgeball Match

Original title: Dodgebrawl

Two days had passed since Owen’s elimination, and Sadie was once more her sunny self. While she had hoped that she could get to know Owen better, she had accepted his untimely departure as something that could happen in an elimination game. She could be separated from a boy she liked, she could—indeed, almost certainly would—be separated from friends she would make here, she might even be separated from Kat—

No, Sadie refused to think of that. On an intellectual level, she knew that it was possible and even likely, but on an emotional level it was too horrible a prospect to contemplate. She would deal with it if it happened, but she would lock it out of her mind until then. “Live for the moment,” as Geoff often counseled.

Besides, Owen’s departure meant one less distraction from her Justin-watching. The gregarious goliath had his charms (charms which, in truth, Sadie had started to fall for), but he wasn’t much to look at. Justin, on the other hand, probably had his picture in a dictionary somewhere, next to the definition of “eye candy”. Sadie knew and accepted that Justin “belonged” to Lindsay, but a girl could dream, and Sadie knew how to dream big.

More troubling was Heather’s attitude toward her, Katie and Lindsay. After forging their alliance, it hadn’t taken the queen bee long to lay down ground rules for it. Some seemed reasonable, or at least defensible. Clearly spurred by Justin and Lindsay’s obvious mutual attraction and the revelation that Sadie had been making eyes at Owen, Heather had forbidden any further romantic entanglements. “If we’re serious about winning this game, then we don’t need that kind of distraction,” Heather had said; and in truth, Sadie had to admit that her liege had a point.

Other rules, though, seemed to range from the pointless to the blatantly self-serving. Most notably, Heather had claimed the right to borrow her allies’ stuff without asking, but had declared her own things strictly off-limits. When Katie had protested, Heather had explained that she needed to be as comfortable as possible to facilitate her strategizing—strategizing which, she reminded them, was going to take them to the Final Four. Lindsay had accepted this justification without a second thought, possibly because she understood the “pampering is a birthright” mentality. Katie and Sadie were more skeptical, but couldn’t deny that Heather’s strategy seemed to be working so far. The clones decided that they could endure a few minor indignities to improve their chances of winning a hundred thousand dollars and lasting fame.

As the teams sat down to another unappetizing breakfast, Heather was keeping her allies close, the better to enforce the “no romancing” rule. At the Muskies' table, Courtney was keeping Ezekiel close, likewise to shield him from what she regarded as bad influences. Courtney was pleased with the progress that she’d apparently made during the Awake-a-thon, but she harbored no illusions that the homeschooled farm boy could be re-educated in a single night, especially since Duncan was also “tutoring” Ezekiel in certain things and seemed intent on pulling him in the opposite direction from where Courtney wanted to take him.

As the campers ate, Chris entered the lodge, walked to one end of the dining hall, and called for attention. The campers knew that the second day after an elimination would normally be a challenge day, so it was possible to guess what the host was going to talk about.

“Okay, campers,” Chris said, “Challenge today. We’ve set up a playing court on the other side of the Arts & Crafts tent. We lost two interns building it, and I’m sure you won’t want their deaths to be in vain,” he added with a dazzling smile, “so be prepared to bring it! It’s going to be strenuous, so I’ll give you half an hour to digest your brekkie. Don’t be late!”

At the appointed time, he campers assembled on a wood-floored playing court which had Plexiglas retaining walls on all sides. The court had no markings except for a centerline and the boundary lines. On one side of the court were two small sets of bleachers and a small tower for Chef Hatchet, who would officiate the match, to stand on.

Chris presently called for attention. “Is there anyone here who’s never played the bloodbath game called dodgeball?” he asked, and was met with silence. “Good,” he pronounced. “As you may know, there are a lot of variations in the rules, so listen carefully while I tell you the rules for this house.”

“Throwing balls,” Noah sneered. “Another mentally taxing challenge. Oh, how will I ever manage?”

Lindsay didn’t know sarcasm when she heard it, even when it dripped like battery acid. “I’ll help you with that. That’s what teamies are for,” she offered cheerily.

A wave of laughter, some open and some poorly suppressed, swept through the throng, for Lindsay’s innocent and completely sincere offer of assistance had put Noah down more effectively than any rival snarker ever could. Not even Chris or Hatchet were able to keep entirely straight faces.

“I’ll keep that in mind, Lindsay,” Noah replied dryly, accepting his accidental defeat in good grace. What do guys see in her, anyway? he wondered, besides the obvious?

“Now that that’s settled,” Chris continued, “here are the rules.

“You’ll start six on six, and the game ends when one team has no players left. Each team must start at least three girls in every game, and each team can sit out up to two players per game. We might change those limits or the starting number later if enough people get hurt,” the host added with a wolfish grin.

“You’ll start with three balls on each side. We won’t be using the opening rush to center court here, at least not in this game. We might do that in a later game, though. Heck, we might even change the rules every game, just to mess with you. The match is best three out of five.

“If a ball hits you without touching the floor or anything out of bounds first, then you’re out. The head is fair game. A ball that hits another player is still live, so you can have double kills. But if you catch a live ball, then the person who threw it is out and you can bring in one person off the bench. More on that in a minute.

“If you catch a ball that’s already hit one of your teammates, then the catch counts but the hit doesn’t. If you’re holding a ball, you can use it to deflect an incoming ball; but if you drop your ‘shield’ ball, you’re out. You can dodge a ball any way you like, but you have to stay at least partly in bounds. The lines are considered ‘in’. You also have to be in bounds to throw. You can leave the court to catch a live ball, but you’ll be out if you don’t make the catch. You can’t cross the centerline or pick up balls from the other team’s side.

“As I said, if you catch an opponent’s throw, then you can bring in someone off the bench if you don’t have six players on the court already. The player you bring in can be either the one who’s been out the longest, or someone who hasn’t been in yet. After everyone’s been in, not counting anyone you might be sitting out, then a catch will bring in whoever’s been out the longest.

“Any questions? No? Great! Play ball!”

In the finished episode, a spliced-in confessional would reveal that the host had a surprise in store for the campers. “There’s one other thing that I decided I wouldn’t tell them about unless it actually comes up,” Chris confessed in the confessional. “If I decide that a game is going too quickly, and that we might not be getting enough good footage, or if I just want to extend what seems like a good game for the sake of getting more footage, or even if I just want to mess with these kids, I can order the teams back to full strength whenever I want. It’ll also help to insure that everybody plays. Of course, I could have just made a rule that everyone has to play, but it’s more fun for me this way.”

On the court, Heather cried, “Coach! I called it!” as the Eagles moved to their bench. None dissented, either because they didn’t care or because they sensed that it would be futile to argue the point. Her power secure, Heather said, “For the first game, we’ll start Justin, Trent, Cody, Katie, Lindsay and Leshawna.”

On the Muskies’ side, Courtney said, “I’ll be the coach, unless somebody thinks they can do a better job.” The lawyer-to-be likewise met with no resistance, so she assigned Duncan, Geoff, D.J., Bridgette, Eva and Izzy to start the first game.

The starters took their places on the court, and a couple of interns distributed the teams’ starting allotment of balls. Hatchet mounted the referee’s tower, looked the teams over, and said, “All right, everyone, let’s make this a good, clean bloodbath. Remember, the nation is watching.” He then gave a hand signal and a blast from his whistle; and with an enthusiastic shout, the Death-and-Glory Teens sought their fates. On the Eagles’ bench, Noah pulled a book out of one of his cargo pockets and began to read Troilus and Cressida.

Tell me, O Muse, who dwellest in the halls of Olympus and makes nimble the tongue of the poet, who was the first to strike, the first to fall, and the first to gain glory in the eyes of gods and men? D.J., the dusky brickhouse, the giant with the heart of a child, who looked kindly on even the humblest beast of the field, drew back his arm as he grasped his ball of foam rubber sheathed in soft plastic. This he flung at Justin, with the intent to smite him upon his breast. But the Embodiment of Manly Beauty sidestepped the azure spheroid as it streaked toward him and Trent, learned in the ways of music and the favorite of the Goth, threw his own ball at D.J., intending to exploit a momentary vulnerability as the brickhouse completed the follow-through to his own throw; yet the gentle giant was not without protectors. Bridgette, who like D.J. was friend to all living things, stepped in front to shelter her huge teammate and deflected Trent’s ball with her own.

Yet Bridgette’s defense did not suffice; for she had not noticed that Lindsay was also preparing to throw, hoping to take advantage of the same window of opportunity that Trent had seen. Bridgette could not have dealt with both, even had she known the truth, but her ignorance of Lindsay’s move would be her downfall. Lindsay threw at D.J., but missed her mark and struck Bridgette instead, and the golden-haired wave rider retired to the bench.

“I got one! Yay!” Lindsay cried in her joy. Before anyone could warn the blonde bombshell to keep her attention on the battle, Geoff stepped forward, brave and tall. In place of the ten-gallon hat that he normally wore, he now sported a small visor that he had acquired from the Tuck Shoppe to shade his eyes; for in this challenge, his enormous hat would have done nothing but make him a bigger target. He picked up the ball that had been Bridgette’s and threw Lindsay out, exacting the vengeance that was due his fallen comrade.

And so the battle raged. Cody threw at Duncan, for the disciple of the sciences sought to win honor and street cred by showing that he did not fear the street fighter and by removing an opponent whom he supposed was a fearsome threat. But Duncan moved like a sick old man, and made only a token effort to dodge Cody’s ball. The scorner of laws was struck fairly, so he tottered to the bench and sat down, looking perfectly miserable.

Having acquired a ball, Eva now stepped forward. The tactic she favored was to target the groin area of boy and girl alike. This she did not from any desire to hinder her opponents’ ability to bring forth a new generation to replace the last, as spring brings forth new leaves to replace those lost in autumn. No, the bronze maiden’s motive was far more pragmatic. Under dodgeball rules, the groin is simply a difficult spot to protect well—low enough that the ball would be hard to catch, high enough that it would be difficult to jump over, one of the last parts of the body to move when a warrior tries to dodge to the side, and far enough from the eyes to make it difficult to reliably place a shield ball for a deflection attempt. The intimidation factor didn’t hurt, either. If someone happened to be overprotective of their groin, then the hips would work nearly as well. Eva threw out Justin in this way, then picked up another ball and threw at Trent, but the wiry young minstrel was more nimble and dodged the throw.

Armed with the ball that had been Eva’s, Trent now threw at Geoff, but that happy warrior caught the ball and Courtney summoned Tyler to do battle even as Trent’s song was halted for the nonce.

The lean, wiry Tyler, resplendent in his bright crimson tracksuit and matching headband, which had been given him by his father to bring him luck and photo ops on the show, dashed onto the court with a mighty war cry. Picking up a loose ball, he flung it at Katie from near the back line.

He hit Ref Hatchet.

Resisting the urge to shake his head in pity at the folly of this eager but blundering youth, Hatchet glowered at Red Jock and said, “You’ve just made a powerful enemy, son.”

Undaunted, Tyler picked up another ball as Eva said to him, “Not bad. Now let’s see if you can hit an actual player.”

“They’ll never know what hit them,” the Dude in Red assured her, as he wound up and hurled the ball at Cody.

The speeding missile struck Geoff in the back of the head, knocking the disciple of Dionysus to the ground and leaving him dazed for a moment; for Tyler had again thrown from the back line as was his wont, Geoff had been standing closer to the centerline in accordance with his preference, and Tyler’s arm was strong.

“I should have been more specific,” Eva muttered to herself with a shake of her head, resisting the urge to facepalm lest it expose her to attack from the remaining Eagles. She need not have worried, though, for everyone was too engrossed in Tyler’s ineptitude to take advantage of it.

“Are you finished?” D.J. asked Tyler.

“I haven’t even started—” Red Jock began, but Eva cut him off.

“Yeah, we can see that,” the mighty maiden retorted, with no hint of a smile to soften her words. “Were you planning to start sometime?”

“I can dominate this game!” Tyler insisted. “Give me all the balls, and you’ll see!”

“Whatever,” Eva sighed, and she and D.J. did as the legend-in-his-own-mind demanded. At one point, Eva and D.J.’s eyes met, and they could guess that they were thinking the same thought: If we lose this challenge, Duncan’s going to have competition in the Bottom Two.

Tyler’s teammates stood back as the boastful boy proceeded to hoist himself by his own petard. Tyler threw as fast as he could put each ball into his right hand and draw back his arm. He threw high and hard—and wild. The first thudded hard against the back wall, at least two and a half meters up, and landed back in Muskies territory. The second scattered the Eagles’ bench, although Noah took no notice, so engrossed was he in his book. The third sailed completely over the back wall.

Tyler’s fourth and final ball sped directly for Leshawna’s forehead, which doesn’t sound bad until one realizes that he was aiming for Cody, who was halfway across the court from the ebon homegirl, born and bred in the mean streets of Montreal’s less savory districts. With no time to think, Leshawna instinctively put up her hands to shield her face.

“Ostie!” she swore as the ball smacked painfully into her hands. She held on, though, and Tyler was out.

At the Muskies’ bench, the disgusted Courtney muttered, “Thank you, Leshawna.”

On the Eagles’ bench, Heather turned to a certain bookworm and said, “Noah, you’re in.”

“Sports aren’t my thing,” Noah replied as if that would end the matter. He didn’t even look up from his book.

To Heather, this sounded like a direct challenge to her authority, and that was simply intolerable. “I’m the coach, and you’ll go in when I say!” she insisted.

“I think not.”

“Are you defying my authority?”

“What authority? The only reason you’re the coach is because you called it.”

“You know, you could at least pretend like you care about this team,” Heather challenged, her patience sorely tried.

“As a matter of fact, I do care,” Noah replied, “but my caring won’t affect the outcome of this challenge,” He then repeated, “Sports aren’t my thing.” The bookworm still hadn’t looked up from his book, and appeared to have read at least two more pages during the argument, assuming that he hadn’t simply turned the pages for dramatic effect.

By this time, the Eagles on the court had come to the bench to find out what was going on, and they were none too pleased when they learned what the argument was about.

Hatchet was getting impatient. “Eagles, you need to decide who to send in,” he called from his tower.

“Whatever,” Heather muttered, conceding defeat for the nonce. “Gwen, you’re in.”

When play finally resumed, Geoff, who was prone to prowl near the enemy lines as has been told of before, threw at Leshawna. The dusky homegirl, descended from a lineage of the Dark Continent, had a ball of her own and now held it before her, intending to deflect the speeding bullet Geoff had sent her way. But the urban cowboy was a star quarterback on his school’s football team, and what this meant Leshawna now learned to her cost. Geoff’s blast knocked Leshawna’s shield ball from her hands and struck her above her bosom besides, and she retired to the bench.

Gwen now tried her luck. Her arm was not strong, though, and Izzy dodged her throw easily. Eva then threw, and Gwen dodged by a mere hair’s breadth.

Katie, meanwhile, had dodged D.J.’s throw and, playing the ball off the retaining wall, threw at Eva, but the ball sailed harmlessly overhead as the raven-haired Amazon ducked. Cody then threw at Geoff, who stood his ground and made to catch the fell spheroid; but the science geek had put an odd spin on the ball so that it squirted from Geoff’s grasp, and the disciple of Dionysus was out.

Izzy then threw at Gwen, who sought to catch it, but the Goth misjudged and failed to hold the ball, so she was out. Yet she did not fall in vain, for Izzy’s throw left her out of position to defend herself against Katie’s throw. The slim lady of the motor mouth and hair of flame was struck cleanly, so she likewise retired to the bench.

With two players remaining per side, Chris signaled to Hatchet, who called an official’s timeout. As the remaining players went to the sidelines, Chris came onto the court and stood astride the centerline, then addressed the teams.

“This game is going too fast,” the Lord of Wawanakwa declared. “There’s too much hitting and not enough dodging. The camera crews aren’t getting enough good shots, so I’m going to invoke a little rules twist that I didn’t tell you about at the start.

Chris saw that the campers were mystified, and he was pleased at this. After letting the campers speculate for a few moments, he decreed, “As the host, I can restore both teams to full strength whenever I want. And now, I want.”

He was met with a collective gasp, and this pleased him as well.

“The four who are on the court now will remain on the court, but you can add anyone you want to get back to six. The only thing you can’t do is put in the same six who started the game. I want to see you mix it up a little. And let’s see a little more drama, dudes and dudettes! This game has been looking like a tea party.”

Courtney replied, “Translation: if we don’t run ourselves into the ground, you might keep starting the games over until we collapse.”

“Pretty much,” Chris replied with that disgusting bland smile of his.

Faced with the prospect of the match turning into a more strenuous version of the Awake-a-thon, the campers (except for Noah) resolved to do what they could to step up their games. Only the viewing audience would know that Chris wasn’t really dissatisfied with the way the teams had been playing.

Play resumed, and the reconstituted teams tested each other with renewed vigor. The lineups were mostly as they had first been; but in deference to the directive that there had to be some changes, Heather had sent Gwen back into the fray, in place of Lindsay. Courtney, meanwhile, had summoned Ezekiel to battle for the first time, replacing Geoff.

Ezekiel took aim at Trent, for the prairie lad’s beliefs were not matters of convenience and his sexism cut both ways, so he thought it unfair to throw at girls when boys were available. The gods did not choose to reward his scruples, though, and the young bard dodged his throw.

D.J. then took aim at Leshawna and hurled his ball. Bridgette, as it happened, had likewise sought to retire the boisterous homegirl, and threw from the other side of the court. Nor did this catch the homegirl unawares, for she was blessed with excellent peripheral vision that had helped her to survive and thrive in the rough neighborhood of her youth. Seeing both throws, though, she was for a moment uncertain of how to react, and this moment of indecision cost her dearly; for in hesitating to decide how she would dodge both throws, she failed to dodge either, and so retired to the bench.

Gwen knew that her arm was not strong, so she had taken to “scavenging”, waiting for a teammate to throw and then throwing at the selfsame foe, in the hope of catching them unawares, for she thought this the way that she was most likely to be effective. She did succeed in throwing out D.J. in this way, piggybacking on Justin’s throw that the gentle giant had dodged. She did not fare as well, though, when she followed Cody’s throw at Izzy, for the manic redhead had a ball of her own.

With a Bacchic cry, Izzy dodged Cody’s throw and then deflected Gwen’s ball high into the air and over the Muskies’ bench. The neutered missile did not fly so far nor so fast that Bridgette could not run it down, though, for the surfer was fleet of foot. Racing madly, she caught the ball barely half a meter from the earth and then crashed painfully into the retaining wall; but she was not hurt and neither did she lose her grip on her prize, so Gwen was out and Tyler of the loud war cry returned to battle.

As he had before, Tyler insisted that he could dominate the game and demanded all the balls. This time, though, his teammates refused, and told him that he would have to gather his own balls. So that is what he did, for he was determined to show everyone what he could do and to set friend and foe alike trembling in awe.

As the battle raged around him, the crimson-clad track star gathered into his hands any ball he could reach. When he had four, for that was the most he could effectively hold at once, he unleashed a fusillade as furious as he had before, and with similar results. He did grant an indirect boon to his team, though; for Izzy, at home in the midst of chaos, took advantage of Tyler’s spectacle to throw out Justin.

As Tyler set to gathering balls again, Chris decided that enough was enough. There were only six balls on the court, of which Red Jock would hog four for himself, and Chris thought that Tyler’s tactics were slowing the game down too much. Seeking to pick up the pace, the host sent two more balls onto the court, one to each side, for at this moment he did not wish to favor one team over the other.

Trent ran down one of the new balls and quickly threw at Tyler. With three balls in hand, that brave but seemingly delusional warrior could neither dodge nor shield effectively, so he was helpless. Trent’s throw struck him amidst his balls—those he carried in his arms, not those with which he had emerged from his mother’s womb those long years before—and scattered them upon the ground, and the crimson-clad track star retired to the bench.

Katie had been playing competently but unremarkably as Sadie warmed the bench. But when Heather finally sent the butterball in, after Trent caught Duncan’s strangely shaky throw, the clones went on the attack.

The neo-Gemini Twins favored a one-two punch, which they didn’t even need to discuss beforehand. Sadie would throw first, at an opponent’s knees. As the foeman jumped to avoid Sadie’s ball (for that is the easiest way to dodge a low throw), Katie, who had the better arm, would throw at the spot where she expected their prey’s groin or hips to be. Katie did this for the same reasons that Eva did, albeit without the same level of intimidation; for although Katie was no weakling, yet she did not possess Eva’s vast strength.

Proving that they feared no one, Sadie and Katie first felled Eva, who retired to the bench cursing under her breath. Nor was Izzy immune to their onslaught. Then Ezekiel fell before the attack of the clones, and just like that, what had been a 3-5 deficit for the Eagles before Trent’s catch had become a 4-1 advantage, with Bridgette as the Muskies’ last hope.

The Eagles on the bench were on their feet. All except for Noah, who still had his nose in his book, seemingly not caring whether his team won or lost.

Bridgette threw at Sadie, who had already broken a light sweat, for she was prone to tire easily. The butterball was not yet spent, though, and dodged the throw because, as Chris could attest all too well, she was more nimble than she looked. Cody retrieved the ball and brought it to Sadie.

“You ladies do the honors,” he said. “You’ve earned it.”

“Thanks, Cody,” Katie replied. “We won’t disappoint you.” The Thin Twin then glared at Chris, as if daring him to reconstitute the teams again, but the Lord of Wawanakwa seemed content to let events take their natural course.

Then Sadie threw for the last time, and Katie a moment after. They grinned broadly as they did so, for in their minds’ eyes they could see the adulation that would soon be theirs.

Bridgette, scion of the sea and beloved of Poseidon, was rather like certain types of seals—graceful in the water, but clumsy on land. That curious handicap did not extend to the field of battle, though, and it was not the gods’ will that she should fall easily. The water nymph jumped to evade the first ball, just as almost everyone expected her to (though Noah neither expected, nor noticed, nor cared); but when Katie threw, Bridgette caught that ball, pirouetted in mid-air and, even as her foot touched down again, threw out the dumbfounded Sadie. D.J. returned to the fray, and suddenly the Muskies had a fighting balance.

With two players per side, it was over quickly. Trent and Cody both threw out Bridgette, but this left them unable to defend against D.J.’s throw. The dusky titan, as it happened, had taken aim at Trent, so the bard and the wave rider retired to the sidelines.

D.J. and Cody retrieved loose balls and faced one another, carrying their teams’ hopes and fears on their shoulders.

“Easy out!” Courtney called.

“Show that weenie who’s boss!” Duncan encouraged, but with an odd tremor in his voice.

These boasts reflected the confidence of the ignorant, for the “weenie” was wily in the ways of war. As the final combatants faced each other and time seemed to stand still, Cody stealthily gashed his ball on his belt buckle of brushed stainless steel, and tore out a chunk as he did so.

Moments later, D.J. threw.

Cody was skilled at evasion—he would later say that he had much practice from dodging spitballs in math class—and he ducked the brickhouse’s bullet. He then reared back and threw his own ball high and hard, and D.J. ducked in turn.

A pitched baseball breaks, if the pitcher knows the proper technique, because of the way the Four Winds play upon its asymmetrical stitching. Pitchers who are unwilling to play within the rules may seek to exaggerate this effect by scuffing the ball unbeknownst to the umpire. Cody had the same aim when he surreptitiously defaced his ball; for the break in its normally smooth surface allowed him to throw a curve ball. So it was that, as D.J. ducked and Cody’s throw seemed about to pass harmlessly overhead, the ball broke sharply downward and struck the gentle giant on his back, just above his kidney.

Hatchet blew his whistle and thumbed D.J. out. “Game, Eagles!” he cried, as the jubilant Cody pranced to the bench.

.

Intermission

At the Muskies' bench, Courtney was not happy, and she had no qualms about showing her displeasure. “This is just wrong,” she fumed. “We’ve got all the jocks. We’re supposed to win this challenge easily! Most of you seem to be doing your jobs, so why don’t we have more to show for it?”

Bridgette, Geoff and Eva made no response, for they sensed that Courtney’s question was rhetorical, and in truth they were as mystified as she. D.J., on the other hand, had something to get off his chest.

“If you ask me, I think we just underestimated them,” the brickhouse speculated, irritated that Cody had thrown him out to end the first game. “Curve balls just don’t happen in this game. Who’d have thought that Cody could throw one? I should have tried to catch his ball instead of trying to dodge it.”

“But we’ve seen their moves now,” Tyler chimed in. “They may have fooled us once, but they won’t fool us again!”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Courtney replied with a curt nod of acknowledgement. “And Tyler,” the future speaker of laws continued, “Your enthusiasm is great, but it doesn’t help us unless you can control it. You were throwing balls all over the court, and you were hitting everything except the opposing players. That doesn’t get us anything. I’ll trade some of your enthusiasm for a little more accuracy.”

Courtney then turned her baleful gaze on Camp Wawanakwa’s resident juvenile delinquent. “Duncan, what’s going on?” she demanded. “You’re playing like you’re on crutches.”

“Yeah,” Ezekiel added. “You’re playing like a girl.”

“Watch it, Homeschool,” Eva snarled.

“Sorry,” Ezekiel offered contritely. “Old habits die hard, eh?”

“Where Zeke’s wrong,” Courtney continued,” is that you’re playing worse than any girl I know. You probably couldn’t have beaten Sadie one-on-one, and you should be one of our best people at this. Where’s that killer instinct honed by years of street fighting?”

“I’m fine, so just get your royal CIT-ness off my back, okay?” Duncan snapped.

“Dude, you are not fine,” Geoff countered. “I can see you shaking from here. What’s wrong, bro?”

Duncan sighed, seeing that he could no longer deny what had apparently become obvious. “If you must know,” he confessed, “I think it’s nicotine withdrawal. I’ve used up the smokes I brought with me, and I can’t get any more. McLean said the Tuck Shoppe would have some, but it doesn’t.”

“I get the impression that Chris says a lot of things,” Courtney replied, with a note of sympathy in her voice. She didn’t approve of smoking, let alone underage smoking, but she could see for herself what her teammate was going through.

”But that’s social engineering for you,” Courtney continued. “The Tuck Shoppe doesn’t carry tobacco, but it does carry contraceptives. Like any of us are going to get busy on national TV with someone we’ve only known a few weeks.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Ezekiel mused in a misguided attempt to lighten the mood. “Sure, it’d be embarrassing, but with the right girl I could probably manage it, eh?”

Eva was not amused, which isn’t saying much because the musclegirl was probably the most perpetually unamused person since Queen Victoria. “Yeah, but who’d get it on with you?” she sneered.

“You’d be surprised who I get fixed up with,” the farm boy replied matter-of-factly.

“How about keeping us in suspense on that, okay?” Bridgette suggested. “That’s a mental image I so don’t need right now.”

“Sex is awesome television,” Geoff said. “I doubt that the Chrismeister is really expecting anyone to get it on while we’re here, but I’ll bet he’s hoping that somebody does!”

The second game was about to start, so Courtney reasserted her dominance. “Guys, I think we’re getting off track. Duncan, since you can’t play effectively, we’re going to sit you out this game. If I were you, I’d start looking for other ways to help this team, because if we lose this challenge as things stand now, your head is liable to be the one that rolls.”

Duncan made no response. He didn’t like being bossed around, especially by the likes of Prissy McGoodygoody, but he couldn’t deny that she had a point. It is the body, not the mind, that cries loudest in nicotine withdrawal, and the physical toughness that was Duncan’s pride had failed him utterly.

On the Eagles’ bench, Heather said, “That was a long game. For the second game, I think Katie and Cody could use breathers, so we’ll start Justin, Noah, Trent, Leshawna, Lindsay and Sadie. We’ve got the advantage now, so don’t let up.”

As the Eagles’ starters took the floor, Heather noticed that there were only five. “Earth to Noah,” she said to the bookworm with audible irritation, “You’re starting this game.”

“I think not,” Noah replied, not looking up from his book.

“I say you are,” Heather snapped. “And I’m the coach, so what I say goes!”

“We’ve been over this,” Noah replied with no more passion than he had shown all along. “Sports aren’t my thing.”

“Look at me when I’m talking to you!”

“Why? Are you going to flash me or something?” Noah asked sarcastically, his nose still in his book.

“In your dreams, loser!” Heather huffed.

Getting no response, Heather made one more attempt. “I’m warning you, dweeb! Get out there now or you’ll regret it!”

“I don’t see you playing,” Noah replied indifferently, not that he was likely to have seen anything beyond the pages of Troilus and Cressida.

“I’m coaching!” Heather retorted, her face now noticeably red. “The coach belongs on the sideline!”

Heather’s voice had been rising, and this attracted Hatchet’s attention. He came over to the bench and asked, in a deceptively mild tone, “Is there a problem?”

“Not for long,” Heather replied darkly. Seeing that Noah had once again successfully run out the clock on her, the queen bee turned to Cody and said, “Sorry, Cody, but we need you.” With an unnoticed glare at Noah, the science geek took the field.

As the teams joined battle once more, Heather continued to stew. Where does that little snot get off defying me? she indignantly asked herself, for she had called the coach’s job fair and square.

As the dragon girl continued to fume, she noticed a pile of miscellaneous sporting equipment behind the bench, in a corner formed by two retaining walls. Don’t get mad, get even, she thought.

“Katie,” she said, “Excuse me a minute. If we have a chance to send someone in, Gwen goes in first, then you.” Heather then went to the equipment pile to see if she could find anything that would help her wreak her vengeance.

Luck was with her, and she found a football. She picked it up, then walked back to the court and stood near the sideline. Taking aim, she flung the football at Noah with all her strength, catching the unsuspecting bookworm squarely on the cheek and knocking him from his seat.

“You’re right,” Heather said sweetly, as she came back to the bench. “Sports aren’t your thing.”

Noah glared at the dragon girl, but said nothing as he rubbed his cheek. Not only had the end of the football imprinted an angry-looking red “X” upon his cheek, but the blow had also been hard enough to cause bruising, so Noah would bear the mark of Heather’s wrath for four days.

In the second game, the teams’ fortunes ebbed and flowed. The warriors threw, dodged, and caught. Players fell, were reinstated, and came off the bench. Fortune first favored the Muskies, then the Eagles, then the Muskies again, with neither team able to gain the upper hand for long.

With the teams standing at four players each, there came a momentary lull in the action, where by chance almost everyone was either standing empty-handed and awaiting a throw, or was retrieving a ball, or had acquired a ball but had yet to select a target. Eva took this moment of calm to step forward, ball in hand, and stand proudly near the centerline.

“Okay, birdies,” she challenged, “Do any of you have the guts to face me one on one?”

From the back line, Katie drew a bead on Eva, for the posturing Amazon seemed to her an easy target; and while the Thin Twin was a goodhearted girl, she was not learned in the customs of martial chivalry. Before Katie could throw, though, Leshawna stopped her with a gesture, asked for her ball, and stood forth to take up the challenge.

“Bring it, Macho Mama,” Leshawna challenged in turn. “You may have butt cheeks tighter than my weave and biceps with their own zip code, but you can’t scare me with mean looks or tough talk. We could have been tight, but you turned me down. That’s your loss, and you’re about to find out why.

“I lived in the projects for ten years before my father’s fortunes improved and we graduated to a middle-class neighborhood. You don’t survive for long on the mean streets if you talk tough and can’t back it up, so take your best shot. I can take whatever you can dish out.”

Eva nodded approvingly at the homegirl’s trash-talking skill, and gave a grim little smile. “No, Homie,” she said, “We’re more alike than you know. Before my family came to Canada, we lived in what used to be called East Germany. I spent my childhood there, in the chaotic years that followed the razing of the Berlin Wall and liberation from Communist rule, and I learned a lot about taking care of your own. You talk the talk epically, and I’d love to see if you can walk the walk, but we shouldn’t go head to head as long as we have other targets. I’ve had reason to reconsider your offer of friendship. I like you better than I realized at first, and during the Awake-a-thon, Chris said something that got me to thinking.

“When Heather was about to go down, Chris wouldn’t let her talk to any of us because he wants the finished episodes to look like our teams are blood enemies or something. He thinks it’s better ‘drama’ that way. But when we lost Harold, may he rest in peace, we saw that we have to look out for each other because we can't count on Chris or the producers to do it. You saw it, too. Better than I did, I’ll bet, because you were on the cliff and heard what he said with your own ears, whereas I only heard about it second-hand.”

Leshawna saw where Eva was going, so she completed the thought. “Well, I did say that you knew where to find me if you changed your mind. My offer still stands, and I’m glad to see that you’ve come around.”

“I have,” Eva replied. “This isn’t the time for us to go head to head. But if the time does come, then for that moment we don’t know each other. After all, our teams are still counting on us. Got it?

“Meaning,” the homegirl translated, “that if I’m the last of my team on the court, and you have a chance to take my head off, the fact that we’re tight isn’t going to stop you.”

“Smart girl,” Eva said.

“So it shouldn’t stop me, either,” Leshawna added.

“Exactly. A proper athlete has to be able to play tough against friends,” the bronze maiden explained.

“You’re my kind of sister,” the homegirl concluded. “Put ‘er there.”

The girls sealed their compact with a fist bump, and then turned away to rejoin their teammates.

Whilst Eva and Leshawna talked, Lindsay happened to be holding a ball and standing near the sideline closest to the Eagles' bench. When it became clear that the confrontation at center court was likely to end amicably, Heather came off the bench, walked up to the sideline, and called Lindsay to her as quietly as she might, in the hope that nobody else would notice.

“Lindsay,” said the queen bee quietly, her voice scarcely above a whisper, “I don’t know what kind of trash-class ritual this is, but all this sweetness and light is going to give me diabetes. Eva might be their toughest player, but she’s not paying attention right now, and no one ever called time out. You’ve got a perfect chance to take her out. It’ll show those losers that you’re not to be messed with, and it’ll really make the viewing audience respect you for more than just your hotness and your fashion sense.”

Any person of average intelligence would likely have seen at least one problem with Heather’s proposal, and possibly several, but Lindsay was not a person of average intelligence. Eager to please the Dark Queen, and not having entirely worked out the concept of actions having consequences, the blonde bombshell needed no further encouragement. So it was that, as Eva turned her back to rejoin her teammates, Lindsay saw her chance, reared back and threw with all her might—a high throw intended to smack the bronze maiden squarely between the shoulders.

But the Spirit of Friendship, having softened Eva’s hard heart, did not leave her defenseless. Most eyes were still on Eva and Leshawna; but as Lindsay wound up for her throw, Tyler spotted her from the bench. As the uberbimbo threw, Tyler yelled, “Duck!”

Eva did more than just duck. Even as she went down into a defensive crouch, she whirled about in the hope of spotting her would-be backstabber. Not a moment too soon, either; for while Lindsay’s arm was not particularly strong, neither was it weak. With reflexes so quick that they seemed scarcely mortal, Eva brought up her own ball as a shield and deflected Lindsay’s throw high over the back wall. Having identified her assailant, the enraged Amazon quickly stood and threw with all her tremendous might. That fury-fueled missile caught Lindsay full in the face, bloodying her nose and gashing her lip on her teeth. The golden-haired bombshell crumpled like a puppet does when its strings are cut.

Seeing Lindsay savaged in this way, Justin knew fury such as he had never known before. With a great, inarticulate war cry, the normally mild-mannered embodiment of manly beauty served Eva in much the same way as she had just served Lindsay. Eva was a powerful girl, seemingly the equal of any boy, but Justin struck her down just the same. He did have enough presence of mind to not aim for the face, as Eva had done; for the face is the center of a person’s outer beauty, and even in the grip of Ristrand-rivaling rage, Justin could never forget that. Instead, he left the bronze maiden gagging from a hit to the throat.

Nor did humbling Eva suffice to slake his vengeance lust. Snatching away first Leshawna’s ball and then Trent’s, the gorgeous lord of war threw out the remaining Muskies faster than you could say “Camp Wawanakwa”, first dispatching D.J. and then felling Geoff and Izzy with the same thigh-high throw to seal Game 2 for the Eagles.

Justin was now himself again, but he did not bask in his mighty deed nor savor the cheers of his teammates. Instead, he gathered the bawling Lindsay into his arms and quickly carried her to the Eagles’ bench.

“That,” Gwen pronounced, as Chef Hatchet came over to see how badly Lindsay was hurt, “was amazing.”

“I don’t know what came over me,” Justin admitted. Then he looked again on Lindsay’s bloody face and said, “On second thought, maybe I do.”

Hatchet opened a first aid kit, which he had brought to the match for just such an emergency, and stanched the blood. He then verified that Lindsay’s teeth were intact—not that a dodgeball ball should be capable of damaging teeth, but the power behind Eva’s throw had bordered on the unnatural—and finally inspected the cut on Lindsay’s lip.

“Nothing serious,” Hatchet assured her at last. “You should be good as new in a week.”

Lindsay finally noticed that the court was vacant, and asked, “Did we win?”

“We won, alright,” Sadie assured her. “You should have seen Justin mow them down. They never knew what hit them.” The butterball then told Lindsay how Justin had avenged her, but nothing would be gained by repeating it here.

Lindsay looked admiringly up at Justin, managed a pained smile, and said, “My avenging angel.” In return, he favored her with a radiant smile that sent a shiver down her spine.

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

.

Sixth 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, 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.

On the opposite bench, the Muskies were in shock at how swiftly the tide of battle had turned. “You okay, Eva?” Courtney asked, as the wounded Amazon came to the bench.

Rubbing her throat and swallowing experimentally, Eva barely managed to croak out, “I will be.”

Duncan had little love for Eva, and now saw a chance to kick her whilst she was down, not to mention playing off one enemy against another. “Where do you get off smashing Lindsay’s face like that?” he chided. “It’s just a game.”

Eva said nothing as she continued to rub her throat, but the glare she fixed on the scorner of laws plainly said, You have got to be kidding me.

“Sure, she tried to backstab you,” Duncan admitted, “but it’s not like she’s smart enough to think of something like that on her own.” Seeing that he had aroused Eva’s curiosity, the scorner of laws explained, “While you and Leshawna were settling your affair of honor, I saw Heather talking to Lindsay. I’d bet good money that she’s the one who put her up to it. Heather’s the one who could stand to have her face rearranged, if that’s what floats your boat.”

“Leave revenge for another time,” Courtney broke in hurriedly. “Right now, we’re in trouble. We’re down two games, and if we lose again, one of us is going home. Our tactics aren’t working. We need something else.”

“I have an idea,” Duncan suggested, “if nobody minds my taking over as coach. Right now, I can’t play worth crap, and you’re the one who said I needed to find another way to help.”

Courtney was torn, just as Duncan suspected she would be. On one hand, the future speaker of laws was every bit as much a control freak as Duncan has supposed; but on the other, she understood that he wanted to win, too, and in truth the Muskies had little to lose by doing whatever Duncan might suggest. Besides, Courtney had been so busy coaching that she hadn’t played yet, and she was reasonably athletic. A fresh player, she thought, might help turn the tide.

“Fine,” Courtney agreed, projecting a nonchalance that she did not feel. “What’s the plan?”

“A trick I learned on my first stay in Juvie,” the scorner of laws replied. “It’s called, ‘Crush the New Guy’.

“Basically, we’re going to concentrate our fire. We’ll let them throw at us, but we won’t throw back until everyone has a ball. Then, everyone will throw at the same person, at the same time. They won’t be able to dodge very well, because you can cover an area with multiple balls. You can’t shield against more than one ball at a time, so that won’t help them, either. And with several balls coming in at the same time, it’ll be hard to pick one to catch.

“Remember, though, that you can’t all aim at exactly the same spot, because that would make the spread easier to dodge. Besides, you’d run the risk or your balls bouncing off of each other. You’ll need to coordinate on who’s going to aim where.”

“I’ll handle that,” Courtney said. It wasn’t a suggestion.

“Alright, Princess, you can be my Field Marshal,” Duncan agreed. “Geoff, you’ll be her backup if she gets thrown out or something.”

“No sweat,” the urban cowboy replied.

“Go for the highest-value targets first, if they happen to be in. Top priority is Justin, because he’s the closest thing they have to a real jock, and we’ve seen what he can do. Your second priority is Katie, if she and Sadie are both in.” Duncan’s brow furrowed in uncertainty as he asked, “Katie’s the skinny one, right?” Upon receiving confirmation, he continued. “Anyway, those two are brutal together, but I doubt that Tubby will be worth much on her own, so we can kill two birds with one stone. Third is Cody, because he knows all the tricks. Fourth is Heather, because she’s Heather. Beyond that, there’s not much to choose. You can save Sadie for last.

“They won’t know what hit them,” Tyler declared enthusiastically.

“We have to strike hard and fast,” Duncan warned his troops, “because if the Birdies are smart, they’ll eventually either copy our tactics or figure out a way to defend against them. Seriously, if any strategy always worked, then everyone would use it.”

Eva’s condition was improving, but she had not yet fully recovered from the blow she’d received in the second game, so Duncan said, “Geoff, Courtney, Izzy, Bridgette, Zeke and Beth will start. Take ‘em to school, gang.”

“What about me?” Tyler asked. “I can dominate this game!”

“That’s the thing, Ty,” Duncan replied with a shake of his head. “This strategy is about quantity, not quality. It won’t work if one guy tries to dominate. Besides, this will let us rest some of our big guns.”

Hatchet’s whistle summoned a dozen eager warriors to proverbial death and not so proverbial glory. When everyone had taken their places, the Muskies saw that Heather had sent Katie, Justin, Cody, Leshawna, Trent and Gwen against them. The queen bee was resting Lindsay to give the uberbimbo more time to collect what wits she had. Heather likewise held Sadie in reserve because the easily winded butterball had to be used sparingly. It wasn’t that Heather had any qualms about sending her vassal into battle, for she had seen what Sadie could do; but the butterball was suited to brief bursts of activity, so Heather supposed that she would be more effective coming off the bench, ideally after everyone else had begun to tire. Noah had once again refused to play, although the bookworm’s attitude was now more sulking than indifferent.

Trent, Leshawna and Justin picked up the balls that were on the Eagles’ side of the court. On the Muskies’ side, Beth and Ezekiel armed themselves at Courtney’s command, with Courtney taking the third ball herself. Courtney had chosen the farm girl and the farm boy because she thought they might not be as good at dodging as their comrades, so she wanted them to have shield balls as an additional line of defense. Hatchet gave a hand signal and a whistle blast, and the hosts joined battle for what the Eagles hoped would be the last time.

The Muskies assumed defensive postures as the three armed Eagles chose their targets and threw. Katie threw first, seeking to humble the chauvinistic Ezekiel and cover herself with glory; but that tiller of the soil, scion of a family rich in corn and oil, dodged the missile that was meant for him. Trent then threw at Geoff, as did Gwen a moment later; but the disciple of Dionysus dropped to his knees and caught Gwen’s low throw, even as the young bard’s ball sailed harmlessly overhead, so the Goth retired to the bench. Geoff’s feat brought no brave brother into the breach, though, for the Muskies were already at full strength.

Bridgette and Izzy fetched the remaining balls and Field Marshal Courtney said, “Justin’s our man. Bridgette and Geoff, aim high, around shoulder level. But don’t look him in the eye, Bridgette, because he has powers. Beth and I will throw low, around thigh level. Izzy, center of mass. Zeke, you’re the headhunter. For future reference, this is the ‘coffin’ pattern. On my mark.”

The six Muskies cocked their arms and threw as one at Courtney’s command, and “attack pattern Coffin” worked just as she had drawn it up. Based on the fact that the Muskies had gathered all the balls, the Eagles suspected that they might all throw at once for intimidation effect, but they hadn’t counted on the Muskies all throwing at the same player. Justin was stunned into inaction at the sight of six spheroids streaking his way, for this was simply too much information for a mortal mind to process in the eye’s blink that was given him; and this was a time when his godlike gorgeousness gained him nothing. Justin was struck fairly five times, with only Ezekiel missing because the head is hard to hit, and the Embodiment of Manly Beauty retired to the bench.

Recovering their wits, the four remaining Eagles armed themselves and threw, but again the Muskies dodged and ducked and came to no harm. Heather appealed to Ref Hatchet, believed that Leshawna had nicked Bridgette; but the hulking arbiter denied her claim, having weighed the homegirl in the balance and found her wanting.

Whilst Heather was making her appeal, Katie and Cody retrieved the remaining balls. Cody, who never met with a girl whom he did not wish to please, chivalrously presented his ball to Leshawna. “My best defense is to dodge,” he explained, “but Lady Large and In Charge is probably better off with a shield ball.”

The ebon Amazon accepted this offering and thanked her benefactor by ever so briefly—fleeting as the blink of an eye, for no longer than it takes a god to ascend to Olympus—puckering her lips at him. Cody was well pleased at this playful “acknowledgement” of his “manly charms”, as he would have put it, as the two Eagles turned their full attention to the Muskie line.

As Katie cocked her arm to throw, Leshawna counseled, “Hold on girl. If we throw now, and they dodge, they’ll just throw all the balls back at once. Make ‘em do it with four.”

Katie saw the wisdom in the dusky daughter’s words, and the two Eagle girls assumed defensive crouches, holding their shield balls in front. On their flanks, Trent and Cody stood ready to dodge.

Courtney understood self-discipline—she had lived her life by it—so she told her teammates to hold their fire. Duncan’s “shock and awe” strategy might be less effective with fewer warriors, so Courtney wanted all six Muskies participating and was prepared to wait as long as it took to realize that aim.

With both teams now waiting for the other to commit itself, Chris grew impatient. Seeking to move the game along, the Lord of Wawanakwa sent four more balls onto the court, two on each side, so that everyone who wanted a ball could have one.

With the Muskies now fully armed, they drew a bead on Cody and again unleashed “attack pattern Coffin”, so named because the pattern marked more or less the points of a hexagonal coffin when properly executed. Cody was well skilled at dodging, as has been told of before, but the area covered by the Muskies’ spread was simply too great. Cody reacted quickly and lunged to one side, but two balls nevertheless found their mark, so he was out. Yet the gods avenged him well, for one ball struck him where the shoulder meets the collarbone and bounced high into the air. The Muskies had held nothing in reserve, so they could only watch helplessly as Trent settled under the ball like an infielder under a popup and calmly waited for it to come down. The young bard plucked the spent missile from the moving air, and Heather sent Sadie into the game even as Cody took his seat on the bench.

There was a brief delay, then, whilst Hatchet reviewed the video footage to determine whose ball Trent had caught. Finally, he sent Bridgette off. That scion of the sea accepted her lot—for who can stand against the whims of Fortune?—and retired to the bench as play resumed.

With Sadie in the fray, the clones went on the attack. Not for long, though, for Duncan had decreed that Sadie’s presence on the court would make Katie a priority target, as has been told of before. The neo-Gemini Twins did succeed in throwing out Ezekiel, whom they had targeted once more for the sake of making a “girl power” statement, but Courtney had caught Leshawna’s throw in the meantime. The Eagles thus succeeded only in trading Ezekiel for the Amazon Eva, who was once more eager for battle, no longer troubled by her wound.

Courtney then instructed Izzy to take Bridgette’s former place in the pattern, throwing at the target’s shoulder, and charged Eva to throw at the center of mass. Queen Courtney dubbed this pattern “Die Five”, for it matched the pips on the five-point side of a gambling die, and the future speaker of laws thought it an amusing double entendre into the bargain.

With the Eagles down to half strength and still facing five Muskies, the third game came quickly to the end that Destiny had set for it. Katie fell first, struck by Eva at that most vital of places, the base of the breastbone, a resounding smack announcing her fate to the world. The Thin Twin was struck with other balls as well, but Eva’s throw was the one that people remembered and talked about afterward. Trent fell next, and finally Sadie. The butterball did not even try to dodge, for she sensed that it would be futile and that she was better off conserving her strength.

In a last-ditch attempt to provide for someone to succeed her even as she fell, as the phoenix rises from the ashes, Sadie tried to catch Izzy’s shoulder-high throw. For a fleeting moment it looked like she would succeed, but the distraction of multiple other balls defiling her flesh proved too great, and Sadie could not hold on. The stout-hearted and stout-bodied girl returned to the bench, concealing as best she might a slight limp from a hit to her knee, and the jubilant Muskies were back from the brink.

“Worked like a charm,” D.J. said, as the Game Three players returned to the Muskies bench.

“I know, right?” Duncan replied with a self-satisfied smirk. Turning to address the team as a whole, he added, “The Birdies started to adjust quicker than I thought they would. We’ll stick with the same tactics for now, but be ready to shift gears if they come up with an effective defense. We’re not out of the woods yet, so keep the pressure on.

“Bridgette and Geoff have seen a lot of action, so I think they could use breathers. D.J. and Evil have had rests, so we’ll play them instead.”

Duncan turned to the Dude in Red and said, “Ty, I’d like to rest Izzy, too, and that means putting you in.” Before Tyler could vow to crush the Eagles single-handed, Duncan added sternly, “But you have to promise me that you won’t try to do it all yourself. You do what Courtney or Geoff say, when they say. If you go off half-cocked like you did before, and it costs us the game…

“We’ll have a score to settle.” Lest there be any misunderstanding about his meaning, Duncan had drawn his knife from his pocket and was now absently playing with it.

Tyler swallowed hard at that, but quickly put on a brave face. “No sweat,” Red Jock assured the scorner of laws. “I can do teamwork.”

On the Eagles side, Heather was trying to rally her troops. “Okay, that was seriously ugly,” she said, “but we still have the advantage. We need to figure out how to defend against their everybody-pound-one guy attack. But in the meantime, we can give them a taste of their own medicine. Take out D.J. first, then Eva if either of them are in. If they’re not, I’ll pick someone else.”

For the fourth game, Heather decided to rest Cody and Trent, for the romance rivals were not especially athletic and had played extensively in every game. She called Noah to battle, expecting him to refuse again, and sure enough, the bookworm did just that. This time, Heather wasted no breath in arguing, for her real aim was to keep the shirker’s disloyalty fresh in the Eagles’ minds. The Dragon Queen instead called Lindsay, who was once more battle-ready, and Sadie, who had assured her liege that she could continue. That this would mean putting five girls on the court at once troubled Heather not; for like Duncan and Courtney, she understood that ganging up on a single opponent was about numbers, not individual prowess. And so, at Hatchet’s whistle, Justin and the Valkyries took the field.

The warriors found a surprise waiting for them. During the intermission, Chris had put yet two more balls on the court, so that instead of the six balls in toto that the match had started with, there were now six per side, so that the hosts could arm themselves fully at once. The reason seemed clear enough to everyone: the Lord of Wawanankwa was determined that ball hoarding should not slow the game down and thereby diminish the spectacle.

At Hatchet’s signal, Game Four began. The teams threw en masse, and D.J. and Justin fell in the fusillade. Heather, though, had not seen fit to appoint a lieutenant to direct traffic on the court. The Muskies, under Courtney’s direction, thus responded more quickly than the Eagles and threw out Katie before the Eagles could prepare another barrage.

Playing the hand she was dealt, Courtney had assigned Tyler to be the headhunter. Tyler tended to throw wildly, as has been told of before, but the head is hard to hit and so whoever threw at it was as likely as not to miss anyway. Courtney thus reasoned that Red Jock’s wildness would do little harm in this role, and indeed might help by distracting the target. Sure enough, Tyler did the Muskies’ cause no harm.

The four remaining Eagles then tried their hand, hungering to humble Eva. Their salvo was random, though, for they still did not realize (and in fairness, it was by no means obvious) that the Muskies were throwing organized patterns. In short, they left the musclegirl an opening, and she dove and slid and emerged unscathed.

As Eva sprang to her feet and hustled back to rejoin her teammates, Courtney urged the Muskies to arm themselves with speed, for she sensed that they had the Eagles reeling and wanted to press that advantage. The diminutive dynamo had the extra ball, so she gave it to Eva and named Leshawna as the next target.

For the second time, the Muskies were able to loose their salvo before the Eagles could ready theirs. Leshawna had no chance; and to make matters worse, the timing was just right to disrupt the valkyries’ coordination (for that goddess who controls matters of chance had smiled on Courtney’s generalship) so the Muskies again suffered no casualties.

Must…not…facepalm, Heather thought as she paced along the Eagles’ bench.

The Muskies quickly readied for another assault. They no longer had enough balls on their side of the court to go around, so Courtney decided to wait for Eagles to commit themselves. Appealing to Tyler’s inflated assessment of his talents and his desire to cover himself in glory, the aspiring politician asked him to give up his ball and stand ready to catch an incoming ball from would surely be a three-ball salvo, and Tyler saw wisdom in this.

Wisdom there was indeed, but not what Tyler thought. Courtney knew that, depleted as the Eagles were, three balls coming in at once would still be dangerous; but with a two-player advantage, she was perfectly content to trade soldier for solder. It was Courtney’s intention to sacrifice the nigh-useless Tyler to shield whomever Gwen, Lindsay and Sadie were actually gunning for. If Tyler defied her expectations and actually caught one of the balls, then so much the better.

Although Heather’s orders were to go after Eva once D.J. was out of the way, Sadie thought it better to seek easier prey, and neither Gwen nor Lindsay saw fit to say her nay. After all, Eva had dodged one salvo already, which was part of the reason why the Eagles were now at a disadvantage. Numbers were what mattered with their current tactics, so it was now critically important that they get someone. Anyone. They were tempted to go after the sexist Ezekiel yet again, but Gwen suggested that Courtney seemed to be actively leading her team (Gwen’s actual words being “bossing them around”) and so would be a greater prize.

So it was that the three Eagles threw at Courtney in a bid to deprive the Muskies of their general. It mattered not, though, for Tyler rushed in where angels fear to tread, just as Courtney expected him to. For a fleeting moment, it looked like he would actually catch Gwen’s ball, but he couldn’t hold on. This, too, mattered not, for the other four Muskies threw as one and sent Lindsay to the bench.

Ref Hatchet called an official’s timeout, for Chris had seen enough. “This game is going too fast,” the Lord of Wawanakwa pronounced, and ordered the teams back to full strength.

Having been “saved by the bell”, as it were, Heather and the Eagles were at a loss. Their attempt to mimic the Muskies’ tactics had gone poorly, but with no one clearly at fault. The only thing Heather could think of to do was to change the lineup, although she didn’t really see how this would address anything but her need to do something.

“Cody, you’re in for Sadie,” she called.

Cody came to Heather and replied quietly, “Normally, I’d be happy to, but I’m going to try to talk some sense into Noah.”

Heather did not acknowledge Cody directly, but called, “Trent, you’re in for Sadie.” Turning back to the science geek, Heather said, “I wish you luck. I sure haven’t been able to get through to him, so maybe he does needs a good nerd-to-nerd talk. No offense.”

“None taken,” Cody assured her.

As a couple of interns redistributed the balls and the reconstituted teams returned to the court, Cody ascended the small bleachers and sat down next to Noah, who did not acknowledge him in any way.

“Hey, dude,” Cody began. “If you don’t mind my asking, why are you so dead set against playing?”

With a sigh of exasperation, Noah replied, “Sports aren’t my thing. I keep telling people.”

“Yeah, you keep saying that,” Cody said with as much patience as he could muster. “I get that you’re not into physical stuff because you’re a brain. Well, I’m a brain, too, and I’m playing. Well, not right now, but you know what I mean.”

“The reason you’re playing is because you can actually do some good out there,” Noah countered. “Your reflexes are better than mine. Your arm, too, probably. Trust me, you don’t want me playing. You have nothing to gain from it, and neither do I.”

“Dude, can’t you see what’s happening out there?” Cody asked. “It’s looking more and more like this challenge could get away from us. If it does, people are going to be looking for a scapegoat. Do you really think they’ll respect your smarts enough to keep you around if they don’t see any effort? I mean, look at Sadie. She’s probably in the worst shape of anyone here. She can’t do much unless she can coordinate with Katie, and she looks like she’s about to collapse, but she’s playing. She’s trying.”

“You’re not giving her enough credit.” Noah explained. “We’ve known ever since the cliff diving that she’s quicker than she looks. And in the 20K around the island, she actually tried to run most of the way, which is more than either of us did. I don’t think Sadie playing really makes your case. Trust me, you don’t want me playing.”

“Okay, maybe you can’t play worth crap,” Cody shot back, trying to keep his voice from rising. “If people can actually see that, they might cut you some slack. If they think you just don’t care, then probably not. You’re setting yourself up to get kicked off if we lose this.”

“And why would that bother you?” Noah retorted dryly. “If they’re dumb enough to kick off their smartest player, then you’d be the only brain left. That’s job security.”

“That’s not the point,” Cody shot back. He was becoming increasingly flustered at Noah’s stubbornness. “The point is that we brains have to stick together. Like they say, two heads are better than one.”

Noah had no answer to this. He put his book away and, with the timeless petulance of people being forced to do things that they don’t really want to do, began to pay close attention to the game.

The second Game Four battle went no better for the Eagles than the first. They fought with no less heart or vigor than their foe, but they had nothing comparable to Courtney’s on-court leadership; and their less-coordinated barrages combined with the Muskies’ superior athleticism meant a lower kill ratio. The Eagles did succeed in throwing out Courtney in a bid to “decapitate” the Muskies, but Duncan had named a backup for precisely that situation. By the time the Eagles realized that Geoff had stepped into the leadership role, the Muskies had gained the upper hand.

When the dust had settled, Lindsay stood alone against three Muskies. Geoff, Beth and Eva threw a triangle pattern, two high and one low, expecting to quickly dispatch the bombshell; but it was not Lindsay’s fate to fall easily.

Despite her top-heavy build, Lindsay was an accomplished gymnast. As a mere sophomore, she was the MVP on her school’s gymnastics team, earning all-conference honors and even an all-province honorable mention. Not only that, but she had also placed fifth on the floor exercise at the Province meet. In short, a three-ball salvo was not too many for her to deal with. Reacting quickly, she dove aside seemingly without effort. Soon after, the Muskies threw again, with similar results; and this time, Beth barely managed to dodge Lindsay’s return throw.

Lindsay frustrated the Muskies for a long time in this way. But in the end, Geoff caught her throw, and the stage was set for a deciding fifth game.

.

The Prodigal Son

“Okay, guys,” Heather told the assembled Eagles. “We’ve come too far to let this get away from us now. I know it’s been a long match, but you need to suck it up. Just because we know who to vote off if we lose doesn’t give us a reason to lose.” The Eagles nodded in agreement, emphasized with various affirming statements.

“But, darn it,” Heather continued, “We still need a defense against those mass barrages. The Fishies are escaping sometimes, so why can’t we?”

“I think I might have an answer,” Cody replied.

“Well, don’t just stand there,” Leshawna prompted. “Let’s hear it.”

“When they pick a target, they’re not just throwing randomly like we are,” Cody explained. “It looks like they’re throwing organized patterns. The same people usually throw at the same spots, depending on how many players they have.”

“That makes sense,” Heather admitted. “But that’ll just help our attacks. What about defense?”

“It looks like their patterns are designed to nail us if we try to dodge to the side,” Cody answered. And if we try to duck, we’ll usually still have two balls hit us. But suppose we go low and to the side? Go to the corner of the pattern. That way we’ll only have one ball to deal with. We wouldn’t be able to dodge it, but maybe we could deflect it if we have a ball of or own, or try to catch it if we don’t. Sort of like what Geoff did to Gwen that one time.”

This plan met with general approval, including Heather’s, so she appointed Cody to coordinate on the court, with Katie as his backup.

“I think we also need to shake things up a little,” came a nasal voice.

From the way the Eagles reacted, one would have thought that they’d never expected to hear that voice again. In an instant, all eyes were on Noah, for it was he who had spoken.

“I think Heather should play this game,” the bookworm explained. “I’ll coach.”

“You’re not muscling in on me, you little twerp,” Heather shot back. “If you’re finally willing to play, that’s great, but I’m the coach. I called it fair and square.”

To this Noah replied, with more passion than anyone in camp had ever heard from him and accompanied in the finished episode by a swell of dramatic music:

Henry V - Speech - Eve of Saint Crispin's Day - HD

Noah replied, with more passion than anyone in camp had ever heard from him and accompanied in the finished episode by a swell of dramatic music

That may not be if we’re to win this fight.
To seize the day against their greater power,
We cannot let out talents be misspent.
If you would lead this team, then lead us not
From the rear, nor hold aloof from battle;
But rather, lead us boldly at the fore.
Your strength of arm says that your place is there.
And you are fresh—and that could turn the tide.
My flesh is weak. My brain—now that’s my strength.
You said yourself, the coach’s place is not
Upon the field, so let me serve us here
As he who thinks for us but cannot act.
And with our purpose thus as one, then let
The nation gape in awe and wonderment
As it beholds the marvels we have wrought
And yet shall do before this day is done.
In times to come, when people talk about
This day and how we earned our fame and honor,
Whether as gloried victors or as valiant
Vanquished, we shall recall our deeds of yore.
Then we will bare our arm or breast and say,
‘These wounds I got that fateful day as we,
Upon the court on Wawanakwa’s isle,
We band of brothers faced our foe who thought
It not too prideful to deem us not their match.
Nor did the world think it wrong to judge us so.
And yet the way we fought and persevered
Poured us the cup of fame we now enjoy.’
Then will the Eagles names come gladly for
Our lips to savor: Heather the Queen, Justin
The brave; Katie, Sadie, the yin and yang;
The wily Cody, the bold Leshawna,
And Trent and Gwen and Lindsay and Noah.
Then men will say our fame was fairly earned,
And women tell their children on their knees
The tale of how we fought on Dodgeball Day.

“Can’t argue with that,” Leshawna admitted. “Wouldn’t even know how to.”

“I know, right?” Katie seconded.

“And Noah did help me to come up with a way to counter their mass barrage tactics,” Cody admitted. “Credit where it’s due.”

“As you like to say, Heather,” Noah reminded the queen bee, “The people have spoken.”

“Fine,” Heather replied with a sigh, wondering what it took to win an argument with the bookworm. “We’ll see if your coaching is as good as your speechmaking.” At least he cares about the challenge now, she later added in the confessional.

Turning back to the team as a whole, Heather said, “I’ll coordinate on the court, then. Cody, you’re my backup.”

Meanwhile, as the Muskies huddled at their bench, Courtney was rallying the troops. Duncan remained the coach, but he had no tongue for rousing pep talks, so he let the aspiring politician listen to the sound of her own voice.

“Okay, guys,” Courtney urged, “We’ve come back, so now it’s time to finish this. I know it’s been a long match, but most of us are in good shape, so they’re probably feeling it more than we are. It’s time to strain those birdies through the floorboards. Show them why we’re called the Killer Muskies.

“And don’t forget that we’ve got more to fight for than they do. Rewards are nice, invincibility is great, but we have a higher cause. Keep that in mind, and we’ll have the edge.”

With that, Courtney extended her arm into the huddle, which was her teammates’ cue to place their hands on hers.

“For Harold,” she said.

“For Harold,” the Muskies replied.

The fifth game was a protracted affair. With both teams inspired, and neither wanting to come so far only to come up short, those noble warriors did more brave deeds than can be recounted here. Even Tyler scored a legitimate hit, on Cody. With Heather coordinating on the court as a counterpart to Courtney, and now having a reasonably effective defense, the Eagles no longer feared the Muskies’ barrages and the Muskies could not gain an advantage.

Chris reconstituted the teams once, twice, thrice, always saying that he needed more footage. After the second restoration, the teams took the hint and abandoned their mass barrages, returning to the more conventional—and, more to the point, more photogenic—freeform tactics that had characterized the first two games. Chris responded to this change by having the extra balls removed from the court, leaving only the original six, at the third restoration.

In the end, the stage was set for a winner-take-all clash of titans; for Justin stood alone, carrying the Eagles’ hopes and dreams on his broad shoulders. Across the court, only Eva remained for the Muskies.

Several players on the benches called out encouragement to their champions, but one cry stood out:

“Show him who’s boss, eh?”

Justin and Eva heard none of these encouragements, so focused were they on the task at hand. Most of the other Muskie girls, though, turned toward Ezekiel, their faces bearing expressions ranging from mild amusement to mild shock. The home-schooled farm boy, though, was still looking out onto the court as if he hadn’t expected anyone to see anything unusual in his outburst.

“Ezekiel,” Bridgette said, “Not that I’m complaining or anything, but for a guy who doesn’t expect girls to be able to keep up, you sure seem to like Eva’s chances.”

“What can I say?” Ezekiel replied with a shrug. “Sure, I’d rather have Geoff or D.J. out there, but I’m not feeling sorry for us just because it has to be Eva. We’ve all seen what she can do. Just because boys are usually better at sports than girls doesn’t mean I’d deny the evidence of my own eyes when I see an exception. It wouldn’t have bothered me if it had been you, either. You’ve been playing pretty well, eh?”

Although Ezekiel’s sexist subtext was unmistakable, it did not escape Bridgette’s notice that he had said “boys are usually better at sports” when a few days before he had said simply, “boys are better at sports” without the qualifier. The surfer considered this a step, however small, in the right direction. Furthermore, she saw no trace of insincerity or condescension in his compliment to her. It sounded just as it was meant—an honest appraisal that he didn’t expect anyone to dwell on.

With a smile and an approving nod, Bridgette said, “There’s hope for you yet.”

“I know, right?” Courtney replied.

On the court, Justin and Eva regarded each other for a few moments, each holding two balls. Then, as if on cue, both threw as one. Their balls met near mid-court and bounced harmlessly away. Moments later, they threw again, with similar results.

The two champions retrieved their balls and glowered at each other again. Justin, for all his perfectly ripped physique, was not a bodybuilder like Eva appeared to be. Bodybuilding tended to give little attention to stamina, so Justin guessed that Eva might be vulnerable there, and decided that he would try to wear her down.

Eva, for her part, had an ace up her sleeve: a maneuver that she had not used the entire match, so Justin should not be expecting it. Eva also had a plan, but executing it meant that she would have to wait for Justin’s throw.

Moments later, Justin threw. Eva ducked the throw and listened. When she heard the ball hit the retaining wall behind her, she counted to two and made her move.

Taking a single step toward her adversary, she threw both her balls a scant moment apart, for both her arms were as her right. She threw the first ball at Justin’s knees, and the second at the spot where she expected his hips to be when he jumped to avoid the first, for she had seen how effective that tactic could be when Katie and Sadie had employed it. If they can do it, then so can I, she reasoned.

Neither Justin nor anyone else in camp had known that Eva was ambidextrous, so while it didn’t surprise him that the Amazon warrior would throw her second ball as quickly as she might on the heels of the first, he had not counted on the second throw coming so quickly. Justin jumped to avoid the first ball, just as Eva had expected him to, and realized too late that he had been duped. Contorting violently, the Incredible Hunk somehow managed to avoid the second ball as well.

Eva, however, had not been idle. The follow through on her twin throws left her in perfect position to pick up the ball that Justin had thrown, which was right where Eva expected it to be. She grabbed it and hurriedly shoveled it at her writhing opponent.

This hasty half-throw had little force behind it; but with Justin helpless for the moment, force was not required. The third missile tapped the Eagles’ last, best hope squarely on the point of his shoulder, and he was out.

Hatchet blew his whistle and thumbed Justin out. “Game and match, Muskies!” he declared, and the Muskies’ improbable comeback was complete.

Chris took center stage “Was that an epic finish or what?” he asked rhetorically. “After tomorrow night’s dramatic elimination ceremony, the Screaming Eagles will be a player down for the first time. As for the reward…

“Muskies, pack your overnight bags. Tomorrow night, while the Eagles are brutally hanging one of their own out to dry, you’ll be in Toronto catching a Blue Jays game! Remember, though, the communications blackout will remain in effect, so don’t even try to get around it if you want to stay in the contest. We will be watching.”

Chris then left the campers to their own affairs. As the Eagles pondered what lay in store for them, the Muskies hoisted Eva onto their shoulders and carried her off the court.

Lunch was late that day, because the match had been a long one and even the jack-of-all trades Hatchet couldn’t be in two places at once. When their meal was finally ready, the ravenous campers wolfed it down, barely noticing how disgusting it was.

As Gwen and Trent put their trays away, Trent said, “Hey, Gwen, would you like to go hang out on the dock? And later on, after we’ve digested our lunch, maybe we could go for a swim.”

“Sure. Sounds nice,” Gwen replied with a blush so faint that it wouldn’t have been visible on a girl less pale.

Perhaps two hours later, as Gwen and Trent took their ease on the dock after their swim and inspected each other (more closely than they needed to) for leeches, lampreys and other such interlopers, Cody sat a way off, gazing at Gwen and brooding. Part of him realized that it was selfish of him to not simply want Gwen to be happy, but another part countered, I do want her to be happy. But darn it, why can’t she be happy with me?

As Cody continued to brood on what might have been, the subjects of his baleful gaze passed the afternoon blissfully unaware that they were being watched. Gwen and Trent knew, of course, that they were surely on camera, but that was easy to ignore. This was the beauty of the show’s heavy reliance on remotes as opposed to camera crews. While the producers used remote cameras whenever possible mainly for budgetary reasons, the remotes had the happy side effect of encouraging greater spontaneity among the campers. Out of sight meant out of mind, for cameras and for rivals.

As the lazy, warm afternoon wore on, it seemed to Cody that tension was building between the budding couple. Even at his distance, he could feel it crackling like static electricity. His skin crawled under this torment as he surmised what must be happening: Gwen and Trent had had enough of the preliminaries and were ready to take their relationship to the next level. Both were longing for a kiss, yet both were afraid to make the first move—Gwen, because she was timid in what for her were uncharted waters; and Trent, because he feared scaring her off if he moved too fast. Cody, meanwhile, was certain that he would rather tear his eyes from their sockets than see that kiss if it did come to pass; yet he couldn’t look away.

“Hey, Cody, got a minute?”

His gloomy reverie interrupted, Cody looked up toward the now-familiar voice, and saw the now-familiar half-Asian face that went with it.

“Sure, Heather. What’s up?”

The queen bee sat down beside him and said, “I have a business proposition for you.”

“I’m listening.”

“You’ve made it pretty clear that you’re into Gwen. I don’t pretend to understand why, but I’m willing to help you there.”

“Cool. What do you have in mind?”

“I’ll admit that it’s looking like Trent’s aced you out,” Heather began. “But let’s suppose, hypothetically, for the sake of argument, that Guitar Guy were to go home tomorrow.”

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

.

Seventh Night

The next morning, after they had breakfasted, Brett went to school whilst his mother went to earn their daily bread. That evening, after they had dined and Brett had attended to his homework, 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.

A knowing smile spread across Cody’s face. “With nothing to distract her, I could woo Gwen with my manly charms.”

“Exactly,” Heather said, resisting the urge to roll her eyes.

“And then, when I won her heart, we’d totally owe you one for helping to bring us together.” Cody added.

“I like the way you think.”

“You said this was a ‘business proposition’,” Cody observed, “so I’m guessing that there’s a price for your kindly assistance. Did you have something specific in mind?”

“Let’s just say, ‘future considerations’,” the Dark Queen suggested. “Like you said, you’ll know when it’s time to pay the piper. As for what I want now, the ‘price’, if that’s what you want to call it, is built in because I’ll be getting something I want at the same time. And before you ask, I don’t want to go into the details. Let’s just say that I have my own reasons for wanting Trent gone.”

“Then it sounds like we have an agreement. How many votes do we have?”

“Dumb, Dumber, and Dumbest will do as they’re told, so you’re Number Five. That’ll probably be enough, but we need six to be sure.”

“Leave that to me,” the science geek assured his partner in crime. “I think I know where we can get the sixth vote.”

Let’s hear it for jealousy, Heather thought, but she said only, “Great. Let me know how it goes.”

Cody and his unlooked for benefactress made small talk for a time, until the Dark Queen felt the need to check on her vassals. Cody, now in good spirits, rose to his feet and left, so he was spared the sight of that fatal kiss and those that followed.

As Gwen and Trent began to gently, hesitantly make out on the dock, Heather smirked and muttered to herself, “Enjoy it while you can, Gothie.” She then rose to her feet and went to make sure that Lindsay wasn’t doing anything similar with Justin.

Heather hadn’t revealed her reason for targeting Trent because she suspected that Cody wouldn’t like it. She wanted to oust Trent, not to help Cody, but to hurt Gwen. Two ways, in fact. Eliminating Trent would deprive the Goth not only of a boy whom she clearly liked, but also of her shield against Cody’s unwanted attentions.

In truth, Heather didn’t want Cody to hook up with Gwen; for in the context of the game, Heather saw romantic pairings as nothing more than a form of alliance, and any alliance that she wasn’t a part of was a threat to her. She would support Cody’s pursuit of Gwen for the sake of annoying the Goth, but if it started to look like he might actually win her over…well, Heather would cross that bridge if and when she came to it.

After dinner, Cody pulled Noah aside. Ever since the incident during the Awake-a-Thon, Cody had been keeping a close but clandestine eye on Noah, hoping to determine whether the bookworm was indeed crushing on one of their campmates. Cody had seen enough over the last few days to strengthen his suspicions; and if he was right, then Noah would be the likeliest place to get the sixth vote to expel Trent.

Cody led his fellow brain to a secluded spot where they would not be overheard.

“So, dude, have you thought about tomorrow’s vote?”

“Yeah,” Noah answered, “but I’m not sure yet what I’m going to do. We don’t really have any obvious candidates this time. Nobody really cost us the challenge or got everyone mad at them.”

“Except maybe you, you know,” Cody reminded the bookworm. “You finished strong, but some people might remember the first part of the match, when you couldn’t be bothered to play, or even to watch.”

Noah favored the science geek with a faint sneer of irritation. “Is that why you brought me here? To remind me of how the Fu King master put a treasure map on my face?”

“No, it’s because I think we might have a common problem.” Time to put the theory to the test.

The bookworm cocked an eyebrow. “Do tell,” he prompted in a tone of studied boredom.

“I understand that you have the hots for Katie.”

Noah’s eyes widened, pushing his semipermanent sneer off his face. “How…how did you know?” he stammered.

Bingo.

“Sunshine told me,” Cody replied, thereby signaling that he did not wish to reveal his source. “Funny, though, Katie doesn’t really seem like your type, unless you had a domination fantasy watching her and Sadie own Chris on the diving cliff.”

"Sunshine told me", Cody replied

“Tell me something I don’t know,” the other boy retorted. “Everything about her is wrong. Too skinny, too shallow, too little-girly…not especially bright…less fashion sense than I have, which is saying something…But when you put it all together, somehow it works. But then, you’d know all about that.”

“I hear you,” Cody conceded. “Gwen’s smart, but beyond that, I can’t explain why she turns me on. But you’d better believe that she does!”

With a reflective air, Noah ventured, “Marcel Proust said it best: ‘Let us leave the beautiful women to the men who have no imagination.’ But what does it matter? Even if Katie wasn’t under Heather’s thumb, you couldn’t pry her away from Sadie with a crowbar, and I’m not into threesomes.”

“Whyever not?” Cody asked with his goofy grin and an exaggerated tone. “I thought all dudes lived for threesomes.”

Noah recognized the jesting, of course, but chose to play it straight. “It just seems to me that any bird worth making out with in the first place would be worth my undivided attention, that’s all.”

“You do have a point,” Cody admitted.

“As for the domination fantasy,” Noah added with a wry smile, “I suppose we could go with that, since I certainly don’t have a better explanation. Just don’t tell me that I was the only one.” Cody’s only response was another grin.

Enough chitchat, Cody thought. Time to get down to business.

“Anyway,” the science geek said, “about our common problem. I can’t get close to Gwen while Trent’s around. Luckily for me, Heather wants to get rid of him for some reason. I didn’t ask why. ‘Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,’ as they say.”

“You have an alliance with Heather?” Noah asked, hiding his concern as best he might. Although the queen bee hadn’t advertised it, the way she lorded it over Lindsay and the clones made it clear that those three were under her sway. That was bad enough, but if Cody had joined forces with that quartet, then the prospects for any other Eagle to reach the merge were bleak unless the team could dominate the challenges.

“Not really,” the science geek admitted, “although I wouldn’t be averse to the idea. It’s just an ad hoc coalition to get rid of what’s apparently a common problem for us.

“Speaking of which, if you help me get Ax Dude out of the picture, maybe I could help you get closer to Katie.” Cody actually had no idea how he was going to keep this promise, although he had every intention of doing so if he could think of something.

“So,” Noah observed with a calculating air, “If all of the Dragon Queen’s thralls are on board, that would give you at least five votes already.”

Cody nodded. “That’s right. Five now, and you’d be the clincher.”

Noah thought about Cody’s proposal. Despite his irritation at the science geek’s reference to the dodgeball match, Noah couldn’t deny that his seemingly uncaring attitude might indeed have made him a target. Noah suspected that there weren’t a lot of long memories on the Eagles’ roster, though, so this might be just what he needed to weather the storm until it blew over.

“Okay, I’ll do it” the bookworm agreed. “While we’re at it, if you don’t have a formal alliance yet, maybe we should make one. Like you said, we brains have to stick together.”

“Sounds good,” Cody agreed. Lifting his hand in a mock toast, for he had nothing to toast with, he pronounced, “To the Brain Trust! For honor! For glory!” With a grin, he added, “For babes!”

“To the Brain Trust!” Noah echoed, mimicking Cody’s air toast with a wry smile. “To get the gold and get the girl!”

“There’s one other thing,” Cody said with the apologetic air of one who wishes to spare another’s feelings when forced to say something unpleasant. “I don’t know if anyone else noticed it, and I’m satisfied that it wasn’t what it looked like, but I wouldn’t put it past the producers to put it in the finished episode. If they did, I assume it would embarrass you, so I thought it would be better if you heard it from me first.

“I think you should know how I found out that you’re into Katie.”

Cody then told Noah about the Awake-a-Thon Spooning Incident, but nothing would be gained by repeating it here.

Their business concluded, the new allies returned to the camp by different routes. Cody tracked Heather down and told her, without elaboration, that he had secured the sixth vote against Trent.

“A pleasure doing business with you,” Heather said, silently adding, I can’t wait to see the look on Freakenchick’s face when Trent gets his walking papers.

Chris held the elimination ceremony the next night. Heather, Noah and Trent had votes against them. Noah had been the weakest performer in the challenges to that point, but it was Trent who was left without a marshmallow. The axboy’s face made it plain that he hadn’t seen it coming, and Gwen looked like she’d been punched in the gut.

Because Trent had been voted off through no fault of his own, his ex-teammates gathered at the base of the dock to see him off. After the boat departed, most of the Eagles returned to the bonfire to chat over toasted marshmallows, but Gwen remained at the dock for a time, watching the boat recede into the distance. She could vaguely see Trent make a gesture that might have been “thumbs up”, so she returned the gesture without enthusiasm.

When Gwen finally left the dock, she still did not go to the bonfire to join her teammates, instead trudging listlessly to the girls’ cabin. The initial shock of Trent’s elimination had passed, leaving an all-encompassing numbness. She didn’t feel sad, or even disappointed. Just…numb.

Gwen reflected, through this haze, that she had fallen for Trent far harder than she had realized. And why should she have suspected the truth? After all, while liking Trent was perfectly reasonable, and even puppy love wasn’t out of the question, she’d barely known him a week. Pathetic, she told herself, albeit with no real feeling behind that self-chastisement.

The cabins were dark and empty, for the Eagles were still at the bonfire and the Muskies were off enjoying their reward. Gwen entered the girls’ cabin but didn’t bother to turn on the lights, for there was a little moonlight coming through the windows and she knew the way to her bunk. Plopping down on the edge of her lumpy bed, Gwen stared blankly into the darkness for long minutes. Then the emotional dam burst at last, and she wept bitterly.

“What is it with girls and guitar players, anyway?” Brett asked.

His mother shook her head. “I really don’t know. It’s common enough to be a cliché, but…I just don’t know.”

The night was not far advanced, so Brett’s mother paused a few moments to collect her thoughts, and then continued with her tale.

.

Episode #5: The Tale of the Talent Show

original title: Not Quite Famous

The next morning, as the other girls were filing out to get what passed for breakfast, Gwen sat on her lumpy bed and moped. Leshawna noticed, and stayed behind to find out what was troubling the Goth, although she had a fair idea.

“What’s wrong, baby doll?”

Gwen didn’t particularly like being called “baby doll”, but she understood that the amiable and outgoing homegirl meant well, so she let it pass and said only, “I still can’t believe last night’s elimination. Why did it have to be Trent?”

“I hear you,” Leshawna admitted. “He was one of our strongest players, and he totally rocked the dodgeball match. Why would anyone want him gone so early?

“I don’t know,” Gwen whined. “Why would anybody want to get throw off someone so talented and nice and helpful and…nice and smart and…nice and…?”

Leshawna shook her head and said, “I hate to say it, but I think somebody’s putting other things ahead of the team. I don’t mind telling you, I sure as heck wasn’t happy when we found out that this was going to be an elimination game and not a talent contest. I’ve seen some of these shows, but scheming and backstabbing aren’t my thing. That’s why I usually lose interest in those games when it becomes a bad thing to be the best. I deal straight up, and I expect the same from others, may the best homie win. That’s why I like you, girl.

“Point is, Trent got jobbed. Maybe whoever’s behind it will get theirs down the road, but for now all we can do is carry on. I know you liked Trent, but you’ve got to get him out of your head.”

“I know, but I miss him so much,” Gwen lamented. “I know it sounds lame, but I fell for him so hard, I left a crater in the ground.”

“And tears on your pillow,” Leshawna added, for she had noticed the telltale puffiness in Gwen’s eyes. “But you can’t go on moping about it. If you can’t keep your head in the game, you might be the next to go.”

Gwen despondently replied, “Maybe that wouldn’t be—”

“Don’t go there, girl,” Leshawna broke in hastily. “A broken heart’s a bad guide. I’ve seen what it can do to people. This game may not be what we expected, but we’re still here to get rich and famous. Would you really throw all that away just to be with a boy for a few extra weeks? There are other homies in the hood, and you’re tougher than you think.”

The Goth sighed deeply in her despair. After a moment, she confided absently to the homegirl, “I had my first kiss with Trent the other day. I’d never been kissed before I came to this island.”

“Losing your first is always hard,” Leshawna conceded. “You think there’ll never be anyone else. But it’ll pass. Take it from a sister who’s been there.”

Gwen brightened a bit at that. She still looked far from chipper, but she rarely looked chipper in any case. “Thanks, Leshawna,” she said. “I still feel like crap, but I appreciate your trying to help.”

“No sweat, baby doll,” Leshawna replied, “And you can call me ‘Shawnee’, if you want. Most of my friends do, and you look like you could use a friend.”

“Thanks…Shawnee. And you’re right. I’ve never had a lot of friends. A few buds back home, but not really anyone here. Until now.”

Leshawna looked thoughtful. “Let me tell you something straight up. If you just try, I think making friends is something else that you’ll be better at than you think. You managed to be at the top of a love triangle without even trying and…

“A triangle.” The homegirl’s eyes widened as realization dawned. She locked eyes with Gwen and saw that the Goth was having the same epiphany.

“Cody.” Gwen all but spat the name.

“Mm, that’d be bad news,” Leshawna mused. “He doesn’t really seem like the backstabbing type, but jealousy can seriously mess people up.”

A knowing and not particularly pleasant smile then spread across the homegirl’s face, and she added, “But if it was Cody…well, you know what they say. Nothing heals a broken heart like revenge.”

Gwen’s reply was lost as the blast of a ship’s horn reverberated through the camp.

As the well-used yacht made its final approach, the curious campers began to assemble near the base of the dock to find out what was going on. The yacht wasn’t used for supply deliveries; and while some elimination game shows featured “second chance” returns for selected contestants, it seemed far too early for that. After all, only three campers had been eliminated to this point, and only two of those had left under circumstances that allowed any question of a possible return.

The yacht tied up at the dock, and a collection of young men and women filed off the boat. Most of them appeared to be college-aged, although a couple looked like they might be older.

Chris came to the dock and shooed the campers away, but not before revealing that the newcomers would be serving as interns. The show had started with 13, the host explained, but four were already dead, and he was afraid that he soon wouldn’t have enough to handle the workload. The notion of finding ways to make the interns’ work less hazardous appeared to be completely alien to him.

Beth had a nagging suspicion, and confirmed it with a quick head count. Just like the original intern corps, the new arrivals numbered 13.

“Uh, Chris,” the farm girl asked hesitantly, “There are 13 of them. Couldn’t you have picked a different number?”

“Why, Beth, you’re not superstitious, are you?”

“Uh, kind of,” the embarrassed nerd girl admitted.

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Bridgette protested, rising to the defense of her teammate, for she believed in certain paranormal phenomena as has been told of before. “But do those guys know what they’re getting into?”

“They’ll be up to speed soon enough,” Chris replied.

“That’s a ‘no’, then?” the surfer asked warily.

Chris’ only reply was a rhetorical, “I love this show.” Since he didn’t want the campers hanging around the dock at the moment, Bridgette sighed and went to the confessional to unburden her soul.

“I think I understand now why Chris doesn’t want us to socialize with the interns,” Bridgette speculated in the confessional. “At first, I thought that maybe he just didn’t want to have them on camera all the time. I’d be cool with that, since the show isn’t about them. But now…but now…”

Bridgette fell silent for a few moments, trying to find a reasonably diplomatic way to say what she felt had to be said. Finally, though, she gave up and just blurted out her indictment:

“I think the real reason he doesn’t want us getting chummy with the interns is because he doesn’t want it to bother us when they die. It seems pretty clear that he doesn’t care about them at all. He doesn’t even seem to care if we die, as long as we do it with ‘drama’. I heard from Beth and some of the Eagles how he pretty much just blew it off when the sharks got Harold, may he rest in peace. He couldn’t even be bothered to give Harold a proper funeral. I can just imagine how he reacts when a ‘mere intern’ buys it.”

Bridgette gave a bark of bitter laughter, and continued. “I’m kind of surprised, really. Considering how broken up we were over Harold, I’d have thought that Chris would have tried to desensitize us by showing us as much bloodshed as his sick little mind could arrange, since I have a bad feeling that Harold won’t be the last. Maybe Chris could…no, I’d better not give him ideas.”

Bridgette sighed, and wiped away the tears of rage and sorrow that had begun to well in her eyes. She then leaned forward and looked straight into the camera with fresh resolve. “You don’t want us to care what happens to the interns? Well, it’s too late, McLean! I do care! I’ll always care! If the pointless death of one person—and I’m sure they were all pointless— ever fails to move me, then you can just throw me to the sharks, because I’d be no better than you!”

The surfer sighed again, as she closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall. When she spoke again, it was in the disillusioned tone of one who has lost too much innocence before her time. “I don’t care what Ezekiel says, Hell isn’t fire and brimstone. It’s people having to do what Chris McLean tells them to do. And this was such a pretty island.”

Bridgette was something of a flower child and had a wholesome, well-scrubbed look, so the producers had pegged her as a natural to wear one of the white hats and had adjusted her edit in the finished episodes accordingly. It was thus inevitable, perhaps, that her bitter confessional spot would never see the light of day.

The next morning, after breakfast, the campers assembled in the camp’s small amphitheater at Chris’ command. The bleacher seating was divided into two sections to segregate the teams, although actual separation between the sections was minimal. This being the second day after an elimination, everyone assumed that their Tormenter in Chief would announce the next challenge. Well, almost everyone.

“Are we going to see a musical?” Lindsay asked innocently. “I just love musicals! Maybe they’ll show ‘Cats’.”

“I don’t think so, Linds,” Sadie answered. “Today should be a challenge day—”

“—so if anyone has to dress up as cats today, it would probably be us,” Katie finished.

Duncan, among others, was close enough to overhear this exchange. With a leer, he leaned over and opened his mouth as if to say something to Ezekiel.

“Don’t say it, Duncan,” Eva warned with a glare and a pointed finger from her perch on a higher row. “We don’t need to hear about your ‘cat girl’ fantasies. We’re not objects for your entertainment.”

“Well, you sure aren’t,” Duncan replied with a sneer. “Sure, you’ve got a big rack, but that’s the only reason I didn’t think you were a guy.”

“Leave my ‘rack’ out of this, caveboy,” the musclegirl shot back. “Every girl here is out of your league. Even Lardball.”

Duncan smirked and said, “Shows how much you know. I could have pretty much any chick here that I wanted.”

“By force, maybe,” Eva retorted, “if you thought it was worth having me rip your pecker off and shove it down your throat.”

“Guys, please,” Courtney interjected from her seat on Ezekiel’s other side. “We’re finally a player up. We have to work together, as a team, if we want to keep that advantage.”

“He started it,” Duncan and Eva replied petulantly and in unison. And yes, Duncan said “he”, not “she”.

“It doesn’t matter who started it,” the tiny tyrant retorted, “I’m ending it. Unless one of you wants to go home the next time we lose a challenge.”

For all his toughness and swagger, Duncan squirmed under Courtney’s withering glare, although he managed a show of indifference. “Whatever,” he said after a pause. Courtney then turned her baleful gaze to Eva, but the steel maiden had already turned her attention elsewhere.

Courtney then said to Ezekiel, softly so that Duncan would not overhear, “That’s why you should be careful about hanging out with Duncan. You’re still on thin ice with some of the girls, and you might be judged by the company you keep. I’d hate to see that happen to you, because I think you can be better than what Duncan would make you.”

“But I like him,” Ezekiel protested. “He’s neat.”

“I won’t judge you on that, as long as you don’t start picking up his habits,” Courtney replied, “but some of the others might. Just be careful, okay? If you want to be like the “cool” kids, there are better role models here.”

At the other end of the bleachers, Cody had managed to get a seat next to Gwen and promptly tried to chat her up. The Goth would normally have made some effort to be reasonably civil, but on this day she was giving him the silent treatment. Cody seemed not to notice.

Chris presently appeared on the stage. “Attention ladies and gentlemen, bros and bras, dudes and dudettes,” he called. “As I’m sure most of you have guessed, it’s time for another challenge!

“Today’s challenge is a summer camp favorite—a talent show! Each team will have eight hours to choose and, if necessary, rehearse three acts of up to ten minutes or so each. This evening, right after dinner, the ‘chosen ones’ will strut their stuff for the camp, the world and our judge: former DJ, VJ and rap legend, Grandmaster Chef!

“Chef will score each act on a ten-point scale. The highest team total wins. In case of a tie, the highest-scoring act wins. If that’s also a tie…I’ll think of something. Any questions?

“Katie and/or Sadie?”

“Do these all have to be solo acts, or are groups okay?” one of the Bobbsey twins inquired hopefully.

“An act can have as many people as you want. You could even do something with your whole team, if that’s what floats your boat.”

“Cody?”

“What if we need something that we didn’t bring with us?”

“Tell us what it is, and we might be able to get it for you,” Chris assured him. “In any case, you were all supposed to list talents on your profiles, so that gave us a pretty good idea of what you’d be likely to need for this challenge. Check backstage, and you’ll probably find whatever you need.

“Ezekiel?”

“Can one person be in two acts?”

“Yeah, I kind of implied that,” the host replied. “One camper can’t have lead roles in two acts, but if someone has a solo act and also wants to assist in a group act, that’s cool.”

The host surveyed the assembled campers. “Anything else? No? Awesome.” With a genuinely warm smile—a notable rarity for this plastic man—Chris added, “I have to admit, I’ve been looking forward to this. As you know, you came to this island thinking that you were finalists in a national talent search, and some of you showed off on your audition tapes, so I’m expecting tonight’s show to be something special. Should make for great ratings.” With that, the Lord of Wawanakwa left the stage and left the campers to their own affairs.

“All right,” Courtney said to the Muskies, “Let’s see what we’ve got. Who wants to go first?”

Duncan immediately saw a flaw in this plan. “What, you’re going to hold tryouts right here in front of the Birdies?”

“I don’t see why not,” Courtney explained, projecting so the Eagles could easily hear her. “If they want to scout us, there isn’t really any way we could stop them. But what would it get them besides feelings of inadequacy that would leave them totally demoralized? The challenge would be over before it started.”

“Ooh, All-Pro trash talking,” Heather cooed in exaggerated but not entirely feigned admiration. “Is that your talent? You simply must give me your coach’s number before you get voted off tomorrow!”

“I’ll have Al put it on the Loser Boat tomorrow night when it’s your turn to make the Voyage of the Damned,” the Muskies’ de facto leader assured her counterpart.

“As long as you’ve got a backup plan. Anywho, we’ll just go somewhere else for our tryouts, because I wouldn’t want you to be so filled with fear and trembling that you can’t even pick your acts,” said the queen bee to the CIT. “It wouldn’t make for a very interesting challenge, and you can just imagine what Chris would say about that.”

“Walk the walk,” Courtney shot back. “Tonight the Eagles will be dining on crow.” With a flourish, she added, “Chef Hatchet’s secret recipe, banned by the Geneva Conventions.”

With a smirk, Heather led the Eagles away, for there was business to attend to. She regarded Courtney as lacking fashion sense, and Courtney regarded Heather as shallow, but in truth they got along reasonably well; and for all their talk about each other’s imminent elimination, neither girl expected the other to be leaving anytime soon. Unlike the Muskies’ benevolent despot, though, the queen bee did see value in keeping her lineup for the show secret if she could; and since the Muskies apparently intended to remain at the amphitheater, it was the Eagles’ lot to go elsewhere.

Without further ado, Courtney called her teammates one by one to strut their stuff. The Muskies’ talents were many and varied; and because the show’s producers had to choose only contestants with real talent in order to preserve the fiction of a talent search, there were no weak acts.

Except for Duncan. The delinquent was still feeling the effects of nicotine withdrawal, and although the worst of his symptoms were past, his hands still shook noticeably. That was enough to spoil his knife throwing tricks.

Geoff wowed his teammates with death-defying skateboarding tricks. Bridgette amazed them with a contortionist act, during which she stuffed herself into a small box and danced on her hands with her legs jammed beneath her armpits and crossed in front of her throat, among other things. D.J. thrilled them with an acrobatic yet eminently graceful ballet dance.

Everyone expected Eva to do something powerfully athletic, but she surprised her teammates with an interpretive dance, using a ribbon as a prop, emphasizing grace and flexibility. The steel maiden explained that she didn’t want her weight training to make her muscle bound, so she danced to maintain agility and flexibility. The ribbon prop, she said, came from rhythmic gymnastics, which is a niche sport in Canada but big in her East European homeland.

Beth and Izzy both twirled fire batons, with Courtney deciding that Izzy was better. Tyler’s feats of strength astounded his teammates; for although Red Jock had a well-toned body, he didn’t look like he would be exceptionally strong. Some of the strongest people are wiry, though, and Tyler was one of these. That strength would mean life or death, but that is another story for another time.

In the end, Courtney announced that the Muskies’ program would open with Ezekiel’s bullwhip tricks, with Izzy’s fire baton routine as the second act. Courtney herself would close with a violin solo.

“Wait a minute, Princess,” Duncan protested. “Who died and made you Queen? Why don’t you have to try out like everyone else?”

“You want an audition? Fine,” Courtney sniffed. Alejandro, who had been instructed to see to the Muskies’ needs on this day, brought Courtney a violin, and the former CIT began to play the “Dance of the Comedians” from an opera called The Bartered Bride.

AYP Performs "Dance of the Comedians" from The Bartered Bride by Bedrich Smetana

"You want an audition? Fine," Courtney sniffed.

“Okay, okay, you’ve made your point,” Duncan admitted after about ten seconds of this. “Sheesh.” Courtney then looked to the other Muskies, who wordlessly confirmed that they had no objections to her being the closing act.

Izzy noticed Beth sitting dejectedly a little way off and went to see what was troubling the farm girl, although she had a fair idea. It was one thing to be passed over for a different type of act, but it was quite another to be upstaged by someone with a similar act.

“Hey Beth,” the manic redhead said, “Tell you what. We’ve got time to rehearse, so how about we do fire batons together? Twice the fire, twice the fun.”

Beth’s self-pity burned away like fog in the morning sun. “That’d be awesome!”

“Then let’s get to it. No Time Toulouse!”

Meanwhile, Heather had led the Eagles to the dodgeball court to conduct the auditions, because some of their acts—not least Heather’s own—would benefit from a smooth, flat surface.

“Okay, everyone,” said the queen bee, “show me what you’ve got, and I’ll decide who we’re going to use.”

“And why do you get to decide?” Gwen challenged.

“Lindsay, Katie, Sadie and I took a vote, and I won,” Heather replied, as if they were discussing the weather.

“You mean you lorded it over them like you always do,” the Goth translated.

“Don’t argue with success. Besides, who would you suggest? You? Yeah, right.”

“No, I don’t want to be the leader,” Gwen shot back. “You know that. But that’s not the point.”

“Then what is your point, Gwennie dear?” Heather asked, abruptly switching her tone from “catfight” to a patronizing, overdone sweetness. Returning to a normal tone, the queen bee asked, “Cody, you’re okay with me leading this challenge, right?”

“Sure, if Gwen doesn’t want to,” the science geek replied.

“Leshawna?” Heather asked.

“No skin off my booty,” the dusky homegirl replied with a shrug. “Sorry, Gwen, but Heather’s my friend, too.”

Heather looked back to Gwen and said, “That’s six votes. Majority rules.”

“Fine,” Gwen huffed. “No point in me auditioning, then, since you’d obviously never pick me.” With that, the Goth stalked off.

“Where are you going?” Heather called after her. “Nobody said you could go!”

“Anywhere that’s not here,” Gwen replied without turning around.

“Your funeral,” Heather called after the departing Goth. “You probably don’t have a decent talent anyway!”

A team of interns had followed the Eagles to the court, carrying the equipment and accessories that the Eagles’ profiles had suggested that they might need for their talent show acts. As the campers took inventory, Heather turned to the tall, muscular black intern whom Chris had assigned to valet the Eagles for this challenge, just as Alejandro was doing for the Muskies.

“Could we get a couple of walkie-talkies or something like that?” the queen bee asked. “And a pair of binoculars? We need them right away.”

“No sweat,” the African Adonis replied in an incongruously high voice. “Lightning is on the case!”

As “Lightning” hustled off on Heather’s errand, the queen bee turned to Lindsay and said, “Gwen still doesn’t get that I’m the boss around here, and I’d bet good money that she’s up to something. I need you to tail her as soon as that intern gets back.”

“What about my audition?” Lindsay asked. “I want to be in the show, too.”

“You’ll get your chance,” Heather assured the brainless blonde bombshell. “I’ll have Katie and Sadie go first, so they can come get you when it’s your turn.”

“Cool,” Lindsay replied, smiling contentedly.

“Lightning” returned as fast as, well, lightning. “Sha-score!” he announced proudly, as he presented the items that Heather had requested. The queen bee gave Lindsay the binoculars and one handset, and sent her on her way. She then turned to her teammates and said, “Katie, Sadie, I’m guessing that you’ll be doing something together?”

“Of course,” the Bobbsey Twins replied in unison.

“Okay, then, let’s see what you’ve got.”

The Eagles’ talents were less diverse than those of their rivals. Whereas the Muskies had an eclectic mix, nearly all of the Eagles were either dancers or musicians. The only exception, apart from the absent Gwen, was Noah. No one could even pretend to be surprised when the bookworm performed a dramatic reading from The Call of the Wild.

Katie and Sadie played a piano piece, sitting side by side in the arrangement known in the business as “piano four hands”. Cody was also a keyboard man, but he played an electronic keyboard instead of a piano, and he played a show tune instead of a folk dance. Leshawna was a break dancer, Justin was a PG-rated (well, maybe PG-13) pole dancer, and Heather herself was a ballet dancer.

Heather was as good as her word and, after Katie and Sadie had played, she sent them to relieve Lindsay. When the bombshell returned, she reported that Gwen had stopped by the girls’ cabin to pick up a book of some kind, but seemed to still be deciding where to go with it when Lindsay had been recalled.

“Whatever,” Heather replied. “You’re up. Everyone else has had their turn.”

“Cool.” Lindsay replied. After taking a few moments to stretch, she performed an erotic yet reasonably family-friendly pole dance that, unbeknownst to her, was very similar to Justin’s.

“All right, everyone, listen up,” Heather called. “Our first act will be Katie and Sadie on the piano. I’ll have the closing act. Justin and Lindsay didn’t give me much to choose between them, but I think it’s better to go with Lindsay for the middle act since we’re going to have a male judge.”

“I’ve got an idea,” Justin said. “Maybe you won’t have to choose.”

“What, you mean like synchronized pole dancing?” Cody asked. “That’d be cool.”

“Equal opportunity titillation,” Noah quipped.

“Actually, I had something else in mind,” the Incredible Hunk corrected. “And like Noah said, it’ll cover all the bases.”

“I’m listening,” Heather prompted, torn between her desire to keep Lindsay away from Justin and her desire to see Justin dance again.

Justin turned to Lindsay and asked, “Linds, have you ever danced ballroom?”

“Huh uh,” Lindsay admitted. With a sultry look, she added, “But I’d love to learn. Do you know how?”

“It’s my best style,” he assured his lust interest with a wink.

“I’m not so sure about this,” Heather objected hastily. “Lindsay, I don’t think it’s a good idea to tease yourself like that. Besides, the challenge is tonight. I don’t think ballroom dancing is something you could pick up in a few hours.”

“What have we got to lose?” Justin challenged. “If it doesn’t work out, she can still do her pole dance. But I think it can work. Sure, Lindsay doesn’t have geek-level brains, but she’s a good gymnast. That means she knows how to follow instructions, and we’ve already seen that she’s coordinated. I’ll bet she’ll pick it up in no time.”

Heather’s first instinct was to seize on Justin’s “I’ll bet” and challenge him to a formal wager because, assuming that it wasn’t just a ruse to give him an excuse to spend the day making out with Lindsay, she thought his proposal had “crash and burn” written all over it. The queen bee bit her tongue, though, because she feared that the stakes of such a wager might be too high. More to the point, Heather feared that Justin might respond to a wager challenge by demanding unrestricted access to Lindsay if he should win the bet. That could be a serious blow to Heather’s strategy, and she wasn’t willing to risk it. She planned to win by calculating, not by gambling.

“All right, then,” Heather agreed. She then looked pointedly at Lindsay and added, “as long as all you do is dance.”

“As opposed to what?” Justin asked obliviously. Realization dawned and he said, “Oh, that. Don’t worry; dancing is something you do vertically. Mostly.” He winked at Lindsay.

“Justin!” the blonde bombshell cried in mock outrage, although her giggle diminished the effect.

Heather was not amused, and flashed the lustbirds an “I’m watching you” sign. She then went out of earshot to find out if Katie and Sadie had anything to report.

The Eagles began to disperse, for nobody except Justin and Lindsay had any real reason to remain at the court. Having checked in with the clones, Heather caught up to Cody and told him where he could find Gwen. As the science geek hustled off to make his move on the now Trentless Goth, Heather circled around through the woods and approached the dodgeball court from another direction. She sat down on a fallen log, close enough to see the dancers but far enough away that she wasn’t likely to be seen or heard herself, and kept her vassal under surveillance for a time.

.

Confession and Penance

Gwen had wandered for a bit in the general direction of the diving cliff, until she chanced upon a large, flat rock that was a good height to sit on. She sat upon it, opened her book, which was actually a diary, and began to write.

Katie and Sadie had dutifully noted this and, when Heather checked in with them, they assured their liege that Gwen was apparently “up to” nothing more than trying to be alone. Heather remained skeptical, though, and ordered the clones to continue monitoring the Goth.

“But this is boring,” Katie protested.

“It’s totally boring, Sadie chimed in.

“I think I can arrange some entertainment,” Heather assured them. “All I have to do is tell Cody where Gwen is. I’m sure he’ll try to chat her up, maybe even ask her out, and you can watch him get shot down. And if she’s figured out that Cody helped to vote off Trent, you might see some real fireworks.”

Not long after, Cody found Gwen, just as Heather had predicted he would. The Goth noticed his approach but gave no sign, hoping against hope that he wasn’t coming to bother her. But of course, he was.

“Hi, Gwen.”

“Beat it,” the surly Goth snapped, without looking up from her book.

“I just thought you might like to know who we’re putting in the talent show.”

“Let me guess,” the surly Goth sneered. “Heather and her stooges will be doing all the acts.”

“Uh…yeah.” Cody admitted, for in truth he hadn’t really noticed at the time. “But Lindsay might be doing her act with Justin. He’s trying to teach her ballroom dancing.”

Gwen cocked an eyebrow. “That might actually be worth watching,” she admitted, “but I’m surprised that Heather would let Lindsay get anywhere near him.”

“So was Heather, I think,” Cody replied with a snort of amusement as he sat down next to Gwen. “So anyway, what’s your talent? I’m a keyboard man.”

“I draw,” Gwen replied with a sigh, as she resumed drawing or writing or whatever she was doing.

Cody motioned to Gwen’s book and asked, “So, is that a sketchbook? Can I see?” Without waiting for an answer, the science geek craned his neck, trying to get a look, and immediately wished that he hadn’t.

Gwen was drawing a picture of Trent.

Gwen said, “It’s a diary, if you must know, and you’ll keep your nose out of it if you know what’s good for you.”

A thought seemed to strike the Goth, and she said, “Actually, my talent show act would have been quick sketch caricatures.” She turned her diary to a blank page and drew something so quickly that Cody could barely follow the movements of her hand.

“See?” Gwen asked as she revealed a good quality caricature sketch of Cody impaled on a bloody stake.

“Harsh,” was all the science geek could say.

“Says the guy who got my boyfriend voted off,” the Goth retorted bitterly.

“I’m sorry, Gwen, I really am. But how did you know?”

“Sunshine told me,” Gwen replied. This had become an in-joke among the campers. When they wished to conceal a source of information, or if they wished to suggest that things they’d seen or heard themselves had actually come from an informant, the campers would say, “Sunshine told me” in the same way that an angry mother might say to her misbehaving child, “A little bird told me.” The campers didn’t seem to realize, or perhaps they simply didn’t care, that their in-joke had the side effect of painting Izzy’s imaginary friend as an incorrigible gossip.

This had become an in-joke among the campers.

“Trent had six votes against him,” Gwen explained coldly, “so Heather obviously had to be involved; but if it had been her idea, I’d have been the one kicked off. So tell me, what did you offer her? What could you offer her that she would want?”

“It’s not like it was my idea—” Cody began, but he caught himself and said no more. He didn’t want to tell on Heather, not out of any desire to protect her, but because he thought it unchivalrous to badmouth a girl.

Gwen looked at him with narrowed eyes and asked, “What do you mean?”

Cody shook his head. “I’ve already said too much. Okay, I voted against Trent because I was jealous. I didn’t want you to hook up with him. But you have to believe me; I’d never have done it if I’d known that you would take it this hard. I really like you, Gwen. Really, really. I’d never do anything that I thought would hurt you. If there’s anything I can do to make it up to you…anything at all…”

Gwen looked into Cody’s eyes and saw that, indeed, he just might be willing to do anything for her. She was still angry with him, for she missed Trent and held Cody responsible, but her desire to do the science geek real harm melted away like a late frost under the spring sun.

“Maybe there is,” she said reflectively. “Promise me that you’ll never vote me off for any reason—not even to save yourself. And if Trent ever gets to come back into the game, you’ll never vote him off again, either. Not even to save yourself.”

“Wow, Gwen, that’s pretty harsh,” Cody protested, and then seemed to deflate. “But yeah, I probably had it coming. Okay, I promise.” Cody would prove to be as good as his word, but that is another story for another time.

At the amphitheater, Izzy and Beth were on the stage practicing moves for dual baton twirling, and Ezekiel was watching them. Most of the other Muskies were relaxing in the backstage area, having stayed together because they generally had a better esprit de corps than the Eagles. Alejandro was also relaxing backstage, in case any of the Muskies needed anything. Courtney was practicing on her violin, trying to decide which of several pieces would be best to play in the talent show, although in truth she did not intend to make her choice until the last second.

Geoff said, “Bridge, I really thought you should have been one of our acts. Sure, I can do wicked skateboarding tricks, but a lot of people can do those. Those contortionist tricks of your are something you don’t see every day.”

“That’s not all I can do,” Bridgette replied with a self-satisfied smirk. “I can also walk on my hands for like 20 minutes. I can even run on them.”

“No way,” Eva retorted. “That’s like, nearly impossible.”

“Nearly,” Bridgette emphasized.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Eva challenged.

“Want to bet that I can’t?” the surfer girl challenged in turn.

“You’re on,” Eva replied, with the air of one calling a bluff.

“I want some of that action,” D.J. said.

“Me, too,” Duncan added.

“Me, three,” Geoff chimed in.

Alejandro said, “I’m probably not supposed to get involved, but I’d like a piece of that wager, too.”

“Ante up,” Bridgette prompted. As her teammates did so, she thought, like sheep to be shorn.

With the bets in place, Bridgette bent forward until her hands and feet were all flat on the ground, then raised her legs above her and began to strut her inverted stuff. Courtney took no notice of this, so focused was she on her music.

Bridgette showed off some tricks, such as pirouetting on one hand like a topsy-turvy ballerina, and hand running across the backstage a couple of times.

Tyler said, “Maybe she should have made this her audition.”

As Bridgette approached the 15-minute mark, she also demonstrated the odd clumsiness that sometimes plagued her. Perhaps she was beginning to tire, or perhaps some malevolent Power begrudged this purehearted girl success and acclaim, or perhaps it was simply bad luck. Whatever the cause, Bridgette suddenly found her foot tangled in something as she hand-walked along the back wall. Whatever this thing was, it held Bridgette’s foot fast, despite the surfer’s best efforts to free it. Indeed, all her maneuvers to free herself merely bound her foot harder.

Finally, she accepted the risk of being thrown off balance and yanked on her unknown restraint with all her inverted might. That got her loose…sort of.

Bridgette shrieked as she was pulled into the air by her bound leg. A moment later, she heard something heavy hit the floor, and something less heavy a moment after. Reaching up to her foot, she saw that a rope had somehow become wrapped around it. The surfer then grasped the rope above her foot with both hands and, now able to see what she was doing, quickly uncoiled the rope from around her foot.

Bridgette jumped down and saw that the other end of the rope was fastened to a heavy stage light, which was presumably what she had heard crash to the ground. Courtney lay just beyond, motionless except for some twitching. Bridgette could not see Courtney’s head.

“Oh, gods, no!” Bridgette whispered desperately, in an instinctive appeal to uncaring Fate. Her teammates, likewise realizing what had happened after having been distracted by the surfer being hoisted aloft, rushed to Courtney, fearing the worst. A moment later, Beth, Izzy and Ezekiel appeared back stage, having heard Bridgette’s shriek.

Bridgette said nothing as she rushed to her fallen teammate, but her mind was screaming. Blood on my hands!? I can’t! I can’t!

When the Muskies and Alejandro reached Courtney, they could see that her head and neck appeared to be intact, so at least there was hope. Alejandro, who was the only one of the lot with even rudimentary medical training, knelt down and checked Courtney’s wrist for a pulse. He looked up at the Muskies and nodded, flashing a reassuring smile. He then called another intern by radio and asked for equipment to transport a possible broken neck patient.

A groan informed everyone that Courtney had regained consciousness. As she began to stir, Alejandro her in place.

“Easy, senorita,” he said gently. “Just lie where you are. We have to make sure your neck isn’t broken. Until we know for sure, one wrong move could leave you paralyzed or worse. Can you move your feet? Your hands?”

Courtney tried, and said that she could. “What happened?” she asked.

“Malibu accidentally dropped a stage light on you,” Duncan explained. “You nearly bought it.” He then told her about the hand-walking wager, but nothing would be gained by repeating it here.

“It looks like it was just a glancing blow,” Alejandro said, “which is why you’re still with us.”

Tyler and D.J. hoisted the heavy stage light high enough for Courtney to see without moving her head. The onetime CIT shifted her eyes to get a look, and her eyes bugged. No wonder they’re not taking any chances, she thought. Then another thought struck her. “Oh, my gosh, my violin!” she cried. “Where’s my violin?”

Geoff replied, “I’ve got it, Court. Looks like it’s okay.”

“Let me see!”

The urban cowboy held Courtney’s violin in front of her eyes, slowly turning it to display various angles, and then showed her that her bow was intact. Courtney blinked hard several time and said, “Damn! My vision’s a little blurry.”

Alejandro surmised, “Sounds like a concussion, but we already knew that.”

Bridgette knelt down beside her stricken teammate. “Courtney, I’m so sorry. If there’s anything I can do…”

“Actually, there is,” Courtney informed her. “Zeke could use an assistant for his act. Tradition demands a pretty girl, so I want you to work with him.” And if you get lashed a few times during rehearsal, then so much the better, Courtney thought bitterly.

With the drama done for the nonce, Beth and Izzy returned to the stage to continue practicing. A few minutes later, a wiry, redheaded male intern with a high-pitched, nasal voice arrived with the transportation equipment that Alejandro had called for. The two interns carefully lifted Courtney onto a gurney, strapped her down, and gingerly wheeled her off to the infirmary. Once there, an X-ray revealed that Courtney’s skull and vertebrae were intact, and additional tests revealed no significant injuries beyond a mild concussion.

“So I can do the challenge tonight?” Courtney inquired hopefully.

“That depends,” Hatchet replied. “What’s your act?”

“I play the violin.”

“Then you should be fine. If it had been something athletic, you’d have had to sit out. Safety first.”

“I’ll bet that’s not what Chris would have said,” Courtney suggested impishly.

“I’m not Chris. And you’re probably right.”

Hatchet kept Courtney in the infirmary for two hours, checking on her periodically, and then discharged her.

Meanwhile, Gwen had returned to the girls’ cabin, with Cody trailing behind like a puppy trying to follow her home. Heather was lounging nearby, finally convinced that Lindsay and Justin did not intend to do anything but practice their dancing. Katie and Sadie had returned to the cabins ahead of Gwen and Cody, and had just finished giving their report to Heather.

As Gwen approached the cabin door, Cody stepped in front to open the door for her. Gwen did not acknowledge this gesture, but Heather did.

“I’m impressed, Gwennie,” she called. “A new hookup every week. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

Gwen turned to her nemesis and said, in a voice dripping sarcasm caustic enough to kill house plants, “Oh, yeah. We were going at it big time. I need a swim just to cool off.”

“Better hope the lampreys aren’t heat seekers,” Heather shot back.

Once in the cabin, Gwen stowed her diary and changed into her bikini, which was relatively modest by bikini standards. She exited, passed Cody without acknowledging him, and headed to the dock. Cody naturally followed.

When Gwen was safely out of sight, Heather looked into the cabin and verified that no one was present. She then turned to the clones and said, “Girls, we have a diary to find. Gwen still doesn’t know her place.”

Katie and Sadie had no great love for Goths in general or Gwen in particular, so they agreed. Heather would conduct the actual search, with the Bobbsey Twins standing guard on the porch.

With all the girls sharing one cabin, there weren’t all that may places to hide a diary, so Heather found it with little trouble. It had a lock, but diary locks are mostly for show, so Heather had little trouble picking it with a hairpin. She skimmed the contents for a few minutes and said to the absent Gwen, “You are so dead.”

At that moment, Heather’s luck ran out. Having no way to know that it was coming, she cringed at the familiar, ear-splitting squeal announcing that Katie and Sadie were happy about something. “Look, it’s Shawnee!” one of them said.

“Hey, girls, what’s up?” the unsuspecting homegirl greeted in return.

Heather quickly climbed into her bunk and secreted her prize under the pillow. When Leshawna finally came into the cabin, she saw the unremarkable sight of Heather resting in her bed.

“Getting a little snooze before the big show?” Leshawna asked amiably.

“You know it,” Heather replied in the tone of artificial friendship that she now used when dealing with the dusky homegirl. “Big night tonight.”

“Knock ‘em dead,” Leshawna replied. She then left the cabin, having retrieved the item that she had come for.

With Katie and Sadie still standing guard, Heather pulled Gwen’s diary out from under her pillow and began to read.

.

Showtime

After dinner, the campers assembled at the amphitheater. Most of the performers went backstage, but the others took seats in the bleachers. Once everyone was seated, the tuxedo-clad host sauntered onto the stage.

“Welcome to the first annual Total Drama Island talent show!” Chris announced grandly. “We’ve got quite a show for you tonight. Invincibility is at stake, so you know that nobody’s going to be holding back.

“To kick things off, let’s give it up to…Ezekiel, Master of the Bullwhip!”

Bullwhip tricks fall into two major classes: power and precision. Ezekiel showed off a few power moves, but spent most of his routine doing precision tricks, which in truth tend to look more impressive. His routine was an educational one, with a fair amount of explanation regarding the bullwhip’s properties, for that is common when dealing with audiences who know little about whips.

Extreme Marksman

Ezekiel showed off a few power moves, but spent most of his routine doing precision tricks

After Courtney assigned Bridgette to work with Ezekiel, he had rehearsed extensively with his new assistant. This was mainly to get Bridgette acclimated, so she wouldn’t flinch when the whip cracked mere centimeters from her face, as some of the prairie boy’s tricks required.

Ezekiel closed his program by having Bridgette face the audience and kneel. As the surfer girl stuck her arms straight out from her sides and tilted her head back, Ezekiel lit three candles, placing one in each of Bridgette’s hands and the third in her mouth. He then stood behind her and announced his intent to snuff all three candles with a single stroke.

It didn’t work.

Not quite, anyway. Ezekiel did manage to snuff the candles in his teammate’s hands, but he miscalculated and wound up lopping about a centimeter off of the middle candle that Bridgette held in her mouth. Still, most of the spectators considered that mistake easy enough to overlook. Bridgette stood, and the pair enjoyed the applause they had earned.

They scored a seemingly unimpressive seven out of a possible ten. Their act really deserved better, but that is the way of judged competitions. The early acts don’t usually get the scores they deserve because judges must leave room at the top. That disadvantage was also the reason why the Muskies wouldn’t have to go first in every round.

“And now,” Chris declaimed, as Alejandro and “Lightning” wheeled out an upright piano, “First up for the Eagles: two pianists, one piano. Will somebody please tell me why I’m not surprised? Let’s hear it for Katie and Sadie!”

Geoff good-naturedly called out, "Wonder Twin powers, activate!" as the Bobbsey Twins glided gracefully onto the stage, dressed in modest black evening gowns, and took their seats at the keyboard. Sadie would play the lower registers whilst Katie, seated to her right, would play the upper. Katie announced that they would play one of Dvorak’s Slavonic Dances.

As their four sets of fingers pranced over the keys, the clones’ bodies moved in rhythm to their Czech folk dance. This did not appear to be part of the act; they were simply into their music. It was a delightful performance, for there is nothing quite like the byplay of gifted musicians who are also dear friends.

Dvořák Slavonic Dance Op. 46 No. 8 in G Minor - Piano Duet, Four Hands

the clones’ bodies moved in rhythm to their Czech folk dance

After the last note had died, Katie and Sadie stood, joined hands and bowed to their applauding colleagues. Chris then returned to the stage and shooed the clones off, only then announcing that the pianists had also received seven of ten from the apparently hard-to-impress Judge Hatchet.

“So, after the first round, we’re tied up,” the host announced. “And now, for the Eagle’s second act, it’s time for Justin and Lindsay to burn the floor!”

“Promises,” Izzy quipped to Beth.

As the two dancers took the stage, it was immediately clear that their dance would play to their strengths. Justin was stripped to the waist, and Lindsay’s costume was a “barely legal” fringed bikini. Katie and Sadie had converted that barely-there swimwear to a dance costume for their new BFF by affixing as many sequins and other baubles as they could get their hands on.

The dance was loosely based on a tango, which is generally regarded in the business as one of the most erotic ballroom dance types, and most of the modifications that Justin had made seemed designed to amp up the eroticism still more. In short, their dance looked very much like stylized lovemaking, such was the fire in it. Although the more experienced Justin did most of the work, Lindsay had learned enough that she could pull her weight; for just as her mentor had predicted, the normally vacuous bombshell had proved a very quick study indeed.

No sooner had Camp Wawanakwa’s resident Beautiful People finished their dance, than a light breeze came up. This zephyr was most gentle, but it felt oddly chill; and the campers realized that, one and all, they were sweating profusely.

That dance had been hot.

Even the host was not immune. After a few moments, Chris, looking a bit flushed, took the stage. As he finished mopping his forehead with a handkerchief, he announced that Justin and Lindsay’s “mating dance” had scored nine out of ten. It appeared that something could impress Hatchet after all.

“And now,” Chris continued, having fully regained his composure, “for the Killer Muskies’ second act. Let’s hear it for Beth and Izzy, and their dueling fire batons!”

The other Muskies knew more or less what to expect, of course, but most of the Eagles looked skeptical. Izzy had a lithe build, and she had already become known as something of a pyrophile, so it wasn’t hard to picture her twirling a fire baton. But Beth? That dumpy little nerd girl? She hardly seemed the type.

As Khachaturian’s famous “Saber Dance” blared over the speakers, the twin twirlers strutted their stuff to its wild tempo. It quickly became apparent to the Eagles that they had misjudged Beth, just as her own teammates had done that morning. The girl had game.

Aram Khachaturian "Saber Dance"

the twin twirlers strutted their stuff to its wild tempo

Beth and Izzy whirled like dervishes. They twirled so fast that they seemed to be using flaming hoops, rather than batons. They threw their batons and caught them, sometimes their own and sometimes each other’s, in progressively more difficult ways.

The other campers were mesmerized, captivated. Not in the same way as they had been when Justin and Lindsay were dancing, but the effect was no less profound. Only Heather seemed unaffected, for she was lost in dark visions.

This is bad, the Princess of Darkness thought grimly. I can’t spring my little surprise on Weird Goth Girl if the team needs my score. Sticking it to Freakenchick isn’t worth throwing a challenge for.

Then, in the final maneuver, disaster struck.

Prancing toward opposite ends of the stage, Beth and Izzy dropped to their knees. Sliding along the floorboards, the twirlers flung their batons back over their heads with a flourish. Without looking back, they kept their throwing hands aloft, awaiting the arrival of their partner’s batons. They had practiced this move extensively, and had it down to the point that they could almost have done it whilst taking their math finals.

This time, however, Izzy threw her baton on too low an arc. Or perhaps Beth threw hers too high. The batons met in midair and caromed off to the sides.

Izzy’s baton fell to earth and, on a short hop, came to rest at the base of the stage backdrop. The cheaply constructed and unsafely finished backdrop burst into flames.

“Incoming!” Justin cried as Beth’s baton spun toward the Eagles’ seating area. Lindsay screamed—a piercing, bone-chilling shriek—as the Eagles scattered. The bleacher seating was as shoddily constructed as the stage backdrop and ignited no less readily, so the Muskies were obliged to join their rivals in a hasty evacuation. The bleachers burned energetically, casting sparks and embers over the retreating campers.

“Perfect!” Heather muttered under her breath. She could now bring her nefarious scheme to fruition; and for that, her scorched tutu seemed to her a small price to pay.

As a corps of interns (or “redshirts”, as the campers had come to call them) battled the twin blazes, the teams reassembled for headcounts. Just as the Eagles noticed that Lindsay was missing, a soul-rending, wailing scream of untold terror and anguish erupted nearby. Even without everyone else accounted for, there was no mistaking the source. No one could scream like Lindsay.

Heather, with Katie and Sadie in tow, was the first to arrive at the spot where Lindsay lay. The uberbimbo was curled in a fetal position with a compact mirror in her hand, gibbering softly and shaking uncontrollably. Heather didn’t know what the problem was, but she saw an opportunity to make the best of what was clearly a bad situation. Heather had become concerned that Katie and Sadie’s insubordinate attitude might start to rub off on Lindsay, and the queen bee reasoned that giving aid and comfort now might go a long way toward keeping her most faithful ally docile and obedient.

“Lindsay, what’s wrong?” Heather asked with only partially feigned concern.

In response to a familiar voice, what passed for Lindsay’s mind began to emerge from the abyss. She stopped gibbering, and her shaking began to abate. As the blonde bombshell lifted her head and turned to face the source of that voice, her allies could see what had shocked her so badly. Heather and Katie gasped, shrinking from the horror before them. Sadie shrieked and fainted dead away.

“My hair,” Lindsay whimpered, too shocked for tears. “My hair.”

Lindsay had not been as lucky as most at escaping the embers that still popped with alarming frequency from the flaming bleachers. Although she was apparently unhurt, most of the hair on the left side of her head had been burned away, and there was damage to other sections as well. The overall effect was of a badly botched haircut.

Swallowing hard, Heather turned to Katie, who was now the only one of her three vassals still capable of reasoned action.

“Katie,” the queen bee said quietly, “I think you’d better take Lindsay to the cabin.”

“But what about Sadie?” the Thin Twin asked, for although she was also concerned about Lindsay, she did have her priorities.

“She’ll be fine when she comes to. I’ll stay with her. Just do as I say.”

Heather and Katie coaxed Lindsay to her feet. Katie then took the uberbimbo by the hand and led her away. Lindsay quietly followed her teammate’s lead, for she was still in shock at the mutilation of her great golden mane and wasn’t really capable of initiating any action much more complex than putting one foot in front of the other.

Heather turned toward the crowd of curious campmates that had gathered, for Lindsay’s allies were not the only ones whom her scream had attracted.

“What are you looking at?” Heather challenged. “There’s nothing to see here.”

“Well, excuse us for caring,” Leshawna retorted.

“All right, then, Care Girl, don’t just stand there. Help me revive Goodyear,” Heather huffed, with a toss of her head in Sadie’s direction. As it turned out, though, no help was needed, for the butterball had begun to come to her senses on her own.

A hiatus of about two hours followed, as the redshirts hastily built and painted a new stage backdrop. During this time, Heather and Sadie went to check on Lindsay, and found her condition unchanged.

When the campers reassembled, now seated on folding chairs, Chris cheerfully announced that the blazes had been extinguished with “only two interns killed and four hospitalized from the toxic fumes.” Calling a resumption of the talent show, the host announced that Beth and Izzy had received a token score—three out of ten—for their trouble, including penalties for failing to finish their act and for the expensive havoc they had wrought.

“After two rounds, the Eagles have a commanding lead,” the host said, “so the Muskies will have the advantage of performing the last act of the night. But first, it’s time for the Eagles’ last dance. And no, that’s not a figure of speech. So let’s give it up to Heather!”

Heather walked calmly onto the stage. The ruff of her light pink tutu was noticeably singed in places, although she otherwise seemed none the worse for her brush with premature cremation. She carried a chair in one hand and what looked like a book of some kind in the other. Most of the campers took little notice of that tome, assuming that it was just a prop for her dance. One camper, though, was looking very intently at Heather’s book, inspecting every visible detail.

“She wouldn’t!” Gwen muttered softly, for the book looked suspiciously like Gwen’s diary.

Heather set the chair down and turned to face the audience. “There’s been a change of plan,” she announced. “I was going to dance for you, but since the stage is now unsafe to dance on,” she said with a significant glance at the charred floorboards, “I’m going to do a dramatic reading instead.”

Heather wasn’t fooling anyone, for everyone knew by now that the floorboards were structurally sound despite their alarming appearance.

“With the help of my dear teammate Gwendolyn, who thoughtfully supplied the text for this reading, I present to you, ‘Diary of a Quiet Goth’.”

At that moment, the Quiet Goth’s quietude was not that of passivity, but of a smoldering fury the likes of which she had never known in her entire life. “God damn you to Hell,” she whispered. She knew stronger language, but she was saying what she meant.

At first, Heather read Gwen’s actual words, which didn’t name names but expressed mostly negative views of the other campers. When she came to Gwen’s confessions of her feelings for Trent, though, the Princess of Darkness began to embellish, speaking with over the top breathlessness. Heather’s exaggerations made Gwen’s schoolgirl crush sound like nigh-pornographic sexual fantasies. In describing Gwen and Trent’s tender makeout session on the dock two days since, Heather made the destination sound more like third base than first. In short, Heather painted Gwen as a raging slut, and it was perhaps inevitable that the finished episode would omit most of Heather’s “act”.

I will sing to comfort my heart,
For I would not die or go mad
Despite my great torment.
I see no one come back
From the savage land where he who
Gives my heart peace has gone
When I hear him spoken of.

I will be patient and suffer my lot
Until I see him return.
May God allow him to come back!
He has gone on pilgrimage, and
Despite my lineage, I will not
Seek to marry another man.
Only fools suggest that to me.

What saddens me most is that
I went not with him when he left.
He gave me the shirt he wore that night,
That I might hold it in my arms.
At night, when love for him torments me
I take it into my bed and hold it
To my naked body to soothe me.

As Heather left the stage, leaving the spectators in uneasy silence, Chris returned. “O…kay,” the host began. “Heather’s impression of a trashy romance novel has scored four out of ten. And yes, she did get a score because it was a legitimate act. Sketchy, but legit. Chef’s not judging taste here. What he’s judging is how well you perform, and it wasn’t hard to tell which parts Heather was reading and which parts she was making up as she went. She also overacted pretty badly.

“Moving on. The Eagles lead by ten points, but if the Muskies get a perfect score with their last act, they can still pull it out on the tiebreaker. So let’s hear it for Courtney!”

As Courtney walked onto the stage in flowing evening dress, violin and bow in one hand, Heather was feeling pleased with herself. Yes, reading Gwen’s diary to the world had probably gotten some people mad at her, but Gwen wasn’t exactly the most popular person on the island. True, Heather had left the Muskies an opening to possibly win the challenge, but that danger seemed remote. After all, Courtney would need a perfect score to win; and if Hatchet didn’t deem Lindsay and Justin’s dance worthy—Heather felt flushed at the mere memory of that orgiastic display—then it seemed unlikely that he would award a perfect score for anything.

Courtney still had a residual headache from her brush with death that afternoon, and the fumes from the fresh paint on the replacement backdrop didn’t help. She would therefore have preferred to play one of her more lyrical pieces, but that was not to be. She wasn’t going to win this by playing it safe. She needed a perfect score from a harsh judge, and she knew just the way to get it. As for the headache, she’d played through pain before.

“Tonight,” Courtney began, “I’ll be taking a page from the playbook of Niccolo Paganini, who lived in the first part of the 19^th Century and was perhaps the greatest violinist of his time. He was also quite a showman.”

Courtney held her violin out in front of her, as if for inspection. “You see,” she explained, “a violin has four strings. But if you’re good enough, and if you’ve had enough practice, you don’t actually need four strings to play a lot of pieces.” With her free hand, she took a pair of scissors that had been concealed in her sleeve, and cut one of the outer strings.

“If you’re really good—like prodigy-level good—then you might not even need three.” And with that, Courtney cut the other outer string.

“And if you’re just totally frikkin’ phenomenal, you might not even need two.”

Snip.

Courtney cast her scissors aside and announced to her fellow campers, who were already looking suitably impressed, “And now, from The Tale of Tsar Saltan, by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, this is ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’. On one string.”

As Courtney played that frantic little ditty, the other campers’ reactions were mixed. Some were mesmerized for the third time that night at this indescribable display of virtuosity. Beth and Izzy were grinning like idiots, so relieved were they that their baton twirling mishap now seemed unlikely to cost their team the challenge. Duncan and Eva smirked at the increasingly likely prospect of another victory and a commanding lead in the game. Ezekiel stared in wonderment and thought, Is she even mortal? Is this not an angel of the Lord?

Itzhak Perlman plays Flight of the Bumblebee

Courtney played that frantic little ditty

Among the Eagles, the most common reaction was a sinking feeling in the pits of their stomachs. In some cases, this soon gave way to anger—anger at the teammate who had left Courtney an opening. Nor was that anger blunted at the pathetic sight of Heather burying her face in her hands as she contemplated her grievous error in judgment and wallowed in self-pity.

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

.

Eighth Night

The next morning, after they had breakfasted, Brett went to school whilst his mother went to earn their daily bread. That evening, after they had dined and Brett had attended to his homework, 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.

Heather’s skin crawled, for she could feel the sting of impending doom with each rapid-fire note. She’d expected her teammates—enough of them, anyway—to overlook the way she had publicly humiliated Gwen. But costing her team a challenge that they had in the bag? The Eagles had turned on Owen for less. Heather was about to find out how just how loyal her allies really were; and even if they remained true, that still might not be enough.

“Aah!”

Snapping out of her self-pity, Heather lifted her eyes just in time to see Courtney’s bow fly from suddenly nerveless fingers and clatter ominously on the floorboards. A moment later, Courtney dropped to her knees and brought her now-empty bow hand to her temple, wincing in obvious pain. She swayed unsteadily, and looked like she was about to faint.

Several Muskies rushed to the aid of their stricken teammate. “Courtney, are you alright?” Bridgette asked reflexively, although the answer was clear enough.

Still wincing in pain, Courtney did not look up as she declared, “Bridgette, this is all your fault! You and your stupid…aah!”

“Get her to the infirmary,” Hatchet commanded. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

Courtney rose unsteadily to her feet, took a step—and collapsed. Only Eva’s quick reaction stopped her falling and possibly damaging her violin, which the broken virtuosa still gripped tightly.

With that, Courtney accepted defeat. As Beth took custody of her violin, the wounded Muskie draped her arm over Eva’s shoulders, for Courtney could not walk unaided. Ezekiel offered to help her to the infirmary as well, and Courtney accepted with thanks, offering him her other arm.

Chris would not let Eva or Ezekiel leave the amphitheater before the challenge officially ended, so they handed their stricken teammate off to a couple of the surviving redshirts. As they did so, the musclegirl warned the sexist farm boy, “No cracks about ‘weak, helpless girls’. Got it?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Ezekiel replied matter-of-factly. “Boys get hurt, too, eh? And I don’t kick people when they’re down.”

“There’s hope for you, yet,” Eva admitted.

“I know, right?” Courtney gasped out as the interns half-carried her away.

Chris called for attention and told the campers to return to their seats. When they had done so, he announced that Judge Hatchet had awarded Courtney a score of eight out of ten, including bonus points for the extreme difficulty of her act and the mandatory penalty for failing to finish it.

“And so,” the host declared grandiosely, “The winners are…the Screaming Eagles! Tomorrow they’ll receive their reward: a sightseeing cruise around the lake!”

Turning to the Muskies, he added, “Muskies, that was pretty lame, blowing two of your three acts like that. Not only that, but the only one of you to finish was the dude. Seriously, dudettes, how are you going to convince Ezekiel that sexism is wrong with a showing like that?”

Chris then looked pointedly at a certain Eagle and said sternly, “Heather, you need a new word for how disappointed I am. Reading another chick’s diary on national TV was wack enough, but leaving the other team an opening just so you could settle a personal score? I think you know as well as I do that Courtney should have won the challenge for the Muskies, in which case you would probably have been the one walking the Dock of Shame tomorrow.” Chris shook his head, as if in disbelief, then added, “And you’re supposed to be the genre-savvy strategist in this game. At least that’s what you keep telling everyone, and that’s what the network’s promos for this show keep saying. But where the heck was the strategy in the stunt you pulled tonight?”

The campers were stunned. Chris had never given any sign that he cared in the least what they did to each other, as long as it generated drama and didn’t expose the show’s producers to legal liability. Heather simply hung her head. She had no answer to this dressing down, for most of what the host had said merely echoed her own accusing conscience. She had taken her eyes off the prize, and she had nearly paid the price.

When Hatchet examined Courtney, he found what he expected to find, namely that she was suffering from aftereffects of her concussion, aggravated by the pressure of the situation and the paint fumes from the new stage backdrop. Chris’ hulking aide told Courtney to remain in the infirmary overnight for observation, and then went to record a confessional spot.

In the confessional, Chef Hatchet said, “Yeah, Alpha Bitch probably didn’t deserve four points for her ‘act’, but I gave her four so Courtney would need a perfect ten and nothing less. You got a problem with that? Chris wanted drama, so I gave him drama. And for the record, Courtney’s act turned out to be good enough that she would have gotten that ten if she’d been able to finish.”

At breakfast the next morning, Heather sat at the Eagles’ table, explaining to Lindsay and the clones why it had been necessary to humiliate Gwen in front of everyone the night before. Her argument was little more than a rehash, for she had made it clear the day before that she would not tolerate Gwen’s insubordinate attitude. Gwen, meanwhile, had not come to the lodge for breakfast, so Leshawna was obliged to bring her a couple of muffins afterward so that she wouldn’t go hungry. There was some grumbling among the other Eagles, but it appeared that the Diary Incident had largely blown over. Nobody seemed inclined to take direct action against Heather.

At the Muskies’ table meanwhile, the main topic of conversation was that night’s elimination. The decision was a difficult one because there was no shortage of candidates, yet none had done anything to make themselves look especially deserving.

Courtney was still in the infirmary, so Duncan decided to take advantage of that. “I think we should get rid of Little Tin Princess. She’s hurt pretty bad, so she won’t be much use in the challenges,” he said. “Besides, she’s pretty full of herself.”

“Sounds good to me,” Geoff chimed in. “She’s pretty harsh.”

“She’s not hurt that bad,” Ezekiel protested. “I asked Chef, and he says she’s going to be fine.”

“Like he said yesterday that she’d be ‘fine’?” Duncan challenged.

“She got rushed back yesterday,” Ezekiel parried. “We’ve got two days before the next challenge. She only had a concussion.”

“That’s not what I heard,” D.J. said. “I heard that she has a hairline fracture on her skull.”

“Okay, I heard that too,” Ezekiel admitted, “but not from Chef, and he's the one who would know. But even if she does, a hairline isn’t going to hurt anything unless somebody goes clubbing her on the head. I trust that nobody will? And if her concussion was bad enough that she wouldn’t be ready for the next challenge, she probably wouldn’t even know where she was right now.”

“Uh, there’s something else I heard,” Beth offered timidly. Keeping her voice low so as to not be overheard, she told her teammates, “Sunshine told me that it’s going to be a while before we have another athletic-type challenge.”

“Good work, Sunshine,” Izzy pronounced. “I’m glad to see you’re keeping busy.” Izzy fist bumped the air as her teammates gave her funny looks.

“And how would ‘Sunshine’ know that?” Eva asked rhetorically, a moment before realization dawned. “Oh, that intern you’re so tight with. Alejandro?”

“Maybe,” Beth replied coyly.

“Well, Courtney’s still one uptight dudette,” Geoff complained. “She just bosses everybody around. She totally harshes my mellow.”

“Well, I think she’s doing a good job,” Ezekiel countered. “Sure, she cracks the whip a lot, and I pity the guy who marries her, but you have to admit, she knows how to get things done.”

“I don’t have to admit anything,” Duncan scoffed. “The way she took over the team…she’s just on a power trip.”

“The reason she’s our leader is because nobody else wants to be,” Ezekiel insisted.

“She’s not my leader,” Duncan insisted in turn. “We don’t need a leader. We agreed to let her be the captain for building the hot tub. Nobody said anything about anything after that.”

“Maybe not, but it wouldn’t hurt,” Eva chimed in. “She might be kind of soft physically, but she’s smart and she’s tough. If she wants to lead, I’m willing to follow.”

“Compared to you, everyone’s ‘kind of soft’,” Tyler declared.

“I know, right?” Eva replied.

Izzy then played the ace that effectively ended this line of discussion. “Guys, you know what Zeke thinks of girls, and we can just imagine what he thinks of girls being in charge. And yet he was the first one to stick up for Courtney. That should tell you something.”

“Whoa,” Duncan said, his eyes wide. “That actually made sense. Are you back on your meds?”

“No way! Too many side effects,” Izzy replied obliviously.

As several of the Muskies exchanged nervous glances, Tyler said, “Okay, so, we don’t vote off Courtney. But then who do we give the boot?”

Izzy replied, “Well, nothing personal, but Bridgette did get Courtney hurt. We’ve voted nice people off for less.”

As the surfer girl hung her head, Tyler retorted, “Says the girl who burned the stage down and roasted two redshirts.”

“Hey, that was totally not my fault!” Izzy protested indignantly. “If they’d just let it burn, nobody would have gotten hurt! And it would have been a lot more fun to watch, too.”

With the characteristic furrowed brow of uncertainty, Eva said, “But how do we know whether the fire was Izzy’s fault or Beth’s? I couldn’t tell just by looking.”

“That’s obvious,” Izzy explained. “I’ll say it was her, she’ll say it was me, and that way everybody’s happy.”

“So much for making sense,” Duncan quipped. “It was too good to last.”

The debate continued for a time, but the Muskies could not reach a consensus, nor was a similar discussion at lunch any more fruitful. Side discussions would continue throughout the day, right up to the voting deadline.

The yacht docked shortly after lunch, and the Eagles boarded for their sightseeing tour. One of the interns, a tiny black lad with a faintly Ghandiesque look, would serve as the guide, for he had read extensively about the area and knew what features were worth pointing out. Certain campers would have a memorable adventure with this man-child, but that is another story for another time.

Beth, who was feeling guilty about the amphitheater fire, offered to look after Lindsay, who was still only dimly aware of her surroundings, so the broken blonde bombshell remained at the camp. Gwen also chose to stay behind, the better to isolate herself from everyone else after her humiliation the night before, and neither Cody nor Leshawna could dissuade her.

As the last glimmers of twilight faded on the western horizon, the Killer Muskies assembled at the bonfire for the melancholy duty of saying goodbye one of their own. After a few minutes, Chris appeared with his tray of marshmallows, took his customary place and bade everyone be seated.

“Killer Muskies,” the host began, “You all know why you’re here. I figured that the talent show would be something special, and it sure as heck was. Maybe not in the way I expected, but hey, if it’s good for ratings, then I’ve got no damage. It’s not like we can’t replace the interns.”

At this reminder of the casualties at the amphitheater, Bridgette closed her eyes for a moment in tribute and Ezekiel crossed himself. Courtney scowled at Chris’ callousness, Beth sighed in gratitude that Alejandro had escaped unhurt, and most of the other Muskies looked suitably somber. Duncan looked bored, and what passed for Izzy’s mind appeared to be elsewhere.

“I have nine marshmallows,” Chris continued, “And there are ten of you. Whoever doesn’t get a marshmallow must walk the Dock of Shame, board the Boat of Losers, and make the Voyage of the Damned to Loserville. And this time, there are no special circumstances to save that hapless victim.” Turning his shirt pocket inside out, the host continued, “There is no extra marshmallow in my pocket. One of you will be leaving tonight.

“I will first call those of you who had no votes against you. When I call your name, come get your marshmallow and stand behind me.”

After a brief pause for dramatic effect, Chris announced, “Long story short, everyone who didn’t perform an act is safe. D.J. …Duncan…Eva…Geoff…and Tyler.”

As Tyler took his place behind Chris, the host said, “For having the only act that actually went like it was supposed to, Ezekiel is also safe.” The home-schooled farm boy then received his benediction and took his place in the ranks of the blessed.

Four Muskie girls were still seated, and their judge said unto them, “I’m down to three marshmallows, and there are still four of you. Each of you four was involved in your team’s epic fail in yesterday’s challenge, but only three of you had votes against you. “The last of our ‘voteless wonders’ is…Courtney.”

After the onetime CIT, who was now fully recovered and who did not in fact have a skull fracture, had collected her prize, Chris addressed the three girls who still awaited judgment. “I have only two marshmallows left,” he intoned solemnly. “Beth, Bridgette, Izzy, you each have teammates who blame you for costing your team the challenge, so you each racked up a lot of votes.

“Two of you received three votes apiece, and will be safe. For tonight. But one of you has four votes against, and has spent her last day on Total Drama Island. Mere minutes from now, that pathetic reject will walk the Dock of Shame, board the Boat of Losers, and leave Total Drama Island forever as she makes the Voyage of the Damned to Loserville.

“With four votes against, the camper going home tonight is…”

Chris milked the dramatic tension as usual, moving his Finger of Fate back and forth as was his wont. On this night, though, it didn’t matter to the viewing audience; for instead of Chris’ “last marshmallow” routine, the finished episode showed a montage of the Muskies casting their votes:

Duncan said contemptuously, “You cost us the challenge, nerd girl.”

Courtney said bitterly, “You cost us the challenge, surfer klutz, not to mention almost getting me killed.”

Tyler said sternly, “You cost us the challenge, psycho.”

Ezekiel said, with what he thought was tact, “Sorry, Beth, but you and Izzy flubbed your act, and you’re not as pretty as Bridgette or Izzy. I know that sounds mean, but I like you all, so how else am I supposed to choose, eh?”

Geoff said with more tact, “Sorry Izzy, but you and Beth blew your act, and I’m kind of worried about you.”

D.J. said sadly, “Sorry, Bridge, but you got Courtney hurt and spoiled her act.”

Bridgette said, with a dejected shake of her head, “I’m sorry, Beth, but I have a feeling that it’s you or me. Oh, gods, I hate these votes.”

Beth, looking like an injured puppy, said, “I’m sorry, Izzy, but I have a feeling that it’s you or me. And Al, if you happen to see this sometime, I’m being ruthless, just like you said. I guess.”

Izzy chattered, “Of course I’m not mad at Beth, and no way am I going to vote for her. Sure, she missed our last throw, but she’s got real talent for burning stuff, and you just can’t get any more awesome than that. I think I’ll ask her if she wants an alliance if neither of us gets sent home tonight. Maybe we could call ourselves, ‘Comrades in Conflagration’. I think that has a nice ring to it. Did you see those huge flames? And the way all those flaming embers were popping out? It was like a real Fourth of July down in the States. I have to find out what those bleachers were made of. It would be so much fun to burn down a set myself, I can’t even tell you. It’s too bad about Lindsay’s hair, but you have to fry some eggs to make an omelet, I always say. It should have been Heather’s hair, though, because she’s not very nice. She really should learn to treat her posse better. Maybe then they would help her burn stuff. I’m sure she’d love it if she’d just try it. Anyway, I have to vote for Bridgette because she indirectly ruined Courtney’s act by getting her hurt, and Beth’s much too awesome to vote off because she’s so good at burning stuff. Maybe we can burn stuff together at the bonfire, because, I mean, that’s what bonfires are for, right? She might even get to be as good at burning stuff as I am once I teach her a few tricks and….”

The Moving Finger came to rest, and Chris pronounced his sentence of reality show death.

“Bridgette. Beth, Izzy, your marshmallows await. Bridgette, the Dock of Shame awaits.”

The vote montage had omitted the deciding vote, saving it for after the surfer girl dejectedly left the bonfire:

“Nothing personal, but it has to be Bridgette,” Eva said, coldly but without rancor. “We can cover for one klutz, but having two is liable to cost us more challenges, and it doesn’t look like anybody wants to get rid of Tyler this time.”

After the camera crew got its footage of Bridgette walking alone down the Dock of Shame and boarding the Boat of Losers, the other Muskies came to the end of the dock to see her off, for she was well-liked. Chris would not allow her to step off the boat to receive hugs or other physical gestures, so her now-ex teammates had to be content with kind words. As the boat began to pull away from the dock, the Muskies called their goodbyes one last time, and then something most remarkable happened: Ezekiel, who was one of several boys known to have a casual eye on the surfer girl, began to sing,

Pie Jesu (lyrics w English translation)

Ezekiel, who was one of several boys known to have a casual eye on the surfer girl, began to sing

Pie Jesu,

Qui tollis pecatta mundi

Dona eis requiem.

Pie Jesu,

Qui tollis pecatta mundi

Dona eis requiem.

Agnus Dei,

Qui tollis pecatta mundi

Dona eis requiem sempiternam.

His singing tenor was untrained, but pleasant enough. The tune was simple, and sounded like something classical or liturgical. The words—well, the other Muskies didn’t recognize most the words, for Ezekiel sang in a tongue they did not know; but the few words that were familiar suggested that the lyrics might also be liturgical. Given what was known of the devout farm boy, that seemed entirely likely.

Gwen stood on the Eagles’ porch, leaning on the railing, avoiding contact with her teammates. She was listening intently to the faint singing drifting from the direction of the dock, trying without success to identify the song and the singer.

A minute or so after the singing stopped, Gwen heard footsteps behind her, stopping a little to her right, not quite within her peripheral vision.

“Uh, Gwen?” came a hesitant, faintly little-girlish voice.

Gwen did not turn toward the voice, instead continuing to gaze out toward the dock. “Katie,” she acknowledged curtly. The Goth was not especially glad for the other girl’s company.

There was no immediate response, but Gwen could hear Katie’s feet shifting nervously. The Thin Twin seemed to be struggling to find the words she wanted.

“Gwen, I, uh,” Katie began, and finally just blurted it out. “Gwen, I’m…I’m so sorry for what happened last night. Sadie and I helped Heather find your diary, but I swear we had no idea what she was going to do with it.”

“Maybe you should have asked,” Gwen suggested, before finally turning to face her teammate. There was enough light from the cabin window that Gwen could see Katie’s face, and that face told the Goth everything she needed to know.

Katie looked to be almost on the point of tears. It was clear that her complicity in Heather’s foul deed was really eating at her—and so it should, Gwen thought with a flare of anger—and Gwen could see that the Thin Twin desperately wanted—no, needed—forgiveness.

The wronged Goth contemplated Katie’s reputation: sweet and innocent, and certainly no match for a schemer like Heather. It didn’t take long for Gwen to decide that Katie would have forgiveness if she was willing to work for it. Something good might come out of this, after all, Gwen thought.

“Speaking of Sadie,” Katie’s confessor asked, letting the penitent squirm for a moment before pronouncing judgment, “where is your stouter half?”

“Getting a shower. There are some things we don’t do together.”

“Whatever,” Gwen said, wishing that she could unsee the mental image that Katie had unwittingly conjured. “I’m inclined to forgive you, but I’m not ready to forget. I need a show of good faith.”

After pausing briefly for effect, Judge Gwen handed down Katie’s sentence. “From now on, I want you to tell me anything you know about what Heather’s up to. And if she wants you to do something that isn’t just day-to-day-type stuff, you need to find out why. I don’t want any more surprises like last night.”

“Gee, Gwen, I don’t know…”

“If you want my forgiveness,” Gwen declared, her voice mild but her expression stern, “that’s my price. The same goes for Sadie.”

Without a word, but with grim determination on her face, Katie raised her fist to Gwen, with the smallest finger extended. Gwen regarded pinky swears as childish, but she could see that the gesture was meaningful to Katie, so she clasped Katie’s pinky with her own.

Brett smirked and said, “Don’t get mad, get even, eh? Read another chick’s diary on national TV, and one of your followers turns double agent. Epic karma.”

“You could call it that,” his mother replied. “But what can I say? Kids will be kids, and teenaged girls can be awfully catty towards each other.”

“Too bad about Bridgette, though,” Brett said. “She sounds just like someone I know at school.”

“I’d say, ‘poor Bridgette’, too,” his mother admitted with a shake of her head, “but it was probably just as well that she got out when she did. There were some real horrors still ahead of us, not to mention the backstabbing and double dealing that elimination games encourage, and she was such a pure-hearted girl. I hate to think what getting deep into the game could have done to her. I think Bridgette herself realized that. Of course she was disappointed to get sacked so early, but later on she seemed to think that it was for the best. They invited her back for the third season, but she declined. She said that fame and fortune were only worth so much.

“It’s like the old fable of the city mouse and the country mouse. At the end, when the country mouse decided to go back to the country, he said, ‘Better bread in peace than cake in fear.”

The night was still young, so Brett’s mother paused a few moments to collect her thoughts, and then she resumed her tale.

.

Episode #6: The Tale of the Camping Trip

Original title: The Sucky Outdoors

The next morning, Katie, Sadie and Lindsay awoke early, as they were growing accustomed to do. Ever since they had joined Heather’s alliance, the Dragon Queen had been bossing them around like they were her servants rather than her allies, meeting all protests with suggestions that they could be replaced and insinuations that they would be at a serious disadvantage in the game without Heather to think for them.

When Heather awoke, she gave her staff their orders.

“Lindsay, go and warm up the shower for me. And not too hot this time.”

“I can’t,” Lindsay protested with a hint of desperation in her voice, clutching at her scalp and what remained of her hair. “I can’t be seen like this!”

“Yes, yes, I know, it was a terrible tragedy,” Heather countered impatiently, “But everyone’s already seen you like that. The damage is done, even if you don’t remember it.” For in truth, Lindsay had spent the previous day in a fog, allowing Katie, Sadie or Beth to lead her around like a small child. She hadn’t even had enough self-awareness to feed herself or to do what no one could do for her, so her babysitters were obliged to assist her with these functions.

“No!” Lindsay pleaded. “I can’t go through that again!” The desperation in her voice was more pronounced.

“So put a towel around your head, or something,” Heather retorted.

“No! That will just remind everyone!” Lindsay cried desperately.

“Look, Lindsiot,” the Dark Queen snapped impatiently, “You can’t stay in the cabin forever.”

“I can’t go out like this!” Lindsay was on the point of tears, her voice now tinged with outright panic.

Heather started to offer a veiled threat, but caught herself. She could hear the increasingly frantic tone in her vassal’s voice, and was by no means certain that Lindsay would respond to a threat in her current state. If Heather threatened expulsion from the alliance now, she might actually have to go through with it, for it would be disastrous to her plans if her lackeys got the idea that she was all bark and no bite. Furthermore, despite Heather’s insinuations that disobedient allies could be replaced, the truth was that she couldn’t really afford to lose Lindsay. With the possible exception of Beth, who was out of Heather’s reach until the merge (if Beth even made it that far), no one in camp was as blindly obedient as the uberbimbo.

It was time for a change of plan. Time for a carrot instead of a stick.

“Sadie,” Heather instructed in a resigned tone, accepting that her shower would have to wait, “Go and claim the washroom. We’re going to be there a while. Katie, we need to round up all the hair care products and equipment that we’ve got. We have an emergency makeover on our hands.”

Heather turned back to the emotionally crippled bombshell. “It’s OK, Lindsay,” the queen bee said, hiding her irritation as best she might, “We’re going to get your hair fixed. But you still have to go to the washroom. We can’t do it here.”

It’s not fair, Heather thought. They’re supposed to wait on me, not the other way around.

Soon enough, the four girls descended on the washroom and quickly converted the common area into a makeshift salon. They had brought a couple of folding chairs, one for Lindsay and one for Heather; for the queen bee’s plan was to supervise, offer advice, and have Katie and Sadie do most of the actual work.

The Bobbsey Twins combed out what remained of Lindsay’s hair, the better to see what they had to work with, and they and Heather cringed anew at the damage. Sadie stepped back, bent over, and began to hyperventilate. She looked like she was about to heave, but she managed to control her gorge and presently returned to her task.

Lindsay had been granted one small mercy that fateful night, for the baby blue bandana she always wore had stopped one of the embers that struck her. The bandana had been ruined, but its sacrifice had not been in vain, for that ember would have burned Lindsay’s hair to the roots. If that had happened, then the only recourse would have been to shave Lindsay’s head and put her in a wig.

Because the left side of Lindsay’s hair was the most heavily damaged, Heather immediately suggested an asymmetrical bob. As Lindsay cringed, Katie replied, “I don’t think she’d like that.”

“No, she’s hated on that look before,” Sadie confirmed.

“I’ve got an idea,” Katie announced after a moment. “Linds, do you trust us?”

Lindsay looked skeptical. She liked the clones very much, but they were hardly fashion plates. “I guess so,” she said after moment of reflection. “Just don’t put me in pigtails. No offense, but they’re totally not fashionable.”

“Swearsies,” Katie replied. She and Sadie then conferred in whispers and signs, and reached an agreement.

“What’s your idea?” Heather asked.

“You’ll find out,” the clones replied in unison.

“I want to know now,” Heather retorted. “I’m captain of this alliance, so I have a right to be informed—especially if you’re going to be using my hair care stuff.”

“If you have an idea, let’s hear it,” Sadie shot back. “But this doesn’t have anything to do with the game. Lindsay’s willing to be surprised, so what’s your damage?”

Katie added, “Yeah, you make it sound like we can’t blow our own noses unless we clear it with you first.”

“Come on, peeps, can’t we just get my hair fixed?” Lindsay pleaded.

“Fine,” Heather huffed. She flashed an “I’m watching you” sign at the clones, but said no more. With that argument settled, at least for the nonce, the toothpick and the butterball went to work.

As the Siamese campers worked, Heather had to admit to herself that they seemed to know what they were doing. She continued to watch, having nothing else to do at the moment, and idly wondered why the clones didn’t used their considerable tonsorial skill for their own benefit. After all, Heather thought, any number of hairstyles would be more flattering to them—especially to Sadie—than their little-girl pigtails.

In the fullness of time, Katie and Sadie finished. Stepping away from their “patient”, they looked at Heather, and Katie challenged, “Do we know our stuff or what?”

“Don’t get too full of yourselves,” Heather admonished. “There’s a major problem.” Lindsay cringed.

“What do you mean?” Sadie asked. “It looks fine to me.”

“But it’s not a ‘blonde’ cut,” the dragon girl explained.

Katie handed Lindsay a compact and asked, “What do you think, Linds?”

Lindsay took one look, and her face lit up like the sun. Handing the compact back to Katie, she gave a sharp, approving nod of her head and declared, “Brunette. Definitely.”

Heather stood and said, “You heard her. Let’s see what we’ve got in the way of coloring.”

When the clones had a result that passed inspection by both of the fashionistae, Heather had an idea. “Tell you what, girls,” she said, “I think we should all do makeovers. It would be a show of support. One for all, and all for one. Or whatever.”

“That would be so neat!” Katie cried.

“Aww, you’d do that for me?” Lindsay asked, clearly touched.

“Of course,” Sadie assured her. “Anything for our new BFF.”

Heather steeled herself against the Bobbsey Twins’ inevitable squeal of delight. But when Lindsay joined in, introducing a harmonic that Heather wasn’t ready for, the queen bee couldn’t suppress a cry of pain.

“Your happiness squeal needs work,” Katie said, oblivious to the true nature of her overlord’s reaction.

Sadie added, “I think the problem is that you’re too uptight. If you’d just lighten up a little, that’d go a long way.”

“We’ll worry about that later,” Heather demurred, discreetly crossing her fingers behind her back. “Now, let’s get to those makeovers!”

Heather, of course, had no intention of developing a “happiness squeal”, for the last thing she wanted was to become more like Lindsay or the clones. Indeed, she had little interest in bonding with her vassals at all. The real reason she had suggested the “solidarity” makeovers was because she suspected that Lindsay’s new look would turn heads, and Heather wasn’t the type to let someone else have the spotlight alone if she could grab part of it for herself.

Heather stepped out of the washroom and flagged down a passing intern. She asked this redshirt, a heavyset brunette who wore a bow in her hair and spoke with a thick German accent, to ask Chris to come to the washroom. When the host arrived in response to this summons, Heather explained her plan and asked him if he would announce her and her staff when they came to the main lodge for lunch. Chris was happy to oblige, for he likewise saw the potential to stage an interesting scene on a day that had nothing game-related on the schedule.

At the appointed time, the other campers filed into the main lodge for the ritual ordeal that was officially called “lunch”. As they sat at their tables, warily eyeing what Cody described as a Klingon meal (“half of the dishes are served live”), Chris came into the lodge and called for attention.

“Campers,” the host announced, “we have something a little different today. Dinner and a show!”

Noah deadpanned, “Yeah, we know. The grub fights in our grub. Betting is still open for the main event: ‘Wild Will’ Worm vs. The Mutant Maggot.”

“Moving…on,” Chris continued, as he shot the bookworm a trenchant look. “You all know about Lindsay’s accident during the last challenge. The reason none of you were able to use the washroom this morning is because she was getting a makeover from Katie, Sadie and Heather. Then they all decided to get makeovers, too. For team spirit. Or whatever. Anyway, that locked out the washroom for the rest of the morning.”

This revelation prompted a good deal of grumbling amongst the campers, mostly along the lines of suggestions for where the Eagles’ power alliance could put their makeovers.

“Dudes, dudes,” Chris protested, for the narcissistic host knew well that looking one’s best can be a lot of work. “They’ve been working on it all morning long. Aren’t you the least bit interested in the result?”

“Whatever,” Leshawna said for everyone. “But this had better be good.”

“See for yourself,” Chris declaimed, “because here they come!”

With that, the four girls filed into the lodge. First came the warm-up act: Katie and Sadie in matching big hair and sundresses, with subtle makeup courtesy of Lindsay, looking five years older than they had the day before. Noah’s eyes widened a bit at that.

With an appreciative smile, Noah said to Cody, “The kiddies have grown up.”

Cody smiled in turn and said to his ally, “Told you they’d make for a good threesome.”

“You and your threesome fantasies,” the bookworm scoffed. “If they were that kind of girl, what would they need me for? I can’t say that I would pass up a chance to make out with both of them, but…one at a time.”

“Okay, you win,” Cody conceded in a tone of mock surrender. “One girl at a time. If any one lady can handle the full force of my manly charms.” Noah lifted his eyes to the heavens in mock supplication, but said no more.

Lindsay entered next. As she did so, an appreciative wolf whistle sounded somewhere to her left. “Thanks, Skrymir,” the bombshell said, without even looking toward the source.

Tyler hung his head in embarrassment. He had no intention of contesting Justin’s claim, and Lindsay wasn’t even the girl he was crushing on, but that whistle had just slipped out. Red Jock was all the more embarrassed because he hadn’t expected Lindsay to guess that he was the culprit, but there wasn’t a boy in Canada whom Lindsay couldn’t identify by his wolf whistle. It was a gift.

Heather entered last. She had a more formal look than the others, with her hair in a high bun, accented with a tiara. She wore a slinky, sleeveless black dress with matching opera gloves and spike heels, and looked every centimeter a queen. For all that, her plan to steal or at least share the spotlight came to naught, because all eyes were on Lindsay.

Thanks to her bandana’s “sacrifice”, the accident had left Lindsay with enough undamaged hair for a short, feathered cut. That hair was now dyed a rich nut brown, a little darker than Courtney’s, with a touch of auburn in the highlights. The shorter style seemed merely to invite more attention to the bombshell’s other features, not that those features had ever lacked for attention. She still wore a halter top and short skirt as before, but they were more darkly and richly colored than what she had worn previously. All in all, she now seemed more earth goddess than sun goddess.

When Justin finally found his voice, he said to no one in particular, “And I thought she was gorgeous before.” Indeed, while Lindsay was still drop-dead gorgeous, the character of her barely-mortal beauty had changed. Formerly spectacular, it was now magnificent, and in truth a better match for Justin’s legendary gorgeousity.

Having failed in her plan to upstage Lindsay, and having chosen a makeover look that was impractical for camp life, Heather went back to her usual look the next day. Katie and Sadie, on the other hand, having chosen makeovers better suited to a summer camp and wishing to show ongoing solidarity with Lindsay, kept their new looks for the rest of the summer.

As the lunch hour wound down, and the campers began to filter out of the lodge, Gwen spotted something on the floor. It appeared to be a note of some kind. Succumbing to curiosity, she knelt down and picked it up. Quickly inspecting the paper, she saw that it was an unsigned love note, addressed to “The Diamond Maid” and quoting a Lord Byron poem:

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that's best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes:

Thus mellowed to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,

Had half impaired the nameless grace

Which waves in every raven tress,

Or softly lightens o'er her face;

Where thoughts serenely sweet express

How pure, how dear their dwelling place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

The smiles that win, the tints that glow,

But tell of days in goodness spent,

A mind at peace with all below,

A heart whose love is innocent!

Gwen smirked at this puppy love tactic, and idly wondered who might have written the note and whom it might be meant for, and whether it was the giver or the recipient who had dropped it. Most of the girls in camp had black hair, assuming that the “raven tress” reference was even meant literally, and she didn’t know what to make of the “diamond maid” salutation. As for who the smitten boy might be, Noah was her first guess, for it stood to reason that a courting bookworm might quote famous love poems; but the Goth had no idea whom Noah might be crushing on if, indeed, he had written the note. The penmanship offered no clues, for there was no handwritten correspondence to speak of amongst the campers, so they had no way to recognize each others’ handwriting.

Gwen decided to hold on to the note in case someone came looking for it, but she otherwise gave it no further thought. She had better things to do than to expose a crush, and the Diary Incident had left her more sensitive about such things in any case.

The next morning, after the campers had choked down their breakfast, Chris called them to the bonfire site for their challenge briefing.

“Today’s challenge,” he said, as Alejandro gave each team a map and a compass, “will test your wilderness survival skills. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if you don’t all make it back alive.” The host paused a moment to let this sink in, and basked in the campers’ worried looks. “But if somebody does buy it in this challenge, like a couple of our interns did setting up for it, then we get to skip the elimination ceremony and I get the night off. So it’s win-win.

“You’ll hike to your campsites, assuming you can find them. When you get there, you’ll find everything you need. Set up your tent, spend one night in the woods, take your tent down in the morning, and return. Touch the totem pole to make it official. First team back wins.”

“Totem pole?” Geoff asked.

“Yeah, the interns are setting it up now,” Chris explained. “The producers decided that the camp needed a little more local flavor for the establishing shots.”

Noah, who was of First Nations descent on his mother’s side, asked, “Aren’t totem poles a Pacific Coast thing? That doesn’t sound very local.”

“Meh. Who’s going to know the difference?” Chris asked rhetorically.

“I did. Or hadn’t you noticed?”

Heather, who was still a bit resentful over how Noah had repeatedly gotten the best of her in the dodgeball match, said archly, “I think he means, ‘How many normal people are going to know the difference?’”

In his usual tone of studied boredom, the bookworm replied, “I never claimed to be normal. Why should I settle for less?”

“Whatever,” Heather sniffed, for she was unwilling to admit in front of everyone that she thought the bookworm had a point. There was a time when Heather had aspired to be normal; but now she, like Noah, considered normalcy a step down. What does it take to get the last word with this nerdling? Heather wondered, not for the first time.

“You two can argue on the trail,” Chris suggested, effectively ending discussion. “One more thing. Watch out for bears. That’s how we lost the interns.”

None of the campers needed to be reminded of the danger that bears posed, for they still remembered the hike to the diving cliff, during which an intern had been fatally mauled more or less before their eyes.

There was safety in numbers, and on the trip out it mattered not who reached their destination first, so the two teams walked together for a time. Eventually, though, the trail forked and the teams’ maps led them down different paths.

Nobody noticed that two of their comrades were missing.

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

.

Ninth Night

The next morning, after they had breakfasted, Brett went to school whilst his mother went to earn their daily bread. That evening, after they had dined and Brett had attended to his homework, 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.

As the Muskies hiked along, Courtney led the way both because she felt that it was her place and because she was the one who had the map. Izzy served as the compass reader at first, but she presently grew bored with that task and decided to look for someone else to walk with Courtney. The onetime CIT agreed readily enough, having come to prefer a “copilot” who would tell her what she needed to know in fewer words.

Izzy disappeared into the Muskies’ peloton and located Ezekiel, who was chatting with Beth. These two both hailed from rural backgrounds, so they had a good deal in common. Beth understood gender roles in farm country, so she was more forgiving of Ezekiel’s innocent sexism than most of the girls were. She understood that the farm boy’s heart was in the right place. Beth would naturally have drawn the line at open disrespect, but Ezekiel never ventured there.

“Hi, guys!” Izzy cried as she bounded up to them. “Hey, Zeke, would you go up and be Courtney’s compass reader for a while?” Even as the farm boy drew breath to respond, Izzy theatrically batted puppy dog eyes at him and pleaded, “Do it for me? Pretty please?”

“Sure,” Ezekiel replied simply, and the demented redhead handed him the compass.

That went well, Izzy thought as the prairie boy trotted to the front of the pack. Izzy had chosen Ezekiel for two reasons: first, she fully supported Courtney’s “re-education” project; and second, she had her own reasons for wanting to talk to Beth.

When Ezekiel joined Courtney, the onetime CIT said, “Great. I was hoping I’d get a chance to talk to you.” As her protégé cocked his head quizzically, Courtney explained, “I heard about how you stood up for me the other day. Thanks. I owe you one.”

“No worries,” Ezekiel replied. “You took my side when most of the other girls wanted my head on a platter.”

“I didn’t exactly ‘take your side’, but I know what you mean. But then you helped me out during the Awake-a-thon.”

“And that was when you started teaching me how to get by in ‘polite society’,” the farm boy noted. A moment later, he snorted in amusement.

“What’s so funny?”

“Oh, nothing really. I just realized that we’ve been spending most of this game doing favors for each other, eh?”

“That’s how people get to be friends,” Courtney replied. With a significant glance, she added, “That’s how alliances are born.”

Meanwhile, the Eagles hiked easily down their ‘trail’, which looked much like the surrounding wilderness except for occasional markers, hence the need for map and compass. Heather had the map and had drafted Justin to be her compass reader, the better to keep and eye on him. Naturally, therefore, Lindsay also walked at the head of the pack with her liege and her crush. That suited Heather well enough, since Justin and Lindsay did not seem inclined to chatter. They did try once to hold hands, but that ended when Heather reminded Lindsay that romantic entanglements were not permitted. The lustbirds therefore contented themselves with merely being near each other and stealing frequent glances at each other.

Heather also found herself stealing glances at the Incredible Hunk—more than were really necessary to insure that he wasn’t misbehaving with Lindsay—and found herself wondering whether she shouldn’t have chosen a compass reader who would be less distracting to her. She considered her options, but didn’t take long to decide that it was best to keep The Embodiment of Manly Beauty with her, distraction be damned.

Maybe it’s just as well that he’s into Lindsiot, Heather thought. That attraction did, after all, make Justin a potential ally. No less importantly, it meant that he wouldn’t be hitting on Heather herself; for despite Justin’s general shallowness, Heather was by no means certain that she would have been able to resist his attentions any better than Lindsay was doing. Heather had no intention of exempting herself from her “no romance” rule, and Justin’s presence made it hard enough for her to keep her head in the game as it was.

Leshawna, meanwhile, had found Gwen. Naturally, finding Gwen also meant finding Cody, who was oblivious to every sign Gwen gave that she would rather be alone. Noah was also with them, although he was saying little, preferring to lend moral support to his ally by mere presence. When the homegirl joined them, the four conversed for a time, but Leshawna eventually excused herself and Gwen on the grounds that they needed to talk about “girl stuff”. Cody and Noah let them go, and shortly thereafter fell to talking about “guy stuff”.

When they were alone, Leshawna said to Gwen, “I was wrong. I’m sorry.”

“Wrong about what?”

“About Heather. We knew that she was a vain little queenie, but I thought she was at least a decent person. Then we had the talent show. Now I know better. Sadder but wiser.”

“Yeah,” Gwen conceded without enthusiasm. “Sadder but wiser. At least now we have some idea what she’s capable of, not that that’s going to help me.”

“What do you mean? I know Heather made you sound like a streetwalker or something, but you don’t think people are actually going to believe that stuff, do you?”

“No, it’s not that,” the Goth admitted. “It’s just that…you remember all those nasty things Heather said that I said about everybody? Well, I really did write that.”

Leshawna was not deterred. “I’m willing to believe that you wrote that stuff before you started to come out of your shell. And if you didn’t, then don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. Anyway, if Queenie makes me choose between you and her, then I choose you.”

“Thanks, Shawnee. That means a lot. And yeah, most of that was before. The stuff I said about you, anyway.”

“But now you know better, right?” the homegirl prompted.

“Now I now a lot better.” Gwen assured her with feeling. After a few moments of reflection, she added, “There’s something else I might have been wrong about.”

“What’s that?”

“About Trent getting blindsided. After I’d had time to think about it, I figured that it was Cody’s idea, and that he somehow got Heather to help him, but now I’m not so sure. Now I’m thinking it might have been the other way around. Cody did apologize like he meant it, and it sounded for a minute like he was going to blame Heather. He didn’t though. Wound up taking the blame himself.”

“Maybe he just didn’t want to badmouth a girl,” Leshawna suggested thoughtfully. “He does seem to be into the whole chivalry thing.”

“Yeah, maybe. But what I don’t get is why Heather didn’t take me out instead, if it was her idea. I don’t know why she has it in for me, but it’s pretty obvious that she does.”

“If she thought she needed Cody’s help to boot Trent, then maybe she didn’t have the votes to take you out. From the way Cody acts around you, Heather probably could have laid him and she still wouldn’t have been able to get him to vote you off. But give a guy like that a chance to get a rival out of the way…. Or, she might have decided that torturing you is more fun. She wouldn’t be the only one on this island with that attitude.”

“You mean Chris,” Gwen surmised. “I see your point. But why does Heather hate me in the first place? What did I ever do to her?”

“You stood up to her. More than once. Maybe Queenie just can’t handle people thinking for themselves. She sure acts like she’s used to getting her way.”

The Eagles found their campsite without incident, or so they thought. As they were taking inventory, though, Heather had the feeling that something was amiss. Much of the hike had been nice and peaceful; and now, even with the general buzz of conversation concerning mostly challenge-related topics, the campsite seemed somehow quieter than it ought to be. Especially in the upper registers. Lindsay notwithstanding, there seemed a distinct lack of high-pitched female voices. A suspicion struck the queen bee, and she confirmed it with a quick head count.

“Hey guys,” Heather called out to her team. “Has anybody seen Tweedledum and Tweedledumber?”

Before the teams separated, Katie had spotted some wild blueberry bushes, which grew plentifully in this region. She and Sadie shared a particular love of blueberries, so Katie naturally alerted her BFF to this find. Yielding to whim, the Bobbsey Twins descended on this bounty like big-haired locusts, oblivious to the fact that everyone else was continuing on without them. If anyone had seen this, then events might have played out differently; but it happened that the clones had been straggling at the rear, so nobody noticed their detour.

After a half an hour or more, all the ripe berries had made the journey from branch to belly. Satisfied with their repast, Katie and Sadie returned to the trail and suddenly realized that they were alone.

At first, they were not dismayed, for they thought it would be a simple matter to follow the trail and catch up to their team. When they came to the fork, though, they were at a loss, for there was nothing to suggest which path they should take.

“I know,” Katie said at last. “Courtney’s such a control freak that she’d want to keep all her team together. So…her team’s path would be the one that looks more trampled. So to find our team, we take the trail that doesn’t look as much like a trail.”

Sadie replied, “I could poke all kinds of holes in that argument, but I don’t have a better way to decide. Might as well. We’ve got a 50-50 chance.”

However shaky her reasoning, Katie had indeed chosen the path that would have led them to the Eagles’ camp; but Fate can go from kind to cruel on a whim. So it was that, although the clones had chosen the correct path (if “path” is the right word for such a lightly-traveled route), it wasn’t overlong before they began to veer off course and missed a trail marker.

In the fullness of time, the Muskies found their campsite without incident. Most of the team turned their attention to the tent, but Tyler began taking inventory at Courtney’s command.

“Guys, we’ve got a problem,” Tyler announced. When he had everyone’s attention, the jock of all trades explained, “We don’t have any food.”

“Crap!” Courtney cried. “I guess that means grubs and berries for dinner.”

Ezekiel said, “I could set some snares. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

With his characteristic leer, Duncan quipped, “Ooh, yeah. Get lucky.” Eva glared at him, but Courtney simply ignored him.

“Sounds good,” Courtney said to Ezekiel. “Do it. We don’t need everyone to set up the tent.” With a glare at a certain party boy and a razor-sharp edge to her voice, she added, “Even with Geoff not doing anything but hitting on girls.”

“Chill, dudette!” the indignant party king protested. “I am too helping. I’m helping Izzy.”

Courtney was not impressed. “Have you been helping her with anything that she actually needs help with? Have you been helping her with anything that she could actually use help with?”

“Well, uh…”

“That’s what I thought.”

“Harsh-ness,” Geoff complained.

Courtney replied archly, “Yes, it is. What’s your point?”

Izzy replied before Geoff could. “Hey, I don’t mind Tall, Blond and Handsome hitting on me. He knows when to back off.”

“That’s not the point, Izzy,” Courtney countered. “The point is that we have work to do, and everyone should be doing their part. There’ll be plenty of time for flirting later, if that’s what you want to do.”

Duncan said, “Sounds like someone needs a good make out session herself.” Courtney did not dignify his assessment with a response.

After the tent had been pitched to Courtney’s satisfaction, the Muskies dispersed to forage for food and firewood. As the light began to fail, everyone reassembled at the campsite. Ezekiel’s snares had come up empty, save for one ground squirrel. Eva had chanced upon a fair-sized rattlesnake, which she subdued by the delicate and ladylike method of staving in its head with a club. Courtney and Beth brought back a decent haul of wild blueberries, that same fruit which had been the downfall of the “Wonder Twins”.

The grand prize, though, was the fully-grown porcupine that Izzy caught. The “quill pig” is the only large mammal in North America that a man, a woman or an Izzy can both overtake on foot and overpower with a club, so the demented redhead had bludgeoned her prey to death, shrieking battle cries the while. Tyler had also found a porcupine and had likewise tried to subdue it with a club. He didn’t get his prey, but he did get so many quills in him that he resembled a porcupine himself.

D.J. came into the clearing, holding a smallish rabbit. “Hey everybody, look what I found!” he said, holding out his cupped hands to display his prize. The rabbit could easily have escaped, but seemed content where it was.

“Cool,” Duncan pronounced. “I’ve never had rabbit stew, but I’m game.”

“He’s not—” D.J. began, but before he could finish his protest, Ezekiel casually plucked the beast from the gentle giant’s hands, wrung its neck, and pulled off its pelt like a glove, all whilst showing no more emotion than he would when turning off a light.

The farm boy then asked, “Duncan, can I borrow your knife?” After the delinquent obligingly tossed it to him, Ezekiel opened the switchblade, gave it a cursory inspection, and said, “It’s kind of small, but I guess it’ll do.”

