Chapter Four: You Can Only Go Up From Here

The next morning, the ex-contestants discovered that Duncan had made quite a splash at the Playa overnight. Literally. He'd managed to flood the entire lobby, creating an odd sort of swimming pool. After discovering that the elevators no longer worked, Sadie walked down the many, many flights of stairs and encountered the newly created pool. She joined the throng of people gaping at the water.

"How'd he do that?" she asked incredulously, staring at the delinquent. Duncan smirked and waved cheerily from where he was floating atop a waterlogged sofa. It was already a given that Duncan was the cause of the miniature flood. During his previous visits to the Playa des Losers, he had routinely played pranks and caused general mayhem. However, back then most of his attention was usually focused solely on winning over Courtney instead of pranking. Now that Courtney was out of the picture, things were looking a bit more worrisome for the inhabitants of the Playa.

"Girl, who knows," Leshawna said, shaking her head.

"I don't know about you guys, but I'm not planning on standing here all day," Noah said, wading into the water. "You coming, Homeschool?" Ezekiel nodded quickly and took off his jacket before following the bookworm into the water. Bridgette, Cody, and Trent followed the two soon after.

Leshawna pulled off her clothes, revealing her bathing suit underneath. "Duncan, when I get my hands on you, you're going to be in for a world o' hurt!" she hollered, marching into the water. She grabbed her forearm as if she was going to roll up her nonexistent sleeves, a habit of hers when she got angry.

Duncan's eyes widened and he began to awkwardly paddle his floating sofa towards the closest exit. That happened to be the sliding glass doors that led outside. When he reached them, he realized the flaw in his escape plan. He had jammed the doors shut with massive amounts of tape earlier in order to stop the water from escaping. However, Duncan wasn't one to be deterred by situations that would have been considered impossible to escape by others. Faced with the wrath of Leshawna, he ripped the leg off the sofa he was perched on and used it to beat against the glass door. The door cracked, a spider-web of cracks spiraling out from the spot Duncan pounded against. With a violent crash, it gave way, leaving Duncan free to escape.

Of course, this released the several tons of water he had trapped inside the lobby. All the people swimming across the lobby found themselves sucked into the sudden current and pulled outside. Screams of fear and anger filled the air. Sadie, who had been slightly apprehensive about swimming across the lobby, burst out laughing. The situation was completely ridiculous. She sort of wished she had pictures of everyone's faces as they were sucked outside.

She heard somebody laughing alongside her and when she looked she was surprised to find Katie standing next to her. Katie stared at her, looking as surprised as Sadie felt. For the first time ever, Sadie found herself completely unsure of what to say around Katie. A few long, awkward moments went by until Noah staggered back into the lobby, pushing his hair out of his eyes frustratedly. "If you two would stop staring at each other and help get some of this stuff out of the way, that would be great," he said testily. He gestured at the few pieces of furniture that had settled in front of the main hallway door, blocking the way to the rest of the hotel from the lobby.

Katie offered a half-hearted apology and rushed to help him. Sadie sent him an angry glare, which he returned. "Find a different way through," she said, turning around to do just that.

"Well, aren't you a ray of sunshine," Noah said, heading for the blocked off door.

Sadie ran up the stairs and, after quite a bit of wandering, discovered another way to get through to the bottom floor of the hotel. She finally encountered one of the conveniently placed maps of the hotel and found her way to the dining room. In the dining hall, most of the other ex-contestants were sitting around in varying degrees of dampness.

Noah, Ezekiel, and Cody sat at one table. Cody chattered excitedly, while Noah looked like he wished he was anywhere but there. Ezekiel just looked confused. Based on her current relationship with Noah, that was not the table for Sadie.

Bridgette sat at a table with Trent on the other side of the room. Katie was nowhere to be seen, so Sadie grabbed some food and sat there.

"Hey, Sadie," Bridgette said.

"Yeah, hi," Trent said, barely lifting his head to look at her. He gave a world-weary sigh.

"You okay?" Sadie asked.

"Katie dumped me."

"Oh," Sadie said faintly, not knowing exactly what reaction she should have to this particular piece of news. Yes, she was mad at Katie, but she didn't think that extended over to Trent. But she definitely didn't know if she was really up for comforting Trent or even really acknowledging Katie's existence in general. She settled for a quiet, "Sorry."

This time, Trent lifted his head a fraction of an inch higher and sent a baleful glance in her direction. The baleful expression quickly turned to one of realization as he watched the chubby girl eating waffles beside him. "Sadie," he murmured, "You should make up with Katie." He said it with finality, like it was the only option left.

