Spring has sprung, and it's time for another chapter of TAOP! Thanks so much to everyone who has been sticking with us. It's always exciting to be reminded that there are people who love this fandom as much as we do!
If you'll recall, when we left Courtney, a kind deliveryman had arrived on the island and led her, Duncan, and Heather out to the beach, where they found a yacht bearing dozens of cardboard boxes. And now, we learn her fate...
Rule 29: Never look a gift boat in the mouth
"Ith the post man gone?"
Beth's voice startled the teens on the yacht—Courtney and Duncan, who had been staring out at the horizon after Richard, and Heather, who was drumming her nails on the metal railing in irritation. Now that their connection to the outside world had disappeared once again, Courtney and Duncan resigned themselves to the fact that they had curious campers to answer to. Crossing the boat to meet them, they found Beth, Lindsay, Trent, and a few other campers on the dock, staring up at them and shielding their eyes from the sun. Off in the distance, the rest of the crew was arriving with Bridgette and Geoff bringing up the rear, coming down the beach and squinting in the direction the tugboat had gone.
"What are you all doing here?" Courtney demanded to the crowd at large.
"Ya'll three commandeer a mystery delivery for Chris and you expect us to sit around waitin' for you to give us the news?" Leshawna asked sarcastically. Offhandedly, she muttered, "We'd be sittin' on our butts forever." Then, louder, "We're here to see for ourselves."
"Yeah, what's this all about, dude?" Geoff called up, playfully knocking on the side of the yacht. "Can we get a VIP entrance going or something?"
Before Courtney could express her concern over having so many people around so many mysterious packages, Duncan chuckled, leaned over the rail, and extended a hand to Geoff. "No such thing, man, but feel free to climb aboard."
Geoff tipped his hat and, with Duncan's help, pulled himself up as more campers gathered below. The party boy turned in a circle and let out a low whistle before reorienting himself to the beach, extending both arms down to the crowd. "Come on up and check this out!" he called.
"Duncan," Courtney hissed, catching the delinquent before he could follow Geoff's lead. "Can you please stop him? I need to inspect these things before anyone else gets near them."
"Why?" Duncan asked, his arm still half-heartedly extended over the railing and causing much distress for the campers attempting to get a firm grip.
"They could contain dangerous explosives!" She thought back to the suspicious growling she'd heard earlier. "Or wild animals!"
"All the better that someone else opens them," Duncan said with a shrug, finally leaning over far enough the give DJ his hand, showing off for his audience of one and very nearly overexerting himself in the process. Between Geoff, Duncan, and DJ (who easily lifted the likes of Ezekiel and Tyler simultaneously), the entirety of Playa's population was on the boat in no time.
"Some of these have living things in them," Harold observed, jumping back from a box that made a low, guttural sound at his approach.
"Nice work, Captain Obvious," Heather snarked from where she sat on the edge of the yacht's on-board jacuzzi. She was quite content to be left out of the welcoming and box opening processes altogether. "We're not stupid."
"What are they for?" Eva asked gruffly, picking up one of the more moderately sized deliveries and lifting it over her head to test its weight.
"No clue," Cody answered congenially, inspecting a perfect cardboard cube on his own. "They could be anything at all. But why would Chris need so many—hey, don't do that!"
Justin was shaking a box to his ear. It produced a loud rattling noise from inside. "Are we going to open these?" he asked the group in general.
"Do you think they're presents?" Lindsay asked, curiosity quickly turning to excitement. "Did Chris and Cook send us gifts?"
"Hey, not so fast," Trent reminded them. "This could just as easily be some backwards plan to mess with us." He walked around the pile curiously but didn't touch any one box. "What if they're going to record our reactions when we open them?"
"Oh! It could be like a final challenge! For us!" Katie offered, to which Sadie replied, "Ohmigosh! Like our own finale! Katie, you are SO smart."
"No one touch anything!" Courtney shouted over the hubbub. "We need a system!" She looked over the shipping manifest Richard had handed her. "We can't just open them at random and lose track of everything we find! These are probably dangerous, or at least—"
"Hey, alligators!" Izzy shouted. "Guys, look!"
Courtney and the campers whirled around to find Izzy standing over a now collapsed box, the packing twine held between her teeth and a dozen alligators blinking in the sudden brightness. It took them only a second to adjust before they collectively made one loud hiss and scattered across the deck.
Lindsay screamed at the top of her lungs and, for the first time, wasn't completely off base with her reaction.
Immediately, every camper within reasonable distance of a box scrambled atop one. A few campers closer to the captain's cabin ran inside and barricaded the door. Those who were too slow to do either, like Ezekiel, ran at the railing in a panic and leapt off the boat altogether, slashing into the water.
Courtney, a decent climber and not an idiot in the face of disaster (both courtesy of her CIT training), scaled the largest box using the air holes as grips and holding the sheet of paper between her teeth. At the top, she crouched and examined the chaos around her.
"I told you!" Courtney shouted at the group at large. "I told you all!"
She scanned the deck several meters below her, but before she could catch the familiar glimpse of green, a voice called out her name. Courtney crawled to the other side of the box and peered down to see Bridgette trying to scramble up after her, a particularly large gator practically standing on two legs to reach her.
"My foot's stuck!" she shouted.
Courtney reached down as far as she could and grasped Bridgette's hand, but it wasn't until Bridgette kicked the gator in the nose (by accident) that she got enough leverage to dislodge her foot and make it to the safety at the top.