“That’s what I said,” Izzy quipped to Beth, drawing a blush and a giggle from the nerd girl.

Courtney overheard Izzy’s remark, and couldn’t suppress a soft titter of her own. The straitlaced former CIT was no fan of off-color humor, but the thought that Duncan’s lechery and swagger might actually be a way to compensate for an inadequacy was a notion that Courtney found both amusing and appealing.

Ezekiel, meanwhile, quickly gutted the rabbit, spitted it on a stick, and set it to grill over the fire, using the pelt like an oven mitt. He was as oblivious as everyone else to the horrified look on D.J.’s face.

“That was appalling!” D.J. later declared in the confessional. With a sniffle, he added, “That bunny was going to be my pet. I was going to call him Bunny.” After wallowing in sorrow for a bit, the gentle giant looked into the Confession Cam and pronounced with grim determination, “Ezekiel is going down!”

Never another pet for me!
Let your place all vacant be;
Better blankness day by day
Than companion torn away.
Better bid his memory fade,
Better blot each mark he made,
Selfishly escape distress
By contrived forgetfulness,
Than preserve his prints to make
Every morn and eve an ache.

Strange it is this speechless thing,
Subject to our mastering,
Subject for his life and food
To our gift, and time, and mood;
Timid pensioner of us Powers,
His existence ruled by ours,
Should—by crossing at a breath
Into safe and shielded death,
By the merely taking hence
Of his insignificance—
Loom as largened to the sense,
Shape as part, above man’s will,
Of the Imperturbable.

As a prisoner, flight debarred,
Exercising in a yard,
Still retain I, troubled, shaken,
Mean estate, by him forsaken;
And this home, which scarcely took
Impress from his little look,
By his faring to the Dim
Grows all eloquent of him.

Housemate, I can think you still
Bounding to the window-sill,
Over which I vaguely see
Your small mound beneath the tree,
Showing in the autumn shade
That you moulder where you played.

Ezekiel set Izzy’s porcupine on its back, intending to gut it as he had the rabbit. He looked again at Duncan’s switchblade, for it seemed marginal at best for the task. The home-schooled farm boy held up the delinquent’s knife for all to see and asked, “Does anybody have a bigger one?”

“That’s what I said,” Izzy quipped.

The Eagles had likewise dispersed to forage after pitching their tent. Cody was the only Eagle with any wilderness experience to speak of, having spent a couple of years in the Possum Scouts when he was younger. He had hoped to show off his skills to Gwen, but that was not to be. Gwen had buddied up with Leshawna for a foraging foray, leaving no real prospect for Cody to be alone with the Goth, so Cody invited Noah to join him in search of sustenance. The bookworm had little to offer in terms of outdoorsmanship, but he was Cody’s ally; and with Katie and Sadie missing, he had no other natural foraging partners.

“Cheer up, dude,” Cody said as they walked through the woods. “I’m sure Katie’s fine.”

“I don’t need cheering up,” Noah replied. “Sure, I’d rather have Katie with us, but I’m not really worried. They act like eight-year-old imbeciles sometimes, but we know full well that there’s more to them than meets the eye. I think they’ll be okay for one night. Cold and hungry, maybe, but okay.

“Besides, if they don’t make it back to base with the rest of us, and that ends up costing us the challenge, it could be a chance to get Sadie out of the way.”

“Good point,” Cody admitted. With that goofy grin of his, the science geek added, “If Sadie got kicked off, I’m sure that Katie would need…‘comforting’.”

Noah smirked and said rhetorically, “Don’t mess with the Brain Trust.”

Presently, the Brain Trust chanced upon a beaver pond. The terrain along the near shore was nearly flat, resulting in a large marshy area covered with reeds. Cody said, “We’re in luck, dude.”

“How so?”

Cody pointed to the marsh reeds and said, “Cattails. Back home, the Possum Scouts call them ‘the outdoor pantry’ because a lot of their parts are edible and there are a lot of ways to cook them. Some of the edible parts are good raw, too. I remember our Scoutmaster told us once that no one should starve or even go hungry in areas that have a lot of cattails.”

“So how do we get at them?”

“We can probably just pull them up. If not, I think we had a couple of small shovel-type things in our camp supplies.”

Noah nodded and said, “Tell you what. You get started, and I’ll go back to camp and get those shovels. And if I run across any of our teammates, I’ll tell them what you found and ask them to come help.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Cody agreed. “For a find like this, we want everyone we can get. And see if you can find something to carry the edible parts in. Otherwise, we’d have to carry the whole plant back, and that could be a pain.”

Among the other Eagles, only Heather and Lindsay found anything that seemed good to eat. They found some wild strawberries, all of which they ate themselves because there weren’t enough to give everyone on the team a meaningful portion. That’s what Heather told herself, anyway. Fortunately, Cody had not misled his teammates on the culinary potential of cattails, and the Eagles enjoyed a simple but satisfying meal. Indeed, everyone agreed that their supper was better than they probably would have gotten from Chef Hatchet.

Katie and Sadie had by now accepted that they would have to spend the night alone. They found a couple more blueberry bushes, which provided a sparse and unsatisfying supper, but they could not find anything resembling proper shelter. As the light diminished to its last usable remnants, the Bobbsey Twins came across a small cleft between two large boulders. Deciding that anything was better than nothing, they prepared to wedge themselves in. The cleft was open to the sky, but closed off on three sides. It would give the girls a measure of protection from dangerous animals, but would offer little protection from the elements if the weather should take a turn for the worse.

.

Dinner and a Show

By the time the Eagles had finished their supper, darkness had fallen, but nobody was sleepy yet. Gwen suggested that they tell stories around the campfire. That is a common campfire pastime, and nobody had any better ideas, so Leshawna said to her Gothic friend, “You obviously have one in mind, so why don’t you start?”

“Sounds good to me,” Cody seconded.

Without preamble, Gwen began in a melodramatic tone, “A couple of years ago, on a night a lot like this one…”

As the Muskies finished their wild game sampler, Tyler enjoyed the attentions of the girls, who were nearly done plucking out his porcupine quills. Ezekiel had volunteered the girls for this task, hastily explaining that girls would be better than boys for the job because having the girls do it would encourage Red Jock to suck it up and act brave for the sake of impressing the ladies. No one could find any flaw in the farm boy’s reasoning, least of all Tyler.

When Tyler had been completely plucked, Geoff asked, “So, what do we do now? It’s still kind of early to turn in.”

“How about a sing-along?” Beth suggested.

“Sounds good to me,” Courtney said.

“I’m game,” Geoff added.

Duncan said, “Sounds like a plan. How about ‘The Good Ship Venus’?”

Courtney glared at the delinquent and said, “You’re kidding, right?”

“Oh, I know!” Izzy chimed in. “How about ‘Barnacle Bill the Sailor’? I could do the ‘fair young maiden’ lines.

“Et tu, Izzy?” Courtney replied with a sigh, sensing that this was a battle she wasn’t going to win.

“No, Princess is right. We need to protect her virgin ears,” Duncan answered with a smirk. Do you guys know ‘The Clean Song’?”

Several of the Muskies sniggered. “I take it that’s a ‘yes’?” Duncan prompted.

Jolly Rogers 2007 KC Ren Fest (The Clean Song)

most of the Killer Muskies sang "The Clean Song", a bawdy little ditty

So it was that most of the Killer Muskies sang “The Clean Song”, a bawdy little ditty where the naughty words at the end of each line are replaced with innocuous words, with the song’s rhyme structure leaving little doubt about what those inoffensive replacement words are really supposed to be. Some performers include pregnant pauses before the substitute words, lest anyone miss the joke, and the Muskies did this as well.

The Muskies then moved on to “All the Young Ladies”, with Eva and Izzy replacing “ladies” with “laddies” and likewise replacing some of the verses with feminine versions. Beth blushed and tittered, unwilling to sing along but clearly enjoying the song as a sort of guilty pleasure. Courtney just sat there and scowled.

BARNACLE BILL THE SAILOR by Frank Luther 1928 Very Funny

Izzy was as good as her word and sang the "fair young maiden" lines. (Note: this video provides the tune. See the Wikipedia article for the R-rated words the Muskies boys actually sang.)

Next came “Barnacle Bill”, where Izzy was as good as her word and sang the “fair young maiden” lines. The Muskies didn’t sing “The Good Ship Venus”, if for no other reason than because not enough of them knew it.

“Does anyone have something a little more…oh, I don’t know…REFINED?” Courtney asked with glares at Duncan and Izzy.

“I know,” Beth offered, “Ezekiel could teach us that nice song he sang when Bridgette left. Maybe we could sing it at all of our eliminations.”

“I like that,” Courtney agreed. Turning to Ezekiel, the Muskies’ de facto leader said, “It’s from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Requiem, isn’t it? I know the tune, but I don’t know the words.”

“The words are Latin. I think,” the prairie boy answered, admitting, “I don’t actually know Latin, eh? I do know that most requiems have pretty much the same words.”

“And since elimination symbolizes death,” Izzy broke in, “you sang something from a mass for the dead. That makes sense. You should have sung it at Harold’s memorial service. You’ve got a nice singing voice.”

“I would have if I’d thought of it at the time, but we were still pretty much in shock, eh?”

“That we were,” Courtney said. “That we were.”

“But if you don’t know the language,” Geoff asked, “how do you know if the words fit?”

“My parents have it on a CD,” the home-schooled boy explained. “I got a translation from the program notes.”

“So, what are the words?” Courtney prompted. “And what do they mean?”

Seeing that he had everyone’s attention, Ezekiel began, “It’s pretty simple, eh?

Pie Jesu – Merciful Jesus,

“Qui tollis peccata mundi – who takes away the sins of the world,

“Dona eis requiem – grant them rest. Or peace, or something along those lines.

“Pie Jesu – Merciful Jesus,

“Qui tollis peccata mundi – who takes away the sins of the world,

“Dona eis requiem – grant them rest.

“Agnus Dei – Lamb of God,

“Qui tollis peccata mundi – who takes away the sins of the world,

“Dona eis requiem sempiternam – grant them everlasting rest.

“When you sing a requiem for someone, you’re basically asking the Lord to judge the departed kindly,” the Bible Boy explained.

“And just because modern requiems are really concert pieces doesn’t mean they can’t serve the original purpose,” Courtney added.

So it was that the Killer Muskies, having nothing better to do, sang the “Pie Jesu” section of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Requiem until everyone knew it by heart.

“Great,” Courtney pronounced when she was finally satisfied. “Now we’ll be able to sing it, and sing it reasonably well, at our next elimination—”

“Which, with any luck, won’t be for a long time,” Tyler said before Courtney could, to a chorus of assent.

But when we do have an elimination, D.J. thought grimly, Homeschool’s going down. Oh, it’s going to be sweet singing off that Bunnykiller.

“…but they never caught him,” Gwen declaimed mysteriously. “Nobody really knows what happened to him, because he disappeared without a trace. We can only assume that Rusty Knife Ripper is still at large. The thing is, he could be anywhere. Maybe even right here!” the Goth concluded, as she suddenly pulled what looked like a large, rusty knife and thrust it right up to Heather’s face. The queen bee responded as Gwen had expected and hoped, with an instinctive lurch back and a shriek that could have given Lindsay a run for her money. The other Eagles looked on silently, stunned for a moment.

Gwen’s “rusty knife” was really just a dirty tent peg, but it took the other Eagles—especially Heather—a few moments to register that fact. “Not cool, freakazoid!” the queen bee yelled. “You are so going to get it for this! I’m going to make you wish that you’d gotten kicked off instead of Fatty Ginormous!”

“It seems to me that you don’t exactly have the moral high ground to complain,” Gwen replied bitterly.

“That’s it,” Heather shot back. “Keep digging yourself deeper!”

“Gwen’s got a point,” Leshawna broke in. “She’s not the one who read a sister’s diary on national TV.”

“What’s with the piling on?” Heather all but screamed at the dusky homegirl. “I thought you were my friend!”

“So did I,” Leshawna admitted. “But reading a sister’s diary to the world? I’ll tell you straight up, that’s not the kind of company I want to keep. Makes me wonder what you’d do behind my back.”

“She’s not my ‘sister’,” Heather retorted, “and if you’re smart, you won’t call her yours, either!”

“Take it easy, Heather,” Justin urged. “Leshawna’s right. It seems to me that Gwen had good cause to give you a scare. And I have to admit, it was kind of funny.” As the dragon girl stared daggers into him, the Incredible Hunk pleaded, “Gwen didn’t do anything more than get even. Can’t you ladies just let bygones go?”

Heather had by now regained control of herself, and she could see that she would gain nothing by alienating her teammates again. She turned to Gwen and said darkly, “This isn’t over, Death Mask.” That warning delivered, though, Heather said no more.

Trying to further defuse the tension, Lindsay pleaded, “I’m with Justin. This isn’t fun when we’re not getting along. Does anybody else know a story?”

“I’ve got one,” Noah said. “It’s old school horror, so it’s pretty tame by today’s standards, but it might be more Heather’s speed, seeing as she has such…delicate sensibilities.” Noah spoke this last in an affected “blushing Southern belle” tone and batted his eyes mockingly at the Dragon Queen.

Heather scowled. “This had better be good, nerdling.”

Noah explained, “It’s about a brokenhearted bro who descends into madness because he can’t get over his lost love. I think some of us can relate to that,” he added, casting a sidelong glance at Gwen.

Now it was Gwen’s turn to scowl. “Like there’s supposed to some great life lesson or something? Doesn’t sound very scary to me, even by ‘old school’ standards.”

“Remember, the scariness level has to be something that Heather can handle,” Noah chided gently. As the dragon girl bristled anew, Noah continued, “As for the ‘life lesson’, I’m just trying to help out a friend.” The “friend” Noah meant was actually Cody, not Gwen, but Gwen didn’t need to know that. If the Goth benefited from it, that was a bonus as far as the Brain Trust was concerned.

“Okay, I’m game,” Gwen admitted.

Noah began to tell his story in his best scary-dramatic style. Gwen recognized his tale almost at once, for it was one of her favorites. She smiled, and then began to speak the words too softly for anyone else to hear, as if comforting herself. She understood that there was indeed a lesson for her in the bookworm’s tale, and in this way the healing of her wounded heart began. In days to come she would still miss Trent, but would no longer pine for him.

Cody saw his crush girl’s reaction, and was pleased. He could not have known, beyond what Noah had suggested, what the tale meant to her; but he saw that she seemed happy without Trent there to make her so, and that was what mattered for the moment.

As Noah continued, more of the Eagles came to recognize his story, although most had never heard it in its entirety. As the bookworm saw their recognition reactions, he continued to speak dramatically, but he also increasingly fell into a poet’s cadence as he finished his famous tale:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door—
Only this, and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; —vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
"'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door—
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; —
This it is, and nothing more."

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you"—here I opened wide the door; —
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?"
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!" —
Merely this, and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
"Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice:
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; —
'Tis the wind and nothing more."

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore.
"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore—
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door—
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as "Nevermore."

But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered—
Till I scarcely more than muttered, "other friends have flown before—
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before."
Then the bird said, "Nevermore."

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore—
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of 'Never—nevermore'."

But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;
Then upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking "Nevermore."

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamplight gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamplight gloating o'er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then methought the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor.
"Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite—respite and nepenthe, from thy memories of Lenore:
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! — prophet still, if bird or devil! —
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—
On this home by horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—
Is there—is there balm in Gilead? —tell me—tell me, I implore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil—prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore—
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

"Be that word our sign in parting, bird or fiend," I shrieked, upstarting—
"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! —quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—nevermore!

In a rocky cleft somewhere in the darkness, Katie and Sadie were no sleepier than the other campers, so they reminisced for a time. They couldn’t really tell each other stories, as their teammates were doing, because they had been so close for so long that neither knew any stories that the other didn’t. That might not have been a problem with a larger group, for retelling a well-loved tale to people who already know it is part of how those tales get to be well-loved in the first place; but with just the two of them, it seemed pointless.

Their thoughts eventually turned to the question of how their getting lost would affect the challenge. Their sad consensus was that, if their teammates returned without them or vice versa, the Eagles would probably be disqualified. Katie and Sadie would then have big, fat, spotlighted targets on their backs, for there are few surer ways to be ousted from an elimination game than to cost your team a challenge.

“It could still work out,” one of them said. “Our alliance could save us. That’s what alliances are for, right?”

“Maybe,” replied the other. “But we still might need another vote. There are only four of us.”

“Well, everyone keeps saying that they can’t tell us apart. Like, hello, we’re totally different, but whatev. If people don’t care which one of us goes, maybe the votes against us will be split.”

“Yeah, you’re right. That’s how Bridgette got booted. More people thought that Beth and Izzy were the ones who really blew it for their team, but they had to pick one or the other, so the votes were split.”

“So if that happens with us, we still might get to kick off who we want.”

“More like who Heather wants.”

“I know, right? Where does she get off being so bossy? Just because she’s hot and popular back home.”

“I know, right? We’re hot and popular back home, but you don’t see us bossing people around.”

“Well, we did make Chris put us on the same team.”

“That was so awesome! I just hope they put that in the finished episode.”

“I know, right? That would totally show everyone that you—”

“Don’t mess with the Wonder Twins!” they cried in unison, invoking the nickname that Geoff had given them at the talent show—a nickname that was showing every sign that it was going to stick.

In the fullness of time, the teams retired to their tents for the night. In the Eagles’ camp, Heather decided to let the fire burn itself out, since they wouldn’t be needing it in the morning. Some of the Eagles slept well, some slept poorly from worrying about their missing teammates, but the night passed without serious incident.

In the Muskies’ camp, the more wilderness-savvy Courtney decided that somebody should stay up to tend the fire, the better to keep dangerous animals at bay. She appointed Geoff for this role on the reasoning that the party king was probably used to staying up late, or even all night, and he had been reasonably strong in the Awake-a-thon.

“It’s not the same,” Geoff protested when Courtney named him for this task. “At parties, there are things to do. Even in the Awake-a-thon, I had people to shoot the bull with.”

“I’ll do it,” Tyler offered before Courtney could express her displeasure with Geoff. “I’m still pretty sore from all those quills, and I can’t sleep the first night in a new bed anyway.”

“Are you sure you’re up to it? You didn’t do too well in the Awake-a-thon,” Courtney asked dubiously. Realizing her gaffe, she added, “Sorry. That sounded harsher than it needed too.”

Tyler let it go. “The Awake-a-thon was different. We were drugged.”

“Objection sustained,” Courtney replied. “Okay, you’re our night watchman. Wake us up as soon as there’s enough light to read the map.”

“You can count on me,” Tyler declared proudly.

“Good, because we are,” Courtney replied. “You may have messed up before, but that’ll all be in the past if you come through for us tonight.”

“When did I ever mess up before?” Tyler asked.

Courtney saw from Red Jock’s face that he honestly didn’t know, so the onetime CIT bit her tongue and said only, “Never mind. See you in the morning.”

Tyler had been standing watch for about an hour when the rain came. An initial cloudburst delivered a torrential downpour for perhaps 15 minutes, with thunderclaps loud enough to wake everyone up, before diminishing to a sustainable level with much less thunder and no visible lightning.

At the cleft, the “Wonder Twins” had run out of things to say and began to feel Somnus’ power. It was still early enough in the year that the nights could be uncomfortably chill, and the cleft wasn’t big enough for them both to stretch out in any case, so they huddled together for warmth. They were chilly and hungry, but they saw their plight as merely an inconvenience.

Then the rain came.

And came. And came.

As the rain continued, the temperature dropped and the wind picked up. To most of the campers in their tents, all this was at worst an annoyance. To the barely sheltered and lightly clothed clones, it was potentially deadly; for in such conditions, a person can “freeze” to death in surprisingly mild temperatures.

For a time, the girls bore their discomfort bravely, with Katie faring better than Sadie. The butterball had a good deal of natural insulation, but Katie had a blast furnace metabolism that enabled her to eat anything and everything without gaining a gram. Indeed, Katie normally ate more than Sadie despite weighing half as much.

Eventually, though, their fortunes reversed. The downside of Katie’s high metabolism was that her body kept little energy in reserve. When the task of keeping that poorly insulated shell warm had exhausted those meager reserves, Katie began a frightening decline.

Reawakened by the storm and unable to sleep in the heavy rain, the Wonder Twins had been playing a game to take their mind off of their misery. One girl would describe an incident from their mutual past. The one relating the anecdote would deliberately insert inaccuracies, some quite subtle, that the other was expected to catch. The listener would interrupt when she spotted a false detail.

As hypothermia progresses, keeping the core warm becomes the body’s top priority, so the body restricts blood flow to the extremities. This rationing eventually comes to include parts of the brain, which is an energy hog; and that, along with a general slowdown in the brain’s chemical processes as the core temperature drops, causes the mental deterioration associated with the condition. So it was that, after a time, Katie’s performance in their game began to decline noticeably, then severely, and Katie’s own anecdotes became increasingly disjointed and incoherent. At first, Sadie thought that her BFF was merely getting sleepy; but when Katie suddenly complained of feeling hot, which can happen to hypothermia patients when their bodies become too weak to keep blood flow away from the skin, Sadie began to suspect the truth. As if to confirm the butterball’s suspicion, Katie soon began to babble her head off in deepening delirium.

The initial cloudburst had driven Tyler into the Muskies’ tent, although the jock of all trades did have the presence of mind to bring with him what wood he could grab quickly. He could use that wood to restore the campfire after the storm passed, he thought, if the rain didn’t completely extinguish it in the meantime.

Tyler entered the tent and piled his wood in a corner. He then sat down at the entrance to keep vigil. The tent’s entrance was on the lee side and happened to be facing the fire, so he kept a flap open, the better to monitor the fire.

Eva was lying closest to the entrance. When the initial cloudburst passed, and the lightning with it, she sat up and whispered, “Psst. Tyler?”

“Yeah?” Tyler whispered back.

“Could you move aside a little?”

“How come?” the jock of all trades asked, for he didn’t see how that would get either of them anything.

“I’d rather not say. Just humor me, okay?” came the barely audible plea.

Tyler did as the Amazon asked, even as he pondered her words. He opened the second entrance flap so he could continue to watch the fire. He looked back to Eva for confirmation that he had moved far enough to suit her, and what he saw puzzled him even more.

With the second flap open, the waning firelight was enough for Tyler to make out some details on Eva’s face. That face bore a look of apprehension that Tyler had never seen on it before. The musclegirl was staring intently at the fire, as if committing its details to memory. After a few moments, she lay back down.

“Sadie?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m not afraid.”

“At least that’s one of us. I’m scared totally crapless,” Sadie admitted, trying to determine whether her companion was lucid or delirious at the moment.

“I guess it’s true what they say,” Katie suggested enigmatically.

“What’s true?”

“That when you’re about to die, you’re not afraid of it anymore.”

Sadie felt a terrible chill that had nothing to do with the weather. “Don’t talk like that. We’ll get warmed up in the morning. We’ll be all right.”

“You’ll be, but I’m not going to make it. I don’t know how I know, but somehow I can tell.”

“Katie, please don’t talk like that. You’re scaring me,” Sadie pleaded desperately. Katie’s voice was calm and steady, but Sadie could detect an almost pitying sadness in her tone, and the butterball was terrified that her dearest friend had truly surrendered.

Katie seemed not to hear Sadie’s plea. “Goodbye, Sadie. I’m sorry we won’t be able to do stuff together anymore.”

“Katie—”

“Win this lame game for me. Best friends forever.”

Projecting confidence that she did not feel, Sadie declared, “I won’t have to win for you. We’ll get through this, and you’ll be right there with me in the finals. You’ll see.”

No words came in reply, but Sadie felt her friend’s body slump. Katie had lost consciousness.

Swallowing hard, Sadie put aside her terror as best she might and began to think furiously. She didn’t know what to do, but she did know that she had to do something. Otherwise, her longtime boon companion—dearer to her than most of her own family—would almost certainly be dead by morning. They might both have been dying and helpless by now, but Fate had granted them one small mercy: the boulders that they were wedged between were big enough to make a reasonably effective windbreak, even with the wind blowing into the cleft mouth.

Presently, Sadie had an idea. First, she removed her pullover sundress to get to her bra, which she would need for her plan and wouldn’t need for its usual purpose. After removing her bra, she replaced her dress. Working by touch, for with neither moon nor stars nor visible lightning she was effectively blind, Sadie folded Katie up into the Fetal position, with Katie’s arms folded across her belly and her legs folded up to keep her arms in place. With Katie’s head now resting on her knees, Sadie used her bra to bind Katie’s spindly limbs together.

With strength born of desperation, Sadie ripped her sodden dress down the front and Katie’s down the back. Their dresses were made of cotton, which doesn’t insulate well when wet, so they weren’t worth much at the moment anyway. Sadie undid the clasps on Katie’s bra, but saw nothing to gain by trying to remove it completely. After pulling open their rent dresses to maximize the area of skin-to-skin contact, the butterball knelt behind the Thin Twin and draped herself over the taller girl, clasping her hands in front of Katie’s shins and enveloping her fading friend as best she might. Now, there was nothing more to do but wait for morning and hope for the best.

Because Sadie was fat, Katie was thin and the cleft was narrow, Sadie had been obliged to sit closer to the mouth when they sought the meager shelter that the cleft offered. This arrangement now worked in their favor as Sadie put her back to the wind and her bulk mostly shielded her dying friend from both wind and rain. Sadie’s stratagem left her more exposed to the elements than she would otherwise have been, and thus would diminish her chance of survival for the sake of boosting Katie’s, but the butterball saw no alternative and so accepted the risk.

Deliberately echoing Katie’s last words, Sadie said, “Best friends forever. Double or nothing.”

As the night wore on and the cold rain continued to fall, Sadie talked about whatever crossed her mind. This was mainly to help her stay awake, for falling asleep now could be disastrous, but she also chattered in the hope that Katie might somehow hear and draw strength from it.

Sadie was not religious and had no tongue for prayer, but fear eventually drove her to it. She did not petition any particular deity, but rather made a general plea for some Power—any Power—to shepherd them through the night.

“But if it really is her time,” Sadie begged, “then please, let me go with her.”

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

.

Tenth Night

The next morning, after they had breakfasted, Brett went to school whilst his mother went to earn their daily bread. That evening, after they had dined and Brett had attended to his homework, 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.

In the Muskies’ camp, dawn was still at least half an hour away when Ezekiel awoke, for the farm boy’s circadian rhythms were so ingrained that not even Chris’ schedule manipulations had been able to alter them. It was still raining, although not as heavily as it had for most of the night.

With the sky still overcast, there wasn’t yet enough light to read the map, so there was as yet no reason to wake anyone else. Creeping as quietly as he might, Ezekiel made his way to the tent’s exit. The flaps were now closed, for when the fire went out and the temperature started to drop Tyler had seen no reason to keep them open. Tyler himself was sitting at his “sentry” post, huddled in a blanket. He was asleep.

“What?” Tyler said in a normal voice, when Ezekiel silently prodded him awake. When the momentary disorientation of sudden waking had passed, the jock of all trades’ voice dropped to a whisper. “Who’s there?” he asked, for there wasn’t enough light to make out details inside the tent.

“It’s me, Ezekiel,” came a whisper from the darkness.

“I should have figured you’d be up before the sun. Whatever. Told you guys I’d stay awake.”

“You were snoring.”

“Oh, crap!” Tyler exclaimed, although he remembered to keep his voice down. “Well, at least it didn’t hurt us. There isn’t enough light yet to get started.”

“This is true. Tell you what, I won’t tell anyone if you don’t. Courtney means well, but I don’t think anyone really wants to hear another lecture, eh?”

“Thanks, dude. I don’t care what the girls say, you’re okay.”

Daylight, such as it was, had come to the cleft. Sadie was in bad shape, but she was alive and confident that her condition would improve at least somewhat, in spite of the continuing rain, as she became more physically active.

Katie, on the other hand, was unresponsive, remaining limp and motionless as Sadie reclaimed her bra and restored it to its place—no easy task, for Sadie could barely move her stiff, blue fingers. Nor did Katie react in any way when Sadie lightly shook and slapped her in an attempt to waken her.

Sadie felt for a pulse at Katie’s wrist, then her neck. The butterball then put her ear to Katie’s back and listened for a heartbeat. Sadie repeated this process, then checked yet again. Her examinations grew frantic.

Finally, Sadie clutched Katie to her and wailed piteously.

At the Muskies’ camp, there was now enough light to see, so Tyler wakened his teammates. Ezekiel had returned to his place and was pretending to still be asleep with the others. When everyone was fully awake, and had seen the disappointing sight of continuing rain and had felt the chill morning air, the Muskies began to debate the question of whether they should strike out at once and risk serious water damage to the map, or whether they should remain in the tent for a time and hope that conditions might become a bit less miserable.

At another tent a couple of kilometers away, the Eagles continued to sleep.

Sadie was ready to surrender to despair, to simply sit there with her friend’s body in her arms and wait for her own escort to the Beyond to come for her—something that now seemed likely to happen sooner than later. But before her mind reached the point of no return, its more rational side finally succeeded in breaking through the haze of her grief.

You don’t know that she’s gone, this inner voice insisted. You’re not a paramedic. Your fingers are too numb to feel a pulse. The rain is too noisy to hear a heartbeat. And even if she is gone, she wouldn’t want you to just give up like this.

With fresh resolve, Sadie shakily rose to her feet. She would now do the only thing she could do: try to find help and assume as an article of faith that Katie’s body yet housed her spirit. Sadie pulled her and Katie’s torn dresses closed as best she could, but didn’t waste time trying to refasten Katie’s bra.

Having worked herself and her companion out of the narrow cleft, Sadie knelt down and slung Katie over her shoulders in a fireman’s carry, then struggled to her feet. Staggering under her burden, the little blue butterball continued along in the same direction as she and Katie had been going when they came to the cleft the night before.

Her progress was very slow. Sadie was suffering from severe hypothermia herself, and because of this her coordination was so poor that she could barely walk. Not once did she manage more than nine steps without stumbling. To make matters worse, the literal weight on her shoulders obliged her to rest frequently; for although Katie was not heavy, Sadie was not strong under the best of conditions, and leaving Katie behind for the sake of making better time was simply not an option.

Finally, when Sadie stumbled and fell to her knees yet again, she asked herself whether she should bother getting back up. She had come such a little way, at so much effort, that she wondered whether she might make better time by crawling. The main drawback to staying on all fours was visibility. Not only would it be harder for her to see what lay ahead, it would also be harder for others to see her at any distance, and that could be disastrous.

With a sigh, Sadie struggled once more to her feet.

Limited though it was, Sadie’s physical activity had begun to warm her. Her hands were still barely usable, and her skin was still disturbingly blue, but she was walking a little more easily now. When the rain slackened to a drizzle, Sadie decided to see once more if she could find any sign of life in her friend. Sadie placed an ear to Katie’s bare back and listened. She wept anew, but this time with tears of joy, for she had detected a heartbeat—fearfully faint, dreadfully slow, but unmistakable. The odds against Katie were still long, for Sadie still needed to find help soon, but now there was a tangible basis for hope.

The other Eagles were finally beginning to stir in their tent. Heather hadn’t thought to appoint someone to stay awake, as Courtney had, and the Eagles had no farmers on their team; so with no wakeup call, the white noise of the rain, and a dim misty dawn, they had slept in.

When Heather began to wake, she felt that something was wrong. It didn’t take long for her to realize that, even with the rain, there was more light inside the tent than there ought to have been. “Oh, crap!” she cried as she sat bolt upright. “The time! Does anyone have the time?”

Most of the Eagles didn’t, having come to rely on their absent smartphones for such things; but Noah had a wristwatch, and he told the queen bee what she had asked to know.

Heather swore and said, “We’ve got to get going. Now!” as she helped to rouse some of her less alert teammates. “I just hope we haven’t spotted the Fishies too big a lead.”

Justin yawned and said, “Chill. What makes you think they didn’t sleep in, too?”

“One word. Homeschool,” Noah replied. The Incredible Hunk’s heavenly eyes widened as he realized what Noah was saying.

“But why would home schooling make you get up early?” Lindsay asked. “Wouldn’t that let you sleep later, since you don’t have to worry about being late to class?”

“What he means,” Cody explained, “is that Ezekiel is a farmer, so he’s used to getting up really early. Beth, too, maybe. Trust me, the Muskies didn’t oversleep.”

“Exactly,” Heather said, “so we’ve probably got a lot of ground to make up. Our only hope is if they decided to wait and see if it would stop raining. If they didn’t, we’re dead.”

“Can I at least do my makeup first?” Lindsay asked. “It’s waterproof.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Leshawna asked incredulously.

Heather sighed and said, “Some things are more important than looking hot.” The queen bee’s face took on an odd expression for a moment. “I can’t believe I just said that, but it’s true. For all we know, the Fishies could have hit the trail two hours ago.”

An hour after leaving the cleft, Sadie had only managed to stagger about eighty meters when she came to a small clearing. It took Sadie’s chilled and blood-deprived brain a few moments to register this sight, but when it did, she was overcome with emotion and dropped to her knees.

“No… frikking… way,” she gasped out, once more on the verge of tears; for this little clearing was none other than the place where, on that very night, one luckless team would gather for the elimination ceremony. Katie and Sadie had come full circle.

Expecting no response, but feeling the need to say the words, Sadie said, “Katie, we made it!”

That was when she smelled it. Katie had lost bowel control.

“NO!” Sadie screamed, for she could guess what that bowel failure meant. Her renewed despair masquerading as rage, she shouted, “You can’t die on me now! Not when we’re this fucking close! You are not going to die now! Do you hear?”

Sadie desperately struggled to her feet and started across the clearing, but managed only nine steps before she collapsed, at the end of her strength.

“Who’s not going… sha-Christ! I didn’t think people could get that blue!”

“Oh, my God,” said another voice.

Sadie looked up and beheld what seemed to her the most beautiful sight she had ever seen in her life: two interns in rain gear. They had been making a routine inspection of the camp when Sadie’s shouting attracted them.

The verbal tic identified one of these guardian angels as Lightning. The other was already on his radio. “Hatchet,” came the filtered acknowledgement.

“Alejandro. Lightning and I are at the bonfire pit. We’ve got two contestants with what looks like severe hypothermia, one critical.”

“What are they doing at the bonfire pit?” Hatchet asked rhetorically. “Never mind. As you know, the infirmary can only handle one at a time, so bring whoever’s in worse shape. We’ll treat the other one in the lodge.”

“Got it. Alejandro out.” The Latino intern holstered his handset and said to his colleague, “I’ll take the skinny one to the infirmary. You take the fat one to the lodge.”

“Why do I have to carry the fat one?” Lightning protested as they went to Katie and Sadie’s aid.

“Because you’re stronger than I am,” Alejandro replied simply.

“Can’t argue with that,” Lightning admitted.

As the interns came to Sadie, she pleaded, “You’ve got to do something! She’s out of time!”

Alejandro knew that Sadie wasn’t exaggerating, for he could smell what she had smelled. “We’ll do everything we can, senorita,” he assured her as he lifted Katie from Sadie’s shoulders. He then trotted off to the infirmary as quickly as he might, carrying Katie in his arms.

Lightning, meanwhile, puzzled for a moment over the question of how best to carry Sadie, for she seemed too bulky to carry easily, although he didn’t expect her weight to be a problem. Soon enough, though, the solution came to him. Dropping to one knee in front of his distressed damsel, he motioned to his back and said, “Sha-all aboard!” With his passenger in position, the big black jock rose to his feet with a grunt and an oath, and was on his way.

Fortunately, hypothermia is a known hazard of life in a Canadian summer camp (the name “Canada” translating roughly to “land of ice cold waters”) so the infirmary was equipped to treat it effectively. There were some nervous moments as Hatchet worked to resuscitate Katie, who was showing no vital signs at all, but he eventually succeeded in stabilizing her. With the immediate crisis past, he instituted several emergency warming protocols, including a two-fisted IV of warmed fluids, with Alejandro assisting.

That done, there was nothing more to do but watch and wait.

In the lodge, meanwhile, Sadie was fading badly, although she was still conscious. She had been running on nothing but adrenaline and willpower for most of the morning, and she was crashing hard. Chef Hatchet couldn’t be in two places at once, so he assigned the little Ghandiesque intern to look after Sadie whilst Lightning and a couple of other interns stocked the lodge’s fireplace.

“Don’t fall asleep,” the book-smart little intern warned the butterball, who was now wrapped in a thermal blanket to preserve what little body heat she still had. “When you have severe hypothermia, you have to get warmed up from the inside as well as the outside. That’ll be a lot easier to do if you’re awake. We’re going to have plenty of hot water in a few minutes. I’ll go see if Chef has some hot cocoa mix or something. I’m guessing that you haven’t eaten yet.”

“No, I haven’t,” Sadie replied thickly. “Hot chocolate sounds great.”

Not long after, Sadie’s valet (whose name, she had learned, was Cameron) emerged from the kitchen with several hot water bottles and a pitcher of hot chocolate. “Don’t just sip it,” Cameron suggested. “We need to get it inside you, and it’s cool enough that it shouldn’t burn you, so you’ll be better off if you drink it normally. And drink as much as you think you can handle.”

The other interns, meanwhile, were ready to light the fire and were arguing over the best way to get it going quickly. Cameron overheard this discussion and said, “How about Anne Maria’s hairspray? We’ve seen how flammable it is, and she doesn’t need it anymore, may she rest in peace.”

“It’s worth a shot,” said another intern, a faintly androgynous girl with short, dishwater blonde hair. “I’ll get it. Jockstrap, check the kitchen and see if you can find enough grease to be useful.”

No sooner had Lightning (who was apparently also known as “Jockstrap”) painted the logs with bacon grease than the semi-androgynous girl returned with several cans of hairspray. She and another intern thoroughly sprayed the logs whilst Lightning moved Sadie back to a respectful distance.

When everyone was out of the way, Lightning lit a candle, took careful aim, and threw. The fireplace burst into orange life with nigh-explosive force; and within minutes Sadie had a roaring, very hot fire to roast herself in front of.

“String bean, you’re a genius,” the girl said.

“I get that a lot,” Cameron replied smugly.

When the Eagles reached the point where their trail and the Muskies’ trail joined, the sky had begun to clear. The break in the weather did not lift the Eagles’ spirits, though, for they had confirmed their fears. Footprints in the mud revealed that the Muskies were ahead of them by an unknown distance. Upon seeing this, Heather put away the map, relieved Justin of his compass reading duties, and announced that they would follow their rivals’ tracks to make up time. She also urged her teammates to pick up their pace, saying that they now must push themselves if they were to have any chance. This still left the question of what to do if they caught up to the Muskies, who would presumably be fresher and better able to make a final push when they drew near the camp, but no one had a better idea.

Around midmorning, the Eagles reached the top of a grassy hill that gave them a good view of the surrounding area. The sharp-eyed Cody spotted the Muskies in the valley, and the Eagles’ hearts sank to see the size of their rivals’ lead.

But the Muskies were not all that the ex-Possum Scout had seen. Parts of the sky had by now returned to their normal blue, and a narrow, whitish plume was plainly visible against that azure backdrop.

“Look, guys,” Cody said excitedly as he pointed toward the plume. “Smoke. And I’d bet good money that it’s coming from base camp.”

“Awesome!” Heather pronounced, no less excitedly. “That means we have a chance!” Handing the compass to Cody, she said, “Get a bearing. We’re going to make straight for that smoke. You’re our guide.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Leshawna protested. “I’m no wilderness expert, but how do we know what we’re going to run into?”

“We don’t,” Heather admitted, “but we’re not going to win this by playing it safe. We’re too far behind.”

“Besides, we’ve still got the map,” Cody assured the dusky homegirl. “Even if we run into obstacles that don’t show up on it, the worst that can happen is that they’ll slow us down enough to cost us the challenge. But we’re going to lose the challenge anyway if we stick to the trail.”

“What he said,” Heather added. “No guts, no glory.”

After finding their current position on the map, Cody and Heather were able to deduce that the smoke was indeed coming from the camp—from Sadie’s fire, as it turned out, although they had no way of knowing that. So it was that the Eagles left the trail behind and struck out into the depths of the woods.

Shortly after noon, the Eagles reached the camp and tagged the totem pole. Chris, who had been lounging nearby, informed them that the Muskies were still in the field.

“So we won, right?” Heather prompted.

“Can’t make it official until the Muskies get here,” the host replied, “so just wait for them here. They should be along pretty soon.”

The Muskies arrived perhaps ten minutes later. They were naturally crestfallen when they sighted the camp and saw the Eagles already there.

After the Muskies had reached the totem pole, Heather said, “Too bad, Fish Heads. Either you’ve got it or you don’t, and you ain’t even close.”

“What we’ve got,” Courtney shot back, “is all our players. Looks like you’re missing a couple of birds. Did they get eaten by bears?”

“Or wolves?” Duncan needled.

“Or giant lampreys?” Izzy challenged, earning her several confused stares.

With an artificially sweet tone and a smug smile, Chris said, “Yes, Heather, where are Katie and Sadie?” Chris knew perfectly well where they were, but the other campers didn’t know that.

“How should I know?” Heather huffed. “They probably wandered off to be annoying somewhere else. That’s not our fault.”

Ezekiel quipped to Duncan, “Guess she’s not her sister’s keeper, eh?” Duncan snorted in response, for he thought that his “country mouse” buddy had not sold the queen bee short.

In truth, Heather was concerned about the clones’ situation, albeit for purely selfish reasons. She still needed them both to control her team’s eliminations, so she was more than a little annoyed that they had apparently gotten lost. Although ruthless and petty, the Dragon Queen was not evil, but neither was she particularly forgiving of mistakes. Even had she known the truth about what the Wonder Twins had gone through, she would probably have thought (and not entirely unreasonably) that they had brought it upon themselves. As it was, though, she suspected nothing.

“So, do we win, then?” Courtney asked expectantly.

“Can’t make it official until Katie and Sadie get here,” Chris told her, just as he had told Heather not long before. “Wait for them here. I’ll be back in a bit.” With that, he left them.

With no good place to sit, for the ground was wet and muddy, the campers were obliged to stand, pace or just walk about aimlessly. Chris had carefully avoided saying where he was going or what his business was, for he didn’t want the campers to know yet that Katie and Sadie had already returned. He would tell them when he felt like it; and in the meantime, he would inflict a petty discomfort on them for no other reason than because he could.

Chris first stopped at the infirmary. Hatchet was not there, but had left Alejandro in charge, so the former reality show star updated the Lord of Wawanakwa on Katie’s condition. Chris then went to the lodge to check on Sadie, for he had been told that she was being treated there. In the lodge, which was now uncomfortably warm from the fire, he found the butterball apparently sleeping comfortably and more or less returned to her normal color. Chef Hatchet, who was in the kitchen making an unappetizing lunch for the campers, told Chris that Sadie was going to be fine.

“And you said they wouldn’t give us enough drama if they were on the same team,” Hatchet reminded his boss and friend.

Chris shrugged his shoulders and said, “My bad.”

The host then went to his trailer and relaxed for perhaps an hour, partly because he was waiting for word that Sadie had recovered enough to be moved to her cabin and partly to delay the campers’ lunch on general principles. When he felt good and ready, he checked in once more on the clones. Then, at long last, he returned to the campers who were milling impatiently around the totem pole.

“Listen up, gang,” Chris called. “I’m tired of waiting for Katie and Sadie, so I’m not going to. The winners of the camping challenge are… the Screaming Eagles!”

“What?” Courtney all but screamed. The reactions of the other campers, Muskie and Eagle alike, varied widely but were no less incredulous.

“Yeah, I kind of told you a story,” Chris admitted. “Here’s the deal: Katie and Sadie got back before any of you. Spent the night a shouting match away from the bonfire pit.”

“Brilliant,” Duncan said quietly to D.J., with a shake of his head. “We’re going to have to keep an eye on those two.”

“Then they should be disqualified,” Courtney retorted, “because they didn’t spend the night at the campsite.”

“As I recall,” Chris replied with that all-occasions bland smile of his, “I said that you had to spend one night in the woods. They did. I don’t think I said that you all had to stay at your campsites.”

“You implied it,” Courtney insisted.

“Meh,” Chris replied, that unchanging smile still in place. “Turns out that today is Sadie’s birthday, so I decided to cut her some slack because I’m such a nice guy. Besides, she’s suffered enough.”

“What does Sadie’s birthday have to do with anything?” Courtney demanded. “They cheated.”

Eva added, “And I can’t imagine you ever thinking that anyone has ‘suffered enough’.”

“No, they didn’t cheat,” Chris explained. “They didn’t know that they were so close to the camp. Besides, it made for good drama because they got some major hypothermia in the rain last night. Sadie barely made it back alive, and Katie…” The host’s smile disappeared as he shook his head. “Katie didn’t.”

The host’s revelation was met with stunned silence, except for a few shocked mutters. Ezekiel said a quiet prayer and crossed himself.

Beth was fighting a losing battle to keep her tears in check as she whimpered, “Not again. How many more?” D.J. placed a consoling hand on her shoulder and would have said something to comfort her, but he had no words.

Duncan was as shocked as the others, but he was also wary of looking too emotionally vulnerable. “So, that means… no elimination tonight?” he asked hopefully. “You said that there wouldn’t be one if anyone didn’t survive.”

Heather glared at the delinquent and said, “That’s cold, even for you.”

“Warm fuzzies won’t bring Katie back,” Duncan retorted, “so you can drop the ‘I’m so offended’ act. The only reason you cared about her is because you controlled her vote.”

“It’s not an act!” Heather insisted. “Yes, she was useful. Sure, she was annoying, but it's not like I'd want anyone here to actually die! Not even you! Not even Gwen!”

Realizing how badly she had been provoked, Heather took a deep breath an added, more calmly, “Not… even… Chris.”

“Why, thank you, Heather,” Chris said in a forced tone, his standard smile returning a little too late to mask his irritation at the queen bee’s left-handed compliment. “As for Duncan’s question… yes, you still have to eliminate someone, because we’ll be behind schedule if we don’t send someone home tonight.”

Izzy said, “Okay, I’m confused. What about Katie?”

“What about her?”

“You said she didn’t make it, so how can not having an elimination put us behind schedule?”

“Because all she did was die,” Chris explained. “That’s not enough.”

“Enough with the riddles,” Courtney snapped. “Can’t you show enough respect for the dead to give us a straight answer?”

“Fine,” Chris huffed. “Here’s the thing. Clinically dead isn’t the same as legally dead; and according to Chef, there’s a saying in emergency medicine that ‘you’re not really dead until you’re warm and dead.’ Long story short, Katie died… but she didn’t stay dead. Psych!”

A psych it was indeed, for Katie had recovered to the point that she was sleeping normally—a deep, dreamless sleep—and was now expected to survive.

With barely suppressed fury, Noah said, “You are one sadistic manhood sucker.” Noah normally relied on deadpan verbal jabs, but at this moment he looked like he was ready to physically assault Chris, despite being no match for him. The other campers had never seen the normally blasé bookworm so visibly angry, and marveled at this. None blamed him for it, though only Cody truly understood it.

“Whatever,” Chris said. “Anyway, it’s past lunchtime, and you probably didn’t have anything to eat on the trail. Maybe today you’ll be hungry enough to eat what Chef gives you without griping about it.”

“As if,” someone muttered softly.

Lunch was as nasty as usual, but the ravenous teens wolfed it down just the same. Afterward, the Eagles took their ease whilst the Muskies discussed their options and cast their votes.

.

Bittersweet Sixteen

When Sadie awoke, Leshawna told her that Chef Hatchet wanted to see her in the lodge.

“Is Katie okay?” Sadie asked desperately.

“She’s alive,” Leshawna told her. “That’s all I know.”

When the butterball answered Hatchet’s summons, he locked the lodge door for privacy and bade Sadie sit. He then sat down beside her and asked her how she was feeling.

“Okay, I guess. I’m still pretty tired, though,” Sadie admitted.

“That’s not surprising,” Hatchet replied. “The good news is that you’re going to be fine.”

Hardly daring to ask, but feeling a need to know, Sadie asked, “Is there bad news?”

“There might be. That’s why I don’t want anyone listening in.

“When we got Katie to the infirmary, she was clinically dead. No heartbeat, no brain function, nothing. She’d even done her ‘death dump’. I was able to resuscitate her, but…”

“But what?” Sadie asked, fearing the worst.

“The thing is,” Hatchet explained as gently as he might, “We have no way to know how long she was like that. We can guess, but that’s all. When you’re warm, it only takes a few minutes to really mess you up. Hypothermia gives you more time, but how much more is a case-by-case thing. So, we don’t know how much time she had, and we don’t know how much she needed.

“The reason I’m telling you this is because you’re closer to her than anyone else here; so if there are any aftereffects, you’re the one who’s most likely to notice. If you do notice something off, I want you to tell me. I’m not sure I’d be able to do anything about it, but we still need to know.”

Sadie nodded absently, lost in thought. “Can I see her?”

“She might still be asleep. I’ve got an intern keeping an eye on her, but I’ll probably discharge her as soon as she wakes up.”

Hatchet rose, unlocked the door and said, “You missed lunch. Normally, you’d be out of luck, but this is a special case. Would you like something now, or would you rather wait for dinner?”

Because lunch had been late, dinner was also late. Katie was now up and about, much to her surprise, for she had not expected to see any earthly sight ever again. She had been told some of what had happened that day, but had not been told that Chef had literally brought her back from the dead.

After the campers had choked down their dinner, Hatchet announced that the dessert course would be something special. He then disappeared into the kitchen, leaving the campers to speculate worriedly on what lay in store for them.

After a couple of minutes, Hatchet brought out a large, round cake with off-white frosting, on which 16 candles burned cheerily. Chris prompted, “One…Two…Three,” and everyone began to sing:

Happy Birthday to you,
Warner Music Group, screw you,
Happy Birthday, dear Sadie,
Happy Birthday to you!

The Muskies sang politely, but without much enthusiasm, because the fact that Sadie’s birthday just happened to fall on the day of a challenge was the reason Chris had given for handing down a controversial ruling in favor of Sadie and the Eagles. Sadie’s teammates, by contrast, sang heartily for the same reason.

When the verse was concluded, Katie added the obligatory tag line, “And many more,” because, as Sadie’s BFF, it was her place. By this time, Hatchet had placed the cake on the table, in front of the birthday girl, and had withdrawn to the background.

“OK, Sadie,” Katie prompted, “Make your wish.”

“Oh, I wish—“ Sadie began excitedly.

“No, no, no, no, no,” Leshawna interrupted hastily. “You know better than that, girl. If you tell us your wish, it won’t come true.”

“Besides,” Beth added helpfully, “we already know what it is.”

That seemed true enough. From what the others knew, it was inconceivable that Sadie’s birthday wish would be anything other than to reach the finals with Katie.

Sadie took a deep breath, leaned forward, and blew with all her might. She then gave a little cough, as commonly happens when someone has completely emptied her lungs, and straightened up to inspect her handiwork.

On one edge of the cake, three candles continued to burn.

After Sadie dispatched the holdouts with a second breath, Hatchet cut the cake and distributed pieces to everyone, including Chris and himself. The teens were pleasantly surprised to discover that the cake (a spice cake with buttercream frosting) was of high quality. Apparently, Hatchet could actually cook well when he cared to, and the campers now suspected that the unappetizing fare he usually served them was part of the master plan—a psychological hardship intended to help separate the game’s contenders from the pretenders.

When the campers had finished their cake, Chris got back to business. “OK, you know the drill,” he declared. “Muskies, to the bonfire. Eagles, you’re going to the Tuck Shoppe for your challenge reward: an all-expenses-paid binge.”

Night had fallen over the island. Had anyone been standing atop the absurdly high diving cliff, they might have been able to make out the last traces of twilight on the western horizon, but not so at the camp. At the bonfire, Chris stood with six self-satisfied campers arrayed behind him. On his marshmallow tray, two talismans of life yet stood. On the other side of the fire, Geoff, Duncan and Ezekiel still awaited judgment.

“Campers, I have only two marshmallows left. Each of you three had votes against you. With one vote against, the next marshmallow goes to…Ezekiel”.

As the home-schooled farm boy rose and stepped forward to receive his token of safety, neither he nor anyone else noticed D.J.’s hateful glare.

When Ezekiel had taken his place in the ranks of the blessed, Chris said, “Geoff, Duncan, you each racked up a lot of votes. Can’t really say I’m shocked. Anywho, the final marshmallow of the night goes to…”

Whilst Chris mugged the camera, as was his wont, Duncan and Geoff were sweating bullets. Duncan wasn’t quite sure what he was doing in the bottom two. True, Courtney had more or less threatened to send him home during the dodgeball match, but that was presumably because he was going through nicotine withdrawal and so had been unable to pull his weight. He’d caught a break when the Muskies won that challenge, and he doubted that he would ever be that vulnerable again. True, he still missed his cigarettes, but the worst of his withdrawal symptoms were past, and he had done his part in the camping challenge.

Duncan was on generally good terms with the other Muskie boys, so he didn’t see who might want him gone. As for the girls, he suspected that both Courtney and Izzy were crushing on him. He had by now got wind that Izzy’s imaginary friend was supposedly carrying a torch for him; and as far as Duncan was concerned, that meant that Izzy was actually the one with the hots for his badboyness. No surprise there, of course, for in Duncan’s world, there were three types of girls: those who openly wanted him, those who secretly wanted him, and those who didn’t yet realize that they wanted him. Well, four types, actually. There were also the freaks like Eva, but who cared what they wanted?

Eva seemed the most likely to have voted against him, but she also seemed unlikely to assemble a coalition, for she generally kept to herself and her weights whenever she could. Neanderthal Woman could account for one vote, but hardly for “a lot”.

Courtney, on the other hand, was the politicking type, but she had targeted Geoff. Duncan knew this because the onetime CIT had come to him and asked his help to send the urban cowboy packing. Courtney had griped, as she often did, that Geoff was too distractible and was a drag on the team; and in fairness, Duncan could find no fault with that indictment. In fact, Duncan had come to realize that he liked Courtney more than was probably good for him. Stupid hormones, he thought. And so, after playing “hard to get”, for the sake of appearances, Duncan had agreed to vote with Courtney after she had resorted to a bit of subtle flirtation.

But if it wasn’t Eva or Courtney, then who was trying to get him kicked off? Duncan suddenly had an unpleasant thought, all the more unpleasant for being highly plausible. Despite being mostly useless in the challenges, Geoff was popular for his happy-go-lucky attitude. If the party king had got wind that Courtney was gunning for him, he might have tried to assemble a coalition of his own. Since Geoff would probably just be trying to save himself, as opposed to pursuing any kind of strategy, this hypothetical voting bloc would probably vote against anyone whom its members could agree on.

This could get ugly, Duncan thought nervously.

Geoff, on the other hand, knew all too well why he was in the bottom two. Courtney was constantly nagging him to keep his head in the game. He had paid her little heed, for Ms. Napoleon Complex had never taken her complaints to the level of threats, and Geoff wasn’t about to let her harsh his mellow. After the camping challenge, though, Izzy had come to him and warned him that Courtney had decided to take action. The Muskies’ nominal leader was relatively well liked in spite of her bossy tendencies, thanks to being a hot chick and to knowing how to use the carrot as well as the stick. Geoff realized with a qualm that, if Courtney wanted someone to go down, she might well have enough influence to make it happen.

Fortunately, though, Izzy had offered him a way out: join her in trying to expel Duncan. Geoff didn’t know why she wanted Duncan gone, and he didn’t ask. So it was that the party king had voted against the delinquent, despite having no real quarrel with Duncan and despite having reservations about how far the flighty and erratic Izzy could be trusted.

Chris’ tension building routine reached its climax, and he handed down the verdict at long last.

“Duncan, on a tiebreaker,” the host pronounced.

“Aw, man,” was all the dejected Geoff had to say.

“Sorry, dude,” Tyler said. “You’re cool and all, but we need players who can keep their heads in the game. But look on the bright side. When you get to Loserville, you can chase Bridgette again.” Tyler’s face took on a wistful look and he seemed to want to say something else, but he said no more.

“You’ve got a point, bro,” the damned cowboy replied, his spirits rising as he cocked his ten gallon hat at a pseudo-rakish angle. “It’s not so bad, after all.”

Beth asked, “So what was the tiebreaker?” The nerd girl didn’t have a high opinion of Geoff’s contributions in the challenges, but she thought he was nicer than Duncan; so when her new ally Izzy had come to her and asked her to help bounce the delinquent, saying that Sunshine would just have to deal with it, Beth had agreed.

“As you know,” Chris explained, “there’s no set tie breaking procedure. Tonight, I decided to keep the camper who’s been generating more drama. It’s better for ratings that way. Anyway, that’s Duncan.”

Courtney crossed her arms and scowled at the host. “With that kind of attitude, how are we supposed to keep troublemakers in line?” she demanded, the daggers in her voice matching those in her eyes.

“Not my problem,” Chris replied with that bland smile that made Courtney want to push his face in. “Keeping the show’s ratings up is my problem. Team discipline is yours.”

Courtney sighed in exasperation, but made no other response.

Eva sidled over to Courtney and said, under her breath, “Don’t worry. He’ll get his.”

“‘He’ meaning Duncan or Chris?” Courtney pouted.

“Either or both,” Eva replied darkly.

There was nothing more to be said, so everyone went to the Dock of Shame to see Geoff off. Some said their goodbyes en route, and the rest did so at the dock. Then, as Hatchet began to toll the bell, Geoff ambled down the dock, as carefree leaving the island as when he had arrived.

As the boat pulled away from the dock, Courtney said to Ezekiel, “Take it away, maestro.” Ezekiel then led the Killer Muskies in the singing of the Pie Jesu, which they had practiced so relentlessly the night before.

“Did you really sing ‘Warner Music Group, screw you’ for Sadie’s birthday song?” Brett asked, suspecting that his mother had tried to pull a fast one on him.

“Of course not,” his mother replied, “although since we were on camera, we might have if we’d had a chance to plan it beforehand. ‘Stick it to the Man’, as it were.

“‘Happy Birthday To You’ is a traditional song, but Warner claims that it belongs to them. Personally, I think their reasoning is pretty shaky, but anybody who would have the resources to fight them has decided that it’s not worth fighting. Big corps can be pretty ruthless, and Warner has a reputation for being pretty anal. So if you so much as sing ‘Happy Birthday To You’ in a public place, they’ll call it a ‘performance’ and demand that you pay them royalties.”

“That’s crazy!” Brett blurted in shock. “But what if somebody isn’t willing to pay?”

“People have been known to ‘disappear’ for less,” his mother replied.

The night was still young, so Brett’s mother took a few moments to collect her thoughts and then resumed her tale.

.

Episode #7: The Tale of Fear and Loathing

Original title: Phobia Factor

After singing Geoff off, the Muskies returned to the fire to toast their marshmallows. This bittersweet ritual completed, they remained for a time and talked about whatever topics came to mind.

After 15 minutes or so, D.J. thought he saw something in the trees. “Is somebody there?” he asked nervously.

“I am the Ghost of Challenge Past,” replied a familiar, nasal voice. Noah’s voice.

“And the Ghost of Ownage Yet To Come,” called the dragon.

As spectral figures in the woods began to emerge into the firelit clearing, the Muskies could see that the entire Eagles team had come, for what purpose the Muskies could only guess.

“What do you guys want?” Courtney and Eva asked, almost in unison. For different reasons, these two were extremely competitive, and their first instinct was to distrust any gesture from an opponent.

“Well, we’ve got some extra Tuck Shoppe swag, if you’d like some,” Leshawna began.

“So now you’re suddenly being nice?” Courtney asked suspiciously.

“Maybe they’re feeling guilty because they know they didn’t deserve to win,” Duncan suggested pointedly.

“In your dreams, loser,” Heather sniffed.

“Save the ‘tude for the challenges, y’all,” Leshawna protested. “We’re rivals, not enemies.” No one ventured to deny that the homegirl had a point, and the budding quarrel was quickly forgotten.

“Since you asked, though,” Cody said, “We’re not ‘suddenly’ being nice. We’ve got a ‘use it or lose it’ situation.”

Justin explained, “We’ve had all we want of our Tuck Shoppe goodies, and we don’t have fridges in the cabins, so a lot of it won’t keep.”

“Yeah, like this jelly,” Sadie added, holding a quivering mass of molded green gelatin dessert up to Courtney, as if for inspection.

With an effort, Courtney maintained a semblance of composure, but she could not suppress a small cry of disgust at the semisolid dish.

“What’s wrong?” Katie asked. “Don’t you like jelly?”

“I like it fine,” Courtney snapped defensively. “I’m just not into that green type,” she added a little too hastily, with a poorly suppressed shudder. “And that jelly looks like the Jell-O brand stuff.”

Duncan was close enough to notice Courtney’s shudder. Seeing an opportunity to take the Muskies’ benevolent despot down a peg, he decided to have a little fun at her expense.

“Well, well, well,” the delinquent chuckled, “Little Miss Perfect-In-Every-Way is afraid of Jell-O. Ah, green Jell-O, to be precise. So, tell me, Princess, does it strike fear into your pure little heart mainly because it’s Jell-O, or mainly because it’s green?”

“Must be ‘cause it’s green,” Izzy opined. “I wear a lot of green, and she’s afraid of me.”

“We’re all afraid of you, Izzy,” Noah deadpanned.

“I know, right?” Gwen said. “The only thing I’d hate worse than being in a confined space with Izzy would be being in a confined space by myself.”

“Claustrophobic, much?” Izzy asked, clearly not offended.

“You have no idea,” the Goth replied softly, embarrassed that she’d revealed such a personal detail about herself.

“No way!” Katie said. “I’m totally claustrophobic, too!”

“So let me guess,” Tyler chuckled, “If you’re claustrophobic, then Sadie must be, too.”

“No,” Katie replied, either missing the sarcasm or choosing to ignore it, “Sadie has a thing about bad haircuts. Everyone instinctively looked at the butterball, who shuddered as Katie continued, “That’s why she fainted when Lindsay’s hair got burned.”

“Sadie’s not the only one,” Heather observed. “That probably would have been traumatic for anyone, but for a while, there, Lindsiot really went off the deep end.” The others could see that Lindsay was shivering at that memory, as if from a chill.

By this time, the campers were beginning to take seats as they were able, with some sitting on the ground because there weren’t enough seats to go around, and the Muskies were starting to sample the Eagles’ “peace offerings”.

“I’d rather have my hair burned off than be covered in bugs,” Beth declared. “When I was six years old, I think, I was eating windfall apples under the big apple tree we have on our farm. It was a warm day and I’d really stuffed myself, so I fell asleep. My hands and face were sticky from the juice—my blouse, too, since I’d been wiping my hands on it—and when I woke up, there were ants and bees crawling all over me. Of course, I freaked out, especially from the bees. Even after all these years, I still have nightmares about it sometimes. I still can’t believe that I didn’t get stung.

Once, I saw a wolf spider with all its babies on its back, and it totally freaked me out. I mean, normally I don’t mind spiders, although those weird-looking orb weavers kind of creep me out, but that wolf spider covered in little spiders really reminded me of those bugs under the apple tree.”

Leshawna had heard enough, and broke in when Beth took a breath as if to continue. “Bugs aren’t so bad,” the homegirl said. “But spiders totally freak me out. I can’t stand getting spider webs on me, either. I’ve never seen a wolf spider, but from what you say, I’m glad I haven’t. And I hear you about those orb weavers, girl. Some of them look like they’re from outer space. If I even see one, I feel like I need a shower.”

Heather said, “Orb weavers, huh? I know what you’re talking about, but I didn’t know that’s what they were called. Anyway, I’m the same way with sumo wrestlers as Homie is with spiders.  They’re like human orb spiders. They don’t even look natural. Ugh!”

“If you want to talk ‘unnatural-looking’,” Duncan began, “what’s really creepy is…” His voice trailed off, as if he had realized that he had been about to say too much.

“Well?” Courtney asked, looking to even the score after the delinquent’s earlier jab. “Come on, spit it out.”

Duncan sighed deeply. He reminded himself that $100,000 was at stake, but this was going to cost him a lot of street cred.

“You know how it is with CGI’d people, where the more realistic they look, the creepier they get?” he began. “Well, I…” Again, his voice trailed off.

“Come on, confess,” Courtney prompted with a wicked grin.

Duncan took another deep breath, steeling himself, but Noah broke in before the delinquent could continue. Right off the top of his head, the bookworm declared, “Duncan lives in mortal fear of an insane, 90-centimeter-tall, winged pixie with orange hair, enormous eyeglasses, and an affinity for Italian food. She stalks him day and night, watching his every move, whispering, ‘Duncan…Duncan’.”

The way Noah created such an elaborate vision on the spot struck everyone—well, almost everyone—as hilarious. A gale of laughter erupted around the bonfire.

Even Duncan laughed, if more nervously than the others. Let them think that he was afraid of pixies, if they liked. It would be less embarrassing than what he was really afraid of.

“Good one, bookworm,” he said through a forced smile as the laughter died.

Apart from Noah, who was not inclined to laugh at his own jokes, only Izzy had not laughed. Quite the contrary, she looked irritated. With her hands on her hips and a displeased expression, she spoke sternly to…no one.

“Sunshine!” the demented redhead demanded, “What did I tell you about sneaking into the boys’ cabin at night?” After a brief pause, she added, “Well, that’s no excuse!”

With most of the campers now eyeing Izzy warily—they all knew about her imaginary friend, of course, but had never suspected that “Sunshine” wasn’t supposed to be human—Gwen said, in a contemplative tone, “Actually, I would have pegged Duncan’s stalker pixie as having purple hair and a skull locket, and probably on the antisocial side.”

Izzy gave an exasperated sigh, but still did not look at Gwen or anyone else.

“Et tu, Ravi?” Weird Red complained. “You’re supposed to be the responsible one. And you could have told me that you knew Gwen.”

“O…kay,” Gwen replied nervously, as Izzy continued her conversation with the air.

“You know, guys,” Justin broke in, keeping a watchful eye on Pixie Girl, “I think two invisible pixies are enough. Maybe we shouldn’t tempt fate.”

The other teens agreed, and quickly dropped the subject of what Duncan’s “stalker” might look like.

“Back to the real issue,” Courtney declared, “Mr. Petty Offenses R Us was about to confess his embarrassing secret fear.”

Duncan sighed yet again. He had hoped that the discussion might not return from the Pixie Tangent, but no such luck.

“You know how it is with CGI’d people, where the more realistic they look, the creepier they get?” the delinquent repeated. “Well, I have the same problem with those cardboard standees you see in music stores. Standees of hot chicks are the worst. Sure, I look at pictures of hot chicks all the time, but it’s not the same.”

Courtney considered asking whether the “hot chicks” in those pictures were clothed, but decided that she didn’t really want to know.

“The hotter, the worse?” Gwen asked, “Or is there some other pattern?”

“No pattern, as far as I can tell,” Duncan replied. He seemed more comfortable discussing his phobia than confessing it in the first place. “Celine Dion is probably the worst of all. There are chicks that are hotter, notter, older, younger, better singers, worse singers…she just seems to hit the sweet spot, somehow. Okay, ‘sweet’ probably isn’t the right word.”

“So, Mr. Tough Guy’s not so tough,” Heather sniped. And here I thought Courtney’s Jell-O phobia was lame.”

“I am not afraid of Jell-O!” Courtney insisted.

“Whatever,” Heather replied.

“So, our tough guy has an embarrassing secret fear,” Leshawna recapped. “How about our tough girl? Is there anything you’re especially afraid of, Eva?”

From what they knew of the she-Hulk, most of the campers were probably expecting Eva to deny that she was afraid of anything. After a few moments, the campers realized that Eva had not only made no denial, but had said nothing at all, and this brought their undivided attention to the steel maiden. Apart from the crackle of the fire and a few insect noises, complete silence now reigned.

“Well?” Duncan prompted, having recovered from his own moment on the hot seat.

Eva was hanging her head, her eyes downcast. “I can’t tell you,” she finally managed to say. “It’s too embarrassing.”

“More embarrassing than being afraid of music store standees?” Leshawna asked skeptically, subtly reminding Iron Woman that her colleagues had already confessed some pretty embarrassing things.

“Yes,” Eva replied, unable to meet her or anyone else’s gaze.

“Worse than Courtney being afraid of green Jell-O?” Gwen asked, no less skeptically than Leshawna had.

“I am not afraid of Jell-O!” Courtney insisted again.

Tyler, who happened to be sitting next to Eva, said, “I think I know.”

“Then you tell them, if you want,” Eva replied in a self-pitying tone, eyes still fixed on the ground. “I can’t.”

“Something happened during the camping trip,” Tyler began. “When the storm came, we didn’t have moon or stars. We had firelight for a while, but when the rain finally put it out, you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.” A general murmur followed, as the campers recalled that unpleasant experience.

“I wasn’t lying down, because I was supposed to stay awake. Anyway, I was sitting near Eva. She must have still been awake when the fire went out, because I remember that she started breathing really ragged. It sounded like she was in pretty bad shape.”

“Oh, so that’s who it was,” Izzy interjected.

Looking back to Eva, the jock laid a sympathetic hand on the jockette’s shoulder as he delivered his conclusion. “You’re afraid of the dark, aren’t you?”

“For as long as I can remember,” Eva replied, still unwilling or unable to meet anyone’s gaze.

“Don’t beat yourself up over that,” said Cody. “Lots of people are afraid of the dark. It’s probably the oldest phobia in the book.”

“Yeah, but it’s supposed to be something that little kids are afraid of,” Eva replied, refusing to be cheered up.

“At least you have a phobia that makes some sense,” Tyler said as he gave Eva’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “Not like mine. I get totally freaked out by chickens, if you can believe that.”

Fortunately, Eva wasn’t eating or drinking anything at the moment, else it would likely have come out her nose. “You’re kidding me!” she blurted, forgetting her self-pity just as Tyler had intended. “Are you telling me that having chickens in your path might stop you from rushing in where angels fear to tread, like you usually do?”

“Pretty much,” Red Jock replied with a self-depreciating grin.

Izzy said, “My phobia’s pretty common, just like Eva’s. I simply cannot fly. I had to take a bus halfway across Canada to get here.”

“Mine isn’t really a phobia,” Cody offered, “but it’s kind of the same effect. I totally freak out anytime I have to do anything under time pressure.”

“Are you a perfectionist?” Noah asked.

“Yeah, I guess so, now that you mention it,” the science geek agreed.

“Kind of figured,” Noah replied. “I read somewhere that perfectionists can’t be rushed. If you try to rush them, they make more mistakes but they don’t really go any faster.”

“So how do you manage in school?” Justin asked. “You mentioned once that you get pretty good grades. If you can’t handle time pressure, how do you manage on tests? Or especially pop quizzes?”

“Tests don’t bother me until the last few minutes, and by then I’m usually done, anyway,” Cody explained. “Pop quizzes usually don’t bother me because there isn’t much at stake, and I usually know my stuff pretty well.

“How about you, Justin?” Cody asked. “What’s your counterpart to Courtney’s Jell-O phobia?”

“I am not afraid of Jell-O!” Courtney insisted once more.

“An ungorgeous girl kissed me once,” the Incredible Hunk answered, a haunted look on his supremely gorgeous face. “It was awful! It felt like my gorgeosity was going to leach right out of me.”

“What a dreadful fate,” Gwen snarked, her sarcasm dripping thickly enough to burn a hole through the Earth’s crust.

“What,” Justin asked obliviously. “How is that worse than Courtney’s Jell-O phobia?”

“I am not afraid of Jell-O!” Courtney cried in exasperation.

“Green Jell-O, remember,” Izzy reminded her colleagues. “It has to be green.”

“Augh!” Courtney cried as she jumped to her feet, her hands balling into fists. “FOR THE LAST TIME, I AM NOT AFRAID OF JELL-O! GREEN OR OTHERWISE!”

“Have a cow, why don’t you?” Sadie sniffed.

“Totally,” Katie seconded. “Take a pill.”

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” quoth the bookworm to the Thin Twin, for he had managed to score a seat next to his secret crush girl.

“Oh, rah-ther,” Katie replied with a giggle. Noah could imitate an English accent decently, but Katie’s faux accent was remarkably lame.

“Okay, guys, this is getting a little heavy,” D.J. broke in, trying to keep everyone on reasonably good terms. Unfortunately for him, in doing so he attracted the wrong kind of attention.

“So, D.J., what are you afraid of?” queried Sadie.

“Telling us what he’s not afraid of might be a shorter list,” Noah quipped.

“That’s a little harsh, isn’t it?” Katie challenged.

“Naw, that’s okay,” D.J. said. “He’s not too far off. I really am afraid of a lot of things. Too many.”

“So, what’s the worst?” asked Lindsay.

“Snakes,” D.J. answered with a shudder. “They’re so slimy and scaly and slithery…”

“Two out of three,” Courtney interjected. “Worms are slimy. Snakes aren’t.”

“Being afraid of snakes is pretty common,” Ezekiel noted. “Goes all the way back to Adam and Eve getting ‘voted off’ the Garden of Eden.” Several campers chuckled at this juxtaposition of the Book of Genesis with the Book of Drama.

D.J. was not amused. The brickhouse was holding a grudge for the death of his “pet” bunny, although this grievance was not yet widely known, and he begrudged Ezekiel any esteem at all in the eyes of their fellows.

Duncan asked, “What are you afraid of, Zeke?”

Zeke’s face took on a vaguely haunted look as he said, “There’s a story behind it, just like with Beth. A couple of years ago, when I was in the mountains visiting some relatives, I was hiking with a couple of my cousins. It was winter, so we were on snowshoes. Anyway, we got caught in an avalanche. It wasn’t very big, and I was on the edge, so I only got buried up to about my waist.

“It took me a while to dig myself out, but when I did, I went looking for my cousins. I found them. They were both pretty much totally buried, although there were bits sticking out—one of Joe’s hands, and one of Rob’s snowshoes, I think. I was able to tell from the snowshoe and the glove who was who.

“The thing is, an avalanche packs the snow so tight, it’s like cement. I found that out when I was digging myself out. I knew it was going to take me a long time to dig my cousins out, and people who get buried like that usually don’t have all that much time, so it didn’t look like I would be able to save them both. I had to choose.”

For the second time, the only sounds were those of the bonfire and the local wildlife. Beth finally broke the silence. “I can’t even imagine having to make a choice like that.”

“I didn’t,” Ezekiel admitted. “Not really. I couldn’t. It probably wouldn’t have been so hard if I didn’t know who was who, but I did, so…. Luckily, a couple of Good Samaritans saw what happened, and they helped me to dig my cousins out. Without that, they might both have died.

“So, I guess my deep secret fear is getting into another situation where I would have to choose who to let die so someone else can live, because I already know that I can’t.”

“That would be tough for most people, I think,” Courtney offered diplomatically. “It just shows that you value human life. Not like some people I could name.”

Courtney scanned the crowd and asked, “Have we missed anyone?”

No answer was immediately forthcoming, as the campers reviewed each other’s confessions. Finally, Heather said, “Noah. Noah still hasn’t embarrassed himself in front of everyone.”

“Not embarrassing,” Noah parried, “just absurd, at least for me. There’s a difference.”

“So let’s hear it,” the queen bee challenged.

Without a hint of embarrassment, the bookworm confessed, “I’m deathly afraid of outhouses. In fact, if I had to relieve myself, I’d probably end up crapping my pants if an outhouse was the only alternative.”

“Then how do you do confessionals?” Tyler asked.

“I don’t. I realize that might reduce my screen time, but that’s just the price I have to pay.”

Gwen wrinkled her nose in distaste as she observed, “I don’t think you need a phobia to be afraid of the outhouse we have here in camp.”

“I hear you, girl,” Leshawna replied. Turning to Noah, the dusky daughter asked, “But how do you vote, then? We have to cast our votes in the confessional—”

“—and having one of us do it for you would be a huge conflict of interest,” Heather finished. “Not that it would bother me, but you know what I mean.”

“I’ve made other arrangements with Chris,” Noah explained. “I just write down my vote and give it to one of the redshirts.”

Izzy chattered, “So why are you so afraid of outhouses? Do you think the Creature From the Black Latrine will get you? Rend your soft flesh into tasty little bloody gobbets with its nasty sharp pointy teeth?” The demented redhead raised her hand to her mouth and held out two crooked fingers, presumably to imitate fangs.

The bookworm looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, “Come to mention it, your bouncing-off-the-wallsness, you might be closer than you think.

“I didn’t used to have a problem with outhouses, but one day I had to use one and I got a nasty surprise. I didn’t know it at the time, but black widows like to hang out under the rims of outhouse seats. A lot of people get bitten that way. For reasons that I trust are obvious, it’s a bigger problem for men than for women.

“Long story short, I got bitten on my, er, ‘organ of increase’ and wound up in hospital. I got so sick that for a while, they weren’t sure if I was going to make it. For a while, I was so sick that I didn’t care whether I survived. But I obviously did, which is how I can be here now giving you lot a hard time.”

“Did you get so sick because of your allergies?” Katie asked.

“No, it had nothing to do with my allergies. Allergies are to things that most people don’t have a problem with but are bad news for you. Deadly neurotoxins don’t exactly fall under that heading.”

“Deadly… neurotoxins?” Leshawna asked with a cringe. The ebon homegirl was no fan of spiders, as has been told of before, and Noah’s story about the Outhouse Incident did not improve her attitude toward them.

“One of the deadliest in the world,” the bookworm replied. “The only reason black widows don’t kill more people than they do is because the biggest dose they can deliver would make Chris’ heart seem large and ungainly by comparison.”

When the chuckles subsided, Izzy summarized, “So you got your pecker pickled with a pinch of potent poison. Does it still work?”

“As far as I know,” Noah replied with a shrug. “It’s not like I’ve ever had a chance to ‘field test’ it—”

“—Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more.” Cody finished.

“Whatever,” Noah said.

Courtney said, “I guess that’s everyone.”

With a sly grin, Duncan said, “You haven’t confessed, Princess.”

“Sure, she did,” Lindsay answered innocently before Courtney could. “It’s green Jell-O, remember?”

“I am not afraid of Jell-O!” Courtney cried yet again.

Cody explained, “She didn’t actually say it, Linds, we just inferred it from empirical observation and deductive reasoning.”

“Empiri-what?” Lindsay asked, looking confused.

“We noticed how she reacted to it, so she didn’t have to say it.”

“Oh, yeah,” the uberbimbo said as understanding dawned. “Poor Courtney. I wouldn’t want to go through life being afraid of Jell-O.”

“I am not afraid of Jell-O!”

Heather saw a chance to take her friendish rival down a peg and said,  “All right, then, what is your deep, dark humiliating fear?”

“I don’t have one,” Courtney replied a little too hastily, with a smile that seemed a little too forced.

“Come on,” the queen bee pressed. “The rest of us confessed. You’re not getting a free pass.”

“What’s to confess?” Courtney replied with a suspicious crack in her voice. “I don’t have a phobia. Sure, there are things that I would be afraid of, but they’re things that most reasonable people would be afraid of.”

“Like Jell-O,” Heather retorted with a cold smirk.

“I am not afraid of Jell-O!”

“Green Jell-O,” Izzy reminded them. “It has to be green.”

The camp rang with Courtney’s scream of frustration.

The next day was the usual off day, so the campers took their ease and pursued their own interests. Katie and Sadie, who had previously shown themselves to be skilled seamstresses, spent much of the day mending their sundresses as best they might. At first, they were ready to write off the badly torn dresses as lost causes; but Eva, of all people, counseled against that.

“People will be able to see the tears,” the clones complained. “They’ll look crappy.”

“That’s not a bad thing, considering how they got torn,” the musclegirl explained. “Those mended tears will be badges of courage. They’ll make you look tough. On a show like this, that’s something you want. It’s something the fans will respect, and this show is all about getting a fan base. Remember, we’re here to become celebrities, even if this lame game wasn’t how we were expecting to do it.”

“Wow,” one of the clones said. “I didn’t know you were so smart. Uh, no offense.”

Eva felt a brief flare of anger in spite of herself, but it passed. She smirked and said, “None taken. I get that a lot. People don’t think that brawn and brains can go together, but some of us know better.”

The next morning, Chris came to the lodge during breakfast and called for attention. Everyone assumed that he was about to give challenge briefing, given that three days had passed since the last one.

“All right, campers,” the host declaimed, “it’s Challenge Day! Today’s challenge is a little game called ‘Phobia Factor’. The rules are simple. You have to face your worst fears.”

There was fear in Leshawna’s eyes as she speared a piece of the gray, meatlike substance that the campers called “zombie sausage” and said, “Worse than this?”

“We’re in trouble,” Gwen pronounced.

“Noah,” Chris said, “it’s come to my attention that you’re the only camper left who’s never done a confessional spot. In our confessional… out… house. We can’t have that, now, can we?”

The bookworm’s eyes widened in horror.

“Heather,” the host continued. “Meet me at the amphitheater. It’s sumo time!”

The expression on the dragon girl’s face closely matched Noah’s, and she began to shake visibly.

“Duncan. Celine Dion would like to have a word with you. Of course, we can’t afford the real Celine Dion on this show’s budget. You understand.”

“This is what I get for opening up to people,” the scorner of laws muttered.

“This is what we get for forgetting that we’re always on camera,” Tyler added.

“Look on the bright side,” Cody suggested, doing his best to put on a brave face. “At least this challenge isn’t likely to get anyone killed.”

“You think so, Codemeister?” Chris challenged as he grinned wickedly. “Just wait ‘till you see what we have in store for Ezekiel.”

“Oh, my God,” Courtney gasped. All the imagined horrors that lay in store for them paled against this one, for the campers remembered all too well what fear the farm boy had confessed: having to let someone die—maybe even one of them—so that someone else could live.

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

.

Eleventh Night

The next day was not a school day, so Brett and his mother spent the day engaged in their own affairs. That night, after they had dined and Brett had finished what homework he had for the weekend, he approached his mother and asked to hear 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.

Chris concluded his briefing by saying, “The team with the most brave souls wins. And before you ask, yes, I realize that having one extra player gives the Eagles an advantage. Deal with it.”

The campers finished their meal in near silence, worrying about what might lie in store for them and fervently hoping that they wouldn’t have to be part of Ezekiel’s potentially lethal test. This preoccupation with the coming challenge did grant them one small mercy, though: they barely tasted their food.

As the campers filed out of the lodge to find their fates, Chris grasped a certain Muskie by her upper arm and said, “Not you, Courtney. You have an appointment with Chef.”

Beth was the first to face her trial. Chris led the campers to a Plexiglas chest that bore an unfortunate resemblance to a coffin. Giving Beth goggles and a dust mask, he told her to put them on and to lie down in the “coffin”, face up. When she had done so, two interns carrying large canisters began to pour a mass of spiders onto the farm girl, starting at her feet and working their way up. Leshawna hastily backed away a few paces.

Beth’s mortal fear was being covered in bugs, as has been told before; and while spiders aren’t actually bugs, they were close enough for Beth. The spiders were a harmless type, but that didn’t matter, either. Most bugs are harmless, too.

With Beth now completely immersed, a redshirt closed the lid on the chest, as Hatchet produced a stopwatch and clicked it. Clearly, Beth had to endure for a certain period, but she hadn’t been told how long that interval might be. After a minute or so, at a signal from his aide, Chris flipped up the lid and bade the nerdette stand.

Beth unsteadily rose to her feet. Her face drawn and paler than Gwen’s, she stepped out of the coffin and stood, shaking, whilst the redshirts brushed her off. She removed her dust mask and goggles and staggered a little way off, then dropped to her hands and knees and was loudly ill.

After giving the others a few moments to contemplate what Beth had gone through, Chris turned to the homegirl. “Well, Leshawna,” he said rhetorically, “We don’t want these spiders to go to waste, do we?”

“W-what do you mean?” Leshawna asked hesitantly. Being afraid of spiders, she thought she knew all too well what he meant, but clung to the forlorn hope that she might be mistaken.

She wasn’t. “I understand you’re afraid of spiders,” the host said, his expectant grin giving the lie to his mild tone. Indicating the coffin, Chris handed down his sentence. “I want you to reach in and scoop up a few. But don’t hurt them.”

“How touching,” Heather remarked caustically to no one in particular. “He cares more about a bug that will die of old age in three months than he does about us.”

Beth’s continued retching didn’t help Leshawna’s state of mind. Having surrendered her breakfast, Beth was still wracked with dry heaves. The farm girl had paid a steep price for her team’s first point. It also didn’t help that the arachnid army was now quitting the coffin en masse, and so the other campers, even those with no special aversion to spiders, were giving ground.

Leshawna thrice stepped forward to do as Chris had commanded, and thrice blenched back. Finally, with a heavy heart, she turned to her teammates. “Sorry, y’all,” she confessed, unable to look them in the eyes, “I can’t do it.”

"Leshawna, you are useless!" Heather snapped.

Chris then led the campers to the amphitheater.  There, he bade Heather stand on the stage, and invited the other campers to take seats in the rebuilt bleachers. As the Eagles’ despot stood nervously, mentally preparing herself as best she might, the host grinned and theatrically called out, “Enter sumo wrestler, stage left!”

Heather barely glimpsed the gigantic form before cowering in a ball and averting her eyes. The wrestler approached menacingly and, getting no response, pranced about the queen bee and made inarticulate but threatening-sounding noises. Heather continued to cower, as if in a “duck and cover” drill.

“That won’t cut it, Heather,” Chris warned, “You have to stand up to him.”

Heather was too frightened to immediately comply. Perhaps 15 seconds later, after a second warning from Chris, the Dragon Queen finally looked up at her adversary and immediately wished she hadn’t.

Heather found herself facing, not a genuine sumo wrestler, but Owen dressed as a sumo, complete with topknot wig and body paint. A lot of body paint. This was actually worse than the genuine article, for although a sumo wrestler appears fat, in truth it’s mostly muscle. Owen, by contrast, was truly fat. Hideously fat. The fact that Owen was a good deal taller than most sumo wrestlers didn’t help.

Heather now appeared calm, but the expression on her face was not pleasant. Having been driven to the extremity of her terror and beyond, her calmness was not the composure of self-assurance, but a serenity not unlike that which comes with ceasing to fear death when about to die.

Still sitting on the floorboards, Heather said, “I thought a real, live sumo wrestler was the scariest thing in the world. I was wrong. I—”

Heather’s eyes rolled back into her head, and she slumped unconscious to the ground.

"Now who's useless?" Leshawna asked rhetorically.

A couple of interns carried Heather to the bleachers, and Chris called Duncan forward. As the wiry delinquent stepped forward, concealing his dread as best he might, another redshirt came onto the stage, carrying three cardboard standees, which she now arrayed at the other end of the stage from Duncan. One of those standees, Duncan had expected: a life-sized image of Celine Dion; but the scorner of laws couldn’t even hazard a guess at why the other two were there.

Some ninety centimeters high, these standees flanked the Celine Dion standee on either side and a little behind. The women pictured thereon weren’t quite human. Oh, they seemed human enough at first glance, until the observer noticed the filmy, insectlike wings sprouting from their backs. Their eyes were also strange, solid disks of color with no pupils evident. One of these women had hair and eyes of flaming golden orange, with her somewhat wild hair in a high, crestlike ponytail. She wore enormous eyeglasses, but was otherwise dressed casually and unremarkably. The other had hair and eyes of purple, with neat hair and an odd spheroidal crest in lieu of a ponytail, and was more fashionably dressed in line with a Gothic or punk aesthetic.

Duncan wasn’t sure he really wanted to know, but he elected to tempt the gods nonetheless. “Why do you have standees of Lady Loony’s imaginary friends?”

“They’re the backup singers,” Chris explained.

“Let me guess,” Noah said dryly. “The Pixie Chicks.” The other campers groaned.

Chris heard this reaction and deemed it good. “The greatness of a pun is measured not by the laughs, but by the groans,” he declared.

“Touché,” Noah replied with his air of studied boredom.

Turning his attention back to his tormentee, Chris said, “Duncan, I believe you know Ms. Dion. What you might not know is that she likes you, so I want you to give her a kiss. Like you mean it. On the lips, nice and tender, eyes open. No tongue, for obvious reasons.”

“You’re sick, dude,” Duncan replied, although he sounded more resigned than condemning.

Chris grinned and replied, “Should I try for ‘depraved’?” Seemingly struck by a sudden thought, the sadistic host cocked his head, stared into space and said reflectively, “Mmm, I’ve always liked that word. ‘Depraved’… yeah, ‘depraved reality show host’. I’ll bet that would be good for ratings.”

Duncan decided that he should cut his losses, and so turned his attention back to his task. He tried to approach the standees, but his progress was slow and hesitant.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of!” Tyler called. “It’s not like she’s not going to smack you! She’s not Eva!” Quickly realizing his gaffe, the jock of all trades turned to the musclegirl and said, “Uh, sorry. No offense.”

“None taken,” Eva replied with a smirk. “I probably would smack him if he tried to kiss me. Even if it was just a cardboard me.”

“You’d smack him just for kissing a standee of you?” D.J. asked.

“No, my standee would probably smack him.”

Beth called out to her delinquent teammate, “She’s pretty! She’s nice!” You can do this!” And sure enough, Duncan eventually succeeded in doing as Chris had commanded.

The terrible deed done, the delinquent glared at Chris and said, “There. Happy now?”

“As a matter of fact, I am,” the host replied. “Point to the Muskies.” Turning to the seated campers, he declaimed, “With Duncan able to face his incredibly lame phobia, the Killer Muskies now lead 2-0. Eagles, you’d better step up your game if you want to win this.”

Chris dismissed Duncan, but as the delinquent turned toward the bleachers, Izzy called, “Wait a minute! Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“What do you mean?” Chris asked as he gestured for Duncan to stand by.

“Celine got a kiss, and she’s only been here one day. Sunshine’s been waiting the whole time we’ve been here. She should get a kiss, too.”

The incredulous delinquent could only say, “You’re kidding, right?”

“Sunshine wants her kiss!”

Duncan snorted and said, “I don’t think so, Looney Tunes.”

“Give her a kiss!” screamed the demented redhead. In spite of himself, Duncan flinched at the sheer intensity of Izzy’s demand.

“Yes,” Chris replied thoughtfully, “Do give her a kiss. It might get you some brownie points if the teams end up tied.”

Duncan sighed. Steeling himself, he knelt down in front of the flame-crested pixie standee.

“Ooh, you two-timer!” D.J. called in mock shock.

Whilst Duncan was “making out” with Sunshine, Chris received a radio call that he had been expecting. The host then called for the campers to follow him.

Chris led his playthings to a spot on the lakefront, not far from the dock but out of sight from the camp. Two pits that looked suspiciously like graves awaited them. Between those pits lay the Plexiglas coffin that Beth had lain in, and another much like it. A work detail of interns stood nearby.

“Gwen, Katie,” the sadistic host announced, “I hear that you’re both claustrophobic, so we’re going to bury you alive. That’s a common phobia in its own right, so that’s a bonus. Your coffins have some lighting, so it’ll be easy to see the walls as they ‘close in on you’.”

Gwen and Katie’s eyes briefly met, and these teammates drew strength from the knowledge that they would not be alone in this ordeal.

“How long do we have to be in there?” Gwen asked nervously.

“Until we decide to dig you out,” Chris replied. “If we decide to dig you out.”

“Not funny, Chris,” Gwen snapped.

“I know, right?” Katie seconded.

“Sheesh. Take a pill,” Chris replied with a show of irritation that was as phony as everything else about him.

The two interns who were apparently attending Chris for this challenge approached the girls, with what looked like medical sensors in their hands. As they affixed these sensors, Chris explained, “We’ll be monitoring your vital signs, because I’ll be deciding whether you pass or fail based on how long it takes you to pass out from the CO₂ buildup. If you can stay reasonably calm, that should take about 30 minutes. Once you’ve passed out, you’ll be able to live for another 30 minutes, give or take. That should be plenty of time for the interns to dig you out, assuming that they’re not on their lunch break or something.”

“You’re enjoying this way too much,” Gwen snapped again.

The host’s only reply was a rhetorical, “I love this show.”

Katie looked once more at Gwen and said wearily, “The sooner we get started, the sooner we can get it over with and the less time we’ll have to think about it. Let’s do this.” The Goth smiled back at her sister in misfortune and gave a quick, curt nod. Both girls then stepped into their Plexiglas tombs and accepted their fate.

Before the intern gravedigger detail could close the lids and begin the burials, Chris stepped forward with two radio handsets. Handing one to each girl, he said, “Most of the other campers will have their teammates cheering them on, so because I’m such a nice guy, I’ll give you these handsets so you can talk to each other while you’re waiting to pass out. Of course, if you talk too much, you might use up your oxygen faster.”

Leaving the burial detail to its work, Chris led the remaining campers inland. Their course happened to take them past the cleft where Katie and Sadie had spent the night that they had thought might be their last in the Vale of Tears, and Chris remarked on this. From there, he led his charges to a cave where an intern was standing by. This cave was literally within rock-throwing range of the cleft, and the campers saw that not even Chris McLean could outdo Lady Luck’s capacity for cruelty; for in that cave, the Siamese campers could have sheltered in relative safety if they had but seen it.

With an expectant grin, Chris said, “Eva’s afraid of the dark, so she’s going to go spelunking. If she dares.”

The redshirt gave Eva a stopwatch, a GPS tracker, and a miner’s hardhat with an electric headlamp. Chris then said, “You need to stay in the cave for an hour, far enough in that you can’t see light from the entrance. If you can do that, you’ll get a point for your team.

Eva looked to her teammates and said, “I can do this.” Her only show of emotion was a faint but perceptible smile, seemingly meant to assure her teammates. On the inside, though, she was positively giddy, at least by her standards, for it seemed that Chris had misjudged her phobia. The steel maiden entered the cave, confident that the light of her headlamp would be enough to keep her fear at bay.

Chris led his dwindling band back to camp. When they were safely out of earshot from the cave, Noah voiced his suspicions. “Chris?”

“Yo, bro?”

“If I’m not mistaken, and I rarely am, Iron Woman’s cave crawl doesn’t really test her phobia. Sure, she’s afraid of the dark, but she didn’t have any trouble at the campfire.” A murmur of agreement ran through the throng, for in truth this seeming contradiction hadn’t occurred to anyone else.

“Oh, yeah. My bad,” the host replied.

“So, what’s the catch?” the bookworm prompted. “Surely there is one.”

“Don’t call me ‘Shirley’,” Chris replied inevitably, and only then deigned to answer the question. “But you get a gold star, dude. Eva’s supposed to stay in the cave for an hour, but what she doesn’t know—actually, she might have noticed by now—is that her lamp battery will only last about ten minutes.”

Izzy said, “Oh, that’s nasty. I love it. But how will she know when her hour is up if she can’t read the stopwatch?”

“She probably won’t,” Chris admitted, “but that’s not her real test. Her real test is, what will she do when she realizes that her battery’s about to die? Will she tough it out and wait for someone to come get her, or will she make tracks for the exit?”

Tyler smiled and said, “I like those odds. She won’t let us down.”

The next stop was the confessional outhouse. “Noah,” Chris called. “It’s time for your first confessional spot of the season.” With an expectant grin, the host added, “Your nice, long confessional spot.”

“How long are we talking about?” the bookworm asked, doing his best to appear indifferent.

“To be honest, I’m not really sure. Let’s just say that I expect you to make up for lost time.”

Leaving Noah to his test, Chris led the campers to the communal washroom. With everyone arrayed around the entrance, he opened the door to reveal that the common area had been converted to a makeshift salon featuring a remarkably large number of mirrors.

“Lindsay and Sadie have a thing about bad haircuts,” Chris declaimed, partly to remind the viewing audience and partly to instill in the two victims a sense of impending doom. “That’s why we’re here at the Wawanakwa Beauty Parlor. Lindsay, your test is to give Sadie a bad haircut. Sadie, you’re probably wondering what’s with all the mirrors.” Getting no response, the host explained, “The mirrors are there because your test is to watch Lindsay work.”

Heather, for whom beauty was serious business, shook her head and said, “That’s low, Chris, even for you.” As the host opened his mouth to respond, the dragon girl hurriedly added, “And no, that’s not a compliment, so don’t try to twist it into one.”

Chris gave an approving nod and replied, “It looks like we think the same way, Heather.”

“That should scare you,” Duncan suggested to the queen bee.

It kind of does, Heather thought, although she said nothing.

.

Zekey’s Choice

As Lindsay and Sadie entered the Wawanakwa Beauty Parlor to do what they must, Chris said to the remaining campers, “Justin, Izzy, Ezekiel, you’re with me. Everyone else, back to the amphitheater. I’ll be there in a bit. No side trips.”

On the way back to the amphitheater, a buzz of worried conversation hung over the campers like flies over a carcass. Considering the nature of Ezekiel’s confessed fear, the fact that Chris had called away two other campers with the prairie boy did not bode well. It seemed odd, though, if that was Chris’ purpose, since neither Justin nor Izzy had faced their own fears yet.

“What do you think Chris will make them do?” Beth asked, not that she really expected anyone to have any more insight than she did.

“Maybe he’ll make Justin kiss Izzy,” Duncan quipped.

“Why would that be so bad?” Beth asked. “Justin said he was afraid of having to kiss an ugly girl, but Izzy’s not ugly.”

“No, for that he’d have made Justin kiss Gwen,” Heather sniped. “He still might, but whatever. Izzy’s not ugly, but she’s not gorgeous, either. Hunkie McHottie didn’t say ‘ugly’, he said ‘ungorgeous’. There might be a difference.”

“I know,” Tyler offered with a grin, trying to lighten the mood. “Izzy’s afraid of flying, so maybe Chris will make them join the Mile High Club.”

“Good one, Ty,” Leshawna said with a smile as she swatted Red Jock lightly on his butt. “That actually sounds like something Chris would do when he’s not trying to kill us. ‘Good for ratings’ and all that.”

Heather said, “What I don’t get is where Homeschool’s test fits in. Having to choose between someone on his own team and someone on the other team, or having to choose between a boy and a girl, might make it easier for him. That’s not like Chris at all. But it’s got to have something to do with Justin’s and Izzy’s tests, otherwise why wouldn’t he have waited until their tests were done? Unless he makes them do their ‘Mile High Club’ thing and then—”

Heather said no more, for a large brown hand clapped over her mouth to prevent it. “Sorry, Heather,” D.J. said, “but if you were going to say something that Chris wasn’t already planning, we don’t want to give him ideas. That’s what got us into this mess in the first place.” Heather nodded silently, belatedly realizing what she had been about to do, and the gentle giant released her.

“Okay, let’s see what we can do,” Lindsay said rhetorically, as she inspected the supplies and equipment that had been provided for her trial whilst Sadie sat in the chair and steeled herself for this ordeal as best she might. Although Lindsay’s brain would make a blueberry seem vast and majestic by comparison, the former blonde was something of an idiot savant when it came to matters of beauty, so Sadie insisted to herself that she was in good hands. Still, the butterball couldn’t help but squirm in anticipation as her hairdresser plotted her course.

“Oh, my gosh,” Sadie suddenly cried. “I can’t do this!”

“What’s wrong?” Lindsay asked.

“If I get a haircut, I won’t match Katie anymore!” Sadie explained desperately. “And I can’t make her get a bad one too! What kind of friend would do that?”

This terrible prospect hadn’t occurred to Lindsay, although she was well aware of Katie and Sadie’s co-dependency. “Let me think about this,” the uberbimbo said, gesturing for her friend and ally to calm down. “There’s got to be a way to have our kale and eat it too.”

Her brow furrowed in concentration, Lindsay turned her attention back to the tonsorial tools she had been given. “Yes!” she cried.

Sadie turned to see Lindsay triumphantly holding out a hand full of hair. “Extensions!” the uberbimbo declared. “With these, I can do what Killer wants me to, and then undo it later! You’ll still match Carrie!”

Heather, in particular, would have been glad that she wasn’t present as Sadie and Lindsay squealed in delight.

The main body of campers reached the amphitheater without further incident and chatted idly as they waited for their sadistic host to return. When he did so, Chris called Tyler to the stage and said, with an expectant grin and loudly enough for everyone to hear, “Tyler, I’m told that you have a thing about chickens.” Even as the host spoke, an intern brought out a small wire cage containing a bantam rooster. The redshirt opened the cage and withdrew, whereupon the rooster emerged and began strutting about the stage like it owned the world.

Chris then declared Tyler’s trial by ordeal. “I want you to put that chicken back in its cage.” The host then stepped back, careful to remain in the camera’s field of view.

As Red Jock warily eyed his nemesis, Beth called out, “You can do it, Ty!”

Almost a minute later, it was looking as though Beth had spoken falsely, that Tyler would not in fact be able to do it. The jock of all trades had broken a cold sweat, but had not been able to make more than the most hesitant approaches to his quarry.

Chris warned Tyler that he would lose the point if he didn’t do something soon, but Tyler still could not bring himself to approach the rooster more closely.

Just as the host was about to give the second and final warning, D.J. called, “This is pathetic, dude! Get in the game!” Then a thought struck the brickhouse, and he added, “Don’t think of it as a chicken, think of it as a game opponent who happens to be the favorite. Being the underdog doesn’t mean that you can’t beat him.”

This new perspective seemed to be what Tyler needed. He took a deep breath and began to walk toward the little rooster—not confidently, but with grim determination. The bantam, for its part, watched his approach with what looked like mild interest.

As Tyler drew closer and the bantam stood idly by, the jock of all trades began to feel better about this test. Now close enough to pick up the rooster, he stooped over and reached down to do so.

The rooster lashed out with its feet, and steel glinted in the morning light. With a cry of alarm, Tyler lurched back, stumbled and fell. The back of his head hit the floorboards, and he was out like a light, bleeding from a cut on his hand.

“Holy crap, it’s a fighting cock!” Duncan cried in disbelief, only now noticing the razor blades affixed to the gamecock’s spurs. The delinquent had never seen a cockfight, but he had heard from sources he considered reliable that gamecocks are often armed with razor blades, small knives or suchlike to make the fights bloodier. Tyler could well attest to the effectiveness of that ploy, or would be able to when he regained consciousness. The very idea of cockfighting was too much for D.J, who looked like he was about to faint. Or barf. Or both.

Leshawna glared at Chris and asked, “Blood sports? Isn’t anything beneath you?”

Heather gave the host an equally frosty glare and declared, “For once, I agree with her.”

Chris shrugged his shoulders and said, “A little blood never hurt the ratings. Surprises are good for ratings, too. Besides, what are you complaining about? The Muskies didn’t get the point, bras.”

The reminder that her team wasn’t the one hurt was enough to silence Heather, but Leshawna was more righteous and less easily appeased. “That’s not the point,” the homegirl shot back. “The point is, what kind of company do you keep that you can get a fighting cock?”

Chris replied, “If you want to get ahead in show biz, sometimes you have to get your hands dirty. Someone at the studio knows some people who know some people… I’d tell you all about it, but it’s kind of boring and we’re on a schedule anyway.”

At the outhouse, Noah was still trying to summon the courage to enter. There’s no reason to be afraid, he told himself. Of course, there isn’t, a nagging voice at the back of his mind insisted. That’s the nature of phobias.

Yet again, Noah tried to steel himself for his ordeal. If he could just force himself across the threshold, that would be half the battle. Once inside, he had to remain there for a long time according to Chris, but Noah didn’t see that as a problem. If he could handle three minutes, then he could handle 30; but could he last for three?

After two more false starts, the bookworm finally succeeded in entering the confessional outhouse for the first time since his arrival on the island.

At the amphitheater, an intern brought out another cage containing a fair-sized snake. The redshirt set the cage down, opened it from behind, and hastily withdrew. The snake then obligingly slithered out onto the stage to bask in the morning sun.

Now that the campers could get a good look at the serpent, they saw that it was nearly a meter long and sported a diamond-like pattern on its orange and brown back. It also had a noticeably triangular head.

Cody, who’d had an interest in animals when he was younger, largely coinciding with his time in the Possum Scouts, knew what that head shape meant. “A pit viper,” he said, shaking his head.

“You mean it’s poisonous?” Heather asked in disbelief.

“Venomous, actually, but yeah,” the former Possum Scout replied.

Leshawna overheard this conversation, and was as appalled as Heather. “So D.J. thinks this is an ordinary snake, but it’s actually something that could kill him?”

“Well, he’s huge, so it probably wouldn’t kill him; but depending on what type it is, it could put him in a world of hurt. I don’t recognize this species.”

“There’s one way to find out,” Leshawna declared. She then called out, “Hey, Chris, what kind of snake is this?”

“I’m glad you asked,” the host replied. “This is the deadly Carolina copperhead!”

D.J., with a quaver in his voice, turned to Chris and asked, “Did you say… ‘deadly’?”

“That’s right, bro. It’s got the deadliest, nastiest, flesh-rottingest venom in the world. One bite, and you’ll be curling up your toes in a couple of minutes. Lost a couple of interns. And I want you to pick it up and put it back in its cage.”

“Chris is just messing with him,” the visibly relieved Cody assured his lady friends, keeping his voice down to ensure that D.J.—who was, after all, on the opposing team—could not hear. “I’ve heard of copperheads. Yes, they’re venomous, but their venom is actually kind of weak. In fact, I’ve heard that people who get bitten by a copperhead usually won’t be given an antidote because it’s not worth the risk of an allergic reaction to the antivenin. Copperheads have killed people, but it’s pretty rare.”

“So you’re saying that it looks a lot nastier than it really is?” Leshawna prompted hopefully, and likewise in hushed tone.

“Like D.J.?” Heather chimed in.

“Pretty much,” Cody affirmed. “I’ve also heard that copperheads are pretty chill—”

“Like D.J.?” Leshawna suggested.

“You got it, bra,” Cody affirmed. “That’s why snake-handling cults like them. That and the weak venom.”

D.J., of course, heard none of this. For all he knew, his life could indeed be in mortal peril. After all, this was Chris McLean he was dealing with.

The gentle giant stopped short. This is Chris McLean I’m dealing with.

The host had gained a reputation among his charges for playing fast and loose with the truth when it suited him. Besides, this challenge was supposed to be about phobias, so it didn't really make sense to set tests that reasonable people would be afraid of. That was enough to convince D.J. that Chris was pulling his leg. This didn’t mean that the soft-hearted brickhouse’s test had suddenly become easy, for he was still facing a snake and he was still afraid of snakes, but at least he probably wasn’t in serious danger.

Tyler’s gamecock was still strutting about the stage, and the sunning serpent eventually noticed it. As D.J. began to cautiously approach the snake, the rooster happened to pass between them, right in front of the viper’s nose.

The serpent struck.

D.J. grieved from the bottom of his heart as the mortally wounded gamecock thrashed out its life on the stage. He understood that tableaus such as this were part of the natural order—the “circle of life”, if you will—but that didn’t make it any less painful to watch.

Seeing that the gentle giant was just standing there, Chris warned, “Dude, you’ve got to do something or you’ll lose the point.”

“Just a couple of minutes,” D.J. pleaded. “I have a plan.”

His curiosity aroused, the host answered, “You got it, bro.”

The snake inspected the late gamecock and, satisfied that the bird was small enough to swallow, undertook to do just that. When the serpent was committed to its course (for a snake swallowing prey can’t disengage after a certain point), D.J. calmly knelt down and removed the razor blades from the rooster’s spurs lest they harm the snake. He then picked up the snake and its prize, shuddering visibly at the first touch of that scaly serpentine skin, and returned the viper to its cage with all deliberate speed.

“There you go, buddy,” the kindhearted brickhouse said as he closed the cage door. “Enjoy your dinner.”

“And D.J. comes through for the Muskies!” Chris announced grandly.

Eva sat in the cave, shaking violently in total darkness. Unable to take any more, she flicked on her headlamp and checked her stopwatch. Thirty-four minutes to go. She took a few deep breaths to calm herself, meanwhile looking around her and committing to memory what details she could, especially those that lay in the direction of the exit. Then, bracing herself for the ordeal to come, she closed her eyes and turned off her lamp.

Eva had repeated this cycle thrice now. When she had first noticed that her headlamp was dimming, and she saw that Chris had not misjudged her phobia after all, the musclegirl had instinctively turned back to the exit and the safety of the light. She quickly checked herself, though, for she was determined to not let her team down.

That still left the problem of how she was going to last an hour, let alone find her way out afterward. She was one of the less social and photogenic campers in the game, and she suspected that Chris might not be above letting her rot in this tomblike place for the sake of keeping a more ratings-friendly contestant in the game longer.

Eva decided that her best chance was to “ration” her light, much as she would ration a limited water supply if she were stranded in the desert. This had the added benefit of allowing her lamp battery to refresh slightly—all too slightly, but better than nothing—during each cycle, thereby improving her chances of getting out of the cave on her own when her test was done.

At the amphitheater, the interns took the feeding snake backstage and wheeled out an unidentifiable contraption. Cameron then brought Chris an absurdly huge book, visibly straining under this weighty tome because the Ghandiesque little intern was weak and frail. Indeed, given the mortality rate amongst the redshirts, it was something of a mystery how the little guy had managed to survive. He probably had a more physically gifted crewmate looking out for him.

Chris called Cody to the stage.

“Cody,” the host declaimed, “You freak out under time pressure, right?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” the science geek replied nervously.

“That,” Chris said, gesturing to the contraption, “is a live bomb set to go off in half an hour, and this,” he added, handing Cody the huge book, “will tell you everything you need to know to disarm it. I hope you’re not a slow reader.”

“You’ve got to be kidding! I can’t do this!” the science geek protested.

“Then I’d suggest that you find a place to hide,” Chris replied. “Because when that bomb goes off, you’re going to be feeling mighty blue. That’s a paint bomb, and it’ll cover you with that indelible blue paint that banks use to thwart robbers by making the money useless.”

Heather called from the stands, “What about the rest of us? I am not getting paint on me!”

“You’re far enough away that you should be safe,” Chris assured her. “I think. We haven’t actually tested the blast radius. Whatever, you have to stay here and watch.” With an expectant grin, the sadistic host added, “More pressure that way.

“Later, dudes and dudettes! I’m sure it’ll be a blast, but I’ve got things to do, places to go and people to see. Good luck, Cody. You’re going to need it.”

Leaving Cody to his work, Chris left the amphitheater. Sending his attending interns away on certain errands, Chris went to the place where Gwen and Katie were buried. When he tuned his handset in to their frequency, he could hear that both girls were still conscious and trying to pass the time with awkward small talk. It was now well past the half hour that it would normally have taken them to pass out, but Chris had conveniently neglected to tell them that their coffins came with a supply of “scrubbers”—chemicals that absorb carbon dioxide from the air—to delay the CO₂ buildup and thereby prolong their torment.

When the interns returned from their errands, Chris dismissed them and then spoke into his handset. “May I have your attention, please?”

When the girls had dutifully fallen silent, the host said, “I imagine that the air in there’s getting pretty stuffy by now, but I’ve decided that we don’t need to wait for you to pass out after all. It’s been long enough, and you seem calm enough, that I’m satisfied you’ve both passed your tests. Score two points for the Screaming Eagles!”

“Yes!” Katie cried.

Gwen cried, “Eagles rule!”

“And so…” Chris declared with a wicked grin that the girls perforce could not see, “Ezekiel’s here to dig one of you out! Assuming, of course, that he doesn’t take too long to decide who…” The sadistic host turned his handset away from his ear just in time to avoid being deafened when Gwen and Katie’s stunned silence gave way to twin screeches of alarm and outrage.

This outburst left the girls panting for breath, for their air was indeed getting stuffy, and Chris applied the crowning blow. “The real reason why I gave you those handsets is so Ezekiel can hear you if either of you want to beg for your lives.”

Gwen all but screamed, “Chris, you can’t be serious! Death-defying stunts are one thing, but this is outright murder!”

Ezekiel, whom Chris had sent the interns to summon, shook his head in disbelief and tried to ignore the knot in his stomach. He had guessed whom he would have to choose between when the interns led him to this place and he saw a single shovel between Gwen’s and Katie’s “graves”, but that foreknowledge didn’t make it any easier. He found himself wondering if he had really survived that dive into shark-infested waters, or if the Deceiver had arranged all this as punishment for some long-forgotten and unrepented sin.

As the Goth paused again to catch her breath, Chris handed the radio to Ezekiel and silently motioned for him to speak. Ezekiel glumly took the handset, took a deep breath and steeled himself.

“I’m sorry,” the prairie boy said, not even trying to keep his voice steady. “I should never have confessed that. God forgive me.”

Chris could well imagine the looks on the girls’ faces when Gwen said, her voice scarcely above a whisper, “Oh, my God, it’s true.” In the same crushed tone, Katie said, as if to herself, “Will I have to leave Sadie behind after all?

As desperation got the better of Gwen and Katie and they began to plead for the salvation that only Ezekiel could now give them, the homeschooled lad saw one hope, however forlorn. If he conceded to Chris that this test was beyond him and threw himself at the mercy of the proverbial court, then perhaps Chris would have the redshirts dig both girls out. Gwen was right; letting one of them die under these circumstances would be murder, plain and simple, and using a simple farm boy as a pawn didn’t change that. Ezekiel decided that he would even accept summary elimination from the game if that was what it took to appease this demon in the shape of a man.

With equal parts desperation and grim resolve, Ezekiel turned to Chris to make his plea, only to find that the host had departed. Ezekiel was alone on the lakeshore.

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

.

Twelfth Night

The next day was not a school day, so Brett and his mother spent the day engaged in their own affairs. Brett had no homework, having dealt with it the day before; so that night, after he and his mother had dined, he asked to hear 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.

As Gwen and Katie pled ever more desperately for their lives, Gwen remembered a tidbit from a Mythology class. Eris, the Goddess of Discord, had been the only goddess not invited to a wedding between the sea nymph Thetis and the mortal king Peleus, and so took her revenge by inscribing one of the fabled Golden Apples of the Hesperides with the words, “for the fairest”, and tossing it into the assembly. Naturally, every goddess present laid claim to the apple, but it didn’t take long for three “finalists” to emerge: Hera, Athena and Aphrodite. These three appealed to Zeus to settle the dispute, but the lord of gods and men would have none of it. Instead of trying to decide between his wife, a favorite daughter and the Goddess of Love, the wily Zeus referred this no-win choice to a mortal, Paris, son of King Priam of Troy. The Judgment of Paris would prove to be one of the pivotal events leading to the legendary Trojan War.

No mere mortal could possibly have said that one of these divinities was more beautiful than the others, for all three possessed overwhelming beauty by mortal standards. The goddesses surely realized this, for they wasted no time in offering Paris bribes so lavish that only an immortal could make good on them; and it was in this way that the son of Priam was able to make a choice.

Gwen thought of this, and realized that both she and Katie had been avoiding contact with Ezekiel, so he probably didn’t know either of them well enough to make a choice based on how well he liked them. Gwen thus offered the prairie boy a bribe for her safety, offering to split with him any prize money that she might win from this hellish game.

That opened the floodgates. Although Katie’s mind wasn’t as sharp as Gwen’s under the best of conditions, and she was now feeling the urge to succumb to sleep, the Thin Twin was not so dense nor so far gone that she could not see the danger of leaving Gwen’s offer unchallenged. The swift and inevitable result was a bidding war.

Chris had not truly left the burial site. He was, in fact, quite near at hand, sitting behind a large rock so that Ezekiel could not see him. Having given the farm boy his own handset, Chris had commandeered another from one of his attending interns before he dismissed them, and he was now using it to listen to Gwen and Katie bid for their lives.

Katie was now on the verge of unconsciousness, once more bitten in the behind by her high metabolism. With nothing left to lose, she finally made the ultimate in ratings-friendly offers. “Please, ‘Zekiel…” she gasped. “If you… If you save me, I’ll… I’ll boink you.”

Gwen quickly matched Katie’s offer, for she thought it would be suicidal not to. Forgive me, Trent, she thought dejectedly, although she dared not say it aloud.

When Chris heard the girls bartering their bodies, which quickly escalated to the point where both had promised to essentially become Ezekiel’s love slave for the whole summer if he would but bring them back to the light of day, the host’s little black heart was made glad. Chris had no illusions that the clean-living farm boy would actually try to hold a girl to such a pledge, but the ratings-obsessed host thought that merely have an offer of sexual favors on the table would titillate the viewing audience (at least that portion old enough to understand) and would therefore be good for ratings.

At the amphitheater, Cody was making good progress, but he had begun to feel the pressure. The huge instruction manual he had been given was mostly for show, as all the relevant information was contained in only a few pages. That section was well past the book’s midpoint, but a Table of Contents had guided Cody to the spot.

The science geek tended to have trouble concentrating when under time pressure, and so it was now. As he became increasingly flustered, his mind began to wander, and it wasn’t long before he found himself wondering how Gwen was doing. He didn’t doubt that she was holding up bravely, for she was a “roll with the punches” type given to quiet perseverance. Cody admired that about Gwen. Of course, he admired pretty much everything about Gwen, for such is the nature of infatuation.

Although Cody would rather have been able to stay with Gwen to help her through her ordeal, he took comfort in the fact that she was not facing it alone—and no less importantly, that the person with her posed no threat to Cody’s romantic designs. As Cody continued to work distractedly on his task, he idly wondered how Katie was holding up, buried alongside his gorgeous Gothic goddess…

Cody dropped his tool. “Oh, my God,” he whispered. “Gwen!”

Cody leapt to his feet and dashed off the stage as if the devil himself were at his heels. “GWEN!” he screamed, although she could not possibly have heard him.

“Cody, get back here!” Heather demanded. “You’re not done!” The science geek paid her no heed, and was soon lost to view.

“What’s up with him?” Leshawna asked rhetorically. “He looked like he saw a ghost.”

As the campers speculated on the reasons for the science geek’s abrupt departure, D.J. was the first to guess the truth. “Homeschool,” he said. “Cody thinks that Chris is going to make Homeschool choose between Gwen and Katie; and if that’s the case, then my money’s on Katie.”

D.J. was half right. As Gwen had suspected, Ezekiel did not know her or Katie well enough to choose between them on their own merits. What these girls could not have known, though, was that their bidding war had merely paralyzed Ezekiel further; for these bribes were the only way he had to choose, but he knew all too well that they were being made under extreme duress, so he thought it unseemly to consider them. This was especially true with the carnal offers, for Bible Boy regarded sex outside of marriage as sinful. He did not think less of Gwen or Katie for trying to tempt him, though, for he could well guess how desperate they were.

When Ezekiel realized that Katie had fallen silent, presumably having passed out, he was finally able to make his terrible choice by telling himself that it was too late for her. Insisting to himself that only Gwen could still be saved, he stood on her “grave” and began to dig furiously, making rapid progress through the loose soil.

Chris watched Ezekiel’s frantic labor and thought, This is awesome television!

“GWEN!” came a distant cry. It repeated moments later, noticeably closer.

Chris smirked as he changed the channel on his handset and placed a call.

“Quartermaster’s. Scott here,” replied a high-pitched, nasal male voice.

Still smirking, Chris said, “Scotty, we need another shovel at the burial test. Cody’s early.”

“Comin’ right up.”

The finished episode spliced in a confessional spot at this point, wherein a smugly grinning Chris McLean declared, “I can play these kids like Courtney plays her violin.”

Izzy’s test was not, in fact, related to Ezekiel’ or Justin’s. Because the demented redhead had confessed that she was afraid of flying, Chef Hatchet took her aloft in a ramshackle light plane that looked like it could fall apart at any moment. Numerous patches on the fabric were plainly visible, and Izzy did not fail to notice them.

Even under normal conditions, flying in a light plane is not the event-free experience that commercial air travel has largely become, and it’s that much more traumatic for a white-knuckle flier like Izzy. But when a patch on one wing tore loose, exposing a large rip in the fabric, Izzy knew fear as if experiencing it for the first time.

When the plane touched down after a half hour or so in flight, Izzy breathed a deep sigh of relief. Something seemed wrong, though. After a moment of confusion, she noticed that her seat was warm and wet.  With a cry of disgust, she realized that she had soiled herself in her terror, probably when the patch tore away from the plane’s wing. When the plane came to a halt, the irritated redhead wrapped an emergency thermal blanket around her waist and waddled off to the washroom to empty her panties.

Fortunately for all concerned, Lindsay and Sadie were no longer there. They had staggered out of the washroom a few minutes before—pale and shaking, but confident that they had done what Chris had demanded of them.

When Cody reached Chris, the host was calmly watching Ezekiel dig. “So, Cody,” Chris asked in a conversational tone, “were you able—”

A muffled explosion sounded from the direction of the amphitheater. “Guess not,” Chris observed with a shake of his head. “That could end up biting your team, dude.”

“Is Gwen going to be okay?” Cody asked desperately. He could see Ezekiel digging, but in the stress of the moment he couldn’t remember who was in which “grave”.

“That’ll depend on how fast Ezekiel digs her out… but yeah, it looks like she’s going to be okay. Things aren’t looking good for Katie, though. I’d hate to lose her. Word on the blogs is that the camping challenge made her and Sadie overnight fan favorites.”

“Are you going to have someone dig her out, then?” Cody asked, trying to keep his rising anger in check. He sensed—he hoped—that Chris was merely trying to bait him, and Cody didn’t want to give the sadistic host the satisfaction of seeing him lose his cool on camera.

“Who’d have thought?” Chris mused, as if he hadn’t heard Cody’s question. “I figured they’d both be early outs and the fans would be like, ‘Good riddance.’”

“Is somebody going to dig Katie out?” Cody asked in exasperation.

“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it, bro? Noah will really owe you one.”

“Me? I don’t have anything to dig with! What am I supposed to use, my bare hands?”

“Well,” the host replied with a shrug, “I don’t have anything either, so I guess we’re out of luck.”

As Cody began to despair, Chris looked toward the camp and said, “Or not.” He had spotted Lightning approaching at a jog with shovel in hand.

When Lightning reached them, he tossed the shovel to Cody and said, “Here you go, kid. Time to score some lady brownie points. Hot sha-diggity dang!” The ripped ebon warrior then returned from whence he came.

No sooner did Cody have the shovel in hand than he rushed to join Ezekiel. When the country bumpkin saw that he was no longer alone, he gave an immense sigh of relief and said, “Thank goodness you’re here! You can finish with Gwen, eh? I need to start with Katie if she’s going to have any chance.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Cody agreed.  “Good luck.” As he began to dig as fast as he was able, he muttered under his breath, “Hang on, Gwen. I’m coming.”

Now with a chance to have his proverbial cake and eat it too, Ezekiel dug with renewed vigor, sparing occasional quick glances to check Cody’s progress. Gwen’s would-be knight in shining armor was not an especially strong digger, but he was highly motivated and Ezekiel had already done much of the work.

Chris left the boys to their work, for he wanted to check on some of the other campers and he felt that he’d seen everything he needed to at the burial ground. Scarcely had he left when he encountered the other campers who had been at the amphitheater. After Cody’s abrupt departure, they had seen no reason to stay and possibly get painted when the bomb went off; and they were worried about their colleagues.

Seeing what was happening at the lakeshore, D.J. offered to take over for Cody. The gentle giant quite reasonably assumed that he would be able to dig faster and longer than the science geek.

“You’re kidding, right?” Chris replied. “Gwen will think that she seriously owes whoever digs her out, and you want to take that away from Cody? Knowing how hot he is for her? You’d have to pry that shovel out of his cold, dead fingers.”

“You can’t expect us to just stand here and watch!” D.J. protested.

“No, I expect you to come with me,” Chris explained. “We have some other campers to check on.”

“But what about Katie and Gwen?” Beth asked.

“What about them?” the host asked in turn, clearly enjoying the situation. “They look like they’re going to be all right.” As the worried teens reluctantly turned to follow their sadistic overlord, he added, “Probably.”

Chris led his entourage to Eva’s cave. The attending intern informed them that the steel maiden had not come out, and despite some movement had remained deep enough in the cave to satisfy the conditions of her trial. Only four minutes remained in that trial, and Chris was eager to see how much Eva had suffered, so the sadistic host decided to stay at the cave mouth until time expired and Eva was brought out.

As the intern escorted Eva out, she turned her dying headlamp on one last time just before reaching the entrance—not because she needed it, but because she wanted to show that she had reasoned out her test instead of just toughing it out through brute force and ignorance.

Chris, naturally, was taken aback when he saw that Eva’s lamp was still functioning, if only just. “That battery was supposed to give out after 10 minutes!” he complained.

Eva replied with a smirk, “It probably would have if I’d left it on.” The musclegirl then explained how she had endured, but nothing would be gained by repeating it here.

“Impressive,” Chris said with a nod of approval. “It wasn’t quite what I expected, but you obviously managed to deal with your fear, so… point to the Muskies!”

Chris then led his charges to the washroom, only to find no one there, so he put out a call on the public address system for Lindsay and Sadie to show themselves. Chris and his entourage then went to the confessional outhouse and found Noah still there.

In response to Chris’ knock on the door, Noah emerged looking none the worse, and admitted that he had lost track of time. Chris chalked up a point for the Eagles, and Noah went on to use the confessional normally for the rest of his time on the island.

The Lord of Wawanakwa and his train returned to the washroom to find Sadie and Lindsay there in response to his summons. Lindsay was doing her best to not look at Sadie, who now sported a frizzy, visibly lopsided mullet with an enormous cowlick on her crown. Chris thus awarded Lindsay a point for the Eagles, but told Sadie that he would have to review the washroom video to verify whether she had indeed watched Lindsay create that travesty. Before departing, though, Chris told the butterball that she and Lindsay needn’t wait any longer before repairing the damage as best they might.

Lastly, Chris and the campers returned to the burial ground to find that the exhumed Gwen and Katie were alive and reasonably well, although they were just beginning to revive. When the girls were fully conscious, Chris handed down his judgment.

“Ezekiel,” the host pronounced, “It’s pretty clear that Gwen and Katie were unconscious by the time you dug them out, which means that you waited too long to make your choice. For the purposes of this challenge, they are both ‘dead’, so no point for the Muskies.

“Cody, you’re with us. Ezekiel, take your ‘victims’ to the morgue, a.k.a. the boathouse. They’ll have to stay in there until dinner.” Gwen and Katie shuddered.

When Ezekiel and his “victims” reached the boathouse, the farm boy said, “Did you want me to stay with you? Don’t take this the wrong way, but we all saw that it’s pretty spooky in there, eh?”

“I think we’ll be all right,” Gwen replied dryly. “At least we’re only ‘dead’ for the challenge, and not dead for real. I wouldn’t have put it past Chris to just let us die if you hadn’t been able to choose. He probably figures that blood’s good for ratings.”

Gwen forced down a lump in her throat, and continued. “Anyway, I understand you choosing Katie over me, so you don’t need to make it up to me. I owe Cody, though, and I have a feeling that he isn’t going to let me forget that.”

Katie, who likewise mistakenly believed that Ezekiel had chosen her over Gwen, fidgeted nervously and kept her eyes lowered so as not to meet his. “Um… Ezekiel? About those ‘favors’ I promised you…”

“Neither of you promised me anything,” Ezekiel said. “That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.”

Gwen smiled and said, “There’s hope for you, yet.”

“I know, right?” Katie seconded with a warm smile of her own, as she finally met the farm boy’s gaze. The sincere gratitude in her face was the only “repayment” Ezekiel needed, although Katie did give him a peck on the cheek for his trouble.

With that, Bible Boy returned to the main camp. When he was safely out of earshot, Gwen said, “I know this is kind of a personal question, but… if he had insisted, would you have gone through with it?”

“Well, it’s not like he could actually make us do anything,” Katie replied, then hung her head in embarrassment. “But, yeah. I probably would have. I’d have felt obligated. It’s not like he made us promise those things, and I’ve always hated girls who tease guys that way. If my mouth writes the check, my body had better be ready to cash it.”

“You’re more honorable than I am,” Gwen admitted with a shake of her head. “I’d have done just about anything to get out of it, even if I hadn’t hooked up with Trent. I’d have at least tried to be polite about it, though, since I did feel bad about having to make the offer in the first place. I don’t like girls who tease, either. I’d probably have been willing to give him a cut of my prize money, if I get any, but not the percentages we were offering.”

With that, Gwen and Katie shared a quick hug. Then they swallowed hard and retired to the boathouse for the afternoon.

As the light began to fail, the campers eagerly filed into the lodge for dinner. They never thought they would see the day that they actually looked forward to a Hatchet-cooked meal; but it had been a difficult day, the hour was late, and most of them were starving. Hatchet’s cooking might be unappetizing, but at least it was edible (if sometimes only just).

The teens were puzzled to see that neither Chris nor Chef Hatchet were present, and the serving counter had nothing ready to be slopped onto their plates. How long were they going to have to wait?

With nothing better to do, the campers fell to discussing the challenge results, and whose heads might be on the chopping block if their teams lost. The Eagles had rallied from an early 3-0 deficit; and with Chris’ announcement that Sadie had indeed passed her test, the teams were now tied (or so they thought) with only Courtney’s and Justin’s results still unknown. Come to mention it, no one had seen Courtney since breakfast, although Justin was in the lodge with the others. When asked how his trial had gone, he refused to discuss it, which didn’t fill his fellow Eagles with confidence. During one of these refusals, his glance chanced to fall on Beth, and he shuddered. If anyone else noticed this, or knew what to make of it, they gave no sign.

At one point, Gwen motioned to Alejandro, who was in the lodge to help with preparations for the evening meal. Although the Goth had forgiven Cody for his role in Trent’s ouster, she had not forgotten, and she was tired of the science geek’s constant attempts to flirt with her. To make matters worse, she now appeared to be in his debt, which might further embolden him. Why, oh, why did he have to be the one to dig me out? Gwen lamented silently.

“Can I help you, senorita?” Alejandro inquired politely.

“I was just thinking about the challenge, and I was wondering. If Cody hadn’t come to dig me out, Chris would have had you guys do it… right?”

“I would like to think so,” the well-spoken Latino replied, “but I must be candid. I think it was wise of Cody to not take that chance.” Of course, it was really Katie who was now in Cody’s debt, for Ezekiel had chosen Gwen, as has been told of before; but neither Gwen nor Alejandro knew that.

Gwen sighed. While Alejandro’s answer hadn’t come as a surprise, it wasn’t the answer she had been hoping for.

At long last, Chris entered. After calling for quiet, he announced that Justin had failed his challenge. Reiterating that Justin’s phobia was physical intimacy with people who did not meet his standards of “gorgeosity”, the host stated that Justin had been charged to make a successful PG-rated “seduction” of Beth, including plenty of kissing, and to make people believe that he meant it.

“Justin,” Chris sniffed in a tut-tutting tone, “refused even to try. His exact words were, and I quote, ‘Beth? But she’s hideous!’”

That got most of the girls staring daggers at the Incredible Hunk, who suddenly seemed a good deal less desirable to them. Beth was mousy and plain, but by no means ugly. Eva said, “He’s worse than Homeschool.”

Justin, as one might suppose, was not pleased at having his dirty laundry aired so publicly. “He’s lying! You know how Chris is,” Justin protested desperately.

“Do you want me to play the tape?” Chris asked with a “gotcha” look at the uberhunk.

Justin knew when he was beaten. “No, that won’t be necessary,” he replied with resignation. He then muttered under his breath, “Way to turn the mob against me, McLean.”

“And so,” Chris continued, ignoring the angry hunk, “That leaves the Eagles ahead by one point, with—“

“What?” the Muskies cried, almost in unison. “We should be tied!”

“Au contraire,” Chris, corrected, motioning again for quiet. “Izzy didn’t pass her test, because she crapped her panties during her flight.”

“Eww, gross!” the campers exclaimed, along with many other things in like vein, and Chris once again had to call for order. Izzy, who naturally didn’t like having her (literally) dirty laundry aired in this way, was now staring broadswords at the host.

With order restored, Chris continued. “If she had waited until after, like Beth, she would have passed. So to speak.” Chris and Chef Hatchet, who had by now emerged from the kitchen, chuckled at the host’s wordplay. The campers were less amused, since the mirth was at the expense of one of their own.

“Anywho,” Chris continued, “Courtney never confessed a phobia, but she didn’t have to. We happen to know that she has a particular aversion to green Jell-O. Which brings us to tonight’s menu, and the deciding trial,” McLean added enigmatically.

“Tonight’s dinner special,” Hatchet announced dramatically, “is Jell-O C.I.T.” With that, Hatchet disappeared into the kitchen.

Whilst Hatchet made whatever preparations were in order, the campers asked each other, “What the heck does that mean?” Did she have to prepare their dinner? That didn’t really seem to be on a par with what most of them had gone through that day.

Duncan suggested, “Maybe she’s going to be our serving wench.” With a leer, he added, “Mmm, entrée and dessert.” That earned him icy glares from a few of the girls.

“Get your mind out of the gutter,” Eva snapped. “If you weren’t teammates, Courtney wouldn’t give you the time of day. For that matter, neither would I.”

Duncan’s lechery aside, the campers were in some agreement that making Courtney serve up her phobia object to everyone else, in addition to eating it herself, might be a reasonable trial, insofar as the word “reasonable” could describe anything connected with their sadistic host and his sometimes-psychotic aide.

Hatchet presently emerged from the kitchen, pushing a cart with a long object draped in a tablecloth. With a flourish, he pulled off the cloth to reveal the mysterious meal.

The long object turned out to be the Plexiglas coffin that had seen so much use that day. It had been a spider city, it had been Gwen’s tomb, and it was now an enormous serving dish filled with green Jell-O.

Suspended within, arms folded across her belly, lay Courtney.

.

The Sum of All Fears

“Oh, my gosh, you’ve killed her,” Beth exclaimed softly, unable to believe her eyes.

In another reality, Beth would have been laughed out of the lodge for such a thought. Not here, though. The campers had all seen Chris’ callous disregard for human life, so Beth’s assessment seemed all too plausible.

“Now, Beth,” Chris replied with a show of theatrical indignation, “I’m hurt. Do you really think I would do something like that?”

“Yes,” the campers replied with one voice.

“I’m making you all into celebrities, and this is the thanks I get,” McLean clucked, shaking his head. “I mean, come on! Why would I kill you when torturing you is so much more fun?” he asked in a cheery tone that made most of the teens want to push his face in.

“For ratings?” Hatchet suggested unhelpfully.

“Hmm, that’s a good point,” Chris acknowledged with a show of considering something he hadn’t before, as the teens silently cursed Hatchet for giving their sadistic overlord ideas.

“Now, once they’ve been eliminated,” Hatchet added, with his own show of contemplation, “they wouldn’t be useful anymore, so you could kill them then, if you wanted. Get the ratings ‘blood boost’ that way.”

“Chef, I knew I hired you for a reason,” Chris offered with far too much cheer.

Tiring of this game, the campers approached the coffin. Inspecting it more closely, they were relieved to discover that the producers had, indeed, made arrangements to keep Courtney alive. In addition to her normal clothing, she wore swimming goggles and nose plugs. In her mouth was a snorkel, the end of which protruded through a hole in the end of the coffin. Through the snorkel, the campers could hear that Courtney’s breathing was slow and regular, and through her goggles they could see that her eyes were closed. She appeared to be asleep, and some of the campers who had feared for her life mere moments before now found themselves envying her that opportunity.

“Awesome,” Beth said. “If Courtney can sleep peacefully when she’s buried in this stuff, then she must have passed. Right?”

“Nice try, but no,” Chris explained. “The reason she’s sleeping is because we sedated her so she wouldn’t move around while the Jell-O was setting. When she fell asleep, she didn’t know what her test was going to be.”

“This should be good,” Gwen said with a smirk.

The teens now noticed that Courtney wore ear buds that were hooked to a handset microphone on the outside. She was also hooked up to a heart rate monitor, although this was probably more for the viewing audience than for any need to monitor Courtney’s vitals.

Picking up the handset mike, Chris declared, “Now for the fun part.” Jiggling the end of Courtney’s snorkel, the host spoke into the microphone. “Wakey, wakey, CIT,” he prompted in a singsong tone.

Courtney’s breathing pattern changed audibly, and she began to stir. With the gelatin restricting her movements, she seemed to sense that something was wrong, and awoke with a start. As she took in her surroundings, her body stiffened and her eyes bugged. Her heart rate skyrocketed, and her breathing became rapid and shallow. There could be no doubt that she was terrified.

Her hands erupted from her semisolid shroud and grabbed the edges of the coffin. Just as she was about to haul herself out, though, which would have cost her team the point and the challenge, she caught herself. With the surface of the Jell-O mass disrupted, the others could no longer see Courtney’s eyes clearly, but her breathing pattern and the odd little noises coming through the snorkel suggested that she might have been sobbing as she slowly drew her hands back inside.

“How long does she have to stay in there?” Beth asked.

“Until the rest of you eat her out,” Chris answered with a bland smile.

With a thoughtful look, Heather asked, “So, if we don’t eat it, she just has to stay in there until she can’t take it anymore and loses the point? And the challenge?”

“Maybe,” Chris replied unhelpfully. “But like Chef said, this is dinner. If you don’t eat it, then you don’t eat.”

“What if she craps her pants, like Izzy?” Gwen asked, with a nasty feeling that she knew the answer.

“Then she loses the point, like Izzy.” As the demented redhead gave Chris another death glare, the host continued smugly, “But you heard Chef. This is dinner. If you don’t eat it, then you don’t eat.”

Another chorus of “Eww, gross!” later, Duncan asked rhetorically, “Where’s Owen when you need him?”

“Owen wouldn’t help,” Heather asserted with a shudder, remembering her own all-too-close encounter with the Human Gullet. “He would be just as likely to down the whole thing in one gulp, and Courtney along with it.” That was an exaggeration, of course, since Owen wasn’t big enough to swallow someone whole, but there were a few chuckles at Heather’s reference to the man-mountain’s indiscriminate eating habits.

In truth, nobody seriously believed that they really had to eat all that Jell-O to free Courtney. For one thing, doing so would have taken days. For another, Chris didn’t have a reputation for honesty. With nothing else to say, and with the Muskies eager to liberate their teammate, the campers lined up and Hatchet scooped out their portions.

The campers began to eat, only to get another unpleasant surprise.

“What is this, Overcooked Okra flavor?” Leshawna asked with a grimace.

“Close,” Chef replied. “It’s a mashup of Celery flavor, Lettuce flavor, Mixed Vegetable flavor and Italian Salad flavor.”

Chris explained, “It’s one of those things that sounded better in theory than it turned out to be in practice. The company also tried some other vegetable-type flavors, but people didn’t like them any better. These flavors haven’t been made since the Fifties, but Kraft Foods is one of TDI’s corporate sponsors, so when I asked for something to make Courtney’s test ‘special’, they were happy to oblige. This stuff has been gathering dust in some warehouse for 50 years, so they thought this was a good way to get rid of it.”

“Maybe Courtney’s tried this stuff before,” Tyler mused. “That would explain a lot.”

As the campers ate, someone thought to ask what the tiebreaker would be if Courtney passed her test.

“There can’t be a tie”, Chris explained, “because the team captains’ tests are worth double.”

“But we don’t have captains,” Leshawna pointed out.

“Sure, you do,” Chris replied. “Maybe not officially, but I’ve seen how the teams behave. Courtney has been bossing the Muskies around left and right, and Heather has been ruling the Eagles with an iron fist.

“Heather failed her test, so it’s all up to Courtney.” Chris took up the hand mike again and declaimed, “The Muskies trail by one point, with two points at stake. This test is for the win.”

After the campers had eaten their fill, Chris spoke again into the handset mike. “Courtney,” he pronounced, “Assuming you haven’t pissed or pooped your panties, you’ve just won the challenge for your team. You can come out now.”

Courtney burst from her quivering prison, scattering Jell-O on everyone. With cries of disgust, she quickly finger-combed her hair and hurriedly began to strip off her clothing. That got the boys’ attention.

“Ooh, dinner and a show,” Duncan leered.

The boys, however, were soon disappointed. Courtney removed her top to reveal, not the racy underthings or uncontained boobies that the boys were hoping for, but a short-sleeved wetsuit similar to Bridgette’s. Since Courtney didn’t own a wetsuit, the producers had presumably provided it so she wouldn’t get hypothermia whilst the Jell-O was setting in the walk-in refrigerator.

Having stripped down to her wetsuit, Courtney finally turned to her teammates, who broke into applause. “Thanks, guys,” she said simply, as she hurried toward the exit. “If anyone needs me, I’ll be decontaminating in the shower.”

Duncan started to say something, but Eva interrupted. “Don’t say it, Duncan,” she warned. “Don’t even think it.”

After Courtney had showered, nobody bothered to take the wetsuit back, so she kept it. It would again serve her well, but that is another story for another time.

The next day, the Muskies enjoyed their reward, an excursion to a local amusement park to face fears of a different sort, and the Eagles considered the question of whom they should vote off. They had something else to talk about, as well—the strong earthquake that had rattled the camp about an hour before lunch. The tremor caused no significant damage at the camp, but the campers would learn in due course that it had wrought havoc elsewhere.

Justin sensed that he was at risk, and so avoided contact with the girls. His hope was that they would quickly forget his gaffe, especially with the earthquake giving them something else to talk about.

It was not to be. Heather called her allies to her and gave them their marching orders. They would try to expel Justin. Despite Lindsay’s mutual attraction to the Incredible Hunk, the former blonde accepted her liege’s command when Heather assured her that there was no other way, but Katie and Sadie balked.

“Why can’t we vote off someone who’s not as yummy?” Katie asked.

“Oh, he’s so yummy,” Sadie added before Heather could even draw breath to respond. “I could stare at him all day.”

“Oh, I could totally stare at him all day,” Katie seconded, without missing a beat. “I could just—“

“Focus, guys, focus,” Heather interjected hastily, with raised voice. Unable to get in a word edgewise, she had resorted to shouting down the “twins”. Getting their attention, Heather asserted her dominance.

“Now look, you timeshares,” Heather said with poorly concealed irritation at Katie and Sadie’s inclination to think for themselves, not to mention the quality of that thinking, “I know Justin’s easy on the eyes, but the reason I’m captain of this alliance is because I can see things that you don’t.”

“The reason you’re captain of this alliance is because you’re bossy,” Sadie shot back.

“Oh, totally bossy,” Katie added.

Heather was losing patience. “Guys, you heard what he said about Beth. How would you have liked it if he’d dissed Sadie like that in front of everyone?”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot about that,” one of the clones admitted.

“We hate him,” the other pronounced.

“Yeah, we totally hate him.”

“Do you hate him more than I do, or do I hate him more than you?”

“I don’t know, but if we both hate him, that’s all that matters.”

“So we’re going to vote him off, like Heather said?”

“We’re totally going to vote him off—“

“—but not just ‘cause it’s what Heather wants.”

“I know, right? Were voting him off because he’s mean—“

“—even if he is yummy.”

“He should really learn to be nicer.”

“I guess he thinks that if you’re totally hot people will just forgive you for anything.”

“Well, can you really blame him?”

“Well, yeah. We just did.”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot. Isn’t that the great thing about us?”

“What?”

“That if one of us forgets something, the other usually remembers.”

“That's so totally great! But that’s what BFFFLs do, you know.”

“I know, right? BFFs FL.”

“I know, right? BFFs for L.”

Katie and Sadie hugged, squealing in unison, then looked around and realized that they were alone. Heather had reached the point where she was ready to break something if she had to listen to them any longer, so the queen bee had left for the confessional to cast her vote, taking Lindsay with her.

“I couldn’t care less what Justin thinks of Beth,” Heather declared in the confessional, “but his hotness…

“…his… incredible…

“…hotness…”

Heather suddenly realized that she was flushed, and that she had started fanning herself. She quickly shook her head as if to clear it, and got back to business.

“Anyway, he’s a threat to the discipline of my alliance. Of course I know that he and Lindsiot have been into each other since Day One. It’s not like they’ve tried to hide it, and I’ve noticed that Justin is the only person here whose name Lindsiot always gets right. I even heard her mess up her own name once. I’ve been able to keep them apart so far, but lust will find a way, given time. I can’t afford that.

“Justin dissing Beth in front of everyone has turned most of the girls against him, but there’s no telling how long that will last. Probably not long, if Tweedledum and Tweedledumber are any indication. I’d rather have kept him around a little longer because he’s strong in the challenges, but I have to do it now—strike while the iron is hot—because I might not get a better chance.

“Bye-bye, Hunkstin. Can’t say I’ll miss you.”

And so it was done. At the elimination ceremony, Justin and Heather were the bottom two, but Heather had only a single vote—Justin’s—against her. The Incredible Hunk had voted against the queen bee because he and Lindsay badly wanted to hook up, and Justin recognized Heather as a serious obstacle to that.

All the other Eagles, save one, had voted against Justin. Cody and Noah had seen an opportunity to remove a distraction from the sight of the girls they were pursuing, although the Brain Brothers did have reservations about expelling the physically strongest remaining Eagle only halfway through the team phase. Heather’s reasoning has been told of before, and nothing would be gained by repeating it here.

Gwen and Leshawna’s first inclination was to vote against Heather, but they didn’t think they had the votes to oust their nemesis, so they settled for the uberhunk. In truth, they might well have been able to round up enough votes to send the queen bee packing, but they made no serious attempt to do so; for the plain-dealing Leshawna found the political elements of the game distasteful, and Gwen was not a people person in any case. Both girls were inclined to hold grudges, though, and they didn’t like how Justin had treated Beth, so the Outsider Girls did not agonize over their decision. Heather’s alliance was powerful, but neither Gwen nor Leshawna expected it to endure, for they thought it only a matter of time before Katie, Sadie and Lindsay came to resent how the Dragon Queen treated them. No, they thought, there would be time enough to settle up with Heather, and it would be most satisfying to watch her allies turn on her. But that is another story for another time.

Justin’s Dock Walk featured a twist. The survivors normally remained at the base of the dock, leaving the condemned to walk alone to the boat. On this night, though, the girls lined the edges of the dock at the far end, facing Justin as he approached the boat. A person unfamiliar with the situation might have thought the girls were honoring him, but the truth was that they just wanted to gaze upon his preternatural beauty one last time. Cody and Noah joined the girls primarily because they didn’t want to be left alone at the base of the dock.

Justin came first to the Brain Brothers, and wished them success in getting hooked up; for he knew that Cody was smitten with Gwen, suspected that Noah had his eye on someone as well, and had no particular quarrel with either. As Justin passed the girls, he acknowledged each in some way—a smile here, a kind word there, a kiss on the hand that left Leshawna ready to faint—until he finally came to Lindsay.

“I wish we’d had more time together, Linds.”

“I know, right? But Heather…”

“I understand. She was afraid you’d abandon her alliance. Can’t say I blame her.”

“Well, At least we had that day when we were practicing for the talent show. That was just totally awesome.”

Justin smiled at the memory. “It was, wasn’t it?”

In a trice, the show’s Royal Couple of Beauty clinched, kissing with unexampled fire. The other girls—yes, even Heather, who no longer had anything to gain by trying to keep Lindsay and her beau apart—found the scene unspeakably adorable.

There is a certain double standard governing which public displays of affection are socially acceptable. Beautiful People, it is said, have no limits. And so, as one kiss became three, then six, as closed mouths opened and hands began to wander, everyone seemed content to let nature take its course.

As the long-frustrated lustbirds continued to make out in front of the world, oblivious to everything except each other and their own desires, they seemed to shine with a radiance of their own. That was merely a trick of the light from the torches lining the dock, of course, but it served to suggest that such gorgeous beings were perhaps not entirely mortal.

Chris finally stepped in, if only because he didn’t want to pay overtime to the camera crew. “Okay, you two,” he said as he separated them, “I think that’s enough fanservice footage for one episode.” With a smile, he added, “Thanks for the ratings booster. If that doesn’t give our viewers naughty dreams, I don’t know what will.”

Justin said to Lindsay, “I’ll be rooting for you, and I’ll be waiting for you, so win this for both of us, okay? Don’t let the chance for us to be together sooner stop you.”

Now where have I heard that before? Gwen thought with an unnoticed glance at her confidante, Leshawna, who had given similar counsel in Gwen’s hour of bereavement.

“It won’t,” Lindsay assured him. “A hot guy and a million bucks is a lot better than just a hot guy.”

“That’s the spirit.” With that, Justin accepted his fate and stepped aboard the Boat of Losers. The grungy little watercraft, ennobled by its beautiful burden, seemed in that moment like a chariot of the gods.

In the finished episode, Lindsay’s vote casting followed Justin’s departure. “I know I’m supposed to vote for Justin, but I can’t,” she admitted. “I’m sure Helen knows what’s best, and she’s too good a friend to make me vote against my future boyfriend if I didn’t have to, but still.

“I heard that Jen and Nirvana are going to vote for Justin. Hera probably didn’t know, but it means she won’t miss my vote. That means I can vote for whoever I want, not that I really want to vote for anybody, but you know what I mean. I think I’ll vote for Glenda. She’s not as much fun as Madonna, and Helga doesn’t like her, so I don’t think she’ll be too mad if she finds out.” Lindsay suddenly looked nervous and added, “But don’t tell her, okay?”

“So, Lindsay had a brain after all,” Brett mused.

“That she did,” his mother replied. “That she did. It took her a while to grow a spine, though… but I’m getting ahead of myself.”

The night was not far advanced, so Brett’s mother paused a few moments to collect her thoughts, and then continued with her tale.

.

Episode #8: The Tale of the Boney Island Adventure

Original title: Up the Creek

The next evening, the campers sat down to yet another reasonably nutritious but appallingly unappealing dinner. As Heather’s posse came off the serving line and began to take their seats, Lindsay had a question for Noah. The bookworm was sitting on the other side of the table and about three seats down, so Lindsay had to speak loudly enough for some of the Muskies to overhear.

“Hey, Noah?” the brunette bombshell called to get the bookworm’s attention.

“Yeah?”

“You’re smart…”

“Yes, I am,” Noah affirmed. “Very, very smart.” With a reflective air, he added, “Quite phenomenally brilliant. Yes, I do possess the most startling quantities of brainpower.” Returning his attention to Lindsay, the pretentious bookwork prompted, “So, because I’m very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very smart, I take it you have a question?”

By the time Noah had finished, Lindsay’s face was showing that all-too-familiar look of childlike confusion. It passed.

“Me and Kerry and Sherry were talking,” the uberbimbo explained. “What’s ‘long pig’?”

Noah’s eyes widened. “How did that come up in conversation?”

“I was asking Chef Hagrid what’s in the casserole—”

“That was your first mistake,” the bookworm interjected.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Lindsay admitted. “Anyway, he said it was something called ‘long pig’. So what’s ‘long pig’? Is that like a dachshund pig or something?”

Most of the other campers were as mystified as Lindsay; but those few who knew the term had pushed their trays away and were looking at their food as if expecting it to lunge for their throats. Courtney and Eva had been among the Muskies eavesdropping, and now wished that they hadn’t. Both were looking notably green around the gills despite having relatively strong stomachs.

“’Long pig’ is an old-fashioned name,” Noah explained as gently as he might. “It’s human flesh eaten by cannibals. ‘Long’ in this case means the same thing as ‘tall’, and ‘people meat’ is supposed to taste a lot like pork, which I might add is the most widely eaten meat in the world. Hence, ‘long pig’.”

“Oh, my gosh,” Lindsay said as her normal skin tone gave way to an ashen pall, “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Oh, please,” Heather sniffed. “Chef was just messing with your mind, such as it is.”

Duncan hadn’t known what “long pig” was, either; but now that he did, he saw a chance to do some mind messing of his own. “Don’t be so sure,” he warned the queen bee. “You know that a bunch of redshirts have bought it on this lame island, and you know how cheap the producers are. Do you really think they’d let that much fresh meat go to waste?”

More of the campers were starting to look disturbed. They didn’t want to believe what Duncan was saying, but they had to admit that the delinquent had a point about the ‘budget conscious’ producers, not to mention Chris.

“And I’m not sure they’d even stop with the interns,” Duncan continued. “Seriously, do we really know what happens to the contestants who get ‘sent home’? Remember that so-called ‘beef stew’ we had the other night? That meat seemed awfully fresh compared to what we usually get. For all we know, that ‘beef stew’ could just as easily have been Bridgette stew.”

“I think I have a new worst fear,” Tyler said.

“Oh, poor Bridgette!” Lindsay lamented, her voice full of pity. “And she was so nice!” Heather facepalmed.

Beth looked a bit pale as she answered, “Sunshine told me that the losers are staying at a compound somewhere. He said… er, she said that they’re going to come back for the finale.” There was fear in the nerd girl’s face and voice, as if she desperately wanted to believe what her source had told her but was now questioning it in spite of herself.

Noticing the pronoun goof, Duncan gave a knowing smirk and said, “And by Sunshine, you mean Alejandro.”

“No, she means Sunshine,” Izzy broke in. With her characteristic rapid-fire delivery, the demented redhead chattered, “Girl gets around with those little pixie wings of hers, and she’s small enough that it’s easy for her to hide when she wants to. Of course, I’m not saying that Sunshine couldn’t have heard it from Al, but that’s not the same thing. If Beth had heard it straight from Al, then that’s what she would have said, now wouldn’t she?”

“Whatever,” Duncan replied. “Anyway, I’ve heard about the losers’ compound too, but how do we know that’s not just the official line? It’s not like McLean hasn’t lied to us before.”

“Even Chris wouldn’t stoop that low,” Courtney insisted, “so stop being so vile. The losers are fine. They’re probably better off than we are, not that they could really be much worse off than us.”

Struck by sudden whimsy, which she would later repent in the confessional, Gwen chimed in. “Courtney’s right. Owen’s more the stewing type. Bridgette would be better for crackers. She’s into the whole ‘green’ thing, you know.”

For a moment, nobody knew quite what to make of Gwen’s remark, but Noah soon brightened as he recognized the reference. “Good one,” he said with an approving nod as he offered a fist bump. “Nice and subtle.”

The other campers puzzled over Gwen’s joke, for joke it clearly was although neither she nor Noah were willing to explain it. Izzy presently figured it out and filled everyone in.

Gwen’s joke had broken the increasingly tense mood, and the meal resumed without further incident. As the campers began to filter out of the lodge, Ezekiel caught up to Duncan and said, “You were just kidding, right? About Chris using the dead interns for meat?”

“I hope so,” the scorner of laws replied, his expression unreadable. “I sincerely hope so.”

The following morning, after waking to the apocalyptic strains of Verdi’s “Dies Irae” and choking down a truly nasty breakfast, the campers assembled at the dock for the challenge briefing. As with the camping challenge six days before, interns stood at the ready with maps and compasses, so the campers surmised that the coming challenge would be another wilderness adventure of some kind.

“Today’s challenge,” Chris announced, “is another classic summer camp experience: a canoe trip. Each team has eight campers and four canoes, so you’ll buddy up and paddle across the lake to… Boney Island, the deadliest island in Muskoka!” Chris declaimed melodramatically.

“The tour guide mentioned that during the sightseeing cruise,” Lindsay offered helpfully, with a look on her face that said, I am not either dumb! “I know, I wasn’t actually there because I was kind of out of it that day, but Kelly and Shelly told me all about it later, when they were fixing my hair. Whatever, the guide said it’s called Boner Island because it has some rocks or something that sort of look like a skull. He had a funny name, too… Calico, I think. I was like, why would his parents name him after a fabric?

Katie chimed in, “No, I don’t think that was it. I think it was… what were we talking about?”

Noah looked sad for a moment before he could compose his face to its normal blasé expression. Something was not quite right with Katie. Although nobody could really be certain, it appeared that the oxygen deprivation her brain had suffered during the camping challenge had done something to her short-term memory. If her mind could hold a thought for just a few minutes—the point where long-term memory takes over—then she was fine, but getting to that point could be tricky. Although everyone has moments when they lose their train of though mid-sentence or can’t remember where they put something, Katie now had these moments noticeably more often than before. In sum, Katie now came across as rather more ditzy than before, although she otherwise behaved normally.

Katie had always been among the more “noticeable” campers, to put it politely, so it didn’t take overlong for the others to notice her impairment. Nobody had the heart to tell her, though—not even Duncan, nor Heather, nor Eva. These three, and perhaps others, might have scorned the diminished Katie in another world, but this was the realm of Chris McLean; and here, it was unwise to tempt the gods, for the campers knew all too well that Katie might not be the last to meet with lasting harm to body or mind in this earthly hell.

The schemers would still scheme and the backstabbers would still backstab, for there was still a game to be won; but if someone got into serious trouble, they were all in it together. So it was that the campers reached an unspoken understanding that they would shelter Katie from the truth as best they might. Certain campers would come to grief from this well-meaning but misguided policy, but that is another story for another time.

Chris was likewise content to keep Katie ignorant of her condition, if only to prevent the lawsuit that he expected to follow if she were to learn the truth; but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t exploit her impairment if the opportunity arose. So it was now, as Chris pounced on Katie’s “brain fart” to get the discussion back on topic.

“We were talking about Boney Island,” he said, “home of the Boney Island National Wildlife Sanctuary, which—”

“Oh, yeah, I’ve heard of it,” Izzy chattered. “Our tour guide—Cameron, I think his name was, which might also be a fabric, for all I know, although if it is, I’ve never heard of it—told us during the cruise that the island has all sorts of mega-critters that died out everywhere else during the last Ice Age but didn’t die out there, go figure. Anyway, that’s why they made it a wildlife sanctuary. And he was telling us all about the skull-looking rock formation, too. He said that it’s kind of like “The Old Man of the Mountain” down in the States in New Hampshire or someplace, except that that one looks like a live guy and the one on Boney Island looks like a dead guy, and that you can tell they’re natural formations—well, the Old Man of the Mountain isn’t really a formation anymore because it broke off a few years ago and now it’s just a pile of rocks at the bottom of the mountain—but anyway, you can tell they were natural, past tense at least, because they only look like a guy or a skull or whatever from one side. And there also used to be a First Nations burial ground on Boney Island, well actually there probably still is, because some Indian guys—that’s Indians from around here, not Indians from India, in case anyone didn’t know that already—saw those skull-looking rocks way back when and said, ‘Hey neat, there’s a rock formation that looks like a skull, so that must mean that the gods are telling us to bury our dearly departed here.’”

As Izzy finally paused to draw a breath following this remarkable recitation, Chris raised a hand to stop her continuing. With an accusing glare at the demented redhead, he declared, “That reward was for the Eagles. You’re not an Eagle—”

“I was an eagle in a previous life,” Izzy protested. “Besides, Gwen didn’t go and Lindsay didn’t go, and it seemed a shame to let those seats go to waste, so Sunshine and I went instead.”

“No way,” Heather scoffed. “On a boat that small, we’d have seen you.”

“That’s what you think,” Izzy replied mysteriously. “When I was travelling in Sunshine’s homeland, I learned how to cloud people’s minds so they can’t see me.”

Noah quipped to Cody, “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Psycho knows!”

Izzy overheard the bookworm, despite his best efforts. “I love you, too!” she declared in a singsong tone. “But I didn’t think that I was the chick you were crushing on. Have you changed your mind, or are you just trying to play the field?”

“Hello!” interjected the irritated host, “Challenge briefing in progress!”

Having regained control of the briefing, Chris continued. “The legend says that Boney Island attracts restless spirits from the surrounding area—” The host’s voice took on a sinister, melodramatic tone as he added, “—and that anyone who dies on Boney Island will never be able to rest in peace!” Chris then let out a hammy peal of evil stage laughter.

“And so,” he continued blandly, in a conversational tone, “If you come across any ghosts on the island, they’re probably just interns. We lost over half of our intern corps marking the—”

“Over half?” Courtney all but screamed. “What did you do to them?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Chris replied indignantly. “We do know that a bunch of them were killed in rockslides that were probably triggered by that earthquake we had the other day. They also got attacked by some of the giant meat-eating beavers that live on the island.”

Leshawna stammered, “D-did you say, ‘giant m-meat-eating?”

“That’s right,” Chris replied cheerily. “They’re called ‘Wooly Beavers’. Hundreds of years ago, they figured out that scavenging leftovers at the burial ground was easier than hunting if any fresh corpses were available. That’s probably how they developed their taste for human flesh.”

“And so why exactly are you sending us there?” Gwen demanded.

“I thought it was time for a change of scenery,” the host replied with a shrug. “Shake up the routine a little.”

Chris’ blasé attitude toward their lives didn’t sit well with the campers, but they had come to expect it and so let it pass as their sadistic overlord blithely continued. “Anyway, once you get to Boney Island, you’ll carry your canoes to the other end of the island, using one of the two marked portage trails. One trail is flatter but longer. The other is shorter but goes through more rugged terrain. Adds an element of strategy that way.

“When you get to the other end of the island, each team will build a signal fire to be judged by yours truly. So even though the portage part isn’t technically a race, you still want to finish it as soon as you can; because the sooner you get to the “rescue point”, the more time you’ll have to build your fire.

“We’re doing the reward a little differently this time. Whichever team I think has the best fire will get the challenge reward and a head start back to camp. The first pair to beach their canoes here will win invincibility for their team. That’s the twist—in this challenge, it’s possible for a team to get the reward and yet still have to send someone home.

“Only a pair can win, so if somebody’s partner gets eaten or falls into quicksand or something, then the only thing the surviving partner can win is the satisfaction of getting back to camp alive. If two of you lose your partners and you’re on the same team, the survivors can paddle back together. Otherwise, no changing partners.”

“And… go,” Chris concluded, as he drew a huge, odd-looking pistol from his belt and fired it into the air. This was no ordinary sidearm. Sporting an impossibly wide barrel, this hand cannon fired no projectile and was designed for a single purpose: to make an absurdly loud report.

The campers flinched at the blast of Chris’ mega starter pistol, but they did not dwell on it, for they knew all too well their tormentor’s fondness for startling them with loud noises.

Since the trip out wasn’t really a race, the campers walked unhurriedly to the canoes, with most pairing up en route.

Gwen thought to partner with Leshawna, who had become her closest friend on the island, but Cody had other ideas and dashed up from behind her, lightly gripping her arm in a half-hug. “Hey, Gwen, you and me, open water—whaddaya say?”

“Whatever,” the Goth replied sullenly, for she didn’t want to encourage him but had no good reason to refuse. “But I’m in charge.”

“That’s the way I like it,” Cody replied in a tone that was meant to be suave but came across as creepy.

Gwen glared at Cody. “Is there anything you can’t turn into a perverted fantasy? Seriously, dude, you’re nice and all, but have you ever listened to yourself?”

Meanwhile, Lindsay asked Heather to be her boatmate. The Dragon Queen likewise had no good reason to refuse, so she didn’t. Heather didn’t like Lindsay as well as she let on, due mainly to the wide gap in their intellects, but the fact remained that they had many common interests. They wouldn’t have any trouble finding things to talk about on what promised to be a long day.

Noah had entertained a brief fantasy of sharing a canoe with Katie, but that pleasant prospect was unceremoniously crushed when Katie teamed up with Sadie before Noah could even open his mouth to speak.

As the bookworm looked for other unattached teammates, Leshawna swatted him playfully on the butt and said, “Looks like it’s you and me. If you can pull your weight, we should be fine.”

“I don’t think my weight will be the problem,” Noah replied caustically.

In a twinkling, the ample homegirl’s playful demeanor vanished. “Oh, you do not want to go there!”

The Muskies, meanwhile, were having a minor controversy of their own. Izzy had paired with Beth, and Tyler with Eva. When Duncan suggested that Ezekiel be his teammate, though, Courtney objected. “Zeke should go with me,” she declared.

“What’s wrong with me going with Duncan?” Ezekiel asked. “I know you don’t like him, but he’s my friend, too.”

“Um… D.J.’s too much taller than me. I wouldn’t be able to help carry the canoe.”

“No sweat,” D.J. assured her. “I can carry a canoe by myself, no problem.”

“I don’t doubt that, but the point is that you shouldn’t have to,” Courtney explained.

Duncan brightened as if suddenly realizing something. “Oh, I get it, Princess. Zeke’s not your real target. This is all a clever ploy to end up sharing your ride with me. Everyone knows that you want me. You just need plausible deniability. Well, you’re secret’s safe with me. I’m game to ride you... er, ride with you. Zeke can go with D.J.”

“Uh, no,” D.J. said.

“I didn’t know that she wanted you,” Ezekiel admitted.

Courtney replied to Duncan, “You’re kidding, right? As if I’d ever want anything to do with an ogre like you. You’re just projecting.”

“Nothing wrong with being a quote-unquote ‘ogre’,” Duncan replied in turn, with an exaggeratedly knowing air. “Zeke’s an ogre too, and you don’t seem to have a problem with him. Just plausible deniability, like I said.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Courtney shot back. “Zeke was never an ogre. He was ignorant. That’s not the same thing. Not to mention that he’s willing to change.”

He is too an ogre, D.J. thought, just not the way you mean.

Courtney decided to try another tack, so she took a deep breath to calm herself. “Duncan, I’ll admit that you’re strong and tough, and that could help us in this challenge, but that’s why Zeke should partner with me. The trip back will be a race, and you teaming up with D.J. may be our best chance to win it.”

Duncan started to say something, but realized that he really didn’t have an answer to this point. “Fine. I’ll go with D.J.”

Each canoe was equipped with paddles, floatation vests and knapsacks containing lunches and a few basic tools. As Courtney and Ezekiel pushed their boat into the water and boarded it, the prairie boy said, “I’ve never paddled a canoe before. Not many opportunities where I live, eh?”

“I can help you with that,” Courtney assured him. “I used to be a CIT, so I know these things.”

When Noah and Leshawna prepared to pull their canoe into the water, she said, “I’ll take the front.”

“Not a good idea,” Noah replied.

“And why is that?” the powerful homegirl asked, with a tone and posture that said, do you want to make something of it?

“Simple physics,” the bookworm replied. “The boat will be easier to steer if most of the weight’s in the back.”

“Oh, no you didn’t! I warned you about that!” the dusky homegirl began.

Noah raised his hands in a placating gesture. “I’m not trying to be insulting. Which one of us do you think weighs more?”

Leshawna glanced about at the other boats, and she could see that other “Mutt and Jeff” crews were doing the very thing Noah had proposed: Katie at the prow with Sadie at the stern, Courtney at the prow with Ezekiel at the stern, Duncan in front of D.J., and Izzy in front of Beth.

“I see your point,” Leshawna admitted sullenly.

Throwing his crewmate a bone, Noah said, “I’ll admit that I wouldn’t mind sitting in the back and looking at your booty the whole trip, but ‘business before pleasure’.”

“As if you could handle that much lusciousness,” Leshawna sniffed for the sake of appearances; but secretly, she was pleased at Noah’s acknowledgement of what she considered her most beguiling asset.

The morning was cool and mostly cloudy—ideal weather for physical exertion—as the canoe crews headed out into open water. Naturally, it didn’t take long for Cody to start chatting Gwen up. She endured his chatter but said relatively little herself; for although she would have preferred to spend the transit in quiet contemplation, she knew that was not Cody’s way.

Mindful of what Gwen had said about appearing creepy, Cody now chose his words with more care. This, combined with Gwen’s laconic responses, gave their conversation a stilted quality, but neither seemed to notice. It was not until Cody bit the bullet and asked Gwen out on a date that their conversation flowed more naturally.

“So, I was thinking,” Cody said, “On our next off day, maybe we could take a canoe trip of our own. No challenge, no pressure, just the two of us. Boney Island isn’t the only other island that would be easy to get to, and I’ll bet Chris would be cool with it.”

“Yeah, right,” Gwen retorted. “Just you and me… and a chase boat with a camera crew.”

“I don’t mind chaperones. My intentions are honorable.”

Thinking about her recent burial, Gwen said, “I’m not questioning your intentions. Not anymore. I’m just not into you that way.”

“So, you’d rather do something on the island? I’m cool with that. We could go exploring.”

“Dude, I wouldn’t be any more into you on land than I would on the water.” Leaving off her paddling for a moment, the Goth turned to face her suitor and said, “You’ve shown me that you would be a friend worth having. Why can’t that be enough?”

“Because you have the best combo of beauty and brains of any girl I’ve ever met.”

Gwen quickly turned away in the hope that Cody would not see her blush. For a long moment she was at a loss for words. The science geek’s compliment had been as sincere and powerful as Trent’s had been when the axboy and Gwen had first met.

Gwen sighed, trying to think of something to say. She still had no romantic interest in Cody, but this was not the time to be snarky about it. The science geek had shown that he deserved to have Gwen let him down as gently as she might. She only hoped he would take the hint.

“That’s so much better than your ‘cool guy’ posing, I can’t even tell you,” Gwen said at last. “Just be yourself, and you’ll find your soulmate. Trust me.”

“I have,” Cody replied softly, and then brightened with a new idea. “I know. We could take a picnic lunch up to the diving cliff. Best wilderness view I’ve ever seen.”

“I can’t.”

“But why not?” Cody asked before realization dawned. “Is this about that Trent thing? I thought you were over that.”

“Yes, I’m over ‘that Trent thing’,” Gwen explained, “but I’m not over Trent. I still consider him my boyfriend, and I’m not going to two-time him.”

‘Lady Jingly! Lady Jingly!
‘Sitting where the pumpkins blow,
‘Will you come and be my wife?’
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
‘I am tired of living singly,—
‘On this coast so wild and shingly,—
‘I’m a-weary of my life:
‘If you’ll come and be my wife,
‘Quite serene would be my life!’—
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo,
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.

‘On this coast of Coromandel,
‘Shrimps and watercresses grow,
‘Prawns are plentiful and cheap,’
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
‘You shall have my chairs and candle,
‘And my jug without a handle!—
‘Gaze upon the rolling deep
(‘Fish is plentiful and cheap)
‘As the sea, my love is deep!’
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo,
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.

Lady Jingly answered sadly,
And her tears began to flow,—
‘Your proposal comes too late,
‘Mr. Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!
‘I would be your wife most gladly!’
(Here she twirled her fingers madly,)
‘But in England I’ve a mate!
‘Yes! you’ve asked me far too late,
‘For in England I’ve a mate,
‘Mr. Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!
‘Mr. Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!’

‘Mr. Jones—(his name is Handel,—
‘Handel Jones Esquire and Co.)
‘Dorking fowls delights to send,
‘Mr. Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!
‘Keep, oh! keep your chairs and candle,
‘And your jug without a handle,—
‘I can merely be your friend!
‘—Should my Jones more Dorkings send,
‘I will give you three, my friend!
‘Mr. Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!
‘Mr. Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!’

‘Though you’ve such a tiny body,
‘And your head so large doth grow,—
‘Though your hat may blow away,
Mr. Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!
‘Though you’re such a Hoddy Doddy—
‘Yet a wish that I could modi-
‘fy the words I needs must say!
‘Will you please to go away?
‘That is all I have to say—
‘Mr. Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!
‘Mr. Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!’

With that, they paddled in silence for a time, until Cody said, “I know. We could go for a swim when we get back.”

After a rocky start, Noah and Leshawna were chatting cordially. They seemed to be falling behind most of the others, though, so Noah suggested that they needed something to help them coordinate.

“I know a paddling song that’s popular in Quebec,” Leshawna said. It has a lot of cuss words, though.”

“I think I can handle that,” the bookworm assured his dusky companion. “How does it go?”

Leshawna cleared her throat and began to sing:

En hiver, calvaire!
Ça glisse, calisse!

“Wait a minute,” Noah broke in. “I know French, and that song doesn’t make any sense. ‘In winter, Calvary/ It’s slippery, Chalice’?”

“I don’t think it’s really supposed to make sense,” the Montreal-born homegirl admitted. “I think it’s just supposed to pack in a lot of cuss words.”

“Such as...?”

“Calvaire and calisse are both cuss words in Quebec.”

“You’re kidding, right? Since when is ‘chalice’ a swear word?”

“Not ‘chalice’, ‘calisse’. It has to be in French to be a cuss word.”

“Fair enough, but my question remains.”

“It’s ‘diss’ swearing, not ‘vulgar’ swearing,” Leshawna explained. We Quebecois have a thing for using the names of religious objects as cuss words. I don’t really know why. I just go with the flow.”

“So, you want to teach me how to swear in a French Canadian idiom. I’m cool with that.”

The Muskies, having a generally more athletic team, were the first to make landfall. After briefly consulting their map, Courtney decided to take the longer, easier path; for she thought her team could more easily maintain a strong, steady pace that way. The Eagles arrived not long after, but they were far enough behind that they did not see which path their opponents had taken.

The teams had now been on the trail about two hours without incident. The Muskies were hiking along at a good pace, having recently negotiated a fresh rockslide, when they heard a roar in the distance.

“What was that?” Beth asked, looking around nervously.

“I hope it wasn’t those giant meat-eating beavers,” Tyler answered, likewise casting nervous glances all about.

“Yeah, right. Chris was just messing with us,” Duncan assured his faint-hearted teammates. “Those ‘wooly beavers’ are just something he made up.”

No sooner had he spoken than the Muskies topped a small ridge and stopped short.

“Or not,” Duncan said.

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

.

Thirteenth Night

The next morning, after they had breakfasted, Brett went to school whilst his mother went to earn their daily bread. That evening, after they had dined and Brett had attended to his homework, 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 glade looked like a battlefield. Vegetation was uprooted and trampled everywhere, mud churned up by many feet. The partially eaten carcass of a giant tusked beaver, bigger than a grizzly bear, blocked the trail about ten meters away, and a second noshed-on carcass lay farther up the trail and off to the left. Partially obscured from view behind the second beaver lay a motionless form in a red pullover shirt.

As the doubly watchful Muskies filed around the first beaver carcass, Courtney paused to examine it, hoping to determine what had fed on it. During the course of this examination, the onetime CIT discovered that something had staved in the giant’s skull. Satisfied that she had learnt all she could under the current conditions, Courtney hurried to catch up with her teammates.

The other Muskies, meanwhile, had gone to the intern, hoping against hope that he wasn’t beyond help, although in their hearts they knew better. When they reached the redshirt and got a closer look, D.J. fainted dead away. Beth, looking ashen, turned away and was violently ill, for the body had not in fact been merely obscured from view as the Muskies had supposed.

Izzy said only, “Gross,” as if she were discussing the weather.

The late intern was a faintly androgynous girl with short, dishwater blonde hair. Her eyes were open and rolled back into her head. Her build could not be determined with any certainty because virtually everything beneath her smallish breasts was gone, presumably having been carried off either by other beavers or by some scavenger. The hand on her one remaining arm still loosely held a makeshift halberd with a blade of flaked obsidian affixed to a long, sturdy tree branch. The blood on that blade, and the nearby beaver carcasses, suggested that this redshirt, at least, had not gone down without a fight.

Courtney had a suspicion, and quickly verified it when she examined the second beaver carcass. Returning to her teammates, who were still gathered round the fallen intern, she said, “Both of these beavers died from heavy blows to the head.” Motioning to the crude halberd, she added, “Probably from that.”

Izzy replied, “Are you saying that this chick whacked two bloodthirsty rodents of unusual size by herself? That is so boss!”

Eva noticed that the chest cavity had not been entirely eviscerated and said, “They didn’t take her heart. That’s fitting.”

Ezekiel knelt down beside the body. Grasping the girl’s thin necklace, he pulled her army-style dog tag out from under her shirt; for in light of what his teammates had said about her, he thought it important that she be remembered as more than just another anonymous redshirt. The prairie boy inspected the tag and solemnly announced, “Her name was Jo.” He then closed the girl’s sightless eyes and said a prayer for her brave soul.

Duncan said, “I’d have loved to see this chick go toe to toe with Miss Muscletits.”

“I know, right?” Eva replied, not even noticing the delinquent’s namecalling. “I’ll bet that would have been fun.”

“How many beavers she was up against?” Tyler asked rhetorically, for he didn’t really expect anyone to know.

“I don’t know,” Courtney admitted, “but it looks like they’re probably pack animals. Normal beavers are kind of social, and I checked out those carcasses. It looks like they were eaten on by their own kind, which is probably why there was anything left of ‘Jo’ for us to find. Rodents can be cannibalistic that way. I’ve seen ground squirrels eating roadkill before.”

“Gross,” Tyler said.

Courtney reasserted her dominance. “Anyway, we need to get going. We’re in the middle of a challenge, you know. I just hope Chris has the decency to bring her home.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Eva retorted bitterly.

“Okay, the producers,” Courtney said, implicitly sustaining the objection. The former CIT look down one last time at the fallen intern and said, “May she rest in peace.” Nor was that any mere formality. Mindful of what Chris had told them about the fate of people who died on Boney Island, Courtney’s wish was from the heart.

Some time later, on the other side of the island, the Eagles made a similar, if less gruesome, discovery of their own. Heather had chosen the shorter, more difficult path for several reasons, not least of which was that she thought most of her teammates could use some toughening up. It was also a way of displaying her fitness to lead; for the dragon girl’s dancing had endowed her with strong and durable legs, so she expected to be able to negotiate the rugged trail easily enough.

After a time, the Eagles came to a fresh rockslide that had cut across the trail. As they were making their way across, the sharp-eyed Cody chanced to look down the slope. A double take followed.

“Guys, look,” the former Possum Scout said as he pointed. “I think I see somebody’s hand.”

The other Eagles gave in to curiosity and saw that Chris hadn’t been joking about the recent earthquake’s lethal effects. Sticking up a few centimeters from the rubble, perhaps 30 meters below the trail, was a human hand, apparently having belonged to someone of African descent.

Heather said, “Let's keep moving. There’s nothing we can do here.”

