Let's set off for the outdoors! Thanks for reviewing, Madison Wooten and LimitedLegendFTW

Our next challenge was simple, but horrible. Chris gave each team a map and compass and sent us off to spend one night in the woods, with the first team back the next morning being the winners. Everything we needed would be at the campsite we were sent to. Oh yeah, and Chris also warned us to watch out for bears.

"I had a little enounter with a bear once!" Owen boasted. "Let's just say his head looks real nice up on my mantle!"

"Oh, this one time, I saw a bear eating our garbage!" Izzy said. "He had spaghetti noodles hanging from his big huge teeth, and it looked like blood and guts, it was so gross! And we thought he was eating the neighbour's cat Simba but it turned out he was just lost for a week. Uh..." she looked at Lindsay, who was starting to look green. "You didn't eat spaghetti, did you?" Lindsay shook her head. "Good, let's go!"

Yeah, Izzy was pretty weird. This wasn't the first time she'd told a random story, and it was never easy to make sense of because she spoke so quickly.

The walk to our campsite was silent and cold. Gwen wouldn't talk to anyone, still humiliated about Heather reading out her diary to everyone. Heather herself was pissed about Gwen dumping Harold's red ant farm into her bed.

"You did read her diary out to the entire world." Trent pointed out.

Heather stopped and turned around. "So?"

"So that was pretty harsh." Trent told her.

"She is going down!" Heather snarled.

Look, I'd tried to be nice and get along with Heather, but that girl was seriously getting on my nerves. If there was one thing I hated, it was people who insulted my friends or my intelligence. Although I wasn't close with Gwen, if Heather did one more thing to her or anyone else on our team, she would get hurt.

We found the camp quickly, but then we had to find our own food. Owen volunteered to go and find it.

"Well, at least this will be a good week for my diet." Heather sighed.

It's true that Owen didn't come back for ages. The rest of us had to pitch our tent, which was pretty small for our ten people. Then in the afternoon, we set up a fire and just sat around, since we had nothing else to do.

At least when Owen arrived back, he didn't come back empty handed. I didn't like fish that much, but at least it was something. Heather wasn't too impressed, but the rest of us were.

"Oh, I love fish! I love fish!" Izzy exclaimed, biting into one. She frowned for a moment, and added "I guess we should cook it first, huh?"

"Remind me which one she bit into before I eat any of them." I muttered.

Once it got dark, we started cooking the fish.

"I'm bored." I said. "Let's play a game or something."

Heather made an unimpressed sound. "Like what?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. Truth or Dare...anything..."

That offer fell flat, so Owen started telling us the story about how he and his grandpa killed a bear. Personally, I didn't believe it, but I said nothing.

Heather was another matter. "There is no way you took down a ten-foot bear." She looked around suddenly. "Hey, has anyone seen crazy girl?"

I cleared my throat, deliberately misunderstanding while answering her question. "I haven't seen anyone by that name, but Izzy disappeared off somewhere because she needed the bathroom."

"That was over an hour ago!" Trent pointed out.

All we got was...oh no, this really sucked. A freaking BEAR came out of the bushes.

"WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!" Owen screamed. "WE'RE GONNA GET EATEN ALIVE BY A BEAR! OH, THE HORROR! SOMEBODY HELP US, I WANT MY MOMMY!"

I glanced over at the rest of our team and saw a dark patch in Cody's jeans. Ew.

Heather tripped the screaming Owen to shut him up, and then said "The trees! Climb into the trees!"

We all scrambled for the nearest tree.

Half an hour later, the bear was still there, and we were stuck in the tree. Owen admitted that he hadn't actually killed a bear, and Heather was completely out of ideas after climbing the tree.

"This was all your fault!" she accused Owen. "If you hadn't been growling like that, we never would've attracted him to our site!"

"Excuse me for living!"

"It's more likely he was attracted to the fish!" I argued. "And we need that!"

"It's still his fault, isn't it?" Heather shot back. "We could've found wild fruit in the woods, but no, he had to go and find fish!"

"Hey, ease up on the guy." Trent defended.

That was the moment when the bear started sniffing at our fish. Well, Heather didn't seem too reluctant when she yelled at it to stay away from our food.

"It's probably already eaten Izzy!" Lindsay wailed.

"Then it shouldn't be hungry anymore!" Heather answered. We all stared at her cool answer. "What? This is survival of the fittest. She should've just gone in her pants like Cody."

Cody was on the highest branch, and he hung his head at that comment. I felt a bit sorry for him.

Suddenly, Leshawna's branch broke off, and the bear cornered her.

We all gasped. "Play dead!" I called down, but I don't think she heard me. The bear drew itself up to its full height, and...

"Hey, are you okay?"

Leshawna blinked. "Uh...did that bear just ask me a question?"

The bear reached up and pulled to reveal...Izzy in a bear costume.

I climbed down, knowing it was safe.

"Okay, I'm so confused right now." Lindsay said, frowning.

"What are you, some kind of weirdo?" Gwen asked.

"I thought it would be funny!" was Izzy's simple answer.

"Not while we're in the woods and bears are a real threat!" I said. "Didn't you think about that?"

"Well duh, it wouldn't be funny if you didn't think it was real!" Izzy giggled.

We ate our fish, which was absolutely fine, but...and this is so TV-show formulaic...a bear showed up. At first, we thought it was another joke, but this time, it was real. We spent the whole night in the tree, trying to sleep. And it started raining after that, too.

The bear had gone by morning, but the map was soggy. We'd have to retrace our steps without help.

The Killer Bass beat us to the campsite, which I pretty much expected.

"Not so fast, Gopherinos." Chris said happily. "It seems that the Killer Bass are missing a few fish."

"Oh, you mean Katie and Sadie?" Courtney said. I looked again and realized that the two girls were missing. "I'm pretty sure they got eaten by wolves last night." She said it so casually, I wasn't sure if she was serious.

"Darn shame." Duncan added.

Right on cue, the two girls ran out from the woods.

"We made it!" cried Katie.

"We're safe!" added Sadie. "Omigosh, guys, we got totally lost and then got in this massive fight!"

"And there was this huge bear," continued Katie, "And he was all 'rawr, you're in my crib so GET OUT'!"

"And we had to run and it was like so scary!"

"Oh, Sadie," Katie said, "I"m so sorry I said I was prettier than you!"

"And I'm so sorry I brought up the snack shack!" Sadie answered.

"And I'm sorry I said your butt was too big to fit in the bus seats."

"You did?"

"Um...well, not to your face."

The two girls were serious for a moment, but then, Sadie finally said "Oh, who cares? We're safe! And you're my best friend and I love you!"

"Aw, I love you too!"

"Are you two finished with your little love fest?" snapped Courtney. The girls nodded. "Good, because thanks to you, we just lost the challenge!"

Our team won an all-expenses paid trip to a tuck shop (well, it sold real food, even if it was all unhealthy), and we had fun, gorging on real stuff and then spending the day lazing around and hanging out in our hot tub.

I couldn't help but wonder who the Bass were sending home. I mean, it was obviously going to be Katie or Sadie, but who was the better player? The only thing I'd seen them do anything apart with was dodgeball. Okay, so Katie was clearly better at that, but how would that affect later challenges? Which girl made both of them get lost?

It didn't matter who it was, anyway. When we went to the campfire later that night, Sadie was on her own, clutching a piece of wood, sniffling.

We'll continue it next time! I'm looking forward to the next challenge. What do you think Elle's fear will be? Hint: Elle is not good at endurance challenges, as shown by her performance during the Awake-A-Thon!