"I'm at a party in a mansion, there's a lot of high fashion, and I'm cooler than I've ever been, so what you think about that?"

For one glorious moment, it didn't matter that she was about to shatter every bone in her body. As she soared above the water, chubby arms gently outspread, pink parka billowing, she allowed herself to forget every bitter glare, every cruel word.

It wasn't difficult, the forgetting. The rushing air was cool against her cheeks. It ruffled the few strings of hair that still flapped stubbornly (faithfully) at her scalp. Stars blinked on the waves below. Most of the island was behind her now. The camp. The single mountain peak. Most of the forest. The world was serene and picturesque. At this point, she didn't particularly care where she landed. The jagged, untamed landscape simply wasn't all that threatening in the dark.

She reached the high flare of her arc. The wind's wail faded away. For a heartbeat or two she hung there, suspended.

Then she tipped downward and plunged, enveloped in half a hurricane. About four seconds before impact, she realized she was screwed and found the breath for a piercing scream.

She slammed into the lake. Presumably - hopefully - with an epic splash that would make it on camera. A fat salmon with three eyes took one look at her and bolted in a cloud of bubbles. Several others hovered just out of reach, staring at her with curious looks drifting past their dull fishy gazes. The bravest even shot forward to dab at her nose. She probably would have enjoyed this rare, actually pleasant encounter with Wawanakwa's infamously odd wildlife, if she could swim.

But she couldn't. So she didn't.

Sand swirled beneath her fingers and stung her eyes. She clawed fruitlessly at nothingness until finally, somehow, she burst to surface, hacking water into the water. A gasping breath that burned her throat. Underneath. Swallowed up by cold ocean. Another gasp, after a second struggle to fresh air. In the dark, she could just make out a pale strip of beach not far away, and some kind of broad-shouldered human figure sloshing through the shallows towards her.

A dude. His narrow waist and rumpled hair suggested that he was close to her age of sixteen, or a few years older. Score! She liked the way this evening was going already.

She dipped under the next wave. Her cheeks swelled up. She forced herself to keep her eyes squinted open, even though her flailing hands churned the sand up again. At long last, her desperate patience was rewarded with two strong hands that plunged into the lake beside her.

Please be hot, please be hot, please be hot.

He scooped her into his arms- a practiced knight in dripping armor. She was lifted like a treasure. She clung to his neck with both hands and, in the chilly air of a starlit summer's night, let herself bask in the splendor of a fairy tale.

"Oh my gosh, dude, oh my gosh," he groaned. "Man, you are so much heavier in the air than you were underwater."

Her name was Staci, this teenage girl - Staci Janet Wilcox if you wanted her to stick out her lower lip and scan you top to bottom with a puzzled stare - and in a year's time that same name would flash across the celebrity magazines in Wal-Mart where it would linger for a moment with the snippy, "She's dating who?"s and "Rumors on why he'd settle for her"s, and then she'd at last get sick of it all and burn them with the letters in her mailbox on the gas fire of her stove. And today she'd already survived an exploding yacht, nearly drowned (twice now), allowed herself to be flipped head over heels through the air, ridden a totem pole down a mountain like one of the toboggans invented by her great-great-great grandfather Vernon, lost all but a few stringy strands of the hair on her head, and been quite literally catapulted at least three kilometers across the island. All without a word of complaint, thank you very much.

Staci frowned and groped for the boy's face in the dark. Her nails found a squashed nose, a tiny ear, two bright green eyes ("Ow!") and a blocky cleft chin. "Trent? Like, Trent Miller? From Cody's band?"

"You guessed it." Trent shifted her weight, and she caught his grimace in a flash of moonlight. "You remember the Drama Brothers? Cool. It's been awhile since the last time we tried to tour. That… went… poorly (Actually, I still have that scar on my back)."

"I'm pretty sure I'm related to you, ya."

"Uh… Really?"

"Of course!" Staci tightened her grip on his shoulder. "I must be. I mean, you're even cooler than my great-great-great uncle Calvin is, and he invented ice cream, ya, so that isn't easy to beat. Ya, you're probably my third cousin twice removed or something. I love your music. I downloaded all your songs onto my iPod illegally, ya. Nine pieces of my broke~en heart! Strewn across the stars like wishes unful~filled!"

She poked him in the other eye.

"Ow!" Trent dropped her to clap both hands to his face. Luckily they were in ankle-deep water now, so it didn't hurt and she didn't almost drown again. Staci scrambled to her feet, flapping droplets from the ends of her parka sleeves.

