Porcupine

"I… I couldn't help it. The poor thing was so small and hurt and cute and it was just lying there on the ground… I couldn't just leave it all alone. It could have been eaten by a wolf or by a bear or a lion or a beaver, or it could have fallen in the water and drowned…"

Ezekiel tore a sixth strip of gauze from his roll and said, "Yeah, well, now ya know better, don'tya homes? You won't go out and touch 'em again, eh?"

Lindsay, sniffling, gave him a weak nod and started nursing her swathed hand.

Drive

Her only choices had been riding with Noah or Izzy. Obviously this was a no-brainer. But to Gwen's surprise, cynical Noah turned out to be a completely different person behind the wheel.

"Noah, what are you doing?"

"Sh-shifting lanes. What does it look like?"

"Check your blind spots first before you kill us both!"

He wrenched the wheel to the right, eyes wild. "My blind spots? I can't even see over the back seat, let alone check my blind spots!"

"Dude, you're seriously gonna end up killing us! Pull over and let me drive."

"Y-yeah, okay. Good plan."

Thief

His career as a thief began at the tender age of five. It started out small, as these things tend to do. His parents had been out working together on the latest case, and even though the fridge was supposed to be off limits, his stomach got the best of him for yet another night. They hadn't been his first choice, but Duncan's small stature had its limits, and all the good stuff was on the top shelf.

He'd deny it if anyone ever found out, of course, but eating cherries was still one of his top pleasures in life.

Crushed

"Y'know T-Man, it's a proven fact that girls always go 'round teasin' the guys that they secretly like, eh."

Eva's hand flashed out then; she grabbed Ezekiel by the neck without even looking up from her food. "Do these girls often put their alleged 'crushes' in intensive care? Do they, Homeschool?"

"Not… really."

She took a left-handed bite of steak, then let him drop to the ground. His hands went for his throat. "Then don't ever insult me by calling me your girl ever again, you hear?"

Ezekiel was too busy occupied with catching his breath to answer her.

Backpack

"Okay, this is seriously pathetic. How many times did I tell you, Brickhouse? How many times did I say, 'Don't take your eyes off of Izzy for even a moment, or we'll lose her'?"

"I'm sorry, Noah, it's just…" He tapped his forefingers together and shifted his weight from foot to foot. "That soup you were cooking smelled so good, and I was so hungry…"

"And so you let Izzy go running off on her own with the one backpack that contained all of our bowls and silverware."

Owen shrugged, Noah sighed.

"At least she left us with the ladle."

Colors

"Ever wonder what color your eyeballs would be if they imploded?"

"Blue, like the veins in your skin, and your optical nerves," Harold insisted, though Noah retorted vehemently (with his arms wrapped tightly around his legs) that white was the correct answer. Duncan himself voted for bloody red, ("Like, duh,"). Geoff made up bruise-purple's entire fanclub, leaving Cody to side with black by default.

Later that night, his arms folded behind his head, Duncan couldn't help but wonder if any of the other guys were still awake. Geoff's teeth sounded like they were in danger of chattering from his jaws.

Arrow

He was a good shot with a bow and arrow. Well, perhaps only a pretty-good shot. A decent shot. An acceptable shot.

He knew how to use it, at least. That had to count for something. He could whittle the arrow, feather the arrow, clean the arrow, hold the bow, string the bow, track the rabbit, corner the rabbit, and everything else in between too, but for the life of him, Ezekiel could not figure out how to hit his target dead center despite years spent honing his skills.

He'd lost a lot of arrows in trees and rabbit rumps.

Brain and Brawn

He was a snarky, bookish sort of boy, rather scrawny by nature and also allergic to half of what he touched. She was a rough-and-tough, muscle-bound girl who was never afraid to speak her mind- or rearrange anyone else's, for that matter. Nobody could say that they were meant for each other, because they never would have lasted out in the real world, but there wasn't a soul among them who hadn't smiled while watching the two of them move from insults to fistfights and then back again without ever once putting their rocky friendship in danger along the way.