“Wait,” Sadie said. “There’s something I need to know.” With that, she and Katie set down their canoe and made their way down to the grisly marker.

The indignant Heather called after them, “Hello! We’re in the middle of a challenge, remember?” The Wonder Twins paid her no heed, so Heather could only wait impatiently for them to return.

Reaching the hand, Sadie quickly inspected it and found the old burn scar that she had been looking for and hoping that she would not find. She shook her head and said to Katie, “Now we know why we haven’t seen Lightning around camp the last couple of days.”

When the clones had rejoined their teammates and reported their findings, Leshawna said, “I’m sorry to hear that. I liked that big lug.”

“More like, you liked his big boy part,” Heather sniped.

“And how would you know if it was big?” the homegirl shot back. “Not that I’m not willing to take your word for it.”

As their teammates tittered, Heather scowled. “Um… He had big feet, okay?”

“Sounds legit,” Gwen snarked, and the bystanders tittered anew.

“Oh… Go jump in a giant beaver pond,” Heather snapped, irritated that her dig at the admittedly man hungry Leshawna had been turned back against her so easily.

The teams reached the “rescue point”, which happened to be near the base of Skull Mountain, without further incident. Fire pits had already been marked out, so everyone began to forage for firewood. Most of the Eagles ventured forth singly; but the Muskies, having seen more of the island’s hazards, mostly stayed in pairs or small groups for safety.

The portage had left Sadie badly winded, for the trail had been difficult and the butterball’s endurance was not great. “My legs feel like rubber,” she complained.

“You’ll just have to suck it up,” Heather replied archly. “This is no time to wimp out on us.”

“I know,” Katie offered, “Me and Sadie can stay at the pit and arrange the firewood as people bring it in.”

“That sounds half good,” Heather replied. “Sadie can do that, but that won’t be enough work to keep two people busy. Besides, if we leave you two here, all you’ll do is gab.”

The Thin Twin stuck her tongue out at her overlord, and then stalked off to forage for firewood.

Katie subsequently returned with an armful of usable firewood, then another. The other foragers did likewise, some more efficiently than others, and Sadie dutifully arranged it into four piles. She put the largest pieces into the pit, the midsized pieces in a pile nearby, and the kindling into a third pile, these latter to be added to the main pile when the time was right. The greener wood went into a fourth pile, for its purpose was different. Once the fire was burning well, adding green wood and boughs would make the fire smoke.

On Katie’s third trip out, she chanced to spot a small wooden idol on the ground near the mouth of a small cave. This idol was perhaps half again as long as her hand and resembled nothing so much as a miniature totem pole. Wait ‘til smarty-pants Noah sees this, she thought, remembering what the bookworm had said about First Nations artifacts at the challenge briefing. The idol seemed somewhat fragile—clearly the wood had been at the mercy of the elements for a very long time—so Katie carefully put the idol in her knapsack, packed the idol in grasses and herbs to protect it, and then resumed her search for firewood.

Not long after, she encountered a certain redhead who was heading back to base with an armload of firewood. “Hey, Izzy,” Katie said sociably, “Look what I found!”

“Let me guess,” the demented redhead asked good-naturedly as Katie dropped her firewood and opened her pack. “A cool beaver skull? Some cool mold spores? Prayer beads of The Great Lamprey Spirit? Don’t leave me hanging!”

When Katie presented the idol, Izzy’s demeanor changed abruptly. “Ooh, you’d better put that back!” she warned darkly.

“Why?”

“The burial ground is on this part of the island, and that had to come from the burial ground. The legend says that if you take anything from there, you’ll be cursed forever! And even if you don’t believe in that stuff, which is totally true, you’d have the whole Ojibwa Nation after your butt, not to mention the RCMP. Come to think of it, maybe that’s the curse. Although this doesn’t look Ojibwa, it looks more Tsimshian, and I have no idea what it’s doing out here. We’re a long way from B.C., you know, so maybe some explorer got tired of life on the coast and got adopted or something and lived out his days in these parts until he croaked from whatever Tsimshians like to croak from and got buried here. But whatev, I know what you’re probably thinking, that the curse couldn’t do anything worse to you than what you’ve already been through, and maybe it can’t, but don’t be so sure. Besides, you really don’t want the RCMP on your case. Believe me, I know, they’ve been after me ever since that time at that Marine base, which was totally an accident, but try telling them that. I can handle it, but it’s not a lifestyle choice I’d recommend for a ‘kid who never grew up’ like you. Sure, it would be fun to have you be a fugitive from justice with me, but that would mean you’d have to leave Sadie behind, since I’m sure she wouldn’t want to be a fugitive, too, especially when she didn’t do anything. People are funny that way, you know?”

Izzy’s rambling, high-speed chatter had somewhat hypnotized Katie, so the demented redhead snapped her fingers in front of Katie’s eyes a couple of times to bring her mind back from wherever it had gone.

“You’re that sure I have to put it back?” Katie asked in disappointment.

“I’m serious,” Izzy assured her gravely. “I know I’m not serious about a lot of things, but I’m serious about this. I don’t want to see you get hurt. More. That thing is solid, 24-karat trouble. Although I’m not sure how many karats pure wood would actually have.”

With that, Izzy went on her way and Katie gathered up her wood and returned to the cave where she had found the idol, but the Idol Incident was not fated to end that simply. Katie’s damaged short-term memory fumbled the handoff to its long-term cousin, possibly with an untimely nudge from the fabled curse; so when Katie reached the cave, she could not remember why she had returned. With a mental shrug, she resumed her search for firewood.

Meanwhile, Courtney had found an interesting if less dangerous artifact of her own. She had spotted what looked like a piece of heavy paper slowly tumbling in the light breeze. Courtney knew that there shouldn’t be any paper on the island except what the campers had brought with them, so she succumbed to curiosity and ran it down. Quickly inspecting the paper, which looked like it might be construction paper nicked from the arts & crafts tent, she saw that it was an unsigned love note, addressed to “The Diamond Maid” and quoting a poem that Courtney did not recognize:

A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness:
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction--
An erring lace, which here and there
Enthrals the crimson stomacher--
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribbands to flow confusedly--
A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat--
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility--
Do more bewitch me than when art
Is too precise in every part.

Courtney smirked at this puppy love tactic, and idly wondered who might have written the note and whom it might be meant for, and whether it was the giver or the recipient who had dropped it. The fact that Courtney had found the note in that place instead of somewhere else offered no clues, for both teams were foraging the same general area, and she didn’t know what to make of the “diamond maid” salutation. As for whom the smitten boy might be, Noah was her first guess, for it stood to reason that a courting bookworm might quote love poems; but the former CIT had no idea whom Noah might be crushing on if, indeed, he had written the note. The penmanship offered no clues, for there was no handwritten correspondence to speak of amongst the campers, so they had no way to recognize each others’ handwriting.

Courtney decided to hold on to the note in case someone came looking for it, but she otherwise gave it no further thought, for she had better things to do than to expose a crush.

In the fullness of time, both teams assembled impressive brush piles under the direction of former CIT Courtney and former Possum Scout Cody. With dry wood to burn hot and green wood to make the fires smoke, both piles seemed likely to generate smoke plumes that would be visible all the way from Camp Wawanakwa, or even the mainland.

If, that is, the teams could get their fires started. They had been given flint and steel, but nothing in the way of accelerants. Getting the fires going strongly enough for a proper signal fire promised to be a long and arduous process, and the campers knew that their time was not unlimited.

Suddenly, a piercing female scream of mortal terror sounded from somewhere in the forest. The campers, one and all, stopped what they were doing and nervously looked into the trees, listening to see if the scream would be repeated.

“Who—who was that?” D.J. asked, shaking visibly and with a quaver in his voice.

Cody said, no less fearfully but hiding it somewhat better, “There shouldn’t be anyone here but us. Is everyone accounted for?”

A quick headcount revealed that Heather was missing.

Beth said, “Oh, my God, if she ran into those giant beavers…”

“That’s just something Chris made up,” Leshawna insisted nervously. “Isn’t it?” The homegirl had little love for Heather, but had no more desire than anyone else to see more blood than this hellish game had already inflicted upon them.

“No,” Courtney replied gravely. “They’re not.” She then told the Eagles about the gruesome discovery that the Muskies had made on the trail, but nothing would be gained by repeating it here.

As the campers began debating whether to conduct a search or to stay put, they heard something approaching. It was crashing—or charging—through the underbrush.

Trying not to let her fear show, Courtney said, “Guys, get to your canoes. If that’s any kind of large predator, we’ll probably be safer on the water.”

Everyone did as Courtney suggested, forgiving her bossiness because her suggestion sounded like a most excellent idea. Scarcely had they launched their canoes when a disheveled Heather stumbled into the clearing and collapsed. Her eyes were wild and she was panting heavily as she raised herself to all fours, lifted an arm to her campmate in supplication and desperately screamed, “Don’t leave me here!”

As Courtney and Ezekiel re-beached their canoe, Courtney called back, “Is anything chasing you?”

Not waiting for an answer, Lindsay re-beached her canoe and dashed to her liege’s side. Heather, still panting for breath, finally managed to gasp out, “No, I don’t think he’s chasing me.”

With that assurance, the other campers beached their canoes and returned to the clearing, wondering what could cause the normally imperious and levelheaded queen bee to come so thoroughly unglued.

“What’s up with you, girl?” Leshawna demanded. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I think I did.” Heather gasped, trembling violently.

Courtney crouched down beside her nigh-hysterical counterpart and said in her best soothing tone, “Okay, let’s take this one step at a time. Tell us what happened.”

“I was over by a cave off that way,” Heather explained as she gestured in the direction from whence she had come. There arose a murmur of recognition, for several of the campers had seen the cave in question. “I crouched down to pick up some stuff that I thought might make a good fire starter…”

“And…?” Courtney prompted.

“I felt something, cold but not like normal cold, you know? I looked up and…” The dragon girl pulled her limbs against her torso in an attempt to control her shaking. It didn’t seem to be helping much.

“Don’t leave us hanging,” Izzy pleaded. “Did you really see a ghost?”

Gwen mused, “Chris did say that there might be some interns’ ghosts here. Not only did a lot of redshirts supposedly buy it here, but he also said that the island attracts restless spirits from the surrounding area. And the way Chris goes through interns, he’s probably creating a lot of restless spirits.”

“It wasn’t a redshirt,” Heather gasped, as if she were fighting to get the words out. “It was… it was Harold. He was standing there right in front of me!”

For a few moments, the only human sound was Heather’s struggle to regain something resembling emotional control. Finally, Duncan spoke.

“Am I missing something here?” the scorner of laws asked. “Sure, seeing Mr. Ninja’s ghost would be creepy, but hardly terrifying.”

“What you’re missing,” Gwen explained, “is that we’re not talking about natural fear. Ghosts cause unnatural fear. Sometimes, anyway.” The Goth shot a glance at Heather and added bitterly, “Couldn’t happen to a nicer girl.”

Courtney shot Gwen an irritated glance of her own and said, “Gwen, we get why you don’t like Heather, and I can’t that say I blame you, but this isn’t the time.”

No, I guess not, Gwen thought, although she said nothing more.

Courtney then said to her campmates, “I really think we need to check this out.”

Duncan wasn’t so sure. “What if we end up as basket cases like Heather?”

“I’m willing to take that chance,” Courtney replied. “It’s bound to wear off. Besides, if there’s anything we can do to help Harold rest in peace, we owe it to him to find out what.”

The future speaker of laws turned her gaze to the campers as a whole and added, “The problem is that we’re in the middle of a challenge. Eagles, will you give us a timeout?”

“Say no more,” Leshawna said. “I want to know what’s going on as much as you do.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Sadie seconded, speaking for the Eagles’ power alliance because Heather could not. “Chris probably won’t like it, but that’s his problem.”

As the campers moved out, Heather grabbed Katie’s dress and softly begged, “Don’t leave me alone! Please!”

Katie replied, “Sadie can stay with you if you want, but I need to go with the others. I feel like I’m supposed to do something at that cave, but I can’t for the life of me remember what. I’m hoping it'll come back to me.”

With that, Katie hustled to join the main group and Sadie stayed with Heather. The butterball didn’t really know what to do, so she hoped that her mere presence would help to calm her liege.

After a minute or two, Heather suddenly stopped shaking and said to Sadie, “Okay, I think it’s been long enough. I’ve got a plan, but we have to move fast. That wild ghost chase should keep those losers occupied for a while, but there’s no telling if somebody might decide to double back for some reason.”

As the girls stood, Sadie smiled and asked, “You’re not afraid anymore?” for the queen bee now sounded like the Heather whom she had come to know and barely tolerate. “I guess Gwen was right about it being unnatural.”

“As if Weird Goth Girl could be right about anything,” Heather sniffed. “The reason I’m not afraid ‘anymore’ is because I was never afraid in the first place.”

Sadie’s eyes widened in wonderment. “Didn’t see that coming. That was one heck of an acting job.”

Heather grinned. “It was, wasn’t it?”

The Dark Queen quickly explained her plan, which required only their nail files and uninterrupted time, but Sadie protested. “That sounds like cheating.”

“That’s kind of the idea,” Heather explained impatiently. “In these elimination games, a certain amount of cheating is expected. Remember when we were building the hot tubs, and the Fish Heads were thinking about trying to steal our stuff? Remember how Chris said that he wished that they would have tried it? Trust me. Even if we get caught, which we might if you delay us with too many questions, Chris won’t do anything.”

Seeing that Sadie was about to protest further, Heather said, “I know, I know, I’d rather play a clean game, too, but not at the cost of giving away challenges. The main challenge today is a power challenge, and the Fishies have all the muscle. Without the edge that my plan can give us, we don’t stand a chance.”

“We might, if we can win the head start for having the best signal fire,” Sadie countered.

“You’re kidding, right? Nothing against our ex-Possum Scout, except of course that he’s a total geek, but which team has the pyro? The deck’s stacked against us there, too, and I don’t see any good way to sabotage their fire.” By this time, Heather was wishing that she could have pulled Lindsay aside instead of Katie and Sadie, for the uberbimbo would have asked fewer questions;  but Lindsay hadn’t been close enough at hand, and seeking the bombshell out might have aroused suspicion and thereby wasted Heather’s admittedly remarkable acting performance.

Sadie was still unwilling to cheat, but she was running out of reasons not to go along with Heather’s scheme. “But if we get caught, or they find out later, how will I be able to look them in the eye?”

With a snort of derision, the Dark Queen retorted, “They won’t blame you, because you’re too nice for your own good. They’ll blame me, but I don’t care.”

“But how will the editors make it look? I don’t want a villain edit,” the butterball protested, a hint of desperation creeping into her voice.

“You might already be getting one because you got on Chris’ bad side right off the bat,” Heather observed dryly. “On the other hand, Sunshine says that the camping challenge made you look like a saint. If the editors aren’t already painting you as a villain, they’re not going to start now just because you went along with one sketchy scheme.

“Besides, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. If they want to make you a villain, then go with the flow.”

Finally, Sadie agreed to help Heather. As they fell to their task, Sadie said, “There’s just one thing I need to know.”

“What’s that?”

“Did you really see Harold?”

“Of course not,” the Dark Queen admitted easily. “I don’t believe in ghosts.”

Wooden Ships and Iron Girls

Heather and her flunky completed their work as quickly as they might, lest they be discovered. As it turned out, though, they need not have worried. It was the better part of an hour before the other campers returned. Naturally, they had found nothing—not that they had necessarily expected to, but it still left everyone a bit dispirited.

The teams ended their truce and resumed the challenge. Cody at once set to work on starting the fire, since he was the only Eagle who had actually used a flint and steel fire starter before. Courtney likewise began to work her team’s flint and steel, but Duncan quickly suggested a more profitable course.

“Why do it the hard way, Princess?” he asked. “We can just use my lighter.”

“I don’t think that’s what Chris had in mind,” the onetime CIT replied.

“So?” the delinquent countered. “Chris knows about my lighter, but he didn’t say anything about it.”

“You make a good point,” Courtney admitted.

“Actually, we can’t use the lighter,” Izzy declared enigmatically. When asked the reason, the manic redhead explained, “I’ve got a high-energy fire starter in my knapsack. It’ll give us a roaring fire in no time, but it’ll make us stand back a little. If you’re close enough to ignite it with a lighter, you’ll get fried.”

“So what are we supposed to do?” Duncan asked. “If we can’t use the lighter, then we obviously can’t use the flint and steel, either.”

“That big magnifying glass,” Beth suggested. “The one she used to inscribe Harold’s memorial marker.”

Izzy gave her ally a ‘thumbs up’ gesture and said, “Exactly.”

“Chris knows about that, too,” Duncan observed before Courtney could protest.

“Okay, the lighter and the magnifying glass are fair game,” Courtney admitted, “but I’m not so sure about the fire starter. Does Chris know about that?”

“Does it matter?” Duncan shot back. “If Chris really cared, he would have made a rule against bringing in accelerants.”

Eva said, “As much as I hate to side with Duncan, he’s got a point. You could call it cheating, but you could also call it ‘thinking outside the box’. Chris seems to respect that, if he cares about it at all. What he really cares about is drama, and it sounds like Izzy’s idea could be pretty dramatic.”

The Eagles were able to overhear part of this exchange. Heather sidled over to Sadie and said, “See what I mean?” This could have meant several things, so any Muskies who might have overheard didn’t waste time trying to determine what Heather did mean.

Having received her team’s blessing, however reluctant, Izzy set down her knapsack and drew forth a lead box. This she opened to reveal an amorphous lump which she carefully placed into the woodpile. Apart from Cody, who was still trying to get his team’s fire started with the flint and steel, the Eagles had succumbed to curiosity and were now watching their rivals’ byplay.

“That looks like congealed tree sap,” Courtney observed. “Is there anything else in it?”

“Yeah, it’s mostly tree sap,” Izzy confirmed. “There’s also pine needles, sawdust, aluminum powder, and some other stuff.”

“Aluminum powder?” Beth asked. “What’s that for?”

“A little extra kick,” Izzy explained. Seeing that she now had the attention of the opposing team as well as her own, the firebug warned, “Aluminum burns super-ultra-mega bright, so you probably don’t want to look straight at it.” No one dreamed of doubting her.

Tyler thought that something seemed off. There was faint but noticeable light where there should have been none. “Um, Izzy? Why is that stuff glowing?”

“Oh, that’s probably just the californium,” the demented redhead answered as if she’d been asked the time of day.

Cody was so appalled that he dropped his flint and steel. “Wait a minute, are you saying that your fire starter is nuclear??”

“Pretty much,” Izzy replied nonchalantly as she pulled out her magnifying glass.

As the other campers began frantically looking for places to hide, Izzy stood with the descending sun at her back and held her glass aloft. As a beam of burning light smote the softly glowing lump of sap, the demented redhead gazed at the great, gray granite skull formation looming over them and shrieked, “By the power of Grayskull!”

Moments later, the lump began to flare, and Izzy shrieked, “I… have… the pow—oh, crap! I used too much! Hit the deck!”

The others were way ahead of her, and had taken whatever cover they could. Several campers had taken to the water and were sheltering beneath inverted canoes. Izzy likewise decided that she would be safest with the fishes, and had barely got beneath the waves when the enhanced tree sap detonated with nigh-atomic brilliance and the power of a tornado.

Some 200 kilometers to the northwest, a helicopter team of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was returning to its base in Sudbury after answering a routine assistance call when they saw the flash and subsequent mushroom cloud from Izzy’s fire starter. Alarmed, these officers of the law quickly took a bearing and called in to report what they had seen. The team then changed course sharply, seeking to triangulate on the great smoke plume before it dissipated. This done, they returned to base, for they needed to refuel before investigating the matter further.

The campers who had remained on land were shaken but not seriously hurt, thanks to local topography that had directed the shockwave over their heads. They gingerly lifted themselves from the dust to find that the blast had scattered the top of the Muskies’ woodpile, but what remained was now burning fiercely. Conversely, the Eagles’ hard work had been for nothing, for the blast had scattered their entire woodpile to parts unknown.

As Tyler and Eva emerged from the water and carried their shield canoe back to the beach, Izzy popped up between them and said, “Yep, definitely too much californium.”

“You could have gotten us all killed, you know,” Eva noted, much more calmly than one might have expected of her. The rage-prone Amazon knew Izzy well enough by now to know that it was pointless to get angry with her, for the demented redhead would not understand her anger.

“But I didn’t, did I?” Izzy countered cheerily. “No harm, no foul.”

“Define ‘harm’,” Eva retorted wearily as she surveyed the destruction. Izzy’s atomic fire starter had flattened the entire forest on that part of the island, igniting several small brush fires in the process. The trees had been either uprooted or broken off, depending on how firmly they had been rooted.

Minutes later, the campers heard an approaching helicopter, which they presumed to be carrying Chris and Chef Hatchet. The host and his aide, who was piloting the craft, had been holding position several kilometers away so that Chris could see how visible the fires were from a distance; and so, although they had felt the shockwave, it had posed no real danger to them.

Having nothing better to do, the campers watched the chopper approach until an ominous crack sounded behind them. The mountainside had taken the full brunt of the blast, and it had been a little too much. The campers turned just in time to see Boney Island’s signature skull formation break loose from its age-old moorings and come thundering down the mountain, breaking up into an unrecognizable pile of rubble. The vast rockslide would have flattened everything in its path, if there had been anything in its path left to flatten.

“Way to destroy a national landmark, Muskies,” Chris chided via his trusty bullhorn. “But hey, I’ll bet it’s going to put the ratings through the roof, and as long as I’m not the one who can be held liable, it’s all good.

“This part of the challenge was to build the best signal fire. I didn’t say anything about collateral damage. And since the Muskies were the only team to actually get a fire going, they get the point!

“Muskies, you get a five-minute head start back to camp. You’ll also get the challenge reward, win or lose. Eagles, you can’t do anything to prepare while you’re in the ‘penalty box’ except talk about your game plan, if any.

“The five minutes starts… now!”

The Muskies wasted no time in launching their canoes. As the Eagles watched them go, Noah said, “That’s just great. Now we won’t have a chance.”

“We still might,” Cody said, trying to project an optimism that he didn’t really feel. “It’s a long way back to camp, so people will have to pace themselves. We might be able to catch up without burning ourselves out. Maybe.”

Heather added, “We also have an ace in the hole.” The Dark Queen then explained what she and Sadie had done. The Eagles’ reactions were mixed, and largely echoed the original philosophical disagreement between Heather and Sadie. Even Heather’s enemies, though, had to give credit where it was due for the dragon girl’s acting performance.

Chris called down, “Eagles, go!” The Eagles responded eagerly to his command.

Ten minutes later, Tyler and Eva were approaching the midpoint of the course, with the other Muskie crews trailing behind. Although the heavier Tyler would normally have sat at the stern, Eva had insisted that he sit at the prow for the return trip, the better to keep an eye on him and to rein him in if his enthusiasm should get the better of him. She and Tyler were the Muskies’ best hope for victory, Eva thought, so it would not do for Red Jock to burn himself out in his zeal.

Suddenly, Eva felt that something was wrong. On her latest stroke, her paddle was passing through the water with much less resistance than it should, which threw her slightly off balance. Even as the steel maiden instinctively looked down to see what the problem was, D.J. called out from the nearest canoe, “Eva! You’ve lost your paddle blade!”

Sure enough, the business end of Eva’s paddle was floating in their wake. The paddles were of two-piece construction, with a hollow metal shaft and a blade of hard synthetic rubber. These parts were connected by a single stout screw. This arrangement meant that a damaged blade could be replaced without having to replace the whole paddle. It also meant that breaking the paddle down to a more compact form for transport required only a Phillips head screwdriver. The tip of a metal nail file would do in a pinch.

Tyler had also heard D.J.’s warning, so he quickly reversed course and Eva retrieved her paddle blade, but they had lost precious time. To make matters worse, they had no spare screws, nor anything else that might serve to secure the blade. Eva decided that the best way to keep the blade from coming off again was to keep her hand on the joint at all times, but that technique obliged her to take shorter, less efficient strokes. The jock and jockette might still be able to win the challenge for their team, but Eva was now racing with the proverbial one hand tied behind her back.

Not long after, though, Tyler likewise lost his paddle blade. Because he was in the forward position, Eva quickly spotted the problem and so they lost less time retrieving it than they had with Eva’s; but it presented the same risk of coming loose again, so Tyler also had to alter his stroke for the worse.

“Of all the crappy luck,” Tyler griped rhetorically. “We had this win in the bag.”

“Luck, nothing,” Eva shot back. “We’ve been sabotaged.”

Over the next several minutes, several racers suffered similar accidents. First, Duncan; then, Ezekiel; and D.J. not long after.

Nor were the Eagles immune. Noah, Katie, Sadie and Leshawna suffered paddle malfunctions in due course, for that was part of the plan to divert suspicion. The difference was that the saboteurs had spared the strongest Eagle crews (Heather/Lindsay and Cody/Gwen) whilst sparing only the weakest Muskie crew—Beth and Izzy. Nor was it an accident that Heather’s more expendable allies had been victimized; for the race would turn on the first of each team’s boats to finish, not the last.

Although neither Heather nor Lindsay were experienced paddlers, both proved reasonably good at it, and both had good stamina—Lindsay from her gymnastics and Heather from her dancing. So it was that, by pushing themselves a bit harder than they would have liked, the Dark Queen and her most faithful vassal caught and passed one crippled Muskie crew, than another, and passed Beth and Izzy into the bargain. In that last case, Izzy threw into her rivals’ path a blob of something designed to explode after contacting water, but that gesture was mostly for show. The explosion looked impressive on camera, but was neither near enough nor powerful enough to cause Heather or Lindsay any significant problems. Most likely, Izzy just wanted to see an explosion and judged that moment to be as good as any.

At last, Heather and Lindsay drew near to the only crew standing between them and victory: Courtney and Ezekiel. From Ezekiel’s paddling technique, Heather could see that he had felt the saboteur’s sting; but he was not a skilled paddler to begin with, so it hadn’t affected him much. Courtney appeared to be paddling normally, and seemed to be saving her strength for a sprint to the finish. Perhaps that was why Courtney’s paddle blade had not yet come loose.

Heather’s plan to sabotage the Muskies’ paddles had deliberately left much to chance. If her intended victims had spotted the damage before setting forth from Boney Island, they might have been able to correct it there, so it was necessary that the paddles appear sound at first. Accordingly, Heather and her reluctant accomplice had removed the screws and twisted the blades back and forth enough to break any incidental seals that might be left over from assembly at the factory, but had taken no further action to help the blades come off quickly, lest they come off too quickly.

In any case, Heather had no idea how many strokes it would take for her and Sadie’s handiwork to become evident. Indeed, the need to trust to luck was largely what had convinced Sadie to help Heather in her nefarious scheme. After all, the Dark Queen had said with that silver tongue of hers, if they were not meant to win by underhanded means, then the Muskies’ paddles would simply not come apart and no one would ever know that anything had ever been amiss.

Heather and her vassal drew up right alongside Courtney and her protégé, obliging both crews to paddle only on the outside. Heather then taunted, “Eat our wake, Fish Heads! Hope you’re in the mood for marshmallows!”

“Nice try, your Highness,” Courtney shot back, “but I can hear that you’re out of breath. You’re the ones heading to Marshmallow City!”

“And we’ve got more muscle, eh?” Ezekiel added.

Heather retorted, “That’s what you think!” as she raised her paddle from the water and brought it over her head in a glittering arc of water droplets.

The Dark Queen knew that her opponents had assessed the situation all too well. No longer willing to trust to luck, Heather had decided that more aggressive action was now called for.

Heather’s target was Ezekiel’s head, but her attack was slow and badly telegraphed, as it had to be to have the power to be anything more than an irritant; for the lightweight paddle shaft was not designed for striking and Ezekiel’s toque made decent armor against such things. So it was that, before Heather’s blow could connect, Courtney parried Heather’s paddle with her own.

Ezekiel was naturally distracted by the hollow clang of metal on metal, so Courtney cried, “Zeke, keep paddling! I’ll deal with Heather!”

Lindsay was likewise distracted by all this, so Heather cried, “Lindsay, keep paddling! Courtney is mine!”

As Lindsay and Ezekiel paddled at the prow, Courtney and Heather traded blow for blow at the stern, each looking for an opening in the other’s guard. It wasn’t long before both fighters were kneeling, then standing. The canoes didn’t make for the most stable of platforms, but this did not trouble the gladiators, for both were surefooted.

Time seemed to stand still as the team leaders strove to overcome each other, the challenge seemingly forgotten. Heather was taller and so had greater reach, but Courtney was stronger and fresher. Meanwhile, Lindsay and Ezekiel glanced at each other and reached an unspoken understanding that they would do their best to pace each other whilst the alpha cats had their fight.

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

.

Fourteenth 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, 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.

As Heather and Courtney battled, their canoes began to come back to the pack, for each of the frontrunners now had only one not especially adept paddler. Duncan and D.J. saw their chance and picked up their pace, as did Tyler and Eva.

In the fullness of time, the paddle battle reached the end that Fate had ordained for it when Courtney’s sabotaged paddle finally lost its blade. This accident did not greatly impair her paddle’s effectiveness as a weapon, but it distracted her for a moment; and in the fury of battle, a moment is sometimes all it takes.

Heather saw her opening and struck. Bending forward dangerously, enough to risk losing her balance, the dragon girl reached out with her paddle and struck Courtney behind the knees, knocking the former CIT’s legs out from under her and dumping her into the lake.

Ezekiel heard Courtney’s cry of alarm and the large splash that followed. Even as he looked back to verify his suspicions, Heather clonked him on the head for good measure and taunted, “Girl overboard, Homeschool! Are you going to let the lampreys get her?”

With Courtney and Ezekiel no longer a factor, Heather was now in command of the race, but she saw that there would be no respite. Eva and Tyler had begun their sprint to the finish, for the steel maiden had decided that the time had come to give her overenthusiastic partner free rein. Handicapped though they were, the jock and jockette were nevertheless closing at an alarming rate.

Heather quickly sat down and cried, “Paddle, Lindsay! Paddle like it’s Midnight Madness at the mall!”

With the situation described to Lindsay in terms she could understand, the uberbimbo began to paddle with all her might. Heather likewise put her back into it, for this was a time to lead by example. Besides, she had done too many compromising things in this challenge to come away with nothing to show for it.

Tyler and Eva continued to close, but much less rapidly than before, and it was anyone’s guess whether Heather and Lindsay would be able to hold them off. Duncan and D.J. were also sprinting, the brickhouse untroubled by his fear of the water now that the situation gave him something to take his mind off of it, but they had a bigger gap to close and so faced longer odds. None of the other crews had a chance.

In the end, it was not the racers who decided the race. As the lead canoes surged down the homestretch, it looked increasingly likely that Tyler and Eva would be able to nip Heather and Lindsay at the proverbial tape. Heather and Lindsay were gasping for breath, their arm and back muscles howling in protest at the unaccustomed strain, whereas it looked like Red Jock and Muscle Girl were just hitting their stride. But Tyler, in his enthusiasm, had unwittingly abandoned the “safe” paddling technique of keeping his hand on the sabotaged joint between blade and shaft, and Eva was too intent on their goal to notice. Their pursuit faltered at the last moment when Tyler lost his paddle blade again.

Heather and Lindsay ran their canoe right up onto the shore, stumbled out to claim victory, and collapsed, utterly spent. Eva, meanwhile, took out her frustrations on her canoe. She snatched Tyler’s half-paddle out of his hands and rammed it through the bottom of the boat. The canoe quickly sank to the bottom of the lake, which was all of 120 centimeters deep at that point, leaving the frustrated Muskie duo to wade ashore.

As Duncan and D.J. cruised the last few meters to the shore, the victorious queen bee and her faithful vassal summoned enough strength to roll onto their backs as they continued to pant for breath. An alert cameraman recorded the scene, with particular emphasis on the girls’ heaving chests. When Chris learned of this whilst reviewing the day’s footage, he warmly commended the cameraman for the latter's viewer appeal instincts.

As the remaining campers completed the course, they learned the outcome from their teammates who had already finished; but only after the last canoe made landfall did Chris officially declare that the Screaming Eagles had won the challenge. This left the Muskies with a difficult decision. Only Courtney and Tyler had done anything that could arguably have cost their team the challenge, but they were also part of the reason why the Muskies had made the race close in the first place. Beth had not distinguished herself, but neither had she caused her team any apparent trouble, and some of her teammates regarded her warm relationship with Alejandro as a potentially valuable “ace in the hole”. Izzy had been helpful in the challenge, but some of her teammates were now a little afraid of her. None of the other Muskies looked to be at risk unless somebody tried to assemble a coalition to blindside someone, as Heather had done to Trent after the dodgeball match.

It was going to be an interesting elimination ceremony.

The next evening, the campers got the dinner call earlier than usual, so they dutifully filed into the lodge and took their seats to wait for the serving counter to open. When everyone was seated, Chris appeared and called for quiet. This was not standard procedure before dinner, so everyone was curious about the coming announcement.

“We’re doing dinner a little differently tonight,” Chris announced. “The Eagles will get Chef’s usual slop, but the Muskies will get the challenge reward for their awesome signal fire: steaks cooked to order. And since the Muskies won the reward but not the challenge, this treat will double as a Last Meal for some poor condemned soul.”

When Chef Hatchet opened the serving counter, he called the Eagles up to get their so-called “food”. Meanwhile, Alejandro took the Muskies’ dinner orders at their table.

The Eagles had finished eating before the Muskies’ dinners were ready, so they left the lodge to attend to their own affairs. In the fullness of time, some of the surviving interns brought out the Muskies’ dinners: thick, juicy steaks with all the trimmings—including, remarkably, red wine.

“Chef really pulled out all the stops,” Izzy said as she savored the bouquet of her wine.

“I’m not surprised,” Eva replied. “Now that the secret’s out that Chef can cook well when he wants to, we’ll probably see more food-related challenge rewards.”

Izzy tasted her wine. “Mmm, Pinot Grand Fenwick. Nineteen ninety-one was a good year.”

“Pinot Grand Fenwick?” Courtney repeated uncomprehendingly. “I know a little about wine naming, mainly by osmosis since it’s not like I get to drink much wine, but I’ve never heard of that. Where’s it come from?”

“There’s a hole-in-the-wall country in the Alps called the Duchy of Grand Fenwick,” Izzy explained. “This wine is their only export worth mentioning. It’s mainly a connoisseur’s wine because the whole Duchy probably isn’t 40 square kilometers and their culture is still pre-industrial, so they can’t make very much, and they’re very protective of their label. They won a big trademark case against the U.S. back in the Fifties.”

Courtney lifted and regarded her own glass. “In other words,” she surmised, “we should enjoy it now because it’s a pleasure that some of us may never have again.”

“The thing I don’t get,” Ezekiel admitted, “is why would they give us something that fancy when those of us who aren’t Izzy probably wouldn’t know it from cheap jug wine?”

Duncan smirked and explained, “Look at it from Chris and Chef’s point of view. It’s a convenient excuse for them to have some, too, on the show’s dime.”

Chef Hatchet was eavesdropping, for his curiosity had been aroused when Izzy recognized the vintage. Only God and a remote camera saw him smirk and heard him softly say, “Busted.”

D.J. had tasted many fine dishes over the years, for his dear momma was an accomplished chef, but these steaks were like nothing he had ever tasted before. A quick poll revealed that his teammates were as mystified as he, although nobody was complaining. This emboldened the timid brickhouse to approach Chef Hatchet.

The campers knew well that Hatchet didn’t like them coming into his kitchen, but he was currently working within easy conversation range of the serving counter. D.J. leaned over the counter and said, “Our compliments to the chef. That was a five-star dinner.”

“Thanks, kid,” replied the usually gruff kitchen master. “It’s nice to be able to show off what I can really do.”

“So it’s true that the stuff you usually give us is bad on purpose?”

“I can’t discuss that, but I think you know the answer,” Hatchet admitted.

D.J. cut to the proverbial chase. “There was a flavoring in the steaks that seemed a little weird, though. It tasted like lean beef, except that it didn’t. I can’t really explain it. It was a little like the porcupine that Izzy caught for us during the camping challenge.”

“That’s probably because they’re both rodents,” Hatchet explained. “The steaks are from those giant beaver carcasses you found on Boney Island.”

Seemingly oblivious to D.J.’s horrified reaction, though possibly fully aware of it, Hatchet continued. “Chris likes for the challenge rewards to be related to the challenge, and there was a lot of meat on those critters. Probably last us a good three weeks.”

“But… but…” D.J. stammered. “Weren’t they killed at least a couple of days before we got there? And the weather’s been warm and sunny…”

Hatchet smirked at D.J.’s discomfiture. “That’s how the English used to flavor their meats, by letting them go a little bad. It gives the meat a gamier taste. You liked it, didn’t you?”

“It was awesome,” the fainthearted brickhouse admitted.

“And I cooked it enough to kill off any little nasties that might have been in there, so as you kids like to say, ‘What’s your damage?’”

“When you put it that way, I guess there isn’t any. No harm, no foul.”

“Exactly.”

D.J. returned to his teammates and told them what he had learned. Most of their reactions more or less mirrored D.J.’s, although Izzy and Eva seemed amused, but everyone agreed quickly enough that no harm had come from Chef’s little prank.

Eva cut a piece from her steak, held it up, regarded it for a moment, and said, “This is for Jo.” She then devoured the morsel with theatrical savagery. Izzy thought this gesture a good one, and followed suit.

Shortly after darkness fell, the Muskies assembled at the bonfire to do what they had to do. As Chris stood before them, some of the Muskies noticed the faint sound of a helicopter in the distance, but paid it no heed. The sound could be removed in postproduction, if need be.

“There are eight of you,” the host intoned solemnly, “but only seven marshmallows on my plate, which means that someone will be left without. That poor sucker must walk the Dock of Shame, board the Boat of Losers, and make the Voyage of the Damned to Loserville, population 5—for the moment.”

The helicopter seemed to be getting louder, and all of the Muskies were now aware of it, although they couldn’t tell if it was heading directly for the camp. It wasn’t loud enough to interfere with the ceremony, though, so Chris continued. “I will first call up those campers who had no votes against them.

“Eva.”

The musclegirl collected her talisman of life and took her place behind Chris. The helicopter was definitely getting louder. It now sounded like it would fly either over the camp or close by, and at low altitude.

“Beth.”

The nerd girl approached the host, held up her toasting stick to receive its bounty, and then took her place beside Eva. The chopper was rather loud now, and seemed to be approaching at a good clip.

D.J.”

The gentle giant received his token of safety and joined the ranks of the blessed.

The helicopter was now loud enough to interfere with the ceremony, so the campers and the irritated host looked up just in time to get a searchlight in the eyes.

“This is the RCMP,” a male voice boomed over a bullhorn. “Captain McAllister, we know you’re down there. Come quietly, and we may be able to get you leniency.”

Most of the Muskies looked at each other in confusion, with the same unspoken question: Who’s Captain McAllister?

The answer came promptly and unexpectedly, as Izzy jumped to her feet. Pointing a finger—not, it bears mention, the finger that most people usually point with—defiantly at the chopper, she shrieked, “You’ll never take me alive!”

“Captain Izzy” dashed off, laughing maniacally and keeping to wooded areas so that the helicopter could not land. As the chopper crew flew off, tracking Izzy through the forest canopy as best they might, Chris shrugged off the incident and got back to business. He dispensed most of the remaining marshmallows with little of the usual ruffles and flourishes, simply tossing the coveted morsels to the campers as he called their names.

“Duncan. Tyler. Ezekiel.”

Chris held up the last marshmallow and returned to something resembling his normal pomp and ceremony. “This marshmallow was supposed to go to Izzy,” he intoned, “which would have meant, ‘Bye, bye, Courtney’; but since Izzy up and ran off on us, I guess I’ll just have to give her marshmallow to our favorite CIT, instead.”

The host beckoned the onetime CIT to approach him. When she did so, contemplating what might have been, if the look on her face was any indication, Chris placed his benediction on her toasting stick. “Courtney, you are hereby reprieved. Make the most of it,” he told her. He then left the Muskies to their own affairs.

As the surviving Muskies toasted their marshmallows at the bonfire, they asked each other why the RCMP had come for Izzy, and why they had called her “Captain McAllister”. None of the teens had any answers, of course, only questions and fruitless speculation. Presently, the marshmallows were ready, and the Muskies consumed their prizes.

It seemed to Beth that something had been overlooked. “Hey, guys? I know Izzy won’t hear it, but I still think we should sing for her. We did decide to make it a regular part of the ceremony, you know.”

“Sounds good,” Courtney agreed. “Everyone, on three.”

Brett looked a bit confused as he asked, “So, Izzy was really an adult? Didn’t see that coming.”

“How do you think she knew so much about wine?” his mother asked in turn. “There are women in their late 20s and sometimes even their 30s who can pass as teenagers. I hate them.”

“So why did they call her ‘Captain McAllister’, anyway?” Brett asked.

“All in good time,” his mother replied. The hour was not especially late, so she took a few moments to collect her thoughts, and then continued her tale.

.

Episode #9: The Tale of the Wild Hunt

Original title: Paintball Deer Hunter

As the Muskies finished their song, they noticed the Eagles standing at the edge of the clearing.

“What brings you guys here?” Duncan asked. “Wait, don’t tell me. The chicks can’t get enough of me.”

“Do you really want an honest answer to that?” Heather sneered.

“Actually,” Leshawna interrupted before Duncan or Heather could pick a fight, “We heard the helicopter and we wanted to know what was going on. Who’s ‘Captain McAllister’?”

“Izzy, apparently,” Tyler replied. “Beyond that, you know as much as we do.”

Gwen added, “The other reason we’re here is that we heard you guys singing, and we were curious. I heard somebody singing the night Bridgette left, but now it looks like you’re all in on it.”

“Yeah, it’s a song Ezekiel taught us the night of the camping challenge,” Beth explained.

Courtney added, “We’ve decided to sing it at all our eliminations. Elimination represents death, and Zeke’s song is from a mass for the dead, so we thought it was fitting.”

“What’s this ‘mass for the dead’?” Leshawna asked uncertainly.

“Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Requiem,” Ezekiel informed her.

“The Pie Jesu,” Noah said with a knowing nod. “That’s its best-known part. Made the Top 10 on the U.K. pop charts, from what I’ve heard, even though it’s a classical piece.”

Lindsay suggested, “Maybe we should sing ‘Peas Ain’t Yellow’ at our eliminations, too. It’s pretty.”

“We’d be happy to teach it to you,” Courtney assured the uberbimbo.

“I know it,” Noah revealed, “but I don’t know if anyone else does.” The other Eagles quickly confirmed that they did not.

“Meh,” Heather sniffed. “It’s copyrighted, and the producers are probably too cheap to pay the royalties, so it’s probably not going to make it into the finished episodes.”

“So?” Sadie challenged.

“Yeah, what’s your point?” Katie challenged in turn. It was written that the Bobbsey Twins would inevitably agree with each other, for those two shared a brain as completely as any pair of teenagers you’re ever likely to encounter.

“It’s not all about screen time, you know,” Sadie added.

“It so happens that some of us actually like some of the people who get kicked off,” Katie added in turn.

“You might, too, if you bothered to get to know them,” Sadie suggested.

“Okay, okay,” the exasperated queen bee interrupted, lest the hive mind continue all night. “It’s not like I was actually objecting.” Seeing that Katie and Sadie were about to say something more, Heather cried, “Enough!” and gave each “twin” a withering glare to keep them silent.

“I’m not much of a singer,” Cody admitted, looking around at his teammates, “but if you guys want to do it, I’m game.”

Leshawna ventured, “We might as well learn it, as long as we’re here. We can decide later whether we want to use it.”

The bonfire was mere embers when the campers retired to their cabins for the night.

On the second morning after, Chris found a new way to jolt the campers awake. The sadistic host assembled the surviving interns in the middle of the camp, armed them with high-powered hunting rifles (which, it bears mention, are loud enough to be audible several kilometers away) and ordered the redshirt brigade to fire at will out over the lake.

In the boys’ cabin, Duncan cried, “Take cover!” for he thought the Army itself had come for him. The other boys were too terrified to do anything but follow his lead.

In the girls’ cabin, Leshawna cried, “Get down!” for although gunfire in Montreal’s mean streets is less common in the 21^st Century than it was in the 20^th, and less common than in comparable American cities, the dusky homegirl was nevertheless more familiar with it than she would have liked.

After what seemed like an eternity but was actually more like 30 seconds, the fusillade ceased. Chris commanded over the loudspeakers, “Campers, report to the totem pole in ten for your challenge briefing! Be there or be square!”

As the girls picked themselves off the floor, Heather sniped, “You heard him, Gothie. Be there or be square. Oops, too late!”

“Better a square than a stick,” Gwen shot back. “You’re just jealous because some of us have profiles that are actually visible to the naked eye.”

Heather turned to Lindsay and theatrically asked, “And why exactly hasn’t she been voted off?”

“Because… you decided that torturing her is more fun?” the uberbimbo explained innocently.

“So, the truth comes out,” Leshawna sneered. Sounds like Queenie needs to learn some manners.”

“And who’s going to teach me?” the queen bee sneered in turn. “You? The ghetto trash who probably learned table manners from Owen? Don’t make me laugh. At least Sadie has an excuse for being fat. She doesn’t eat half of what you do.”

“Gee, Heather,” Sadie chimed in, “that may be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.” The butterball’s tone carried a sarcastic edge that Heather either didn’t notice or chose to ignore.

Eva began to rise to Leshawna’s defense, but Courtney stopped her. “This isn’t our business,” the aspiring politician said quietly as the Eagle girls continued to argue. “Let the other team tear itself apart if that’s what they want. They’ll be less prepared for the challenges. Divide and conquer. Besides, Leshawna can take care of herself.”

An all too familiar, loudspeaker-amplified air horn blast summoned the campers to assembly. As the girls filed out of the cabin, Heather said to Leshawna, “Homie, you’d better hope we win out, because the next time we lose a challenge, you’re history. Although you’ve got so much junk in your trunk, you’ll probably tip over the Loser Boat.”

In the fullness of time, Chris appeared before the assembled campers. He was dressed in camouflage pattern cargo pants, cap and vest over a plaid flannel shirt. He carried what appeared at first glance to be a rifle with a telescopic sight. On closer inspection, though, the host’s weapon looked a little too stylized and lightweight for a proper rifle.

“Is that a paintball gun?” Duncan asked with an expectant grin.

“Why, yes, Duncan,” Chris replied. “Yes, it is.” Giving in to whimsy, or perhaps sociopathy, the Lord of Wawanakwa suddenly leveled his gun at Duncan and splattered the delinquent at point blank range.

That was the plan, anyway, but Duncan was too quick. The scorner of laws casually stepped aside and raised his hand. He made an odd motion with his wrist and forearm, then held out his arm to Chris and opened his hand to reveal the intact paintball.

“Is that the best you’ve got?” Duncan scoffed.

In response, Chris fired thrice more in quick succession, splattering the delinquent at point blank range.

“Does that answer your question, dude?” the host replied with that infuriating bland smile.

Eva had little love for Duncan, and was always happy to see him get what she considered his just desserts. “Smooth move, street meat,” she smirked. “Haven’t you learned yet that Chris doesn’t like to be shown up?”

“Moving… on,” Chris interjected before Duncan could respond. “Today’s challenge is a deer hunt. The thing is, summer isn’t deer season, and even if it were, I wouldn’t trust any of you with deadly weapons. That’s where the paintball guns come in. Your paint more or less matches your team colors: red for the Eagles and green for the Muskies. Each hunter has different shade, though, so we can tell who hits whom.

“Muskies, your hunters are Duncan, Courtney, Beth and Ezekiel. Eagles, your hunters are Noah, Lindsay, Katie and Sadie.”

Heather muttered, “We are so dead.”

“The rest of you,” Chris continued, “are now deer: Eva, D.J. and Tyler for the Muskies; and Cody, Heather, Gwen and Leshawna for the Eagles.

“Each hunter gets one point for each of the other team's deer you hit. Hitting your own deer, or a hunter from either team, will cost you a point. A hunter can’t get more than one point for hitting the same deer, but you can lose multiple points for hitting the same bad target, so be sure of your targets. The team with the most points wins. Any questions?

“Yes, Cody?”

“We’ve got four deer for the Muskies to shoot at, and they’ve only got three. You don’t have to be a math whiz to see that your scoring system gives them a big advantage,” the math whiz explained.

“Not to mention that all their jocks are the deer,” Noah observed.

“And that our hunters probably don’t know one end of a gun from the other,” Heather added.

As Katie and Sadie made sour faces at the queen bee, Noah said, “Don’t listen to her, ladies. I have confidence in your abilities, even if your unpleasable overlord doesn’t.”

Noah later clarified that statement in a confessional spot. “To be precise,” he explained, “I have confidence—some confidence, anyway—in the abilities of Katie and Sadie. Heather’s probably right about Lindsay.”

In truth, Lindsay did know enough about guns to understand the concept of a safety, even if she was not as attentive as she could be to the safe handling practice of always being aware of where her gun was pointed, but that is another story for another time.

In answer to Cody’s objection, Chris explained, “You have an extra player, so one team would have an advantage no matter what.”

Heather countered, “Not necessarily. If you let me sit out the challenge, that would equalize the numbers. It’s not like this would be the first time that you’ve changed the rules on the fly.”

“That’s a good point,” Chris admitted. “I could do that.”

Now it was the Muskies’ turn to cast sour looks at Heather, not to mention Chris. None voiced any objections, though, for they couldn’t deny that the dragon girl had a point. Besides, Chris’s choices of who would be hunters and who would be deer figured to give the Muskies a significant advantage, even without the extra target. It was still disappointing, though, for the prospect of a dragon hunt had made some trigger fingers itchy.

“Any other questions?” Chris asked.

Beth asked in turn, “What about breakfast?”

“That depends on whether you’re a hunter or a deer,” Chris explained. “For the hunters, we have Army field rations. They’ve been gathering dust since World War II, and the government wanted to get rid of them, so we got them cheap.”

“Now, where have we heard that before?” Duncan asked with a significant glance toward Courtney.

“Ugh, don’t get me started,” the onetime CIT replied with a shudder, for she remembered all too well the similarly ancient Jell-O that had figured so prominently in the phobia challenge.

“The deer,” Chris continued with a glare at the Muskies who had dared interrupt him, “will have to eat deer food, so you’ve got two options. One, you can forage and live off the land. Two, the interns have set up a couple of feeding stations stocked with things like berries and edible weeds. If you can find those stations, you’ll probably eat better than if you forage on your own. The downside is that if the other team’s hunters find a feeding station before you do, they might stake it out.”

The campers had no further questions, so Chris returned to the script. “Legal made us give you protective clothing, so the hunters will wear camo and the deer will wear buckskin. Well, faux buckskin. It’s not like this show could afford real buckskin, seeing as my astronomical salary and lavish perks take up such a huge part of the show’s budget. You’ll all have clear plastic face shields, because the viewing audience has to be able to tell who’s who.

“The deer will also wear these deer antlers and cute fluffy tails,” the host added, brandishing examples of the accessories in question.

“Lame,” Gwen declared without much interest.

“But you look so good in lame, Gwennie dear,” Heather sniped, her voice dripping with over the top artificial sweetness. “It really suits you.”

Cody replied, “Naturally, because she’d look good in anything.”

Lindsay and Katie tittered as Sadie quipped, “Sounds like someone’s taken a course in shameless flattery,” before the butterball’s straight face broke and she tittered alongside her buddies.

“Lame or not,” Chris continued, “although it totally is, your tails and antlers are in team colors, so the hunters will need them to tell you apart. That’s why any ‘deer’ who takes off their embarrassing deer parts will get their whole team disqualified. If that happens, you’re liable to find out how ‘lame’ really feels when your angry teammates vote your sorry butt off the island.

“The deer get a fifteen minute head start, but that includes the time it takes you to change, so I wouldn’t dawdle.” With that, Chris gestured to twin piles of clothing. Within each pile were bundles marked with the campers’ names.

As the teens who would be deer slipped into their faux leather armor, which was sized to fit over their normal clothing, Heather remained where she was, casually filing her nails. Chris noticed this and pointedly asked, “Will the lady be participating?”

Without looking up from her nails, Heather explained, “You said you'd let me sit out the challenge, so the Fish Heads wouldn’t have an extra target.”

“I said I could do that. I never said I would.”

“You implied it,” Heather insisted.

The master of the Wild Hunt was in no mood to argue. “You’re wasting head start time. But if you want to give the Muskies four free points and maybe get your eye put out or something, well, that’s your call. Legal said I had to give you protective clothing. They never said I had to make you wear it.”

Heather realized that Chris didn’t have to lift a finger to make good on his threat, which meant that his threat should be taken seriously. Heather joined the rest of the herd in haste and without further protest.

When the last of the “deer” had finished dressing and dashed into the woods, the hunters began to dress at Chris’ command. Roughly three minutes after the hunters were ready, the master of the Wild Hunt declared, “It’s time. Good hunting.”

The hunters dashed into the woods, their ears ringing from the tremendous blast of Chris’ huge Walpurgisnacht pistol, which he had first used to start the Boney Island challenge as has been told of before. The Eagles’ hunters continued on the path that seemed best to them; but before the Muskies’ hunters could disperse, Duncan asked his teammates to come with him.

“I’ve got an idea,” the scorner of laws offered when he was certain that they would not be overheard. “Do any of you know how to fly a plane?”

Ezekiel answered, “I fly my uncle’s crop duster sometimes.”

“That’s what I was counting on,” Duncan revealed with a wolfish grin. “If Princess Pure’n’Perfect can bring herself to bend a couple of rules, I’m pretty sure I can hotwire Chef’s plane. We could hunt from the air.”

“I wish you’d stop calling me that,” Courtney said sourly, but then met Duncan’s wolfish grin with an impish grin of her own. “But that’s a great idea. The Birdies won’t stand a chance.”

“Awesome!” Beth added. Her teammates’ enthusiasm was infectious, and the nerd girl was now grinning from ear to ear. “I can’t wait to see the looks on their faces!”

“Let’s do it, then. Death from above!” Duncan cried.

“Death from above!” his teammates answered.

Duncan then said, “But first… Beth, I have a job for you.”

Noah, meanwhile, had a plan of his own. He had little interest in physical exertion, but he was willing to endure it for the sake of being near Katie, so he walked with the girls for a time. Lindsay and the clones were chattering about girl stuff, which seemed likely to alert any nearby deer. That gave Noah the idea of using the girls as beaters. When the chatter flushed eligible targets, he would shoot at them and hope that the girls had enough situational awareness to start shooting when he did. In the meantime, he would grit his teeth and endure the girl talk.

Deeper in the woods, Muskie deer D.J. encountered Eagle deer Heather quite by chance. The queen doe was sitting on a fallen tree, sulking. She gave no sign that she was aware of the mighy Muskie stag, so D.J. decided to practice his stealth. He retreated a short distance and then circled around until he was behind his quarry. Approaching from Heather’s rear, he succeeded in coming right up to her without being detected. He reached out and passed his hand down the length of Heather’s hair, mere centimeters from that ebon cascade. The graceful brickhouse then retired the way he had come, smiling smugly at his achievement. Only then did he announce his presence, deliberately snapping a large twig underfoot as he approached again.

Her dark thoughts interrupted, Heather started and anxiously turned toward the sound, but relaxed when she saw who was approaching.

“Oh, hi, D.J. You startled me.”

“Not like yesterday, I hope.”

“The less said about that, the better,” Heather replied sourly. “At least you have some gentlemanly instincts, unlike some boys here that I could name.”

“My momma didn’t raise no pervert. So, are you just going to stay here all day?”

“What’s it to you? We’re on opposite teams, you know.”

“True, but not everything is about the game. I was just trying to make conversation.”

“Sorry. I didn’t really need to snap at you like that,” Heather admitted. “I’m just pissed because I thought I’d found a way out of this lame challenge. Then Chris had to go and ruin it.”

“He’s Chris. That’s what he does.”

“Anyway, I’ll probably just stay here for a while. You?”

“I haven’t decided whether it’s better to keep moving or find a good place to hide,” D.J. admitted. “But if you’re going to stay here, I’ll bring you something if I find one of the feeding stations. It’s the least I can do after putting you in such a compromising position.”

“Yes, that’s definitely the least you could do,” Heather agreed sourly. “But what were you thinking? Like you said, it doesn’t seem like you.”

“I owed one of your servants a favor.”

Heather glowered. “I see.”

“By the way,” D.J. warned, “I probably shouldn’t tell you this—we’re on opposite teams, like you said—but if you’re going to stay in one spot, you need to keep a better lookout. I snapped that twig on purpose. Before that, I was able to sneak right up to you without you noticing.”

When Heather’s surprise had passed, she smiled warmly. “I see that Cody’s not the only one here who’s into misguided chivalry. But thanks. I hope it doesn’t come back to bite you with your team. And I mean that.”

The dusky brickhouse smiled in turn. “And I’m glad to see that there’s a real person under that gamebot exterior. See you around.” With that, D.J. left Heather in a better mood than he’d found her in.

Duncan, Courtney and Ezekiel arrived at the plane’s hanger to find it padlocked, but Duncan was not dismayed. He removed the bauble from one of his piercings and folded it out into something that looked like it might make a serviceable lockpick. Showing it to his teammates, the delinquent smirked and declared, “You’ve got to get up pretty early to keep me out of places that I’m not supposed to get into.”

Duncan applied his sketchy craft in an efficient and workmanlike fashion, but picking a lock takes time. By the time he finished, Beth had rejoined them.

Courtney asked, “Did you get the goods?”

With a hangdog look on her face, the farm girl replied, “When I asked Al, he just laughed.”

Duncan gave Beth a disapproving look and surmised, “Guess you’re not as tight with him as you thought.”

“Don’t be such an ogre,” Courtney chided in Beth’s defense. “We were asking a lot. Whatever, they’d have been nice to have, but we shouldn’t need them.”

“Like I said, he just laughed,” Beth repeated. Then, no longer able to keep a straight face, she grinned as she revealed a small sack that she had been carefully concealing behind her ample derriere. “And then he said he was honored to be part of such a masterful plan. He said that for people who weren’t expecting to be in an elimination game, we’re really learning.”

Duncan grinned his wolfish grin as he looked into the sack, which contained extra ammunition and several pairs of compact field glasses. “I never doubted you for a second. I know Al’s type,” he declared. Courtney lifted her eyes heavenward at this display of twofacedness, but said nothing.

The Muskie hunters entered the hangar, and Duncan set to work. Ezekiel, meanwhile, began a walkaround to verify that the plane was airworthy. Seeing the plane up close for the first time, Beth and Courtney were having second thoughts.

“I hope this was a good idea,” Courtney said as she cast a nervous eye on the decrepit-looking plane.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Beth admitted, no less nervously.

“Famous Last Words: ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time’,” Courtney replied, swallowing hard. In her mind’s eye, she had a vivid image of a scenario that would leave the Muskies down by far more than one player, or even two.

“I think we’ll be fine,” Ezekiel pronounced when he finished his walkaround. “It’s not going to fall apart in midair. It just looks like it will. The skin’s all patched up, but the structure and the engine look okay.”

Soon after, Duncan completed his work. “There, that should do it,” he pronounced.

The hunters boarded the plane, with Ezekiel taking the controls. The engine roared to life, the crop dusting prairie boy verified that they had enough fuel for a reasonably long flight, and the Four Muskie-teers slipped the surly bonds of Earth.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

.

Death From Above

Gwen and Cody hiked aimlessly through the woods, with Cody trying to chat Gwen up as per standard procedure. When the challenge began, Gwen had seen a polite way to ditch her unwanted suitor. She had dressed more quickly than the science geek, partly because she wasn’t the only girl that he was talking to, and had sprinted into the woods. That looked innocent enough, since most of the “deer” were trying to make the most of their head start; but in Gwen’s case, she hoped to elude not only the hunters, but also a certain horny stag. It was not to be. Cody eventually found his dream doe by chance, and had stayed with her since. They had both noticed a light plane passing by in the distance; but that sight was not rare, so they paid it no heed.

Finally, Gwen decided to take the deer by the antlers. “I really think we should split up,” she declared.

“But then who will watch your back?” Cody pleaded.

“I don’t think my back is what you’ve been watching,” the Goth observed dryly. “If we’re together, you’ll want to talk. If you talk, you might attract the wrong kind of attention. If you attract the wrong kind of attention, we might both get shot. It’s going to be hard enough for us to win this lame challenge as it is. We need to split up.”

Cody had no answer to Gwen’s argument, so he reluctantly wished her luck and took his leave. Gwen wished Cody luck in turn as the plane changed course to pass near their position.

Cody hadn’t gotten far when Gwen’s cries of alarm and confusion stopped him. His first instinct was to rush back to her, but he had enough presence of mind to realize that she’d probably been shot—more than once, from the sound of her reaction—and that he would probably share her fate if he acted rashly. He dashed into a nearby thicket, crouched down, and began to scan for hunters.

Less than a minute later, the former Possum Scout heard someone or something approaching rapidly and unstealthily. “Cody? Cody?” called the voice that sounded sweeter to him than any other.

As Gwen came into view, Cody decided to risk revealing himself. He called back to her, and then stepped out of the thicket. Gwen quickly joined him there.

“What happened to you?” the science geek asked reflexively. It was obvious that she’d been shot many times, but Cody didn’t know what to make of the pattern, which included a hit on Gwen’s crown. Before he could figure it out for himself, the Goth explained.

“The Fishies are hunting from the frikking plane!” she informed him angrily. “We have to warn the others!”

Cody then understood what he was seeing. Caught completely by surprise, Gwen had been smothered. She’d been hit a dozen times before she knew what was happening.

“They’d have gotten you, too, if I hadn’t sent you away,” Gwen added.

“Yeah, we caught a break there,” Cody admitted. He inspected his crush girl’s “wounds” and concluded, “I see three shades of paint. That means all their hunters are probably on the plane, since whoever’s flying it probably can’t shoot.”

“Which means the plane should be all we have to worry about, at least for a while,” Gwen concluded, finishing the thought. “Be thankful for small favors, I guess.”

With that, the two Eagles wished each other luck once more, and again went their separate ways. Cody had no thought of trying to stay with Gwen now, for he knew that they had to cover as much ground as they might, as quickly as they might. That meant splitting up.

After a time, Cody encountered Leshawna, but he could see that he was too late. The Flying Fish had found the dusky homegirl first, and had served her in much the same way as they had served Gwen.

In the course of searching for Heather, the last unaccounted for Eagle deer, Cody eventually came across a feeding station. Emboldened by the fact that he could not hear the plane, the former Possum Scout sorted through the bounty at his leisure, cherry picking what he considered the best bits, mainly berries, pine nuts and succulents such as purslane.

Having eaten his fill, and with his hands full of additional provender for such later time as he might want it, Cody turned to resume his search for the dragon girl—and found himself face to face with what looked like a grizzly bear. It was actually a black bear, which contrary to the name comes in many colors; and wild grizzlies haven’t lived in Ontario since prehistoric times (except on Boney Island, where they survive to this day); but that distinction mattered little to Cody.

“Nice bear… nice bear,” Cody said as soothingly as he might, whilst he backed slowly away. “You want some berries? The purslane’s pretty good…”

Cody tossed his “deer food” onto the ground between him and the bear as he continued to back away, hoping that the hungry bruin would be content with it. The bear sniffed these offerings for a moment… but only for a moment. Apparently in the mood for meat, Cody’s ursine prosecutor began to stalk him, slowly and with grim purpose.

As Cody continued to back away, in somewhat more haste than before, he continued to face his adversary. The former Possum Scout knew that turning and running now would almost certainly provoke an attack; for when a predator sees something smaller run away, its first instinct is to give chase.

The standoff ended when Cody backed into a large boulder. As the bear finally began to close the distance between them, Cody had nowhere to go.

Katie, Sadie and Lindsay continued to hunt in a pack. They were still chattering happily, seemingly oblivious to basic hunting concepts such as stealth. Noah eventually had all he could take of this and had gone off on his own, hoping to find a feeding station that he could stake out.

Fate had decreed—and what Fate says, goes—that the Three Caballeras would eventually encounter Heather, who was still sitting on the log where D.J. had found her.

“Any luck?” Heather asked.

Lindsay complained, “We haven’t seen anyone.” The clones quickly affirmed their buddy’s report.

“Kind of figured,” the queen bee sniffed. “Whatever, I didn’t bring you guys into my alliance because I thought you’d know your heads from your butts in the challenges.”

“We’ve done okay in the challenges,” Sadie protested.

“Maybe not this one, but some of the others,” Katie added.

“Whatever,” Heather replied dismissively. “Lindsay, I’m hungry. Go find me some berries or something.”

As the loyal uberbimbo trotted off with the enthusiasm of a puppy, the queen bee commanded, “You two stay here and protect me.”

“How?” Katie asked. “We’re not allowed to shoot the hunters.”

“Exactly,” Heather explained. “You can be human shields. The Fishies won’t dare shoot at me because they’ll lose points if they hit you. Sadie, you cover my back since you’re bigger.”

“How are we going to win the challenge that way?” Sadie protested.

“If we have to stay here with you and Lindsay has to run errands for you, then who’s going to do the hunting?” Katie challenged.

“Even if Noah turns out to be a good hunter, he can’t win the challenge by himself—”

“—unless we get lucky.”

“It’s not like we have a chance anyway,” Heather insisted. “We might as well count on luck.”

Sadie observed, “The Heather I know doesn’t give up that easily.”

“We owe it to the others to at least try,” Katie insisted.

“We don’t owe the others anything,” Heather sniffed. “If they’re not in the alliance, they don’t matter. And you don’t know me. Got it?”

Cody saw one chance. Unlike grizzlies, black bears are not at the top of the food chain and so are easier to intimidate. If Cody could make himself look big enough, it might scare the bear off. If he tried and failed, that would probably provoke the bear to charge, in which case Cody would almost certainly die, or at best be left in such a condition that his own mother would be hard pressed to recognize him. Were he facing a grizzly bear, the trick he had in mind would surely have provoked a charge.

The former Possum Scout began to undo the fasteners on his faux buckskin jacket. His plan was to slide it down his forearms and then quickly raise his jacket-bound arms overhead, so as to make himself look suddenly bigger.

Drenched in cold sweat, with the bear now only a few meters away, Cody was ready for his “death or glory” gambit. Here goes nothing, he thought. If it doesn’t work, at least the ladies will grieve for me.

Suddenly, the bear seemed to go insane. It whirled and writhed, snapping at its flanks and pawing at the air as if tormented by hornets. It took Cody a few moments to realize that the “hornets” were actually paintballs, streaking in and marring the bruin’s brown coat with splotches of Muskie green.

A few of these missiles struck Cody as well, and this was no accident. He was a designated deer, after all, and his “friends in high places” still had a challenge to win. They had spotted the science geek at the feeding station and had moved in for the kill; but by the time they had gotten close for their quarry to hear the plane’s engine, the bear had commanded Cody’s undivided attention.

The fusillade ceased as quickly as it had come, for the limited range of paintball guns had obliged the Four Muskie-teers to make their pass at little more than treetop level. Such low altitude might be ideal for things like dusting crops, but it made for a narrow firing window. As the plane banked steeply for another pass, Cody turned his attention back to the bear.

The beast had not run off, but was now eyeing Cody more warily than hungrily. There was also a little more distance between them, for Cody had begun to work his way around the boulder during the first volley.

It was time, Cody thought, to make his move. He was tracking the plane by ear; and when he supposed that the Muskie “gunship” was in position, Cody suddenly raised his jacket-bound arms overhead, making him look half again bigger than before.

The bear gave more ground, but still did not flee. When the gunners opened fire, though, this time from behind their campmate instead of from the side, the beast finally broke and ran. Cody freed one arm from his jacket and waved appreciatively at the plane, which waggled its wings as it chased Cody’s would-be assailant deeper into the forest.

Lindsay returned empty handed. When she heard her allies’ voices rising, she had left off her foraging mission, succumbing to the overpowering urge to find out what was going on. When the uberbimbo got back, Heather and the clones were still arguing.

“Don’t you know what they’ll do if they find out that you deliberately screwed the team over just to protect your selfish little designer shorts? People don’t like you much as it is,” Sadie pointed out.

“What are you talking about?” Heather snapped angrily. “I’m popular!”

“Not as popular as you think,” Katie replied with no less heat. “If you ruin this challenge for us, they’re going to vote you off!”

“And so… will… we,” Sadie added in that dangerously quiet tone of one who is about to snap.

Heather exploded. “You think you can threaten me? You are nothing without me, you hive-minded little dweebs!”

“Right now, we’re nothing with you!” Katie retorted.

“All you do is make us step and carry for you!” Sadie added, her voice no longer quiet.

“So what do we have to lose?” Katie demanded.

“You’d be totally clueless without my strategizing!” Heather replied, her voice nearing screaming volume.

“You always talk about strategy—” one clone countered.

“—but what have you actually done—” the other continued.

“—except turn us into servants—”

“—and bully Gwen—”

“—just because she’s a Goth?”

“Sure, we don’t really like Goths, either—”

“—but at least we’ve been civil to her—”

“—not to mention that she’s actually kind of nice—”

“—once you get to know her.”

“I won the last challenge for us!” Heather screeched.

“By cheating!” Sadie shot back.

When the nonplussed queen bee failed to respond immediately, Katie jumped back in. “And now, you’re ready to throw this challenge just so you don’t get a little paint on you,” she griped.

“Oh, yeah, we’ll just be totally lost without that,” Sadie added without missing a beat.

Heather snapped. Unwilling or unable to accept that her lackeys were right, she snatched Lindsay’s paintball gun and shot both of the “twins” at point blank range.

“Picking a one-on-two firefight,” Katie (or was it Sadie?) sneered, pulling her own weapon from her shoulder.

“That’s real strategic of you,” Sadie (or was it Katie?) sneered in turn, completing the thought as she brought her own weapon to bear.

“MEET YOUR MAKER, BITCH!” the clones cried in unison, firing as one.

This servile insurrection was in full swing when Duncan spotted the girls through his field glasses. Courtney came to Duncan’s side, verified his report, and ordered, “Zeke, bring us about! Gunners, fire on my mark!”

As they closed on their quarry, the Flying Fish could see that something was not right. Ezekiel finally voiced the question that was now on all their minds.

“What’s going on down there? They’re shooting each other.”

“Maybe the worm has finally turned,” Courtney speculated.

“Or maybe Heather’s going to be ‘assimilated’,” Beth suggested.

“Shall we join the party? Duncan asked, raising his gun to his shoulder.

“No,” Courtney answered. “Katie, Sadie, and I assume that’s Lindsay are too close. We’ll lose points if we hit them.” The Muskies leader smiled in grim satisfaction and said, “Stand ready; but for now, we’ll just enjoy the show. They’re basically giving us the challenge.”

As the Death From Above squad circled overhead, waiting for an opening, Katie/Sadie and Heather continued to paint each other as fast as they could pull their triggers. When their magazines ran dry, the three reloaded (with Heather demanding, and receiving, Lindsay’s extra clips) and went right back to it.

Finally, when ruler and subjects had nothing more to shoot with, Katie and Sadie stalked off, leaving Heather to fume. After a few moments, the wing-clipped queen bee noticed that Lindsay—still loyal, if only because she was too stupid and too weak-willed to be otherwise—was looking at her, unsure of what to say or do.

“Don’t just stand there, Lindsiot,” the angry dragon snapped. “Go get me some berries or something. Just leave me in peace.” Lindsay promptly departed to do her liege’s bidding, leaving Heather to sulk alone.

High overhead, Courtney cried, “Fire!” And Heather was plastered a second time.

At the appointed time, the campers assembled for the reckoning, and it was obvious that the challenge had been no contest. Thanks partly to the infighting among the Eagles, the Muskies had won a “flawless victory”. All the Eagles’ deer, plus Katie and Sadie into the bargain, had taken multiple hits. Between the slave revolt and the Muskies’ tactics, Heather had been hit so many times that she was actually dripping.

In stark contrast, none of the Muskies’ deer had been hit even once, partly because only Noah had done much actual hunting for his team. Noah did get two shots at Tyler; but they had been difficult shots, and the bookworm had missed.

“So,” Chris pronounced, “Four kills each for Beth, Courtney and Duncan makes 12 points for the Muskies. Deducting points for hitting teammates and hunters makes… let’s see… each hunter had 30 rounds, so we’ll call it 90 points in the hole for the Eagles.

“However, comma, I can’t ignore the fact that the Eagles’ civil war is going to be great for ratings, so I’m giving the Eagles a fifty-point bonus. The final score is Muskies 12, Eagles minus-40. Eagles, get cleaned up and decide who you want to send home.”

Heather saw one way that she might salvage the situation. “It was totally unfair for the Fish Heads to hunt from the air,” she protested. “Shouldn’t they be disqualified for stealing the plane?”

“No rule against it,” Chris replied with that infuriating bland smile. “And they didn’t steal the plane, they borrowed it. They didn’t damage it, and nobody else needed it while they had it, so why should I care?

“Besides, if they hadn’t taken the plane, who knows what might have happened to Cody? Some things are more important than winning a challenge, wouldn’t you say?” the host added in a tone that all but dared Heather to disagree.

The campers assumed that Chris was just trying to force Heather down. None of the teens believed (well, Lindsay might have believed) that their overlord actually cared a whit about the science geek.

Heather didn’t really care about Cody, either, beyond not wanting to see him get seriously hurt, but she had nothing to gain by saying so. Besides, he was useful, and might be all the more so with Heather’s alliance on the verge of collapse.

“Yes,” Heather said dully, as if reading from a teleprompter, “some things are more important.”

The next morning, after a nasty breakfast that looked suspiciously like World War II vintage Army rations, the Muskies departed for their challenge reward: an excursion to a local shooting gallery. As the Eagles contemplated that night’s elimination, Heather summoned the Bobbsey Twins to her.

“You two were major traitors yesterday,” Heather pronounced, before letting her expression soften. Doing her best to project a geniality that she did not feel, the queen bee added, “But I have to admit, I probably had it coming, so I’m willing to let bygones go if you don’t try to take over the alliance again. Which brings us to tonight’s elimination. I’ve had all I can take of Leshawna, so we’re going to send her packing.”

“But we like Leshawna,” Katie protested.

“Yeah, she’s fun,” Sadie added.

Heather confronted Yin and Yang with the most withering, intimidating look in her repertoire. “Do you want to be in an alliance or don’t you?” When Tweedledum and Tweedledee nodded silently, Heather repeated, in a voice that brooked no dissent, “Leshawna.” They nodded again, and she left them.

This business concluded, the queen bee went to find her third and most loyal vassal. Upon catching up to Lindsay, Heather pulled the uberbimbo aside.

“I’ve decided who to vote off tonight,” Heather confided, “but it’s going to be tricky. Don’t breathe a word of this to anyone, or it’ll be all over for both of us.” The queen bee drew a finger across her throat with an exaggerated cutting sound to emphasize her point.

The dimwitted former blonde was not so stupid that she couldn’t understand this warning. “Right,” Lindsay acknowledged, “Don’t tell anyone.”

Heather looked around to make sure that no one was within earshot. Satisfied that they were alone, she put one finger on Lindsay’s lips as a warning to keep silent. Keeping her own voice low, Heather handed down her sentence.

“We’re voting off Katie.”

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

.

Fifteenth Night

The next morning, after they had breakfasted, Brett went to school whilst his mother went to earn their daily bread. That evening, after they had dined and Brett had attended to his homework, 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.

“But why?” Lindsay asked in honest confusion. “Kayla’s our ally, isn’t she? Not to mention, our friend.”

“Not anymore,” Heather declared. “You saw how they tried to take over our alliance yesterday. And remember what they did to Chris on the diving cliff, when he wouldn’t let them be on the same team?

Lindsay did indeed remember. Through poorly suppressed giggles, she said, “Oh, that was totally awesome.”

Heather realized that she herself had failed to suppress a grin at that memory, but she quickly composed herself. “Okay, I’ll give them major props for that,” the Dark Queen admitted, “but it proves my point. If they’re willing to take on Chris to get what they want, then they’re capable of anything. They care more about each other than they do about us, the game, or anything, so they’re going to back each other no matter what.

“We still need one of them. Unfortunately, the only way we can keep one now is to sacrifice the other. I’ve decided that it’s better to keep Sadie. It was a tough call, but that’s why I’m the captain of our alliance. I know how to make these hard choices.

“Remember, not a word about this to anyone. Especially Katie and Sadie.”

This was a great deal of information for Lindsay to digest so quickly, at least by her standards. That was how Heather wanted it, for the Princess of Darkness had learned that fast talk tended to stop Lindsay asking questions.

“Right,” the uberbimbo acknowledged slowly. “We have to vote Katrina off, so we can’t tell her or Sandrine.”

“Good,” Heather pronounced with an encouraging smile, for she had learned that Lindsay confused only names, not identities. “Our two votes won’t be enough, but I have a plan. Have you seen Cody?”

“No, but I’ve seen Jen,” Lindsay replied helpfully.

“Close enough.”

Heather found the Goth and the Geek on the dock, where Gwen was trying to get away from everyone else and Cody was trying to chat her up. This had become an almost daily routine. Eavesdropping for a few minutes before announcing herself, Heather had to admit that Cody’s courting skills were starting to improve, even if his results didn’t reflect that improvement. Well, he’d had enough practice these last few weeks.

As Cody talked, Gwen responded mechanically. She really had no interest in him, and wanted to be alone in any case, but she had given up trying to discourage him. The science geek simply would not be deterred.

Enough entertainment, Heather finally decided. I’ve got a clone to backstab.

“Oh, there, you are,” Heather called in a sweetness-and-light tone as she approached. Grabbing Cody by the arm, the Dark Queen asked, “Gwen, do you mind if I borrow your boyfriend for a minute?”

Gwen scowled, and her voice dripped with irritation. “You know perfectly well that he’s not my boyfriend, and you can have him for as many minutes as you want.” Suddenly struck with a whimsical thought, she added in an artificially sweet tone similar to Heather’s, “You’re on an Unlimited plan, you know. And if you can talk some sense into him, I might actually think about forgiving you for your little stunt in the talent show.”

Heather did not value Gwen’s forgiveness, so the queen bee did not deign to reply as she escorted Cody in the general direction of the boathouse, still gripping his arm. As the Beauty and the Geek departed, Heather said, loudly enough for Gwen to hear, “Hey, Codemeister, tell me again about the first time you got to second base with Gwen. I love that story.”

When they were safely out of earshot, Heather released Cody’s arm. As they continued to walk toward the boathouse, having nowhere better to go, Heather asked, “So, have you given any thought to the vote?”

“Yeah,” Cody admitted slowly. “You and your lackeys did cost us the challenge, you know.”

“Yeah, about that,” Heather began, with a show of contrition, “I’ve been thinking that Katie and Sadie are getting awfully full of themselves. They think that as long as they have each other, they can do whatever they want. I can’t control them anymore, especially Katie. Seriously, how can you intimidate someone who’s died and lived to tell about it?”

Seeing that she had Cody’s attention, Heather paused for effect before dropping the other shoe. “I think it’s time for Katie to go.”

Cody stiffened. He saw a chance to make good on a promise; but to do that, he would first have to get Katie’s head off the block.

Fishing for information, Cody asked, “Any particular reason you picked Katie instead of Sadie? Besides what you’ve just said?”

“Not really,” Heather told him. That was a lie—Heather did have a reason, but was leery of having Cody or anyone else know too much about her master plan.

“How many votes do you have?” More probing.

Heather saw no reason to lie again. “I’ve just decided, so it’s only me and Lindsay so far. You’d be the third.”

Time to test her conviction, Cody thought. Aloud, he said, “You’re probably going to need a fourth vote. I think I know where we can get it, but it’s more likely to happen with Sadie than with Katie. Would you be willing to boot Sadie instead?”

Heather considered Cody’s proposal. She had chosen Katie in the belief that Sadie could be more easily broken if the Siamese campers were separated, but this was mostly conjecture based on the fact that Sadie was fat, whereas the post-makeover Katie was now considered hot. Heather didn’t particularly like either of them, so she had largely avoided getting to know them, and in truth her assessment was little better than a coin flip. Cody didn’t have to know that, though.

“Who do you have in mind for the fourth vote?” Heather asked, mounting a fishing expedition of her own.

“I can’t tell you that,” Cody demurred. “You understand. If you can figure it out for yourself, then more power to you.”

“It’s Noah, isn’t it? Sunshine said that you have an alliance with him, but why would he care whether I keep Katie or Sadie?”

“Most of the guys think Katie’s prettier. Noah’s no exception.”

Cody hadn’t told Heather the whole truth, but he’d told her enough to be believable and, with any luck, enough to satisfy her. With Katie in Heather’s thrall, neither Cody nor Noah wanted the queen bee to know about Noah’s crush.

Meanwhile, Cody’s suggestion to expel Sadie instead of Katie had got Heather thinking. When Heather had been incapacitated following the Awake-a-thon, it was Sadie who had marshaled the troops; and while Sadie’s resistance to ousting Justin after the phobia challenge had been no better reasoned than Katie’s, Heather had to admit that the butterball generally made a competent lieutenant. And therein lay a problem.

Being a treacherous sort, the Dark Queen naturally feared treachery. Although Sadie was no genius, she was noticeably smarter than Katie, and light years ahead of Lindsay—granted, nearly everyone was light years ahead of Lindsay, Heather thought—so Sadie just might get the misguided idea someday that she and Lindsay didn’t need Heather. Moreover, Katie and Sadie’s near-fatal misadventure during the camping challenge had amply demonstrated what Sadie was capable of when she put her mind to it.

Perhaps, Heather thought, she’d been too hasty in deciding which clone to send packing.

“Fine,” Heather answered with a shrug. “If you can get the fourth vote, we’ll send Fatty Lumpkin off.”

“Tom Bombadil. The Lord of the Rings,” Cody noted.

“Whatever.” Heather knew nothing of Tom Bombadil or the pony he named “Fatty Lumpkin”, for she had never read the book and Bombadil wasn’t in the movies.

“There’s one other thing,” Cody added. “I need something in return for my help.”

In truth, Heather respected Cody more for demanding a quid pro quo than she would have if he hadn’t. Besides, if she thought his price too high, she was confident that she could bargain him down. “All right, then, what’s your price?” she prompted.

“I would really appreciate it if you’d get off Gwen’s back.”

Ouch.

Heather started to protest, but checked herself. She needed Cody’s help to split the Bobbsey Twins without tipping her hand further, but she couldn’t just boss him around like she did her posse. Being a boy, Cody had no reason to recognize Heather’s queen bee authority, and they both knew that he had her over a barrel.

That wasn’t the worst of it. It was no secret that Gwen was on friendly terms with Leshawna, the only player whom Heather despised more than she did the Goth. If those two ever decided to start actually playing the game, there was a very real danger that they might recruit Cody into an alliance. That would be a serious rival to Heather’s bloc, especially if Cody then recruited Noah, and would weaken Heather’s own alliance into the bargain. Heather would rather shave her head than see that happen. If preventing it meant treating this nerdling as something resembling an equal, then that was the way it would be.

Besides, Heather had to admit, although she would never tell anyone but the Confession Cam, she thought it sweet that Cody wanted a favor on behalf of his crush girl instead of for himself.

But still… this was Gwen they were talking about.

“You don’t know what you’re asking,” Heather said, shaking her head. “Weir… Gwen creases me so majorly, I can’t even tell you.”

That was close. Heather had almost said, “Weird Goth Girl”. That could have been disastrous, because it simply would not do to alienate Cody right now. “I get that you’ve never been able to see anything but the best in her, but… I just don’t know,” Heather added with another shake of her head.

“I’m not asking you to be her buddy,” Cody clarified. “Just… don’t be her enemy. Gwen doesn’t get into people’s faces the way Leshawna can. She’ll ignore you if you give her half a chance.”

Heather didn’t see the selling point there. The queen bee didn’t like the thought of being ignored, even by people she hated. She lived by the Oscar Wilde credo: “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.”

Time to turn on the charm, and see if she might bargain Cody down. “Gwen does not deserve you,” Heather declared.

“That’s what she said,” Cody revealed. “Funny thing, though, it didn’t sound the same when she said it.”

Despite the gravity of the situation, Heather couldn’t suppress a short bark of laughter. “I’ll bet,” she said.

The Dark Queen and her torpedo reached the boathouse. With nothing there to command their attention, they began to stroll back to the camp.

“I’m serious, though,” Heather continued. “I’ll admit that I didn’t think so at first, but you’ve got a lot to offer a girl. Why waste it on someone who doesn’t want it?”

“I hear you,” Cody admitted. “There are a lot of girls here—well, some of them aren’t here anymore—who I wouldn’t mind hooking up with, but I just feel a special connection to Gwen. Like she’s my preordained soulmate, or something.”

“Forget Gwen. When people see how devoted you can be, girls will be flocking to you.” The deceiver was thus the deceived, for this bit of shameless flattery was in fact truth spoken in jest, but that is another story for another time.

“Yeah, but the flocks aren’t here. Gwen is,” the science geek countered. “Besides, I stabbed Trent in the back to be with her, when I really didn’t have anything else against him. That’s not something I’d be especially proud of, even if it hadn’t blown up in my face, and the producers are probably going to give me a ‘villain edit’ for it. How can I give up on Gwen now, after I paid that kind of price to be with her?”

“You took that chance,” Heather answered. “It was a good gamble, but sometimes good gambles don’t pay off. Get a clue, dude. Gwen doesn’t want you.

“Someone… else… might.” The Princess of Darkness underscored this conjecture by lightly running a fingernail down Cody’s flank before gently grasping his arm near the elbow.

I think I’m going to rupture my zipper, Cody mused facetiously, as he took Heather’s cue and bent his arm for her. What he actually said, though, was, “And might this ‘someone’ be, say, a ‘business associate’ who is perhaps looking to broaden an existing relationship?”

“Possibly,” Heather purred, sidling a little closer as they walked.

“With romantic dates doubling as strategy sessions?”

“I’ve said this before, but I like the way you think.”

“Combining gameplay with, er, playing other ‘games’?” Cody suggested with a gleam in his eye and his characteristic goofy grin.

“Down, boy!” Heather commanded in a playful-sounding tone, gesturing with her free hand. “I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves, you little horndog.”

“Hey, I’m a dude. It comes with the territory.”

“You do have a point.”

In truth, Heather had no more romantic interest in Cody than Gwen did; for while the Dark Queen had been sincere when she said that Cody had a lot to offer the right girl, she didn’t see herself as that girl because appearances were very important to her. Heather did rather like the idea of dating as a cover for planning game strategy, so she wouldn’t rule out the possibility of a sham hookup with the science geek; and while she normally wouldn’t be caught dead on the arm of a boy like Cody, the show’s viewing audience would know the truth. She did hope, though, that she wouldn’t have to make out with him.

“If we did become ‘an item’,” Cody said after a few moments, interrupting Heather’s ruminations, “I would still want you to cut Gwen some slack. I don’t like to see people bullied. I’ve been bullied before, myself, so I know what it feels like.”

Heather sighed. Cody was the second person in two days—the third if you went so far as to count Katie and Sadie as separate people—to accuse her of actually bullying Gwen, so maybe there was something to it. Heather, too, knew what it was like to be bullied, for she had not always been as pretty or as popular as she had since become.

The queen bee thought back over her treatment of Gwen and felt… not guilty, certainly not ashamed, but… surprised that this ‘low-rent gutterpunk’ (as Heather had once described the Goth) had commanded so much of her attention, especially when Leshawna was no less grating and far more confrontational.

Heather had to admit to herself that Cody’s terms were reasonable, but that didn’t mean that meeting them would be easy. She reminded herself that her semi-ally was useful, and that she was committed to paying whatever price she must to win the game.

They were approaching the camp, so Heather released Cody’s arm, and the conspirators continued to walk side by side like the friendish teammates they were.

“Okay, you win,” the queen bee conceded. “Being nice to Gwen is going to be really hard, but for your sake, I’ll try.”

“Thanks, bra. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a fourth vote to round up.”

It didn’t take Cody long to find Noah, for he knew his ally’s habits. They went to a place where they would not be overheard, and Cody told the bookworm of his conversation with Heather, but nothing would be gained be repeating it here. Noah had reservations about helping to backstab Sadie, for he feared Katie’s reaction if she should learn of it; but in the end, he decided that it was worth the risk.

That evening, the Eagles gathered at the bonfire to do what they had to do. Chris recited his now-familiar spiel, but with a twist: instead of calling campers in the order of increasing vote totals, as he usually did, on this night he would call the safe campers randomly. In due course, he called Katie, Noah, Gwen, Leshawna, Cody and Lindsay to him to receive their marshmallows. He did not reveal whether any of these six had votes against them.

“I have just one marshmallow left,” the host intoned solemnly. “Heather, Sadie, your infighting may have cost your team the challenge, although I have to admit that the Muskies would probably have won anyway. Their idea to hunt from the air was brilliant, and it’s going to be great for ratings.

“One of you has spent her last day on Total Drama Island. The one who does not receive this marshmallow must walk the Dock of Shame, board the Boat of Losers, and make the Voyage of the Damned to Loserville. And you can never come back, because damnation is for ev-er.

“The final marshmallow of the night goes to…”

As Chris McLean, Arbiter of Fates, hammed it up and milked the dramatic tension for all it was worth, Heather felt far from secure. If all had gone according to plan, then she and Leshawna would each have two votes against them, since Gwen and Leshawna could be expected to vote against her, leaving a 50-50 chance of Heather ending up in the bottom two even if Chris hadn’t really randomized the call-up order like he claimed.

There was a wildcard, though: Lindsay. If the uberbimbo had spilled the beans to Katie and Sadie, then there was a very real chance that Heather could be the one going home this night.

As the host’s Finger of Fate moved back and forth between Heather and Sadie, both girls, plus Katie, were sweating bullets. Finally…

“Heather. Come get your marshmallow.”

Heather breathed a deep sigh of relief as she rose to her feet. Lindsay had, indeed, kept her mouth shut.

As the Dark Queen claimed her talisman of life, her eyes met Chris’, and host and contestant shared a moment of silent understanding. Had Chris revealed the vote totals, as he usually did, Sadie would still have been out, but it wouldn’t have been hard for the others to figure out what had happened. By keeping the vote distribution secret, and thereby keeping the Eagles guessing, the host had done what he could to protect his ratings-boosting main antagonist.

Besides, Heather wasn’t the only one who wanted the clones brought into line; for although Chris had forgiven Katie and Sadie for his humiliation on the diving cliff, he hadn’t forgotten it.

Katie, meanwhile, had returned to the seating area to console her BFF.

“This is so unfair,” Katie declared. With a set to her jaw that seemed out of place on such an innocent young face, she turned back to the others and said, “Chris, I’ll go in Sadie’s place, if you’ll allow it.”

“Aw, that’s so sweet!” Sadie cooed, clearly touched by her BFF’s gesture. “But you know I can’t let you do that.”

“But I mean it!” Katie cried passionately.

“I know, right? And I’d do the same for you,” Sadie answered with equal fervor. “But how could I go on, knowing what it cost you?”

Katie pressed her case. “But it won’t cost me anything, if I know you’re still in the game. We’re going to be separated no matter what. And in case you forgot, I owe you my life. Isn’t that worth a chance to stay in the game?”

“But you’re in better shape then I am,” Sadie countered, “and most of the challenges are probably going to be physical in some way. You have a better chance of getting to the ‘cash zone’ than I would,” the butterball added, referring to the fact that the top third of the field would receive cash prizes.

When Katie did not have an immediate answer to this point, Chris declared, “The vote stands. Sadie is out.”

When the Eagles assembled at the base of the dock for the sendoff, Katie and Sadie walked down the Dock of Shame together. As Hatchet tolled the bell, the other campers could hear the BFFs arguing, and there was some question as to which one would actually board the boat. Indeed, this bit of dramatic tension was the reason why Chris had allowed the clones to walk the Dock together, when the condemned normally had to walk alone.

One man in a thousand, Solomon says,
Will stick more close than a brother.
And it’s worth while seeking him half your days
If you find him before the other.
Nine hundred and ninety-nine depend
On what the world sees in you
But the Thousandth Man will stand your friend
With the whole round world agin you.

‘Tis neither promise nor prayer nor show
Will settle the finding for ‘ee.
Nine hundred and ninety-nine of ‘em go
By your looks, or your acts, or your glory.
Bit if he finds you and you find him,
The rest of the world don’t matter;
For the Thousandth Man will sink or swim
With you in any water.

You can use his purse with no more talk
Than he uses yours for his spendings,
And laugh and meet in your daily walk
As though there had been no lendings.
Nine hundred and ninety-nine of ‘em call
For silver and gold in their dealings;
But the Thousandth Man h’s worth ‘em all,
Because you can show him your feelings.

His wrong’s your wrong, and his right’s your right,
In season or out of season.
Stand up and back it in all men’s sight—
With that for your only reason!
Nine hundred and ninety-nine can’t bide
The shame or mocking or laughter,
But the Thousandth Man will stand by your side
To the gallows-foot—and after!

When the Bobbsey Twins reached the end of the dock, Sadie stepped out to board the boat, but Katie stopped her. As they continued to argue over who should go and who should remain, Katie moved to board, only to be stopped in turn.

Finally, Hatchet grew impatient and emerged from the wheelhouse. Without a word, he approached Sadie from behind, grabbed her by her arms, just below her shoulders, picked her up (visibly straining, for that little butterball was a lot of butter), pivoted, and deposited her on the boat.

Hatchet turned back to Katie. “You can go, too, if you really want,” he said, “but Fatso is going, regardless.”

Katie saw that there was nothing more she could do, so she pledged to Sadie to carry on for the both of them. Then, she sank to her knees, put her face in her hands, and began to weep.

Looking on, Chris wiped away a tear; but in his case, it was a tear of joy as he contemplated what this touching emotional scene would do for the show’s ratings.

Noah started down the dock toward Katie, followed closely by Cody, and then by the other Eagles. Cody knew what his ally was planning. The others did not, but were game to find out.

Noah came right up to the end of the dock and stood beside the still-kneeling girl-child, whose rail-thin body was now wracked with quiet sobs. As the boat pulled away from the dock, Noah placed a consoling hand on Katie’s heaving shoulder and, in his rough, nasal baritone, began to sing the Pie Jesu.

Although the Eagles had learnt this song from the Muskies three nights since, as has been told of before, they had not formally decided whether to use it at their own eliminations. When Chris announced Sadie’s elimination, Noah had decided to force the issue in the hope of scoring points with his stricken crush girl.

As Noah sang, or did what passed for singing in his case, Katie’s sobbing abated briefly. When Noah came to the line meaning, “You take away the sins of the world”, Katie showed a hint of a smile and began to sing in a reedy soprano, but her grief-choked voice faltered and she could not finish the line. By that time, however, the other Eagles had joined it.

And that is how the Screaming Eagles came to adopt the “Pie Jesu” section of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Requiem as a regular part of the elimination ceremony.

Brett said, “I’ve watched some of the early episodes from your season online, and I can’t believe some of the editing. I’m not sure I’d have even recognized Noah from the way you describe him. Except for the dodgeball speech.”

“Blame it on TDI supposedly being a kid’s show,” his mother explained. “The producers obviously thought that kids would be more interested in a snarker than an intellectual who likes poetry, so that was mostly the edit he got. The only reason his dodgeball speech made it into the episode is because it was too awesome to leave out.”

The night was not far advanced, so Brett’s mother paused a few moments to collect her thoughts, and then continued with her tale.

.

Episode #10: The Tale of the Cooking Challenge

Original title: If You Can’t Take the Heat

The next morning, at the crack of dawn, the yacht that had brought the campers to the island announced its arrival with a blast from its horn that jolted the campers awake. That, of course, was precisely the reason why Chris had requested a dawn delivery.

The yacht docked and disgorged thirteen college age men and women, the latest reinforcements for the depleted intern corps. Alejandro, that diplomat’s son who had risen to become the intern-in-chief in every way but name, stood on the dock to greet them.

Even at the rate Chris was going through interns, the producers had not expected to need more recruits so quickly, but the massive losses on Boney Island had caught everyone flatfooted. Part of a producer’s job is to arrange logistical support, and the sudden crisis left them scrambling. Not surprisingly, tempers ran high. Chris felt the pressure as well, and maintaining a “business as usual” air during the paintball challenge had been a stern test of his considerable acting skill.

When the harried producers called Chris on the carpet for the Boney Island debacle, the host had testily pointed out that he couldn’t predict earthquakes. Therefore, he argued, the rockslides that had wiped out an entire work detail and then some couldn’t be blamed on anything more than bad luck. That hadn’t been the only cause of intern death, of course, but it was enough for Chris’ inquisitors to concede his point, and they let the matter drop.

Fortunately for the producers, if not for the recruits, the show had become popular, so even on short notice there was no shortage of applicants looking to be a part of it and burnish their resumes thereby. Both the finished episodes and the “behind the scenes” footage posted on the show’s website had been carefully edited to avoid any suggestion that interns were coming to sticky ends, so twelve of the recruits suspected nothing. The thirteenth was different, though, for she was blessed or cursed with perceptions that are not given to most of us.

As Alejandro’s new colleagues filed off the boat, he noticed that this last was looking oddly troubled. He solicitously asked, “Is something wrong, senorita?”

The recruit, a tiny, pale blonde with a wraithlike air about her, seemed to be listening to voices that only she could hear, like and yet unlike what Izzy sometimes did. “There is a great evil here,” she said distractedly, in a soft, childlike voice.

“That would be our overlord, Chris McLean,” Alejandro quipped.

“No, this is something else,” the recruit explained in the same distracted tone. “Something not of flesh and blood.”

“I’m afraid I can’t help you there,” Alejandro admitted. “I understand people, not spirits.”

“Yes, a spirit,” the wraith-girl said absently, and then seemed to see Alejandro for the first time. “But maybe I can help you. I realize that we’ve only just met, but I can see that you bear a terrible burden. ‘Survivor guilt’, I think it’s called. You might feel better if you talk about it.”

How did she know that? Alejandro wondered. He knew that he hadn’t felt like himself for several days, but he hadn’t been able to fathom it until this seemingly psychic girl had put it into words. In a moment of weakness and selfishness, Alejandro had talked his friend Lightning into swapping work assignments with him, because Alejandro wanted to avoid having to get up before dawn. Lightning had agreed readily enough, for that mighty jock enjoyed proving his toughness by mortifying the flesh in various ways. So it was that Lightning had gone to Boney Island instead of Alejandro, and had found his fate there.

“My burden is indeed a heavy one,” the big Latino confessed, turning away so that this uncanny girl would not see him blinking away the tears that now threatened to flow. “But this is not the time or the place to discuss it.”

Meanwhile, one of the campers was wrestling with survivor guilt of her own. As the campers ate what passed for breakfast, Katie listlessly poked at her alleged food. “Why did it have to be Sadie?” she lamented to no one in particular. “Why didn’t she let me go in her place?

Noah had managed to score the seat next to Katie, in the spot that Sadie normally occupied. “It might be exactly what she said,” the bookworm surmised. “In a game where physical attributes matter, you’ve got a better body for it.”

“Excuse me?” Katie interrupted with a bit of irritation in her voice.

“I know, right?” Heather added with unusual sincerity.

“Sorry,” Noah offered hastily, for he hadn’t expected Katie to suspect his true meaning. “Poor choice of words. My point—Sadie’s point—was that from a physical standpoint, you’re the stronger all-around player. You’re strong, quick, agile, and have good stamina.” Noah allowed himself a faint smile as he added, “By the most widely accepted standards, you’re also prettier, and don’t think that doesn’t matter to Chris. We all know by now what a ratings whore he is.”

“That makes sense,” Katie admitted reluctantly. “But why would anyone vote against Sadie in the first place? What did she ever do to anyone?”

“That could be exactly it,” Heather dissembled. The Dark Queen lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper and somehow managed to keep a straight face as she explained. “You know what I think? I think the reason why Chris didn’t announce the vote totals like he usually does is because he decided to ignore the vote. We know that Chris likes to change the rules on the fly, and we know that he likes players who put the ‘Drama’ in Total Drama Island. Sadie was never big on drama. That made her a good ally, but Chris might have decided that it didn’t make her good television. He also might have thought that our alliance had too much power.”

“Besides, he might still remember what you and Sadie did to him on the diving cliff,” Noah interjected.

Katie giggled in spite of herself. “As if that wasn’t good ‘drama’.”

“That probably wound up on the cutting room floor,” Heather surmised. “You know what Chris’ ego is like.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Katie replied listlessly as her dolor returned.

The finished episode had a confessional spot by Chris spliced in at this point. “For the record,” the host declaimed, “I did not ignore the vote. Sadie got backstabbed fair and square. But if Heather’s disinformation keeps the players guessing, that’s good for drama. And if it’s good for drama, then it’s good for ratings. And if it’s good for ratings, then I’ve got no damage.”

As the breakfast period wound down and the campers began to filter out of the lodge, Katie rose to dispose of her virtually untouched food. Noah rose a moment later and followed her as unobtrusively as he could manage.

“I know this must be hard for you,” Noah told his crush girl as they put away their trays. “If you need anything, feel free to ask.” That was all he dared say at the moment, lest the approaching Heather overhear.

“Thanks, Noah. I’ll keep that in mind,” replied the dejected girl-child. “And thanks for what you did at the dock.”

“My pleasure,” the bookworm assured her, and then took his leave. He would find another time to converse with her at greater length.

As Katie exited the lodge, Heather and Lindsay caught up to her. “That surprise elimination weakened our alliance,” the Dark Queen said, “so it’s even more important that we stick together. Let bygones be bygones, or whatever.”

“What’s the point?” Katie lamented. “If Chris is just kicking off whoever he wants, then what’s the point of playing this lame game at all?”

Lindsay opened her mouth as if to speak, but her overlord silenced her with a glance. Heather had to think fast, for she was caught in a “tangled web” of her own making, but the Princess of Darkness was up to the challenge. “That’s a good point,” she assured her stricken ally. “But I don’t think he’ll do that again. Not before the merge, anyway. It worked once because it was a surprise. But if he makes a habit of throwing screwy eliminations at us, then everyone will just give up, like you said.”

“I wouldn’t give up,” Lindsay blurted out. “We’re still BFFs, and right now this is the only place where we can be together.”

Heather smiled at that. Her smile looked warm and sincere on camera, but in truth it was as cold and heartless as she. “I guess it’s true what they say. Even a blind squirrel finds a few acorns.”

Lindsay’s face took on that all-too-familiar look of childlike confusion as she asked, “What do acorns have to do with anything?”

“Never mind,” Heather replied with a touch of audible exasperation. “As I was about to say, Chris probably didn’t want us to be able to just cruise to the merge, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t want us to still be a force to be reckoned with.”

The next day was a challenge day; so when Chris came into the lodge at breakfast and called for attention, the campers wondered what rare ordeal lay in store for them.

“Today is ‘Put Up or Shut Up’ Day,” Chris began. “We’ve had enough of everyone complaining about Chef’s cooking when it hasn’t even killed anyone yet, so we’re going to see if you can do better. Each team will prepare a three-course meal to be judged by moi, Chef Hatchet, and a guest judge who you’ll meet when I feel like it.

“Each team will choose a Head Chef, who will select a theme and coordinate your work. If you need recipes, talk to Alejandro. Normally I’d have Chef Hatchet handle that sort of thing, but he’s on our judging panel and he wants to be surprised.

“Each judge will score each course on a ten-point scale, so the maximum base score is 30 for each course. On top of that, each judge may award up to two bonus points per course for peripheral stuff. Our guest judge will award the presentation bonuses because she’s obsessed with appearances—”

“So the guest judge is a hot chick?” Duncan ventured hopefully.

“—Chef Hatchet will handle the difficulty/exoticness bonuses,” Chris continued with a glare at Duncan for interrupting him, “and I will be in charge of the ‘sucking up to the host’ bonuses. If there’s a tie, the first tiebreaker is the highest low score for your three courses, so you want consistency.

“You have eight hours to do your thing. We’ve just restocked the pantry, not to mention all that beaver meat the Muskies found for us on Boney Island, so you’ll have a good selection. None of the judges are vegetarians, and we don’t have any known food allergies or intolerances, so it’s pretty much anything goes. Any questions?”

D.J. raised his hand and was duly acknowledged. “A cook is only as good as his ingredients,” the gentle giant explained, for as the son of a restaurateur, he knew his way around a kitchen. “Is there good stuff for us to work with, or just the substandard stuff that Chef usually uses?”

Chris replied, “Everything’s either fresh or reasonably close to its expiration date, so you’ve got no excuses.”

Cody asked, “What if we want something that’s not in the pantry?”

“Tell us what it is, and we can probably get it for you, within reason,” Chris assured him. “But the pantry has a better selection than you think. The interns eat pretty well, since we don’t pay them.”

“And because every meal could be their last?” Noah suggested.

“That too,” Chris admitted. “But if you want something like Beluga caviar, then you’re out of luck. Anything that fancy and expensive would have to come out of my own stash. So not happening.”

A thought suddenly struck the host. “Oh, right,” he said to Cody. “You’re the ex-Possum Scout. If you’re talking about ‘eating locally’, any edible plant or critter that you can get your hands on is fair game. If you try to go that route, though, you might want to have a backup plan.”

No one had any more questions, so the Lord of Wawanakwa dismissed the campers. Roughly eight milliseconds later, Heather cried, “Head Chef! Called it!”

Courtney’s first instinct was to do as Heather had done, but she hesitated. She was a control freak, but she also wanted to win, and she really didn’t know much about gourmet cooking, so she held her tongue. No one else seemed inclined to step into the breach, though; so as the campers went to inspect the pantry, she approached D.J.

“Hey, Deej,” Courtney called to her dusky teammate. “You said that your mom runs a restaurant, and you’ve shown us that you know a thing or two about cooking. It seems to me that you’d make a good Head Chef.”

“Seriously? You don’t want to be Head Chef yourself?” the incredulous brickhouse asked. He quickly recovered from his shock, though, and answered, “But sure, I’ll do it.”

“Just making use of the talent around me,” Courtney explained. “This is a team challenge, and I have to think of the team.”

Duncan narrowed his eyes and challenged, “Who are you, and what have you done with Courtney?”

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” Ezekiel admonished his “city mouse” buddy. The farm boy kept his voice low in deference to Courtney’s feelings, for she was his friend, too.

“What does that mean, anyway?” asked the suitably distracted delinquent.

“It means, ‘don’t complain about a gift you’ve been given,” Ezekiel explained. “The reason why you’d look inside a horse’s mouth is to spot defects.”

The teams reached the kitchen, and found Alejandro there to greet them. The big intern explained that he was there not only to procure recipes as needed, but also to arbitrate disputes over the use of shared facilities such as the burners. The spacious kitchen had two large tables, so the teams quickly set up shop.

D.J. said to his team, “I’d like to go with an Italian theme. Any objections?”

Beth said, “I know a great ravioli recipe!”

“I didn’t see any ravioli in the pantry,” D.J. pointed out, “but Chris did say that we could request stuff that we don’t have on hand. Sounds good.”

“No, no,” Beth corrected. “I meant that I can make it from scratch. Four Cheese, with spinach pasta.”

D.J. smiled and said, “Even better. That might get us a difficulty bonus. I think I know just the sauce for that, too. Alright, Beth, you’re on the entrée.”

When none of the other Muskies revealed specific cooking talents, D.J. said, “Three courses, six of you, so we’ll put two on each. Eva, you’re with Tyler on the starter—traditional antipasto. Courtney and Ezekiel, you’ll make dessert. I’m thinking tiramisu. Duncan, you’re with our ‘ravioli pixie’ on the entrée.”

Beth shyly waved at her new partner and flashed a metallic grin.

“I had a bad pixie experience in the phobia challenge,” Duncan protested. “Since I’m good with knives, I think we’d be better off with me on the antipasto.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Courtney countered. You and Eva together with deadly weapons? That’s a disaster waiting to happen. Everyone knows that you two hate each other. Tyler with knives isn’t much better, but at least he’s only a danger to himself.”

“And I’d rather work with anyone else but Duncan,” Eva chimed in. “Even Homeschool. At least there’s hope for him.”

“Settle down, everyone,” D.J. pleaded. “I have to admit that you all make good points, so here’s how it’s going down. Duncan, you’re with Homesc—er, Ezekiel on the antipasto. Eva and Tyler, you’re on dessert. Courtney, you’re with Beth on the entrée. As Head Chef, I’m the floater. I can lend a hand anywhere it’s needed. Is everyone cool with that?”

Everyone was, so D.J. said, “Awesome. Let’s get to work.”

At the Eagle’s table, meanwhile, a similar scene was playing out. Heather called her team to order and announced, “I’m thinking Hawaiian. If anybody has a lot of cooking experience with something else, now’s the time to speak up.”

Leshawna accepted the challenge. “This Quebecois homegirl does French.”

Katie seconded the motion. “Yeah, let’s do French. I can make a killer bordelaise sauce.”

Cody then chimed in. “If we do French, I have an idea for the dessert. Ever since I first heard of it, I’ve always wanted to try it, and I think we can get a ‘sucking up to Chris’ bonus out of it.”

“Now I’m intrigued,” Heather admitted. “What do you have in mind?”

Cody gathered his teammates to him and spoke softly, for he did not want the Muskies to overhear. “It’s called ‘blancmange’,” he began.

After Cody had explained his proposal, Heather declared, “French it is, then. Leshawna and Noah will do the appetizer. Gwen, you’re with Katie on the entrée. Lindsay, you and Cody will make dessert. Katie, what type of meat goes with bordelaise sauce?”

“Red meat, mostly.”

“We’ll use the beaver meat,” Heather pronounced. “The Fish Heads raved about it, and maybe we can get a bonus for using local ingredients. Speaking of which, maybe we can get a bonus for the starter, too.”

Heather then made a fateful decision; for although the queen bee meant well, it is not given to mortals to see the future with clarity. “We should have more than enough time to cook everything,” she said, “so I want everyone to go out and forage for frogs or crawdads or stuff like that. The French are into petite crawly things as starters.

“Do I have to?” Lindsay complained. “Frogs and stuff are so gross.”

“It’s for the good of the team,” Heather assured her. “And Cody, since you can identify edible plants, keep an eye open for anything that we could use as garnishes.”

With that, the Eagles set out on their quest. Katie briefly remained to list the ingredients that she would need for her sauce; then she, too, set out to forage for appetizer ingredients. Heather remained in the kitchen to see to the known ingredient needs and to request a blancmange recipe from Alejandro.

When Heather received the recipe, she quickly read through it and discovered that a proper blancmange takes several hours to make; so after collecting the ingredients for it, she left the lodge to find her dessert cooks.

She had not been searching long when she found Lindsay. The uberbimbo’s search has been timid and ineffectual. Heather found this unsurprising in light of Lindsay’s stated revulsion, and in fairness the dragon girl could sympathize, so she let it go.

“You need to get back to the kitchen,” the queen bee commanded. “I just found out that blancmange has gelatin in it, and it needs like six hours in the fridge. That doesn’t give us a lot of time. Have you seen Cody?”

“No,” Lindsay admitted. “I haven’t see Glenda, either.”

“I’ll keep looking. You get started on the blancmange. I assume you can read a recipe?”

“Of course,” Lindsay assured her liege. “Just because I’m not as smart as some people here doesn’t mean I’m illegible.”

“Whatever,” the Dragon Queen said, and sent the uberbimbo on her way.

Heather eventually found most of the unaccounted for Eagles at the lake shore. Although they had originally set out to forage individually, it hadn’t been long before someone realized that working together might be more productive. Leshawna had changed into her swimsuit and now stood in chest-deep water, with a door screen mesh in hand. Her job was to drive frogs and crayfish and other denizens of the shallows toward the shore, and to deter them from trying to escape into deep water. The Eagles were having some success with this strategy, and Cody caught a good-sized bullfrog even as Heather approached.

Gwen called to Leshawna, “That’s two! Do you want to come out now, or do you want to try for three?”

“Three judges, three frogs,” the ebon homegirl called back cheerfully.

Heather told the Eagles on shore, “You’ll have to catch the third one without Cody. We need him back at the kitchen. It turns out that blancmange takes like six hours to make.”

Leshawna, meanwhile, suddenly felt pain at the base of her spine, as if something was gouging her skin. She instinctively reached back to that spot, and felt something that she was quite certain didn’t belong there.

“I’m coming out!” the homegirl called frantically. “Something ain’t right out here!” The pain was worsening.

Leshawna waded ashore as quickly as she might, but something seemed to be impeding her. She felt like she was wading through molasses instead of water. The pain no longer grew worse, but neither did it abate.

As she staggered out of the water, her teammates saw at once what was amiss. Leshawna seemed to have grown an enormous tail, nearly as thick as her stout thighs. The unwanted appendage glistened in the morning sun. And it had eyes.

Katie screamed. Gwen tried to say something, but the words would not come, so she just gestured wildly and jabbered inarticulately.

Cody was the first to recognize the nature of the threat. “Giant lamprey!”

Leshawna reached back again, this time with both hands, and her eyes widened in horror when she thereby discovered just how big the piscine bloodsucker was. “Get it off me! Get it off me!” she pleaded, with rising panic in her voice.

Reacting quickly, Heather cried, “Don’t let it get away! They’re supposed to be good eating! We can use it for the challenge!”

Heather’s apparent lack of concern for Leshawna’s safety didn’t sit well with the homegirl, but it did have the benefit of distracting her from her terror. Determined not to be anything’s lunch, Leshawna lurched ashore. She then reached behind her once more, as if to throttle her assailant, and was surprised to find good purchase. Her fingertips had by chance found some of the lamprey’s gill holes, although Leshawna would not learn this until later. With the intention of literally crushing her adversary, the homegirl fell backward slightly and sat down heavily upon it.

The lamprey went limp, for Leshawna’s move had worked better than she had hoped, and she had cleanly broken its neck. By this time, the homegirl’s teammates had reached her, and they quickly hauled the dying leviathan out of the water. Three meters from snout to tail, it measured, and it tipped the scales at almost 80 kilos. Had Leshawna not trusted her instincts and come ashore when she did, it could easily have sucked her dry.

The excitement past, Leshawna excused herself, intending to go to the girls’ cabin to change. As the homegirl turned to do so, however, Katie said, “Shawnee, you’re bleeding.”

“How bad?” the homegirl asked nervously.

Heather borrowed Cody’s handkerchief and stanched the blood. “I’ve got bad news,” she said. “It sanded off your tramp stamp.”

“I don’t have a tramp stamp,” Leshawna shot back testily.

“Not any more, you don’t.”

In no mood to spar with her enemy, Leshawna asked, “Can somebody give me a straight answer? How bad is it?”

Cody obligingly answered, “It looks superficial, but you should probably go to the infirmary and get it bandaged properly.” With that, the science geek took the frogs they’d caught and finally returned to the kitchen to help Lindsay with the blancmange.

Katie said to her dusky friend, “There is bad news, though. It put a big hole in your swimsuit. I wonder how long it took to get through that.”

Indeed, the lamprey might have been attached to Leshawna for quite some time, for spandex is not an obstacle that lampreys are accustomed to dealing with, and the homegirl had felt nothing until the piscine parasite’s rasping tongue had gotten through the fabric and made contact with her skin.

“Maybe it’s not so bad,” Leshawna suggested. “I heard about how Eva convinced you and Sadie to keep wearing your torn-up dresses as ‘badges of courage’. If the hole doesn’t make my suit tear, maybe I can do the same thing.”

“Yeah, just like me and Sadie,” Katie affirmed. Then a cloud seemed to pass over her normally cheerful face, and she said softly, “Oh, Sadie, why did you have to go?”

Leshawna departed for the infirmary, and Heather issued marching orders to her teammates that still remained.  “Gwen, find Chef Hatchet and see if he’ll butcher this thing for us. Katie, we need to find out if bordelaise sauce goes well with lamprey.”

“It should,” Katie surmised. “I remember Owen saying that lamprey tastes a lot meatier than most other types of fish. He said that’s why Catholics like to eat them during Lent.”

On her way to the infirmary, Leshawna had to take a slight detour to avoid the hornet’s nest that had appeared under an eave of the boys’ cabin a few days before. No one had been stung yet, but the nest’s central location in camp made getting around it a nuisance. That’s probably why Chris is leaving it there, instead of having the redshirts get rid of it, she mused disgustedly. At the moment, the hornets seemed agitated, so Leshawna veered further out of her way. Apparently, something had disturbed them.

As the homegirl scanned the area to find the best route around this obstacle, she saw something that she hadn’t bargained for. Some thirty meters beyond, in the general direction of the infirmary, Noah lay motionless.

Leshawna was confused for a moment, for she had arrived on the island after Noah and so hadn’t seen his reaction to the camp. Then she remembered something that Gwen had told her about him. Something about—

“Oh, my God,” she whispered.

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

Sixteenth Night

Fearing the worst, Leshawna skirted the hornet zone as she sprinted to her fallen teammate. She knelt down beside Noah, who was still conscious if only just, and quickly slung him over her shoulders, much as Sadie had done with Katie not two weeks before. “Hang on, teamie,” the powerful homegirl implored as she rose to her feet.

Leshawna arrived at the infirmary tent to find it occupied. The little blonde wraith-girl was sitting on the cot, receiving first aid for multiple hornet stings. She had no allergy to make her wounds dangerous, so she quickly yielded the cot when she saw that Noah had greater need of it.

Leshawna hastily explained the situation to the wiry hillbilly who was the “nurse” on duty. As this redheaded redshirt, who answered to the name of Scott, attended to the now-unconscious bookworm, the girls looked on nervously.

In an attempt to make conversation, Leshawna said to the diminutive blonde, “Somebody really needs to do something about that hornet’s nest.”

The little blonde redshirt seemed distracted. She muttered, “Something’s wrong. They wouldn’t talk to me.”

“Say what?” Leshawna prompted uncertainly. It sounded to her ears that the intern had expected to be able to play Doctor Doolittle with the hornets, but surely such things were impossible in real life.

The dusky homegirl’s attention returned to Noah when Scott said, “I’ve given him epinephrine, but he’s not responding.” Without looking up from his patient, the hillbilly added, “Dawn, get Chef Hatchet.”

“So, it’s Daw—” Leshawna began as she turned back toward the girl so named, but “Dawn” had vanished as if she were made of air. Creepy, Leshawna thought.

Having done all she could for her teammate, Leshawna returned to the kitchen and the challenge. She would now have to prepare her team’s appetizer alone, but that suited her well enough. The homegirl was a skilled cook and Noah was not, by his own admission, so Leshawna didn’t expect the bookworm’s hopefully temporary incapacity to hurt the Eagles’ chances.

Leshawna arrived at the kitchen to find that one of the new interns had replaced Alejandro. Apart from the dusky tones of his skin and hair, the new arrival looked like a Viking of old—big, powerfully built and exceptionally hairy, seemingly having never put razor to hair nor face. He was one of the most distinctive looking people on the island, and the campers had quickly dubbed him “Beardo”.

“It’s about time you got back,” Heather griped. “How long does it take to slap on a bandage? And where’s Noah? Our appetizer’s not going to make itself.”

In no mood for verbal sparring, Leshawna explained, “We had kind of an emergency.” She then told Heather and the other Eagles what had happened to Noah, but nothing would be gained by repeating it here.

“I hope he’s going to be all right,” Katie said.

“We can win without him,” Heather declared. “And if we don’t, he’ll be the logical one to vote off.”

“That’s harsh, even for you,” Gwen snapped.

It was, Heather realized, as she suddenly found herself facing a phalanx of angry glares. “Sorry. That was uncalled for,” the queen bee admitted. Heather was getting a “villain” edit, though, so her apology did not make it into the finished episode.

Alejandro returned to the kitchen on Leshawna’s heels, but “Beardo” remained, the better to monitor the proceedings. With both teams making wine-based sauces, the two big redshirts were now serving as chaperones, keeping a watchful eye to ensure that none of the underage campers went nipping at the cooking wine.

The Muskies’ work was proceeding smoothly as D.J. made his rounds. Tyler and Eva seemed to be doing a decent job with the dessert course, so D.J. left them with a few words of encouragement. The Muskies’ Head Chef was more critical of the appetizer, though.

“Dudes, this won’t cut it,” D.J. declared. “The cheese pieces need to all be the same thickness, and the meat slices have to be arranged neatly.”

“It’s fine,” Duncan assured him. “It’s not like we can do much with it.”

“Exactly,” the dusky Head Chef countered. “Since antipasto doesn’t require any actual cooking, superior presentation is the only way we’re going to get a big score with it. We have plenty of time to do it right, so we need to do it right. But leave that to Homeschool. I’ve got another job for you.”

D.J. drew Duncan aside and said to the delinquent, “You’re good with knives, right? I need you to make a centerpiece for us.”

“Sure, I’m good with knives, but that doesn’t make me an artist,” Duncan demurred.

“Maybe not, but you’re still our best bet. Besides, I’ve seen some of your skull carvings. You might be better at this than you think. We won’t lose anything if you can’t cut it, so to speak, but we stand to gain if you can do it well.”

D.J. then explained his plan. Duncan thought the idea a good one, and agreed to try.

D.J. returned to Ezekiel and pronounced, “You’ll need to start over on the antipasto; and remember, presentation is going to make or break it. ‘The first bite is with the eye.’ Take as much time as you need, but do it right.

“But what about all this?” Ezekiel protested, indicating the prepared array. “You’re not just going to let all this perfectly good food go to waste, are you?”

“Of course not,” D.J. assured him. “We can all chow down on it while we work.”

“I guess that works.”

At the appointed time, Chris summoned the teams to the dining area. Standing behind one table were Chris, Chef Hatchet and a model-thin woman with long, straight, bottle blonde hair. The new arrival wore a low-cut, form-fitting, red knee-length dress with matching spike heels and large hoop earrings. Pretty though she was, in trying to be glamorous she wore somewhat more makeup than would have been the most flattering to her. Her pleasant smile did not extend to her blue eyes, which seemed cold. Her habit of putting her hands on her hips gave her a haughty air.

“Campers,” Chris announced, “Some of you may recognize our guest judge: Millie Stacey, hostess of the Total Drama Island Aftermath show.”

“Some of them? May recognize?” Millie asked archly. “Why wouldn’t they all recognize me? I’m more famous than you, after all.”

“In your dreams,” Chris shot back, doing his best to retain something resembling his usual bland smile. “I’ve had three hit movies. What have you had, besides a Celebrity Manhunt gig that nobody else wanted because it doesn’t pay worth crap?” As Millie looked about to tick points off on her fingers, Chris added, “It was a rhetorical question.”

Courtney saw that Ezekiel was looking confused at this thinly veiled hostility, so she quietly explained. “They used to date. They had a very public breakup, and they blamed each other. Long story short, they were too much alike in all the wrong ways. The fact that their couple name sounded like a type of crustacean didn’t help.”

“Anyway,” Chris said, mindful of the production schedule, “One of the things Millie does on the Aftermath show is the exit interviews with the eliminated campers, so whichever of you gets brutally hung out to dry after this challenge will be left to her tender mercies.” With a smirk, Chris added, “She’ll flay you alive.”

“Only if they piss me off,” Millie shot back. “No one has yet, although I damn near needed oxygen after I interviewed Owen.”

“Whatever,” Chris said, effectively ending the discussion. Returning his attention to the campers, he revealed, “Speaking of hanging people out to dry, this challenge has a little twist that I didn’t feel like telling you about until now. Chef, with his military background, says that a commander is responsible for the actions of those under his command, and so…”

The Lord of Wawanakwa let the campers sweat for a few moments before dropping the other shoe. “The losing team’s Head Chef will go into the elimination ceremony with one penalty vote against them.”

Oh, crap, Heather thought. Chris giveth and he taketh away.

Duncan said to D.J., “Sorry, big guy, but we couldn’t have known. Besides, you were still the best man for the job.”

“No worries,” D.J. replied. “It’ll be all right.

Chris beheld the campers’ reactions and saw that they were good. “Muskies are up first,” he decreed. “Since the Eagles lost the last challenge and had more misadventures in this one, they get the last ‘at bat’.”

As the judges took their seats, the Muskies returned to the kitchen and quickly emerged with three covered platters. Duncan carried what looked like a sculpture of some sort. As the delinquent approached the table, D.J. announced, “Submitted for your approval, a traditional Italian meal. Duncan has created a fitting centerpiece in honor of our esteemed host.”

As D.J. set down the first platter, Duncan set down the Muskie’s centerpiece: a crude bust of Chris as a Roman emperor, carved from a block of parmesan cheese. Chris didn’t seem to mind the crudeness, though; for although the bust certainly wasn’t anything you’d expect to find in the Louvre, it was nevertheless recognizable as Chris.

Chris said, “I have to admit, you guys really know how to suck up when you want to. This is certainly worth a two point bonus. True, it could be a little more refined, but it does capture the essence of my ruggedly handsome features.”

“And I love your choice of material,” Millie broke in without missing a beat. “The medium should fit the subject, and your ‘cheesy’ bust fits Chris perfectly.” As Chef Hatchet and most of the campers struggled valiantly to keep straight faces, Millie continued, “I’ll give you one bonus point for presentation. The reason I can’t give you two is because your subject matter is so… sketchy.”

With poorly concealed irritation, Chris asked, “What did I ever see in you?”

“Two tits and a love box?” Chef suggested, for he knew his friend’s criteria. The campers abruptly lost their battle to spare their host’s feelings, and a gale of laughter swept the room.

When order had been restored, Chris declaimed, “Touché, Chef. It’s not like she has much else to offer.”

Seeing that Millie was about to respond, Chris held up a hand and said, “Leave it, Mildred, we’re on a schedule.” Chris knew full well that his ex-girlfriend didn’t like her official name and much preferred the diminutive “Millie”, for she thought that “Mildred” made her sound like a grandmother.

As Millie fumed, Chris prompted, “Okay, Muskies, let’s see what you’ve got.”

D.J. lifted the platter cover and announced, “For the starter, traditional antipasto.”

The judges tasted the Muskies’ starter as a formality, but put most of their effort into visual inspection; for just as D.J. had warned Duncan and Ezekiel, antipasto is a dish that lives or dies on presentation. Finally, Chris said, “Your antipasto passed the test-o. Seven points.”

Chef Hatchet said, “Seven.”

Millie said, “Eight, and I’ll give you the second presentation bonus point for this.”

Chris announced, “Including four points of bonuses, the Muskies come out of the gate strong, with a total of 26 points.”

D.J. took the second platter from Courtney and set it on the table. “For the main course,” he announced, “Four-cheese ravioli with spinach pasta made from scratch, a white wine sauce and seasonal vegetables.”

“From scratch, you say?” asked the visibly impressed Chef Hatchet.

“That’s right,” D.J. assured him. “Thanks to our ‘ravioli pixie’, Beth. The sauce is one of my momma’s recipes. She runs a restaurant, as you may know.

Millie affirmed, “I did, and from what I’ve been able to find out, it’s pretty well regarded. I can’t wait to try this.”

Chef Hatchet replied, “Then what are we waiting for?

“Me,” Chris explained archly. “You’re waiting for me. As the host, I get the first taste. Then, you, and Mildred last.”

“What did I ever see in you, Chrissie?” Millie sniped.

“You got me,” Chef Hatchet admitted. “I’ve never pretended to understand the workings of the female mind.”

“We’re on a schedule, people,” Chris reminded his fellow judges. The three then inspected the dish in earnest.

Millie said, “Looks good. I give it one bonus point for presentation. With the vegetables and the pale green pasta, it’s a nice colorful dish.”

Chris then sampled the ravioli, and favored the Muskies with the genuinely warm smile that he gave so rarely. “Oh, yeah. This is good stuff.”

Chef Hatchet tasted his sample and pronounced, “Well done. I like the nuances in the sauce. I know the type, and I know that it’s easy to ruin. I don’t recognize all of the herbs offhand, but the flavors play well together, and they complement the cheese filling without overpowering it. I can taste parmesan and romana in the filling, but I don’t recognize the other two right off. The scratch-made pasta is a nice touch, and done to a turn. Two bonus points for difficulty.”

“The others are ricotta and mozzarella,” D.J. explained.

“That would have been my first guess,” Hatchet replied. “That’s a traditional four-cheese combo. The proportions are kind of unusual, and that’s what probably threw me off, but they work well.”

Millie had tasted her sample by this time. “I have to agree with my esteemed colleague, meaning Chef, and my not-so-esteemed colleague,” she admitted. “This tastes as good as it looks.”

Chris concealed his irritation as best he might, and said, “Time for the scores. I give it nine points. Chef?”

“Ten.”

Millie declared, “Nine.”

Chris announced, “That’s 31 total, including three bonus points. Another monster score for the Muskies!”

D.J. took the third platter from Eva and brought it forth. As he uncovered it, he announced, “Our dessert course is tiramisu made entirely from scratch, meaning we made our own lady fingers instead of using the ones you had in stock.”

Chef observed, with a nod of approval, “You kids really pulled out all the stops.”

“Chris gave us enough time to do it right,” D.J. explained.

“Which was the idea,” Chris explained in turn. “Since we have to eat what they give us, I didn’t want them to have any excuses.”

The judges looked upon the Muskies’ confection and saw that it was good, although Millie did not see fit to award a presentation bonus. The triumvirate then tasted it, and was pleased. Chef Hatchet said, “You weren’t kidding about those lady fingers. I can tell that they’re fresh. I’ll give you one bonus point for difficulty.”

Chris said, “Time for the scores. I give it eight.”

Chef said, “Eight.”

Millie said, “Seven.”

Chris announced, “That’s 24 points, including one bonus point. Not quite up your standards, Muskies, but still a good score.”

Alejandro handed Chris a paper with the combined scores, and the host recapped, “The Muskies’ scores are 26 for the starter, 31 for the entrée and 24 for the dessert. That’s a total of 81 points, with a tiebreaker score of 24. Eagles, I hope you’ve brought your ‘A’ game, because the Killer Muskies have set the bar way up there.”

The Eagles, minus the bedridden Noah who was still confined to the infirmary, went into the kitchen and brought out three covered platters. As Leshawna placed the first platter on the table and uncovered it, Heather announced, “Our theme is French Canadian, featuring local ingredients. Our starter is sautéed wild bullfrog legs, lightly coated in flour made from cattail seeds, served on a bed of purslane with locally gathered chanterelles. You didn’t have any clarified butter on hand, so Homie made her own.”

“Purslane? Isn’t that a weed?” Millie asked skeptically.

“Yes, an edible weed,” Cody explained. “It’s a succulent, and it has a sour tang because it has a lot of Vitamin C. This is wild, but in some parts of the world they actually grow it as a crop. The cultivated type with big flowers is called moss rose.”

“Sounds interesting,” Millie said. “I’m game. This is very nicely presented. Nice and colorful, so I give it one bonus point for presentation. For three judges, there really ought to be three pairs of legs, though.”

“That’s what we thought, too,” Gwen admitted, “but then our entrée tried to eat Leshawna.”

“Yeah, I heard about the Attack of the Fifty-Foot Lamprey,” Chris chimed in.

Cody replied, “Actually, it was more like ten feet, which is still more than big enough to be dangerous.”

“The fifty-footers probably don’t come into the shallows,” Chef Hatchet speculated. “Nothing there big enough to be worth their trouble, except maybe the moose and the bears.”

Chris theatrically tapped his wristwatch. “Schedule, people. Besides, we don’t want these legs, which are more shapely than Mildred’s, to get cold.”

Millie hissed, “Don’t call me ‘Mildred’ on camera. I have the ear of the editors, if you catch my drift.”

Chris went a little pale, but quickly composed himself. “Moving on. Time to taste these babies.”

The judges did so, and were well pleased. Chef Hatchet said, “I give it one bonus point for using local ingredients, and the second for difficulty since you took the trouble to grind your own flour and make your own clarified butter. It’s also delicious, so I give it a base score of nine.”

Chris protested petulantly, “I’m supposed to reveal my score first. Or didn’t you know that?”

“You snooze, you lose,” Hatchet replied with a shrug. “Besides, you know as well as I do that the editors can put the scores in any order they want.”

“True,” the Lord of Wawanakwa admitted. “I give it eight.”

“Eight,” Millie declared.

Chris announced, “That’s a total of 28 points, including three bonus, which is two better than the Muskies’ first score. This is shaping up to be quite a fight. Time for the entrée.”

Leshawna took the first platter away. As she rejoined her teammates, she took the extra leg for herself. “Cook’s prerogative,” she told her teammates, although she did leave part of it for her buddy, Gwen.

Katie set down the second platter and uncovered it as Heather announced, “Our entrée is giant lamprey bordelaise—originally a dish of royalty, befitting the King of Wawanakwa and his court, even if his common ex-consort doesn’t really deserve that distinction.”

As Chris chuckled, Millie looked indignant. The Aftermath hostess opened her mouth, presumably to say something caustic, but a wink from Heather stopped her. Millie realized that Heather was gunning for a “sucking up to Chris” bonus, and decided that the Eagles’ leader couldn’t really be faulted for doing what the rules encouraged.

“Way to butter up your host,” Chris said with his standard bland smile. “That’s worth two bonus points—one for the compliment and one for dissing the ex, even if it was all nothing but the truth.”

Chef Hatchet broke in before Millie could respond. “I have to give it two bonus points as well. One for the exotic main ingredient, and one for the difficulty in obtaining it.”

“I hear you,” Chris seconded. “Using a fellow camper as live bait? That’s awesome television.”

The judges tasted Gwen and Katie’s handiwork. Chris and Millie looked suitably impressed, but Chef Hatchet seemed more contemplative, as if analyzing the flavors. Then again, he was the most practiced in such matters.

“Did you use bone marrow in the sauce?” Chef asked.

“Well, yeah,” Katie replied. “Isn’t that what you do when you make bordelaise sauce?”

“With red meat, yes,” Hatchet explained. “But for lamprey à la bordelaise, you really should use the lamprey’s blood instead, to make it more of a stew. This sauce is well prepared, but I’ll have to dock you for that mismatch.”

Chris said, “Time for the scores. I give it nine.”

“Eight,” said Chef Hatchet.

“Nine,” declared Millie.

Chris announced, “That’s a total of 30 points, including four bonus. The Eagles gave up some ground, but still lead by one point after two courses.”

The Lord of Wawanakwa then declaimed grandly, “It all comes down to the final taste, which is as it should be. Eagles, your dessert needs to be good, but that’s where the Muskies got their weakest score, so they’ve left you an opening. What have you got for us?”

As Cody brought the final platter to the table, Heather announced, “Our dessert is a tribute to Chris McLean’s breakout film role in Badminton: The Movie. We present to you… blancmange.” With a flourish, the Dragon Queen lifted the platter cover to reveal a molded gelatin dessert with a miniature tennis racket sticking out of the top.

Chris looked skeptical as he observed, “Apart from the badminton-type racket, which you could have stuck onto anything, I don’t see how this relates to my epoch-making performance.”

Heather motioned to Cody, for the tribute had been his idea and he could explain it better than Heather could. The science geek discoursed, “The reference is actually to tennis instead of badminton, but I thought that would be close enough. Anyway, the reference is to a Monty Python skit that’s just called, ‘Science Fiction Sketch’. It’s about giant blancmanges from the Andromeda galaxy that invade England and depopulate the country by turning most of the Englanders into Scotsmen, who are supposedly the world’s worst tennis players. The blancmanges’ nefarious purpose was to win the British Open tennis tournament, which is better known by the name of its host city: Wimbledon. The day was saved when the blancmange that was about to win the tournament got eaten at match point, like this baby is about to.”

Chris decreed, “That’s worth a sucking up bonus, but I’m not sure how much. On the one hand, you did have to explain it, and that’s not good. On the other hand, I have to admit that it was an inventive way to recognize one of cinema’s greatest triumphs.”

The Badminton King pondered for a moment, and handed down his judgment. “Tell you what. Since I can’t decide whether your creative sucking up is worth one point or two, I’ll give you one point now, and I’ll give you the tiebreaker if we end up with a tie.”

“Cool,” Cody replied.

Millie smiled and said, “I love blancmange. Let’s get to it.”

The judges three tasted the French confection…

…and grimaced. Chef turned and spat it out. Chris and Millie swallowed with an effort, then quickly reached for their water and drained their glasses.

“That was hideous!” Millie declared unnecessarily, for the judges’ reactions had made that obvious.

Chef Hatchet shook his head and said, “And you were doing so well.”

“Who made this crap?” Chris demanded. “I think some more penalty votes are in order.”

Cody admitted, “I don’t get it.” He dashed into the kitchen and returned with some fresh spoons. He tasted his and Lindsay’s creation, and mirrored the judges’ grimaces with one of his own. “Okay, now I get it, but how could this happen? Lindsay?”

“Don’t look at me,” the uberbimbo protested. “All I did was mix the ingredients, just like the recipe said. Helen said I needed to get started right away, and you were off helping catch those frogs.”

Cody replied, as gently as he might, “You should taste it, but be ready for a shock.”

Always eager to please, Lindsay did as she was bidden and grimaced in turn. “Is it supposed to be this salty?”

Heather facepalmed. “No, Lindsiot, it’s supposed to be sweet.”

Lindsay looked confused, which was common enough for her. “But then how come… Oh, no! Guys, I’m so sorry!”

As the Eagles consoled Lindsay, who was on the point of tears, Chris pronounced, “Muskies win. I don’t think we need to bother with the scores. Normally, I’d be happy to add insult to injury, but this is a case where that might not be the best thing for our ratings.”

Millie and Chef Hatchet nodded in agreement, for they knew that Lindsay was popular with the viewing audience as well as with her fellow campers. The uberbimbo’s disposition was so sweet that the viewers tended to pity her mental deficiency instead of scorning it.

Later that night, several Eagles sat on the lodge porch discussing the next day’s elimination when Cody joined the group.

Leshawna declared, “I’m telling you, Heather has got to go!”

“But Lindsay’s the one who cost us the challenge,” Gwen pointed out. “And is it just me, or is Heather starting to get nicer?”

“I think it’s just you,” Leshawna replied. “You’re probably learning to tune her out.”

“Lindsay mistook salt for sugar,” Katie protested. “That’s a mistake anyone could have made.”

“Noah. It has to be Noah.”

The girls turned curiously toward Cody, for in truth Noah hadn’t even been on their radar. Katie said, “I thought you had an alliance with him.”

“And now you’re just going to hang him out to dry?” Leshawna asked skeptically. “You’ve been spending too much time around Heather.”

“I know how it sounds,” Cody admitted, “but hear me out. I don’t want to kick Noah off, either, but we’re still in the team phase and the team has to come first. I lost sight of that once, and it bit me in the butt. Learn from my mistake.

“We’re going to be a man down after tonight, and the teams are a lot smaller now, so we can’t afford to carry a nonperformer. If it was just the allergic reaction to a couple of stings, Noah would probably be up and around in a day or two, but he took a lot of stings. Enough to have actual poisoning symptoms even without his allergy. Chef thinks it’ll be at least a week before he’s well enough to play. That means he could be out for the rest of the team phase.”

“I don’t know,” Gwen said with a shake of her head. She was giving Cody an odd look, and he could guess why: it was Gwen who had taken it on the chin when Cody had lost sight of putting the team first, and she had reminded him more than once since that she had forgiven but not forgotten.

Katie and Leshawna also looked skeptical, so Cody played his trump card. “I’ve talked it over with Noah, and he’s okay with it. He’s obviously not happy about it, but he understands.”

Katie wanted to believe Cody, but it didn’t feel right. “He really said that?”

“Scout’s honor.”

“It would be the easy way out,” Gwen admitted, “but it feels like kicking him when he’s down.”

“It would weaken Heather, sort of, since Noah usually votes with her,” Katie pointed out. “Isn’t that what you want, Shawnee?”

“You may be right,” the homegirl admitted.

Cody said, “Now that that’s settled, I have to find Tyler. Noah wants to talk to him.”

The next night, the Muskies received their reward—a five-star dinner under the stars, featuring giant lamprey à la bordelaise “done right” according to Chef Hatchet—and the Eagles assembled at the bonfire to do what they had to do. Noah was strapped into a wheelchair, with Cody tending to him. After the boilerplate introduction, Chris called forth Cody, Gwen, Katie and Leshawna to receive their marshmallows.

“I have only two marshmallows left,” Chris intoned, “and there are three of you. Lindsay, you cost your team the challenge because you couldn’t tell salt from sugar, but either you used up some karma points or you’re just easily forgiven, because nobody thought it was worth voting against you for. Come get your marshmallow.”

When Lindsay had gratefully acceded to Chris’ command, the host intoned, “Heather, Noah, you both had votes against you. Noah, you’re in the bottom two because your teammates are afraid that you won’t be able to pull you weight in the rest of the team challenges. Heather, you’re in the bottom two because you’re usually in the bottom two, so why should this time be any different?”

Heather snapped, “Just give me my marshmallow already.” Getting the last marshmallow of the night had indeed become routine for her; and while she had worried at the most recent elimination, as has been told of before, she was not worried on this night because the unsuspecting Katie had dutifully told her about the deal to send off Noah. The bookworm was useful to Heather but not under her control, so her strategy would be little affected whether he stayed or went; and Heather, like most of her teammates, had found Cody’s reasoning persuasive.

“Fine,” Chris huffed. “Come and get it.”

Most of the Eagles said their goodbyes to Noah en route to the dock, for only his body was incapacitated. He could still converse without too much difficulty, but he had little to say; for he had indeed accepted his fate the night before, just as Cody had claimed.

Cody wheeled his stricken ex-ally down the Dock of Shame, and found “Beardo” waiting for them on the boat. The hulking redshirt helped Cody load Noah onto the boat as the other Eagles approached.

“See you, dude,” Cody said. “Get well soon. Sorry we couldn’t get you hooked up.”

“It could still happen,” Noah replied. “This is still an elimination game, with everything that implies.”

Katie remembered Noah’s gesture at Sadie’s elimination, and was pleased to repay it in kind; and so, as the boat pulled away from the dock, it was she who led the singing of the Pie Jesu.

“That bites,” Brett said. “All that work to get the girl, and as soon as he gets a chance, he gets hurt and has to leave the game.”

“True,” his mother seconded, “but a setback, even one as serious as that, isn’t necessarily the end. You should know that as well as anyone, seeing as you’ve been overcoming obstacles all your life.”

“True that,” Brett mused. “If Katie got eliminated at some point, Noah could make his move at the loser’s compound. But with Sadie there, too, it seems to me that he’d be pretty much back to Square One.”

“It would seem that way, wouldn’t it?” his mother replied enigmatically.

“So something did change?” Brett asked suspiciously.

“All in good time,” his mother answered.

The hour was not especially late, so Brett’s mother paused a few moments to collect her thoughts, and then continued with her tale.

.

Episode #11: The Tale of Trust

Original title: Who Do You Trust?

The next morning, having endured the ritual ordeal called “breakfast”, Courtney was preparing to leave the lodge when she noticed something that looked both familiar and out of place. Lying on the floor near the tray return area was a scrap of paper that looked much like the love note she had found on Boney Island.

As Courtney knelt down to pick up the note, if such it was, a distinctively pale hand came into her field of view, likewise reaching for the paper.

Gwen and Courtney rose as one, holding the suspected love note by opposite ends and eyeing each other curiously. They then inspected the paper, and their curiosity grew as their suspicions were confirmed.

It was indeed an unsigned love note, addressed to “The Diamond Maid” and containing a sonnet that Gwen and Courtney felt they should recognize, although neither could place it:

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks,
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know,
That music hath a far more pleasing sound.
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

“Check it out,” Gwen said. “It’s a fancy love sonnet.”

Courtney replied, “I found one of these notes on Boney Island, when we were foraging for firewood.”

“No way! I found one here in the lodge a couple of weeks ago. When Heather and her flunkies did their makeovers, I think.”

“I wonder who wrote it,” Courtney mused.

“The poem, or the note?”

“Well, both, actually, but you know what I mean.”

“I’d have thought Noah,” Gwen mused, “but he’s not here anymore.”

“Noah was my first guess, too. Maybe he wrote it before he left.” Courtney speculated, and then her face took on an impish grin.

“I know that look,” Gwen chided as her mouth spread into an expectant grin of its own. “You think you know who it is. Don’t leave me hanging.”

Courtney explained, “Noah and Cody had an alliance, right? Maybe Cody wrote this for you, and Noah was feeding him poems.”

“If this had been the first note we found, I’d have said you might be right,” Gwen admitted, “but I haven’t gotten any love notes.”

“That you know of. Maybe Cody just doesn’t take very good care of them.”

“Maybe, but I have a boyfriend.”

“Like that’s ever stopped Cody before,” Courtney chided.

“I know, right?” Gwen replied with a roll of her eyes. “This does kind of sound like Noah, but I don’t think Cody’s that subtle.”

“Well, we do know that our mystery note passer is crushing on someone with black hair,” Courtney pressed.

“Not really. Who says that ‘black hair’ or ‘raven hair’ or whatever was meant literally? Seriously, how many love poems do you know that talk about brunettes?” Belatedly realizing her gaffe, Gwen limply added, “Uh, no offense.”

“None taken,” Courtney granted easily, “and I see your point.”

“For all we know,” Gwen added, “Ezekiel could have written this note for you.” A moment later, both girls burst out laughing.

“There’s more to Zeke than meets the eye,” Courtney admitted, “but I don’t think that’s his style. Besides, we’re just friends. Good friends, by elimination game standards, but still just friends. I don’t see us ever being anything more than that.”

“Whatever,” Gwen replied, for there seemed to her less certainty in Courtney’s face than in her words.

Courtney’s theory having been shot down, the future speaker of laws pondered for a bit until Gwen said, “You’re getting that look again.”

The onetime CIT explained, “I don’t have any more specific ‘suspects’; but since there seems to be a pattern here, are you up for a little detective work?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

It was mid-afternoon, and Katie was wandering aimlessly through the woods near camp. After lunch, she had sunned herself near the dock for a time with Lindsay and Heather, but Katie’s heart wasn’t in it. Although she did not lack for friends on the island, the stricken “twin” nevertheless missed Sadie terribly; and while part of her wanted to just lie in the sun and pine for her BFF, another part of her was unaccountably restless, as if she felt a compulsion to do something but couldn’t tell what.

Katie came to a thicket and was about to pass it by, as she had numberless others, when she thought she heard a human voice from within. Soft and childlike it was, and she thought she heard it say, “Thank you, little one.”

Her curiosity aroused, Katie entered the thicket as quietly as she might. Inside, she found the wraithlike new intern sitting in the Lotus position, apparently meditating. As chance would have it, the girl was facing away from Katie. Two cloths, one somewhat smaller than the other, were spread out on the forest floor behind the little redshirt, with the smaller one closer to Katie.

Before Katie could withdraw, the intern said, without turning round, “I’ve been expecting you. Katie Gutierrez, I presume?” Only then did the uncanny wraith-girl turn round, although somehow Katie could not recall having actually seen her turn.

“I’m Dawn. Please, have a seat.”

“How did you know I’d be here?” Katie asked.

“When a leaf falls in the forest,” Dawn explained enigmatically, “the eagle sees it, the deer hears it and the bear smells it. The forest is a living being, and nothing escapes its notice.”

Katie sat down on the smaller cloth. This tiny blonde redshirt was not imposing in any way, yet there was something oddly compelling about her. Katie found herself instinctively beginning to trust Dawn.

“It’s weird,” Katie said. “We’ve just met, but I feel like I’ve known you for years.”

“Yes,” Dawn agreed. “And I feel the same way about you. It’s a pleasant side effect, though the effect is fleeting.”

“A side effect of what?”

“A temporary psychic link I set up between us when you arrived. And before you ask, no, it’s not mind reading. That’s too invasive and dangerous for the benefit we’d get from it, and I don’t even know the technique.

“Even a low-grade link is something I wouldn’t use lightly, because as I said, it affects me as much as you, but I can see from your aura that you have a good heart. Your aura also shows terrible spiritual wounds and some strange anomalies, though. The link I’ve set up will help me figure out what’s going on, and whether we need to do anything about it.”

“Help you how?”

“Mostly, it enhances your aura so I can see the nuances more easily. In fact, if you look closely while the link is in effect, you might be able to see your aura, too, or mine for that matter, although you presumably wouldn’t know how to interpret what you see.”

Katie accepted this explanation at face value. She was still a child at heart, as has been told of before, and a part of her still wanted to believe that wizards and psychics and suchlike still walked the Earth as in days of yore, just as she wanted to believe that Izzy’s imaginary friends were real. Since arriving on the island, Katie had thought more than once that Sunshine would be fun to hang out with, and Katie was disappointed that only Izzy could apparently see the pixie. But now…

“Mind if I ask a question?”

“Of course not,” Dawn replied as she shuffled a tarot deck. “I need your trust in order to help you; so if you have any questions, then by all means, ask.”

“If somebody had friends that only they can see, would you be able to tell if they’re real or imaginary?”

“You’re implying a definition of ‘real’ that I’m not sure I agree with,” Dawn replied.

Nonplussed at the mystic’s cryptic response, Katie fell silent and concentrated on trying to see her aura, although she didn’t quite know what she was looking for. Dawn, meanwhile, laid out a pattern of cards face down on the cloth that separated her from her “client”.

“I have another question,” Katie ventured timidly.

“Shoot.”

“Who’s ‘Little One’?”

“I know many little ones. Can you be more specific?”

“Just before I came in here, I heard you thank someone you called ‘Little One’.”

“That was a butterfly. I learn a lot from humble creatures, especially birds and lepidopterans. They bring me many tidings.”

“You can talk to animals?”

“Uh, huh.”

“Too bad you couldn’t convince those hornets to leave Noah alone,” Katie suggested wistfully.

“I tried. Believe me, I tried. Not only did they not listen, they actually attacked me! That’s part of the reason why I think something is seriously wrong on this island. It’s probably been ten years since an insect tried to hurt me.”

Katie pointed at a skink she’d spotted on one of the trees lining the thicket and asked, “But you could talk to that lizard over there and it would tell you what kind of day it’s having?”

“I try to avoid talking to lizards. All they want to do is sell me insurance.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“You know how it is. Someone makes it big, word gets around, and everyone else thinks, ‘I can do that, too. I can be rich and famous, too.’ Are humans so different?”

“When you put it that way, I guess not,” Katie admitted uncertainly. She still suspected that Dawn was pulling her leg, but that’s where Katie was wrong; but that is another story for another time.

Dawn began to turn the cards face up one by one, briefly studying each before revealing the next. Katie had more questions, but quickly forgot them as she marveled at the artistic detail on the cards’ faces.

“Oh, crap.”

Katie’s wandering attention snapped back to Dawn. The mystic’s previous expression of serene benevolence had given way to a distinctly worried look.

“This isn’t good,” Dawn muttered as she revealed the remaining cards in turn. “This is not good at all.”

With the entire pattern now revealed, Dawn reached toward Katie and urgently demanded, “Give me your hand.”

Katie did as she was bidden, suspecting that Dawn wanted to read her palm. Sure enough, that’s what the wraith-girl did, muttering indistinctly and shaking her head.

With a feeling of impending doom, hardly daring to ask yet determined to know, Katie prompted, “What’s wrong?”

“I think I understand now,” Dawn replied distractedly, and only then looked up to meet Katie’s gaze. Although Katie was now expecting bad news, she couldn’t help shuddering when the mystic delivered her verdict.

“It looks like you have a wendigo after you.”

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

.

Seventeenth Night

The next morning, after they had breakfasted, Brett went to school whilst his mother went to earn their daily bread. That evening, after they had dined and Brett had attended to his homework, 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.

“A wendigo?” repeated the horrified Katie. “I’ve heard of them. Don’t they, like… eat people?”

“The physical types do,” Dawn explained, “but they don’t seem to be around anymore. There hasn’t been a confirmed sighting in over 60 years. The spirit types will try to possess you and make you eat people. That’s the type we seem to be dealing with.”

“Why me?” Katie asked plaintively. “Not that I’d want it to possess anyone else, either, but still…”

“One of the things I’ve seen in your aura is that your soul is more weakly bound to your body than with most people. That makes you more vulnerable to possession by certain types of spirits, including wendigos.”

“What’s wrong with my soul?” Katie asked, feeling vaguely insulted.

“Not the soul itself, the connection between your soul and your physical body,” Dawn repeated. “Several things can cause that. Being near death from illness or injury, for example, or having been to the other side and returned. Eating human flesh is a big one, which is why cannibalism attracts wendigos so strongly.”

Katie looked like she was going to vomit, or cry, or both. “About a week ago,” she said, “Chef served us a casserole that he said had something called ‘long pig’ in it. When Noah told us what that meant, I thought that Chef had to be joking. Sometimes he can be as mean as Chris, but mostly he doesn’t seem too bad. But now…”

With a desperate plea in her eyes, Katie asked, “Is it true? Did Chef really feed us people meat?”

Dawn’s face screwed up in distaste as she answered, “I heard about that morbid little joke, but I can assure you that it’s not true. If it was, this camp would be crawling with wendigos, and there’d be no hope for any of you. But some of you must have believed Chef was serious, at least at first. That was all it took to attract the wrong kind of attention.”

Dawn was still holding Katie’s hand from the palm reading, and now clasped her second hand over it as she looked Katie in the eye and vowed, “Believe me, I’ll do anything I can to help you, and I do know ways to help you. You’ve had such terrible ordeals. Some I can see in your aura, others I’ve heard about, some you probably aren’t even aware—”

Dawn looked up with a start. “We’re not alone.” The mystic snapped her head to one side and gazed at a certain spot in the thicket.

With a mixture of fear and curiosity, Katie followed Dawn’s gaze, and gaped. “What is that?”

“You can see it?”

“Well, yeah, it’s kind of hard to miss.”

“Most people wouldn’t be able to see it without special training,” the mystic explained. “You can because of the psychic link I told you about.” Dawn turned back to Katie and smiled. “Congratulations. You’ve just seen an aura.”

“Do they all look like that?”

“As if,” Dawn answered with feeling. “That may be the most prominent and jumbled aura I’ve ever seen. That is the aura of a full-fledged Chaos spirit.”

“She’s been called worse,” said a familiar voice from the aura’s location.

As Katie squeaked in astonishment, Dawn rose to her feet and faced the aura. With a smile on her face that belied the sternness of her words, the mystic demanded, “All right, Becky, you’ve had your fun. Now show yourself. You, too, Sunshine.”

“You’re no fun anymore,” Izzy declared with mock petulance as she stood up from behind a bush. With her customary cheer, the demented redhead added, “Hi, guys. What’s up? Looks like I interrupted something. So, Angie, when did you get in?”

“Three days ago,” Dawn informed the fugitive. It’s been… interesting. In the sense of the old Chinese curse, ‘may you live in interesting times.’”

“I know, right? The RCMP came to get me, so I’ve been hiding out. Um… they didn’t send you to track me down, did they?”

“No, they didn’t. Their loss, since you know I’d have been able to find you.”

“Wait a minute,” Katie broke in. “You know each other?”

Dawn and Izzy turned to Katie and answered in unison, “We have history.”

Izzy’s glance chanced to fall on the lizard that Katie had spotted a few minutes before. With a single deft move, the unstable fugitive casually snatched the beast and bit off its forward half.

“Eww, gross!” Katie recoiled as Izzy munched contentedly.

“Hey, when you’re living off the land, you take what you can get,” Izzy explained as best she could around her mouthful of fresh reptile. The demented redhead idly inspected what remained of her prey, as if noticing it for the first time, and ventured, “Guess he’ll never be the Safeco Skink or whatever. Tastes like chicken.”

Dawn said, in that soft, childlike voice of hers, “You really should go back on your meds. I can tell you’re not taking them.” As the demented redhead opened her mouth to respond, Dawn added, “I know, I know, you don’t like the side effects, but it’s for the best. You know what can happen when you go too long without.”

“Like blowing up half of Boney Island?” Katie suggested.

“Kind of,” Izzy admitted sheepishly. “But that was totally an accident.”

“So was that Marine base,” Dawn reminded her… friend? Relative? Colleague? Patient? Or familiar, for that matter? Despite some tantalizing hints in the conversation, Katie still couldn’t guess with any confidence at the nature of Dawn and Izzy’s “history”.

Izzy protested, “I know what you’re thinking. You’re afraid ‘Explosivo’ is starting to emerge, but I haven’t spoken a word of faux Spanish since I got here.”

“Yet.”

Izzy seemed eager to change the subject as she turned and asked, “So, Katie, what sort of mystical hocus pocus were you guys doing?”

“Dawn thinks a wendigo is trying to get me.”

“Could be worse,” Izzy assured her former campmate. “At least it’s not something you brought back from Boney Island… Um, you did put that idol back, right?”

“I remember talking to you after I found it. Then I went back to the cave where I found it. You told me that I was supposed to do something there, but I couldn’t remember what.” Katie saw the look on Izzy’s face, and swallowed hard. “Is that what I was supposed to do?” the Thin Twin whimpered, with a sinking feeling that she knew the answer.

Izzy turned to Dawn and pleaded, “Please tell us that’s just a legend… about being cursed forever if you take anything from the burial ground.”

The mystic looked appalled as she asked Katie, “You have an artifact from Boney Island??”

“Well, yeah,” Katie replied uncertainly. “It’s in the cabin, with the rest of my stuff.”

Dawn grabbed Katie’s arm and urgently demanded, “Show me!”

Katie blinked, as people must from time to time. At the start of her blink, they in the thicket; but by the end of her blink, they were in the girls’ cabin. Gwen was there, but she was resting on her bed and had not noticed the unorthodox arrival.

“What… How did we…” Katie stammered, understandably disoriented by the sudden change in scenery.

“We took a shortcut,” Dawn explained, “But that’s not important right now. Show me that artifact, preferably without touching flesh to it.”

“What’s this about an artifact?” Gwen asked as she sat up. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“I found a little tiki doll type thing on Boney Island,” Katie explained. “Dawn here thinks it might be cursed or something.” The Thin Twin slipped socks over her hands and retrieved the idol as Gwen and Dawn formally introduced themselves to each other.

When Katie revealed the idol, Gwen marveled at it and pronounced, “Cool.”

Dawn’s reaction was very different. She shook her head and said, “This changes everything. You can put that back, now.” Noticing the other girls’ quizzical expressions, the mystic explained, “It’s not a wendigo, after all. I didn’t think it was behaving like one. What threw me is that we do have a wendigo in camp, but that’s not what’s causing the ‘curse’, for lack of a better word. It’s just piggybacking, hoping that Katie will get weakened enough for it to make its move.”

“Weakened how?” Katie asked as she moved to put the idol away.

“There’s a spirit bound to that idol, and I recognize the type. It’s angry at having its rest disturbed. It holds you responsible, but it’s not attacking you directly. It’s more subtle than that, and more cruel. It seeks to burden and wound your soul by harming those close to you. A friend, an admirer, a strategic ally… they’re all fair game. Anyone it would hurt you to lose.”

Katie sounded on the point of tears as she whimpered, “Sadie?”

“Her bestie,” Gwen explained. “Got sent home a few days…” The Goth’s brow furrowed as she had a flash of insight. “The first challenge after we went to Boney Island, we got squashed and Sadie got kicked off. Then in the next challenge, Lindsay blew it for us. She’s not very bright, but she’s also pretty tight with Katie.”

With a thoughtful look, Gwen added, “But Lindsay didn’t get the boot, Noah did after those hornets put him down for the count.” Gwen said no more, but thought, Courtney, I may have our answer.

“Can’t I just take it back?” Katie asked.

“Don’t even think it! You can never go back!”

Taken aback at the intensity of the mystic’s outburst, Katie could only ask, “But what if we have another challenge there?”

“Then you’ll have to sit out, or even drop out of the game if that’s what it takes.” Dawn’s eyes and voice were as pleading as her words as she clasped her hands over Katie’s and begged, “If you don’t believe anything else I’ve told you, or anything else I’ll ever say to you, you must believe this: if you go back to Boney Island, you’ll die there—if you even live long enough to reach it.”

Katie was crushed at the prospect of having to quit the game, but she saw no reason to doubt the mystic’s dire prophecy. “So what can I do?”

“I told you that I know ways to help you. I still do, even if the problem isn’t what I first thought it was,” Dawn reminded her. “But we have to act fast. You have a challenge tomorrow, and I’ve heard that it’ll be dangerous. For the safety of your teammates, we have to get this done before then. This evening, if I can get everything ready.

“I’ll need something you’re willing to wear at all times—in bed, in the shower, always—at least until you return home. A necklace would be ideal, but almost anything will do.”

As Katie pondered what bit of bling might fill the bill, Gwen asked Dawn, “What are you going to do with it? It sounds like you’re going to cast a spell on it or something.”

“Pretty much,” Dawn confirmed.

“But I thought real magic was a lost art,” Gwen prompted.

“Sadly, it’s heading in that direction,” the mystic admitted wistfully. “Same story as with so many other things. Modern technology can duplicate more and more of the effects with a lot less work. But when it comes to the spirit world, the old ways are still the best.”

I know spells no king’s wife can say
And no man has mastered;
One is called “Help”
Because it can comfort
The sick and careworn,
Relieve all sorrows.

I know another
Which all men need
Who hope to be healers.

I know a third:
If I should need
To fetter any foe;
It blunts the edge
Of my enemy’s sword,
Neither wiles nor weapons work.

I know a fourth:
If I should find myself
Fettered hand and foot,
I shout the spell
That sets me free,
Bonds break from my feet,
Nothing holds my hands.

I know a fifth:
In battle’s fury
If someone flings a spear,
It speeds not so fast
But that I can stop it—
I have only to see it.

I know a sixth:
If someone would harm me
By writing runes on a tree root,
The man who wished
I would come to woe
Will meet misfortune, not I.

I know a seventh:
If I see flames
High around a hall,
No matter how far
The fire has spread,
My spell can stop it.

I know an eighth
Which no one on Earth
Could fail to find useful:
When hatred waxes
Among warriors,
The spell will soothe them.

I know a ninth:
If I ever need
To save my ship in a storm,
It will quiet the wind
And calm the waves,
Soothing the sea.

I know a tenth:
Any time I see
Witches sailing the sky,
The spell I sing
Sends them off their course;
When they lose their skins
They fail to find their homes.

I know an eleventh:
If I lead to war
Good and faithful friends,
Under a shield I shout
The spell that speeds them—
Well they fare in the fight,
Well they fare from the fight,
Wherever they go they fare well.

I know a twelfth:
If up in a tree
I see a corpse hanging high,
The mighty runes
I write and color
Make the man come down
To talk with me.

I know a thirteenth:
If I pour water
Over a youth,
He will not fall
In any fight,
Swords will not slay him.

I know a fourteenth,
As men will find
When I tell them tales of the gods;
I always know the Aesir from the Elves—
Few fools can do so.

I know a fifteenth
That the dwarf Thjodrorir
Chanted at Delling’s door:
Power to the Aesir,
Triumph to the Elves,
Enlightenment to Odin.

I know a sixteenth:
If I say that spell,
Any girl soon grants my desires;
I win the heart
Of the white-armed maiden,
Turn her thoughts where I will.

I know a seventeenth,
And with that spell,
No maiden will forsake me.

But all this lore
You, Loddfafnir,
Will long be lacking—
Though it would help you to have it,
Do you good to get it,
Be needed if you knew it.

I know an eighteenth
Which I never tell
A maiden or any man’s wife—
The best of charms
If you can chant it;
This is the last of my lay—
Unless to a lady
Who lies in my arms,
Or I’ll sing it to my sister.

Katie seemed to be having trouble deciding what she wanted to use, so Gwen volunteered, “If it doesn’t have to be something of hers, I’ve got a spare choker she could use.”

“Seriously?” squealed Katie. “From the sound of it, you might not get it back.”

“True,” admitted the Goth, “but it sounds like I’ve got a dog in this fight, too.”

“No, it doesn’t have to belong to her,” Dawn verified, “and you do indeed. Even if it wasn’t all over your auras, I’ve heard about your ‘arrangement’ with Katie. You’ve clearly warmed up to each other since then, and you’re right. That makes you a target.”

“Yeah, I guess we have,” Katie admitted.

Gwen retrieved the necklace. Black synth-leather it was, narrow with flat silver studs and a “dog collar” vibe. When Katie tried it on for size, Gwen grinned. “Oh, that suits you! Hot with a touch of… ‘availability’.”

“I know, right?” Dawn seconded with a knowing smile of her own. “She’ll have to beat the boys off with a stick. This is perfect.”

Katie retrieved her compact, examined herself in its mirror, and squealed in delight. “Look out boys, here I come!”

Dawn took the necklace from Katie and said, “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a lot of work to do. Katie, you should be there when I do the ritual, so be ready when I send for you. Gwen, you don’t need to be there, but you’re welcome to come if you want, since you’ve shown an interest and you have a stake.”

“Count me in!” the Goth assured her.

With that, the mystic left the cabin—normally, by using the door.

Shortly before dinner, Gwen caught up to Courtney and revealed her suspicion that Noah had been writing love notes to Katie. As evidence, the Goth described the pertinent parts of her encounter with Dawn, but nothing would be gained by repeating them here. Courtney agreed that the circumstantial evidence was strong, albeit hardly conclusive, if one accepted that the supposed curse was real.

Courtney confided, “I’ll admit, Katie wasn’t high on my list of suspects, but maybe I should have given her more credit. She’s a lot prettier with her new look, and I think she’s grown up a little. She doesn’t show as much skin as she did with that shirt and shorts she used to wear, but sometimes less is more.

“If it was Noah, then that’s probably the end of it. But if it wasn’t… I think we should keep an eye on her.”

“You can count on me,” Gwen assured the onetime CIT in the hope that the latter would not start tailing Katie; for Gwen and Katie had an appointment, and the Goth wasn’t sure how Dawn would react to having Courtney tag along. The mystic seemed very pleasant and mild mannered, but Gwen suspected that crossing her would be unwise. This suspicion would prove prescient, but that is another story for another time.

After dinner, the campers took their ease in whatever ways seemed best to them. Katie went to the girls’ cabin and found Eva teaching yoga exercises to Courtney and Leshawna. Eva had learned these exercises from Bridgette when the wave rider was on the island. Bridgette had suggested that, in addition to its physical benefits, yoga might help Eva with her anger management. The musclegirl was willing to try, for she had a long and colorful history of her temper getting her into trouble. Opinions were divided on how much it was helping her, but it clearly wasn’t hurting, and something seemed to have mellowed her a bit, so nobody wanted to discourage her. Although not as severe as Eva’s, Courtney and especially Leshawna had anger management problems of their own, and so were presumably hoping to get the same benefit.

Katie greeted the three and went to her bunk. Protruding from beneath her pillow was a piece of pale green construction paper, presumably nicked from the Arts & Crafts tent. She picked up the scrap and examined it, and this did not escape Courtney’s notice.

“What’cha got there, Katie?” asked the lawyer-to-be, hoping to see her theory confirmed.

“Oh, nothing.”

“I can see that it’s something,” Courtney chided gently. This exchange attracted the attention of the other girls, who were now also wondering what Katie had in her hand.

“I don’t know if I should tell you guys,” the girl-child demurred. “It’s kind of personal.”

“Like… love note personal?” Courtney pressed.

“That would be nice. I could use some male attention to take my mind off of Sadie leaving, but no such luck.” A look of ineffable sadness passed over Katie’s face, and she sighed. “If only I’d known.”

“What’s wrong, girl?” Leshawna pleaded. “We’re all friends here. You can tell us.”

“Maybe,” Katie admitted. “But I think this is supposed to be private. We might get in trouble if you come with me.”

“So, a secret meeting,” Leshawna surmised. “Are you sure it’s not a love note?”

Katie giggled and assured her dusky buddy, “Yes, I’m sure it’s not a love note.”

Katie’s interrogators eventually cajoled her into showing them the paper; but when she did so, the mystery only deepened.

Eva looked at the scrap, and the puzzlement was clear on her face. “I don’t get it. It’s blank.”

“Huh?” Katie replied dumbly. She looked at the paper again and said, “The message is right here, plain as day.”

Leshawna looked and said, “I don’t see anything.”

“Me, neither,” Courtney added. “This is weird.” Then inspiration struck. “Wait a minute. Is this about that Boney Island thing? Gwen told me a little about it.” In answer to Eva and Leshawna’s unspoken questions, the onetime CIT explained, “Katie found something on Boney Island, and it’s supposed to be cursed or something. Katie, do you know who wrote this note that apparently only you can see?

“Yeah, it’s signed.”

“Is it from that creepy blonde intern?”

“Her name’s Dawn, and she’s sweet once you get to know her. And yeah, it’s from her.”

Courtney explained to her yoga mates, “Gwen and Katie apparently had quite a talk with her today. From the sound of it, this redshirt is supposed to have magical powers or something. Okay, Katie, we get the picture. The note is for your eyes only. Never mind us. I wish I knew how she did that, though. You need a new word for how useful that would be in a game like this.”

As the yoga session resumed, Katie left the cabin and went looking for Gwen. She found the Goth (and Cody, naturally) on the dock. Katie asked to speak with Gwen alone, so Cody obediently excused himself.

“Have you heard from Dawn?” Gwen asked.

“I got a note, but it looks like nobody can read it but me. I was wondering if you can.” Katie explained as she handed Gwen the paper.

In the orange light of sunset, Gwen could see a message written in a delicate, ornate hand. She read aloud:

Katie,

Come to the boathouse sometime after dinner, whenever you can get away. The exact time doesn’t matter. Bring Gwen if she wants to come. Don’t bring the idol.

Dawn

“Sounds like a plan,” Gwen concluded. “We’ll want flashlights.”

“First stop: the Quartermaster,” Katie agreed.

.

The Sorceress

As the light began to fail, Katie and Gwen arrived at the boathouse to find Dawn meditating outside. The mystic ushered her “clients” inside, where they found a certain fugitive curiously inspecting the trophies that hung on the walls.

Gwen exclaimed, “Izzy, what are you doing here? I thought the RCMP hunted you down!”

“They tried,” the demented redhead explained, “but being a wilderness survivor, I was swift footed and eluded capture. As for why I’m here instead of somewhere else, I love to watch Angie work, and tonight my pixie buddies get to help.”

“Angie?” Gwen repeated uncomprehendingly.

“My middle name,” Dawn explained. Becky here is the only one who calls me that.”

Katie asked Izzy, “Is that why Dawn calls you ‘Becky’?”

“Something like that,” Izzy replied enigmatically. “Which reminds me… Angie, we don’t want the RCMP to come barging in in the middle of your incantation.”

Dawn replied, “My thoughts exactly. If you’ll excuse me for a moment…”

The mystic took a burlap sack and went outside. She swung the sack and its unknown contents round her head, chanting:

Let there be fog
And let there be phantoms,
Weird marvels
To baffle your hunters.

Dawn went back inside and assured the others, “We won’t be disturbed.”

As it turned out, the RCMP wasn’t coming, but Courtney was. She had tried to respect Katie’s privacy, and had tried to trust her fellow “detective” Gwen to give her all the juicy details in due course, but curiosity had gotten the better of her. After seeing Gwen and Katie leave the quartermaster’s tent, the tiny former CIT had tailed her campmates to the boathouse.

Suddenly, Courtney could see nothing. Forests can be very dark at night, but this was different. At that hour, there should still have been a fair amount of light in the sky, but Courtney could see nothing but impenetrable blackness. Moreover, she could hear none of the normal twilight sounds. She spoke experimentally, but could not hear her own words.

Panic overwhelmed her as she realized that she was both blind and deaf. She cried out instinctively, but the girls in the boathouse did not hear her.

Stumbling blindly about, it was inevitable that Courtney would eventually get turned around. When she chanced to face the way she had come, the onetime CIT discovered to her immeasurable relief that she could see again. The lights of the camp and the first stars in the twilight sky were plainly visible, and Courtney could hear normal woodland sounds.

Now in control of her wits, Courtney turned toward the boathouse, and again her senses left her. She turned back toward the camp proper, and her senses returned.

This is that redshirt’s doing, she thought. It has to be. Although Courtney yearned to know what was going on, she took the hint and returned to camp.

Inside the boathouse, Dawn was preparing for whatever she intended to do.

“Funny,” Katie ventured, “Seeing auras and talking to animals is one thing, but you don’t look like an actual wizard.”

Gwen surreptitiously elbowed Katie in the ribs and said, “That’s probably just a stereotype.”

Dawn explained, “Sorcerer, actually. That’s as may be, the definition of ‘stereotype’ is ‘exaggerated truth’. The stereotype of witches as old crones comes from the myth that every hour spent practicing black magic subtracts a year from your personal beauty. It’s true that our kind tends to not age well, but that’s not the reason.”

“But still,” Katie prompted.

“I’m definitely more into the naturalistic and so-called ‘psychic’ disciplines,” Dawn conceded as she slowly pivoted, drawing a perfect circle on the floor around her, “but traditional sorcery was part of my education. I come from a long line of commercial sorcerers. You could say it’s in my blood, although bloodlines aren’t actually a requirement. Our firm is called Wells & Company Family Sorcerers. It went international when my parents moved to Ontario, but the headquarters is still in the same London location that it’s been in since the reign of Henry VIII: 70 St. Mary Axe, or ‘Simmery Axe’ in the vernacular. “Back in Victorian times, a famous playwright wanted to depict magic in one of his plays, so he engaged Wells & Company as consultants. He must have been pleased, because he named the sorcerer character after my great-great-grandfather, John Wellington Wells, who was head of the company at the time. Gave him a famous introduction song and everything. True, the character gets killed off at the end, but it was still great PR.

“Our family, and J.W. in particular, were pleased as punch, as you might expect. In fact, it kind of went to their heads. They licensed the song used to introduce J.W.’s alter ego in the opera, and it became the company song. Every child born into our line since then has been given a name that fits the meter. That’s why my middle name is Angela.”

“Sing the song for them,” Izzy prompted.

“That would be awesome!” Katie seconded.

“Assuming it wouldn’t spoil your spell, or ritual, or whatever,” Gwen cautioned.

“No, that’s not a problem,” the mystic conceded. “I’m still doing the prep work. The incantation doesn’t come ‘til later, and I’m not doing anything now that I don’t know by heart.”

“So, what are you waiting for?” Izzy prodded.

“Okay, okay!” Dawn cried in mock surrender, but her smile belied the seeming exasperation in her tone. Moments later, as she continued to draw on the floor, she began to sing:

My Name Is John Wellington Wells

Performed by Martyn Green, who is widely regarded as the greatest Gilbert & Sullivan actor of the 20th Century

My name is Dawn Angela Wells,
I’m a dealer in magic and spells,
With blessings and curses
And ever-filled purses
In prophecies, witches and knells.
If you want a proud foe to “make tracks”—
If you’d melt a rich uncle in wax—
You’ve but to look in
On our resident Djinn,
Number seventy Simmery Axe!

We’ve a first-class assortment of magic;
And for raising a posthumous shade
With effects that are comic or tragic,
There’s no cheaper house in the trade.
Love-philtre—we’ve quantities of it;
And for knowledge if anyone burns,
We’re keeping a very small prophet, a prophet
Who brings us unbounded returns;

For he can prophesy
With a wink of his eye,
Peep with security
Into futurity,
Sum up your history,
Clear up a mystery,
Humour proclivity
For a nativity—for a nativity;
With mirrors so magical,
Tetrapods tragical,
Bogies spectacular,
Answers oracular,
Facts astronomical,
Solemn or comical,
And, if you want it, he
Makes a reduction on taking a quantity!
Oh!

If anyone anything lacks,
He’ll find it all ready in stacks,
If he’ll only look in
On our resident Djinn,
Number seventy, Simmery Axe!

He can raise you hosts
Of ghosts,
And that without reflectors;
And creepy things
With wings,
And gaunt and grisly specters.
He can fill you crowds
Of shrouds,
And horrify you vastly,
He can rack your brains
With chains,
And gibberings grim and ghastly!

Then, if you plan it, he
Changes organity
With an urbanity
Full of Satanity,
Vexes humanity
With an inanity
Fatal to vanity—
Driving your foes to the verge of insanity!
Barring tautology,
In demonology,
‘Lecto-biology,
Mystic nosology,
Spirit philology,
High-class astrology,
Such is his knowledge, he
Isn’t the man to require an apology!
Oh!

My name is Dawn Angela Wells,
I’m a dealer in magic and spells,
With blessings and curses
And ever-filled purses
In prophecies, witches and knells.
If anyone anything lacks,
He’ll find it all ready in stacks,
If he’ll only look in
On our resident Djinn,
Number seventy, Simmery Axe!

By the time Dawn finished her song, she had inscribed an equilateral triangle within the circle, and had drawn a second circle outside the first. Her song done, and her attention no longer divided, she began to draw strange symbols between the circles.

“Those look like Viking runes or something,” Gwen ventured when Dawn began to color the mysterious glyphs.

“Very good,” the mystic affirmed. “That’s exactly what they are. My family’s sorcery techniques have a strong Norse influence.”

“Coolio,” pronounced the Goth.

Dawn presently finished her rune writing and rose to her feet. She reached into a pouch on her hip and withdrew the necklace. She said, “Katie, since this necklace is borrowed, we have to make it yours for the purpose of this charm. I need a lock of your hair.”