"S-sorry! Um, that wasn't my fault. Ya, my great-great-great-great-great grandmother Melanie invented enthusiasm. Before her, people didn't… do… that. Ya. Not my fault. Sorry."

Trent parted his fingers, his eyes swelling with red. "S'okay. Nothing new to me."

Staci nodded, tugging on her lower lip. Fortunately, by the time they waded up to dry sand, the awkward silence was broken by the sudden appearance of a blonde girl on the beach.

"Hey, are you all right?" she asked, placing a fluffy blue towel around Staci's shoulders. "You wiped out pretty hard."

Staci nestled into the worn cloth. "Ya. I think so, thanks. My great-great-great-great-great aunt Eliza invented water, ya. Before her, people stayed dry all the time."

"Oh. That's… really cool."

"Is that you, Bridgette?" Trent took his hands from his face and blinked like he was facing the sun, instead of the quarter-moon. "Dude. I think I'll leave the damsel-saving to Harold from now on."

Bridgette chuckled. "Well, now we've learned our lesson on calling dibs, haven't we? You knew he wanted her."

Staci pulled the towel tighter and glanced about the beach. It wasn't much to look at, with what little sand there was scattered about in gold and black patches, and far too many jagged rocks. Even the palm trees looked pathetic, and she'd come already knowing they were rubber.

Two boys stood beneath the nearest one. One of them with a red sweater and long brown hair grinned from ear to ear, his arms - one of them splinted with… reeds? - folded behind his back. As Staci glanced his way, he said to the other, "That crash was the most convenient timing I think I've ever seen in my life. Tyler, you owe me five bucks."

"Aw, man."

The buff boy with the tracksuit and headband was Tyler, then. Staci squinted into the darkness, trying to match a name to the first face. She couldn't. Pathetically heartbreaking, but not a particular surprise. It had been at least seven months since she'd last watched any episodes of Total Drama, and seven months was a long time. She'd had more important things to worry about, like what she was going to wear. Nope, still no regrets about wearing the pink parka all summer long. Take that, mom. She'd only been allowed to bring two suitcases, and it was so much more fun to fill them with notebooks and scraps of future inventions than pointless clothes.

"Ya, are you guys staying with me?" Staci asked, and felt the disappointment sweep across her face like the shadow of bird wings when Bridgette shook her head.

"It's nothing personal, but as we speak, we're in the process of getting out of here as soon as we can. The only camera here is the one at the dock where the Boat of Losers used to drop off the eliminated campers (although I can see Chris decided to do things a bit differently this time around), and if that camera catches any proof that we witnessed you showing up, then according to our contracts we have little choice but to stay stuck here the whole time lest we squeal the elimination order. That's what happened with Season 2. And after our yacht blew up and the poor wildlife we saw… to tell you the truth, that kinda scares a lot of us. Really, we came here thinking we were going to be competing for our final season, but as you can see that's not the-"

"I was supposed to compete in this season! Sidelined again? Are you freaking kidding me? What is that?"

Staci pricked up her ears as a second voice chimed in, "Dude, Eva, you have a broken leg."

"You're about to have one too, Cowboy Hat! Aw, forget this!"

Bridgette grimaced and shifted her feet in the sand. "Yes. Not the case."

"This is all your fault, Sadie!"

"I told you it was a stupid idea to wander off searching for food instead of starting the signal fire!"

"Well, I am SO not talking to you anymore!"

"Oh, that is super mature, Katie! You'd better not!"

"Fine!"

One big, happy, dysfunctional family indeed.

"So, I'm guessing you were the first one eliminated, huh?" Bridgette asked, placing her hand on Staci's shoulder and leading her up the sloping beach towards the hotel and the outside resort area. "Sorry that it had to end this way, but if you've ever seen the show before, you know it isn't all bad once you're out."

Grinning, Staci rubbed her palms together. "Ya, because the next four weeks are all mine at Playa Des Losers, right? Ya, I so didn't try to get myself booted on purpose for this. My great-great-great-great uncle Steven invented boots. Ya, before him, everybody walked in snowshoes everywhere, ya, even the penguins and the kangaroos."

"Do you talk whack now because you hit your head on a rock?" Tyler asked with utter seriousness, stumble-trotting after them (Trent and the third boy followed with slightly more balance).

Bridgette rubbed behind her neck. "Ooh. Well, I can't promise you the plaza is in the most pleasant state it's ever been."

"Oh, please. Once you get to know me, you'll realize that I'm like super chill. My great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother's sister, ya, she invented so many ice cubes that she froze the dinosaurs. Come on, it's a five-star hotel. And sure, my ancestors could have built a resort worth six stars - it's in our blood - but ya, I'm pretty sure there's absolutely nothing that could put a damper on my-"

Staci's lower jaw dropped with her stomach.

The poolside had been ravaged. No plastic chair had managed to keep its legs. Various floaties had been popped and ensnared on twigs. Palm trees dripped limply, stripped of their fronds. Heaps of dirt and sand bordered the hotel by its rear double doors. Its rear doorway, more like- they'd been made of glass once, and now shards of them had scattered all over the surrounding yellow tiles. Dark bloodstains suggested that more than one person had made the mistake of stepping over them in bare feet. Up and down both on the outside white walls and the inner tan ones, Staci could make out burn marks and gashes like furious claws. Older teenagers milled about the area, several of them attempting to soothe a black-haired girl dressed in blue who was strongly favoring one leg. But, with dreadful undeniability, the pool itself brimmed with the same green, radioactive slime she'd seen coating the barrels by the confessional cam and the marshmallow that had robbed her of her hair.

"Okay," she grunted, rubbing her temples. "Change of plans, ya. No swim-up smoothie bar for me. Well, would you look at that?"

"We haven't touched it," Bridgette said, clearly following her thoughts. "So I can't confirm that it actually is radioactive or anything, but we did see more than one tree octopus, and a mutant shark with legs."

Still clutching the towel to her shoulders, Staci walked a long, slow circle all the way around the kidney-shaped pool. She was a scientist at heart and didn't believe in writing anything off as dangerous until it had first been studied, and only an hour ago she would have snorted, "They can't put us on an island with anything that could severely damage us like that," and plunged her hand straight in. But she'd seen the two-headed rabbits. She'd seen the bald squirrel that could shoot lasers from its twisted eyeballs. She'd seen the three-eyed salmon. She'd seen the teleporting frogs. She'd seen the marshmallow. No. Sample collecting would need to be held off until she could prove the method of gathering it was safe.

A piece of blue-green fabric lying on the top pool stair - just above the rippling slime - caught her eye. Holding to the sloped silver handrail, Staci leaned down and snagged it between her middle finger and thumb. "Ya, one of my second cousins three-times-removed invented hats," she told Trent, who had followed her around in a circle even when Bridgette had slipped off. "Before him, people's heads just burned a lot and sometimes they caught on fire. Is this Zeke's? The… the guy who got eliminated first in Season 1? And 3?"

"Looks like it." He scanned the area. "I don't know where he scampered off to, but if you see Courtney, you can toss it off to her and she'll make sure he gets it."

Staci squished and pulled the toque between her hands. "Ya, how is he? I've just heard the tabloid gossip. Gossip was invented by my great-grandmother Skye, and I don't really trust her with anything. She was a filthy liar."

"Yeah, they're not very accurate on this topic in particular. Everyone wants to run a false story on how Courtney's sleeping with a mutant who will probably lock his jaws around her throat and kill her in bed. Well. I will say that he's doing better than he once was, but it has only been a year. He mostly grunts and growls, especially when he gets excited, but he can say about five things." Trent scratched the back of his head, then looked down at the handprint on his shirt and started ticking off words on fabric fingers. "Let's see. There's 'Zeke'. 'Chris'. 'Coourtney', with the double 'o's. And…"

"'Panda Express'," Tyler butted in, limping up behind Trent. "I know. I'm still rubbing my forehead all over that one."

Trent snapped his fingers (his real ones, not the ones on his shirt). "That's it. 'P-Panna E-E-Espressy! S-spressy!'"

Staci widened her eyes. "Um-"

Tyler grinned and held up eight curled fingers. "'Z-Zeke eat Panna Spressy, C-Coourtney! Spressy only!'" Then he chuckled. "Grr! Rawr! Hissing! And then she gets all-"

"Guys," Staci tried again. "My great-great-great-great-"

"No, Ezekiel." Trent wagged one finger Tyler's way. "Down, boy. Panda Express is a distinguished place full of distinguished people, and a distinguished gentleman – I.E. my soon-to-be-perfect boyfriend that I've been fixing all by myself and don't you forget it – dresses nicely, takes a shower once in a blue harvest moon, and – above all – walks on two feet. No freaks allowed in. We'll have to get lunch somewhere else."

A low growl paralyzed both boys where they stood. Their eyes met, and then swiveled around to land on the sickly, scrawny figure that crouched on the buffet table behind them. It was slanted- one of the legs had snapped off. He held his perch nonetheless.

"Aw, crap! Zeke, we didn't-"

Tyler clapped both hands over his mouth, and almost fell over in the process. "Zed, you're our bud! We would never call you a freak and mean it. Not ever! You're totally extreme, seriously! Bro for life."