Cards

They could call her names - airheaded, ditzy, blonde, scatterbrained - but if there was one thing Lindsay was truly good at, that would be her skill at these sorts of games. Cody had three sixes and Gwen had a four. Harold packed his sleeves like chipmunk cheeks every time he thought no one was looking; they were dangerously close to bulging over by this point.

She asked Tyler for his tens. He stared back at her for a brief, sad moment, then reminded her, gently, that they were playing Hearts.

"Oh." Lindsay puzzled over this information. "No one tells me anything."

Chill

The mailbox was empty. So he'd tromped across the yard for nothing. Snow crunching under his boots, he picked his way back towards the door.

Locked.

"What?" That made him turn to pounding. "Sheila? Sheila, I know you're there. It's Uncle Noah. Let me in!"

"Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin."

"Sheila, this isn't funny. I left my coat in there. Open up! It's negative something degrees out here!"

"Well then, I guess that means it's the coldest time of the year."

"Sheila, I am going to kill you!"

"And I'm gonna make big bad wolfie stew!"

Walrus

Heather awoke with a perfect knowledge of where she was, but not of what was on top of her. After some fumbling about in the dark, she came up with something large and soft and smelled strangely of cinnamon. It was the strangest, most horrendous creature she had ever seen, and the tag around its neck read, "It reminded me of you".

She snapped at her team the next morning, raising the thing above her head and demanding an explanation. Nothing.

She learned later that one of her cabinmates had a secret admirer, and the walrus had been incorrectly delivered.

Camouflage

Ezekiel's plan for avoiding notice revolved entirely around camouflage. So long as he didn't move…

"Is it really bad? It's not going to be the end of my career, is it? Will something like this one permanently distort my perfect skin?" Justin walked through the room directly on the heels of one of the interns, who was murmuring reassuring nonsense comments back at him. Only once did he glance Ezekiel's way, but his eyes quickly flicked on by, indicating either that Ezekiel's camouflage idea had actually worked or that the smaller boy was not worth further damage to his knuckles.

Short

The chair rocked dangerously beneath his feet. He stood on tiptoes, one hand flattened against the wall and the other stretched high above his head, groping at nothing. A good dozen people were gathered in the next room, and almost any one of them would have been glad to help had he asked, but Noah refused to let himself stoop to such begging.

He jumped, snatching; his fingers brushed the shelf for the briefest of moments before his shoes landed. His second leap brought him closer, and the third sent him tumbling to the ground with a tremendous crash.

"Perfect…"

Obsession

He'd been diffusing a time bomb (under pressure) the first time she ever laid eyes on him. He was the sweetest boy on the show. And really, how could you not love a guy who let go of his crush in order to pair her up with the guy she actually liked? He was everything she'd ever wanted in a boyfriend.

They mocked him for his sweetness. Nobody like that deserved to be so underappreciated.

After three straight weeks of Sierra, Cody pulled Gwen aside and apologized profusely for putting her through anything like what he was going through now.

Gloves

He'd never worn gloves, never really seen the reason to. Every time his mother caught him when out slopping the pigs she would put her hands on her hips and scold him fiercely for it, reminding him for the umpteenth time about germs, but it seemed that the only times Ezekiel actually remembered them were when he had already walked a quarter mile away from home. Those few times he searched for them, they would have mysteriously vanished from their hook.

His father always winked and told him that only a girl would worry about such a tedious little thing.

Egg

Beth never forgot the day Little Cluck laid her first egg. She'd grabbed the tiny hen in her arms and tore off for the house, shouting as she went that Little Cluck's brain had fallen out during the night. She hadn't meant to set the pigs squealing or the dogs yapping or Puff-Puff charging around the kitchen. Her parents spent an hour calming her down before they even started to explain that Little Cluck was all grown up now, and that egg-laying was as natural for chickens as breathing.

That morning they had bacon for breakfast. No eggs, only bacon.

Guardian

Bags of flour and sugar. Fruit of all shapes, sizes, and colors. Long strips of soft, warm, pastry. A dozen pies lined up in a neat row.