Katie dutifully plucked a single lock, follicle and all. Dawn tied one end around the necklace, wrapped the length of that ebon tress round and round, and finally tied off the other end. The mystic then placed the necklace, “wig” and all, at the center of the thaumaturgic diagram she had drawn. Lastly, she drew three vials of liquid from her pouch and placed one at each point of the triangle.

The young sorceress stood, faced her audience, and said, “Everything’s ready. Don’t be afraid.”

“Why would we be afraid?” asked Gwen, who imagined that she looked impassive but was actually grinning like an idiot. “Personally, I think this is fascinating. I’ve never seen real magic before.”

“The reason you might be afraid,” Dawn explained, “is because, although this enchantment has a benevolent purpose and a benign effect, the text sounds like the blackest magic. It’s one of J.W.’s incantations, and he had an odd sense of humor.”

“Kind of like if Chris wanted to do something nice?” the Goth suggested.

“From what I’ve heard about Chris, that’s not a bad analogy,” the pale sorceress agreed as she turned down the lantern. Looking even more wraithlike than usual in the dim light, she took up her position at the base of the diagram, facing the top. Standing with her arms at her sides and the palms forward, she slowly raised her forearms as she began a tuneful chant:

The Sorcerer, 15. "Sprites of earth and air"

The Incantation Scene, from a made-for-TV production

Sprites of earth and air—
Fiends of flame and fire—
Demon souls,
Come here in shoals,
This dreadful deed inspire!

Appear!

Appear!

Appear!

After a few moments, there was a faint but perceptible rustling outside, like leaves in a breeze. After this zephyr crested and faded, Gwen and Katie thought they could hear, just at the edge of their perception, a chanting of masculine voices.

Good mistress, we are here.

Izzy was also looking on with interest, but apparently without Gwen and Katie’s sense of wonder. This was not strange; for in light of her admitted “history” with Dawn, the demented redhead had probably seen rituals like this before.

Dawn resumed her initial pose and chanted again, with the same beckoning gestures:

Noisome hags of night—
Imps of deadly shade—
Pallid ghosts,
Arise in hosts,
And give me all your aid.

Appear!

Appear!

Appear!

Izzy whispered, “That’s your cue, Ravi! Break a leg! No, Sunshine, wait for it!”

Another susurrus rose and fell, and again Gwen and Katie barely heard—whether through their ears or in their heads, they couldn’t be certain—another answering chant; but this time, the voices were distinctly feminine.

Good mistress, we are here.

Dawn folded her left arm against her side and stretched out her right, more or less horizontally, across the diagram. The thumb of her right hand was hard against her palm, and her fingers splayed out so far that the onlookers wondered if it wasn’t painful.

Izzy whispered urgently, “You’re up, Sunshine! Knock ‘em dead!”

As Dawn began the main incantation, her arm began to rise slightly. The wind outside the boathouse likewise rose, and the wraith-girl’s voice rose in response to stay above it. By the end of the verse, she was all but screaming the words, yet her chant never lost its tuneful quality:

Now, shriveled hags, with poison bags,
Discharge your loathsome loads!
Spit flame and fire, unholy choir!
Belch forth your venom, toads!
Ye demons fell, with yelp and yell,
Shed curses far afield—
Ye fiends of night, your filthy blight
In noisome plenty yield!

As the wind outside abated, Dawn knelt down and picked up the vial to her right. “Number One,” she said as she opened it and slowly poured it out over the necklace.

When the vial was empty, the “voices”, if such they truly were, responded at the edge of the onlookers’ perception in a monotone chant.

It is done.

Dawn took the vial to her left and repeated the procedure. “Number Two,” she said, and again the whisper quiet voices responded.

One too few.

Dawn circled the diagram until reached the top. There, she knelt down, picked up the third vial, and did the same as before. “Number Three,” she said.

SET US FREE!

Gwen and Katie reeled. Izzy reacted with more aplomb, presumably having expected the outburst. Or perhaps she just reacted differently to getting the verbal/psychic equivalent of a sledgehammer blow when she was expecting the touch of a feather.

The necklace glowed green—the color of hope—and another strong wind gust rose and fell amid a gale of otherworldly laughter. At length, the necklace’s glow faded and the invisible chorus spoke for the last time.

Set us free! Our work is done!
Ha! Ha! Ha!
Set us free! Our course is run!
Ha! Ha! Ha!

Dawn picked up the necklace and turned up the lantern to normal brightness. In the renewed light, Gwen and Katie did not fail to notice that the center of the diagram looked completely dry; but whether the mysterious liquids had been absorbed into the necklace or taken by the spirits as a sacrifice, the campers could only guess.

The sometime sorceress presented the necklace to Katie. “Here you go. Wear it in good health. But remember, you must never take it off while you’re on the island. Better yet, never take it off until you leave Muskoka for good.”

Katie and Gwen inspected the perfectly dry necklace, looking for anything visibly different about it. Meanwhile, Dawn erased the diagram by the arcane, eldritch method of mop and bucket.

When the campers were satisfied that the necklace looked exactly the same as before—even the lock of Katie’s hair was gone, presumably to the same place as the potions—Katie finally put on the necklace and asked, “What does it do now?”

“It’s sort of like an invisibility shield,” her benefactress explained, “but the only thing you’re invisible to is a certain class of spirit. If it can’t sense your presence, then it can’t hurt you. Or more precisely, it won’t try.”

“But how does that help the rest of us?” Gwen wondered. “Can’t it still see me and Lindsay? Or anyone else in camp, for that matter?”

“Yes, but you’re safe for a different reason. The spirit bound to that idol is angry and cruel, but it’s not vindictive. It’s been attacking people close to Katie to hurt Katie. If it thinks Katie’s gone, it’s not likely to come after you anyway ‘just because’.”

Dawn turned back to Katie and added, “Before you ask… no, you still can’t go back to Boney Island. The power of this ward is limited. The mystic forces on Boney Island would overwhelm it.”

“So what do I do with the idol?” Katie asked. “I can’t just leave it lying around for someone else to find. Right?”

“You’re right, that wouldn’t be good,” Dawn answered. “Now that you’re properly warded, it’s safe for you to handle the idol briefly, although you still shouldn’t touch flesh to it. As for where to toss it…” The mystic pondered for a few moment, then suggested, “The confessional outhouse will probably do as well as anywhere within our reach. It’s not a flush toilet, so size isn’t an issue, nobody’s likely to retrieve it from there, and distance is people’s best defense.

“One more thing. Try not to damage the idol when you dispose of it. We don’t want to release the spirit, because its reaction to that is unpredictable. Believe me, I tried to predict it. I ran several divinations, and the results were… inconclusive. Unpredictable reaction means unpredictable consequences.”

Dawn reminded Katie once more about proper use of the necklace and proper disposal of the idol. The mystic then bade them farewell and took her leave.

Izzy said, “I’ve gotta run, too. Can’t stay too long in one place, you know. It was fun to see you guys again.”

“I know, right?” Katie agreed. “But what were your buddies doing earlier?

“Ravi was helping with the spell, and Sunshine was doing the special effects. The windstorm isn’t actually part of the spell, but Angie decided to give you guys a show. Besides, it gave Sunshine something to do.”

“She couldn’t help with the spell?” Gwen asked with tongue in cheek, for she still was not convinced that “Sunshine” or “Ravi” actually existed.

“Ravi was on the spell detail because she’s good at sticking to the script. Sunshine, not so much. Not that I can really blame her,” the demented redhead admitted. “That’s why we’re such good buds. We get each other, and no one else really does.”

With a word of farewell, the demented fugitive dashed off into the night. No longer having any reason to remain at the boathouse, Gwen and Katie returned to camp.

Katie was tired out from a most eventful day, so she straightaway prepared for bed. Gwen was still too jazzed to sleep, so she sat on the cabin’s porch steps, enjoying the cool night air and revisiting in her mind the marvels she had seen.

As Gwen sat in contemplation, Dawn glided in as silently as a moonbeam and sat down beside her. Gwen knew the rules regarding camper-intern socializing, and so guessed that the mystic had something important to say. “Yes?” the Goth prompted softly.

Dawn likewise knew the rules regarding fraternizing with the players, so she came right to the point. “I know about Katie’s short-term memory,” she confided softly, so as not to be overheard, although her normal speaking voice was soft enough to make that unlikely in any case. “For her safety and yours, will you remind her about disposing of that idol and not taking off the necklace?”

“Absolutely,” Gwen assured the wraith-girl, and then added more wistfully, “For as long as I can.”

“What do you mean?”

“Our team’s running out of deadweight, and Heather pretty much controls our eliminations. The next time we lose a challenge, I could be going home.”

“Worry not,” the mystic replied. “Barring a challenge accident, you won’t be going anywhere soon. Your guardian angel won’t allow it.”

“Guardian angel?”

“I’ve said too much,” Dawn demurred.

Dawn was a perceptive young lady, and it didn’t take an aura reading for her to sense that Gwen had more to ask. “Was there something else?” the mystic prompted.

“Yeah, there is,” the Goth admitted. “I don’t want to impose, but… is there anything you can do to fix Katie’s memory?”

The wraithlike redshirt shook her head. “Poor girl. Believe me, if I could heal her, you wouldn’t have had to ask; but her affliction has an organic cause, so it’s outside my expertise. I’m a mystic, sometimes a sorceress, but a neurosurgeon I’m not.

“I must go now. Remember… if she can’t remember, then you must.”

.

Who Do You Trust?

The next morning, after a typically unappetizing breakfast, the campers assembled at the bonfire pit for their challenge briefing.

“Campers, I’ll be blunt,” Chris began. “Most of you get along too well. That’s not a healthy attitude to have in an elimination game, especially when the teams will be merging before too long, and it’s not good television. People who watch this kind of show expect backstabbing and backbiting, not back scratching and back rubbing. Your sweetness-and-light lovefest hasn’t hurt our ratings yet, but I’m not going to wait until it does. So today’s challenge is about trust. That is to say, you’re going to find out just how untrustworthy some of your campmates really are.

“You’ll be facing five tests. In each test, two campers from each team will participate. I will choose the pairings, because it’s more fun for me that way, and I’ve made sure that each and every one of you will participate in at least one test.

“In each test, one person from each pair will have to trust the other implicitly. If the person being trusted messes up, and I don’t doubt for a second that some of you will, the consequences to the poor trusting soul will range from certain pain to possible death.”

The host fell silent for a moment so the camera could catch the campers’ worried reactions without distraction.

Chris resumed the briefing. “Successfully completing a test gets your team one point. In some tests, that means you have to finish before the other team; in others, you just have to finish. Highest team score wins.

“Any questions?”

Lindsay raised her hand, but Chris did not acknowledge her directly. Instead, he asked the assembly, “Any questions that I can answer without having to repeat the whole briefing?”

There were none, so the host called for his chauffeured ATV and led his charges inland. As the campers dutifully followed, Courtney sidled up to a certain Goth.

“So, Gwen,” began the Muskies’ nominal leader, “You went somewhere with Katie last night. Did you find out anything relevant to our investigation?”

Gwen shook her head. “No, nothing about that. I did get to see a fascinating magic ritual, though. Apparently, Dawn—that little blonde redshirt—isn’t just a psychic type. She’s a real, live sorceress. She did something to that necklace I loaned to Katie.”

“I noticed it. It looks good on her.”

“I know, right?”

“I thought real magic was a lost art,” Courtney admitted, “but after last night, I know better.”

“What happened last night?”

Courtney hung her head. “I tried to follow you and Katie. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t resist.” The former CIT then told Gwen about her misadventure in the woods, but nothing would be gained by repeating it here.

“No harm, no foul,” the Goth assured her fellow detective. “I’d probably have given in to my curiosity, too, but you took a big chance. Just be glad that redshirt doesn’t have Eva’s temper. She probably could have done a lot worse if she’d wanted to.”

“Whatever. What’s done is done,” Courtney declared. “Anyway, back to our investigation. I was hoping you’d talk to Duncan when you get a chance. If I ask him about those notes, and he’s not the one who wrote them, he’s bound to think I’m hitting on him. I don’t know where he got the idea that I’m crushing on him, but that’s something I’d really rather not encourage.”

“I hear that. All right, then, I’ll talk to Duncan and you talk to Cody, since I’ve got pretty much the same problem with him.”

“Deal.”

As the campers trudged along, one of the attending interns struck up a hiking song which she seemed to be making up as she went. This remarkable redshirt was a pale skinned, raven haired beauty who looked like she stepped out of a Disney cartoon. She often had a song on her lips, and always had one in her heart. She had arrived at the same time as Dawn and had quickly become fast friends with the mystic, for they were both children of nature, albeit of very different sorts, but that is another story for another time. Most of the campers didn’t yet know the Singing Intern’s name, so they called her that; and because she seemed so sweet and innocent, some had begun to refer to her as “Katie Two”, which Katie considered a compliment.

As the Singing Intern sang, the campers traversed rough terrain as easily as they would a city sidewalk and knew neither hunger nor thirst nor fatigue, for there was power in her songs. Nor were these the only effects. Local wildlife seemed at once attracted and pacified. Songbirds flitted about in greater numbers than seemed normal, but they remained silent, as if deeming their songs an unworthy accompaniment. Deer and elk walked alongside the troupe, as if escorting it; and one elk knelt down before the singer, who was soon sitting on the beast’s back. (Sidesaddle, for she was a lady of quality.) Bear and wolf appeared, only to lie down and rest their heads on their forepaws as this wondrous procession passed by. Serpents lifted their heads from the dust and swayed in time. Heather and Leshawna chatted cordially. Even fabled Sasquatchanakwa deigned to show itself for the first time, so great was its desire to hear this ethereal songstress as clearly as it might.

There was not that creature, not indeed a single six-finned creature
Moving in the water, not the finest school of fish
That did not come to listen, to marvel at the joyous music.
Pike swam along stiffly, dogs of the water thrashed about,
Salmon wandered in from the little islands, whitefish from the deep places.
The little carp, perch, too, whitefish, also, other fish as well
Went straight on into the sedge grass, took their place by the shore
To listen to Vainamoinen’s song, to take in the music.
Ahto, king of the waves, old man of the water with a sedgy beard,
Hauls himself onto the surface of the water, slips onto a water lily;
There he listened to the joyous music. He uttered these words:
“Never before have I heard anything of this sort,
Vainamoinen’s playing, the joyous music of the eternal bard.”

In the fullness of time, Chris and his entourage arrived at a large rock, perhaps 15 meters high, which had a sheer face on one side.

“The first test,” the host discoursed, “is free rock climbing. I was going to have some of you stand under your climber with a net and try to catch them if they fell, but Legal said no. Go figure. So what we’re doing instead is having the climbers wear harnesses with a rope attached. The thing is, the ropes aren’t attached to anything at the other end, so one of the climber’s teammates will have to hold the rope. If the climber falls, the rope minder will be the only thing standing between the climber and pain, injury or even death, depending on how high you’re falling from. The rope minder is also responsible for securing the climber’s harness and tying on the rope.

“For the Muskies, Ezekiel will climb and Beth will tend the rope. For the Eagles, Gwen will climb and her life will be in Heather’s hands.”

As Beth seemed to blush slightly, Gwen asked, “Can I get another partner? I’m not in the mood to get dropped on my head today.”

“Oh, please,” Heather retorted archly. “I’ll admit that ridding the world of your Gothness has a certain appeal, but I’m not going to give away a challenge just to kill you. I’ve learned that lesson. Besides, we’re not even sure it would work.” Gwen responded with an “I’m watching you” sign, but said nothing.

As these two collected a harness, Heather said softly, “Gwen, we need to talk.” The Goth curtly agreed, and they moved a little way off so as not to be overheard.

As Heather began to affix Gwen’s harness, the queen bee said, “I only want to have to say this once, so listen up. For reasons you don’t need to know, I’ve decided that it’s better to stop picking on you, but you have to meet me halfway. If you stay out of my way, I’m willing to leave you alone.”

“That’s all I would ever have asked from you,” Gwen admitted warily. “But if our contracts for this lame show have taught us anything, it’s that we’d better understand what we’re agreeing to.”

“I know, right?” Heather agreed with feeling. “But what does that have to do with anything?”

“You said that I have to ‘stay out of your way’ for you to leave me alone. You have to tell me what that means.”

“Fair enough. It means that you don’t question my being the team leader, since nobody else wants to be the leader. And you don’t go around trying to get me kicked off.”

Gwen briefly considered the queen bee’s terms, and gave her answer. “I think I can live with that. So, truce?”

“Truce,” Heather affirmed, and the girls sealed their pact with a fist bump. “Just don’t get the idea that I actually like you.”

“Likewise.”

Cody saw this byplay and was well pleased; for although he could not hear their conversation, he had a fair idea of what was happening and why.

With the harness secure, Heather affixed the lifeline rope. Once her face was safely out of Gwen’s field of vision, Heather let the carefully schooled neutral expression that she had worn during their conversation give way to a look of distaste that better reflected her true feelings. The things I do for the sake of winning, the dragon girl thought. Cody, I hope you’re happy.

When the teams were ready, Chris instructed the rope minders to stand at certain spots for reasons that would become apparent in due course. The host announced, “The first climber to the top wins the point. If neither of you reach the top without getting too injured to continue, then whoever got closest will get the point.” Moments later, with a blast from Chris’ trusty air horn ringing in their ears, Gwen and Ezekiel dashed to the rock and began to climb.

Neither of these competitors were experienced rock climbers, but Ezekiel had the advantage because his heavy work boots were reasonably well suited to rock climbing, and because farm life had given him tough hands and superior upper body strength. Gwen’s high boots were geared more to fashion than function, but she was not at so much of a disadvantage as most of her teammates would have been.

As the climbers made slow but steady progress, the reason why Chris had placed the rope tenders where he did became apparent. Unbeknownst to Beth, she was standing almost on top of a large ant nest; and the ants residing there wasted little time investigating the new addition to the local terrain.

Beth had a mortal fear of being covered in bugs, as has been told of before; and as her teammate passed the halfway mark of his climb, the farm girl felt these phobia objects climbing up her legs. Beth instinctively turned her attention away from the challenge and toward the vermin invading her personal space.

But Beth had faced her fear before, and she now showed that it had been no fluke. Thinking quickly, the nerd girl tied the rope tightly around her, just beneath her bosom because she had no waist, and then devoted her full attention to beating back the hexapod horde.

Ezekiel, meanwhile, had fallen slightly behind Gwen in spite of his superior “equipment”. Both climbers were gaining confidence and had picked up their pace. Both were showing single-minded focus on their task. It was time for Chris to spring a surprise.

With a couple of quick jabs on a remote control, the sadistic host detonated an explosive charge virtually in Gwen’s face, just as she was reaching for her next handhold. The explosive was a mere squib, scarcely more powerful than a lady finger, but it badly startled the unsuspecting Goth. She recoiled instinctively, lost her grip on the rock face, and fell.

Even as the luckless Goth’s second hand lost contact with the rock face, Chris drew a high pressure water pistol and shot the scantily-clad Heather in her kidney with an icy blast. The Eagles’ rope tender had likewise suspected nothing—her eyes, like almost everyone else’s, were on the climbers—and she did not have so much as a thin shirt to cushion the shock. As the dragon girl yelped and turned instinctively to protect her “wound”, she still held the rope loosely in one hand for a moment; but with her attention diverted, the lifeline flew from her grasp as Gwen fell.

“Oh, crap!” Heather cried when she realized what was happening. The dragon girl ran after the retreating rope, but she could not reach it before Gwen hit the ground with a cry of pain.

Yet all was not lost; for even without Heather to serve as an anchor, the rope itself provided considerable drag as it passed through the metal loop at the top of the rock. Because of this, Gwen’s plunge was not a true free fall, and she banged against the rock face once or twice on her way down. Moreover, with the rope affixed to the harness above her center of gravity, the drag kept her more or less upright, and an upright posture is the most survivable way to fall from a great height. In sum, the Goth never reached life-threatening speed as she fell. The shock of landing could easily have left her with a sprained ankle or worse, but her high boots prevented this.

As Gwen gingerly tested her legs and feet to verify that they were still usable, Heather ran up to her and retrieved the lifeline rope. “Are you all right?” the queen bee asked.

“I think so. No thanks to you,” the Goth replied with an accusing glare.

“It wasn’t my fault!” Heather protested. “I was distracted! Somebody sprayed me with ice water or something.” The dragon girl’s expression darkened as she surmised, “Probably Chris.”

“I could believe that,” Gwen admitted.

With rope in hand, Heather sprinted back to her place as Gwen resumed her climb. Ezekiel now had a daunting lead, so Gwen could only hope that Chris wasn’t playing favorites.

When Ezekiel heard a noise he could not identify, followed by Gwen’s cry of alarm, he spared a quick glance and saw his opponent fall. Being a good-hearted soul, his first thought was of concern for her safety; but he knew that he could do nothing for her, so he did his best to put the incident out of his mind.

Even as Gwen was resuming her climb, Ezekiel’s hand found a crevice where a pressure-sensitive squib rested. As the farm boy’s other hand moved toward its next stop, the pressure on the unsuspected squib grew great enough to detonate it.

Ezekiel voiced a mild oath at the sudden pain, but he retained the presence of mind to not withdraw his injured hand until his other hand was secure. Only then did he inspect his savaged hand, and saw that his injury was minor. Bible Boy resumed his climb, albeit more slowly and cautiously than before.

This renewed caution did not help him. Chris thought that Ezekiel would have significant natural advantages over Gwen in this test, so the host had handicapped the race by placing more and larger squibs in the prairie boy’s path. So it was that Ezekiel soon got a squib in the face, just as Gwen had, with much the same result.

As Ezekiel fell, Beth was still fending off the ants, but her foresight carried the day. The farm girl was pulled off her feet and the rope loop scraped painfully over her chest, but this was enough warning to remind her of her purpose. She grabbed the lifeline with both hands, ants be damned, and held on for dear life.

With an effective anchor, Ezekiel’s fall was short, and he managed to swing back onto the rock face without losing much ground. He encountered more squibs after passing the point he had fallen from, but without the element of surprise they were a mere annoyance. Ezekiel beat Gwen to the top by a healthy margin.

Scott was stationed at the top and said, “Good job.” The redheaded redneck redshirt then planted his foot on his fellow farmer’s shoulder and pushed him off the rock.

Chris saw what had happened and announced via his trusty bullhorn, “Ezekiel draws first blood for the Muskies! Climbers, you can just jump off and let your teammates do the work.” The sadistic host had conveniently neglected to mention that getting kicked off the rock was the victory condition.

With her teammate safely down, Beth winced and complained to Eva, the girl who happened to be closest, “That rope scrape hurt. My boobs are really sore.”

Duncan quipped, “Do you want us to rub them for you?”

Eva growled at the delinquent. Beth gave him a funny look and warily replied, “No thanks, I’m good.”

As Duncan turned away, Tyler said softly to him, “Besides, I think that’s Zeke’s job. You saw how she was looking at him when she was fixing up his harness.”

Duncan smirked knowingly and replied, “Good point.”

Beth and Eva did not overhear what Tyler had said, but Courtney did. Maybe I didn’t give Zeke enough credit, the former CIT thought. It wouldn’t be the first time, and I have to admit that he and Beth would make a cute couple. He’d be a good catch for her.

Only the cameras noted the odd expression that came over Courtney’s face as she absently thought, A good catch…

The climbers presently rejoined their teammates and explained why they had fallen, but nothing would be gained by repeating it here. There were several angry glares at Chris, who either did not notice or did not care.

The second test was to take place in the lodge, so Chris led the campers back to camp. The Singing Intern sang an apparently improvised homecoming song, with much the same effects as before. The lyrics were not memorable, but that honey-throated redshirt could have made “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” sound like grand opera.

Then Vipunen rich in songs indeed sang and well knew how to.
A better singer was not heard or seen, never, never at all a more accurate seer;
That mouth threw out magic words, the tongue dropped charms flowingly
As a two-year-old colt does its legs, a riding horse its fine limbs.
He sang day after day, he sang night after night.
The sun stopped to hear, the lovely moon to look;
The waves stood still in the sea, the billows at the head of the bay;
The streams stopped flowing, the rapids of Finnmark stopped foaming,
The rapids of the Vuoksi stopped flowing, the river Jourtan came to a stop.

When Chris and his charges reached the camp, he dismissed some of the attending interns for other assignments, and the singer was one of these. None of the campers were glad to see her go, for she had made them forget their hellish game for a time; but they had little chance to dwell on this as the host ushered them into the lodge.

“For the second test,” Chris announced in the lodge, “one camper from each team will prepare fugu sashimi, which is probably the most notorious and celebrated dish in all of Japanese cuisine. It’s made from a certain type of poisonous blowfish. Prepared properly, it’s considered a great delicacy. But prepared improperly, it’s a deadly poison… with no antidote.” Of course, “no antidote” isn’t the same as “no treatment”, but Chris wasn’t about to tell the campers that if they couldn’t figure it out for themselves.

“One lucky camper from each team will get to sample this delicacy. Because we’re testing trust, not constitution or culinary skill, the taster doesn’t have to survive to score the point. Being willing to taste it is what matters.

“Duncan, you will prepare fugu for Eva. Heather, you will get to try Katie’s fugu.”

Heather actually seemed to welcome the opportunity. She said, “I’ve heard of fugu. I’ve always wanted to try it. And Katie rocked her part of the cooking challenge, so I’m willing to bet that she knows what she’s doing.”

Eva’s reaction was very different. Although she said nothing, Duncan noticed that the steel maiden was looking extremely nervous. Given the enmity between them, he could well guess what she was thinking, but he knew that her fear was misguided. If she was going to be afraid of this test, he thought, she should be afraid for the right reasons.

“Okay, Miss Muscletits,” he told her, “here’s the deal. You’re probably thinking that I might be planning to mess up the fugu on purpose, so I’ll tell you straight up that I’m not. We’ve probably both had fantasies of violently murdering each other, but poison is for cowards and that’s not how I roll. If I ever decide to take you out, I’ll do it toe to toe.”

Eva still looked nervous, but not nearly so much as before. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said with a curt nod. “You may be an asshole, but you do seem to be straight with people. I’ll trust you to at least try to do it right.”

“That’s the spirit, teamie,” Duncan encouraged. “Just don’t get the idea that I actually like you.”

“Ditto,” Eva replied.

Chef Hatchet had set up an easel with a chart of blowfish anatomy. As he disappeared into the kitchen, Chris directed everyone’s attention to the chart.

“This chart shows you where the edible parts are. These sections must be excised ver-y carefully, so as not to contaminate them. Duncan, Katie, if you’ll join Chef in the kitchen, we’ll get started. The rest of you can watch them on the monitor,” the host added, indicating a large monitor that had been set up at one end of the common area.

In the kitchen, Duncan and Katie found designated work areas for each of them. These stations, Hatchet informed them, were equipped with everything they would need, including one dead blowfish and an anatomy chart. A large aquarium held a backup supply of live blowfish, in case either or both of the young chefs made a mistake and wanted to start over.

Duncan worked slowly, showing enough care to convince Eva and the other Muskies that he was genuinely trying. Katie meanwhile, worked quickly. Too quickly, it seemed, for twice she asked to start over when it looked like she was nearly done.

“Come on, Katie,” Cody muttered rhetorically, although the fugu chefs were too far away to hear him. “Doing it right is easier than doing it over.”

“I know, right?” Heather added nervously.

In the fullness of time, Duncan and Katie emerged with trays of sashimi rolls. For some reason, Katie’s pile looked much bigger than Duncan’s, although nobody commented on the imbalance.

Chris said, “Eva, you’re up first.”

Duncan silently held out his platter, but Eva did not immediately reach for the morsels that it held. Instead she nervously looked at her teammates face and into his eyes, seeking clues about his intentions, and what she saw was most disquieting. Eva saw no lie in Duncan’s eyes, but neither did she see confidence. The scorner of laws had done his best, Eva surmised; but considering the stakes, he was not certain that his best was good enough. As for the rolls themselves, the presentation seemed passable if unremarkable, with noticeable size differences from one roll to the next.

Eva made a show of trying to force herself to sample the fugu, but subconsciously she had already made her choice. With heavy heart, she turned to the watching Muskies and said, “Sorry guys. I can’t.”

“That was probably the right call,” Duncan admitted as he gave his tray to Chef Hatchet for disposal. “I’m good with knives, but that doesn’t mean I know what’s what in the kitchen.”

Chris turned to the Eagles’ taster and said, “Heather… the Muskies’ epic fail has left you an opening to tie it up.”

Katie held up her handiwork for Heather and the camera to inspect. The presentation suggested that the Thin Twin had done her work competently. Appearances meant little in this case, of course, but it was still cause for optimism.

Heather reached for one of the sashimi rolls, but stopped short. The queen bee couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but she felt that something was wrong.

Heather looked at the rolls more closely. They still looked fine. She then looked up at Katie, and trembled imperceptibly. There was something in Katie’s eyes, and was that a smirk at the corner of her mouth? Heather blinked, and Katie’s smirk was gone, if it had ever truly been there.

It had been less than a week since Heather had tricked Katie and Sadie to send Sadie packing. Could Katie have somehow figured it out? Heather had to admit that it wouldn’t have been all that hard, despite Chris’ decision to not reveal the vote totals that night; for although the Dark Queen had told the clones to vote off Leshawna, the homegirl had remained, and Chris had made no mention of a tiebreaker. Heather had counted on the trauma of separation from Sadie to stop Katie realizing that their alliance hadn’t all voted together, but what if Katie had noticed? And what if she hadn’t believed Heather’s suggestion that Chris had ignored the vote?

It didn’t matter, Heather told herself. Katie was sweet and innocent and forgiving. Even if she had guessed Heather’s role in Sadie’s ouster, it wasn’t as though Katie would stoop to murder to pay back such a minor offense.

Would she?

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

.

Eighteenth Night

The next day was not a school day, so Brett and his mother spent the day engaged in their own affairs. That night, after they had dined and Brett had finished what homework he had for the weekend, he approached his mother and asked to hear 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.

“We don’t have all day, Heather,” Chris prompted. “Eat or pass. Which will it be?”

Heather reached again for Katie’s sashimi, and again stopped short. She realized with a qualm that she really didn’t know all that much about what made most of the other campers tick. More to the point, she had avoided getting to know her allies well, having seen nothing to gain by “fraternizing with the help”. Katie seemed sweet and innocent and forgiving, but did Heather really know that?

Is this how it ends? Heather asked herself, although she said nothing as she continued to agonize over her decision. Finally, she made her choice.

“I can’t do it,” she admitted. “My team would be lost without me.”

Katie knew a diss when she heard it. “Thanks, Heather,” she grumbled. “Thanks a lot.”

“Well, that was a waste of time,” Chris grumbled in turn. “We’re going to take a break while I figure out a viewer-friendly penalty. Meet up at the amphitheatre after lunch.”

As the campers quit the lodge, Courtney called, “Hey, Tyler, wait up!” Gwen, meanwhile, sidled up to a certain dusky titan.

“D.J., you’re a sensitive guy,” began the gothic gumshoe.

“Yeah, I guess so,” admitted the gentle giant.

“So, have you come across any good love poems lately?”

Lunch was as revolting as the campers had come to expect. In keeping with the challenge theme, Chris gleefully pointed out that the campers would just have to trust that this sick excuse for a meal wouldn’t oblige them to spend the rest of the challenge worshipping at the porcelain throne. That was actually a safer bet than it might seem, for a month of eating Chef’s cooking had significantly strengthened the campers’ stomachs. Humans are adaptable creatures, and the teens were learning this firsthand.

After that latest violation of natural law, human dignity and all things good and holy, the campers briefly took their ease before they began to migrate to the amphitheatre. Heather encountered Eva en route, just as the steel maiden was finishing what looked like a sashimi roll.

“Is that a fugu roll?” the dragon girl asked.

“It was a fugu roll,” Eva clarified.

With a smug smirk, Heather observed, “Too bad you didn’t have the guts to eat it for the challenge. You could have gotten a point for your team instead of probably putting a target on your back.”

Eva replied, with a smirk of her own, “It wasn’t Duncan’s fugu, it was Katie’s.”

“You’re kidding, right?” was all the flummoxed Heather could say.

“That’s why she ‘started over’ twice,” the steel maiden explained. “There was nothing wrong with those batches, but she wanted to make enough for everyone. Sure put one over on Chef. Or maybe he figured out what she was up to and decided to play along. It’s hard to tell with him.”

With a cocksure tone quite at odds with the knot forming in her stomach, the queen bee said, “Sweet. If everyone else gets fugu poisoning, I’ll win by default.”

“Nice try,” Eva scoffed. “Chef said it should be good, that psychic redshirt said it should be good, so the odds are that it’s good.” The musclegirl saw uncertainty in her campmate’s face, so with mock innocence applied the coup de grace: “Oh, and did I mention that they were confident enough to have some? Even Chris tried it, after his ‘tasters’ didn’t croak.”

Heather had been sincere when she said that she had always wanted to try fugu, and she could no longer hide her true feelings. “Please tell me there’s some left.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Eva admitted. “A couple of redshirts were passing them around after so-called lunch. There was supposed to be one per person. I got mine from Beardo. He might still have some. Of course, you could always go crawling back to Katie. Maybe she saved one for you.”

That wasn’t an option, at least not yet, and both girls knew it. As a queen bee and the leader of her alliance, Heather had appearances to maintain. Going to Katie with hat in hand would entail a serious loss of face.

When the campers assembled at the amphitheatre, they noticed that it now sported a trapeze, a high platform to one side, and a large water trough set in the floor. Before anyone could ask the purpose of this apparatus, Chris led the teens to a nearby embankment. The Lord of Wawanakwa announced, “The second part of the trust challenge is called the ‘Three Blind Trusts’. Why, you ask? Because, I answer, in each of these tests, one player on each team will be blindfolded.

“The first blind test is the William Tell challenge; or as I like to call it, ‘the slingshots and arrows of outrageous fortune’. One player will stand with a crossbow bolt on their head, and a teammate will try to knock it off by shooting crabapples. Yes, Ezekiel?”

“Not that I’m complaining, but wasn’t it the other way around?”

“Don’t remind me,” grumbled the visibly irritated host. “Reversing it was Legal’s idea, not mine.”

Chris quickly regained his composure, and his standard bland smile returned.  “Courtney will shoot at Duncan for the Muskies, and Lindsay will shoot at Leshawna for the Eagles.”

Heather snidely said to Leshawna, “Nice knowing you. Not.”

Chef Hatchet let Duncan and Leshawna closer to the embankment, some ten meters downrange. He gave each “target” camper a clear face shield and a small, oddly shaped hat. The purpose of this strange headgear, Hatchet explained, was to provided a flat platform to stop the crossbow bolts rolling off their heads prematurely. Hatchet had the “flatheads” stand far enough apart that one team’s shooter wasn’t likely to accidentally strike the other team’s target.

Meanwhile, Alejandro gave Courtney and Lindsay slingshots and pouches containing a supply of crabapples. The pouches had carrying straps long enough for the girls to sling across their shoulders, thereby keeping the shooters’ ammunition readily accessible on their hips.

D.J. asked, “Aren’t Duncan and Leshawna supposed to be blindfolded? You said one player would be.”

Chris replied, “They don’t get the blindfolds, the shooters do.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Courtney snapped.

“Not really,” Duncan explained. “Everyone knows you want me, and the shot follows the eye, so being blindfolded will keep you from shooting me in my privates.”

In less time than it takes to describe, the diminutive dynamo loaded her slingshot, drew it farther back than it was really designed to go, and snapped off a shot with a sharp crack. Duncan winced, but somehow managed to stop himself crying out in pain as the fructose-laden herald of Courtney’s wrath struck him in a particularly sensitive part of his aforementioned privates and disintegrated—in a trice—into so much steaming applesauce.

“You mean, like that?” Courtney asked smugly.

“Something … like that,” Duncan gasped. The pitch of his voice seemed unnaturally high.

Eva smirked and sniped, “I thought you could catch those things. Or was that paintball just a fluke?”

“Paintballs … are … subsonic,” Duncan explained through gritted teeth as his voice began to return to normal.

When Duncan finally regained his composure, Courtney ventured, “I have to admit, though, you did have a point. Without the blindfold, I’d have to avert my eyes from your ugly face; and like you said, the shot follows the eye.” She looked pointedly at Duncan’s crotch and grinned wickedly.

Duncan decided that he was better off not goading Courtney further, so he bit his tongue and made no answer.

Leshawna asked, “But if the shooters are blindfolded, then it’s all luck, so what’s to trust?”

Chris ignored the question, for he did not want to admit that he hadn’t thought out this test as well as he could have. Truth be told, blindfolding people in the first place for the afternoon tests was a last-minute addition—the “viewer-friendly penalty” the Lord of Wawanakwa had decreed for the cowardice of the designated fugu tasters.

Alejandro and another intern—a huge, redheaded farm boy who looked like Scott on steroids—blindfolded Courtney and Lindsay; and at Chris’ command, the trust challenge resumed.

As Lindsay and Courtney fired away, trusting to luck because that was all they could do, Cody had an idea. He took a position directly behind Lindsay (which he regarded as her least appealing angle, although even that was pleasant enough to him) and waited for her next shot. He then called, “Lindsay, your last shot was eight centimeters too high and ten centimeters too far to the left.”

As Lindsay strained to remember how long a centimeter was (for like many Canadians, she still tended to use feet and inches for short distances despite the Metric System having been the official one for many years) Duncan asked hopefully, “Can they do that?”

“No rule against it,” Chris admitted.

As Courtney maintained firing, she called to her teammates, “If they can do it, so can we. A little help, here?”

“I’m here,” Tyler answered. The jock of all trades had anticipated Courtney’s request and, with characteristic enthusiasm, was already in position. “I’ll guide you in!”

There goes the challenge, Courtney thought, although she held her tongue in deference to her teammate’s feelings.

Lindsay continued to fire, but she was clearly struggling to process Cody’s instructions. The science geek eventually realized this and switched to inches, but that didn’t seem to help much.

Tyler, meanwhile, was proving to be a competent spotter. His coordination problems mattered naught in this observe-and-report task, and his eye was sharp; so he was able to walk Courtney in with reasonable efficiency.

Heather saw that the Muskies had gained the upper hand, and that Cody’s admittedly brilliant idea was about to be wasted. The only reason Courtney and Tyler hadn’t won already was because it was still no simple matter for a blindfolded shooter to follow even the clearest instructions.

Heather shoved Cody aside and explained, “You’re not speaking her language.” The queen bee called to her vassal, “I’ve got this, Lindsay! Keep shooting!”

Lindsay did so, and Heather demonstrated what Cody had been doing wrong. As fast as she could get the words out, the Eagles’ overlord cried, “That was high by twice the maximum cup height of your Canada Day bikini and wide right by three and a half times the heel length of your burnt sienna stilettos!”

Lindsay was an accomplished gymnast, as has been told of before, so she knew how to follow instructions. With those instructions now framed in terms she could understand effortlessly, the uberbimbo fired with renewed confidence. Courtney stepped up her firing rate in response, for she had heard Heather and understood that the Eagles’ new spotter posed a serious threat.

With the shooters once more on equal footing, the battle raged for several more volleys. In the end, Lindsay’s superior coordination carried the day when her fruity missile struck Leshawna’s bolt squarely on the fletching and sent it spinning away.

Chris announced, “The Eagles win it! We’re all tied up! Nice shooting, Lindsay. Heather, loved your spotting technique.”

“Crap!” Courtney cried as she pulled off her blindfold.

Ezekiel went to console his mentor. “Don’t beat yourself up over it. You and Tyler did a good job, but there was still luck involved.”

“He’s right,” Eva seconded. “They had the luck, we didn’t. Though I do wish you’d been able to hit Duncan a few more times than you did.”

“I heard that!” Duncan challenged as he rejoined his teammates.

Chris called for attention and announced, “When we were at the amphitheater, you no doubt noticed the props for our potentially painful and dangerous fourth test. Oh, and if you haven’t tried Katie’s fugu, you’re missing a real treat. There was supposed to be one roll for everyone, even the interns and camera crews, but I had two because I thought it would add a little drama if one of you had to miss out. Besides, as the host with the most, I’m entitled.”

Chris and the campers returned to the amphitheater. “The next trust-building exercise,” the sadistic host expounded, “is ‘The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze’. Each team will have a dude on the trapeze, and a blindfolded girl on the platform.”

Henry Hall - "The Man On The Flying Trapeze"

"The song isn't called 'The Daring Young Girl on the Flying Trapeze'," Chris replied archly. (Abridged. See Notes for full lyrics.)

“Can you get any more sexist?” Eva snapped. She turned to Ezekiel and added, “Homeschool, you have been replaced.”

“The song isn’t called, ‘The Daring Young Girl on the Flying Trapeze’,” Chris replied archly. “But thank you, Eva, for volunteering to be the Muskies’ jumper. Since you went down in flames in the fugu tasting, this will give you a chance to redeem yourself.”

Eva’s voice said, “Bring it,” but her face said, me and my big mouth.

Chris resumed his briefing. “As I was about to say before I was so rudely interrupted,” he said archly, with a glare at Eva, who responded with a defiant glare of her own, “the boy’s job is to not only catch the girl, but also to tell her when to jump, since she won’t be able to see for herself. If you miss your connection, the helpless jumper will fall into this water trough. Trust me, you don’t want that, because not only will you lose the point, but the water is full of nasty, stinging little jellyfish. Which means that, if you blow it, Jumper Girl will be in for one heck of a painful swim, and Trapeze Boy will have girls all over Canada cursing his name and defacing his publicity portrait.

“Tyler, it will be your job to keep Eva from getting stung half to death.”

It may have been just a trick of the light, but Eva seemed to go a little pale at that.

“Eagles, Cody will be on the trapeze, since he’s the only dude you have left. Your jumper will be…” Chris made a soft “doodoodoodoo” sound and little motions with his fingers for a moment, as if trying to decide, then said, “What the heck, let’s go with Leshawna.”

The dusky homegirl looked disconcerted, and eyed Cody nervously. She didn’t doubt that this self-styled “ladies’ man” would do everything he could for her, and she was prepared to believe he could time their connection competently. The problem was that she probably outweighed him by 20 kilos, and Cody didn’t look especially strong; so even if he caught her, Leshawna was by no means certain he would be able to hold her.

The homegirl sidled over to her partner and nervously asked, “Think you can handle this bounty of beauty, Short Stuff? We can’t have those jellyfish having their way with me.”

“Indeed we can’t,” the science geek assured her. “Sure, you’re bigger than me, but we’ll make it work somehow.”

Leshawna still looked worried, so Cody made a pledge that he hoped would allay her fears. “And I’ll tell you this,” he said softly, for his vow was meant for her and not necessarily for the camera, “If you end up in the water because of me, I’m going in after you.”

Leshawna was suitably impressed. “That’s sweet,” she said. Probably not very smart, she added silently, but sweet, just the same. “Let’s hope I don’t have to hold you to that.”

Chris said, “Tyler, Eva, you’re up first.”

As Tyler swung back and forth to build momentum, the blindfolded Eva stood apprehensively on the platform. This promised to be an ordeal as bad as the phobia challenge in its own way, because part of the reason the steel maiden was so fanatical about developing her physical prowess, and the reason she had failed the fugu tasting test, was that she found it difficult to trust others with her safety. It didn’t help that Tyler was known to lack coordination. Eva found herself fervently hoping she wasn’t allergic to jellyfish venom.

Tyler was soon swinging in arcs large enough that he would be able to catch his partner if the timing was right. He called to Eva, warning her to be ready for his command. On his next approach, at the moment that seemed best to him, Tyler called, “Jump!”

Eva remained frozen in place. She would later learn that Tyler had mistimed his command badly enough that, had she jumped, they would probably have missed their connection.

On the next pass, Tyler called encouragement to his partner. On the following approach, the enthusiastic but uncoordinated jock again called, “Jump!”

Once again, Eva could not bring herself to jump. Once again, that was probably for the best.

“If we’re going to do this,” Tyler called, “you’re going to have to trust me!”

“I know, right?” Eva snapped, though she was more irritated with herself than with Tyler. After all, her partner was just doing his job. “Next time, I swear!” she called, now determined to meet whatever fate awaited her.

Tyler called, for the third time, for Eva to jump. The musclegirl hesitated yet again, but this time she stepped off the platform.

Eva’s hesitation stood her in good stead; for Tyler, realizing that he had been late with his previous jump commands, had overcompensated and given his third command too early. As the steel maiden fell, she heard Tyler call, “I’ve got y—” cut short by a muffled grunt as the pair collided. They had met on Tyler’s upswing, with a jarring impact.

Neither was prepared for the force of their collision. To their credit, it didn’t matter. Tyler latched his arms around his partner, locking his fingers behind her back. The jock of all trades would have breathed a sigh of relief if it hadn’t been so hard at that moment to breathe at all; for their timing had been just right (or just wrong) and Tyler’s face was buried in Eva’s ample chest. They looked ridiculous, but they scored the point.

Eva had mixed feelings about this. Her first thought, as she wrapped her arms under Tyler’s armpits and locked her fingers across his chest, was gratitude that Tyler hadn’t botched the catch like he had botched so many other things since coming to the island. Her second thought was of offended modesty. If he planned it this way, she thought with a flare of anger, I’m going to tear his head off and mount it in my weight room.

When the Muskie duo dismounted, Chris needled them, for he had noticed their unusual positioning. “You know,” he joked, “you two have really got to stop meeting like that. People will start to talk.” If looks could kill, Eva would probably be getting out of prison right about now.

As the “trapezoids” rejoined their teammates, Tyler and Duncan exchanged high-fives. Duncan exclaimed, “Second base on the first date! Way to—”

Eva was passing by at that moment and, without turning toward Duncan or even breaking stride, felled him with an explosive backhand blow. The musclegirl stalked off, leaving the unconscious delinquent where he lay, and exchanged high-fives with a nervous-looking Courtney.

“That’s going to leave a mark,” ventured Chris, sounding mildly interested. “Cody, Leshawna, you’re up.”

Cody told his partner, “When I’m ready, I’ll count down from three with every pass. Take as many passes as you need. Just don’t take so many that Chris decides to change the rules on us.”

“I hear you,” the homegirl affirmed, grimacing at the reminder of the host’s fondness for changing rules on the fly. “Let’s do this.”

The two Eagles climbed to their respective platforms. As Alejandro blindfolded Leshawna, Cody mounted the trapeze bar and began to swing. When the science geek had built enough momentum to swing in full arcs, he thrice counted down silently. Satisfied that he had the timing down, he called, “Okay, I’m ready!”

“Just give the word, short stuff!” Leshawna answered.

On his next swing, Cody counted down aloud, “Three, two, one, GO!”

Leshawna made no move to jump, but appeared to be listening intently, and did the same on Cody’s next count. The science geek surmised that she was studying his cadence, which was fine with him.

After three more dry runs, Leshawna was ready. On Cody’s next approach, Leshawna stepped off the platform—and virtually into Cody’s arms. Their timing was that good.

The catch, however, was only half the battle. As they approached the bottom of their arc, the added momentum from Leshawna’s weight nearly pulled Cody off the trapeze. His legs held, but he was losing his grip on his teammate.

“Grab something! Anything!” he hissed urgently.

Leshawna was way ahead of him, for she could feel his hold slipping and well understood the need for haste. She reached out and latched onto the first things her hands contacted, which happened to be the opposite sides of Cody’s belt. The added support enabled the science geek to stabilize his hold, at the cost of giving him The Mother Of All Wedgies.

“I think we’re good,” Cody squeaked bravely.

When they had dismounted, Leshawna noticed that Cody’s belt line was a good 15 centimeters higher than it was supposed to be. No wonder his voice had sounded strained. With a mischievous smile, the homegirl grabbed the sides of Cody’s trousers and pulled them down to their normal position.

“There,” she pronounced. “Now, you can tell all your buddies back home that a bootylicious babe couldn’t resist pulling your pants down,” she added with a wink.

“That’s a very pleasant image,” the science geek admitted, with a wink of his own. “But for now, what’s important is that we scored.” Quickly realizing his poor choice of words, he hastily added, “You know, the point… for the challenge.” With a cringe and an affected whimper he begged, “Please don’t kill me.”

Leshawna let out a belly laugh and gave Cody a fraternal swat between the shoulders as they rejoined their teammates. “Don’t sweat it, hon. It was good for me, too.”

Chris called for attention. “So, both couples scored on the trapeze,” he noted, indulging in a little double entendre of his own, “which obviously means it was too easy, but whatev. The score is still tied, but now at 2-2, so the next stop is the diving cliff for the final test. Meet me at the totem pole in 30, or I might just award the final point to whomever I feel like.”

“Will we need our swimsuits?” Lindsay asked.

“Sorry, no spoilers today,” Chris replied unhelpfully. “Use your judgment.”

“Cool,” Lindsay declared. “I can model my new bikini.”

“That’s something we can all look forward to,” Duncan observed.

“I hear you, bro,” Chris replied.

.

The Bloody Cliffs of Wawanakwa

As the campers briefly returned to their cabins, speculating on what awaited them, Heather pulled Katie aside.

“Sounds like your fugu is a big hit,” the queen bee observed. “Good for you.”

“Thanks,” Katie replied with a smile. Praise from her queen was not a common thing, so Katie was always happy to get it when Heather deigned to offer it.

“It was amazing!” Lindsay gushed. “Too bad there was only enough for one each. I could have eaten ten.”

“You saved one for me, right?” Heather prompted. She had struck out with the interns, so Katie was her last hope.

“You didn’t want any,” Katie innocently pointed out.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Heather protested. “I couldn’t risk it when I didn’t know if it was good, but I said I’ve always wanted to try it, and I meant that. But yeah, I should have trusted you.”

“Nothing we can do about it now,” Katie conceded. “But I don’t have any. I’m real sorry.”

Lindsay looked confused. “I thought you did save her one.”

“Chris took it.”

Heather sighed. “I’ll meet you at the cabin. I have to make a confessional stop.”

“Of all the crappy luck,” Heather grumbled in the confession can. “I’ve always wanted to try fugu. Here I had a chance, and I let it slip through my fingers because I was stupid enough to think that Lindsiot Lite could actually figure out what was going on. That’s what I get for listening to my conscience.”

The Dark Queen leaned forward and looked directly into the camera. With iron voice and icy eyes, she vowed, “It won’t… happen… again.”

All the girls except for Beth had form-fitting swimwear, so they decided to hedge their bets by wearing their swimsuits beneath their normal clothing, in lieu of underwear. Beth and Lindsay decided that their swimwear alone would suffice: Beth, because her old-fashioned bathing suit was expansive enough to serve for most land-based activities; and Lindsay, because she had her heart set on wowing the boys and the viewing audience with her new bikini.

In the boys’ cabin, meanwhile, D.J. suggested that they wouldn’t need their swimwear, arguing that the ratings-obsessed host wouldn’t have wasted a chance to put the girls in their swimsuits if the campers were going to be within so much as rock-throwing range of the water. The other boys found his logic compelling, so they decided to stick with their normal clothing. If it turned out that they had to do actual swimming, their gitch would serve in lieu of swim trunks.

At the appointed time, the campers assembled at the totem pole, and Chris and his chauffeur led them on the long hike to the diving cliff. They made excellent time, for the Singer went with them. Nor was this merely the luck of the draw. Chris had noticed how the angelic girl’s songs sped the campers on these journeys; and while the black-hearted host found the constant singing annoying, he wasn’t the type to argue with results. After all, the show had a schedule to keep.

As the campers ascended the improbably high peak to the cliff, Courtney found Gwen, shooed Cody away and asked the Goth, “Did you find out anything?”

“Sort of,” Gwen reported, “but it was kind of weird. I was talking to D.J. and I asked him, ‘So, have you come across any good love poems lately?’”

“Real subtle,” Courtney chided.

“Yeah, I could have done better there. Anyway, he said, ‘So, asked any arbitrary, way-out-of-left field questions lately?’”

“Was he really as snippy as that sounds?”

“Worse. I think he was trying to imitate my voice.”

Courtney shook her head. “That doesn’t sound like D.J. at all.”

“I know, right?” Gwen seconded. “I think he knows more than he’s letting on.”

Courtney looked thoughtful for a moment and admitted, “No that you mention it, I got the same impression from Cody. I showed him the latest note we found—”

“And you say I’m not subtle,” Gwen chided.

“Hey, he’s Cody and I’m a pretty girl,” the onetime CIT replied archly. “I figured a direct approach would work best with him. And it did, sort of. He said it was a Shakespeare sonnet Noah knows, but that’s all I could get out of him. If he knows who it’s for, he wasn’t willing to tell me.”

Gwen recapped, “So, it sounds like we may be dealing with a conspiracy of silence. Cody knows something and D.J. probably knows something. How about the others? If Duncan knows anything, he’s got a good poker face.”

“Same with Zeke,” Courtney admitted. “I do worry about what Duncan might be doing to him, but whatever. I’m not sure about Tyler. I have a feeling that he might know something, but it’s just a feeling. I can’t really point to anything specific that he did or said or didn’t say.”

As Gwen pondered Courtney’s report, the future speaker of laws added, “I think we’ve gotten everything we’re going to out of the boys. It’s time to start on the girls. I’ll take Heather, Beth and Eva. You take Leshawna, Katie and Lindsay.”

“Sounds like a plan,” quoth the Goth.

In the fullness of time, the campers reached the summit, and the diving cliff. Awaiting them were Chef Hatchet, Alejandro, Beardo and two strange-looking vehicles. They resembled common ATVs except for the fact that, instead of the usual four wheels, they had only three: the normal two in back; but only one in front, on the vehicle’s centerline. They also appeared to be heavily armored, which made them look top heavy.

For the moment, though, the boys (not to mention Chris, Chef, and the camera crew) were more interested in Lindsay’s new string bikini, which was clearly an “ass man’s” style. Its top struck a balance between revealing enough and leaving enough to the imagination, but the bottom was “barely legal”. It was a style that Eva could have worn well; likewise, Leshawna, if she’d had a flatter belly. Lindsay beheld the males’ reactions and saw that they were good.

After giving everyone a few moments to contemplate this scene of great natural beauty, Chris returned to the business at hand.

“The final test,” the host explained, “is the blindfolded ATV freewheeling race. Two members from each team will ride, a driver and a navigator. Since the driver will be blindfolded, it will be the navigator’s job to call out course adjustments. Removing the driver’s blindfold for any reason will get you disqualified.

“You’ll just be coasting, so your ATVs have no fuel. In order to get dangerous and dangerously ratings-friendly speeds, we’ve added a lot of weight to them. We’ve also locked the transmissions in neutral—coasting in neutral is called ‘freewheeling’, for those of you who didn’t know—and disabled the regular brakes. The navigator will have an emergency brake, but any team that actually uses it will be DQ-ed, so you had better be sure it’s a matter of life and death. Which it probably will be.”

The campers didn’t like the sound of that at all, which isn’t to say that it was particularly surprising. After all, this was Chris McLean they were dealing with.

“Weren’t these three-wheelers banned like, decades ago?” Courtney asked, with a wary eye on the two chariots.

“Now that you mention it, they were,” the host admitted with that ubiquitous bland smile of his. “They were popular because they’re highly maneuverable, but they became notorious for overturning. Killed and maimed a lot of people. Which means,” Chris continued, amused at the teens’ increasingly disturbed expressions, “drivers, you’ll want to make your course changes gent…ly. And that means, navigators, you’ll want to give your drivers plenty of notice when you want them to change course.

“First team to the bottom with both riders still on board and still alive wins. And since it’s too much trouble to set up a tiebreaker, both teams will be sending someone home—dead or alive—if neither crew can complete the course.”

Courtney shook her head and muttered, “That explains this morning’s wakeup call.”

“How do you figure?” Tyler asked.

“The ‘Dies Irae’,” Ezekiel explained. “‘Judgment Day’. I hadn’t really noticed the pattern until Courtney mentioned it just now, but Chris has played the ‘Dies Irae’ twice before as a wakeup call, and both times we had a life-threatening challenge that day. We had the cliff diving and lost Harold, God rest his soul, and the trip to Boney Island, where we saw what the local wildlife is capable of.”

“And if that pattern holds,” Courtney added, “then this race might be as dangerous as it looks. The rock climb certainly wasn’t.”

“What about the fugu?” Eva asked with a sinking feeling that she might have chickened out too easily.

“You'd think so,” D.J. observed, “but people with fugu poisoning can be kept alive by artificial respiration until the poison wears off.” As Eva seemed to deflate, the kindhearted brickhouse guessed the reason and said, “Oh, crap! Eva, I’m sorry. I should have told you that before, but I just didn’t think of it.”

“No harm, no foul,” the musclegirl assured him halfheartedly. “If you’d told me, and any of the Birdies overheard, it wouldn’t have changed anything. We’d still be tied now.”

Chris overheard the Muskies’ worried byplay. He sighed theatrically and said, as if to himself but loudly enough for the campers to hear, “I love this show.”

When the sadistic host decided that the campers had spent enough time fearing for their lives, he announced, “Here are the riders: for the Muskies, Ezekiel will drive and D.J. will navigate. For the Eagles, Gwen will drive and Lindsay will navigate.”

That was the worst news the campers had had all day, and Beth was the first to voice the fear on their minds. “Wouldn’t Gwen and Lindsay be more likely to live with Lindsay driving and Gwen navigating? Sorry, Lindsay.”

“Sorry for what?” the uberbimbo asked obliviously. “Don’t you think Jen can drive?”

“That’s not what she means,” Katie explained gently.

Before Lindsay could ask what Beth did mean, Courtney turned to Chris and pleaded, “I hate to look a gift horse in the mouth, but Beth’s right. No challenge advantage is worth more blood. Please, let Gwen navigate.”

Heather added, “Besides, it’s not fair that the Fish Heads have heavier riders. At least switch Homie for Lindsay.” The Dark Queen later added in the confessional, That way, if anything does go wrong, not that I’d want it to, my enemies will be in harm’s way and my puppet will be safe.

Chris said only, “Trust me. Get it?” When no one so much as smiled at his wordplay, he grumbled, “Fine. Be that way.” The black-hearted host quickly recovered his normal plastic demeanor and explained, “Lindsay’s already been blindfolded once, so she can’t be this time; and Leshawna’s already been in two straight. That’s the limit.”

Heather challenged, “You’re just making up rules as you go along.”

“Your point being…?” Chris prompted. When Heather responded with naught but a glare, the host explained, “But since you want a rule I didn’t ‘just make up’, here’s one: we’ve added enough weight to your ride to make up for the Muskies’ heavier racers, and that’s why we can’t make rider substitutions.”

“That’s a better story,” Heather admitted.

Chris stepped into his chauffeured buggy to signal that the discussion was over. He sternly told the Singing Intern that she must not sing on the way down, lest she distract the campers from their fearful speculations about the coming race. The Singer meekly accepted the ban without understanding why Chris should wish it so; but she did understand that, as an intern, it was her place to obey.

As the campers began to quit the summit, Katie said to the Eagles’ driving crew—the two girls who, with Sadie gone, were now closer to her than any others on the island—“Good luck. I hope you won’t need it, but…” The once-innocent girl, who had suffered so much in the earthly hell that was Total Drama Island, absently stroked her necklace as she struggled to find the words she wanted. Lindsay took no notice of this gesture, for she did not understand its import, but Gwen did.

“Don’t worry,” Gwen assured her unlikely friend in an attempt to reassure herself as well. “Lindsay may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but it’s not like she doesn’t know left from right. If anything goes wrong, I doubt it would be from anything worse than mundane bad luck.”

Gwen’s choice of the word “mundane” was not a coincidence, and Katie seemed to understand that. The Thin Twin mustered a smile and confessed, “I guess that’s what I was trying to say. Yeah, I see your point. I said I trust her, so I guess I should trust her.”

“Trust who?” asked the understandably confused Lindsay, who understood only that she was on the outside of an inside reference.

“Long story,” Katie explained. “Anyway, I’d better go. See you at the bottom.”

As Katie joined the others descending the mountain, Gwen looked over the visible portion of the course for the first time. The Goth quickly understood why everyone was so concerned for her and Lindsay’s safety with Lindsay navigating. The marked courses had turns at irregular intervals, and some stretches looked tight enough that the navigator would likely have to think quickly—an ability Lindsay was not known for. Worse, the peak had not only the diving cliff, oft told of before, but also cliffs on both sides; and some parts of the course came too close to the edges for comfort. If either ATV happened to go over the edge, its crew wouldn’t have a chance.

Alejandro and Beardo remained at the summit with the riders, for it was their task to provide the initial push that would start the riders on their dreadful descent. Chef also remained, the better to deal with any last minute problems that might arise. Neither he nor the redshirts were in any hurry to blindfold the drivers, content instead to let Gwen and Ezekiel survey the upper part of the course and commit it to memory as best they might until Chris reached the bottom and summoned destiny. The riders could not see the finish line from the start, for the top part of the course was not the steepest; and the slope, like most of the island, was heavily forested in any case.

During the hike down, Katie caught up to Dawn and the Singer, who were chatting amiably as good friends do, and Dawn invited her to join them. They all knew the rules about players socializing with interns; but in most cases, the only penalty for doing so was that these interactions would be kept out of the finished episodes, and anything that happened on the hike down would likely be edited out for length in any case.

The mystic formally introduced Katie and the Singer, whose name was Ella. As the three talked about whatever struck their fancy, Katie learned that Ella lived in the forests of southern Yukon, on the outskirts of Whitehorse. Katie quickly saw that Ella was as sweet and innocent in person as she had seemed from afar, much as Katie herself had been at the start of this hellish game. Katie suddenly felt as though she’d aged a decade since arriving on the island, instead of only a month.

One thing all three readily agreed on was that, Chris and the game notwithstanding, the island itself was a very pleasant place, the occasional natural hazard notwithstanding. Indeed, Ella, who loved the woods, went so far as to say that she could see spending the rest of her life there. Her words were more prophetic than she knew, but that is another story for another time.

In the fullness of time, the spectators reached the bottom and found that other interns had set up two large monitors, one to show the progress of each vehicle. Chris radioed Chef Hatchet, and told him to send the riders down.

At the summit, the riders took their positions. The interns blindfolded the drivers and wished everyone a safe ride, having even more cause than the campers to be sick of blood, before taking position behind the vehicles.

Beardo now revealed his singular talent. The hulking redshirt was a beat boxer par excellence, and he gave a flawless rendition—so precise that it could have fooled a computer—of the electronic “countdown to start” signal  that one hears at ski races and suchlike. At the final beep, he and Alejandro pushed with all their might for a few meters, and four fame-hungry teenagers were on their way to whatever awaited them and their metastable chariots.

For a time, drivers and navigators had little trouble coordinating, for their speeds were modest; but this respite was fleeting. When a motor vehicle coasts in gear, engine drag limits the maximum speed. Not so when coasting in neutral, and this is what can make freewheeling dangerous. By the course’s midpoint, both ATVs were hurtling down the mountain at speeds they were not designed for.

D.J. and Ezekiel had opened a slight lead. When the teams’ courses took them to opposite sides of the slope, a massive explosion erupted between them.

“What was that?” Gwen asked desperately as she flinched at the blast.

“Left Left!” Lindsay cried no less desperately, for Gwen’s flinch was taking them off course. Ezekiel and D.J., meanwhile, were having a similar conversation. The racers were fortunate, though, and got back under what passed for control quickly enough.

At the finish line, several campers demanded to know what had possessed Chris to put explosives on a racecourse that was clearly perilous enough without them. The sadistic host explained, “We found some explosives in Izzy’s stuff after she ran off on us, and big explosions mean big ratings. Waste not, want not.”

The turns tightened as the racers entered the most technically difficult part of the course. Fear crept into Lindsay’s and D.J.’s voices as they called out, “Left!” “Straight!” or “Right!” as the situation warranted. Gwen and Ezekiel struggled to control their own mounting fear and instinctively gripped their handlebars ever tighter; for although the drivers still made their turns as gently as they might, drivers and navigators alike could feel their inside rear wheels lifting from the ground during more and more of these maneuvers as their vehicles yearned to overturn. But luck was yet with the racers, and they remained on course.

When the racers’ courses again took them to the edges of the slope, D.J. and Lindsay could see that the cliffs ended not far ahead, and the navigators were well pleased at this. The bottom of the course was still certain to be terribly dangerous at their present speeds, but having the cliffs behind them would mean one less hazard.

Another massive explosion erupted between the teetering ATVs, and the Muskie duo’s luck ran out.

Ezekiel and D.J.’s chariot struck a fair-sized rock that the blast had thrown into their path. The ATV briefly left the ground as the back end rose alarmingly. D.J. lurched backward, and his great weight was enough to stop their mechanical mount flipping ass over tip; but they began to arc to the left, toward the edge of the course—more to the point, toward the cliff.

“Right! Right!” D.J. cried urgently, as his teammate struggled to comply. As they continued to veer off course, the brickhouse fairly screamed, “Right! Right!”

“It won’t go right!” Ezekiel shot back desperately, for the rock impact had apparently damaged the steering system. The vehicle’s armor had counted for nothing, as it was meant to add weight and not necessarily protection.

D.J. did not hesitate. “I’m hitting the brake!” The brickhouse applied the emergency brake as strongly as he dared, for flipping their vehicle at their current speed could be as lethal as the 60-meter plunge that awaited them. Ezekiel, meanwhile, pulled down his blindfold. His teammate’s use of the brake had already disqualified them, not that the race was foremost on their minds at the moment, and it sounded to the farm boy that he was likely to need his eyesight.

The overloaded ATV responded sluggishly to the brake. In less time than it takes to describe, D.J. concluded that they would run out of room before they ran out of speed. “Bail!” he cried. Ezekiel was still disoriented from the sudden restoration of his eyesight, and didn’t have his teammate’s reaction time in any case, so D.J. grabbed the farm boy by the hoodie hood and leapt off over the back of their doomed ride.

Moments later, the ATV went over the cliff and smashed to pieces on the rocks below.

Gwen and Lindsay knew nothing of what had happened to their opponents, and had problems of their own in any case. Against all odds, Lindsay unerringly guided the sightless Goth through all the twists and turns, as well as a third bomb blast, in the course’s technical portion; but one surprise yet lay in wait. Indeed, part of the reason why Chris had let the Singer sing during the ascent was to distract the campers from examining the course too closely on the way up.

D.J. stood alone near the cliff. His body was intact; his spirit, less so.  When he bailed out, he had grabbed Ezekiel’s hood with the intent of pulling the homeschooled prairie boy to safety with him. But Ezekiel’s hoodie was a hand-me-down, old and worn, so the hood was all D.J. had come away with. The gentle giant reviewed the scene over and over in his mind, asking himself what he might have done differently, and always came to the conclusion that he had done everything he plausibly could; yet he could not shake the feeling that he now had blood on his hands.

Be careful what you wish for, the brickhouse thought glumly. I swore he’d go down for what he did to Bunny. I should have been more specific.

Even without considering his fear of heights, D.J. could not bring himself to look down from the cliff and confirm with his eyes what he knew in his heart. There was nothing for it but to make the long, lonely hike to the finish and tell the others what had happened.

D.J. had scarcely begun his doleful trek when, from farther down the slope, he heard a terrible, bone-chilling scream that could only have come from Lindsay. The scream ended abruptly.

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

.

Nineteenth Night

The next day was not a school day, so Brett and his mother spent the day engaged in their own affairs. Brett had no homework, having dealt with it the day before; so that night, after he and his mother had dined, he asked to hear 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 campers watching the race stood in a cluster, staring at the Muskies’ monitor in stunned silence. Chris clucked his tongue and remarked, “Ooh, hate to see that happen.” At the moment, though, no one had the presence of mind to call the black-hearted host out on his seeming lack of concern, not that it was likely to have done any good.

Lindsay’s scream snapped everyone out of their trance.

In fairness, even if Lindsay had known what awaited them, it’s doubtful she could have done anything about it. The straightaway to the finish was easily the steepest part of the course, and at its head was a small rise—in effect, a jump.

“Oh, wow!” exclaimed the delighted bombshell as they sailed into the air. “It’s like a ski jump!”

“A ski jump?” Gwen repeated in alarm. The Goth nervously tensed for the impact which, as far as she knew, could come at any moment, and desperately muttered, “Chris is not trying to kill us Chris is not trying to kill us Chris is not trying to kill us Chris is not trying to kill us…”

Lindsay’s delight turned to alarm when she realized they weren’t going to land properly. With most of the vehicle’s weight in the back, it was slowly rotating in the opposite direction from what the girls needed to land safely.

“Lean forward!” Lindsay commanded desperately.

The girls did so, but it wasn’t enough. The ATV landed hard on its rear wheels and flipped ass over tip. Lindsay screamed—that terrible, bone-chilling shriek only she could voice—but her scream was cut short when the front wheel hit the ground with a jarring impact that ejected the riders.

Too terrified to scream again, Lindsay reacted instinctively as her gymnastics training took over. The slope did indeed resemble a ski jumping hill, hard and very steep, and that was what saved her life. Instead of plowing into the soft earth, which would have ended badly for her, Lindsay skipped along the Canadian Shield like a flat stone over a pond. So it was that, with a series of absurdly high-amplitude handsprings and rolls that slowly but surely sapped her speed, the dimwitted but well-coordinated bombshell tumbled down the slope in good form and came to a stop near the finish line, none the worse for having the Grim Reaper hit on her.

Meanwhile, the riderless ATV rolled down the slope, albeit not on its wheels, shedding pieces as it went and veering to the right. What was left of it came to rest a little past the edge of the course, perhaps two-thirds of the way down that final slope.

When Lindsay rejoined her teammates, Chris announced, “The Eagles win the point and the challenge!”

“No way!” Eva protested. “You said they had to finish!”

“Lindsay did,” noted the host.

“You said their ride had to cross!” the unfazed musclegirl shot back. “With them on it!”

“So I did,” Chris admitted. “The thing is, I just said that so everyone would try harder. I didn’t really expect either team to make it all the way down, so the backup plan was to give the point to whoever got the farthest.”

“Stupid hidden rules,” Eva grumbled. “I still think they should have to send someone home, too.”

“They might,” Courtney observed as she looked worriedly up the hill. “Gwen’s not getting up.”

Chris snapped his fingers and Scott answered the summons. At the host’s command, the redheaded redneck and his larger near twin jogged up the slope carrying a stretcher and a first aid kit.

Chris looked pensive and admitted rhetorically, “I feel like I’m forgetting something.”

“What about Zeke?” Beth prompted.

“No, that’s not it. Oh, I know! I’m due for my afternoon massage. But yeah, I guess we need to find the body before the bears do.” The self-absorbed host radioed Chef Hatchet, who was on his way down with Alejandro and Beardo, and updated his aide on the situation, but nothing would be gained by repeating it here. Hatchet, who was normally in charge of intern assignments, replied that Alejandro would coordinate the search when they reached the bottom, since Hatchet himself would obviously be needed in the infirmary.

As the stretcher bearers approached Gwen, they saw movement, so they relaxed a bit. The Goth was alive and conscious, at least, although she gave every sign of being badly hurt.

Scott called to the fallen camper, “Try not to move around too much until we can check you out.”

The redheaded redshirts reached Gwen and did a quick inspection. Remarkably, she showed no sign of concussion. When Scott had verified that Gwen’s neck and spine seemed to be intact, he and his colleague placed the stretcher beside her and gently rolled her onto it. Gwen winced in pain.

The bigger intern whistled softly and said, as if to himself, “She’s beautiful.”

“Thanks,” Gwen replied weakly. “I don’t feel very beautiful right now.”

“She’s only sixteen,” Scott reminded his seemingly lovestruck colleague.

“I’m only twenty,” the huge farm boy replied. “It could work.”

“And I think she already has a boyfriend,” the smaller farm boy added.

“Crap. All the good ones are taken.”

“Give it a couple of days,” Scott counseled. “You’ll find someone else.” To Gwen, he explained, “You’ll have to excuse Rodney. He’s… easily smitten. Not a lot of pretty girls where he comes from, I guess. Can’t say I don’t know the feeling.”

“Don’t tell Heather,” Gwen warned with a wan smile. “She’d exploit it for all it’s worth.”

“Been there, done that,” Rodney admitted. “I’m over her.”

With Gwen distracted, Scott hastily bandaged her left hand and placed if on her belly as gently as he might. This brought another wince of pain, from which Scott deduced that the wounded warrior had other injuries on that side. Gwen did not react when Scott moved her right hand onto her belly, which was an encouraging sign.

“Just lie still,” Scott admonished. “I’m pretty sure you’re in shock.”

When the ATV’s crash landing ejected Lindsay and Gwen, Lindsay’s course had quite by chance kept her clear of the disintegrating vehicle’s debris field. Gwen had not been so lucky. Moreover, the Goth had still been blindfolded, which left her nearly helpless, so all she’d been able to do was instinctively hold out her arms  and hope for the best. Only after she came to a stop could she find a moment to uncover her eyes.

Gwen’s arms had succeeded in protecting her somewhat, but at a terrible cost. What Scott had been so careful to avoid revealing was that the little finger on Gwen’s left hand was crushed and mangled, presumably from being caught between a rock and an ATV part, and little more than a strip of skin kept it attached to her hand. Scott had seen similar injuries when farmers lost arguments with heavy equipment, and he seriously doubted that the finger could be saved, but that was not his call.

The stretcher bearers reached the bottom of the hill at about the same time as Chef, Beardo and Alejandro arrived. D.J. was with them, having flagged the staffers down as they passed by.

The sorrowful brickhouse held up Ezekiel’s hood and said, “I tried, guys. I really did.” He began to explain what had happened, but Duncan cut him off.

“We know, dude. We saw everything. I still can’t believe it.”

Courtney asked, “Chris, do you mind if we help with the search?”

“Knock yourself out,” the host replied with a shrug. “The challenge is over, so there’s nothing left on today’s agenda. But I’m out of here. I’m late for my massage.”

As the searchers dispersed, Ella began to sing a searching song. Small animals converged on her position, as they often did; but while these woodland creatures were sensitive to the honey-throated redshirt’s desires on an empathic level, she could not actually converse with them any more than you or I, and so could not give them complex instructions.  That was where Dawn came in. The mystic could instruct Ella’s “groupies”; but while Dawn could summon animals in certain situations, she could not do so with the Singer’s casual ease. With their unique talents working hand in glove, these two children of Nature made as fine a search team as you would ever hope to employ.

To this effort, Dawn added two special friends. Shortly after arriving on the island, she had rescued and befriended two gulls who were being slowly throttled by plastic six-pack rings. The mystic had named these birds “Reflection” and “Remembrance”, for she felt these qualities were lacking in the world.

Prokofiev - Alexander Nevsky 6 Field of the Dead

Ella began to sing a searching song

I shall go across the snow-clad field,
I shall fly above the field of death,
I shall search for valiant warriors there.
Those to me betrothed, stalwart men and staunch.
Here lies one who was felled by the sabers wild,
Here lies one impaled by an arrow shaft.
From their wounds warm, red blood like the rain was
Shed on our native soil, on our Russian fields.
He who fell for Russia in noble death
Shall be blest by my kiss on his dead eyes.
And to him, brave lad, who remained alive,
I shall be a true wife and a loving friend.
I’ll not be wed to a handsome man:
Earthly charm and beauty fade fast and die,
I’ll be wed to the man who’s brave.
Hark ye, warriors brave, lionhearted men!

In the fullness of time, one of Dawn’s gulls brought back a blood-soaked strip of cloth. Ezekiel’s blindfold. The mystic took this garment in her hands and looked upon it for a time with unfocused gaze. Ella looked on curiously, guessed that her friend was trying to sense psychic impressions from the fabric, and softly sang a song of mysteries.

Beth and Courtney joined Alejandro on the beach where most of the searchers had congregated.  These three were the first to find the main wreckage of the Muskies’ ill-fated ATV, but they saw no sign of Ezekiel. As they spread out from the wreck, they found more ATV parts, but still no Ezekiel.

Courtney looked up the cliff face and realized it was not as sheer as they had assumed. Although most people wouldn’t have been able to scale it without specialized equipment, a number of shrubs and stunted trees had found purchase and were eking out a meager living in that inhospitable environment.

“He must have tried to jump for it,” Courtney suggested to her teammate as they struggled gamely against the tears that threatened to burst forth at any moment. “We’ll probably find him closer to the cliff.”

“Senoritas! I have news!”

Courtney and Beth, as well as a few other searchers who happened to overhear, rushed to Alejandro, who explained. “Dawn called and said one of her little friends found the blindfold. It had a lot of blood on it, but she said she could not sense death from it, and she thinks she should have if our missing man had met his end while wearing it.

“Dawn’s theory is that Ezekiel used his blindfold to stanch the bleeding from a wound, then discarded it. If he lived long enough to do that, there’s a good chance he lives still.

“Everyone, scan the cliff face. If he hasn’t fallen, then he’s probably in one of those trees or bushes, but look also for any rock crevices or ledges that might be big enough to hold him.” Alejandro promptly raised his field glasses and did as he had counseled the other searchers to do.

After a time, the big Latino pointed to a spot on the cliff face and announced, “And there he is. Alive, you’ll be happy to know.” He quickly radioed his findings to the other search teams.

Beth and Courtney looked along Alejandro’s outstretched arm and spotted Ezekiel in one of the trees growing from the cliff face, perhaps fifteen meters from the cliff top and a fair lateral distance from where he went over. He was waving one arm in a desperate attempt to get their attention; but with his clothing matching the foliage reasonably well, neither of his teammates would have spotted him with unaided eyes if they hadn’t known where to look.

Having found the farm boy, there remained the question of how best to get him down. As Beth expressed her hope that he wasn’t hurt, Dawn suggested a solution.

“I’m sending you a hawk that came to Ella,” the animal whisperer announced via radio. “It can carry a handset up to him.”

“You two make things so easy for us sometimes,” Alejandro admitted in admiration.

“We get that a lot,” Dawn replied smugly.

When Ezekiel received the handset, he reported that he was not seriously hurt as far as he knew. His voice was thin and raspy, and was only now coming back to him; for losing one’s voice is a common stress reaction, and this was why the searchers had not heard his calls for help. They could hear him well enough over the radio, though; and whilst the searchers waited for rescue gear that they had not dared hope they would need, the prairie boy regaled a rapt audience with the harrowing tale of how he had come to his present predicament.

As his ATV began its fateful plunge, Ezekiel managed to jump into a small tree, but his momentum and weight were too much for it. The trunk split, gashing his cheek in the process. With what remained of that tree threatening to give way at any moment, he swung to a nearby ledge that was little more than a handhold, and thence to a nearby bush. Safe for the moment, he paused to stanch his bleeding cheek with his blindfold and to contemplate his next move.

Although that meager refuge was much closer to the cliff top than to the bottom, the area immediately above proved unclimbable; so when Ezekiel saw signs that the bush would probably not hold his weight until he could be rescued, he hopscotched his way along the cliff until he came to the tree where the searchers ultimately found him. Although that tree was large enough and secure enough to give him succor from his immediate peril, it also proved to be a dead end. There were no usable handholds within reach, and he could not return the way he had come.

“And that’s how I wound up stuck in this tree,” Ezekiel concluded, his voice back to normal.

As Chef’s plane passed by in the distance, heading in the general direction of Sudbury, Dawn and Ella appeared on mooseback at the top of the cliff. Alejandro quickly guided them to stand directly above Ezekiel’s tree.

Beth brightened. “Oh, I get it. They’re going to drop a rope to him and have their moose haul him up. Neat!”

That was the theory, but in practice it wasn’t so simple. It took the magical girls several tries to get the rope to the stranded farm boy, and the failed attempts revealed projections and other obstacles of such type and number that would seriously complicate retrieval. It was time for Plan B.

“We’ll set up a zip line,” Alejandro radioed to Ezekiel. “We’ve got an experienced climber on our staff, so we’ll send him down to you. If he starts talking about zombies, just go with the flow.”

“Zombies?” Beth asked skeptically.

Courtney explained, “It’s a trendy way to practice emergency preparedness. The premise is that if you’re ready for a zombie apocalypse, you’re ready for anything. Which may be true, but it’s a little too fanciful for my taste.”

In the fullness of time, the climber descended to Ezekiel’s position. This lanky redshirt had unkempt brown hair, rather long for a boy, and a soul patch on his lip. He had an indefinably “stoner” air about him when he was silent, but his speech betrayed a chronically wary manner; and sure enough, it didn’t take him long to start giving Ezekiel pointers on how to cope with a takeover by the walking dead. The intern knew his stuff, though; and barely five minutes after introducing himself to Ezekiel, they had their feet safely on solid ground.

The intern, whose name was Shawn but whose colleagues liked to call him “ZB” (short for “Zombie Bait”, although he thought it stood for “Zombie Beater”) looked up the cliff and gave a low whistle. “How did you end up in that tree?” he asked Ezekiel. “It looks too far from the top to just fall into without seriously messing you up, or breaking it, or both.” Ezekiel explained again how he had come to the tree, but nothing would be gained by repeating it here.

“Have you ever thought about taking up rock climbing?” ZB asked. “If you managed to get that far without equipment and without being able to plan your route, I’d say you’ve got some talent. Not to mention it’s a great last-ditch way to escape a zombie horde.”

“He did win a rock climbing challenge for us this morning,” Courtney noted, “so, yeah, I’d say he’s got talent.”

“I helped, remember,” Beth protested.

“We haven’t forgotten that,” Courtney assured her. “Trust me.”

“I sure haven’t, eh?” Ezekiel seconded with an appreciative smile to the farm girl. Beth smiled shyly in response.

The searchers brought Ezekiel back to camp and a hero’s welcome. The other campers knew the basics of his adventure (for Dawn and Ella had brought the news before dismissing their moose with thanks and a bit of fresh produce for its trouble) but were eager to hear the details. Bible Boy’s descriptions of his ordeal invariably boiled down to some variation of, “Someone was watching over me.”

Ezekiel was happy for the attention—especially from the girls, most of whom didn’t normally have much to do with him—but Courtney noticed that one camper in particular seemed preoccupied and his accolades forced. Courtney had heard all the details her protégé cared to reveal on the way back to camp, but she didn’t want to detract from his “king for a day” reception; so she dutifully waited until the admiring throng had learned everything they wanted to know and finally allowed Ezekiel to go to the infirmary to get his cheek tended to. Only then did Courtney pull the brooding camper aside.

“Cody, what’s wrong?”

And that is how Courtney learned that she would have to finish investigating the love notes alone.

As the sun sank low in the western sky, Chris announced via loudspeaker that each team was to send to his trailer the one of their number who had performed worst in the cooking challenge three days before, to perform a punishment. It was a foregone conclusion that the Eagles would send Lindsay. The Muskies had a much harder time of it, for everyone had performed competently; and while Ezekiel was probably the most logical choice, his teammates didn’t have the heart to send him after what he had just been through. The farm boy’s cheek had been slashed from eye to jaw, a wound that required several stitches to close and earned him a new nickname; so after much deliberation and a second call from Chris, Duncan gamely volunteered to take the fall for his good friend, “Zipperface”. The delinquent assured his teammates that he could take anything Chris could dish out.

This unpleasant duty done, Courtney resumed her investigation. Beth and Eva professed ignorance of the mysterious love notes, although Beth suggested that perhaps Noah had written them. Eva, on the other hand, didn’t think Noah was behind it because she couldn’t imagine who on the island would have caught his eye; but the musclegirl couldn’t hazard a guess at who else might have such knowledge of love poetry. Both of Courtney’s remaining female teammates asked her to let them know if her investigation turned up anything.

As Courtney pondered her next move, she spied Dawn near the Craft Services tent, which was where the interns took their meals, and flagged the mystic down. The onetime CIT quickly explained the nature of her quest.

“It’s so romantic!” Ella cooed, for the Singer was also seeking her supper and had arrived partway through Courtney’s exposition.

“It is, kind of,” Courtney admitted. “Anyway, Dawn, I’ve heard… and, seen… that you can do certain things the rest of us can’t. I was hoping you could be persuaded to help me get to the bottom of this.”

The wraith-girl shook her head. “It’s not my place.”

“But I’ll bet you could find out if you wanted to, if you don’t know already,” Courtney pressed.

“Of course I know. So does Ella, but she can’t tell you either.” Dawn emphasized this point with a warning glance at her friend, who looked crestfallen but made no protest. “Even if Chris would allow me to get involved in the players’ social interactions, I wouldn’t want to cheapen the payoff. Admit it; you’re having fun doing this.”

Courtney smiled sheepishly. “I see your point.”

“I can tell you this: put aside your preconceptions. You’re closer to the truth than you know.”

Not long after, the campers got their dinner call. As they came into the lodge, they saw that Chef had still not returned from flying Gwen to a Sudbury hospital, so Chris had assigned the teams’ “Tributes” to prepare the campers’ dinner. Chris being Chris, though, he didn’t want to give the campers any more respite from Chef’s cooking than he had to, and this was not lost on the campers. As Ezekiel quipped to Beth, “This explains why he wanted our worst cooks instead of our best, eh?”

After a simple supper which was unremarkable in an absolute sense, but seemed like the food of the gods compared to what the campers usually got from Chef, Chris came into the lodge and called for attention. He held several envelopes in one hand.

“We have some unfinished business,” the host explained. “First is the Eagles’ reward for winning the challenge. In keeping with the challenge’s ‘trust’ theme, each Eagle will secretly choose a teammate’s reward.”

The Arbiter of Fates held up his fistful of envelopes. “Each Eagle gets one of these envelopes with a teammate’s name on it. Each envelope contains a card with three reward options. You must choose one for the teammate named on your envelope. Cody will choose for Lindsay, Heather will choose for Leshawna, Katie will choose for Cody, Leshawna will choose for Heather, and Lindsay will choose for Katie. No trading.”

“What about Gwen?” Katie asked. Despite Dawn’s assurances that the warding charm was working as expected, and that Gwen’s injuries had nothing to do with the spirit world and everything to do with the fact that the ATV race was insanely dangerous, Katie couldn’t help feeling responsible.

“I’m getting to that,” Chris replied with a brief glare of irritation at being interrupted. “As I was saying, some of the reward choices are better than others. Some are fabulous, some are nice, and some are better than nothing, but you won’t necessarily have one of each type. That’s where the ‘trust’ part comes in. If your chooser says they gave you the best reward available, you’ll just have to take their word for it. Or not.” The sadistic host grinned wickedly and admitted, “Personally, I’d rather you didn’t. More drama that way.

“There is a drop box in the confessional for your completed forms. Don’t even think about trying to tamper with it,” Chris added with a warning glance at Duncan. The scorner of laws responded with his best, “Who, me, Officer?” look.

“I’ll announce the results tomorrow at breakfast, so you have to make your choices before then. Any questions?”

There were none, so Chris continued. “The other loose end is today’s med-evac. Several of you have asked about Gwen. Long story short, she’s pretty messed up. A separated shoulder, a couple of cracked ribs, a broken wrist, and she lost a finger, plus a bunch of little stuff.”

“So… she’s out?” Heather ventured hopefully. She had winced in spite of herself at the grisly litany; but she also recognized that Gwen’s departure, however unpleasant the circumstances, would make Cody easier to manage.

“Try not to sound too happy,” Leshawna grumbled.

“My show of sympathy won’t change what happened,” the queen bee sniffed. “That’s on Chris’ head. And in case you forgot, we’re still in an elimination game.”

Chris motioned to the camera crew to take a break and clicked a remote control to turn off the stationary cameras in the lodge. What the host had to say now was for the campers’ ears only.

“Believe it or not,” Chris confided, “there is a chance Gwen could be back. She’s right-handed, her worst injuries are on her left side, and most of them sound worse than they really are. And let’s face it, she’s tough. Looking at the next few challenges, I think she could theoretically handle them. Either they’re not really physical, or they have room for reasonable accommodation.

“Playing favorites much?” Heather griped. “Not that I miss Noah or anything, but you didn’t bend the rules for him. I’d understand if it was me, since you wouldn’t have much of a show without me, but what’s Gothie given you that Brainiac didn’t?”

“Drama,” Chris replied tersely. “Almost in spite of herself, Gwen’s given us great drama, and I have big plans for her. And you’re right, Heather, I’d have done the same for you.” The Lord of the Game would be put to the test on his claim, but that is another story for another time.

“Anywho,” Chris continued, “Chef says everything depends on how bad Gwen’s shoulder is. That’s why he flew her to the hospital, to get an MRI on it. If it turns out that she needs surgery, then yeah, she’d be done. We’ll know more in the morning.”

Later that evening, Heather sat in the confessional and prepared to name Leshawna’s reward. The dragon girl made a show of looking over the options, although she had already made her choice. She gave the camera a sour look and sneered, “Seriously, Chris? Did you honestly think I would even consider giving Homie an invincibility idol? That’s too dangerous to give an ally, let alone an enemy.”

In a more analytical tone, Heather explained for the audience, “My other options are a gift basket of exotic cheeses or a TDI keychain. If I give her the keychain, everyone will know I picked the lamest option. The cheese basket sounds nice enough that people might believe me if I say I gave her the best thing I could; so if I give her that, I might be able to sucker her into thinking I want to bury the hatchet. Which I do, dear viewers, I do.” Heather allowed herself a wicked grin as she added, “Three guesses where I’d like to bury it. Maybe I’ll get lucky and she’ll be lactose intolerant or something.”

Although Heather could not have known, Leshawna did indeed have a bad cheese experience in her past, but that is another story for another time.

Heather stepped out of the “confession can” to find Cody patiently waiting his turn. She greeted her semi-ally warmly and suggested, with a flirtatious touch on his arm, “Give Lindsay something nice, okay? She’s very useful.”

Cody grinned his goofy grin and assured her, “As if I wouldn’t want to give a girl like Lindsay nice things.”

“Point taken,” Heather acknowledged, and left the science geek to his business.

In the confessional, Cody explained his options much as Heather had, but without the snark. “All three of the choices I have sound pretty nice, and I’m sure Lindsay would like them. There’s a shopping spree at the Tuck Shoppe, a phone call, and… an invincibility idol.

“I’d love to give Lindsay the idol, because she’d totally owe me a favor, but it’s too dangerous. It doesn’t say whether there are any restrictions on how or when it can be used, so I have to assume the worst. I’d trust Gwen with it—I’d trust Gwen with anything—but everyone knows Lindsay is under Heather’s thumb. If I give Lindsay this idol without knowing if it can be transferred, I’d bet good money that it would end up in Heather’s hands. I do kind of like Heather and she’s crazy hot, and I guess I even trust her up to a point—it does look like she’s been keeping her promise to be nicer to Gwen—but I don’t trust her that much. She is the genre-savvy strategist, after all. At least, that’s what she keeps telling me.”

.

Once More into the Breach

As the Eagles made their decisions, certain Muskies contemplated a much weightier decision of their own. Eva emerged from the washroom to find D.J. waiting for her, and the brickhouse invited the steel maiden to join him for a lakeshore stroll.

These teammates made small talk until they reached the shore. D.J. then asked, “Have you thought about who you’re going to vote for?”

“It’s a tough call,” Eva admitted. “We didn’t have anyone who obviously dropped the ball in the challenge. It might just come down to whom I like and whom I don’t.”

“So, would you be willing to join me in voting off Homeschool?” D.J. ventured hopefully.

“Maybe,” Eva admitted, “although it does seem kind of harsh to kick him off after he nearly got killed in the challenge. Any particular reason you want him gone now instead of later?”

“He killed Bunny. You know that.”

The musclegirl sighed in exasperation. “Are you still hung up on that stupid rabbit? Look, D.J., we’ve been over this. Homeschool’s not my favorite person, either, but he’s been pulling his weight in the challenges and Courtney seems to be making progress with his ‘re-education’. For now, that’s good enough for me. I’ll vote against him if you give me a good reason, but I’m going to need something better than revenge for a rabbit.”

“Then do it for yourself,” D.J. suggested. “I’ve heard talk that some of our teammates want to send you home tomorrow night.”

Remarkably, Eva didn’t respond with the sort of towering rage that her campmates had too often seen. Instead, she merely sighed again, and her normally stern expression softened to the point that it was almost pitiable.

“Yeah, that wouldn’t surprise me after the way I decked Duncan,” she admitted. “I’ve never understood why you guys like him so much. Personally, I think he’s a royal asshole. At least Homeschool thinks girls are good for more than one thing.”

Eva considered her options, and her shoulders slumped. “You win,” she finally conceded. “I’ll vote with you.”

The next morning was notable for what it didn’t have: a wakeup call. Chris had decided to let the campers sleep in, the better to prepare a certain surprise. It was almost ten o’clock before enough campers were up and about for Chef Hatchet to sound the call to breakfast.

As the well-rested campers regarded their repast with newfound revulsion, noticing flaws that would have escaped their previously sleep-deprived senses, Chris came to his customary announcement position. The campers promptly gave him their full attention, the better to take their minds off of what they were putting into their bodies.

“Last night, the Eagles decided on each other’s rewards for winning the trust challenge. Cody gave Lindsay a five-minute phone call to anyone she wants.”

“Can I call Justin at wherever the losers are staying?” the formerly blonde bombshell asked excitedly.

“There are some things he wouldn’t be allowed to talk about, but sure, you can if you want,” Chris assured her.

As the host was saying this last, Cody leaned over to Leshawna and murmured, “Incoming squee! Impact in three… two… one…”

“EEEEEEEEE!”

Chris uncovered his ringing ears and continued. “Heather gave Leshawna a gift basket of fancy cheeses.”

Visibly impressed, yet still a little wary, the homegirl turned to her nemesis. “Trying to make amends? I’m cool with that. Even if it wasn’t what I would have picked myself, it sounds nice.”

Heather explained, “I’m ruthless, not vindictive.”

“Katie gave Cody a Total Drama Island DVD set, to be delivered when it’s released. Cody will be able to relive all his humiliating moments again and again.”

Katie gave Chris a sour look and shot back, “He can fondly remember the peeps he met here. It’ll be like a video yearbook.”

Cody favored his teammate with what he thought was a suave smile but was actually his characteristic goofy grin. “I’m going with your interpretation. Thanks, Katie.”

“Leshawna gave Heather a genuine TDI coffee mug.”

Heather sniped, “I take it the other choices were worthwhile.”

“Would you have preferred a ‘romantic date’ with Owen?” the homegirl retorted. “That was on my card, too. Some of us might have actually liked to see him again, but I figured you wouldn’t. It didn’t say whether the ‘date’ came with a breathing mask.”

“I see your point,” the dragon girl admitted with a shudder. She later added in the confessional, “I doubt Leshawna’s clever enough to make up something like that on the spot. As much as it galls me, I have to give her the benefit of the doubt on this.”

“My other option was—” Leshawna began, but Chris cut her off.

“Save it, Leshawna. It’s no fun if everyone knows what all your options were. And last but not least, Lindsay gave Katie a five-star dinner under the stars, with the camper of her choice—except for the one who awarded it to her.”

Katie pondered for a moment and pronounced, “I owe Ezekiel a favor. I choose him.”

The farm boy’s first instinct was to protest. He was certain that Katie was referring to the phobia challenge, and he had made it plain at the time that she owed him nothing. He kept silent, though, for a nice dinner was a nice dinner; and if accepting Katie’s offer served to convince her that they were square, he would not say her nay. Besides, without Sadie to bring out Katie’s inner child, the Thin Twin was pleasant enough company.

“Thanks, Katie,” Ezekiel acknowledged. “I’d be happy to join you.”

Chris said, “There’s one more thing. Two of you had the chance to give your esteemed teammate an invincibility idol.” A buzz of hushed conversation arose, and the host’s little black heart was made glad, for he knew he had succeeded in planting seeds of doubt. “But neither of you did, so I’ve got two invincibility idols burning holes in my pocket.” The Lord of Wawanakwa’s voice rose slightly as he asked, “What am I to do with them?”

That was the cue for a certain Goth to come out of the kitchen, to various reactions of disbelief from the other campers. This, of course, was why Chris had let the campers sleep in: the better to smuggle the wounded warrior into camp unnoticed. The new arrival had her left arm in a sling, a waterproof cast on her left wrist, and heavy bandaging on her unnaturally narrow left hand.

Ever the showman, Chris turned to his “lovely assistant” and asked theatrically, “Gwen, you helped win the challenge for your team, but you haven’t gotten your reward yet. Would you like a couple of mint condition invincibility idols?”

As the other campers gasped, Gwen replied, “I daresay I would.” Her tone was dry, but she couldn’t suppress a giddy grin.

Chris reached into his trouser pockets and drew forth two small wooden busts of… himself, naturally. These he dropped into Gwen’s sling and explained, “These are good until the teams merge, and anyone who steals them won’t be able to use them, so you’re basically untouchable for the rest of the team phase. Don’t let it go to your head, though, or I might change the expiry date. I still expect you to do your best in the challenges, even if your best isn’t as good as it used to be.”

Gwen looked her benefactor straight in the eye and said, “Noted.”

Heather raised her hand and was duly acknowledged. Dreading the answer, but needing to know, she asked, “Can Gwen give either of those idols to anyone else?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” Chris answered coyly. “No point in worrying about it unless she tries.” He motioned to Gwen to join her teammates at their table, and took his leave.

The Goth quickly became the center of attention from both her teammates and the Muskies. Everyone wanted to know how badly she had been hurt, how she was going to handle the challenges in her current state, whether she was out of her mind for returning to this hellish game when she had a chance to get out honorably, what might induce her to part with one of those precious idols, and so on. Most of all, they wanted to know why Chris was protecting her so openly, but Gwen could shed no light on the host’s motives.

“Because you don’t know, or because you’re not allowed to talk about it?” Courtney pressed.

“Because I don’t know. He did tell me I was good for ratings, but that hardly seems to explain it. I’m sure lots of us are good for ratings.”

Concerning her shoulder, Gwen explained, “They called it a Type Three separation. They said that’s the worst type that can heal decently without surgery. It’s going to be a while before I can do much with that arm, and they said it could be three months before I’m good as new.”

Gwen’s campmates eventually dispersed to attend to their own affairs. Courtney lingered; and when everyone else had gone, the onetime CIT informed her fellow detective that the love note investigation had reached an impasse. “The people who know aren’t talking, beyond what we’d already learned,” Courtney reported. “I tried to ‘cheat’, if you want to call it that, by asking Dawn. She has to know, and she said she knows, but she wouldn’t tell me. She did say I should put aside my preconceptions, but I haven’t been able to figure out what she meant.”

“Why didn’t I think of that?” Gwen asked rhetorically. “Asking Dawn, I mean. She probably wouldn’t have told me, either, but still. As for your preconceptions, that sounds reasonable, but it’s pretty vague.”

“Mystic advice usually is,” Courtney observed.

Darkness had fallen over the island, with the barest hint of light lingering on the western horizon, when the Muskies gathered at the bonfire to see their bittersweet duty done. When the teens had taken their seats in front of the bonfire as per custom, Chris stood before them with his marshmallow tray.

“I have to give it up to you kids,” the host began in his usual camera mugging style. “This was the first challenge in a while where no one seriously messed up. That didn’t save you yesterday, though, and it won’t save you tonight, because it’s the nature of this game that there has to be a loser. It’s the nature of this game that someone has to go home. So who’s ready to walk the Dock of Shame and catch a ride on the boat of Losers for the one-way Voyage of the Damned?

“Six of you will be safe tonight, and will live to fight another day. And I do mean fight.” Chris’ choice of words was not idle, for he had deigned to give the Muskies a hint as to the nature of the next challenge, as the survivors and the viewing audience would discover in due course.

The Arbiter of Fates declared, “The first marshmallow of the night goes to… Beth.”

Although the nerd girl had no reason to believe she might be at risk this night, she nevertheless sighed in relief. She gratefully received her marshmallow and took her place at the host’s right hand.

“Also safe,” decreed the Arbiter, “are… Duncan… Tyler… Courtney… and D.J.”

With the ranks of the blessed assembled behind him, Chris fixed his gaze on the farm boy and the musclegirl and intoned, “And then there were two. Two campers, that is, one of whom is about to become an ‘ex’, because there’s only one marshmallow left.” Beyond these words, the screen-hogging host also recited a good deal of boilerplate.

“Both of you are in the Bottom Two for the first time. Eva, you’re on the chopping block because some people don’t like you when you’re angry, and you still get angry pretty easily. Ezekiel, you’re on the block because some people have long memories.

“The last marshmallow of the night goes to…”

Chris hammed it up and stretched it out and made the last two Muskies squirm as a matter of course. In the end, though, the devout farm boy was saved.

Most of Eva’s teammates said their goodbyes en route to the dock. The finished episode did not show any of this, but instead showed the customary spliced-in confessional spot from one of the ousted camper’s ex-teammates. In this episode, that role fell to Courtney.

“It has to be Eva,” Courtney said as she cast her vote. “She’s done some good things for us, but I’m afraid there’s going to be bloodshed if she and Duncan both stay. Duncan’s somehow gotten the idea that I’m crushing on him—as if anyone would be—so I’d rather get rid of him, but I don’t have the votes.”

When the Muskies arrived at the dock, the Eagles were waiting for them. With only a dozen campers remaining, there was enough room at the base of the dock for both teams, so Chris had “suggested” that everyone be present for the sendoffs from that point on. Those Eagles who wished to say goodbye to the condemned quickly did so, but one felt the need to speak at greater length.

“Take care of yourself, girl,” Leshawna said. “Since we weren’t on the same team, I was hoping we’d both make the merge.”

“Yeah, being on opposite teams kind of sucked, but what can you do?” replied the musclegirl. “For what it’s worth, I consider you one of the best things about this lame game.”

“Thanks, that means a lot. I know you don’t make friends easily. But if you don’t mind my asking, why’d you get the boot? I sure didn’t see it coming.”

“My temper got the better of me. Again.”

“For whacking Duncan during the challenge?”

“That’s what I heard. Anyway, I’m not a hugger, but…” The musclegirl extended her hand, which Leshawna clasped with her own.

As Hatchet began to toll the bell, Eva started down the dock. D.J. said, in a voice that seemed meant to be overheard, “Don’t sweat it, Ty. There are other ‘diamond maids’.”

Eva froze.

For a moment, she was too stunned even to turn round, and a widening of her eyes was the only sign that she hadn’t been completely paralyzed. The steel maiden had never been the type to seek out male companionship, but neither was she the type to reject it out of hand if offered unbidden.

Behind her, Ezekiel prodded the mystery poet. “Don’t just stand there, go to her. You’ve waited long enough, eh?”

With the same enthusiasm he displayed in his athletic endeavors, Tyler bounded the short distance to his crush girl. With the same poor eye for distance he had shown on the diving cliff, he accidentally slammed into Eva, who had recovered from her shock and had turned round just in time to meet his rush.

The next thing Eva knew, she was flat on her back, with Tyler atop her in a reasonable facsimile of the “R-rated sex” position. Tyler realized this and hastily rolled off, but made no immediate move to get up. Instead, he simply lay beside her, propped up on one elbow.

As Eva assumed a similar attitude and the “funeral bell” fell silent, she declared, “We have got to work on your coordination.”

Tyler sprang to his feet and answered, as he offered Eva a hand up, “We will work on whatever you want.”

When Eva regained her feet, she grabbed Tyler by the front of his tracksuit with her free hand and pulled him gently but irresistibly toward her. “C’mere, klutz.”

As their lips met, to a chorus of “Awww” from the other girls, Eva heard footsteps on the dock behind her. Without breaking their kiss, she casually pulled her no-longer-secret admirer around, placing Tyler between her and the approaching footfalls. A few moments later, with lips still locked, she opened one eye, fixed it on the approaching Chef Hatchet, and growled softly.

Although Hatchet could have won any serious disagreement, he backed off and waited impatiently for the new couple to complete its leavetaking. Eva and Tyler did not do so quickly.

Looking on, Gwen smiled and shook her head. “I would never have pegged Tyler as a poet,” she admitted.

Cody, who was rarely farther away from Gwen than circumstances required, was happy to explain. “He isn’t, really. Noah was feeding him love poems. You know how much Noah reads.”

“But Noah’s not here any more,” Courtney pointed out. “We found one of Tyler’s notes just this morning.”

“When Noah was in the infirmary, he asked to see Tyler,” Cody explained. “He knew we were going to vote him off because he wasn’t fit to continue, so he probably left Ty a stockpile.”

Duncan, who liked to hover in Courtney’s vicinity, albeit not to the same extent and not as obtrusively as Cody with Gwen, overheard and added, “I would never have guessed that love poetry would make an impression on Evil, but Bookworm really had her pegged. He’s got some matchmaker in him.”

Gwen and Courtney stared at each other in wonderment. Had all the boys known about this?

When Courtney finally inquired, Duncan replied dismissively, “you chicks might not get along, but we guys are as tight as a family. Guys rule!”

“So how long have you ‘tight as a family’ guys known about this?” Gwen asked.

“Almost from the beginning,” Cody admitted. “Noah mapped out Ty’s whole campaign for him.”

“Yeah,” Duncan confirmed. “She’s not the prettiest face, but she’s got a nice bod and Tyler respects her athleticism. Besides, he’s so used to getting hurt that he can probably take anything she can dish out if he does get on her bad side.” Duncan rubbed his temple and winced, wishing for the moment that he had Tyler’s resilience. “And, if there was a chance that having an admirer might mellow Evil a little, then we were all for it.”

“How long has this been going on?” Gwen asked. “I found a note before the camping challenge. I presume it was his.”

“He’s into Amazons, so he’s had his eye on her pretty much from the day we got here,” Duncan explained. “To him, her temper was just a challenge. The dodgeball match was when he really fell for her.”

On the dock, meanwhile, the new couple had finally separated. Hatchet had granted them a stay until he returned to the boat and started ringing the bell again. When the bell tolled anew, Eva was ready, and walked the Dock of Shame with a light heart.

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

The musclegirl boarded the boat, turned and called to Tyler. “Don’t let me see you before the finale!”

“I hear and obey!” Tyler called back with a wave and a smile. “And tell Noah we owe him one!”

Ezekiel sidled up to the jock of all trades and said, “I’d normally do it, but tonight I think it’s your place, eh?”

Tyler looked confused for a moment, but it didn’t take him long to realize what the farm boy meant. So it was that, as the Loser Boat pulled away from the dock, Tyler led the singing of the Pie Jesu in his bargain basement baritone.

Brett mused, “Tyler and Eva. I saw that coming a click away.”

His mother admitted, “In hindsight, it’s weird that more of us didn’t. The signs were there. Tyler liked to hang around Eva, although he was subtler about it than Cody, for example; and Tyler and Eva were paired in more challenges than random chance would suggest. In fact, I’m sure D.J. deliberately paired them up in the cooking challenge, since he knew what was going on, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Chris had the same idea with the trapeze catch.”

Brett admitted in turn, “What I don’t get is why Tyler waited until Eva was eliminated.”

“A couple of reasons, I think. First, I’m sure he wasn’t expecting her to get cut before the teams merged. Although Eva could be trying for her teammates to be around, she was undeniably useful. Second, everyone knew how competitive she was. Tyler—and Noah, for that matter—probably thought she wouldn’t want the distraction. That’s what the love notes were all about: getting past the cold, no-nonsense exterior to the teenage girl underneath who had the same needs and desires as the rest of us. Ice without, fire within, hence ‘Diamond Maid’. The fact that diamond is the hardest known material probably also had something to do with that description.”

The night was not far advanced, so Brett’s mother paused a few moments to collect her thoughts, and then continued with her tale.

.

Episode #12: The Tale of the Boot Camp

Original title: Basic Straining

The next morning, after the standard substandard breakfast impostor, Heather called her vassals to an alliance meeting.

“We have a problem,” the queen bee began without preamble. “I assumed that if we had to go to elimination, we’d boot either Gwen or Leshawna. But now, Gwen’s off the table thanks to Chris throwing his weight around. But the bigger problem, in more ways than one, is that Chris might let Gothie give away one of those idols of hers, and she’s pretty tight with Leshawna. If Gwen tries to protect Leshawna and Chris allows it, then we’d have to vote off someone in our alliance. I’m sorry, Katie, but that would probably mean you.”

“What about Cory?” Lindsay asked. “He’s not in our alliance, is he?”

“It’s a little different with boys,” the Dragon Queen explained. “True, Cody doesn’t hang with us, which is just as well, considering how he drapes himself over Gwen, but he usually votes with us and he’s our ear in the boy’s cabin. I consider him part of our alliance in everything but name, and he’s not expendable yet.”

“That’s so unfair!” Katie pouted. “I’ve done everything you asked!”

“Yes, you have,” Heather admitted, “even if you sometimes had to be dragged kicking and screaming into it, but that’s not important right now. What’s important is that the next time we go to the bonfire, we’ll be in a bind.”

“There has to be another way!” Katie pleaded.

“Only one that I can see.” Heather fixed her vassals with a steely gaze to conceal her own fear and grimly declared, “We have to win out. We can’t afford another elimination before the merge.”

Gwen and Leshawna, meanwhile, were having a strategy session of their own. These girls had previously shown little interest the game’s strategic aspects, as has been told of before, and the Goth had thereby squandered a chance to form an alliance that might have been able to overpower Heather’s; but Gwen’s invincibility idols, however short-lived, had opened their eyes.

“Let’s face it,” Leshawna said with a shake of her head. “We’re in trouble. We’re tight and all, but we’re really going to have to stick together if we want to stay in the game. Speaking of which, did you know about those idols beforehand?”

“Not the idols, specifically,” Gwen admitted, “but I did have a deal. When I was at the hospital and found out that I wouldn’t need surgery, I still didn’t want to come back here. I figured I’d just make a fool of myself. Or maybe people would pity me, which is even worse in some ways. Whatever, Chef seemed to understand.”

“Chef’s chill, even if he does like to play nasty for the cameras.”

“I know, right? Anyway, he told me that my injuries weren’t so bad that I couldn’t come back, but they were bad enough that no one would think less of me if I bailed. It was pretty clear that he wanted me to hang tough and come back, though.”

“Tough people admire toughness,” the homegirl noted. “I heard about how he treated Sadie when she and Katie nearly bought it. A real ‘father to his men’.”

“A hundred grand is a lot of money,” Gwen admitted, “but I didn’t see any real chance anymore of actually getting it. So, yeah, I was going to bail.

“Chef called Chris and told him I wanted out. Then he handed me the phone and said Chris wanted to talk to me. Chris said I’d been good for the show’s ratings, and that he was willing to make a deal to convince me to stay in the game. The rest you know.”

“You drive a hard bargain, girl.”

“That’s not all. He said that if I don’t make it to the cash zone, I’ll still get the same as the seventh place finisher.”

“Twenty-five hundred in the bank, just for trying? Nice work if you can get it.”

“Chris can be pretty generous when he’s playing with other people’s money.”

Leshawna smiled knowingly. “But knowing you, I’m sure you’d rather earn it.”

“It would mean more that way, even if it spends the same.”

“I hear you,” the homegirl seconded. “But that brings us back to our problem. I’m liable to be out if we lose again before the merge. In fact, I’m not sure why I’m still here. The night Sadie left, I thought I was dead.”

“Yeah, that was weird. Somebody didn’t vote the way they were expected to vote, but the people who know aren’t talking. I have to wonder if Chris wasn’t in on it somehow. I know now as well as anyone that he’s willing to pull strings.”

“I’m liable to need some strings pulled if I’m going to make the merge.”

Now the knowing smile was Gwen’s. “You don’t like to take charity either. What you’re trying so hard to ask me without asking me is if I’d give you one of my idols. I’d like to, but we’ll really have to wait and see. Two idols is probably more than I’ll need, in which case I’d be happy to give you one, assuming that I’m allowed to and assuming they’re actually good for anything and aren’t just for show. Maybe I’m supposed to use an idol to get votes against me thrown out, or maybe Chris will just tell everyone that they can’t vote for me in the first place.”

“So, basically, we can’t be sure unless we win the challenges. You’ll do your best for your homie, right?”

“Even if it wasn’t part of my deal,” Gwen assured her. “On the brighter side, I’m sure Heather’s going to assume the worst, so she and her lackeys will probably be busting their butts, too.”

“That’s as it should be,” Leshawna declared. “Everyone does their best, and let the chips fall where they may.”

Challenge Day dawned to a cloudless sky and a new wakeup call: the bugled melody of reveille. A half-expected announcement followed, strange because it came not from Chris, but from Chef Hatchet.

“Attention, all campers!” Hatchet thundered in his most intimidating voice. “Report to the Dock of Shame in ten minutes for your challenge briefing! Anyone who’s late will receive one penalty vote at elimination! That is all!”

Duncan grumbled, “Another challenge without our prison food breakfast. I don’t know whether to be annoyed or grateful.”

D.J. suggested, “We’ll probably get those World War II field rations again.”

“I stand corrected. I’m definitely annoyed,” replied the delinquent.

At the girls’ cabin, meanwhile, Chef’s announcement was followed almost immediately by a knock on the door and a female voice asking admittance. Beth opened the door to reveal one of the new interns who had arrived with Dawn, Ella, Beardo and others. This redshirt had a slim, athletic build, with fair skin but black hair, not quite shoulder length. Her face bore a superficial but noticeable resemblance to Heather’s, suggesting at least partially Asian or First Nations heritage. In one hand, she held a role of athletic tape.

“Which one of you is Gwen?”

As the girls hurriedly dressed, the new arrival tended to Gwen. “Chef assumed you wouldn’t be able to get ready in the time you were given,” the redshirt explained, “so I was assigned to give you a hand since your buddies might not have time to. Today’s challenge is kind of physical, so I also need to tape your shoulder.”

“Thanks…” Gwen began, her tone prompting for a name.

“Name’s Skylar if you’re standing on ceremony, but I prefer just ‘Sky’.”

Sky taped Gwen’s injured shoulder quickly and efficiently. Gwen asked, “Do you do this often?”

“I’m a gymnast back home,” the slim intern explained. “So, yeah, I know a little more about joint injuries than I’d like.”

Ten minutes later, all the campers save Gwen stood in two cluster on the dock as Hatchet approached. The “host for a day” wore military garb instead of his usual chef’s attire, with a sleeveless shirt and a wide-brimmed hat. He carried a slim rod of unknown material.

Patience - When I First Put This Uniform On

The “host for a day” wore military garb instead of his usual chef’s attire

When I first put this uniform on,
I said, as I looked in the glass,
“It’s one to a million
That any civilian
My figure and form will surpass.
Gold lace has a charm for the fair,
And I’ve plenty of that, and to spare,
While a lover’s professions,
When uttered in Hessians,
Are eloquent everywhere!”
A fact I counted upon,
When I first put this uniform on!

“Line up and stand at attention!” he bellowed. When the campers had lined up, he walked down the line and thundered, “You call this standing at attention?” The rod came into play as Hatchet commanded, “Feet together!” and, with a flick of his wrist, rapped Tyler on the knee. Hatchet then smacked Duncan above the elbow. “Arms down!” A smack to Beth’s solar plexus. “Back straight!” A smack upside Cody’s head. “Eyes front!” Finally, a smack under Heather’s chin. “Chin up!”

Hatchet knew how to pull his punches, Heather mused; for although the blow she received looked painful on camera, in truth she had barely felt it. It certainly got her attention, though.

As Hatchet turned to retrace his steps, he noticed Gwen running toward the dock at the best speed she could manage. Unlike most of the campers, she was not wearing her usual outfit. The Goth’s sleeved corset top would have taken far too long to put on in her current condition; so Katie, looking to repay a favor, had loaned her a striped tube top, essentially a sleeveless version of the shirt Katie had worn on the island before her makeover. It fit Gwen reasonably well, if a bit tightly. Gwen wasn’t thrilled with the look, but at least the stripes were black.

Hatchet beheld the wounded warrior’s new look and saw that it was good, for the simple top left Gwen’s heavily taped shoulder exposed for all the world to see.

When Gwen reached the dock, Hatchet commanded, “Fall in, soldier! You’re at attention!”

“Yes, sir!” the wounded warrior replied with a crisp salute, for Sky had mentioned that the challenge would have a military theme.

“Not ‘sir’! I work for a living!” Hatchet countered. He turned to the campers and said in drill sergeant fashion, “Which brings us to the rules of this challenge.

“Today’s challenge will not be an easy one. In fact, I do not expect all of you to come out of it… alive.” The thought had occurred to Hatchet that “alive” might not have been the best word in light of what the campers had already been through, hence his hesitation, but he couldn’t think of a better word on the spot. “My orders are to grind you babies into the dirt until all but one of you drops out of my boot camp. The last player standing will win invincibility for their team.

“Rule Number One: You will address me as ‘Master Chief’. Not as ‘sir’—that’s for those white-collar commissioned officers. I’m a Warrant Officer, and proud of it.” Master Chief Warrant Officer Hatchet turned to D.J., who happened to be the recruit closest at hand, and bellowed, “Have you got that?”

“Yes, Master Chief!” the brickhouse shouted back.

“Rule Number Two: You will not talk back to me for any reason, or you may be summarily eliminated at my sole discretion. In fact, you will not speak at all unless I tell you to speak or if it’s a genuine emergency—by my definition, not yours. My definition of ‘emergency’ is narrow. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Master Chief!” the campers replied in chorus.

“Rule Number Three: You may have noticed that old-style cannon over there. Each player who drops out will fire that cannon—assuming you are physically able to do so at the time—to signal your withdrawal from the challenge. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Master Chief!”

“Good. For the first part of today’s challenge, we’re going on a little hike. We’re on a schedule, so I want at least one quit before the hike ends. That means the hike will not end until someone drops out. To speed that along, you’ll be carrying a heavy cargo.”

Chris appeared in an officer’s uniform, attended by several interns carrying two sedan chairs with roofs and windows, the latter currently open. “Report, Master Chief.”

“All recruits present and ready, sir!” Hatchet replied with a crisp salute, which Chris returned.

The interns set down the sedan chairs, opened the doors and stepped aside, whereupon the fake officer and the genuine Master Chief seated themselves. Hatchet commanded, “The Eagles will carry General McLean, since he’s smaller and you’ve got mostly girls, plus the smallest boy in the corps. The Muskies have mostly strapping boys, so they will carry me. You are to carry us at shoulder height. Fall in!”

The campers lined up alongside the carrying poles after brief discussions of who should go where. The Master Chief commanded, “Squat down and grab your poles!”

Hatchet glanced over his troops. “Don’t kneel, Anderson! Lift with both legs, not just one!”

Cody lifted his knee from the ground and squatted as Hatchet had commanded.

“Chairs… up!”

The teams lifted their burdens, although the Eagles did so only with considerable effort. Chris was smaller than Hatchet, but he was still no featherweight; and only Katie and Leshawna were widely considered to be strong. Once they got their chair to the proper height, though, they didn’t have undue difficulty keeping it there.

“Forward… march!”

They hadn’t gotten far when Katie ventured, “Master Chief? I need to go to the bathroom.”

“Don’t be such a baby, maggot,” Hatchet replied without even turning to face her.

“This really can’t wait,” the Thin Twin pleaded. “I think I’ve got the runs.”

Master Chief Hatchet finally turned toward Katie and saw her distinctly pained expression. A menacing rumble sounded from her visibly distended belly.

“Permission granted. We don’t have any toilet paper, so you’re on your own there.”

Katie dashed desperately into the bushes. Moments later, a horrid gas blast that would have done Owen proud sounded from the brush.

Heather called, “Katie, hurry up! Chris’ ego weighs a ton!”

“Did I tell you to speak?” Hatchet bellowed. “‘Cause I don’t recall telling you to speak! And as soon as your squadmate gets back, it’s 20 pushups for insulting the Generalissimo!”

“Whatever,” Heather muttered.

The death march soon resumed, Katie having done her business and Heather (now looking a bit ill herself) having done her penance. Throughout the morning, the campers carried their burdens over every conceivable type of terrain, including some that shouldn’t even have been able to exist in Ontario.

There were two more incidents during this time. First Beth, then D.J. complained that they felt ill, and both had bouts of dry heaves soon after, for the campers had had no breakfast and so their stomachs had nothing to expel.

In the fullness of time, this procession stopped under the noonday sun of a baking desert that existed on the island God only knew how. The pause did not mean a respite from toil, though; quite the contrary, for standing still is more tiring than walking, and the campers still had to keep the chairs aloft. Most of the teens were now weary enough that they resorted to using both arms for the task, where they had initially used but one.

As the campers sweltered, the attending interns passed around a late breakfast. Since the campers could not feed themselves under the circumstances, it fell to the redshirts to do so. Two interns per team, they held a thermos with a straw to the lips of each camper in turn. Brunch was a vile concoction, but had the virtue of being straw-friendly. When Tyler made the mistake of asking what it was, and was promptly dressed down for speaking unbidden, his attending intern Ella apologetically identified it as pureed field rations.

Ella had volunteered for the hike because she wanted to see more of the island; but at Hatchet’s command, she had sung no songs. Any unauthorized easing of the campers’ burdens would have been contrary to the challenge’s purpose, after all; and the Singer, naïve and innocent though she was, was not so naïve that she did not understand this. So it was that her turn as Brunch Betty was the first time that most of the campers had noticed her.

Meanwhile, Master Chief Hatchet told Chris, the interns and the campers war stories. He had served his country as a helicopter pilot in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, fought to liberate Kuwait. He flew an unarmed freight helicopter, so he had personally seen little direct action; but in the closing days of the war’s ground phase, as he was ferrying supplies to the rapidly moving front, an infiltrator had shot his chopper with a rocket-propelled grenade. Reaching deep into his bag of piloting tricks, Hatchet had somehow managed to bring his crippled bird safely back to base, and was awarded a medal for his efforts. At least, that was how the story went.

Not long after Hatchet finished this admittedly riveting tale, Lindsay felt an oncoming diarrhea attack and dashed into the bushes just in time to get her panties out of the way of the gastric tidal wave. In her panic, she did not think to get Hatchet’s leave to do so.

“Looks like we’ve got ourselves a quitter!” the Master Chief announced.

“But why?” Lindsay asked when he returned and learned that she had been condemned. “You let Katie go when she needed to.”

“She asked permission. You didn’t.”

Alejandro took Lindsay in charge and escorted her back to camp. The rest started back soon after, the Master Chief having decided that nobody else was on the verge of quitting.

They hadn’t gotten far when Heather, who had been looking pale for some time, lost her battle to keep her lunch where it was and vomited at trailside. She did not leave her post to do so, however, so she remained in the challenge.

The campers and their overlords had gotten about halfway back when the cannon thundered in the distance to herald the fall of the bombshell. Not long after, Duncan succumbed to whatever bug was going around and vomited; although he, like Heather, did not abandon his post to do so.

“You maggots have been on this island a month now!” Master Chief Hatchet bellowed in disgust. “There’s no excuse for you to still be this soft!”

Cody timidly piped up, “Master Chief? Permission to speak?”

“Granted.”

“I’ve been thinking about who’s gotten sick today and who hasn’t, and I think we’re seeing a pattern. If I’m right, it has nothing to do with softness.”

“You’ve gotten me curious, soldier. Go on.”

“Remember when Izzy blew up half of Boney Island with her so-called fire starter? Some of us hid in the water; and if I remember correctly, nobody who did that has gotten sick. The peeps who found hiding places on land are the ones giving at both ends. Granted, I’m no doctor, but the symptoms got me thinking. Water has a lot of hydrogen, and hydrogen is good at absorbing neutrons; and Izzy did say that her fire starter had fissile material in it. Californium, to be precise.”

“Stop beating around the bush, soldier! Report!” Hatchet thundered.

Cody did his best to look Hatchet in the eye without flinching and said, “It sounds like radiation sickness.”

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

.

Twentieth 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, when his mother returned home, Brett proudly informed her that he had aced his history test.

“See what happens when you keep up with your homework?” his mother asked. “I know it sometimes seems hard to believe at your age, but teachers give you homework for a reason, and it’s not just to keep you off the streets.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Brett admitted. Although he could be dogged in pursuit of a goal when he set his mind to it, Brett had never been the most diligent student, and his especial failing was inconsistency in doing and submitting his homework. That was, of course, precisely the reason why his mother insisted that he do his homework each night as the price for hearing more of her tale. Brett had met that price faithfully for three weeks now, and his grades were starting to respond.

After they had dined and Brett had attended to his homework, 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.

“Radiation sickness?” Hatchet pondered this remarkable conjecture for a few moments and said, “You may be right. The pieces fit.” An expectant grin spread across his face. “This is better than I’d planned. When you’re in a war zone, you have to be able to play through pain, or sickness, or what have you. And if it took this long for symptoms to show up, that probably means a sublethal dose. Probably won’t even make your hair fall out. So, this should help keep us on schedule and might not charge us any real price for it.”

Hatchet turned his attention to the other campers, who were looking on nervously. They had all heard stories about what radiation poisoning could do to its victims, and the prospect of going through similar ordeals themselves was not a pleasant thing to contemplate.

“All right, maggots, listen up!” the Master Chief announced. “As each of you drops out of the challenge, after firing the cannon you will report to the infirmary to be tested for radiation poisoning. In the meantime, we will carry on.”

As the hike resumed, Hatchet made two radio calls, first to Alejandro and then to Scott. Alejandro he instructed to find Lindsay and escort her to the infirmary. Hatchet gave the big Latino no details, reasoning that he had no need to know.

Scott, on the other hand, did need to know what was going on. The redheaded redneck had risen through the ranks to become the camp’s de facto backup medic, so Hatchet patiently explained why Lindsay was coming to the infirmary, what tests to run, and what to look for.

Beth’s position on the carrying poles was close enough to the Master Chief that she could hear his side of the conversations in some detail. Although Hatchet tried to keep his tone businesslike, Beth was certain she heard a note of concern creeping into his voice as he instructed Scott.

Beth thought, Bless him. He really does care about us. For the first time, the nerd girl felt honored that her team had been assigned to carry Master Chief Hatchet instead of the lighter but less-respected Chris McLean.

The squad reached camp without further incident, perhaps three hours before sundown. “Company, halt! Chairs down!” Hatchet called.

Leaving the attending interns to deal with the sedan chairs and Chris to do whatever he did when he was not conducting challenges or ceremonies, Master Chief Hatchet led his trainees to the place where the reverse William Tell test had taken place three days before. The area had been converted to a proper 15-meter shooting range, with metal-backed paper targets in front of the embankment and a dozen shooting stations at the near end. Each station was marked with a camper’s name. Sky and another intern were taking their ease, having completed their prep work with time to spare.

The second redshirt was a strange one. A big black lad, shorter than Owen but with a similar build (and, thankfully, a more efficient digestive system), the campers knew less about him than about almost anyone else on the island, despite the fact that he was one of the original thirteen interns who had been on the island longer than the campers. The campers did not even know what his voice sounded like.

Sky leapt to her feet and announced, “Everything’s ready, Chef, er, Master Chief. We’ve even set up a system for moving targets.”

“Moving targets? I didn’t expect that,” the visibly impressed Master Chief admitted.

“Oh, I think you did,” Sky replied with a knowing air. “You know how B is with mechanical systems.”

“Indeed I do,” Hatchet admitted with a growing smile. He turned to the second intern, who was apparently called “B” for unknown reasons, and said, “I’m looking forward to seeing what you’ve done here.” B smiled and nodded in response, but said nothing.

The Master Chief turned to the campers and announced, “Your next test is marksmanship. You’ll be using paintball guns, and you will each have a different paint color so we can tell who hits what. The sad sack who gets the lowest score will be eliminated unless there’s a tie for lowest. In that case, you’ll all advance to the next test. I don’t want to lose too many people before we get to the good part.

“The original plan was for you to use rifles and fire from the prone position, because that gives better accuracy and leaves you a smaller target for return fire; but since Private Gwen is in no condition to do that, and my orders are to neither put her at a disadvantage nor give her a free pass, we’re going to do something a little different.

“Since Gwen only has one good arm, you’ll be using pistols instead of rifles; and since she can’t lie on her stomach very well, you’ll all be lying on your backs. Has anyone heard of the Creedmore position?

Tyler raised his hand. “I’ve seen pictures of it. I think. Is that the one that looks kind of like the guy’s doing a crab crawl?”

“That’s the one,” Hatchet confirmed. “It got its start with the metallic silhouette shooting crowd, and that’s still mainly where you see it. Observe.”

Hatchet gestured to B, who proceeded to demonstrate. At the station that would have been Lindsay’s, the Silent One lay on his back, with his knees slightly raised and his lower legs splayed out to the sides. He held a long-barreled paint pistol over his right leg, with the base of the barrel resting on the bulge of his calf muscle, and lifted his head just enough to line up the sights. He fired two rounds, which painted makeshift eyes on a “standing man” silhouette target.

“Doesn’t look too hard,” Tyler pronounced.

Sky brought forth a box of pistols of the same design B had used. Master Chief Hatchet bade each camper take one, and resumed his briefing. “Your pistols are not sighted in, so you will start with standard bulls-eye targets. Knowing how to adjust your weapon’s sights is part of knowing how to use your weapon. I recommend firing groups of five rounds between adjustments.

“When you want a fresh target, press the red button at your station to bring the target to you. You each have a pad of targets, so you can just rip off the used target to expose the one beneath. Press the button again to return the target to its place."

Hatchet gestured toward B. “Gwen, you may dictate your adjustments to Mr. LaForge here, since you probably won’t be able to make them with one hand.”

“You have fifteen minutes. Company, begin!”

As the campers fell to their task, Hatchet withdrew and began to converse with Sky. Presumably, the redshirt was explaining the bonus features she and B had put into the target presentation system.

Meanwhile, Dawn was heading to the interns’ quarters to get a nap, for she had a late-night assignment on her schedule. As she passed the medical tent, she heard odd speech from within. The mystic sighed and detoured to investigate.

“Neutronicus expelliamus! Atomicus Radiatum abjuri! Systemen digesticus bismuthiae!”

Dawn peeked into the infirmary and beheld a sight as strange as the words that had lured her. Lindsay lay on the cot, looking pale but more than a little amused, as an intern dressed in a stereotypical wizard robe and conical hat waved a wooden wand and spoke in no known language. This wizard, a tall, lanky black fellow with an oddly high-pitched voice, seemed faintly out of breath and was sweating profusely, as if from exertion. Apparently, he had been “treating” Lindsay for some time.

“Leonard, what are you doing?”

The answer came not from the wizard, but from Lindsay. “Hi, Fawn. Lemuel said he was going to cure my… radio sickness? I think that’s what Spot called it. He didn’t say if it was AM sickness or FM, though.”

“I see,” Dawn acknowledged with a glower. “Len, you really shouldn’t be bothering her. She needs rest.”

“I don’t mind,” Lindsay assured the disapproving mystic. “He’s funny.”

“I’m sure he is. Nevertheless…” The wraith-girl crooked her finger to her dusky colleague in a come-hither gesture. “A word, please?”

The interns stepped outside the infirmary, and Dawn began an all-too-familiar lecture. “Leonard, how many times do I have to tell you? The Harry Potter novels are fantasy stories. They’re not how-to guides, and were never meant to be.”

Leonard was not a combative person by nature, but he had heard variations of this lecture once too often. “I don’t see you doing anything to help her, Miss I-come-from-a-family-of-wizards-and-you-don’t-so-there,” he countered petulantly.

“That’s because I know my limitations. Magical healing is a specialist field. It takes years of training to do competently, and I’m not even sure magic can cure radiation poisoning in the first place. That’s not something people have done much research on.”

“Then why not let me ‘research’ it? For all you know, I could discover something,” the would-be magical medic insisted.

“That’s what worries me. Against all odds, you might actually stumble on a real incantation that does something completely different from what you’re expecting. If that happens, someone could get hurt. Magic is not a toy.”

“I never said it was. I know what I’m doing!”

Dawn shook her head. “No, you don’t, and that’s what makes your wand waving dangerous. Don’t get me wrong, you do have real magical talent—I can see it in your aura—but you don’t know how the first thing about how to apply it. You can’t self-teach magic, Len. You need a mentor.”

“So tell me, Fairy Princess, who would this all-knowing mentor be?” Leonard asked sarcastically. “You, I suppose?”

Dawn recognized the sarcasm in his tone, but ignored it in hope of defusing his hostility. “No, I’m not ready to take apprentices. Besides, I’m more into the ‘psychic’ side of the Craft, whereas you seem more interested in traditional sorcery.”

Leonard, sounding less hostile but still defensive, asked, “Do you know any good teachers for wizardry or sorcery or whatever?”

“I was hoping you’d ask. I do have someone in mind, if you’re willing to live abroad for a few years.”

Now looking genuinely interested, Leonard prompted, “Go on.”

“I have a cousin in London—England, not Ontario—who has an opening for an apprentice. You’re rather old for a new apprentice, but that shouldn’t be a deal breaker. If I tell him you have talent and that you’ve been trying to teach yourself, I think he’ll understand.”

“Gee, thanks!”

“You’re quite welcome,” Dawn assured him with audible relief in her voice. “Now, all we have to do is…” A cloud passed over the mystic’s face, and she gave a sorrowful sigh as she looked downward.

Leonard could guess what was troubling his colleague. “Yeah, I know. We have to survive until the show finishes shooting.”

At the shooting range, Hatchet called time. Only Cody had taken the full fifteen minutes to prepare, and even then he looked unsatisfied, but that was just his perfectionism at work. Despite the science geek’s misgivings, there was no reason to suppose he had not sighted in his pistol properly.

Marksmanship training began in earnest with standard silhouette targets. As Sky had suggested, Hatchet had indeed expected the mechanically inclined and highly inventive B to do something special with the target presentation system, and the silent genius did not disappoint. Armed with modified universal remotes, Hatchet and his aides put the campers through their paces with pop-up targets that dropped after a few moments or when hit, targets that remained edge-on until briefly turning to expose themselves, variable-speed running targets, and combinations. With the interns and the Master Chief each controlling targets according to their own schemes, the campers faced a sometimes-chaotic “battlefield” that sternly tested their ability to make snap decisions and acquire targets quickly.

“Cease fire!” Hatchet called. As the interns went downrange to collect and replace the well-splattered targets, Hatchet announced, “That does it for the practice round. Take ten while we set up for the part that actually counts.”

“Practice round?” Leshawna asked incredulously as she wiped her forearm across her perspiring brow. “We’ve had whole challenges that weren’t this much work!”

“But they haven’t been this much fun, eh?” Ezekiel countered.

“He’s got a point,” Gwen seconded. “I haven’t had this much fun here since the dodgeball match.”

Leshawna grinned sheepishly. “When you put it that way, I guess you’re right.”

Duncan grinned his wolfish grin, although his face was a bit drawn, presumably from his mysterious illness. “Ah, the incomparable joys of blowing things away.”

“I know, right?” Cody agreed as he grinned his goofy grin. “The original first-person shooter.”

Heather stood stiffly a little apart from the others, and she, like Duncan, appeared to be in pain. “Master Chief?” she called. “Can I go to the bathroom? I think I’ve got the runs.”

“Make it quick,” Hatchet growled. “I don’t want to run out of daylight before we’re done here.”

“Do we have any toilet paper?” the dragon girl asked as she clenched and rocked back and forth from one foot to the other in an effort to stop the dam bursting prematurely.

Hatchet tossed her a pad of bulls-eye targets. “Now hurry.”

Heather returned just as Hatchet began to brief his troops. “For the scoring round, we’re cranking up the difficulty. Instead of silhouette targets, you’ll have combat shooting targets. There are soldiers, terrorists and so forth, which you’ll score points for hitting; and noncombatant civilians, which you’ll lose points for hitting. Lowest score means elimination. Battle stations!”

The first few noncombatant targets to show themselves took multiple hits because the previous round had conditioned the First Wawanakwa Light Infantry to shoot at anything that moved, but the campers adjusted quickly enough. The noncombatant targets behaved in two ways. The “decoy” targets showed themselves briefly, to draw the fire of anyone who shot reflexively and without properly identifying the target. The “collateral damage” targets moved across the range in the foreground, and tended to get in the way at just the wrong moment.

With the scene as chaotic as before, it was difficult to tell who was doing well and who was doing poorly, but everyone was having the time of their lives. The campers had been given so much ammunition, preloaded for their magazine-fed pistols, that it appeared Hatchet meant for this round to test endurance as well as skill.

The “firefight” proceeded without major incident for a time, until the campers began shooting at a certain noncombatant target as it moved across the field. This new target was remarkable for bearing the likeness of a recognizable person instead of a nondescript one.

Heather asked rhetorically, “What’s everyone doing? Don’t they know they’re losing points?”

Katie, who was stationed next to her liege, speculated as she took a potshot at this new target, “I think it’s more like they’re willing to take the penalty. You’re pretty bossy, you know.” Indeed, the person depicted on this well-splattered target, which most of the shooters had now hit two or three times, was none other than Heather herself. “Besides, if everyone gets the same penalty, it doesn’t really change anything.”

“Hmph,” Heather grunted in derision as the target bearing her likeness quit the field. “So I can get a leg up just by not joining in this childish DIE! DIE! DIE!”

.

The Imaginary Rebellion

The dragon’s shrieks distracted the other shooters for a moment, but only for a moment. When they saw that Heather was pumping paintball after paintball, as fast as she could pull the trigger, into the Chris target that had just emerged from where the Heather target had exited moments before, they needed no encouragement to join in; for all was as Katie had surmised.

With this single target now drawing the undivided fire of the entire company as if to a magnet, it looked as though Chris was being machine gunned. First to disappear beneath the rainbow river of paint was that hated bland smile of his, then the rest of his handsome but reviled face.

As the fusillade continued, sparks flew from the target’s base and “Chris” ground to a halt. So thickly did the paintballs fly that the air itself shimmered with a veritable rainbow of color, like sunlight diffracted through the water droplets a garden sprinkler throws into the air on a summer day. Other targets continued to operate normally, but the campers paid them no heed as the Chris target tilted back precariously under the incessant pounding on its metal backing.

“Cease fire!” Hatchet called. The paintstorm continued unabated.

“Cease fire!” Hatchet bellowed again, with no more effect than before.

Hatchet drew his service sidearm—not a paint pistol, but a real pistol, albeit loaded with blanks—and fired into the air. This finally distracted the campers from their berserker fury, and Hatchet thundered, “I said, cease fire!”

In that silent moment, what was left of the Chris target finally answered the call of gravity and fell over backward.

Master Chief Hatchet turned toward the interns with an accusing glare. B stood his ground inscrutably, but Sky, whose brainchild the Chris target apparently was, shrugged her shoulders and raised her palms whilst struggling gamely to suppress a giggle. She did not quite succeed, so instead of a girlish giggle, she emitted a most unladylike snort. B cracked a half-smile at that.

“All right, you’ve had your fun,” Hatchet growled. “Can’t say I blame you, but you’ve made more cleanup work for yourselves. You might as well get to it.”

The Master Chief turned to the campers and bellowed, “When I give you an order, I expect it to be obeyed the first time! Your inattention just bought you fifteen laps around the range. Now!”

As the campers rose to begin their penance, Duncan quipped to his neighbor, Tyler, “It was worth it.”

“I know, right?” Red Jock seconded.

As the teens finished their run, each came before Hatchet and stood at attention by his command. When the last, Gwen, had finished and fallen into line as she winced and held her good hand on her damaged ribs, the Master Chief addressed his troops as the sun stood barely its full height above the horizon.

“I was going to eliminate whoever had the lowest score here, but your stunt with that last target left you all so far in the red it would be pointless. I guess I’ll just have to advance you all to the next test.” With a wicked little grin, he warned, “Just remember… you asked for it.”

The Master Chief marched his squad to the lodge at a double-quick pace. Once there, he said, “You have fifteen minutes to eat before night training begins.”

“Night training?” several campers repeated incredulously.

Gwen asked, “Master Chief? Where’s the food?

Hatchet gestured to several garbage cans lined up beneath the serving counter. “You’re looking at it.”

“You’re kidding, right?” the Goth asked acidly, although in her heart she knew the answer.

Tyler opened one of the cans and confirmed his fear. “This is the garbage from last night’s dinner.”

“Damn right,” Hatchet shot back. “When you’re at war, you take what you can get.”

“I am not eating this!” Heather declared.

“Me neither!” Courtney seconded. “I am going to be running for office one day, and no one is going to pull up a file of me eating garbage!”

Hatchet looked at the Alpha Females of Wawanakwa and shook his head. “I expected better from you two,” he said, his voice soft with disappointment. “Very well. Go fire the cannon and report to the infirmary for testing.”

The girls gaped. “You’re kicking us out of the challenge?” Heather all but shrieked. “No way!”

“This is part of the challenge,” Hatchet explained. “You refused to participate. So yes, you’re out… unless you’d like to reconsider.”

“I’ve changed my mind. I can handle this,” Heather answered as fast as she could get the words out.

Courtney, however, stood her ground. “This is not in my contract. I’ll sue!”

Hatchet was not impressed. “You don’t have a case, and we both know it.”

Courtney did know it, but she had made her threat reflexively. “Fine,” she conceded with a resigned sigh. “It wasn’t my intention to drop out.”

Hatchet nodded. “Very good.”

As the campers began to scrounge, Chris poked his head into the lodge. “Yo, Master Chief! I’m heading over to Craft Services. Coming?”

Hatchet shook his head. “Have one of the interns bring me something. I can’t leave my unit.”

Chris grinned. “You’re an inspiration, Chief. A real ‘father to his men’. Sometimes I wish I could care that much about them. Occasionally. Okay, maybe once or twice. If we define ‘care’ broadly enough.”

“Just remind yourself that you wouldn’t have this cushy gig without them. You’ll care.”

“You’ve got me there,” Chris admitted cheerily.

With Hatchet distracted, Duncan and Ezekiel slipped unnoticed into the kitchen. They hoped to find some real food, or at least what passed for real food during this game, but it was not to be. Hatchet had apparently anticipated such a raid, and everything edible was locked away. It was to be garbage or nothing.

Ezekiel was not dismayed. “The grease traps! Grease is mostly fat, so it’ll fill us up. Besides, it’ll probably taste as good as anything we could get in the stuff Chef set out, eh?”

“Sounds good. All we need is something to—score!” The delinquent had spotted an empty coffee can. With a single scoop into the trap, he had enough congealed grease to feed their entire team. More, in fact; but with a challenge in progress, the grease thieves were not about to offer the Eagles any of their “booty”, such as it was.

With no way to know whether Hatchet was watching the door, the partners in crime decided to play innocent. If they were caught, Duncan pointed out, it was easier to get forgiveness than permission. Hoping for the best but prepared for the worst, they casually strolled through the swinging door into the common area.

“Duncan! Ezekiel! Front and center!”

The thieves felt a flash of disappointment, but it passed. Lady Luck had forsaken them, but silver-tongued Persuasion might yet see them through.

Hatchet gestured to the can of grease. “Well?”

Duncan explained, “You said yourself, M.C., ‘When you’re at war, you take what you can get.’”

“Besides,” Ezekiel added, “we may not have followed the letter of your orders, but we followed the spirit. It’s just kitchen grease. That can be considered garbage, eh?”

“He’s got you there, Master Chief,” spoke a familiar voice from behind Hatchet. Alejandro stood in the doorway with Hatchet’s dinner in hand.

“Kitchen raiding is a basic soldier’s skill,” Hatchet muttered rhetorically as he stroked his deeply cleft chin. He turned back to the red-handed raiders. “I’ll allow it. Good initiative, soldiers, but you have to share it with Eagle Company as well as your own. Carry on.”

Pickings in the garbage pails had been slim, so the campers were glad to have the purloined grease. Spread on bread crusts and suchlike, it made a passable butter substitute; and while it was not especially tasty, it could mask a variety of less pleasant flavors. Gwen quipped, to general agreement, that they’d had worse at the camp.

Night training consisted of calisthenics and things very like calisthenics under the glare of the amphitheatre lights, for that was the only outdoor venue in camp equipped to properly illuminate nighttime challenges. Between bouts of jumping jacks, lunges and other exercises that could be done with only one good arm, Hatchet fired up a boombox and led his troops in the latest now-forgotten line dance, or shouted chants and led the campers in variations of the haka, the Maori posture dance which the All Blacks, New Zealand’s rugby union team, brought to a worldwide audience. These dance segments served two purposes. First, they were more photogenic than simple calisthenics. Second, they were less strenuous, enabling the campers to catch their breath and thus prolong the training session; for in this evening session, as in the morning hike, the Master Chief was determined to continue until at least one player dropped out, but he had his reasons for not wanting to end the session quickly.

Hatchet himself needed these “breather” segments more than he liked to admit. Although he was physically fit, he was no longer young; and “the Big 4-0”, traditional threshold of middle age, was staring him in the face.

As night training dragged on, Gwen’s two injured ribs troubled her ever more. Although their fractures were mere hairlines, and simple calisthenics were unlikely to expand those cracks, the exertion worsened their soreness until every breath brought fresh pain. Gwen gritted her teeth against this torment, determined to endure for Leshawna’s sake, but it looked increasingly like the Goth would be the next to fall.

Duncan was also having problems. He was holding up well enough physically, but he was getting bored, and a bored Duncan was a lazy Duncan. He began to entertain himself by periodically telling Courtney, at whose side he was stationed by design and not by accident, that he was going to drop out. Courtney naturally responded by telling him the team needed him, threatening dire consequences if he gave up before his flesh gave out, and so on.

“Why, Princess, I didn’t know you cared,” Duncan needled during the first such exchange.

“I don’t,” Courtney hissed, mindful of the need to keep her voice down. “I just don’t want to lose this challenge.”

“Are you sure that’s the only reason?” the delinquent pressed in a tone implying that Courtney was fooling no one.

“What other reason would I have?”

“It’s obvious you want me,” the delinquent ‘explained’. “I know it, you know it, everyone knows it, so here’s a tip: if you try to kiss me, I might let you.”

The Muskies’ nominal leader snorted in derision. “I’d rather kiss the wrong end of Owen’s digestive tract.”

Subsequent exchanges between the law scorner and the lawgiver were similar, with Duncan claiming to see repressed desire in every response Courtney gave. Courtney became so exasperated that she began to consider dropping out herself just to shut Duncan up.

Finally, at the stroke of midnight, one soldier turned into a proverbial pumpkin. A sudden cessation of the music during a line dance segment heralded the surrender.

“Master Chief?” Gwen said dejectedly as she winced and moved her good hand from the boombox controls to her injured ribs, “I can’t take anymore.” The Goth hung her head, unable to meet her commander’s gaze.

“Stand at attention. Look at me,” Hatchet ordered. Gwen complied with an effort.

“You have nothing to be ashamed of,” the Master Chief said softly. Raising his voice enough for the others to hear clearly, he added, “In fact, you will be advancing to the next test with everyone else, because of how I decided to accommodate your disability.”

Relief and confusion vied to be expressed, and confusion won out. The Goth admitted, “We weren’t doing anything that needed two good arms. I thought that was my accommodation.”

“It was,” Hatchet admitted in turn, “but I had something else, too. I decided that if you were the first to drop out, I would pass you if you could last two hours. You gave me nearly four. Well done.”

Someone in the ranks said in disbelief, “We’ve been at this for four hours?”

Master Chief Hatchet lifted his eyes, searching for the speaker, and bellowed, “Did I tell any of you to speak? Because I don’t recall telling any of you to speak! You’ll speak only when I tell you to speak! Is that clear?”

“Yes, Master Chief!” the campers answered in unison.

Hatchet announced, “We’re done here! Back to the lodge!”

The campers sat at the lodge tables with pen and paper in front of them. Several were yawning or trying to stifle yawns, for it had been a long and eventful day. Dawn and Shawn sat inconspicuously on the fireplace hearth.

Hatchet announced, “Your next test is to write a 300-word essay about how much you love… me. Anyone who falls asleep or fails to complete their essay will be eliminated!”

Beth raised her hand. “Master Chief? How much time do we have?”

“More than enough. If anyone needs more paper, one of our interns can get it for you. If you need to use the can, one of them will escort you to the confessional outhouse. The confessional camera’s power switch has been disabled for the duration of this test, so don’t think you can go there to get away with a nap.

“No talking amongst yourselves. Begin.”

The campers picked up their pens, and Hatchet motioned to the redshirts to step outside with him. Safely out of the campers’ hearing, he said, “I’m going to get some shuteye. If I’m not back by 2:30, one of you come get me.”

“Good night. Sleep tight,” Dawn said.

“Don’t let the zombies bite,” Shawn added.

Almost three hours later, all the campers had finished their essays and were struggling to stay awake with nothing to do. Those who had taken longer to finish their essays thus had the advantage, and the subsiding pain in Gwen’s ribs likewise proved an unlooked for blessing. Dawn and Shawn conversed quietly, largely to help themselves stay awake whilst they monitored the campers. Master Chief Hatchet sat in a corner, reading something and periodically looking up to monitor his trainees. He had returned promptly at 2:30.

“Time!” Hatchet announced at the stroke of three. As he collected the essays, he lightly rapped Heather’s arm with his baton to wake her, and pronounced the queen bee out.

Hatchet skimmed Duncan’s essay, then began to read aloud. “I love Master Chief Hatchet because he is very, very, very, very…” The Master Chief turned his baleful gaze to the delinquent and bellowed, “This is nothing but five pages of ‘very’s!”

“It’s 300 words exactly,” the scorner of laws pointed out. “You can count if you want.”

The Master Chief was not amused. “I take a dim view of people who try to game the system. You’re out! Now drop and give me twenty!”

“I don’t think so, Chef. You said I’m out, so I’m going to go catch up on my sleep.”

“You’ll sleep when I tell you to sleep! You still belong to me until this challenge ends!” Hatchet thundered. Seeing that Duncan was about to respond, with nothing to suggest that said response would be in any way respectful, Hatchet cut him off. “In case you’re thinking of defying me again, you should know that our C.O. has authorized me to summarily eliminate anyone who gives me too much trouble.”

“Been there, done that. You already said I’m out, remember?”

“Not from the challenge, from the game.”

The other campers gasped, but Hatchet was not done. In a deadly, matter-of-fact tone, he added, “The staff can always use new people, so if you don’t shape up and do as you’re told, you just might find yourself spending the rest of the summer as… an intern.”

This threat left the other campers too stunned even to gasp, for it was not hard to guess why the show constantly needed new interns.

Duncan looked into the Master Chief’s eyes and saw no trace of jest or mercy. The delinquent said slowly, “I… think… I’ll… just… keep my big mouth shut… and do as I’m told.”

“Glad to hear it,” Hatchet replied. “Now, I ordered twenty pushups, and that’s what you’re going to give me. First thing in the morning, fire the cannon and report to the infirmary for testing.”

Hatchet scanned Leshawna’s paper and frowned. “This is all in French.”

“You didn’t say it had to be in English, sugar.”

“You will address me as Master Chief!”

“Sorry, Master Chief sugar,” the homegirl offered with a wink.

“Your insubordination just bought you twenty pushups! Now!”

After Leshawna grunted and panted her way through her punishment, Hatchet demanded, “Now tell me, soldier, what’s with the French essay?”

“French is my first language,” the homegirl reminded him, “and I speak English better than I write it. You wouldn’t discriminate against a luscious francophone like me, would you?”

“Political correctness has no place in war,” Master Chief Hatchet declared before softening his expression. “But I have to admit, it does look like you followed your orders as stated—in both letter and spirit,” he added with a glare at Duncan. “I’ll accept your essay if it’s in order otherwise. Wells!”

“Sir? Er, Master Chief?” answered Dawn.

“Are any of you interns fluent in French?”

“I think Scarlett is,” the wraith-girl offered.

“Get her.”

“But it’s three a.m.,” Dawn protested. “With all due respect, you do not want to be around her when she’s sleep deprived.”

“I know what time it is, but this can’t wait,” Hatchet explained. “The survivors have another training session in a couple of hours, and I need to know whether the maggot who wrote this is eligible to continue. You have your orders.”

As the wraith-girl went to fetch her colleague, Hatchet began to read the essays written in English. The drudgery of word counts he delegated to Shawn, the zombie master. Hatchet pronounced Tyler out for excessive sloppiness, because Red Jock’s paper had so many strikethroughs and corrections that it was hard to read. Athletics, it seemed, was not the only area where the jock of all trades lacked coordination.

The Master Chief began to read Gwen’s paper and smiled. The Goth had clearly felt charitable, which was no surprise in light of Command’s efforts to keep her in the game and keep her competitive in the wake of her horrific ATV crash three days before. Gwen had written:

I love Master Chief Hatchet because he’s a blue collar Renaissance Man. He’s just like the Heavy Dragoons of song and story:

Patience Act 1 - If you want a receipt

Gwen had written, "I love Master Chief Hatchet because..."

If you want a receipt for that popular mystery,
Known to the world as a Heavy Dragoon,
Take all the remarkable people in history,
Rattle them off to a popular tune.

The pluck of Lord Nelson on board of the Victory—
Genius of Bismarck devising a plan—
The humor of Fielding (which sounds contradictory)—
Coolness of Paget about to trepan—
The science of Jullien, the eminent musico—
Wit of Macaulay, who wrote of Queen Anne—
The pathos of Paddy, as rendered by Boucicault—
Style of the Bishop of Sodor and Man—
The dash of a D’Orsay, divested of quackery—
Narrative powers of Dickens and Thackery—
Victor Emmanuel—peak-haunting Peveril—
Thomas Aquinas, and Doctor Sacheverell—
Tupper and Tennyson—Daniel Defoe—
Anthony Trollope and Mr. Guizot!
Take of these elements all that is fusible,
Melt them all down in a pipkin or crucible,
Set them to simmer and take off the scum,
And a Heavy Dragoon is the residuum!

If you want a receipt for this soldier-like paragon,
Get at the wealth of the Czar (if you can)—
The family pride of a Spaniard from Aragon—
Force of Mephisto pronouncing a ban—
A smack of Lord Waterford, reckless and rollicky—
Swagger of Roderick, heading his clan—
The keen penetration of Paddington Pollaky—
Grace of an Odalisque on a divan—
The genius strategic of Caesar or Hannibal—
Skill of Sir Garnet in thrashing a cannibal—
Flavor of Hamlet—the Stranger, a touch of him—
Little of Manfred (but not very much of him)—
Beadle of Burlington—Richardson’s show—
Mr. Micawber and Madame Tussaud!
Take of these elements all that is fusible,
Melt them all down in a pipkin or crucible,
Set them to simmer and take off the scum,
And a Heavy Dragoon is the residuum!

This poem was actually the lyrics to a song Hatchet knew well, for it fit closely with his self-image, and he idly wondered where Gwen had learnt of it. From Noah, he supposed. Thanks to the recently departed bookworm, several campers knew parts of this song; but so far as Hatchet knew, the artistically inclined Goth was the only camper still on the island who knew it in its entirety. And yes, Hatchet did not fail to note, Gwen’s “essay” did exceed 300 words, even if most of those words were not Gwen’s own.

Dawn returned with a young woman whom the campers could only assume was Scarlett, for the campers knew most of the interns by appearance but not by name. The campers failed to recognize Scarlett at first, for she looked very different than she did by day. She usually looked like a librarian or an old-style schoolmarm, with large eyeglasses and her fiery red hair in a bun. Now, though, her waist-length hair was wild; and without her glasses, her green eyes had a distinctly beady look. She had not bothered to put on her uniform, and still wore the nightshirt she normally slept in.

That garment was most remarkable for the artwork imprinted on it. Gwen, Courtney and Ezekiel recognized the images as visions of Hell from Heironymous Bosch’s famous painting, “The Garden of Earthly Delights”.

When Ezekiel explained to Duncan the significance of Scarlett’s unusual taste in sleepwear, the delinquent quipped, “So, Izzy has an evil twin. Who knew?”

The bleary-eyed intern’s attitude was also very different from what seemed normal for her. From what little the campers had seen of her, Scarlett seemed rather stiff but not unfriendly. Now, though, the campers could have sworn they felt a brooding malice emanating from her like body heat, as if at that moment she should have liked nothing better than to watch the Master Chief being torn apart by dogs, much like the armored knight depicted on her nightshirt.

Master Chief Hatchet either did not notice the intern’s baleful gaze or, more likely, did not care. “Can you read French?” he asked simply.

“Of course,” the hellshirt replied, as if everybody who was anybody would know French.

“These maggots were supposed to write an essay about how much they love me,” Hatchet explained. “Our francophone decided to write hers in French. The word count is fine, but I need you to tell me whether the content passes muster.”

“Let’s see it.”

Scarlett read the paper silently and without apparent effort, suggesting that her glasses were a matter of fashion rather than need. She had an excellent poker face, so her expression revealed none of her amusement when she discovered that Leshawna had written, “I love Master Chief Hatchet because he’s not a total narcissist like the host of this show” and had devoted the rest of her essay almost entirely to insulting Chris (whom Leshawna had carefully avoided identifying by name, lest Hatchet notice and spoil the joke) in increasingly colorful ways.

The grumpy intern handed the paper back to Hatchet. “It’s fine. May I go back to bed now?”

Hatchet replied, “I have an assignment for you in the morning. Come see me after breakfast. Dismissed.”

Hatchet turned to the campers and announced, “Your next training session will be an obstacle course, so girls, dress appropriately. Reveille is at 0500. That gives you time for one full sleep cycle if you don’t waste it, but I’ll be happy to cut that in half if I hear any complaints.”

The campers, some already half-asleep, shuffled out without a word.

.

Bodies in the Mud

Less than two hours later, the surviving trainees assembled at the obstacle course. The cannon sounded in the distance to announce the fall of the Dragon Queen.

The obstacles were fairly standard, but to accommodate the squad’s wounded warrior they emphasized legwork rather more than a typical obstacle course might. There was a set of huge tires the trainees had to high-step through; a mud pit to crawl through with fearsomely sharp axes swinging overhead; a climbing wall with a muddy landing area on the far side; another mud pit with two trails of stepping stones; suspended tires to squeeze through, albeit with much thicker tires than are common; yet another mud pit that was apparently meant to be simply slogged through; a set of hurdles that an athletic runner could jump over and a less athletic runner could vault over with the aid of one or both arms; a rope swing across a mud pit; and more.

The campers noted with distaste the course’s particular emphasis on mud. Ezekiel also noted the large inventory of oversized tires, and quipped to Beth that perhaps the Master Chief was a fan of monster trucks or tractor pulls.

Master Chief Hatchet announced, in his drill sergeant style, “You will all run this course until you can all complete it in under a minute. Gwen, your target is 90 seconds because some of the obstacles will take longer with only one good arm, but it can be done. We had our smallest, scrawniest intern test the course with one arm. If Dave can do it, so can you.”

“Oh, so that’s his name,” Gwen mused rhetorically. “The little black guy with the big glasses?”

“No, that was Cameron,” Hatchet answered. “He fell in battle a while back. Good kid.”

In the distance, the cannon thundered again.

Hatchet resumed his briefing. “If I see anyone slowing down or not giving it their all, that sad sack may be eliminated at my sole discretion. Any questions?”

Beth raised her hand and was duly acknowledged. “When do we get breakfast?”

“When and if I’m convinced you’ve earned it.”

There were no further questions, so Master Chief Hatchet let slip the dogs of war. The eight remaining trainees tasted their legs as the antique artillery piece spoke for the third and final time, heralding Tyler’s washout from the boot camp.

As expected, the handicapped Gwen proved slower than most of the other trainees; but she had the will, and so found a way. The one-winged Goth navigated the axe pit by scooting along on her back; she wriggled through the suspended tire by merely holding her bad arm against her side as she engaged the obstacle; and the rope swing could be done almost as easily with one arm as with two, although it did pose a potential stamina problem if the campers had to run the course many times.

Only the wall stumped her at first. Normally an obstacle based on upper body strength, the usual way to attack the wall was to leap onto it high enough to get one’s arms on the top, and then muscle oneself over. Even with two good arms, though, Gwen’s upper body strength was unremarkable; and with only one arm fully functional, she did not see how she could possibly manage it; yet the Master Chief had promised there would be a way.

Gwen scanned the wall, in haste lest Hatchet think she had given up, and spotted her accommodation. Near one end of the wall were several small indentations which she surmised were meant to be footholds. She leapt upon the wall once but failed to scale it when her foot slipped; yet this attempt was fruitful for all that, for she had glimpsed something atop the wall that was clearly meant to be a handhold. The Goth gamely tried the wall again; but this time she had better footing, grasped the handhold, and gained the summit.

The other trainees could presumably have used Gwen’s accommodation had they wished, but most had little to gain from it, for it was slower and taxing in its own way. Only Beth found it advantageous, for the squat little farm girl needed an accommodation herself. The mysterious malady that burdened so many of the campers had hit her hardest of all, and the standard method of scaling the wall proved too much for her.

As midmorning approached, Scarlett, now looking like she usually did, arrived with several papers in hand. Hatchet quickly read these, frowning and muttering darkly. He conversed with the academic-looking redshirt for a time, keeping one eye on the trainees’ progress. After dismissing Scarlett, Hatchet placed a radio call to Chris, asking the Generalissimo (or General Nuisance, as the trainees had taken to calling him) to meet him at the lodge.

“Company, halt!” Hatchet called. “Everyone, to the lodge. It’s time for breakfast.”

The trainees arrived at the lodge to find their less hardy comrades waiting for them, presumably because Hatchet did not want to cook for the washouts separately. Lindsay, Tyler, Heather and Duncan were naturally eager to know how the challenge was going, even though they had hoped to resume their normal camp routine, or at least what passed for normal.

Breakfast was a thick, pasty gruel that tasted like wet cardboard, but whether this signaled the Master Chief’s displeasure with his troops’ performance was hard to say. Indeed, some of the campers considered the lack of flavor a blessing, considering some of the things they’d had to eat at the camp.

As the teens ate, Chris arrived with Dawn and Ella in tow. Hatchet led the three outside.

“I might have known you’d have the prettiest women on the island waiting on you,” Hatchet observed dryly.

Ella blushed and seemed about to speak, but Chris spoke first. “Maybe they are, but I’ve got another reason. These two have irreplaceable skill sets, so I actually have to try to keep them alive.” Chris shook his head theatrically. “Heavy are the burdens of command.”

“Roger that,” Hatchet said.

“So, Chief, what’s up? You said it was important. It had better be, to interrupt my morning manicure.”

“I’ve seen the test results for the trainees who’ve washed out of boot camp so far, and I don’t like them. Tyler’s fine, but the others…”

“Was Cody right? Is it radiation sickness?” Ella fearfully asked before Chris could.

“What she said,” added Chris with a glare at the admittedly beautiful intern.

“That’s the weird part,” Hatchet answered. “I had one of the interns read up on it this morning. The pattern of who’s sick and who’s not fits, but the symptoms don’t quite match. Turns out diarrhea and especially vomiting start right away and usually mean a lethal dose; so if that was the cause, the players who are sick now would probably be dead by now.”

“So it’s probably an ordinary bug. Why can’t you just give them some antibiotics?”

“Because even though it looks like radiation wasn’t the direct cause, it might still have been an indirect cause. Lindsay, Heather and Duncan all have pretty low white cell counts. We’re probably going to see the same with the others who are sick. Their immune systems have been compromised, so we might be seeing what’s called an ‘opportunistic’ infection.”

“Meaning…?” Chris prompted uncertainly.

“I’ve got basic medical training,” Hatchet explained, “but this is outside my expertise. These kids need a real doctor.”

“Do you know what a real doctor costs?” Chris whined. “I can’t run this show on stone knives and bearskins.”

“You mean without your full massage budget,” Hatchet translated. “Look, Chris, I know the producers don’t like to spend a dime if a nickel will do, but what do you think will happen to the show’s ratings if half the players get too sick to do the challenges? Or if they’re feeling so crappy that they just go through the motions? For all we know, this could get worse before it gets better.”

Chris nodded grudgingly in belated understanding. “Right. Get a real doctor out here. Unless…” His eyes lit up with sudden inspiration. “Say, Ella, we’ve seen some of the things you can do with your singing. I don’t suppose you can heal the sick, can you?”

Ella looked confused, so it fell to Dawn to explain. “I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way. Ella is what we in the Craft call a wild talent. Yes, she can do some wondrous things with her songs, but rarely if ever can she evoke those effects consciously, except maybe for the animal summoning. In other words, she doesn’t sing to make things happen, she sings because she likes to sing. The extraordinary effects just follow naturally.”

Hatchet sent Ella into the lodge to round up the campers. When she was safely out of earshot, the Master Chief said to Dawn, “From what I’ve heard, and what I’ve seen, her singing tends to be appropriate to the situation, with appropriate effects. Is that correct?”

“Of course,” the mystic replied. “That’s part of her Gift.”

“I have an idea.” Hatchet quickly laid out his proposal.

Dawn nodded. “It just might work. It certainly couldn’t hurt to try.”

Chris smirked and needled, “You’re going soft, Chief.”

“Not at all,” Dawn countered. “He’s a father to his men, something you wouldn’t understand.”

Before Chris could respond, the lodge door opened and the campers filed out, escorted by Ella singing the Caisson Song:

The Caissons Go Rolling Along circa 1942 US Office of Emergency Management World War II

the campers filed out, escorted by Ella singing the Caisson Song

Over hill, over dale,
We will hit the dusty trail,
And those Caissons go rolling along.

Up and down, in and out,
Counter march and left about,
And those Caissons go rolling along,

For it's high-high-he,
In the Field Artillery,
Shout out your numbers loud and strong,

For wher-e’er we go,
You will always know,
That those Caissons go rolling along.

The campers, now in high spirits, soon joined in as they marched back to the obstacle course, for it was part of the Singer’s uncanny gift that all who heard her sing knew the words and the tune as well as she. Even language was no barrier.

Hatchet looked at Dawn and grinned. “Appropriate to the situation, all right.”

When training resumed, Hatchet drove his troops as hard as before; and though Ella’s song had left the trainees feeling like they could take on the world, the effect was fleeting. A more mundane but more enduring benefit was the encouragement of their washed-out teammates, who were now on hand to cheer the trainees on.

Beth vomited barely a half hour after returning to the course, after which her performance began to decline. In the fullness of time, the farm girl stumbled on the stepping stones and took a header into the mud. She got up slowly as Hatchet came to check on her.

“Too… much… mud,” the nerd girl groaned.

“Fire the cannon and report to the infirmary,” Hatchet commanded. “You have been honorably discharged.”

The Master Chief turned to face the trainees who had gathered to see what was wrong with Beth. He bellowed, “Back on the course, soldiers! Now!”

Katie had been looking haggard ever since what passed for breakfast, and vomited soon after Beth’s dismissal, but the Thin Twin felt she had too much at stake to give up and persisted through sheer willpower. Not only was her head likely to be on the block if her team lost, but she had pledged to carry on for Sadie and could not—would not—let her BFF down.

As the afternoon wore on, two more trainees fell. Hatchet discharged first Gwen, then Cody for visibly declining performance. After pulling the science geek off the course, the Master Chief said in consoling tone, “Listen here. You have nothing to be ashamed of,” then shouted, “except for being a little baby who let your team down! Beth is sick and Gwen is wounded. What’s your excuse?!”

The sun began to sink beneath the horizon. Leshawna’s performance was declining severely, but Hatchet elected not to remove her, possibly because discharging the homegirl would have left the visibly ill Katie as the only remaining Eagle against three Muskies. Finally, in the deepening dusk, Hatchet announced, “We’re done for today! Katie, D.J., front and center!”

Master Chief Hatchet told the brickhouse and the yinless yang, “You were the only two able to consistently run the course in under a minute. Well done, soldiers.” He favored the pair with a crisp salute, which D.J. and Katie were pleased to return.

.

The Brick MacArthur Memorial Kitchen Raid

After a “gruel”ing excuse for dinner, the campers headed back to their cabins, but Duncan was not ready to call it a day. The delinquent approached Ezekiel, and the pair then approached Courtney.

“That gruel wasn’t exactly satisfying,” Duncan said. “What say we get some peanut butter and jam sandwiches?

“Are you kidding? I’d love it,” Courtney admitted, “but Chef will never give them to us.”

“That’s the problem with your thinking,” Duncan explained. “The trick is to not ask for it.”

Courtney longed for decent food, but she was also a stickler for the rules. “But if we get caught…”

“If we get caught, it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission,” the delinquent assured her.

“You won’t get caught,” Dawn said. The three Muskies gasped and flinched, for they had no idea the mystic was present. Then again, she might not have been present until just that moment, for anything the conspirators knew to the contrary. Hers were mysterious ways.

As soon as Courtney trusted her voice to sound steady, she said, “I really wish you wouldn’t do that.”

“Apologies,” the mystic offered, “but do you remember what Chef said when he made you eat the garbage and Duncan and Ezekiel tried to get something better?”

“I remember,” Ezekiel said. “He said, ‘Kitchen raiding is a basic soldier’s skill.’ I get it now. For all we know, this could actually be part of the challenge, eh? That would explain why he isn’t dragging us into ‘night training’ again.”

Dawn nodded. “Exactly. As long as you’re reasonably careful and don’t try to just walk in, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to pull this off.”

Duncan grinned his wolfish grin. “This won’t be as much fun if Chef’s going to turn a blind eye, but hey, if we’re getting better food out of it, who am I to complain?”

“Okay, I admit this all sounds plausible,” Courtney conceded. “We all know Chef’s nicer than he lets on.”

Ezekiel said, “I just thought of something. If this is part of the challenge, then Katie and Leshawna need to either come with us or make a raid of their own. D.J. should also come with us, since he’s still in the challenge.”

Duncan shook his head. “Six people? That’s an awful lot for a kitchen raid. We’d be getting in each other’s way.”

“Well, you don’t have to come,” Courtney observed archly. “In fact, maybe you shouldn’t. I realize this was your idea, but you did wash out of the challenge last night. I like the idea of a joint operation. That way, if we’re wrong and Chef gets mad, he won’t have an excuse to disqualify us and award the challenge to the Birdies by command decision.”

Duncan had no desire to leave such a “delicate operation” (as he put it) to others, but he could find no flaw in Courtney’s argument, so he excused himself and went to tell D.J. of the plan. The goodhearted brickhouse required little persuasion.

Courtney, meanwhile, sought out the Eagles girls who were still in the challenge. Katie readily agreed, saying only that it sounded like fun. Leshawna was more skeptical of Courtney’s motives, to which the onetime CIT replied, “That’s not how I roll. I’m not Heather.” Courtney finally convinced Leshawna to participate by explaining how Courtney herself had been convinced, but nothing would be gained by repeating it here.

Ezekiel had no one to persuade, but nevertheless felt the need to tell someone, so he sought out Beth; and it was ill luck that he did, for it set in motion events none could have foreseen.

When the raiding party assembled, Duncan was there to see them off with a final suggestion. Their target should be the Craft Services tent, he said, not the lodge kitchen. Craft Services was where the staff ate, as has been told of before, and it was no secret that the staff got better food than the campers did. Duncan also noted that Craft Services, being housed in a tent, might be easier to infiltrate than the lodge, which was a permanent structure. The raiders saw wisdom in the delinquent’s counsel.

The Joint Strike Force embarked on a circuitous route to their target as Dawn watched them go from a discreet distance. The wraith-girl pulled out her radio and placed a call.

“Eos to Black Ramsay. Come in, Black Ramsay.”

“Black Ramsay here. Report,” came Master Chief Hatchet’s filtered voice in reply.

“They took the bait. The Brick MacArthur Memorial Kitchen Raid is a go. Their target is Craft Services, not the lodge kitchen.”

“Ambitious,” Hatchet said with audible surprise in his voice. “Black Ramsay out.”

The raiders, well camouflaged with bits and bobs of brush, reached Craft Services without incident, but an unforeseen complication stymied them for a time. The interns had apparently eaten in two shifts, although this was not standard procedure, and the second shift was still in the tent. There was nothing for it but to wait, which the five did for over half an hour.

Katie felt increasingly nauseated, and she finally excused herself long enough to purge nearby. Better that, she thought, than to have her gruel come up of its own accord at a less convenient time, which it seemed likely to do. Besides, she told herself, this way she would have more room for the delicacies that she hoped awaited them. After doing what she had to do, the Thin Twin rejoined the others.

In the fullness of time, the interns finished their repast and went about their business. The raiders moved in soon after. Courtney, being the smallest and least conspicuous of the group as well as a former summer camp CIT, volunteered for the dangerous job of sneaking to the entrance to reconnoiter whilst her squadmates went to the tent’s opposite end.

Chris and Chef sat in the dining area, for they preferred to eat fashionably late when the shooting schedule permitted. They were conversing and seemed in no hurry to go anywhere, so Courtney presumed they would keep each other occupied for the duration of the raid.

By the time Courtney rejoined her fellow raiders, they had found a likely entry spot. The fabric of the large, semipermanent tent looked too heavy to slash easily with the small knife Duncan had loaned to Ezekiel; but even were it not, damaging the tent would risk incurring the Master Chief’s wrath, not to mention Chris’. The classic method of sneaking into a tent—lifting the fabric in one spot high enough for the sneakers to sneak under—looked no easier, but D.J.’s finger strength was equal to the task.

Courtney peeked under the tent to verify that the kitchen area was deserted. Satisfied that the coast was clear, she went in past her shoulders for a better look before withdrawing to brief her band of brothers.

“Duncan was right,” the CIT-cum-snack burglar admitted. “The kitchen area is too small for all of us, so here’s how it’s going to work. D.J. will stay here to let us out when we’re ready. Leshawna, you go watch the tent entrance; but watch D.J. too, because if anything happens to him, we’ll need you to let us out.

“Zeke and Katie will go inside with me to get the goods, but be careful. There’s a partition, so it doesn’t look like Chris and Chef can see much of the kitchen from the dining area, but there’s no door, so we’ll have to be very quiet. It’s too dangerous to turn on the overhead light, but we can use the refrigerator light to see what we’re doing. Just be careful where it casts your shadow.”

There were no objections or counterproposals, so Courtney grinned and said, “Let’s do this. ‘Cry “Very quiet havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war.’”

Despite some nervous moments and a false alarm, the raid went off without a serious hitch. The raiders got away clean with not only soft drinks and the basic ingredients for peanut butter and jam sandwiches, but also bananas, cold cuts, tomatoes and a head of lettuce, a few savory sandwich spreads, and even some cold pan-fried bacon. They could have gotten even more, had they brought enough sacks to carry it all. The raiders snuck away from the tent until they thought they had reached a safe distance. Then, no longer able or willing to contain their emotions, the five abandoned stealth and dashed back to their cabins, whooping and squealing with glee.

Duncan was stationed near the porch of the girls’ cabin when he heard that noisy approach and knew it could mean only one thing. He knocked on the door and, when Lindsay answered, announced, “Party at the boys’ cabin. Come one, come all.”

The girls who had not participated in the raid answered the summons as quickly as they might, just in time to see the raiders lay out their booty. Courtney did a quick head count and asked, “Where’s Beth?”

Lindsay explained, “When Doug invited us over, Belle said she needed to talk to Alamogordo about something. She said she’d be back pretty soon.”

“I guess we can start without her,” Courtney said. “We’ve got all night, and there’s enough for everyone. We got enough that we might even have leftovers.”

“As if,” Cody retorted with that goofy grin of his.

“What he said,” Katie seconded.

The campers set up a sandwich bar, and had scarcely completed this task when Beth arrived with a large and apparently heavy sack slung over her shoulder. “I got something for our party,” she said as she set the sack down.

“Cool,” Heather pronounced as she looked inside. “Let’s see what you’ve…” The queen bee lifted her head and stared at the nerd girl, eyes wide with shock and admiration. “Beth… I knew you had connections to the redshirts, but this… this is beyond the call.”

“What did she get?” Lindsay asked excitedly, sensing that it was something wonderful.

Heather reached into the sack and drew forth the topmost item. She triumphantly held aloft, for all to see, a six-pack of beer. “There’s more where this came from,” the Dragon Queen assured her awestruck colleagues.

Duncan gave a low whistle of appreciation. “Beth, if your braces weren’t so disgusting, I’d kiss you.”

Beth answered shyly, “If you were my type, I’d let you.” She seemed to be averting her eyes, but Duncan and few others noticed that she was actually glancing at Ezekiel.

“Fair enough,” Duncan said with a knowing smirk.

Courtney said, “Just remember, don’t overindulge if you’re still in the challenge.” She grinned impishly and added, “At least, not if you’re on my team. If Katie and Leshawna want to overindulge, that’s fine by me.”

With nothing to delay them further, the campers began to enjoy their first proper food in two days. Tyler said, “Beth, I don’t suppose you managed to arrange a DJ for us? Or are two miracles too much to ask for?”

As if on cue, someone knocked at the door. The campers fell silent, suddenly fearing that all this was too good to be true and the other shoe was about to drop. Gwen nervously answered the door.

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

.

Twenty-first Night

The next morning, after they had breakfasted, Brett went to school whilst his mother went to earn their daily bread. That evening, after they had dined and Brett had attended to his homework, 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.

Gwen opened the door to reveal Dawn and Ella.

“Cool,” Duncan pronounced. “The hookers are here.”

Dawn scowled, but Ella just looked confused. Courtney declared, “You know, Duncan, it would serve you right if our resident sorceress turned you into a toad.”

“That would be redundant,” Dawn said. “His family tree only has one branch, you know.” Before anyone could ask what she meant, the mystic flashed a mockup badge and announced sternly, “RWMP. We’re investigating a theft from the Craft Services tent.”

