Right, right. Time for week five to finally start! Thanks for reviewing, lordgemini, Gucci Mane LaFlare and OmniIBIBUltraInstinctGodzilla.
When challenge day rolled around once again and we filed into the main lodge as usual, Trent was the first in. As we entered, we heard him say "What? No breakfast?"
Chris told him not to worry. "There will be plenty of food later on." He and Chef started laughing together. They sounded totally evil. Clearly there was something more going on.
Chris further explained that we'd reached the halfway mark, and that for this challenge, the teams would change, but no one would be kicked off – the challenge would all be for reward. Bridgette and I had to move to the Gophers' cabin, and Trent and Owen had to move to the boys' cabins of our team. "Today's challenge is as old as time itself – a battle of the sexes."
"Um, slight problem there." Duncan spoke up. "There's four of us, six of them."
Chris shrugged. "One of the girls will sit out. I've already decided who, but we'll get to that when we get to that. And due to popular audience demand, you will be getting an old teammate back. In fact, he's on his way and will be moving into the Bass cabin with you soon."
We'd apparently get to eat something once we'd settled into our new cabins. Something about whatever food we were getting was suspicious, as Chris and Chef laughed again when it was mentioned, but we'd have to cross that bridge when we came to it. While Bridgette and I were walking back, Heather came up to us. "Peyton, I absolutely love the way you've done your eyeliner!" she said in an overly friendly tone. "Those wings really accentuate the blue in your eyes. You'll have to show me how to do them!"
"Um, thanks," I mumbled awkwardly. I knew we had to be teammates today, but who knew how long the girls vs boys thing would last? I wasn't going to antagonize Heather, but her being nice was even worse than her unveiled cruel comments.
The next minute, she was turning to Bridgette and telling her how her hair looked amazing and how did she take care of it?
Gwen came up to us. "Watch it with this one," she advised, aiming a thumb at Heather. "She's trouble." Heather gave her a death glare, which only confirmed that she was only being nice because she wanted our favour.
"Did you buy Heather's nice girl act?" I asked Bridgette as I packed my things up.
"Not really," Bridgette admitted. "I know she can be really mean, but I don't see any reason to start a fight I'll be nice to her as long as she's nice to me, and if she's not, I'll just not interact with her unless I have to."
"I just know she probably knows how to do good wings, anyway," I murmured, "And she's made enough comments about my hair that I know she thinks I look stupid. I don't mind working with her, but I'm not planning to get friendly with her."
We left before the old competitor who got voted off arrived, so we didn't see him until the challenge.
"Nervous?" Bridgette asked me.
"A bit," I admitted. "I'm glad Gwen's in the cabin. At least I feel I can count on her. Are you?"
"I'm glad we're together," was Bridgette's reply. "I'd be more worried about being the only new girl. But I think we'll be okay. I mean, how bad could it be?"
We both visited the confessional before we went to the cabin together. I overheard Bridgette saying something about how she didn't buy that guys always got on and girls didn't. As for me, I just admitted "It's not going to be easy to get into a new group. I'm glad we at least have one friend in the cabin – but this means I'll have to start getting to know Leshawna better. I just hope I don't make any major screw-ups in front of her."
We ended up walking right into the middle of a shouting match between Leshawna and Heather. Apparently Heather had taken some food Leshawna had and Heather was saying it served her right for leaving her stuff all over the cabin (apparently hanging a bra off your bunk was leaving stuff everywhere – it was the same purple one I'd seen before). Then Leshawna said Heather was just jealous that she didn't have anything to put in a bra (true, Heather's halter tank left nothing to the imagination), and Heather said Leshawna needed a trash compactor to fit into her jeans…at that point, they realized we were standing there and Heather started welcoming us into the cabin.
Lindsay joined in, but her sweetness seemed genuine. "Welcome to the club!" she said with a sincere smile. "It'll be so much fun, as long as you do everything Heather says. Ow!"
Heather had stamped on her foot at that last remark. She started laughing it off. Obviously, she knew we wouldn't agree to do what she said, but she knew that Lindsay would.
Bridgette tried her best to include Gwen and Leshawna as she thanked everyone. "Thanks, everybody, I can't wait to-"
"Okay, plenty of time to chat later," Heather interrupted her. "Let's unpack." She turned back and looked at me, saying "Come on, you too. I want to really get to know both of you as my teammates."
Bridgette smiled awkwardly and waved to the two girls. I followed suit.
Heather even offered to let us borrow her makeup, but I had my own (although we did have a similar skin tone), and Bridgette said she wanted to keep it natural.