"This is a really bad idea," she tried to protest, digging her heels into the grass. "I don't want to be the one that gets between Owen and his food."

They left her with no choice, but Harold offered her a thick stick to defend herself with. Gwen felt so small as she guarded the dozen pies, but she forced herself to stand straight. Owen wouldn't be crashing the party on her watch.

Poison Ivy

He couldn't take the itching for another second. His neck had already turned scabby and flaky, and his fingernails were tipped with his own blood from the places where he had punctured his skin. Water had brought him no relief, and neither had thrashing about in the grass. Would the torture never end? Would he have to scratch off all the skin he had?

"Whoa."

"Wicked."

"That is by far the coolest thing I have ever seen Homeschool do."

"That is so… wrong."

Ezekiel took his foot away from behind his ear and looked up at his crowd of admirers. "… What?"

Insomniac

Noah's first night in the Gopher's cabin was a sleepless one, and it wasn't because Owen mumbled about hot dogs or because Cody snored or because Trent tossed and turned all night. Because they didn't. Not in the slightest, in fact. The cabin was eerily silent.

He sat up in his bunk, the blankets in a tangle around his legs, and blinked owlishly at the nearest window. After a good eleven years of sharing a room with three sisters, it was unnerving to go a night without the music and the incessant chatter.

He didn't sleep very well at all.

Hopeless

"They really aren't planning to let you live down that whole kissing-Bridgette incident anytime soon, are they?"

He shrugged back, not looking up. "Yo dawg, t'wasn't really what it looked like, eh. I know that, and, uh, I think that you prob'ly know that too, and I know that she knows that… What more's there to really say, eh?"

"Doesn't it bother you?"

His eyes turned a bit dreamy as he looked away. "Yo, she was worth the allergic reaction I had to the peanut butter on her lips."

"You are the most hopeless romantic I have ever met."

Lessons

"You know, this really isn't helping to improve my feelings about sports."

"You're still going in there, whether you like it or not (Let go of the door already, you little weasel). I still can't believe that any son of mine had the chance to win a hundred thousand dollars, and he just let it go."

The dodge ball lessons turned out to be just as horrible as Noah imagined them to be, and the worst part of it all was that every person in there had seen Total Drama Island, and they knew exactly why he had been eliminated.

Social

Neither one of them considered the other as more than a friend, and sometimes hardly even that. They'd had their share of fights, but what friends didn't? They might argue one minute, but they would make up the next; they could never stay upset at each other for very long.

Both he and she were farm-born and farm-bred, and they could waste many an hour with their feet in the Playa Des Losers pool, chattering on aimlessly about hen houses and horse care and food their pigs liked to eat and, ironically, their shared lack of social skills.

Jam

"What do you mean I'm on kitchen duty tonight? I just did it last Thursday. It's Tyler's turn."

No such luck. With a final "Whatever," Noah took the offered spreading knife and resigned himself to making sandwiches. Half an hour later, when he stalked through the plane passing out the food, he received the same comment in various forms from over a dozen of his fellow competitors.

"Strawberry jam? I thought Monday was peanut butter night."

"Suck it up," was always his stiff reply, and he took the final two sandwiches for himself. "I have a severe peanut allergy."

Stormy

"He's still out in the pool? Does he have a deathwish?"

"Looks like it. Poor sucker. Any minute now and he's gonna get electrocuted."

"Dude, there's five bucks in it if you lock him out there."

"You're on."

Eva didn't like Homeschool any more than she liked anyone else here, but she and lightning had had one too many close calls during outdoor weight-lifting, so she shoved Fruitcake, Red, and Mohawk aside and went to fetch him back. They wouldn't stop teasing her the rest of the night, but at least the scrawny toothpick was grateful for the save.

Apples

"I thought you told me that you were allergic to apples, String Bean."

"I was." Harold rubbed his arm across his mouth. "But then you said that you had chocolate-covered fruit tarts."

"Those were supposed to be for the big celebration tomorrow."

"Oh…" Harold looked down, then left, then right. "I could… help… you bake some more?"

