Chapter One: Half a BFFFL
"I think I see the boat!" Bridgette said, leaning an unsafe distance off the pier. She squinted, then leaned back to safety. "Never mind, that's a bird."
"Oooh! I'm so excited to see who's been eliminated this time!" Sadie said, clapping cheerleader-style. "Right, Katie?"
Silence greeted her. The other half of the BFFFLs was squeezing as close to her new boyfriend, Trent, as humanly possible. Sadie sighed and stepped away from them, bumping into Noah in the process.
"Watch it," Noah snapped, struggling to regain his balance on the tiny pier.
Sadie giggled. His annoyed face was just so funny. "Sorry, Noah."
"I hope it's Geoff," Bridgette said, crossing her fingers tightly for luck.
"Don't you want him to win?" Sadie asked. Before Katie was eliminated, Sadie had been rooting for her to win. Even if the relationships were a little different, the principle was generally the same.
"He doesn't need to win another season," Bridgette explained, her eyes still glued on the horizon. "Besides, I want to spend some quality time with him now that we're back at the Playa."
"Quality hot tub time?" Noah said, his eyebrows quirked in faint amusement.
Bridgette laughed, not denying it. "I think that's the boat," she said, pointing at a speck in the distance.
"Or is it another bird?" Noah said.
"Nope," Bridgette said, completely immune to Noah's particular brand of sarcasm. "It's the boat this time!" The rickety old boat everyone remembered not-so-fondly from the first season puttered to a stop by the pier. "Leshawna!" Bridgette cried, almost as excited as she would have been if it was Geoff.
"Hey, girl," Leshawna said, stepping onto the pier. She smiled at the hotel in the distance. "Wow, it sure ain't fun to lose out on a bunch of money, but it is good to be back here. I'm ready for a real shower and some sweet, sweet pool time."
"Why'd they vote you off?" Sadie asked. "I was totally sure Heather was going to be voted off, the jerk."
"Immunity," Leshawna said, shrugging helplessly.
"Yo, yo, yo!" another voice yelled from the boat. "I hope the Playa is ready for the Zeke!"
"Boy, you got eliminated 'cuz of stuff like that," Leshawna said. She gave the blinged-up homeschooled boy a look of distaste.
"Stuff like what, eh?" Ezekiel said, the confusion apparent on his face.
"If I hear one more word of slang like that comin' out your little white boy mouth, I'm gonna-" Leshawna glared fiercely at Ezekiel, the unsaid threat hanging in the air between them. The homeschooled homeboy recoiled and nervously fingered his bling.
"Wait, both of you got eliminated?" Trent said, finally looking up from whatever he and Katie were whispering about.
"Double elimination," Leshawna said.
"Any news of Geoff?" Bridgette asked, leading Leshawna towards the hotel.
The group of people standing on the pier gradually dispersed, most of them heading back to the hotel. Sadie considered following after Trent and Katie, but decided against it. She had already played the third wheel enough in the past few days.
Sadie was the first to be eliminated in the current season of Total Drama Island, which was a half-season set during winter break. The two BFFFLs had parted tearfully at the Dock of Shame in a scene that was sure to have dramatic music set to it when the show aired. Sadie had spent the next week trying to keep her spirits up.
When Katie showed up about a week and a half later, she spent the few days between her elimination and Trent's subsequent elimination recounting every detail of their new relationship. Even Sadie, who normally had near-infinite patience where Katie was concerned, was ready to scream every time Trent's name was mentioned.
"Yoo oo'kay?" Ezekiel asked, startling Sadie out of her thoughts.
Sadie realized that she had been staring into the beach waves broodingly. She tore her eyes away from the surf and nodded. "I'll show you where you can get your room key."
"Thanks, eh," he said. "Yoo're a real fly chicken."
Sadie burst into peals of laughter. Ezekiel stared at her blankly.
After leaving Ezekiel at the front desk, Sadie headed for the dining room to get dinner. It usually took her a good ten minutes to walk there. The hotel was huge. Ridiculously huge for a place that, at the most, only held about twenty people. Sadie walked through the silent hallways, going in the direction she hoped led to the dining room. She couldn't ever really be sure of her exact location in the hotel, since her sense of direction wasn't the best. Plus, all the hallways looked the same.
The walk gave the dread in the pit of her stomach time to settle. She was undoubtedly going to spend yet another meal with the happy couple - namely, Trent and Katie. The three always sat at the table furthest from the others. Katie picked the table, of course. Sadie suspected it was because she wanted the meals with her boyfriend to be semi-private. Unfortunately, Sadie didn't count as somebody that would bother their privacy. She was practically an extension of Katie herself.
In the end, the distance between their table and everyone else forced Sadie to eat her meal silently while Katie and Trent did mushy couple stuff and pretty much ignored her. Not that she could sit at anybody else's table. The thought was almost blasphemous.