"Like my mom always says," Heather said with a shrug, "A lady can always use a little boost in the looks department."
"And my mama told me ain't nothing free in this world," Leshawna spoke up. "Watch what you take from this girl, both of you."
Heather whipped around. "Mind your own business!"
"We're a team and we gotta live in the same cabin, so this is all of our business!"
"Yeah, we're a team!" Bridgette spoke up herself. "We should be using this as an opportunity to get to know each other better."
Heather scowled. "You wanna play that way? Fine! Be on their side!" She actually started putting down tape, saying we could choose between one side or the other, but if we chose Gwen and Leshawna, we wouldn't be allowed on the other side. "Right, Lindsay?"
Lindsay, who'd seemed so nice seconds ago and not fake nice like Heather, stuck her nose in the air and went to stand beside her.
How had I gotten into this? I stayed quiet, scared that if I tried to talk, I was going to burst into tears. This was the exact kind of confrontation I'd tried not to get into, but Heather wasn't letting up.
Bridgette saw my face. "Let's build bridges, not walls," she tried saying, but even she didn't seem to believe what she was saying.
"Take your pick," Heather replied, every inch the ice queen.
"I don't want to pick," I managed to whisper to Bridgette.
"Neither do I, but it's either that or being hated by both," Bridgette whispered back. "We can just stick together." And, with that, I got up my courage, and we both stepped over the line.
Gwen and Leshawna both smiled. We'd chosen them.
"You two just dug your own graves," Heather informed us.
"Let's try to get along, okay?" Bridgette pleaded. "Otherwise the guys are going to cream us, don't you get it?" We didn't get an answer. Bridgette looked at me. "Tough room," she joked shakily.
It wasn't an easy settling in period, considering now we had a total Us vs Them thing going on. At least it was four against two, but that didn't make things any easier. I hated all of this confrontational fighting.
Still, after that, Gwen and Leshawna helped us unpack onto the spare bunk. We swapped this time, so I got the top bunk and Bridgette took the bottom one. There were six bunks, after all, and I would have wanted to stay with Bridgette. I liked the other girls, but I still felt a bit too nervous to initiate much conversation with Leshawna, and I didn't know Gwen as well as I knew Bridgette yet.
When the other girls weren't in the cabin, I managed to scribble another note to Leshawna, which I only left on her bed when Chris had called us back to the mess hall and the other girls were already on their way out.
The note said: To the girl I admire most,
I know the numbers are narrowed down enough that you know if I'm sending this, than Harold wasn't your only secret admirer. If you like him, that's fine. But someone told me you thought the kiss gave him the wrong idea or something and I really, really hope that means you might still like me. I'll be trying harder to let you know who I am for the moment, but I'm afraid you might not like me because of something I can't do a thing about. I might need to know more before I can tell you who I am.
Love as always, your shy admirer
When I hurried after the other girls and sat down at the Gophers' old table with the other girls, I saw a familiar face at the boys' table immediately.
It was Geoff! That was kind of a stroke of good luck. He was really easygoing, reasonably skilled, but not so good in challenges that he was a major threat.
It turned out our challenge was a nine-course meal of disgusting food, which Chris called the Brunch of Disgustingness. Everyone on the team had to finish each dish, and the team that did it fastest won the rounds. Bad news for me. I wasn't a fast eater, and nor did I have a strong stomach.
It was, in fact, Lindsay who got to sit out. However, if we did win, she could share in the reward. The weekend was coming up, and if we won, we'd head off to a real five-star resort that evening and come back on Monday morning. If we lost, we'd have nothing else to eat all day and just had to hang out all weekend.
"We are going to win this challenge." Heather told the rest of us.
Our first course, to be fair, was not so bad, at least for me. Owen seemed happy to gulp down the meatballs at first. Then he found out they were made of beef testicles.
It wasn't just Owen who was feeling sick. "I don't know if I can do this to my bovine brothers," Geoff admitted outright.
Trent put one in his mouth and bit down, but he didn't seem to be able to actually eat it. I even saw a tear fall onto DJ's plate. My heart went out to him, but I pushed the feeling down.
I'd eaten offal before, so I had a slight advantage. If I could eat hearts and lungs, I could eat testicles. They were just another organ. They didn't even taste all that bad.
Bridgette was the only one of us girls who sat there, staring at her plate. When Heather snapped at her, she pointed out "I'm a vegetarian! It's against my principles!"
It was Geoff who came to her rescue, despite him being on the other team. 'It's not that big a deal," he told her. "Sometimes they castrate bulls for, uh, medical reasons."