“Quick, eat the evidence,” someone whispered. It was a stage whisper, for everyone knew or had been told of Dawn’s role in recent events.

“RWMP?” Leshawna repeated without comprehending.

“Royal Wawanakwa Mystic Police,” Dawn explained. “We see all, so you might as well tell us the truth.”

“The cops already?” Tyler whined. “We haven’t even had time to get rowdy.”

Courtney sensed that Dawn was role playing, and so responded in kind. “You’ve got nothing! Your evidence is entirely circumstantial! This is entrapment!” A pause, and then, “Oh, but maybe you’re here to join the fun? We’d love to have you, seeing as you did put us up to it, sort of.”

Dawn smirked and conceded, “I suppose I did. Tell you what: you say nothing, I say nothing.”

“So don’t just stand, there, come on in,” Gwen urged.

“Oh, please do,” Katie pleaded. “We owe you so much.”

“Besides,” Cody observed, “We’re always being told the editors won’t put footage of us fraternizing with interns into the episodes, so having you ladies here could help make sure any compromising situations we might get into tonight end up on the cutting room floor.”

“Not to mention that having more hot chicks never makes a party worse,” Duncan added.

Dawn declined with thanks, but the more gregarious Ella was happy to accept. The Singer did what she did best, and was soon entertaining the campers with drinking songs.

In taberna quando sumus - Carmina Burana italiano latino english testo lyrics

The Singer … was soon entertaining the campers with drinking songs

In the tavern when we’re drinking,
Though the ground be cold and stinking,
Down we go and join the action
With the dice and gaming faction.
What goes on inside the salon
Where it’s strictly cash per gallon
If you’d like to know, sir, well you
Shut your mouth and I shall tell you.

Some are drinking, some are playing,
Some their vulgar side displaying:
Most of those who like to gamble
Wind up naked in the scramble;
Some emerge attired in new things,
Some in bits and bobs and shoestrings:
No one thinks they’ll kick the bucket
Dicing for a beery ducat.

First to those who pay for wallowing,
Then we layabouts toast the following:
Next we drink to all held captive,
Thirdly drink to those still active,
Fourthly drink to the Christian-hearted,
Fifthly drink to the dear departed,
Sixthly to our free-and-easy-sisters,
Seventhly to all out-of-work enlisters.

Eighthly drink to friars deconverted,
Ninthly, monks from monast’ries diverted,
Tenthly, sailors of the oceans,
Eleventhly, louts who cause commotions,
Twelfthly, those who wear the penitential,
Thirteenth, and whose journey is essential—
To this fat pope, to that thin king—
Who the hell cares why they’re drinking!

Drinking tinker, drinking tailor,
Drinking soldier, drinking sailor,
Drinking rich man, drinking poor man,
Drinking beggarman, thief and lawman,
Drinking servant, drinking master,
Drinking mistress, drinking pastor,
Drinking doctor, drinking layman,
Drinking drunkard, drinking drayman:

Drinking rude man, drinking proper,
Drinking tiddler, drinking whopper,
Drinking scholar, drinking gypsy,
Drinking drunk or maudlin tipsy,
Drinking father, drinking mother,
Drinking sister, drinking brother,
Drinking husbands, wives and lovers,
Hundreds more and thousands others—

Half a million pounds would never
Pay for all we drink together:
For we drink beyond all measure,
Purely for the sake of pleasure:
Thus you see us, poor and shoddy,
Criticized by everybody—
God grant that they be confounded
When at last the trump is sounded!

Royal Navy - Heart of Oak

Ella finished singing “Heart of Oak”

Consumption of food and drink proceeded apace. As the provisions dwindled and so required less space to display, D.J. had an idea. When Ella finished singing “Heart of Oak”, D.J. made public his proposal, which the Singer and the other campers greeted with enthusiasm.

Ella took a break and partook of the feast whilst the strapping Muskie boys, plus Cody and Leshawna, tweaked the arrangement of the bunk beds to free up more floor space. Courtney, Gwen and Katie rearranged the buffet to the same end whilst Lindsay dashed off to the girls’ cabin.

Heather sidled up to Beth and purred, “Let’s go out on the porch.”

The queen bee had barely said a word to Beth all summer, and the nerd girl could not begin to guess what she wanted to talk about now, but was game to find out. “Sure,” Beth said.

By the time the redecorating crew had finished, Lindsay had returned with duct tape and scissors. These she used to mark off a small dance floor. Ella returned to her station with a contented smile and an expectant air, and Beth and Heather came in from the porch.

Courtney extended a hand and said, “Zeke, may I have the first dance?”

“I don’t really know how to dance,” her protégé admitted, “except for some square dancing.”

“I can teach you the basics, but you’ll have to let me lead,” Courtney insisted gently.

“Since you put it that way …” the farm boy said as he took Courtney’s proffered hand.

It was foreordained that Cody would ask Gwen to dance. The Goth was reluctant, of course, but agreed. “Just do me a favor,” she asked as she removed her sling, “and try not to read too much into this, okay?”

Everyone else seemed content to wait and see what Ella would sing; for although the small dance floor might have had enough room for everyone during slow numbers, most fast dancing styles required more space.

Ella began to sing “Bella Notte” from Lady and the Tramp, a romantic song suitable for slow dancing. Her eyes were bright with encouragement as her gaze briefly met Cody’s, for the Singer was a romantic at heart and loved few things better than a good underdog story.

Gwen and Cody had a few false starts as they discovered by trial and error what positioning would put the least strain on the Goth’s injured shoulder, but by the end of the song they were dancing easily. During that opening number, D.J. and Leshawna joined the vanguard on the floor. Ella segued from the first song to a second, then a third, without pause.

During the second song in this opening set, Duncan came onto the floor with Beth, of all people. The delinquent had heretofore shown little interest in her, but the nerd girl’s acquisition of beer for the party—not just a little, but as much as most of the campers were likely to want—had greatly boosted her social standing, at least for the nonce. Despite the surplus of girls, Beth would have as many dances as she wanted this night.

When Ella finished the song set, the dancers exhaled almost in unison and it seemed to some that they were in closer embrace with their partners than they had been at the start. Gwen self-consciously pulled a little away from Cody, though not so far nor so violently as to attract attention.

“You okay, Gwen?” Cody asked, for the normally pasty white Goth had a distinctly ruddy complexion, and Cody thought her breathing seemed a bit ragged.

“I … I’m not sure,” Gwen admitted. She could feel her blush, and did not want to think how that might be interpreted. “I think I’d better sit down.”

In dance hall configuration, the cabin had two options for seating, the beds or the floor, so Cody and Gwen sat on a bed. With an effort, Gwen got her breathing under control and began to return to her normal color. Meanwhile, Ella began a fast dance song and D.J. and Leshawna returned to the floor, joined by Tyler and Lindsay.

Gwen seemed lost in thought as she watched the dancers, so Cody decided it was up to him to pull his erstwhile dance partner out of her shell. “Those were awesome dances we had,” he prompted.

“A little too awesome,” Gwen answered cryptically.

“What do you mean? How can a dance be too awesome?”

“I’m not really sure how to say this,” Gwen admitted, torn between not wanting to deceive Cody and not wanting to give him vain hope. “I’ve never been to a dance before, or even a party. I didn’t know what to expect, but we’ve all seen—we’ve all felt—what Ella can do. When she was singing those love songs, it was like an aphrodisiac. God help me, I actually wanted you!”

“Why wouldn’t you? You were finally getting to experience my manly charms up close and personal.”

Gwen gave the science geek a trenchant look. “Because I have a boyfriend. A boyfriend I’m very happy with. A boyfriend who lives close enough to me that we might actually be able to see each other when this lame game’s over. This party’s been so much fun, I’m trying to let you down gently, but facts are facts, dude.

“Listen, there are more girls than boys here tonight, and there’s romance in the air. Try your luck with someone else. You might never get a better chance before we get off this lame island.”

During their time on the dance floor, Cody had wanted Gwen so badly he could taste it. At the time, he had chalked it up to a combination of the Goth’s beauty and proximity, the romantic setting, and normal male urges. “You’re sure it was the singing … and not me?”

“Trent’s probably going to see this sooner or later, so that’s the story I need to stick to,” Gwen explained contritely, or so it seemed to Cody. “Look, I can still fast dance with you if you want, but I think we’re done with slow dancing.”

Ella began to sing another slow dance song, which was the type she seemed to prefer. Katie trotted over to a certain Goth and her unwanted suitor. “Hey, Gwen, mind if I borrow Cody?”

Gwen smiled warmly to her innocent friend, who still had a good deal of little girl in her despite the maturation she had undergone by merely surviving this hellish game. “Trust me, you don’t even need to ask.”

Now it was Cody’s turn to hesitate and to fear the reaction of one who might later see footage of the party. Karma sucks, he thought.

“Come on, ‘Codemeister’,” Katie urged as she pulled the science geek to his feet. “Sweep me off my feet like you did with Gwen.”

So, Gwen thought, Katie had noticed.

In the end, Cody’s reluctance did not stop him any more than Gwen’s had. He and Katie completed a full house on the dance floor, as Lindsay continued to dance with Tyler and Courtney had returned with Ezekiel. Beth was cutely if awkwardly paired with D.J., and Duncan with Leshawna.

Ella followed her slow love ballad with another, as she had before. Shortly after the second song began, Lindsay felt a tap on her shoulder. She looked over her shoulder to find Heather standing behind her.

“I’m cutting in,” the queen bee announced.

Tyler had no objection, but Lindsay was confused. “I thought that was something boys did,” the uberbimbo noted uncertainly.

“Usually,” Heather admitted as she stepped into Tyler’s arms, “but tonight, there aren’t enough boys to go around.”

In the fullness of time, the gender imbalance meant that most of the boys had opportunities to dance with most of the girls. During a certain slow number, Courtney was dancing contentedly with Ezekiel when she felt a tap on her shoulder.

“I’m cutting in,” Beth told her.

“You’re cutting in on me?” Courtney repeated incredulously. “There’s hope for you yet.”

“Well, you have been monopolizing Zeke pretty much all night.”

“I’ve been teaching him how to dance, but I guess you’re right. He’s all yours.”

Courtney suddenly felt flushed as she yielded the floor. After a few moments watching the children of the corn dance, she went out to the cabin porch for some cool night air.

Duncan was on the porch, enjoying the same night air that had lured Courtney. “Come to claim that kiss, Princess?” he asked.

“Please don’t start,” Courtney asked as politely as she might. “This night has been so much fun, I don’t want to ruin the mood.”

“I could improve your mood,” the scorner of laws countered. “Trust me, you’ve had worse.”

“And how would you know what I’ve had?”

“You can’t be as goody-goody as you let on. You’re too successful and too strong-willed.”

“So you think a good person can’t be successful or strong-willed? That’s a sad and tragic view of life.”

“Or practical. People who get ahead are willing to get their hands dirty, so here’s a tip: stop fighting it. You’ll be happier, I’ll be happier, our whole team will be happier. This seems like a romantic setting, if you’re into that sort of thing. You know you want it, so why not just take it? That’s what you do back home, isn’t it?”

Courtney heard footsteps, and could see in her peripheral vision that she and Duncan were no longer alone.

“You really think I’m crushing on you?” Courtney challenged. Not waiting for an answer, she turned to D.J., who had overheard part of their argument and had succumbed to the temptation to find out what was going on.

D.J. suddenly found his arms full of warm CIT as Courtney leapt upon him, twined her legs around his waist to overcome the height difference, and treated him to one of the steamiest kisses in her repertoire. When she finally let the gentle giant come up for air, Courtney whispered into his ear, “Play along.”

D.J. did not have to be told twice. He still could only guess what was going on, but he had a pretty girl in his arms and an invitation to get physical. Neither he nor Courtney was currently involved with anyone, so it was not as though they would be cheating. What would you have done?

At first, Duncan looked on in amusement. After another lingering kiss, D.J. noticed that the delinquent was still watching. As the gentle giant nuzzled Courtney, lightly scruffling her cheek with his beard, he asked the other boy, “Yo, dude? A little privacy?”

Duncan had every right to be there, and if it had been only Courtney, he might have stayed to see how far she was willing to go to back her claim that she had no interest in him. Duncan considered D.J. a friend, though, so with a “thumbs up” gesture to the brickhouse, Duncan left the putative lovebirds to their business.

After two more long, languid kisses, Courtney again whispered in D.J.’s ear, in the same breathy, sultry tone as before, “Is he gone?”

D.J. said nothing, but turned round so Courtney could see for herself that Duncan had departed.

Courtney hopped down. “Thanks, D.J. I owe you one.”

In an affected British accent, her “leading man” replied, “Well, ma’am, I don’t think much of the British soldier who wouldn’t inconvenience himself to save a female in distress.”

“That sounds like a line from something,” Courtney observed.

“I think so,” D.J. admitted. “I don’t know where I heard it—it might have been from the musical our school did last spring—but it seemed appropriate, with this boot camp and me ‘rescuing’ you from Duncan and all.”

Courtney’s expression turned apologetic. In the course of their staged makeout session, she had felt D.J. getting into the part a little more than she had hoped he would. “I’m sorry if I, uh, ‘teased’ you,” she offered contritely.

“No worries, Court. It’s nothing a cold shower won’t fix.”

Courtney laughed. “Well, the shower stalls have plenty of cold water. Now, if you’d wanted a hot shower, you might have been out of luck. But thanks again. I had to get Duncan off my back, and you were ‘available’, so to speak. I could have done worse.”

“I think you’re about to,” D.J. replied enigmatically. “I know who you’re falling for, and it’s not Duncan.”

“What do you mean?” Courtney asked curiously. She did not think she was crushing on anyone, although she did understand that the crusher is not always the first person to notice.

“Do you know the story of My Fair Lady?” D.J. asked.

“Sure,” Courtney replied. “Upper-crust guy schools uncouth, lower-class girl to be acceptable to polite society, and in the process he starts … to …” Courtney’s voice trailed off and her eyes widened as realization dawned.

“No. It can’t be. That’s impossible,” she declared hastily, with more certainty in her voice than in her face.

“Maybe,” D.J. conceded, “but the signs are there. I’m not surprised you haven’t seen them, but now that you know what to look for …” He left the thought unfinished.

The flustered Muskies leader excused herself and returned to the cabin, her mind in turmoil. D.J. watched her go, pleased with how he had handled the situation. He had not planned to poison Courtney’s ear like that, but an unlooked-for opportunity had presented itself and he had taken it. Besides, he told himself, this was for Courtney’s own good. Despite her bossy tendencies, she was a good catch—one who could do far better than the likes of Ezekiel. If D.J. could get what he wanted whilst saving Courtney from herself, then so much the better.

You’re going down, Homeschool, D.J. thought grimly. Bunny will be avenged.

In the cabin, Ella was singing a fast dance number. Beth and Ezekiel were on the floor, as were Tyler and Leshawna. All four were dancing up a storm, although only Leshawna had any prior reputation as a dancer. Courtney marveled at this, and her mind began to clear.

The onetime CIT reclaimed her half-finished beer and sat on a bed beside Gwen. “And Zeke told me he didn’t know how to dance,” Courtney observed rhetorically. “Beth, I can sort of see because of her baton twirling, but what’s up with Tyler? Sometimes it seems like he could trip over a blade of grass, yet he’s matching Leshawna step for step.”

“I noticed that,” Gwen replied. “I’d guess their dancing skills are being enhanced. In fact, I’d bet on it.”

“Enhanced? How?”

Gwen explained her theory concerning the effects of Ella’s singing on the dancers, but nothing would be gained by repeating it here.

“Of course!” Courtney seemed downright eager to accept Gwen’s theory. “That explains a lot.”

Amused at the Muskie leader’s reaction, Gwen asked, “So now that you know, what are you going to do?”

“I intend to enjoy it.”

“Didn’t see that coming.”

“Look at it this way,” Courtney explained as she lifted her beer. “If you’re right, then the aphrodisiac effect is like this beer. If you understand what overindulging can do, and have the self-control to stop short of that, you have a pleasant buzz that makes the world a better place. And this is a great night to play the field.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Gwen replied wistfully.

“Why the long face?” Courtney asked reflexively, but guessed the answer before the Goth could respond. “Oh, of course. Trent. Yeah, if I had a boyfriend at the moment, I’d want him here, too. Tell you what, we already know that we can work well together, so go ahead and slow dance with Cody if you want, or any of the other boys for that matter. If things get too hot and you need me to pry him off you, I’m there; and if I need Duncan distracted, I’ll count on you.” With a wink, the onetime CIT added, “And if you end up going with the flow, I’ll vouch for you to Trent in the confessional.”

Gwen smiled. “You’ve got a deal … wingman.”

During the next slow set, Heather was dancing with Cody when she felt a tap on her shoulder.

“I’m cutting in,” Lindsay announced.

“Not on me, you’re not.”

“But you cut in on me,” Lindsay protested.

“Remember the alliance rule that I can borrow your stuff without asking but you can’t borrow mine?”

“Yes, but—”

“Right now, Cody’s part of my stuff,” the queen bee concluded.

“Ladies, please,” Cody entreated. “There’s enough of the Codester to go around.”

“You stay out of this,” the girls shot back in unison.

Cody said no more, but thought, Two hotties fighting over me. Can this night get any better? He chanced to spot a certain Goth on the sidelines and thought, Yes, it could, if one of those hotties was Gwen.

As the party wore on, more campers guessed what was happening; and for those who still had not worked it out for themselves, Gwen’s theory had got around. The campers, being the hormonal teenagers they were, largely embraced the possibilities, much as Courtney had; for when all was said and done, the aphrodisiac effect really was not as strong as it had first seemed, altering mood rather than mind. It had threatened to overwhelm Gwen at first because she was unprepared for it, and just possibly because she perhaps liked Cody better than she was willing to admit; but forewarned is forearmed, and Gwen did not slide to the brink with him again.

There could be no doubt that Ella’s love songs reduced inhibitions, but they appeared to merely amplify attraction as opposed to creating it from nothing. The beer might have done as well, had there been more of it, but the Singer’s spell had the advantage of preserving coordination and cognition; and even dance partners who had no intention of going to first base with each other, much less beyond, nevertheless gained in the mind’s eye visions which were exceedingly pleasant to contemplate.

So it was that when Heather and D.J. kissed more hungrily than tenderly, they were neither the first nor the last pair to do so, and their kiss might not even have been the most passionate exchanged on the dance floor that night; for as Courtney had suggested, it was a good night to play the field. But although Cody and Duncan each got their share of kisses from multiple desirable girls, neither got the kiss they wanted most.

Nor did the Singer herself seem immune. She seemed to feel the love in the air, for her slow numbers grew ever more sultry and suggestive—never crudely so, for that would have been completely unlike her—and her flawless face positively beamed with unexampled joy.

During a break in the action, Tyler pulled Cody aside. “Would you do a bro a solid?”

“Sure. What do you need?”

“Get out your keyboard. It’s time to go big or go home.”

Cody grinned his goofy grin, for could guess what Red Jock had in mind. “Good luck, dude.”

Tyler had met with much more success under Ella’s spell than he had in most of his endeavors on the island. He had earned kisses from every girl at the party save one, for he was handsome and well liked. Only D.J. had done as well, and Tyler intended to break that tie, at least temporarily. So it was that, at the next break, Tyler invited Ella to dance, for the one girl he had not yet had a chance to kiss was the Singer herself.

“I’d love to,” Ella admitted, “but what will we dance to?”

Tyler gestured to Cody, who stood in the background with his keyboard at the ready.

The Singer’s face lit up like the sun. She extended her hand and said, “Lead the way, good sir!”

Following Ella’s usual pattern, Cody played a set of three slow, romantic tunes as Tyler and Ella danced. Other couples took the floor as well, for there was no reason not to; and while Cody’s keyboarding lacked the uncanny power of the Singer’s songs, the residual effect from two hours of increasingly romantic dancing and thoughts of love was still potent. Several dancers snuck glances toward Tyler and Ella to see if his bold gambit would bear fruit and perhaps to encourage them; but the jock and the Singer noticed not, having eyes only for each other.

During the third dance, Tyler got his reward: a tender, lingering, electrifying kiss from that classically beautiful older woman best known as the Singer, and another kiss of like kind when they parted. As Tyler staggered off the floor, Ella went to Cody, thanked him for making her visit to the dance floor possible, and underscored her appreciation with a briefer but no less potent kiss that left the science geek feeling weak in the knees.

“Do you always kiss like that?” Cody asked with that goofy grin of his. “Tyler looks ready to pass out, and I think I know how he feels.”

“I’m not really the one who could answer that,” Ella admitted. “I don’t really do all that much kissing, but tonight’s a special night.”

“I know, right?” Cody affirmed with feeling. “If you need me to play my keyboard again, just ask.”

“Thank you most kindly. I’ll keep that in mind.” Ella gave Cody a light peck on his cheek and returned to her station with a radiant smile and a light heart.

Nobody wanted the evening to end, but not even the Singer could stay the inexorable march of Time. Ella closed the dance program as she had opened it, with “Bella Notte” from Lady and the Tramp. That song consists of a single verse sung twice, usually with additional voices the second time. Ella, her voice as strong and pure has it had been at the start, sang solo the first time; and at her prompt, the campers joined her in chorus as they danced their last.

Lady And The Tramp 1This Is The Night

Ella closed the dance program as she had opened it

Oh, this is the night,
It’s a beautiful night,
And we call it “Bella Notte”.
Look at the skies,
They have stars in their eyes
On this lovely Bella Notte.
Side by side with your loved one,
You’ll find enchantment here;
The night will weave its magic spell
When the one you love is near.
For this is the night,
And the heavens are right,
On this lovely Bella Notte.

It was very late when the party finally wound down and everyone retired for the night. Perhaps half an hour after the lights went out, an alert observer might have noticed a female form slipping into the boys’ cabin.

.

Strange Bedfellows

The next morning, as Duncan began to awaken, he sensed that he was not alone in his bed. His semiconscious mind, still in that no man’s land between dreams and reality, began reviewing the previous night’s events as best it was able. The party had been fun, a break from the game all the more welcome for its spontaneity, but had it really been that wild? Duncan could not recall bringing anyone “home” with him. Beth’s acquisition of beer had been an amazing coup, but all the campers had been “thirsty”, so no one had gotten enough to get truly drunk on, especially with full stomachs. Indeed, two bottles per camper did little more than allow everyone to indulge “the wish to feel wicked” of which Lord Byron spoke.

Lord Byron? Duncan mused that he had spent too much time around Noah when the bookworm was on the island.

But if not the beer, then what? Had someone spiked the soda? No, he did not feel hung over, and he doubted that anyone in camp would have access to “date rape” drugs, much less be inclined to use them.

Lying on his side, Duncan was now close enough to full consciousness to operate voluntary muscles, so he opened his eyes, half-expecting to see Courtney. The delinquent had no lack of self-confidence, and he had always suspected that Courtney protested too much when she repeatedly claimed to have no interest in him. Indeed, the more she protested, the more he assumed that she would gladly give herself to him on any reasonable pretext.

When Duncan finally managed to retract his eyelids, however, he immediately saw that his bedmate was not Courtney. Lying in his arms, clad in a filmy negligee and with a contented smile on her face, was—

With a cry of alarm, Duncan hastily lurched away. Tangled in his blanket, he fell out of bed and landed flat on his back. His bed had sheets hung around it, turning his lower bunk into a proper canopy bed to give the lovers a bit of privacy. Duncan’s hasty evacuation had pulled one of these makeshift curtains from its moorings, so at the moment he could see nothing but bedsheet.

As the virile delinquent struggled with his linen bonds, reveille sounded. The other boys were already awake, though, thanks to their comrade’s unorthodox rise-and-shine procedure, which had also pulled his bedmate onto the floor.

After a few moments, the Juvenile Hall alumnus managed to extricate himself from the pile of bedding. Regaining his composure and what remained of his dignity, Duncan lost no time confronting his fellows.

“All right, who put the pixie standee in my bed?”

No answer was immediately forthcoming, because the other boys were too busy cracking wise:

“Does Courtney know about this?”

“Getting a little cardboard on the side?”

“I think we can safely say he’s not afraid of standees anymore.”

“Finally given up on Courtney, eh?”

After these wisecracks had run their course, Duncan repeated his question in a threatening tone. The other boys protested their innocence, for innocent they were. Duncan and his “band of brothers” would not learn the truth for some time, but a confessional spot in the finished episode insured that the viewing audience was not so mystified.

After the Boney Island challenge, the RCMP had come for Izzy but had failed to run her to ground, as has been told of before. After the Mounties had given up the search (for they are said to always get their man, but women are apparently another matter) the demented redhead made her home in the woods, but generally remained near the camp because that was where the action was. After delivering the Sunshine standee to Duncan’s bed, for indeed it was Izzy who had done this thing, Weird Red skulked to the outhouse to tape a brief confessional spot.

“Sunshine has had a huge crush on Duncan since the day we met him,” the fugitive explained, “and she asked me to help fix her up with him. I’ve never been able to refuse her. Sure, we got off on the wrong foot when we first met, but we’re just so much alike, she’s like a sister to me. So, I arranged for Sunshine and Duncan to spend the night together.” Izzy wagged her finger at the camera as she added in a playfully admonishing tone, “Naughty, naughty, Sunshine. I didn’t think you were that kind of girl.”

Breakfast consisted of gruel, gruel, gruel, gruel, gruel, gruel, water, gruel, gruel, gruel and gruel, but the campers were in such good moods that they scarcely cared. Katie was late to the table because she was the only camper still in the challenge to show signs of illness; so at the Master Chief’s command, she had detoured to the infirmary to be examined by the visiting doctor, one Leonard Kelley.

After their reasonably nutritious but typically unappetizing meal, the campers followed Master Chief Hatchet to a large tree that conveniently had an easily climbable trunk and sturdy branches near the ground. There, Hatchet bade the final five trainees climb onto those low branches, with the three Muskies one side of the trunk and the two remaining Eagles on the other. The trunk was wide enough that each team’s players could not see their rivals. With everyone in position, Hatchet ordered the trainees to hang upside down from their branches. This, he told them, was the final test and would not end until only one trainee remained.

“What you are experiencing is an ancient form of torture,” the Master Chief explained. “As your blood pools in your head, your head will start to pound and your eyes will feel like they’re about to pop out of their sockets. You’ll feel dizzy, and you may experience nausea and fainting spells.”

As if on cue, Leshawna nearly swooned and fell, but was able to anchor herself by reaching back and grasping her ankles. Katie thought that tactic a good one, and followed suit. D.J., Courtney and Ezekiel did likewise after Beth helpfully told them what the Eagles had done.

“Hey, no kibitzing!” Heather protested. “Master Chief, isn’t there a rule against that?”

“Of course not,” Hatchet replied. “The reason you washouts are here in the first place is to support your squadmates who are still in the challenge.”

Heather had no answer to this, so she called out, “You’ve got this, Katie! Show those losers what you’re made of!”

When Gwen called similar encouragement to Leshawna, Heather retorted, “Oh, please. Homie’s probably going to be the first one out. She’s got so much junk in her trunk, I’m surprised she can wrap her legs around the branch.”

“If you’re such an expert,” Gwen challenged skeptically, “Let’s hear you handicap the Fishies.”

Heather recognized the sarcastic tone, but ignored it for the sake of her business partnership with the Goth’s admirer. “Easy peasy. D.J.’s ripped, but he’s kind of top heavy, and that’s not going to do him any favors in a challenge like this. He’s not really built for stamina. Courtney’s in decent shape and she’s tiny, so she’s probably the one Katie has to beat. Homeschool’s the wild card, but if he lives on the prairie, then he probably doesn’t have much experience with trees. I doubt he’ll be able to go the distance.”

Over the next two hours, backup medic Scott periodically appeared and called the sick spectators one by one to the infirmary for their interviews with Dr. Kelley. Although Gwen was not ill, she was also called in for a follow-up examination of her recent injuries. Beth was the last patient, and when she returned to the challenge venue, she had Dawn and the good doctor with her.

Dr. Leonard Kelley was in his early fifties, but looked considerably older. He had black hair graying at the temples and a craggy face that betrayed curiosity and a hint of confusion as he surveyed the challenge scene. Leshawna had succumbed, just as Heather had predicted, but the other four trainees were still going strong.

Dawn approached Hatchet and said, “Master Chief? When you have a moment, Dr. Kelley is here to discuss his findings.”

Nothing about the challenge required immediate attention, so Hatchet formally introduced himself to the good Doctor and asked, “What have we got, Doc?” The campers, whether in the tree or on the ground, listened intently but pretended to be focused entirely on the challenge.

“I looked over the results of our patients’ earlier blood tests, and I can see why you were so concerned. I was ready to recommend blood transfusions, but when I talked to the patients this morning, they all said they were feeling fine. One or two, I might chalk up to normal variation, but for all of them to say that … it didn’t add up, so I ran new blood tests, but that just made the mystery bigger.

“To make a long story short, I didn’t see any red flags. Their white cell counts are significantly higher than they were just yesterday. They’re still rather low, but they’re in the normal range. I have to admit I’m stumped, but a healing body can do some strange things.”

Duncan said quietly to Tyler, “Must have been the booze.”

“No doubt,” Red Jock replied with a snicker.

Dr. Kelley, meanwhile, continued his briefing. “My ‘prescription’ is to not look this gift horse in the mouth. If anyone relapses, we can give them blood transfusions and maybe antibiotics; but for now, I don’t think any of that will be necessary.”

“Sounds good,” Hatchet said. “Thanks for coming out. I don’t mind saying this gave us quite a scare.”

Dr. Kelley smiled genially and ventured, “Maybe some higher power likes to watch your show. I know my grandkids are totally addicted to it.”

Dawn escorted Dr. Kelley to the helicopter that had brought him to the island. In the fullness of time, the mystic returned to the tree to find that Ezekiel had fallen.

Dawn sidled up to Hatchet and said, “Congratulations, Master Chief. It looks like your little stratagem worked.”

“What stratagem?” Leshawna asked, for the mystic had spoken normally and so had not been difficult to overhear.

Hatchet said nothing, but nodded to Dawn and by that gesture granted her leave to explain.

“You’ve all seen some of the things Ella can do with her singing,” Dawn began as Hatchet turned his attention back to the challenge. “The thing is, she generally can’t do those things on purpose. They just happen.

“As most of you know, or guessed, Master Chief was aware of your little party last night. What you may not have guessed is that it was his idea all along, even if certain things did happen that he and Chris didn’t approve of.”

Several campers sniggered quietly at that, and Heather gave Beth a comradely nudge.

The mystic continued. “Master Chief had noticed that the effects of Ella’s songs tend to be appropriate to the situation. I knew that, too, of course, but it had never occurred to me to try to use her power that way.”

Dawn looked admiringly at Hatchet and added, “Sometimes it takes a rookie to think outside the box.”

“A good commander knows how to use the talent around him,” Hatchet replied.

Dawn turned back to the campers. “My job, in addition to giving the raiders a little encouragement, was to find a reasonable pretext to leave Ella at your party. The idea was that the party would heal your spirits, so Ella’s talent might build on that to heal your bodies. I really had no idea if it would work, because mystic healing isn’t easy and it’s not something I’m trained in, but for your sakes I’m glad it did. But even if it didn’t work, at least you’d still have had entertainment for your party.”

Ezekiel asked, “But how did you know we were going to have a party in the first place?”

“You’re teenagers,” Dawn explained. “How could you score all that delicious food and not use it for a party?”

“She’s got us there,” Leshawna conceded with a laugh. “And I have to admit, I’ve never been given medicine with nicer side effects.”

“Side effects?” Heather repeated incredulously. “That siren nearly made half of us screw each other, and you call it a side effect?”

Leshawna stood her ground. “But were you really that close to doing it? I don’t know about you, but I’ve never gotten so much out of kissing. When we got back to our cabin, I felt like I’d been making love all night long.”

“And you know this how?” the queen bee challenged.

“We’re not all as sheltered as you, Queenie.”

“Leshawna’s right,” Tyler said. “I hadn’t really thought about until she mentioned it, but she’s right. Usually, kissing the way we were doing would have me wanting more. But when the party broke up, I felt totally relaxed. Like Leshawna said, I didn’t feel the need to ‘do it’ because I felt like I’d already done it. And yes, I know what that feels like.”

“So do I,” Duncan added. “And yeah, they’re right. It’s weird.”

Heather nodded reflectively, for she had exchanged “enchanted” kisses with both the jock of all trades and the scorner of laws. “When you put it that way, yeah, I guess you’re right. But don’t get any bright ideas from what happened last night. I’m not here to meet boys, I’m here to win.”

Dawn ventured, “It sounds to me like you all owe D.J. a debt of gratitude. Ella told me that setting up a dance floor was his idea.”

Gwen had a bit of a blush as she raised her hand, for she had kissed Tyler and D.J. and Ezekiel, and more than once each. She had chosen those three because, while they all had their charms, she supposed that Trent would find them less threatening than Duncan or especially Cody; and by kissing multiple boys instead of just one, Gwen had sought to convey the message that the circumstances were unusual and the kisses she had given on the dance floor lacked the meaning of those she had given Trent on the dock that fateful afternoon.

“Dawn, did you know that would happen? Or was it a crapshoot like the healing?” asked the Goth.

“I didn’t know your party would have dancing. That was probably the trigger.”

“You know what I mean.”

Dawn nodded. “We interns have hazardous work, as you know, so we try to live life to the fullest … while we can.” A cloud seemed to pass over her face, but it passed. “We party a lot after hours, to try to forget what it’s like working here, and Ella likes to sing for us as much as she does for you, so we know the effect very well.” With a radiant grin, the wraith-girl added, “Straight from the foreplay to the afterglow. If that’s not the ultimate in safe sex, then it’s pretty close. It’s probably going to be a once in a lifetime thing—there aren’t many Ellas in the world—so I’m glad you all got a chance to experience it.”

Duncan grabbed one of Tyler’s wrists and raised his arm. “The winner and champion!” the delinquent proclaimed like a boxing referee. “Got every girl at the party! Even the intern.”

“Speech! Speech!” cried the other boys in unison.

Heather said, as she shot Duncan a sour look, “Just remember, Ty, you couldn’t have done it without our help.”

“I don’t know about you, but I was happy to help,” Leshawna shot back.

“Touché.”

Tyler grinned proudly. “What can I say? When you’ve got it, you’ve …” His grin vanished abruptly, and he buried his face in his hands. “Oh, shit, what’s Eva going to think?”

“Oh, no!” Lindsay lamented. “And I kissed all the boys! How am I going to explain that to Justin?”

Courtney called down from the tree, “We can vouch for anyone who needs it in the confessional. If we all tell the same story, they’re bound to accept it.”

“What ‘story’ do we tell?” Tyler asked, uncertain but hopeful.

“Nothing but the truth,” Courtney assured him. “It was a unique situation and didn’t mean anything. It didn’t mean anything, right?”

“No,” the jock of all trades admitted. “But what I don’t get is why none of us thought of our significant others until just now.”

“I was thinking of Trent,” Gwen protested, “even if it didn’t always look like it. But why didn’t it just affect those of us who were unattached? Ella doesn’t seem like the type to encourage cheating.”

“Ella’s a wild talent,” Dawn explained, “and wild magic can’t be controlled that finely. It was basically a crapshoot. There was probably a residual effect that kept Tyler and Lindsay from thinking of their significant others until just now. As for you, Gwen, if I had to guess, I’d say you were probably less affected because you had an unwanted suitor here to keep you grounded. By the way, how are your injured parts feeling?”

“A lot better. Doctor Kelley said I’m making amazing progress, and my ribs don’t hurt anymore. I take it that was Ella’s doing, too?”

“Probably. You shouldn’t assume too much, though, because I heard your shoulder injury was pretty bad and you don’t want to aggravate it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she knocked a week or three off your recovery time.”

“Bonus,” said the Master Chief without turning round.

Katie listened no less intently than the other campers as she hung from her branch. Her wonderment and relief were short-lived, though, for she could not forget that Sadie, her dearest companion, had left the island a week before and so had not been present at the party to benefit from Hatchet’s stratagem. Katie and Sadie had hidden in the same place that fateful day on Boney Island, so if Katie had been irradiated by Izzy’s runaway “fire starter”, then Sadie had surely been as well.

There was a difference, though, in that Sadie was quite fat. She was certainly not obese enough to make most people look away, but she was beyond merely plump. Katie normally avoided any consideration of her BFF’s weight as a matter of policy, but was making an exception now because she was grasping for any hope that her boon companion was not suffering too much. It would be fitting if Sadie’s bulk had helped shield her that day, Katie thought, considering how much grief it had caused her over the years. It was not Sadie’s fault that she had the “thrifty gene”, but people too often took one look at her portly profile and assumed it meant a lack of self-control or something worse.

Katie recalled, in spite of herself, an ugly incident years before when she and Sadie had actually fought over a boy. Katie had poisoned the ear of “Dreamy Dan” with some of those same weight-based stereotypes, and won him over. She found her victory unsatisfying, though, and could not understand why until she realized that she had achieved it by demeaning something that was more important to her. Shortly after this epiphany, Katie broke up with Dan, apologized abjectly to Sadie, and subconsciously adopted her current policy of weight blindness.

Katie idly wondered how Sadie was faring at the losers’ compound. Their separation had been hard enough on Katie, who still had her second BFF Lindsay, not to mention still being in the game. Oh, Sadie, she thought, why wouldn’t you let me go in your place? Despite being as outgoing as Katie, Sadie did not make friends quite as easily, for Sadie was the thinker and Katie the feeler. Moreover, not many girls had been eliminated yet. Of those who had been, Eva was not very sociable and Izzy was probably still hiding out on the island. That left only Bridgette for Sadie to talk with about “girl stuff”, and Bridgette did not seem like the “girly girl” type, so the range of their common interests might be limited.

On the brighter side, fewer girls meant less competition for the boys. Katie wondered if Sadie was still crushing on Owen. Perhaps she had even hooked up with him, which would—

A sharp pain high on Katie’s arm jolted her out of her ruminations. More surprised than hurt, she fell to the ground in a heap. After collecting her wits, she looked up to see Master Chief Hatchet towering over her, holding the baton he had presumably used to strike her.

“What was that for?” Katie demanded indignantly as she stood up and rubbed her arm.

“The challenge is over. You won.”

“Already?”

Hatchet snorted in apparent amusement. “Already. Look where the sun is.”

It took Katie a moment to locate the sun, or rather its halo, for the sun itself had descended behind the diving cliff on the island’s western shore. Katie had been lost in her own little world for the better part of six hours.

“Oh, wow!” Katie exclaimed in her incomparably articulate way. She turned back to Hatchet and griped, “But why did you have to hit me? You could have just told me the challenge was over.”

“I tried.”

Katie had no answer, so she turned to her teammates and grinned broadly as the Eagles came to hail their conquering hero.

Dinner was as unappetizing as usual, but at least it was not gruel, or worse, those ancient c-rations. As the campers ate and talked, Chris appeared in his general’s costume and took his customary place at the head of the tables. The campers fell silent, for they knew this meant an announcement.

The Generalissimo said, “I have seen Master Chief Hatchet’s reports on your performance in his boot camp, and I must say, some of you would make fine soldiers. Others, not so much. Katie, come forward.”

When the challenge victor had joined him, General McLean declaimed, “Katie, for exemplary performance in overcoming obstacles, disrupting supply lines, maintaining troop morale and general endurance, it is my pleasure to award you the Drama Cross.”

As Chris pinned a large medal, which looked like it might have been made in a high school shop class, to Katie’s dress, Ezekiel said quietly to Duncan, “And she’s a great kisser, too.”

“Dude, last night we were all great kissers,” the Juvenile Hall alumnus replied. “Could you tell which chicks do a lot of kissing and which ones don’t? I couldn’t. Even Beth’s braces didn’t bother me. But yeah, that’s probably the ‘maintaining morale’ part.”

After “pinning” the challenge victor, Chris told her, “This medal comes with invincibility for Eagle Company and a Movie Night in the Craft Services tent when we’re done here. Said Movie Night will feature one of the great cinematic achievements of our time: Strawberry Bitch, a World War II action flick featuring the incomparable Chris McLean in his first starring role. You also get to nosh on the usual movie theatre snack foods, courtesy of the Tuck Shoppe. You may invite one member of Muskie Company, if you wish.”

General McLean and Hero First Class Katie exchanged salutes. When the triumphant heroine returned to her seat, Heather said quietly, “Katie, I know who you should invite for the good of our alliance.”

.

Crime and Punishment

The next evening, as the last remnants of starless sky darkened in the west, the Muskies gathered at the bonfire to pay final respects to their “honored dead”. Chris stood before them in his general’s costume, augmented with a ceremonial sword on his hip. In his right hand he held the customary plate of marshmallows.

“Tonight,” Chris said, “one of you will be dishonorably discharged and shipped off to the Stockade of Losers. In keeping with the military theme, tonight’s elimination ceremony has a new feature: the Firing Squad of Disgrace.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Courtney challenged.

“Chill, Princess,” Duncan scoffed. “It has to be something nonlethal.”

“Sadly, yes,” Chris admitted, “but that doesn’t mean it can’t be painful and degrading. Live ammunition would have been better for ratings, but Legal said no.”

The campers shifted nervously in their seats at this sudden raising of the stakes. The black-hearted host looked on their discomfiture and saw that it was good.

“The soldiers with no votes against them are … Courtney … D.J. … and Tyler. You three will live to fight another day. Come get your marshmallows.” The three obeyed the general’s order with enthusiasm.

Chris fixed his gaze on the three Muskies still awaiting judgment. “We’re down to two marshmallows. Each of you three had votes against you. Beth, you’re on the chopping block because the team phase is winding down. You’ve been a pretty good team player, but some people are worried about what you might do when it’s every camper for themselves. Duncan, you’re on the block for no special reason I can see, unless you spending the night with that pixie made somebody jealous.”

“I was set up,” Duncan protested.

“Whatever,” the Generalissimo sniffed before returning to the script. “Ezekiel, you’re on the block for the same reason as usual: long memories.

“With one vote against, the fourth surviving soldier is … Duncan.”

After the scorner of laws collected his talisman of life, Chris intoned, “And then there were two. Two soldiers, that is, who both need this last marshmallow to stay in the game. The one who doesn’t get it must face the Firing Squad of Disgrace. That sad sack’s lifeless carcass will then be dumped on the Boat of Losers and shipped off to Loserville to rot.

“With one vote against, the final marshmallow goes to …” After the obligatory scenery chewing and tension milking, the hammy host granted the God-fearing Ezekiel a bittersweet salvation.

Beardo appeared from the surrounding trees and pulled Beth to her feet. Without a word, the hirsute hulk frog-marched the condemned camper to a torchlit glade where a squad of interns waited. Beth recognized B, Shawn, Scott and two or three whom she did not know by name. Across the glade from the redshirts was a large stake where Alejandro stood.

Beardo gave Beth over to his colleague’s care and joined the firing squad. Alejandro made Beth to kneel and tied her fast to the stake. As he did so, he said, “A pity it must end like this. You played a good darkhorse game, but sometimes playing well isn’t enough.” The big Latino seemed conflicted on whether to say more, and finally did. “I am truly sorry if my actions brought you to this wretched state. I should have said ‘no’.”

No to what? Beth wondered briefly. “It’s okay,” she assured her redshirted mentor. “I’m glad we got to be friends. The friends I’ve made here are worth more than the prize money.”

“With an attitude like that, you’ll do well in life.”

Alejandro undid Beth’s side ponytail and finger-combed her hair down, for she was to wear a face shield and her ponytail would have interfered with its placement. This task completed, he moved to give her a kiss of death, which is traditionally to the cheek near the corner of the mouth. Beth turned her head at the last moment, though, so her handsome friend wound up kissing her full on the lips.

“Stealing kisses,” Alejandro observed with a grin. “It seems I have created a monster. The question is can I control her?”

“I’m about to die, sort of,” Beth observed with a grin of her own, her braces flashing dully in the torch light. “What have I got to lose?”

The former reality show star blindfolded Beth and affixed her face shield. “Adios, señorita. I have an unpleasant duty to perform.”

When Alejandro had joined the firing squad, Chris took position within the shooters’ peripheral vision but safely out of the line of fire. He drew his sword and held it aloft. “Ready!” he cried.

The interns picked up what looked like Nerf rifles.

“Aim!”

After giving Beth a few last moments to contemplate her fate, Chris silently dropped his arm, and it was done.

Beth was groaning softly as Alejandro went to untie her. She had been shot not with the foam rubber missiles the rifles were designed to fire, but with projectiles hard enough to be somewhat painful if they struck bare or lightly covered skin, hence the need for the face shield. Alejandro removed the shield and blindfold, and informed Beth as he untied her that one bit of role playing remained. Because she had been “executed”, she would not walk the Dock of Shame as ousted campers normally did. Instead, B and Beardo would carry her “lifeless body” to the boat on a litter and dump her “carcass” on board. Regrettably, this meant that any surviving campers who wished to say proper goodbyes would find it difficult to do so, and would be limited to words in any case. Hugs and other physical gestures would not be possible.

The Eagles were waiting at the base of the dock, and several asked what was going on when they saw Beth being carried on the litter. Courtney explained, but nothing would be gained by repeating it here. The litter crew carried Beth onto the boat, set their sad burden down, rolled Beth off, and returned to the base of the dock. Only when the surviving campers came down the dock was Beth allowed to stand and exchange words of parting.

As the Boat of Losers pulled away from the dock, the campers sang with feeling; for although Ezekiel had started the custom of singing the Pie Jesu for departing players, Beth had been the catalyst in getting it adopted as a regular part of the elimination ceremony. After the song was done, the Muskies returned to the bonfire for a time and the Eagles returned to their own affairs.

On the Boat of Losers, Beth sat dejectedly on the fantail, watching the camp lights recede into the distance and contemplating the fickleness of Fortune. Just two nights before, she had been on top of the world. Between her unlooked-for resourcefulness in obtaining beer for the party and the literally and figuratively enchanting dancing that followed, the nerd girl had gotten her first taste of what it was like to be both popular and desired. Her dream of winning Total Drama Island and becoming a household name seemed more within her grasp than it had ever been. Two nights later, her popularity was gone and her dream was gone.

After the boat changed course and the camp was lost to view, Beth began to sniffle in spite of herself. Well, why try to hold it in? she thought as her tears began to trickle. It’s not like anyone’s going to see, or care.

“Don’t be sad,” implored a sweet, familiar voice.

Beth whirled around toward the voice and saw a familiar face faintly lit by a cluster of bright lights—the unmistakable lights of civilization—that had appeared off the port bow.

“Ella? Why are you on the boat?”

Dawn emerged from the shadows with two other interns, both girls, and said, “We’re doing damage control for some of your ex-campmates.”

“How?” Beth asked as her dolor gave way to curiosity.

“Remember the tree-hanging challenge, when some people were worried about what their boyfriends or girlfriends at the losers’ compound would think when they saw footage of the party? Well, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, as they say. The confessional spots might have been enough, but I thought the best way for the losers to understand what happened at the party was to let them experience the effect for themselves. I couldn’t suggest it in front of ‘Master Chief’ because Chris might not have wanted to let us spend the night away from the island, but I talked to Tyler and Lindsay and Gwen, and none of them had a problem with it.

“I told your friends that getting to dance to Ella’s singing would probably be a once in a lifetime thing. Lucky you, you get to twice.”

“Does Chef know you’re here?” Beth asked.

“He does now. I waited until we were well away from the island before I approached him, so he wouldn’t be tempted to turn back, but he’s okay with it. He radioed ahead so the losers know to expect us and can make preparations. On elimination nights, Chef usually spends the night at the Playa de Losers anyway, so we’ll have a convenient ride back. Chris probably won’t be the wiser, and even if he is, ‘no harm, no foul’.”

“Playa de Losers?”

“That’s what the losers’ compound is called. It’s actually a small luxury hotel. You’ll like it, even if you’d obviously rather still be at the camp.”

“Why are there four of you? And, I don’t think I know you all,” Beth admitted, fishing for names.

Dawn had a tiny flashlight, which she used to reveal the faces of her colleagues. “I think you’ve met Sky, but I don’t know if you’ve met Carrie.”

Beth did not know Sky, the slim, dark-haired girl who looked a little like Heather, but recognized her from the sub-challenge at the shooting range. Carrie was pretty in a girl-next-door sort of way, with wavy, shoulder-length bottle blonde hair. Her wide face was loaded with baby fat, giving her a somewhat jowly look, but her body did not appear to be so encumbered.

“No, I don’t think we’ve met,” Beth admitted.

“Well, it’s nice to meet you now,” Carrie said with a nervous smile. She seemed friendly but a bit socially awkward, not unlike Beth herself.

“The reason Carrie and I are here,” Sky explained, “is because more boys than girls have been eliminated so far, so the dance party needed more girls to balance the numbers. When Dawn said she needed a couple of volunteers, I jumped at the chance because I like to dance, so naturally I like it even more when Ella’s singing and there are cute boys to dance with. I’m a gymnast back home, and the floor exercise is a mix of dancing and tumbling.”

“Besides,” Carrie added with an expectant grin, “it was a chance to see the legendary Justin with our own eyes.”

“I hear that,” Beth admitted with a broad grin of her own.

In the finished episode, Courtney delivered the post-mortem confessional spot. “I’m sorry, Beth, but it’s your time. You did some good things for us, and you definitely made the most of that reprieve you got way back in the very first elimination ceremony. I only hope I can do as well with the reprieve I got after the Boney Island challenge, but that’s beside the point.

“The teams will be merging soon, so people will be able to start gathering useful allies from both teams. I can tell Heather wants you in her alliance, and I can see she’s already started working on you. She probably thinks she can dominate you, and I have a feeling she may be right. It’s only natural to want to be popular, and you’re as eager to please as anyone here, but that’s the problem.

“Heather already has Katie and Lindsay, and as far as I can tell, she’s also got Cody. If she gets you as well …” Courtney shook her head. “A five-player alliance at the merge could be unstoppable, and I hate to think what Heather might do with your connections to the intern corps; and by ‘the intern corps’, I mean Alejandro. Seriously, it’s one thing to procure goodies for a party, but …”

That thought remained unfinished, for Courtney’s attention was divided as she rambled on. Throughout her spot, she seemed very fidgety, which was not like her. Sure enough, there was more to her fidgeting than mere restlessness or nervousness.

When the episode aired, some enterprising viewer realized that Courtney’s “fidgeting” was really an improvised sign language consisting of Morse code and camouflaging gestures. The brief message was in Pig Latin for an extra layer of encryption. The code-breaking viewer eagerly went to a fan website with his discovery, and it was not overlong before most of the fandom knew the real reason why the Muskies had booted Beth:

Chris made us.

“But why would he pull strings like that?” Brett asked. “Could the show really get in that much trouble because of a party with a little underage drinking?”

“Yes, but not for the reasons you’re probably thinking,” his mother explained. “As long as Chris could convince the authorities that it had been done behind his back, the producers might get a slap-on-the-wrist fine, if that. The real problem was that the producers were hoping to syndicate reruns of the show in the United States, which is a much larger market than Canada, and self-appointed moral guardians are a much more fearsome force in the States than they are here. Neither Chris nor the producers relished the thought of losing a lucrative market opportunity just because somebody might have thought they condoned a sketchy party. Besides, the producers probably considered Beth expendable, since she usually flew under the radar. If TDI had been a scripted drama, she would have had ‘supporting character’ written all over her.

“That’s not to say they approved of what Courtney did, either, and there’s no way her message would have made it into the episode if anyone had realized what she was up to; but once her message was on the Internet, there was no way anyone was going to put that genie back in the bottle. In any case, Courtney was one of the stars, at least by the Drama Quotient, so it was going to take a bigger transgression than that for the powers that were to take any serious action against her. Besides, her family had access to some top-shelf legal talent that the people running the show probably weren’t eager to go toe to toe against.”

“But how did Alejandro get that beer for Beth in the first place?”

“Most of the interns were old enough to drink whatever they wanted,” the former camper reminded her son, “and nobody cared about those who weren’t, because the interns rarely appeared on camera. With the interns’ life expectancies being what they were, most of them drank more than was probably good for them. Again, nobody cared as long as they weren’t drunk when they showed up for work. And if they were, that offense was likely to carry its own punishment, given how hazardous their work was.”

The hour was not unduly late, so Brett’s mother paused a few moments to collect her thoughts and then resumed her tale.

.

Episode #13: The Tale of the Extremely Unlikely Sports

Original title: X-treme Torture

Dies Irae, Dies illa
Solvet saeclum in favilla:
Teste David cum Sybilla.

The campers, one and all, groaned in their beds. The loss of their off day was disappointing, but hardly surprising. Whereas most challenges ran their course in a single day, the boot camp had taken three, so the producers presumably wanted to make up for lost time.

The campers’ greater concern, though, was Chris’ choice of wakeup call, for they all knew by now that the “Dies Irae” meant a challenge that was at least potentially life-threatening.

“When we get off this lame island,” Courtney later lamented in the confessional, “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to listen to Verdi’s Requiem again without having flashbacks.”

As the campers finished the latest sick excuse for breakfast, Chris took his customary Announcement station. “Campers! Today is the Extreme … Sports … Challenge!” The sadistic host shouted this last through his bullhorn, although everyone could have heard him perfectly well without it.

“Ugh, it’s too early for this,” Gwen griped.

Chris paid the Goth no heed. “In each round of the Extreme … Sports … Challenge! one or more Eagles will square off against an equal number of Muskies. I choose who does what, because it’s more fun for me that way. The Eagles have an extra player, so Gwen will sit out the Extreme … Sports … Challenge! Unless, of course, somebody gets hurt worse than she is.”

“And could any of these ‘extreme sports’ actually get someone hurt that bad?” Leshawna asked warily, with a nasty feeling that she knew the answer.

“Well, there’s the Extreme … Rodeo … Moose Riding!” the sadistic host began, apparently intending to shout the challenge names through his bullhorn all morning, “The Extreme … Aerial … Chicken Jousting! The—”

“So that’s a ‘yes,’ then?” Leshawna asked.

Lindsay quietly asked Heather, “Is he serious, or is he just trying to mess with our heads?”

“Yes,” Heather answered.

“For all that blood and pain,” Chris continued, “you’re probably saying the reward had better be fantastic. And it is. If you’ll follow me …”

Chris led the campers outside to where something large was concealed under a tarp. On his signal, a couple of interns pulled back the tarp and Chris grandly announced, “Win the Extreme … Sports … Challenge! and not only will your butts be safe from elimination, but you’ll also get untimed sessions in this sweet mobile shower! Check it out! Tankless water heater so the hot water never runs out, eight showerhead settings, top of the line designer cleansers … This is a perk even I don’t get every day.”

“Can it be?” the awestruck Heather asked rhetorically. The dragon girl was in the early stages of hyperventilation, her voice soft and her eyes wide.

“Oh, it be,” the host assured her.

“Am I missing something here?” Cody asked. “What’s the big selling point? What’s wrong with the washroom showers, besides not having enough hot water?”

Five pairs of angry female eyes stared daggers into the science geek, who was suddenly much too keenly aware that he was the only boy on his team.

Heather declared, “Listen to me, you little dweeb. We are going to win that shower if it’s the last thing we do. Got it?”

Leshawna shook her head. “Boy, if you knew as much about girls as you claim to, you’d understand.”

“What she said,” Lindsay declared in turn. “Not getting that shower would be like … like … like Kara losing Sara!”

Katie closed her eyes and sighed deeply at the reminder of what she had lost, but the melancholy moment passed. “Lindsay’s exaggerating, of course”, she assured Cody. “A little.”

Gwen shook her head and admitted, “Seriously, Cody, I can’t even tell you how much I want to be in this challenge right now, even with my bad arm. Holding me out is a mercy worse than none, even if it is probably for the best.”

“I’d bet good money that Chris knows that,” Heather ventured. “He probably doesn’t really want to be as nice to you as he’s been lately.” Can’t say I don’t know the feeling, the queen bee added silently.

The visibly confused Ezekiel looked to his etiquette tutor, who guessed what question the farm boy was trying to find a tactful way to ask. “Zeke, you’ve come a long way in understanding girls,” Courtney explained, “but this is something for the Advanced class. Suffice to say the Birdies will have the motivation advantage.”

Chris said, “Settle down, Eagles. There will be plenty of time for the torches and pitchforks if you lose. Speaking of pitchforks, we’re going to start with the original extreme sport: gladiatorial combat!”

Chris led the campers to a miniature stadium with four short rows of bleacher seating on each side. He directed the Eagles to sit on one side, and the Muskies on the other.

With everyone seated, the host continued his briefing. “This round will consist of five gladiator battles, starting with a catfight, then three battles of the sexes, and finally mano a mano, with a different weapon type for each fight. The winner of each round gets five points, and the loser can get up to four, depending on how well they do. The highest cumulative team score wins the round. For the duration of this round, you will address me as ‘Arena Master’.

“Now, for the alpha catfight.” The Arena Master motioned to the seated campers with a grand, sweeping gesture of his arm and cried, “Courtney and Heather, come on down! You’re the first contestants in the Wawanakwa Arena of Death!”

The alpha females did as they were bidden, and Chef Hatchet handed each a foam rubber baseball bat. Courtney and Heather thought, this doesn’t look so bad, but neither was willing to tempt Fate by saying it aloud.

In the Eagle’s bleachers, Lindsay said, “That doesn’t look so bad.”

Gwen replied, “You’re tempting Fate, Linds.”

“Attempting fate?” Lindsay asked uncomprehendingly, which was how she asked most questions. “Is fate something you can attempt?”

“Sort of, now that you mention it, but never mind.”

On the arena field, Chris told the alpha females, “No rules, no rounds, just take your opponent out. The fight ends when one of you says ‘Uncle’. Ready—”

Without waiting for a signal from the Arena Master, who would probably have set their ears ringing with his trusty airhorn, Heather leapt upon her adversary.

“Hey! Wait for the signal!” Courtney protested. The diminutive dynamo briefly gave ground under Heather’s premature assault, but recovered quickly.

“No rules, remember?” Heather taunted.

“Fine. Your funeral,” Courtney shot back as she took the offensive and drove the dragon back.

The battle wavered to and fro. Heather seemed to be landing more blows, thanks to her greater reach and dancer’s agility, but Courtney had once been a summer camp CIT, and those elite warriors looked ever to the day when they would die with honor in glorious battle.

Without warning, the Fighting CIT yelped, stumbled and collapsed. Heather paused in confusion, for the blow she had just struck seemed no different from any other she had landed or taken. The campers in the stands were no less mystified.

With a look of exaggerated innocence, Chris turned to a camera and said loudly enough for everyone to hear, “Oh, did I forget to mention the embedded cattle prods?”

Heather’s eyes lit up. She hastily inspected her weapon and spotted the prod’s electrical contacts. Originally hidden, they now lay exposed to view, for the arc from their first discharge had burned away the thin layer of foam rubber that previously concealed them.

With a vibrant battle cry, the Dragon Queen leapt upon her adversary. Courtney regained her feet just in time to be struck down again. Heather rained down blow after blow and shock after shock, easily evading Courtney’s increasingly weak and uncoordinated attempts to defend herself.

Most of the spectators looked appalled at the direction the catfight had taken. Ezekiel asked rhetorically, “Why doesn’t Courtney say ‘Uncle’? Is she really that proud?”

“Maybe,” was all D.J. could say. Like the other campers in the stands, the gentle giant could not bear to look and yet could not look away.

“Or maybe she’s lost the power of speech,” Tyler suggested. To this day, no one knows whether Red Jock was being serious or facetious. He may not have been certain himself.

“That would be nice,” Duncan declared with feeling. The delinquent said no more and seemed lost in thought, presumably envisioning a paradise where the beautiful but bossy Courtney could not speak.

As the electrically enhanced beating continued, it was inevitable that Courtney would eventually drop her bat. Heather quickly grabbed it and alternated blows with her two weapons, looking for the second bat’s electrical contacts. When she found them, her helpless opponent yelped and writhed twice as often as before.

“Halt!”

The spell broken, Heather’s berserker fury faded as she looked up and turned to Chris, for it was he who had called to her. The Arena Master declared, “This fight is over.” He melodramatically held out his fist at arm’s length, and extended his thumb toward the earth.

With an unpleasant little grin, Heather said, “Remember, Chris made me do this.” With a soft kick, the Dark Queen rolled the prostrate Courtney onto her back. Then, she jabbed her prods into Courtney, one into each breast, and held them there. Courtney screamed.

Leshawna shook her head. “Queenie’s got a vicious streak.” She leaned down toward Heather’s lackeys and said quietly, “Katie, Lindsay, I know you have an alliance with Heather, but if we lose this challenge, I really think she needs to go.”

Katie looked torn, but loyal servant Lindsay was always ready to defend her liege. “Chip made her do it. Blame him.”

“Girl, can’t you see what’s happening out there?” the homegirl pressed, her voice soft and troubled.

“Hera just got carried away in the fight. It happens,” Lindsay insisted. “She and Connie aren’t enemies. She’ll feel sorry about it later.”

Lindsay turned back to the grim spectacle and muttered to herself, “I hope.”

What goes around comes around, it is said, and Heather would face a horrific thrashing of her own in due course, but that is another story for another time.

When the batteries finally ran down far enough for Courtney to stop screaming, Chris said, “I think that’s enough,” and Heather withdrew. Chris would not allow the Muskies to quit the stands to aid their fallen leader, so two interns rolled Courtney onto a stretcher and carried her to the infirmary; for although the Fighting CIT was not seriously hurt, it would be a while yet before she could walk unaided.

The Arena Master declared, “Heather gets five points for winning the match. Courtney’s performance would have been worth three points, but I’ll give her four because her ‘demise’ was so photogenic. I can see the ratings now.”

“What, she’s getting an extra point because I made her scream her head off?” Heather asked in disbelief.

“Pretty much,” replied the Arena Master.

“You told me to! Where’s my extra point?”

The Arena Master grinned a wicked little grin and said, “I’m surprised you’d want it, considering what Courtney had to go through to get it. But if it really means that much to you …”

Heather’s eyes widened, but she recovered quickly. “You make a good point. I’m happy with five,” she offered hastily.

“That’s the spirit.”

The Dragon Queen stalked to the stands, plopped herself heavily down, and grumbled to her henchchicks, “Just great. That means I pissed off Courtney—a potential post-merge ally—for nothing. Chris needs to have one of those cattle prods shoved up his butt.”

Meanwhile, the Arena Master had called D.J. and Leshawna down for the next fight. The biggest and most physically intimidating members of their respective teams, these gladiators were armed with the sort of soft, oversized boxing gloves one sometimes sees in celebrity bouts, and were armored with mouth guards and the protective headgear typical of amateur boxing.

With the Courtney/Heather match fresh in their minds, D.J. and Leshawna warily inspected their armament, looking for anything that did not belong on a boxing glove. Neither was pleased to find what looked suspiciously like small nozzles on the back of each hand, near the punching surface, but neither knew what to make of it. The fighters knew all too well that they would likely learn the function of this mysterious apparatus soon enough.

With his customary signal, the Arena Master bade the fighters begin. The gladiators circled each other, looking for an opening and ignoring the ringing in their ears as best they might.

As most of the onlookers expected, the fight was a mismatch. Leshawna was strong and fierce, but she could not match her opponent’s reach and had no answer to his speed and agility. In fairness, though, none of the Eagles could have stood up to D.J., so the homegirl was the best option the Arena Master had.

The fight lasted longer than it needed to because D.J. did not want to hurt Leshawna. To avoid doing so, the softhearted brickhouse confined himself to body blows and struck more lightly than he might have, counting on skill instead of strength to impress the Arena Master and earn a decisive score.

The gentle giant’s scruples were nearly his undoing. Leshawna quickly realized that a lucky knockout punch was her only chance, so she covered herself as best she might and watched for her opening. Luck was with her, and she presently connected with a haymaker to D.J.’s cheek.

D.J. cried out in apparent pain and staggered back, trying to clutch at his eyes although his oversized gloves made that quite impossible. Leshawna simply stood where she was, too confused by her opponent’s reaction to press her advantage.

That was when the homegirl remembered the small nozzles on her gloves. She raised her right glove—the one she had struck D.J. with—toward her eyes for closer inspection, and her eyes began to water.

Leshawna looked accusingly at the Arena Master. “Tear gas, Chris? Seriously? What is this, the Riot Control Challenge?”

The crafty Arena Master did not deign to answer. “Don’t just stand there,” he admonished. “You know what will happen if you give him time to recover.”

The homegirl did know. She fell upon her crippled foe, but it was too late. D.J.’s left eye was effectively useless, but his right was only mildly affected. Moreover, he had felt little pain from the force of Leshawna’s blow, though it presumably had most of her considerable strength behind it. The mighty brickhouse realized that there was no need to pull his punches, although he had more reason than ever to avoid blows to the head.

D.J. sidestepped Leshawna’s rush and answered with a storm of punches that showed just how much he had been holding back. His tear gas dispensers, which apparently needed a certain level of punching force to activate, discharged harmlessly against Leshawna’s flanks, but this was small comfort to the homegirl. Tear gas or no, Leshawna was helpless in the face of D.J.’s renewed onslaught and soon yielded, her pride grievously wounded but her body less so.

The Arena Master announced, “The win and five points to D.J. and the Muskies! Leshawna gets two points because not only was she outclassed, but she also didn’t take advantage when she managed to turn the tables.”

Leshawna gave the Arena Master a sour look and retorted, “Outgunned, maybe. Outclassed, never.”

Heather said to her henchchicks, “Definitely outclassed.”

The Arena Master declaimed, “The Killer Muskies take the lead, nine to seven. Can they hold it? We’re about to find out. Tyler and Lindsay, come on down! You’re the next contestants in the Wawanakwa Arena of Death!”

Chef Hatchet gave Red Jock and the uberbimbo strange polearms with pincer-like assemblies on the end, and demonstrated how to operate them. These, the Arena Master explained, were based on the medieval man catcher, a weapon designed to take mounted knights alive so they could be held for ransom.

The combatants readied themselves not by assuming fighter’s crouches, but by holding their hands over their ears. The spectators did likewise.

“Am I really that predictable?” Chris asked petulantly.

Chef said, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

“Fine. Be that way,” grumped the Arena Master. He raised his free hand into the air for a moment, and abruptly dropped it. “Begin!”

Tyler was not one for subtlety, so he charged directly at Lindsay. The top-heavy gymnast casually sidestepped the charge, but Red Jock’s momentum carried him out of range before Lindsay could bring her own weapon to bear. The fight, if it could be called that, continued in this vein for some time.

Tyler was a sprinter and enthusiastic to a fault, as has been told of before, and apparently did not easily learn from his mistakes, so it was not overlong before he wore himself out in his misguided zeal. Lindsay, meanwhile, was working out how best to use her clumsy weapon. Finally, as Tyler stopped for the briefest moment to catch his breath after yet another rush, Lindsay pounced and made the catch. Ensnared from behind and with one arm pinned at his side, Tyler was helpless.

The Arena Master pronounced, “One point to Tyler and the Muskies for a dazzling display of ineptitude. Congratulations, Lindsay, you get five points for catching yourself a hot guy.”

“But I already have a hot guy,” Lindsay noted, “and Nigel’s taken, too.”

“Whatever,” was all the Arena Master said. Hatchet released Tyler because Lindsay had forgotten how, and the jock of all trades slunk back to his seat as Lindsay exchanged high fives with her teammates.

The Arena Master declaimed, “The Screaming Eagles regain the lead, 12-10. Katie and Ezekiel, come on down! You’re the next contestants in the Wawanakwa Arena of Death!”

When these gladiators stood before the Arena Master, he motioned toward Chef Hatchet and said, “Your weapons will be these giant salt shakers.”

“They look more like pepper shakers to me,” Katie observed. The shakers were transparent, and the contents did not resemble salt.

“Well, they’re salt shakers,” the Arena Master insisted.

“Since when is salt gray?” Ezekiel asked.

“Salt gives me a good pun and pepper doesn’t, okay?” the Arena Master explained testily.

Gwen called from the stands, “No, it’s not a good pun, it’s a lame pun.”

Arena Master McLean shrugged. “This show targets a young demographic. What can I say?”

“Which is why you want footage of us making out,” Heather broke in before the Arena Master could continue. He silenced her with a glare.

“Now Katie, Ezekiel, you will, ahem, ‘a-salt’ each other until—”

The campers groaned.

“So what are we going to, ahem, pepper each other with?” Ezekiel asked. The other campers groaned again.

“Hmph, guess I didn’t need salt for the wordplay after all,” the Arena Master mused. “My bad. Whatever, your shakers have sneezing powder, itching powder, and some other things that are pretty brutal but won’t cause permanent blindness when they get in your eyes. At least, we don’t think.

“Ezekiel, you have a lot more ‘armor’ than Katie, so you’ll have to take off your toque and your hoodie.”

“Because the ‘young demographic’ needs to see more skin,” Duncan quipped. The Arena Master glared again.

Ezekiel did as he was bidden, and stood before his opponent in a plaid flannel shirt which the boys had seen often enough but which most of the girls were seeing for the first time. Chef Hatchet handed the combatants a shaker that was nearly as long as their forearms and equipped with a bar handle on one side. The shakers had large holes, the better to dispense enough noxious chemicals on each shake to be visible on the video footage.

“This is totally lame,” Katie complained.

“Boy-girl chivalry is the flip side of sexism,” the Arena Master explained, “so we assumed Ezekiel wouldn’t be willing to hit a girl. That kind of limited our options.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Katie admitted, “but this is still lame.”

“What do you expect from Chris McLame?” Heather quipped from the stands, earning yet another glare from “Chris McLame”.

“All right, children, that’s enough banter. In case you forgot, we’re on a schedule. And also in case you forgot, you are to address me as ‘Arena Master’.”

“They weren’t actually addressing you,” Cody pointed out. “They were talking about you. That’s not the same thing.”

The Arena Master silenced the campers with a blast from his trusty airhorn. “Zip it! All of you!”

“Don’t have a—” Katie began, but another airhorn blast cut her off.

“The first one to sneeze or scratch loses. Begin!”

The stick girl sighed and turned her attention to her opponent who, sure enough, appeared to have no intention of attacking before Katie was ready. When she was, though, he did not hesitate. The look on Ezekiel’s face made it clear that he also thought their weapons were lame, even if that was not the word he would have used.

Lame weapons or no, Katie and Ezekiel assaulted each other with gusto, Ezekiel more aggressively because his team was behind. That motivation, however, played into Katie’s hands; for while Ezekiel was physically fit, Katie was athletic, skilled in both dodgeball, as has been told of before, and volleyball, which is another story for another time.

Ezekiel was not without advantages, though. He was stronger and had larger hands, so he found it easier to wield his bulky shaker and recovered more quickly from each shake.

These factors encouraged a strategy of offense for Ezekiel and counterpunching defense for Katie, so those were the courses these champions took. Despite their best efforts, though, the battle was not riveting and dragged on for a good while.

“Halt! We’re not getting anywhere,” complained the Arena Master. “Whose lame idea was this, anyway?”

“It was yours, Chris,” Chef Hatchet reminded him.

“It worked fine when we tested it with the interns.”

“That was before Legal made you take out the really nasty stuff.”

“Don’t remind me,” grumbled the Arena Master. “Whatever, this round is a draw. Five points each, but Ezekiel gets a one-point penalty because he couldn’t outman a girl. So, for tiebreaker purposes, I guess Katie wins. Happy now, Heather?”

“As a matter of fact, I am,” admitted the queen bee.

As Ezekiel rejoined his teammates, itching fiercely but still determined not to scratch lest Chris change his mind and cut his score even further, he griped, “I thought people were over that.”

“Don’t beat yourself up over it,” Tyler counseled. “That was a totally bogus call by Chris.”

“He probably had second thoughts about giving Courtney a bonus point, and was looking for an excuse to take it back,” Duncan ventured.

Katie, meanwhile was also feeling the effects of the battle. The sneezing powder had been ineffective because both fighters knew enough to hold their breath when their opponents attacked, and were breathing mainly through their mouths in any case, but the itching powder was finally making itself felt.

“Chris, can we get a shower or something to get this itching powder off of us?”

“Zeke, you dog!” Duncan exclaimed with a leer. “Katie wants to take a shower with you!”

“Separate showers, you doofus!” Katie clarified with her best death glare.

“Settle down, children,” said the Arena Master.

“So, can we?” Katie asked again.

“Go jump in the lake,” said the Arena Master.

“Now who’s acting childish?” grumbled Katie.

“I didn’t mean that in an insulting way,” Chris explained. “I meant it literally. Why do you need showers when you have a perfectly good lake? We’ll be going there after this last fight, so you can rinse off then.”

“Better than nothing, eh?” Ezekiel conceded as he finally broke down and started to scratch.

Chris declaimed, “With one round left, the Eagles extend their lead to 17-14. It’s time for the men to settle this, or at least the closest thing to men that we’ve got. Cody and Duncan, come on down! You’re the final contestants in the Wawanakwa Arena of Death!”

When those worthies had presented themselves, Hatchet handed each a giant spoon nearly two meters long.

“Why do we have these giant spoons?” Cody asked.

“Because Legal won’t let you use pitchforks,” the Arena Master explained. He then declaimed for the spectators and the viewing audience. “For the final bout, we have a David and Goliath classic: For the Eagles, mild-mannered science guy Cody; and for the Muskies, Duncan, the Prince of Insufficient Light.

“But the underdog Cody has an edge, namely his team’s three-point lead. Not only that, but the Eagles have already won three battles, so they have the tiebreaker. That means Cody doesn’t have to win to get the challenge point for the Eagles. He doesn’t even have to go the distance. All he has to do is not suck. Duncan needs to finish this fast, so you can expect him to come out swinging.”

As the gladiators faced each other and readied themselves, Duncan said nothing but grinned his wolfish grin.

He’s going to kill me, Cody thought nervously, but the science geek was determined to do his best for the sake of impressing all those female teammates of his. A defensive strategy seemed his best bet to protect the Eagles’ lead.

“Begin!”

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

.

Twenty-second Night

The next morning, after they had breakfasted, Brett went to school whilst his mother went to earn their daily bread. That evening, after they had dined and Brett had attended to his homework, 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.

---

In less time than it takes to describe, Duncan swung low, knocking Cody’s feet out from under him. On the upswing, Duncan reversed his grip even as his opponent fell; and scarcely was Cody on the ground when the street fighter “finished” him by jabbing the handle end of his spoon-staff into the science geek’s solar plexus. Cody lay doubled up in pain, clearly unable to continue.

“Well, that was quick,” Chris grumbled. The finished episode would show several replays of this blink-and-you-missed-it bout, from a variety of angles, to fill the time that had been allotted for it.^[22.01]

“The scoring is: Duncan, five points for the win; and for lasting only …” Chris looked toward his aide.

“One point three seconds,” Hatchet informed the Arena Master.

“For lasting a measly 1.3 seconds,” Chris repeated, “Cody gets squat. That means, by a score of 19-17, the first round of the Extreme … Sports … Challenge! goes to the Muskies! Eagles, you’re going to have to try harder than that if you want to pull this challenge out.”

Cody slunk to the sidelines, deeply ashamed of himself. In truth, there is no shame in losing when one is severely overmatched, as Cody was; but none of his teammates tried to tell him this, and it is doubtful he would have listened to them if they had.

---

Chris led the campers to the dock, which now doubled as an impromptu airstrip. Two interns were there with ultralight aircraft, which are essentially powered hang gliders. Courtney was also there, still a bit unsteady on her feet but otherwise little the worse for her shocking experience in the Arena.

Chris gestured toward the lake. “Katie, Ezekiel, the lake as promised. Never say I’m not a man of my word.”

“But the rest of us can say it?” Lindsay asked. The other campers tittered.

Chris sighed, for he knew it was pointless to try to correct Lindsay. The uberbimbo had a history of saying things, most infamously her putdown of Noah before the dodgeball match, which would be considered snarky coming from someone more intelligent, but which were more likely to be completely innocent coming from her. “Yes, Lindsay, if you must. But think of my feelings, okay?”

Before the dimwitted former blonde could answer, Chris turned back to Katie and Ezekiel and said, “We’re on a schedule, so I’m not going to delay the briefing. You’ll have to pay attention while you ditch your itch.”

Those two campers, befouled as they were with itching powder as has been told of before, waded into the lake as quickly as they might and stripped to their gitch to ditch their itch.

“Our second extreme sport,” Chris explained, “is Extreme …  Aerial … Chicken Jousting!^[22.02] In each joust, one camper from each team will fly straight at each other in these ultralights. It’s best three out of five, assuming nobody wrecks their flyer. You’ll be flying over the lake, so you might survive a crash if your broken bodies don’t drown or become lamprey lunch. So yeah, somebody really needs to chicken out in each joust. Or not. I have to admit, a spectacular crash and a grisly death would be great for ratings, and I don’t think we’re planning to use the ultralights again.”

The host paused to let the campers contemplate the danger ahead, his little black heart made glad at the buzz of worried conversation. Gwen shook her head and muttered, “This must be why we woke up to the ‘Dies Irae’ this morning.”

“At least you don’t have to do it,” Cody reminded her. “But fear not, you have a brave knight to do battle in your name.”

Gwen allowed herself a smirk. “I suppose I do, even if you’re basically a stand-in champion.”

The science geek winced. “That hurt. But, yeah. I keep telling you I’m sorry.”

“And I believe you,” Gwen offered, wondering if she had let too much bitterness creep into her voice. “But, yeah. Sorry or not, I still can’t quite convince myself that you wouldn’t do it again, but maybe that’s just me. Sunshine did tell me that you’re the one who convinced Heather to be nicer to me, although I can’t imagine how you did it.”

“Tell you what,” Cody ventured, eager to distract his Gothic crush girl from that line of discussion. “It’s customary for a knight to carry something of his lady’s into battle. Something like, say, maybe your br—” The science geek looked down at his feet. “Never mind. I’m an idiot.”

Gwen looked confused for a moment, until she had a flash of insight. “You were about to ask for my bra, weren’t you? Seriously, dude?”

“A moment of weakness,” the science geek admitted, still studying his feet. “I know how it sounds, but I can’t help it. The knight usually carries a bit of clothing or something, and … and that was the first thing that came to mind.”

“Look at me.”

Cody reluctantly did as he was told.

“Even if that didn’t make me want to beat you to death with my good arm, I’m not about to take off my bra in front of everyone, not to mention the cameras.”

Cody suddenly realized that he and Gwen had the undivided attention of everyone except Katie and Ezekiel, who were still doing their business in the lake. Chris had begun listening because he could smell the drama in Gwen and Cody’s conversation, and the other campers had noticed the host’s interest.

Cody noticed something else, as well: he saw, or thought he saw, the slightest smile on Gwen’s face as she spoke, as if to take the sting out of her words. “So … something more family-friendly?” he ventured hopefully.

Gwen pondered for a moment. “My necklace?”

“Sounds good.”

“All right, but I expect it back in one piece,” the Goth admonished. “I only brought two with me, and one is already out on loan for the summer.”

Cody grinned his goofy grin. “So that’s where Katie got hers. Looks good on her.”

“I know, right?”

Sensing that there was no more drama to be had in Cody and Gwen’s byplay, Chris turned to the other campers and announced, “Back to business. Nothing to see here.

“As I was saying, you’ll be better off if someone chickens out of every joust. The motors are kind of wimpy, so we’re going to standardize the chicken moves. To chicken out, whoever weighs less should bank to the right. I’ll decide who that is if there’s any question. The pilot who weighs more can either bank to the right or dive. Don’t try any other chicken move, or you’re liable to crash anyway and add injury to insult.

“For the sake of revenge, which is always good for ratings, we’ll use the same pairings we had at the Arena. First up, D.J. and Leshawna!”

Shawn, the intern assigned to attend the Eagles’ jousters, helped Leshawna strap into her life vest and flight harness, gave her a radio headset and explained the simple controls for the electric motor. The Zombie Master also gave the dusky homegirl many pointers on flying, not because she would need them for her joust, but simply to make conversation.

“How do you know so much about these things?” Leshawna asked.

“Because zombies can’t fly. Duh.”

---

D.J. and Leshawna took to the skies and circled about as they climbed to jousting altitude. When they were high enough, Chris radioed the pilots. “The next time you’re facing each other, start your run.”

The result was predictable. Leshawna was a stouthearted lass and disinclined to flinch from battle, and she wanted the reward shower as much as the other girls. D.J., for all his athletic prowess, had gained a reputation for being more fainthearted than was good for him. So it was, perhaps inevitably, that D.J. gave way when they were put to the test. It looked good on camera, for the fainthearted brickhouse did have a good eye for distance and stayed the course as long as he dared, and the editors selected a camera angle that minimized the apparent distance between the flyers, but the outcome was never in serious doubt.

Tyler and Lindsay faced off in the second joust. This time, the advantage clearly lay with the Muskie flyer; for although Lindsay was as motivated as the other girls, Tyler had a reputation for recklessness and also had hang gliding experience, which was why he came to the island by glider on the day of the Gathering.

Tyler lacked coordination, though, and this proved his undoing. In the midst of his jousting run, his hand slipped on the motor controls during a course adjustment, and he began to climb out of Lindsay’s path. Accustomed as he was to flying unpowered gliders as opposed to the heavier and more responsive ultralights, Red Jock overcompensated and went into a dive. By the time he recovered, he had passed Lindsay, whom Chris declared the winner.

“The Eagles lead 2-0,” the host declaimed. “One more win, and they take the round. Next up are Cody and Duncan.”

The science geek looked toward Gwen, and in silent response the Goth turned a little away from him and gestured to the back of her neck. Cody unfastened her necklace, which Gwen could not easily do herself with only one good arm, and the Goth refastened it around her champion’s arm, just below the elbow. She said, “My honor is at stake here, sort of, so kick his butt.”

Heather added sternly, “Come back either with your shield or on it.”^[22.03]

As the pilots prepared for takeoff, Duncan called to his opponent. “Hey, Casanova, ready to chicken out in front of all your bitches?” This was the wrong thing to say, as the delinquent would learn quickly enough.

The two boys circled up to jousting altitude, and started their runs. As they approached each other, Cody could see Duncan’s wolfish grin, and surmised that the scorner of laws just might be reckless enough to crash if it came to that. Cody was by no means of reckless nature, but most people may act without proper thought for the consequences if they are highly motivated, and he was no exception. That was, after all, what got him on Gwen’s bad side in the first place, as has been told of before.

Duncan’s taunt still burned in Cody’s ears, and the hopes and dreams of his “bitches”—more to the point, of the crush girl he had wronged—were in his hands. So it was that the science geek made a fateful decision: he would not give way. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, anticipating the pain and wounds the imminent collision would surely bring him.

When the collision did not come, Cody opened his eyes and looked about in confusion. He was still flying on course, but there was no sign of Duncan.

“Uh, Cody?” Chris called from below via Cody’s headset. “You can turn around now.”

Cody came about and spotted Duncan far below, preparing to land. The delinquent did not believe Chris had exaggerated the danger of a collision, and so had wisely dived to safety when he saw in Cody’s face that the science geek was committed to staying his course at any cost.

As Cody descended, Duncan landed and rejoined his disappointed teammates. In answer to their reproachful looks, the Juvenile Hall alumnus explained why he had given way, but nothing would be gained by repeating it here.

“I don’t blame you for that,” Courtney admitted. “What I do blame you for is egging Cody on in the first place. You probably could have gotten him to chicken out if you’d just kept your big mouth shut.”

Duncan, unwilling to admit that Courtney had a point, challenged, “What are you complaining about, Princess? At least you probably won’t have to do your joust.”

Courtney, unwilling to admit that Duncan had a point, shot back, “That’s beside the point.”

As Cody landed, Chris announced, “The second round of the Extreme … Sports … Challenge! goes to the Eagles, 3-0! Muskies, you’re going to have to do better than that if you want to win this challenge. Heather, Courtney, Katie and Ezekiel, you all catch a break. You won’t have to do your jousts.”

Heather whispered something into Lindsay’s ear, and the uberbimbo grinned and nodded. When Cody shed his flight gear and rejoined his “bitches”, as Duncan had put it, Heather said loudly enough for the delinquent to hear, “I don’t care what Duncan says, we know a real man when we see one.”

Her words drew the delinquent’s attention, as Heather knew they would. Duncan looked her way to see the two hottest girls in the game cling to Cody and nibble appreciatively on his ears. The science geek grinned like an idiot as he slipped his arms around their waists.

Ezekiel asked Duncan, “What’s his secret?”

“They’re just playacting,” the Juvenile Hall alumnus told his homeschooled buddy.

“Do you think he cares?” the farm boy asked, wishing fervently that he were in Cody’s place at that moment.

“I wouldn’t,” Duncan admitted.

---

Chris led the campers to a makeshift corral with five marked zones and two posts at each end, not unlike a football field. Dawn and Ella, dressed as cowgirls, were leading a huge bull moose into a small pen near one end. The moose wore a wide leather strip around its torso behind the shoulders, with something resembling a suitcase handle at the top.

“Best animal handlers ever,” Chris noted approvingly. “They’re real budget savers.” Although the normally self-absorbed host was sincere in his admiration of the girls’ talents, he did not always use them wisely, and this would bring both him and the mystic to grief, but that is another story for another time.

Chris declaimed through his bullhorn, “The third round of the Extreme … Sports … Challenge! is Extreme … Rodeo … Moose Riding!” He lowered his bullhorn and explained, “Each of you must ride on the back of this wild moose. If you can last eight seconds, you get a point for your team. Highest team score wins the round.^[22.04]

“Why eight seconds?” Leshawna asked. “Is there something special about that?”

“Eight seconds is the rodeo standard,” Ezekiel explained.

Chris said, “Ezekiel, since you know so much about rodeo, why don’t you go first and show us how it’s done?”

“Sure.”

With the mighty alces^[22.05] secure in the mounting pen, Dawn stroked the beast’s muzzle and spoke softly as if to soothe it, or perhaps to instruct it, whilst Ezekiel nervously mounted his imposing steed. When the farm boy said he was ready, gripping the handle with his brown right hand,^[22.06] the animal whisperers swung the gate open with a shout.

Ezekiel had never ridden bull nor bronco, but he had seen it done often enough and he knew the theory. No less importantly, riding mooseback was “extreme” only in appearance, for the moose’s narrower back made it easier for the rider’s legs to grip than a more conventional bucker’s back would have been. In sum, the prairie boy had little trouble hanging on for the required eight seconds.

Ezekiel jumped off and landed with a jarring impact, for he was not especially graceful and a moose is a good deal taller than a typical horse. The farm boy stumbled and fell, but was unhurt. As the moose’s lovely assistants led the enormous ungulate back to the mounting pen, Ezekiel got up, dusted himself off, and rejoined the other campers.

“Be careful jumping off,” the prairie boy warned his colleagues. “It’s a long way down.”

Chris announced, “Ezekiel scores first for the Muskies! Katie, since you would have had to fly against our country boy if we’d had all five Chicken jousts, what say you go first for the Eagles?”

The Thin Twin shrugged. “I’d have to sooner or later.”

Katie took her place on the beast’s back and grasped the handle-like rigging with one hand, absently stroking her warding necklace with the other. Dawn noticed and seemed about to say something, so Katie explained, “For luck.”

The mystic smiled. “For luck, indeed.”

Dawn and Ella swung the gate open and the beast bolted into the corral as Katie held on for “deer” life. Not for long, though. On only the second buck, Katie’s legs lost their grip, and she found herself hanging precariously at the beast’s side for a moment. She let go the rigging, for her awkward position made her hold too painful to maintain, and pushed off the moose’s flank as best she could so as not to get trampled.

“And Katie goes down in flames,” Chris declaimed. “Courtney, you’re up next.”

“Wait a minute,” Heather broke in. “The Fishies are ahead, so if we just alternate, they’ll always have the advantage. The next rider should be from our team.”

The host pondered for the briefest moment. “Objection sustained. Thanks for volunteering to go next, Heather.”

Heather would have preferred to go last for her team, partly because she had little faith that any of her teammates could handle the pressure as well as she assumed she could, and partly because of the off chance that the round might be settled before then, but she accepted her assignment without protest. Her team was down a point, after all, and who better than she to erase that deficit?

Heather took her place, and when her glance happened to meet Ella’s, the Singer wordlessly wished her luck. The moose girls opened the gate, and the dragon girl’s trial was under way.

Heather’s long, strong dancer’s legs gripped her steed firmly, and for a time it seemed she would pass her easily enough. In the end, though, the moose succeeded in throwing her.

Chris asked melodramatically, “Chef, did she do it?”

Hatchet checked his digital stopwatch and announced, “7.999—”

“Whatever, it’s not eight,” Chris broke in. “The Muskies are still in front, 1-0. Let’s see if Courtney can extend their lead.”

Courtney was the smallest rider on the range, so getting a firm leg grip on the moose’s broad back was a challenge; and when she began her ride, the onetime CIT quickly lost her grip. Realizing she was about to be thrown, Courtney gripped the rigging with her second hand; for although a one-handed grip is standard, allowing use of the other arm to help the rider maintain their balance, Courtney’s hands were small enough that she could comfortably grasp with both. Yet this did not avail her; for when the moose threw her, Courtney’s two-fisted grip merely caused her to flip forward over the handle, and she landed flat on her back upon the beast’s velvet-covered antlers. With a cry of pain, the onetime CIT reflexively let go the handle, whereupon the moose tossed her aside and trotted off.

As Dawn and Ella began preparations for the next rider, Courtney slowly lifted herself from the dust and gingerly made her way back to her teammates.

“You okay, Court?” Ezekiel inquired solicitously.

“I’ll be fine,” Courtney snapped. Realizing how she sounded, the Muskies’ nominal leader hastily added, “Sorry, Zeke, I didn’t mean to be that snippy. This just doesn’t seem to be my day, that’s all.”

“I’ve always thought you needed a little humiliation,” Duncan broke in. “Or was it humility? Either would do.”^[22.07]

“You’re a fine one to talk,” Courtney shot back.

Chris declaimed, “The score remains 1-0 in favor of the Muskies. Since Heather demanded that the Eagles get two tries in a row, the Muskies get two in a row now, and that’s how it’ll go from here on out. So, next up for the Muskies—”

“I volunteer as Tribute!” Duncan called.^[22.08] The scorner of laws turned to Courtney and said with a smirk, “Watch and learn, Princess.”

“Whatever. Who’d have guessed that you actually read books?” the future speaker of laws retorted.

Duncan drew Ezekiel aside. “Any last-second pointers, dude?”

“Nothing I haven’t told you already,” the farm boy admitted; for after his own ride, he had briefed his teammates as best he was able. “Just don’t try to showboat, and you should be fine.”

Duncan, however, was too much of … well, of Duncan, to simply stick to the script. As he prepared to mount the moose, he winked at Ella and asked, “A kiss for luck, Hot Lips?”^[22.09]

“It would be bad luck, I’m afraid,” Ella demurred. She had no particular desire to kiss Duncan, but did not wish to seem rude. “When I kissed Tyler and Cody at the party, it seemed to make them weak for a bit. I don’t think you want that right now.”

“Good point,” the delinquent admitted. “After my ride, then?”

“I doubt Chris would approve.”

“I do a lot of things Chris doesn’t approve of. Nothing’s happened yet.”

“Yet,” Dawn broke in. “Duncan, I’ll be blunt. Ella’s trying to be polite, but she doesn’t want to cost you your shot at a hundred thousand dollars.”

The scorner of laws opened his mouth to answer, only to realize he had no answer. He recovered quickly. “You know how to let a guy down easy, I’ll give you that.”

Chris called from across the corral, “Yo, dude, we’re on a schedule! Stop trying to pick up interns and do your challenge!”

“By your command,^[22.10] McLame,” Duncan muttered sarcastically, but he delayed no longer. When he was ready, the cowgirls opened the gate and the moose burst into the corral. Eight seconds later, Chef Hatchet’s arm shot up to signal a successful ride. Duncan then allowed himself to be bucked off and, with his characteristic smirk, lit upon the dust of the earth with a three-point landing befitting a man of action.

“Duncan breaks the lameness streak!” Chris declaimed. “The Muskies extend their lead. Eagles, you’re down 2-0 and running out of chances. Leshawna, let’s see you do something about that.”

When Duncan rejoined his teammates, he wasted no time accosting Courtney. “Did you take good notes, Princess?”

“Part of me was hoping you’d make a fool of yourself,” the Muskies’ nominal leader admitted, “but a point’s a point. I’ll take it.”

Meanwhile, Leshawna took her place on mooseback. Projecting a confidence she did not feel, the dusky homegirl called, “Chef, I hope you’ve got a moose burger recipe handy!”  She looked down to her reluctant steed, patted its back and said in a more soothing tone, “Easy, boy. You don’t want to make me mad, now.”

Bobby Darin - If I Could Talk To The Animals

Ella grinned as she looked at Dawn and sang softly, “If I could trash talk the animals …”

Ella grinned as she looked at Dawn and sang softly, “If I could trash talk the animals …”

With a grin of her own, the mystic sang softly in turn, “They won’t talk back … to … me.”^[22.11]

Leshawna could not suppress a half-smile. “Damn straight, they won’t,” she declared. “Let’s do this.” The moose wranglers took this to mean the homegirl was ready, so they swung wide the gate.

“Whoa, whoa, who-oa,” Leshawna cried inarticulately as her sassy composure deserted her. So single-minded was her focus on keeping her grip that she did not see Chef’s success signal, and maintained her death grip and her “whoa, who-oa” mantra until the wranglers brought the beast to heel.

“The Eagles finally get on the board,” Chris announced as Dawn calmed the moose and Ella helped Leshawna down. “The Muskies still lead 2-1, but it’s anybody’s game again.

“Next up for the Eagles … Lindsay!”

Lindsay’s ride was as flashy and action-packed as anything the viewing audience had seen all season. Twice the moose seemed to throw her, only for the top-heavy gymnast to recover with breathtaking aerial maneuvers as graceful and spectacular as they were desperate, and light once more upon the beast’s back. Hatchet did not count the time she was airborne, but that mattered not. When Hatchet signaled eight legitimate seconds, Lindsay allowed herself to be bucked off, just as Duncan had, and sailed back over the beast’s hindquarters. She flawlessly executed the most complex vault in her repertoire, for the “moose boost” had given her more altitude than she would have with a normal vault, and landed facing her colleagues. She stuck the landing perfectly and, with a radiant smile of triumph, stood up straight and raised her arms in the standard gymnastic finish to wild applause from campers and staff alike.

Chris pronounced, “Seriously, that was made of awesome. Lindsay ties it up, 2-2! Not only that, she’s just given the Eagles the tiebreaker if it comes to that. Bonus!”

After a few moments, when the euphoria had died, the host dropped the other shoe. “Unless, of course, one of the remaining Muskies can do even better.”

“Not likely,” D.J. muttered softly, as if to himself. “I’m good at what I do, but I’m not built for that.”

---

Of Moose and Men^[22.12]

The hammy host declaimed, “The Muskies still control their own destiny because they have two riders left and the Eagles have only one. Tyler, you’re up.”

Red Jock took his place on the moose’s back and, as he looked down upon his mount’s handlers, his eyes happened to meet Ella’s. The Singer smiled warmly up at him and said, “Make your love proud.”

Tyler did not make his love proud. He was strong and he was determined; but for all that, seven seconds after his ride began, he was on the ground, flat on his back, wondering what had gone wrong.

Chris announced, “And Tyler crashes and burns. It’s still 2-2, but the Eagles hold the tiebreaker. The Muskies are down to their last hope. That means you, D.J.”

The gentle giant nervously but resolutely mounted the moose. Meanwhile, Dawn stroked the beast’s muzzle and spoke unknown words to it, as she had done before every ride. This time, though, she said something more. Her lips moved not, so the cameras did not capture her message; and she spoke so softly that no one—not Ella, not D.J., not even the microphones—knew she had spoken; but the moose’s sensitive hearing discerned the mystic’s message easily enough.

“One of us.”^[22.13]

When D.J. began his ride, he quickly sensed that something was amiss. Although the moose’s romp looked good on camera, what D.J. felt was not the violent bucking the other riders had experienced, but an odd and not entirely unpleasant undulation. Had he ever ridden a “camelback” roller coaster,^[22.14] the sensation would have been more familiar to him; but of course, he had not, for his fear of heights made such activities impossible.

D.J. did not see Chef Hatchet’s signal, but he heard his teammates break into cheers and knew thereby that he had succeeded. That left only the problem of how to get off his not-so-reluctant steed; but when he spoke pleadingly to it, with no expectation that it would have any effect, the beast unaccountably calmed, and D.J. was able to dismount without assistance.

Chris noticed this odd behavior, but of course he did not suspect the true cause. “Hmph, the moose must be getting tired,” the host surmised rhetorically. “Well, that’s an advantage for our last rider.” Chris lifted his bullhorn to his lips and announced, “The Muskies retake the lead! It’s 3-2 with one rider to go. The Eagles have the tiebreaker, but that won’t help them unless Cody can force a tie. It all comes down to this last ride. Is that great drama, or what?”

Cody took his place on the Wawanakwa Bucking Moose, and his eyes happened to meet Ella’s. The Singer smiled and wished him luck, as she had done with other riders when her glance chanced to meet theirs.

Dawn’s eyes widened, for only she could see the true intensity of the science geek’s reaction. “Try not to read too much into that,” she suggested, “especially for the next eight seconds.”

“What? Oh, yeah, right,” Cody answered thickly, as if emerging from a daze. “Choking doesn’t impress the ladies.”

“Besides, we’re not the ladies you need to impress,” Dawn observed dryly, which Cody did not venture to deny.

The moose whisperers swung open the gate, and the deciding ride was underway. “What was that about?” Ella asked.

“His erotic fantasies are very easily triggered,” the mystic explained. “For a moment, his aura was blinding.”

“Should I be flattered or frightened?” the Singer asked with a giggle as the unmoosed science geek hit the ground.

Cody lifted himself from the dust as Chris called theatrically, “Chef, did he make it?”

Hatchet checked his stopwatch. “Eight seconds flat.”^[22.15]

Cody pumped his fist and rejoined his cheering teammates.

---

Chris announced, “Round Three of the Extreme … Sports … Challenge! ends in a 3-3 tie! The Eagles have the tiebreaker, so they take the round and the lead, two rounds to one!

“And now, it’s time for Round Four of the Extreme … Sports … Challenge! If the Muskies win this round, we’ll have a tiebreaker round after lunch. If the Eagles win, they take the whole challenge and we all get the afternoon off.

“So far, we’ve been doing individual challenges, but this one will be a team event. It’s our very own take on the Sport of Kings.^[22.16] Get ready for Extreme … Moose … Cowboy Polo!”

Ezekiel nodded in apparent understanding, but the other campers looked completely mystified, so Chris explained. “For the uninitiated, which is probably all of you except maybe our farm boy, Ezekiel, polo is basically hockey on horseback, or mooseback in this case. That should give you a basic idea of the rules. We’ll be doing a variation called cowboy polo because that way we can reuse the corral, and because teams are five players instead of four, so we won’t have to sit anyone out. It’s also a more positional game than regular polo, so you don’t have to be as good a rider. As part of your summer camp experience, you’ve all done enough horseback riding to have the basics down, but most of you are still pretty much beginners, so yeah.

“There are normally four periods called ‘chukkars’, but we might only play two if it looks like the game is taking too long or if it gets too one-sided. Each chukkar is 15 minutes. Play is continuous, meaning the clock doesn’t stop except for penalties.

“There are a lot of rules, but we’re on a schedule, so here’s the quick and dirty version: any move that looks like it could be hazardous to your opponent or their moose is probably a foul, which means either loss of possession or a penalty shot. If the ball goes out of bounds, the other team gets the ball at that point.

“The field has five zones. Each team has one player in each zone, and you can’t leave your zone. If you do, the other team gets the ball. Just a suggestion, you probably want your best riders in your offensive zones or at midfield. You can change zone assignments between periods or during timeouts. You get four timeouts. Teams change ends after each period.

“To score, use your mallets to hit the ball between the goalposts, at any height. Goals from the nearest zone are worth one point. Goals from farther out are worth two or three points, as the case may be, if they go though without anyone in another zone touching them. The value of touched long goals depends on the zone where they were last touched.

“If the other team has the ball and you want it, there are two legal ways to get it. One is to steal it. For example, you can hook your opponent’s mallet, but to do that you have to be on the same side of your opponent’s moose as the ball is, or directly behind. Reaching across your opponent’s moose to hook is a foul. The other way is to ride your opponent off the ball by using your moose to push their moose away, kind of like body checking in hockey. The legal ‘checking’ angle is 45 degrees or less, so broadsiding your opponent is a foul.

“Since everybody here and, more importantly, in the viewing audience knows the teams by now, we’re not going to bother with the full uniforms. You’ll just have riding boots, helmets and optional jeans in your team colors. Beyond that, just what you normally wear. Except Tyler. Since your tracksuit is the wrong team color, you’ll wear the full uniform.”

“That’s cool,” Red Jock replied nonchalantly.

As the players donned their polo gear, which included standard equestrian helmets, Dawn and Ella returned on mooseback, leading a string of ten cow moose into the corral. The beasts wore protective wrappings above their hooves, in Eagles red or Muskies green as the case was. Chris gave the campers fifteen minutes to warm up, get the feel of their steeds, and decide zone assignments. During this time, Sky and Alejandro rode in on gray horses. Being the most skillful riders in the intern corps, they would referee the game. Chef Hatchet, meanwhile, returned to the main lodge to prepare whatever crime against humanity he was going to pass off as the campers’ lunch.

When the warm-up period ended, Dawn and Ella took their places near the ends of the corral to serve as goal spotters, which kept them readily available in case a problem arose with one of the animals. The corral had its own public address system, so Chris holstered his trusty bullhorn in favor of a wireless microphone, the better to offer a running commentary. The campers went to their assigned zones, across the corral from their counterparts. Alejandro dropped a red rubber medicine ball at the midpoint of the center zone, which was somewhat wider than the others, then backed away a bit and blew his whistle. The first ever, and probably last ever, moose cowboy polo game was underway.

---

Courtney and Lindsay were stationed at midfield and charged for the ball. To be precise, it seemed to them a charge but was really more of an easy lope because moose are rather sedentary creatures and their riders’ skill was not great. Courtney reached the ball first; but after a brief confrontation, Lindsay came away with it and quickly passed to Katie. Before Tyler could close, for Courtney had assigned him to the outer defense zone believing the jock of all trades would do their team the least harm there, Katie passed to Heather, who naturally had taken for herself the role of primary attacker in the hope of covering herself with glory.

Duncan was the Muskies’ pseudo goalkeeper (for neither traditional polo nor the “cowboy” variant have true goalkeepers) and rode up to challenge as Heather took aim at the goal. His challenge was a little too enthusiastic, though, for his moose struck Heather’s at an illegal angle and nearly knocked the dragon girl off. Sky blew her whistle to stop play, and awarded Heather a penalty shot.

“Heather nearly hits the dirt!” Chris announced. “That reminds me, I almost forgot the most important rule of cowboy polo, which is the unwritten rule: anyone who falls off their moose for any reason, or gets bucked off, has to buy their team a round of drinks. Normally that means beer, but since you’re all underage, you’ll buy sodas or energy drinks or whatever your teammates want. The Tuck Shoppe is standing by.”

Sky placed the ball at the back of Heather’s zone, fifty feet^[22.17] from the twenty-foot-wide goal, and shooed Duncan off to the side; for on a penalty shot, he was not allowed to defend. Heather took aim and swung her mallet. Her shot was on target, but the dragon girl had underestimated the power she would need, so the large ball rolled to a stop before reaching the goal.

No sooner had Sky signaled for play to resume than Duncan rode to the ball and, before Heather could intervene, took a mighty swing and sent the ball bounding all the way past midfield to the first zone beyond, near the fencing on Duncan’s right. D.J. reached the ball before his Zone 4 counterpart, Cody; and with a strong swing of his own, the brickhouse drove the ball toward the Eagles’ goal. It was a difficult angle, though, and the ball struck the goal post and bounced strongly to the left, toward the onrushing Ezekiel.

Leshawna, who was the Eagles’ last line of defense, closed at once to dispute possession, and she and the prairie boy proved surprisingly well matched; for although Ezekiel had more riding skill, Leshawna was more aggressive and more nimble with her mallet. The homegirl somehow managed to steal the ball without fouling her opponent and sent a long pass toward Lindsay in the center zone.

Courtney avenged herself and got the better of the bombshell, intercepting the pass and quickly passing the ball back in D.J.’s general direction. The brickhouse beat Cody to the ball again, as Courtney had suspected he would, and sent another long shot goalward. This time, his shot was on target, but Leshawna managed to deflect the ball. The neutered shot rolled out of bounds a few meters to the right of the goal. Ezekiel and the Muskies took possession and, after some spirited mallet work and jostling between him and Leshawna, the prairie boy drove the ball through the goal.

“First blood to the Muskies!” Chris called when Dawn signaled the goal. “It’s 1-0!”

Dawn tossed the ball to Gwen, whose task was to retrieve balls after goals and bring them to the midfield sideline, where they would be ready when Alejandro should happen to need them. This gave Gwen something to do and served to “keep her in shape”, as Chris had put it. As the injured Goth kicked the ball along the fence toward her destination, Alejandro retrieved a new ball from the sideline and threw it into the center zone so play could resume.

Lindsay and Courtney battled long and hard for the ball, for they were the most closely matched pair on the field. Lindsay eventually gained control long enough to pass to her nearest offensive teammate, Katie.

The Thin Twin’s first instinct was to pass to Heather, but Duncan was between them and seemed likely to intercept. As Katie waited for her liege to get open, she moved the ball into position for a potential shot, but neither did that avail her; for Tyler charged in with his characteristic recklessness and, before they knew it, both riders were on the ground in a heap.

Sky stopped play and Chris announced, “The first round of drinks is on Tyler and Katie, who just took a tumble together! Or maybe Tyler should hand out cigars.”^[22.18]

Ella dashed onto the field to examine the fallen riders’ mounts, for the incident had come to pass in her end of the field, and quickly determined that they were unhurt. The riders’ injuries were minor, and Sky awarded Katie a penalty shot from the midpoint of her zone, 75 feet from the goal. Katie drove the ball through, for she was fairly strong despite being visibly underweight, scoring two points and giving the Eagles the lead.

Alejandro tossed a new ball into the center zone, and this time the battle for possession ended with Alejandro calling Lindsay for an illegal hook. As Courtney prepared to take a penalty shot from midfield, a full 130 feet from the goal, D.J. and Cody made ready in their zone, as did Ezekiel and Leshawna near the goal, for no one believed the petite CIT had the strength to make a shot from that distance.

Sure enough, she did not. When Courtney’s shot came to a stop a few meters shy of Ezekiel’s territory, the waiting D.J. sprang into action the instant Alejandro signaled for play to resume. The brickhouse took possession of the ball, circled back around the oncoming Cody, saw an opening, and once more drove the ball toward the goal.

This time, luck was with him. D.J.’s shot was on target and had plenty of power, and Leshawna was not quick enough to intercept. The Muskies had retaken the lead.

The rest of the first chukkar went in much the same vein. Ezekiel scored thrice more, once in normal play and twice on penalty shots. D.J. scored a second goal, worth only one point instead of two because Leshawna touched the ball en route, although the homegirl’s interference had little effect on the ball’s course. For the Eagles, Heather and Katie each converted a penalty shot. Courtney and Lindsay’s battles in the center zone remained the most visually and strategically compelling part of the game. So it was that the first chukkar ended with the Muskies leading 7-5.

---

The teams huddled briefly before switching ends for the second chukkar. In the Muskies’ huddle, Courtney decreed, “For the second period, I’m going to switch with D.J. He’s strong enough to make penalty shots from midfield, so I want to see if he can do better than I have riding against Lindsay.”

“You’ve been doing fine, Court,” Ezekiel assured her.

“I’ve been holding my own,” Courtney countered, “but I want more. The best defense is a good offense, as they say. Heather and Katie have been able to keep the game close, so the best way to neutralize them is to keep the ball out of their zones. That means winning the battles at midfield.”

“You can count on me,” D.J. assured her.

“I just wish we had proper horses instead of these stupid moose,” Courtney griped. “Is anyone else having as much trouble as me getting their moose to do anything?”

Ezekiel replied, “Mine’s getting a little better, but it’s been tough, eh?”

Duncan and Tyler grumbled that they were also having trouble with their mounts, which, after all, were not trained for riding. D.J., however, said, “My moose seems to be doing what I want. Not as well as a horse probably would, but then, I doubt anyone’s ever ridden her before. Except maybe our animal whisperers.”

Courtney perked up. “Your moose is responsive?”

“Reasonably,” the brickhouse affirmed.

“How very interesting,” the Muskies’ nominal leader declared with a fiendish grin. “Okay, change of plans. Zeke, you’re our best rider, so we’ll put you against Lindsay at midfield. We’re counting on you to keep the ball out of the Birdies’ offensive end. D.J., you’ll be next to the goal. If your moose really is obeying as well as you say, and if Leshawna’s riding a pig in disguise^[22.19] like the rest of us, you should be able to ride circles around her. We might switch you and Zeke later, to see which setup works better. I can see advantages in both.”

“Sounds like a plan,” D.J. acknowledged with an expectant grin of his own.

“Sounds good to me, eh?” Ezekiel seconded.

“Tyler, Duncan, you’ll stay where you were,” Courtney added. “And do try to stop fouling. The penalty shots are keeping the Birdies close.”

The Muskies took the field to find the matchups they were expecting. Heather had not made any zone changes because she was reasonably optimistic about how the game was going and, more importantly, she could not think of any reassignments that seemed likely to improve the Eagles’ chances.

The second chukkar began with Lindsay and Ezekiel charging from opposite sides toward the ball at midfield. The farm boy reached it first and passed to Courtney, who quickly passed to D.J. in the Muskies’ offensive end. The brickhouse feinted left and went right, which got him past Leshawna, and put the ball through the goal at short range.

Alejandro threw another ball onto the field. Ezekiel again reached it first; but this time, with the riders not required to retreat to the sidelines beforehand, Lindsay was close enough on his heels to dispute possession. Ezekiel nevertheless won the dispute because, although Lindsay was as nimble as he with the mallet, the bombshell lacked the aggressiveness that had enabled Leshawna to cope reasonably well with the farm boy’s superior riding skill.

Seeing that Cody had Courtney well covered for the nonce, Ezekiel bypassed their zone with a long pass into D.J.’s end, counting on his teammate to reach the ball before it went out of bounds or Leshawna could get to it. The brickhouse did not disappoint; after another feint, he tapped through another goal at point-blank range.

D.J. soon had the ball again, and Leshawna was as helpless as before. Although the homegirl had not fared too badly against Ezekiel in the first chukkar, she was no match for D.J.; for the brickhouse was wilier than the farm boy in matters athletic and more adept at using misdirection to turn Leshawna’s aggressiveness against her. When D.J. completed his hat trick^[22.20] to give the Muskies a 10-5 lead, Heather called the Eagles’ first timeout.

“Leshawna, what’s going on?” Heather demanded. “You’re playing like you’re blindfolded.”

“I’d like to see you do better,” the homegirl shot back, although for once she was more annoyed with herself than with her nemesis.

Heather’s first instinct was to respond caustically, but she caught herself. “You may be right,” she conceded. “If you want something done right, do it yourself.

“I’ll take Leshawna’s spot defending our goal. Lindsay, you take my spot attacking the Fishies’ goal. Leshawna, you’re at midfield. I have to admit, you didn’t do too badly against Homeschool in the first period, and the best way to stop D.J. is to keep the ball out of his hands.”

No one dissented, for Heather’s realignment seemed to the Eagles a good one. When they broke huddle and went to their new zones, however, Courtney saw what was happening and hastily called, “Zeke! D.J.! Switch, stat!”

Heather appealed to Alejandro, who was the referee closest at hand. “They can’t do that, can they?”

The strapping Latino lad explained, “If the team calling a timeout makes a change, then the other team may, as well; but if you had not done so, then they would not have been allowed to, either.”

Heather accepted this for the nonce, hoping Leshawna would have better success against D.J. without the added burden of having to defend the goal.

At first, it looked as though the Eagles’ new alignment might keep them competitive. Leshawna beat D.J. to the ball when play resumed and the Eagles worked the ball down the field, only for Duncan to stop Lindsay’s shot. The Muskies scored on their next two possessions, with Ezekiel beating Heather both times close to the goal; but Katie countered with a two-point penalty shot after being fouled by Tyler. The Eagles still trailed 12-7, but seemed to have stopped the proverbial bleeding.

Alas for the avians, it did not last. Pitted against D.J., Leshawna was only effective when she could reach the ball first and pass off quickly. If D.J. reached the ball first, or if Leshawna’s “receivers” could not get open before the brickhouse engaged her, she was helpless. To make matters worse, Heather did not fare as well with the goal at her back as Leshawna had in the first chukkar; for the queen bee was not as deft with her mallet as the homegirl, and Heather’s slightly better riding skill was not enough to compensate.

Moreover, Courtney could usually get the better of Cody, although this was not the mismatch that D.J.-Leshawna or Ezekiel-Heather were. The onetime CIT was one of the best riders among the campers, or would have been if everyone had cooperative mounts, but she could not pass the large ball as efficiently as her stronger teammates. D.J. could easily bypass Courtney’s zone with long passes into the Eagles’ end, so Courtney was content to draw Cody out of the way and watch her teammates work.

Nor was Courtney the only player doing more watching than playing. With D.J. completely owning Leshawna at midfield, the riders in the Eagles’ offensive zones were reduced to little more than spectators.

Four possessions after Katie’s score, Ezekiel had scored twice more, although Heather did manage to stop him once. Leshawna had won only one more of the several battles in the center zone, although that lone victory did lead to Lindsay scoring on a penalty shot. When the increasingly frustrated Leshawna fouled D.J. during yet another one-sided possession battle, the brickhouse earned the cheers of his teammates by calmly golfing through a three-point penalty shot from midfield.

Down 17-8 and facing the increasingly likely prospect of Chris calling the game at halftime, Heather called the Eagles’ second timeout. She shuffled the lineup again, matching herself against D.J. and Katie against Ezekiel. Cody took Katie’s former place against Tyler in Zone 4, with Leshawna now matched against Courtney in Zone 2.

It mattered little. Heather tried pitting Lindsay and finally Katie against D.J., but none of the Eagles could cope with D.J.’s unsuspected advantage of a cooperative steed; for the quality of a polo player’s mount accounts for the lion’s share of the player’s worth to their team. Moreover, only Katie achieved so much as “coin flip” success defending the Eagle’s goal.

When the second chukkar ended with the Muskies leading 24-9, Chris announced, “I think we’ve seen enough. Round Four of the Extreme … Sports … Challenge! goes to the Muskies!^[22.21] The teams are tied at two rounds apiece, so we’ll break for lunch and meet back here in 45 minutes for the tiebreaker round.^[22.22] Normally, I wouldn’t cut you that kind of slack, but it will take time for the interns to prepare the course. Forty-five minutes should be enough if we don’t lose anyone.”

All the interns present cast sour looks at Chris, but he paid no heed.

---

At the appointed time, the campers returned to find the corral transformed into a mud pit and marked with what looked like some kind of slalom course, including a small jump. Nor was that the only remarkable sight. To meet the deadline, every intern on the island had been called to help, and this was the first time the campers had ever seen the entire intern corps together. The fencing was gone, having been designed for quick installation and removal.

Chris declaimed, “The final event of the Extreme … Sports … Challenge! is Extreme … Seadoo … Mud Skiing! The course has six flags.^[22.23] One of you will drive the Seadoo while someone from the other team skis and tries to pick up as many flags as they can. Then another pair will go.

“The driver can use any driving tricks they can think of to distract or thwart the skier, as long as it’s not something a reasonable person would consider cheating. For example, you can’t just cut the tether or anything like that, and you have to stay on course. The driver also has to complete the course. Otherwise, the skier will get credit not only for the flags they have, but also for any flags they haven’t reached yet.

“Since this is the tiebreaking round, we’re looking at sudden death, sort of. We’ll start with a Muskie driver and an Eagle skier, and then we’ll have an Eagle driver and a Muskie skier. If one skier gets more flags than the other, that’s the end of the challenge. If they get the same number of flags, we’ll have another round with different people. We can have up to five rounds, since people who drive in an early round could ski in a later round, and vice versa.

“That jump with the second flag on it is our tiebreaker if we don’t get a winner within five rounds. Skiers don’t have to take the jump; but if they do, and don’t wipe out, they get a tiebreaker point. The first tiebreaker is the number of skiers for each team who successfully make the jump. Highest number wins. A panel of judges will award style points for jumps, because that’s the second tiebreaker.”

Katie translated, “Meaning we would win because, you know, Lindsay.”

“Probably,” the host admitted. “In the ridiculously unlikely event that we still have a tie after totaling up the style points, I’ll just give it to the Muskies because they’re a man down.”

“Seems fair,” Heather conceded, “since there’s no way it’ll get that far.”

There were no questions, so Chris announced, “First up, Tyler drives and Katie skis.”

Tyler had had more than his share of problems in the previous events, but he proved a competent and wily driver. Katie picked up the first flag without incident; but with a curious “crack the whip” move, Red Jock managed to steer her away from the second flag and the jump. Katie captured the third flag, and the fourth as well, but Tyler succeeded in keeping her away from the fifth. Katie snagged the final flag to finish with four. That was enough to put pressure on the Muskies’ skier, but Tyler had done his job by leaving his team an opening.

Chris announced, “Next up, Cody drives and D.J. skis.”

Cody’s driving was not bad, but neither was it in any way remarkable, and D.J. was a graceful and adept skier. Cody tried to distract and confuse his adversary with sudden changes in speed, and he tried to emulate Tyler’s “crack the whip” maneuver; but the course was narrow enough that, other things being equal, the skier would always have the advantage.

D.J. caught the first flag as easily as a February cold. He did not attempt the jump, due to his fear of heights, but he shrugged off that failure and snagged the second flag from atop the jump as he skied past. In due course, he plucked the third flag from its place with no trouble. When he grabbed the fourth, with two flags still waiting, the Eagles girls groaned, for they saw the coveted reward shower slipping away.

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

.

Twenty-third Night

The next morning, after they had breakfasted, Brett went to school whilst his mother went to earn their daily bread. That evening, after they had dined and Brett had attended to his homework, 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.

---

“Oh, crap,” Heather muttered. “Cody, you are useless!”

“No. We are not losing that shower,” Lindsay declared with iron in her voice that no one in camp had ever heard from her before. She sprinted to the finish line, calling out, “Cory! Keep your eyes on the road, no matter what!”

“What’s she doing?” several campers asked themselves and each other, as Lindsay stopped at one side of the finish line.

Not long afterwards, Lindsay called out again. “Yoo hoo, D.J.!” she cried in a singsong tone as she waved something over her head.

The brickhouse picked up the fifth flag. Confident that the challenge was in the bag, and with no course obstacles immediately ahead of him, he spared a quick glance at the uberbimbo when she called to him again. That quick glance became a double take.

Chris had been doing a play-by-play over the loudspeakers, but had fallen silent, apparently struck speechless. Chef Hatchet, the onlooking campers, and the interns stared at the gesticulating bombshell, eyes wide and jaws agape; for the thing Lindsay was waving overhead, you see, was her top.^[23.01]

If you were suddenly confronted with a topless goddess, one with enough “assets” to blow the show’s pixellation budget in a couple of scenes, would you be distracted? D.J. certainly was, to the point that he wiped out, losing both his flags and his grip on the tether. Her goal achieved, Lindsay quickly turned away from the course, lest Cody see her and share D.J.’s fate. The formerly blonde bombshell replaced her top even as the science geek, his eyes still averted although he knew not from what, crossed the finish line.

Finally finding his tongue, Chris announced, “Did not see that coming! Whatever, the Eagles win the challenge, three rounds to two! Eagles, you’ve got a date with the Heaven on Earth mobile shower. Muskies, you’ve got a date with the Marshmallow Man.”^[23.02]

As Lindsay rejoined her teammates, Leshawna declared, “Girl, you’ve got guts. I would never have tried that, not that I don’t have the goods to pull it off.”

“I didn’t want to do that,” Lindsay confessed, blushing deeply. “I really didn’t want to do that, but that shower is just too important.”

Katie was still in shock at what Lindsay had done, and she was hardly alone in this. “All I can say is, way to take one for the team,” the Thin Twin said.

Heather, meanwhile, was for the first time feeling genuine respect for her abused toady. “Using sex as a weapon! That was totally ruthless, merciless and evil of you,” the queen bee pronounced with a genuinely warm smile, something she gave even more rarely than Chris did. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“She learned from the best in the business,” Gwen observed with a smirk.

“And don’t you forget it,” Heather replied with a sniff.

“Poor Cody, though,” Katie added. “He was probably the only guy on the island who didn’t get to see you let it all hang out. Even the redshirts got their eyeful.”

“Well, if Cory had seen me, he probably would have crashed, too,” Lindsay noted. “That’s why I told him not to look. Duh! Just because I’m hopeless with names doesn’t mean I’m dumb. I think it’s just a speech impedicure or something.”

Truth be told, none of the other girls thought that names were the only things Lindsay was hopeless with, but none were tactless enough to say so after the service she had done them.

---

The mobile shower had two spacious stalls. Heather naturally claimed one spot in the first shift, and the girls agreed that Lindsay should have other slot, for she had gone beyond the call of duty to secure it for them.

As Lindsay and her liege enjoyed this treat to the fullest, Courtney sat on the dock, cooling her feet in the lake. Her mood was foul. Not only was her team facing its third straight elimination, with a good chance that the boys might band together to send their last female teammate packing, but Courtney had also wanted that fancy shower as much as the other girls; and being the only girl on the Muskies, she was now the only girl left out. The washroom had basic shower facilities, but it was not remotely the same. The washroom showers were for getting reasonably clean. The reward shower was for decadent, pampering pleasure.

Then Courtney had an idea, and her mood brightened. The boys had fought for invincibility, but were indifferent to the tricked out shower, and the Eagles still had one boy on their team. Although Cody was known to be particularly fond of Gwen, he had a chivalrous bent and seemed to enjoy pleasing girls in general. Perhaps he could be sweet-talked into yielding his shower session.

The sound of footsteps on the creaking dock interrupted her ruminations.

“Hey, Courtney.”

Speak of the devil,^[23.03] the lawyer-to-be thought as she leaned back on her hands and twisted her body about to face the new arrival.

“Hi, Cody. What’s up?”

The science geek dropped to one knee beside his campmate. “I’ve noticed that I’m the only dude left on the Eagles, and you’re the only girl left on the Muskies.”

“Yeah. Funny how things work out like that.”

“Yeah, funny,” Cody agreed. “You know what else is funny? The challenge reward isn’t that big a deal to me or the other guys, but all the girls seem to think it’s the greatest thing since the Internet.”

“That we do,” Courtney admitted wistfully. “Especially in a place like this. It’s a girl thing. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Maybe not, but I don’t have to. The point is, you’re the only girl on the losing team, so you can have my spot if you want it. I wouldn’t want you to be left out, especially if it’s that important to you.”

“You read my mind,” the onetime CIT said with feeling.

The science geek grinned his goofy grin and said, “What can I say? I live to please the ladies.”

“You certainly pleased this one.”

Courtney rose to her feet, and Cody did likewise. “Thanks, Cody,” she said, giving his hand a quick, light squeeze to underscore her appreciation. “I owe you one.”

“Put in a good word for me with Gwen, and we’ll call it even.”

Courtney gave a quick snort of amusement. “It’s always about Gwen with you, isn’t it?” Not waiting for an answer, she added, “Well, it’s cheap at thrice the price. You’ve got a deal, bucko. Gwen had better get a clue before somebody else nabs you.”

“You know, you’re not the first girl to tell me that.”

“There’s a reason for that.”

The Muskies’ nominal leader slipped into her sandals, and she and her benefactor walked back to the camp with light hearts.

---

The Muskie boys were in a vindictive mood after having victory snatched from their grasp by Lindsay (of all people) playing dirty pool; so when they saw Cody return to the camp with Courtney, who took his hand in hers for a moment before they parted ways, the boys decided to have a little fun at the science geek’s expense.

“Yo, dude!” Tyler called to Cody, who seemed lost in thought. The science geek turned to see the Muskie males approaching.

“Hey, dudes, what’s up?

Tyler said, “You and Courtney were looking awfully friendly. Given up on Gwen?”

“As if. In fact, Courtney has agreed to help me.”

Duncan asked with a leer, “How? By cosplaying for you?” He could not have guessed how prophetic his words were, but that is another story for another time.

“For your information,” Cody replied smugly, “Courtney is going to explain to Gwen what a great opportunity she’s letting slip through her fingers. Testimonials, baby!”

“How did you get her to do that?” Ezekiel asked. “Courtney doesn’t seem like she’d be into matchmaking, eh?”

“I gave her my spot in that fancy shower, and she wanted to do something for me in return. That’s what I asked her to do.”

D.J. observed, “Seems only fair for her to get your spot in that shower, seeing as you Birdies didn’t deserve to win.”

Cody replied, “Now that you mention it, how did we win? The way you were owning that mud skiing course, I thought we were dead. Did you catch an edge or something?”

“No, nothing that simple,” the dusky brickhouse explained. “I don’t even know how to explain it. It’s one of those universal mysteries that if you haven’t experienced it, then you can’t understand; and if you have, then no explanation is necessary.” D.J. shook his head. “The middle of a challenge wasn’t the best place for a religious epiphany, but I’ll take that experience over one measly challenge any day.” With awestruck tone, he added, “Homeschool was right all along, Cody. There is a God.”

“Believe it, dude,” Duncan seconded, sounding as awestruck as D.J. “I’ve seen the light. We all have. I’m thankful I saw before it was too late.”

“The Lord is merciful,” Ezekiel assured his “city mouse” buddy, “and He was doing powerful work.” Bible Boy turned to Cody and said, “I know from all those accounts of miracles in the Bible that nothing is impossible for the Lord; but it’s one thing to read about miracles, and another thing entirely to witness one firsthand. Now I understand why I didn’t get kicked out of the game when the girls got mad at me, eh? I was meant to be here today! Like a pilgrimage, except I didn’t know it ahead of time.” Ezekiel’s face took on an enraptured look and he added, “Even if I get booted tomorrow, now I have what I was really sent here for.”

“I know, right?” Tyler added. “Now I can die content.”

The four Muskies departed, softly spouting gibberish meant to imitate speaking in tongues, a touch Ezekiel had suggested. Cody watched them go as he tried to fathom what they had told him. He did not succeed in this, of course, because the other boys had been very careful to avoid giving him any useful details of what had happened. So it was that the Muskies had their revenge, in a manner of speaking.

The Muskie boys split up and sought out various members of the staff to explain what they had done and to ask that Cody not be told the truth. Chris and Chef chuckled and assured D.J. that they would not dream of spoiling the prank. Indeed, Chris observed wistfully that he wished there were more mind games among the campers. “You all get along too well,” the ratings-obsessed host chided, not for the first time.

The other three boys approached the first interns they encountered and explained the situation; for although the interns were not supposed to interfere in the campers’ social interactions, as has been told of before, the real danger was that someone unaware of the prank could reveal the truth to Cody unbeknownst.

Alejandro was as approving as Chris and Chef had been, and assured Duncan that he would not undeceive Cody even if he were at liberty to do so. The de facto Intern-in-Chief also promised to spread the word among the intern corps. After leaving the big Latino, Duncan went to the infirmary, which was his original destination, and swore Scott to secrecy.

The normally reserved and strait-laced Scarlett laughed uproariously when Ezekiel brought her the news. “Yes, I imagine you boys would consider seeing Lindsay’s bare bosom a religious experience,” she said. “Worry not, your secret is safe with me.”

Dawn, who for once did not have Ella in tow, was less approving, but she nevertheless assured Tyler that it was not her place, nor any intern’s, to interfere, and she agreed to spread the word to her fellows.

There remained the possibility that Courtney or one of Cody’s teammates might tell him what had happened. The girls all knew Cody’s reputation, though, so Duncan, who had masterminded the prank, had surmised that they would probably not be inclined to discuss the incident to avoid encouraging the science geek’s preoccupations. If Lindsay herself chose to tell Cody what had happened, that was her prerogative.

---

Cody found Katie and Leshawna sitting on the porch steps to their cabin, killing time until their much-anticipated shower sessions. After exchanging pleasantries, the science geek sat down beside the girls and described his encounter with the Muskie boys, but nothing would be gained by repeating it here.

“Do you know what happened?” Cody asked.

“Yeah, but I don’t know if it would be right to tell you,” Katie admitted.

“Why not?

“It’s not really our place,” Leshawna explained.

“But I seem to be the only one on the island who doesn’t know,” Cody protested a bit petulantly, “and nobody seems willing to tell me. Is it really as hard to explain as the other dudes were saying?”

“No, it’s not hard to explain. We can tell you that much,” Leshawna conceded.

“I gave you that DVD set after the trust challenge,” Katie said, “so you’re eventually going to see all the episodes, right? There’s no way they’d leave that part out. Because, you know, ratings.”

“Tell you what,” Leshawna broke in. “When Lindsay gets out of the shower, you can ask her. She’s the one who should tell you—if she’s willing to. But if she’s not, you’d be better off dropping it. Trust me. It’s not as if you’d be at a strategic disadvantage or anything.”

The shower trailer was visible from the porch, and Katie and Leshawna had the second shower shift, so the three teammates made small talk and waited with varying degrees of impatience. When Lindsay emerged, clad in a terrycloth bathrobe and slippers, with a towel wrapped around her head, the science geek went to her and explained his quest for knowledge, but nothing would be gained by repeating it here.

“They were right about one thing,” Lindsay said when Cody described his encounter with the other boys. “You really had to see it. Hearing about it just isn’t the same.”

“See what?” Cody pleaded, unable despite his best efforts to keep a touch of exasperation out of his voice.

Lindsay led Cody to the washroom, saying she needed to get something there. The science geek dutifully followed, more confused than ever but hopeful of finally getting to the bottom of the mystery.

Cody, as was his wont, chivalrously held the washroom door open for Lindsay. When he made no move to join her inside, Lindsay pretended to notice something strange in one of the toilet stalls and asked him to take a look. The science geek obliged and of course saw nothing unusual, but this diversion allowed Lindsay to untie her bathrobe belt unnoticed.

When Cody turned away from the stall, Lindsay said, “You wanted to know why D.J. wiped out? Because he saw this,” and opened her bathrobe to her teammate.

Cody was awestruck, mesmerized; for while everyone else had merely seen the bombshell topless (“merely”, she says) Cody was getting the full monty, and at much closer range into the bargain. Instinctively, for he was incapable of conscious thought, one of his forearms rose toward Lindsay’s monumental mammaries.

“Ah, ah, ah,” Lindsay chided gently as she casually stepped back out of easy groping range. “Look, don’t touch.” She let her teammate marvel a few moments more, then retied her bathrobe and left the washroom. Cody remained where he was as if paralyzed, his forearm still raised.

Before returning to her cabin to dress, the buxom bombshell detoured to the confessional. She described her thoughts on using her wiles to win the challenge, and on the private audience she had given Cody. Due to time constraints, and to the fact that most of what she said duplicated things which could just as easily be shown, only one sentence of her confessional spot appeared in the finished episode:

“Yep, he would have crashed.”

---

As the sun sank lower in the sky and afternoon yielded to evening, the girls were taking their ease in their cabin, enjoying the afterglow of that shower the likes of which they might never experience again. Although their conversation was mostly small talk, there was no shortage of it, even between Heather and her nemeses, Gwen and Leshawna, for Heather was in a good mood; and when the queen bee was in a good mood for reasons unrelated to gameplay, the other girls tended to be in good moods as well.

Courtney had gone to the washroom to answer nature’s call. When she returned, she asked her colleagues, “Does anyone know what’s up with Cody? He was in the washroom, and he looked like he got turned to stone. He was just standing there with one forearm up.”

Lindsay explained how Cody had come to see that which everyone else had seen during the challenge, but nothing would be gained by repeating it here. “I think it overloaded his brain or something,” she surmised.

“You flashed Cody?” Gwen asked in disbelief. “Seriously?”

“What are you complaining about, Jen?” Lindsay asked in turn. “You keep saying Cory won’t give you a minute’s peace. From the look on his face, it might be a while before he remembers how hot he is for you.”

Heather muttered to herself, “That would solve a lot of problems,” for collegial though her current mood was, her gamebot side was never far from the surface.

Courtney, not hearing Heather’s words or not caring to address them, said, “From the look on his face, it might be a while before he remembers his own name.”

Leshawna’s reply was lost as an ambulance siren sounded.

The camp had no vehicles equipped with sirens, which was a bit strange in light of Chris McLean’s fondness for vexing the campers with loud noises, so the “ambulance siren” was actually Beardo’s perfect imitation of same. Whatever the source, it shook Cody out of his stupor, and he emerged from the washroom to find the camp in an uproar. Campers and staff alike gravitated toward the infirmary, for a most disquieting rumor had spread. Beardo stood guard at the infirmary entrance, imploring all who approached to keep their distance so the medics could work unimpeded.

When Chris arrived, he ordered the interns to segregate from the campers so the camera crews could get a group shot of the latter; for although Chris knew no more about the situation than anyone else, he was first and foremost the show’s host, and the good of the show came before any other consideration. Any other consideration, no matter how vital. Before taking over as “palace guard” and dismissing Beardo to join the other interns, the self-absorbed host grumbled rhetorically, “Interrupting my manicure. This had better be important.”

Not long after, Chef Hatchet emerged from the infirmary tent and the disquieting rumor became terrible news.

.

Journey’s End

The Singer was dead.

Ella had not met with an accident, as interns too often did. She had been engaged in routine camp maintenance with Beardo and Chef Hatchet, looking “like a slim Grecian maiden between two Moorish giants”,^[23.04] as Courtney had put it, when she complained of feeling faint. Hatchet sent her to her bunk to lie down for a while, assigning Beardo to escort her, and gave the incident no further thought, for Ella was known to be somewhat delicate. When Beardo later went to check on her, however, he found her unresponsive. The alarmed sound effects master carried the Singer posthaste to the infirmary, summoning the medics in his own inimitable way, but all attempts to revive her failed. Nor could Hatchet determine a cause of death.^[23.05]

At dinner, Ella’s passing dominated conversation, despite the Muskies’ best efforts to focus on the important business of the next night’s elimination. Most of the campers ate little, partly because the alleged food was as unappetizing as usual, and partly because the Singer had been the best-loved intern in camp, taken from them without warning and for no apparent reason, so the teens were taking her death hard.

After dinner, Chef Hatchet came out of the kitchen and called the campers to him. This was not a common occurrence, so the teens were curious to hear what he had to say.

“Ella’s service is at sunup tomorrow,” Hatchet told them, “and the interns have asked that you attend. Chris usually doesn’t want you to pay much attention to them, as you know, but I convinced him to make an exception this time.”

“I, for one, would be happy to,” Courtney assured Hatchet. “Well, maybe ‘happy’ isn’t the right word. Is there a particular reason why they want us there?”

“You know how much Ella liked to sing,”^[23.06] Hatchet explained, “and of course the interns know about the wrinkle you lot added to the elimination ceremony. They want you to sing the ‘Pie Jesu’ for her.”

Ezekiel was the first to answer. “It would be an honor.” He and Hatchet looked to the other campers and saw no sign that any of them felt differently.

Hatchet said, “Breakfast is at 0500. In honor of our late songbird, the food will be decent.”

---

Ella’s funeral lasted until late morning, partly because many people had many things to say about her, and partly because the interns were keenly aware that no one else was encouraged to care about them, so their funerals had become as elaborate as the interns could make them. When the campers sang the Pie Jesu, Beardo accompanied them with an uncanny imitation of a pipe organ.

In the fullness of time, the service concluded and the attendees began to disperse. Katie approached Alejandro, for she had a question which had occurred to most of the campers.

“Al, where’s Dawn? She’s the last person I would have expected to miss Ella’s funeral.”

“I cannot say, senorita,” the big Latino admitted. “I also noticed that she was not here, and you’re right, it does seem strange. Then again, her ways are not like ours. I would not be at all surprised if she can still converse with our departed friend; and if that’s the case, she may not have felt the need to say goodbye if Ella is not truly lost to her.”

“Does she come to other funerals?”

Alejandro looked thoughtful for a moment. “Now that you mention it, Ella was the first intern to pass away since she and Dawn arrived; before the cooking challenge, if memory serves. I hope we haven’t lost whatever kindly influence they brought with them.”

“I hear that,” Katie seconded with feeling.

---

That evening, as dusk yielded to night, the Muskies gathered at the bonfire for a figurative funeral of their own. Chris stood before the five seated camper, holding his Tray of Life with four marshmallows on it.

“Tonight,” the host intoned solemnly, “is the last elimination of the team phase.” He paused briefly to let the cameras capture the Muskies’ reactions. Although the campers knew the teams would be merging soon, and two challenges had come and gone since Gwen received her two invincibility idols, Chris had never said anything more specific than “around the midpoint, or when one of the teams gets too small”, and even that much he had only said at the orientation when the twenty-two would-be celebrities first arrived on the island more than a month before.

Presently, the host resumed his spiel. “D.J., you cost your team the challenge when you wiped out in the tiebreaker round, but I don’t think there’s a dude on the island who wouldn’t have understood. I know I did. And that’s why you’re safe. Come get your marshmallow.”

As D.J. presented his toasting stick and Chris spitted the first marshmallow upon it, the host said, “Congratulations on reaching the merge.”

As the gentle giant took his customary place behind Chris but within the camera’s field of view, Chris pronounced, “Duncan, in yesterday’s challenge you did as well as anyone on your team, and that’s why you also had no votes against you. Congratulations on reaching the merge.”

With the brickhouse and the delinquent standing behind him, Chris intoned, “Three fish left, but only two marshmallows. Each of you had votes against you. Courtney, Tyler, you both dropped the ball in the challenge, which is part of the reason why your team is here tonight. Ezekiel, you did a little better, but you still have the same problem you’ve had for a while.

“The third marshmallow goes to …”

Chris let the Bottom Three sweat for a bit, until he suddenly picked up a marshmallow and casually flipped it to the last female Muskie. “Okay, I lied. Nobody voted against our CIT. Courtney, congratulations on reaching the merge.”

Courtney knew she had never been truly at risk, but she nevertheless gave Chris a brief glare before impaling her marshmallow on her stick and taking her place in the ranks of the blessed.

Chris gazed sternly at Tyler and Ezekiel. “You know the drill, but I’m going to tell you anyway because the viewing audience expects it. Whichever of you doesn’t get this last marshmallow must walk the Dock of Shame, board the Boat of Losers, and make the Voyage of the Damned to Loserville. And that pitiful loser is …”

Chris mugged the camera and milked the tension as per standard procedure, whilst the Bottom Two sweated bullets. Despite Tyler’s lackluster performance in the challenges, the jock of all trades rarely found himself at risk because people usually had bigger fish to fry when it came time to vote, but there were few “bigger fish” left. Had his luck run out? Ezekiel, on the other hand, almost always had votes against him for one reason or another, but familiarity with his current situation did not make it any less nerve-wracking.

Finally, the Arbiter of Fates handed down the verdict. “Tyler. Sorry dude, the clock has run out.^[23.07] Ezekiel, come get your marshmallow.”^[23.08]

When the farm boy did as he was bidden, Chris said, “Congratulations on reaching the merge. I’ll admit I never expected you to get this far, but you’ve found some interesting ways to defy expectations. I like that. You’ve been good for ratings.”

---

The Eagles were waiting at the dock, and reacted with elation when the Muskies brought the tidings that the merge was at hand. The revelation was no great surprise, with only four Muskies left and over half the contestant roster gone, but that did not make the news any less welcome.

The ten survivors were not overhasty in saying their goodbyes to Tyler, for he was well liked, as were most of the players still in the game. After the boat cast off and the survivors sang the Pie Jesu, the Eagles returned to their own affairs and the Muskies returned to the bonfire to toast their marshmallows and speculate on what lay ahead.

In the fullness of time, Courtney, Duncan and Ezekiel returned to their cabins, but D.J. remained at the fire pit. The gentle giant gazed into the waning flames, lost in thought. The merging of the teams could not come too soon for him.

D.J. had tried yet again to oust Ezekiel. He had persuaded Tyler to join his cause, but had apparently failed to persuade Duncan. D.J. had not bothered to approach Courtney, expecting her to turn on the farm boy of her own accord after having her eyes opened at the boot camp party, and the brickhouse wondered if that might have been his mistake; for Tyler’s elimination, and in retrospect Eva’s and Beth’s before him, made it clear to D.J. that Courtney, Ezekiel and Duncan were voting together. How formal that arrangement was and who the ringleader might be, D.J. could only guess; but in any case, he was apparently on the wrong side of a majority alliance. Indeed, he suspected that he would have been expelled instead of the largely ineffectual Tyler, but for the fact that there could plausibly have been one or two more team challenges. The alliance, if such it truly was, had no doubt voted accordingly.

“You seem troubled.”

The gentle giant turned from his reverie to see Dawn sitting beside him; but how long she might have been there, he could only guess.

“You could say that,” D.J. admitted. “It looks like I dodged a bullet at the elimination tonight. I’m not ready to go home. I have unfinished business.”

“Yes, I can see you’re holding some kind of grudge, but why? That’s not like you.”

“During the camping challenge,” D.J. explained, “I was foraging for food, because Chris didn’t give us any. I found the cutest bunny you ever saw. It wasn’t even afraid of me. In fact, it came right up to me.”

“If I were a wild bunny, I probably wouldn’t have been afraid of you, either,” Dawn admitted. “Anyway, go on.”

“He seemed to want to stay with me,” the softhearted brickhouse continued, “so I decided to keep him as a pet. But when I got back to my team’s campsite, Homeschool … he …”

“He didn’t understand, and thought your bunny was supposed to be food,” Dawn surmised sadly. “It must have been traumatic for you.”

“I know, right? Homeschool took Bunny right out of my hands before I could say a word, and wrung his neck right in front of me! And if that wasn’t bad enough, he ripped off poor Bunny’s hide and used it like an oven mitt!”

“And that’s why you’re the only boy in the game who doesn’t call him by his name?” Dawn asked rhetorically. With a shake of her head, the mystic added, “Believe me, I understand how you must have felt, but it sounds like an innocent misunderstanding. For your own good, you have to let this go.”

“I know,” D.J. admitted, “but I can’t help it. I’m a person who feels things deeply.”

“You’d have to have the perceptive abilities of a rock to not see that,” Dawn assured him, “but the point remains. Your teammates needed food and thought you were bringing them food. And before you ask … no, I don’t condemn people for eating meat.”

The mystic observed the brickhouse’s reaction and asked, “Does that surprise you?”

“It kind of does,” D.J. admitted. “I’ve heard you can talk to animals, so I guess I figured you wouldn’t be any more willing to eat a bunny than you would a human.”

“Bunnies are cute, and they’re pleasant to talk to,” Dawn agreed, “but imagine where we’d be if there was nothing to keep their numbers in check. True, I doubt I could eat an animal I knew, but predation is part of the natural order. It’s not a bad thing in and of itself. Look at you. You’re as attuned to nature as anyone I’ve met in a long time, including a lot of people who are more vocal about it, yet you eat meat.” The mystic smiled wryly. “And from what I’ve heard, you know any number of mouth-watering ways to prepare it.”

“Do you eat meat, then?” D.J. asked.

“I don’t seek it out, but I’ll eat it. I can even enjoy it if I’m in the right mood.” With a wolfish grin which seemed to D.J. out of place on such a delicate face, Dawn explained, “Especially if I’m pissed at someone. I just imagine I’m chowing down on the object of my irritation. For example, one night Chef gave the interns pork chops for dinner, but to me, they were Chris chops. They were delicious.”

“I hear that,” D.J. muttered under his breath. In a more conversational tone, he said, “I can see why you wouldn’t like Chris, since he seems to treat the interns like supplies instead of people. At least Ella didn’t meet with an accident, like so many of you have.” The gentle giant sighed. “But still, poor Ella. To just up and die like that for no reason. I guess it’s true what Noah quoted to us: ‘God grants his favorites early death.’”

“She appreciates the sentiment, but it’s misplaced. Do you mourn the caterpillar when it becomes a butterfly?” the mystic replied cryptically.

“I’m not very good at riddles,” D.J. prompted.

“Ella’s passing was neither tragic nor untimely. She was meant for something very different from the rest of us.”

“I still don’t think I’m following you.”

“There is a type of immortal forest spirit which takes physical form in its juvenile phase,” Dawn explained patiently. “Usually, they become a higher animal such as a hawk or a deer or even a sasquatch, but on rare occasions they will take human form. These human spirit-children are always female, exceptionally beautiful, and remarkably innocent by modern standards; and Ella’s hometown is in the middle of a forest. To make a long story short, Ella was never truly human.

“When she came to this island, she liked it well enough that she must have decided to settle down here.^[23.09] When she did, and that decision was probably more instinctive than conscious, she cast off her physical body, which ‘died’ as a result. That’s why Chef couldn’t resuscitate it. There was no spirit to restore to the body, because the spirit had gone its own way.”

“I’ve heard of things like that,” D.J. admitted. “Those aren’t just stories?” He quickly remembered who he was talking to, and hastily added, “No, of course they’re not. But when did you figure it out?”

“It wasn’t hard,” the mystic replied. “Even if it wasn’t all over her aura, the magical singing was a giveaway.”

“I’m glad to hear she’s all right,” D.J. said, “but I’m still going to miss her, even though I didn’t really know her personally. She was one of the nicest things about this camp.”

“I’ve been hearing that a lot,” Dawn affirmed. “I know I wouldn’t have enjoyed my experience here nearly as much without her.”

Camper and intern gazed into the fire for a few moments, until Dawn said, “Let me show you something.” The mystic took D.J.’s hand in hers, and suddenly the kindhearted brickhouse could see things he could not see before. He would later learn that Dawn had established a psychic link with him, like and yet unlike what she had done with Katie a week before.

With this sight beyond sight, D.J. saw the mystic bathed in more than firelight. She was also suffused with a pleasing glow which he could only assume was her aura. A dozen shades of green and gold it had; but there was something else, something darker. D.J. recalled Dawn’s confession regarding the mental trick she sometimes used to enable herself to enjoy eating meat, and he assumed he was seeing something related to that. This seemingly angelic girl, he surmised, was not as soft as she usually appeared.

The gentle giant looked at his hand in Dawn’s gentle grasp, and saw his own aura, dominated by soft pink and baby blue. He looked around the clearing and saw bits of color that he supposed might be the auras of various creatures of the night.

He saw something else, too, when Dawn directed his gaze to the near edge of the clearing. It was larger than a man, three or four meters in height, glowing softly in the color of new leaves and shimmering almost imperceptibly in the firelight. This apparition had a vaguely humanlike face, not quite recognizable, but overall resembled nothing so much as an animated tree.

Dawn smiled and said, “This is Ella’s mature form.”^[23.10]

As D.J. marveled, the mystic asked, “Would you like to talk to her? She can understand you.”

“I’d love to.”

“In time, she’ll lose interest in human affairs that don’t affect her forest; but for now, she still remembers her old life as she learns the ways of her new one. Don’t call her ‘Ella’, though. That’s just the name given her by her human ‘foster parents’, for lack of a better term. Her true name is Perola.”^[23.11]

The gentle brickhouse self-consciously cleared his throat. “Um, hi … Perola? I’m glad to see you’re still with us.”

“Hello, D.J.,” the tree-spirit replied in that honeyed voice the campers knew so well. Her voice now had an otherworldly quality to it, but it was unmistakable.

“What’s it like, being a … whatever you are now?”

“It’s strange, but wondrous. It’s hard to describe in human terms, and I don’t quite understand it myself yet. It’s a little like having a garden the size of the island, but nothing is a pest or a weed. Maybe Dawn can explain. She knows a lot about my kind. Perhaps more than I, for the time being.”

“I wouldn’t presume,” the mystic demurred. “I don’t want to diminish your joy of discovery.”

A warm smile spread across Perola’s inhuman face. “I might have known you’d say something like that. You’ve been a true friend from the day we met. I’ll be sad to see you go when the time comes.”

“It will pass. I exist for a season, figuratively; you, for an Age. Your place is here, and your forest will prosper. Mark my words. I intend to make the most of the time we still have together, but in the end, my place is with my own kind.”

“With one in particular, I think.”

D.J. did not know if spirits appreciate humor the way humans do, but he could have sworn that ethereal, otherworldly voice had a distinctly teasing tone.

“Perola!” Dawn protested in an odd tone which seemed at once exasperated and amused. The mystic was not facing him, so D.J. could not clearly see her silently mouth the words, He’s only sixteen!

“For now,” replied Perola in the same teasing, knowing tone.

D.J. noticed an aura change in his “guide”, but he had no idea what it meant. “I feel like I’m on the outside of an inside joke,” he ventured.

“I suppose you are, in a way,” Dawn admitted. “Suffice to say our new forest caretaker still has some very human sensibilities.”

D.J. shook his head. “Another riddle. I don’t mean to sound harsh, but can’t you give a guy a straight answer the first time?”

The answer came not from Dawn, but from Perola. “Of course not. Tradition has its demands.”

“Touché,” Dawn conceded, and her demeanor turned serious. “I’m sorry, D.J., I linked to you so you could talk to Perola, but I’m the one who’s been doing all the talking.”

“No worries. You know her a lot better than I ever did, and it’s not like I really knew what I wanted to say. Knowing she’s all right, I’d still call it a win.”

“No, Dawn’s right,” Perola said. “I can talk to her anytime, but I need her help to talk to you. You can’t even see me without her.”

“I guess that means I have to think of something to say,” D.J. mused. After a brief, awkward silence, he asked, “This is probably a stupid question, but … can you still sing?”

“That’s not stupid at all,” the forest spirit replied. “It’s actually a very good question. I haven’t tried.”

“No time like the present,” Dawn prompted.

With that, the former intern once known as the Singer began to sing. What issued from her intangible throat sounded nothing like human song, and untrained ears would have perceived naught but normal forest sounds; but Dawn and D.J. found Perola’s song of the night as entrancing as anything her human self had ever voiced.

As that song of another world faded, the ice was broken and D.J. no longer lacked for things to say or things to ask. He and Dawn retired to their bunks very late that night.

---

Brett said, “Everything you’ve said about Ella made it sound like you all thought she was something special, but I sure didn’t see that coming.”

“I know, right? None of us did,” his mother admitted. “It’s one thing to hear stories about immortals, but you never expect to meet one yourself. I don’t think D.J. was ever quite the same.”

“So he did hook up with that sorceress or fairy princess or whatever she was?”

“All in good time.”

Brett pondered for a moment. “What was it like to hear Ella sing?”

“Deceptively ordinary,” his mother explained. “It sounded like just another girl with a pretty singing voice. We could see … we could feel … that there was much more to it, but we could never quite pin it down, even after we’d learned to expect her singing to do … something. It was kind of like trying to think of a word and having it on the tip of your tongue, but without the frustration. Since the effects were beneficial or at least pleasant, it was a lot easier to just go with the flow.

“You can hear her sing, if you like. Maybe you already have. Recording equipment couldn’t capture the uncanny aspects, but before Ella … left the show, the producers brought her into the studio one day to record the show’s theme song. They used that version for the second half of the season, probably because the royalty for a cover performance was less than the fee for the original performance.” With a smirk and a snort of sudden whimsy, Brett’s mother added, “Or maybe they figured it couldn’t hurt to see if she could magically goose the show’s ratings, what with the theme song being about fame. Or both.”

The hour was not unduly late, so Brett’s mother paused a few moments to collect her thoughts, and then resumed her tale.

.

Episode #14: The Tale of Disordered Eating

Original title: Brunch of Disgustingness

The next morning, the ten remaining campers filed into the lodge for the ritual ordeal known as “breakfast”; but even by the standards of their hell on Earth, it was no common meal that awaited them.

Inside the lodge, Chris and Chef Hatchet stood beside the door, and the serving counter was shuttered. Neither was standard procedure, so Gwen asked, “Where’s breakfast?”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Chris assured her. “There will be plenty to eat later.” He and Chef sniggered.

“What are you two so giggly about?” Leshawna asked warily, for she surmised that the reason was not likely to bode well for her or her campmates. Her only answer was another snigger from the host and his aide.

When all the campers were seated, Chris took his customary announcement station. Quoth the host, “Campers, we have reached the midpoint of Total Drama Island. Just one more challenge before the teams merge and it’s every camper for themselves. Yes, D.J.?”

“You said last night’s elimination was the last one of the team phase.”

“So I did,” the host admitted, “and so it was.”

“So what’s with the ‘one more team challenge’?”

“I was getting to that, if you would have let me finish,” Chris chided. “As I was saying, we’re halfway through the game, and what’s a game without a halftime show? Our ‘halftime show’ is a special challenge with special teams, the best reward yet, no elimination and a conflict as old as civilization: a battle of the sexes!”

“But the girls outnumber us,” Cody protested.

“I thought you liked having more girls,” Lindsay replied uncertainly. “Don’t you like being with us?”

“I like being with you just fine,” the science geek assured her, “but if I have to be against you, I don’t want to be at a disadvantage.”

“Yeah, about that,” Chris broke in. “If you’ll all come with me to the dock, I have a little surprise for you. Well, actually, a big surprise. And when we come back here, you’ll … have a bite to eat.” Chris and Chef sniggered yet again.

The host led the campers to the dock, from which they could see the yacht approaching. The boat was still a way off, but a few of the campers could vaguely make out people standing at the prow.

Only arriving campers ever stood at the prow.

Chris said, “Since the guys are two players down, as Cody mentioned, they’re getting some reinforcements. The original plan was to bring back two losers before the first individual challenge, but because we need equal numbers to make our Battle of the Sexes a fair fight, we’re bringing them back an episode early. You know what they say, though: ‘Be careful what you wish for, because you may get it.’”

The campers intently scrutinized the approaching yacht, partly out of curiosity about their overlord’s cryptic admonition, and partly because the reality show mentality had become well ingrained in them. Any activity could be turned into an impromptu challenge, and every camper wanted to be the first to positively identify the returning players.

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

.

Twenty-fourth Night

The next 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, 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.

Presently, the campers could make out two people standing on the yacht’s prow, one dwarfing the other. Duncan was the first to name the larger of the two: a towheaded colossus clad in the colors of the Maple Leafs, he could only be Owen.^[24.01] As the yacht drew nearer, one camper began to silently curse the cruelty of Fate, although he said only, “Aw, man.”

Gwen’s heart soared even as Cody’s sank, for Trent was returning to the island.^[24.02]

Heather turned accusingly to Chris and demanded, “Is this why you were willing to pull strings to keep Gwen in the game?”

“Got it in one,” the Arbiter of Fates replied with that infuriating bland smile of his. “Nothing like a good old-fashioned love triangle to spice things up a bit.”^[24.03]

Heather sullenly conceded, “Well played.”

In the fullness of time, the prodigal sons disembarked and were greeted warmly for the most part, for both were well liked. Trent and Owen greeted their once and future campmates genially in return, although Trent did flash a quick “I’m watching you” sign to Cody.

When Trent came to Gwen, they embraced and kissed with enthusiasm, but not passionately enough to make a scene. When they separated, Gwen asked her beau, “So, how was life at the losers’ compound?”

“He can’t tell you,” Chris answered before Trent could. “Our ex-losers are under strict orders not to tell any of you anything you couldn’t learn from methods available here on the island. Any violation will mean immediate re-elimination, forfeiture of any prize money they may have won, and a lawsuit.” The host raised his voice enough for all the campers to hear him clearly as he added, “And it’s not just on them. We will take a very dim view of any attempts to trick or coerce them into revealing anything. Capisce?”

“You’re not usually this uptight about things,” D.J. observed. “What gives?”

“The losers in Loserville get to watch not only the finished episodes, but also unedited camera footage from the competition to help them with their votes come finale time. That includes your confessionals. So, yeah, we can’t have that getting out.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Heather conceded with feeling. As the genre-savvy strategist, she suspected she would lose more than she gained if the contents of everyone’s confessionals and secret meetings became public knowledge.

Trent said, partly to Gwen and partly to the campers as a whole, “There’s so much we want to tell you, but as Chris said, we can’t. The producers warned us about that before we got on the boat.”

Chris led the campers back to the lodge. When everyone was seated, Owen asked, “Has breakfast been served yet?”

“Not yet,” the host answered. “Because today’s challenge is … The Brunch of Disgustingness!”

The eating challenge, Heather thought with a shudder. We had to get one eventually.

“You’ll be getting a nine-course meal,” the host explained. “In each round, your team will score a point if each member of your team can finish the dish in a reasonable amount of time. Highest score wins. Each dish might be gross because of its taste, or its texture, or what it’s made from, or some other reason. We did not try to arrange them in any special order of grossness, because you probably won’t agree on what’s grossest or least gross anyway; so you will not know whether each dish is grosser than the last, not quite as gross, or just as gross. You’ll only know that it’s likely to be … gross.

“As I mentioned before our ex-losers joined us, there will be no elimination. It’s all for a reward, and it’s a good one. The winning team will spend two days at a local five-star resort where they’ll be waited on hand and foot, eat gourmet nosh, be given antibiotics against anything they may have caught while participating in today’s challenge, and generally live the life of Riley.

“The losing team will go hungry tonight, and will spend the next two days here, at Camp Wawanakwa … with Chef.”

Hatchet waved at the campers and flashed what he thought was an evil-looking grin. He actually looked more psychotic than evil, but that served his purpose—motivating the campers—just as well.

“You have five minutes to choose your team captains,” Chris continued, “and then, you’ll … have a bite to … eat.” He and his aide sniggered yet again.

“Stop doing that!” Heather demanded.

The teams huddled. Gwen asked, “Does anyone besides the usual suspects want to be captain?

No one did, so Heather, a.k.a. Usual Suspect Number One, offered, “How about we just vote on it?”

Courtney, a.k.a. Usual Suspect Number Two, countered, “We could do that, but it would probably be a deadlock. You won’t let Katie or Lindsay blow their noses without your say-so, Gwen and Leshawna probably wouldn’t vote for you on a dare, and we’re obviously going to vote for ourselves.”

“Then what do you suggest, Miss Know-it-all?” Heather shot back.

“Remember the phobia challenge, when Chris gave extra weight to how the captains did? He might do something like that here, and we both know my stomach is stronger than yours, so—”

A tremendous belch erupted from the boys’ table.

“Good one,” Cody said to Owen, who was apparently the culprit.

“That’s going to be tough to beat,” D.J. said. “Who’s up next?” All the boys seemed oblivious to the scandalized expressions of the girls.

“A belching contest?” Heather asked rhetorically. “No way!”^[24.04]

“That’s just like, totally gross,” Katie declared.

“I can’t even!” Lindsay added.

Leshawna shrugged. “Boys will be—”

Another horrendous belch sounded, this one was not quite as loud.

Gwen facepalmed. “Oh, Trent!” she murmured sadly, for it was he who had authored that massive blast.^[24.05]

Katie pulled Heather aside. “It’s not like I want to betray our alliance or anything, but if—”

A third thunderous belch erupted, even mightier than Owen’s. Heather could have sworn she heard the windowpanes rattle.

“—if Courtney’s stomach really is stronger than yours, then maybe she should be captain,” Katie finished.

“Fine,” Heather replied reluctantly, for she sensed this was a fight she was not going to win. “Courtney can be captain. Now, let’s get out of here until the boys finish.”

The girls fled the lodge as a fourth horrific belch sounded. Chris started to ask where they were going, but his question died aborning in the face of the girls’ glares. “Stay nearby,” he commanded. “I don’t want to have to come looking for you.”

In the fullness of time, Chris summoned the girls and informed them that the boys had christened Duncan as their captain. It had taken four one-on-one “burp-off” rounds for the delinquent to defeat the surprise runner-up, Ezekiel. Courtney stated in response that she would be the girls’ captain for reasons which were actually relevant to the challenge.

“You’re going down, Princess,” declared Duncan.

“Bring it, ogre,” Courtney shot back.

“For our starter,” Chris announced genially, “from the Whizzo Quality Assortment, produced by a British outfit called the Whizzo Chocolate Company, this is the cherry fondue.”

“Uh, Chris?”

“Yes, Cody?”

“Did you say, Whizzo Quality Assortment?” The science geek’s face bore a look of unexampled horror.

“Yes, I did. You’ve heard of it?”

“I’ve heard of it, but I thought it was just something out of a comedy skit.^[24.06] You mean it actually exists?”

“That’s right,” Chris replied with that ubiquitous bland smile of his.

Cody grimaced. “Gross.”

“Well, if it wasn’t gross, we couldn’t use it in this challenge, could we?”

Trent eyed his rival warily and asked, “Cody, do you have something to tell us?”

“Trust me,” the science geek replied, “At this point, the less you know about it, the better.”

“Fine. For now.” Trent conceded. Under his breath, the axboy muttered, “Trust you. Yeah, right.”

Two interns in objectifying costumes, one male and one female, emerged from the kitchen carrying covered serving platters. Scarlett, her hair of flame teased into a huge, wild mane, was dressed as a Playboy bunny. Her role in the challenge was to wait the boy’s table in keeping with the “battle of the sexes” theme. Alejandro, dressed as a Chippendales dancer, would wait on the girls.

As the interns began to hand out the chocolates, Ezekiel could barely keep his tongue in his mouth, and his eyes looked like they were about to pop out of their sockets. “Scarlett?” he stammered. “I thought you were pretty before, but this … Wow, just … wow.” The homeschooled farm boy seemed to want to say more, but could find no words.

Scarlett smiled sweetly in response, although her smile did not reach her eyes. “I ought to be annoyed at your focus on the superficial, but I know innocent admiration when I see it, even if it is straight out of a Tex Avery cartoon.^[24.07] Enjoy it while you can, because this isn’t my style.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” Duncan quipped, reaching across the table as if to cop a quick feel. Scarlett stopped him with a withering glare.

“Let me tell you what happened to the last man who touched me inappropriately,” she said in a seemingly conversational tone as she set out the boys’ chocolates. “His name was Topher, and he was a lot like our … esteemed host.” Scarlett shot a trenchant glance at the unsuspecting Chris, who would have perished on the spot if looks could kill. “To put it succinctly, a hack here, a falsified record there, and before that little snot knew it, the mob was mad at him for something he didn’t do. That was four years ago. He hasn’t been heard from since.”^[24.08]

Her task finished, the killer bunny^[24.09] withdrew. Duncan said to Ezekiel, “She’s all yours, dude.”

Oblivious to the exchange at the boys’ table, Chris said unto the campers, “You won’t get credit if you swallow these whole, for a couple of reasons. First, you could choke to death on them. Second, and more important, it would defeat the purpose of the challenge. There’s a time and a place for thinking outside the box, but this isn’t it.”

The campers braced themselves for a surprise and ate their innocuous-looking chocolates. Leshawna was the first to recover her voice. “That was straight-up nasty!”

Most of the other campers had similar reactions, but everyone managed to eat their candies, so the balance of power remained as it had been. Cody bore his revulsion silently, for he knew there was probably worse to come.

Chris announced, “Now that you’ve all survived the warm-up round, it’s time for the first course that actually counts.”

“Seriously?” Courtney challenged. “You made us eat that misbegotten candy impostor for nothing?”

“Not for nothing,” the host protested. “It was a warm-up, like I said, to give you some idea of what you’re in for. Those cherry fondues weren’t quite disgusting enough to make the cut, but we didn’t want them to go to waste. ‘Waste not, want not’, as they say.”

“We didn’t need a warm-up,” the lawyer-to-be insisted. “You know what kind of slop Chef usually feeds us. We’ve basically been training for this challenge all summer.”

“She’s got you there,” Chef admitted.

“Fine,” Chris huffed. “The chocolates count. The score is 1-1. Chef, scratch the fried chicken.”

Owen looked aghast. “Y-you were going to defile fried chicken?! The food of the gods? Great horny Catherine, you are evil!”^[24.10]

“Whatever,” Chris replied with a dismissive gesture.

The eye candy interns emerged from the kitchen with the second course. Upon reaching their assigned tables, they uncovered their serving platters to reveal …

“Meatballs?” Owen asked rhetorically. “Bring it on!”

“Well, technically, yes, Owen,” Chris explained, “but these are kind of special.”

“Beef testicles Bourguignon,” Chef announced.

“Nuts,” Owen lamented, his enthusiasm gone.

“Yes, they are,” Chris replied.^[24.11]

D.J. gazed sadly at his plate. “I don’t know if I can do this to my bovine brother.”^[24.12]

“It’s the hardest thing a man can do,” Chris observed.

“Yeah, right,” Heather later said in the confessional. “Sure, it sounds harsh, but it’s nothing compared to what people do to cattle to get steaks. Of course, I wasn’t about to tell the boys that. Judging by how they were reacting to the, uh … dish, I knew we could win the round. But then Homeschool had to go and ruin it.”

In the lodge, Heather whispered to her henchchicks, “Time for some mind games.” She impaled one of her “meatballs” on her fork and bit into it, slowly and deliberately with a wicked grin, the better for the boys to see her flawless white teeth slicing into the tender testicle. Katie and Lindsay followed suit, doing their best to channel their liege’s “man eater” attitude. The other girls quickly divined Heather’s plan, and likewise followed her example.

Courtney asked, “Chef, aren’t these usually served … mashed flat?” Most of the boys cringed.

“Sometimes,” Hatchet answered.

Most of the boys cringed again. They did not relish the thought of eating testicles under the best of conditions, and watching the girls made it all too easy to imagine a similar fate for their own family jewels. That, of course, was precisely Heather’s intent.

“Come on, guys,” Ezekiel implored. “Haven’t you ever had prairie oysters? These are basically the same thing, just prepared differently.”

Owen looked hopeful, but still wary. “I love prairie oysters! But Chris wouldn’t give us something that tasty without tricks, would he?”

Ezekiel sampled his “meatballs” and said, “Tastes fine to me, and the girls don’t seem to be having any trouble with it. I’d guess the ‘trick’ was just telling us what it’s actually made from, eh? Trust me, it’s a sight better than what we usually get from Chef.”

The prairie boy’s simple eloquence emboldened Owen and D.J. to sample their “oysters”, but the other boys remained unconvinced. “Come on guys, try it,” Ezekiel implored again. “It’ll put hair on your chest.”

“Now that’s something I’d like to see,” Duncan quipped with a significant glance at the girls, who scowled back at him. Persuaded at last, the scorner of laws took an experimental bite. His eyes lit up, and he quickly finished his portion.

D.J. finished and said, “These are actually pretty good, but I can’t help thinking they would go better with a demi-glace instead of a bourguignon.”^[24.13]

Owen, Ezekiel and Duncan had finished by this time, so Trent and Cody gave in to the unspoken peer pressure and ate their portions. Trent said, “These aren’t half bad. A little strong, though.”

“Some people do think that, eh?” Ezekiel admitted.

Chef Hatchet turned to Chris and held out his hand. “Told you it wouldn’t faze Farm Boy.”

“So you did,” the host grumbled in irritation as fake as everything else about him. He reached into his pocket and withdrew his wallet. He extracted a ten-dollar bill and slapped it into Chef’s upturned palm. “Someday, I’ll learn.”

The sexy wait staff distributed another round of chocolate candies as Chris announced, “We’re still tied up! The score is now 2-2.

“The third round also comes from the Whizzo Quality Assortment. And yes, I know it’s repetitive on the heels of that nasty cherry fondue. You can blame Courtney for that.”

Reading from a box top guide, the host relayed, “This is Number Four: Crunchy Frog.”

D.J. picked up his chocolate and inspected it warily. “Am I right in thinking there’s a real frog in here?”^[24.14]

“Yes, a little one,” Chris affirmed.

“Well, yeah, it would have to be little,” Courtney observed. “Is it cooked?”

“No.”

“What, a raw frog?” the appalled Heather demanded.

Reading from a box insert, Chris explained, “Only the finest baby frogs, dew picked and flown from Iraq. Cleansed in the finest spring water, lightly killed, whipped into a quintuple-smooth fondue and lovingly frosted with glucose.”

“Yeah, but it’s still a frog,” Trent observed.

“What else would it be?” Chris challenged.

“Don’t they even take the bones out?” Katie asked.

“If they took the bones out, it wouldn’t be crunchy, would it?” Chris answered with his best condescending tone.

Lindsay smirked and said, “Cliff is just trying to psych us out. It has to be some kind of mock frog.”

“Mock frog?” Chris repeated with mock incredulity. “The insert clearly states, and very emphatically, I might add, “We use no artificial flavorings or preservatives of any kind.”

Undeterred, Lindsay popped her chocolate into her mouth and chewed blithely, with an audible crunching. She swallowed and said, “I think it’s an almond whorl.”

“No, it is a frog!” Chris insisted. “A crunchy … raw … unboned … real … dead … frog!”

Lindsay giggled. “You’re silly. People don’t put frogs in candies.”

Chris turned helplessly to Chef, who just shrugged his shoulders and said, “Ignorance is truly bliss.”

“Yeah,” Chris admitted. “I should have gone with the Ram’s Bladder Cup instead.”

Most of the campers overheard, for the host and his aide had made no effort to prevent it, and Gwen elected to tempt the gods. “I admit I may not want to know the full answer, but how would that be worse than a frog?”

“Mainly because it’s garnished with lark’s vomit,” Chris explained.

“Lark’s vomit?” repeated the appalled Leshawna. “You’re frontin’ me!”

“Would I lie to you?” Chris asked. Before anyone could respond, he hastily added, “Don’t answer that. Seriously, though, that’s not something I could make up. It says ‘lark’s vomit’ right here in the ingredients list, after ‘monosodium glutamate’.”

“Eat lark’s vomit?” Courtney scoffed. “Not in this reality.”^[24.15]

“Whatever,” Chris said. “We’re on a schedule, so eat your Crunchy Frogs … if you can.”

Lindsay’s success emboldened the other campers to follow suit. Several softly chanted “Almond whorl … almond whorl” or “mock frog … mock frog” to themselves before ingesting their candies, and most consumed them without incident. Curiosity got the better of Heather, though, and she made the mistake of biting her chocolate in half and inspecting the interior. When she did, she instinctively spat out the part in her mouth. “Holy crap, it is a frog!”

“Told you,” Chris admonished. “The boys have all finished their candies; and right now, you’re the only one holding the girls back.”

Heather sighed. “Um, can I get another one?”

“Sorry, but we only have the ten boxes. You have to eat the one you were given,” Chris replied. “All of it.”

The queen bee reluctantly scanned the dirty floor for the part she had spat out. She spotted it just in time to see an opportunistic rat dart out from its hiding place, grab the morsel, and scurry off.

“Oh, come on!” Heather cried in frustration.

Chris announced, “We don’t have time for a rat hunt, so Round Three goes to … the guys!”

“No way!” Heather protested. “Can’t I at least try that Lark’s Vomit Cup or whatever instead?”

Chris shook his head. “Sorry, no substitutions. The guys lead, 3-2.”

.

Scarred for Life

As Heather stewed, the host announced, “The next dish comes from Café Santropol, a little restaurant in Montreal that’s known for strange sandwich combinations.”

Leshawna brightened. “Oh, I know that place,” said the Montreal-born homegirl. “Some of their sandwiches are straight-up weird, but it’s mostly pretty good stuff. Just don’t get … the …”

Leshawna looked at Chris, her eyes wide with horror. “You wouldn’t,” she insisted, her normally booming voice barely above a whisper.

Scarlett and Alejandro brought out plates of sandwiches, sliced diagonally, and set one sandwich half before each camper. “Fromage Hongrois,” Chef Hatchet announced.

“Non,” Leshawna whimpered.^[24.16]

“What’s that in English?” Ezekiel asked.

“Hungarian cheese,” Hatchet informed him.

“Cheese!” Owen shouted. “I love cheese! All cheese!” The man-mountain grabbed his sandwich and assaulted it with gusto, taking nearly half of his section with a single bite. He chewed briefly, swallowed, and set his sandwich down.

“I didn’t think there was a cheese in the world I didn’t like,” Owen said calmly. “I’ve just found one. This is revolting.” He appeared to have no intention of finishing his sandwich.

Duncan picked up his sandwich. “I may regret this, but I have to find out what kind of real food Owen can’t stomach.” He took a bite and set his sandwich down. After swallowing, he remained still, staring into space.

“How is it, dude?” D.J. asked.

Still staring into space, the delinquent replied thickly, “I think my life is flashing before my eyes.”

“Oh, please,” Courtney scoffed. “It’s just cheese. How bad can it be?” She took a bite of her sandwich, then set it down. “Ask a silly question … Chef, what’s the actual name of this cheese?”

“The restaurant menu just says, ‘Hungarian Cheese’,” Chris answered unhelpfully.

“Hmph. ‘Hungarian’ must be French for ‘revolting’,” Courtney mused.^[24.17]

“Wimps,” Heather sneered. “It can’t be that bad.” She took a bite, grimaced, and set her sandwich down. “It’s that bad,” she pronounced.

Curiosity kills campers as well as cats. Except for Leshawna, who was already all too familiar with the fell fromage, every remaining camper succumbed to the urge to find out firsthand what was so horrible about this unearthly cheese spread. None could finish their portions, though.

Ezekiel took a bite, resisted the urge to spit it out, and swallowed. He set his sandwich down, crossed himself and muttered a brief prayer, seeking mercy for his soul.

It is a war movie cliché to have mortally wounded soldiers call for their mothers. Trent’s reaction was similar. He would later claim in a confessional spot that he had been exaggerating for the camera, but a poll conducted on the show’s website indicated that most of the viewing audience did not believe him. Vomiting at the memory during his confessional had not helped his credibility.^[24.18]

“Okay, gross me right out the door,” Lindsay cried with a shudder. “I’ll never be able to eat cheese again!”

“And I’ll never get to see you again, Gwen,” Cody said softly, ineffable sadness in his face.

Gwen rolled her eyes. “Isn’t that overdoing it a little? It’s not like you’re going to die.”

“It’s not that,” Cody explained. “I think I’m going blind.”

“How can people eat this crap?” Katie asked, looking like she was in the grip of a hot flash.

By this time, Gwen had sampled her own sandwich, and looked even paler than usual. “Maybe … it’s an acquired taste?” she suggested limply.

D.J., who knew his way around a kitchen as has been told of before, took more intellectual than visceral offense. “Don’t these people know you’re supposed to flavor cheese with paprika, not flavor paprika with cheese?” he demanded to no one in particular. “This cheese spread is blood red! Wasn’t that a clue?”^[24.19]

“Rule change,” Chris announced, making no effort to hide his disappointment. “Everyone on a team was supposed to finish the dish to score the point, but nobody did, so … time for Plan B.

“Since everyone except Leshawna at least tried their sandwiches, I’m going to give the point to the boys unless she at least takes a bite. If she can finish it, the girls will get the point.”

The homegirl turned toward her teammates, horror writ large on her face. “Please don’t make me do this,” she begged.

“The rest of us did it,” Heather replied coldly. “It’s only fair that you should.”

Duncan rose, with ulterior motives, to Leshawna’s defense. “Give her a break,” he demanded. “Isn’t once in a lifetime enough for this crap?” By taking the homegirl’s side, of course, the delinquent was really just hoping the girls could be persuaded to forfeit the point.

Courtney laid a hand on Leshawna’s trembling shoulder. “Believe me,” she cooed, “I know what we’re asking of you, but it’s for the good of the team. Sometimes, you just have to take one for the team.”

“No, you don’t know what you’re asking, but … I’ll try,” Leshawna replied. Tears began to trickle down her face as she braced herself for the ordeal.

The trickle became a stream as Leshawna took a bite and swallowed, with as little chewing as she thought would suffice to get it down. The terrible deed done, she lost all semblance of control, putting her face in her hands as sobs wracked her body.

Many of the other campers were getting a little choked up, too, for it was truly heart-rending to see the normally boisterous and cocksure homegirl so utterly broken. Even Heather, Leshawna’s mortal enemy, had to force down a lump in her throat. Even Chris looked like he might be asking himself what he had done, but that soul-searching moment passed when he thought about what this emotional scene would do for the show’s ratings.

For long moments, the only sound was Leshawna’s sobbing. Finally, Heather spoke.

“This isn’t over yet,” she observed. “Chris said that we’ll get the point if Leshawna can finish her sandwich.”

“No,” Courtney countered. “Leshawna kept us from losing the point. That’s enough.”

Heather’s moment of pity for her enemy was past and all but forgotten, so she pressed her case. “But Chris said Leshawna’s the only one who has to finish. We might not get another chance like that.”

“Do you even know how to care about anyone but yourself?” Gwen asked, glaring at her former nemesis. “Look at her!”

“Gwen’s right,” Courtney added. “Leshawna has done enough.”

“Do you want to win this challenge or don’t you?” Heather shot back.

“We agreed beforehand that I would be the team captain for this challenge,” Courtney reminded the dragon girl, “and I’m making a command decision.” Looking Heather in the eye, Courtney repeated, “Leshawna has done enough.”

