Interaction: Beth and Harold

The campers continued to discuss their fears for a few minutes before breaking up their little meeting to head back to their respective cabins, the two teams walking together in one large, loose group. Heather was, as usual, barking orders at Lindsay; the usual pre-bedtime commands to prepare her shower, that sort of thing. Beth was hanging back from the two of them, walking purposefully slow at the back of the two teams.

"Hey," a raspy voice from behind her said.

She jumped, spinning around. "Oh," she said, clutching her chest and breathing a sigh of relief. "Hey, Harold."

"Sorry. Didn't mean to scare you," he said.

"Oh…don't worry about it."

The other campers' voices were growing more distant; Harold sped up slightly until he and Beth were walking beside each other.

"So, you're afraid of bugs or something?" he asked, wiping his nose on his sleeve.

"Yeah."

He paused. "Why?"

Beth blinked, looking up at him in the dull moonlight. She wasn't entirely sure how to answer that question. "I dunno. They just…creep me out."

Harold frowned. "Here, lemme show you something."

"Okay..."

He reached into his pocket and dug around for a moment. "Where is…ah, here we go." He cupped his hands together as he pulled something else. "Beth, I'd like you to meet Gulliver."

Beth blinked. "Gulliver? Who's---agh!"

She jumped back as Harold opened his hands---he was hold a huge, hairy tarantula, extending one hairy leg as if to reach out and grab her. She jumped back.

"Don't freak out," Harold said, frowning again. He turned his hand to keep "Gulliver" from walking off and falling to the ground. "Don't worry, he's defanged. Even if he wasn't, he couldn't kill you or anything. Could you boy?" he asked, gently stroking the spider's hairy body.

Beth made a face at Gulliver, cringing as it looked up at her and waved its disgusting little mouth-claws at her.

"Those are its chelicerae," Harold said fondly, watching Beth's reaction. She held Gulliver up. "Go on; pet him."

"Pet him?"

"Sure. Like I said, he can't hurt you."

"Are you…sure?"

"I've been carrying him around in my pants, of course I'm sure."

They had stopped walking; the others were far ahead of them. Beth looked off, as if hoping someone would come back and give her an excuse not to, then turned back to the spider. It looked up at her with its many beady black eyes, almost curious.

"Go ahead," Harold urged.

Beth hesitated. Then, slowly, carefully, she reached out and very carefully patted its hairy body.

"There, see? It likes you."

"It…does?" Beth said, pausing to hold her hand about a foot above the hairy little beast.

"Yeah. I can tell these kinds of things," Harold said proudly, puffing out his skinny chest.

Beth carefully gave the spider another little pet, a small smile crossing her face.

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"Now Beth, to complete this challenge, you have to jump into this swimming pool full of live worms!"

Harold stood watching from a short distance away with the other Bass as Beth stood by the side of the pool, looking in with a slight frown on her face. Pretty much everyone else on both teams had looks of horror on their face; DJ began to vomit.

Beth looked in for another moment, silently, as if this were nothing more than a slightly challenging puzzle. Then she shrugged, swung herself over the side and fell into the huge pile of writhing worms.

"And Beth sets the bar way up there!" Chris cried, as the Gophers broke out in tremendous applause.

Beth grinned triumphantly as she emerged from the pool to the cheers, but her eyes wandered over to the Bass team, and to the one face there not registering either disgust or disappointment.

Harold knew he shouldn't be cheering for an opponent, but he smiled back anyway.

Gulliver later went on to escape Harold's pocket, overthrow the Prime Minister of Canada and take over Japan.

Ugh, I'm running out of pre-written chapters and with the semester started, I'm thinking these updates are going to have to be less common pretty soon. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this, and for those who enjoyed the last chapter, I published a story called "Ezekiel and Katie: A Relationship in 50 Words," if you want to look that up. (It's one of those fifty-random-word-prompt things.) Anyway I hope you enjoyed this, please leave a review!

Next Interaction: Geoff and Bridgette.