"I told them!" Courtney told her best friend as the box they were sitting on growled and the gators around it scattered anew. "I told them we needed a system! But does anyone on this rock ever listen to me? No! And now we're—!"
The CIT was cut off when Bridgette grabbed her by the shoulders, looking intensely into her eyes.
"Courtney," Bridgette said. "We need to talk. Now."
Courtney made a face at her. "About what?!"
"You know about what." Bridgette looked both intrigued and serious, and after a moment's thought, Courtney answered her own question.
"Bridgette!" Courtney yelled, throwing her arms out around them. "Alligators! Priorities!"
The surfer frowned a little. "This is important, though!"
"Whatever you want to talk about, it can't be more important than being stranded on a boat deck full of THREE METER LONG REPTILES."
As if to counter her point, Izzy whizzed by beneath them cackling madly, riding a gator like a surfboard as she steered it through the chaos using twine she'd roped around its nose.
"So you're not too busy to risk life and limb handling this mysterious delivery," Bridgette intoned, looking disapprovingly at Courtney, "but you're too busy to talk to your best friend about the most recent development between you and Dun—"
"Shhh!" Courtney hissed, hoping that the campers were too terrified to notice that she wasn't barking orders at them anymore. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Katie and Sadie, camped out on top of the captain's cabin, throwing their shoes at the gators in hopes of shooing them away. They ran out of ammo quickly.
In a rushed whisper, Courtney explained, "Bridgette, look, I don't know what you think you saw this morning—and don't make that know-it-all face at me, I hate that face—but everything is status quo and I really can't talk about it right now because obviously our first priority should be—"
Courtney's head suddenly snapped up. "Where's Geoff?"
"Over on a box with Duncan,"Bridgette said, waving off the question. "Which is who you and I would be talking about right now if you would stop changing the subject and admit that something happened between when I saw you last night and this morning, because I know I didn't just imagine the way you were acting at breakfast—"
With Bridgette's direction, Courtney located Duncan atop a shorter box, attempting to talk to Geoff who was, at the moment, holding DJ's entire weight off the ground in his arms and visibly straining from the effort.
As panic lodged in her gut, Courtney turned back to Bridgette, who was still adding to her run-on sentence. "Okay, okay, yes, something happened—" Bridgette's grin widened in appreciation of Courtney's admission, but her joy and curiosity were quickly superseded when Courtney grabbed Bridgette by the shoulders in turn and went on rambling, "—but I can't tell you any of it now because our new first priority is keeping Geoff and Duncan as far away from each other as possible until I figure something out, okay?"
The surfer's brow furrowed. "And we are doing that because...?"
"Because my stupid—" oh god, she almost used the 'b' word, "—delinquent is going to spill the details of last night to your boyfriend, and I think we both know how tactful Geoff is with secrets."
Bridgette glanced over at Geoff and Duncan, and Courtney knew her point was understood.
"Okay," Bridgette whispered. "I'll keep Geoff distracted, but as soon as this gator crisis and mystery delivery thing are resolved, we are going to the gym and you are telling me everything over a sparring match, protein smoothies, and granola snacks, are we clear?"
"Yes! Yes, thank you, thank you," Courtney sighed gratefully, nudging Bridgette in Geoff and Duncan's direction. "Go, go, go!"
It took Courtney a moment to realize that she was sending her extremely clumsy friend to hopscotch across boxes on a deck full of alligators, but Bridgette was already lowering herself onto the closest box.
"Bridgette!" Courtney called at the last second.
"I know!" the blonde answered, not turning around, "Gators! I got it!"
"You're the best," Courtney added.
"And don't you forget it," Bridgette answered, successfully making it to the next box and then hoisting herself up on the one currently occupied by Leshawna and Beth.
Courtney wiped her brow. That was one pressing crisis down. The gators had calmed down as well—they were meandering around the deck, no longer motivated to reach the campers, but steadfastly not retreating back into their large, flat crate either. Who could blame them?
Seeing as a certain redhead had been skipping amongst the reptiles since she'd freed them, Courtney figured Izzy was her best resource. "Izzy!" Courtney called. "What are they doing?"
Izzy looked up from where she was playing peek-a-boo with the smallest gator, who still came in at about a meter. "Oh, they're hiding from the gators! But really, Toothy and his friends are friendly!"
"I know what the humans are doing! What are the gators doing?!"
Izzy rolled her eyes. "Looking for water!" she replied. "It's hot out today! Wouldn't you want a glass of water? Duh."
"I don't know about the gators, but I'd like a vacation from this vacation."
Courtney jumped at Duncan's comment as he hoisted himself up on her box, far too easily for her taste.
"Bridgette sent me over," he said by way of explanation, breezily hanging his legs over the edge of the box. "Said you needed me for an anti-gator plan."
"Um, yes!" Courtney answered, making a mental note to thank Bridgette for that particular falsehood. She came up with the plan on the spot. "Izzy the Crocodile Huntress down here says they want to get to water, but the railing is too high for them to climb over, so I was thinking—"
"The ramp," both said at the same time. Duncan snickered, "Jinx."
"Not jinx, yes ramp," Courtney reiterated. "We have to get it down."
Duncan gave Courtney a playful shove. "So go, get it open then."
"I'm not going down there!" she said, hoping he wasn't intentionally trying to make her an amputee. "You might not have noticed, but gators, Duncan! Gators!"
"You've got more teeth than all those bad boys combined," Duncan said, laying down on top of the box and throwing a hand over his eyes to block the sun. "You can handle a couple of overgrown iguanas."