The challenge could not continue until Leshawna composed herself, so Hatchet retired to the kitchen to make what preparations he could whilst the homegirl cried herself out, and Chris sat down by the fireplace to watch the drama unfold.

When Leshawna was finally herself again, Gwen asked, “Shawnee, if it’s not too personal … I know those sandwiches were awful, but why did you lose it like that? It couldn’t have just been the taste.”

“I’d … I’d rather not talk about it,” Leshawna demurred hesitantly, unable to meet her friend’s gaze.

Heather observed archly, “Well, if they air this without an explanation, you’re going to look like a total basket case.” The dragon girl was also curious, but felt she had already shown her enemy too much sympathy.

“I’m afraid she’s right,” Courtney added. “If you have a defense, now’s the time.”

“Tell us, Shawnee,” Gwen urged. “We’re here for you. Well, most of us, anyway,” she added with a quick glare at Heather.

The homegirl considered her options, and decided that revealing her secret was the lesser evil.

“When I was eight years old, my family went to that restaurant for lunch. It wasn’t the first time we’d been there, so I knew they had some good stuff. I made the mistake of ordering … that sandwich. I took one bite and decided I’d rather go hungry than eat any more. My parents … they …”

“They what?” Gwen asked softly.

It was as if Leshawna was fighting to get the words out. “They … they made me finish it. They told me I wasn’t getting anything else until I did, even if it took me a week.

“No matter how hungry I got, I couldn’t handle more than one bite at a time. That nasty sandwich was all I had to eat for four days.”^[24.20]

Gwen whistled in disbelief. “Wow,” was all she could say.

“That’s just … just … I can’t even,” Lindsay admitted.

Katie was no less shocked. “I can’t believe anyone would do that to their own flesh and blood.”

“Believe me,” Heather said, “People do worse things than that to their own flesh and blood.” None of the other girls responded, sensing more in Heather’s words than simple argument. Indeed, Heather herself did not fully appreciate how truly she had spoken, but that is another story for another time.

“You have to understand,” Leshawna explained, “My dad’s one tight brother with a dollar, because for a long time he didn’t have very many. Unless food had actually spoiled, he would not let it go to waste. He also said we should deal with the fallout ourselves if we made a mistake. I ordered that sandwich, so I was the one who had to eat it.”

“Those are good attitudes to have,” Courtney conceded diplomatically, “but I can’t say I agree with his methods.”

Chris called for attention, satisfied that the sandwich course had provided all the drama it was going to. “Okay, dudes and dudettes, now that Leshawna has composed herself, it’s time for the next course.

“The fifth course is so disgusting that its sheer disgustingness has become legendary. If there was a Disgusting Foods Hall of Fame, this disgusting dish would be a disgusting—”

“We get it, we get it, it’s disgusting,” interjected a certain irritated Goth. “Do we really have to listen to you work in the word ‘disgusting’ 23 more times? Can’t we just get on with it?”

“Fine,” Chris huffed. “But remember, you asked for it. Chef?”

As the campers waited for the hulking kitchen master and his sexy staff to emerge with the fifth course, Cody observed, “So far, the pattern has been to alternate sweet dishes with savory dishes, so this one will probably be sweet.”

Trent saw, or thought he saw, where Cody was going. His eyes widening in horror, the axboy surmised, “If it’s sweet, disgusting and ‘legendary’, that would mean—”

“Don’t say it,” Ezekiel implored. “For the love of God, please don’t say it!”

“It can’t be,” Courtney insisted. “We’re all minors! That would be child abuse!”

“As if that’s ever stopped Chris before,” Gwen retorted bitterly.

Katie’s brow furrowed as she struggled with a horrible concept her innocent mind was not meant to understand. “Black licorice?” she asked uncertainly. “But isn’t that just one of those stories parents make up to scare their kids into behaving?”

Trent sadly shook his head. “If I’m right, we’ll wish we’d been given black licorice. There’s one sweet food that’s even worse.”

“Not that!” Heather whispered as she buried her face in her hands. “Anything but that!”

Scarlett and Alejandro brought the customary covered dishes to the campers’ tables, lifted the covers with a flourish, and the campers’ worst fears were confirmed. Hatchet announced, “Holiday fruitcake!”^[24.21]

Duncan shook his head. “That’s cold, man.”

D.J. said nothing, but shed a single tear as he thought, So this is how it ends. Forgive me, Bunny, I’ve failed you.

The cake, which like any proper fruitcake was slightly less dense than a brick, had been pre-sectioned. When Katie received her piece, she groaned and lamented, “I can’t face this alone. Oh, Sadie, why did you have to go?”

“You’re not alone,” Lindsay assured her despairing buddy. “I’m here. I know it’s not the same without Sadie, but we’re still BFFs, right? We’re still in this together.”

Lindsay’s solicitous attitude could have been seen as two-faced, given that she had helped vote Sadie off in the first place, but perhaps she wanted to make amends for that. Or perhaps she had truly forgotten the circumstances of Sadie’s ouster, for Lindsay’s cloudlike mind was where complex thoughts went to die. Indeed, that special form of plausible deniability was a major reason why Heather found the uberbimbo such a valuable co-conspirator, however exasperating.

Owen shrugged and began to eat. Even he could not eat it quickly, though, for it was hard and dense enough to test even his all-devouring jaws. Nevertheless, it surprised no one when he was the first to finish.

When Courtney became the first girl to finish, Duncan suggested that she was able to do so because all the time she spent complaining and arguing and bossing people around had strengthened her jaws to the point where she could handle even a nigh-indestructible fruitcake.

“You are old,” said the youth, “and your jaws are too weak^[24.22]
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak—
Pray, how did you manage to do it?”

“In my youth,” said his father, “I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw
Has lasted the rest of my life.”

Heather and Leshawana eventually ate their fruitcake; but Gwen, Katie and Lindsay could not, despite their best efforts. For the boys, Ezekiel and Duncan eventually succeeded; but D.J., Cody and Trent failed.

Chris McLean, founder of this corrupted feast, called time for the round. He declaimed, “The score remains 3-2 in favor of the dudes. Seriously campers, where did your intestinal fortitude go? You won’t get very far in life if you can’t eat anything but candy and nuts,[24.23] and it won’t do our ratings any favors, either. You need to suck it up. So to speak.

“Round Six is the main course. Norwegian Blue parrot and moldy, diseased veggies, smothered in fish guts that have been out in the sun for a long time.”

Scarlett and Alejandro set before each camper a small bird that looked like a Rock Cornish game hen with a fake parrot head sewn onto the neck, with a crabapple in the open beak. The bird was smothered in a clear, oily sauce with black chunks that could have been mistaken for mushrooms if the beholder’s imagination was active enough.

The Lord of the Feast added, “Oh, and if you’re wondering about the crabapple, which is rotten, as you’ve probably guessed, it’s there so your parrot doesn’t bite you. They can get grumpy when they’re pining for the fjords.”^[24.24]

“Yeah, right,” several campers muttered.

Cody thought, Gee, I wonder where his scriptwriter got that line.

Carmina Burana Swan Song

The bird was smothered in a clear, oily sauce

Once I had lakes to live upon^[24.25]
In glory I would swim along—
Once, when I was still a swan.

Poor thing, poor thing—
Not a raw thing
But done like anything!

Once, I was whiter than the snow,
Finer than any bird I know:
Now see me—blacker than a crow!

Poor thing, poor thing—
Not a raw thing
But done like anything!

Cook on the spit is curving me,
Flames sear through every nerve in me—
Now here’s a waiter serving me

Poor thing, poor thing—
Not a raw thing
But done like anything!

I’d rather be in the fresh air
Out on a lake—or anywhere
But peppered up as gourmet’s fare.

Poor thing, poor thing—
Not a raw thing
But done like anything!

Here in this serving dish I lie
Where I have no strength to fly
As grinding molars greet the eye …

Poor thing, poor thing—
Not a raw thing
But done like anything!

With varying degrees of foreboding, the campers began to eat. The meat was severely overcooked—not burnt, but very dry, presumably to encourage them to eat more of the weird sauce. The vegetables, if such they truly were, were likewise notably dry and tough, whether by nature or from overcooking. The sauce was salty, with little aroma and not much fish flavor. The crabapples may indeed have been rotten, or may have merely been softened from cooking; but in either case, they were not a serious obstacle because they were small enough and soft enough to swallow whole.

“Garum,” D.J. said. “Yo, Chef, is this sauce garum?”^[24.26]

“Got it in one,” Hatchet replied.

“You’ve had it before?” Chris asked.

“No, but I’ve heard of it,” D.J. explained. “I’ve heard some things about how it’s made, although I’ve never seen a recipe. I’m guessing the “moldy, diseased veggies” are also something that some people, somewhere in the world, actually eat and maybe even like?”

“I was kind of hoping nobody would figure that out,” the host admitted, “but you’re right. Of course, that doesn’t mean Canadians can stomach it.”

“I hear that,” Leshawna admitted with feeling. “This is all kinds of sick and wrong.”

“Oh, and I was kidding before about the winners getting antibiotics,” Chris admitted with uncharacteristic candor. “I argued and reasoned and begged, but Legal insisted that we couldn’t serve you anything genuinely dangerous. So no matter how vile and disgusting these dishes get, everything is safe to eat.”

The Lord of the Feast observed the campers’ relieved reactions. Then, with his actor’s sense of timing, he dropped the other shoe.

“Unless we need the tiebreaker.”

The campers resumed eating. The “moldy, diseased-ridden veggie” was actually corn smut, which when properly harvested and prepared is a mushroomesque delicacy in places such as Mexico, where it costs more than uninfected corn. Although the garum was foreign to the campers’ palates, some, most notably D.J. and Owen, liked it on its merits or thought they could get used to it. Most disliked it, but admitted they had had worse from Chef.

As the campers began to finish, with reactions less dramatic and amusing than Chris had hoped for, some of the girls noticed that Lindsay was not eating. She had managed to finish her smut, but had not touched her “parrot”, nor its crabapple.

“What’s wrong, Linds?” Katie asked. “Everyone else is finishing up.”

“She’s right, girl,” Leshawna added. “We’ll lose the point if you don’t eat, and it’s not the worst thing we’ve had today.”

“Critter said it might bite me,” Lindsay explained innocently. “I don’t want to provoke it.”

This got the attention of the other campers, as well as Chris, who was struggling mightily to not burst out laughing. In a confessional spot, he managed to gasp out amid his laughter, “I just suggested the ‘parrots’ were still alive for the sake of atmosphere. I didn’t expect anyone to actually fall for it! Good old Lindsay, she’s ratings gold!”

In the lodge, Lindsay’s teammates clustered around her. “You do realize it’s dead, right?” Gwen asked.

“Kryten^[24.27] said it was just pining for the fjords.”

Heather could take no more, and got in her vassal’s face. “Seriously, Lindsiot? That’s stupid, even for you. It is not pining, it’s passed on. It’s expired and gone to meet its maker. The only reason you can even tell it’s supposed to be a parrot is because somebody sewed on a head.”

“You’re that sure it’s dead?” Lindsay asked uncertainly.

Heather exploded. “It’s a stiff! It’s deceased! This parrot is no more! It has ceased to be! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! It’s rung down the curtain, shuffled off the mortal coil, and joined the choir invisible!” Heather grabbed Lindsay’s knife and ran the carcass through. “This … is an ex- … parrot!”^[24.28]

“Well, yeah, I guess it is now,” Lindsay said, her eyes wide. Heather barely managed to suppress her urge to scream.

“So … it’s okay to eat?” the microcephalic bombshell asked warily.

“I’m not sure I’d go that far,” Courtney replied, “but you do need to eat it or we’ll lose the point, and you probably need to be quick about it. There are only three courses left after this, so we can’t afford to fall two points down.”

“Here, I’ll help you,” Katie offered. She took her fork and pulled Lindsay’s knife from the carcass. Then, with a practiced and nimble hand, she sliced the breast meat from the bone and cut it up into bite-sized pieces, in scarcely more time than it takes to describe.

“You go, girl,” Leshawna said admiringly. That’s what I call teamwork.”

At the boys’ table, the onlooking Duncan was equally impressed. Imagine what that chick could do with a switchblade, he thought.

Cody and Duncan were nearly done, and the other boys had already finished, so Lindsay understood the need for haste. As her teammates cheered her on before returning to their own plates, she ate her meat as quickly as she might. In the end, the boys finished first, but the girls finished soon enough after that The Lord of the Feast awarded both teams a point. The girls still trailed, 4-3, but they had stayed within striking distance.

Chris said, “I’m sure you’re wanting something to wash that down with, which brings us to the seventh course.”

Scarlett and Alejandro set out for each camper a large glass filled with a pale yellow liquid. The campers, one and all, naturally feared the worst.

Trent warily sniffed his beverage. “Lemonade?” he asked, foolishly daring to hope. “What did you do to it?”

“Nothing,” the Lord of the Feast assured him. “Nothing at all. So enjoy your nice, tall glass of fresh-squeezed, unsweetened lemon juice.”

The campers steeled themselves for the ordeal, for although unsweetened lemon juice is not “gross” by any reasonable definition of the term, consuming the amount set before them would nevertheless be a stern test of their physical endurance.

When Courtney finished her glass, she tried to say something, but her mouth was so badly puckered that she could not make herself understood. Heather fared no better when she tried to speak.

In the finished episode, a confessional spot featuring Duncan appeared next. Unable to speak intelligibly and with his mouth visibly distorted, he held up a cardboard sign on which he had scrawled, “Heather and Courtney can’t talk. I think this is my favorite challenge.”

All the girls eventually finished their portions, although Katie and Lindsay had some difficult moments. The boys were not so lucky, and were stymied when Cody’s throat seized up, leaving him barely able to breathe, much less drink. D.J. suggested using a funnel, if they could make one long enough to bypass the science geek’s outraged throat muscles; but Chris vetoed the scheme, saying Cody had to finish under his own power and had failed to do so. The girls had pulled even at last.

“It looks like the campers are going to need time to recover,” the Lord of the Feast surmised, “if they’re going to fully appreciate just how gross the last two dishes are; so everyone else, take thirty.” It was during this interval that Duncan asked by signs and was granted permission to record his confessional spot, but nothing would be gained by repeating it here.

Thirty minutes later, the staff and camera crew reassembled, and Chris announced, “The eighth course comes from the States, where sadistic prison wardens feed it to misbehaving inmates. It’s called ‘Blendo’.”

None of the campers had ever heard of “Blendo”, so the host of this hellish dinner party gleefully explained. “Most developed countries have laws that prisoners have to be fed decently, and the U.S. is no exception. The law doesn’t say it has to be appetizing, though, so if you get on the wrong side of the wrong warden, you might have to eat Blendo if you want to eat at all. Duncan, this could be a preview for when you ‘graduate’ from Juvie to a real slammer.”

Projecting a confidence he did not feel, the Juvenile Hall alumnus challenged, “Bring it.”

Whilst Scarlett and Alejandro gave everyone large glasses filled with a thick, unidentifiable liquid, the Lord of the Feast explained, “Blendo wardens take all the food behaving inmates would be given over the course of a day and mix it up in a blender, hence the name. It’s so disgusting that some civil liberties lawyers tried to get it declared unconstitutional.^[24.29]

“Of course, just because it’s cruel and unusual punishment doesn’t mean it’s gross enough for the Brunch of Disgustingness, so what you’ll be drinking—if you can—isn’t a blend of everything a prisoner would get, it’s a blend of everything you would normally get from Chef. So, bottoms up!”

Not surprisingly, Owen was the first to try the horrid concoction. “Ugh, it’s bitter!” he declared.

Gwen sighed in resigned despair. “That would probably be the grapefruit juice.”

“Are the meats and eggs and suchlike cooked?” Courtney asked, dreading the answer but feeling she had to know.

“That depends on which way we thought would be grossest,” Chris explained. “Ingredients which are supposed to be cooked might be raw, or they might be burned to a crisp—”

“Yeah, I think I can taste the carbon,” said Cody.

“—and things like the “zombie sausage”, as you kids like to call it, might be cooked normally for maximum disgustingness,” the host continued.

Owen, perhaps inevitably, was the first to finish. “It has its charms,” he offered diplomatically.

More surprisingly, Cody was the second to finish. Ashamed at his involuntary failure with the lemon juice, he was determined not to let his team down again so close to the end. He looked for a time like he might lose his brunch, but in the end he kept it down. Moreover, his success emboldened the remaining boys to redouble their efforts.

Courtney finished first for the girls, for she did indeed have their strongest stomach, although Leshawna and Katie were close behind. Yet their willpower did not avail them, for Lindsay could not finish and Heather vomited almost immediately after finishing, which disqualified her. Trent was the last boy to finish; and when he did, the Lord of the Feast awarded the point to Team Dude.

Chris announced, “With one course left, the boys lead 5-4. If they can eat this last gross dish, or if the girls can’t, the boys win and all Courtney’s hard work in reeducating Ezekiel goes down the tubes; but if the girls can stomach it and the boys can’t, we go to the tiebreaker. And so, the Brunch of Disgustingness comes down to … donuts. Of course, these donuts are a little different. You’ve heard of ‘double chocolate’ donuts, which are chocolate with chocolate icing? Well, these are double black licorice.”^[24.30]

Cody declared, “That’s so gross, I don’t even know the word for it!”

“Speak for yourself,” Gwen retorted. “I love black licorice!” She confidently picked up her black-on-black donut, but stopped suddenly. “But Chris did seem to imply there’s some kind of trick.” The Goth warily took a small bite, and grimaced. “What did Chef fry these in, motor oil?” she asked.

“Cod liver oil, actually,” Chris explained, “one of the most famous, or infamous, of all nutraceuticals.^[24.31] It’s full of vitamins, and let’s face it, what Chef usually feeds you leaves something to be desired in the nutrition department, so he thought this would be a good way to fill in some of the gaps.”

Owen gasped. “You tried to make donuts healthy? That’s unnatural!” The eating machine grabbed his knife and fork and held them at arm’s length in one hand, knife crossed over fork and held in place by thumb pressure to form a makeshift crucifix. Trembling visibly, he demanded, “Waitress! Remove this abomination from my sight!”

“Dude, chill,” Duncan urged. “If we eat this, we win the—”

“I … will … not … eat … a healthful … donut!” Owen thundered in a tone that brooked no argument. And was that a tinge of panic in his voice?

“Please, dude,” D.J. implored. “We’ve come this far—”

“TAKE … IT … AWAY!”^[24.32]

At Chris’ signal, Scarlett removed Owen’s donut with the timidity of a real bunny, keeping as far away from him as she might and making it clear that she was afraid of Owen. Courtney turned to her teammates and urged, “This is our chance! Strike while the iron is hot!”

Her teammates required little persuasion, and assaulted their fishy donuts with a will—after turning away from Owen so he would not see, for they too had good reason to fear his potential reaction. The experience was not pleasant for them, as their faces made plain, but they all succeeded in finishing their “unnatural” pastries. The other boys saw nothing to gain by eating their donuts if Owen would not, and so allowed Scarlett to remove them; and although Team Testosterone lamented the victory slipping through their fingers, none despised their lives enough to confront a 180-kilo goliath who seemed on the verge of a psychotic episode.

“And the girls take Round Nine!” Chris proclaimed in the fullness of time.

“Sorry, guys,” Owen offered contritely, having apparently returned to normal, “but there are some things I just can’t handle.” The man-mountain looked to Scarlett and added, “Sorry if I scared you.” The boys’ waitress accepted his apology with a nod.

As the waiters cleared the table, Chris recapped, “After nine rounds, the score is tied, so we’re going into extra innings. The tiebreaker will be the team captains, one-on-one.”

I’m glad I didn’t insist on being captain, Heather thought.

The Lord of the Feast paused for effect, then commanded, “Courtney and Duncan, front and center.”

The captains stepped forward as bidden, hiding their nervousness as best they might.

“For the tiebreaker,” Chris declaimed, “we go once more to the chocolates from Hell: the Whizzo Quality Assortment.”

“Again?” Courtney griped. “What is it this time? Cockroach Cluster? Anthrax Ripple?”

“You know your Whizzo chocolates,” the Lord of the Feast observed with an approving nod. “I thought Cody was the only camper who was familiar with them.”

Help, Courtney whimpered mentally, although she said nothing.

I’m so glad I didn’t insist on being captain, Heather thought, although she likewise remained silent.

“Actually,” Chris continued, “our tiebreaker is called ‘Spring Surprise’.”^[24.33]

Both Courtney and Duncan snuck glances at Cody, to see if his reaction might give them some idea of what they were facing. The science geek was shaking his lowered head, his hand at his brow.

That’s not good, the captains thought.

“The surprise,” Chris explained with his customary plastic cheer, “is that when you pop it in your mouth, steel bolts spring out and plunge straight through both cheeks.”

“What?!” Courtney all but shrieked in disbelief.

I am SO glad I didn’t insist on being captain, Heather thought with feeling.

Duncan’s reaction was very different. “Eh, I have fourteen piercings. What’s two more?”

Chris asked, “So, Duncan, I take it you’re willing to go first?”

“Sure,” Duncan answered with a shrug.

“Open wide,” Scarlett said as she proffered the chocolate, apparently having been instructed to feed it to her “master”. With a softer tone and a half smile, she added, “You stouthearted young idiot.”^[24.34]

Duncan accepted the fell confection, bit down, and barely flinched as his cheeks were pierced. He calmly wiped his bloody cheeks on his sleeve, turned to Courtney, and said with a smirk, “You’re up, Princess.”

As Alejandro approached Courtney, Chef Hatchet told her, “If the candy layers are stripped away, it might not need bite pressure to activate, so don’t even think about trying to swallow it whole. A pierced stomach is a damn sight worse than pierced cheeks.”

Courtney turned to her teammates, a silent appeal in her eyes.

“Don’t look at me,” Heather chided with a sniff. “You’re the one who wanted to be captain.”

The steel in the dragon girl’s words, however, did not match the message in her eyes, a message matched on the faces of the other four girls. Courtney understood that, whatever they might say, none of her teammates would seriously think less of her for backing down.

Courtney turned back to Chris. “I won’t do it,” she declared. “It’s not worth it.”

Chris did not directly acknowledge her decision, but turned to the camera and proclaimed theatrically, “And the winners of the Brunch of Disgustingness are … the guys!” He turned to the victors and said, “The boat leaves at sundown. Be there or be left behind.”

The girls, in a foul mood after what they saw as a humiliating defeat, were lounging in their cabin and sniping at each other over this or that girl’s failure to pull her weight in the challenge. When a knock at the door interrupted their recriminations, Katie opened the door to reveal Ezekiel.

“Hi, girls,” said the visitor.

“What do you want, Homeschool?” Heather sneered. “Come to rub it in? Come to tell us how inferior we ‘mere girls’ are?”

“Jeez, am I ever going to live that down?” Ezekiel asked, determined not to rise to Heather’s bait.

“Probably not,” Gwen mused with a sardonic smile.

Courtney opened her mouth as if to speak, but thought better of it. She did not really believe what D.J. had told her during the boot camp party, but she recognized that the big lug might not be alone in believing she was crushing on Ezekiel. Courtney did not want rumors of that sort getting started, so she decided it was best not to take the lead in defending the farm boy now. If someone else did, then she would join in.

“Anyway,” Ezekiel continued, “I have a proposition for you. For all of you,” he added hastily, lest the girls—especially Heather—take his use of the word “proposition” the wrong way.

“Well, don’t just stand there, let’s hear it,” Leshawna prompted.

“I’ve talked it over with Chris,” Ezekiel began enigmatically, “and he says it’s okay if I give my spot on the reward excursion to one of you.”

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

.

Twenty-fifth Night

The next day was not a school day, so Brett and his mother spent the day engaged in their own affairs. That night, after they had dined and Brett had finished what homework he had for the weekend, he approached his mother and asked to hear 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.^[25.01]

The six girls perked up as one. Courtney said, “I think you have everyone’s attention. You certainly have mine. Please, go on. And have a seat, if you like,” she offered, motioning to a chair near the door.

Ezekiel sat down in the proffered chair, and continued. “Chris says there will be separate rooms for everyone, so you won’t have to room with any of the guys. We wouldn’t want anyone, er, talking about you, eh?”

“But isn’t having people talk about us the whole point of being a celebrity?” Lindsay asked obliviously.

“Not in the way he means, Lindsiot,” Heather informed the turnip-brained former blonde. The queen bee had been routinely calling her lackey “Lindsiot” (short for “Lindsay, you idiot” or “Lindsay, that idiot”) for quite some time, and Lindsay still had not caught on. Indeed, some of the girls had begun to wonder if the uberbimbo would ever catch on. For now, though, they had more pressing concerns, such as getting the open spot on the reward excursion.

“So, what does he mean?” the microcephalic bombshell asked innocently.

“I’ll give you an example,” Heather answered. “We all know Gwen won’t give Cody the time of day. Suppose a rumor got started that she had not only hooked up with him, but was actually screwing him. How do you think she would like that?”

Heather smiled smugly at how her dual-purpose explanation had not only enlightened Lindsay in terms the uberbimbo could understand, but also irritated Gwen. Doubly irritated Gwen, in fact, by not only planting a mental image the Goth would rather have been without, but also denying the fact that Gwen was usually civil to Cody. Indeed, Gwen would have been happy to call the science geek a friend if she but saw any sign he would be content with that.

Heather’s smugness was short-lived. Lindsay, her eyes wide with shock and her mouth agape, turned to Gwen. “You’re sleeping with Cory? In front of the cameras?”

The other girls, as well as Ezekiel, gave reactions ranging from eye rolls to facepalms. Heather said rhetorically, “It’s like talking to an eggplant.”

Hearing but not understanding, Lindsay utterly forgot about Gwen, Cody, and her shock of mere moments before. “Oh, I love eggplants,” she began. “Especially when they’re—“

“Focus, guys,” Courtney interrupted hastily, determined to get the discussion back on track, “Let’s get back to Zeke’s offer.”

“Yes, let’s,” Heather agreed. “So, Homesc—Zeke, what do you want for your spot?” The queen bee automatically assumed there would be a price.

“I’ll leave that to you, eh?” Ezekiel replied equably. “I’ll be happy to listen to offers, but I wasn’t planning to just sell my spot to the highest bidder.”

“So, how will you decide?” Katie asked.

Seeing that he had everyone’s attention again, the farm boy laid out the details of his proposal.

“We’ll use the Confession Cam. You’ll each go into the confessional, and you’ll tell me two things. First, tell me why I should choose you, assuming you want to go. Second, in case I don’t choose you, tell me who I should choose, and why.

“I’ve also asked the other guys for their thoughts on who I should choose, and why; but I told them, and I’ll tell you, that you’ll be giving advice, not casting votes. Chris and I will go over the Confession Cam footage and make a decision.”

“Why Chris?” Heather asked, automatically suspicious of anything connected with the host.

“He insisted,” Ezekiel admitted. In truth, the prairie boy did not really mind Chris’ meddling, for it would give him cover. If any of the passed-over girls got mad at him, he could say the host had overridden his choice.

“Sounds like a plan,” Courtney agreed to a general murmur of assent from the other girls.

“Indeed it does,” Heather seconded, with newfound respect for Ezekiel. Homeschool’s playing the game harder than I thought, she would later tell the Confession Cam. He’s liable to learn a lot about what people really think of each other. Well, if that’s worth more to him than the challenge reward, I’ll be happy to take his spot.

“One more thing,” Ezekiel added, as he turned to go. “Don’t take too long in the confessional. The boat leaves at sundown, and Chris said that if I haven’t made a choice by then, the seat will go unused. He’s apparently going with the guys to get pampered, too, as if he doesn’t get enough of that already, and he ‘won’t allow a precious minute to be wasted’, as he put it.”

“That must be what he meant when he said the losers would be spending the next two days with Chef,” Gwen surmised.

“Yeah, probably,” Ezekiel agreed. “The guys are recording their thoughts now, but they should be done pretty soon.”

After the farm boy departed, the girls began to chatter excitedly about this unlooked-for opportunity. Several spoke admiringly of how well Courtney seemed to be doing with her re-education project.

“If you don’t choose me, although I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t, then you should choose Lindsay. She’s been through a lot, with her hair and all.”

Heather, who was the last girl to record her pitch in the confessional, turned the camera off and briefly sat in silence. She reflected that Katie, her other henchchick, had also been through a great deal, what with the trauma of separation from Sadie and having literally come back from the dead, but the queen bee dared not nominate her. First, Sadie’s departure had not rendered Katie as pliant as Heather had hoped, so the Thin Twin needed to be kept on a short leash. Second and more worrisome was that, despite the colloquialism of losers being “sent home” when voted off, it was no secret that the losers were actually staying together, at an undisclosed location and under unknown conditions, so they would be available for the jury vote at the end.

Considering Chris’ perverse sense of humor, Heather could well believe the losers might be staying at some fancy resort, perhaps even the place the campers had been led to believe would be the competition venue. Perhaps even the place where the boys were going for their challenge reward. Heather could not take the chance that Katie might have contact with any of the losers—especially Sadie—during the proverbial weekend getaway, lest Katie learn of Heather’s role in Sadie’s ouster; for if that happened, Heather’s powerful but fragile alliance might collapse completely.

As for the other girls, Heather could not bear to nominate Gwen or Leshawna, for she regarded them as enemies—a feeling that was mutual, to put it mildly, at least in Leshawna’s case. Heather had no quarrel with Courtney, but was concerned that Ezekiel and Miss Type A were getting too close. If they were not already allies, they might well become allies if Bible Boy gave Courtney his spot.

That left Lindsay as the safest and most palatable choice. If word got out that Heather had nominated her abused toady, and people began to think Heather actually cared about the uberbimbo, then so much the better.

Heather emerged from the confessional and told a waiting intern that she was done. The redshirt dashed off and, a few minutes later, the public address system squealed to life.

“Ezekiel, report to my trailer. McLean out.”

When the prairie boy arrived at Chris’ air-conditioned trailer, the host welcomed him eagerly. “I said it before, but it bears repeating: this was an awesome plan, dude. I can’t wait to see those tapes, so let’s get started. I’ve got gourmet popcorn, if you’d like some. Nothing but the best for me.”

Especially if someone else is paying for it, Ezekiel thought, for it was no secret that Chris shamelessly milked his expense account for all it was worth; but the farm boy said only, “Thanks. Don’t mind if I do.”

It was, indeed, very good popcorn, as good as any Ezekiel had ever tasted. “Kettle corn, my favorite,” he said.^[25.02]

“I know, right?”

It was simplest to play the confessional spots in the order they were recorded, and Trent’s happened to be first. The axboy said, “I’ve been waiting all this time to see Gwen again, and now I have to leave her again? Don’t get me wrong, this trip sounds awesome, but there’s one thing that would make it a lot better. I don’t really have anything to offer you right now, but who knows about the future? If you pick Gwen, I’ll seriously owe you one.”

“I kind of figured he would say something like that,” Chris ventured. “After all, reviving their triangle is the whole reason I brought him back. Something a little less predictable would have been nice, though.”

The next spot was Cody’s. The science geek said, “I was making real progress with Gwen, and now they had to bring Trent back? Don’t get me wrong, he’s a cool dude and I really have nothing against him, but this could ruin all my hard work. I was starting to make real progress. I know, people say nothing that happened at the dance really counts, but I doubt Ella could make people fall for each other for no reason. There had to be something there. I’m sure she was almost ready to move on.

“So, my options are to have Gwen here at camp, away from Trent, where she can spend two days building him up in her mind, or have her on the cruise with us, where maybe she’ll see that Trent isn’t as perfect as she thinks. That looks like my best chance at this point. So I nominate Gwen—and if you … just kind of mention in passing that I did, I’ll owe you one.”

“What happened between them at the dance?” Ezekiel asked.

“If you don’t know, I’m not allowed to tell you,” Chris demurred. “Manipulating you dudes to mine drama is one thing, but I can’t go feeding you secrets. It wouldn’t be good for ratings if people got the idea that we were trying to script things. That’s what’s so awesome about your idea. You invited everyone to spill the beans for you and gave them a reason to, with no future obligations on you. Power player move, dude.”

Next came Duncan’s pitch. The delinquent said, “You’ve got to pick Courtney, dude. We’ve all been voting together for our own purposes, but we’ve got the makings of a real alliance big enough to counter Heather’s posse when the teams merge.

“And … I have to admit …” the delinquent added as he nervously scratched his head, “I’m into her, more than I really want to be, and more than is probably good for me, but I’m a sucker for forbidden fruit. What can I say?” Duncan regained his cocky demeanor and concluded, “She’s hot, and it’s fun making her show her dark side. So do it for your bro.”

“Mr. Tough Guy’s not so tough,” Chris observed with a smirk. “This kind of soul-baring is just what I was hoping for. Funny, though, Courtney doesn’t seem like his type.”

“I think he realizes that she’s not,” Ezekiel surmised. “I like Duncan, as I’m sure you know, but I don’t think pairing them up would be good for either of them, eh?”

“So, Mr. Relationship Counselor, do you have anyone in mind who would be a good match for Courtney?” Chris needled with a knowing air, for he could smell another triangle in the works.

“No, not really,” the farm boy admitted.

“Whatever,” Chris grumped. “On to the next.” The host thought, Does he honestly not see it?

Next came D.J.’s spot. The gentle giant said, “I guess they’re all deserving in their own ways, but I would choose Leshawna. I think the more time she can get away from Heather, the better off she’ll be. Besides, she’s probably the best company.”

“Straight to the point,” Ezekiel observed.

“A little too straight,” Chris said with a note of irritation. “He left us hanging with that ‘everyone is deserving’ bit. How are they deserving, dude?”

“I’d have liked to know that, too,” the farm boy admitted, “but I’ll take what I can get.”

“When you put it that way, I hear you. Next!”

Owen was the last of the boys. The man-mountain said, “Leshawna all the way, dude! We’ve got a two-day party ahead of us, and she’s our best party girl. Besides, she could probably use some rehab from that whole Hungarian Cheese thing.”

“Did you or Chef ever try that cheese sandwich?” Ezekiel asked.

“No, we didn’t.”

“Don’t.”

“Noted, dude. Time for the girls.”

Gwen had been the first girl to record her thoughts. The Goth said, “Whoever you choose is going to owe you one, and we’re getting into the part of the game where that’s important. And here I am, just reunited with Trent, and he’s leaving again. I know it’s only for two days, but still. If you pick me so Trent and I can be together, you’ll have two campers who owe you one.” With a slight smile to take the sting out of her words, the Goth added, “And Trent better have told you the same thing.”

“If you’d rather pick someone else, pretty much anyone but Heather is deserving. Yeah, she’s been nicer to me lately, but I have the feeling she doesn’t really mean it. I’m still afraid to turn my back on her, but whatever. If it were up to me, I’d choose Leshawna. I know, she’s not the only one who’s had a traumatic experience here, but hers is the most recent. Well, the original cheese incident isn’t recent, but the flashback is.” Gwen shuddered visibly at the memory of that eating challenge lowlight, and Ezekiel did not blame her one bit.

“Gwen nominates her buddy. Big surprise,” Ezekiel observed.

“But she did tell us what she really thinks of Heather, so I’d call that a win,” Chris countered.

“Yeah, I guess so. Who’s up next? By the way, you were right. This really is great popcorn.”

Leshawna’s spot began to play. The homegirl said, “The guys have a two-day party ahead of them, and I’m the biggest, baddest party girl in camp! What other sister here can handle five boys?” she asked with a wink.

“But if not me, then my girl Gwen is the one you want. She and Trent need time together away from that scheming w… bitch, Heather.” With a contrite air, the homegirl added, “Don’t tell Dawn I almost called Heather a witch, okay? I didn’t mean to insult witches, and that little redshirt is someone I’d trust with my back.” Leshawna’s expression turned odd, as if a thought had just occurred to her, and she added, “Actually, I didn’t mean to insult dogs, either. Seriously, what can you call Heather that wouldn’t insult the thing you’re calling her?”

“Ooh, burn,” Chris said admiringly.

Next came Lindsay’s pitch. The formerly blonde bombshell said, “You should choose me because I’m the prettiest, so the other boys might get mad if you pick someone else. But if you do choose someone else, I think you should pick Helen. Sure, she calls me names and borrows my stuff without asking, but that’s what BFFs are for. That’s ‘Best Female Friends’, in case you didn’t know. When she was afraid she might have to vote off someone in our alliance because Glenda had those invisibility idols and we didn’t know if Chip would let her give one to Madonna, Hera said she would keep me over Kayla, so I know she’s looking out for me, and I know she felt bad for Kayla. Some people think she’s mean and bossy just because she knows how to play the game, but they don’t know her the way Kellie and I do. Helga’s not a bad person, she’s just misunderstood. Of course, she wants what’s best for her and her buddies, but doesn’t everybody?”^[25.03]

“Not a bad person, just misunderstood,” Ezekiel repeated. “Lindsay’s been saying that about Heather pretty much the whole summer, eh?”

“That she has,” Chris agreed. “And like Lindsay said, Heather does know how to play the game, but that’s never been a secret, either. Next batter.”

The “next batter” was Katie. The stick girl said, “I’m not sure what I can say that you don’t already know. Obviously, I’ll owe you one if you choose me, but I’m fine with that because you’ve already proved that you wouldn’t abuse it. I guess that probably sounds kind of weak, but like I said, I don’t really know what else to tell you.

“If you choose someone else, Heather expects me to nominate her, and she nearly came right out and told me I had to, but I don’t really get why. Sure, she’s the captain of our alliance and she seems to know what she’s doing, but I don’t see how nominating her will help our alliance more than nominating my backup BFF, Lindsay. Besides, I don’t see why we have to be gamebots about everything. It’s not like peeps have to be in our alliance to be deserving. Leshawna’s fun, Gwen’s nicer than she wants people to think, not to mention that she’ll get to be with her boyfriend if you choose her, and Courtney … well, I don’t imagine I need to tell you about Courtney.

“So, I guess what I’m saying is, choose whoever you like best.” Katie suddenly grinned impishly. “Or better yet, keep the girl you like best here in camp with you, and maybe you can get to know her better,” she added with a wink.

Chris said, “And Katie basically punts.”

“But she did make some good points, eh?” Ezekiel observed.

“I hear you. Whatever, this should be where it gets good.”

Courtney’s spot began to play. The onetime CIT said, “I deserve the spot because of what I’ve done for you. I talked the Muskie girls out of voting you off after the very first challenge, because I thought you deserved another chance. Granted, that didn’t matter as things turned out, but that’s beside the point. Then you helped me in the Awake-a-thon, and we’ve been informal allies ever since. If you choose someone else, though, I think you should choose Katie. She’s probably been through more crap than anyone else here, and she’s never really gotten over losing Sadie, so she could use something to take her mind off it.”

“She’s right,” Ezekiel conceded. “I do owe her a lot, and I’ve told her that.”

“You do and you have,” Chris affirmed, “but it seems to me that you’ve given as good as you’ve gotten with her.”

“True. I guess that’s why she calls us informal allies. We’re friends, and we usually vote together.”

“In a game like this, that’s all you need to be considered allies,” Chris observed.

The last girl to record her confessional was Heather, as has been told of before. The queen bee said, “If you choose me, you can be an official member of my alliance. Just you and three hot chicks, how would you like that? Nobody else has a real alliance going, and we’ve also got someone who isn’t actually in our alliance but who has been supporting us for his own reasons. That would give us five votes, so we should be able to cruise all the way to the Final Four. We can dump the adjunct when the time comes.

“On the other hand, turning me down wouldn’t be a good idea, because most of the girls still don’t like you very much. They haven’t kicked you off because you were on the opposite team from them, but with the teams merging for the next challenge, their votes will be in play. I also happen to know that D.J. has been trying to get rid of you for weeks—why, I don’t know and don’t really care—so you need the ‘safety in numbers’ my alliance can give you.

“If you don’t choose me, although I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t, then you should choose Lindsay. She’s been through a lot, with her hair and all.”

Ezekiel said, “That was a heck of a sales pitch.”

“She’s worried,” Chris ventured. “I think she may have guessed what you’re up to. She is supposed to be the genre-savvy strategist, after all.”

“And even if she hasn’t,” Ezekiel surmised, “She’s worried that I might get into a formal alliance with Duncan and Courtney. I’d be lying if I said that possibility hadn’t crossed my mind—”

“And she’s looking to improve her odds, which is what these elimination games are all about,” Chris finished. “So, have you decided?”

“I’ve narrowed it down,” replied the farm boy, “but there are a few things I need to think about.”

“Knock yourself out, but don’t take too long, and do your thinking somewhere else. I’m due for my afternoon massage.”

“So you’re going to let me make this decision myself?” Ezekiel asked, wary but hopeful.

“Never said I wouldn’t,” the host assured him. “I see plenty of drama potential no matter what you do, so I’m good. Besides, I just wanted to see their sales pitches.”

Ezekiel quit the trailer and went to the nearby bonfire pit to contemplate his decision.

Who would you choose?

Ezekiel returned to the girls’ cabin about an hour before sundown, and was welcomed warmly. All the girls had packed their bags just in case, lest they forget something whilst packing on short notice.

Bible Boy saw no reason to keep the girls in suspense longer than necessary. He said only, “Heather, your berth awaits.”

Katie looked disappointed, but not unduly so. Gwen, by contrast, looked utterly crestfallen. Leshawna shook her head, whether in anger or dismay, for she suspected that her enemy had somehow played the naïve farm boy. Courtney congratulated Heather grudgingly, but Lindsay seemed genuinely happy for her liege.

Heather, ever the fashionista, had packed several bags on the premise that she could never know what she might need even for a short trip. She picked up two and nodded to the rest as she asked, “Zeke, would you mind helping me carry these to the boat?”

Ezekiel was happy to oblige, which surprised no one. He picked up the two largest suitcases with little apparent effort, for the rigors of farm life had made him strong, and said in his best “think nothing of it” tone, “Men are here.”^[25.04]

When they were out of eavesdropping range of the cabin, Heather said to her benefactor, “Smart call. You won’t regret it.”

“I’ll bet he did regret it,” Brett ventured.

“That does seem a reasonable supposition,” his mother conceded. “But you wouldn’t want me to spoil it.”

“Of course not,” Brett conceded in turn, “but there’s something else bugging me about the eating challenge. Some of the campers’ reactions seemed awfully over the top.”

“And you suspect I was over-embellishing,” his mother surmised. With a shake of her head, she explained, “I wish it were that simple. With Owen and the ‘healthful’ donut, and Leshawna and the sandwich—oh, God, that horrible cheese sandwich—there was some kind of trigger involved, and triggers can make even the most level-headed people come completely unglued. As for the fruitcake, hating fruitcake is such a cliché that some of us decided to ham it up for the camera. For those of us who couldn’t finish it, the problem wasn’t being grossed out—we weren’t, really—but that it was so dense and so hard that we were physically unable to chew it up into bits small enough to swallow. I heard Cody cracked a tooth on it.”

Brett’s mother paused a few moments to collect her thoughts, and resumed her tale.

.

Episode #15: The Tale of the Labors

Original title: No Pain, No Game

As the sun neared the horizon and the yacht prepared to depart with Chris, Heather and the boys, Courtney went looking for Chef Hatchet. She found him in the lodge kitchen preparing a wholesome if unremarkable meal for the interns.

“Chef?”

“I’m not making dinner for you girls,” Hatchet declared brusquely, anticipating Courtney’s request. “Chris said the losing team goes hungry tonight, and hungry you’re gonna go.”

“What about Zeke?”

“He gave up his spot, so he doesn’t get dinner, either.”

“I know you’re not supposed make a regular dinner for us, but if we managed to forage something in the woods or catch some fish or something, would you cook it for us?”

“You actually want me to cook for you?” Hatchet asked with an unpleasant smirk.

Courtney turned a little pale as she hastily replied, “I respectfully decline to answer that question on the grounds that either a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ is liable to incriminate me.”

Hatchet narrowed his eyes at Courtney and said, “Okay, your scheming has gotten you and your cronies on my bad side. So … the interns will eat in the lodge tonight instead of the Craft Services tent. When they’re done, you girls and Homeschool will have to clean up here—the dining area and the kitchen.”

Courtney started to protest, but Hatchet cut her off.

“I don’t want none of your lip,” he thundered. “You tried to manipulate me and you failed miserably, so you got yourself KP duty.” Seeing that the lawyer-to-be was about to say more, Hatchet warned, “Not another word, unless you want to do it all yourself!”

As Courtney pouted, Hatchet dropped the other shoe. “Of course, it completely slipped my mind that making you clean the kitchen would give you access to the cooking gear. I’m sure you’ll agree that anyone could have made that mistake, and I doubt Pretty Boy will pick up on it.”

Courtney brightened, and a knowing smile spread across her well-tanned face. “Thanks, Chef. I knew I could count on you. We’ll be discreet, and if we have to ‘sing for our supper’ so to speak, then so be it.”

Hatchet gave a knowing little smile of his own and said, “Now get out of here. You have to find your own grub, and you don’t have a lot of daylight left.”

Courtney returned to the girls’ cabin and told the others of the deal she had struck with Chris’ scheming aide, but nothing would be gained by repeating it here. Although the girls were not happy about being drafted into a cleaning detail, they agreed that it was fair enough a price for getting a meal when Chris had decreed they should have none. Understanding the need to make haste while there was still enough light to find something dinner-worthy, the girls dispersed.

None of the girls knew Ezekiel’s whereabouts, for he was not in the boys’ cabin or the washroom. No one could suggest another likely place to look, so the girls could only hope he was out foraging on his own.

Courtney went to the boathouse, hoping to find some light netting, and spotted the farm boy returning from there. He clearly had a similar idea, for he was carrying some netting and was wearing fisherman’s waders that presumably also came from the boathouse.

Courtney called, “Hey, Zeke!” and trotted up to him. “Looks like you’ve got a plan.”

“Sort of,” Ezekiel replied. “I figured net fishing on the lake would be the best bet for getting something to eat tonight. I’m not really sure what the best technique is, though. Back home, lakes are kind of scarce, eh?”

“I think I can help you there,” the onetime CIT assured him. “Are there any more waders in the boathouse?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

At the boathouse, the ex-teammates did indeed find a second pair of waders. They also found some sturdy poles, which Courtney attached to opposite sides of the net, and some large sinkers that she affixed to one of the net’s open sides.

Courtney’s plan was to trawl the lake bottom. She was mainly hoping to catch crayfish. Ezekiel suggested that leeches would also be worth having, for he had once eaten pan-fried leeches and found them tasty.^[25.05]

With a bucket in hand to hold whatever they might catch, Courtney and Ezekiel trawled their way back toward the camp. Luck was with them, and by the time the light failed they had caught what they thought might be enough leeches and crayfish for everyone, as well as a frog or two. When they met up with the other girls at the lodge, they learned that Lindsay and Katie had found a bountiful bunch of blueberry bushes. Gwen and Leshawna had made a boathouse run of their own and borrowed fishing poles and bait. Gwen had struck out in their subsequent fishing expedition, but Leshawna had better luck and had caught a good-sized bass.

The campers went into the kitchen with the idea of boiling the lobster-like crayfish and pan-frying the fish and the leeches. This plan changed when they discovered that Hatchet had “accidentally” left parts of the pantry unsecured. Katie and Leshawna, who were the best cooks, devised a plan and shooed everyone else out. In the fullness of time, they presented to their comrades a spicy fisherman’s stew, with blueberry pie for dessert. It was no gourmet dinner, but nobody was complaining.

Conversation flowed like wine, but it mainly concerned girl-oriented topics that Ezekiel had little knowledge of or little interest in or both, so the farm boy mostly remained silent. After dinner, the campers kept their end of the bargain with Chef Hatchet by cleaning the kitchen and the dining area before retiring to their cabins for the night.

Ezekiel detoured to the confessional before retiring. “I think the girls kind of forgot I was there, eh?” he told the Confession Cam. “Their gossip got really candid, and kind of brutal. I probably learned more from that than I did from their ‘sales pitches’.”

Breakfast the next morning was even less appetizing than usual, with visible foreign objects in the pancakes; but nobody complained, at least not to Chef’s face, in deference to the rule bending he had done for them the night before. Ezekiel sat with the girls because there was no good reason for him to sit alone, and as the campers ate and talked, he offered a proposal.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “We’ve got nothing on the schedule for two days until the others get back. Since all the other guys are gone, I think I’d like to go exploring, see more of the island, eh? I asked Chris, and he said they have all the equipment on hand that I’d need for an overnight trip. Backpack, bedroll, pup tent, cooking gear, all that.”

“Knock yourself out,” Gwen replied, for she did not really care what the homeschooled boy chose to do in his spare time.

“The thing is,” Ezekiel explained, “Chef won’t let me go alone. He said Chris doesn’t want a lawsuit if I fall in a hole or something. I don’t know why, but they don’t seem to think I can take care of myself.”

“Care to guess where this is going?” Katie whispered to Lindsay.

“I know, right?” Lindsay replied in the same conspiratorial whisper. “Sounds like Homework’s finally going to ask Corin out.”

“Think she’ll accept?”

“I think she could do better, but she does seem to like him.”

“Place your bets.”

“As I recall,” Gwen said, oblivious to the gossiping at the end of the table, “You used to doubt that we girls could take care of ourselves. Looks like the shoe’s on the other foot now.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” the farm boy admitted. “But anyway, would any of you like to go with me?”

Leshawna looked skeptical. “One of us. Alone in the woods with you. Overnight. Don’t you think you’re moving a little fast?”

“It doesn’t have to be just one of you. Besides, I won’t lay a glove on you, cross my heart. My ma didn’t raise no pervert, eh?”

“I think I’ll pass, just the same,” Leshawna replied. “I’ve never been a fan of roughing it.”

“Ditto,” Gwen said.

Lindsay said, “Sorry, Zero, but I’m not a wilderness gal. Besides, I can’t pass up two days with just me and my budette and not having to do anything for Helga.”

“What she said,” Katie added, “except for the ‘Zero’ part. And the ‘Helga’ part.”

Courtney, satisfied that she could now speak up without seeming too eager, said, “I think I’d like see more of the island, too. It might prove useful in a challenge down the road, and I know how to take care of myself in the wilderness because I used to be a CIT. I’ll come with you, since no one else seems to want to. As for not laying a glove on me, I’ll hold you to that.”

“Thanks, Court,” Ezekiel replied simply. Neither of them noticed Katie and Lindsay winking at each other.

After breakfast, Ezekiel told Chef Hatchet that he had a camping partner, and Hatchet assigned Alejandro to round up the equipment the explorers would need. After a stop at the kitchen, where Hatchet measured out the pair’s provender, the adventurers briefly returned to their respective cabins to add clothing, toiletries and other personal effects to their backpacks.

When Ezekiel arrived at the girls’ cabin to collect his partner, Courtney was ready. As the onetime CIT headed out the door, Katie called after them, “Have fun on your date!”

“It’s not a date,” Courtney and Ezekiel called back in unison.

Courtney exited the cabin, and she and Ezekiel were on their way. When they were out of earshot, Lindsay declared with a knowing air, “It’s totally a date.”

About an hour after the explorers departed, the yacht returned with a new batch of thirteen interns. As usual, these sacrifices to the Drama God were divided more or less evenly between men and women, much as the campers had originally been.

The reinforcements were necessary because, while no one had died between the arrival of Dawn and Ella’s batch and Ella’s “death”, if you want to call it that, the injuries had continued apace. The most serious of these had been to Rodney. The big farmer’s size and strength had made him one of the intern corps’ go-to men when heavy lifting was required; and this, possibly combined with the well-meaning but misguided actions of a certain self-styled wizard, had been his downfall.

The interns had been building the corral for the Extreme Sports challenge when Leonard decided he could magically lighten the load of lumber Rodney had picked up. Something went wrong, and Rodney collapsed with his spine snapped like a twig. He now lay in traction in a Toronto hospital, falling in love with every pretty nurse and orderly who came into his room.

Fortunately, there was no sign of paralysis, and the big farmer’s doctors were optimistic that he would eventually make a full recovery, but Leonard had been “scared straight”. Although the interns’ opinions were divided over whether he bore any fault (for having Dawn and Ella on the island had tempered their skepticism concerning matters supernatural) and no one suspected him of any but the best intentions, the wizard wannabe vowed to himself that he would work no more magic without the formal training Dawn had promised him—a promise to which he intended to hold her.

Chef Hatchet was normally in charge of intern assignments, as has been told of before, so he preferred to handle the orientation of new interns personally. As a result, the campers did not get lunch until mid-afternoon. After a suspiciously palatable “afternoon tea”, the four girls remained in the lodge and talked. They speculated on what lay ahead, and on how Courtney and Ezekiel were faring on their expedition, but they mostly speculated on why Hatchet had given them decent food that was not part of a challenge reward. On this last, the girls eventually agreed that Chef was probably giving them a break because the competition was officially on hiatus until Chris, Heather and the boys returned. Breakfast had been the usual bill of un-fare, they surmised, because Hatchet needed to keep up appearances, or perhaps as a reminder that his indulgence was not to be sought lightly.

“Hey, campers, ready to blow off some steam?”

The four girls looked to the lodge entrance, where Sky stood in the doorway. She was leaning casually on the door jamb and effortlessly twirling a familiar foam rubber ball on one fingertip.

“We’re welcoming some of the new interns with a little pickup dodgeball,” the slim redshirt explained. “Ladies only, and we’ve got four open spots. Think you can take the heat?” she challenged in a tone that implied a serious loss of face if the campers declined.

“I’d love to,” Katie admitted, “but won’t Chris get mad?”

That was the cue for Chef Hatchet to step into the doorway. He wore a referee’s uniform and held in one hand a roll of athletic tape that was presumably meant for Gwen.

“Chris isn’t here,” Ref Hatchet reminded them. “No Chris, no cameras, strictly off the record.”

“In that case, count me in!” Leshawna bellowed enthusiastically. “The Lady of Pain is in the house!”

“Me, too,” said Gwen, smiling in spite of herself. “My throwing arm isn’t the one that’s hurt.”

“Me, three,” added Lindsay. “Girls night out!”

Katie grinned expectantly. “You already know my answer. Captain of the Sophomore team back home.”^[25.06]

The next morning, Ezekiel started his day rather later than usual. Normally, the farm boy was up before the sun, even without Chris’ efforts to weaken the campers’ emotional control by disrupting their sleep patterns, but Courtney had set a grueling pace the day before. Ezekiel was used to working long, hard hours on his farm, but that did not necessarily impart exceptional skill in woodcraft, nor did it normally require hiking long distances over rough terrain, so his and Courtney’s exploring had been taxing in a different way.

Nor were the demands only physical. Ezekiel had some knowledge of woodcraft, but generally only in those areas that were useful for farm life. Courtney’s wilderness knowledge was broader, with a particular aptitude for orienteering, but that is another story for another time, and the onetime CIT had been doing her best to teach her simple but eager companion as much as she could in the short time they had.

They had camped not far from a waterfall, close enough to provide a ready source of water for their morning coffee and for the fall’s white noise to help them sleep, but far enough away that unusual noises heralding possible danger might not be masked.

The previous day’s exploration had apparently taken more out of Courtney than she had been willing to admit, for she was still sound asleep. Ezekiel did not try to wake her. Instead, he dressed as quietly as he might and went to fetch water. He suspected that she would be awake and have breakfast preparations underway by the time he returned.

Ezekiel’s orienteering was a bit off, and he came to the river above the fall when he had meant to go to the large pool at the base. The river looked to be flowing fast enough that it might well rip his canteen from his hands if he tried to fill it there; so rather than tempt fate, he circled down to the pool.

As Ezekiel approached the pool, he heard a splash at the near shore. He scanned the area, but saw only a set of expanding ripples behind some reeds. Whatever had made the splash had sounded big. A pike, perhaps? The farm boy had learnt that those “water wolves” sometimes prowled the shallows. Perhaps it had caught something. No matter, he thought, for he did not see anything that looked dangerous.

Ezekiel came to the edge of the pool. After filling his and Courtney’s canteens, he got down on his hands and knees to drink directly from the source, at a spot where the crystal-clear water was deep right up to the shore. He did not notice the pale form approaching just under the water’s surface.

Suddenly, something grabbed him by his hoodless hoodie and, even as he drew breath to cry out, pulled him in.

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

.

Twenty-sixth Night

The next day was not a school day, so Brett and his mother spent the day engaged in their own affairs. Brett had no homework, having dealt with it the day before; so that night, after he and his mother had dined, he asked to hear 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.

Ezekiel felt a moment of panic. He had no idea what had attacked him, or what would attack something as large as he. A snapping turtle would not be big enough to try it without provocation. A big muskellunge—the species of pike for which his former team had been named—might have been able to pull him in, but they did not normally attack anything bigger than they could swallow whole. Could one of the sharks have come upstream?

No, he realized as he struggled to free himself before he ran out of oxygen, whatever had attacked him was not behaving like any animal he had ever heard of. It had got behind him and now seemed to be constricting him across his chest. It apparently did not want him to go anywhere, but it did not seem to be actively trying to hurt him. That distinction would not matter for long, though. Ezekiel’s mysterious assailant might be able to breathe water, but he could not.

Ezekiel looked down, hoping to get some idea of what he was up against, and was taken aback at the sight of human-looking arms, with slender, feminine-looking hands. Could this be one of the water nymphs of folklore? Ezekiel had not believed in such things since he was little, but being acquainted with people like Dawn and Ella could do much to temper skepticism, and in any case he had no idea what else it could be.

The nymph, if such it was, was remarkably strong; but with an adrenaline-fueled burst of strength, the increasingly desperate prairie boy broke free and broke for the surface.

As Ezekiel gulped air—hurriedly, in case he was pulled under again—the water nymph surfaced in front of him. The farm boy gaped, his eyes wide, for he could not believe what his eyes were telling him. She was beautiful, but that was not why he goggled at her. No, he stared because this vision was no creature of myth or folklore, but a certain redhead of his acquaintance.

“Hi, Zeke,” said Izzy. “Sorry to scare you like that, but I couldn’t resist. I was a crocodile in a previous life, you know. Anyway, we should get you ashore. I’m sure it’s tough to swim in those waterlogged clothes, not to mention those huge boots of yours.” It took her all of eight seconds to say this.

Ezekiel was, in fact, having some difficulty, for he felt ten kilos heavier than normal; so Izzy helped him to shore, which turned out to be the opposite bank from the one he had arrived at. He slogged out of the water and turned to see Izzy emerge from the pool as unselfconsciously naked as the day she was born.

With an effort, the farm boy took his eyes off Izzy and regarded his own squishy clothing. “Now what am I supposed to do?” he asked. “I’m totally soaked, eh?” He was not really upset with Weird Red, for he thought seeing her in the altogether had compensated him well enough for this inconvenience, but he was not looking forward to hiking back to camp in his current state.

“What you’re supposed to do now,” Izzy answered matter-of-factly, “is set your clothes to dry on that rock over there.” She motioned to a nearby boulder. It had full sun exposure, and looked like it would indeed be an effective “solar-powered clothes dryer”. Ezekiel noticed Izzy’s clothing—clothing she was making no move to retrieve—draped over a tree branch near the rock.

“And what should I do in the meantime?” the prairie boy asked warily.

“Well, I wasn’t finished with my swim when you arrived,” the demented redhead suggested. “The water’s nice and brisk. No sharks, either. Except for me, or course. I was a shark in a previous life, you know,” she chattered in her inimitable style. “Don’t worry, though. I don’t bite … hard.”^[26.01]

So it was that Ezekiel set his clothes out to dry, and the ex-teammates took their skinny dip in the pool under the watchful eye of an unnoticed remote camera.

When Ezekiel failed to return in a reasonable amount of time, Courtney debated going to look for him, but for a time stayed her hand because she was unwilling to leave their campfire unattended. Eventually, though, she decided that her campmate’s safety was more important than her morning coffee, so she put out the fire and went to look for him. Had she called out to him during her search, events might have played out differently, but she remained silent because she had decided to practice her woodcraft and track him.

In the fullness of time, the onetime CIT came to the same spot above the waterfall as her camping partner had done. She was quite close to the brink, so she decided to go there and admire the view for a moment before resuming her tracking.

The view from the top was as beautiful as Courtney had expected, but she saw more than she bargained for. Lying beside the base pool were her fellow explorer and a certain fugitive of their mutual acquaintance, wearing only their skins and looking remarkably interested in each other.

When Courtney recovered from her shock, she quickly turned away, for she was not a voyeur. If Izzy and Ezekiel wound up doing what Courtney suspected they might be about to do, she did not particularly want to see it. Having nothing better to do, she returned to the campsite to wait.

Ezekiel returned around midmorning, but he was not alone.

“Izzy?” Courtney asked in genuine surprise; for although she knew, or thought she knew, what the farm boy and the fugitive had been up to, she had not expected Ezekiel to bring the demented redhead back with him. Yet that was not the only surprise that lay in store for the onetime CIT.

“Izzy’s coming back to camp with us,” Ezekiel explained simply.

“But what about the RCMP?” Courtney asked.

“Eh, I’d have to face the music sooner or later. Now’s as good a time as any, I guess. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been fun living off the land, but I’m not really looking forward to spending the winter here. Perola can only do so much for us mere mortals, and babysitting’s not really her thing, anyway.”

“Wait a minute,” Courtney broke in. “How do you even know about Perola? And I thought only Dawn could talk to her.”

“Angie’s the only one who can talk to her directly, as far as I know, but I have Sunshine and Ravi to ‘translate’ for me. Zeke told me about the connection between Perola and Ella. Speaking of whom, from what I’ve been told, it’s too bad I didn’t get to meet her while she was still human.”

Courtney had no response to this, so she said, “Whatever, we need to get back to camp. We should have been on the trail an hour ago.”

The explorers and the fugitive quickly struck the tent and were on their way. Izzy and Ezekiel chatted about whatever topics crossed their minds, but Courtney mostly remained silent.

“Is something wrong, Court?” Ezekiel asked when he eventually noticed.

“Come to mention it, I feel like something is,” Courtney admitted, “but I can’t put my finger on it. That’s actually the most frustrating part.”

“Sort of like not being able to say a word that’s on the tip of your tongue?” Izzy surmised.

“Something like that,” Courtney said.

“When that happens to me, I just use a different word,” the demented redhead said. “If the substitute word happens to mean the same thing, bonus.”

“That’s very interesting,” Courtney ventured diplomatically, “but it’s not a word I’m looking for.”

“Are you worried about what Chris will do?” Ezekiel asked. “He did say Izzy was supposed to get the last marshmallow the night the RCMP came for her.”

“I don’t think that’s it,” Courtney replied. “I took his claim at face value at the time; but later, after I had time to think about it, I realized that he was probably just messing with me. Chris does that.”

It caused quite a stir in camp when the explorers returned with Izzy in tow. The prodigal camper was happy to exchange greetings with all who would greet her, and asked that someone inform Dawn, but on the whole she seemed preoccupied. That was no mystery, given that Izzy was effectively turning herself in.

Chef Hatchet was just beginning dinner preparations when the prodigal camper came into the lodge and called to him.

“Izzy? What are you doing here?”

Izzy did not answer the question, for Hatchet would have his answer soon enough. She said, “Chef, we need to talk. Actually, I probably need to talk to Chris, but you’re here and he’s not.”

Chris, Heather and the other boys returned to camp the next morning, straightaway after breakfast. As the yacht approached, the teens danced on the foredeck as Chris looked on with an air of serene benevolence quite at odds with how he usually treated the campers.

No sooner had the yacht docked than the teens came bounding down the gangplank or, in Duncan’s case, sliding down the guardrail. Chris followed more sedately as the returning campers began to gloat to those who had been left behind.

“What a weekend!” Duncan declared.

“You left on a Monday,” Courtney countered.

“Sweet mother of mirth, you can’t buy that kind of fun!” Owen exulted.

“Well, somebody did,” Gwen observed dryly.

Chris smirked. He had been tempted to make exactly that observation, but Gwen had beaten him to it. That was the best of both worlds, for the Goth’s rebuttal had put the credit where it was due without Chris having to interfere with the campers’ social interactions.

“Come on, don’t be such party poopers,” D.J. implored.

“Don’t let it get you down,” Trent said. In a stage aside, he added, “The girls are just a little jealous.”

“Envious, technically—” Courtney began.

“And who can blame them?” Duncan asked rhetorically before Courtney could continue. “They can barely stand each other, but we guys are as tight as a family. Guys rule!”

“We got along fine without Helen here,” Lindsay countered innocently. Belatedly realizing that she had just dissed her overlord, the uberbimbo looked to the scowling queen bee and said, “Oops. Sorry, Helga.”

“Whatever,” Heather sniffed.

“If it had been up to me, I’d have brought you all with us,” Cody assured the girls, none of whom saw any reason to doubt him. “Getting waited on hand and foot by all those lovely ladies was great, but I’d rather have lovely ladies I’ll actually see again.”

“I take it you’re not the ‘love ‘em and leave ‘em type, eh?” Ezekiel surmised. “Good for you!”

“I know, right?” Courtney seconded.

Cody displayed a small bag of chocolates. “Would anyone like a Chocolate Covered Cherry Blossom?”

“Don’t mind if I do,” Leshawna admitted as she accepted her portion of Cody’s peace offering. “Thanks, short stuff.” The other girls quickly followed suit—including Heather, who had plenty of access to fancy chocolates during the excursion but knew that partaking of Cody’s offering would please him.

Duncan scoffed. “So that’s how you get girls to like you? By bribing them?”

“Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it,” Heather shot back.

“All right, campers, listen up!” Chris announced. “I’ve been told a lot has happened while we were away. If you’ll all come with me to the lodge, I have a surprise for you.”

“A good surprise, or a bad surprise?” Heather asked warily.

“That depends,” the host answered enigmatically.

As the group repaired to the lodge, Katie said to the returners, “Spoiler alert: Izzy’s back.”

“Izzy?” Heather repeated. “Chris wasn’t kidding when he said, ‘That depends.’ But if that’s the case, why hasn’t the RCMP picked her up?”

“You got me,” Katie admitted. “Maybe the ‘surprise’ has something to do with that.”

“We also got some new interns,” Gwen said, “but Chris probably wouldn’t consider that newsworthy.”

Once in the lodge, Chris bade everyone be seated. When this was done, he proclaimed, “The first order of business is: as of right now, all teams are officially dissolved. From here on in, it’s every … camper … for … themselves!”

Leshawna, for one, was unimpressed. “That was your big surprise? You told us at the eating challenge.”

“Just making it official,” Chris explained. “And now, I promised you a surprise, and here it is: Owen and Trent were going to be our only returning campers, but we have an unscheduled third returner!”

“Yeah, we’ve all heard,” Gwen said in her best uncaring tone. “Izzy, right?”

“Yes and no,” the host replied cryptically. That got the campers’ attention, and they were now genuinely curious. They could not fathom how the demented redhead could be both returning and not, until Duncan had a flash of insight.

“Does this have something to do with why the RCMP called her ‘Captain McAllister’?” the scorner of laws asked.

Chris grinned. “Got it in one, dude. Captain, you can come out now.”

Izzy emerged from the kitchen and waved to the assembled teens. “Hi, guys! It’s great to be back, even though I never actually left the island.” She would have said more, but Chris stopped her with a gesture.

“Dudes and dudettes,” the host proclaimed grandly, “I present to you Captain Rebecca McAllister, undercover agent of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police!”

Katie was the first to recover from Chris’ surprise. “So that’s why Dawn calls you ‘Becky’.”

“You got it, girl,” Izzy/Becky replied with a pair of finger guns. “But you can still call me ‘Izzy’, if you want. That’s my favorite alias, and I think it fits me.”

“I didn’t want to be the one to say that, but it’s true,” D.J. admitted. “Dizzy Izzy.”

“Well, not so much anymore,” Izzy admitted. “Not for long, anyway. When I came back to camp, I talked to Chef and Chef talked to Chris and Chris talked to the producers, who have a pretty good legal team, and they agreed to help me out, but one of the terms of my plea deal was that I have to go back on my meds.”^[26.02]

“Yeah, what’s up with that?” Katie asked. “You and Dawn have both mentioned that you don’t like the side effects.”

“The main problem is that they make it hard for me to hear my pixie buddies,” Izzy explained wistfully.

“Isn’t that the point?” Heather asked acidly. “Aren’t your meds supposed to stop the voices in your head?”

“Yeah, but try telling them that,” Izzy replied. “Sunshine understands, sort of, but I can’t even tell you how cross Ravi can get when she has to repeat herself.”

“O … kay,” Heather said uncertainly.

“For a while, it wasn’t a problem,” Izzy explained, “but my ‘condition’ got worse over the years, meaning I need more medication to control the symptoms. Eventually, the dosage got high enough to trigger side effects.”

“Back to Izzy’s plea deal,” Chris said. “Basically, she pleaded guilty to a ridiculously reduced charge—not even a felony—and was sentenced to community service. She will be serving that sentence right here, at Camp Wawanakwa.”

Duncan looked to Izzy and said with a smirk, “It’s been nice knowing you. Everyone knows how Chris goes through interns. If it had been me, I think I’d have preferred the slammer.”

“Well, here’s the thing,” Chris explained. “Izzy won’t be serving her sentence as an intern. She’ll be a camper. I can see the ratings now!”

Courtney interrupted the sudden buzz of surprised camper-to-camper comments. “That’s not fair! She’s an adult!”^[26.03]

“Yes, she is,” the host conceded, “and because she’s an adult, she’ll be playing under special rules. To be precise, she’ll be playing spoiler. Izzy will participate in challenges and vote in eliminations, just like the rest of you, unless and until she gets eliminated normally, but she won’t be eligible to win. She also won’t get any prize money if she makes it to the Cash Zone, because she has already received valuable and expensive legal assistance in lieu of cash.”

“Not to mention I get to be on national TV again,” Izzy interjected. “I probably would have been anyway, but 30-second spots on the nightly news just aren’t the same.”

“Wait a minute,” Cody broke in. “You’re an undercover agent, but you’ve just told the whole country?”

Izzy gave a wistful half-smile. “That’s because I won’t be doing undercover work anymore. My specialty was posing as a teenager to infiltrate school-based fencing rings and drug rings and things like that, but I’m almost 30 now and I’m getting too old to pass for a teen. This game show was going to be my last hurrah, as it were. The RCMP doesn’t trust me to do ‘grownup’ undercover work or to be a good beat cop because of my ‘condition’, so they probably have some soul-crushing desk job lined up for me.”

“Any further questions will have to wait,” Chris broke in. “Izzy and the campers who arrived this morning on the S.S. Lap O’Luxury have one hour to get settled in before we all meet at the amphitheater for today’s educational challenge.”

Heather said quietly to Lindsay, “The only education I’ve gotten from these challenges is that I’m learning new reasons to hate Chris.”

As the girls relaxed in their cabin, Katie asked, “So, Izzy, where do you know Dawn from? She’s not RCMP, too, is she?”

“No, we met on one of my first undercover assignments. She was no older than you—younger, in fact; she was still a freshman, as I recall. She wasn’t as good at aura reading in those days as she is now, but she was good enough to tell that I wasn’t what I appeared to be and that I was doing something important. She was feeling socially isolated, so she asked if she could do anything to help, and I happened to like her, so I took her into my confidence. Good thing, too, because she tipped me off when one of the kids I was investigating got suspicious and decided to bump me off. Forewarned is forearmed, though, so he never had a chance. When he tried, I mopped the floor with him.

“When my assignment ended, Angie gave me one of her dad’s business cards. Some higher-up on the force followed up, and Angie’s family has done consulting work for the RCMP ever since. There are some things we can’t ask them to do, because magically obtained evidence isn’t admissible in court, but they can and do help us track down fugitives, locate witnesses, clear innocent suspects, things like that. And on my own assignments, I’ve found Angie’s divination skills useful more than once.

“Speaking of Angie, how’s your magic necklace holding up? Is it keeping the boogeyman at bay?”

“As far as I can tell,” Katie answered, “but it’s probably a ‘no news is good news’ sort of thing.”

“That reminds me,” Gwen said. “Izzy, when we last saw you at the boathouse, you didn’t seem to mind being a fugitive. What made you decide to come back and face the music?”

“I’ve been wondering about that,” Courtney admitted. “When Zeke and I were exploring the island in case we have another wilderness-type challenge, he went off to get some fresh water and came back with Izzy.”

“It sounds like there’s a story there,” Katie prompted.

“Not really,” Izzy said with a shrug. “I ran into Zeke and we had a romantic date. Not that great a kisser, but he gives a first-rate hand job.”

Six stunned faces were the only response to the rogue cop’s startling revelation. “What?” Izzy asked innocently after a moment.

Only Courtney was not completely shocked, having seen Izzy and Ezekiel together as has been told of before, so the onetime CIT was the first to find her voice. “T … M … I.”

Izzy seemed not to hear, or simply did not care, and blithely described her “date” with the farm boy in a level of detail that is not consistent with a PG-13 rating.^[26.04]

When Izzy finished her tale, the other girls hanging on every word in spite of themselves, Courtney excused herself and went looking for Ezekiel. She caught up to him near the washroom, and immediately lit into him.

“I can’t believe you went to third base with Izzy! What were you thinking?” the diminutive dynamo demanded.

“Why do you care, Court?” Ezekiel asked obliviously. “It’s not like we were cheating on anyone, eh? Yes, it’s probably considered fornication, so I might have to do some kind of penance for it, but that’s between me and my church.”

Courtney had no answer, for she realized Ezekiel’s question was a fair one. She wanted to say something, but she did not really know what, and the words would not come. After a few moments, she balled her fists at her sides with an inarticulate cry of frustration, and stalked off to the confessional to vent.

The puzzled prairie boy watched her go, wondering why she was so upset. Presently, a thought struck him. Could she be crushing on him? It did not seem at all likely, but why else would she object to his interlude with Izzy? Ezekiel considered Courtney a good friend, one he valued highly, but he had never seriously considered trying to turn that friendship into something more; for although Courtney was pretty and smart, she also had a dominant personality. Ezekiel was quite certain that anyone involved in a serious relationship with the lawyer-to-be was going to be henpecked, and that was something he wanted no part of.

“Zeke’s right,” Courtney declared in the confessional. “I have no reason to believe he’s trying to freeze me out of any alliances, so why should I care if he fools around with Izzy? There’s no reason for me to care.” Her face took on a look of helpless confusion as she added, “And yet, for some reason … I do care.”

.

Learning on the Job

At the appointed time, the campers assembled at the amphitheater. The thirteen campers all sat in one section of the bleachers, for the other section had twelve pillories arranged in three rows. The campers could all too easily guess the purpose of these punishment devices, but did their best to ignore them.

The campers quickly noticed that someone had hung a large TV monitor on the stage backdrop. In addition, the stage’s wooden floorboards were mostly covered with a foam rubber mat, suggesting that the challenge would involve some kind of athletic activity. On one side of the stage stood a large wheel marked with twelve icons around its perimeter.

As the campers speculated on the purpose of this new hardware, Chris appeared from backstage and called for attention.

“Today’s challenge,” the host began, “will feature a variety of taxing ordeals, some of which are potentially painful or even lethal. If you endure your ordeal, you will move on to the next round.

“Because TDI is nominally a children’s show, broadcast regulations require that we include a certain amount of educational content, so today’s challenge will include a lesson in classical mythology.

“On this wheel are twelve icons, representing the ordeals we have set up for you. Each test is based on one of the twelve Labors of Heracles.”

“Who’s ‘Heer-a-kleez’?” Katie asked.

“He was the strongest man in the world, which is what he’s mainly known for, but what’s less well known is that he was also one of the foremost archers of his day,” Chris explained in a pedantic tone. “The son of Zeus and some mortal chick. Heracles is the Greek name. He’s better known by his Roman name, Hercules.”

“Got it,” Katie declared.

Chris resumed the briefing. “One day, the goddess Hera, who hated Heracles because her unfaithful husband sired him, made him go bonkers. While he was insane, Heracles killed his wife and children. When he snapped out of it, he was so bummed that he was going to do an atonement suicide, but he got talked out of it. He went to the famous Oracle at Delphi to figure out a proper penance, and the Oracle sent him to serve his cousin, King Eurystheus, for twelve years. During that time, Eurystheus sent Heracles on a series of difficult missions, mostly in the hope of getting rid of him for good. Those tasks became known as the Labors of Heracles.

“When I call your name, you will spin the Wheel of Work^[26.05] to determine your Labor. If you complete your task, you will move on to the next round. If you fail, you will spend the rest of the challenge in a pillory.”^[26.06]

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Lindsay ventured. “My cousin Paula and I have pillory fights sometimes.”

“No, you have pillow fights, not pillory fights,” Chris explained, concealing his irritation as best he might. “A pillory is a big punishment device that goes around your neck and wrists to display you for public ridicule. A pillow is a soft cushion that you rest your head on or use to support your back … although it was allegedly used by the Spanish Inquisition as a torture device,^[26.07] so I guess I can understand your confusion after all.

“Anywho, if the Wheel stops on a Labor you’ve already done, we’ll go clockwise from that point until we get to one you haven’t done. We’ll randomize the order in each round, so the camper who goes first in one round won’t necessarily go first in the next round. That’s important because the winner will be the first camper to complete all twelve Labors, which means the twelfth round will be ‘sudden death’, if we get that far. If we don’t have at least two of you reach the twelfth round, the last camper standing will win.

“You’re probably asking, ‘What do I get if I win?’ And that’s a fair question, because every challenge we’ve done so far has had a reward. Well here it is!”

The host gestured to the overhead monitor, which flickered to life and displayed a large, battered trailer with heavily dimpled skin. That establishing shot gave way to a few scenes of a nicely furnished interior.

“From here on in,” declaimed the Lord of Wawanakwa, “not only do challenge winners save their butts from elimination, they also get to live in this fancy trailer until the next challenge!^[26.08] Seriously, this is almost as nice as mine. It’s even got satellite TV and a video game console, although we made sure it still doesn’t have any way to contact the outside world. We got it cheap because of the hail damage, but it still cost a pretty penny, so we have to get our money’s worth.”

“That sounds very nice,” Heather said softly to Katie and Lindsay, “but it also sounds like a double-edged sword. It means the challenge winner could be out of the loop for three days. Knowing Chris, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the idea.”

“That’s no problem,” Lindsay assured her liege. “You’ll still have us. Besides, if you win, you can just give it to someone you want to impress … or someone you want to keep out of the loop.”

Heather mentally kicked herself, for although she was strategically minded, sharing was not something that came naturally to her. “That’s actually a good idea. I guess it’s true what they say: ‘Even a blind squirrel finds a few acorns.’”

After giving the campers a few moments to react to the challenge reward, Chris resumed his briefing. “This challenge will have two main venues: here on the stage, and ‘on location’ as we say in the movie biz. To save time, anyone who draws a ‘location’ Labor will have to wait until the campers with stage Labors have gone, or vice versa.

“For the most part, the order people go in won’t really matter, because the editors will probably mix it up some in the finished episode.

“Duncan, you’re up first.”

The delinquent sauntered onto the stage and spun the wheel. It stopped with the pointer on an icon that looked like a belt.

“The Ninth Labor,” Chris stated, “was to bring back the girdle, or belt as we would call it nowadays, of Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons.

“And now, let’s meet Queen Hippolyta. Give it up to my lovely but scary assistant … Eva!”

On this cue, the musclegirl strode onto the stage to polite if not especially enthusiastic applause from the campers. In addition to her standard blue leotard, Eva wore a large, ornate belt similar to a pro wrestler’s championship belt. What appeared to be the buckle was emblazoned with the TDI logo. Her gym shorts were missing, the better to show off her rock-hard thighs and camel toe of bronze.

When the applause faded, Chris turned to the Laborer. “On my mark, you’ll have three minutes to remove Hippolyta’s belt. The fasteners are in the back and work like a bra’s. If you’d rather just rip it off and are strong enough to do so, that’s okay, because we have an intern who’s good at repairing things.

“Expect ‘Hippolyta’ to resist you. She is not allowed to run out the clock by avoiding you.”

Duncan smirked as he advanced on the Amazon, for he had a score to settle. “The gloves are off, Toots,” he sneered.

“They were never on,” she sneered in turn.

It is a martial arts axiom that, other things being equal, grappling disciplines such as wrestling can usually beat striking disciplines. Although Duncan had plenty of generic brawling experience, his real expertise lay in knife fighting, as has been told of before. That is striking discipline, and Duncan was unarmed. This confrontation would have to be on the bronze maiden’s terms.

That is not to say that Eva held all the cards, for Duncan was taller than she and had greater reach, and Eva had to protect her back. If she rushed the street tough from the front and grappled him about the waist, for example, he could simply reach over her back and unfasten the belt without serious interference if her clinch failed to pin his arms.

Eva feinted for Duncan’s waist, despite the flaws of clinching there. Duncan did not counter, believing her rush would leave him in a favorable position. That complacency proved his undoing, for Eva’s feint was just that.

Instead of grappling about the waist, she grabbed low, behind Duncan’s knees, which she pulled forward as the force of her charge drove his body the other way. Before the delinquent knew it, he was flat on his back.

Duncan recovered quickly and reached for the belt, but Eva was quicker. She backed away just enough to reverse her grip and fold his legs against his torso, which she did in a trice, for Duncan had neither enough leverage to stop her nor enough wrestling experience to make an effective countermove without having to think about it. A moment later, “Queen Hippolyta” locked her fingers behind her adversary’s upper back and began to squeeze the breath from his body as she maneuvered him onto his shoulders. Duncan’s arms were free, but neither could reach the Queen’s belt fasteners.

Chef Hatchet, who had been standing in the background, got down on his hands and knees, watching Duncan’s shoulders. When those shoulders kept contact with the mat for three seconds, Hatchet slapped the mat with his palm. The task clock, then reading 2:44, changed to 0:00.

Duncan had been pinned.

Alejandro led Duncan to the pillories and locked him into the rightmost pillory on the top row. Because Duncan was the challenge’s first casualty, Chris waited patiently because he wanted the campers to get a good look at the fate that awaited most of them.

In the fullness of time, Chris announced, “Next up is … Cody.”

The science geek came on stage and spun the wheel, which came to rest on an icon similar to but legally distinct from the Texas Longhorns logo.^[26.09]

“The Tenth Labor,” Chris announced. “Fetch the cattle of Geryon.

“Since we don’t have the budget for a herd of cattle, we’re just going to pit you against our version of Geryon. The stories don’t agree on what Geryon looked like, but they do agree that he was an odd-looking giant, so that’s what we went with.”

Chris directed Cody to stand at one end of the stage. At the other end stood a lectern with a large red button on top. The host explained, “You have 30 seconds to press that button over there. Obviously, ‘Geryon’ will try to stop you.

“Good luck. You’re going to need it.”

Cody could well believe that. He was not built for physical duels, and the first player to draw any given Labor was at a disadvantage from not knowing what to expect, especially since Chris loved to spring surprises on the campers. All Cody could do was to do his best and let the chips fall where they might.

Having no good reason to delay, the science geek started across the stage. As he approached the pedestal, a huge intern stepped out from a hidden alcove and barred the way.

Cody stopped and stared. Chris had suggested that “Geryon” would be big and of distinctive appearance, so Cody had naturally assumed that Beardo or Chef Hatchet would play the part, possibly in costume. He had not expected a pretty girl.

In fairness, this warrior woman, clad in a bronze-tone chainmail bikini which went nicely with her sable skin, was no ordinary girl. She was by far the tallest woman Cody had ever met face to … well, to chest, really, for that was the part of her closest to Cody’s eye level.

The focus of Cody’s gaze did not escape the giantess’ notice. “I’d say, ‘eyes up’, but I can see they already are,” she remarked dryly with a broad Australian accent.^[26.10]

The Aboriginal Achaean, who answered to the name of Jasmine when not impersonating mythical figures,^[26.11] did not wait for Cody to collect his wits. Swift as the strike of a rattlesnake, she lunged forward and reached down, grabbed the science geek by his ankles, and hoisted him aloft. As strong as she was big, the giantess held her arms straight out in front as she marched across the stage with her inverted, feebly struggling prey, waited patiently for the clock to run out, and dumped him at his starting point.

“He who hesitates is lost,” quipped Lady Geryon. “Better luck next time, squirt.” Although interns were normally not supposed to speak on camera, as has been told of before, Chris had told Jasmine during her challenge briefing that she was welcome—indeed, encouraged—to trash talk any camper who might have to face her.

Chris feigned disappointment as he needled, “Two Labors, two failures. Campers, if you don’t suck it up, this is going to be a very short challenge. We might have to air some of your confessional dirty laundry in front of everyone^[26.12] to fill the time slot. I’m guessing you don’t want that. Ezekiel, you’re next.”

After Alejandro locked the disappointed Cody into the pillory next to Duncan’s, the ever-lecherous scorner of laws said, “Owned by a hot chick. There are worse ways to lose.”

Cody brightened at that, for although he was generally a good deal more respectful of girls than Duncan, he was also a normal teenage boy and so could be just as dirty-minded as the delinquent. “She really had her way with me, didn’t she?” the science geek conceded with that goofy grin of his.

“Dude, she didn’t just have her way with you, she totally dominated you.”

“You’re just jealous because my dominatrix was prettier than yours, not to mention nicer.”

Duncan grinned and admitted, “You’ve got me there. You’re getting better at this.” The scorner of laws looked thoughtful for a moment, then added, “So, is she nice?”

“I thought so.”

Meanwhile, Ezekiel had spun, and the wheel came to rest on a deer antlers icon.

Chris announced, “The Third Labor: capture the Golden Hind of Artemis. That’s a location challenge, so you’ll have to wait until we’re done here.”

As Ezekiel returned to his seat, Chris called Lindsay to the stage for to find her fate. The uberbimbo spun and, like Cody before her, drew the Tenth Labor and a confrontation with Jasmine/Geryon.

Airheaded though she was, Lindsay’s intellect was not so limited that she could not grasp the, er, enormity of the problem her task posed. The formerly blonde bombshell knew from Cody’s failure that she had no chance to overpower the “giant fox”, which left evasion as her best bet.

At Chris’ signal, Lindsay dashed across the stage. The towering redshirt stepped out to bar the way and assumed a wide stance, as if daring Lindsay to try to duck between her legs. Lindsay feinted low, as if to do just that; but as Jasmine stooped down to make the grab, Lindsay went high and launched herself into the air, using the giantess’ shoulders as a vault horse.

The top-heavy gymnast executed a flawless double somersault and a half-twist as she sailed through the air. She stuck the landing and stood facing the way she had come, beyond the lectern and within arm’s length of it. Lindsay quickly slammed her hand down on the button, and was rewarded with the sound of cattle lowing. The campers would later learn that, because there was no budget for cattle, the recorded lowing was actually a Beardo sound effect.

Chris pronounced, “Good job, Lindsay! Nice showmanship.” Jasmine favored the bombshell with a sheepish grin and an approving nod.

Heather answered the call and spun the wheel, which came to rest at an icon similar to but legally distinct from the Calgary Stampeders logo.^[26.13] The Eighth Labor, to bring back the flesh-eating mares of Diomedes, was another location challenge, so Heather returned to her seat.

Quoth the host, “Leshawna, you’re up.”

The homegirl’s spin left the Fickle Finger of the Fates pointing to an apple icon.

Chris intoned, “The Eleventh Labor: fetch the golden apples of the Hesperides. In the version we’re using, Heracles did not know where to find them, so he was directed to the Titan, Atlas—the guy who has to support the heavens on his shoulders forever—because Atlas knew where the apples were and had the connections to get them without a fight.

“Atlas wouldn’t tell Heracles where to find the apples, but offered to get them himself if Heracles would stand in for him while he was gone. By standing at the summit of the very highest peak, Heracles was able to get high enough to hold the heavens at their proper height, but it took all his insane strength.

“When Atlas returned, he wasn’t too keen to take his burden back, so he said he would deliver the apples himself. Heracles wasn’t in any position to argue, so he tried to trick Atlas by asking him to hold up the heavens ‘for just a moment’ so Heracles could adjust his cloak, which he said was starting to chafe his shoulders. Luckily for Heracles, Atlas wasn’t the sharpest knife in the Titans’ drawer, so he fell for it. With Atlas occupied, Heracles gathered up the apples and went on his way.

“We considered a test of strength for this Labor, but Chef still hasn’t cleared Gwen to do stuff like that with her bad shoulder; so instead of giving her an accommodation, we decided to use a nonphysical challenge for everyone. You’re going to match wits with our version of Atlas.”

From backstage stepped a huge intern of African descent. He had close-cropped hair, a lantern jaw and a bodybuilder’s physique, and carried a heavy wooden table as easily as if it were made of paper. On the table rested three coconut halves.

Leshawna whistled in appreciation. “Sugar, where have you been all my life?”

The brown behemoth set the table down and motioned for Leshawna to approach. He held up a crabapple between two fingers, and then placed it under one of the coconut shells. He began to move the coconuts about and said, “The hand is quicker than the eye. Follow carefully or figuratively die.” When he finished, he motioned to the shells with one hand and added, “Which of the three are you going to try?” His voice was similar to D.J.’s, and as with D.J. seemed rather too high for such a massive body.

The streetwise Leshawna smirked and declared, “You can’t fool me, sugar. You palmed it.”

Duncan said to Cody in their pillories, “He did palm it.”

“Atlas”, who more commonly answered to the name of Ryan,^[26.14] sheepishly held out his other hand and opened it to reveal the crabapple. Chris declaimed, “Leshawna moves on to the second round!”^[26.15]

Katie spun next, and like her liege drew the Mares of Diomedes test, so she returned to her seat. Chris called, “Captain Izzy, come take your spin.”

The young-looking Mountie bounded to the stage with her characteristic enthusiasm and spun the wheel as hard as she could. The Wheel of Work spun so fast the icons blurred together; but in the fullness of time, the wheel came to rest on an icon similar to but legally distinct from the Chicago Bulls logo.^[26.16] This indicated the Seventh Labor, to capture the Cretan Bull. That was another location challenge, so Izzy returned to her seat.

Gwen answered the call and took her spin. Moments later, the Wheel of Work declared her destiny: she would be the third camper of the round to face the giantess Jasmine in the Tenth Labor.

“Your Labor will be a little different,” Chris informed the Goth, “because Doc Hatchet still hasn’t cleared you for contact sports. You should be grateful, because now that the teams are merged, we had no obligation to cut you any slack.”

“Noted,” Gwen acknowledged curtly, for she was unwilling to publicly admit that Chris was right.

Gwen started across the stage, and the towering intern stepped out to bar the way; but this time, instead of assuming a fighter’s crouch, Lady Geryon stood at ease and read a verse from an index card, which she did her best to hide from the camera in her vast hand. In her best imitation of an old crone’s voice, the sable giantess challenged:

Stop!

She who would cross the Bridge of Death
Must answer me
These questions three,
Ere the other side she see!^[26.17]

Gwen recognized the reference, so she answered the challenge in the prescribed manner. “Ask your questions, bridgekeeper. I’m not afraid.”

Spake Lady Geryon, “What … is your name?”

“Dame Gwendolyn of Wawanakwa,”^[26.18] answered the Goth.

Nice touch, Chris thought.

“What … is your quest?”

“To win Total Drama Island.”

If Chris had stayed true to the source material, the final question would be either ridiculously simple or absurdly obscure. Gwen could only face what came and do her best, for she was not expecting the simple question.

The mighty guardian with skin of sable and hair of jet consulted her index card again—a bad sign—and asked, “What … famous speech was Noah’s dodgeball speech based on?”

Faced with the choice of simple or obscure, Chris had split the difference. Luck was with the Laborer, though, for the bookworm’s speech was one of many things she and Cody had talked about during their trip to Boney Island. Dame Gwendolyn of Wawanakwa smiled confidently and answered, “The ‘Saint Crispin’s Day’ speech from Henry V.”

Jasmine stepped aside. She gestured over her shoulder with her thumb and said, in her normal voice and accent, “Over you go, mate.”

Gwen needed no encouragement. She strode to the lectern, figuratively summoned the cattle, and advanced to the second round.

The Arbiter of Fates summoned D.J. The brickhouse’s spin ended on an icon that looked like the hind end of a defecating cow. This represented the Fifth Labor, cleaning the Augean stables—a location challenge, so D.J. returned to his seat.

After Owen drew the Cretan Bull challenge as Izzy had, Trent spun. The axboy drew the Eleventh Labor, Atlas’ shell game.

Ryan displayed and placed the crabapple, and shuffled the shells so quickly that his hands seemed a blur. “The hand is quicker than the eye. Follow carefully or figuratively die. Which of the three are you going to try?”

Trent eyed the huge intern suspiciously. “Did you palm it again?”

“Maybe,” Ryan admitted. “Is that your guess?”

Trent hesitated a moment, then pointed to the shell to his left. “No, I think it’s under that one.”

“Atlas” lifted the chosen shell to reveal the crabapple.

“Trent advances!” Chris pronounced grandly.

Courtney was the last camper of the round. The onetime CIT spun, and the wheel came to rest on an icon that looked like a bunch of snakes growing out of a dinosaur body.

“The Second Labor,” Chris proclaimed, “is to slay the Lernaen Hydra. That’s a location challenge, and everyone has their first round assignments, so it’s time to go on location! First up will be Ezekiel and the Golden Hind.”

.

Shooting on Location

Leaving the pilloried campers behind to watch the proceedings on the big monitor, the host led the surviving Laborers to the corral, where a duplicate Wheel of Work stood pointing to the deer antler icon. Inside the corral, leaning against the fence, the hind took her ease.

“Hi, guys,” said the Golden Hind of Artemis, better known as Bridgette. “It’s great to see you.” She would have said more, but Chris silenced her with a gesture. The prodigal surfer was dressed in faux buckskin that matched her naturally blonde hair, as did the moccasins on her feet. She also wore golden antlers and tail of the sort first seen in the paintball challenge.

Chris intoned, “The Third Labor was to capture the Ceryneian Hind, also called the Golden Hind of Artemis. A hind is a female deer, so you wouldn’t expect it to have antlers, but this one did, go figure. In some versions of the story, the hind was so swift it could outrun an arrow. In others, Heracles was told to bring it back unharmed. Either way, he couldn’t just shoot it.”

A lariat and a weighted net lay draped over the gate to the enclosure. Chris took these, presented them to Ezekiel and said, “Choose your weapon.” The prairie boy was more familiar with the lariat, so he took that.

Chris directed Ezekiel to stand at the center of the corral, and Bridgette took her position nearby. The Arbiter of Fates explained, via his trusty bullhorn, “It took Heracles a year to catch the golden hind, but we’re on a schedule, so you have three minutes from …”

Hind and hunter tensed, waiting for the host to say, “now” or something similar. They really should have known better; for instead of a verbal cue, they got an amplified air horn blast that left everyone’s ears ringing. Everyone except Chris, of course, for the sadistic host routinely wore discreet hearing protection when dealing with the campers.

Ezekiel quickly maneuvered Bridgette into one end of the corral, but missed with his lariat toss. Whilst he was busy retrieving his rope, Bridgette dashed up to him and, with a kick to the head from the broadside of one moccasin-clad foot, dropped him like a felled ox.

Bridgette bent down over her victim, as if inspecting her handiwork. “I’m sorry, Ezekiel,” she said softly, hoping the microphones would not pick up her words. “That was Chris’ idea, not mine. Something about your sexist comments after the cliff diving.”

Although Bridgette’s blow had been far from gentle, Ezekiel was more surprised than hurt. He recovered quickly enough, and again drove his quarry to one end of the corral. This time, Bridgette offered only token resistance, for she felt that putting up with Chris’ trick had earned the farm boy the right to advance. Ezekiel successfully lassoed the winsome blonde with over a minute left on the clock.

As Chris officially pronounced Ezekiel successful, an intern discreetly moved the Wheel to the not-quite-Stampeders-logo in case the camera crew needed an establishing shot for the next test.

“Next up is Heather, with the Eighth Labor,” Chris announced.

He gestured to a straight track near the corral. The track was marked with three lines, the first two perhaps ten meters apart and the third some 150 meters beyond the second. A Quarter Horse—the standard issue breed at Camp Wawanakwa^[26.19]—was stationed at each of the first two lines; and beside the second horse stood an intern in hardcore Goth regalia including a shoulder length black and red wig, and chalky white makeup with darker highlights giving the impression of sunken eyes and an exaggerated chin cleft.

“The Eighth Labor,” the host intoned, “was to bring back the flesh-eating mares of Diomedes, who wasn’t the same guy as the Trojan War hero of that name.

“Diomedes, King of Thrace, had some mares he fed human flesh to make them fierce in battle, but it also made them wild and uncontrollable for most people. Heracles defeated King Diomedes in battle and fed him to his own horses, after which they calmed down and were perfectly happy to eat normal horse food from then on, so Heracles was able to bring them to King Eurystheus without any problem.

“To represent the Eighth Labor, Heather and one of our interns will play a Central Asian game called kyz kuu. The name means ‘girl chasing’. Heather will start on the first line and ride for the finish line as fast as she can. Our intern, who makes Gwen look positively mainstream, will be waiting at the second line, and when Heather passes him, he’ll start his horse and try to catch her before she reaches the finish line. If he does, then he wins and Heather has to give him a kiss.”

“No way,” Heather protested archly. “I am not kissing that freak.”

“You will if he catches you,” Chris stated in a tone that brooked no argument. “That’s why kyz kuu is sometimes classified as a kissing game.”

Chris handed Heather a stout riding whip roughly the length of her arm. “If you reach the finish line first, turn around and chase Mr. Girl Chaser back to the starting line. If you catch him, try to whip him. If you succeed, then you win and you will have successfully completed the Labor.”

“What if neither of us wins?” Heather asked. “That sounds like a distinct possibility.”

“To advance to the next round, you have to win.”

Heather and the intern mounted their steeds. The dragon girl steeled herself for the trial, dreading the prospect of having to kiss the ghoulish horseman. She might have felt differently had she known which intern was underneath that macabre makeup, for she had seen him about camp once or twice and thought him handsome enough.

The intern, for his part, relished the challenge, for he was in fact a hardcore Goth and this was the first time since arriving on the island that he was allowed to look the part. Chris and Chef Hatchet usually demanded that he look like a normal person because interns were normally supposed to stay in the background, and his Goth makeup would draw too much attention to him.

The Lord of Wawanakwa said, “Whenever you’re ready, Heather.”

Heather quickly started her horse, the better to get the race over with. As she galloped past the intern, he dug his heels lightly into his steed’s flanks. He sounded bored and listless as he said in near-monotone, “Giddap, Loki!”

Once “Loki” reached full speed, the Goth steadily gained ground on the Queen, but Heather was first to the finish. She quickly came about and gave chase. Nor did she have much ground to make up, for the race’s first leg had been close.

The riders were barely halfway back when Heather caught up to her erstwhile pursuer and began to flog him as gently as she might, for she had no personal score to settle and knew as well as the other campers what the interns had to endure. She made sure it looked good for the cameras, though.

“Ow,” said the Gothic cavalier listlessly, with no sign that he was in any real pain.^[26.20] So it was that Heather advanced.

Although Katie had also drawn the Eighth Labor, Chris led the campers back to the corral, whether to give the horses time to rest or because he was sticking to the spin order. Inside the corral stood a bull moose with a bright red ribbon strung between its antlers. Oddly, there was no sign of Dawn, whom the campers had expected to be on hand to manage a wild animal.

“The Seventh Labor,” Chris said didactically, “was to capture the Cretan Bull. This bull was originally sent to King Minos of Crete to be a sacrifice to Poseidon, but it was so fabulous that Minos kept it and sacrificed another bull that wasn’t as good. Poseidon got pissed, and when a god gets pissed, bad things happen.

“Poseidon made the bull go wild and trample people’s fields and stuff like that; and Aphrodite, who the Romans said was the goddess of romantic love but the Greeks said was the goddess of mad passionate love, made Minos’ wife fall so much in love with the bull that she had a child with it. Yeah, try not to think too hard about that. Their son was the Minotaur, but he’s not part of the Labors of Heracles stories.”

Chris gestured to the moose in the corral and said to Izzy, “For the Seventh Labor, you’ll try your hand at our version of Provençal bull fighting, so called because it’s how they fight bulls in the Provence region of France. Here, it’s French-Canadian bull moose fighting because moose don’t cost us anything and a bull would.^[26.21] Instead of killing the bull, or bull moose in this case, the object is to pluck that ribbon off its antlers using a special hook.”

The Lord of Wawanakwa handed Izzy a long, narrow contraption of the sort used to grab things from high shelves. The gripping part consisted of two large, hook-studded disks that looked suspiciously like the mouth disks of giant lampreys.

“There’s no clock,” Chris said, “so keep trying until you either succeed or give up or get hurt too badly to continue.”

“No sweat,” Izzy said.

The rogue cop entered the corral and approached the moose cautiously by her standards as the famous “March of the Toreadors”^[26.22] blared over the loudspeakers. When Izzy got close, the beast feinted charges but did not try to kick her; for although Dawn was not present, her influence was. The fighting moose had appeared in the extreme sports challenge as the bucking moose, so it was at least somewhat acclimated to humans, and the mystic had trained it for fighting during the eating challenge and the ensuing hiatus. That training consisted mainly of teaching the beast to recognize the ribbon grabber as a sign that the human wielding it meant him no harm, and that the wielder should be resisted but not attacked. The campers, of course, would learn none of this until later.

Bizet Carmen - March of Toreadors and Chorus Les voici! (Act IV.)

the famous “March of the Toreadors" blared over the loudspeakers

After a few feints and counters, Izzy suddenly made a tremendous leap onto the moose’s back. The beast began to buck violently, for that was both its instinctive response and its trained one, but Izzy was not dismayed. She plucked the ribbon from its moorings, and nimbly vaulted off and into the second round.

Chris led the campers to a tiny creek barely half a meter wide and perhaps half that in depth, which fed the much larger stream that ran east from the highlands and entered the lake not far from camp. Small and midsized trees grew near the banks of this rivulet. A small gate was suspended over the creek, connected by ropes and pulleys to a standard bulls-eye archery target. Someone had dug a small channel near one side of the creek, separated from it by a narrow strip of earth. On the gate were painted the words, “Flood Control Dam #3”.^[26.23]

“The Fifth Labor,” Chris explained, “was to clean the stables of King Augeus. The stables housed more than a thousand cattle and had not been cleaned in over thirty years, so Eurystheus expected Heracles to find the job both humiliating and impossible. What he didn’t count on was for Heracles to have a decent brain to go with his legendary muscles.

“Heracles diverted two rivers, which flushed out the stables in less than a day, and that’s the basis for this challenge.

“We didn’t have a better place to work in Heracles’ reputation as an archer, because our animal whisperer refused to cooperate if I had you shoot the Stymphalian Birds, so we’re putting your archery skills to the test here. All you have to do is put an arrow into the center ring of that target over there. If you can do that, that gate up there will drop and cut off the stream, which will back up until it spills over into that side channel.

“You have five arrows, and there’s no clock, so take as much time as you need. Good luck.”

Chef Hatchet handed D.J. a bow and one arrow, keeping the arrow reserve in hand, and directed the gentle giant to the firing line, fifteen meters from the target.

“Show us how it’s done, Deej!” Katie called good-naturedly.

The brickhouse smiled at the encouragement and confidently drew a bead on the target; for archery is a standard summer camp activity, so all the campers had acquired at least rudimentary skill.

D.J.’s first shot hit the outer ring high, and his second was wide right, but his third shot brought success. The suspended gate dropped and, just as Chris had promised, blocked the creek until its waters found release in the side channel.

Chris theatrically pronounced, “D.J. nails his Labor! But wait, there’s more!”

“Let me guess,” Heather grumbled. “You’re about to spring a twist on us.”

“It wouldn’t be a Total Drama Island challenge without one,” the Lord of Wawanakwa explained with that hated bland smile of his.

D.J. prompted warily, “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s the twist?”

“When Heracles completed the original ten Labors, King Eurystheus disqualified two, including the Stables, for various reasons. Some versions say Eurystheus DQ-ed the Stables because the rivers did the actual work, and others say he nixed it because Heracles got paid for the job. In any case, Eurystheus sent Heracles on two more missions which became the Eleventh and Twelfth Labors.

“D.J., since you have just done a disqualified Labor, spin again. If you succeed in your ‘bonus’ Labor, you’ll have two of your twelve out of the way in the first round, which will give you a leg up on everyone else.”

“Until somebody else does a ‘disqualified Labor’,” Heather pointed out.

“Exactly,” Chris conceded.

The Stables venue had a Wheel of Work in anticipation of just such a development, so D.J. took his ‘bonus’ spin on the spot. The antlers icon signaled a ‘play date’ with the Golden Bridgette.

Chris and the campers returned to the corral, D.J. chose the weighted net for his task, and Hind and hunter took their stations. The hunt began, but ended quickly; for Bridgette stumbled as she reacted to D.J.’s feint, and the gentle giant easily netted his former teammate before she could recover.

After Owen won an uneventful confrontation with the Cretan Bull moose, the campers returned to the race course. Chris said, “Katie, you have the Eighth Labor, which means a kyz kuu race with the same nightmare Heather rode against.”

Katie mounted her horse confidently, for her overlord had already won, and Katie was a better rider than Heather. The seemingly listless Goth nevertheless pressed her hard, but seemed to have a knack for coming up just short. When Katie crossed the finish line, her pursuer was almost literally breathing down her neck, and he shot past when Katie eased her steed.

Katie’s erstwhile pursuer knew what was about to happen, for he still had to ride back to the start, and the Thin Twin was between him and that goal. Sure enough, she flogged him—gently—all the way back.

“Ow. Oh, the pain. Please, no more,” the Goth cried in a listless monotone that was hammy and overwrought by his standards, though to Katie it seemed softer than normal speech. Katie had learned from Gwen that certain Goth subgroups cultivate an air of studied boredom, much as Noah did, so she assumed the ghoulish horseman was being a good sport and giving her a show.

When Katie rejoined her fellows, Chris congratulated her and placed a radio call to see if Courtney’s test was ready, but there was no answer. The Lord of Wawanakwa muttered something about the difficulty of finding good help and led his troops to the next venue.

The group presently came to a pair of wooden holding tanks. One was empty, but the other was full of good-sized snakes, and Chris immediately saw why his call had gone unanswered.

“The Second Labor,” the host stated as if everything was going according to plan, “was to slay the Lernaen Hydra.

“The Hydra had the ability to regenerate. Each time Heracles cut off one head, two more would grow back in its place. He got around that by using fire to cauterize the neck stumps before the replacement heads could grow in. The last head was unkillable, so Heracles stashed it under a boulder. That head lives to this day, but it can’t go anywhere without a body, so it’s harmless.”

Chris motioned to the occupied tank and said to Courtney, “See these boa constrictors? You have to transfer them from that tank to the other. There’s also one extra-large snake—the one with that intern’s feet sticking out of its mouth … er, the one that used to have an intern’s feet sticking out of its mouth—representing the immortal head. You don’t have to transfer that one to advance, but if you can, you’ll get invincibility on the spot. That means you won’t have to do the rest of the challenge if you don’t want to. Of course, you won’t be eligible for the winner’s reward if you quit at that point.”

The host turned to the other teens and said, “You heard me right, campers. It’s possible for more than one of you to get invincibility in this challenge.”

Chris handed Courtney a large flashlight and explained, “To represent using fire to stop the regeneration, you have to carry this flashlight when you’re transferring each snake. If you drop the flashlight for any reason during a transfer, you’ll have to start over.

“Good luck. You’re going to need it.”

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

.

Twenty-seventh Night

The next morning, after they had breakfasted, Brett went to school whilst his mother went to earn their daily bread. That evening, after they had dined and Brett had attended to his homework, 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.

Courtney pondered for a bit, trying to decide what would be the best course of action; for unlike some of the other Labors, this one was not timed. As she approached, she undid her blouse’s top buttons and stuffed the flashlight’s handle into her ample bosom. That, she reasoned, would satisfy the letter of the “carrying” requirement whilst allowing her to keep both hands free.

The snakes were of various sizes. All were large enough that the campers might encounter problems in dealing with them, but only the “immortal head” snake was large enough to be genuinely dangerous—especially to Courtney, who was probably the smallest camper in the game. Courtney decided she would not mess with that one, the lure of invincibility notwithstanding, for she still had too much living to do. She knew constrictors typically suffocate their prey before consuming it, and she was not about to give Chris McLean the pleasure of watching the light go out of her eyes. Someone else would have to give meaning to the death of whoever that hapless intern had been.

Courtney stood at the edge of the snake-filled tank, waiting, her hands poised to grab. Seeing an opening, she grabbed one snake behind its head and, as it tried to wrap itself around her, caught it near the base of the tail with her other hand. She carried the struggling reptile to the second tank without much difficulty, for snakes—even constrictors—are not really all that strong.

Courtney transferred three more snakes without incident. With the first tank’s population thinned out, she could see that the tank had originally held eight snakes, plus the man-eater. The latter tracked her warily with its unblinking gaze, but with at least one intern already in its belly, Jormungandr Junior^[27.01] seemed willing to leave Courtney alone if she returned the favor.

Courtney grabbed the fifth snake near the head, as she had done with the others, but missed the grab with her second hand, so the snake threw its coils around her unimpeded. She ended up with her second arm folded and pinned against her body. Her first arm, the one controlling the snake’s head, was still free, but its mobility was restricted because a thick coil of constrictor over her armpit meant Courtney could not bring her arm down much past the horizontal.

The snake was not big enough to seriously impair Courtney’s breathing, but in her current state it was not clear how she was going to get it off of her and into the second tank. Furthermore, with the former CIT seemingly defenseless, the man-eating super snake was looking a little too interested in her. One problem at a time, Courtney thought as she hurriedly backed out of striking range.

Courtney’s legs were unencumbered, so she trotted over to the second tank and stood beside it, trying to think of a way out of her predicament. Suddenly, her eyes widened and her composure deserted her.

“Chris!” she cried. “Get this thing off me! Now!”

Chris replied, “You do realize that if you—“

“Now!” Courtney screamed. “Snake porn is not in my contract!”

The spectators were confused for a moment until they noticed the tip of the snake’s tail writhing about that place where Courtney admitted only feminine hygiene products.^[27.02] Yes, that place the Marquis de Sade called “the Altar of Venus”.^[27.03]

Chris snapped his fingers, and an intern uncoiled the snake. The redshirt returned the serpent to the tank from whence it came, taking care not to get too close to the big man-eater.

“You’re out, Courtney,” Chris said. “Your pillory is waiting at the amphitheater.”

“What do you mean, ‘I’m out’?” Courtney demanded. “There’s no justifiable basis for making me stand there and get violated!”

“I guess you didn’t read—“

“Don’t give me that crap about fine print!” the lawyer-to-be railed. “I read the fine print! There’s nothing that says we have to put up with anything explicitly sexual!”

The Lord of Wawanakwa replied, with that infuriating bland smile of his, “True, we can’t make you do certain things, but that doesn’t mean we have to give you a free pass if you refuse to do them. Besides, you wouldn’t have gotten violated, just groped a little. Sort of.”

Courtney opened her mouth for an acid retort, but Chris stopped her with a gesture and continued. “It would be one thing if we were talking about instant elimination, but we’re not. This challenge is just for rewards, even if one of those rewards happens to be invincibility, so you … are … out.”

“Fine,” Courtney huffed. “But if I get kicked off at the next elimination, you will be hearing from my attorney.” With that, she stalked off, with intern escort, to her waiting pillory.

Chris recapped, “That’s it for the first round. We have eleven successes, including D.J.’s double play, and three washouts. That’s the kind of batting average I was looking for. At this rate, we should get plenty of footage and I might even get the afternoon off. How’s that for win-win?”

Since the group was currently in the field, the second round inverted the venue order, with the location challenges first and the stage challenges last. The Hydra venue was equipped with a Wheel of Work, so Lindsay took the first spin of the second round. The wheel came to rest on an icon resembling a dog’s head. This denoted the Twelfth Labor, to capture Cerberus, who guarded the gates to the underworld. The Twelfth Labor, however, was a stage challenge.

Ezekiel spun next and drew the Augean stables. Although that archery test took the farm boy all five of the arrows he was allowed,^[27.04] he nevertheless succeeded in striking the bulls-eye and dropping “Flood Control Dam #3” to divert the creek. This was a “disqualified” Labor, as has been told of before, so Ezekiel spun again. His bonus spin decreed the Eighth Labor and a kyz kuu race.

When Chris and entourage reached the course, they found Scarlett waiting at the back line. She had apparently been injured recently, for she wore a heavy brace on one knee.

“Funny, I was expecting Sky,” one of the campers said.

“Which one is she?” Chris asked, for in most cases he did not think the interns significant enough to bother learning their names. He knew Alejandro and Dawn because they were important enough, and he had picked up a few other names by osmosis, but for the most part they were just nameless redshirts to him.

“Looks a little like Heather?” D.J. prompted.

“Oh, yeah, her,” Chris acknowledged. “Chef said we shouldn’t use her for this because she’s a great rider who could have left any of you in her dust. While that would have helped keep us on schedule, it would have been too predictable. Not good for ratings. According to Chef, Red here is only an okay rider, so anyone who goes up against her has a reasonable chance to catch her.”

“And I hear Zeke’s hot for her,” Izzy noted.

“The eating challenge made that pretty clear,” Gwen observed.

Owen chuckled and said, “The way she looked then, any dude who wasn’t hot for her isn’t into girls at all.”

Gwen instinctively looked to Trent for his reaction. The axboy noticed and did his best to look innocent, but in fact he had “noticed” the bunny waitress as much as the other boys that day.

“It’s not like that,” Ezekiel protested. “I just think she’s pretty, that’s all. It’s not like I want to marry her or anything.”

“Suit yourself,” Trent said. In a lower voice, he added, “But you’re out of your mind.”

Scarlett overheard none of this, for she was not near enough, but Ezekiel favored her with a smile and a nod as he trotted to his horse. She returned the gesture in kind before mounting her steed, and decided she had no aversion to kissing the farm boy if he could earn it; but by all that was holy, she would do her best to make him earn it.

Ezekiel mounted his horse and signaled that he was ready. On a whim, Scarlett undid her bun before starting her horse with a cry of, “Giddap, Rocinante!”^[27.05] The redheaded redshirt’s wild mane trailed behind like a pennant of fire as “Rocinante” galloped down the course.

Ezekiel was probably a better rider than Scarlett, and may also have had a more responsive mount. The prairie boy caught his quarry about fifteen meters from the finish, and Scarlett was content to give him the reward he had earned. Ezekiel claimed his prize with a light, chaste peck on the intern’s lips.

Ezekiel grinned like the cat that ate the canary. Scarlett found this amusing, and observed, “It appears you may have a particular affinity for redheads. I heard about your ‘exploration’ with Izzy.”

The farm boy’s grin changed from joyous to sheepish and his face turned the color of early cherries, which merely added to the redshirt’s amusement. Scarlett said, as she lightly ran a fingertip down the scar on Ezekiel’s cheek, “You’re cute when the dermal capillaries in your face dilate to accommodate increased blood flow,” Ezekiel looked confused, so the brainy intern explained, “When you’re blushing.”

The race course did not have a Wheel of Work because the corral was so close by, so Chris led the campers there and called Leshawna to take her second spin. The wheel stopped at an icon similar to but legally distinct from the Arkansas Razorbacks logo.^[27.06]

“The Fourth Labor,” Chris intoned, “was to capture the Erymanthian Boar^[27.07] alive. Heracles found that fantastic beast^[27.08] on the slopes of Mount Erymanthos, hence the name, but our version is at the dodgeball court.”

When the campers arrived at said venue, they saw a piglet wandering about the enclosed court. In one corner, piled against the retaining walls, was a large quantity of an unknown white substance.

Chris said, “Leshawna, your job is to catch that greased pig. Heracles caught the boar by driving it into deep snow, but even Canada doesn’t get a lot of snow in July, so Chef thoughtfully donated a bunch of flour as a substitute. Don’t worry, though, it won’t go to waste. Chef is very conscientious about recycling.”

“Eww!” cried the campers, for they understood all too well what “recycling” meant in this case.

“Anyway,” the host continued, “if you can drive the pig into that flour bank, not only will you slow it down, but the flour will also stick to the grease and make Piggy^[27.09] easier to grab. We think. I don’t know if anyone actually tested it.”

“There was that one intern who nearly died from a lungful of flour,” Hatchet explained helpfully. “The self-styled ‘evil genius’. Damn fool didn’t think he needed a dust mask.”^[27.10]

Heather summarized, “So, basically, the whole point of this lame challenge is to get us covered in grease and flour. Is Chef planning to cook us for dinner or something?”

Gwen said, “Don’t give him ideas.”

Leshawna’s task did not please her, of course, but neither was she dismayed. “Is this timed?” she asked.

“You have three minutes,” Chris answered. “If you haven’t managed it by then, it’s probably hopeless.”

It took Leshawna considerably less than three minutes. She emerged from the flour bank white as a ghost, but with her arms firmly gripping the struggling piglet. And unlike the hapless intern, Leshawna had not been too proud to wear a dust mask.

When the triumphant homegirl rejoined her colleagues, leaving the piglet to hungrily lick itself clean and an intern to groom the flour bank, Gwen smiled and said, “Now who’s the white girl?”

“You know as well as I do that nobody’s winning this game without getting dirty,” Leshawna explained. “Doing a Wacko Jacko impression^[27.11] is a small price to pay for a hundred grand.”

“Well, you did it in style,” Gwen assured her whitewashed friend.

“I’ll tell you something, though,” Leshawna added, “that pig sure didn’t smell very good. I think they got the grease from the kitchen grease traps.”

Chris called Izzy to summon destiny. The rehabbing redhead experimentally moved the wheel back and forth as she declaimed rhetorically, “Which job does Izzy want this round? Hmm … I know! Let’s play the ponies.”^[27.12] She spun fairly hard, but not excessively so, and after three and a third rotations, the Wheel of Work did indeed come to rest on the Eighth Labor icon.

“Called it,” Izzy announced smugly.^[27.13]

The “M” in “RCMP” stands for “Mounted”, and while the Mounties no longer make much use of horses, Izzy had long been fascinated with that aspect of their heritage. Shortly after joining the force, she had learned to ride horseback as a self-imposed initiation. She had some aptitude for it, and after she met Dawn, the mystic taught Izzy much about horses. In short, Izzy was easily the most skillful rider among the campers, and the Gothman riding against her on the kyz kuu course never had a chance.

Chris called Owen to spin. The Jolly White Giant would face the Hydra.

Whilst watching Courtney’s failure in this test, Owen had noticed something. The tanks were not quite the same size, suggesting that they had been repurposed from other jobs. The receiving tank seemed a bit wider than the snake tank, and this had given Owen an idea.

Following Courtney’s example after a fashion, the man-mountain stowed the flashlight in the back of his waistband, where his enormous hams would keep it in place.

“Eww!” cried the other campers, who now had an additional reason to hope the challenge would end before they had to face the Hydra.

Pushing his immense size and strength to their limits, Owen picked up the receiving tank and flipped it onto the snake tank like a wrestler body slamming his opponent. Next, he flipped over the entire snugly fitting assembly, which neatly dumped all the snakes into the receiving tank.

Although Owen had technically done what was required of him, one step remained. The starting tank had to be separated from its embrace with the receiving tank, and Owen, being a caring and compassionate lad, had a vivid picture in his mind’s eye of what might happen if interns were assigned this task.

Fortunately, the bottom of the starting tank, or the “plug” as it could now be called, protruded by well over a hand’s breadth. The forceful mating of the tanks had left the plug wedged tightly, but by patiently turning it back and forth, grunting and farting the while, the conscientious colossus slowly but inexorably worked the narrower tank out and reset the Labor for the next camper.

The other campers had been watching silently, mesmerized; but when Owen finished, they erupted into cheers.

“That was awesome!” Chris declared. “Owen, my man, you’ve earned yourself bonus invincibility! Now, you have a choice. You can quit while you’re ahead, and you won’t even have to sit in a pillory, or you can stay in if you still want to try for the trailer.”

“I … live for … the challenges!” Owen panted, for he was unused to sustained exertion. “I’m … still in.”

“Cool,” Chris pronounced. “The Hydra was one of the labors Eurystheus disqualified, because Heracles had help. His nephew, Iaulus, was the one who actually cauterized the neck stumps before the new heads could grow in. That means you get to spin again; but after the performance you just gave, I think we can give you a few minutes to catch your breath. Next up is—”

“Me!” Heather cried as she raised her hand. “I volunteer!”

“Didn’t see that coming,” the host admitted. “You aren’t usually this eager for the challenges, not that I’m complaining.”

“There’s method in my madness,” the dragon girl explained cryptically.

“Okay, then, take your spin.”

Heather grasped the wheel’s edge and experimentally moved it back and forth, as if to gauge its ease of movement. She spun weakly, clearly hoping for a specific result.

The wheel turned the bare minimum required by the rules—one full revolution—and stopped on the same icon it had started on.

“Hydra! Yes!” Heather cried in triumph as she pumped her fist.

“Seriously, bra?” Chris asked in disbelief. “That’s the most dangerous test in the whole challenge.”

“Not if the snakes are still dazed from what Owen did to them. Strike while the iron is hot.”

“You do know what you’re doing,” Chris acknowledged with an approving nod. “Go for it.” The host gripped the flashlight by its head as he offered it to Heather, but the queen bee quailed.

“Uh, can I get another flashlight?” she asked. “Or at least get that one washed?”

“You’re kidding, right?” the host replied.

“No, I am not!” Heather shot back as she seized the Owenated flashlight as close to the head as she might, and tore it from Chris’ grasp. She shoved the handle, marinated in Owen’s wet intestinal gases, at the Overlord’s face. “You know where this has been!”

Chris shuddered, but said, “Your problem, not mine.”

“Do you want me to make it your problem?” the dragon girl challenged.

“You’re wasting time,” Chris countered. “The snakes are recovering.”

“Fine,” Heather grumbled. Turning to the snake tank, she steeled herself and stuffed the flashlight between her breasts as Courtney had done, for she had no better place to put it. Unfortunately for her, this placed the desecrated device directly under her nose.

“Owen, you are so disgusting,” the dragon girl said softly to herself as the noxious aroma of the man-mountain’s inefficient digestion assailed her nostrils.

With watering eyes, Heather immediately went after the megasnake and its promise of invincibility. The great serpent did not resist, but proved too heavy for Heather to pull out of the tank. After a brief, futile struggle, Heather admitted defeat and contented herself with transferring the smaller snakes, which likewise offered little to no resistance. So it was that the queen bee buzzed on.

Chris said, “Well done, Heather. Before you take your bonus spin, let’s have Owen take his, since it looks like he’s recovered.” Heather did not object, not that it would have availed her if she had, and Owen did as he was bidden.

The man-mountain’s spin assigned him a stage challenge—the Ninth Labor, the Girdle of Eva. Heather took her bonus spin and landed again on the Hydra. Because the dragon girl had already completed the Second Labor, she was assigned the Third—the Ceryneian Hind.

.

A Loser’s Prerogative

At the corral, Bridgette dutifully took her station as Heather confidently chose the net. Heather was agile from her dancing, whereas Bridgette was inclined to clumsiness, so the dragon girl assumed the surfer would pose little challenge.

Bridgette, however, had other plans. Heather maneuvered her quarry into one end of the corral, much as Ezekiel had done; but when the dragon girl threw her net, Bridgette dodged. When Heather moved to retrieve the net, the surfer-cum-Hind casually trotted up to meet her.

Heather recognized the danger, for she remembered what had happened to Ezekiel, so she gave a little ground and warily eyed her adversary from a defensive crouch. Bridgette likewise retreated to stand guard over the net. After a few seconds of impasse, the golden surfer reached down to pick up the net.

“No!” Heather cried as she desperately rushed her adversary, for she knew she would have little chance without the net. Bridgette’s move was a mere feint, however, for unbeknownst to the campers, she was not allowed to deliberately touch the net.

The Hind met Heather’s charge in kind and tackled her. This was a risky move, for if the dragon girl managed to grapple Bridgette whilst they lay in the dust, Chris would surely count it as a capture. Luck was with the wave rider, though, for although the impact momentarily stunned both girls, Bridgette recovered first and quickly rolled away before regaining her feet.

Heather eventually made the capture, but only by chance. With time running out, she frantically chased Bridgette around the corral and tried to beat her with the net, with no apparent concern for whether the weights might be heavy enough to harm the wave rider. With only three seconds left, Heather’s final, desperate swing caught an antler tine and pulled Bridgette’s antlers off her head. Chris pronounced Heather the winner by disqualification, possibly for no other reason than because it amused him to do so.

Trent had the next spin, and the Wheel of Work decreed that he should face the Cretan Bull moose, so that is what he did. Barely a minute later, he returned triumphantly to his colleagues and said, “That was way too easy.”

“Yes, it was,” Chris grumbled. “Our Cretan Bull is starting to look like a paper tiger.”

“Or a paper moose,” Katie observed.

“Ha, ha, very funny,” the host retorted petulantly. “Take a spin, and we’ll see who has the last laugh.”

Chef said to Chris, “You’re just mad because you didn’t think of it.”

Katie dutifully summoned destiny, and drew the Third Labor. She chose the weighted net, as most of her fellow Laborers had done, and stepped into the corral to face the Golden Hind. Soon after, she quit the corral one step closer to a luxury trailer vacation and invincibility. The stick girl had captured Bridgette almost as easily as D.J. had, and for the selfsame reason: an untimely stumble.

Heather was incensed. “Why is everyone else having such an easy time with Bridgette?” she demanded.

“I didn’t have a particularly easy time,” Ezekiel pointed out.

“Yes, you did,” the queen bee retorted reflexively. “Even if she did kick you upside the head, she didn’t put up much of a fight after that.”

“Maybe you wore her out for me,” Katie offered diplomatically.

“Or maybe she’s taking dives,” Heather surmised darkly. “Chris, doesn’t this look the least bit suspicious to you?”

“There’s a joke there, I think,” the Arbiter of Fates said. “A surfer? Taking dives? You know … in the ocean?” The campers did not respond.

“Sheesh, tough room,” the host said. “To answer your question, Heather, we all know Bridgette can be clumsy … but if she is taking dives, that’s her prerogative.”

All the campers’ eyes were instantly on Chris, for his words sounded suspiciously like another twist. The host smiled his bland smile and said, a little louder lest anyone miss it, “You heard me, campers. The losers helping with today’s challenge, whom you so brutally kicked off the island, are allowed to play favorites if they want … so I hope you were nice to them. Or not. Either way works for me.”

As Heather grumbled, her newest ally, Ezekiel—another camper whose attitudes could easily land him on the wrong side of favorites playing—said to her, “I wouldn’t worry. Bridgette’s probably too nice to play favorites, and Eva’s probably too proud to take dives. Probably.”

Chris called Gwen to spin, and finally D.J. The Goth drew the Eleventh Labor and Atlas’ shell game, and the brickhouse drew the Tenth Labor and a confrontation with the comely giantess playing Geryon.

Only stage challenges remained for the second round, so the campers and their escorts returned to the amphitheater. When they arrived and the campers took their seats, Chris called forth Lindsay. Alejandro moved the Wheel to the dog icon for the camera.

“The Twelfth Labor,” the Arbiter of Fates intoned pedantically, “was to capture Cerberus.”

“Who’s ‘Caribou’?” asked the Crown Princess of Bimbonia.

“If you’ll let me finish,” Chris replied testily, “Cerberus^[27.14] was the part-dog, part-snake whatchamacallit who guarded the entrance to the underworld to prevent the dead from leaving. He’s usually depicted with three heads, but some sources have given him as many as a hundred. He was also said to have snakes growing out of his body, but sources disagree on how many there were and whether they were arranged in any special place or order.

“Hades, ruler of the underworld, allowed Heracles to ‘borrow’ Cerberus on the condition that Heracles could not use any kind of weapon to subdue him, presumably because Hades wanted his pooch back in one piece. Heracles’ heroic qualities notwithstanding, he did tend to leave death and destruction in his wake.”

“Much like a certain reality show host,” quipped Gwen.

“I know, I’m good,” said the reality show host in question. He handed Lindsay an ordinary dog collar and leash and said, “Your Labor is to walk the dog.”

“That doesn’t sound hard,” the uberbimbo observed innocently.

Chris sniggered. “No, it doesn’t sound hard at all.” He called theatrically to the backstage crew, “Enter Cerberus, Stage Left!”

An obviously robotic collie-sized monstrosity lumbered onto the stage with a series of short, high-pitched barks. The cybermutt had a patchwork look, with orange, carpetlike “fur” covering most of its body. Its semi-regulation three dog heads had small, rounded ears rather like a bear’s, and short, furless muzzles. The eyes were large red hemispheres, set very close.^[27.15] Small cybersnake foreparts arose from the outer heads, with a larger robosnake where a real dog’s tail would be. Curiously, the three reptilian heads looked more dragonlike than snakelike.

“Oh, it’s adorable!” Lindsay squealed in delight.

“It is kind of neat,” Gwen admitted to Trent, “but I wouldn’t have guessed it would be Lindsay’s thing.”

Cody and Duncan were pilloried in good spots to see backstage to where two interns stood, one with a remote control in hand and the other looking on silently.

“B and Scarlett,” Cody observed with admiration. “I might have known.” Those two redshirts had indeed built the beast, for B was a mechanical genius, as has been told of before, and Scarlett was equally adept with electronics. Moreover, they had built the mechamutt entirely from materials on hand, for the producers had been as tightfisted as usual. Being lowly interns, however, neither B nor Scarlett would ever get the credit they deserved for this remarkable feat of engineering.

Mechacerberus advanced on Lindsay, growling menacingly from the center head as the outer heads yapped. Scarlett made only occasional jabs at the remote control, for their creation was semiautonomous.

Not intelligent enough to be perturbed, Lindsay crouched low—not bending over, for her skirt was very short—and cooed, “Oh, don’t you growl at me. Head One and Head Three aren’t growling.”

Backstage, B and Scarlett exchanged disbelieving glances. Meanwhile, Lindsay reached out and began to scratch the outer heads behind their oscillating, bearlike ears. The dog-thing fell silent and rested its heads against Lindsay’s legs, for Scarlett had programmed it to behave much like her own dog.

“Who’s a good Khakibarn? You’re a good Khakibarn!” the uberbimbo cooed.

Scarlett again looked to B in disbelief. “Khaki Barn?”^[27.16]

B shrugged, but said nothing.

A few moments later, Lindsay fastened the collar around the center neck of the unresisting robot, and rose to her feet. “Wanna go walkies?”

Mechacerberus wagged its snake tail as Lindsay led it across the stage and advanced to the third round.

Chris called Owen to the stage for his delayed bonus Labor, the Girdle of Hippolyta.

As the man-mountain faced off against Eva, he said, “I’ll try not to hurt you.”

The musclegirl nodded curtly, for although she thought his concern misplaced, she understood that it was genuine. The Amazon queen was tougher than Owen, and she was stronger kilo for kilo, but there are times when size does matter. Owen outweighed Eva three to one at the very least; and thanks to big TV screen on the stage backdrop, she had seen his performance in the Hydra test. Eva regarded passive avoidance as cowardly, and that strategy was forbidden to her in any case, so all she could do was face her gargantuan foe and trust her quickness and experience to carry the day.

Eva decided on a counterpunching strategy, but Owen was quicker than anyone on the island had suspected. The man-mountain lunged and grabbed and simply flattened the bronze maiden beneath his vast bulk.

With no leverage to push Owen off, Eva was helpless. She struggled gamely but to no avail as Owen patiently worked his hands between her back and the mat. The Amazon’s struggles grew frantic, for her face was buried in the obese colossus’ breast, and his flaccid flesh sealed off her nose and mouth most efficiently.

When Owen’s fingers finally met over the belt fasteners, he unclipped the belt and rose with his prize, leaving Eva gasping for breath.

Chris summoned Gwen to play Atlas’ shell game, and the Goth caught the huge intern palming the crabapple. When Gwen returned to her seat, she whispered to Leshawna, so as not the tip off the campers who had yet to face Atlas, “You were right. He does have a tell.”^[27.17]

D.J., with the Tenth Labor, was the last Laborer of the round. He started across the stage to fetch the Cattle of Geryon, and the giantess Jasmine dutifully stepped from her alcove to bar his way.

“All right, almost-as-tall-as-me, dark and handsome, let’s see what you’ve got,” she challenged.

Jasmine’s brave talk notwithstanding, the odds were clearly not in her favor. Although she was no beanpole—she was, in fact, nicely proportioned and strong as an ox, as has been told of before—D.J. probably outweighed her by half again. No matter, the huge intern thought. Her job was to stop D.J. if she could, and she would not give the task any less than her best—so far as was consistent with martial chivalry, that is, for she had certain skills the brickhouse did not, but she was unwilling to use them against an opponent who could not respond in kind.

Jasmine lunged low, seeking to bind her adversary’s legs at the knees, but this did not avail her. With a single, fluid motion, D.J. sidestepped her rush, grabbed the giantess by the waist, hoisted her aloft and slung her over one shoulder. Jasmine pounded her captor’s back for the sake of appearances, but she knew well enough that she was helpless. That’s what I get for holding back, she thought.

As D.J. strolled to the now-undefended lectern, his winsome captive quipped, “I could get used to this. What are you doing after the challenge?”

“Nothing I couldn’t cancel,” the brickhouse admitted, “but Chris doesn’t like us fraternizing with the interns. I have to admit, though, you make it tempting.”

When D.J. pressed the lectern button to make the outcome official, Chris announced, “D.J. gets the goods … and the girl.” The host flashed a quick “I’m watching you” gesture at the dusky duo.

When D.J. returned to his seat, Chris announced, “Round Two is in the books. There were no further casualties, and we still have two Labors that nobody’s had to do yet. Let’s see if we can change that in Round Three. Trent, you’re up.”

After the axboy drew the Mares of Diomedes and Ezekiel’s spin assigned him the Erymanthian Boar, both location Labors, Gwen spun and drew the unenviable task of confronting Eva for the Girdle of Hippolyta.

It surprised no one when Chris explained that, because Gwen’s partially healed shoulder rendered her unfit to wrestle, she would face a test of quickness instead—a test which, the Lord of Wawanakwa gleefully informed her, would likely be just as difficult in its own way.

Gwen stepped into Eva’s proverbial parlor. The bronze maiden extended one arm and opened her hand, revealing a marble-sized pebble in her palm.

Eva said, “If you can snatch this—”

Gwen snatched without waiting for Eva to finish, hoping to catch the musclegirl off guard; but when the girls opened their hands, the pebble still lay in Eva’s.

“Nice try,” said the Amazon queen. “Now, if you’ll let me finish … if you can snatch this pebble from my hand, my girdle will be your prize. You had five tries to start. You have four now.”

Gwen tried again and again, with the same result. Her fourth attempt nearly brought success, for although she did not gain the pebble, neither could Eva hold it, and it fell to the mat. Chris declared that attempt a push,^[27.18] so Gwen still had two left.

That fourth try, however, was Gwen’s high-water mark. Her last two attempts were no more fruitful than her first, so Chris declared her out. Disappointed, but satisfied that she had been given a fair chance, Gwen went to her pillory without protest.

Heather answered the summons and won Atlas’s shell game. As with Trent, Ryan did not palm the crabapple, but Heather correctly guessed its location just the same.

When Lindsay spun, the Wheel came to rest on an icon similar to but legally distinct from the Toronto Blue Jays logo. This denoted the Sixth Labor, the Stymphalian Birds, which was a location challenge.

Izzy bounded to the stage at Chris’ summons. She spun the wheel theatrically, with all her strength. “Give me something fun!” she cried.

The wheel came to rest on the dog icon, denoting the Twelfth Labor and an encounter with Mechacerberus. “It’ll do, I suppose,” Izzy pronounced.

The off-kilter cop faced the backstage exit from whence the robot dog had first appeared. She squatted down, slapped her hands on her thighs a few times in a beckoning gesture, and called, “Here, doggie, doggie, doggie!”

The hardware hound dutifully lumbered out, dog heads growling and dragon-snake heads hissing, which dismayed Izzy not in the slightest. She jumped up, bounded about the mechanical monster and said, “Behold, the Izzy is faster than the hellhound.”

She was indeed faster. Scarlett quickly gave up trying to keep up with her, choosing instead to wait for an opportunity which was not long in coming. When Dizzy Izzy’s jumping about happened to bring her back in front of the mechanical mutt, Scarlett pressed a certain button on her remote control. The robot’s snake-wyrm mouths opened and three blue-white arcs of electrical energy leapt into Izzy’s body, causing her to convulse and laugh maniacally.

“Awe-some,” Chris pronounced.

The “shock treatment” ended after a couple of seconds, leaving Izzy crumpled in a heap on the mat. Suddenly, she sat bolt upright and said, “Hit me again!”^[27.19]

Backstage, B and Scarlett exchanged disbelieving glances. B shrugged, but said nothing, so the brainy redhead did as the demented redhead asked. Izzy laughed maniacally again.

When Izzy recovered from the second shock, she might have asked for a third; but she could see the robot’s handlers from her position, and B shook his head as Scarlett silently mouthed the words, “no more”. Izzy took this to mean Mechacerberus might not have a third good shock in him, so she quickly fastened the collar around the mechamutt’s left neck. The dog heads mimed panting, which lead the more perceptive campers to correctly guess that the robot was programmed to become docile once collared. Izzy briefly scratched the left wyrm head on its crown for the sake of role playing, and led the mechamutt across the stage.

Backstage, Chef Hatchet asked Scarlett, “Since when does Cerberus breathe lightning?”

The brainy redshirt explained, “B’s into kaiju movies. What can I say?”^[27.20]

B grinned sheepishly, but said nothing.

Scarlett saw that Izzy seemed about to present the robot dog to Chris, so she said, “Chef, for the sake of plausible deniability, it would probably be best if you did not see what’s about to happen here.”

Curious but game, Hatchet dutifully turned away. Scarlett pressed another button. On stage, Mechacerberus suddenly lifted a leg and sprayed a foul-smelling liquid onto Chris’ trousers. A gale of laughter swept the bleachers until an unfavorable breeze wafted the aroma over the campers.

“Ugh, what is that smell?” Heather asked rhetorically, wrinkling her nose in distaste.

Cody sniffed experimentally, and wished he had not. “My first guess would be butyric acid,” he explained, hoping to impress the ladies. “It’s a common ingredient in stink bombs, and it’s part of what makes vomit smell the way it does. It’s also in butter, go figure.”

Chris, meanwhile, had removed his shoes, socks and trousers as quickly as he might, before the mechamutt pee could soak through. That the cameras were still rolling troubled him not, for he knew he had a body worth showing off, and anything he did not want the viewing audience to see could be edited out in any case. “Interns!” he called. “Somebody go to my trailer and get me some new pants! And be quick about it, we’re on a schedule!” He turned to Izzy and said, “I ought to sack you for failing to curb your dog, but I’m going to assume you didn’t know this would happen. You pass.”

When the off-kilter cop returned to her seat, Leshawna said, “Girl, I thought you were back on your meds.”

“Doesn’t change my pleasure and pain responses,” Izzy explained. “Not most of them, anyway. Besides, full effect takes a few days.”

Owen drew the Stables and D.J. drew the Hydra, so they returned to their seats to wait for the stage Labors to finish. Leshawna’s spin assigned her the Tenth Labor and an encounter with the giantess Jasmine.

This is no time for subtlety, Leshawna thought as she took her starting position and got down on all fours like a sprinter awaiting the gun. Jasmine quit her alcove and assumed a defensive crouch in front of the lectern, for it was clear that Leshawna had no use for the theatrics and ceremony of the earlier Tenth Labor encounters.

At Chris’ signal, Leshawna exploded forward like a fullback diving into the line. Jasmine lunged forward to counter the homegirl’s locomotive rush, and they met with teeth-rattling impact. They fell the way Leshawna wanted, for although she had no weight advantage, she had a full head of steam and was much more solidly built than the willowy warrior opposing her. In a trice, Jasmine was flat on her back, but with a firm grip on Leshawna’s waist.

Crawling on hands and knees with much effort, Leshawna dragged them both the short distance to the lectern, and too late did the giant guardian guess her intent. Leshawna pulled down the lectern, which was neither anchored nor particularly heavy, and slapped her hand on the button before Jasmine could stop her. So it was that Leshawna advanced.

Katie was the last to spin, and drew the Girdle of Hippolyta. The stick girl was stronger than she looked, as has been told of before, but she knew she was no match for Eva. She turned to Chris and asked, “Do I have to wrestle her, or can I try that pebble thing?”

“Funny you should ask,” replied the Lord of Wawanakwa. “I wasn’t going to mention it until it came up, but all you girls have a choice. The boys don’t, because they deserve to be embarrassed if they can’t outman a girl, even a girl like Eva.”

“I’ll go with the pebble,” Katie said. Better a likely fail than a certain fail, she thought nervously.

Katie stepped into the ring with Eva, who held out her hand and showed the pebble. The bronze maiden intoned, “If you can snatch this pebble from my hand, my girdle will be your prize. You have five tries if you need them.”

Katie was faster than Gwen, and Eva seemed rather slower than before, so Katie succeeded on her third try.

“Yeah, maybe I went a little easy on Katie,” Eva later admitted in the confessional. “Maybe I felt sorry for her because she’s been such a cosmic chew toy here, or maybe I cut her some slack because she waited for me to say my lines and didn’t jump the gun like Gwen did. Whatever, Chris told me I’m allowed to play favorites as long as I don’t make it obvious. But give Katie credit … I didn’t go that easy on her.”

At the amphitheater, Chris announced, “Katie moves on! And now, time to go on location!”

Izzy lingered behind unnoticed, for she wanted a word with one of the helpers, but she caught up to the travelling Laborers—a party now known as the Chain Gang, thanks to Gwen—before anyone missed her.

.

The Last Labors Revealed

The first stop was the kyz kuu course, where Trent earned a kiss from the resident femme fatale, Scarlett. The next stop was the dodgeball court, where Ezekiel would try to catch the greased Erymanthian piglet.

Unbeknownst to anyone else, Bible Boy had a plan. When the clock started, he did not try to drive the piglet. Instead, he cupped his hands about his mouth and cried, “Suuuu-eeee! Pig! Pig! Pig!”

The piglet trotted up to Ezekiel and eyed him expectantly. The prairie boy reached into a pocket of his hoodless hoodie and brought forth a small apple he had saved from his breakfast, something he often did. This he offered to the piglet, which happily accepted his gift. Ezekiel picked up the contented little beast, which did not resist, and presented it to Chris. So it was that Ezekiel emerged with a couple of large grease stains on his hoodie, which was nevertheless as clean as the Fourth Labor would allow.

“Seriously?” Chris griped privately to Chef. “He’s barely dirty! How does that happen?”

Chef replied in a mildly reproving tone, “Kid grew up on a farm, and you’re surprised he’s a good hog caller?”

The host led his young charges to a small maple tree. Dawn sat cross-legged at its base, apparently meditating. Her eyes were closed, but it seemed entirely likely that she was monitoring the party with some kind of second sight. The venue’s Wheel of Work had the blue jay icon highlighted.

“The Sixth Labor,” Chris intoned, “was to drive off the Stymphalian Birds, which were meat eaters that had metal feathers they could shoot at people like arrows. That’s a little beyond our budget, so we’re going to simplify things.”

Chef Hatchet handed Lindsay a long-handled, oversized butterfly net suitable for catching small birds on the wing. Chris said, “There’s a flock of quail in that tree. Your challenge is to catch one. Simple, huh?”

Lindsay began a careful, deliberate approach. She was still a little way off when the birds became agitated and seemed about to flush.

“Wait for it,” Dawn admonished softly, her eyes still closed. “She has to get close enough to have a chance.”

Lindsay continued to approach. Finally, without opening an eye, the mystic whispered, “Any time.”

Anyone who has ever seen a large flock of quail flush at close range understands why quail hunting is not a pastime recommended for people with weak hearts. So it was that, when the flock burst from its bush like a bomb, Lindsay shrieked and fainted dead away. When the formerly blonde bombshell came to her senses, Chris announced, “Lindsay goes down in flames!”

Dawn whistled sharply, and the flock returned to her tree to await the next would-be birdcatcher.

Next on the agenda was Owen’s Augean Stables test. The gregarious gargantua was an avid hunter, as were his father and grandfather before him, so he had a good eye for distance. He calmly nailed the bullseye with his first arrow, and drew the Cattle of Geryon for his bonus Labor. Being a stage Labor, however, that would have to wait.

The Chain Gang repaired to the snake tanks for D.J.’s Hydra test. The gentle giant well remembered Owen’s inventive solution and resolved to do as the man-mountain had done. The main problem, D.J. thought, was that the snakes were now in the wider vat, so he was concerned that if he plugged it with the narrower receiving vat, he ran the risk of injuring any snakes that were too close to the edge. To minimize this danger, he would have to place the cap more gently than Owen had done.

D.J. tipped the “cap” onto its side and rolled it into position. He shuddered when he looked into the tank, for snakes were a phobia object of his, as has been told of before; and while he had managed to face his fear during the phobia challenge, snakes still creeped him out.

“Okay, slither dudes,” he said rhetorically. “I’ll try not to hurt you, but don’t get too close to the edge.” The gentle giant turned his attention back to the “plug” vat, so he did not notice when the snakes unaccountably curled up in the middle of their vat.

D.J. tilted the cap onto the snake tank and patiently worked it into position. Then, instead of crudely albeit spectacularly flipping the assembly over as Owen had done, D.J. lifted the assembly slowly and as gently as he might, stood it briefly on edge, and just as patiently inverted it.

Although the tanks were not mated as tightly as they had been after Owen’s more violent maneuvers and D.J. was the stronger of the two titans, the kind-hearted brickhouse found the upper tank harder to remove because he could not quite match Owen’s wingspan and also had to remove the wider tank instead of the narrower. In the end, though, he managed it and earned bonus invincibility. Like Owen, D.J. elected to continue the challenge in hope of winning the reward.

D.J.’s bonus Labor was the Erymanthian Boar, but that encounter was anticlimactic. The gentle giant merely walked over, knelt down and picked up the piglet, which seemed to have no particular desire to avoid him.

The irritated Chris said to his aide, “I’ll buy that Ezekiel had it easy because he knows how to call hogs, but what’s your explanation this time?”

“You got me,” Hatchet admitted with a shrug.

The Chain Gang returned to the stage for Owen’s bonus Labor, the Cattle of Geryon. This time, Jasmine did not hide in her alcove, the main purpose of which had been to surprise the first Laborer to face her. Instead, she took her place in front of the lectern from the start, in case anyone tried to copy Leshawna’s tactics.

When Owen took his place at the other side of the stage, Jasmine exclaimed, “Crikey! I didn’t think teenagers got that big!”

Owen replied, “I didn’t think girls got as big as you, so I guess we’re even. Ready?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be, mate.”

With a vibrant war cry, Owen dashed across the stage like a charging elephant. Jasmine came up to meet him, as she had with Leshawna, but with even less success. The man-mountain simply ran over the giantess, whom he outweighed two to one or more. He would one day do the same to another girl, for higher stakes, but that is another story for another time.

Chris recapped, “That’s three rounds in the books, and eight campers are still alive. Katie, how about you start the next round?”

“I’d have to sooner or later,” the Thin Twin replied.

The Fates decreed that Katie should face Cerberus. For the sake of role playing, she whistled to summon the mechamutt, which dutifully answered the summons at Scarlett’s behest. This time, the hardware hound lumbered out silently, except for the whirrs and clicks of its limbs, for Scarlett’s controller included a dial to randomize the robot’s personality for each Laborer. This mattered not in the end; for ditzy though she sometimes seemed, the Thin Twin was not stupid. Although she was not as fast as Izzy, Katie nevertheless thought the manic redhead’s tactic a good one, for Lindsay’s method seemed unlikely to work more than once.

With leash in hand, Katie feinted left, dashed right until she was past the dog heads, nimbly leapt over the hellhound’s back and quickly fastened the collar over Mechacerberus’ right neck before the tail snake could shock her or envenomate her or do whatever it might have done if given more time.

As Katie led the cybercanine across the stage, Cody recalled a famous panagram frequently used in teaching writing, typing and similar skills. He quipped to Courtney, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”^[27.21]

Ezekiel answered Chris’ summons. The wheel came to rest with the pointer on a drawing similar to but legally distinct from the Hamilton Tiger-Cats logo.^[27.22]

“I was wondering when somebody was going to hit that one,” Chris admitted. “The First Labor, and the last to be introduced in this challenge, is to kill the Nemean Lion. Believe me, I’d have loved to have someone do that literally, and strangle it like Heracles did, but Legal went and got all pissy.

“Whatever, the Nemean Lion was an infamous man-eater with a bulletproof hide. Well, arrow-proof at any rate. It could take the form of a lustworthy human woman to lure unsuspecting men to their doom, and that’s that basis for this challenge.

“Your challenge is based on a classic short story you’ve probably heard of: ‘The Lady, or the Tiger?’” Chris gestured to the stage backdrop, where a curtain opened to reveal a makeshift wall with two doors.

“In the story,” the host continued pedantically, “single men accused of certain crimes had to go through what’s called a ‘trial by ordeal’. In this case, the ordeal was to make a blind choice between two doors. One door concealed an eligible bachelorette appropriate to the accused man’s social station, and the other concealed a hungry tiger.

“If the accused opened the door with the tiger, that meant he was guilty, and his punishment was to get et. If he opened the door with the lady, that meant he was innocent, and marrying the chick on the spot was his reward. So yeah, it wasn’t a society where marrying for love was a priority.

“You get no clues, so you’ve got a 50-50 chance. That’s why we went with this setup. If enough campers have to do this one, it should theoretically knock out about half, which would help keep us on schedule.

“So which will it be, dude? The lady, or the tiger?”^[27.23]

Ezekiel turned away from the wall and fixed his gaze on Courtney in her pillory. The lawyer-to-be was confused at this for a moment, but quickly realized that her etiquette pupil was role playing. He knew the story and so was looking to her—the “princess”—for guidance.

Courtney subtly motioned, as the story described, toward the door to her right. Ezekiel opened the door to reveal … the TDI Aftermath hostess, Millie Stacey, in a simple white wedding dress. She sat preening on a stool.

“So, which is this? The lady, or the tiger?” the farm boy asked; for although the campers’ encounter with Millie during the cooking challenge had been pleasant enough, they knew her reputation.

“Good question, dude,” Chris said.

Millie declared with mock petulance, “Just for that, you don’t get the kiss I’m supposed to give you. Me-yow!” She punctuated her “meow” by crooking the fingers of one hand to depict bared claws, and flicking her wrist to suggest a scratch attack.

“Well, that stinks, eh?” Ezekiel griped with feeling; for although Millie Stacey was easily ten years older than the campers and was not the most pleasant person to be around, she was pretty enough that none of the boys had any reservations about the prospect of kissing her. Ezekiel, in particular, would have dearly loved to complete his “hat trick” of older women.

“Trust me, dude, you’re better off without it,” Chris said. “She’s the type that you can’t fall into her arms without falling into her hands. But sadly, you’re out. Don’t blame me, though, blame Mildred. You should have passed this test, but she decided to flunk you anyway.”

The protest everyone was expecting came not from Ezekiel, but from Millie. “Seriously, Chris? That’s lame, even for you.”

“It’s not my fault that you decided to be the predator when you were supposed to be the blushing bride. That’s on you, Mildred.”

“But I don’t go around enforcing lame technicalities, Chris McLame.”

“Do you know the real reason you wouldn’t give Ezekiel his kiss?” Chris challenged. “It’s because, deep down, you know he’s too good for you. Every dude on this island is too good for you, even that incompetent little intern who thinks he’s an evil genius.”

“Jealousy doesn’t become you, Chris,” Millie shot back. “I’m the best you’ve ever had or ever will have—and yes, I realize that doesn’t in and of itself refute your claim that every man here is too good for me.”

Chef Hatchet emerged from backstage. “That’s enough, children!” he thundered. “I’m out of popcorn, and as Chris is so fond of saying, we’re on a schedule.”

As Millie retired backstage, she said to Chef, “Thanks for letting me get the last word.”

“Any time,” he assured her. “Your zingers are better than his.”

After D.J.’s turn at the Wheel yielded a location challenge, Chris called Heather forward, and it pleased the Fates that she should face Jasmine for the Cattle of Geryon.

The sable giantess, looking a bit battered from her encounter with Owen but otherwise none the worse, assumed a wide stance as she had with Lindsay, seemingly daring Heather to try to duck between her legs. Heather feinted low and went high, intending to leap to victory with those long, strong dancer’s legs of hers, but this time Jasmine was not fooled. The giantess grabbed the dragon girl by her trailing leg and pinned her to the mat, but Heather somehow squirted out of Jasmine’s grasp and slapped her hand on the lectern button before the huge intern could grab her again.

“Crikey! Aren’t you a slippery one?” Jasmine exclaimed.

“I get that a lot,” Heather admitted.

Izzy spun next, then Leshawna and finally Trent, but the Wheel of Work assigned location Labors to all three, so the Chain Gang quit the amphitheater.

The first stop was Dawn’s tree, for the Fates had decreed that D.J. should face the Stymphalian Birds.

The gentle giant took net in hand and began to stalk as quietly as a cat. During his approach, he looked to Dawn to see if she intended to control the birds in any way; for if she was telling the flock when to flush, that moment of warning might make the difference. Their eyes met, and the mystic smiled. She spoke not, but with a strange hearing beyond hearing, D.J. heard the words, good luck.

As with Lindsay’s test, Dawn did not tell the flock precisely when to flush, but merely gave general guidance. As she had done for Lindsay, Dawn assured her feathered friends that D.J. meant them no harm, but there was something more. The mystic’s attitude toward Lindsay had been the neutrality of professional detachment, but she wanted D.J. to succeed; and while she did not speak of this to her flock, the birds may have sensed her desire on an empathic level. So it was that, when the flock flushed, several birds swooped within easy netting range, whether by accident or design.

This is not to say D.J. was handed a freebie; far from it. The flush startled him, despite his knowing it was coming and knowing what to expect, and he had to recover in time to net the birds that were so conveniently in range. This he did, though; and when he gently swung his net, a female quail became trapped therein.

Papageno - Magic Flute (Titled English version)

he gently swung his net

I am a lad of widespread fame,
And Devon Joseph^[27.24] is my name.
To tell the truth in simple words,
I make my living catching birds.

The moment they attract my eye,
I spread my net and in they fly.
I whistle on my Pipes of Pan
And that makes me a happy man.

Although I am a happy man,
I have in mind another plan.
I dearly love my feathered friends,
But that’s not where my interest ends.

To tell the truth, I’d like to find
A pretty bird of my own kind.
In fact, I’d like to fill my net
With all the pretty girls I’ve met.

Once all the girls were in my net,
I’d choose the fairest for my pet.
My sweetheart and my bride-to-be,
To love and care for tenderly.

I’d bring her cake and sugar plums,
And be content to eat the crumbs.
She’d share my little nest with me—
A happier pair could never be.

The campers came to the kyz kuu course for Owen’s date with Scarlett.

“Get ready to pucker up!” Owen called to her between chuckles.

“Talk is cheap, adipose atomizer!” the red rider called back. Scarlett was normally more cordial to the campers than this, but she, like the other challenge helpers, had been encouraged to trash talk, trick and otherwise make life difficult for the Laborers. In the interns’ cases, however, few if any of their lines would survive the final edit.

“What did she say?” Leshawna asked.

“I think she called him a fat gas generator,” Trent surmised.

“Didn’t think she knew him that well,” the homegirl admitted.

At Chris’ signal, Scarlett started down the course. Owen urged his own horse forward the very instant the flame-crested intern passed him.

Owen’s quick reflexes did not avail him. He was not necessarily the worse rider, but his 180-kilo corpus was enough to slow his steed appreciably. The race was never close, and Scarlett beat the man-mountain by 15 lengths if she beat him by one on that short course. She could have won by even more had she not eased her steed just before the finish, the better to come about quickly and chase her hapless opponent back to the start.

On the return, Scarlett caught Owen almost immediately and flogged him all the way back, although she struck no harder than the female campers had. Owen’s torment was done quickly enough, and Chris pronounced him out of the challenge. Owen already had bonus invincibility in hand, however, so he would be spared the indignity of the pillory.

The next stop was the Augean Stables, where Izzy took all five of her allotted shots. Many suspected the off-kilter cop of showing off, for she hit first the top of the outer ring, then the bottom, then the left edge, and finally the right edge before neatly skewering the bullseye with her final arrow.

Izzy’s bonus spin sent her into the corral to face the Golden Hind, where Weird Red became only the second Laborer to choose the lariat instead of the net. Izzy and Bridgette took their positions, and the all-too-familiar air horn blast started the clock.

Bridgette took exactly one step before she felt the lariat tighten around her trailing leg, just above the ankle. “Seriously?” she cried in disbelief. “Seriously?”

“Chris thought I was wasting time at the Stables,” Izzy explained apologetically, “so I figured I needed to get this one over with fast so he-who-must-be-obeyed^[27.25] doesn’t decide to make trouble for me. Sorry if I embarrassed you.”

“No, it’s not that,” Bridgette explained, “but sheesh, you didn’t even give me a chance.”

“That’s what Zeke told me,” Izzy replied with a wink.

“Did not need to know that.”

Izzy rejoined her fellow Laborers. Heather asked, “When did you become such a challenge beast?”

“When I went back on my meds,” the off-kilter cop explained. “I’d rather not have to take them, but I will say this for them: they do help me focus.”

Chef’s radio clamored for attention. When he answered, the entire group could hear a very agitated Beardo speaking rapidly and making sound effects indicating distress and urgency.

Hatchet closed the channel and announced, “We need to get to the snake tanks now!”

“But we’re not done here yet,” Chris protested. “Leshawna still has to do the Cretan Bull.”

“Now, Chris!” Hatchet thundered. “Unless you want to lose another intern!”^[27.26]

“What’s the big deal?” Chris asked obliviously, but no one was left to explain. Chef, the campers, the attending interns, Bridgette and the camera crew had dashed off in a body without so much as a “by your leave”, so the Supreme Overlord of Wawanakwa could do nothing but follow.

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

.

Twenty-eighth Night

The next morning, after they had breakfasted, Brett went to school whilst his mother went to earn their daily bread. That evening, after they had dined and Brett had attended to his homework, 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.

As the rescue party approached the Hydra venue, they immediately saw what had Beardo in such a tizzy: the man-eating supersnake had Carrie in its coils and was slowly but surely squeezing the life out of her as she wept in silent terror. The baby-faced bottle blonde would have cried out in her distress if she had enough air in her lungs to do so.

Beardo and Carrie were under orders that, if either should be attacked, the other was not to attempt a rescue without first calling for backup. Having made that call, the sound effects master could do nothing but watch his colleague suffer—asphyxiation by constriction is a slow, horrible way to die—because even a man as big and strong as he could not hope to uncoil such a vast serpent alone; and he was forbidden to harm it, not that he had the means to do it much harm, because it was effectively irreplaceable within the constraints of the show’s shooting schedule.

When Beardo saw the Chain Gang and its support staff approaching, he voiced an exultant “cavalry charge” bugle effect and finally grasped the snake’s tail to begin uncoiling it, for it was no longer futile to do so. By the time he reached the limit of what he could do alone, his hands would be joined by many others.

Uncoiling the snake required the five biggest, strongest people on hand—Beardo, Chef Hatchet, Owen, D.J. and, because Chris could not be bothered to help, Leshawna—but it was not overlong before Carrie was free. She was still in shock and only dimly aware of her surroundings, so no sooner were her lungs filled than she wailed in distress as sobs wracked her body. She would recover ere long, for although she had been terrified out of her mind, she was not seriously hurt.^[28.01]

After the rescuers returned the snake to its tank, Hatchet turned to Chris and said, “Now do you see why we need two interns to look after the snakes?” After the earlier incident, Hatchet had—over Chris’ objections—stationed two interns instead of one to manage the snakes.

When Carrie had recovered enough to think coherently, Hatchet told her to trade places with the intern stationed at the Erymanthian Boar challenge.

Chris said, “I was going to have Leshwana do her Cretan Bull challenge next, but since we’re here and Trent is scheduled to go up against the Hydra, he might as well do it now. Your loss, since that big snake is probably mad about getting robbed.”

“I’d have to sooner or later,” Trent said with a shrug. As he approached the snake tank, he added, more for the camera’s benefit than the snake’s, “You might as well chill, dude. You know that if you catch me, they won’t let you keep me.”

The great serpent eyed Trent warily, but seemed at least temporarily chastened by having its second breakfast^[28.02] taken from it, so it slithered along the tank’s perimeter in apparent desire to avoid Trent. The axboy surmised that the supersnake, even if docile, was more than he could handle, so he let it be. Learning also from Courtney’s failure, he picked up one of the smaller snakes as gently as he might, disdaining Courtney’s fast strike tactics. The serpent did not resist, and Trent transferred it without incident.

Trent transferred four more snakes without difficulty, but the sixth snake—conceivably the same one that had been Courtney’s downfall—objected to being handled. When Trent tried to work his hand underneath it, behind its throat, the snake began to slither away. With his other hand, the axboy grabbed the snake by its tail and pulled it back toward him, a maneuver snakes are poorly equipped to resist. Trent again tried to grasp the snake near its head, and this time the snake sank its teeth into his arm. Trent still had the snake by its tail, though, so it could not throw its coils around him.

Most constrictors are not venomous, so the bite of even a large one is painful but not especially dangerous if the snake cannot encoil its victim. Trent bore the pain stoically as he lifted the snake out of the tank. He placed it in the receiving tank, loosened his grip on its tail and waited. After a few moments, the snake seemed to understand his intent, whereupon it let go his arm and slithered away. Trent transferred the remaining two smaller snakes without further incident.

Trent’s bonus spin assigned him the Erymanthian Boar. Because that venue was closer than the corral, Chris chose to delay Leshawna’s challenge again. The Chain Gang arrived at the dodgeball court to find Carrie calmly tending the piglet, seemingly none the worse for her brush with death.

Trent’s battle with the boar went much as Leshawna’s had. After about two minutes of maneuvering, the flour-covered axboy presented the piglet to Chris, who pronounced his Labor a success.

The Chain Gang repaired to the corral, where Leshawna’s twice-delayed encounter with the Cretan Bull moose would conclude the fourth round. Once there, Leshawna became the first camper to have significant trouble with that test; for she approached the moose more aggressively than the others had, in keeping with her cocksure attitude, but that made the moose more aggressive as well. The homegirl belatedly realized she had bitten off more than she could chew, and she backed off, but the moose remained aggressive for a time. Fortunately for Leshawna, the Cretan Bull test was not timed, so she was able to wait for it to calm down, whilst making occasional moves toward it lest Chris decide that he had seen enough. Leshawna needed nearly ten minutes to snatch the ribbon; but in the end, she managed it.

Chris announced, “That’s it for Round Four. Six campers are still in the running. Captain Izzy, would you like to kick off the next round?”

“I’m running out of location challenges. I’d rather do a stage challenge this time,” Izzy replied as if that was the end of the matter.

“That’s fine, if that’s what the wheel shows,” Chris answered, “but it’s still your turn to spin.”

“I can control the wheel with my Jedi mind powers,”^[28.03] Izzy explained with an air of exaggerated mystery, “so even if I spin first, I won’t be doing my challenge first.”

“Now you’re just being difficult. Take your spin already,” Chris demanded impatiently.

The off-kilter cop finally did as she was told, and it pleased the Fates (or perhaps Izzy herself) that she should face Eva for the Girdle of Hippolyta, which was indeed a stage Labor. “Told you,” she said before the host could tell her not to.

“Fine,” Chris replied testily. “Heather, you’re up.”

After the dragon girl successfully netted a quail to pass the Stymphalian Birds test, the Wheel tasked Leshawna with the Augean Stables. The homegirl struck the bulls-eye with her fourth shot, and her bonus spin charged her to face Cerberus when the Chain Gang returned to the amphitheater.

D.J. and Katie’s spins also yielded stage challenges, the Girdle of Hippolyta and the Nemean Lion, respectively.

Trent closed the fifth round location challenges in the corral against the Golden Hind, where he chose the weighted net. Bridgette put up a spirited resistance and successfully dodged several throws, partly because Trent tended to throw too soon, from too far away, which gave the golden girl more time to react. With about thirty seconds left, though, Bridgette stumbled as she moved to dodge, and the net settled over her before she could scramble out of the way.

When the Chain Gang returned to the amphitheater, Chris said, “Our next batter is Izzy, for the Girdle of Hippolyta.”

“Cool. I’ll go with the pebble test,” the demented redhead said. Moments later, she stepped into the ring with Eva, who held out her hand and said her line.

Suddenly, the pebble was in Izzy’s hand. No one saw her strike, and Eva only felt it after the fact. The finished episode included a super-slow motion replay so the viewing audience could see that Izzy had indeed snatched the stone legitimately, as opposed to using some sort of trick. The finished episode also spliced in an Izzy confessional spot.

“I’ve had a lot of training in unarmed combat techniques,” the off-kilter cop explained in the confessional, “because I couldn’t carry weapons on my undercover assignments without tipping my hand. I was pretty sure I could beat Eva in a wrestling match, but I didn’t want to embarrass her, and I figured the pebble snatch was less likely to do that. Eva’s strength is her pride. Her quickness, not so much.”

Leshawna took the stage to capture Cerberus. She well knew that she was not as nimble as Izzy or Katie, so their avoidance tactics were unlikely to work for her, not that they had worked especially well for Izzy. Leshawna had never been much for subtlety, so she decided to take her chances with a direct approach.

Either Scarlett or the mechamutt’s own programming viewed Leshawna’s approach as a little too aggressive, so the homegirl received a painful electric shock. She responded reflexively with a backhand blow that struck off the nearest snake head. Sparks briefly flew from the stump, and Mechacerberus moved no more.

The homegirl looked backstage, and B responded with the characteristic shrug and upturned palms of helplessness, which was his way of saying the hardware hound was well and truly disabled. Leshawna, not seeing anything else she could do, hoisted the robot onto one shoulder, grunting with the effort; for although the mechamutt was not especially heavy, it weighed at least as much as a real dog of the same size.

When Leshawna presented the disabled dog to Chris, the host clucked his tongue. “Tsk, tsk. You were supposed to walk the dog, not kill it. And so—”

“Self-defense,” Izzy broke in. “It attacked first. Leshawna reacted instinctively. You can’t blame her for that.”

“Thanks, girl,” Leshawna said with feeling.

“Oh, I can blame her,” the Arbiter of Fates countered. “I’ve blamed people for less when the shooting schedule is at stake. What if someone else has to do the Twelfth Labor?”

“Make something up on the spot,” Izzy suggested. “You’ve done it before, and you’re actually pretty good at it.”

Whether Izzy actually regarded the host as a good improviser was beside the point; for Chris McLean was a vain man, as has been told of before, and as such was susceptible to flattery. “You make a good point,” he admitted, “and it’s possible the interns might be able to fix Cerberus.”

“That’s a good one,” Izzy said. “Fix the dog.”^[28.04]

“Laying it on a little thick, aren’t you?” Heather asked loudly enough for Chris to hear, for the dragon girl yet hoped the technicality-loving host would disqualify her enemy.

Chris pondered a moment and said, “Tell you what. We’ll preview the finale by having the losers vote.” He turned to said losers in their pillories and said, “Unemployed lame-os, it’s up to you. Should I let Leshawna stay in the challenge? Duncan?”

“Sure, give it to her.”

“Cody?”

“She’s a pretty girl. Do you really have to ask?”

“Well, yeah, I did, but I see your point. I’ll take that as a ‘yes’. Courtney?”

“You canned Zeke on a lamer technicality than that.” Chris opened his mouth as if to protest, but Courtney cut him off. “No, that wasn’t Millie Stacey’s fault, it was yours. Anyway, that’s why I’m voting ‘no’. Nothing personal, Leshawna.”

“I understand,” the homegirl admitted.

“Gwen?” prompted the host.

“Leshawna’s always been there for me,” said the Goth, “so I’m there for her. Let her stay.”

“Lindsay?”

As the formerly blonde bombshell opened her mouth to answer, she noticed a warning glare from Heather. A long moment later, Lindsay said, “I might get in trouble if I vote ‘yes’, so I have to vote ‘no’. Sorry, Madonna.”

“That’s okay,” Leshawna assured the sweet but weak-willed bombshell, “but you really should learn to stand up for yourself.”

Chris declaimed, “That’s three votes to keep Leshawna on, and two votes to sack her, with two losers yet to vote. It could still go either way. Ezekiel?”

The farm boy had guessed the nature of the ‘trouble’ Lindsay feared, so he also looked to his new ally. This time, Heather surmised the carrot would work better than the stick, so she made puppy dog eyes at him and silently mouthed the words, “please, no.”

Ezekiel understood that Heather had a very good gameplay-related reason for wanting Leshawna disqualified, even without their personal enmity. This was a chance to demonstrate his value as an ally. The farm boy said, “I have a … commitment to vote ‘no’.”

So that’s what Heather offered him, several campers thought. Courtney also thought, I wish I knew whether that’s good or bad.

Chris turned to the unpilloried campers, where the latest loser sat in freedom, and declaimed, “The vote is three to three. Owen, it’s all up to you. Does Leshawna still have a job, so to speak?”

“Yes,” the man-mountain said simply; for while he loved the challenges, he did not share the host’s love of drama.

“That’s it, then,” Chris said. “Leshawna, you’re still in the running for invincibility and a luxury trailer getaway, but consider yourself on probation. If there’s another marginal situation, I can’t guarantee I’ll be so charitable next time.” The host emphasized his warning with an “I’m watching you” gesture.

“D.J. has the Ninth Labor, the Girdle of Hippolyta,” the Arbiter of Fates declaimed as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

The brickhouse stepped into the ring with Eva and said, “Look at it this way. The underdog has nothing to lose, because they’re expected to lose.”

“Talk is cheap,” the musclegirl growled for the camera, but she knew he was right. Although Eva had more wrestling experience than D.J., the brickhouse was as quick as she, at least as strong, and much bigger. Eva knew she could not win this match with conventional tactics; ergo, she would have to do something D.J. did not expect.

The grapplers spent a few moments looking for an opening before D.J. attacked high and Eva dodged low, evading his grasp. Almost instantly, the bronze maiden sprang upright again. Now behind the brickhouse, she grabbed him by the waist and, using all her immense strength, body slammed him to the mat. She could not maintain her advantage, though, for D.J.’s size and strength enabled him to break her hold without much difficulty.

The pair quickly regained their feet and looked again for an opening. “First points to you,” D.J. said, “but we’re not keeping score here.”

“I know, right?” was all Eva said in reply; for in truth, what she had gained was not points toward a decision, but precious seconds toward her goal of running out the clock, and she had done so honorably.

Eva feinted from her crouch, but D.J. did not respond, for he and everyone else knew that Eva was playing defense. D.J. attacked high again, but this time anticipated Eva’s dodge and drove her to the mat. Yet he could not capitalize on his advantage, for “Hippolyta” escaped with a juggle that seemed nigh supernatural^[28.05] to those viewers who were not well-versed in wrestling’s finer points. The grapplers regained their feet, and D.J. was back to Square One.

D.J.’s third attack brought the turning point. This time, Eva did not try to dodge the brickhouse’s waist-high attack; but at the last possible moment, she spun about so D.J. found himself clinching her from behind. This was Eva’s unexpected, unconventional move; and before D.J. could react and either try to throw her or go for her belt, the bronze maiden fastened a vise-like grip on the brickhouse’s wrists—a grip so tight that she might have broken them had she been a little stronger or he more frail.

D.J. struggled briefly to free himself, but Eva had cannily gripped his right with her left and vice versa, which gave her the better leverage, so she had only to hold fast as the seconds ticked away.

Under normal wrestling rules, this gambit might have earned Eva a warning for passivity, not to mention a likely loss by decision, but Queen and Laborer were not operating under normal rules. D.J. did look to Chris, perhaps hoping for a passivity warning and a position reset, but the Arbiter of Fates seemed content to let the match take its natural course. Nor did Ref Hatchet see fit to intervene, for the bronze maiden had not shirked her duty to engage her foe.

With the clock running, and unable to free himself by main strength, D.J. reluctantly set aside his concern about possibly injuring his ex-teammate. “Sorry girl, but you leave me no choice,” he said a moment before he slammed them both to the mat, landing atop her like—fittingly for a brickhouse—the proverbial ton of bricks.

“Do your worst,” Eva gasped through the pain she had known would be hers. “I mean that. If you respect me, don’t hold back.”

D.J. struggled to his feet, for Eva holding him fast in their clinch posed an unusual balance problem. His conscience now clear, he body slammed her to the mat again and again. On the fifth slam, the seemingly invulnerable musclegirl actually cried out in pain, but she did not loosen her grip.

The ninth body slam brought the match to the end the Fates had ordained for it. D.J. finally succeeded in breaking Eva’s grip and freeing one hand. Now it was the bronze maiden who could do nothing as the brickhouse reached for her belt, intending to rip it off by main strength.

A horn sounded, and Chris called, “Time’s up! That was close, dude, but ‘close’ only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. You’re out.”

D.J. accepted his fate with good grace. He rose without protest and helped the battered Eva to her feet.^[28.06]

“Good job, Deej,” the Amazon said equably. “You almost had me.”

“I would have if I’d known more about wrestling,” the disappointed brickhouse lamented.

“Can’t argue with that.”

D.J. returned to his seat, but thanks to the bonus invincibility he had earned from the Hydra test, he was spared the indignity of the pillory.

Chris announced, “To finish off the fifth round, we have Katie and the Nemean Lion.”

“Just one question,” Katie said. “What if I don’t want to kiss Millie Stacey?”

“I hear that,” Chris answered “Frankly, I don’t know why anyone would want to.”

“Well, she is hot,” Owen offered.

“She’s also evil,” Chris countered.

“Has that ever stopped your girlfriends?” Heather asked pointedly.

Wild applause erupted from backstage.

“How would you like to be booted out of this challenge right now?” Chris asked darkly, for narcissists hate few things more than to be the butt of a joke.

“In other words, you don’t have a decent comeback,” Heather surmised.

“You go, girl!” Millie called from backstage.

“Shut up, Mildred!” Chris snapped.

“Uh, Chris?” Katie ventured timidly.

As the Lord of Wawanakwa tried to calm himself, Duncan said, “Hey, Katie, I’ve got an idea. If you earn a kiss from Millie Stacey, maybe you could have Zeke stand in for you. He was supposed to get one, but he got robbed.”

“Sounds good to me, eh?” Ezekiel seconded. “I’d be happy to be your designated kissee, if you want.”

Katie motioned to the farm boy with twin finger guns and said, “I’ll keep that in mind.”

It took all the self-control Courtney could muster to remain silent.

Chris had apparently regained control of himself, for his trademark bland smile was back in place. He said, “In answer to your question, Katie … no spoilers. We’ll just have to see what you get.”

When the host received word that the trial by ordeal was ready, Katie chose the door to her left. When she opened it, all the girls’ hearts raced, not just hers; for there, preening on the stool, sat none other than The Embodiment of Manly Beauty himself.

Justin smiled and said, “I’m told I’m supposed to give you that kiss I wasn’t able to give you before the Awake-a-thon.”^[28.07]

Katie ignored her fluttering heart as best she might and said, “I wish I could, but I can’t do that to Lindsay.”

Chris said in theatrical amazement, “You’re giving your Justin kiss to another girl? Now that’s a true friend.” He made a show of wiping away a nonexistent tear, then grinned wickedly and added, “Or maybe you’re just not into guys.”

“She’s into guys,” answered most of the other girls in unison, in a tone that said, “Believe me, she’s into guys.”

“Whatever,” Chris said, for he had merely been baiting Katie because he was Chris. “Justin, your bondage bride awaits in the pillory section. Don’t take too long, though. We’re—”

“Yeah, I know,” Justin broke in. “We’re on a schedule.”

The Embodiment of Manly Beauty approached Lindsay’s pillory with his distinctive series-of-poses gait. He removed his shirt and slowly squatted down before her, for the bleacher-and-pillory arrangement made it impractical to kneel. After Justin had thus allowed Lindsay to admire his sculpted torso, Wawanakwa’s Royal Couple of Beauty shared a couple of long kisses, tender and passionate in equal measure. Lindsay whispered something to her beautiful beau before he rose and replaced his shirt.

When Justin met with Katie during his return to the backstage, he said, “Thanks, Katie. We owe you one … and Lindsay has suggested a way to repay you.”

Before the Thin Twin could ask what he meant, the uberhunk swept her off her feet and treated her to one of the fieriest kisses in his repertoire as he held her in a deep dip. After a moment’s hesitation, Katie twined her arms around him lest he release her too quickly. In the fullness of time, Justin let her up for air and retired backstage as Katie staggered back to her seat, only dimly aware of her surroundings.

Justin later said in the confessional, “Katie gave as good as she got, in her own way. She’s going to make someone very happy.”

.

Game of Death

Chris announced, “That’s it for Round Five, and five are still alive.”

“How long did it take you to come up with that line?” someone asked from the bleachers.