"Chris said that those were the last apples that we were gonna get." Leshawna placed her fists on her hips. She managed to successfully stare Harold down, but he sort of won in the end. She couldn't resist that face of his.

Deep

The plan had been for them to stay up watching "scary" movies all night. Noah conked out before the first bloodbath even began. After three hours of constantly forgetting he was there, tripping over him every time he went for snacks, Duncan finally threw the scrawny guy over his shoulder, marched through hallway after hallway, tucked him beneath a short-sheeted bed, and then slammed the door shut behind him for good measure.

You could say a lot of insulting things about Noah, even if only half of them were true, but he was sure one heck of a deep sleeper.

Surfing

The wind was her friend. It told her things, many things. She adjusted her footing with the faintest twitch of a muscle. She tilted her head so that the wind would blow a stray strand of blond hair over her shoulder.

The wind was everywhere. High in the mountains or down by the sea, the breeze saw everything. She had always loved it.

The wind was wonderful. It carried with it the spray of salt. It whipped her ponytail back from her face. It tried to throw her from her board, but Bridgette stood in the face of it all.

Crutches

Harold wasn't going to lie - He had almost cried when the time came to give up the wheelchair. No longer would he be able to tear down the street at warp speed or threaten to crush his brother beneath the wheels whenever the taunting began. No longer would he have an excuse to avoid the family picnics his mother hosted every month, and no longer would his little cousins sneak him pieces of cake purely out of pity.

On the other hand, the crutches were electric green and could easily be used to whack his brother across the face. Awesome.

Choice

"Him? But why? He's our buddy!"

"Well, we can't avoid elimination for much longer, and someone's gotta be the next to go."

Duncan shrugged once and spooned another bite of burned oatmeal into his mouth. How it was even possible to burn oatmeal he wasn't sure he wanted to know. That hadn't even happened in juvie. "Don't all look at me. You send me packing and this team'll start slacking. You two are the ones who tossed ear-smoocher out the plane. With him out and your issues with Evil-whosit, I'm the one who's really holding us together now."

Cornered

"Start talking, Homeschool. My arms are getting tired."

"No, no, wait! I can explain! I- uh- Zeke- there was a… uh… Y-yo, remember that time when, uh, we all ate those crayfish together, eh? A-and then, uh, right after that ya made Noah, uh, F-fruitcake, I mean, ya made him put on one of Marcia's d-dresses? Ya remember that? And, uh, and we're prob'ly on camera right now, s-so th-think about my fans, dog! They'll be devastated if they see ya crush my skull in with that chair a' yours, eh!"

Eva only glared back down at him, considering carefully.

Chatter

"Hey, you know who you remind me of? My great-half-aunt Tiana! She was a real nut-job, let me tell you - had this huge obsession with thumbtacks and those little metal tabs that you find on the tops of soda cans - I wonder if she ever got those back after her boyfriend ran off with them a few years ago? Anyway, she kinda has the same ears that you do, and the same shape of eyes- think maybe you could be related? Oh, that would be, like, so awesome!"

He folded his hands over his ears. Did this girl ever shut up?

Emergency

They both knew that he was playing dead so that she would carry him.

Or at least… she thought that was the reason for his sprawled-out form - Homeschool had only thrown one potato at him, after all - until his face began to swell.

"Fruitcake? Fruitcake, can you hear me?"

He pushed himself up slowly, coughing up mucus. When he turned his head and blinked at her, she saw that his eyes had turned pink around the edges.

"Emergency?"

He nodded and sneezed a second round of snot into his hands

"Well, that sucks, 'cuz I'm not carrying you back."

Soup

He looked up from his book with dull pink eyes when she shoved the door open with her shoulder and stalked to his bedside.

"Here. Homeschool and Pigtails made this junk for you. It's supposed to help with your allergies. Red said it always works."

Blink.

"What, you need me to spoonfeed it to you?"

"Not… thrilled… either," he managed to rasp out, but then she thrust a bite of soup into his mouth. Immediately he shot upright and began to gag.

"Please don't tell me that you're allergic to apricot soup."

While choking, Fruitcake somehow nodded.

"Aw, forget this!"