"Duncan, c'mon!" Courtney insisted, poking him hard in the ribs. "I want to find out what's in these packages before I die of dehydration up here! Please go get the ramp."
"Have Ms. Irwin do it! She's up to her elbows in crocs already!"
"They're gators," Harold called from where he was balancing on top of one very thin and moderately tall package. "Crocodiles are a very different species."
"Don't care," Duncan said, relaxing further. "Not my problem. What's Plan B?"
Courtney and Duncan were on the tallest box and therefore had the best vantage point. Bridgette was coaxing DJ from Geoff's arms. Someone inside the captain's cabin was apparently fiddling with the stereo system, as she could hear static coming from all sides of her now. Justin, atop his box with Tyler, Lindsay, and Eva, was using one of his mirrors to create a reflection and laughing as Izzy chased it like a cat.
Courtney breathed deep and decided it was time for a new tactic; surely no one was paying either of them any attention. She leaned over Duncan with her mouth very close to his ear and whispered, "There's a make-out session in it for you if you can get the ramp down."
Duncan was still for a moment. Then he moved the arm from over his eyes to look at her hopefully. "Now we're talking..."
Her look transformed into a glare. "I shouldn't have to bribe you, mongrel."
"Well, we don't all have a death wish," he snarked.
"You're doing this on purpose now!"
"Doing what?"
"Giving me a hard time!" Courtney pointed a deadly finger down at him.
He rolled his eyes. "Oh, so I wasn't giving you enough grief at breakfast, and now I'm giving you too much?"
"You shouldn't be giving me any grief at all!"
"You don't want that, Princess," he grinned. "That would make me just as boring as you."
"Sooo if Mr. and Mrs. Denial up there have finished exchanging vows," Noah's voice cut in, "would they be so kind as to toss down the manifest so someone capable can sort this out?"
Courtney and Duncan looked down to find the campers gathering around their box as the last of the alligators scrambled off the ramp and into the water.
Courtney gasped. "How did you—?"
"There was a switch for the ramp in the captain's cabin," Cody said. "Neat, huh?"
Courtney exchanged a look with Duncan that she hoped negated the make-out session, but she didn't say anything as she climbed down from the box the same way she'd gotten up. Duncan jumped off in a fashion that probably should have broken both of his legs.
"Are we all agreed now that we need a system to open these boxes before one of them kills us?" Courtney asked testily.
The campers nodded collectively, some more reluctant than others. Noah raised his eyebrows. Leshawna, Heather, and Eva rolled their eyes.
"Now," Courtney said, pulling the manifest from her blouse pocket, where she'd stored it for safe keeping, "it says here that the boxes are numbered."
Courtney went to inspect. Sure enough, in a faded red stamp, each of the boxes had a number and letter designation. She checked the paper in her hand: there were the numbers 1-20 and either an A or a B, followed by abbreviated, partial word descriptions of the packages that made little to no sense. Things like "2B: fit, cheap, plastic, yoga" or "7A: ceratotherium, simun, simon says".
"If it's not alive, I think we should start with the smallest box and work our way up from there," she suggested. "I expect a pattern will emerge."
"Because small things are never dangerous," Heather said sarcastically, leaning on the jacuzzi railing behind Courtney.
"If Chris wanted to give you malaria, Heather, you'd be infected already," Courtney muttered under her breath.
Heather leaned forward and slapped Courtney's arm—hard. "Oops! Thought I saw a mosquito."
DJ interrupted the string of obscenities that were springing to Courtney's mind when he called out, "I think I found the smallest box."
He reached up and retrieved a box no bigger than a small stack of CDs and walked over to Courtney. The crowd followed, including Geoff, who had Bridgette wrapped around his waist. At least that situation was under control.
Courtney turned to DJ, who handed her the box. "Thank you, DJ. Now, let's see what we have here."
"How're you going to open it, eh?" a dripping wet Zeke asked timidly from somewhere in the back of the crowd. He'd presumably hoisted himself back on deck once the gators were gone but still didn't feel comfortable being too close to the power couple.
"It should just have, you know," Courtney grunted, "a perforation." She had dug her nails into one of the flaps and was pulling, to no avail.
"Babe, I got this," Duncan said, whipping out his switchblade.
"Yes, because if we were fearing for our lives before, we surely aren't now," Noah commented dryly. One of the boxes barked.
"You're a bull in a china shop when it comes to this sort of thing," Courtney insisted, reaching for the switchblade. "I'll do it."
"My knife, my rules," Duncan said back, tugging the package from Courtney.
"What happened to letting someone else open the possibly dangerous packages?" she hissed.
"I didn't mean I wanted you to do it," Duncan said under his breath as the gathered teens muttered among themselves and took a step back. "Make-out or not, I'm not that heartless."
Courtney acquiesced and moved back as Duncan slipped the blade under one flap of the box.
"Brace yourselves."
Duncan sliced it clean off and there was a collective gasp.
But nothing happened. No explosion, no swarm of mosquitoes, nothing that looked immediately life threatening. Duncan tilted the box and a second clear plastic container slid out onto his palm. He stared at it, baffled.
"What is it?" Harold asked from the back.
"It looks like...a set of torture instruments," Duncan said.
"Ha!" Trent said. "I was right! Chris is trying to punk us!"
"These aren't torture instruments," Courtney corrected, making a face and taking the plastic box from Duncan. "They're nail care instruments. This is home manicure/pedicure set."
Suddenly, Lindsay spoke up with more purpose and clarity than Courtney had ever seen in her. "What kind?"