Chris did not deign to reply. Instead, he said, “We’ll start Round Six with the only dude who’s still in the running. Trent, come take your spin.”

The axboy’s spin assigned him the Augean Stables, so he returned to his seat. Izzy spun next, and once again called her shot. This time, it pleased her to face Jasmine in the Tenth Labor, the Cattle of Geryon.

“Chris, since I’m not a ‘real’ contestant anymore, can I ask a favor?” the off-kilter cop pleaded.

“I can’t guarantee that I’ll grant it, but you can ask.”

“If you’ll turn off the clock for this one, Big Bertha^[28.08] and I will make it worth your while, not to mention the viewing audience’s.”

“Deal,” declared the Arbiter of Fates. “But I’ll hold you to that. If you don’t deliver, you’re out.”

Izzy bounded to the starting point and yelled, “Get her a chair!”

Jasmine presently emerged carrying a folding chair, which she placed in front of the lectern and sat upon. The giantess apparently understood why she should sit, for she grinned broadly and said, “This should be fun, but don’t count on the original outcome.”

Izzy approached and struck a theatrical martial arts readiness pose for a second or two, then attacked. Jasmine repelled her with a kick whilst still sitting in the chair. Izzy fairly flew backward and fell to the mat, but the fall became a roll, and in a trice Weird Red was back on her feet and assumed the same readiness pose as before. Jasmine stood and tossed the chair behind the lectern to get it out of the way, her eyes still fixed on her foe. Izzy advanced again, and the battle began in earnest.^[28.09]

Bruce Lee vs Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

the battle began in earnest

It quickly became apparent that both young women were skilled martial artists, albeit with very different styles. Izzy’s style emphasized constant motion and constant banter, in keeping with her manic nature, whereas Jasmine had a reach advantage against most opponents and a fighting style designed to take full advantage of that.^[28.10] She spoke less frequently, but was not silent. The attacks and counters tended to be more florid than would be called for in a serious fight, for the fighters were mindful of the camera’s needs and Izzy’s pledge.

The fight lasted six minutes if it lasted one, with no sign that either of these mythic warriors was holding anything back. In the end, though, a final flurry by Izzy put Jasmine down for the proverbial count. By the time the giantess recovered enough to continue, Izzy had pressed the lectern button and made off with the imaginary prize.

Chris said, “Well done, Izzy. It’s a pity we won’t have time to show most of that in the episode, but it’ll make an awesome clip for the show’s website.”

Izzy rejoined her colleagues. She seemed none the worse for wear, apart from a black eye and a few bruises here and there; but when she reached her seat, and no longer had to worry about a camera closeup, she sat down heavily and seemed to deflate.

“Worn out?” D.J. asked.

“I can’t even,” the off-kilter cop admitted, “I gave as good as I got, though, and that’s what matters.”

“You were amazing,” the brickhouse said, his voice frankly admiring. “You both were. Do you know if she’s one of the new interns? I don’t recall seeing her before.”

“Yeah, Jasmine’s one of the newbies. We met the day I came back to camp, and when we found out that we’re both into martial arts, we really hit it off. Being martial artists, naturally we knew Bruce Lee’s work. A couple of rounds ago, I was able to get a word with her, and she liked the idea of doing our own martial arts movie fight scene.”

Meanwhile, Chris had called Katie to the stage, and the Wheel decreed that the stick girl should play Atlas’ shell game in the Eleventh Labor. The gargantuan intern did not attempt to palm the crabapple when he shuffled the shells for Katie, but the naïve girl-child did not know how to interpret his tell. She named the center shell when the crabapple actually lay to her left, so she was out. Katie dutifully retired to the seventh pillory, which yawned open to receive her.^[28.11]

“And then there were four,” Chris intoned.

The Lord of Wawanakwa called Heather forward for to find her fate, and the dragon girl drew the Girdle of Hippolyta. Unsurprisingly, she chose the pebble test and succeeded on her second try.

“That should not have happened,” the Amazon queen lamented. “That bout with D.J. must have taken more out of me than I thought.”

“Excuses, excuses,” Heather snarked, but she did thank D.J. upon returning to her seat.

Leshawna had the last spin of the round, and drew the Hydra. With no more stage challenges in the queue, the Chain Gang, including the unpilloried losers D.J. and Owen, repaired to the Augean Stables for Trent’s Labor.

Trent was not a particularly good archer, but he nevertheless struck the bulls-eye with his final shot. His bonus spin assigned him the Nemean Lion, Wawanakwa style. In other words, the Lady or the Tiger; but that ordeal would have to wait, for it was not a field Labor.

The Chain Gang came to the snake tank for Leshawna’s test. Leshawna walked up to the snake tank, put her hands on her hips and glared at the big man-eater.

Snakes have no eyelids, so one might expect them to have little trouble winning a staredown, but Jormungandr Junior could not bear the attitude behind the homegirl’s gaze. The great serpent turned aside and showed every sign that it wished to avoid confrontation. Leshawna let it be and transferred the smaller snakes without incident, for she emulated Trent’s gentler and more successful approach as opposed to the more aggressive tack that had gotten Courtney into trouble.

Upon completing this task, Leshawna drew the Mares of Diomedes with her bonus spin. She won the first leg of her race against the Gothic horseman by a wider margin than Heather or Katie had done, although the race was still relatively close. The homegirl miscalculated on the return trip, however, and was hard pressed to recover in time to catch her quarry on the return leg, for the short course left little margin for error. Leshawna managed only one lash on her ghoulish adversary before the race ended, and she struck him hard out of desperation; but one lash was all the rules required, so the homegirl advanced.

Leshawna said to her nightmarish victim, “I’m sorry I had to hit you that hard. I was out of time.”

“It happens,” he replied in his listless monotone.

With only Trent’s bonus Labor remaining for the sixth round, the Chain Gang returned to the amphitheater. Chris called Trent to the stage, reminded the viewing audience that the axboy was about to attempt the Nemean Lion test, and said, “Which will it be? The Lady, or the Tiger?” He added under his breath, “More like ‘The Whore, or the Tiger?’” That bit would not appear in the finished episode, for obvious reasons, but the season’s DVD set would include it in a collection of outtakes.

Yeah, we get it. You don’t like your ex, Trent thought.

Trent opened the door to his right, and felt mixed emotions when Millie greeted him. On the one hand, he was glad to have chosen correctly. On the other, he did not particularly want to kiss another woman, even one as pretty as Millie Stacey—especially one as pretty as Millie Stacey—in front of Gwen, even though Gwen was unlikely to mind under the circumstances.

Millie stood and opened her arms invitingly to Trent, clearly intending that their kiss should look good for the cameras; but Trent said, “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but do we have to do this? My girlfriend is here.”

Millie answered, “You’ve seen how McLame is with technicalities. Are you sure it’s wise to turn me down?”

“Maybe not, but it would just feel weird to kiss you in front of my girlfriend.”

“Ah, I see, you don’t want her to feel inadequate,” Millie suggested loudly enough for Gwen to hear. The Goth rolled her eyes, and Trent bit his tongue with an effort.

Chris said, “There must be a kiss.”

Millie shrugged and said, “You heard him. Pucker up.” She opened her arms again and added, “And you might want to take notes. I know a thing or two about kissing.”

“She learned from the best,” Chris said as he pointed a thumb to himself.

Millie laughed uproariously and staggered back to her stool, which she clutched for support until her (probably faked) laughing fit subsided. When she was done, Trent chivalrously offered her a hand up.

“I have an idea, if you don’t mind,” the axboy said. “When Katie wasn’t willing to kiss Lindsay’s boyfriend, she had Lindsay stand in for her.”

“And you want someone to stand in for you,” Millie surmised. “Seriously? You think you can just pass me around like a piece of meat?” The Aftermath diva quickly looked to Chris, for she knew she had left herself open. Seeing that the Lord of Wawanakwa had indeed opened his mouth to speak, Millie warned, “Don’t say it, Chris.”

“A gourmet cut, if I may say so,” Trent ventured, hoping Millie would be as susceptible to flattery as Chris. “And I won’t contradict you if you want to say it’s my loss.”

“Nice recovery,” Millie said in a tone that suggested she was rather enjoying this banter. “I’ll accept your … proposal if I get to choose the stand-in.”

“Go for it,” Trent said. “I doubt any of those dudes would turn you down. I wouldn’t have if I wasn’t a taken man. But if I may make a suggestion, Ezekiel got robbed when he had to do this test.”

“I had him in mind,” Millie admitted. “Maybe I can make someone jealous.”

The woman in white catwalked to Ezekiel’s pillory with an exaggerated wiggle in her hips. She stooped down in front of the farm boy, which enabled him to see down the front of her dress (not that he saw anything unsuitable for general audiences) and said, “I was too hard on you before. I took your question as an insult when I probably should have taken it as a compliment … so pucker up, Bible Boy.”

Millie gave Ezekiel a kiss that seemed at once enthusiastic and dainty. She probably felt nothing, but was clearly pleased at the farm boy’s enthralled reaction.

As the Tiger Lady retired backstage, Ezekiel said to Duncan, who was pilloried in the row above him, “She kisses even better than Izzy.”

“Did not need to know that,” Courtney said.

Round Seven began with Leshawna facing Eva for the Girdle of Hippolyta. The big homegirl said, “Speed isn’t really my thing, so I’ll wrestle her for it.”

Eva grinned and nodded in approval. “I was hoping you would.”

As the two friends squared off, Eva said, “Don’t pull your punches. You know I won’t.”

Leshawna took that advice literally. She rushed left and, as Eva moved to counter, raised her powerful right arm and belted the Amazon queen across the chops.

“Can she do that?” Heather asked incredulously.

Eva staggered for a moment, stunned more by surprise than by the force of Leshawna’s blow, heavy though it was; and before she could recover, Leshawna’s locomotive rush sent both fighters to the mat. Eva grinned fiendishly, as if relishing the turn this match had taken; but before she could carry out whatever plan had brought that grin to her face, Leshawna had her hands on the belt and quickly unhooked it. The homegirl held her prize aloft as she rose to her feet.

“Leshawna moves on!” Chris proclaimed.

“Seriously, can she do that?” Heather asked again.

“I don’t have a problem with it,” Eva said as she rose to her feet.

“No rule against it,” Chris added.

“Why didn’t I think of that?” Duncan asked rhetorically.

“She probably would have expected you to try it, since you basically hate each other,” Cody observed.

“True,” Duncan admitted. “It worked for Leshawna because it was a surprise. Something tells me it wouldn’t work again.”

Meanwhile, Eva extended her hand to Leshawna and said, “I should have seen that coming. My bad.”

“In the dodgeball match, you said yourself that we have to be able to play tough against friends,” the homegirl said as she took Eva’s hand in hers and shook. “Just tell me you didn’t take a dive because we’re tight.”

“Don’t even think it. You won because you did something I didn’t expect,” Eva assured her dusky friend.

Heather came to the stage, took her spin, and drew the First Labor—the Laddy or the Tiger, representing the Nemean Lion. Luck was not with the dragon girl, though, and she opened the door to her left to reveal a large Russian Blue house cat. An extraordinarily friendly house cat; for the Nemean Blue ran toward the dragon with its tail held high and, with one mighty bound, twined its paws around her neck. Heather instinctively brought her forearm up to support the cat’s hind legs, lest it start raking her exposed midriff to maintain its position. The “man-eater” began sucking on Heather’s earlobe and purring ecstatically.^[28.12]

“Hmph, no accounting for taste,” Leshawna said.

“I know, right?” Gwen said softly, for she did not want Heather to overhear. Gwen still did not like the queen bee, and had not forgiven her for the Diary Incident, but Gwen had found life on the island a good deal more bearable since she and Heather had forged their surprisingly long-lived truce. That truce was fragile, though, and Gwen did not want to be the one to break it.

As the “Nemean Lion” continued to suck away, Heather smiled in spite of her disappointment. “I take it this means I’m out?”

“‘Fraid so,” Chris said.

“It could have been worse,” the dragon girl admitted. “I would have expected your ‘man-eating lion’ to be something a lot more painful or annoying or … something.”

“Believe me, I had plenty of ideas, but Legal said no … so don’t you dare think I’m going soft.”

“Certainly not,” Heather admitted as the “Nemean Lion” continued to “eat” her. “If you want us to think you’re irredeemably evil, I’m happy to oblige you.”

Jasmine emerged from backstage, walking with a slight limp which she did her best to conceal. “C’mere, you little ratbag,” she said affectionately as she carefully pried the cat off of Heather.

Jasmine would appear again quickly enough, for the Wheel of Work assigned the Tenth Labor to Trent. The axboy might have had trouble with a fresh Jasmine even if she confined herself to wrestling moves, but the Aboriginal giantess was still recovering from her mutually exhausting fight with Izzy, and her reaction time was noticeably slowed. Trent feinted left, went left and evaded Jasmine’s initial attempt to grapple him. She recovered and grabbed him about the waist on her second attempt, but by then Trent was close enough to his goal to pull down the lectern as Leshawna had done. Jasmine was able to restrain only one of Trent’s arms, so he pressed the button with the other and advanced.

Izzy was also still recovering from her martial arts tour de force, so she expressed a desire for a nonphysical test. Sure enough, her turn at the Wheel gave her the Eleventh Labor—the Golden Apples—and she won Atlas’ shell game by correctly picking the shell to her right.

Chris declaimed, “That’s it for Round Seven. We still have three hard workers going into the homestretch. Izzy, you’ve only done eight Labors, whereas Trent and Leshawna have each done nine, so that makes you the slacker … which means you’re up first.

Izzy controlled her spin, as she had done more often than not. She still wanted a bit more rest time, so she elected to take her chances with the least physical Labor remaining to her: the Laddy or the Tiger. She had to do it sometime, she reasoned; and if she failed, she would have all the rest time she wanted. If she succeeded, then so much the better, for she did not think any of her other remaining Labors were likely to stop her.

Presently, the off-kilter cop stood before the doors, trying to decide which to open. She listened intently in hope of gaining a clue, but the doors were heavily soundproofed. She sniffed experimentally, but could learn nothing because both Justin and the cat had been in both chambers. It would be a truly blind choice, just as Chris had intended.

With nothing to gain by continuing to dither, Izzy opened the door to her right and beheld the most beautiful sight she had ever seen. She had seen it many times before, of course, but she never tired of it.

Justin said softly, with an awestruck look, “You’re the most beautiful woman ever.”

“You don’t mean that, not that it isn’t nice to hear.”^[28.13]

“You got me,” the Embodiment of Manly Beauty admitted. “That would be Lindsay. Would you believe second most beautiful?”

“Yeah, right,” Izzy replied impishly. “I’d believe top third.”

“All right,” Justin said. He smirked devilishly and added, “The top third of you is the second most beautiful I’ve ever seen.”

“Ah, a tit man,” Izzy joked, for her mammaries were modest, although most people who had seen them uncovered would call them shapely. “Not that your lies aren’t fun to listen to, but you owe me a kiss. I’m sure Lindsay understands.”

“Just don’t enjoy it too much,” Lindsay called good-naturedly from her pillory.

Izzy turned to acknowledge that admonition, and bantered, “Ooh, that means I’m really going to have to hold back … or, I could teach him a new trick, and he can teach you when he gets a chance.”

“Do what you think is best,” the bondaged bombshell said. “I trust you … and him.”

Justin stood and opened his arms invitingly. Izzy glomped him, held him in a deep dip as Justin had done with Katie, and kissed him with great enthusiasm. This time, it was Justin who staggered back to his place.

As Izzy returned to her seat, she said, “Chris, I’m still behind in my Labor count, so I’d probably better do the Hydra next round. I’ll need a boombox or something for that.”

“You’ll have it,” Chris assured her.

“Wait a minute,” Leshawna broke in. “We can have props?”

“Within reason,” the host clarified. “Izzy’s request sounds reasonable.”

“Why didn’t you say anything about that before?” Heather challenged.

“Nobody asked.”

After Leshawna’s spin assigned her the Stymphalian Birds, Trent spun and drew Cerberus. On cue, the mechamutt sallied out, once more prepared for battle, for its electronic systems had required naught but a simple reboot. The snake head Leshawna had struck off was back in place and as functional as before, thanks to B’s mechanical wizardry, although the hasty patch job was plainly visible.^[28.14]

With this appearance, Mechacerberus showed its most aggressive personality yet, almost as if it were angry at Leshawna’s mistreatment of it and seeking to take out its frustrations on the first person it came across. It crouched down as if ready to spring, whilst all three dog heads growled menacingly and all three snake heads reared with mouths open, ready to bite or zap any Laborer foolish enough to come within range. After a few moments, the hardware hound rose from its crouch and began to stalk its prey.

Trent kept a respectful distance as he considered his tactics. Presently, he had an idea. As quickly as he might, he pulled up one of the mats covering the stage floor and held it before him like the shield of fabled Aias.^[28.15] The mat was rather larger than the axboy could wield easily, but he managed it just the same.

Scarlett quickly divined Trent’s intent and commanded Mechacerberus to charge, but the hardware hound was not built for speed. Nevertheless, dog and Laborer joined battle quickly enough. The robot seized the mat in its dog jaws and tried to wrest it from Trent’s grip, to open a clear line of fire for the lightning-breathing snake heads, but the Achaean axboy held his shield fast.

When Trent thought the moment right, he half-threw, half-draped his shield mat over the robot’s body. The mechamutt’s snake heads spat thunderbolts three, but the mat’s foam rubber filling was thick enough to resist them.

Trent quickly stepped aside and knelt down to attach his collar to the nearest dog neck before Mechacerberus could work its way out from beneath the mat, which Scarlett was furiously working her remote control to achieve. On Trent’s first attempt, he got a painful jolt when an electric arc struck the mat too close to his hand. On his second try, he was shocked again; but this second shock was less painful than the first, despite actually striking his hand. A third attempt brought only mild discomfort from a near miss, and the mechamutt’s movements began to slow noticeably; for Scarlett knew Trent would be the last camper to face the Twelfth Labor, so she was holding nothing in reserve.

With that third attempt, Trent succeeded in collaring the robot, and it became docile. The axboy pulled the mat off the hardware hound and led it across the stage, thereby fulfilling the requirements of the Twelfth Labor.

.

The Day the Magic Died^[28.16]

The Chain Gang went to Dawn’s tree, where Leshawna succeeded in capturing a Stymphalian Bird. Chris gave Trent the first spin of the ninth round, and the Wheel of Work came to rest on the Hydra icon. Trent had already completed the second through fifth Labors, as has been told of before, so he, like Leshawna, faced the Stymphalian Birds; and he, like Leshawna, completed that assignment without undue difficulty.

Chris said, “Izzy, you wanted to do the Second Labor this round, so let’s see if you can get it.”

“No problem,” Izzy said. “I’ve got a two in three chance without even trying.”

The off-kilter cop dutifully spun the Wheel of Work, which stopped on the Seventh Labor. Izzy had already faced the Cretan Bull; so by rule, Chris moved the wheel clockwise until he came to the first test she had not done: The Hydra.

The Chain Gang arrived at the Hydra venue to find Izzy’s boombox waiting. When the off-kilter cop turned it on, it began to play “I’m Being Eaten by a Boa Constrictor”.^[28.17]

Shel Silverstein performs "Boa Constrictor" from Where the Sidewalk Ends - The Thinkpierce Store

"Very funny, Chris," Izzy said

“Very funny, Chris,” Izzy said with a theatrically outraged glare.

“I thought so, too,” the host replied, missing the sarcasm or choosing to ignore it. “But you didn’t ask for any music, so we had no idea what you wanted.”

“My first guess would be snake charming music,” Trent ventured.

“Kind of,” Izzy admitted. “Fortunately I came prepared.” She reached under her skirt, drew forth a CD and popped it into the player.

As the boombox began to play “In the Hall of the Mountain King”,^[28.18] the off-kilter cop approached the snake tank, swaying sinuously to the initially relaxed tempo. She declaimed, “I call this ‘The Dance of the Rattlesnake’.”^[28.19]

IN THE HALL OF THE MOUNTAIN KING - Grieg.avi

the off-kilter cop approached the snake tank

“Shouldn’t it be ‘The Dance of the Boa Constrictor’ or the ‘Anaconda Mambo’ or something like that?” D.J. asked.

“Shush, you. This isn’t a request program,” Izzy replied. She began her dance and said to the snakes, “Look into my eyes. What do you see?” She may have said much else in a babbling, incoherent fashion, or perhaps she was simply making noises, but it mattered not; for although snakes are sensitive to vibrations, they are quite deaf, and would not be likely to understand human speech in any case. What they did understand, or thought they understood, was the swaying of Izzy’s body. This they mimicked in their own fashion, seemingly hypnotized.

Russian Sailor Dance - Yablochko Яблочко. Igor Moiseev's Ensemble (21.12.2016)

Izzy continued to dance

Izzy continued to dance as she carried the smaller snakes, one by one, to the receiving tank. Her snake charming CD was a mix, and segued from “In the Hall of the Mountain King” to the "Russian Sailor Dance", during which she transferred the last of the eight. The supersnake she left where it was, for the same reason Trent had left it: she deemed it too massive for her to move, although it was no more resistant to her dance than its smaller kin.

Izzy’s bonus spin assigned her the Fourth Labor, so the Chain Gang repaired to the dodgeball court for her encounter with the Erymanthian Boar. When the clock started, the off-kilter cop shrieked and whooped and pranced about in her inimitably manic manner, which sent the terrified piglet dashing deep into the flour bank in hope that Izzy would not follow it there.

No such luck, of course. Izzy gleefully ran toward the struggling piglet and dove and knifed her way into the flour bank so efficiently that for a few moments she was completely hidden from view. Suddenly, she erupted from the flour, covered from head to toe, holding the confused piglet which she had captured from below.

Izzy presented the piglet to Chris and said, “If you’re going to do something, you might as well do it with flair.”

“I hear you, Izz,” the host replied with a grin.

Leshawna spun the Wheel, and the Chain Gang hiked to the corral so she could try her luck with the Golden Hind. Leshawna chose the net, as most of her colleagues had done, and Bridgette proceeded to run her ragged. The homegirl did eventually succeed in netting the wave rider, but nobody doubted that Bridgette had made her work for it.

Chris led the Chain Gang back to the amphitheater. There he declaimed, “After nine rounds, we have three hard workers going to sudden death: Trent, Izzy and Leshawna. Yes, I know I said at the start that the twelfth round would be sudden death, but that was because I didn’t want to give away the twist with the ‘disqualified’ Labors and the double dips. The fact is, I knew perfectly well that this challenge couldn’t go twelve rounds and probably wouldn’t go eleven before someone got all twelve Labors done.

“Anywho, Trent’s only remaining Labor is the Girdle of Hippolyta, Izzy has done everything except the Stymphalian Birds, and Leshawna is missing only the Laddy or the Tiger.”

The Arbiter of Fates pulled some coins from his pocket and handed one to each of the three remaining Laborers. Nor were they ordinary coins. Struck from silver bullion for the show in case a coin flip should be needed for any reason, they bore Chris’ face as the “head” and the TDI logo as the “tail”. At the end of the season, a coin of this type would be part of the collection of branded tchotchkes each camper received as mementos of their summer in the sun.

“Each of you, flip your coin and tell me whether it comes up ‘heads’ or ‘tails’,” the Arbiter of Fates instructed.

The campers did as they were bidden. “Heads,” said Trent.

“Tails,” said Izzy.

“Heads,” said Leshawna.

Chris opened his mouth as if to speak, but Izzy shrieked, “Don’t say it!” When the host closed his mouth and eyed the off-kilter cop warily, Izzy explained, “Because I want to.” She drew herself to her full height and declaimed, as if delivering a Shakespeare soliloquy, “Izzy is the odd camper out. How fitting.” She looked to her pilloried campmates and challenged, “Be honest. You were all thinking that, right?”

“It’s a fair cop. So to speak,” Cody admitted.

“O … kay,” Chris said uncertainly. “I was about to say that being the odd camper meant you would go first, with a chance to win before Trent or Leshawna even got a chance; but sadly, you’ve eliminated yourself.”^[28.20]

“What?” Izzy demanded indignantly. “How did I …?” Then, as if a switch had been flipped, she calmed and said, “Oh, yeah. You and your technicalities … or me and my conclusion jumping. Whatever. Oops.”

Accepting the consequences of her blunder in good grace, Izzy turned to Trent and Leshawna and said, “Oh, well, them’s the breaks. Good luck, whoever goes first. We wouldn’t want to see a winner by default.”

Chef Hatchet collected the coins and gave them back to Chris. The Arbiter of Fates flipped one of these high into the air and commanded, “Leshawna! Call it!”

“Tails,” the homegirl said.

When the coin came to rest, it revealed the grinning visage of Chris McLean.

“It is heads,” Hatchet pronounced.

Chris announced grandly, “And now, the main event! Trent versus Queen Hippolyta for all the marbles!”

Eva strode onto the stage and assumed a fighter’s crouch.

“Begin,” Hatchet commanded.

If Duncan and D.J. could not defeat Eva, Trent thought, what chance did he have? Granted, Leshawna had beaten her, but Eva had brought that on herself by underestimating the homegirl. Trent did not think the Amazon queen would make that mistake again.

With nothing to lose, Trent decided to try a different tack.

The axboy casually walked up to the Amazon, who glared defiantly at him from her crouch. Without warning, he knelt before her, averted his eyes, spread his arms in a gesture of supplication, and declaimed, “Your glory, if it’s not irredeemably presumptuous of me to ask, may I please have your girdle?”

Eva cracked a wry smile as she stood erect. “Sure, why not?” she said, and reached behind her back to unfasten her belt. As Trent rose to his feet, “Queen Hippolyta” handed him his prize.

“Trent wins the challenge!” Chris pronounced.

“You’re frontin’ me!” Leshawna cried. Turning to Chris with an accusatory glare, she protested, “You said she was supposed to resist!”

“I said to expect her to resist. I never said she had to,” the Arbiter of Fates reminded her.

“I was briefed before the challenge,” Eva explained. “Apparently, in some versions of the story, Hippolyta initially liked Hercules^[28.21] and was willing to give him the girdle without a fight until Hera stirred up her people, so I was told to hand that belt over freely to the first one of you who asked for it nicely. Sorry, Shawnee.”

Leshawna continued to fume, for this seemed a cheap way to lose the challenge, but there was no help for it. Trickery by the host was par for the course in this game.

Chris turned to his guest star. “Well done, Eva,” he said with a genuine smile. “For your assistance, you and the other ‘guest star’ ex-campers may join me and Chef for dinner tonight. Steak and lobster. Or, in Bridgette’s case, eggplant.”

“Awesome,” Eva pronounced. As she exited stage right, the “queen for a day” waved to the campers and said, “So long, guys, it’s been fun. Nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live here.”

“She’s mellowed,” Lindsay observed approvingly. “Looks like hooking up with Nigel has done her some good.”

After a late lunch, Chris sat in a lawn chair near the dock, gazing out over the lake as he sipped hot buttered rum. Chef’s secret recipe, it was, and it had been Chris’ favorite for years, ever since he had first met Hatchet in the studio cafeteria whilst filming Strawberry Bitch. No one could mix drinks like Chef, Chris thought, and that skill was one reason the Lord of Wawanakwa had insisted on having Hatchet on his staff for Total Drama Island.

It had been an entertaining challenge, Chris mused, with he getting to spring plenty of ratings-friendly surprises on the campers, and the teens rising to the occasion with surprises of their own. In particular, the host felt confident that he had made the right choice in bringing back Trent and Owen instead of the more popular Noah and Justin.

Ever the narcissist, Chris was taking credit, even in the privacy of his own thoughts, for a fortuitous decision that had not been his. He had, in fact, asked for Noah when the bookworm won a viewer poll on the show’s website, but the producers had overruled him for budgetary reasons. That is to say, the losers’ compound served better food than the campers or even the interns got on the island, and Owen had been eating the producers out of house and home.

Mentally reviewing his performance, Chris did recall one mistake: he had called attention to an intern being eaten by the megasnake, and that bit would have to be edited out so any future intern recruits would not know.

“Mr. McLean, we need to talk.”

His reverie interrupted, the irritated host turned toward the voice. The formal address identified the speaker as an intern, but what intern would dare address him in that tone? Oh, the witch, he thought when he saw the scowling, wraithlike girl standing beside him. Who does she think she is?

“Interns don’t give orders, you take them,” the host declared archly as he stood, the better to tower over her. Chris was not especially tall, as has been told of before, but he was still a good deal taller than the diminutive mystic.

“Scott was killed in today’s challenge,” Dawn stated.

“Well, you do have hazardous work, but we have plenty more.”

“And Dave yesterday—the same way—when we were setting up. And I heard that if you had your way, we would have lost Carrie, too.” On the point of tears, the mystic said, “I begged you to let me manage the snakes. Why wouldn’t you? Chef was willing to.”

“We needed you to round up the ‘Stymphalian Birds’, since your animal-summoning sidekick up and skipped out on us. Seriously, ascending to a higher plane of existence on company time? What’s up with that?”

“That big snake is dangerous! The birds aren’t!”

“Exactly. Your skills are too valuable. I couldn’t risk losing you. I thought you understood that,” the Lord of Wawanakwa explained, seemingly oblivious to the little redshirt’s distress.

“It would not have harmed me!” the wraith-girl screamed. “I thought you understood that!”

Chris was taken aback for a moment, for neither he nor anyone else on the island had ever heard Dawn raise her voice in anger, but he recovered quickly. “Maybe not, but I couldn’t take that chance,” he explained with audible exasperation. “If anything happened to you, I’d have had to hire a professional animal handler. Do you have any idea what they cost?”

When Dawn did not respond immediately, Chris played what he considered the trump card. “Besides, if the campers had seen you at the Hydra challenge, they might have thought they weren’t in any real danger. That wouldn’t have been good for ratings.”

Chris did not notice, or perhaps it simply did not register, that the sky behind the mystic was darkening as if with a gathering storm. He did notice that her misting eyes had begun to shine—indeed, to glow—but that was surely just a trick of the light. Magically gifted she might be, but she was still human. Presumably.

As tears of rage finally began to stream down Dawn’s cheeks, she raised her arm and pointed an accusing finger at her evil overlord. She declared, “Chris McLean, your aura is blacker than your hair dye. You are a blight on this world.”

Der Hölle Rache

She declared, “Chris McLean, your aura is blacker than your hair dye."

The mystic turned her back on Chris in disgust and said, “Get him, gals.”

The sky had darkened not with storm clouds, but with a vast swarm of horseflies so enormous that two could not have stood end to end on a man’s finger. Moreover, they were all female, for it is the females that must feed on blood to mature their eggs; and a horsefly’s bite is not the bloodless puncture of a mosquito bite, but a bloody, slashing bite. And they had all come for the blood of Chris McLean.

Dawn stalked off as Chris fled screaming to his trailer.^[28.22]

Hell’s vengeance boils in my heart;
Death and despair blaze around me!
Disowned be forever!
Forsaken be forever!
Shattered be forever!
All the bonds of nature—
Hear! Hear! Hear!
Gods of vengeance, hear the mother’s oath!

Dawn went to the interns’ quarters and packed her bags as quickly as she might, for she intended to leave the island. Even if Chris would allow her to stay after what she had done to him, she felt she could not stay in good conscience.

She went to the dock and stood at the end, at the spot where the Boat of Losers received castoff campers after the elimination ceremony. There she stood for a time, looking out over the lake, watching as a mound rose above the water’s surface in the distance and began to move toward her.

“Angie, wait up!”

Dawn turned back toward the camp and saw Izzy sprinting toward her with D.J. and Katie. Leonard trailed a little way behind, gamely trying to keep up with the three campers.

The mystic smiled a bit as she trotted back to meet them. She had not foreseen this, but told herself that perhaps she should have. No matter; whether their purpose was to see her off or to persuade her to stay, she was pleased to see them.

“I heard you stuck it to our evil overlord,” Izzy explained when they met at the base of the dock. “Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”

“I know, right?” Katie seconded. She turned to Dawn and said, her voice quavering with disappointment, “Is it true you’re leaving us?”

“I’m afraid so,” Dawn answered ruefully. “Not that I’m not glad to see you, but how did you know?”

“Izzy told me and Leonard,” Katie explained, “but she hasn’t told us how she knew.”

“Nothing simpler,” Izzy explained, “Angie told Perola, Perola told Sunshine, Sunshine told me, and so it was done.”

“I might have known,” Dawn admitted. She turned to her fellow intern and said, “Leonard, I haven’t forgotten my promise. I’ll be in touch.”

The diminutive mystic craned her neck a bit to meet the gaze of the towering brickhouse who rounded out the sendoff committee, and she seemed to flush slightly. “Did you hear about it through the grapevine, like the others?”

D.J. opened his mouth to answer, but stopped short. After a moment, he admitted, “Now that you mention it, I don’t know. I could have sworn somebody told me, but I can’t for the life of me remember who.”

Dawn cocked her head as if listening to voices only she could hear—a distinct possibility, her companions thought—and then looked intently at D.J. for a few moments. Neither he nor anyone else saw fit to interrupt her. Finally, the wraith-girl smiled warmly. “It seems I may have given you more that night than I realized,” she said enigmatically. “I will be very interested to see where this leads.”

“Another riddle,” D.J. chided gently. “I take it that’s your way of saying you’ll keep in touch. I would like that.”

“So what did you get from her ‘that night’, Deej?” Katie needled. “Sounds naughty.”

“No, it wasn’t like that,” Dawn said. “But now that you mention it, I suppose it did sound rather salacious.”

“That wouldn’t happen if you came right out and said what you mean,” D.J. chided again, but his smile took the sting from his words.

“And if she did, what would happen to that air of mystery that men can’t resist?” Izzy countered.

“Me, irresistible to men?” Dawn asked with audible amusement. “You give me far too much credit.”

The approaching mound on the water was quite near, and now identifiable as the carapace of a colossal snapping turtle. The bus-sized turtle presently hauled itself halfway onto shore at the base of the dock.

“My ride is here,” Dawn explained. “Katie, I’m glad I could give you what help I did. I’d have done more if it had been within my power.”

“I’ll miss you,” Katie said. “Do you really have to go?”

“Yes, I’m afraid I must. Remember, you must not take that necklace off for any reason until you leave the island for good.”

Dawn turned to Izzy. “Until next time, Becky. I’m glad you got your legal problems cleared up. Sounds to me that they let you off pretty easy.”

“I know, right?” Izzy replied.

“Look after her, Sunshine. Don’t let her get in too much trouble, okay?” Dawn smiled knowingly, as if well aware that she was setting the proverbial fox to guard the henhouse.

Having nothing more to say, the mystic made the short leap from the dock onto the turtle’s back. She sat cross-legged at the base of her steed’s neck, and the huge reptile eased itself back into the water. The turtle came about and swam away with such power that it and its passenger were soon lost to view.^[28.23]

Down the slippery slopes of Myrtle,
Where the early pumpkins blow,
To the calm and silent sea
Fled the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò.
There, beyond the Bay of Gurtle,
Lay a large and lively Turtle,—
You're the Cove,' he said, 'for me
On your back beyond the sea,
Turtle, you shall carry me!'
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò,
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò.

Through the silent-roaring ocean
Did the Turtle swiftly go;
Holding fast upon his shell
Rode the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò.
With a sad primæval motion
Towards the sunset isles of Boshen
Still the Turtle bore him well.
Holding fast upon his shell,
Lady Jingly Jones, farewell!
Sang the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò,
Sang the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò.

Leonard and the campers returned to their own affairs by whatever paths seemed best to them. When D.J. happened to pass near the boy’s cabin, Trent stepped out and called, with a beckoning gesture, “Yo, dude! Got a minute?”

Time was heavy on D.J.’s hands, so he went into the cabin to find out what Trent wanted. He was mildly surprised to find all the boys there because, with the challenge done, they would normally be scattered about the camp at this time of day.

“Duncan has an idea,” Trent said before D.J. could ask. “He didn’t want to explain until everyone was here, but now everybody is.”

“We’re in trouble,” Duncan declared. “Chris letting Izzy back in the game means there are seven chicks and only six dudes. If they realize that, they’re going to pick us off one by one, so we have to strike before they do.”

“Are you sure? It’s not like they’re all pals or anything,” D.J. noted skeptically.

“In a game like this, you don’t have to be pals to be allies,” the Juvenile Hall alumnus countered. “All you have to do is vote together.”

Cody said, “I don’t know about you, but I like having a bunch of hot chicks around.”

“So do I,” Duncan admitted, “but that doesn’t mean I want them controlling my destiny. The only reason you’re still here is because the team phase ended before your team ran out of dudes. They’ll do the same thing to the rest of us if we give them a chance.”

“But if we like having girls around, why wouldn’t they like having dudes?” Owen asked.

“They probably do, but have you ever seen a chick flick? When push comes to shove, they’re going to stick together, which means we have to. Bros before hos.”

Several boy protested, almost as one, that this or that girl was not a “ho”.

“All right, then, pals before gals, but the point stands,” Duncan insisted.

“But you and I sort of have an alliance with Courtney, eh?” Ezekiel noted. “Are you just going to throw her to the wolves?”

“When we have to,” Duncan admitted. “We’ll be trading up, sacrificing a smaller alliance for a bigger one.”

“I don’t know,” Trent said. “Gwen and I have been hooked up most of the summer. It doesn’t feel right being in an alliance without her.”

“Like I told Zeke, you’ll be sacrificing a smaller alliance to be part of a bigger one. That doesn’t mean Gwen can’t still be your girlfriend, but it does mean you have to be careful what you tell her.”

Duncan could see that some of the boys remained unconvinced. “Dudes, it’s not as hard as you’re making it,” he insisted. “This isn’t going to work if we’re not all in on it. We’re only down one, so we can still take control if we stick together; but if anyone flakes out on us, the girls will have time to react after we strike. This is an elimination game. Trust me, dudes, Gwen and Courtney will understand. Voting against someone doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t like them. Anyone who’s smarter than Lindsay should get that by now.”

In the fullness of time, Duncan’s arguments carried the day, and all the boys agreed to join the Grand Dudes Alliance. Their discussion then turned to the question of which girl to target first.^[28.24]

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

.

Twenty-ninth Night

The next morning, after they had breakfasted, Brett went to school whilst his mother went to earn their daily bread. That evening, after they had dined and Brett had attended to his homework, 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.

“How about Izzy?” Cody offered. “I don’t know if she was holding back before, or if her meds took out some kind of power limiter or something, but she totally killed the challenge today. She’s a major threat now.”

“And if we don’t take her out now, we might not get a better chance?” Owen ventured. “Yeah, that’s a good point.”

“Maybe,” Duncan conceded, “but Chris did say she’s not eligible to win. If she’s just playing spoiler, like he said, he’s got to take her out sometime before the finals. If she goes all the way and isn’t eligible for the prize money, people are going to suspect a fix. I know I would. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not thrilled with having a cop living in camp with us, but I think we have higher-priority targets.”

“And Izzy’s always been unpredictable,” Trent observed. “If the girls do band together, she’s probably the one who’s most likely to do her own thing regardless of what anyone else wants, meds or no.”

“I think we should take out Heather,” Duncan said. “She’s the genre savvy strategist, she’s the one who has Katie and Lindsay doing whatever she wants, and she’s the one who’s the biggest pain in the butt.”

“You’ve got my vote,” Trent seconded enthusiastically. “Let the losers deal with her.” Whilst staying with the losers, Trent had learned of Heather’s role in voting him off after the dodgeball match, and the axboy wanted revenge. Moreover, Trent assumed the dragon girl’s departure would make life on the island easier, or at least less unpleasant, for Gwen.

Like Trent, Cody recognized that expelling the queen bee would be a boon to Gwen; and while the science geek had worked with Heather to the point where they could be considered informal allies, he did not trust her any more than the other boys did. Besides, she was a threat.

“Yeah, I guess Heather can go,” Cody said reflectively.

“But it’s Heather who’s keeping the girls divided,” D.J. countered. “If we boot her now, the other girls might close ranks. Isn’t that exactly what Duncan’s afraid of?”

“You do have a point,” Duncan conceded grimly. “I hadn’t thought of that.” The delinquent pondered for a moment and said, “Since it’s not safe to take Heather out right now, we can still weaken her. How about we take out one of her henchchicks?”

The other boys quickly agreed that the new proposal seemed a good one.

“How about Katie?” Cody suggested. “She’s never really gotten over losing Sadie, so let’s reunite them.”

In truth, Katie had adapted better than Cody was giving her credit for, although she missed her BFF. That mattered not, for Cody had an unspoken reason for suggesting the Thin Twin: with Katie taking up residence at the losers’ compound, Noah would have another chance with her. There would still be the matter of trying to pry Katie away from Sadie, but that would be Noah’s problem.

“No, I think we should vote off Lindsay,” Duncan countered. “She’s always been more obedient to Heather than Katie has.”

“Makes sense,” Trent conceded, “since being Heather’s ally is the only thing that’s gotten her this far.”

“And Izzy’s not the only one who can kill challenges,” Owen observed. “I saw the footage of the extreme sports challenge. All of it,” he added with a knowing snicker, which the other boys matched. “She was the MVP.”

The boys found these arguments persuasive, and were soon in agreement. They liked Miss Mammaries, but it was time for her to go.

Cody, however, was not the only boy with his own agenda. D.J. did not share Duncan’s concern that the girls might wage a battle of the sexes without the boys firing the first shot, but the real reason he had argued against “slaying the dragon” was that he had his own plan—a plan for which he would need the votes Heather controlled.

After waiting long enough that he would not arouse suspicion, the brickhouse sought out the queen bee. He found her at the lakeshore, sitting on a beach chair and gazing out onto the lake. She was out of direct sight from the camp, although there were undoubtedly remote cameras about, so D.J. deduced that Heather wanted to be alone. No matter, he thought. If she dismissed him, he would find another time to approach her.

“Hi, Heather.”

The Dragon Queen turned toward the familiar voice. “Oh, hi, D.J. What’s up?”

“That was going to be my line.”

Heather turned back to the panorama before her. “Just watching the sun set. Care to join me?”

“Don’t mind if I do.” D.J. sat cross-legged on the greensward, next to Heather’s chair. “Come here often?” he asked with a smile, slipping comfortably into chat-up mode.

Heather continued to gaze into the distance as Apollo and his team^[29.01] sought their rest, so D.J. did not see her smile. The dragon girl was in a good mood—as good a mood, at any rate, as she was ever in since coming to the hellhole that was Camp Wawanakwa—and she liked D.J. reasonably well, so she was game for a little innocent flirtation. If the gentle giant came to believe she was falling for him, or if he started to fall for her, then so much the better. Either would make him easier to manipulate, should the need arise.

“Every day I can,” she said. “I love sunsets, and we do have some pretty ones here. It’s one of the few decent things about this place.”

“I hear you. I only noticed recently, though.”

“Well, for most of the time we’ve been in this gulag, we’ve usually been eating dinner—I use that term loosely—around sundown. But now that the days are getting shorter, they don’t overlap as often.”

The campmates fell silent, lost in thought, for a couple of minutes. Finally, D.J. broke their reverie.

“Heather, I wanted to ask a favor,” he said, still watching the vista before them.

“What would that be?” she asked, likewise continuing to look straight ahead.

“I’m trying to get rid of Homeschool.”

After dinner, D.J. asked Courtney to speak with him privately. She agreed, seeing no reason not to, and the ex-teammates withdrew a little way into the woods.

“We have to vote tomorrow,” D.J. said in preamble. “If you don’t mind my asking, do you have any thoughts?”

“If it were up to me, I’d probably want Heather gone because she’s a threat, or Duncan because he’s Duncan,” the onetime CIT answered. “But either way, I don’t think I have the votes.”

“Duncan? But I thought you and he were voting together,” D.J. prompted, hoping to get his suspicion confirmed or refuted.

“Yeah, I guess we have, for our own reasons, but that doesn’t make him easier to tolerate. He still seems to be hot for me and seemingly can’t be convinced he’s not making any progress, but he’s not my type. I can do better.”

“Funny you should mention that. We both know who you’re into, but you can do better.”

“You can speak more plainly than that,” Courtney replied warily. “If it makes you feel better, I’m not looking to hook up with anyone here.”

“No, you’re here to win, but that’s kind of my point. Even with your determination to win and avoid distractions, you still managed to fall for Homeschool, and—”

“If you want to talk to me about Zeke, I’ll thank you to use his name,” Courtney interrupted archly.

“Sorry. Slip of the tongue,” D.J. assured her. “Anyway, Ezekiel is holding you back. You know as well as I do that he’s still damaged goods among the girls, even if they don’t despise him the way they used to. That could hurt future alliance prospects if you stick with him. Besides, it looks like he’s in Heather’s alliance now, so even if he’s voted with you before, you can’t count on that going forward. After all, he wants to win, too.”

“You’re trying to get Zeke booted—again—and you need my vote,” the lawyer-to-be surmised. “But why him?”

“You don’t need to know my reasons. You don’t need to like my reasons. All you need is to do what’s best for you. He’s holding you back, however unwittingly. You’ll be a stronger player down the stretch without him than with him.”

Courtney had no immediate answer, so she pondered long the brickhouse’s words. Against all odds, Ezekiel had become her closest friend in camp; and though she had been denying ever since the boot camp party that she was developing romantic feelings for him, she now found she no longer could. On the one hand, D.J. was right—that was an exploitable weakness. On the other hand, he was asking her to stab a good and valued friend in the back.

“If you have six votes,” she finally replied, “I’ll give you the seventh, and you’ll have the majority. But if you can’t show me six others, or if you have a majority without me, then I won’t do it.”

The next evening, under the rising moon, the campers assembled at the bonfire pit to learn the result of their vote and to say goodbye to one of their own. Chris wore a new shirt, albeit a close match for his old one, for the latter had been slashed to ribbons after Dawn expressed her displeasure with him. The host’s exposed flesh was covered in so many giant horsefly bites that he had needed a full liter of blood from the infirmary, but the fire’s guttering light concealed these well enough that they did not impair his camera-readiness.

After giving his boilerplate “establishing shot” speech, Chris summoned Trent, the challenge winner, to receive his marshmallow. The Lord of the Game next called forth the invincible D.J. and the invincible Owen, then the other voteless campers in the order of their challenge finish: Leshawna, then Izzy, then Heather, Katie, Gwen, Courtney and Cody.

“I have only two marshmallows left,” Chris intoned solemnly, “and there are three of you. Duncan, Ezekiel, Lindsay, each of you had votes against you. With one vote against, the eleventh marshmallow goes to … Duncan.”

The delinquent collected his sugary manna and took his place behind Chris, smirking at Izzy as he did so; for he suspected, albeit with no special evidence, that the off-kilter cop had cast the lone vote against him.

Chris turned his attention back to the Bottom Two. “Lindsay, Ezekiel, you both racked up a lot of votes. Lindsay, you’re in the Bottom Two because some people think being in Heather’s alliance makes you a threat. Ezekiel, you’re in the bottom two because some people have long memories … and just maybe because some people have come to see you as a threat.

“And so, the twelfth and final marshmallow of the night goes to …”

As Chris went through his tension-building routine, Lindsay looked for Heather in the crowd. She knew what most of the other campers thought of Heather, and staunchly defended the queen bee whenever anyone dissed her in Lindsay’s presence, but the formerly blonde bombshell had never considered that her loyalty might make her a target.

Lindsay’s eyes met her liege’s. Heather said nothing, or course, for she knew Chris would not react well to being interrupted; but her face said, There’s nothing I can do.

Lindsay looked for Katie, and saw that the Thin Twin seemed even more worried than she. Lindsay’s friendship, more than anything else, had enabled Katie to cope with the blindside blow of Sadie’s elimination, and Katie could not imagine what she would do if she lost that support as well.

Ezekiel, meanwhile, was also scanning the crowd behind the camera-mugging host, trying to understand why he had been singled out. The boys would not have voted against him, since they were all in alliance now … weren’t they? As for the girls, Chris had mentioned long memories. Perhaps some of the girls had tried to kick him off, just as Heather had warned they might, for those remarks he had made what now seemed an eternity ago. Indeed, that danger was what had persuaded him to accept Heather’s offer of formal alliance, when his first inclination had been to give his reward from the eating challenge to Courtney.

The homeschooled farm boy looked to Heather, to see what he might learn from her reactions, but the Dragon Queen’s attention was focused on Lindsay. Heather seemed very worried, but Ezekiel could not guess why. He and Lindsay were both Heather’s allies, and it was common knowledge that Heather treated Lindsay like dirt, so why would it matter that much to the queen bee whether he or Lindsay went home this night?

Could Heather have betrayed him? She had gained a reputation for duplicity, among other undesirable personality traits, which was part of the reason his decision to accept her offer of alliance had been so difficult. And if she had, in fact double-crossed him, did he really have the moral high ground to complain? The forging of the Great Dudes Alliance had put the farm boy in a very tough spot. He knew, without having to be told by Chris, that he was not widely liked among the girls, which was what had made Heather’s offer of alliance enticing. The boys, on the other hand, liked him reasonably well; and when he had arrived on the island some six weeks before, Duncan had been the very first to accept him.

If Duncan had proposed to ally all the boys just a few days earlier, before the eating challenge, Ezekiel’s course would have been plain. He would have joined the Great Dudes Alliance, declined Heather’s offer when she made it, and given his challenge reward to Courtney as compensation for the fact that he would eventually have to vote her off. But Heather had made her offer first, and Ezekiel had accepted it, only to be blindsided when Duncan proposed his grand alliance—in front of all the boys, which effectively made refusal impossible.

So it was that Ezekiel found himself in two incompatible alliances. He had to betray one, no matter how he voted. He did not even have the option of falling on his proverbial sword and voting himself off; for that, too, would betray the boys’ alliance. Indeed, a figurative suicide could be seen as a betrayal of both his alliances. An abstention, even if that were allowed, would have the same problem.

After much soul searching, he had kept faith with the other boys; so as Chris continued to milk the dramatic tension for all it was worth, the Bible boy asked himself again: if Heather had indeed betrayed him, did he really have the moral high ground to complain?

Scanning the other faces in the crowd behind Chris, Ezekiel saw D.J. glaring at him. Heather had warned him that D.J. had it in for him for some reason, although Ezekiel still did not understand why.

As Chris’ routine approached its climax, Ezekiel looked to Courtney. The onetime CIT had been one of only three girls on the island, along with Izzy and the now-departed Beth, to openly accept him.

Ezekiel’s gaze met Courtney’s. She averted her eyes and hung her head, as if in shame.

Uh-oh.

“Lindsay, with five votes,” Chris finally announced.^[29.02]

“Five votes?” Duncan repeated incredulously. He muttered, “Someone’s going down for this.”

In the finished episode, the standard explanatory confessional spot fell to Courtney. Her voice quavered almost imperceptibly as she said, “I’m sorry, Zeke, but I’m in this game to win; and through no fault of your own, you’ve become a distraction I can’t afford. I’ll make it up to you … somehow.” Courtney raised her hands in a gesture of helplessness, tacitly confessing that she had no idea how to make good on her pledge.

As the surviving campers went to the dock to see Ezekiel off, the prairie boy sought out Heather, for the vote count made it plain that he could not have been expelled without the queen bee’s involvement. Unless Heather had been the lone vote against Duncan, but had been unable to persuade Katie or Lindsay … no, it was common knowledge that Heather had more control over her posse than that.

“Heather, what happened?” he asked when he finally tracked down his supposed ally. “Joining your alliance was supposed to protect me, eh?”

“That was before you joined an alliance with the other boys,” the Dark Queen retorted. “Once a sexist, always a sexist, I guess. Be that as it may, I don’t take kindly to betrayal.”

“I had no choice … wait a minute, who told you about the boys’ alliance?”

“That’s not important. What’s important is that it wasn’t you.”

“What was I supposed to do?” the exasperated farm boy asked. “Refuse in front of everyone? What if they decided to kick me off for that? Could you have protected me?”

“Probably not,” the Dark Queen admitted easily. “What’s your point?”

When the nonplussed farm boy had no immediate answer, Heather continued. “Of course, since you obviously don’t have a problem with betraying allies, you could have joined Duncan’s alliance and then gone behind his back, like D.J. did.”

“But Duncan’s my friend.”

“You should choose your friends more carefully,” Heather replied archly, “not to mention your allies. If you’d gone to a real school, you might have known that.”

Something about Heather’s attitude was not adding up, but Ezekiel could not put his finger on it. With her warning about choosing allies, it clicked into place.

“You never really wanted me in your alliance,” he said as realization dawned. “You just wanted my spot on that luxury getaway.”

“Guilty as charged,” the Dark Queen replied sweetly. “Deal with it.”

It so happened that Duncan overheard part of this conversation, for neither Heather nor Ezekiel had made any effort to prevent eavesdropping. Incensed, to put it mildly, the scorner of laws quickly tracked down D.J. and confronted him.

“Dude, you’ve got some explaining to do,” Duncan declared. “Heather just said you double-crossed our alliance. Not cool!”

“And you believed her?” the brickhouse replied with a show of disbelief. “You, of all people, would believe someone like Heather?”

“She didn’t tell me. She was piling on Zeke, and she told him. She didn’t know anyone could overhear, so she had no reason to lie to him. And what’s with this vendetta of yours, anyway? What did Zeke ever do to you?”

“He killed my Bunny!”

“Huh? When did you ever have a bunny?”

“I found him during the camping challenge. He was going to be my pet. I was going to call him ‘Bunny’. But when I brought him to our campsite, Homeschool wrung his neck and skinned him right in front of me!”

Duncan had no immediate response. He knew D.J. was an animal lover, of course, but … this was absurd. It took Duncan a few moments to find words, but a building rage finally loosened his tongue.

“Let me get this straight. You sold out the Dudes Alliance for a stupid rabbit? A stupid dead rabbit you didn’t even know existed ten minutes before? Do you know how many rabbits you could buy with a hundred thousand dollars? Dude, you are so going down for this!”

“You can’t understand,” the gentle giant replied sadly, with a shake of his head. “You lash out because you can’t understand.”

“We’ll see how many of the guys ‘understand’. You may have just cost us all our shot at the hundred grand.” With that, the disgusted delinquent left his traitorous teammate.

D.J., however, was unrepentant. He went to his partner in crime and said, “Thanks, Heather. I owe you one.”

“I’m glad you realize that,” the Dragon Queen replied, “because that’s a debt I intend to collect.”

The campers reached the dock quickly enough, and it was time for Ezekiel’s Dock Walk … and the goodbyes.

“See you, dude,” Duncan said as he offered a fist bump. “You deserved better.”^[29.03]

Katie said, “I remember something you said once about the end times prophecies. Look at it this way: you’re not being kicked off, you’re being taken into Heaven in the Rapture.”

Trent thought, You have no idea, for he knew what awaited the devout farm boy.

“Leaving the rest of you to deal with the Antichrist,” Ezekiel replied, finishing the thought. “I like that. Funny thing, though, the prophecies only mention one.”

“And we have two?” Katie surmised. “Yeah, I can see why you’d think that.”

“You’ve come a long way,” Leshawna admitted. “For what it’s worth, the only reason I voted against you this time was because we’d been tipped off about Duncan’s alliance, and we thought you would be the easiest boy to take out, what with D.J. turning coat and all.” The dusky homegirl leaned to the farm boy’s ear, cupped her hand, and added in a conspiratorial stage whisper, “Just between you and me, I think Beth’s sweet on you. Nothing against Courtney or Izzy, but they’re not your type.”

When Owen gave Ezekiel an affectionate bear hug, the prairie boy all but disappeared from view. “Good luck, farm dude,” the gregarious gargantua said as he all but squeezed the breath from Ezekiel’s body. “Trust me, you won’t be envying us for long.” That was as close as Owen dared come to describing the conditions at the losers’ compound.

Ezekiel came to Courtney, who looked like she wanted to crawl into a hole. “Good luck, Zeke,” she said, trying and failing to muster a smile. “Like Leshawna said, you’ve come a long way.”

Ezekiel’s self-appointed etiquette tutor clearly wanted to say more, but seemed to be struggling to find the words. Eventually, she just flung her arms around his neck and buried her face in his chest. “I’m so sorry it had to end this way,” she said, her voice thick with emotion.

“No worries, Court,” the Bible boy assured her, self-consciously patting her back because he knew not what else to do. “If it weren’t for you, I probably wouldn’t have gotten as far as I did, eh?”

As mentor and protégé separated, Ezekiel added with a grin, “Between you and Izzy, I got quite an education here.”

“Yeah, about that,” Izzy interjected with a knowing grin of her own, “Just so there’s no misunderstanding … it won’t happen again, but I don’t regret that it happened once.” With a wink and her customary rapid-fire chatter, the off-kilter cop added, “I just hope I didn’t ruin you for girls your own age, ‘cause I think Leshawna’s right about Beth, and there’s nothing like a new interest to take your mind off the old.”

From the boat, Chef Hatchet began tolling the bell, a not-so-subtle prompt for the well-wishers to wrap up their well-wishing. With no reason to delay any longer, Ezekiel made the lonely trek to the Boat of Losers.

As the boat pulled away from the dock, Courtney began to sing the Pie Jesu in an angelic mezzo.^[29.04] Although both teams had taken to singing it at eliminations about midway through the team phase, as has been told of before, the campers had not discussed whether to continue this bit of ceremony now that the teams had merged. Beth or Ezekiel would surely have maintained the custom, but both were now gone. Courtney thought the custom a good one, though, and she felt the need to do something—anything—to atone for what she had done to her homeschooled friend. This gesture was meager compensation, to be sure; but for the nonce, it would have to do.

As the other campers followed Courtney’s lead and lifted their voices in chorus, she vowed to herself that she would keep this custom alive as long as she remained on the island.

After the last strains of the Pie Jesu faded into the night, D.J. approached his guilt-ridden ex-teammate.

“Thanks for your help, Court. You did the right thing.” D.J.’s gratitude was sincere, but Courtney could not help hearing it as a taunt.

Courtney could not bear to look her former teammate in the eye. “Not the right thing,” she replied glumly, “the thing I had to do. If anyone asks, I’ll be in the shower trying to wash my soul.”

The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.^[29.05]

“Called it,” Brett declared smugly. “Ezekiel trusted the wrong person, and it bit him in the butt big time. He should have stuck with what he had.”

“You’d think so,” his mother agreed, “but everyone has 20-20 hindsight. It’s easy to look back and believe there were more clues than there really were. That’s what makes these elimination games so dicey. You can never really know whom to trust, but you have to trust someone. As someone who’s been through the war, as it were, I can’t blame Ezekiel for jumping an informal alliance for a formal one. If he hadn’t gotten stuck in that second, conflicting alliance, it could just as easily have worked out for him.”

The hour was not unduly late, so Brett’s mother paused a few moments to collect her thoughts, and then resumed her tale.

.

Episode #16: The Tale of the Pirate Treasure Hunt, or The Campers of Penzance

Original title: Search and Do Not Destroy^[29.06]

The next morning, Alejandro went to the “traveling trophy” trailer with a covered tray in hand. He knocked on the door and called, “Breakfast, amigo!”

Trent opened the door, wearing a bathrobe. “Thanks, dude, but isn’t it a little early?”

“One might think so,” the big intern admitted, “but Chris has elected—”

From near the dock, the antique cannon thundered. A moment later, a loud crack sounded and a large tree fell dangerously near the boys’ cabin. The loudspeakers squealed to life and Chris commanded in an affected, gravelly voice, “Arr, maties! Report to the amphitheater in ten minutes to hear about today’s challenge!”

“Chris has elected to dispense with your off day,” Alejandro finished. “I’m afraid you will have to eat quickly.”

Trent took the tray with thanks and withdrew into the trailer. He lifted the cover to reveal back bacon^[29.07] and eggs done to a turn, with buttered toast, a small bowl of oatmeal flavored with cinnamon and maple syrup, orange juice, fresh milk and a blueberry muffin. The axboy regretted that he could not savor this fine meal properly; but circumstances being what they were, it was not to be. He set aside the muffin for Gwen, just as he had the previous morning,^[29.08] and bolted his meal in barely a minute.

The campers assembled as instructed, with several grumbling about not getting breakfast. That privation, however, made Gwen doubly grateful for her boyfriend’s gift. The campers’ complaining quickly gave way to speculation about what lay in store for them, for the signals were mixed. Chris’ announcement had suggested a pirate theme, but the stage backdrop resembled the wall of a mediaeval castle. Several ropes hung from a platform at the top, and on that platform rested several fair-sized chests.

Chris appeared on stage. Dressed in an ornate, unbuttoned black justacorps with waistcoat, breeches and boots, a large bicorne hat with skull and crossbones emblazoned on it, and wearing a black full-bottomed wig with matching mustache, the host looked every centimeter a pirate king.

Pirate King -The Pirates of Penzance (Subtitles)

the host looked every centimeter a pirate king

When I sally forth to seek my prey^[29.09]
I help myself in a royal way;
I sink a few more ships, it’s true,
Than a well-bred monarch ought to do;
But many a king on a first-class throne,
If he wants to call his crown his own,
Must manage somehow to get through
More dirty work than ever I do
Though I am a Pirate King.
And it is a glorious thing
To be a Pirate King!

Chef Hatchet wore an outfit befitting one of the king’s crew, with a puffy shirt, waistcoat, bandana on his head, and a cutlass at his waist. His boots and breeches were of simpler design, and he wore an eyepatch. A few interns were also present and were dressed similarly to Chef, some with eyepatches, some without. Scarlett was dressed in a distaff version of this garb, with a skirt long enough to conceal her knee brace. She wore her hair in a ponytail instead of her usual bun and had a pair of muzzleloader pistols in her waistband, in lieu of a cutlass.^[29.10] The more tomboyish Jasmine was dressed like the men, cutlass and all, although she dispensed with the eyepatch.

“Hearken to me, maties! We’ve got high adventure in store for ye!” the Pirate King rasped in a stereotypically piratical voice. “Who’s got a hankerin’ for a good old-fashioned treasure hunt?”

The irrepressible Owen gave an enthusiastic whoop, but the other campers’ reactions suggested indifference or resignation.

Chris paid the tepid reception no heed. “This treasure hunt’s got a twist, maties. What ye’re lookin’ for isn’t the treasure itself, but a key that will open one of those chests,” he explained as he motioned to the overhead platform. “Inside those chests are treasures that will pamper ye, and one of them will even give some lucky seadog invincibility!

“But beware, scalawags, for the keys have fearsome guardians!” Behind Chris, Chef and Jasmine grinned wickedly and waved discreetly.

The Pirate King held up a bucket containing several scrolls. “Ye’ll each draw one of these maps. They’ll lead you to your key, and the traditional ‘X’ marks the spot. The picture beneath will tell ye what guards the key. Ye’ll know when ye’ve come to the right place because the key’s location be marked with a French flag.”

“Why French?” Gwen asked in a tone implying that she expected the reason to be lame.

The Pirate King opened his mouth to answer, but Heather beat him to it. “Bastille Day?”

“Sounds about right,” Leshawna said. “Is it the fourteenth already?”^[29.11]

“I’m impressed, Heather,” Cody said ingratiatingly. “I can see why Leshawna would know about it, because she’s Quebecois, but—please don’t take this the wrong way—you didn’t strike me as the type who would know about things like that, or care.”

“There’s a celebration in Vancouver every year, and I live in Whistler, which is close enough that my family goes sometimes,” the queen bee explained.^[29.12] “It’s a good place to meet boys.”

“That sounds like the Heather I know,” Cody declared with his characteristic goofy grin.

Duncan said, “So instead of doing something holiday-related that might actually be fun, Chris took away our day off so his lame challenge could include a reference to somebody else’s holiday?”

“That sounds like the Chris I know,” Heather said with a sour look.

The young pirates-for-a-day drew and opened their maps.

“A bear?!” Owen asked in disbelief.

“Could have been worse, dude,” Trent assured him. “I got sharks.”

“I got crocodiles,” Leshawna said. “I’m not sure that’s much better.”

“I got bees,” Lindsay said with a shudder.^[29.13]

“It looks like mine involves fire somehow,” Cody said. “This drawing is kind of cryptic.”

“My clue is pretty cryptic, too,” Courtney griped as she held up her map so the camera could get a good look.

“That be the bilge,” the pirate king rasped, “better known as the septic tank for the communal washroom.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Courtney challenged, but in her heart she knew the answer.

“Most of Chris’ challenges run on the three Ds: difficult, dangerous and degrading,” D.J. observed. “At least you didn’t get a dangerous one.”

“‘Degrading’ works,” Duncan ventured. “Sounds like just the thing to take Ms. High-and-Mighty down a peg.”

“Maybe,” Courtney replied distractedly, for an idea had come to her.

“I can’t even guess what mine is,” Heather admitted, “except that it’s in the lodge.” Her map bore a drawing of a key inside some sort of rounded, segmented rectangle.

“Oh, that,” Chris said in his normal speech. “Your key is in a refrigerator in Chef’s kitchen. You have to swipe it without getting caught.” The host grinned wickedly. “I hear he dusts that fridge daily for fingerprints.”

Cody grinned his goofy grin. “Chris did say ‘fearsome guardians’.”

“And another thing,” Chris said. “Figuring out where your key is doesn’t mean you can just make a beeline there. You still have to follow your map.”

“Seriously?!” Cody asked in disbelief. “My route looks like the Gordian Knot^[29.14] or something.”

“Exactly. Some of your challenges are farther away than others, or will take longer to get the key once you’re there, so that’s how we handicapped your tests. Trent, for example, has a simple route because his key is on the other side of the island, and Katie’s is simple because—”

“She has a simple mind?” Heather suggested.

“Well, yes,” Chris admitted, earning him a sour look from the Thin Twin, “but the real reason is that her test will probably take a long time even if she aces it.”

Katie’s learning was indeed not immense, but she recognized her map’s drawing as that of a famous sculpture. “My map has a picture of The Thinker. I’m guessing that means some kind of puzzle or battle of wits or something.”

“That might explain why Scarlett’s in costume,” Cody surmised. “Your ‘battle of wits’ is probably against her.”

“Got it in one, dude,” Chris said, making finger guns for emphasis.

“Well, we know at least one chest isn’t getting opened,” Heather said.

“Thanks a lot, Heather,” Katie griped. “You know, you could be supportive once in a while.”

“So, you’re saying you’d rather hear a pleasant lie than an unpleasant truth?” Heather shot back. “Sure, I can do that. You’ve got this in the bag, girl.”

“Mine looks like a rattlesnake or something,” Izzy said. “Piece of cake.”

“If you’re planning to do your ‘Dance of the Rattlesnake’ again, please don’t,” Chris admonished. “It’s not that we didn’t like it the first time—we did—but it won’t be new to the viewing audience. Winning another challenge the same way would be too predictable, and that’s not good for ratings, so we’d really rather you did something else.”

“No worries,” Izzy conceded equably. “I reserve the right to do my dance if I’m running out of time, but I’ll try something else first.”

“A proposition fair and true,” Chris pronounced in his pirate voice.

Heather asked, “Can we get help, or do we have to get our keys by ourselves?”

“Ye can recruit anyone who’s willing to help ye,” the Pirate King rasped, “but ye may find that easier said than done, because the first seadog to bring back their key gets the cozy trailer berth, and anyone who fails to get their key will have one penalty vote against them when ye decide who walks the plank.”

The dread pirate Christopher^[29.15] looked to the west and extended his arm and fingers as if sighting. “Ye have until the sun stands a hand’s breadth above the horizon—Gwen, that’s your right hand, not your left—and then we’ll storm the Bastille. So get to work!”

“But what about breakfast?” Owen asked. He had his priorities, after all.

Hatchet took a bag from his waistband and drew forth some crackers. “This is a pirate ship, not a luxury cruise, so you’ll have to make do with hardtack,"^[29.16] he explained.

“Except for Trent, who got a proper breakfast as part of his stay in the reward trailer,” Chris added.

As the campers began to disperse, Heather pulled Cody aside, and Courtney did likewise with D.J.

“Hey, Deej, would you be willing to help a damsel in distress?”

“I could probably be persuaded,” the kindly brickhouse admitted. “What do you need?”

“I have an idea for dealing with the septic tank, but I’ll need your help. We need to check out the boathouse.”

Katie’s map led her to a large tree stump near the boathouse. On one side was a simple stool, on which Katie was apparently meant to sit. On the other side, Scarlett sat in a chair with a large X-shaped back. The brainy intern, still in pirate garb, wore a short necklace of gold about her neck, from which Katie’s key hung like an amulet. A large sack sat on the ground beside the intern, and a French tricolor hung from a tree branch overhead.

“Greetings,” Scarlett said cordially. “As you surmised, your challenge is a battle of wits. My instructions are that your test should be difficult yet offer a reasonable chance of success. Since I did not know in advance whom I would be dealing with, I have several options. Do you play chess?”

“I know most of the rules, but I’m not any good at it,” Katie admitted. “You’d probably beat me in, like, three moves.”

“Four moves is standard for dispatching an inexperienced or unwary opponent,” Scarlett replied didactically.^[29.17] “How are you with riddles?”

“Pretty good, although my BFF, Sadie, can usually beat me.”

“Riddles it is, then. Let the loser’s head fall to the winner’s wisdom.”^[29.18]

“I hope you mean that figuratively.”

Scarlett gave a sardonic half-smile. “From the things I’ve heard about the interns’ mortality rate and what you’ve been through … yes, I suppose ‘figuratively’ does need to be specified.”

“Mind if I ask a question before we start?”

“Not at all.”

“You said you were prepared for any of us. I was just curious … what would you have done with Lindsay? I don’t think she’s any better at riddles than she is at chess.”

“For Lindsay, I was ready to play Chutes and Ladders.”^[29.19]

Katie snorted in her effort to suppress a laugh. “You’re kidding, right?”

“As a matter of fact, I am,” Katie’s inquisitor admitted evenly. “For Lindsay, and maybe for Heather, I would have used a quiz from a fashion magazine.”

Scarlett reached into her sack and brought forth a narrow wooden block with two small stopclocks and a button above each. She placed this on the stump and explained, “This is a chess clock. In timed games, each player normally has two hours to make their first forty moves. Today, we will each have one hour to give twenty riddles and responses. When I pose my first riddle, I will press my button, which will stop my clock and start yours. If you answer correctly, you will give me a riddle. When you have done so, press your button to stop your clock and start mine. You may take as much time as you need; but if you take too long in the early rounds, you may find yourself running out of time in the late rounds.

“The first to answer incorrectly or run out of time loses. My advantage is that I get to pose the first riddle. Your advantage is that, if we finish twenty rounds without a resolution, I am required to concede. Furthermore, you may pose any sort of riddle you like, but I will ask only classic riddles; so if I ask one you can’t reason out, knowledge of traditional lore may see you through nonetheless.

“Start my clock when you are ready to begin. Good luck.”

“My key’s in a skunk hole or something,” Gwen lamented to Trent. “Skunks totally freak me out!”

“I’ll help you with that,” the axboy assured her. “We just need to find out where our keys are, and see what we’ll have to do to get them.”

The couple located Gwen’s key first, for their maps indicated that her key was closer than Trent’s and in roughly the same direction. In the fullness of time, they spotted the flag marking an ordinary-looking animal burrow.

Trent chivalrously braved the hazard of skunkly wrath to reconnoiter whilst Gwen remained at a safe distance. The axboy presently rejoined his girlfriend.

“The key is inside the burrow, near the entrance. Maybe we could get some buckets and water, and flush the skunk out.”

“Can skunks swim?” Gwen asked. “I don’t want to drown it.”

“It shouldn’t have to,” her beau assured her. “Animal burrows usually have more than one way out. The idea is to force the ‘guardian’ to take another exit.”

“Cool,” Gwen pronounced.

The couple continued their scouting mission, and found Trent’s challenge site in the fullness of time. The tricolor flag, key dangling beneath, stood atop one of the buoys ringing the diving cliff’s splashdown site, so the treasure hunters could well believe there were sharks in the area.

“This is going to be way too easy,” Trent declared.

It had not taken Duncan long to deduce that his key was near the river mouth, and the guardian icon of crossed swords suggested a fight of some kind, possibly a boarding action. Disdaining the circuitous route marked on his map, the scorner of laws went directly to the river mouth and found a canoe on the near bank. The Loser Boat, flying the flag of France, lay at anchor some twenty meters offshore.

Duncan confidently paddled out as he scanned his “prey” for the key. When he drew alongside and made ready to board, Jasmine emerged from the charthouse.

“You’re here awfully quick, mate. Did you follow the route on your map?” the dusky giantess challenged.

With cameras tracking his every move, Duncan knew he had nothing to gain by lying, so he took the proverbial bull by the equally proverbial horns and stepped onto Jasmine’s boat. “What’s it to you, Toots?”

“Nothing, if all you want is the key. But if you want the reward for finishing first, Chris will disqualify you if you didn’t follow your map properly,” Jasmine explained.

Duncan made no immediate reply, so the guardian prompted, “Would you like to reconsider? I have all day.”

Duncan did indeed want to reconsider, but not at the cost of losing face. “Nah, I’m good.”

“Suit yourself.” The huge piratess tossed Duncan a wooden cutlass even as she drew her own. “I hear you’re pretty good with knives. Let’s see how you are with swords. Have at thee, mate!”

“If you don’t mind my asking, is there any particular reason you asked me instead of somebody else?” D.J. inquired as he and Courtney approached the boathouse.

The future speaker of laws left off nibbling her hardtack and explained, “With the whole chivalry thing, I figured a boy was more likely to help me than a girl. We used to be on the same team, and I have my reasons for not wanting to ask Duncan.”

“In other words, you don’t want Duncan to think you’re into him,” the dusky brickhouse surmised. “I think that ship has sailed, but I see your point.”

“As for the former Eagles,” Courtney continued, “Trent and Cody are probably taken, and Owen has his own problems. He’ll be more likely to need help than be able to give it.”

“Sounds logical. So, what’s your plan?”

“When I was at the boathouse a few days ago, I saw a hardhat diving suit. If it’s still there, I’ll use it, but I’ll need someone to watch the air pump,” Courtney explained.

Luck was with her, for the diving suit was still in the boathouse. When Courtney and D.J. left the ramshackle building, they found Trent and Gwen at the boathouse dock preparing to launch a canoe.

“Hey, dudes, what brings you here?” D.J. asked sociably.

“We could ask you the same question,” Trent replied. “But since you asked first, I have to go into shark-infested waters, but the key is above water—”

“And Chris never said you couldn’t use a boat,” Courtney finished with a knowing grin.

“So what loophole are you here to exploit?” Gwen asked.

The onetime CIT held up her prize. “Full-coverage diving suit. It’ll keep the stink off me, not to mention that I won’t have to smell it … until I take the suit off.”

“Damn! Why didn’t I think of that?” the Goth lamented. “That would have been great for getting my key out of the skunk hole.”

“When I’m done with it, you’re welcome to it if you still need it,” Courtney assured her.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Greater than God,
More evil than the Devil;
And if you eat it you will die.

Katie snorted from another poorly suppressed laugh.

“Care to let me in on the joke?” Scarlett asked curiously, for the riddle had not struck her as especially funny. This riddle was her sixth; five rounds of their riddling duel had passed without incident.

When Katie trusted herself to speak without cracking up, she explained, “I was so tempted to say ‘Heather’. She thinks she’s greater than God, most of the campers who aren’t in her alliance think she’s more evil than the Devil, and if I ate her I would probably die.”

“Yes, I heard about the Wendigo Incident,” Scarlett said. “As whimsical as that answer would have been, if you had offered it with that explanation, I daresay I would have been inclined to accept it. I take it you know the official answer?”

“Nothing,” Katie replied. “Nothing is greater than God, nothing is more evil than the Devil, and if you eat nothing, you’ll die. I heard that one from Ezekiel when we had dinner together as a challenge reward. He’s really religious, if you didn’t know, and he’s not a bad riddler, either. Anyway, my turn.”

As I was going to St. Ives,
I met a man with seven wives,
Every wife had seven sacks,
Every sack had seven cats,
Every cat had seven kits:
Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,
How many were there going to St. Ives?

No sooner had Katie started Scarlett’s clock than the brainy redhead answered, “Presumably just you. Everyone else was presumably going another direction, although that’s not necessarily true if they were travelling faster or slower than you.”

“How many?” Katie pressed, for she had once multiplied it out for the sake of stumping Sadie.

Scarlett, however, was made of sterner stuff. “It’s a simple mathematical progression. Besides the man, there were seven wives, which is seven to the first power; 49 sacks, seven to the second power; 343 cats, seven to the third power; and 2,401 kits, seven to the fourth power. In fact, the one man is seven to the zeroth power, because any nonzero number raised to the zeroth power is one. Add them all up, including you, and the total is 2,802 if you count the inanimate objects, or 2,753 otherwise.”

“O … kay,” Katie said uncertainly, for Scarlett’s rapid-fire explanation was rather a lot for the Thin Twin to digest. “Whatever, you’re up.”

Scarlett recited:

Elizabeth, Elspeth, Betsy and Bess
All went together to seek a bird’s nest.
They found a nest with five eggs in;
They all took one, and left four in.

This was a poser for Katie, but in the end she answered, “There was only one girl, Elizabeth. All the other names are variations.”

“Correct. Select,” Scarlett replied crisply.^[29.20]

Katie recited:

Tower of London Singalong The Yeomen of the Guard Gilbert & Sullivan

Scarlett replied, "I don't think I've ever heard that phrased as a riddle before."

When its gallant Norman foes
Made a merry land their own,
And the Saxons from the Conqueror were flying,
At his bidding it arose,
In its panoply of stone,
A sentinel unliving and undying.

Scarlett replied, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard that phrased as a riddle before. Did you know it comes from an opera?”

“No, but it doesn’t surprise me,” Katie admitted. “I heard it from Noah, and he’s into that sort of thing. So, you know the answer?”

“The Tower of London.”

“Yeah, I had to give a speech about it in sixth grade,”^[29.21] Katie said. “So, what opera does it come from?”

“The Yeomen of the Guard,”^[29.22] Scarlett answered. “The only Gilbert & Sullivan operetta that’s not a comedy. It would actually be called a musical if it were written today. Here’s a riddle from the same source: Why is a cook’s brain-pan like an overwound clock?”^[29.23]

“I thought you said you were only going to ask classic riddles,” Katie noted dubiously.

“I did, and I am, but since you brought up The Yeomen of the Guard, however indirectly, this is a freebie. If you can answer it, you win the duel. If you can’t, our duel will continue normally. I’ll give you two minutes on my clock to answer.”

When Heather asked Cody to help her in the name of chivalry, he readily agreed, as she knew he would. Both could tell at a glance where their keys were located, but were required to follow circuitous routes to get there, so they agreed to follow their maps separately and meet up afterward. Once they had reached their keys, they could presumably move however they pleased to deal with the guardians.

Cody’s map led him to the bonfire pit. As he approached, he could hear the crackling and distinctive dull roar of a large, hot fire. Presently, he also heard … a tea kettle?

Idly wondering why he was not feeling more heat, the science geek came to the clearing and stopped short. “I might have known,” he said rhetorically.

Beardo, in pirate costume, sat in the clearing tending a much smaller fire than Cody had been led to expect. There was no tea kettle, but within the fire stood a large, two-handled iron pot, its lid half-covered in red-hot coals.

“Do you always beatbox when you’re alone?” Cody asked.

“If you want to maintain excellence at your chosen skills, you must practice constantly,” the huge hairball explained. “Beatboxing is no different. I take it you’re here for the fire key?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s in that Dutch oven,” Beardo said, gesturing to the pot.

“And you’re supposed to try to stop me?”

Beardo imitated, with characteristic perfection, a “wrong answer” buzzer such as one hears on quiz shows. “Why would I do that?”

“Chris said the keys would have fearsome guardians, and you look pretty fearsome.”

“Chris says a lot of things. You know that,” Beardo said. “The only ‘guardian’ here is the fire itself. My job is just to keep the fire nice and hot. Eight ball, side pocket.” The sound effects master flawlessly imitated billiards sounds as he stuck a long stick into the fire and flicked another coal onto the oven lid.

“That doesn’t sound too hard,” Cody ventured, wary but hopeful. “Is there any reason I can’t just fill a bucket with water and douse the fire?”

“If you try that, I will be working against you. As I said, my job is to keep the fire going. Sure, you’d succeed eventually, but there are easier ways. Besides, you’re not the only camper who might be wanting a bucket for this challenge.”

“How about if I can get something to protect my hands, and just pull the oven out of the fire?”

“I’ll say it once more: my job is to keep the fire going,” the hirsute hired help replied.

Owen’s map led him to a small cave with a French tricolor standing beside its mouth. The man-mountain was well skilled in woodcraft, for he often went hunting and fishing with his grandfather, so he tiptoed silently up to the cave mouth and peered cautiously inside from the side opposite the flag.

A fair-sized black bear lay asleep near the cave’s back wall. The bruin’s coat had the midnight blue color phase unique to eastern Canada. Owen’s key hung from a thin lanyard about the beast’s neck.

Seriously?! Owen thought. My kingdom for a tranquilizer gun. Of course, he had no gun, tranquilizer or otherwise. He might have found one if he had thought to search the boathouse, but that is another story for another time.

Several types of aromatic herbs grew near the cave, so Owen stuffed some into his pockets and smeared juices on his skin to help mask his scent, for bears have a peerless sense of smell. The obese outdoorsman did not know how well bears could smell whilst sleeping, so he was taking no unnecessary chances.

Owen crept into the cave. Halfway to his goal, he had to pause as a wave of nausea swept over him; for in a deep corner, only now visible to the bear burglar, lay the eviscerated, partially eaten body of an intern. The late laborer was short and squat, with an unusually large head topped with a small mop of purple hair.^[29.24]

Owen put out of his mind as best he might this grisly reminder of what could go wrong, and resumed stalking the sleeping bear. In the fullness of time, he crept up to the beast, took the soft lanyard in his hand as gently as he might, and began to slowly, patiently saw at it with a pocketknife.

The bear awoke.

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

.

Thirtieth Night

The next 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, 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.

Swifter than the strike of a rattlesnake, Owen lunged upon the bear, for he knew he could not outrun it and had decided a strong offense was his best defense. The man-mountain clamped one hand over the beast’s muzzle with iron grip and, in the selfsame maneuver, pinned its forelimbs to its sides with (fittingly) a bear hug.

That brought the bear fully awake. It struggled frantically—indeed, for very life—for Owen was bigger than it and black bears are not at the top of the food chain, so the bruin could only assume it was about to be killed and eaten.

“Sorry, dude,” Owen hissed through gritted teeth, “but I need that key!”

Owen’s stamina did not match his strength, so he had to act fast. He dragged the struggling bear to the cave mouth as quickly as he might. Once there, he grasped that precious key and snapped the lanyard by main strength even as he released the bear and pushed it away from him. Before the bruin could fully register that it was free, Owen seized the flag marking the cave and waved it overhead like a soldier of Napoleon storming a fort. He roared inarticulately.

If Owen had been facing a grizzly bear, this display would likely have provoked a charge, which would have ended badly for him, but a black bear is more easily intimidated. The beast fled back into the cave.

Owen backed cautiously away from the cave mouth, circling to get out of the bear’s line of sight. When he was satisfied the encounter was truly over, he turned and ran back to camp, whooping and hollering and waving his flag in childlike joy.

Leshawna’s map led her to a small stream. A large rock had been placed in the center, and atop the rock stood a wine glass containing her key. The water was clear enough and shallow enough for the homegirl to spot two fair-sized crocodiles lurking nearby. This section of the stream was cordoned off to discourage the water-dragons from departing, which meant they could not be lured far enough away with bait to be helpful. A rudimentary rope bridge was strung overhead, high enough so none of the campers could simply reach down and grab the key or the glass.

With or without help, Leshawna saw two feasible courses of action: she could get fishing gear from the boathouse and angle for the key; or she could try to overpower the crocs. The latter was a realistic option because the crocodiles were big enough to be impressive but small enough that she thought she could handle one, especially since Cody had helpfully told her about a weakness all crocodilians share, namely that their jaw-opening muscles are quite weak. Slipping strong elastic bands or something similar over the water-dragons’ snouts would neutralize them.

Both approaches had obvious problems. Fishing for the key would require something other than normal fishhooks. A magnet might suffice if the key was made of steel, but not if it was made of brass. Tackling the crocodiles was dangerous because there were two of them. If Leshawna fell upon one and failed to neutralize it quickly, she would soon have to fight both, which was likely to end badly for her.

Resolved to try the safer option first, Leshawna headed for that unexpectedly popular challenge way station, the boathouse.

After leaving the bonfire pit, Cody went to the lodge to find Heather sitting on the porch, waiting for him. The dragon girl had finished navigating her prescribed route only a couple of minutes before, so she had not yet grown impatient.

Heather bade Cody come with her, and together they made their way to the quartermaster’s tent, where Shawn was the intern on duty. Heather explained her plan and what they needed, and the Zombie Master pronounced her scheme worthy of his assistance.

Next, Heather sent Cody to the communal washroom, where she joined him after a brief detour to her cabin.

My days are in the summer
When you’ll eat me when I’m hot;
In fact I’ll even eat myself
Where battles tough are fought.
But when you find me in a fight,
‘Twill be high in the sky;
And if you catch me napping,
I suggest you let me lie.
When you’re bad, come to my house;
From Ma get thoughts profound—
Am I big or am I small?
Some say I’m just a pound.

Scarlett pondered for a bit. Her demeanor suggested confidence that she knew the answer and was merely making extra effort to craft her answer in a certain way. Finally, she answered. “Those are all terms and phrases with the word, ‘dog’ in them: the dog days of summer, eating a hot dog, ‘dog-eat-dog’, dogfight between aircraft, ‘let sleeping dogs lie’, ‘in the doghouse’, and dog pound.”

This had been Scarlett’s pattern. Merely saying ‘dog’ would have sufficed, but the brainy redhead seemed fond of explaining thing in general and ‘showing her work’ in particular. The time required for such explanations was coming off Scarlett’s clock, not Katie’s, so the Thin Twin had no objection.

Scarlett recited:

As I went through the garden gap,
Who should I meet but Dick Red-cap!
A stick in his hand a stone in his throat;
If you’ll tell me this riddle, I’ll give you a groat.

Katie did not happen to know this riddle, and it proved a terrible poser for her. She assumed “Dick Red-cap” must be a literary synonym for someone or something; or perhaps he personified something in the way John Barleycorn personifies the grain from which he takes his name.

Katie racked her brain for minutes on end without success, for the strain of this duel was starting to tell on her. It seemed likely Scarlett had a list of riddles prepared in advance, whereas Katie had to think of hers on the spot; so as their battle of wits became more and more a test of endurance thirteen rounds in, the battle grew increasingly unequal.

Katie became so flustered she twice asked Scarlett to repeat the riddle, which the pirate-costumed intern did patiently and without complaint. Eventually, as Katie continued to ponder, Scarlett began writing in a notepad and softly, absently humming to herself.

Katie thought the tune familiar, and felt she did not need this new distraction; but as she was about to ask Scarlett to stop, something clicked. Katie had once seen a TV movie featuring this tune, which she quickly identified as the English folk song, “Cherry Ripe”.^[30.01]

Of course, she thought.

“I think I have it. Finally,” said the Thin Twin. “A cherry. The ‘stick in his hand’ is the stem, and the ‘stone’ is another name for the pit. But what’s a groat?”

“Very good,” Scarlett said. “I was starting to wonder whether you would ever get it.”

“Well, with your humming—”

“Was I humming?” Scarlett asked in seeming confusion. “I’m terribly sorry. I hope I wasn’t distracting you. Oh, and since you asked, a groat is an obsolete coin of no great worth.”

“No, it wasn’t distracting,” Katie said with a warm smile. She said no more, but inwardly rejoiced at the valuable knowledge she had just gained. Scarlett had given her a hint. Despite making Katie work for her key, the brainy intern seemed to want her to succeed in the end.

With renewed confidence, Katie recited:

What hungry beast devours
Roots, stems, leaves and flowers?

Scarlett knew this riddle but made a show of having difficulty with it, for Katie had not misjudged her intent. In the fullness of time, she answered, “We do, or we should; because carrots are roots, celery stalks are stems, lettuce and spinach are leaves, broccoli is a flower, and they’re all good for us.”

The redheaded redshirt had answered correctly, so she recited:

Thirty white horses on a red hill:
First they champ, then they stamp, then they stand still.

This was another pattern of Scarlett’s: whenever Katie had trouble with a riddle, Scarlett’s next riddle would be either easy to reason out or a chestnut everyone knows, or both. Katie now understood the purpose of this tactic was to build confidence, and she confidently answered, “Teeth”.

“You fight pretty well, mate, but you’ll have to show me more if you expect to beat me.”

“Talk is cheap, Toots,” Duncan shot back as he took the offensive and drove Jasmine back.

“It’s not bragging if you can back it up,” Jasmine parried with her words even as she parried with her sword; and soon Duncan was the one giving ground.

The combatants continued to talk trash over the steady clack-clack-clack of wood on wood. In the finished episode, the editors substituted metal-on-metal sound effects and altered the swords’ appearance with CGI effects to suggest that boarder and defender were using real, deadly blades instead of wooden facsimiles.

“Do you do this often?” Duncan asked. Since trash talk did not seem to impress his statuesque opponent, he thought a more conversational tone might distract her.

“Not really,” Jasmine admitted. Since trash talk did not seem to impress her streetwise opponent, she thought a more conversational tone might distract him. “I mainly work with knives, just like you. The difference is I’m an outback girl, and we use proper knives—not the fingernail trimmers you street toughs call knives.”^[30.02]

Camper and intern traded blow and banter. Duncan was a bit quicker than his towering opponent, but Jasmine’s longer reach and greater familiarity with large blades more than compensated, so on balance she had the advantage.

In the fullness of time, Duncan said, “I’ve been thinking—”

“And you’re not used to it?” Jasmine suggested as she parried Duncan’s blow.

“Most of the others aren’t fighters, so they wouldn’t have had a chance here unless you went easy on them.”

“So it would seem,” the dusky giantess admitted as Duncan parried her blow in turn.

“So what’s the catch?”

“What makes you think there is one?”

“Because as much as Chris might like to see us humiliated against overwhelming odds, I think he knows that wouldn’t be good for ratings. Too predictable. So what’s the catch?”

“The ‘catch’, as you say, is that you don’t have to beat me to win.”

Duncan belatedly realized he had stopped looking for the key, so he resumed as best he might in the heat of battle. Presently, he spotted his key nailed to the back of the charthouse like Ahab’s coin.^[30.03] The nail did not appear to be embedded especially deep—quite the contrary, in fact—and the Juvenile Hall alumnus surmised he could easily pull free if he could but get to it.

With a flash of insight, Duncan understood, or thought he understood, and Jasmine’s tactics suddenly made sense to him. Throughout their sword fight, the giantess had given ground as often as she had forced him back, but the ebb and flow of battle had been effectively in a straight line.

To test his theory, the street punk slowly moved laterally toward the key as their battle raged. Jasmine moved laterally with him, but made little effort to cut him off, and this confirmed Duncan’s theory.

Jasmine was not really defending the key.

Duncan was a fighter and had boarded the boat expecting a fight, so he had readily accepted Jasmine’s challenge when she made it; but all along, she had deliberately left him an opening if he was clever enough to take it. Duncan wondered if it had been necessary to fight the giantess at all; but even had he known at the start, nothing would have changed. With the reward trailer out of reach thanks to his corner cutting, as has been told of before, Duncan had nothing better to do this morning.

Besides, if the look on his winsome foe’s face was any indication, she was having as much fun as he.

Confident he could take the key whenever he wanted, Duncan pressed his attacks with renewed vigor, although it did not avail him. The fight continued until both camper and intern were tiring visibly.

In the end, Duncan sensed the fight could end only one way, for Jasmine appeared to have better stamina; so he pocketed his pride and broke off the fight to snatch the key.

One problem remained, for Jasmine stood between Duncan and his canoe. They were close enough to the island that he could have jumped ship and swum ashore easily enough, even in street clothes, but Duncan resolved to compensate for his defeat in the fight by finishing with a flourish. He quickly climbed atop the charthouse, then vaulted over Jasmine’s outstretched sword and into his waiting canoe … which swamped and sank under the impact.

“Oh, that was smooth, mate!” Jasmine pronounced with a laugh. “I hope your booty is worth the trouble.”

Duncan hid his embarrassment behind a cocky grin as he treaded water. “A pleasure doing business with you, matey!” he said. “Cody was right; there are worse things than getting owned by a hot chick.”

In the fullness of time, Courtney retrieved her key without incident. She rinsed under a showerhead before removing her protective suit, but the odor was still pungent enough to make her eyes water slightly. When she was free of the suit, she laid it out under the showerhead, turned the water back on, and left the suit to soak whilst she attended to other business. She thanked D.J. for his assistance, assured him she was at his disposal if he needed help retrieving his own key, and dashed off to the amphitheatre in hope of claiming the trailer.

The camp’s central loudspeakers squealed to life. “Chef Hatchet, you’re needed in the infirmary. Chef Hatchet to the infirmary, please.”

Knowing the details of Heather’s challenge, Hatchet naturally suspected a trick. As he emerged from the kitchen, he spotted a skinny black intern mopping the floor. Hatchet spared the redshirt barely a glance as he commanded, “Leonard, keep an eye on things. If any campers try to get into the kitchen, don’t make it easy for them.”

“Yes, sir,” the redshirt acknowledged in a high, squeaky voice.

Hatchet strode quickly to the infirmary; but when he entered the tent, he stopped and stared in confusion. He had suspected Heather would rely on trickery to get him out of the lodge, but the patient was none other than the queen bee herself, lying on the cot and showing signs of severe abdominal cramps. Even more confusing was the identity of the attending intern.

“Leonard?” Hatchet asked blankly. “I told you to keep the campers out of the lodge kitchen. What are you doing here? And how in blazes did you beat me here?”

The skinny black intern replied with equal confusion in his high, squeaky voice, “I’ve been here all morning, sir. I haven’t been to the lodge.”

“Then who—”

Heather’s symptoms suddenly vanished, for it had all been an act. “It’s amazing what you can do with a change of clothes and a little shoe polish,” she explained smugly as she sat up on the cot. “That wasn’t Wizard Wannabe in the lodge; it was Cody in a simple disguise. I’m sure you’d have seen through if you’d looked closely, but we both know that nobody looks closely at interns. You just gave Cody, who will do almost anything to please a girl, unfettered access to your kitchen … and to a certain refrigerator.”

Hatchet shook his head and grinned sheepishly. “I expected a trick, but I wasn’t expecting two. Whatever, I know when I’m beaten. Well done.

“Get your key from your partner in crime and report to the amphitheater. It’s early enough that you might be able to get the reward trailer.”

Heather returned to the lodge, but Cody was not there, so she went to the bonfire pit. She arrived just in time to see the science geek pull the Dutch oven out of the fire, his hands sheathed in oven mitts he acquired from the kitchen. Beardo was looking on with mild interest but making no move to interfere.

“Cody, do you have my key?”

“Of course,” he replied as he removed the oven lid and dumped out his key. “Just give me a moment. Or, you could get it yourself, if you like. Left front pocket.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” the dragon girl said playfully as Cody set down the pot, for she deigned to compensate him with a cheap thrill for his valuable services. No sooner had Cody stood than Heather draped herself over him, thrust her hands into his forepockets, fished around a bit, and extracted her key. Beardo imitated a movie soundtrack of the sort stereotypically associated with porn flicks.

Cody picked up his still-scorching key and said, “Race you to the amphitheater.”

Heather replied, “We both know you intend to let me win, but we can make it look good for the cameras.”

“It seems my reputation has preceded me,” Cody observed.

“Of course, if you were really all that chivalrous, you would have already taken my key to Chris and submitted it in my name to get me the trailer.”

“I tried. Chris disallowed it.”

“I might have known … on both counts,” Heather said.

.

To Absent Friends

Trent and Gwen paddled toward the cliff diving venue at the island’s western end. They had made good time, and were now close enough to make out both the buoys ringing the diving safe zone and the French tricolor advertising Trent’s key. As they drew nearer, they noticed something else: a rude wooden cross bobbing next to the ring of floats.

“Check it out,” Gwen said. “There’s Harold’s marker.”

“I see it,” Trent acknowledged. “It’s drifted.”

Indeed, the marker had migrated over the six weeks since Harold’s funeral and now stood hard by the floats marking the diving safe zone, as has been told of before. Gwen and Trent had not seen it from shore because the marker had been on the far side of the zone—presumably the reason it had not drifted farther than it had—whereas the flag advertising Trent’s key had been on the near side.

“Shall we pay our respects?”

They brought their canoe alongside the cross. Gwen dutifully read aloud the inscription Izzy had burned into it.

Trent said gravely, “Dude showed us what Chris is really capable of. In a sense, he gave his life for ours.”

They reached out with their free hands, grasped one end of the marker’s crosspiece, and held it a moment as they said, “Rest in peace, Harold.” After observing a minute of silence, they paddled over to the flag and retrieved Trent’s key without incident.

D.J. followed his map somewhat absently, for he was preoccupied with the promised guardian. The drawing on his map suggested a rabbit, but D.J. knew it could not be that simple. In his mind’s eye, he envisioned a rabid rabbit, a super rabbit capable of beheading an armored knight with one swift stroke, a robotic fire-breathing rabbit, and even more exotic possibilities.^[30.04]

When he reached his destination, however, there was no rabbit in sight, robotic or otherwise. The key hung from a low tree branch, plainly visible. The tree looked easily climbable, insofar as any tree could be easily climbable to the heights-fearing brickhouse. On the other hand, the key hung low enough that he thought he just might be able to jump for it. More or less directly beneath the key, a long leash lay empty.

D.J. approached the key slowly, cautiously, expecting … something.

“Hi, D.J.,” chirped a familiar female voice.

Mildly startled, the gentle giant turned about. “Oh, hi, Izzy. What are you doing here?”

“Chris didn’t want me to dance my snake into submission—biggest damned rattler you ever saw, by the way—so I decided to feed it instead and grab my key while it was distracted. The bunny that used to be here was the first good snake chow I could catch.”

“So, what was the catch with having a bunny guard my key?”

“As far as I could tell, there wasn’t one,” the off-kilter cop admitted. “I don’t know whether Chris was clever or just lazy, but my guess is he was counting on whoever had the rabbit test^[30.05] to just assume it wouldn’t be as easy as it looked, and waste time and make more work for themselves preparing for nonexistent dangers.”

“Just like I was doing,” D.J. admitted. “So, what now?”

“I’ve got my key, and yours is unguarded. Grab it, and I’ll race you back.”

“In case you didn’t know, we can’t win the trailer,” D.J. said. “I helped Courtney get her key before I came out here. I don’t know whether she won the trailer or someone else did, but either way, it’s out of our reach.”

“Doesn’t mean we can’t race. It’s been too long since a big, virile guy chased me through the woods.”

“Does that mean what I think it means?”

“You tell me.”

“It sounds like you’re hinting at a pretty damned good reason to catch you if I can.”

“Catch me, and you’ll find out. If you can’t, at least you’ll have had a pleasant fantasy. Now go get your key.”

The key turned out to be the proverbial hair’s breadth too high for D.J. to jump for; so he naturally proposed that Izzy stand atop his broad shoulders, for she could then reach the key easily.

“And let you look up my skirt? I don’t think so,” Izzy said with affected sternness. “I’ll lift you.”

“Seriously?”

“I’m stronger than I look.”

D.J. was dubious, but willing to let her try. Izzy asked him to bow out his legs. She squatted down between them and placed her hands where his thighs met his groin. On the count of three, she exploded upward like an uncoiling spring, with a grunt and an oath. The off-kilter cop could lift D.J. only a few centimeters higher than he had jumped on his own, but those centimeters were enough.

“Ow!” Izzy exclaimed softly as she rubbed her knees and flexed her legs and hands after letting D.J. down. “Remind me never to try that with you again. Whatever, you’ve got your key so—”

Izzy dashed off without warning and called back, “Catch me if you can!”

D.J. was not built for running, and Izzy had won the 20K run preceding the Awake-a-thon, as has been told of before, so the brickhouse knew he had no real chance unless Izzy chose to give him one. On the other hand, she was a friend offering a bit of harmless recreation, and it would cost him nothing to indulge her.

The Pirates of Penzance, 5. "Climbing over rocky mountain"

she was a friend offering a bit of harmless recreation

Let us gaily tread the measure,^[30.06]
Make the most of fleeting leisure;
Hail it as a true ally,
Though it perish by and by.
Every moment brings a treasure
Of its own especial pleasure,
Though the moments quickly die,
Greet them gaily as they fly.

Katie asked, “What house do people enter blind and come out seeing?”

Scarlett answered, “A school. That’s literally the oldest riddle in the book—four thousand years and more. Sumerian, as I recall.”

“Yeah, I think so,” Katie said. “But in any case, you had the right answer.”

Scarlett recited:

In marble walls as white as milk;
Lined with skin as soft as silk;
Within a fountain crystal clear,
A golden apple doth appear.
No doors are there to this stronghold,
Yet thieves break in and steal the gold.

Katie’s brow furrowed. “Crap, I should know this one.” With the finish line in sight, the girl-child suddenly felt like a marathoner who had completed the 42 kilometers, only to get leg cramps in the last two hundred meters.^[30.07]

“In that case, don’t try so hard,” Scarlett suggested. “Try to relax, and perhaps it will come to you.”

Katie did, and the answer did. She presently replied, “An egg.” That was, of course, the correct answer, so Katie recited:

If you break me,
I do not stop working.
If you touch me,
I may be snared.
If you lose me,
Nothing will matter.

Scarlett pondered for a time, or pretended to ponder. Finally, she correctly answered, “your heart.”

Only one riddle remained, Scarlett’s twentieth. If Katie could answer it, the coveted key would be hers. Scarlett said, “What never was and never will be.”

Katie did not know this riddle, and her first instinct was to protest that it was unfairly ambiguous.^[30.08] It surely referred to something either impossible or traditionally regarded as impossible, but what? Why had Scarlett helped her before only to spring something like this on her at the end? Or had the brainy intern actually served up a softball, intending to accept any answer Katie could justify? If that was the case, what sort of answer and what level of justification would she accept?

As Katie pondered these questions with less than five minutes remaining on her clock, Fate smiled on her and she had a flash of insight.

“You have it,” Scarlett prompted, for she had noticed the grin spreading across her opponent’s face.

Katie grinned broadly and said, “The present. It never was because it’s not the past, and it never will be because it’s not the future.”

Scarlett smiled benevolently and nodded approvingly. “I like your answer better than the official one.”^[30.09] She removed the lanyard and its precious key from about her neck and held out her hand. “You win. Congratulations.”

Katie accepted the talisman with thanks, but one item of business remained. “I haven’t heard that last riddle. What’s the official answer?”

“A mouse’s nest in a cat’s ear.”

“Seriously? That’s lame.”

“It doesn’t make much sense to me, either,” Scarlett admitted, “especially in light of a proverb suggesting it could actually happen. That proverb goes, ‘Only a very brave mouse builds a nest in a cat’s ear.’ Nevertheless, it is a classic riddle, and as such was fair game for our duel.”^[30.10]

Gwen and Trent paddled eastward after retrieving Trent’s key, and made landfall as near as they might to the skunk burrow housing Gwen’s key. Both assumed Courtney’s diving suit would be available by this time, but they did not return to camp to fetch it because Trent had another idea.

The canoe was vital to his plan, so the couple bore it to the skunk den. Once there, Trent took the more hazardous position at the bow, leaving the safer stern position to his skunk-fearing girlfriend. Together, they worked the canoe into the entryway. The canoe was much too wide to go all the way in, of course; but by careful maneuvering, they were able to block the entrance and get the canoe’s upturned prow between the key and the burrow’s occupant. This done, Gwen held their “shield” in place whilst Trent knelt down to pick up the key.

“Whew!” the axboy exclaimed as he hastily backed away with Gwen’s key in hand.

“Are you okay?” Gwen asked, fearing her boyfriend had somehow been sprayed in spite of his shield.

“Yeah, the canoe shielded me, but I think Mr. Stinkbomb just asked us to leave.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Gwen said with feeling.

Idle hands, it is said, are the Devil’s workshop. Heather and her vassals had all retrieved their keys before lunchtime, Lindsay having successfully defied the bees after Cody found the unclaimed diving suit decontaminating in the shower and chivalrously helped her to use it, so Heather had the afternoon to pursue larger objectives. To that end, she called an alliance meeting.

“We have a problem,” Heather told her henchchicks. “We have to break up Gwen and Trent.”

“Why?” Lindsay asked innocently. “They seem like a good match, even if Tarrant^[30.11] could do better.”

“That’s the problem,” Heather explained. “This is an elimination game, which means ‘boyfriend/girlfriend’ is just a type of alliance. Speaking of which, Gwen’s getting too popular. Trent likes her, Cody likes her, Leshawna likes her, Courtney likes her, and worst of all, Chris likes her. She’s got the ‘antisocial loner’ act down to a science, but more and more I’m thinking that’s all it is—an act. Her strategy is obvious, at least in hindsight: she’s trying to fly under the radar and build alliances quietly.”^[30.12]

“Except for Kent,” Lindsay pointed out helpfully. “That wasn’t very quiet.”

“True, but the point remains,” the Dark Queen countered. “Gwen is running a strategy that can work, which is why we have to put a stop to it. We won’t reach the Final Three together if we just sit around and let other players form alliances. Mark my words; our alliance is going to be the only one on the island.

“I’ve decided to attack Gwen’s alliance with Trent first, because that should hurt her the most, so it’s our best bet to throw her off her game. Here’s what I need you to do ….”

After giving her lackeys their assignments, the Dark Queen went into the confessional and said, “Operation Breakup will tell me a lot about whether I can count on Katie and Lindsiot for anything besides their votes. They’re obedient, usually, but I’ve got flip-flops with more brains than Lindsiot, and Katie’s not much better. I had to make sure neither of them knows the whole plan in case they accidentally blab to somebody.

“I would really rather have asked Cody—I’m sure he would have jumped at the chance—but unfortunately, there wasn’t really anything he could do. He can’t go into the girls’ cabin without attracting attention, Gwen probably knows his handwriting, and Trent has no reason to trust him.”

When Gwen and Trent returned to camp, Trent went to his trailer for a shower because it seemed a touch of skunk spray had indeed drifted onto him whilst he was retrieving Gwen’s key. With nothing better to do, Gwen decided to go for a swim. That meant finding a swimming partner, for Chef Hatchet strictly enforced the buddy system when no lifeguard was on duty. The Goth wandered about the camp and eventually encountered Courtney, who agreed that a swim would be a nice way to kill an hour or two.

As these friendish campmates whiled away the afternoon in the lake, Heather put her plan into motion. Katie she sent to keep a discreet eye on the reward trailer until Trent emerged, whereupon she was to make small talk with him so he would not go looking for Gwen. Heather, meanwhile, kept a discreet eye on the swimmers.

.

Operation Breakup

When Gwen and Courtney returned to their cabin after their swim, Gwen spotted a sealed envelope on her bed. She opened it and read aloud in answer to Courtney’s unspoken question:

Gwen,

Come to the main dock at 4:00 for a little surprise.

You know who

Courtney said, “You’ll have to let me know what the ‘surprise’ is, as long as it’s reasonably family-friendly and not meant for your eyes only.”

“Your request has been duly noted,” Gwen assured her with a giddy grin.

What neither girl knew, nor had any reason to suspect, was that Heather, not Trent, had written the note and Lindsay had placed it. Heather’s scheme had originally called for Lindsay to write the note as well, so Heather’s involvement could not be deduced from handwriting, but Lindsay proved unable to write even the simplest note without decorating it with little hearts and smileys and suchlike, which was presumably not Trent’s style. Katie had the same problem, so Heather was obliged to write the note in her own, more generic hand.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with Heather,” Katie told Trent a little too loudly as they approached the dock. “She’s really upset, and she won’t tell us why. Would you talk to her? I’d really appreciate it.”

At this cue, Heather began to lament theatrically on the dock. As she did so, Katie lowered her voice and added, “But be careful. Heather’s planning something to get you and Gwen mad at each other. I don’t know what.”

That got the axboy’s attention. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked warily. Following Katie’s lead, he was also keeping his voice down. “I thought you had an alliance with Heather.”

“I do,” Katie answered quietly, her voice barely audible as Heather carried on with the fervor of a Persian mourner,^[30.13] “but I also owe Gwen. Long story. Besides, I don’t have proof, but I think Heather got Sadie kicked off. Fair’s fair.”

The girl-child looked Trent in the eye. “We didn’t have this conversation.”

During Trent’s stay at the losers’ compound, he had seen unedited footage of the episodes produced after his elimination, so he knew all about Katie’s debt of honor to Gwen. He could also have confirmed that Heather had indeed betrayed Sadie, but he and Owen were under strict orders to reveal nothing they had learned by methods not available on the island, as has been told of before.

“I’ll see what I can do,” the axboy assured Katie in a normal speaking voice. In a softer voice, he added, “and I’ll watch my back.”

Trent went to the emoting queen bee and asked solicitously, “Heather, what’s wrong?”

“Gwen’s just being so mean to me, and I don’t get why,” the Dark Queen lamented.

“If I had to guess, I’d say she probably has a long memory and hasn’t forgiven you for reading her diary to the world,” Trent ventured. “Especially since she didn’t actually write a lot of the things you ‘read’.”

This was not the response Heather was looking for, and she silently cursed herself for forgetting that Trent had seen the episodes after his elimination.

“You don’t understand,” Heather pleaded. “She got her revenge, and I apologized. We made a truce and everything. But now …” The Dark Queen sniffled, as if unable to finish the thought. What she had told Trent was not entirely true—she had never offered a real apology—but it was close enough to what the axboy knew that he did not call her on it.

“Gwen’s just a hard girl to get to now, that’s all,” Trent explained. “I have to admit, that’s one of the things that attracted me to her—the air of mystery. I know that’s kind of cliché, but still.”

Heather seemed to regain some of her composure, although she was still sniffling. “She’s mysterious, all right. How well do we really know her? I sure didn’t know her as well as I thought I did.”

“What do you mean?”

“I know it’s not nice to eavesdrop, but you pretty much have to if you want to survive in these elimination games,” the Dark Queen lamented. “I overheard Gwen telling Leshawna and Katie that—”

“Wait a minute. Why would she confide in Katie?” Trent asked in honest confusion. “I thought Katie had an alliance with you.”

“Gwen and I had a truce, like I said,” Heather explained, her voice thickening with well-feigned distress. “That went for my allies, too. At least I thought it did. Anyway, Gwen and Leshawna were trying to get Katie to turn on me and ally with them. Katie naturally wanted to know where she would rank, because nobody wants to be at the bottom of an alliance hierarchy.”

Heather’s voice began to clear, as if talking about game strategy—one of her favorite topics of conversation on the island—was distracting her from her misery for the nonce. “Gwen, who is apparently the ringleader, said you were on the bottom. She said she wasn’t really into you and your music is lame, and she only hooked up with you as wolfsbane against Cody because she likes him even less. Gwen said now that Cody’s learned his lesson, she’s only stringing you along for your vote so she can get further in the game.”

“This is pretty heavy,” Trent admitted, his mind reeling. He distrusted Heather for good reason, as has been told of before, and he wanted to believe she had spun her tale from whole cloth,^[30.14] but her words seemed to him disturbingly plausible. Katie had warned him that Heather was up to something, but what if Katie herself had ulterior motives? How well did Trent really know her? How well did he really know Gwen?

How well did he really know anyone on the island?

“I thought Gwen and I had a real connection,” he said, groping for answers like a man in a dark room groping for a light switch.

From the direction of the camp came a passable imitation of a blue jay’s “rusty pump” call, but a little too slow and high-pitched. Katie had concealed herself in the high branches to watch for Gwen, and the faux jay call was the prearranged signal to alert Heather to the Goth’s approach.

Heather shook her head sadly. “This is an elimination game. Real connections don’t happen here.”

“And all this time, I thought she really liked me,” Trent said blankly. “She really said my music is lame?”

The faux jay call sounded again with the same inaccuracies as before, but accurately enough that neither the unsuspecting Gwen nor the flummoxed Trent noticed.

Heather took Trent’s head in her hands. “Maybe Gwen doesn’t know what she’s got, but I think you’re really talented.” The Princess of Darkness kissed Trent full on the lips, a moment before the dock came into Gwen’s field of view.

“What the—”

Trent neither saw his girlfriend nor heard her exclamation, but his doubts vanished in an instant. Whereas he could barely think straight mere moments before, now he felt he had never thought more clearly in his life.

It had all been a trap; and despite Katie’s warning, he had blundered right into it.

That is not to say the kiss itself was bad. Quite the contrary; Heather was an excellent kisser, as another boy would later attest, but that is another story for another time. In the absence of affection or at least attraction, though, even a well-crafted kiss is not an especially pleasant experience.

Trent struggled to escape, but Heather was surprisingly strong and clung to him desperately. Finally, he wrenched free and threw her to the dock as he cried, “Get away from me, you whore!”

Heather tried to protest, but the axboy had already quit the dock.

Trent’s mind was in turmoil. Fearing that Katie’s kindly warning—a warning she had likely given at considerable risk to herself—had been in vain, Trent fixated on a single thought.

He had to find Gwen.

D.J. did not take at face value Izzy’s veiled offer of a possible tryst in the woods. He suspected it was merely innocent flirtation, a bit more graphic but otherwise similar to what he had done with Heather two evenings before. Besides, Izzy’s medication appeared designed to suppress hallucinations and an alter ego, and had little if any affect on her flighty nature; so even if her veiled offer had been sincere when she made it, there was no guarantee it would still be in force if he somehow managed to catch her. But, as the eccentric redhead had said, there was one way to find out.

Izzy was well aware of her superior running prowess, so she largely paced her pursuer, staying out of reach but not drawing far enough ahead to discourage him. Her lead grew and shrank as unpredictably as Izzy herself.

About halfway back to camp, Izzy stumbled, and found herself in D.J.’s grasp before she could recover.

“You caught me fair and square,” the off-kilter cop admitted. She spun about to face her captor and added, “And here’s my ransom.” She threw her arms about his neck and began kissing him passionately and playfully.

D.J. was delighted to collect Izzy’s “ransom”, for she was a beautiful and vivacious woman, however eccentric, and as good a kisser as any he had ever known. Indeed, though none of the boys had tried to make Izzy their own, most had fantasized about her at least once. Granted, they had also fantasized about the other girls from time to time, for that is the way of teenage boys. Moreover, the teenage male ego being what it is, the revelation that Izzy was really an adult had only made her more appealing.

Some boys in D.J.’s position might have fallen in love—well, in lust, at any rate—with Izzy then and there; but in a moment of clarity, D.J. understood the truth. The sheer playfulness of Izzy’s kisses told him she was doing this not out of any special attraction to him, although she found him appealing enough, but because she simply enjoyed kissing. This mattered not to the gentle giant, who resolved to ask for nothing more than this winsome wood nymph in green and gold gave him, while gladly accepting all she saw fit to give.

In the fullness of time, such desires as could be fulfilled by necking were sated for the nonce. Without warning, Izzy dashed off, again calling to D.J. to catch her if he could. He eventually did catch her when Izzy encountered terrain she could not negotiate at a dead run, and the second “ransom payment” was as pleasant as the first.

“That was fun,” Izzy later confessed in the confessional. “If he had caught me a third time, he might have gotten to second base.”

No sooner had Trent left the dock than Katie climbed down from her tree as quickly as she might. After a moment of indecision concerning what she should do, she went to Heather, who was still sitting on the dock where she had fallen.

“Heather, are you okay?”

“Do I look okay?” the Dark Queen retorted acidly.

“Your plan might still have worked. I’m sure Gwen saw you and Trent together, and I don’t think she saw what he did after.”

“Did you hear what he said?”

“Yeah, but I don’t think Gwen did. If she had, she probably wouldn’t have run off.”

“Well, that’s something. Mark my words, Trent is dead. Nobody calls me a whore and gets away with it. Go tell anyone who will listen how he insulted me, but make it sound like he did it for no reason. Or better yet, make it sound like he was hitting on me and insulted me when I turned him down. I want him gone!

“Again.” Heather drew a finger across her throat for emphasis.

Katie dashed off on her vital errand, leaving her liege to brood.

Leshawna strode into the girl’s cabin, disheveled but triumphant, but stopped short when she saw Gwen. The Goth was sitting on her bed, brooding.

“What’s wrong, baby doll?”

“Heather broke … how’d you get so scratched up?”

“You should see the crocodiles,” the homegirl said as she twirled her key on one finger. “Anyway, you were saying?

“Heather broke our truce. She’s trying to steal Trent! I saw them kissing on the dock.”

“Seriously?!” Leshawna asked reflexively. “I didn’t think she even liked him. Are you sure it’s her doing and not his? What am I saying? Of course it’s her doing. She’s Heather.”^[30.15]

“Yeah, it was her idea.”

Gwen and Leshawna turned to see Katie standing in the doorway. “She staged the whole thing,” the girl-child explained hastily. “I tried to warn him, but Heather can make left sound like right and black sound like white, and she wouldn’t tell me her whole plan. She probably got him doubting what he knew. She’s done that to me and Lindsay more times than I want to remember.

“Gwen, go find Trent. Tell him what you saw. If he tries to explain, hear him out, because I’m pretty sure he’s innocent. But please, please, don’t tell anyone I told you this. If it gets back to Heather, I’m dead.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Leshawna declared. “Heather is so off this island!”

“But it’s not—” Katie began.

“Heather is out of here!” the homegirl thundered.

The Pirates of Penzance, 20. "Away, away! My heart's on fire!"

"Heather is out of here!" the homegirl thundered

Away, away! My heart’s on fire;^[30.16]
I burn this base deception to repay!
This very night, my vengeance dire
Shall glut itself in gore. Away, away!

With falsehood foul
He tricked us of our brides.
Let vengeance howl;
The Pirate so decides.
Our nature stern
He softened with his lies,
And, in return,
Tonight the traitor dies.

The finished episode spliced in two confessional spots at this point. In the first, Leshawna said, “I’ve done my bit. I told everyone who would listen about what Heather did. If she doesn’t get invincibility, she’s history; and if she does, it will only delay the inevitable.”

In the second spot, Katie said, “Heather was worried that Gwen’s strategy is to build alliances quietly. If she only knew. Don’t get me wrong; I didn’t want to have to ruin Heather’s plan. As mean and bossy as she can be, being in her alliance and also being a double agent for Gwen, which kind of gives me a semi-alliance with her and Trent and Leshawna, has put me in a good position to get far in this lame game, and I don’t want to mess that up.

“Today I had to choose a side because what Heather tried to do was mean even for these elimination games; but if the others try to kick her off for it, I’ll have to try to stop them. Like it or not, I still need her. She does know strategy, even if she’s sometimes too mean and petty to actually use it, and I’ve learned a ton from her.

“I just hope this works out better for me than it did for Ezekiel.”

Away, away! Ere I expire—
I find my duty hard to do today!
My heart is filled with anguish dire,
It strikes me to the core! Away, away!

.

Storming the Bastille

At the appointed time, everyone assembled at the amphitheater. Against all odds, everyone had managed to retrieve their keys, and eagerly anticipated their rewards.

“Well done, mateys!” Chris rasped in his pirate voice. “Shiver me timber,^[30.17] I expected at least one of you to fail, but I’ve underestimated ye before.

“Before we proceed, I’m sure ye be wanting to know who gets the trailer berth until the next challenge. Well, I was as surprised as ye’ll be, but not only did Owen beat the most dangerous guardian of all, he finished before anyone else—and I didn’t even have to disqualify Duncan for not following his map!” The host added in his normal voice, “Congratulations, big guy.”

“Alright!” Owen cried as he raised his arms in triumph.

Chris gestured over his shoulder to the stage backdrop with its castle motif, and continued in his pirate voice. “Now, it’s time to get your booty, but to do it, ye’ll have storm the Bastille. The revolutionaries stormed that mighty fortress not just because it was a symbol of despotism, being a prison and whatnot, but also because a fine treasure of gunpowder was being kept there.

“Your task now is to climb those scaling ropes and rape those chests down here intact.”

“That doesn’t even make sense,” Leshawna challenged.

“Actually, it does,” Courtney explained. “The original meaning of ‘rape’ was ‘to abduct or carry off’, and you can still see that in its adjective form, ‘rapacious’. If I had to guess, I’d say ‘rape’ acquired its modern meaning of sexual violation because that’s what tended to happen to women who got raped in the original sense.”^[30.18]

Gwen smirked at this impromptu mini-lecture in etymology and said to Trent, “It seems Harold is still with us in spirit.”

Cody said, “Back on topic, and I admit I may not want to know the whole answer to this … if those chests are as heavy as they look, how are we supposed to get them down without getting ourselves killed in the process?

“By heaving them over?” Duncan suggested.

“But what if the treasure is something fragile?” Owen countered. “And if the chests get smashed, how would we know who was supposed to get invincibility?”

“Good points,” Duncan admitted.

“By teamwork, laddie. No pirate ever took a ship single-handed,” explained the Pirate King.

“This is just to make more work for us, isn’t it?” Heather challenged.

“D’arr, ye know me too well,” Chris admitted with a pair of finger guns.

The “fortress wall” had enough ropes for everyone, but not enough room on the platform. Owen, for all his strength, could not climb his rope at all, as he was not built for it. Katie and Izzy scaled the wall quickest, and experimentally hefted a couple of the chests. After conferring a moment, the false teen Izzy deferred to the true teen Katie, thereby giving the girl-child a rare opportunity to take charge.

Katie said to her colleagues, some of whom had clambered onto the platform and some of whom waited at the top of their ropes, “These chests are bulky, but they’re not really very heavy. Maybe some of our bigger, stronger peeps could carry one on one shoulder?

D.J. was clinging to his rope and taking care to not look down. He said, “It’s worth a shot. Hit me.”

Courtney, Duncan and Lindsay had joined Katie and Izzy on the platform, but there was no room for more. Duncan helped Katie load a chest onto D.J.’s broad shoulder, and sure enough, the brickhouse had no trouble at all securing it with one arm. He quickly slid down his rope, and the first chest was officially fetched.

“I think we’re better off with me on the ropes than up here,” Duncan ventured as he quit the platform.

“Naturally, Mr. Delinquent would be good with ropes,” Heather snarked.

“It’s a useful skill for a guy like me to have,” Duncan admitted.^[30.19]

Along with Trent, that made three boys on shuttle detail. Leshawna was big enough to do this as well, but her rope climbing skill was little better than Owen’s, so she could only offer encouragement.

Owen wanted to help, and presently had an idea. He lifted his arms and asked, “Are those chests light enough that I could expect to catch one if you dropped it?”

“I think so, Big O, but—” Katie began.

Courtney started to say something, but Izzy stopped her with a gesture and said quietly, “She never gets to lead anything. Let her handle this.”

Unaware of this exchange, Katie continued, “—how about you be the backstop in case any of the climbers drop their chest?”

Owen saluted and said, “Aye, aye, Cap’n!”

The storming/looting operation proceeded smoothly, and came to successful completion quickly enough. When all the chests and all the campers were down, the Pirate King rasped, “Now that ye’ve retrieved all the chests, find your own chest and get your loot! Because everyone managed to get their keys, there will be no penalty votes at elimination time, and one of ye will be getting invincibility!

Pirates of Penzance Pour, O Pour the Pirate Sherry

the Pirate King rasped, "... find your own chest and get your loot!"

Pour, oh, pour the pirate sherry;^[30.20]
Fill, oh, fill the pirate glass;
And, to make us more than merry,
Let the pirate pass.

For today our pirate ‘prentice
Rises from indenture freed;
Strong his arm and keen his scent is,
He’s a pirate now, indeed!

The booty, for the most part, was disappointing relative to what these “scurvy dogs” had gone through to get it, although it would have been welcome enough in another context. Most of the “treasure” chests yielded varying quantities of junk food, although there were a couple of nice gift baskets. The standard package also included one item of especial note, which erased all disappointment.

When Duncan opened his chest and recognized that special item, his face lit up like the sun. He seized the minibar-sized bottle of golden rum, looked at Chris, and exclaimed, “Dude! Seriously?”^[30.21]

“I see ye’ve met Captain Morgan,”^[30.22] rasped the Pirate King. “Don’t drink it all in one place.”

“But there’s only enough for one drink,” Lindsay observed obliviously.

“We could make grog, I guess,” Cody ventured.

“What’s grog?” Leshawna asked.

“Basically, it’s rum diluted with water,” Cody explained. “Three to one or four to one, something like that. Captains in the British navy used to give it to their crews because straight rum would have made them too drunk to do their jobs.”

“Or maybe Chef would be willing to make hot buttered rums for us,” Katie suggested. “I got to taste one once, and they are so good.”

Chris looked to Chef Hatchet, who shrugged and said, “Sounds reasonable for a challenge reward, although bumbo would be a better fit for the pirate theme.^[30.23] Either way, I could serve it as a digestif^[30.24] at dinner.”

Chris said in his normal voice, “I’ll leave that to your judgment, bartender.”

Owen’s chest contained but one item: a fancy wooden plaque with a skull-and-crossbones emblem. With all the pirate jargon they had endured from Chris before and after the challenge, the jolly white giant put two and two together.

“Hey, guys, this must be the invincibility token,” he ventured, showing the plaque to everyone before turning to Chris for confirmation.

The host squinted with his uncovered eye, as if to get a better look. “Oh, dear,” he declaimed melodramatically. “Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear.”

“What?” Owen asked warily. “This is the invincibility token, isn’t it?”

His answer came not from Chris, but from D.J. “I don’t think so, dude. I’m guessing this is it.” The brickhouse held up the marshmallow he had found in his chest with the other repositories of empty calories.

“D.J.’s right,” Chris confirmed. He held out his hand and said, “D.J., give me your marshmallow. You won’t be needing it.”

“Because …?” D.J. prompted as he handed over the coveted morsel.

“Because,” Chris pronounced dramatically as he turned to face the others, “Owen has unleashed the Curse of Fatal Death!^[30.25] That plaque in his hand is the Decree of Instant Elimination.” Raising his voice so his volume matched his histrionics, Chris bellowed, “No camper can touch it and live!” The host followed this pronouncement with evil stage laughter.

“Oh, come on!” Owen cried in exasperation. “You know what I had to do to get this!”^[30.26]

“Yes, Owen. Yes, I do,” Chris replied affably, with that infuriating bland smile of his. “I didn’t specify which chest it should go in because I wanted to be surprised, so some well-meaning intern probably put it in the chest with the bear key because they didn’t think anyone would be foolhardy enough to try to get it. Guess they were wrong.”

This was adding insult to injury, and Owen looked genuinely angry for the first time anyone could remember. After stewing for a few moments, he said, “You say any camper who touches this is out?”

“That’s right, dude,” Chris confirmed.

“Meaning … I can take someone with me?”

The other campers began to back away nervously, not liking where this conversation was going.

“I never thought of it that way,” the host admitted, “but now that you mention it … yeah, I guess so.”

Without hesitation or warning, Owen spun about and hurled the fatal plaque like a baseball.

“You’re mine!”

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

.

Thirty-first Night

The next 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, 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 plaque spun through the air, directly toward Heather. Too stunned to evade, the Dragon Queen was helpless. All her scheming, all her strategizing—all ashes. All the toes she had stepped on, all the backs she had stabbed, all the enemies she’d made—all for nothing.

Until Izzy stepped in front of her and casually snatched the toxic missile from the air.

“Owen, you should be ashamed of yourself!” the off-kilter cop declared, also displaying genuine anger for the first time. “And you seemed like such a nice guy.”

Unprepared for the intensity of Izzy’s reaction, Owen stammered, “But … but … you know what Heather’s like!”

“That doesn’t give you the right to bean her! She could have been seriously hurt!” Izzy replied sternly, her hands on her hips and steel in her eyes.

Belatedly realizing he had lost control, the man-mountain withered under Izzy’s piercing gaze. Hanging his head, he limply offered, “Uh, sorry, Heather. I don’t know what got into me.”

Heather did not respond directly. Eyeing Owen warily, she said to no one in particular, “It’s always the one you least suspect.”

“Well, not always,” Izzy remarked in a conversational tone as she inspected the wooden plaque, looking for the grain, “but often enough.” Finding the grain, she turned the plaque to align it properly, and broke it over her knee.

Chris interrupted this tableau, for he had a show to produce. “You do realize, Izzy,” he reminded her, “that by touching the death mark, you’ve eliminated yourself?”

“Meh,” replied the formerly demented redhead. “You said yourself I was just playing spoiler and wasn’t eligible to win. This way, my quote-unquote ‘death’ counts for something, so it’s all good.”

“Yeah, but taking a bullet for Heather?” Duncan asked incredulously.

“Hello!” Izzy retorted. “I’m a police officer, remember? ‘To Protect and Serve’ and all that? Don’t tell me you don’t understand that, with your bloodlines.”

Duncan had no answer, nonplussed that Izzy knew so much about him. Despite his disdain for law and order, Duncan’s family tree was full of cops, and it had been barely four years since his cousin Alex had become the first of their line to be killed in the line of duty.^[31.01]

Heather belatedly said, “Thanks, Izzy. I owe you one.”

“Don’t thank me too much,” Izzy replied coolly. “If that thing hadn’t been heavy enough to be dangerous, I would probably have let him have you.”

The evening meal was much as the campers had come to expect, which is to say the “pirate stew” was not fit for rats. Trent had the most trouble with his gag reflex, for the downside of having sat out most of the game was that his stomach had not been fully hardened to Chef’s cooking. In desperation, the axboy mixed his bumbo into his stew to make it more palatable, with limited success.

There was no elimination ceremony that night, for it would have had no suspense and therefore no drama; and in Chris’ world, having no drama meant having no point. Instead, the Lord of the Game led the campers directly to the dock for the customary leavetaking rituals as soon as the twilight had deepened enough for the tiki torches lining the dock to be useful.

The other campers offered condolences to Owen in whatever way seemed best to them, for they thought his elimination a cheap one. Granted, his departure removed a significant threat; but the other teens, one and all, understood that he had fallen and they survived by pure chance. To Heather, the gamebot, this thought was especially sobering. On an intellectual level, she had known all along that it was entirely possible to make no mistakes and still lose, but Owen’s fate drove that point home like a punch in the gut.

Before the condemned campers began their Dock walk, Izzy left the survivors with a tongue in cheek warning. “Don’t assume you’ve seen the last of me,” she said. “If the Powers that Be decide I wasn’t here long enough to satisfy my community service sentence, the producers might find an excuse to bring me back again. That would be fun, wouldn’t it? Or maybe they’ll have me do something with the losers. We’ll just have to see. Until then … cheerio, bros and bras! I’ll see you at the finale, if nothing else.”^[31.02]

Owen had already started to walk dejectedly down the dock, so Izzy dashed to catch him up. She took his hand in hers and spoke words of comfort as they walked. Only they know what she said to him, but it took away his self-pity.^[31.03]

The condemned campers reached the end of the dock. Still upset, and understandably so, at the unorthodox method of his elimination, Owen thought of a way to express his displeasure in his own inimitable style. Without warning, he bent over, clenched, and emitted a truly thunderous fart Chris and the remaining campers could hear all the way at the other end of the dock. There could be no doubt that this butt blast was far more powerful than the one that had felled Gwen and Trent during the Awake-a-Thon.

“Whew,” Duncan said, “Good thing he didn’t cut that one when we were all together at the bonfire or something.”

Chris’ face suddenly took on a look of pure panic. “The torches!” he cried. “Hit the deck!”

Realizing the danger, the campers measured their lengths in the dust, flattening themselves as best they might. Not a moment too soon, for the trees around them were bathed in a flash of blue light^[31.04] and lost most of their foliage as the shockwave swept over the host and his playthings.

The danger past, Chris and the campers raised themselves again from the embrace of Mother Earth and looked toward the boat. Owen had heard Chris’ warning and turned around just in time to catch the blast full in the face. The man-mountain had been blown onto the deck of the Loser Boat and lay there flat on his back, stunned. Izzy had ridden out the blast with more success, and now sat cross-legged atop the boat’s charthouse, where the shockwave had left her. Chef Hatchet had also heard the warning and done a quick duck-and-cover, so he was not injured when the boat’s windows blew out. At Ground Zero, a five-meter stretch of the dock was gone.

“Awesome!” Izzy cried happily. “An atomic fart fireball! I’ve never seen one before!”

After the boat departed to the customary singing of the Pie Jesu, the campers began the short trek back to the lodge for a round of marshmallow-garnished cocoa in lieu of their standard elimination ceremony treat, for there was no bonfire. D.J., trailing a little way behind, looked ruefully at the denuded trees beyond the dock and said rhetorically, “I hope Perola’s not too pissed at what we just did to her forest.”

It will recover.

D.J. did a double take, wondering if he had actually heard the forest spirit. “Perola? Is that you?” he asked experimentally, but there was no answer.

“It sounds like Owen went out in a blaze of glory,” Brett mused.

“If ‘glory’ is what you want to call it,” his mother conceded. “Of course he was as complex a person as the rest of us, and he could be a real powerhouse in challenges that played to his strengths, but TDI was nominally a kid’s show, so the producers wanted things they thought would appeal to kids. Owen was a big eater with an inefficient digestive system, so he got a ‘toilet humor’ edit. He did have some juvenile sensibilities, and he was a ‘go with the flow’ guy in any case, so when he found out after his first elimination how he was being portrayed, he embraced it.”

“You’ve mentioned before that the show targeted kids,” Brett noted uncertainly, “so why was Chris so keen to revive a love triangle? That doesn’t seem like something kids would be all that interested in, even if they do understand it.”

“For better or worse, kids nowadays aren’t as innocent as they used to be. You know that. Besides, that kids show turned out in practice to be more of a ‘kids of all ages’ show, and I’m sure it didn’t take Chris or the producers long to figure that out. In any case, even kids who don’t understand love triangles can understand jealousy and conflict.”

The night was still young, so Brett’s mother paused a few moments to collect her thoughts, and then resumed her tale.

. 

Episode #17: The Tale of Chef Hatchet’s Manhunt

Original title: Hide and be Sneaky

“I’m so glad they included Grapetastic pop in my challenge reward yesterday. It’s the one thing I’ve really been craving on the island,” Lindsay confided to Heather and Katie before taking another swig from her bottle, as the three took their ease outside the reward trailer. The distinctive sounds of carpentry echoed faintly from the nearby dock.

“I know, right? I wonder why the Tuck Shoppe doesn’t have it,” Katie mused between bites of toast spread with lemon curd.

“One of their competitors probably sponsors the show,” Heather ventured. “But yeah, you really lucked out with that fancy breakfast basket. All I got out of that lame pirate challenge was a couple of bags of chips—and one of those was barbecue, which I hate.”

“You also got the trailer and breakfast delivered to your door, don’t forget,” Katie reminded her liege.

With Owen eliminated despite winning the trailer, Heather had been next in line for that coveted reward, but the queen bee had been of two minds about it. Staying in the trailer would tend to isolate the lucky camper from the others, and Heather craved that; but she also feared it, for she felt she needed to keep Lindsay and especially Katie on short leashes. So it was that Heather invited—commanded, perhaps more accurately—her vassals to join her at the trailer for breakfast. Between Lindsay’s gift basket and the delivered meal that came with the trailer stay, there was enough for all three.

“Yeah, thanks to Chris’ trick,” Heather admitted sourly. “I still can’t believe Owen tried to bean me!”

“Well, you did try to steal Gwen’s boyfriend,” Lindsay reminded her. “That’s pretty major.”

“Shut up!” Heather commanded as she snatched the bottle from Lindsay’s hand. She took a swig to assert her dominance, but reflexively spat it out. In the heat of the moment, the queen bee had forgotten that she did not actually like ultra-sweet fruity sodas such as Grapetastic.

“Ugh! How can you drink this sugar water?!” the Dragon Queen challenged rhetorically as she cast the bottle away. Her arm was strong, as she had demonstrated during the dodgeball challenge, and the bottle chanced to strike a rock, so Lindsay’s precious nutrientless nectar was lost.

Lindsay looked wistfully at the shattered bottle as someone from the dock called desperately for a medic. Katie, meanwhile, did her best to keep her face unreadable. If Heather knew of or suspected Katie’s betrayal, she had given no sign, so Katie was keeping her head down in hope the incident would blow over.

The next morning, Heather and her vassals again broke their fast at the trailer, this time without incident. Shortly thereafter, the Lord of the Game summoned them and the other campers to the newly rebuilt dock. Chef Hatchet was also there, carrying a high-powered water gun.

“Today’s challenge is a good old-fashioned game of Hide and Seek,” Chris decreed. “Chef will be the seeker because—”

“It gives you an excuse to take the day off?” Gwen suggested.

“These kids know you too well,” Hatchet observed.

“If I may continue?” Chris shot back testily. “As I was saying, Chef will be the seeker because, with his military background and his wicked tracking skills,^[31.05] he is uniquely qualified to make this challenge excruciatingly hard.

“The lifeguard chair is home base. If you reach it, you’re safe; but if Chef catches you, he’ll douse you with his water gun.”

“Ooh, we’re going to get splashed with a little water. Now I’m terrified!” Duncan said in a tone suggesting he was anything but.

“Don’t knock it,” Heather admonished. “Knowing Chris, we should be thankful Chef isn’t using live ammunition.”

“Yeah, that would have put our ratings through the roof,” Chris admitted wistfully. “Sadly, Legal said ‘no’, but we came as close as we could. Chef, would you care to demonstrate?”

Without a word, Hatchet turned and blasted Chris at point blank range, blowing the black-hearted host off the dock like a feather and dumping him into the lake.

“Not on me, dude!” Chris spluttered as he trod water. “Darn it, that hurt!”

Hatchet turned to the campers and looked Duncan straight in the eye. “This gun has three power settings. That was ‘low’.”

Gwen quipped, “That’s as good as live ammunition for Heather, anyway.”^[31.06]

Heather scowled at the Goth, but said nothing.

Chris hauled himself back onto the dock and continued the briefing as if nothing had happened. “To give you a fighting chance, there are not one, not two, but three ways to get invincibility. The first way is the Hide and Seek standard of not being discovered in your hiding place. Chef has until sundown to find you; but with so many of you, it’s just possible he might run out of time.

“The second way is the other Hide and Seek standard of beating Chef back to base when he does find you. To get invincibility this way, though, you have to get back without getting sprayed.

“The third way to get invincibility is the nastiest, meanest, sickest way of all. If Chef catches you and douses you, you can help him find other campers. If you succeed, either on your own or by giving Chef a useful tip, your butt will be safe from elimination … this time.”

Cody could not help casting a surreptitious glance toward Leshawna, and this did not escape the curvaceous homegirl’s notice. “Don’t get your hopes up, short stuff,” she admonished. “This T-shirt ain’t getting wet.”

“A man can dream,” Cody replied.

“So, how much head start do we get?” Katie asked.

Hatchet answered, “I was up very early this morning, so I’m going to take a nap in the lifeguard chair. When I wake up, I’ll start searching. Could be ten minutes, could be twenty.”

“Any other questions?” Chris asked. There were none, so he said, “In that case … go!”

The campers scattered in haste. Courtney sprinted for the girls’ cabin, for she had a cunning plan but little time to implement it. Gwen and Trent, seeing a chance to spend the day together with little distraction, headed into the woods. Duncan likewise elected to take his chances in the forest, but took a different path from Gwen and Trent because he could guess the lovebirds’ intent. Cody headed for a certain storage tent because he, too, had a plan. The other campers sought hiding places in or near the camp.

Courtney collected a small bundle from the cabin and ran to the boathouse as fast as she might, for her plan would fail if she was not out of sight from the camp proper by the time Hatchet started seeking. When she reached the boathouse, she went inside and quickly changed, for the bundle she had brought with her was the wetsuit she had worn whilst immersed in Jell-O for the phobia challenge, as has been told of before, and which the show’s staff had not bothered to reclaim. The onetime CIT stashed her normal clothing in a burlap sack, which she concealed under a large fishnet. She also grabbed a snorkel, hoping Hatchet would not notice it was missing.

The boathouse had a small window facing the camp, and Courtney used this to scan for the Seeker; for if she did not know his position, she might be spotted when she quit her temporary shelter. Courtney knew Hatchet would come to the boathouse in due course, but she presumed he would search areas nearer the base first.

Five minutes later, Chris ambled to the lifeguard’s chair and tapped his softly snoring aide on the leg. “Yo, dude. It’s time.”

Hatchet awakened promptly and removed his sleeping mask. In a trice, he jumped down from the chair and grabbed his water gun, for his days in the Service had given him the enviable ability to pass quickly from deep sleep to full alertness. He went to the dock’s edge and fired a medium-power blast into the lake, which churned all around the dock.

“Anyone hiding under the dock is out!” the Seeker announced, but no one had tried that trick. Leshawna had considered it, but had thought better of it because she feared Hatchet might do exactly as he had done.^[31.07]

Hatchet searched first the boys’ cabin and then the girls’, but found no one, for the cabins offered few viable hiding places. The washroom likewise yielded no prey, for the same reason.

When Hatchet entered the first cabin, Courtney remained where she was and waited for him to emerge. When he did so, the concealed camper concluded the boathouse had been out of his sight for long enough; so when the Seeker entered the other cabin, Courtney made her move. Crouching as low as she might, the onetime CIT went onto the boathouse dock and slipped quietly into the water. With the dock between her and the camp, she swam silently westward, submerged at snorkel depth.

Courtney followed the shoreline until she came to the river, where she turned upstream. She surfaced soon after and continued her aquatic journey like a salmon returning to its birthplace, easily overcoming the gentle current.

When the Seeker entered the main lodge, he heard Heather and Lindsay arguing in the kitchen, presumably over who should get to hide there. Heather based her claim on being the captain of their alliance, with the usual veiled threats to expel Lindsay from the alliance if the latter did not mind her place, whereas Lindsay pleaded that she had gotten there first.

Hatchet barged through the swinging doors, trained his gun on the girls, and thundered, “This is my kitchen, also known as ‘Forbidden Territory’!” He could have easily doused both girls from the hip, but held his fire because his kitchen contained too many things that even an allegedly low-power blast could damage.

“Take her!” Heather cried as she pushed the unsuspecting Lindsay into the Seeker.

Hatchet tried to grab Lindsay with one arm as Heather dashed through the doors, but the top-heavy gymnast recovered quickly and eluded him. She dashed through the doors after her liege, with Hatchet hot on her heels.

This pursuit did not go unobserved. D.J. had taken refuge on the forest-facing side of the boys’ cabin roof, and from that position was invisible from most of the camp. With Hatchet’s attention entirely on the fleeing girls, D.J. saw his chance. Trusting to luck, the graceful brickhouse leapt catlike onto the ground and ran after the Seeker and his quarry.

Hatchet and the girls sprinted for the dock. The Seeker could have gunned Lindsay down at any time, but only at the cost of letting Heather escape, for he would have to stop running to shoot accurately and the dragon girl’s lead was large.

Neither girl was a strong runner, but Lindsay was stronger, so Hatchet inexorably gained on Heather even as he paced Lindsay. His hope was that Lindsay would draw close enough to Heather for him to eliminate both with a single blast. As he pursued his prey, Hatchet switched the power level on his water cannon to “high”, for he suspected he might need the extra range.

Finally, Hatchet deemed his prey close enough, and none too soon, for Heather had reached the base of the dock. The Seeker pulled up and quickly took aim. He rhetorically muttered, “Say ‘Goodnight’,” and fired.

Hatchet’s shot went wild and his water gun flew from his hands as D.J. slammed into him from behind. Reacting more quickly than his flummoxed quarry, the brickhouse grabbed Hatchet’s weapon and sprinted after Heather and Lindsay to the dock. All three tagged the lifeguard chair to claim victory. Nor were they the only ones, for Katie and Leshawna were hiding nearby. When these two saw how the hunter had become the hunted, stick girl and homegirl quit bush and copse and dashed for the dock in a bid for safety. Katie reached the chair easily; and although Hatchet very nearly brought down Leshawna with a shoestring tackle, she eluded him as well.

When Hatchet reached the base, he silently demanded his water gun. D.J. had no further use for it, so he handed it over.

“OK, girls, you have your darned invincibility,” the irritated Seeker snapped before turning back to D.J. “As for you,” he added, fixing the brickhouse with an icy glare before breaking character and favoring the boy with a wry smile, “There’s hope for you, yet.”

“I owed Heather a favor,” D.J. explained. He turned to the Dragon Queen and declared, “We’re even.”

Heather had bigger plans for calling in the debt D.J. owed her for helping him expel Ezekiel, so her first instinct was to protest; but when she saw the steel in D.J.’s eyes, she knew it was pointless to argue. He had, after all, delivered invincibility not only to her, but to her vassals as well.

“Fine. We’re even,” the queen bee conceded grudgingly.

In the fullness of time, Courtney came to the waterfall where Ezekiel had his fateful tryst with Izzy. This was Courtney’s destination, for she had noticed something in her earlier visit to this place. She made her way through the modest waterfall near one edge, for it was still important that she leave no trail, and emerged into the gap between the falls and the cliff face. This clearance, though small, was enough for the onetime CIT to climb the cliff to a small, shallow cave.

As Courtney had hoped, the cave was deep enough that she could stay out of sight from any angle from which someone on shore could see behind the waterfall. The small portion of daylight penetrating the water “shield”, and a dim greenish glow from some sort of bioluminescent organism, provided enough light to see by, although there was little to see.^[31.08]

Hatchet resumed his manhunt, grumbling to himself at how fully half the campers managed to gain invincibility in one fell swoop. He quickly searched the rest of the main camp and verified that the five campers still at large had taken to the proverbial hills.

At the tent where the ultralight aircraft were stored, the Seeker picked up Cody’s trail, which was easy to follow because the science geek appeared to be dragging something. Cody had not taken one of the ultralights, though, for their motors made them too heavy to transport easily and too noisy for a game of stealth such as Hide and Seek. Instead, the science geek had taken the unpowered hang glider Tyler had brought to the island. The only good place on the island to launch a hang glider was the western end with its high cliffs. Specifically, the diving cliff, which was the highest point on the island and an area the campers knew.

Clever, Hatchet thought, but not clever enough.

Hatchet could have easily caught Cody before the science geek reached the cliffs, but shooting a bird on the wing is more sporting than shooting it on the ground. The Seeker decided to let Cody’s plan ripen.

The Seeker continued his tour of the camp perimeter and picked up the remaining trails. None were difficult to follow, because only Courtney had appreciable knowledge of woodcraft, and she had plainly chosen speed over stealth.

Was Courtney planning to simply outrun him? That was a viable strategy, for it was difficult to make good time whilst tracking. Courtney had performed better in the 20K run than Hatchet could have, and while the game was called Hide and Seek, Chris had not explicitly forbidden the “keep moving” strategy. Nor was that an oversight. Allowing the campers the entire island instead of just the camp, the multiple ways to win, the “state’s evidence” option of ratting out fellow campers, allowing campers to keep moving … all these rules had the same purpose: to guarantee that someone would win the challenge and claim invincibility, not to mention the reward trailer. And if, by some miscalculation—failure to account for D.J.’s stratagem, for example—all this had made the challenge so easy that everyone managed to best him, there was enough wiggle room in the production schedule to make the Hide and Seek game a reward challenge with no elimination.

Better to pick the low-hanging fruit first, the Seeker thought, so he returned to Gwen and Trent’s trail. In the fullness of time, he tracked the lovebirds to a cave where he found them making out—“rounding second and heading for third” as the Seeker later put it, although this was an exaggeration.

Chef Hatchet did not come across as an intellectual because he did not cultivate that image; but this blue-collar Renaissance man had not only read the classics, he had read many of them in their original Latin.^[31.09] So it was that finding the oblivious couple in the cave reminded him of a scene from The Aeneid, yet one thing was missing.

Hatchet raised his water cannon. Only when Gwen and Trent were in his sights did he intone, loudly enough for the lovebirds to hear, “Let there be rain.”^[31.10]

Courtney’s wetsuit and physical exertion had kept her reasonably warm during her journey; but deprived of that exertion, she grew increasingly cold and miserable. Her wetsuit stopped her becoming dangerously hypothermic—indeed, the cave would not have been a viable hiding place without it—but it was going to be a long day.

As the day dragged on, Courtney began to jog in place, much as she had initially done during the Awake-a-thon as has been told of before, interspersed with various stretching and flexibility exercises. These activities helped both to warm her and to pass the time.

Chef Hatchet returned to the camp with two drenched teenagers in tow. Neither Gwen nor Trent had any useful information for the Seeker, but knew they had nothing to lose by helping him, so they volunteered to become his deputies.^[31.11] Hatchet accepted their fealty by telling them what he knew of the remaining campers’ whereabouts.

Trent did a quick mental calculation and asked, “So, five are accounted for. Does anyone have invincibility yet?”

“They all do,” the Seeker admitted. “It’s a long story I don’t feel like telling right now. You can ask around if you really want to know, but I’d suggest waiting until after the challenge, because right now, you two are the only ones on the block.

“I’m going after punk boy next, but that still leaves two; so if you’re good enough or lucky enough, you can both still save yourselves. The Quartermaster has the gear you’ll need.”

Gwen and Trent made haste to the Quartermaster’s tent, where Alejandro gave them camouflage clothing, radio handsets, Super Soaker-class water guns which were far less powerful than the Seeker’s but nevertheless potent enough to command respect, and knapsacks with spare water tanks.

The lovebirds briefly discussed their options. Although they would have preferred to stay together, Alejandro had warned them that only one could get credit for a kill—or a tip, for that matter—so they agreed they should hunt separately. They assumed they would have to actually shoot Cody, for the Seeker seemed to know or have guessed too much about the science geek’s plan for a mere tip to be useful.

Trent was more physically fit, so he made haste for the diving cliff in hope of catching Cody. Gwen went to the boathouse to search for any sign of Courtney.

.

Peter the Wolf^[31.12]

In the fullness of time, Chef Hatchet tracked Duncan down and spotted him at the edge of a small glade. The scorner of laws was still on the move, albeit by accident and not by design. He had simply not found a hiding place he thought good enough to thwart the Seeker.

This is going to be fun, Hatchet thought as he switched his water gun’s power setting to “high”.

Something stirred in the bush. Duncan noticed, cocked his head, and looked intently. Hatchet saw his quarry’s reaction and heard the movement, so he held his fire in case this unknown beast was something dangerous he needed to drive off.

A wolf emerged from a thicket and approached Duncan timidly. Although the delinquent knew little about wilderness matters, something in the back of his mind told him this was not normal behavior for a wolf. Duncan looked more closely, and saw the wolf had a badly swollen muzzle and appeared to be starving.

The sight of this forlorn-looking canine roused a childhood memory in Duncan. Without fully realizing what he was doing, the delinquent dropped to one knee and extended his hand. The wolf, now almost close enough for Duncan to touch, opened its mouth to reveal that its tongue had somehow become impaled on one of its fangs.

Duncan pulled the swollen, infected tongue from its fetter. Although he worked as gently as he might, the procedure must have been terribly painful for the wolf, but the beast bore it stoically.

Finally, the tongue was free. “There you go, Petey,” Duncan assured it, and gave the wolf a brief scratch behind one ear, which had a floppy tip from some old injury. The wolf whined softly, turned, and loped into the bush.^[31.13] There was every possibility the beast might still die, but now it had a fighting chance.

As Duncan watched it go, a thought struck him. Why on Earth had he called the wolf “Petey?”

Duncan stood where he was, lost in thought. He was still an easy target, but Hatchet held his fire and slipped away unnoticed.

Trent did not waste time trying to track Cody, for the science geek could only have gone to the diving cliff unless he had second thoughts about his plan and decided to ditch the glider; and if he had done that, Trent was likely to encounter it and could begin tracking from that point.

“Yo, dude! Need a lift?”

Trent turned and saw a grungy-looking intern approaching in an ATV. A water gun similar to Trent’s stood propped between the front seats.

“I could sure use one … Shawn, is it?” Trent admitted. “But won’t Chef get mad?”

“I doubt it,” the Zombie Master assured the axboy. “Chef figures that Cody should be ready to launch his glider by now, but Cody’s got no reason to launch until someone—or something—comes after him.^[31.14] If nothing or no one does, he could win the challenge and get invincibility just by staying up there all day. That’s where I come in. My job is to flush him, but he might not think I would actually shoot him; and, I have to admit, my gun’s mostly for show. Having you with me will make the threat more credible because he’ll know that you will shoot if I can get us close enough.”

Trent filled the “shotgun” seat and said, “Sounds like a plan. Let’s ride.”

Hatchet’s radio clamored for attention. He opened the channel and curtly acknowledged, “Hatchet here.”

“This is Gwen. I’m at the boathouse. All the canoes are here, but I found Courtney’s clothes in a sack. It looks like she decided to swim for it.”

“Because a canoe would be too visible, which would defeat the purpose of leaving no trail,” the Seeker surmised. “Well done.”

“So, do I get invincibility?” Gwen asked hopefully.

“Only if one of us can catch her. That’s why I gave you a water gun.”

Gwen said nothing in response, but Hatchet thought he heard a sigh of disappointment.

“My guess is she swam away from the camp,” the Seeker said. “If she had swum toward it, I would have spotted her. Follow the shoreline and look for footprints. The water’s cold, so she had to come out somewhere. Unless … do you know if she still has that wetsuit we put her in for the phobia challenge?

“I don’t know,” Gwen admitted. “But if you and the interns don’t know, then she probably does.”

“That complicates things. With that, she just might be able to stay in the water all day; and with this level of planning, she probably has a snorkel or something. On the other hand, the lampreys will probably keep her close to shore.

“I think your best bet is still to follow the shore and look for signs that she came out somewhere; but if you see a place in the water where you think she might be hiding, fire a blast into it. If she’s in the water close enough to that point, you’ll get credit for a kill.

“You can start with the boathouse dock, in case she’s hiding under it. Good hunting.”

Trent and Shawn watched Cody glide away. Despite their best efforts to approach stealthily, they had failed to surprise the science geek, although they had gotten close enough for Trent to take a shot.

Shawn radioed Hatchet and said, “Cody’s away, heading east along the shore. By the look of it, he’s trying to stay low, otherwise everyone on the island would see him. I have Trent with me.”

“Let me talk to him,” the Seeker replied.

“Trent here. I got a shot and hit his glider, but Shawn doesn’t think I hit him. Does that count?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Yeah, I was afraid of that,” the axboy admitted.

“You still have a few options,” the Seeker assured him. “Do you know how to drive?”

“Yeah, I got my license last winter.”

“In that case, you could come back to camp in the ATV and leave Shawn to watch Cody. It’s a longshot, but if you can get to the dock before Cody does, I’ll let you have the first shot. You can also stay where you are and keep an eye on Cody. If he ditches the glider somewhere, although I’m not sure where he could do that safely, you can pass on that info; and if I can catch him, you’ll get credit for the tip.

“The third option is to try to find Duncan. I can tell you exactly where I lost his trail.” This was technically true, for the Seeker had made no further effort to track Duncan after the encounter with “Petey”; and while Hatchet had spared the scorner of laws for his conduct in that incident, there was no reason that choice should bind Trent.

“I’ll go with Door Number Two,”^[31.15] Trent said. “If it doesn’t pan out, I can still go after Duncan.”

“Exactly. Hatchet out.”

Trent handed the handset back to Shawn as they watched Cody glide. Trent asked, “If Cody doesn’t ditch, would it be okay for you to drive me to the place Chef mentioned? It would save me a lot of time.”

“That’s why I’m still here,” replied the Zombie Master. “I seriously doubt Chef would mind. In fact, he’s probably expecting me to do that.”

As Hatchet had surmised, the island’s heavily forested interior offered no place where a pilot of Cody’s limited skill could land safely. The only good places to land were in or near the camp.

During the time Cody waited for a reason to launch his glider, he had briefly considered leaving the island altogether, for the diving cliff was high enough that he could probably have glided all the way to Boney Island without being seen from the camp. While this was an entertaining fantasy, Cody had quickly dismissed it for two reasons. First was the danger that Chris might interpret such an unauthorized departure to mean Cody had quit the game. Second was the even greater danger that Chris might simply leave him on Boney Island with only the dead and various dangerous predators for company.

On the other hand, the camp island was hillier than is typical of northern Ontario, so the terrain might conceivably conceal his approach if he kept his altitude low. So it was that Cody rounded the eastern end of the island at little more than treetop level and began his final approach to the Promised Land.

Cody’s heart sank when he saw Hatchet waiting for him on the lakeshore, with the dock some twenty meters beyond, for he knew then that the Seeker had guessed his plan; but there was no help for it, for Cody was committed to his course. Hatchet waited until his quarry was within low-power range, and calmly shot the science geek out of the sky.

After bagging his bird, Hatchet called to Cody, instructing the science geek to leave the glider where it was and wade ashore as quickly as he might. The Seeker radioed for an intern detail to retrieve the glider, and then called a certain turncoat camper.

Hatchet told Trent where he had allegedly lost Duncan’s trail, and gave Shawn leave to drive the axboy to that place. Shawn was then to meet Hatchet at the boathouse, for the Seeker did not wish to waste time on ground Gwen had already covered.

Cody emerged from the lake and asked if anyone was still at large. Hatchet told him how Gwen and Trent were deployed, but nothing would be gained by repeating it here. Cody agreed to help the Seeker and resolved to hunt Duncan, for this was now his only chance to gain invincibility without doing so at Gwen’s expense. Cody repaired to the Quartermaster, and Chef to the boathouse.

When Shawn arrived with the ATV, Hatchet boarded and made a radio call as they headed west along the shoreline.

“Gwen here,” answered the Goth’s filtered voice.

“Hatchet. Report.”

“I still haven’t seen any sign of Courtney. When I got to the river, I decided to follow it upstream. I figure that’s what she’d do because there are probably more hiding places nearby than there would be on the lakeshore, and there isn’t as much sand or mud to show her footprints.”

“Very good. Are you on the near bank or the far bank from camp?”

“The near bank.”

“Then I’ll take the far bank. Carry on.^[31.16] Hatchet out.”

Trent stalked through the underbrush as quietly as he might, for he had spotted his prey. Duncan had still not found a hiding place he liked, and now sat on a fallen log, apparently contemplating his next move.

Trent suddenly wondered if his weapon’s water tank was still properly pressurized, but he dismissed the thought. If the pressure had indeed faded, Trent could not pump now without alerting the delinquent.

Trent continued to stalk as Duncan continued to ponder. Just a little closer, Trent thought.

A loud, outraged squawk sounded from Trent’s feet. A pheasant hen half-ran away, dragging a wing that it clearly wanted Trent to believe was broken. The axboy had blundered onto the bird’s nest, nearly crushing its precious contents in the process, and the hen sought to lure away what it could only assume was a predator.

Unsurprisingly, the incident caught Duncan’s attention. “Nice try, dude! You nearly had me!” the scorner of laws conceded.^[31.17] “Feel like running?”

Duncan dodged Trent’s shot, however narrowly, and the chase was on.

In the fullness of time, Shawn and Chef forded the river near its mouth. Hatchet sent the intern on to scout the shoreline whilst Hatchet searched the river bank. Hatchet made better time than Gwen, and caught up to her by the time she arrived at the waterfall pool.

Whilst searching the area, Gwen fired two blasts into the reeds Izzy had hidden in before ambushing Ezekiel a week earlier, but of course Courtney was not there.

Duncan zigzagged unpredictably through the woods. The delinquent was a slightly better broken-field runner than Trent and also had the advantage of acting instead of reacting, so he was able to stay out of range but unable to shake his pursuer completely.

In the fullness of time, Duncan emerged from the forest and entered the camp. As the scorner of laws approached the dock, now decisively ahead of Trent, Cody stepped out from behind a defoliated tree and quickly took aim. The science geek had staked out the base in hope of getting just such an opportunity as had now come to him.

Cody expected Duncan to react instinctively by either swerving or braking for a moment, either of which would give Cody a good shot. Duncan did indeed react instinctively, but his instinct was not what the science geek had predicted.

Without breaking stride, Duncan threw his knife.

Gwen peered behind the waterfall and beheld a most intriguing sight. She withdrew a little way to lessen the background noise and unholstered her radio.

“Chef?”

“Report, deputy.”

“I think I see a cave behind the falls, maybe five meters up.”

Hatchet came to the falls and peered behind them. “If there is a cave, it’s not visible from this side. Check it out, if you can get to it, while I find a place to cross.”

As it happened, the river was fordable a little way below the pool outlet, with water depth about halfway up Hatchet’s thighs. As he was crossing, he received another radio call.

Meanwhile, Gwen thrice tried to climb to the cave, and thrice had to retreat, for she lacked Courtney’s protective suit and was less skilled a climber than the onetime CIT in any case. So it was that the Seeker found his deputy looking like a drowned gothic rat.

“I can’t get to the cave,” Gwen admitted as she showed the Seeker its location.

“I can see why. If Courtney is in there, then she definitely has the wetsuit.”

“I was thinking,” Gwen said, “If we can get a straight shot into the cave, is your gun powerful enough to punch through the waterfall?”

“Maybe, but it doesn’t matter. Chris just called. Time’s up.”

“Crap,” said the disappointed Goth.

“Crap, indeed.”

Hatchet unholstered a bullhorn he carried for this eventuality. He called out, “Courtney, if you’re behind the waterfall, you can come out now. The challenge is over. You’ve won.”

Courtney burst through the waterfall and arced into the pool with a graceful swan dive as she grinned through blue-tinted lips.^[31.18]

After tagging the lifeguard’s chair to claim invincibility, Duncan sauntered back the way he had come. He met Cody near the base of the dock and held out a hand, silently demanding his knife.

“Dude, what were you thinking? You could have put out my eye or something!” the science geek griped as he surrendered the knife.

“I didn’t have time to think,” Duncan protested. “You really did surprise me. Good job with that, by the way. But let me tell you something. No matter what you see in the movies, you’re probably not going to hurt someone by throwing a knife at them unless it’s specially designed for throwing, and most knives aren’t.^[31.19] Mine sure isn’t. But I didn’t need to hurt you, I just needed to distract you.”

That, Duncan had done. His switchblade had struck Cody high on his forehead—lengthwise, with the unsharpened back edge of the blade, as it turned out—leaving Cody unhurt but mightily distracted. Only for a moment, to be sure, but that moment was all Duncan needed. By the time Cody had recovered his wits, the Juvenile Hall alumnus had sprinted past him and was on the dock and out of range.

When Shawn brought Chef, Gwen and Courtney back to camp, Chris summoned the campers to the lodge.

“So, Chef, who gets the trailer?” Chris asked theatrically.

“I was the first one to win, so I should get it,” Heather prompted.

“Nice try, but won’t fly,” Chef Hatchet replied. “Who helped you win? For that matter, who was responsible for half of you getting invincibility all at once?”

“Yes, who, Chef? That sounds like quite an achievement,” Chris prompted curiously, for in truth he did not know. The Lord of the Game had spent the day in his own pursuits, leaving to his versatile aide the business of running the challenge.

Hatchet did not answer his overlord directly, but turned to the lucky camper and said, “D.J., the trailer is yours.”

Hatchet handed Chris a list of who had been caught and who had not. The host briefly scanned the paper and did a double take. “Seven out of ten have invincibility?” Chris asked incredulously. “Seriously, Chef? Do I have to do everything myself?”

“You’re welcome to, but that would mean you’d have to do actual work,” replied the unamused man hunter. Several campers chuckled at that.

“Whatever,” the host replied, and flashed an “I’m watching you” sign at his aide. He looked over his “little list”^[31.20] again, and gave a chuckle of his own. “Actually, this works,” he noted rhetorically. Turning to the campers, some of whom had a fair idea what he meant, Chris said, “It seems Gwen, Trent and Cody are the only three who didn’t get invincibility, which means the rest of you have a love triangle to break up. Should make for a nice, dramatic elimination ceremony.”

Not long after the campers dispersed to await their late dinner, Cody went to find Heather and asked her to join him in the woods near camp. This gave the queen bee a fair idea what he wanted. No, not that.

When they rendezvoused, out of sight and earshot from the camp, they looked around to make sure neither of them had been followed. Cody said, “I need your help.”

“So you do,” Heather replied noncommittally. “Works for me. It’s about time we got rid of Gwen, anyway.”

“No way!” Cody shot back reflexively. “If that’s my only other option, I’d rather go myself!”

“Kidding, kidding,” Heather said, with a gesture warning Cody to keep his voice down. “I get that you’re totally devoted to Gwen. I’ll never understand why, but whatever. You’ve shown that you can be useful, so I think we can come to an agreement. We just have to work out the price.”

Cody said, “All the rest of us have a better chance in this game if Trent goes. You, Katie, Lindsay, everyone. Remember what Chris said when Trent came back to the island? That he couldn’t tell us anything he might have found out ‘by means not available on the island’? Trent probably got to see all sorts of confessional spots and stuff that we don’t get to see. There’s no telling what kind of dirt he might have on us. Sure, he’s not supposed to talk about it, but that doesn’t mean he can’t use it himself.”

“That’s a good point,” Heather acknowledged grimly. “I have a fair idea what I’d do with that kind of info if I had it.”

“So we don’t really need a ‘price’, do we?” Cody suggested hopefully. “It’s enlightened self-interest.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Heather admitted. “So, it sounds like we have a deal. It shouldn’t be too hard for me to get Courtney to vote with us. She knows all about ‘enlightened self-interest’, too. Five votes should be enough, if Duncan still thinks the girls are conspiring against the boys.”

“He still does, as far as I know.”

“Great. That means he’ll probably vote for Gwen, so the five votes we don’t have will be split. If I can get Courtney, then it won’t matter what D.J. or Leshawna do.”

“Uh, there’s just one thing,” Cody began. Heather gave him a quizzical look, and he explained, “It’s a long story, but I’m honor-bound to vote against myself this time.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“I’m afraid not. I’m bound to never vote against either Gwen or Trent.^[31.21] I’m the only other candidate this time, and we’re not allowed to abstain.”

“Are you crazy?!” Heather cried, and it was Cody’s turn to warn against letting their voices rise. “You can’t make commitments like that in a game like this!” The dragon girl sighed and shook her head at Cody’s folly. “Are you sure there’s no way out of it?”

“My word is my bond.”

Heather was about to upbraid Cody further for his “honor before reason” attitude, but she bit her tongue, for she had thought of a way to take advantage of the situation. With a calculating air, she said, “That means four votes against you already, since Leshawna will probably vote with Gwen; and even if Courtney votes with us, we’ve only got four.”

The Dragon Queen pondered for a moment. “You’ve just made my job a lot harder. A lot harder than it needed to be. Which means … the price has gone up.”

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

.

Thirty-second Night

The next day was not a school day, so Brett and his mother spent the day engaged in their own affairs. That night, after they had dined and Brett had finished what homework he had for the weekend, he approached his mother and asked to hear 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.

Cody waited nervously for his sometime ally to dictate terms. A few weeks before, when Heather needed Cody’s help to backstab Sadie, Cody had set a price Heather considered harsh, knowing full well that Heather was in no position to refuse. Now, the shoe was on the other foot.

“Okay, here’s the deal. Take it or leave it,” the Dragon Queen said. “If I can bail you out, then you stop trying to protect Gwen.”^[32.01] Cody started to protest, but Heather silenced him with a gesture and continued. “If you get voted off tomorrow, you won’t be able to protect her anymore, anyway.

“I won’t ask you to actually vote against her, because you’ve made it pretty clear you won’t, so it would be pointless. And, I’ll still try to be civil to her, as a favor to you, since I might need your help again sometime. But it’s getting close to the end, and I need the flexibility to decide who goes and when.”

Cody pleaded, “Can you at least promise me you won’t get her booted before we get to the ‘cash zone’? Her family doesn’t have a lot of money.”

“No promises,” Heather replied with iron in her voice. “I do have higher-priority targets, but if they happen to be invincible for some reason, I’m not going to vote off one of my allies just to keep Gwen around. So, do we have a deal?”

Cody considered Heather’s terms. As much as it galled him to leave his crush girl to Heather’s tender mercies, Cody had to admit the queen bee was right. He really had nothing to lose.

“Yeah. Deal.”

Heather, who was taller than Cody, stepped forward and kissed him on his forehead. It was a gesture not of affection, but of dominance.

The next night came the elimination ceremony. Chris took his customary place behind the bonfire and called for attention. “I have nine marshmallows, and there are ten of you. Seven of you have invincibility, so obviously this challenge was way too easy.

“Whatever. You know the drill. First, the campers invincible. Courtney … D.J. … Duncan … Heather … Katie … Leshawna … and Lindsay.

With these seven standing safely behind him, Chris addressed the three on the block. “Gwen, Trent, Cody, your love triangle has given our viewers some awesome drama. Sadly, though, it’s time to break it up. I have two marshmallows on my plate, and there are three of you, but only two of you had votes against you. Our voteless wonder is … Gwen.”

The Goth stepped forward and received her talisman of life, then stood with the others and kept her eyes nervously on Trent.

“No real surprise there,” Chris admitted. “Anywho, the final marshmallow goes to …”

As usual, Chris mugged the camera and milked the tension; and in truth, the campers were not certain how the vote would pan out. Both of Gwen’s suitors were sweating bullets, looking first to Gwen, then to that last marshmallow, and back again.

At last, the Arbiter of Fates handed down the verdict. “Cody, on a tiebreaker.”

Gwen groaned in despair. “Not again.”

Cody stepped forward to claim his prize. Trent also stood even as his heart sank. Turning his gaze from his love to his executioner, the axboy asked, “Chris, what was the tiebreaker?”

“You’re not going to believe this,” the host replied with a smirk. “Cody actually voted against himself because of some lame ‘debt of honor’ or something. He promised way back when that he would never vote against either Gwen or you.^[32.02] Not very smart in a game like this, but it did make for good drama, I’ll give him that. So, I decided if he wound up in a tie with you or Gwen, I’d ignore his attempt to fall on his sword. If his vote had been the deciding one, I would have let it stand.”

“Wow,” Gwen said, forgetting her disappointment for a moment. She turned to Cody and said, “I guess I did sort of make you promise that, but I didn’t think you’d actually do it.”

“I gave my word. What can I say?” Cody replied.

“And some things are more important than winning,” Katie chimed in.

“That’s a matter of opinion,” Heather said.

Trent turned to Cody. “Dude, maybe I misjudged you.”

“I can’t really blame you,” Cody admitted.

The nine remaining campers accompanied their ex-colleague to the dock to see him off. As everyone gathered at the base of the dock, Trent turned to Gwen and lightly grasped her wrists.

“Promise me you’ll stay strong and win for both of us,” Trent charged his lady.

Gwen managed a smile and softly replied, “I will.”

Trent gently cupped Gwen’s head in his hands and drew her to him, and the lovebirds shared a long, tender farewell kiss. They parted in the fullness of time, and Trent accepted his fate. Turning toward the dock at last, he began the lonely trek to the Boat of Losers as the bell began to toll.

As the boat pulled away from the dock and set forth on the Voyage of the Damned, Gwen led the singing of the Pie Jesu for the first time because, as Trent’s girlfriend, it was her place. Tears began to well in her eyes, but she managed to keep her voice steady, for she thought Trent deserved nothing less. There would be time enough to grieve later.

As the surviving campers returned to the bonfire to toast their marshmallows and contemplate what lay ahead, Courtney pulled Cody aside, and Heather as well. “I had to agree to go on a date with Duncan to get his vote,”^[32.03] the future speaker of laws informed them, “and knowing him, I’m expecting a wrestling match. You two owe me big time.”

“Cody actually went through with it,” Brett said rhetorically, shaking his head slightly in quiet amazement. “You did say he’d be as good as his word, but that’s pretty extreme with a hundred grand at stake.”

“I know, right?” his mother conceded. “But it can be that way with people who don’t make promises lightly. And … he got more extreme than that.”

“Seriously?!” Brett blurted out reflexively. “All for a crush?!”

“Well, not quite, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves,” his mother replied cryptically.

The hour was not late, so Brett’s mother paused a few moments to collect her thoughts, and then resumed her tale.

.

Episode #18: The Tale of the Tour de Wawanakwa

Original title: That’s Off the Chain!

The next day, Courtney made good her bargain with Duncan.^[32.04] After breakfast, they “negotiated terms”, as Courtney later put it. Duncan suggested a hike into the woods, much as Courtney had previously done with Ezekiel, albeit without the camping. Courtney gave Duncan an odd look and suggested lunch on the lake.

The delinquent grinned wolfishly. “You don’t trust me, do you?

Courtney saw no reason to deceive him. “As a matter of fact, I do … but only to a certain point.”^[32.05]

Duncan had not really expected Courtney to go for his risqué proposal, so he shrugged and said, “Fair enough. I doubt Chef will make separate lunches for us, so we’ll get something from the Tuck Shoppe.” The delinquent grinned another wolfish grin as he added, “Unless you’re up to raiding Craft Services.”^[32.06]

“In broad daylight?!” Courtney asked incredulously. “The Tuck Shoppe will do fine. Serving detention together isn’t my idea of a date. If you want to try raiding Craft Services, be my guest; but if you get caught and miss our date, my obligation is discharged. I don’t take kindly to being stood up.” Courtney smiled slightly to take some of the sting out of her words, but her smile did not reach her eyes.

When the other campers answered the luncheon bell, Courtney and Duncan met at the Tuck Shoppe. Although their date was nominally Dutch treat, Courtney suggested they buy different foods so they would have a greater selection if they wished to share anything. Duncan thought her plan a good one, and was well pleased at Courtney’s apparent intention to honor the spirit of her commitment as well as the letter.

Their next stop was the boathouse, for Courtney had proposed lunch on the lake, not merely by it. They outfitted themselves with fishing gear as well as boating essentials, and presently paddled a canoe to a particularly scenic spot. There they passed the afternoon snacking, talking, and catch-and-release fishing.

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
'O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!'^[32.07]

Before the afternoon was done, Duncan had figured out why Courtney wanted a date on the lake. The canoe constrained mobility, and with their food and cooler between them, Duncan was forced by circumstance to keep his hands to himself. Well played, he thought and later admitted in the confessional.

“That went well,” Courtney said in her confessional spot. “I was pleasantly surprised. He’s still not my type, and I have no desire to go out with him again, but I have to give credit where it’s due. He was actually trying.”

The following morning, the campers made their thrice-daily pilgrimage to the lodge, where an unusual breakfast awaited them. It was no more appetizing than usual, except perhaps by default, but it was unusual nonetheless because the protein dishes were missing. The menu offered neither eggs nor meat nor dairy, but plenty of underdone pancakes, overdone hash browns and stale pastries. Several campers commented on this.

“I think I know what’s going on,” Katie ventured. All eyes were on her at once, for the campers were never displeased when one of them saw through a trick of Chris’ and chose to share that insight. Chef looked on with an expression of mild interest.

“Do tell, bra,” Duncan prompted around a mouthful of pancakes.

“The last challenge was three days ago, so we’ll probably have one today,” the Thin Twin began.

“Yes, yes, we know that,” Heather interjected impatiently.

“I think breakfast is a clue about the challenge,” Katie explained. “Ever heard of ‘carbo loading’?”

“That’s something jocks do, isn’t it?” Leshawna guessed.

“That’s right,” Katie replied. “Racers, especially. They’ll eat mainly carbs before a big race, because carbs are easier to digest and give you quick energy. Which means … today’s challenge is probably something sports-related.”

From the kitchen, Chef flashed a finger gun at her, as if to say, “Got it in one.”

Not long after, Chris summoned the campers to the Arts and Crafts tent, where D.J. joined them. His breakfast at the reward trailer had been as carbohydrate-heavy as everyone else’s, but of much higher quality perforce; and D.J., like his fellow athlete, Katie, had guessed the meaning behind it.

Chris appeared and called for attention. “Today’s challenge,” he declaimed, “is a tribute to one of the most storied events in competitive cycling: the Tour de France. This year’s Tour just ran Stage Eleven, so it’s more or less as far along as our elimination game. Therefore, in honor of the Tour de France, today’s challenge is … building your own wheels!”

Tourmaster Chris motioned to a large pile of bicycle parts nearby. “You’ll find all the parts you need in the bike depot. Once you’ve collected the basics, you can trick out your bike any way you like with supplies from the Arts and Crafts Center. Best design wins.

“Oh, and if anyone is thinking about hoarding parts so someone else can’t get the parts they need, keep in mind that you’re expected to use all the parts you take.”

An intern handed out generic assembly instructions, and Chris said, “One more thing: you may have heard about a doping scandal related to the Tour de France, where some big name riders allegedly used shady methods to give themselves an unfair advantage. We have our own version, which you’ll recognize when you see it.

“You have until high noon. Good luck.”

“We get first dibs!” Heather called.

“Nice try, sister,” Duncan shot back. “It’s free for all.”

None of the other campers ventured opinions, but their behavior made it clear they had sided with Duncan. Free for all it was.

The campers crowded around the ‘bike depot” like hyenas around a zebra carcass and began extracting parts from the pile. This was occasionally hazardous, as this or that coveted part sometimes carried the risk of triggering a partslide.

Suddenly, Duncan’s eyes lit up like the sun. “No way!” he cried as he pulled a small electric motor from the pile.