Sadie broke into a coughing fit that was mostly induced by shock and partially induced by choking on her waffles. When she had recovered, she looked at him with slightly watery eyes and shook her head. "I already told you I wouldn't. Not unless she apologizes."

Trent stared at her, his mouth slightly open and his green eyes childishly wide. The fight had been going on too long. It had been a few days already, the longest one of Katie and Sadie's fights had ever lasted. Dealing with Katie during those first few days had been difficult. She'd flipped between snapping at him and being overly sweet too quickly for him to form a solid reaction to either. When he'd suggested she make up with Sadie, she snapped and told him that if he liked Sadie so much, he should go out with her. At this point, he didn't even know if there was hope for Sadie and Katie's relationship and consequently there might not be hope for his relationship with Katie.

All of this was way more complicated than Trent wanted it to be.

On the other side of the table, Bridgette was making up for the doom and gloom emanating from Trent by smiling sunnily at Sadie. She pushed a strand of her soaked ponytail off her shoulder and rested her elbows on the table. "That was a huge flood this morning."

Sadie laughed shortly, putting the thoughts of Katie and Trent from her mind. Katie couldn't bring her down when she wasn't even here. Sadie wouldn't let her. "Yeah, how did Duncan do it?"

"I asked and he said that troublemakers shouldn't reveal their tricks," she said, rolling her eyes good-naturedly. "I'm pretty sure that saying is about magicians, but whatever. I saw the ceiling near one of the fire sprinklers leaking, so I guessed that was how he did it."

"I was sure-"

"Would you leave me alone and go talk to her if she 'so wants you,' Codemeister?" Noah practically shouted, making the nickname Cody had given himself seem like a sort of expletive.

The heads of everybody in the room flipped around to see Noah stomping towards the door, a mixture of carefully constructed boredom and irritation on his face. Sadie exchanged a look with Bridgette. This was weird. Noah was highly sarcastic, even to the point of meanness sometimes, but he was almost never downright angry. He was more likely to throw out a barbed comment than yell at someone. Sadie made sure to glare at him as he stomped away. He shot her an icy stare back.

Bridgette glanced between Sadie and Noah, wondering if she should say something about the apparent animosity between the two that had suddenly appeared. She sighed. Maybe later. For now, the problems with Trent and Katie seemed more pressing. Things just seemed to be falling apart these days, for everybody but her. Leshawna liked someone who was already taken, Duncan had come to the Playa with news of his breakup, Sadie and Katie were fighting, and Trent and Katie had broken up. Now, Noah was acting unusual and apparently had some problem with Sadie.

Bridgette took a calming breath, pushing down the waves of worry that threatened to overtake her. Worrying was useless. When she could do something to help any of those people, she would. "These waffles are good," she said lightly, bringing Sadie's attention back to the tasty, sugary breakfast at hand.

Sadie nodded, her energy level sinking even lower than before. Then, the door Noah had just exited through flew open with a remarkable amount of force, announcing the arrival of Leshawna and Duncan. Leshawna was doing something none of them had ever seen in real life - dragging someone by the ear. The delinquent was definitely not enjoying the experience. He shot Leshawna mutinous glances while keeping up a continuous stream of under-his-breath cursing.

She released him and he immediately scooted away from her, rubbing his ear. "Duncan has something he wants to say," she announced.

Duncan muttered something that sounded sort of like "No, I don't."

"Did you say something?" she asked fiercely.

"Nope," he replied, not looking her in the eye.

"So?"

"I'm..." He paused and pulled a face before continuing. "Sorry. Happy?"

"For now," she said, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

"Great," he said with a roll of his eyes, and he turned to walk in the direction of the buffet.

Sadie focused on her meal again once it was clear that the announcement was finished. Leshawna joined them at the table, a victorious smile on her face.

"Hi."

Sadie looked in the direction of the voice and saw Cody sitting beside her, looking distinctly nervous. He gave her a strange half-smirk, an expression that didn't work on his boyish face. "Hi," she replied. "What's up?"

"Um." He blinked rapidly and stared at a point somewhere beyond her left shoulder. "Wouldyouliketogooutwithme?"

Sadie talked pretty quickly herself and it even took her a moment to decipher the outpouring of words that left Cody's mouth. "Really?" she asked, slightly thrown off balance by the question.

Cody somehow managed to look even more nervous and threw up his Codemeister persona. "Really, gorgeous."

She giggled and nodded. "Sure."

This time it was his turn to be shocked. "Really?"

"Yeah."

"Thanks!" he said, a delighted smile appearing on his face. He nearly tripped over his own feet in his hurry away from the table. He rushed through the door and everyone heard a distinctive "YES!" from the hallway.

Sadie smiled fondly at the door and turned back to her waffles.