"The nail kind," Courtney answered, not sure why it mattered.
"Is it Sefore? Or Maybe-Line?" the blonde asked, pushing through the crowd with Tyler in tow.
Courtney looked it over. "It's Mak, I think."
"Oh my gosh!" Lindsay shrieked, startling everyone as she snatched the box from Courtney. "This is so amazing! I've always wanted a Mak home mani-pedi set! Daddy would never buy it for me even though I asked like, at least once! I think..." She got lost in thought for a moment but recovered quickly. "I knew the boxes were presents!"
As Lindsay fawned over the nail set, the other campers looked at each other in confusion.
"Chris got the girl a nail set that she wanted but probably never even asked for?" Leshawna said, voicing what everyone was thinking. "That doesn't make a lick of sense any way you spin it."
"Chin up! It's only the first package," Courtney said, looking at her list and the corresponding number on the box. She crossed it out. "Maybe after a few boxes, we'll see a pattern. Where's the next biggest one?"
"Here."
Heather stepped forward, now interested, and holding a similarly sized box in one hand.
Courtney held out her hand for it, but Heather pulled back, grabbing at the switchblade instead. Duncan handed it over easily, perhaps hoping this one was a terrifying disease in a box. Heather opened it swiftly (Courtney found herself concerned by how adeptly Heather handled the knife), and inside was a similar nail kit.
"Oh! Oh! What kind is that one?" Lindsay asked, trying to peer at the object from outside of Heather's Killzone.
"It doesn't have a brand," Heather said, her lip curling in distaste. "It's generic. You could get one of these at a gas station."
"Now this really doesn't make any sense!" Cody said, throwing his hands up. "Why would Chris get Lindsay not one, but two nail kits! And one of them is good and one of them is blah and just what? Am I right, guys?"
"We're getting to the bottom of this," Courtney promised, looking at her list. The first box was 15A and the second was 15B. Interesting. "Next biggest box."
"We should open one that has an animal inside!" Izzy insisted as Duncan snatched his knife back from Heather.
"We already did that, Izzy," Bridgette reminded her.
"Nex'th s'thmallest box'th!" Beth called, holding up a slightly larger box and passing it forward through the crowd.
Duncan opened this one a little more recklessly, despite Courtney's warning that just because two boxes hadn't been explosives, the odds of safety still weren't very high. Her warnings proved needless, however, when a very expensive digital camera, still in its original casing, slid out of the cardboard.
"Hey, I have a camera just like that," Justin said, coming forward to collect it. "Mine's a little older, but this brand takes the best pictures. Really shows off my features."
He struck a pose and Katie and Sadie sighed loudly.
Courtney scanned the manifest. "Find me box 4B!"
Trent procured the desired box, deviating from the pattern in that it was bigger—and much heavier. Duncan climbed aboard a nearby box and sliced the sides off from above. When the box fell open and flat, it revealed an old, 19th century camera, the kind with powder held separately and a cover for the eyes. The kind that required hours to develop a picture.
"Uh, I don't know what that is," Justin said. "But it probably takes terrible selfies."
"Can I see that?" Cody asked Courtney. She checked off the camera boxes, 4A and 4B, and handed the sheet and pen over to Cody.
"So far, the numbers on the boxes correlate to the order in which the camper was voted off," Cody muttered to himself. "Justin was fourth, and Lindsay was fifteenth. But why would Chris send us these things? How would he even know to—?"
Overhearing Cody, Courtney shouted, "Someone find boxes twelve! 12A and 12B!"
"Got 'em over here!" Geoff called. "They're a bit heavy though."
Duncan and Courtney (and the crowd) walked over to Geoff and the two identical boxes he had pointed out. They weren't much bigger than Lindsay's nail kits (which she was now gushing over off to the side), but when Duncan tried to pick one up, it took some effort. "Jeez, did Chris send us bricks?"
"Shut up and open it," Courtney demanded, no longer caring about explosives in the box. Very quietly, she added, "This one's for me."
Duncan looked at her curiously, then sliced one package open and slid it over. Courtney folded back the top of the box and gasped.
"What's 'War and Peace'?" Katie asked, hovering over Courtney's shoulder. "Is it a manual? For war and for peace?"
"No, Katie, it's a novel. It's...it's my favorite book," Courtney breathed, too shocked to be affronted that she was stranded with uncultured people who didn't know Tolstoy. She picked it up out of the box and set it on her lap. "I can't believe it... It looks just like the copy I have at home, it—" she flipped through it, her expression switching to disbelief, "—it IS my copy from home! These are all my notes and highlights and…"
Courtney turned to stare at Duncan. "What the hell is going on?"
Duncan shrugged, at a loss for what to do besides open the second box.
"Oh! It's the same book!" Sadie announced. "At least…it looks the same. The words on the cover look funny."
"I know what it is!" Izzy said, bouncing up and down. "Oh! Oh! Pick me! It's Russian!" she said, picking herself. "Voyna i mir! That's 'War and Peace' in Russian!"
"I don't speak Russian," Courtney said. "At all."
"Open box eight!" Cody called from where he had taken over as Person In Charge. He was sprawled on the floor of the deck, scribbling formulas madly on the back of the shipping manifest.
The teens dispersed, now dying to know what was in the remainder of the boxes, but Courtney caught Duncan by the sleeve before he stood up to go.