So Bridgette ate, and most of the guys couldn't. We won the first round. Afterwards, Bridgette went to the boys table, just to say "Thanks for the talk, Geoff."
Duncan, however, glared at Geoff.. "What, you're helping them, dork? You just cost us this round!"
"Yo, it's my business who I talk to! Give me a break, man!"
"We can't let them win!" Trent protested.
"You blew it!"
"Come on, DJ chickened out!"
Chris had to break up the argument after a few minutes. But instantly, Geoff and Duncan apologized to each other, and they were all cool again. Why couldn't girls be like that? But then, I held grudges too, sometimes, so who was I to talk?
We lost the next two rounds, partly my fault, but not just mine. I mean, the grasshopper pizza with jellyfish sauce and live anchovies might have been my fault, but the worms with snail slime was something Bridgette wouldn't eat, either. We did, however, finish the French bunion soup. We all drank by pouring it into a filter and swallowing, and it bypassed our tastebuds.
It went on like this, with the guys winning one, us winning another, until we were tied 4-4. I was pretty hopeless at the ones we lost. Offal and organs were one thing, but everything else was far more disgusting. It was a good thing no one was getting kicked off – the girls would have easily picked me.
Finally, the ninth course came. We were all given tiny hot dogs - wieners. I would probably have been ready to try it – if Chris hadn't told us it was made of dolphin.
"But dolphins are our friends!" Bridgette said, looking faint.
Heather tried pointing out not eating it wouldn't bring it back to life, but I wasn't going to eat it, either. And it was settled when DJ spoke up and said "I'm with you, sisters. I ain't eating no dolphin." That brought it to a stalemate.
In the end, Chris agreed to let one person from each team fight it out over another round if no one would eat the weiners. We put Leshawna forward. She'd been a little bit queasy over the pizza, not wanting to hurt the grasshoppers, but when Chef served up blended cockroach, we figured she could take that.
But the guys were allowed to put forward Owen. There were thirteen shots of roach blend, and both of them drank five at the same time. But Owen ended up grabbing the last three, before he dropped to the ground.
I think we all had to run to the bathrooms that night. Most of us didn't make it. I couldn't even go to the confessional that night, because Trent had thrown up in it so much that bits of chewed-up undigested pizza were still floating around in it. The guys, at least, could escape to their resort weekend, but the six of us had to stay in the cabin. Okay, well, Leshawna and Gwen locked the door on Lindsay and Heather, but Bridgette and I, although we were in, didn't feel so good about it.
Once we'd gotten over the sickness of the courses we'd already eaten, I started feeling hungry again. And I still had a few Tuck Shoppe snacks in my bag. "Anyone for Ruffles?" I offered. "I know we're supposed to go hungry tonight, but no reason why we can't have snacks."
Gwen brightened up. "I think I saved some chocolate from that raid Duncan and Courtney did last week," she offered. "We could pool everything."
Leshawna smiled, too. "Heather may have gotten my Pudding Pockets, but that's not all I had," she added. "I usually wouldn't let anyone touch my food, but if you're sharing, so will I."
The four of us sat around the cabin, not bothering to stay over the tape, laughing and talking. We started telling stories from back home, and I paid particular attention to that. Bridgette said very little, but Gwen told a few stories about some of things she and her friends did (she showed us some photos and sketches of her much scarier-looking friends, all goths, and half of them had names that I was sure were made up), and stories about other things she did with her little brother. I listened more carefully to Leshawna's stories, when I wasn't laughing at them, at least. She was a volunteer at the local community centre in her hometown and specialised in working with troubled kids and younger teens, acting as sort of an older-sister figure to a lot of them. Was it luck or what that the girl I fell for was not only confident, funny and of course, hot, but also giving and caring underneath it all?
I caught myself admiring Leshawna again, a few times. I'm not sure if she saw it, but I saw Gwen glancing at me with a little smirk, so I think she'd noticed. I stuck my tongue out at her and she laughed. I started to relax a little more. Maybe with the support of my two friends, I might finally get past the letter-writing stage.
Oh, and you want to know what happened with the note I'd left on Leshawna's bed earlier? She found it as soon as she went up to her bunk to start delving into her bag for the food. I saw her scan it, smiling, and then tuck it into her pocket. She didn't look at me, but I wondered if she had any idea.
She deserved to know. I just wished I didn't have to be the one to say it out loud.
Well, who's going to do it for you? It's always hard to tell anyone, boy or girl, at least in my experience.