AN: Good Lord…it certainly has been a while since I've submitted anything to this website…but that's cool. I'm starting to become obsessed again, so or better or worse, I'll have a bunch of stuff to write before I get bored again (don't see that happening any time THIS year). Anyhoo, yep, here's my first story since a year ago! I promised myself I wouldn't submit it until the WHOLE THING was done, but I can't help myself. I crave criticism. Enjoy : )

-Dosko

"So, what's happening in that book of yours now, eh?" Ezekiel asked Noah aloud. Noah looked up from his lengthy textbook and gave the boy a peeved expression.

"Ezekiel." He paused. "For the last time, it's a book about why people act the way they do. A NON-fiction book. Nothing 'happens', it's just a series of anecdotes, discoveries, and monologues about the brain, the nature of emotions, and how the brain reacts to them."

"Oh, I get you. Yeah, I had to read a bunch of those types of books when I was back at home, you know, with the home schooling and all." Ezekiel said sheepishly.

"Right. I'm sure prairie people enjoy walking around with their thinking caps on all the time." Noah retorted, rolling his eyes around.

Eva, Justin, Katie, and Tyler, Ezekiel, and Noah were all residing at the five star resort (conveniently close to the island), Playa de Losers. The main thing to do at the resort was to watch the show, and witness the competition of Total Drama Island from the sidelines. However, there were a cavalcade of other things to do when the show wasn't being broadcasted. While the rest of the cast members spent most of their day hanging out around the resort's many places of pleasure, Noah spent the majority of his time indoors alone, reading in his room.

It wasn't long before Noah arrived at the resort that he learned that the pool area was empty during the night. So, he decided on his first night there to bring a book out to the hot tub, and read in the comfortable mixture of the warm water and the cool night air. Regrettably, Ezekiel had figured this out long before Noah, and also spent his time in the hot tub at night. On the very first night that Noah had decided to read in the hot tub, Ezekiel had come out to the pool area as well. Before Noah had time to notice his entrance, Ezekiel had jumped into the hot tub with a copy of The Complete Idiots Guide to: Women (a book that Chris Maclean had given Ezekiel behind the scenes as a consolation prize for being voted off first, and as a means to help Ezekiel relate to women a little easier), and made a rather large splash. He got one of Noah's books wet, and almost started a fight with him. As venomous words were exchanged between the two, Ezekiel noticed Noah's book, Molecules of Emotion, and asked him what it was about. Noah, being the know-it-all he was, heatedly explained the premise of the book to him. Ezekiel put his book down, and relaxed in the warm water and began asking serious questions about the book, and how people can analyze something like emotion in a scientific way. The intrigue of the question cast off Noah's anger at the boy, and the two got into a serious, lengthy, yet enjoyable discussion about the book. Since then, Ezekiel and Noah began to make their nightly trips to the pool a ritual of sorts, always bringing a book with them, sometimes (yet rarely) talking about their respective books.

Suddenly, the fog horn of a boat rang in the distance. Ezekiel and Noah paused their conversation to look around towards the Dock of Losers (the resort's Dock of Losers), and saw a big boat pull up in the midst of the night, causing the reflection of the moon in the water to ripple away as it came nearer. By the time the two boys got up and out of the hot tub, leaving their books behind, the boat had already dropped off the loser of the evening, along with his luggage: Cody.

"Oh man, what the heck happened to you, eh?" Ezekiel exclaimed upon looking at Cody's patched up skeleton. Cody had been mauled by a bear just a few hours before, and was in a full body cast, unable to talk coherently or move (with the exception of his hand, which cranked the joystick on his wheelchair).

Cody mumbled something through the bandages surrounding his mouth and head.

"What's that? I can't hear you through your failure." Noah remarked with a smile on his face.

"Mauled by bears he was" The ship's captain said to Ezekiel and Noah, stepping off the boat to tie it up to the dock. "It's a miracle he's alive at all really. But we got some fine doctors on the island, to make sure nobody files a lawsuit or anything. He'll be fine after a few months or so."

Cody gave a conformational nod, and then mumbled something else, expecting the two boys to still be able to understand him.

"Jeez, what did you do, sneak in their house and raid their porridge stash?" Noah asked Cody.