"Duncan, how could Chris possibly know that this is my favorite book?" she whispered. "I've never told anyone about this. How could he get his hands on my copy of my favorite book?" The implications were a little bit terrifying. "It makes no sense. And then a Russian version? What is he trying to do?"
"Found box eight, A and B," Eva announced in a monotone. "Duncan, knife."
"More boxes equals more answers, right?" Duncan said, standing up and then offering Courtney a hand.
She handed him her copy of the book and stood up on her own before taking it back. "Only one way to find out."
Box 8B contained an original 80s handheld gaming platform with a square cartridge game. Box 8A contained the newest, most state-of-the-art handheld gaming platform that, according to Cody, had only just come out while they were on Wawanakwa. It had 3D features, multiple screens, and graphics in such high definition that Cody almost cried when he held it in his hands.
"But how did Chris know about my book and Lindsay's nail kit and your console?" Courtney demanded. "I don't know about you guys, but these things are way too specific to be general things Chris thought we'd like. And while we're on that, why is Chris giving us things we like?"
"Maybe he knows Santa Claus," Lindsay offered from where she was painting her nails baby blue.
"If I had a million years, I couldn't explain to you all the reasons why that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard," Heather said.
"They're by voting number!" Harold said, figuring out the pattern on his own and announcing it to the remaining campers. "The number we got voted off is the number on our boxes!"
"Well if they're by number, that means I'm 18, and I'm next," Leshawna announced, moving to grab the knife from Duncan.
"No, I'm next," Heather insisted, coming forward. "I'm the only one here who actually needs what's in her box." She adjusted her hood.
"Girls, girls, please," Duncan intoned, holding the knife over his head as Leshawna and Heather stared each other down. "There's enough of me to go around."
"Shut up, Duncan!" Heather, Leshawna, and Courtney all snapped.
Seeing as Duncan wasn't that tall to begin with, it was easy for Eva to walk up behind him and snatch the blade from his hand. "Wrong, losers. My turn."
Box 2A contained an intense workout program: dumbbells of multiple weights, mix for protein shakes, and a dozen DVD videos. Box 2B was a yoga mat.
"So there's a principal and a secondary," Cody muttered to himself, scribbling on his paper as the campers started fighting over who was opening their box next: there was only one knife to go around.
"I don't care enough about this crap," Duncan announced, wandering over to Courtney and Noah, who also didn't care, where they'd extracted themselves from the crowd. Into the mass of campers, he shouted, "If any of you screw up my knife, I'll shank you with it!"
"You two really aren't the least bit curious as to what's in your boxes?" Courtney asked the boys, still holding her copy of War and Peace to her chest like it would disappear if she let it go.
"While the mystery is intriguing," Noah stated from behind a different Poirot novel he'd had tucked in his pants, "I strongly doubt Chris's ability to predict even my heart's shallowest desire."
Courtney humored him. "Which is?"
Noah flipped a page of his book. "A pony."
Harold opened his boxes and came out wielding two Japanese katanas, one professionally crafted for samurai warfare and the other a flimsy prop. Both sped up the unboxing process significantly.
"And I'm pretty sure that one's mine," Duncan said, pointing at the largest growling box, "and that it's a yeti or something that will murder me."
Courtney squinted. "That's not your number though…" she said just as Izzy, not needing anything as sophisticated as a knife, once again opened the box with her teeth.
As it collapsed, a large white rhino was revealed. But even as all the campers started fleeing to the captain's cabin (the only refuge left), Izzy started talking to it animatedly in Spanish and, after a long moment in which the recently-freed wild animal looked like it was going to charge and impale the redhead, it knelt down and allowed Izzy to ride it off the boat. The entire yacht swayed as the animal walked off the ramp, down the dock, and then started charging down the beach with Izzy loudly singing some South American country's national anthem on its back.
"Gators and a rhino for Izzy, then," Cody said shakily, emerging from the captain's cabin and crossing out Izzy's numbers on the manifest. "That's gotta be animal cruelty."
Finally, with the exception of Duncan, Heather, and Noah (who was still reading his book), everyone had opened their boxes.
Unlike the others, however, Heather's empty-handedness was not due to apathy but rather to the fact that her boxes had integral to a yacht-wide game of Keep Away. It wasn't until Katie and Sadie lost track of the packages, too distracted playing around with the life-size cardboard cut-outs of each other they'd received, that Heather opened her boxes, slicing through the cardboard with her nails (which were apparently sharper than Courtney's).
The campers who weren't too enthralled in their own gifts watched as she took one look inside, blinked, and then started shaking in anger. With a strangled scream of frustration, she whirled around and threw both boxes overboard before turning and stomping off the boat ramp to the beach.
The closest campers went to the rail and looked over into the water. Numerous plastic bottles of hair care products were bobbing in the ocean.
"And suddenly," Geoff said cheerfully, "I'm thinking Chris might be a bro!"
"Let's not get crazy, now," Leshawna advised.
"I missed my old girl," Trent told no one in particular, sitting on a high quality amp stack and shredding on the custom electric guitar he'd received. Like Courtney's gift, the guitar was a personal object. He'd customized down to the last string. "This may be the best day of my life!"
"Same! You have no idea how long I've wanted a Channeled Isle surfboard," Bridgette told him, waxing the professional grade board she'd received while sitting on its cheap cardboard companion. "These babies are pricey!"
"If there wath only one thing in the world I could haff, I'd want thith!" Beth agreed, her voice magnified by the large professional karaoke machine she was trying out. "It'th a Christhmas Miracle!"
Others chimed in their similar sentiments, undeterred by Noah's reminder that, "It's August."