She paused to check one of the large maps the hotel had been forced to put up after one of their staff members had gotten lost for two days. (Not that Sadie had ever seen any of the so-called staff. The dirty towels disappeared and the beds were made, but nobody had ever caught sight of a single maid. Or any other staff member, for that matter.) If the large red dot with 'YOU ARE HERE' written over it was any indication, she was facing the opposite direction from the dining hall. At least, she hoped so. Reading maps was not a skill she had ever completely mastered.
She flipped around and walked until she found a pair of familiar giant, gilded doors. With some difficulty, she dragged the heavy door open and slipped through. The door always created a massive amount of noise when someone opened it, attracting the attention of everyone in the dining hall. This time was no different. The five people in the massive room looked up, concluded that it was only Sadie, and returned to whatever they were talking about. Sadie helped herself to the buffet by the door and went to join Katie and Trent.
"Hey," she said, pulling out a chair. It was a useless greeting. Katie and Trent were too busy kissing to take notice. Sadie attacked her roast beef with single-minded focus, wondering when they would notice her presence.
Katie pulled away from the kiss, her cheeks flushed pink. "Oh, hi!"
"When did you get here?" Trent said. Sadie chose to ignore the hint of dismay in his voice.
When he had started dating Katie, Trent hadn't totally understood what dating half of the BFFFLs meant. When you dated Katie, you got Sadie as well. The same would apply, Sadie assumed, if she ever got a boyfriend.
"Just now," Sadie replied.
Katie exchanged a look with Trent. "Um, Sadie," she said slowly, considering what she should say. The truth was not an option. Saying that Trent had talked to her earlier about how he thought it was a little strange that the three of them were always together was possibly the worst option. "Are you, like, okay with hanging around us all the time? Do you think it's too awkward? You could totally leave if you want."
Sadie gritted her teeth, reminded herself that Katie was her BFFFL, and lied her butt off. "I don't mind."
Trent's eyes widened and he nudged Katie with his knee. Images of Sadie stuck to them forever ran through his mind. He tried to use his Boyfriend Mindwaves to send her the message 'DEAR GOD GET HER AWAY FROM US! I'M LOSING MY SANITY!'
Katie frowned. "I want some time alone with Trent."
Then the ball dropped for Sadie. They wanted her to leave. In her opinion, it wasn't a good thing. In the way that the Black Plague wasn't a good thing. She fiddled nervously with the baby hairs at the base of her neck. "This, like, isn't going to be like what happened with Keith, right?"
Katie huffed, crossing her arms over her chest. "Oh my gosh, why did you even bring that up?"
"I just don't want that to happen again."
"It's not the same." Katie's brown eyes flashed angrily. "Like, at all."
"I mean, it's kind of similar."
"Whatever," Katie said, rolling her eyes. "You haven't even had a boyfriend."
Both Sadie and Trent gasped. Sadie couldn't believe that Katie had said something that was so totally a low blow. "At least I'm not so desperate that I went on a date with my cousin!"
It was Katie's turn to gasp. "He was my fourth cousin and I was twelve!" She glared at Sadie for a second before looking away pointedly. "We are so not BFFFLs anymore."
"I wouldn't want to be BFFFLs with someone so mean anyway," Sadie yelled. She stomped away. The dramatic effect was semi-ruined because the room was so ridiculously huge. It took her almost a minute to stomp all the way across it. She shoved open the huge door and heard a loud crunching sound from behind it.
On the other side, she found Ezekiel crouched on the ground, holding his hands to his face. She had a quick debate with herself about whether or not she should switch from being mad to concerned. She decided on concerned after he didn't move from the ground.
"Are you okay?" she asked, crouching next to him.
"I'm fine, eh," he mumbled through his hands.
"Let me see," she said. His hands slowly came off his nose, allowing her to see that his nose was bent in a direction entirely different from the one noses are supposed to point in. It was actually kind of gross, in her opinion. "Um, put your hands back," she said, staring at the tile floor. "Hey, I think there's, like, a bathroom around the corner. We can look at it in there."
Sadie led Ezekiel by the elbow to the bathroom. In the fluorescent lighting of the bathroom, the broken nose looked even worse. "What do you think we should do?" she asked.
He touched his nose gingerly. "I knoo' what to doo," he said grimly. He took a deep breath and then, all in one motion, he cracked his nose back into place.
Sadie flinched. "Ohmygosh," she breathed.
"Doo'es it look oo'kay?" he asked, turning away from the mirror to look at her.
She stepped back, still squeamish, then paused. "Actually, it totally does." She leaned in to check if it was really okay and bit her lip, a nervous habit Katie had previously reassured her was cute instead of weird and gross. "Sorry I broke your nose."
"T-that's oo'kay," he stammered. He took a small step backwards, realizing that a girl, something he hadn't had very many good experiences with, was standing very close to him. "Thanks!" he said abruptly, almost tripping over himself to get out of the bathroom.
It was only after he was already halfway down the hallway that he realized he had just exited the women's bathroom, a place his father had warned him never to enter. His father had told him that unspeakable things went on in there. He was in such a hurry to escape that he even forgot to swagger as he walked.