“That must be the ‘doping’ advantage,” Courtney surmised. She and the other campers searched the pile with renewed vigor.

There were three motors in all. Leshawna and Katie found the others, although Heather quickly commandeered Katie’s. As for standard bicycle parts, there were more than enough to go around, and nothing to gain by hoarding.

In the fullness of time, Heather and her vassals moved a little way off and quickly took inventory. Katie said, “I’m going to build my dream bike, just like the one my dad had when he was a kid!”

“Oh, so am I!” Lindsay cooed. “Every year when I was little, I would ask for a Sunset Sally bike for Christmas, and my birthday, but I never got one.”

“Seriously?” Katie asked incredulously. “Your Sweet Sixteen birthday party cost more than my house,^[32.08] yet your dad wouldn’t spring for a Sunset Sally bike?”

“My dad said it was important to show status, and a nonentity bike^[32.09] wouldn’t do that, but a huge party would,” Lindsay explained wistfully.

“Can’t argue with that,” Heather said, “but first things first. You need me, and I need to win this challenge so I can get invincibility, which means you need to build my bike first.”

“Why can’t you build your own bike?” Katie challenged.

“Because I’m sure you two can do it better and faster than I could,” Heather explained. She held up her perfectly manicured hands and asked, “Seriously, do these hands look like manual labor is their thing?”

Lindsay seemed convinced, but Katie was not ready to back down. “Lindsay’s hands are as pretty as yours.”

Heather gasped in feigned horror, but quickly composed herself. “What does that have to do with anything? I’m the brains of our alliance. Lindsiot’s not. I thought you understood that.”

Katie started to protest further, but Heather silenced her with a gesture. “You’re wasting time. I’m the captain of this alliance, so what I say goes. That’s just how it works. You know that.”

Katie was not ready to abandon Heather’s alliance, so she glared and flashed the “I’m watching you” sign, but said no more. Heather, unimpressed, scowled and returned Katie’s sign in kind.

“Once, I braked too hard on a steep hill and flew right over the handlebars. By the time I stopped skidding, skin was hanging off me in chunks.”

“One time, I ‘ate a rock’ a car in front of me kicked up. It took out four of my teeth, so I had to get surgical implants.”^[32.10]

“I wiped out so badly once, it popped my arm right out of my socket. It took two orderlies to hold me down while the doctor slingshotted it back into place.”

“There was this one time I wiped out so bad, I broke my collarbone. You could see it sticking right out of my shoulder. It was wicked.”

The three boys had moved off by themselves, much as Heather and her posse had. Duncan and Cody had extensive riding experience, and swapped “war stories” as they worked. Their tales grew increasingly outlandish as they fell into a game of “Can You Top This?” The naturally timid D.J., who had relatively little riding experience, listened with growing apprehension.

“Good times,” Duncan and Cody finally sighed in near-unison.

Courtney had joined Gwen and Leshawna more or less by default, for none of these girls were planning anything requiring secrecy. They worked efficiently, making small talk the while, but Leshawna was ambivalent about her advantage.

“Don’t get me wrong; I want to win as much as the next camper, but this just doesn’t seem right,” the homegirl lamented as she regarded her motor.

“Neither is doping, which is what those motors represent,” Courtney observed. “But fair or not, Chris clearly intended it to be part of the challenge. He’s handed out advantages before. This one is just more random than most.”

“Besides,” Gwen reminded the homegirl, “Katie got one of the others, which means it will probably end up on Heather’s bike—Heather’s—unless Katie grew a spine.”

Courtney added, “So yes, you have an unfair advantage over Gwen and me, and some of the others; but against Heather and Duncan—the people you really need to beat—your playing field is level. I’ll be happy to take the motor if you don’t want it; but if you don’t mind my saying so, you’d be a fool to give it up.”

Courtney thumbed through her manual to find a tidbit she had previously noticed. When she found it, she showed it to the reluctant homegirl. “I don’t know about your manual, but mine has instructions on how to install a motor.”

“So does mine,” Gwen said. “She’s right, Shawnee. It was meant to be.”

The sun stood at its zenith when the P.A. system squealed to life. “Time, campers! Come to the Arts and Crafts Center for the judging. Be there or be square … and DQed.”

A few minutes later, Chris stood before the assembled campers and asked, “Who wants to be judged first?”

“Might as well get this over with,” Gwen muttered. Her bike was a recumbent, with aspen wood paneling that partially enclosed the rider in a way that suggested a coffin without adding much weight. Large, batlike wings projected from the rear, stretching backward along the bike’s axis.^[32.11]

Chris nodded. “Spooky, yet practical. Well done.”

Heather’s bike looked every centimeter a racer, complete with drop handlebars. Apart from decorative racing stripes of glitter glue, long a guilty pleasure of the normally haughty queen bee,^[32.12] every feature minimized weight or maximized performance or both.

“Excellent aerodynamics, Heather,” the Tourmaster observed.

“It only weighs two ounces,” the queen bee claimed smugly and implausibly.

“Like her brain,” Leshawna muttered.

“Not her brain,” Gwen replied with a sigh, “her heart.”^[32.13]

Leshawna presented a solidly built all-purpose bike, christened the Ghetto Blaster^[32.14] and decorated in a “loud and proud” motif featuring fluorescent green paint so bright it was almost painful to look at. Heeding Courtney and Gwen’s counsel, Leshawna had installed her motor. Chris made a show of shielding his eyes as he gave the “Ghetto Blaster” thumbs up.

Courtney had built a mountain bike, for she, like Heather, expected a race to follow the judging; but whereas Heather expected a relatively straightforward speed race with perhaps a few obstacles, Courtney expected a full-fledged obstacle course or some other test emphasizing maneuverability. The onetime CIT had largely eschewed decoration, for hers was a practical nature, but she had painted the motto, “Excelsior”^[32.15] on the frame. The Lord of Wawanakwa beheld this bike and saw that it was good.

D.J.’s creation emphasized rider safety above all else, and the result was not so much a bicycle as a tank. A protective cage enclosed the rider, with heavy padding on all sides. This added a good deal of weight, so D.J. had reinforced the frame and added double wheels, much as one sees on large trucks. Training wheels, both fore and aft, helped stabilize the severely top-heavy design.

Chris took one look at this travesty and said, “Dude, seriously? This is lame … but I have to admit, it just might work for you.”

The host did not make cryptic remarks without purpose, so his admission that D.J.’s ungainly but nigh-invulnerable so-called bike might actually be effective touched off a buzz of speculation among the campers. Heather, in particular, was having second thoughts about staking her fortunes on a specialized design, but what was done was done.

Duncan’s bike had a rugged, off-road design broadly similar to Courtney’s, but tricked out as a post-apocalyptic war machine with large knifelike projections on the wheel hubs, a sheet metal fairing between the “ape hanger” handlebars, and lengths of barbed wire that would whip about in the wind behind to discourage close pursuit. It even had a hardpoint^[32.16] on each side—a feature that would stand the delinquent in good stead, although he could not have known this. At the moment, these hardpoints sported reasonable facsimiles of Sidewinder missiles.^[32.17]

“Wicked Mad Max^[32.18] Mobile, dude!” Chris pronounced gleefully.

At first glance, Cody’s bike looked conceptually similar to D.J.’s, but much more stylish, if “stylish” is the correct word. Whereas D.J.’s design choices stemmed from his natural timidity, Cody had given his bike an enclosed, vaguely humanoid-shaped cockpit that amounted to an oversized suit of armor. Overall, his design suggested Robby the Robot^[32.19] … on a bicycle.

Understandably, Chris did not quite know what to make of this admittedly strange and wondrous contraption. “Cody, I have to admit, this is … this is extraordinary.”

Lindsay had indeed built a reasonable facsimile of the bicycle marketed as part of the Sunset Sally line of girls’ toys. She had painted the step-through frame in a pastel pink that was a near match for the line’s equine mascot. The stuffed head of a small hobby horse, pinkified and purpleized with pastel chalk, projected from the frame, above the front wheel.

The hobby horse’s detached pole was mounted horizontally above the rear wheel, with a clump of hair tied to the end to serve as the “tail”; and here Lindsay had done the original one better, for hers sported genuine (albeit purple) horsehair. The interns maintained a stable of horses, which they used for various tasks as has been told of before, and the need to groom those horses meant there was always a certain amount of loose horsehair lying about the stable; so when Lindsay had gone to the stable and asked Sky for some horsehair, the redshirt had little trouble accommodating her.

The right handlebar mounted a bell, which perforce lacked the horselike sound effects of the genuine article. The seat was a wide, soft mattress saddle shaped vaguely like … well, a saddle. Lindsay had cut away the front of the toe clips on her pedals, the better to suggest the stirrup-like construction of the original Sunset Sally’s pedals.

Chris smiled warmly and said, “I can see this was a real labor of love.”

“I know, right?” Lindsay replied.

Katie presented a wheelie bike any fifth-grader would have been proud to call their own. It had an extended fork in imitation of a chopper motorcycle, holding a front wheel significantly smaller than the rear. This retro roadrunner also sported ape hanger handlebars, a banana seat, and a meter-high passenger backrest. The handlebars had a plastic fairing between, on which Katie had mounted a high-quality drawing of Sadie as a sort of figurehead. This drawing, which Gwen had provided as a favor to Katie, depicted the butterball with an angrier demeanor than most of the campers had ever seen from her.

Chris declared, “Now this is a hot rod! Nice!”^[32.20]

“I call it ‘Sadie’s Revenge’,” Katie explained.

Duncan quipped, “So, Katie has a cool streak. Who’d have guessed?”

The Tourmaster said, “This is a tough decision. Most of you did excellent jobs. We have Katie’s fun machine, Heather’s speed machine, Courtney’s mountain climber, Leshawna’s Ghetto Blaster, Gwen’s Vampirebatmobile^[32.21], Lindsay’s Sunset Sally, D.J.’s safe room on wheels, Cody’s half-transformed Transformer, and Duncan’s lethal weapon. Go grab some lunch while I confer with my panel of experts.”

Chris’ “experts”, using the term loosely, consisted of Chef Hatchet and the three interns—Alejandro, Scarlett and Sky—who, for one reason or another, knew the most about bicycles. As these worthies and their overlord conducted a closer inspection of the campers’ handiwork, the campers went to the lodge to face the ritual ordeal known as “lunch”.

On this day, that noontide nastiness consisted of cold, self-serve leftovers from that morning’s breakfast, for Chef was busy with the bikes and even he could not be in two places at once. As the campers ate, they speculated on why Chris had chosen the interns he did, what those worthies would be looking for, and (naturally) on who was likely to win the challenge. This discussion helped divert the campers’ attention from the quality (or lack thereof) of the food, and had entertainment value in its own right.

Alejandro’s inclusion was no surprise, for the big Latino seemed as much a Renaissance man as Chef Hatchet and over time had become the de facto Intern in Chief. Sky likewise seemed a logical choice because her gymnastics background meant she was highly coordinated, so she was presumably a skilled rider. The consensus was that she would probably test ride the bikes, although any or all of the others judges might do so as well.

Scarlett seemed the oddest choice, for she seemed more inclined to academic pursuits. On the other hand, she had served as the boys’ horse racing opponent in the Labors of Heracles challenge, so perhaps her interests extended to mechanical steeds as well. With her injured knee, she seemed unlikely to test ride the bikes, but the campers supposed she might perform all sorts of calculations related to the technical aspects of bicycle design.

In any case, the campers assumed the challenge would have a second part, else Chris would probably have given them the whole day to build their bikes instead of just the morning; but what the afternoon session held in store, the teens could only guess.

In the fullness of time, the public address system squealed to life and the Tourmaster summoned the campers to the Arts and Crafts tent to hear the verdict.

“After due consideration,” Chris informed the assembled campers with his standard bland smile in place, “We have a winner. The best bike is … Heather’s.”

“Yes!” exclaimed the queen bee. “Eat my dust, losers!”

“Which means Lindsay will have an advantage in the second part of the challenge.” Chris’ bland smile did not change a whit as he dropped the other shoe.

Gwen was first to ask the obvious question. “Why Lindsay?”

“Glad you asked,” Chris said. “The challenge was to build your own ‘wheels’. Those were my exact words, which I’m sure our lawyer-to-be will be happy to corroborate.”

The Tourmaster nodded toward Courtney, who smirked at Heather and affirmed, “That’s exactly what he said.”

“Thank you, Courtney,” Chris said with exaggerated politeness. “Heather had her staff build her bike for her instead of doing it herself, which means she did not participate in the challenge; so although she gets to use that fine bike for the rest of the challenge, she obviously can’t get the reward for building it.”

“I did so participate. I decorated it,” Heather protested.

“And nicely done,” Chris admitted, “but I hardly think squirting on a little glitter glue qualifies as helping build it. As I was saying, Lindsay and Katie built Heather’s bike, so I used their own bikes as the tiebreaker. Lindsay gets the Part Two advantage because her horse-themed bike is a better fit for Part Two of today’s challenge.”

“Which is …?” Duncan prompted.

Chris said only, “Follow me.”

.

Full Tilt

The Tourmaster led his young charges to a construct that resembled a section of a snowboarder’s halfpipe, but with sides less steep and access ramps on each side. A small rack holding wooden poles tipped with boxing gloves stood in front of one ramp.

“This is where it gets good,” Chris assured the campers. “Because we’re going to race these babies hard!”

“Awesome! My bike is built for speed!” Heather declared with a confidence she did not entirely feel.

“But that’s Part Three. First, you have to survive Part Two: a jousting tournament!”^[32.22]

“And that’s why you said D.J.’s tank might work for him,” Duncan surmised. “Well, bring it!”

Chris motioned to the rack and explained, “You’ll be using blunted lances because, as much as bloody impalings would boost our ratings, the party poopers at Legal … well, you know the drill by now.

“We’ll give you some armor because, even though your lances are blunted, there’s still the chance someone’s lance could splinter on impact. Besides, it’ll look cool. You can also have shields if you can figure out a way to handle both that and your lance, and also steer your bike.

“The winner of this tournament, along with our Master Builder, gets an advantage in the third and final part of the challenge. If Lindsay wins, she’ll have a double advantage. Anyone who chickens out gets hit with a penalty in the third part.

“I was going to have you pull names out of a helmet to determine the first-round pairings, but Chef suggested we seed you according to how well we think your bikes are suited to jousting, so blame him if you don’t like your draw.

“As I’m sure you know, a three-round tournament bracket has eight spots, and there are nine of you, so that’s where Lindsay’s Part Two advantage comes in. Because she won the building phase, she gets a bye to the final round of this tournament. That means she only needs to win one joust, whereas anyone else will have to win four.

“Any questions?”

There were none, so Chris continued. “The seeding is: first seed, D.J.; second seed, Duncan; third, Cody; fourth, Gwen; fifth, Katie; sixth, Leshawna; seventh, Courtney; and eighth, Heather.^[32.23]

“Gwen and Katie, you’re up first. Gwen, if you want your shoulder taped, ask your squire.”

“Squires” from the intern corps—Alejandro and the bodybuilder Ryan, to be precise—provided Gwen and Katie with white plastic cuirasses that probably came from Star Wars stormtrooper costumes, but with a metal flange bolted to one flank. These flanges, the squires explained, were lance rests. The purpose of these rests was to help hold the lance in position as the knight charged, as well as to add force to the blow by bracing the lance against the weight of the knight’s torso, as opposed to relying entirely on the knight’s arm strength.

Katie regarded her lance and observed rhetorically, “So that’s what the notch behind the grip is for.”

After the girls had put on their cuirasses, their squires helped them don coats of scale armor, short-sleeved pullover shirts of canvas with overlapping rows of soda can or beer can tabs sewn on as the “scales”. The flanks of these shirts were partially open to accommodate the lance rest.

The jousters then donned bicycle helmets and clear plastic face shields of the type first used in the paintball deer hunt. Thick, padded gauntlets, which in another context would be called oven mitts, completed the panoply. Gwen took a shield, which was merely a large plastic trash can lid with arm straps attached, and using those straps affixed it to her handlebars. Katie eschewed her shield, for the fairing between her handlebars would serve just as well. The Thin Twin did remove her Sadie “figurehead” from the fairing, for she did not wish to risk damaging it.

With the knights ready for battle, the squires affixed heraldic flags to their bikes, partly for pageantry and partly as a mnemonic for the viewing audience. Katie’s flag, which would fly from the tall passenger backrest, bore the yin-yang symbol. Gwen’s flag, bearing a scythe, would fly from a thin pole affixed to her bike’s frame and the back of the seat.

The jousters took their places atop opposite ends of the jousting halfpipe, and the squires handed them their lances. Gwen quickly realized she could further brace her lance within the wooden “coffin” that surrounded her seat. Across the way, Katie realized her passenger backrest could perform the same function, for the lances had beanbag butts able to conform to any bracing surface. With this feature, jousters could put not only their body weights, but also the weights of their bikes behind their lances if their bikes had features suitable to brace the lance, and the tournament seedings had taken this into account.

At a signal from Chris McLean, Lord of the Lists, “Dame Gwendolyn” and “Dame Kathleen” launched themselves down the slopes. Faster and faster raced the warcycles, with little need for the riders to pedal. At the bottom, on flat ground more or less midway between the launch points, the jousters met with teeth-rattling impact.

Both lances struck true, but only Katie was thrown from her bike. Victor and vanquished were dazed for a moment, but unhurt, nor did their solidly built bikes sustain more than cosmetic damage.

“And the winner is Dame Gwendolyn!” the Lord of the Lists announced theatrically.

In the fullness of time, the next pair of jousters waited at their starting gates: the third-seeded Sir Cody and the sixth-seeded Dame Leshawna. Cody’s enclosed cockpit did not have room for the scale armor, so he had to make do with the cuirass. That mattered little, though, for the cockpit provided ample protection. Cody likewise had no need for the face shield, although he did wear the helmet, which he had designed the cockpit with enough headroom to accommodate.

Cody wondered at first how he was going to handle the lance, but his squire helpfully pointed out that someone had drilled good-sized holes through the cockpit on one side to accommodate the lance, presumably whilst the bike judges had been doing their work. This was why Cody was seeded higher than Leshawna. The homegirl’s bike, for all its merits, had no features that would give her an advantage in a joust, whereas Cody’ enclosed cockpit meant he could not be unseated, so the only way to beat him was to make him wipe out.^[32.24]

The flag on Cody’s bike bore the image of a calculator as his heraldic device. Someone had originally suggested the three-point Klingon star of Star Trek lore for Cody’s flag, but Legal had vetoed that idea for the simple and eminently logical reason that the Klingon star is trademarked intellectual property, and the producers were unwilling to pay royalties for such trivial use. Leshawna’s flag bore the most complex device in the field, bearing testament to her African-Quebecois heritage. Based on the spears-and-shield crest adorning the flag of Kenya, the Masai-style shield bore Quebec’s colors of blue and white; and while one spear bore a typical point, the other was tipped with a fleur de lis. Leshawna’s flag hung from an add-on pole, much as Gwen’s had, whereas Cody’s hung from the back of his cockpit.

At Chris’ signal, the jousters launched themselves down the acceleration slopes. Both lances struck true. The impact all but turned Cody’s bike about, but the science geek was a skilled rider and did not fall. Leshawna lost her grip on her lance and steered a wobbly course past the impact point, but she likewise did not fall.

“Another lance!” cried the Lord of the Lists. “There must be a winner!”

So it was that Cody and Leshawna did it all again, but this time the powerful homegirl knocked Cody down, enclosed cockpit and all.

“We have our first upset!” proclaimed the Lord of the Lists. “Dame Leshawna advances to the second round!”

When Chris called the second-seeded Duncan and the seventh-seeded Courtney to the lists, Duncan had an idea. After he and Ryan verified that a lance could be mounted on one of his bike’s hardpoints in place of the mockup missile, the scorner of laws asked for and received two additional lances, one for the other hardpoint and one to carry normally. The hardpoints did not mount gear horizontally, but at a slight upward angle, so any knight facing the scorner of laws would have to deal not with one lance, but three. Well, two, because one mounted lance would be out of play perforce, but it looked intimidating and left Duncan’s bike without a weak side. Nevertheless, something was amiss.

“Dude, where are my hub knives?” Duncan asked.

“Bicycle tires are expensive, and you can’t win your joust by slashing your opponent’s tires,” Ryan explained.

“Will I get them back for the race?”

“You’ll have to ask Chris.”

Courtney did not see what her opponent was up to, else she would surely have protested, but the spectators did see. Heather asked, “Can he do that?”

The other campers replied, almost in unison with Chris but in a more resigned tone, “No rule against it.”

Meanwhile, Courtney was admiring her scale armor. “My compliments to the armorer,” she said. “Somebody put a lot of work into this.”

“I’ll pass that on,” Alejandro assured her. “Several of us put in time making them, but B came up with the design.”

“I might have known,” Courtney said.

Presently, the jousters were ready. Courtney’ heraldic device was a flag on a mountaintop, and Duncan flew the Jolly Roger. Duncan’s barbed wire trailers were wrapped around the mounted lances, lest they interfere with the joust.

At Chris’ signal, the jousters launched themselves down the slopes, for Courtney’s inevitable protests had fallen on deaf ears. The diminutive dynamo struck the scorner of laws fairly with her lance, but never had a chance. Courtney fell with honor, but she fell nevertheless.

The Lord of the Lists formally proclaimed “Sir Duncan” the victor and said, “One more joust to wrap up the first round, and I have to say this could get ugly. D.J. and Heather, you’re up.”

In the fullness of time, the jousters were ready. Heather’s flag bore the image of a bee, presumably a queen, arched to sting with its barbless stinger^[32.25] bared. D.J.’s flag bore the image of a bunny.

The Lord of the Lists signaled top seed and bottom seed to begin their runs. As the knights rolled down their launch slopes, Heather played her ace, realizing it might do more harm than good, but seeing no alternative. The motor buzzed to life, and her racer fairly leapt forward to meet whatever fate awaited.

There are times when size does matter. When the jousters met, Heather was thrown and her featherweight speed steed was crushed and mangled beyond repair, although Heather herself suffered only minor injuries. D.J.’s massive, overbuilt destrier^[32.26] did not even slow down.

In the second round, Leshawna faced D.J., for the homegirl was the lowest surviving seed,^[32.27] and Gwen faced Duncan. Neither match offered much suspense. Duncan dispatched Gwen with little trouble; and while Leshawna’s sturdy steed was not damaged in her joust with D.J., the homegirl otherwise fared no better than Heather had. Gwen’s bike did suffer extensive cosmetic damage at Duncan’s hands, but this did not impair its performance.

The stage was set for the top seeds to settle matters.

What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object? Logicians will tell you such a meeting is impossible because these are mutually exclusive concepts; but the colloquial answer is, “Something’s got to give.”

In the third round, Duncan’s irresistible force thrice met D.J.’s immovable object, and thrice bikes and riders came away little the worse. Whatever advantage there may have been lay with D.J., for the normally timid brickhouse was gaining confidence with each joust.

On the fourth joust, one of Duncan’s mounted lances splintered on impact, leaving an icepick-like shard that drove through D.J.’s protective cage and into his chest. This fell shiver snapped off as Duncan passed, which nearly caused the scorner of laws to fall as the sundered lance was torn from its mount.

D.J. was unhurt, for his coat of scale proved more than a match for the unhardened wood, but the incident seemed to unnerve him. The gentle giant’s natural timidity reasserted itself with a vengeance, and on the next joust he gave way. The Lord of the Lists declared Duncan the winner by default, and cast the obligatory aspersions on D.J.’s manhood.

The stage was set for the final confrontation between tournament champion Duncan and master builder Lindsay. In the fullness of time, these worthies took their places atop the launch ramps, and at Chris’ signal they launched their bikes toward destiny. Lindsay’s flag displayed her heraldic device, a crossed pair of lipstick tubes.

To no one’s surprise, Duncan unhorsed the buxom equestrienne, but it took him three jousts to do so; for Lindsay, besides being well coordinated, knew how to follow instructions in spite of her mental deficiencies, so she had taken to heart the tips Alejandro had given her. So it was that, when the formerly blonde bombshell finally fell, everyone else—not least Duncan—held that she had acquitted herself well.

Chris, who had strapped a wooden sword to his hip before the final joust, called Duncan to kneel before him. The street tough had a fair idea what was about to happen, so he complied without protest, still wearing his scale armor, and bowed his head before his overlord.

The Lord of the Lists drew his sword and touched the flat of the blade to Duncan’s shoulders, the right and the left, as he intoned, “In the name of Saint George and Saint Numeris,^[32.28] for valor in the joust, I pronounce thee Sir Duncan, wielder of advantage in the third part of the bicycle challenge and guardian of awesome ratings!”

.

The Charge of the Camper Brigade

This bit of ceremony concluded, Ryan and Alejandro provided the campers with fencing foils and shoulder belts, by which the foils would remain strapped to the campers’ backs until the time came to use them.

Chris said, “The third and final part of the Tour de Wawanakwa is based on a famous military action that was immortalized in an even more famous poem: the Charge of the Light Brigade.”

“Didn’t the Light Brigade get, like, wiped out?” D.J. asked nervously,

“Not ‘wiped out’, really,” Courtney corrected, “but their casualties were high enough that they couldn’t be an effective fighting force afterward.”

“About a third of the riders were killed or wounded,” Chris explained, “and most of the survivors lost their horses. I’m expecting a similar result today.”

“Regarding our bikes or our lives?” Leshawna asked nervously.

Chris said rhetorically, “I love this show.”

After giving the riders a few moments to make of his response what they would, the Lord of the Game continued. “This race consists of three parts. First, you’ll ride through the cannon fire in the ‘valley of death’. Since cannons and gunnery crews are too expensive, we’ll be using mines instead. They’ll go off if you hit one or get too close, and we can also detonate them remotely. For effect,” he added with an expectant grin. “They’re concussion mines that don’t throw off shrapnel, because we’re not trying to kill you.” The host paused for effect. “Not trying.”

“At the end of the valley, you will take a narrow catwalk over the piranha pool—”^[32.29]

“I’m pretty sure the Light Brigade never had to deal with piranhas,” Courtney objected.

“Ah-ah-ah,” Chris clucked, wagging a finger at her. “Theirs not to make reply/ Theirs not to reason why,” he admonished.

“Theirs but to do and die,” Courtney replied sullenly, completing the triplet.

Chris resumed the briefing. “Beyond the piranha pool are the ‘Russian lines’. Each ‘soldier’ has a large ring attached to one side. If you skewer the ring with your foil, the ring will come right off. Once you have nine rings, you’ll return to the starting point. The first one back wins.”

“Why nine rings?” Duncan asked warily, not sure he wanted to know the answer.

“Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,”^[32.30] Cody recited. “Is that it?”

“Very good, Cody,” Chris affirmed with that bland smile of his.

“You’re not going to be happy unless someone buys it in this challenge, are you?” Heather challenged testily.

“Which is unusual how, exactly?” Gwen asked caustically.

Chris did not deign to reply, instead returning to the briefing. “As I was saying, the first one back with nine rings wins. You have sixty ‘Russian troops’ waiting for you, so if you do the math …” Chris looked expectantly at Cody, as if expecting him to do the math.

The science geek did not disappoint. “There aren’t enough rings to go around.”

“Exactamundo,” Chris affirmed with a pair of finger guns. “Which means at least one of you will come up short. Anyone who does will go into the elimination ceremony with one penalty vote against them for every ring they were short. Of those who get all their rings, the last to finish will also have one penalty vote. That’s your incentive to get there first.”

“What if nobody gets all their rings?” Cody asked. “With only sixty rings available, that’s theoretically possible.”

“If nobody gets all their rings, then nobody will get invincibility. Beyond that, I’ll decide what to do if it happens.” With an unsettling grin, the host concluded, “You don’t want that.”

Chris McLean did not have a reputation for honesty, but this warning was one every camper took at face value.

“Whether you’re in the minefield or collecting rings, you must stay on your bike at all times. If any part of your body touches the ground for any reason, it means you had your mount shot out from under you. If that happens, you’ll have to complete the challenge on foot, and I don’t imagine I need to tell you what that would do to your chances of winning. Or of getting all your rings, for that matter.

“A couple more things: because Lindsay won the first part of the challenge and Duncan won the second, they only need seven rings instead of nine.”

“Biggest dwarves I’ve ever seen,” Cody quipped.^[32.31]

“On the other hand, D.J. chickened out in the jousting tournament, so he will have sixty seconds added to his final time; and because Heather’s bike did not survive the jousting, she will have to ride a child’s tricycle.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Heather challenged, but in her heart she knew the answer.

“Because it’s too small for you, even though it’s the biggest we could find, it won’t be an easy ride, or dignified, but it can be done. Theoretically,” Chris explained as if he had not heard Heather’s challenge. “And before you ask, no, I’m not picking on you. I was expecting more than one bike to get wrecked.”

Ever the strategist, Heather was thinking furiously about how she might overcome what promised to be a significant handicap, and an idea quickly came to her. “We can help each other get our rings, right?”

“Not sure why anyone would want to, seeing as they’d be pretty much throwing away their own shot at invincibility,” Chris answered, “but if it was voluntary, I’d allow it. But if it was under duress, well … you’d have to change your name and move to another Province so Chef doesn’t find you. Nothing sets him off like stolen valor.”

“But Helga has been making us help her all summer, and Chef’s never gotten mad,” Lindsay observed innocently. Heather scowled.

“Not in a military-themed challenge, she hasn’t,” Chris observed.

“In other words, Heather can’t make us do the work for her,” Katie surmised.

“Not this time,” affirmed the Lord of the Game. “Stolen valor is serious business. If there are no further questions … riders up!”^[32.32]

As the campers moved to their bikes, Heather said to Katie and Lindsay, “Here’s the plan: I need invincibility because anyone with half a brain knows by now that I’m a threat; so if either of you can get invincibility, you have to give it to me. I don’t care about the trailer this time, but I need invincibility.”

“But what if we need it?” Lindsay asked.

“You won’t, because nobody’s going to vote you off. Nobody sees you or Katie as threats. They get that I’m the brains of this alliance.”

“But Lindsay nearly got kicked off a couple of challenges ago,” Katie reminded her liege.

“Only because Duncan tried to blindside us with his boys’ alliance. He doesn’t have the votes to try that again.”

“Okay, I guess I can buy that,” Katie admitted slowly. “But what if we can’t get invincibility?”

Heather’s answer was a fateful one, with consequences none of the girls could have guessed, for they did not have the gift of prescience.

“Then we need to be sure someone has a lot of penalty votes, since I’m probably going to have some,” the queen bee explained. “Katie, I want you to shadow Leshawna. When she goes for a ring, you need to get it first. That’ll slow her down, and with any luck she won’t get all the rings she needs. Lindsay,^[32.33] you only need seven rings, so you go for the win. And whatever you do, don’t lose count.

“I’m counting on you two. If you drop the ball, we’re all screwed.”

Presently, the riders waited at the starting line. Chris fired the thunder-pistol he had first used to start the Boney Island challenge, and the race for invincibility was on.

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
`Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!' he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

'Forward, the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldiers knew
Some one had blunder'd: 
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.^[32.34]

Chris and Hatchet boarded their helicopter and rose above the “battlefield”, the better to monitor the riders’ progress. By the time they were in position, the peloton had already started to break up. Courtney and Duncan were in the vanguard, with Katie and Leshawna not far behind. Katie could probably have paced the leaders, but was hanging back because she needed to watch Leshawna. Neither Duncan nor Leshawna were using their motors, for those “doping” devices were powered by batteries, not the pedals, and neither punk boy nor homegirl had any idea how long the motors could run before their batteries were depleted.

Lindsay had been saving ground,^[32.35] tailing Gwen, but was starting to move up. Cody and D.J. lagged behind because their bikes were big and slow, more suited to the Heavy Brigade than to the Light, though the interns had removed enough of the cockpits to allow the riders’ sword arms their full range of motion. Heather was a little ahead of these laggards, pedaling furiously on her undersized steed.

The first mine exploded hard by. Courtney flinched and might have steered into Duncan’s path; but because they had been forewarned, most of the riders were keeping respectful distances between them, so both leaders were able to correct their courses in time to avert disaster. Chris detonated a mine remotely, near Lindsay, but Sunset Sally proved a doughty warhorse and stayed her course as Lindsay winced, but did not flinch.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

To Chris’ disappointment, none of the riders fell to the mines, despite a full score of blasts. The riders emerged from the minefield and crossed the piranha pool without incident. The catwalk over the pool was narrow enough that the riders were obliged to cross single file, but the loose spacing between riders made for little question concerning who should cross before whom.

As Duncan approached the “Russian troops”, he had an idea. He was practiced at wielding knives, as has been told of before, but fencing foils are much longer and the mechanics of using them are very different. The delinquent decided to stick to what he knew.

Duncan came to his first target, but instead of trying to skewer the ring, he simply reached out to grab it. The advantage of this technique was that he could pass at full speed, whereas he would have had to slow down to be sure of scoring a hit with his foil. Just like snatching a purse, he thought as he grabbed his first ring.

The ring did not come loose from its mount. Duncan cried out in pain and surprise as the unexpected resistance wrenched his arm back and pulled him off his bike.

Duncan winced and muttered a censorable oath as he clutched his shoulder, fearing he had dislocated it. Spotting Chris’ helicopter close at hand, the enraged delinquent shouted, “McLean, you said the rings were supposed to come right off!”

Thanks to the small wireless throat microphones the campers were wearing for the race, Chris had no trouble hearing the fallen rider. “The rings are held in place with magnetic locks that your foils are designed to neutralize,” the host explained via his trusty bullhorn. “Seriously, dude, would you really try to kill an enemy soldier with your bare hands when you have a sword?”

Duncan had no answer to this, so he grumbled a few more expletives as he tested his arm and verified that it was still usable. There was nothing for it but to complete the challenge on foot.

Katie and Leshawna rode neck and neck as they rapidly closed on Heather’s tricycle, unaware that all three were intent on the same “soldier”.

“Eat my dust, homie!” Katie cried good-naturedly.

“Bring it, sister!” Leshawna called back, matching Katie’s fiendish grin with one of her own. “Let’s see if your swordplay is as good as your trash talk!”

“Watch and learn!”

As the three approached their target and Heather prepared to stab, Katie made her move. With a burst of speed, she overtook her liege and swerved in front, deftly skewering and collecting her third ring. Unfortunately, she had misjudged the clearance. Heather had begun her stab even as Katie cut her off, so the dragon girl’s foil ended up in the spokes of Katie’s rear wheel. Leshawna had come up hard by on Heather’s opposite flank, so in a trice the three girls and their mounts were on the ground in a heap. No one was seriously hurt, though.

“Why don’t you watch where you’re going, you brain-damaged little twit?” Heather railed at her vassal. “And I thought you were dumb before you got your little pea brain frozen! Seriously, you’ve turned into another Lindsiot!”

Katie took little notice of this invective, for she had come to expect nothing less from her overlord, although Heather’s choice of insults did seem strange to her. Leshawna, however, pounced on the Dragon Queen with a feral snarl and murderous fury on her face.

“Sacredam!” the dusky homegirl cried. “Is nothing beneath you? You’ve had this coming all summer!” With that, Leshawna, now straddling Heather across her chest, cocked her arm and smashed her beefy fist into Heather’s face.^[32.36]

All the world wonder'd

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

.

Author's Notes (aka Trivia)

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.
• Writing the contestant introductions as if the reader has never heard of Total Drama Island is a stylistic point, done in part because one of the author’s competition story pet peeves is that too many writers treat the intros as a chore to be got through as quickly as possible instead of a chance to make memorable first impressions and get a running start on character development. Most of the longer 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 mainly 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.
• The phrase, "but that is another story for another time" is not merely a narrative flourish. Whenever this phrase appears, it foreshadows an incident in a later chapter that will, indeed, be told in the fullness of time. Some of these “other stories for other times” are told only a few chapters later, while others are not told for 20 chapters or more. This device is taken from The Sword of Shannara, where the phrase “but that is another story for another time” is a catchphrase of the Druid, Allanon whenever he mentions something that touches on the origin of the Elves.
• 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 section title, “Send In the Clones” is a play on “Send In the Clowns”, a song in A Little Night Music.
• 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 one version of her backstory holds that she rose from the sea near the Greek island of Cythera.
• The canon version of Ezekiel's entrance 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 a Biblical name. This story’s characterization of Ezekiel omits his canon counterpart’s social ineptness because that is an aspect of the “home schooled” stereotype that the author considers unworthy of perpetuation. Because most parents who homeschool their children do so for religious reasons, 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.
• The description of Tyler as the “jock of all trades” is, of course, a play on “jack of all trades”. As applied to Tyler, the description invokes the unspoken part—“master of none”.
• Ezekiel’s remark, “guh-dunge” in reaction to Tyler’s crash is a reference to the comic strip, B.C., originally 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 Mardrus & Mathers translation of The 1,001 Nights. The original and some translations repeat such content in full because Shahrazad (Scheherezade) is trying to fill time.
• 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 (it is, in fact, distinctively African-North American), 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 & 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 original, 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 original. 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 here 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 1,001 Nights.

Second Night Notes

• Noah’s assurance that Lindsay “won’t have to stay in the underworld year round” because she hasn’t finished her pomegranate is a reference to the Greco-Roman myth of Hades and Persephone (Pluto and Proserpine to the Romans), which explained the origin of the seasons.
• A “captive audience” is a clientele that comes to the business’ location for some purpose other than to patronize the business. In this case, the campers have come to Camp Wawanakwa to compete in an elimination game, not to patronize the Tuck Shoppe, so the campers are a captive audience for the Tuck Shoppe. Restaurants located in airports or shopping malls are good examples of businesses that cater to captive audiences.
• The subheading, “Leave All Hope, Ye That Enter” (with “leave all hope” commonly rendered as “abandon all hope”) is a reference to The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri, who is commonly known simply as “Dante”. The line is the last line of the inscription on the Gate of Hell. The full inscription, from the Carlyle-Okey-Wicksteed translation, is:

Through me is the way into the doleful city;
Through me is the way into the eternal pain;
Through me the way among the people lost.

Justice moved my High Maker;
Divine Power made me,
Wisdom Supreme, and Primal Love.

Before me were no things created,
But eternal; And eternal I endure:
Leave all hope, ye that enter.

• Animal byproducts are things like intestines, hooves, and other leftovers from the butchering process that aren’t valuable enough to have markets of their own. Chef Hatchet’s use of that term, instead of “meat”, is a subtle way of messing with the minds of those campers who understand the distinction.
• “Olive drab” beans are simply canned (as opposed to frozen) green beans. The unappetizing color is a side effect of the canning process, whereas freezing preserves the original color. There is a double entendre here, because olive drab is also a color inseparably associated with the Army—The U.S. Army, at least.
• The author is not familiar with Canadian law on the subject, but U.S. law does indeed state that dog food must be fit for human consumption.
• The description of Izzy’s sloppy Joe as “convulsing once” after she stabbed it suggests that it was probably just the reaction any inanimate object would have to a brief, violent external force. (Of course, probably isn’t the same as definitely…)
• The part of the Eva-Leshawna scene that made it into the finished episode is quoted verbatim from the canon, although the scene was moved from the serving line to after the meal.
• Duncan’s knife fighting background is based on a young man whom the author met doing day labor many years ago.
• Through most of the story, Brett’s interaction with his mother somewhat parallels the interaction between King Shahryar and his wife Shahrazad (Scheherezade) in The 1001 Nights.
• Notwithstanding the reasons the Storyteller gives, the dramatic reasons for her to refer to herself in the third person are (a) because the interior story isn’t really about her, and there are many scenes where the Storyteller isn’t present; (b) to make it easier for the reader to distinguish the frame story from the interior story; and (c) to keep the reader in suspense for a time as to the Storyteller’s identity.
• Although The 1,001 Nights is a prose work, many of the component tales contain a significant amount of verse. To somewhat duplicate this feel, this reimagining includes a number of (mostly famous) poems that fit the mood or events in the places where they appear. Most of these poems are in the public domain, but a few are recent enough to be copyrighted. In these cases, the author believes, but cannot guarantee, that inclusion of these verses constitutes “fair use”.
• The red pullover shirts the interns wear is a reference to the original Star Trek series. Captain Kirk’s security personnel wore similar shirts, and had roughly the same life expectancy as TDI interns.
• As a unit of measure, a “click” is slang for a kilometer.
• Tyler is postulated as a star sprinter because, although the canon tends to depict him as utterly incompetent, the author’s take is that he has to actually be good at something if he is not to come across as totally deluded. Certain canon references (most notably his audition tape, wherein he easily jumped high enough to dunk a basketball, only to knuckle it off the rim) suggest that his only real flaw is poor coordination. (It’s not giving away too much to note that this becomes a plot point in a later chapter.) In this reimagining, therefore, Tyler is a star sprinter because… well, because how much coordination does it take to run in a straight line? It also explains the tracksuit.
• The “alliter-off” alliteration scene was originally much shorter, with only Noah speaking. A scene in TDIwriter’s since-cancelled story, Total Drama: Pacific Island (specifically, the “shirt-off”, a pec flexing duel between two ripped male characters) inspired the author to expand Noah’s alliteration line into a duel scene of sorts. Chris was originally the second “duelist”, but Izzy was given the role instead because it was a more natural fit for her, although Chris still gets involved.
• The sharks’ reaction (or lack thereof) to Courtney refers to an ancient lawyer joke, the gist of which is that sharks recognize lawyers as kindred spirits and so will not harm them.

Third Night Notes

• The description of Harold as “Mr. Beanpole” is a reference to Rowan Atkinson’s title character in the British sitcom, Mr. Bean.
• “Six nights a week and twice on Sundays” is a traditional theater schedule.
• “By Jiminy” is a corruption of an oath originally invoking Castor and Pollux, the Gemini twins.
• Cody’s line, “Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated” quotes the two major catchphrases of the Star Trek universe’s hive-minded villain race, the Borg. Cody is aware of this.
• The idea of having Katie and Sadie tickle Chris into submission was inspired in part by the author’s wife, who is also exceptionally skilled at tickle torture. In any case, tickling is the method of physical assault that seems to the author to be most in keeping with Katie and Sadie’s childlike natures.
• The Sadie/Beth team switch resolves a continuity lapse in the original. When Sadie’s turn came in the canon version, Chris announced that the Bass had 8 successful dives and 2 chickens. That should have left only Sadie, but Izzy was still on the cliff, so the Bass actually had 7 successful dives at that point. This reimagining treats Chris’ count as correct—the canon version treated the visual as correct—so Izzy has already dived and is therefore not available to trade places with Katie.
• The Third Night and Fourth Night chapters comprise one of the story’s most verse-heavy sections. The verse in the scene where the Eagles are trying to discourage Beth from diving comes from the “Entrance of the Police” scene in the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, The Pirates of Penzance.
• Alejandro is (presumably) older in this reimagining than in the original. Most of the interns are college age, although a few are older, and this version of Alejandro is 19 or 20 years old. He was 16 when he competed in Camp TV.
• Alejandro’s description of the Camp TV diving cliff as being 20 meters high is an estimate based on the old Camp TV trailer. Most of what Alejandro says about his gameplay—not least of which is that he looked like a Villain Stu—lampshades his portrayal in the canon Total Drama World Tour.
• Alejandro’s near-gaffe of being “able to charm the pants off the ladies” is a reference to his introduction in the canon TDWT, where Chris described him as having “an amazing ability to charm the pants off of most species (which suggests even more exotic possibilities to the dirty mind). Alejandro being the son of a diplomat is likewise a canonical element.
• The section heading, “Where Eagles Dare” is a reference to the 1968 film of that name as well as wordplay on the Screaming Eagle’s situation at that point.
• For the benefit of readers who don’t live in North America, the description of Owen as “the Jolly White Giant” is a play on “the Jolly Green Giant”, the mascot for a brand of frozen vegetables.
• Slapping one or both of a person’s cheeks with an empty glove is a traditional (or Hollywood traditional, at any rate) method of challenging that person to a duel.
• The Storyteller’s description of Ezekiel as a “sexist warthog boy” is a play on “male chauvinist pig”, a catchphrase of the Women’s Liberation movement of the 1960s. Replacing “pig” with “warthog” carries the added implication that Ezekiel’s complexion might not be the best.
• Eva’s line, “I find this lack of faith disturbing”, is a direct quotation from the original Star Wars movie. The line was originally Darth Vader’s, spoken as he was telekinetically choking some admiral at a staff meeting.
• Adamant (usually called adamantium in modern fantasy literature, adjective form “adamantine”) is a fictional metal as hard as diamond. Adamant was first described in Jonathan Swift’s novel, Gulliver’s Travels, although the word was in use as a descriptive term much earlier. Adamant supposedly doesn’t exist today because it was so widely used by ancient civilizations that all the world’s reserves have been exhausted.
• Describing Eva as “the steel maiden” is a play on “iron maiden”, a pseudo-medieval torture device.
• The poem in the “Ezekiel puts his foot in it” scene is a partial quotation (verses 1-3) of “The Female of the Species”, by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936).
• Eva calling Ezekiel a “trilobite” (a small, long-extinct sea creature that predates the dinosaurs and had a body that appears to consist of three lobes) refers both to Zeke’s primitive (in Eva’s eyes) attitudes and to the Christian concept of the Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit).
• Eva originally threatened to throw Ezekiel to the sharks. “Throw” was changed to “dropkick” as a nod to Ezekiel’s LTDI theme song, “Drop Kick Me, Jesus, Through the Goalposts of Life”.
• At the risk of belaboring the obvious, Duncan’s line, “You’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto” is a reference to the 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz.
• The B.C. character called “Fat Broad” is depicted as being not particularly attractive, but she’s powerfully built and swings a mean club. She has a hair-trigger temper and is particularly sensitive to real or perceived digs at her weight.
• “Grand Pooh-bah” was the lodge leader’s title in the 1960s animated TV series, The Flintstones. That title, in turn, was a reference to a character named Pooh-bah (described as “The Lord High Everything Else”), in the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, The Mikado.
• Gwen’s description of Heather as a self-appointed “Queen of Hearts” is a reference to the character of that title in Lewis Carroll’s novel, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (more commonly rendered as simply, Alice In Wonderland). The Queen of Hearts is best known for solving any problem, great or small, by shouting, “Off with his head!” The implication is that Gwen does not expect Heather to be a wise or benevolent leader.
• The section heading, “Build It, and He Will Come” is a reference to the 1989 film, Field of Dreams.
• Although there is some variation in the listings, the Five Simple Machines, from which the more complex machines are derived, are:

1. Wheel and axle
2. Pulley
3. Lever
4. Inclined plane (including the wedge, which is sometimes listed separately); and
5. Screw (which is sometimes subsumed under the inclined plane)

• The nickname, “Fatal Fishies” is not only a play on “Killer Muskies”, but is also what the author and his wife like to call the Discovery Channel series, The Deadliest Catch.
• Duncan’s claim that Heather had propositioned him is a reference to their exchange during the contestant introductions, when Heather told Duncan to “get bent”. Of course, Duncan knows perfectly well that Heather did not proposition him.
• Chris’ description of the competition venue as the “Isle of Tears” is a play on “The Vale of Tears” (a.k.a. “The Vale of Sorrow”), which is a traditional poetic metaphor for mortal existence. Chris is playing up the symbolic death that elimination represents.

Fourth Night Notes

• The “last marshmallow” poem is a partial quotation from the 13^th Century Latin poem, “Dies Irae” ("Day of Wrath", i.e. Judgment Day). Translation by William Josiah Irons.
• The vote totals were:

• Beth: 4 (Duncan, Eva, Ezekiel, Tyler)
• Tyler: 3 (Courtney, D.J., Geoff)
• Ezekiel: 2 (Beth, Bridgette)
• D.J.: 1 (Izzy)

Beth, Tyler and Ezekiel voted as they did because they knew they were at risk and were seeking to save themselves.

• Somnus (Hypnos to the Greeks) is the Greco/Roman god of sleep.
• Chris’ fractured syntax in his line, “He paid his money and he tooks his chances” is an imitation of an old-school carnival barker.
• Harold’s use of the suffix “V” in his name is an affectation, similar to non-lawyers using the suffix “esq.” Harold’s genealogy, as related by the Storyteller for Harold’s arrival on the island, reveals no other Harolds in his recent ancestry.
• Lindsay having “bikinis for every conceivable occasion” is a reference to her canon audition tape, wherein she claims to have “a bikini for every season, even the ones not listed on the calendar.”
• The drifting of Harold’s marker is based on how the boat containing Boromir’s body drifted all the way to the sea in The Lord of the Rings.
• Brynhild (originally Brynhildr under the Old Norse convention of putting an “r” at the end of proper names) is one of the Valkyries of Norse/Germanic mythology. She is better known by her German name, Brunhilde, but the Norse “Brynhild” is used here because it’s closer to “Bridgette”.
• The relative positions of the camp and the diving cliff are reversed from the canon. Although continuity meant little where the island’s layout and topography were concerned, the canon episode “Are We There, Yeti?” indicated that the camp is on the island’s northern shore. The diving cliff, on the viewer’s right-hand side when approaching the camp from the lake, would therefore have been on the western shore. In this reimagining, the diving cliff remains in the west, but the camp is on the southern shore (which, considering Canada’s climate, seems a much more likely place for it), thereby placing the cliff on the viewer’s left when approaching the camp from the lake.
• Bridgette’s dream was a late addition, inspired by Sunshine’s Third Night feedback. Sunshine said, in pertinent part, that she half-expected Harold to turn up later, complaining about how he had been left for dead in the lake. The dream sequence has the added virtue of giving Bridgette her first big scene.
• The current Fourth Night chapter was nearly split in two because the stage-setting for Harold's seeming return presented a good cliffhanger point and good chapter lengths (about 5800 + 6400 words), and cliffhanger placement is the main factor governing chapter length. Indeed, the chapter would have been split there but for the fact that the story was updating so slowly at the time—one chapter every two months.
• Leshawna’s line, “Must… control… Fist of Death” line is Alice’s catchphrase in the comic strip, Dilbert.
• Gwen’s suggestion that Heather is used to vomiting is a veiled accusation that Heather is bulimic.
• The verse in the Gwen/Trent scene is a partial quotation of the Lewis Carroll poem, “The Walrus and the Carpenter”. This poem appears in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (more commonly rendered as simply, Through the Looking-Glass), where it is described as the longest poem in Tweedledum and Tweedledee’s repertoire.
• The verses in the Courtney/Ezekiel scene are a partial quotation of “The Lay of Loddfafnir” and the final stanza of its parent poem, “Sayings of the High One” from The Elder Edda, a collection of Viking poetry. In this quotation, the pronouns in the final stanza have been changed from masculine to feminine to make clear that Courtney is the one doing the instructing. (“The High One” of the title is actually the Norse god, Odin.) Translation by Patricia Terry.
• The description of Heather as “The Girl Who Would Be Queen” is a reference to the Rudyard Kipling novella, “The Man Who Would Be King”.
• “Fatty Lumpkin” is the name of Tom Bombadil’s pony in The Lord of the Rings, although Heather doesn’t know that.
• The verses in the Cody/Noah scene are a partial quotation of a poem from The Carmina Burana (“Songs of Beuern”, a Benedictine monastery in Bavaria), described as “the last great outpouring of medieval poets who spoke Latin as fluently as their native tongues.” In the poem quoted, a scholar studying abroad defends himself against his girlfriend’s accusation of homosexuality. Translation by David Parlett.
• Owen’s sleepwalking differs from the canon version in that he remains fully clothed.
• Justin’s tactics differ from the canon version in that he did not go so far as to paint false eyes on his face, and in fact may not have been cheating at all. In any case, this is a cartoonish element in that, in real life, a person who fell asleep whilst standing would quickly collapse.

Fifth Night Notes

• Lindsay’s rendering of “Gwen” as “Jen” is a reference to the 6Teen character, Jen Masterson, who has the same voice actress as Gwen.
• “Elvira, Mistress of the Dark” (Cassie Peterson) is a TV horror show host. “Vampira” (Maila Nurmi) was the first host of this type, and unsuccessfully sued Peterson for stealing her act.
• Duncan’s line, “She so horny, love us long time” is a reference to a racist “dragon lady” stereotype that includes (among other things) broken English and sexual promiscuity. (Readers familiar with the Total Drama canon presumably know better than to expect political correctness or cultural sensitivity from the likes of Duncan.)
• Lindsay’s rendering of “Owen” as “Odo” is a reference to the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine character of that name.
• In the first elimination ceremony to result in someone actually leaving the island, the finalists in the canon Total Drama Island were the bottom two in this reimagining, with the “official” TDI winner being the first to walk the Dock of Shame here. These are coincidences resulting from the elimination order following the storylines.
• The vote totals were:

• Owen: 6 (Cody, Gwen, Justin, Leshawna, Noah, Trent)
• Gwen: 5 (Heather, Katie, Lindsay, Owen, Sadie)

• Brobdingnag is a fictional nation inhabited by giants. It is the main setting for Part II of Gulliver’s Travels.
• The verse quoted as Owen walks the Dock of Shame comes from the Act I finale of the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, The Yeomen Of the Guard.
• The challenge section of the dodgeball episode draws extensively from Homer’s Trojan War epic poem, The Iliad. Chris’ prerogative of restoring the teams to full strength at will somewhat parallels the divine interventions, with the bonus of allowing for more incidents and explaining certain continuity gaps in the original episode.
• Troilus and Cressida is a Shakespeare play set during the Trojan War.
• Much of the game action, particularly in the first game, is described in a style similar to a battle scene from certain prose translations of The Iliad. Since dodgeball is a nonlethal sport, phrases such as "he was out" or "he retired to the bench" replace phrases such as "darkness came over his eyes" or "his soul went down to Hades" in Homer's poem.
• Eva is commonly described in this reimagining as “the steel maiden” (a play on “iron maiden”, not Supergirl’s nickname of “Maid of Steel”), but is described as “the bronze maiden” in the dodgeball match because The Iliad is set in the Bronze Age.
• Tyler hitting Chef Hatchet is a reference to the scene in The Iliad where the Greek hero Diomedes wounds the god Ares, who was fighting alongside the Trojans.
• The people of Quebec have a habit of using the names of religious objects or concepts as swear words. The theory is that this was a way of rebelling against the Roman Catholic Church, which was a dominant force in the lives of the Quebecois until the social upheaval of the 1960s. Of these Catholicism-based swear words, “ostie” (the French word for the compressed bread wafers used as the Communion host in a Catholic mass) is the most popular.
• A "Bacchic cry" is the sort of inarticulate shrieking or yelling one might do in a drunken frenzy, which seems appropriate for Izzy. The reference is to the Roman god of wine, Bacchus (Dionysus to the Greeks) or the festival held in his honor, the Bacchanalia.
• Although underage smoking can't be depicted on television, the canon episode "Up the Creek" suggests it by revealing that Duncan carries a lighter.
• Queen Victoria’s most famous attributed quotation was, “We are not amused.”
• Ezekiel is leaning on the fourth wall (i.e. he looks like he's breaking the fourth wall, but he's not) with his reference to unlikely romantic/sexual partners. The meta reference is to the fan fiction phenomenon of “crack pairing”, i.e. romantic pairings of characters who had little or no interaction in the canon. In the Total Drama fandom, Ezekiel is a major beneficiary of this.
• The Football Incident is a parody of the iconic first torture scene from Fadingsilverstar16’s story, Life After Lies.
• The Eva/Leshawna scene is based on the scene in The Iliad where Diomedes and the Trojan Glaucus, son of Bellerophon, meet on the battlefield for single combat, only to discover that old ties of friendship between their houses prevent them from fighting. The Heather/Lindsay scene is based on the scene in The Iliad where the disguised Athena persuades a Trojan archer named Pandarus to take a potshot at Menelaus after the latter’s duel with Paris, thereby breaking the truce between the armies.
• The Ristrand (spellings vary) is the special berserker fury of the mythic Irish hero, Chu Chulainn (pronounced koo-KULL-in, spellings vary).
• Justin’s berserker fury is similar to Owen’s in the original, the difference being that Justin has a clear reason for it, whereas Owen’s was fairly random.
• Although Beth was not mentioned, she played in the second game after sitting out the first.

Sixth Night Notes

• The description of Ezekiel’s family being “rich in corn and oil” (presumably corn oil, as opposed to petroleum) is a reference to the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, Ruddigore, which describes the protagonist thusly.
• Lindsay’s gymnastics background is based on her pseudocanonical text bio from the show’s website. In real life, a girl with Lindsay’s exaggerated proportions would probably not be a particularly good gymnast—especially on the balance beam, where having wide hips and a higher center of gravity are disadvantages. In this reimagining, the floor exercise is Lindsay’s best event because that’s the one that would be most relevant to the game of dodgeball.
• The section heading, “The Prodigal Son” alludes to the Biblical parable of that name, with Noah’s waywardness paralleling that of the titular son.
• Noah’s blank verse speech before the start of Game 5 is based on the famous “St. Crispin’s Day” speech from Shakespeare’s play, Henry V. Noah is fully aware of this, but is oblivious to the fact that he’s hamming up the delivery.
• The maneuver that Eva uses to finish the match is somewhat a parallel to the Gae Bolg (“lightning spear”), a special technique known to only two people: the mythic Irish hero Chu Chulainn and the warrior woman who taught it to him.
• The Blue Jays are Toronto’s professional baseball team.

Seventh Night Notes

• Noah’s “treasure map” line is a reference to the treasure map cliché of “X marks the spot”. His reference to the fictional martial art of Fu King is actually stealth profanity.
• Noah’s listing of Katie’s flaws as he sees them lampshades the most common criticism of the Noah/Katie pairing, i.e. that they are too different. (It bears mention, though, that this pairing is not unlike the author and his wife.)
• The vote totals were:

• Trent: 6 (Cody, Heather, Katie, Lindsay, Noah, Sadie)
• Heather: 2 (Gwen, Trent)
• Noah: 2 (Justin, Leshawna)

Trent voted as he did to please Gwen, not because he had any idea what Heather was up to.

• Unlike his canon counterpart, Alejandro has no objection to being called “Al”.
• “Eating crow” as a metaphor for being humbled is of uncertain origin, but it became particularly common in the Great Depression, when people who couldn’t afford chicken would eat crows instead. The author is reliably informed that crow is actually good eating, but not as good as chicken.
• The Geneva Conventions are a series of treaties and related protocols governing the rights and treatment of prisoners of war and noncombatants in war zones. Courtney is implying that feeding Chef’s cooking to a prisoner of war would meet the legal definition of torture.
• Izzy’s saying “No Time Toulouse” instead of “no time to lose” is a reference to a Monty Python sketch. Toulouse (pronounced “to lose”) is a city in southern France.
• Adonis is a figure from classical mythology. Calling a boy or young man an Adonis implies that he is physically beautiful and probably vain about it. The canon Justin parodies the Adonis type.
• This reimagining was not originally planned to include any of the new characters from Total Drama Revenge of the Island.
• Katie and Sadie’s act was originally a performance of the famous Abbott & Costello comedy sketch, “Who’s On First?” This was changed because playing the piano four hands seemed even more like them. This led to the Storyteller’s comment about the Eagles’ range of talents being narrower than the Muskies’.
• The term “break dancing” is actually not preferred amongst its practitioners, although it is the best known term amongst the general public. Since Leshawna never corrected anyone who described her act as “break dancing”, the implication is that she is familiar with the externals of that subculture but does not understand its mysteries.
• Describing the intern who comes to help take Courtney to the infirmary is a subtle breach of the Fourth Wall. The Storyteller would not normally describe such a bit player because Brett would be unlikely to care, but she describes this intern in the expectation that readers familiar with Total Drama Revenge of the Island will recognize Scott.
• The description of Heather as the “Princess of Darkness” is a play on “Prince of Darkness”, a common description of Satan. The Storyteller normally describes Heather with neutral labels, but describes her with negative labels when Heather is planning or doing something underhanded.
• Lindsay and Sadie’s reaction to the burning of Lindsay’s hair is a reference to their canon phobia toward bad haircuts, which this reimagining retains.
• Heather calls Sadie “Goodyear” as a dig at Sadie’s weight. The reference is to the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company’s famous fleet of blimps.
• Heather’s title for her dramatic reading, “Diary of a Quiet Goth” was taken from DJ Spenstar’s (now dead) story of the same name. There is no relation to the content of that story.
• The poem, such as it is, accompanying Heather’s diary reading is based on a prose translation (translator unknown) of the Crusades-era French love song, “Chanterai Por Mon Corage”. The refrain is omitted. The pilgrimage mentioned is the Third Crusade, hence the singer’s fear that her love might not return.

Eighth Night Notes

• Duncan calling Courtney “Little Tin Princess” is a play on “little tin god”—a self-important, dictatorial person.
• The speculation that Courtney might have a skull fracture, when the Storyteller previously noted that her X-ray showed no such injury, is merely the working of the rumor mill, as opposed to any kind of deception or conspiracy.
• Describing the intern who serves as the Eagles’ tour guide was originally meant to be another subtle Fourth Wall breach by the Storyteller, meaning nothing to Brett but included in the expectation that readers familiar with Total Drama Revenge of the Island would recognize Cameron. This bit eventually lost its Fourth Wall character when the author decided to give Cameron dialogue in later chapters.
• Although most countries use fireworks in various celebrations, Izzy specifically compares the amphitheater fire to a U.S. Independence Day (4 July) celebration because she is referring to the American cultural mindset that “anything worth doing is worth being able to see from outer space”.
• The description of Chris’ pointer finger as “the Moving Finger” is a reference to one of the best-known quatrains from “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam”, as translated by Edward Fitzgerald (1809-83):

The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

• Bridgette’s elimination and the incident that led to it were foreshadowed as “another story for another time” in the Muskies’ first elimination ceremony (Third Night), when Bridgette stumbled whilst going to get her marshmallow. This was the first “story for another time” to actually be told.
• From a dramatic standpoint, Bridgette was a victim of the elimination order following the storylines. The vote totals were:

• Bridgette: 4 (Courtney, D.J. Eva, Izzy)
• Beth: 3 (Bridgette, Duncan, Ezekiel)
• Izzy: 3 (Beth, Geoff, Tyler)

• Ezekiel having a “casual eye” on Bridgette means that he thinks she’s pretty and would be happy to make out with her given the chance, but he’s not actually crushing on her and hasn’t made any serious effort to make her his.
• The song Ezekiel sings is not identified in these notes because it becomes a plot point later, and will be identified in the story at that time.
• “Judge Gwen” is a play on the “Judge X” courtroom reality shows that are named after their presiding judges.
• The phrase, “do what no one could do for her” could mean any number of things, but is usually a fancy/polite way of saying, “use the toilet”.
• The “sacrifice” of Lindsay’s bandana was foreshadowed as “another story for another time” when Lindsay arrived on the island (First Night).
• “Siamese campers” is a play on “Siamese twins”, a colloquial term for conjoined twins.
• The Storyteller describes the intern whom Heather flags down in enough detail for readers familiar with Total Drama Revenge of the Island to recognize Staci.
• Lindsay’s rendering of “Tyler” as “Skrymir” is a reference to an alias of Utgard-Loki, a wizardly giant in Norse mythology.
• Tyler’s wolf whistle at the post-makeover Lindsay is a nod to their canon relationship.
• Heather’s makeover is based on an iconic publicity photo of Audrey Hepburn (1929-93).
• The poem on the note is “She Walks in Beauty”, by George Gordon Byron (“Lord Byron”, 1788-1824).
• “First Nations” is the official Canadian term for what Americans call “Indian Nations” or (less formally) “Indian tribes”.

Ninth Night Notes

• The French word peloton is most frequently encountered in competitive road cycling (Tour de France and similar events) and refers to the main pack of riders.
• The author would have preferred to have Harold and/or Owen in the camping challenge, as they are the outdoorsmen in the canon, but both had to be eliminated earlier for specific dramatic reasons. That left Courtney as the Muskies’ best alternative by the show’s internal logic, although a real-life summer camp CIT wouldn’t necessarily have significant skill in woodcraft. On the Eagles’ side, Cody’s archetype seemed the most likely (albeit perhaps still not particularly likely) to have Scouting experience in his past.
• Eva killing the rattlesnake is a reference to Fat Broad in the comic strip, B.C. Fat Broad hates snakes with a passion and will club them on sight.
• The poem that follows D.J.’s reaction to Bunny’s death is a partial quotation from “Last Words To a Dumb Friend”, by Thomas Hardy (1840-1928). Verses 1-3 are not quoted because the poem is actually about a cat, as the omitted verses would have made clear.
• The poem that Noah recites as his “scary story” is “The Raven”, by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849). Although there is disagreement on its literary merits, it is one of the most famous poems of all time.
• The Pie Jesu and the Agnus Dei are standard parts of a requiem. Andrew Lloyd Webber combined portions of these two sections in his requiem, and did not set the Agnus Dei separately.
• A recommended method of treating hypothermia in the field is to put the patient and another person in a sleeping bag together, with both stripped down to their underwear. Sadie’s gambit is similar, except that she doesn’t have a sleeping bag.

Tenth Night Notes

• In the original draft of Katie and Sadie’s arrival at the bonfire pit, Sadie noticed that Katie had stopped breathing. This was changed to a bowel failure because that is something a person is more likely to notice without actually looking for it, and has the bonus effect of suggesting that Katie is further gone (see note below).

• Sadie collapsing after nine steps across the clearing is a reference to the world-ending battle of Ragnarok in Norse mythology. In that battle, Thor fights Jörmungandr, the World Serpent. Thor kills the serpent, but then can only stagger nine steps (the number nine having a significance in Norse mythology similar to that of the number seven in Christianity) before succumbing to the serpent’s venom.

• The sphincter muscles controlling a person’s bladder and bowels will fail shortly after death. The allusion to this in the bonfire pit scene underscores just how dire Katie’s situation is.

• Alejandro’s exclamation further emphasizes the gravity of Katie's situation. Characters in this story use variations of “Oh, my God” for various reasons and in various situations, but use those exact words for one reason and one reason alone: because the speaker believes that someone’s life is in grave danger.

• The Storyteller’s tongue in cheek description of Canada as the “land of ice cold waters” is a play on the old Hamm’s Beer jingle, “Land of Sky Blue Waters”.

• Ezekiel’s quip that Heather is “not her sister’s keeper” is a reference to the Biblical story of Cain and Abel. After Cain murders his younger brother Abel, God asks Cain of Abel’s whereabouts. Cain replies, in pertinent part, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” which is a fancy and rather snide way of saying, “How should I know?” Ezekiel is suggesting that Heather has perhaps more in common with Cain than is good for her.

• The birthday cake that Hatchet serves is the author’s favorite recipe.

• The vote totals were:

• Geoff 4: (Courtney, Duncan, Ezekiel, Tyler)
• Duncan 4: (Beth, Eva, Geoff, Izzy)
• Ezekiel: 1 (D.J.)

• D.J. voted for Ezekiel, despite having no real hope of expelling him, because he couldn’t decide between Duncan and Geoff, and so settled for a symbolic “protest” vote.

• Geoff is the only early out who was not eliminated for a specific dramatic reason. Largely a filler character, although he did have his moments, Geoff was the fifth out for one reason and one reason alone: because that was the last open spot in the elimination order.

• For campers who were present in the canon version of the phobia challenge, this reimagining retains the canon phobias or more general versions thereof. For example, Cody’s stated fear in the canon version (defusing a time bomb under pressure) is something that a reasonable person would likely be afraid of, so this reimagining gives him a more general fear of time pressure. Likewise, Gwen’s canon fear of being buried alive (a common phobia in its own right) becomes the more general claustrophobia referenced in the canon Total Drama Action.

• Noah’s description of how Duncan’s supposed “stalker” behaves is loosely based on Monty Python’s “Piranha Brothers” sketch. In that sketch, Dinsdale Piranha believed that a giant hedgehog was watching him. The episode’s closing credits featured a series of animated shots of “Spiny Norman” peering from behind buildings and suchlike, softly calling, “Dinsdale…Dinsdale.”

• The phobia confession scene was originally supposed to be Sunshine’s “debut”. In the original draft, Izzy’s question to Sunshine was, “Why didn’t you tell me that you knew Noah?”

• Izzy’s second imaginary friend, Ravi was created by Sunshineandravioli. Used with permission.

• Eva’s fear of darkness is based on Ram-Man’s nyctophobia in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. The Eva/Tyler scene during the camping challenge (Ninth Night) foreshadowed the revelation of Eva’s phobia.

• Ezekiel’s fear of having to let one person die so another can live (the “Sophie’s Choice” scenario) is based on the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, “Coming Of Age”. In that episode, Wesley Crusher must face his worst fear—a fear that he’s not even consciously aware of—as part of a Starfleet Academy entrance exam. Wesley fears the Sophie’s Choice scenario because his father died as a result of Captain Picard having to make such a choice.

• Izzy’s behavior when she speculates on why Noah fears outhouses is based on a scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. In that scene, the enchanter Tim does a similar business when he warns Arthur and his knights about a terrible guardian beast that turns out to be the killer rabbit. Izzy’s reference to “The Creature From the Black Latrine” is a play on Creature From the Black Lagoon.

• Cody’s line, “Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more” is a reference to a Monty Python sketch commonly known as simply the “Nudge, nudge” sketch. It consists, for the most part, of nothing but sexual innuendo played for laughs.

Eleventh Night Notes

• Beth’s test resolves a continuity lapse in the original. In the canon version, her stated fear was of being covered in bugs, but the video showed her immersing herself in earthworms, which aren’t really similar.
• Heather’s test likewise resolves a continuity lapse in the original. In the canon version, she was mistakenly credited with facing her fear despite doing nothing but cowering in a ball. Because the Gophers won the challenge easily, this dialogue/video discontinuity did not affect the outcome.
• The Mile High Club consists of everyone who has had sexual intercourse aboard an airplane in flight.
• When Heather was speculating on how Ezekiel’s test might relate to Justin and Izzy’s, the guess she was going to offer before D.J. stopped her was that Chris might give Ezekiel a parachute, throw Justin and Izzy out of the plane, and make Ezekiel skydive after them.
• Lindsay’s rendering of “Chris” as “Killer” is a reference both to the womanizing Beetle Bailey character of that name and to the often-hazardous nature of the game’s challenges.
• Chris calling Justin and Izzy away along with Ezekiel is a red herring intended to stop the other campers, especially Ezekiel (not to mention the reader) automatically guessing that Gwen and Katie would be the real subjects of Ezekiel’s choice. Chris didn’t want Ezekiel to have time to make specific preparations for his test, because most of the other campers wouldn’t have that luxury, either.
• Bantams are essentially scaled-down chickens, and the males are indeed used for cockfighting in some regions because of their nimbleness and aggressiveness. Making Tyler’s gamecock (the term referring to usage, not to any specific breed) a bantam has the additional dramatic advantage of making it small enough for D.J.’s snake to eat.
• Copperheads are widely distributed through the eastern and southern U.S. The snake in this story is identified as a “Carolina copperhead” for the sake of alliteration.

Twelfth Night Notes

• Chris addressing Scott as “Scotty” is a Star Trek reference. In the original series, the Enterprise’s Chief Engineer is Montgomery Scott, whom both Captain Kirk and Dr. McCoy commonly call “Scotty”.
• The revelation of Courtney in the Jell-O was originally planned to be the Eleventh Night cliffhanger. The corresponding poll question would have been, “Will Courtney pass her test?”, with the choices being “Yes”, “No”, and “Uh, does she even have a way to breathe?”
• The canon version of Courtney’s trial didn’t really test her phobia, because her trial included elements (such as diving from a dangerous height) that a reasonable person might be afraid of. And yes, Jell-O brand gelatin really did used to have savory flavors including Lettuce, Celery, Mixed Vegetable and Italian Salad. (They sold poorly.) The implication is that Kraft Foods donated its entire remaining stock of these failed flavors for Courtney’s test. The opportunity to introduce this trivia tidbit is the entire reason why Courtney’s phobia in this reimagining is specifically to Jell-O brand gelatin instead of generic gelatin (known to the Canadians as “jelly”) as in the original.
• When Chris revealed that the captain’s tests were worth double, the implication is that he made up this twist on the spot so that he wouldn’t have to come up with a formal tiebreaker. Of course, it’s also possible that he did indeed have this twist planned beforehand, and simply didn’t see fit to mention it until it became relevant. Both possibilities are entirely typical of the canon Chris.
• The vote totals were:

• Justin: 7 (Cody, Gwen, Heather, Katie, Leshawna, Noah, Sadie)
• Heather: 1 (Justin)
• Gwen: 1 (Lindsay)

• The point in the farewell scene where Justin and Lindsay “seemed to shine with a radiance of their own” refers to several scenes in the canon episodes wherein beams of light emanate from Justin’s torso when he removes his shirt.
• With Justin’s departure, five of the first six eliminated campers are boys. This is a coincidence resulting from the elimination order following the storylines. A later string of mostly female eliminations is equally coincidental.
• Noah’s monologue on how smart he is is based on a Monty Python sketch wherein a man soliciting charitable donations (Terry Jones) approaches a wealthy merchant banker (John Cleese). Cleese, assuming that Jones is approaching him for a loan, asks how much Jones wants. Jones says, “Well, you’re a rich man…” Cleese replies, in pertinent part, “Yes, I am. Very, very rich. Quite phenomenally wealthy. Yes, I do own the most startling quantities of cash… So you were saying, I’m very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very rich…”
• Gwen’s suggestion that Bridgette would be best suited for being made into crackers because of her “green” attitudes is a reference to the 1973 film, Soylent Green.
• Izzy’s claim to have learned how to cloud people’s minds so they can’t see her, and Noah’s subsequent “The Psycho knows” line, are references to the famous radio serial drama, The Shadow (1937-54). The title character, a Batman-like vigilante who was a major influence on the characterization of Batman, learned “the power to cloud men’s minds so they cannot see him” whilst travelling in the Orient. The radio episodes began with the narration line, “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!”
• Separating the challenge reward from invincibility resolves a continuity gap in the original, where the Killer Bass won a “point” for building the best fire but got no discernible advantage from it.
• Chris’ starter pistol is a ceremonial German design. The improbably loud report is intended to scare away evil spirits (appropriately for Boney Island) as part of an annual ritual connected with Walpurgisnacht.
• The Storyteller’s use of the term “Mutt and Jeff” to describe those canoe crews wherein one person was much larger than the other is a reference to the early newspaper comic of that name.
• The poem in Gwen and Cody's Boney Island transit scene is a partial quotation (verses 3-7) of "The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo", by Edward Lear (1812-88). The reference to the Total Drama drawing style as it relates to Cody's physique ("Though you've such a tiny body/ And your head so large doth grow") is a bonus.

Thirteenth Night Notes

• The author was determined almost from the beginning that someone, somewhere should refer to Boney Island’s giant beavers as “rodents of unusual size”. The reference is, of course, to The Princess Bride.
• Jo’s last stand (to be described more fully in a later chapter) is based on the death of Gunnar of Hlidarend in Njal's Saga (a.k.a. The Saga of Burning-Njal and variations), which is one of the most famous, if not the most famous, of the medieval Icelandic sagas. Gunnar’s main weapon was a magic halberd, or more precisely a period weapon of unrecorded design whose name is usually translated as “halberd”. Jo was chosen for this role because giving the scene its proper emotional impact required that the slain intern be someone whom the reader would recognize.
• The fact that Lightning had died on the same assignment as Jo was originally not going to be revealed until much later in the story.
• Lightning allegedly having large feet refers to the general correlation between the size of a man’s feet and the size of certain other appendages.
• “B.C.” is a common abbreviation for the Canadian province of British Columbia.
• The original plan for the idol was for Duncan (who doesn't believe in the curse) to find it and slip it into Noah's knapsack as a prank.
• The poem on the love note is “Delight in Disorder” by Robert Herrick (1591-1674)
• The subheading, “Wooden Ships and Iron Girls” is a play on “wooden ships and iron men”, a standard poetic description of ships from the Age of Sail.
• Aluminum burns much brighter than the magnesium used in common flares, and aluminum flares can reach brightness of 100,000 candlepower per square inch. The tradeoff is that aluminum is much harder to ignite than magnesium.
• Californium (chemical symbol Cf, atomic number 98) is a transuranic element capable of nuclear chain reaction in much smaller amounts than uranium or plutonium, for example, with Cf-252 having a critical mass of only 6 lb (about 2.75 kg) – about the size of a tennis ball. (Cf-252 can also decay by spontaneous fission, although that can’t sustain a chain reaction by itself.) This story treats as true the exaggerated claim (from a 1961 Popular Science article) that a californium bomb with a 10-ton yield could be the size of a pistol bullet, because that fits reasonably well with the sight gag in the original episode.
• “By the power of Grayskull” and “I have the power” are the Transformation Sequence catch phrases in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.
• The destruction of the Boney Island Skull is based on the 2003 collapse of The Old Man of the Mountain, which incident Izzy mentioned during the challenge briefing.
• The phrase, “an ace in the hole” comes from five-card stud, a card game in the poker family. The first card dealt, and the only one not visible to the other players, is called the “hole” card. Having that card be an ace is a significant advantage because players may not draw to replace any of their cards.
• Heather and Courtney fighting in their canoes parodies a chariot racing scene from Ben-Hur wherein the racers take to whipping each other instead of their horses.

Fourteenth Night Notes

• The wine is a 1991 vintage because that’s one of the two years (the other being 1990) when the campers were born.
• The Duchy of Grand Fenwick and it signature wine are references to the 1955 Cold War satire, The Mouse That Roared. The “big trademark case” (actually a shooting war that the Duchy accidentally won when its forces captured a prototype doomsday bomb) is one of the novel’s central plot points.
• The vote totals were never revealed, so the Muskies (and the reader) have only Chris’ word that Courtney was the one voted off, and likewise have little evidence regarding who else might have had votes against them.
• The Wild Hunt is an ancient European folk myth involving supernatural, ghostly huntsmen. According to the legends, seeing the Wild Hunt foretells either the death of the viewer or something worse, such as war or plague. The Ghost Riders of Geoff’s LTDI theme song (see Appendix B) are a North American counterpart. There is a double entendre in that “wild hunting” is also an archaic synonym for trophy hunting.
• The phrase, “the teens who would be deer” is a play on the title of the Rudyard Kipling novella, “The Man Who Would Be King”.
• The poem quoted when the Muskie hunters commandeer the plane is “High Flight”, by John Gillespie McGee, Jr. (1922-1941). It is particularly well known among aviators, having been written by one of their own.
• For the benefit of readers who are not familiar with American idioms, “take the deer by the antlers” is a play on “take the bull by the horns”.
• Common Purslane (Portulaca oleracea) is considered a weed in the U.S., but is widely eaten and even grown as a crop in other parts of the world. In the author’s household, it is colloquially known as “Salad Weed” in reference to its primary use there.
• The description of Lindsay, Katie and Sadie as “the Three Caballeras” is a feminine gender play on The Three Caballeros, an early Disney semi-animated feature film starring Donald Duck.
• Waggling a plane’s wings is how a pilot identifies himself as friendly or acknowledges someone on the ground when radio communication is unavailable.
• “The worm will turn” has been an English proverb since the 16^th Century. It means that even the humblest and weakest can be driven to retaliate when subjected to constant abuse.
• Beth’s suggestion that Katie and Sadie are “assimilating” Heather is a reference to the Borg, the hive-mind villain race of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager. Through a process called “assimilation”, the Borg turn prisoners and defenders from other species into more Borg, rather like a high-tech zombie apocalypse. Beth is aware of all this, presumably having learned it from Cody.
• The description of the Muskies’ win as a “flawless victory” is a reference to the iconic arcade game, Mortal Kombat.

Fifteenth Night Notes

• Lindsay’s rendering of “Katie” and “Sadie” as “Katrina” and “Sandrine” is a reference to the French dub of Total Drama Island that the studio made for the Quebec francophone market. In that dub, Katie and Sadie were called Katrina and Sandrine.
• The description of Heather and Cody as the “Beauty and the Geek” is a reference to the reality TV series of that name.
• Cody’s facetious concern that he might “rupture his zipper” in response to Heather’s flirtatious gesture refers to a complaint that women often make about men, namely that men tend to view any physical contact from a woman as foreplay.
• The poem quoted for Katie and Sadie’s Dock Walk is “The Thousandth Man”, by Rudyard Kipling.
• Noah and Katie’s duet on the dock is based on the stage directions for Tony’s death scene in West Side Story, where it is the mortally wounded Tony who joins in at the second line but cannot finish the line.
• The vote totals were:

• Sadie: 4 (Cody, Heather, Lindsay, Noah)
• Heather: 2 (Gwen, Leshawna)
• Leshawna: 2 (Katie, Sadie)

• Heather’s “‘tangled web’ of her own making” is a reference to the famous quotation from Sir Walther Scott’s epic poem, Marmion: “Oh, what a tangled web we weave/ When first we practise to deceive!” This couplet is often misattributed to Shakespeare.
• The description of Beth as “the Ravioli Pixie” is a reference to our long-lost, lamented user, Sunshineandravioli, the alter ego of Izzy’s imaginary friend, whose crush on Duncan was well known. Pairing Duncan with “the Ravioli Pixie”, however briefly, was originally planned specifically to please Sunshine.
• The name blancmange is pronounced, “blah-MAHNJ”.
• Heather’s mention of “petite crawly things” is a reference to the comic strip, That’s Jake, by Jake Vest. One day’s gag was of a French restaurant named, “Le Petite Crawly Things”, with the subheading, “Some Frenchman’s idea of food.”
• Unlike most fish, which have gill slits or gill covers, the more primitive lampreys have gill holes. These seven holes (per side) are roughly the same size as the eyes and the single nostril, hence the colloquial name, “nine-eyed eel”.
• A tattoo at the base of the spine is known as a “tramp stamp” because promiscuous women supposedly favor tattoos in that location. Heather is just baiting Leshawna by casting aspersions on her sexual proclivities (again), as there is no reason to doubt Leshawna’s claim that she didn’t have such a tattoo.
• The original plan was to have either Katie or Heather find Noah. That changed with the addition of the lamprey attack, which provided a logical setup for Leshawna to find him.

Sixteenth Night Notes

• Noah’s encounter with the hornets was foreshadowed as “another story for another time” when he arrived on the island (First Night) and wanted confirmation that Chris and the producers knew about his life-threatening allergies.
• "Beardo" is the first Pahkitew Islander (canon season 6) to cameo in this story.
• Heather’s thought that Chris “giveth and taketh away” refers to Chris trying to conceal Heather’s backstab of Sadie (giving) in one episode, only to put Heather at gratuitous risk (taking away) in the next with his “penalty vote” scheme.
• Having a panel of judges, instead of Chris being the only judge as in the original, serves two purposes: first, it introduces Millie (better known in the original as Blaineley) who will appear again in due course; and second, the panel setup was fertile ground for character development and personal byplay on the panel, not to mention a bit of comic relief.
• Chris and Millie’s couple name was “Chrillie”, which sounds like “krill”, a tiny shrimplike crustacean.
• The chanterelle is a highly regarded type of edible mushroom.
• The stock phrase, “pulled out all the stops” is a reference to organ playing. An organ has a series of devices called “stops”, which moderate and alter the sound. A stop is active when pushed in and inactive when pulled out, so pulling out all the stops yields maximum power.
• A triumvirate is a group of three people who share power or authority. The term originally referred to certain panels and commissions in the Roman government.
• Chris calling the Lamprey Incident the “Attack of the Fifty-Foot Lamprey” is a play on the science fiction film title, Attack of the Fifty-Foot Woman.
• Describing the blancmange as “the French confection” is a play on the thriller film title, The French Connection.
• The vote totals were:

• Noah: 5 (Cody, Gwen, Heather, Katie, Lindsay)
• Heather: 3 (Leshawna, Noah, penalty)

• The mysterious love poem is Sonnet 130, by William Shakespeare (1564-1616).
• The scene where Gwen and Courtney find the love note was originally envisioned as following the original more closely, concluding with a quarrel and a bet at the end. The stakes of their bet would have been for the loser to go on a date with an unwanted suitor, i.e. Courtney would go on a date with Duncan or Gwen would go on a date with Cody. That plan was scrapped when the scene wound up going in a different direction that caused Gwen and Courtney’s conversation to remain amicable throughout.
• Katie’s surname was originally going to be Villareal, for no special reason beyond indicating Hispanic ancestry. This was changed to Gutierrez after the maiden name of a childhood friend with whom the author reconnected a few months before writing the Dawn/Katie scene. Thus, the character Kathleen "Katie" Gutierrez is named after the real-life Katherine "Kathy" Gutierrez. Ironically, Katie’s namesake isn’t Hispanic, she’s Asian, because her father was from the onetime Spanish territory (and current U.S. territory) of Guam.
• Lepidoptera is the insect order that includes butterflies and moths.
• The lizard Katie spots is a five-lined skink, Muskoka’s (and Ontario’s) only native lizard species.
• Dawn’s claim that lizards try to sell her insurance is a reference to the GEICO gecko, spokeslizard for the insurance company, GEICO (originally called Government Employees Insurance Co., from whence the acronym comes).
• Wendigos (spellings vary) are mythical spirits or monsters (descriptions vary) commonly associated with Canada, although the myth is not exclusively Canadian. The spirit version referenced in this story will possess people who eat human flesh, and the wendigo myth is believed to have arisen to reinforce cultural taboos against cannibalism. The Marvel Comics character called the Wendigo is based on the wendigo myth, drawing from both the spirit and monster versions.

Seventeenth Night Notes

• Izzy’s reference to the “Safeco Skink” is a play on the GEICO gecko. Safeco is another insurance company, and skinks are a class of lizard with no pronounced neck (i.e. head, neck and body are all about the same width).
• The main reason for making the Boney Island idol curse real (instead of ambiguous, as in the original) is because doing so provided a natural setup to give Dawn a couple of big scenes.
• Dawn’s warning that Katie will die if she returns to Boney Island is based on Dawn’s prophecy in Total Drama Revenge of the Island that staying at the camp would prove disastrous for Dakota.
• In the world of this story, unlike the real world, the existence of real magic is widely accepted among educated people. This is why the girls accept Dawn’s claims so readily, even before getting demonstrations. Because most people never see real magic, though, they tend to think of it as a lost art—yet another skill of pre-industrial life rendered superfluous by modern technology. Belief in ghosts and other spirits is somewhat less common, hence Heather’s disbelief in ghosts.
• The “list of spells” poem in the cabin scene is a partial quotation of the Viking poem, “The Lay of Loddfafnir”. Other portions of this poem were quoted in the Awake-a-thon (Fourth Night) scene that marked the beginning of Courtney’s attempt to re-educate Ezekiel. See the Fourth Night Notes for additional information on “The Lay of Loddfafnir”.
• The subchapter title, “The Sorceress” refers to the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, The Sorcerer, as does most of the section’s content.
• Courtney’s foiled attempt to follow Gwen and Katie is based on an incident in Njal’s Saga . The text and gestures of Dawn’s “Do Not Disturb” spell are those of the spell Svan casts, as translated by Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Palsson. (Dawn’s burlap sack replaces the goatskin of the original because of Dawn’s “friend to all living things” attitudes.) Svan’s and Dawn’s spells have somewhat different effects, but similar purposes. See the Thirteenth Night Notes for additional information on Njal’s Saga.
• As noted above, the boathouse scene draws heavily from The Sorcerer. The titular sorcerer is John Wellington Wells, from whom Dawn claims to be descended. The famous playwright who immortalized Wells & Company Family Sorcerers is, of course, none other than William Schwenck Gilbert.
• Family sorcerers are those who are moral enough to refrain from engaging in any sort of magic that would offend mainstream family values. How this squares with offering the service of “melt[ing] a rich uncle in wax” (sympathetic magic that involves melting a wax image of said rich uncle, causing him to waste away, presumably so impatient heirs can get their inheritance faster) is not clear, but Gilbert had little concern for such minutiae.
• Dawn’s claim that her family’s firm has been in the same location since the reign of Henry VIII refers to The Yeomen of the Guard, which is the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta with the earliest setting. Although Gilbert said only that Yeomen was set in the 16^th Century, certain references within the libretto—not least that Yeomen is the only G&S operetta to include in its cast of characters someone who actually existed—allows the range of possible setting dates to be narrowed down to the last eight years of Henry VIII’s reign, i.e. 1540-47.
• The song Dawn’s ancestors licensed is the first of the famous Gilbert & Sullivan patter songs , “My Name is John Wellington Wells”. Gilbert and Sullivan are credited with perfecting the patter song form, which features simple, singsong tunes designed for rapid delivery.
• The phrase, “pleased as punch” refers to the Punch character in the Punch and Judy puppet shows that are a traditional part of British seaside culture.
• When Dawn enchants the necklace, she essentially acts out J.W. Wells’ part of the Incantation Scene. The main differences are that Dawn’s ritual is a little more elaborate, and that Dawn makes a warding charm whereas Mr. Wells makes a love philtre. The text of Dawn’s incantation is Gilbert’s, quoted verbatim. The spirits’ responses likewise directly quote Gilbert except for changing the masculine “master” to the feminine “mistress”.
• The subchapter title, “Who Do You Trust?” is the canonical episode title.
• “The Singing Intern” and the effects of her song are described in enough detail for readers familiar with Total Drama Pahkitew Island (canon Season 6) to recognize Ella, who canonically resembles the Disney version of Snow White. Unlike some previous cameos of unnamed interns, the Storyteller’s decision to describe Ella in detail is not a breach of the Fourth Wall, because Ella is plainly noteworthy.
• Ella sitting sidesaddle on the elk’s back because she’s “a lady of quality” refers to the Disney Princess archetype that Ella’s canon counterpart parodies. Ella rides an elk instead of a moose (which would be more typical of Total Drama) because moose look too ungainly for such an absurdly sweet tableau.
• The verses accompanying Ella’s singing scenes come from the Finnish quasi-epic, The Kalevala. Most of the major characters in The Kalevala make magic primarily by singing, just like Ella. See the First Night Notes for additional information.

Eighteenth Night Notes

• Gwen’s question to D.J. and his response are quoted verbatim from the original episode 13, the episode where the love note B story appeared. The author thought at the time (and still thinks now) that D.J.'s snippy response was out of character, so this reimagining provides a reason for it.
• Chris’ subtitling of the William Tell test as “the slingshots and arrows of outrageous fortune” is a play on the line, “The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” from the famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy in Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet.
• Describing the William Tell targets in their strange hats as “flatheads” refers to a quirk in the Total Drama drawing style that gave most of the original cast flat heads.
• Fructose is a type of sugar particularly prevalent in fruits, hence the name.
• Courtney shooting Duncan during the William Tell briefing is full of the sort of ritual exaggeration that one might expect from a legend. The scene contains several hints that Courtney’s extreme annoyance endowed her (however briefly) with unnatural strength. The “sharp crack” when she shoots is implied to be a sonic boom generated by the crabapple breaking the sound barrier.
• The second intern at the William Tell challenge is described in enough detail that readers familiar with Total Drama Pahkitew Island are likely to recognize Rodney.
• Chris naming the fourth test “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze” refers, of course, to the popular 19^th Century ballad of that name. The first verse and chorus remain well known to this day; the other verses, not so much. Interested parties can read the unabridged lyrics here.
• For the benefit of readers who don’t live in North America and don’t have English as their first language, “ATV” is short for “all terrain vehicle”.
• “Metastable” is a scientific term meaning “having only a slight margin of stability”. The reference is to the marginal stability of the three-wheel ATV design, made even less stable by all the extra weight piled onto them to generate faster coasting speeds.
• For readers not familiar with Total Drama Pahkitew Island, Beardo is canonically a gimmick character, and absurd beatboxing skill is his gimmick.
• Episode 11 is the first in this reimagining to span portions of four chapters, due mainly to the elaborate subplots in this episode.

Nineteenth Night Notes

• Minimizing injury by allowing jumpers to skip along the surface instead of plowing into it after a crash is why ski jumping hills are as hard and steep as they are.
• The Canadian Shield is large area of exposed Precambrian rock encircling Hudson Bay. It has some of the oldest exposed rock in the world, dating back three billion years and more.
• Scott and Rodney’s exchange as they tend to Gwen alludes to Rodney’s running gag in Total Drama Pahkitew Island, which had Rodney fall for a different girl in every episode.
• Dawn’s seagulls, Reflection and Remembrance, parody the Norse god Odin’s intelligence-gathering ravens, Huginn (whose name means “Thought”) and Muninn (“Memory”).
• The song quoted for the description of Dawn and Ella’s search tactics comes from the cantata, Alexander Nevsky, originally a film score for a 1938 Russian biopic of that name. In the film, the song appears as a voiceover when a woman is searching for survivors after the Battle of Lake Peipus, the famous “Battle on the Ice”. The lines, “I’ll not be wed to a handsome man… I’ll be wed to the man who’s brave” foreshadow a certain development in this reimagining, but that is another story for another time.
• The climber who aids Ezekiel on the cliff is of course Shawn, the zombie-obsessed player in Total Drama Pahkitew Island.
• The Storyteller alludes to The Hunger Games when she describes the team representatives sent to Chris as “Tributes”.
• Gwen losing a finger alludes to the animation convention of simplifying the artwork in non-realistic styles by drawing characters with only four fingers per hand. It also alludes to a polarizing storyline in Total Drama Action (canon season 2) where Trent develops an obsession with the number nine. Here, Gwen’s accident leaves Trent’s girlfriend with fingers numbering… nine.
• The section heading, “Once More into the Breach” alludes to the first of two famous speeches in Shakespeare’s play, Henry V.
• Chris telling Eva that some people don’t like her when she’s angry alludes to the 1978-82 TV series, The Incredible Hulk. In that series, Dr. Banner (who transforms into the Hulk when sufficiently angered) warns, “Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”
• The vote totals were:

• Eva: 4 (Beth, Courtney, Duncan, Ezekiel)
• Ezekiel: 3 (D.J., Eva, Tyler)

• Resolution of the love notes subplot was moved up to episode 11 (from episode 13 in the original) to accommodate the elimination order.
• Tyler’s eventual hookup with Eva was first foreshadowed after the Beetle Incident (episode 1, Second Night) when Geoff and Harold discussed the attributes of their female teammates. Concerning Eva, Geoff’s advice to Harold was, “Leave her to dudes who can take some punishment.” At the time of the Beetle Incident, Tyler’s physical resilience had already been established.
• The poem quoted as Eva walks to the boat is Sonnet 29, by William Shakespeare.
• The acknowledgement, “I hear and obey” appears frequently in The 1,001 Nights.
• “Bargain basement baritone” is how novelty song disc jockey Dr. Demento likes to describe his singing voice. This is part of the reason (along with the fact that he can’t carry a tune) why he normally relies on talk-singing instead of true singing when circumstances call for him to sing.
• The revelation that Eva is the “Diamond Maid” of the love notes was foreshadowed during Eva’s confrontation with Ezekiel on the beach (episode 2, Third Night) when Eva’s grip is described as “adamantine”. In addition to being the adjective form for the fictional metal adamant (or adamantium), “adamantine” is also the traditional adjective for things with diamondlike properties.
• The verse quoted when Hatchet appears in his military garb comes from a song in the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, Patience.
• Master Chief Warrant Officer is a real rank in the Canadian Navy. (The equivalent U.S. rank is one of the Chief Petty Officer grades.) Since Hatchet behaves more like an Army veteran than a Navy one, the implication is that he served in the Canadian counterpart to the U.S. Navy SEALs—a fictional unit, since Canada’s small navy has no such special force in the real world.
• In the original, contestants rang a bell to announce their elimination from the challenge. The altered ritual of firing a cannon alludes to The Hunger Games and also seems more in keeping with the challenge’s military theme.
• A sedan chair is the British version of the human-powered vehicle generically called a litter.
• The improbable variety of terrain encountered during the hike is implied to be another example of ritual exaggeration by the Storyteller.
• “Betty” is a slang term for an attractive young woman.
• Warrant/Petty officers are typically specialists. (Readers familiar with the Star Trek franchise, which generally uses naval terminology, may recall that transporter operators are commonly addressed as “Chief”, short for “Chief Petty Officer”.) Based on the skills Hatchet demonstrated in the original episodes and what can be deduced from his military background, it seems logical that he would have been a pilot, and most likely a helicopter pilot.

Twentieth Night Notes

• The improvement in Brett’s grades as an indirect result of his mother’s storytelling parallels King Shahryar’s increasingly benevolent attitude toward Shahrazad in The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night. Shahryar had originally planned to execute Shahrazad after their wedding night, as he had been doing to his brides every night for the previous two years (being the king, he could order women to marry him) after becoming convinced that women were inherently unfaithful. This is why Shahrazad ends with a cliffhanger every night, to buy her another day of life. As the tales wear on and Shahryar gets used to having Shahrazad around, signs appear that he is increasingly open to reconsidering his bloodthirsty plan, and he eventually abandons it entirely as part of the book’s happy ending. Similarly, albeit with much lower stakes, Brett’s mother is using her tale as bait to encourage Brett to keep up with his homework in the hope that such diligence will become second nature to him.
• Chef calling B “Mr. LaForge” refers to Lt. Commander Geordi LaForge, the Enterprise’s Chief Engineer in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Whether this is B’s actual surname or merely a nickname he acquired on the island is left for the reader to decide. B is canonically a contestant in Total Drama Revenge of the Island.
• “Sad sack”, short for “sad sack of crap”, is Army slang for an incompetent soldier.
• Leonard is canonically a contestant in Total Drama Pahkitew Island.
• The Leonardspeak-English translation of, “Systemen digesticus bismuthiae!” is “Bismuth for the digestive system!” Unlike most heavy metals, bismuth (atomic number 83, one higher than lead, and the highest-numbered element that is not radioactive) is not only nontoxic but actually medicinal. It’s the “bis” in Pepto-Bismol, an over the counter remedy for various digestive system complaints.
• In military parlance, “take ten” is short for “take a ten-minute break”.
• Hatchet’s suggestion to Chris about how the latter can make himself care about the campers refers to the fact that, on the rare occasions when Chris expresses concern for the players’ well-being in canon, he always does so for selfish reasons.
• “Carry on” is a military command meaning, “Go back to doing whatever you were doing before I interrupted you.”
• Gwen “turning into a pumpkin” at the stroke of midnight alludes to the story of Cinderella.
• Despite superficial similarities, Hatchet’s threat to demote Duncan to Intern is not based on fallen contestant Dakota becoming an intern in Total Drama Revenge of the Island. Hatchet simply needed a threat Duncan would take seriously.
• The sloppiness of Tyler’s essay paper alludes to his physical clumsiness, as opposed to any “dumb jock” stereotypes.
• “C.O.” is short for “Commanding Officer”, which in this case means Chris.
• The song Gwen transcribes for her essay is “If You Want a Receipt” from the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, Patience. The only Gilbert & Sullivan patter song not sung at least in part by the comic lead, it consists of little more than a list of names, mostly historical but a few fictional, all of which were well known in Gilbert’s time but many of which are all but forgotten today.
• Scarlett is canonically a contestant in Total Drama Pahkitew Island. Her appearance when she comes to the lodge to grade Leshawna’s essay alludes to her big reveal in that season.
• Dave, the unseen obstacle course tester, is canonically a contestant in Total Drama Pahkitew Island.
• The campers taking to the obstacle course includes allusions to two Shakespeare quotes, from Julius Caesar (“Cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war,” i.e. let the soldiers do their thing) and Twelfth Night (“Taste your legs, sir. Put them to motion.”)
• “Stone knives and bearskins” is more or less how Spock described 1930s technology in the Star Trek (original series) episode, “The City on the Edge of Forever”, although Chris doesn’t know this.
• “The Caisson Song”, also known by other names, was originally written by three artillery officers of the United States Army in 1908. The version Ella sings was written in 1918, with the original tune arranged into a march by that most famous of march composers, John Phillip Sousa. This version and its variants was the unofficial U.S. Army song until 1956, when an official song with the same tune but less artillery-centric lyrics was adopted. The 1918 version also gained an enduring place in popular culture beyond the Army.
• Eos was the goddess of the dawn in classical mythology. One of the Titans, the generation of gods who preceded the Olympians, she was fortunate enough to keep her job after the Olympians defeated and largely supplanted the Titans. The Romans called her Aurora.
• Hatchet’s code name, “Black Ramsay” alludes to celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay.
• Brick MacArthur is canonically a contestant in Total Drama Revenge of the Island, where his archetype label was “The Cadet”. In this reimagining, he was an intern, like all of his ROTI castmates who have appeared or been mentioned. Naming a “memorial kitchen raid” after him suggests that (a) he is dead, because interning on Total Drama Island is hazardous work; and (b) he was an accomplished kitchen raider. Brick’s surname, which is canonical, comes from the famous American general, Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964).
• The description of Courtney as a “snack burglar” is a play on “cat burglar”, i.e. a burglar who relies on stealth instead of more thuggish methods.
• “Havoc” was a command given to English armies in the Middle Ages. It meant, “start pillaging”. Courtney’s “very quiet havoc” line is the chapter’s second reference to the quote from Julius Caesar. This quote is famous enough that Courtney’s knowledge of it does not necessarily imply more than ordinary knowledge of Shakespeare’s works.
• Alamogordo is a small city in New Mexico best known for its association with the first atomic bomb test in 1945. It is also the location of the infamous Atari video game burial of 1983.

Twenty-first Night Notes

• Dawn’s claim that Duncan’s family tree has only one branch refers to “A Burlesque Biography”, a humorous sketch by Mark Twain (1835-1910), wherein he related an assertion that his family tree “never had but one limb to it, and that that one stuck out at right angles, and bore fruit winter and summer.” An accompanying illustration explained the joke: the “tree” is a gallows and the “fruit” is the condemned man hanged from it, suggesting that Twain’s lineage was full of scoundrels. Dawn casts a similar, and equally facetious, aspersion on Duncan’s pedigree.

• The party poem, "Im Taberna" ("In the Tavern") comes from the Carmina Burana ("Songs of Buern"). Scholars regard it as the greatest drinking song of the Middle Ages, and one of the greatest of all time. This was one of the songs set by Carl Orff in his famous cantata, Carmina Burana, which has the dubious distinction of being the most important musical composition to come out of Nazi Germany. The translation, by David Parlett, is singable to Orff's tune. (The translator makes no apologies for the "Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor", a traditional character stocklist that serves the same purpose as the original.) The video includes a non-singable but more accurate translation, as well as the original Latin lyrics. (The original tune is long lost.)

• “Heart of Oak” is the official march of several Commonwealth navies, including the Canadian navy. It also makes a good drinking song.

• The song, “Bella Notte” (Italian for “Beautiful Night”) from the 1955 Disney animated film, Lady and the Tramp, is perhaps better known by its opening line (“Oh, this is the night”) or simply as “the Spaghetti Scene song”. The Spaghetti Scene is one of the most iconic scenes in the Disney animated canon, and Disney songs are especially appropriate for this version of Ella, whose canon counterpart is a Disney Princess parody.

• Tyler and Lindsay dancing together at the start is a nod to their canonical relationship. Heather subsequently cutting in on Lindsay alludes to the related subplot in the original where Heather tried to keep Lindsay and Tyler apart for gameplay reasons, much as she tried to keep Lindsay and Justin apart in this reimagining.

• The description of country bumpkins Beth and Ezekiel as “children of the corn” refers to the Stephen King short story of that name.

• The Courtney/D.J. scene on the porch was written years before most of the boot camp episode, and was the second of three steamy scenes previewed with minor differences for Valentine’s Day 2011. Conversely, turning the party into a dance was an eleventh-hour addition.

• The “line from something” D.J. quotes after his staged makeout session with Courtney comes from the spoken dialogue of the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, Iolanthe.

• The term, “playing the field”, meaning to divide one’s attention among several romantic prospects instead of focusing on just one, comes from horse racing. Many races include several “field” horses that all have the same (usually midrange) odds. A bettor who “plays the field” or “bets on the field” wins if any of the field horses wins.

• In works geared to children, as Total Drama Island was, certain “mature” subjects may not be discussed or are considered inappropriate to discuss, so more innocuous metaphors are substituted as needed. For example, kissing is typically substituted for sexual intercourse as a major milestone in a romantic relationship. In the canonical version of the boot camp party, Courtney eating too many sandwiches and subsequently vomiting is a child-friendly metaphor for binge drinking. In this reimagining, the dance with its free love undertones is a family-friendly metaphor for a drunken orgy.

• The “morning after” Duncshine scene was written years before most of the boot camp episode, and was the third of three steamy scenes previewed with minor differences for Valentine’s Day 2011.

• Beth is implied to have obtained four six-packs of beer for the party, which was enough for every camper to have two beers. It is likewise implied that everyone drank their full allotment.

• Izzy saying that she and Sunshine originally got off on the wrong foot refers to an element of Sunshine’s backstory, described on her character page. It seems that Sunshine auditioned for (canon) Total Drama Island after seeing Duncan’s audition tape, and was accepted. When Izzy subsequently forced her way in, the show had too many players (23) so someone had to be cut. Chris decided that Izzy and Sunshine were too similar to keep both, so he made them fight for the spot. Izzy won, and Sunshine suffered eye damage that led to her wearing the enormous eyeglasses mentioned in Noah’s description of her during the Phobia confession scene (Tenth Night).

• The breakfast of “gruel, gruel, gruel, gruel, gruel, gruel, water, gruel, gruel, gruel and gruel” is based on the Monty Python “Spam” sketch. In that sketch, Spam (a pork-based meat product sold in tins, the name coming from "spiced ham") appears with increasing frequency as a restaurant waitress lists the menu options, culminating with “Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, baked beans, Spam, Spam, Spam and Spam.”

• The visiting doctor is named after the Enterprise’s Chief Medical Officer in the original Star Trek series. Dr. Leonard Kelley’s first name is that the character (Leonard McCoy) and his last name is that of the actor (the late DeForest Kelley).

• Duncan crediting the sick campers’ remarkable recovery to the alcohol Beth brought to the previous night’s party is a reference to The Mouse That Roared, although Duncan doesn’t know this. In that Cold War satire, reports arise that consuming alcohol can increase resistance to radiation. It’s not true, but most of the American public readily believes it because it’s a pleasant thing to believe. This leads to people routinely going about their daily business with a pleasant buzz, a state known as “blitz plotz”.

• The Sirens of classical mythology were known for their beautiful singing, which entranced passing sailors and lured them to shipwreck on the cliffs of the sirens’ island, whether through compulsion or because the entranced sailors could not tend their ships properly. Descriptions vary, but the Sirens were generally agreed to be part human and part bird, the latter in reference to the voices of songbirds. The Germanic myth of the Lorelei is similar, and likely based on the Siren myths.

• In the U.S., the average age for losing one’s virginity is 16, although the range of common ages is wide, and the statistics in Canada are probably similar. It therefore stands to reason that a fair number of the campers would not be virgins, although that topic could not be addressed on the child-oriented show this story reimagines. It was suggested as early as Leshawna’s scene with Eva after the first meal (episode 1, Second Night) that Leshawna is sexually active, but whether Duncan and/or Tyler are is left for the reader to decide. On the one hand, both are character types one might expect to be sexually active. On the other hand, they are in the age range where boys who have had sex tend to lord it over those who haven’t, and teenage boys are traditionally notorious liars when it comes to progress with a girl.

• “Crap” is a word Canadians use freely in the presence of children, and the characters in this story usually say “oh, crap” for the sake of a family-friendly rating. Tyler’s use of the stronger “oh, shit” emphasizes the enormity of his awful realization, however belated, of what he has done behind Eva’s back.

• The notion of Sadie having the “thrifty gene” is based on a hypothesis first articulated in 1962 with subsequent revisions, which attempts to explain why certain populations are more prone to obesity and related diseases. There is considerable debate as to whether the “thrifty gene” or series of genes actually exists, but that’s Katie’s story and she’s sticking to it.

• “Pinning” is a ceremony in which new nursing school graduates are welcomed into the profession. It also describes the college fraternity practice of a fraternity member affixing his fraternity badge/pin to the clothing of a girl he has officially begun to date. Neither meaning is relevant to Chris pinning the medal on Katie’s chest; the Storyteller is merely indulging in a bit of wordplay.

• The Strawberry Bitch is the B-24 “Liberator” heavy bomber on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force. The film, Strawberry Bitch is the in-universe counterpart to Memphis Belle, a 1990 film about a B-17 “Flying Fortress” heavy bomber and its crew.

• Although not stated in the story, Katie is implied to have invited Beth to the Eagles’ Movie Night at Heather’s “suggestion”.

• The section heading, “Crime and Punishment” refers to the Fyodor Dostoevsky novel of that name.

• Chris seemingly misuses the military term, “dishonorably discharged” to imply nothing worse than humiliation at being voted off, although subsequent events suggest that he may have understood the true meaning. In actual military service, being mustered out by any method typical of elimination games would be considered an “honorable” discharge. A dishonorable discharge requires a trial and is equivalent to being convicted of a felony.

• In modern military parlance, a stockade is a military prison located in an army camp or on a base.

• The vote totals were:
  • Beth: 4 (Courtney, Duncan, Ezekiel, Tyler)
  • Duncan: 1 (Beth)
  • Ezekiel: 1 (D.J.)

• Although not stated, the firing squad is implied to have been all-male.

• Carrie is canonically a contestant in the Total Drama spinoff, The Ridonculous Race. She is the first Ridonculous Racer to appear in this story.

• Courtney gives a perfectly legitimate “cover story” for voting Beth off (i.e., fear that Beth was falling under Heather’s influence) and this is implied to be at least part of the reason why the producers did not suspect Courtney’s secret message to the viewing audience.

• Chris coercing the Muskies into voting Beth out is based on an open secret in the elimination game business, namely that regardless of who officially controls the eliminations, the producers normally have some influence over who stays and who goes. The original Total Drama Island satirized this in episode #22 (“After the Dock of Shame”, also known by the artifact title, “Haute Camp-ture”) when Chris invoked creative vote counting to reach a predetermined result.

• The notion of the interns drinking heavily to drown their sorrows comes from Rhonda's new-season fanfic, Total Drama What The Heck?

• The scoring system for the gladiator battles is based on the “20-point must” system of amateur boxing, where the winner of each round gets 20 points and the loser gets a lower score reflecting how decisive the round was.

• Chris’ command to “Come on down! You’re the next contestants …” is based the contestant summoning catch phrase in the price guessing game show, The Price is Right.

• The “salt” shaker battle is based on a joke in a children’s play the author once saw. Because such weapons do not really make for a dramatic fight, the segment became mainly about people cracking wise at Chris’ expense.

• Duncan’s weapon and description in his gladiator battle refer to Phil, “The Prince of Insufficient Light” from the Dilbert comic strip. Phil is a softened Satan knockoff who will “darn you to Heck” for minor breaches of office etiquette. Likening Duncan to Phil suggests that Duncan’s criminal record, lengthy though it may be, consists mainly or entirely of petty offenses.

Twenty-second Night Notes

^[22.01]The numerous replays of the Duncan vs. Cody gladiator bout is based on the protracted replaying of Geoff being hit in the face with a dodgeball in the canonical TDI episode, “Dodgebrawl”.

^[22.02]The aerial chicken jousting replaces the original episode’s first event, sofa bed skydiving.

^[22.03]Heather challenging Cody to come back either with his shield or on it refers to the tendency of a soldier running away from battle to discard his heavy shield, lest it slow him down. It also refers to the custom of carrying dead soldiers back to base on their full-body shields. In other words, Heather is telling Cody to either beat Duncan or die trying.

^[22.04]The rodeo moose riding event is canonical, but the original episode had only one round per team per event. In this reimagining, everyone rides for two major reasons: (1) In the original, Chris’ player assignments for each event appeared designed to deliver a come-from-behind victory to the Killer Bass, who were a player down. (That plan, if plan it was, was foiled when two campers did not perform as expected, with Lindsay faring better and Geoff faring worse.) Having everyone ride eliminated the appearance of favoritism. (2) The reimagined episode has no B story. The original episode’s B story (the love note mystery) is present in this reimagining, but is resolved earlier to accommodate the elimination order. In lieu of a B story, having everyone ride offered more potential for character development and interaction.

^[22.05]Alces is the Latin word for moose. The species’ scientific name (Alces alces) and its British common name (elk, not to be confused with what North Americans call an elk) are derived from this.

^[22.06]The reference to Ezekiel’s “brown right hand” alludes to a line in the song, “A Simple Sailor Lowly Born” from the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, H.M.S. Pinafore. More generally, the allusion is to Ezekiel’s working class background. In a class-conscious, Caucasian-populated society dominated by occupations such as subsistence farming which keep people exposed to the sun, tanned skin is a mark of peasantry. Aristocrats, who don’t have to work for a living, can signal their class status by staying out of the sun and keeping their skin pale to the point where their blue veins are visible through their skin, hence the term, “blueblood”.

^[22.07]Duncan’s line about humiliation and humility is a quote from the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, “Family”, although Duncan does not know this. The line was originally said to Captain Picard by his embittered brother.

^[22.08]Duncan “volunteering as Tribute” alludes to The Hunger Games as a tongue in cheek exaggeration of the challenge’s hazards. There is a bit of artistic license here because, in the real world, the first Total Drama season aired before publication of the first Hunger Games novel. The implication is that Duncan and Courtney’s repartee is an embellishment added by the Storyteller.

^[22.09]Duncan addressing Ella as “Hot Lips” refers not only to the remarkable effects of her kissing, but also to the M*A*S*H character, Maj. Margaret Houlihan, who was known by the nickname “Hot Lips” in the movie and the early seasons of the ensuing TV series.

^[22.10]Duncan’s mock acknowledgement, “By your command” is the catch phrase of the Cylons, the robotic villain “species” in the original Battlestar Galactica TV series.

^[22.11]The lines Ella and Dawn sing to each other before Leshawna’s rodeo ride are altered lines from the song, “If I Could Talk to the Animals” from the 1967 film musical, Doctor Dolittle.

^[22.12]The section heading, “Of Moose and Men” is a play on Of Mice and Men, a novella by John Steinbeck (1902-1968). There is no connection to the events of that novella.

^[22.13]Dawn’s appearance in the rodeo moose riding was originally going to be her debut. She would have been identified only by description and not by name, and “one of us” would have been her first line.

^[22.14]A “camelback” roller coaster is the earliest type. It has few turns, so most of the movement is up and down, hence the name.

^[22.15]Cody was originally planned to fail his rodeo ride miserably after Ella’s well-meaning encouragement proved too distracting for his sometimes one-track mind. (He knows her kisses can be mind-blowing, so he can well imagine what more advanced acts of love with her might be like.) This was changed to mesh with how the later challenge events needed to play out.

^[22.16]Polo and horse racing share the nickname, “The Sport of Kings”. Cowboy polo, the variant on which the fourth challenge event is based, is nicknamed, “The Sport of the Average Man” because each player needs only one horse as opposed to multiple horses, due to cowboy polo’s less strenuous gameplay.

^[22.17]Although the Storyteller usually uses metric units of measure, she uses feet instead of meters when describing the cowboy polo game because the field’s dimensions are marked in feet. (1 meter = about 3.3 feet)

^[22.18]When Tyler and Katie fall off their moose, Chris makes a double entendre and off-color joke at their expense. In addition to more innocuous meanings, “take a tumble” is also a euphemism for “have sex”, and handing out cigars is a traditional way men celebrate the birth of a child.

^[22.19]A “pig in disguise” is a horse which, despite being trained for riding, responds poorly to its rider’s commands.

^[22.20]In ice hockey, a hat trick was originally three straight goals by the same player. The modern definition is less strict, i.e. three goals in a game and not necessarily consecutive.

^[22.21]Before the fourth event was set, the Muskies were originally planned to win the rodeo moose riding round, thanks in part to Dawn’s covert assistance. This was changed because having a fifth event required a 2-2 score after the first four, and it made more sense for the Muskies to win the polo game.

^[22.22]Originally, when most of the challenge events still followed the canonical structure of one player per team per event, the extreme sports challenge was planned as best of seven. This was changed to best of five after the bull (moose) fighting was moved to a later episode and the rodeo moose riding was changed from “one per team” to “everyone rides”. The omitted seventh event was an extreme dance-off featuring Heather vs. D.J. in a dance-til-you-drop malambo, a high-energy dance where the upper body remains relatively still but the legs are in constant motion.

^[22.23]The Seadoo mud skiing event is canonical, but the canonical course had five flags. The change to six refers to the Six Flags chain of amusement parks. The original also did not have the “sudden death” aspect, i.e. only one round was scheduled with no hint of what might have happened had it failed to break the tie.

Twenty-third Night Notes

^[23.01] Lindsay exposing herself is based on the original episode’s iconic scene where Heather’s top was ripped off in a freak accident. The author thought it implausible that none of the spectators noticed in the original, so that plot hole is corrected in this reimagining.

^[23.02] The Eagles close the team phase by winning three challenges in a row, just as in the original. This is a coincidence resulting from the elimination order following the storylines. The potential disruptive effect of Gwen’s invincibility idols was a red herring, because that plot complication was devised long after the elimination order was set.

^[23.03] The phrase, “speak of the devil” (short for “speak of the devil and he will appear”) refers to the folkloric belief that speaking the devil’s name would cause him to appear. The less known flip side of this belief is that, if he was already present incognito, speaking his name would cause him to leave.

^[23.04] The simile of Ella, Beardo and Chef Hatchet looking like “a slim Grecian maiden between two Moorish giants” refers to music composer Robert Schumann’s famous description of Ludwig van Beethoven’s fourth symphony. (Beethoven’s odd-numbered symphonies were the groundbreakers, whereas his even-numbered symphonies were typically more lighthearted or introspective.) Courtney, who is familiar with Schumann’s description thanks to her classical music background, replaced “Nordic giants” with “Moorish giants” to better fit Beardo’s and Hatchet’s ethnicities.

^[23.05] Ella was originally planned to drown in a boating accident where she was struck unconscious and so “could not give voice to the song which might have saved her”. Her cause of death was changed when her characterization was revised to give her less control over the effects of her songs and a logical reason for an apparent death by natural causes.

^[23.06] Ella’s theme is “Sing”, from the educational children’s TV series, Sesame Street. A video is available in Appendix B. One of that show’s most iconic original songs, it was popularized in the 1970s when The Carpenters covered it.

^[23.07] Tyler’s theme is “Go the Distance” from (Disney’s) Hercules. A video is available in Appendix B. Suggested by Rhonda the stalker fan!.

^[23.08] The vote totals were:

Tyler: 3 (Courtney, Duncan, Ezekiel)

Ezekiel: 2 (D.J., Tyler)

^[23.09] Ella making the island her permanent home was foreshadowed as “another story for another time” when Ella, Dawn and Katie were conversing before the ATV race (episode 11, Eighteenth Night). The Storyteller noted that Ella loved the woods and could see spending the rest of her life on the heavily forested island.

^[23.10] Ella’s mature form is based on the ents in The Lord of the Rings, although she is smaller than an ent (as she appears to D.J. and Dawn, at least). Her transformation was foreshadowed as “another story for another time” when the Storyteller noted that Dawn and Ella “were both children of nature, albeit of very different sorts” (episode 11, Seventeenth Night).

^[23.11] Ella’s true name, Perola, was the original name of the titular fairy in the seventh Gilbert & Sullivan operetta. During development of that operetta, the character and the work were renamed Iolanthe.

Twenty-fourth Night Notes

^[24.01] The Maple Leafs are Toronto’s professional hockey team. The shirt Owen wears in canon is a trademark-compliant (and, perhaps, more animation-friendly) knockoff of a Maple Leafs jersey.

^[24.02] The returning players were the first two to be eliminated by normal means, i.e. by vote; or alternatively, the first two to be eliminated under circumstances allowing any possibility of a return. This is a coincidence resulting from the elimination order following the storylines.

^[24.03] Trent’s return and the consequent revival of the Gwen-Trent-Cody love triangle were foreshadowed during Chris’ briefing after the trust challenge (episode 11, Nineteenth Night) when Chris admitted that he was trying to find a way to keep the badly injured Gwen in the game because “Gwen’s given us great drama, and I have big plans for her.”

^[24.04] The belching contest is based on an incident in the canon episode where Geoff responds to Owen’s belch at an impromptu party with a much more powerful one, and is named the boys’ team captain by consensus. In the original episode, however, there is no clear indication that any kind of contest was involved.

^[24.05] Trent’s participation in the belching contest, and Gwen’s reaction to that, are based on a canonical incident where Owen burped the entire alphabet in one go for his talent show audition. All the other boys present—even pretty boy Justin—reacted with admiration, whereas all the girls reacted negatively.

^[24.06] The comedy skit to which Cody refers comes from Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and is commonly known as the “Crunchy Frog” sketch. Six types of chocolates are mentioned in the sketch, including an “extremely nasty” cherry fondue, and all six appear or are mentioned in the reimagined eating challenge.

 ^[24.07] Ezekiel’s reaction to Scarlett is inspired by the 1949 Tex Avery animated short, “Little Rural Riding Hood”, a followup to the iconic 1943 short, “Red Hot Riding Hood”. One or both of these shorts is implied to be Chris and/or Chef’s inspiration for casting Scarlett as the Playboy bunny in the first place.

^[24.08] Topher is canonically a contestant in Total Drama Pahkitew Island, and the tale of Scarlett’s revenge is based on her canonical vicious streak and taste for disproportionate retribution. Whether Scarlett actually arranged Topher’s death as she suggests, or is just trying to scare Duncan, is left for the reader to decide.

^[24.09] In addition to the obvious wordplay, the description of Scarlett as “the killer bunny” refers to the killer rabbit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

 ^[24.10] Owen’s canon counterpart is known for off the wall exclamations such as “Great Gatsby”, “Alexander the Insanely Great”, and so on. Here, “Great horny Catherine” refers to Catherine II, a.k.a. Catherine the Great (1729-1796), the longest-lived (though not longest-ruling) Russian monarch of the Tsarist era. She had so many lovers that, when she died, the rumor quickly arose that she has been crushed to death whilst trying to have sex with a horse. (She actually died from a stroke.)

^[24.11] The joke concerning “nuts” being both slang for testicles and a mild oath having nothing to do with testicles is based on an incident the author’s mother was party to whilst studying animal husbandry in the 1950s. She had been called upon to castrate a young pig as a classroom exercise. The operation was proceeding smoothly until the second newly liberated testis slipped from her grasp as she was pulling it out and returned to its home. She instinctively spoke the oath, “nuts”, to which the graduate student holding the pig replied, “That’s right.”

^[24.12] The line, “I don’t know if I can do this to my bovine brother” was Geoff’s in canon, in keeping with his faux cowboy characterization. Here, D.J. gets the line in keeping with his “friend to all living things” characterization, because Geoff is not present.

^[24.13] Prairie oysters, or Rocky Mountain oysters as they are usually called in the U.S., are most commonly deep fried; but in Canada, they are sometimes served in a sauce instead. The latter is what Chef does, but he uses a wine-based bourguignon sauce instead of the usual demi-glace, which is based on veal stock, hence D.J.’s comment. This is the only dish from the canonical Brunch of Disgustingness to be retained in this reimagining.

^[24.14] The campers’ reactions to the “Crunchy Frog” candies, and Chris’ explanations, repeat a portion of the Monty Python sketch almost verbatim.

^[24.15] Courtney is leaning on the Fourth Wall (i.e., it looks like she’s breaking the Fourth Wall, but she’s not) when she dismisses the notion of eating lark’s vomit “in this reality”. The meta reference is to the Total Drama All-Stars (canon season 5.1) episode, “Sundae Muddy Sundae”, where Courtney is humiliated (gratuitously, many viewers thought) in her ill-fated quest to make an ice cream sundae for a challenge. The crowning indignity comes when a small bird, conceivably a lark, vomits on Courtney’s finished sundae (such as it is), which she must then eat.

^[24.16] Leshawna’s use of the French “non” instead of the English “no” is an example of how she occasionally lapses into French when she is angry or (as in this case) afraid. This tendency was mentioned when she arrived on the island (First Night).

^[24.17] Café Santropol is a real restaurant, accurately described by Chris and Leshawna, and the Hungarian (“French for ‘revolting’”) Cheese sandwich was for many years a real item on its menu. (It was apparently dropped sometime after 2011, presumably in a routine menu update.) A friend of the author’s (the one whom the Storyteller’s son is named after) once made the mistake of ordering this sandwich, and the scene divides his real-life reaction between Owen and Courtney. Brett (the friend, not the character) still recommends the restaurant to people, but also recommends that they avoid the Hungarian Cheese sandwich.

^[24.18] Trent’s reaction to the cheese sandwich, and his subsequent attempt to downplay it in a confessional spot, are similar to his canon counterpart’s reaction to the pizza made with jellyfish sauce and topped with live grasshoppers and live anchovies.

^[24.19] Café Santropol’s Hungarian Cheese spread is objectionable mainly because it has too much paprika, to the point where the spread tastes/feels like a sort of congealed paprika, as D.J. observes.

^[24.20] As alluded to in the First Night notes, Leshawna is from Montreal because of the need for one of the campers to be familiar with Café Santropol and its loathsome Hungarian Cheese sandwich. Likewise, Owen returned to the game mainly to set up the joke of the cheese spread being so revolting that even he won’t eat it. Leshawna’s childhood encounter with it was foreshadowed as “another story for another time” when Heather was choosing Leshawna’s reward after the trust challenge (episode 11, Nineteenth Night) and the Storyteller noted that Leshawna had “a bad cheese experience in her past”.

^[24.21] The author is well aware that many people like fruitcake, but it has been the butt of so many jokes over so many years that the eating challenge would not have been complete without it. In North America, it is mainly associated with the Christmas season, hence “holiday fruitcake”.

^[24.22] The verses quoted in the fruitcake segment come from “You are old, Father William”, a poem in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

^[24.23] Chris comments on the campers being able to eat only candy and nuts because the only rounds where either team has scored to this point were two types of (admittedly unappetizing) boxed candy and the beef testicles (the “nuts”).

^[24.24] The fictional parrot species, “Norwegian Blue” comes from a Monty Python skit known as the “Thesaurus” sketch in the U.K. and as the “Dead Parrot” sketch in America. Subsequent dialogue between Lindsay and the other girls also makes multiple references to it. The skit’s climax involves John Cleese’s character rattling of an extensive list of euphemisms for “dead”, ranging from the blunt to the flowery. Chris’ “pining for the fjords” line also refers to the skit, but whether he is familiar with the sketch or is merely speaking a scripted line is left for the reader to decide.

^[24.25] The poem quoted with the presentation of the “parrot” course is the “swan song” from The Carmina Burana, as translated by David Parlett. Verses 1, 3 and 5, plus the refrain, appear in Carl Orff’s cantata, and the translation is singable to his excruciating tune.

^[24.26] Garum is a condiment primarily associated with the ancient Romans, who used it even more extensively than Americans use ketchup. Chris’ description of how it is made is simplified for gross-out effect, but otherwise reasonably accurate.

^[24.27] Lindsay rendering “Chris” as “Kryten” refers to the Red Dwarf character of that name.

^[24.28] Heather quotes the Monty Python “dead parrot” sketch extensively in her tirade, although she does not know this. She even includes a euphemism which somehow did not make it into the skit, i.e. “shuffled off the mortal coil”. The thought may occur to the discerning reader that Lindsay is perhaps not smart enough to understand the more poetic euphemisms, but Heather is too exasperated to consider this.

^[24.29] There really is such a food as “Blendo”, and there really was an attempt to get its use in U.S. prisons declared unconstitutional as “cruel and unusual punishment”.

^[24.30] Black licorice is very much a “love it or hate it” food, and as such is perhaps the only sweet food that can rival fruitcake as the butt of jokes; so naturally, it had to appear in the eating challenge.

^[24.31] At one point in the development of this challenge, chicken fried in cod liver oil was going to be one of the dishes, but it became repetitive when the even nastier surprise of frying donuts in cod liver oil was devised. Scratching the fried chicken also left an opening for the “parrot” course and another round of Monty Python references.

^[24.32] The reimagined eating challenge does not retain the canonical wieners (allegedly) made from dolphin meat because Bridgette is not on hand to object to them, so Owen and the “healthful donut” have a similar role. Owen’s rant is based on a scene in the Star Trek (original series) episode, “The Trouble with Tribbles”, where Cyrano Jones, an itinerant trader, tries to persuade Korax, a Klingon officer, to buy a tribble (essentially a living beanbag with long fur and a pleasant voice, as well as less desirable traits which come to light in due course). Although Korax is merely annoyed, not unhinged like Owen, he ultimately gets fed up with Jones’ inability to take a hint and dismisses him with a thunderous “Take … it … away!”

^[24.33] The boxed chocolate called “Spring Surprise” is the last of six types mentioned in the “Crunchy Frog” sketch, and the last of three types (the others being the titular “Crunchy Frog” and the “Ram’s Bladder Cup”) to be described therein.

^[24.34] Scarlett’s line, “you stouthearted young idiot” comes from an early Prince Valiant comic strip. The line was originally spoken by Sir Gawain to Val, who was still his squire at the time.

Twenty-fifth Night Notes

^[25.01] Apart from the short prologue, this chapter is the first to have no scenes based on canonical scenes.

^[25.02] Kettle corn is popcorn that is both lightly salted and lightly sweetened.

^[25.03] In the canonical episode, “That’s Off the Chain!” Lindsay claims that she had frequently defended Heather to the other campers, but these defenses were never shown. In this reimagining, Lindsay’s nomination of Heather is meant to be representative of those unseen canonical defenses.

^[25.04] Saying, “men are here” as acknowledgement/assent when asked by a woman to do something requiring/displaying manly strength is a tongue in cheek mannerism the author picked up from a longtime friend, specifically Brett’s namesake.

^[25.05] The author is reliably informed that pan-fried leeches are indeed good eating.

^[25.06] In other countries, dodgeball is not pigeonholed as a child’s game the way it tends to be in the U.S. Although not stated in the story, Sadie is implied to be on the same school dodgeball team as Katie, and whether this is the cause or the effect of their working so well together during the dodgeball challenge is left for the reader to decide. Whereas Katie is their team’s captain, Sadie comes off the bench because her physical condition limits her stamina and therefore her playing time.

Twenty-sixth Night Notes

^[26.01]  Izzy’s claims to have been a crocodile and a shark in previous lives imply a “predatory” attitude toward Ezekiel.

^[26.02] The notion of Izzy actually being an adult and a rogue RCMP agent was expanded upon and somewhat altered for the Fake Souls anthology.

^[26.03] Despite superficial similarities, the adult Izzy returning to the game is neither based on nor inspired by Blaineley’s brief stint as a player on Total Drama World Tour.

^[26.04] The standard age of consent in Canada is 16. It’s higher if the older partner is in a position of trust or authority over the younger, but Izzy isn’t.

^[26.05] The selection wheel is called the “Wheel of Work” for the sake of wordplay. In addition to the alliterative allusion to the canonical “Wheel of Misfortune”, “work” is a rough synonym for “labor”.

^[26.06] Pillories have nothing to do with the Labors of Heracles, but appear in this story as a nod to the challenge’s canon counterpart.

^[26.07] The alleged use of pillows (i.e. “soft cushions”) by the Spanish Inquisition as torture devices refers to a Monty Python sketch from the episode best known for the catchphrase, “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!”

^[26.08] In the original episode, the winner of the random punishments challenge got the trailer to live in for the rest of the game and to take home at the end. That was far too rich a prize to hand out only halfway through a game where the grand prize was only $100K, which is undoubtedly part of the reason the trailer was destroyed in the next episode. The “travelling trophy” aspect used in this reimagining comes from Total Drama All-Stars, where the team or individual winning a challenge received good food and fancy lodging until the next challenge.

^[26.09] Athletic teams at the University of Texas are called the Longhorns.

^[26.10] As might be expected from a geographically large country, people living in the various regions of Australia tend to speak with different accents. The “broad” accent is the one North American media tend to depict as stereotypically Australian.

^[26.11] The epithet, “Aboriginal Achaean” refers not only to Jasmine’s ethnicity (Australian Aborigine) but also to the challenge theme, as well as providing a bit of alliteration. Bronze Age Greeks did not call themselves Greeks, but “Achaeans” or “Danaans”, the latter after a mythical King Danaus. In The Iliad, they are also called “Argives”, which in other contexts normally refers specifically to the city-state of Argos. Jasmine is canonically a contestant in Total Drama Pahkitew Island.

^[26.12] Chris’ threat to air the campers’ confessional spots refers to an incident in the original episode, where Chris aired several voting spots at the elimination ceremony.

^[26.13] The Calgary Stampeders are a professional gridiron football team in the Canadian Football League.

^[26.14] Ryan is canonically a contestant on The Ridonculous Race. Casting this bodybuilder as Atlas alludes to the famous bodybuilder, Charles Atlas (1892-1972) who was best known for an iconic advertising campaign promoting his methods.

 ^[26.15] The Labor of the Apples was originally planned as a climbing challenge, suggested by JojiMC on fanfiction.net and similar to a training exercise in the Disney film, Mulan, with the shell game being Gwen’s accommodation for her partially-healed shoulder. This plan was scrapped in favor of having everyone play the shell game to avoid giving Gwen too many “specials” and to showcase Leshawna’s street smarts.

^[26.16] The Chicago Bulls are a professional basketball team in the National Basketball Association.

^[26.17] Gwen’s encounter with Jasmine/Geryon is based on a scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

^[26.18] The title, “Dame” is the feminine counterpart to “Sir”.

^[26.19] A Quarter Horse is not only a sprinter (typically racing a quarter mile, hence the name) but is also North America’s generic work horse, not even recognized as a separate breed until 1940. Describing this working breed as “the standard issue breed at Camp Wawanakwa” implies that the interns sometimes use horses on the job. This becomes a plot point in a later chapter.

^[26.20] The appearance and behavior of the intern Heather rides against in the kyz kuu race are described in enough detail for readers familiar with The Ridonculous Race to recognize Ennui, who canonically has a pet rabbit named Loki.

^[26.21] Using a moose for the Cretan Bull challenge follows a longstanding running gag in the Total Drama canon, where moose and bears can stand in for almost any large mammal.

^[26.22] The “March of the Toreadors” from Carmen, which is also Alejandro’s theme in this reimagining, is one of the most famous pieces in all of opera. In addition to being probably the most widely recognized piece from one of the world’s most widely performed operas, the instrumental version is a staple of the concert repertory.

^[26.23] “Flood Control Dam #3” refers to Zork, a classic interactive text adventure computer game and one of the first of that genre. Its authors began writing the original version in 1977—an even 40 years before the posting of this chapter.

Twenty-seventh Night Notes

^[27.01] Jormungandr, as previously noted, is the World Serpent of Norse mythology. The son of Loki and the giantess Angr-Boda, it was a snake so large that it girdled the entire world, living under the sea, and its movements were supposedly the cause of storms at sea. Note that “Jormungandr Junior” is not alliterative because “j” is pronounced like “y” in Old Norse and other Scandinavian languages.

^[27.02] In Japanese erotica, tentacles commonly stand in for male genitalia for various reasons. The woodblock print design, “The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife” (also known by other, more descriptive names, link NSFW) is a famous example of this. In Courtney’s constrictor contretemps, the snake’s tail stands in for a tentacle.

^[27.03] The Marquis de Sade (Donatien Alphonse François, 1740-1814) is best known for his writings blending philosophy with a brand of pornography emphasizing violence, criminality and anti-Christian blasphemy. The words “sadism” and “sadist” come from his name. In his writings, he (or his English translators) typically called female genitalia “the Altar of Venus”, i.e. the place where the Goddess of Love is worshipped. Sade preferred cruder terms for male genitalia, although the flowery “Spear of Jupiter” (after the seemly perpetually horny Greco-Roman god) occasionally appears.

^[27.04] Ezekiel’s difficulty with the archery test alludes to his canonical audition tape, where he tries to demonstrate his archery skill but ends up hitting his mother, who was downrange for unknown reasons.

^[27.05] Scarlett calling her horse “Rocinante” alludes to Don Quixote, and Scarlett is aware of this. Published in two volumes in 1605 and 1615, it is considered the first modern novel and is the most influential literary work of the Spanish Golden Age. Rocinante, whose name translates roughly to “used to be a worker”, was Quixote’s broken-down horse.

^[27.06] The athletic teams at the University of Arkansas are called the Razorbacks, which are feral boars.

^[27.07] The Erymanthian Boar, played by a bear in costume, appears in the Total Drama World Tour episode, “Greece’s Pieces” during the Ancient Olympics challenge. Because the bear is not a skilled actor, it behaves like a bear, not a boar.

^[27.08] Chris’ word choice regarding the habitat of the Erymanthian Boar alludes to the Harry Potter reference book, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

^[27.09] Chris calling the piglet by the proper name of “Piggy” refers to the Lord of the Flies character of that name.

^[27.10] In a Total Drama context, “self-styled evil genius” is enough description for readers familiar with Total Drama Pahkitew Island to recognize the canonically inept Max.

^[27.11] Michael Jackson (1958-2009), once known as “The King of Pop”, was also and less flatteringly known for his body image issues, which contributed to a nickname shift from “Jacko” to “Wacko Jacko”. One of the modifications he made to himself was to severely lighten his skin. Because this story is set in 2007, the year the show’s canon counterpart premiered, Jackson is still alive and still making headlines for all the wrong reasons.

^[27.12] “Playing the ponies” is slang for betting on horse races.

^[27.13] Izzy stating her desired Labor and subsequently getting it without using a weak spin to “cheat” is based on the famous “called shot” by baseball legend Babe Ruth (1895-1948). During the 1932 World Series, Ruth came to the plate, pointed his bat seemingly at the center-field stands, and on the next pitch hit a tape-measure home run to center field. There is some question as to whether Ruth actually pointed at the stands or at something else (such as the opposing pitcher or bench) but the story is firmly entrenched in baseball lore.

^[27.14] In the Bronze Age Greek names of classical mythology, “c” is always pronounced like “k”, never like “s”.

^[27.15] The description of the Cerberus robot’s dog parts is based on Muffit II, the robotic dog from the original Battlestar Galactica.

^[27.16] Lindsay rendering “Cerberus” as “Khakibarn” alludes to Total Drama’s sister series, 6Teen, which is canonically implied to be in the same continuity as Total Drama. Khaki Barn is a clothing retailer and a major subsetting for 6Teen’s events, and one of the characters employed there has the same voice actress as Lindsay.

^[27.17] A tell is a subconscious behavior that gives an opponent useful information in card games and similar pursuits.

^[27.18] In gambling, a “push” is a tie, adjusted for equalizing factors such as point spreads. In the event of a push, all bets are off and the bettors neither gain nor lose.

^[27.19] Izzy’s pleasure reaction to electric shock and her request for another come from the challenge’s canon counterpart, which includes Izzy being shocked with electric eels and loving every second of it.

^[27.20] Because B is a fan of the kaiju genre, Mechacerberus’ lightning-breathing dragonlike heads allude to King Ghidorah, a three-headed dragon in the Godzilla franchise.

^[27.21] A panagram is a phrase that includes every letter of the alphabet. Cody’s remark includes a double entendre, because in addition to the animal, “fox” is also slang for an attractive woman. (The counterpart term for a man with Cody’s attitudes toward women is “wolf”.)

^[27.22] The Hamilton Tiger-Cats are a team in the Canadian Football League. They are based in Hamilton, Ontario, a port city on the western end of Lake Ontario. (Trivia note: In the author’s what-if story, “Legacy”, Geoff eventually becomes a backup quarterback for the Tiger-Cats.)

^[27.23] The “Lady or the Tiger” angle for the Nemean Lion sub-challenge was suggested by Rhonda the stalker fan!

^[27.24] The poem quoted when D.J. faces the Stymphalian Birds is Papageno’s introduction aria, “Der Vogelfänger bin ich ja” (“I am the Birdcatcher”) from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera, The Magic Flute. D.J.’s name, Devon Joseph, replaces “Papageno” from the metrical English translation (in the original German, Papageno does not identify himself by name in this aria) because it fits the meter.

^[27.25] Izzy’s description of Chris as “he-who-must-be-obeyed” is a gender-flipped reference to the 1887 novel, She (subtltled A History of Adventure) by H. Rider Haggard. This novel established the conventions of the “lost world” fantasy sub-genre.

^[27.26] The man-eating supersnake was originally planned to attack Katie during her Hydra test. This was changed for chapter length. The snake attack seemed the best place for a cliffhanger, but Katie could not face the Hydra before the sixth round.

Twenty-eighth Night Notes

^[28.01] Under the original plan of having the man-eating snake attack Katie during her Hydra sub-challenge, the scene would essentially have been a played-for-drama counterpart to D.J.’s failure in the canonical “random punishments” challenge. Chris would have appeared content to let the encounter run its course (i.e. to let Katie die) until the other campers could take no more, whereupon they would have stormed the snake tank and rescued her.

^[28.02] Describing Carrie as the supersnake’s intended second breakfast alludes to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth novels, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. “Second breakfast” is the second of six standard meals in hobbit society. The film adaptation identifies the full listing as breakfast, second breakfast (a traditional meal in parts of Eastern Europe), elevenses (also called “morning tea” in some countries), luncheon, dinner and supper.

^[28.03] The first meal in camp (episode 1, Second Night) established that Izzy is a fan of the Star Wars franchise.

^[28.04] For the benefit of readers not well versed in American slang, “fixing” a dog or other animal means to neuter or spay it.

^[28.05] In wrestling, a juggle is a move used to break a hold. Describing Eva’s juggle as “nigh supernatural” refers to the song, “Like a Ghost his Vigil Keeping” from the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, The Yeomen of the Guard. The pertinent part of this alternating-lines duet goes:

After mighty tug and tussle—
—It resembled more a struggle—
He, by dint of stronger muscle—
—Or by some infernal juggle—
From my clutches quickly sliding—
—I should rather call it slipping—

^[28.06] The trick Eva uses to beat D.J. is loosely based on the story of Br’er Rabbit and the Tar-Baby. D.J. needing nine body slams to free himself is based on the significance of that number in Norse mythology.

^[28.07] Justin offering Katie the kiss he could not give her before the Awake-a-Thon alludes to their “romance novel” scene where Justin used his wiles to distract Katie, who was about to vomit from overeating at the buffet following the 20K run (episode 3, Fourth Night). He succeeded in calming her stomach, but when she tried to kiss him, he politely declined because he had his heart set on Lindsay.

^[28.08] “Big Bertha” has become a generic term, but in the sense of “particularly large example” it originally referred to a certain huge World War I howitzer fielded by the Germans. The French used the term generically for several exceptionally large German guns, including the Paris Gun.

^[28.09] Izzy’s fight with Jasmine is based on an iconic fight scene in the unfinished martial arts film, The Game of Death, and includes a loose reenactment of the opening bit. In that scene, the protagonist (played by Bruce Lee, who died during a production hiatus) faces a giant guardian (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar). The Izzy-Jasmine fight also alludes to an ambition of Jasmine’s canon counterpart, who hoped to use the prize money from Total Drama Pahkitew Island to open a combination cage fighting school and flower shop.

^[28.10] Izzy’s fighting style is loosely based on that of the comic book superhero, Spider-Man. Jasmine’s style does not have any specific model. Their use of differing styles is a departure from the Game of Death fight scene, as Lee and Jabbar used the same style.

^[28.11] A second snake attack would have been too repetitive, so Katie is eliminated in another Labor and does not face the Hydra.

^[28.12] The “Tiger” cat’s behavior toward Heather is based on a Burmese cat the author had as a child.

^[28.13] Izzy’s scene with Justin is based on a quasi-canonical short video where Izzy claims to have dated Justin for a time, only to dump him because he was a liar.

^[28.14] The robotic Cerberus losing a snake head to Leshawna’s wrath and getting it replaced in time to face Trent alludes to an incident in Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah where Godzilla blasts off one of Ghidorah’s heads, only to have a third party replace the destroyed head with a mechanical head.

^[28.15] Aias (Ajax to the Romans) was the name of two Greek heroes in the Trojan War. Aias the Greater was probably the biggest warrior in the Achaean host, and was said to be the second strongest after Achilles; and in The Iliad, Homer made numerous references to his huge “shield like a tower”. Bronze Age Greece had three major shield designs: the round buckler; the tower shield which covered the entire body; and a vaguely figure-eight design with flared top and bottom and narrower waist, which was as tall as a tower shield but easier to handle.

^[28.16] The section heading, “The Day the Magic Died” is a play on “the day the music died”. On 3 February 1959, rock and roll stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson died in a light plane crash en route to a tour stop. In 1971, folk rock singer/songwriter Don McLean referred to the incident as “the day the music died” in his song, “American Pie”, and the label stuck.

^[28.17] “I’m Being Eaten [or “Swallowed”] by a Boa Constrictor”, officially titled simply “Boa Constrictor”, is a children’s song by Shel Silverstein (1930-1999).

^[28.18] “In the Hall of the Mountain King”, by Edvard Grieg (1843-1907), is canonically the tune Mal likes to whistle in Total Drama All-Stars.

^[28.19] The Dance of the Rattlesnake is canonically the act Izzy offers for the talent show challenge.

^[28.20] Izzy also eliminates herself and places third in the canon counterpart to this challenge, although the setup is quite different.

^[28.21] Although Chris uses the original name, Heracles, throughout the challenge, Eva uses the better-known Hercules.

^[28.22] Dawn siccing the swarm of giant horseflies on Chris was foreshadowed as “another story for another time” during the “save Katie from the curse” subplot (episode 11, Seventeenth Night) when Gwen suspected that crossing Dawn would be unwise, Dawn’s pleasant and mild-mannered demeanor notwithstanding. The accompanying verse is an abridged version of the Queen of the Night’s famous aria from The Magic Flute.

^[28.23] Dawn’s theme is “If I Could Talk to the Animals” from Doctor Doolittle. The verses accompanying her departure scene come from "The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò", which was previously quoted in part during Gwen and Cody’s transit to Boney Island (episode 8, Twelfth Night).

^[28.24] In the original, Duncan forged the boys’ alliance two episodes later, during the hide-and-seek challenge (episode 17, “Hide and be Sneaky”). Doing so immediately after the merge might have made more sense in-universe, but the show was constrained to 20-minute segments and other storylines took precedence in episodes 15 (“No Pain, No Game”) and 16 (“Search and Do Not Destroy”).

Twenty-ninth Night Notes

^[29.01] Most polytheistic mythoi have a sun god who either embodies the sun or conveys it across the heavens every day via chariot or similar means. Apollo and his chariot, from classical mythology, is probably the best known of these.

^[29.02] The vote totals were:

• Ezekiel: 7 (Courtney, D.J., Gwen, Heather, Katie, Leshawna, Lindsay)
• Lindsay: 5 (Cody, Duncan, Ezekiel, Owen, Trent)
• Duncan: 1 (Izzy)

^[29.03] Ezekiel’s placement as the first post-merge elimination was originally meant to make him the first major character eliminated, but the expansion of Sadie’s role after the elimination order had been set earned her that dubious distinction.

^[29.04] Mezzo, short for mezzo-soprano (“half-soprano”), lies between soprano and alto. It is the most common women’s voice range, and dominates non-classical music genres.

^[29.05] The episode-ending verse is from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, previously described in the Eighth Night notes.

^[29.06] The episode’s secondary title refers to the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, The Pirates of Penzance, and is the first of several references to that work in the reimagined pirate treasure episode. The use of alternate titles is typical of the Gilbert & Sullivan series, and indeed of Victorian theatrical works in general; but whereas the secondary title was usually more descriptive than the primary, here the primary title is the more descriptive.

^[29.07] Back bacon is so called because it comes from that part of the pig. The form Americans call Canadian bacon is a subtype.

^[29.08] In the original episode, “X-treme Torture”, Bridgette noted that Trent always procures an extra muffin for Gwen at breakfast.

^[29.09] The verse accompanying Chris’ entrance is the second verse and refrain to the Pirate King’s song, “Oh Better Far to Live and Die” from The Pirates of Penzance.

^[29.10] Chris and Scarlett are dressed like the Pirate King (synonymous with pirate captain) and Ruth, respectively, from The Pirates of Penzance as they typically appear in the D’Oyly Carte productions. The D’Oyly Carte Opera Company was created by Messrs. Gilbert, Sullivan and D’Oyly Carte to produce these operas, and is generally considered the most reliable keeper of the Gilbert & Sullivan tradition.

^[29.11] The French observe Bastille Day on 14 July. For readers who don’t want to try to figure out the timeline from the references appearing in this story, the campers arrived on the island on Saturday, 2 June 2007.

^[29.12] Although Bastille Day is not widely observed in Canada, Vancouver does celebrate it. In one of the Season 2 (Total Drama Action) promos, Heather mentions that she lives in Whistler, B.C., a resort town about 125 km north of Vancouver. Whistler’s ski area, called Whistler Blackcomb, is the largest ski area in North America and was the venue for the alpine skiing events of the 2010 Winter Olympics.

^[29.13] Most of the campers who were present for the canonical version of this challenge draw the same obstacle they had in canon.

^[29.14] The Gordian Knot figures in a myth about Alexander the Great. Fantastically tight and complex, prophecy held that whoever opened it would go on to rule all of Asia. After trying and failing to unravel the knot, Alexander sliced it open with a stroke of his sword, thereby meeting the letter of the prophecy’s prerequisite.

^[29.15] “Dread pirate Christopher” is a play on “Dread pirate Robert” from The Princess Bride.

^[29.16] Hardtack is an infamously hard biscuit or cracker, typically made only from flour and water. Until canned food became common, hardtack was a staple food on long sea voyages, migrations and suchlike because it does not spoil easily. It is known by many names, including colorful pejoratives such as “sheet iron” and “molar breakers”.

^[29.17] The four-move “standard” chess game Scarlett mentions is called Scholar’s Mate, and has trapped unwary victims for centuries. It is often confused with Fool’s Mate, a two-move (for Black) or three-move (for White) checkmate that can only work if the losing player makes a specific blunder. Scholar’s Mate has no such requirement.

^[29.18] Despite substantial similarities to Bilbo’s duel with Gollum in The Hobbit, the true inspiration for Katie and Scarlett’s riddling duel was a scene with fewer similarities in the details, namely the Man in Black’s battle of wits with Fezzini in The Princess Bride. Scarlett’s line, “Let the loser’s head fall to the winner’s wisdom” comes from the Norse Eddaic poem, “The Lay of Vafthrudnir” as translated by Patricia Terry. In that poem, the god Odin and the giant Vafthrudnir duel not with riddles, but with questions requiring knowledge of ancient lore.

^[29.19] Chutes and Ladders, descended from the ancient Indian board game of Snakes and Ladders, is played mainly by young children. It is purely a game of chance, and requires no reasoning skill at all.

^[29.20] Scarlett’s line, “Correct. Select.” comes from the original (1964-75) version of the game show, Jeopardy! Host Art Fleming typically acknowledged correct responses in this manner.

^[29.21] Katie having knowledge of the Tower of London from a speech assignment comes from the Total Drama World Tour episode, “I See London”, where it was a conveniently relevant element of Courtney’s backstory.

^[29.22] Katie’s Tower of London riddle consists of the (slightly altered) opening lines from the song, “When Our Gallant Norman Foes”, a ballad about the Tower and its history.

^[29.23] In The Yeomen of the Guard, the jester Jack Point asks his new employer, “How is a cook’s brain-pan like an overwound clock?” When said employer dismisses the question because he has weightier matters on his mind at the moment, Point rhetorically laments, “Just my luck; my best conundrum wasted!” There is no evidence that Gilbert had an official answer in mind, but that has not stopped Savoyards (as Gilbert & Sullivan buffs call themselves, after the Savoy Theatre) from suggesting many possible answers. In any case, Point’s question is an anachronism because the story is set in a period before the invention of spring-powered clocks.

^[29.24] The dead intern in the bear cave is described in enough detail for readers familiar with Total Drama Pahkitew Island to recognize Max. He is eviscerated because black bears are known to favor the entrails of large prey.

Thirtieth Night Notes

^[30.01] The folk song, “Cherry Ripe” appears in a 1999 made-for-TV adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, which is implied to be where Katie first heard it.

^[30.02] Jasmine’s dismissive attitude toward the knives favored by street criminals alludes to an incident in the 1986 film, Crocodile Dundee. In what may be that film’s best-known scene, Dundee and his companion are accosted by a knife-wielding mugger. When Dundee’s companion says fearfully, “he’s got a knife”, Dundee dismisses it as “not a knife”, produces a much larger knife, and says, “Now, that’s a knife”.

^[30.03] Duncan’s key nailed to the charthouse “like Ahab’s coin” refers to Herman Melville’s novel, Moby Dick. Captain Ahab nailed a gold coin to the mast and promised it to the first man to spot the white whale. When Ahab himself won the coin, he left it on the mast and promised it to whoever spotted the whale first on the day the whale was slain.

^[30.04] D.J. envisioning a rabbit capable of beheading an armored knight refers to the killer rabbit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, also referenced in the canon counterpart to this episode. The prospect of a robotic, fire-breathing rabbit refers to Cat-bot in Total Drama Pahkitew Island.

^[30.05] Izzy describing D.J.’s (formerly) bunny-guarded key as a “rabbit test” refers to the iconic pregnancy test. Her choice of words foreshadows her and D.J.’s return to camp.

^[30.06] The verse accompanying D.J.’s pursuit of Izzy is verse 2 of “Climbing Over Rocky Mountain”. This song originally appeared in Thespis, the first and least-known of the Gilbert & Sullivan operettas, in the entrance of the Thespians. The song was later recycled, with minor changes to the lyrics, in The Pirates of Penzance for the entrance of the General’s daughters.

^[30.07] A standard marathon is 26 miles, 385 yards (42.195 kilometers). The distance was originally an even 26 miles, but at the 1908 Olympics in London, 385 yards were added so the race could start in front of Buckingham Palace.

^[30.08] Riddle duels in literature and folklore often end with one of the duelists asking a riddle that is unanswerable either because it is ambiguous or because the answer is something only the asker could possibly know. The opponent’s reaction varies widely, ranging from concession to physical assault.

^[30.09] Katie’s answer to Scarlett’s final riddle, and Scarlett’s reaction to that answer, are based on an incident in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign where the author was serving as Dungeon Master. The player characters (PCs) encountered a gynosphinx who naturally posed riddles to them, from the same collection Scarlett used. (Curiously, although most of the players recognized riddles posed to other players, none could answer their own riddles, and the sphinx had a “no kibitzing” rule.) Instead of trying to eat the PCs who could not answer their riddles, as the Sphinx of the Oedipus story did, the sphinx demanded a hefty toll for safe passage—unless the PC could stump her with a riddle of their own, for the sphinx was always looking to expand her repertoire. One player tried the “what never was and never will be” riddle, which the author did not know, and without hesitation the author (via the sphinx) gave Katie’s answer. The player claimed the sphinx’s answer was incorrect, but the other players sided with the sphinx.

^[30.10] Except for the answerless “freebie” in the preceding chapter, all the riddles Scarlett asks come from a 19^th Century Mother Goose collection, as do some of Katie’s.

^[30.11] Lindsay rendering “Trent” as “Tarrant” refers to Del Tarrant, a main character in seasons 3-4 of the 1978-81 British science fiction series, Blake’s 7. Lindsay, of course, does not know this.

^[30.12] Heather’s accusation that Gwen is putting on an act as a loner refers to the mismatch between Gwen’s canonical description and canonical characterization. Gwen’s canon counterpart is billed as a loner but usually behaves like a normal teenage girl, albeit one with a relatively downbeat outlook. Whether Heather actually believes what she is saying or is merely telling a story to Katie and Lindsay is left to the reader to decide.

^[30.13] During the classical mythology period, hiring professional mourners for funerals was a common practice in Eastern Mediterranean societies. Women from Persia (modern Iran) were especially prized for this role because they lamented with unmatched intensity.

^[30.14] Creating something from whole cloth means it is pure fabrication with no truth at all.

^[30.15] In the original, Heather’s seduction scheme works because, despite Gwen and Trent’s obvious mutual attraction, they are all too ready to believe the worst about each other (thereby suggesting to the observant viewer a serious flaw in their relationship). In this reimagining, they are more willing to give each other the benefit of the doubt. Leshawna is likewise not inclined to summarily condemn Trent as she did in the original, partly because Gwen is not and partly because this version of Heather has victimized Trent before.

^[30.16] The poem accompanying Leshawna’s vow to eliminate Heather consists of verses 1 and 3 of the trio, “Away, Away!” from The Pirates of Penzance. Verse 2 of that song follows Katie’s ensuing confessional spot.

^[30.17] The stereotypical pirate oath, “shiver me timber” literally means, “shatter my wooden leg”.

^[30.18] The word “rape” retains is original meaning (from the Latin rapito) in literary language, where it refers to general (as opposed to specifically sexual) violation on a grand scale during wartime, e.g. the Rape of Nanking during the Second Sino-Japanese War (later subsumed under World War II). The original meaning also appears in the names of famous works such as the epic parody poem, “The Rape of the Lock”, which is about the theft of a lock of hair.

^[30.19] Heather’s reference to Duncan being good with ropes, and his acknowledgement of same, allude to his canonical audition tape, which begins with Duncan climbing down a rope in a jailbreak attempt.

^[30.20] The verses accompanying the chest opening come from the opening chorus to The Pirates of Penzance. In the context of a party or celebration, a bumper is a cup or glass filled to the brim.

^[30.21] The pirate treasure challenge is the second in which campers receive alcohol with the producers’ blessing. (The Muskies were given fine wine with their steak dinners after the Boney Island challenge.) Conversely, Beth was crucified for obtaining beer for the boot camp dance because her actions enabled unsupervised, uncontrolled drinking, and because she did not get the beer through official channels.

^[30.22] Captain Morgan is a brand of rum. The brand’s mascot is a pirate king named after the Welsh privateer, Sir Henry Morgan (1635-88).

^[30.23] During the “golden age of piracy” (c. 1630-80), so called because the most famous pirates operated during that period, bumbo was the pirates’ rum beverage of choice, mainly because it tasted better than grog. It was made with rum, water and sugar, and garnished with nutmeg and/or cinnamon.

^[30.24] A digestif is a drink, usually sweet and alcoholic, consumed after a meal. Brandy and liqueurs are typical digestifs.

^[30.25] The “curse” Owen’s plaque represents is named after the 1999 Comic Relief special, “Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death”, starring Rowan Atkinson (of Mr. Bean and Black Adder fame) as the Doctor.

^[30.26] Owen’s summary elimination is a nastier version of Chris’ canonical trick where Owen’s hard-won key was merely useless and did not open any of the chests. Note that, unlike his canon counterpart, Chris expressed no preference concerning which camper drew the bear challenge.

Thirty-first Night Notes

^[31.01] Duncan’s late cousin (a police officer killed in the line of duty) is named after Alexander James Murphy, the title character in the 1987 film, Robocop.

^[31.02]Izzy’s second theme is “Secret Agent Man” by Johnny Rivers. A video link is available on the author’s profile page. Apart from the Storyteller, who has themes for both her current and (so far unidentified) past selves, Izzy is the only character with two themes, due to the nature of her characterization.

^[31.03] Izzy holding hands with Owen during their Dock walk is a nod to their canonical relationship.

^[31.04] The ignition of Owen’s fart produced a blue flash instead of an orange one because his flammable gases (mostly methane, which is also the main component of natural gas) had time to mix with air before reaching the torches. This mixing is also what, under the right conditions, produces an explosion instead of a flame. In short, it is a cartoonish exaggeration of a real-world phenomenon.

^[31.05]In the original, Chris claimed that Chef holds an advanced degree in manhunting. There is no such degree to the best of the author’s knowledge, so in this reimagining Chris substitutes a more generic description of Chef’s skills.

^[31.06]Gwen’s comment that Chef’s water gun is as dangerous to Heather as live ammunition alludes to a climactic incident in The Wizard of Oz, where the Wicked Witch of the West melts after being splashed with water.

^[31.07] Leshawna won the canonical version of the Hide and Seek challenge by hiding under the dock.

^[31.08] Courtney was originally planned to find Ella’s body in the cave, secreted there by someone (presumably Dawn) and preserved incorruptible, in reference to the “Disney Princess” origins of Ella’s canon counterpart. This detail was scrapped because adding the “really a nature spirit” wrinkle to Ella’s characterization gave Dawn less reason to care about the disposition of Ella/Perola’s physical body.

^[31.09] Chef Hatchet’s hidden intellectual side is based on former U.S. President Harry Truman (1884-1972, President 1945-53), who likewise did not have an intellectual image, yet read most of the classics in their original language. It is also based on the canonical TDI episode, “Are We There, Yeti?” (episode 24) wherein Hatchet spends a free day in such pursuits as playing a harp and learning a language.

^[31.10] The Aeneid is an epic poem by the Roman poet Publius Vergilius Maro, commonly known as Virgil, and is counted among the Latin-language classics. In the scene Chef is reminded of and subsequently invokes, Aeneas, a Trojan prince left homeless by the fall of Troy, and Dido, Queen of Carthage, are separated from their hunting party in a rainstorm and take shelter together in a cave. This was all arranged by the goddess Juno (Hera to the Greeks) in an attempt to thwart a prophecy she found unpleasant. Juno loved Carthage, and reasoned that if she could cause Aeneas to fall in love with Dido and settle down in Carthage to rule by her side, Aeneas would not go on to set in motion a series of events that would culminate, centuries later, in the destruction of Carthage by the Romans.

^[31.11]In the original, the captured campers showed a curious indifference to the “help Chef” option, possibly because the “every camper for themselves” mindset had not yet taken hold so soon after the merge. Izzy did not expose Leshawna despite having both opportunity and incentive to do so, and none of the other boys exposed Duncan despite having both opportunity and incentive. Indeed, most of the captured campers did nothing but follow Chef around in the challenge’s latter stages. Only Heather helped Chef, and even she merely took an opportunity that fell into her lap. (This was part of a string of contrivances to keep the reviled and villainous Heather in the game past her natural time.) In this reimagining, the captured campers fully understand the benefit of helping Chef, and actively assist him.

^[31.12] The section title, “Peter the Wolf” is a play on Peter and the Wolf, the famous “symphonic fairy tale for children” by Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953).

^[31.13] Duncan assisting the wolf is based on an apparently true story the author read about as a child. In the original incident, if memory serves (it’s been almost 50 years, so some of the details are fuzzy) the animal was a lynx and the person, whose name escapes the author, was a park ranger or some such. Duncan showing his softer side was foreshadowed as “another story for another time” when Duncan arrived on the island and traded barbs with Heather (First Night), and the Storyteller noted that Duncan would one day show himself to be “more than just piercings and attitude”.

^[31.14]Shawn speaking of “someone … or something” coming after Cody is Shawn’s obligatory reference to a zombie apocalypse.

^[31.15] Trent choosing the second of three options Chef Hatchet offered him, and calling that option “Door Number Two” refers to the game show, Let’s Make A Deal. The climax of each episode was the “Big Deal of the Day” where the contestant would win a very valuable prize (frequently a new car) if they could correctly guess which of three numbered doors concealed it.

^[31.16] In military parlance, “carry on” means “go back to doing whatever you were doing before I interrupted you”.

^[31.17] Trent’s failed stalk of Duncan is based on an incident in the canonical paintball episode, where Owen tries to ambush Duncan but is betrayed by an ill-timed fart. That particular device is not consistent with Trent’s characterization, and a broken twig would have been too cliché, hence the pheasant cameo.

^[31.18] Courtney winning the challenge by using the wetsuit was foreshadowed as “another story for another time” after the phobia challenge (episode 7, Twelfth Night). The Storyteller noted that because no one bothered to retrieve the protective wetsuit Courtney wore when she was immersed in Jell-O, she kept it and it would again serve her well. Courtney’s “blue-tinted lips” indicate mild hypothermia.

^[31.19] The U.S. Army’s policy on knife throwing is simple and direct: “Don’t throw your knife. You are unlikely to incapacitate your target, and you give him a weapon.” The Canadian Army’s policy is presumably similar.

^[31.20] Describing the list of who has invincibility and who doesn’t as Chris’ “little list” refers to the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, The Mikado. In the song, “As Someday It May Happen”, popularly known as “the Little List song”, the Lord High Executioner details his “little list” of people who could be executed if the need arose because they “never would be missed”. The song is essentially a listing of Gilbert’s pet peeves.

^[31.21] When Cody confessed his role in Trent’s first elimination (episode 5, Seventh Night), his pledge to never vote against Gwen—nor Trent, should he return—was the price of Gwen’s forgiveness.

Thirty-second Night Notes

^[32.01] When Dawn assured the injured Gwen (episode 11, Seventeenth Night) that her “guardian angel” would not allow her to be eliminated soon, there was nothing supernatural about that protection. Dawn was referring to Cody and how he uses his influence with Heather.

^[32.02] Cody voting against himself for the sake of keeping his word to Gwen was foreshadowed as “another story for another time” when he made that promise (episode 5, Seventh Night) and the Storyteller noted that Cody would prove as good as his word. Chris recaps the pertinent details of Cody’s pledge.

^[32.03] The vote totals were:

• Trent: 5 (Courtney, Duncan, Heather, Katie, Lindsay)
• Cody: 5 (Cody, D.J., Gwen, Leshawna, Trent)

^[32.04] Courtney’s date with Duncan is a nod to their canonical relationship.

^[32.05] Duncan’s challenge that Courtney doesn’t trust him, and Courtney’s partial acknowledgement, are based on a bit of dialogue in the (original) Star Trek episode, “Tomorrow is Yesterday”. The original exchange was between the main guest character and Spock.

^[32.06] Duncan’s proposal to raid Craft Services to provision his date with Courtney refers to their canonical raid in the boot camp challenge (“Basic Straining”).

^[32.07] The verse accompanying Duncan and Courtney’s date scene comes from “The Owl and the Pussy-cat” by Edward Lear. The line, “What a beautiful Pussy you are”, combined with Duncan’s tendency to view girls as objects, introduces a double entendre that Lear did not intend.

^[32.08] Lindsay’s absurdly expensive birthday party comes from her pseudo-canonical text biography on the show’s website, whereas her unrequited desire for a Sunset Sally bicycle comes from the original episode. The cast’s text biographies were frequently inconsistent with the show’s events.

^[32.09] When Lindsay speaks of a “nonentity bike”, she is trying to say “novelty bike”.

^[32.10] The “ate a rock” cycling injury story is based on an injury suffered by the author’s former brother in law. The other “war stories” are more or less canonical, albeit not necessarily from the same characters as relate them here.

^[32.11] Most of the campers who were still in the game during the canonical version of this challenge build bikes at least broadly similar to their canonical designs. Leshawna is the major exception, as she did not build a bike at all in the original (and was inexplicably not penalized in any way for that).

^[32.12] Heather’s fondness for glitter glue is canonical, revealed in the Total Drama World Tour episode, “Awwwwww, Drumheller”.

^[32.13] Heather’s implausible claim that her bike weighs only two ounces is canonical. Leshawna’s dig at Heather’s intelligence is likewise canonical, although the line was originally Gwen’s. Gwen’s observation that Heather’s underdeveloped part is her heart, as opposed to her brain, is closely based on an exchange in the (original) Star Trek episode, “The Galileo Seven”, with Heather standing in for Spock, Gwen for Dr. McCoy, and Leshawna for the episode’s main guest character (who, quite coincidentally, was also black).

^[32.14] A “ghetto blaster” is a portable music player with large speakers. More generic names include “master blaster” and “boombox”.

^[32.15] “Excelsior”, a Latin word literally meaning “higher” or “superior” but commonly translated “ever upward”, was a catchphrase of the late comic book icon, Stan Lee (1922-2018). It is also the official motto of the U.S. State of New York, among other things.

^[32.16] A hardpoint is a spot on a vehicle, e.g. on the wing of an airplane, designed to mount external weapons or other gear.

^[32.17] The Sidewinder missile is a relatively small, short-range heat-seeking missile. Although designed and primarily used for air-to-air combat, it also makes a passable light antitank missile, which is how Duncan’s bike is implied to use it.

^[32.18] Mad Max is the protagonist of a series of Australian films set in a post-collapse Australia. The first film (Mad Max) is not widely known in North America, but the second (called Mad Max 2 in Australia and The Road Warrior in the U.S.) put the franchise on the proverbial map.

^[32.19] Robby the Robot is a character in the classic 1956 science fiction film, Forbidden Planet.

^[32.20] Katie’s bike is similar to Geoff’s in the original, and gets a similar reaction from Chris. Wheelie bikes are generally regarded as a children’s bike design, which fits the child-at-heart Katie.

^[32.21] Chris dubbing Gwen’s bike the Vampirebatmobile is a mashup of “vampire bat” (alluding to the bike’s Gothic décor) and “Batmobile”, Batman’s iconic car.

^[32.22] The canonical bicycle challenge is infamous for its poor execution, which is the main reason the reimagined challenge is as different as it is. The jousting tournament replaces a preliminary race wherein the campers rode each other’s bikes. When development of this reimagining began in 2010, jousting on bicycles, with lances blunted with boxing gloves, was one of the author’s very first ideas. It seemed a perfect fit for Total Drama’s sensibilities.

^[32.23] The boys getting all the top seeds in the jousting tournament is a coincidence. Seeding the bikes, as opposed to random pairings, was a late addition made well after the bike designs had been set, and helped resolve the question of who should joust against whom.

^[32.24] Seeds 1-5 in the jousting tournament all have bikes with features that can serve as a supplemental lance rest, or provide more protection for the rider, or both. Seeds 6-8 lack such features.

^[32.25] A worker bee’s stinger is barbed, but a queen bee’s is not. As a result, a queen can sting repeatedly, whereas a worker can normally sting but once.

^[32.26] A destrier is a type of heavy warhorse.

^[32.27] Single-elimination tournaments are sometimes reseeded after each round, albeit more commonly not. (The smaller the field, or the more time elapses between rounds, the more likely reseeding becomes.) Had the jousting tournament not been reseeded, #1 D.J. would have faced #4 Gwen instead of #6 Leshawna in the second round, and #2 Duncan would have faced Leshawna.

^[32.28] Saint George is the patron saint of knights. The invented “Saint Numeris” refers to the Canadian audience measurement organization, Numeris. (The U.S. counterpart is Nielsen Media Research, for which the Nielsen rating system is named.) The name “Numeris” is an anachronism here, and suggests an embellishment by the Storyteller, because this story is set in 2007 and the Bureau of Broadcast Measurement (later BBM Canada) did not rebrand itself as Numeris until 2014.

^[32.29] The piranha pool and the minefield are retained from the canonical final race, which is a straightforward albeit hazard-laden speed race.

^[32.30] The line Cody recites, “Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die” comes from the poem that prefaces The Lord of the Rings and is inscribed on the One Ring.

^[32.31] Cody likening Lindsay and Duncan to dwarves also alludes to the preface poem in The Lord of the Rings: “Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone”.

^[32.32] In horse racing, “riders up” is the command for the jockeys to mount their horses. This command is normally given immediately before the “parade to the post”.

^[32.33] Heather addresses Lindsay by her proper name, as opposed to the usual “Lindsiot”, because Heather is desperate and understands that she genuinely needs Lindsay’s help.

^[32.34] The verses quoted in the “Charge of the Light Brigade” challenge are, of course, taken from the Alfred Lord Tennyson poem.

^[32.35] “Saving ground” is horse racing terminology, and refers to a jockey hanging back and conserving their horse’s energy for a more advantageous moment.

^[32.36] Despite some similarities, Leshawna’s assault on Heather is not based on the canonical incident in Season 3 (Total Drama World Tour). The assault scene, including the cliffhanger placement and resolution, was one of this story’s first finished scenes, written before World Tour premiered and with only minor revisions since.

Appendices

Appendix A: Elimination Table

To reduce the potential for late arrival spoilers, the elimination table has its own subpage.

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Appendix B: Character Theme Songs

Staff

Chris: "I'll Make a Man Out of You" from Mulan

Mulan - i'll make a man out of you

Chris' theme

Chef Hatchet: "If You Want a Receipt" from Patience, by W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan. This is also Chef's theme in Total Drama Island, by Gilbert and Sullivan

Patience Act 1 - If you want a receipt

Chef Hatchet's theme

The Interns: "Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves" from Nabucco, by Giuseppe Verdi

Nabucco - Hebrew Slaves Chorus (SUBTITLES)

Interns' theme

Note: Some of the more prominent interns have their own themes.

Alejandro: "March of the Toreadors" from Carmen, by Georges Bizet

Bizet Carmen - March of Toreadors and Chorus Les voici! (Act IV.)

Alejandro's theme

Dawn: "If I Could Talk to the Animals" from Doctor Dolittle

Bobby Darin - If I Could Talk To The Animals

Dawn's theme

Ella: "Sing" from Sesame Street

Sesame Street - Sing

Ella's theme

This song, by Joe Raposo, is one of Sesame Street's most iconic original songs. It was popularized beyond the show's target demographic when The Carpenters covered it.

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Contestants

Beth: "Fanfare for the Common Man" by Aaron Copland (instrumental)

Fanfare for the Common Man New York Philharmonic. 911 museum closing ceremony

Beth's theme

Bridgette: "Simple Gifts" by Joseph Brackett Jr.

Simple Gifts Judy Collins

Bridgette's theme

Courtney:"The Olive Tree" from Kismet

The Olive Tree (Kismet) - Howard Keel

Courtney's theme

Cody: "The Impossible Dream" from Man of La Mancha

The Impossible Dream - Man of La Mancha

Cody's theme

Duncan: "The Seven Deadly Virtues" from Camelot, by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe

Canterlot - Seven Deadly Virtues

Duncan's theme

Eva: "Ride of the Valkyries" from Die Walküre, by Richard Wagner (instrumental)

Classical - Richard Wagner - Ride of the Valkyries

Eva's theme

Ezekiel: "Dropkick Me, Jesus, Through the Goalposts of Life" by Bobby Bare

Bobby Bare "Dropkick Me Jesus" (Unedited Version)

Ezekiel's theme

Geoff: "Ghost Riders in the Sky" by Stan Jones

Ghost Riders In the Sky By Frankie Laine

Geoff's theme

Gwen: "The Music of the Night" from The Phantom of the Opera by Charles Hart, Richard Stilgoe, and Andrew Lloyd Webber

The Music of the Night - Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman (lyrics in the description)

Gwen's theme

Harold: "Valhalla" leitmotif from The Ring of the Nibelungen opera tetralogy (sometimes described as "the world's first miniseries), by Richard Wagner (instrumental)

Valhalla - Leitmotif 8 (Richard Wagner, Das Rheingold Scene 2)

Harold's theme

Heather: "Be Prepared" from The Lion King

The Lion King - Be Prepared (Sing-Along Lyrics)

Heather's Theme

Izzy #1: "Magic Fire Music" from Die Walkure (mostly instrumental)

Wotan and The Magic Fire (Die Walküre Act III Conclusion) 720p

Izzy's 1st theme

Note: Izzy has two themes due to the nature of her backstory.

Izzy #2: "Secret Agent Man" by Johnny Rivers

JOHNNY RIVERS - Secret Agent Man 1966

Izzy's 2nd theme

Justin: "C'est Moi" from Camelot

Franco Nero - C'est Moi

Justin's theme

Katie & Sadie: "Friendship" by Cole Porter (from DuBarry Was a Lady, later added to Anything Goes)

Friendship Cole Porter Greatest Hits

Katie & Sadie's theme

Katie (alone): "The Mary Ellen Carter", by Stan Rogers

Liam Clancy - Mary Ellen Carter

Katie's theme

Leshawna: "Clancy Lowered the Boom" by Hy Heath and Johhny Lange

Clancy Lowered the Boom

Leshawna's theme

Lindsay: "'Cause I'm a Blonde" by Julie Brown

Cause I'm a Blond

Lindsay's theme

Noah: "If You're Anxious for to Shine" from Patience, by W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

If You're Anxious for to Shine - Michael Ball - Patience - Proms

Noah's theme

Owen: "Baby Elephant Walk" by Henry Mancini (instrumental)

Baby Elephant Walk

Owen's theme

Trent: "A Wandering Minstrel, I" by W.S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan, from The Mikado

This is also Trent's theme in the author's compilation, Total Drama Island, by Gilbert and Sullivan

"A Wandering Minstrel, I" from Gilbert & Sullivan's The Mikado

Trent's theme

Tyler: "Go the Distance" from (Disney's) Hercules

Disney's Hercules - Go the Distance (English High Quality)

Tyler's theme

Suggested by Rhonda the stalker fan!

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Other

Brett & his mother: Opening to Scheherazade, by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (instrumental)

Rimsky-Korsakov Scheherazade - op.35

Brett & his mother's themes

The opening chords, which represent the Sultan commanding Scheherazade to speak, comprise Brett's theme. Scheherazade's theme, a violin solo that first appears at about 0:50 and represents her spinning her tales, is the mother's theme.

Sunshine: "Pick a Little, Talk a Little" by Meredith Wilson, from The Music Man

08. Pick-A-Little Talk-A-Little (The Music Man 1962 Film Soundtrack)

Sunshine's theme

The story is ambiguous on whether Sunshine actually exists as a separate entity, but she's mentioned often enough justify having her own theme song.

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