"Not me, eh," Ezekiel said, sitting on the deck in a rickety wooden canoe. He swayed in it pathetically, his second gift nowhere to be found. "I don't even know if yer supposed to drive one 'o these, eh. The only reason I'd want a boat is to go home."
"Will you keep it down, Zeke?" Courtney asked. She was huddled around the manifest with Cody, scribbling notes.
"Okay, so the packages were supposed to be delivered to Wawanakwa originally, therefore all these things must play some part in Chris's finale," Courtney said, snatching the pen away from Cody for the tenth time to draw connecting lines between some descriptions, lines through others. "If he were to use these things all together, it could be a water related challenge. And these four here could be earth related… Something to do with the elements?" she suggested.
"But only a small percentage fall into the pattern," Cody said, taking his pen back and flipping the manifest over to find the few inches of space that weren't already covered in scrawl. "And this is way more personal than any other challenge. It matters that these are our things, Courtney! We need to figure out how he got the information on us."
Cody scribbled frantically and Courtney rubbed her temple. This was all too big to be a prank, or a mistake. There was a HOW and a WHY to this puzzle; they were almost in her grasp! Though considering that she hadn't even been able to figure out the prop room layout without a thorough explanation from Duncan, her confidence might have been misplaced.
The delinquent himself, who might have been an asset in this situation for the first time in his life, had quickly gotten bored of the 'nerding' he accused Courtney of participating in and had taken to circling boxes 19A and 19B, poking them, yelling at them, generally employing a number of bizarre tactics to figure out what was in them without releasing the surely lethal thing he'd received.
"Aw man, I can't wait to get in a kitchen and try these out!" DJ said as he sat among two boxes, either full of A-grade or expired spices and preserves. Harold, practicing with his katana, was distracted as Tyler tossed one of the sports balls he'd received in his direction, which nearly resulted in DJ's head getting sliced off. Harold tip-toed away before anyone else had the chance to notice.
"Dudes," Geoff said to his friends, possessively hugging the state-of-the-art electronic mixing table that had come with his package of party supplies, "if I was stranded on a deserted island and could only bring one thing, it would totally be this thing."
Cody, Noah, and Courtney looked up.
"What did you say?" Cody asked.
Leshawna, who was modelling a fashionable jacket from the suitcase of clothes she'd received, repeated, "That's his deserted island thing. You know, classic question, if y—"
"That's it!" Courtney shouted, straightening up. "The survey! The application survey!" She took Cody by the shoulders, scanning her memory of every piece of paperwork in the Total Drama application. "The one we had to fill out months before we even knew we would be accepted to the show! One of the questions was: 'If you were stranded on a deserted island and you could only bring one thing, what would it be?'"
Courtney stood up and glanced around at the campers and their gifts, looking for confirmation. From a preliminary look, every gift made sense, even Ezekiel's and Heather's to an extent. Ezekiel had answered the question literally and been gifted a crappy boat. Heather had thought she'd need hair care on a deserted island, or at least believed that asking for hair care would make her sound vapid and unassuming.
"Well, that's the easy part!" Leshawna said, rolling her eyes as she swapped jackets. Ya'll should be tryin'a figure out the why, not the what!"
"Duh!" Cody said, smacking his forehead and standing up. "That explains how Chris knew we wanted these things! But Leshawna's right... why does Chris want them?"
Cody turned to ask Noah if he had any theories, but the bookworm had gone pale. Dropping his novel without a second thought, he sprinted across the deck towards his packages, snatched Harold's katana from him, and carefully began slashing at the larger of his boxes.
"Relax," Duncan snickered, watching from nearby, "your mountain of library books will still be there when you—"
Noah ripped open the box, and the moment he did, he was bowled over by a large, big-pawed golden lab who started barking excitedly and licking him remorselessly.
But Noah was...laughing. Which was strange on several levels.
"Lady! Lady, no!" he called, trying to fend off the dog good-naturedly. "Lady! Daddy's happy to see you too, but no licking!"
The dog stopped right away.
"Lady, sit," Noah commanded, sitting up himself. "Stay."
Lady planted her butt on the ground, panting happily at the sight of Noah.
"That's Daddy's good girl!" he cooed, wrapping himself around her and scratching her behind the ears.
"Oh my gosh!" Lindsay squealed, coming right over, hands clasped together. "She's so cute!"
"She's the adorablest thing I've ever seen!" Sadie agreed.
Noah and his dog were quickly swarmed by most of the campers. Lady seemed to take the attention well, looking eagerly at each newcomer and happily accepting pettings; Noah looked infinitely more nervous.
"Okay! Okay! She's a dog! Everyone's seen a dog before!" he shouted at the crowd, back to his bitter, apathetic tone. "She's been a box for god knows how long, give her some room!"
"I didn't know you were a dog person," Katie told him.
"Yes, you did," Noah said, rolling his eyes. "I've mentioned it at least twice."
"Well?" Courtney asked, bypassing the puppyfest and walking over to Duncan and his packages. "Are you finally going to open those, or am I going to have to do it for you? The curiosity is killing me."
"Yeah, and this thing might kill us if your curiosity doesn't," Duncan answered, indicating his two packages. One was narrow on one end, wide on the other, and fairly tall; the other was narrower, thinner, and waist high. "If we were worried about something on this boat exploding, these would be the packages to do it."
"Please, Duncan," Courtney scoffed as Noah opened his second package behind her to find a life-size stuffed animal dog. "I figured out the puzzle—by myself, I might add. What did you write in your survey?"