Ezekiel spared them each a curl-lipped glare before turning his full, curious attention to Staci. He blinked. Sunken silver eyes, thickly veined with deep red. Drinking her in. Much like the Irish setter she'd had when she was twelve, Ezekiel slid down the length of the buffet table and loped up to Staci's side on all fours. Even when she backed away, he stopped at her feet and tilted up his head to gaze into her face.

"Um," Staci said, glancing towards Trent and Tyler. Trent reached slowly for the nearest suitcase, clearly intending to bash Ezekiel over the head with it if he made any attempt to lunge. Tyler held both hands in front of him and shook them in a No way, man sort of way, and this time his ankle really did give out beneath him. He collapsed to the ground with a soft thud, jaw-first.

Staci, for her part, told herself not to panic. After all, her great-great-great-great-great aunt Floris had invented meditation. But staying calm turned out to be a very difficult thing to do when Ezekiel padded around behind her and then – oh gosh, oh gosh – placed his hands on her shoulders and climbed onto her back and planted both dirty palms on her scalp and oh my gosh he was going to eat her brains why wasn't Trent swinging that suitcase yet why was he just staring at her slack-jawed and Zeke was going to bash open her skull and suck out her brain juice and Tyler was still nursing his injured ankle in the sand and where was Courtney and what the heck was Trent even waiting for?

Just as Staci was considering unleashing the martial arts taught to her by her third cousin twice removed, Ezekiel patted her scalp with a rough, broad hand.

"H-h-h-h-hair," he said.

Trent lifted his eyebrows. "That's a new word."

She closed her teeth around her lower lip as Ezekiel plucked at the few strands of hair still stuck to her head. "Yeah, can we get him off? My great-great-great grandmother Laila, yeah, she invented animal control. Before her, people with creepy feral beasts on their head got totally murdered."

Trent's wide eyes widened another few notches. He raised his hands- one of which still had the purple suitcase dangling from it, Staci couldn't help but be infuriated by. "Dude, Zeke," he said, "she didn't mean it. You're not an animal. You're totally human. And you're our buddy, buddy. Uh, shouldn't you go find Courtney, dude? Maybe she'll take you to Panda Express."

Ezekiel poked a very sharp fingernail into her head and made a growling noise. Trent looked helplessly at Staci, and Tyler stayed sitting on the ground in fetal position, wisely not making any sudden movements. When he got no response, Ezekiel said "C-C-C-Chriiiis", but that too produced no reply. Which seemed to frustrate him. He yanked at Staci's few hairs again and let out another series of growling noises. Evidently he hadn't gotten his tongue around the English words he wanted to use quite yet. Staci prayed he wouldn't express his rage by clawing out her eyeballs.

"Um," Staci said. She was partially hunched over now, her arms outstretched as she struggled to balance the freeloader on her shoulders. "My great-great-great-great-great grandfather Norbert invented suitcases. Yeah, before him, people were never so fashionable when they were clubbing certain other people over the head." Then she stiffened. Something wet and warm scraped along her scalp. "Is he-?"

"Grooming you?" Trent swallowed. "Yeah. Dude, we had to carpool out here on the bus with him for three hours, and that whole time I never saw him express any sort of… non-loathing to anyone besides Courtney. And then that was mostly fear, not anything remotely like this." He glanced at the suitcase in his hand, then back Staci's way. "Uh, I'm really sorry about this, but I'm not sure we should try to… We don't want to upset him again." He mouthed the words, He throws temper tantrums.

Spiffy.

Tyler took hold of Trent's sleeve and yanked himself back to his feet (knocking Trent down in the process). "But I think maybe he… likes… you?"

Staci smiled, trying very, very hard not to think about how she was being hit on by a half-human and half-feral misfit. As Ezekiel continued to lick her head, she said, "Ya, my great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents invented spreading rumors. After them, life became really sucky for their nasty neighbors that lived down the street, ya. Really such a shame."

"I'll find Courtney now," Tyler offered. He hobbled off as fast as his injured ankle could carry him and slammed into a palm tree. A round of coconuts then fell on his head, burying him in fuzzy husks and splashes of milk, and Trent ran to help him back to his feet.

"F-f-f-f-fiiiiirrrrrsssst," said Ezekiel, giving her ear a sympathetic stroke.

Staci gave up. Since Trent and Tyler had made it clear they were not going to help remove her new hat, she threw her hands in the air and marched away across the plaza, with Ezekiel squeaking and clenching his legs around her neck like the ribbon of a little Chanukah present.