"What did he say?" Ezekiel asked the captain.

"Not sure….but I'd guess he said that he's sad that he's here and that he got voted off." The captain said stroking his long patchy beard. Cody gave another nod of the head, and sighed underneath his bandages.

It was a mystery to Noah why everybody who was on the show felt badly after they lost. As far as he was concerned, losing was liberation from the hellhole called Camp Wawanakwa. There were several reasons that "Total Drama Island" was so bothersome for the young man: the horrible challenges, the annoying people, the unnecessary commotion and fuss over trivial things, the list went on. But the most prominent of all was the most evil game show host: Chris Maclean. Come to think of it, it was pretty much all his fault the show was so commercially successful in the first place; he was the one who pit all of the teens against each other by making them fight over an inconsequential sum of a hundred thousand dollars, money which judging by the demeanor of the show, most likely didn't even really exist.

"Well, don't you worry man, we'll get you all set up here, and you'll be back to feeling good in no time!" Ezekiel assured the wounded boy enthusiastically, grabbing his wheelchair by the handles. "I mean, there are all sorts of stuff to do here! We've got a spa, continent breakfasts, and there's even a big TV room where we can watch the rest of the guys still on the show compete!"

"That would be continental breakfast home school. I don't particularly enjoy eating pancakes the size of Australia." Noah added sarcastically as always, picking up Cody's two suitcases for him. Cody laughed under his bandages while being wheeled by Ezekiel, and the two boys walked up from the dock of shame back towards the resort with Cody in tow. Noah grabbed the towels and the two books by the hot tub, and they all went inside the hotel to the rooms upstairs.

As they wheeled Cody towards to the elevator, the double doors opened, and out of the elevator came Eva, fresh from the gym. She spotted the boys, and shot them an angry glare. "Mr. Sexist." She stated. She turned her head to Noah, "Know-it-all."

"Iron woman." Noah replied blankly. Eva's glare deepened, until she looked down to the thrashed Cody.

"Whoa, what the heck happened to the string bean?" she said, almost concerned.

"Dude was attacked by vicious bears, not really sure why." Ezekiel answered. Eva winced a little at the sight of Cody, and the thought of bears.

"Well, good to see he's at least alive anyways." Eva finished, and walked off towards the showers.

"Man…she looks kinda different when she's not angry, don't you think?" Ezekiel pointed out. Suddenly, Eva turned around, and looked menacingly at Ezekiel. She stormed back over, and picked up the toque-wearing boy, and pressed him against the wall of the elevator.

"What'd you say, home school?" she hissed

"Ooh man. I didn't mean anything by it. Really!" he screamed as he was being pressed harder. "I meant you look different, you know, good different! Like, pretty!" Hearing the last two words, the angry frown was once again wiped off of her face, and replaced this time with a look of confusion. She set Ezekiel down, and continued walking towards the showers, with the same perplexed appearance.

"Yeah, she's totally chill when you mention that she isn't angry," Noah remarked "Besides, catching her when she's not angry is like catching a grain of sugar in a salt storm; don't count on it."

Noah and Ezekiel got into the elevator, wheeling Cody in, and pressed the button for the second floor. When they got there, Ezekiel opened the door to one of the empty rooms, and wheeled in Cody. Noah walked into the room with them, putting down Cody's luggage on the bed, seeing as he wouldn't be sleeping in it for a while. The room was just like all the other guest rooms at the resort: one bed, a small bathroom, a T.V. with basic cable, an empty dresser, a bedside table, two chairs in the corner of the room, and a sliding glass door to the balcony overlooking the rest of the resort.

"Well, this room is empty, so I guess you got dibs on it. See you in the morning dude." Ezekiel said to Cody. Cody waved goodbye to him and Noah with his one available hand as the both of them walked out of the room, shutting the door gently behind them.

"Man, it must suck to be in a full cast-thingy like that, not being able to walk around and stuff." Ezekiel commented. The two boys sat there in silence for a few seconds. It hadn't occurred to either of them until then that it was a little bit past ten, and that they were both still in their bathing suits, a little wet.

"Right, well I'm going to go to bed. Here's your book, Casanova." Noah handed Ezekiel one of the books in his arms, along with Ezekiel's towel, and walked off to his room on the other end of the hallway.

"Yeah, see you in the morning Noah!" Ezekiel said happily, waving to the boy, and then walking off to his own room. As Noah entered his room, he set the book in his hand down on the available table by the bed, and sat down in one of the chairs he had moved by the door to the balcony. He sat there, and sighed, thinking about the rest of his summer. All he would be able to do, or even wanted to do at the resort for the next few weeks was read books. To be fair though, that was how he spent a lot of his previous summers anyhow. At least now he had a few people which he could talk to, if he ever wanted to anyways. He looked out into the night at the lake, towards the island in the distance, which was just barely visible, and thought of everybody else.

Though Noah had once thought when he first came to the island that he might make some good friends, his dreams were smothered quickly upon his arrival. Everybody else around him was so different, that it made it hard for the know-it-all to really relate to anybody there. He couldn't relate to goths, or jocks, or frat boys, or popular people, or pretty-boys, or crazy people, or pretty much all of them. His few friends back home were all just like him: geniuses with little social skills by choice, who spent their time either studying or rarely talking to other geniuses. Though Noah was a bit more social and open minded than his other friends, he was also the most arrogant and sarcastic of all of them.

In his short time on Total Drama Island, he felt there were only a few people who didn't completely annoy him: Ezekiel and Cody. Though he didn't exactly condone sexism, nor did he think he was as nerdy as Cody, they were the two people on the whole island to which he could somewhat relate to. Noah got up from his chair, took off his still damp swim trunks, put on his pajamas, and got into bed. As he slipped under the warm blankets, and adjusted himself comfortably, he glanced over at the book on his bedside table. He groaned in annoyance when he noticed that he had accidentally given Ezekiel his copy of Molecules of Emotion, and had mistakenly taken Ezekiel's copy of The Complete Idiots Guide to: Women. Now Ezekiel was sure to make several sarcastic, joking comments in the morning about how Noah had taken it on purpose, and that "if he needed help on approaching woman, all he had to do was ask". The idea of meeting and conversing with women wasn't something that he was all too practiced with, and he had been reminded of his trouble with ladies on a consistent basis at his school back home. From rejection to retort, and laughter to lament, Noah had tried several times in his life to hook up with somebody, but he never really got the hang of talking to women. After a while, he had mostly given up on trying the whole thing. The book next to his bed was just another reminded of how inexperienced he was at regular social communication.

It did irk Noah (a bit less then making friends) that he hadn't found a girl to whom he could relate to during his "vacation". It was partly due to the "kissing incident" with Cody that the other girls from the competition had thought he was weird to begin with. That was only topped off by the fact that they all thought he was a cynical, sarcastic bookworm after the night he got voted off of the island. He never thought that any girl would actually fall in love with him or anything, but at the least, he had hoped to make a small connection with at least one girl, just a glimmer of hope that he may one day find love: the one thing that baffled him almost as much as stupidity.

Noah had never been around women too much in his life until he joined the show, and that was part of the reason he went on in the first place; in hopes of changing that. But nonetheless, his hopes seemed pointless, and only made him more bothered that he would never appeal to the opposite sex, because he was always a bit of a jerk, and that was something that wouldn't likely change. Noah thought to himself almost warily, who on the show would even appeal to him at all? Heather was pretty, but she was such a witch that it didn't even matter. Lindsay was also gorgeous, but she was so dim that Noah often made jokes to himself about her. Gwen was already into Trent, and she was too weird, even for him. Bridgette seemed too peppy and happy for the negative minded boy. LeShawna's attitude was just too much for him to handle. Katie and Sadie…forget it. Courtney was way too stuck up. Eva was a walking menace all the time. Izzy was plain psychotic. And then there was Beth…well, Beth wasn't too bad actually. Come to think of it, she was basically a girl version of Cody with braces. She wasn't annoying, or simple-minded, or overly emotional, or crazy…she was just Beth.

And soon, Noah passed out from thinking too much, two hours later.

AN: So, that's it so far. Reviews people! I need somebody to tell me what's good and what's bad. Especially what's bad, so I can fix it! But don't point out too many flaws…oh, and it may not seem like it, but there IS a point to this chapter, I promise! I'm building up to it people!