Duncan looked at her worriedly.
"Come on," she prodded.
"I don't remember."
"Sure you do!" Courtney nudged him. "This isn't the sort of thing that tends to drastically change over the course of a year. If you were stranded on a deserted island and could only bring one thing, what would it be?"
Duncan groaned. "Babe, filling out that survey, I may have been at a point in my life where I didn't really give a crap about anything."
"I regret to inform you that you're still in that point of your life," Courtney said pointedly before reiterating, "So what then? You just BSed an answer and can't remember it?"
Duncan shrugged. "Well, y'know. YOLO."
Courtney pinched her brow. "What am I going to do with you?"
Even with her eyes shut, she could hear the smirk in his voice. "You could kiss me again."
"Well, Duncan?" Eva's voice called from across the deck. "You going open your boxes or not?"
When Duncan turned to Courtney for the okay, she sighed and gestured towards the only standing boxes left. "Go ahead. If they do explode, I hold you fully responsible and plan on haunting you long enough to say 'I told you so'."
"Looking forward to it, darling," he said, walking over to Harold and holding his hand out for the katana.
"You have your own switchblade!" Harold protested, holding the sword protectively.
"Yeah, but your thing is cooler, dweeb."
Harold debated for a second longer before holding it out, saying, "Okay...but don't mess it up."
"No guarantees," Duncan replied, snatching it from Harold and walking over to the first of his boxes."Brace yourselves," he said, nodding at those closest to him.
The contestants collectively took a step back.
"Lady wouldn't happen to be one of those bomb-sniffer dogs, would she?" DJ asked hopefully.
"Not unless your bomb smells like steak," Noah told him.
Duncan swung the sword back over his head, then cut down through the front panel.
The cardboard panel swayed for a second before tipping forward and floating slowly to the ground.
"You've got to be kidding me," Courtney said after a second, squinting into the box's shadows.
"A hog!" Geoff ran up to Duncan and clapped him on the back. "That's totally sweet, dude!"
Courtney turned around to face Duncan, her eyebrows raised so high they were hidden under her bangs. "A motorcycle. You're stranded on a deserted island and can only bring one thing and you ask for a motorcycle?" She shuffled into the box, looking for something that might redeem this request and, finding nothing, turned back around to Duncan disapprovingly. "What were you going to do, ride around in circles until you died?"
"Says the girl who asked for a book," Duncan answered, tearing down the box's other walls and walking around the motorcycle appreciatively. "What were you going to do? Read until you died?—of BOREDOM?"
"What kind of bike is it?" Trent asked.
"No clue," Duncan said, shrugging. "I don't know anything about bikes except how to chop 'em." Courtney gaped at him. "I always wanted one, though! With black paint and fire on the side." He indicated said tongues of flame. "Me of a year ago must have figured I might as well own the motorcycle I always wanted if I was going to die anyway."
"I wonder, if I punched the you of a year ago, would you still feel it now?" Courtney commented dryly as Duncan unboxed his other gift, a run-of-the-mill bicycle.
"Aren't bicycles just acoustic motorcycles?" Tyler asked the group at large.
"Then aren't canoes acoustic yachts, eh?" Ezekiel asked, still rocking in his tiny plank of wood. Tyler shrugged at him.
"What do we do now?" Lindsay wondered. "We opened all our prezzies." She waggled her freshly painted fingernails in the air.
"Now we all go our own separate ways," Courtney said, collecting her book and clutching it close to her chest, "and thank our lucky stars for people like Richard."
"You could do that," Duncan said musically, "if you wanted to be a boring old stick in the mud."
Courtney warily eyed him over her shoulder. "I suppose you have a better idea."
"Oh, I don't know," he said, playing to the crowd. "Maybe we could actually have some fun? We're on a yacht!" He dug in his pocket and pulled out the set of boat keys Richard had given him.
On the key-chain, in black marker, was scrawled 1A.
"Hey! That's mine, eh!" Ezekiel protested, standing up from his canoe.
"Do you know how to drive a boat, Homeschool? Didn't think so."
"Do you?"
"No," he said easily, "but Courtney does."
"What?" Courtney stared at him as the crowd turned to stare at her. "I...Why do you say that?"
"Your nickname is Princess. It's not so hard to put two and two together."
"You came up with that nickname—which I still hate, by the way," she said, putting her hands on her hips. "That doesn't mean I can drive a yacht."
"But you can, can't you?" He smirked knowingly.
Courtney shifted her weight. "Well...okay, yes, but how did you know?"
"Babe, your family owns boxed seats to Maple Leaf games. And you like reading, and cardigans. Your family clearly owns a boat, and there's no way you'd put up with riding on a boat and not knowing how to drive one." He swung the keys around his finger for a second before letting them fly off in Courtney's direction.
She caught them with a jangle, not sure if she should be flattered he put so much thought into her capabilities or embarrassed that he was flaunting his knowledge in front of everyone else. For a moment, she merely fingered the keys, frowning. Then she said, "I don't know about this. We can't just take a yacht, can we?"
"Sure we can!" Leshawna said. "It's Homeschool's gift. It belongs to us now!"
"We're not even sure these gifts were meant for us," Courtney replied.
"Shouldn't I be allowed to decide if—" Zeke piped up, but was cut off when he had to duck under Bridgette's swinging surfboard.
"Let's do it!" she said, the most excited anyone had ever seen her about rule breaking. "Let's all get our swimsuits on and I'll grab my other surfboard from my room and we'll have a cruise! I can give surf lessons!"
"Ooh! We can have a siiiiiiiiiiiing-off!" Beth added through her microphone, somewhat painfully.
"Our last day on the island," Trent said thoughtfully. "It would make a hell of a send off."
"I can probably sneak some steaks from the kitchens and have a barbecue!" DJ announced. No one looked more excited about this than Lady, who understood the word 'steak' if nothing else and started nudging Noah in DJ's direction.
"What if the interns come back and confiscate the boat while we're gone, though?" Cody asked.
"Let them try," Eva growled, cracking her knuckles. "I'll stay with the boat."
"Me too," Harold added, swirling his katanas somewhat impressively. "None shall pass!"
As the campers started disembarking and running up the beach toward their rooms, Courtney chewed her lip. "This is a bad idea, a bad bad idea. I can't drive this boat with a clear conscience, Duncan."
"Sure you can!" Duncan countered, grabbing Bridgette by the elbow on her way past and swinging her into the conversation. "You're excited about this, right Malibu?"
"Completely!" Bridgette chirped before registering Courtney's look of obvious distress (and mild annoyance that her best friend had taken Duncan's side). "Is everything okay, Court?" She leaned in a little closer, her eyes flicking towards Duncan, who was still well within earshot. "Is this about Geoff and, ahem, you-know-who?"
The anxious knot in Courtney's stomach got a little bit tighter with that reminder. She'd tasked Bridgette with keeping Geoff busy, but her friend was so excited about giving surf lessons—how could Courtney ask her not to? But if Bridgette was in the water, Geoff would be unoccupied, meaning Courtney would have to stick with Duncan, and there was no way he was giving up on their yacht party! Besides, it would be awfully heartless to refuse everyone such a good time when they were already so excited. And the prospect of hanging out with Duncan wasn't nearly as nauseating as it had been twenty four hours ago...
Courtney glanced at Duncan, then to Bridgette. Checking her watch, she caved. "You know what? Okay. Let's do it." Both Duncan and Bridgette beamed at her words. "Could you drop off my book and grab my swimsuit from my dresser?"
The surfer nodded with rigor. Courtney gingerly handed her 'War and Peace' and the key to her room before walking to the deck railing.
"Get what you need!" she shouted overboard at the receding campers. "This boat sets sail in ten minutes! Be back by then or I am leaving you!"
"But... it's my boat," Ezekiel grumbled as he departed to get his swim trunks.
"Keep walking before I remember why I should be pummeling you right now, Zeke," Duncan threatened. Ezekiel picked up his pace in compliance.
Courtney crossed her arms and turned to survey the mess of cardboard, animal droppings, and discarded secondary gifts that littered the deck. "With any luck, between the penthouse and this yacht disaster, Chris will have a simultaneous aneurysm, ulcer, and heart attack when he gets back."
Duncan put an arm around her waist. "I hope that when his brain explodes, one of the cameras catches it on film so we can replay it at my birthday every year."
Courtney checked to make sure Eva and Harold were looking away (and that none of the departing campers had turned around) before tentatively resting her head on Duncan's shoulder. "We're horrible."
With a squeeze, Duncan grinned into her hair. "The worst."
Out of the corner of her eye, Courtney caught a speck of maroon on the beach, standing completely still. Slightly too far away to be certain of which way Heather was facing (but having a pretty good idea), Courtney turned from Duncan's arm and headed into the captain's cabin.
"Let's figure out these controls before we kill everyone, shall we?"
Yes, Duncney, please don't kill everyone.
From strayphoenix: Ahhhh... Nothing like a nice leisure/lethal cruise to get our campers and readers ready for Spring and Summer! Do you guys agree or disagree with our 'deserted island' answers for the campers? Why or why not? Also, we've left you some mysteries this time around! What do the packages mean? What do they have to do with the finale? What is Chris's plan? Can Courtney drive a yacht? Can Duncan keep his mouth shut? All will be answered in our special edition Chapter 30!
Also, Happy 9 Year Fanfiction Anniversary to me! Wow, I am getting old. If you'd like to get me something as an anniversary gift, swing by my page and check out my new ongoing story Machine Gun Blues co-written with Ms. edwardandbella4evah of Prinzessin fame. It's a DxC Bonnie and Clyde AU that I've had in the works since around the time Rina and I started on TAOP. Check it out as Rina and I prepare a landmark Chapter 30 for you guys!
Stay cool, Playa fans. Stay cool.
From Contemperina:
manifest or ship's manifest (noun): a document listing the cargo, passengers, and crew of a ship, aircraft, or vehicle, for the use of customs and other officials.
This is not to be confused with a manifesto (n., a public declaration of intentions, opinions, objectives, or motives, as one issued by a government, sovereign, or organization), which stray and I almost learned the hard way. #oops
So, nothing like a TAOP update to brighten up your day! I hope you all got a kick out of this latest chapter-and that it has peaked your curiosity! SO MANY QUESTIONS (see stray's summary above). Hit us with your best responses in the review section; we'd love to hear them, and if you can figure out what's going on all on your own, I will bow down to you from behind my computer screen. (I mean seriously, stray and I didn't even know what was happening until more recently than we'll ever admit. *shifty eyes*)
And definitely check out Machine Gun Blues if you haven't already! I'm going there now...because I haven't yet... because I'm a bad co-author... Cough. No more excuses for me or for you! Join me, and join us next time for your Playa de Losers fix. The next chapter is officially in the works.
Thanks for reading! Please review (:
