Cooking. I enjoy it, Stephanie doesn't so much. Thanks again to Gage the Hedgehog and Elizabeth Life Stone (sorry, but no – she will have a little fling with another teammate later on) for reviewing.

The day began when the boys were complaining that Harold was leaving his gitch lying around the cabin all ( the time and wouldn't admit to it. But it didn't matter so much. What mattered was the challenge.

The group of us had to cook a three-course meal. Chris would try it and judge the best team. The first thing we had to do was choose a head chef to decide on the theme of the meal and supervise. And then we had to get the ingredients.

Geoff took one look at the van full of ingredients and said "We could do a killer Italian theme!"

"Hello, head chef!" Duncan grinned at him.

"Seriously? Then let's get grabbing!"

It was great to have Geoff as head chef, because he wasn't bossy, like Courtney would've been. When we got into the kitchen, he simply said "Okay, we've got three courses and seven people. So one team of three, and everyone else partner up."

"I know how to make pasta sauce." offered DJ.

"I know how to boil pasta." added Bridgette. They high-fived.

"Me and Sadie can rock the antipasto." Harold spoke up. "I'm like a black belt when it comes to cutting cheese." All of us started giggling. "What? What?"

Duncan moved his eyebrows up and down as he looked at me and Courtney. "I guess that leaves you two and me on dessert detail."

"Oh, no. No way." Courtney refused.

"Come on, Courtney." Geoff coaxed. "For the team." She submitted, which was good, because the custard pastries were pretty complicated. It also gave Duncan plenty of time to flirt with Courtney. I helped with the pasta sauce when I wasn't needed, just to give them time they could spend alone together. And also, Harold was getting some rough treatment from the other boys for leaving his stuff lying around. First, DJ spilled water on him, and he had to go and get changed.

After Harold was gone, I looked suspiciously at DJ and Geoff. "Be honest." I said. "You did that on purpose, DJ, didn't you?"

Geoff admitted to it. "We're sick of Harold leaving his stuff out around the cabin, so we took most of his shorts and stuff. We'll give them back when he admits to it."

I thought it over. Then I gave the boys the thumbs up. "Awesome!"

Meanwhile, the Gophers were working at the other end of the table. Heather had called the position of head chef, and was of course abusing her power like crazy. She wouldn't listen to anyone else.

On our side, Geoff tried to flirt with Bridgette again, and then screwed up. DJ had to rescue him.

With the dessert, Courtney watched anxiously as Duncan rolled it out and she stirred the custard. "Careful your big paws don't mash the pastry." she cautioned.

"Careful your uptight butt doesn't curdle the custard." he responded.

"Oh ha ha ha." Courtney snapped, but she was sidetracked by Harold appearing in a tiny red thing.

"Okay, who took all my shorts?"

To Duncan's credit, he was the only one who pretended not to notice. DJ and Geoff kept snickering the whole time. Even Chris, passing by to check on us, shuddered at Harold's attire. "Three hours and counting, guys." he warned.

It got worse. Next, Harold was sent back to the cabin, and ended up putting on pants with hot sauce in them. He came back in his pyjamas. "These are all I've got left. So if you sickos wanna see me butt naked, hit me with your best shot."
"Well, stop leaving your butt bags all over the cabin and we'll back off." Duncan told him.

"I told you it wasn't me!"

"Well, I tried." And then Geoff held up some sandwiches that he'd put Harold's briefs in earlier. We all knew it, but Harold didn't, so he took a bite of one, before realizing what was in them. "Gross!" he exclaimed, dropping the sandwich.

Geoff told him exactly what he'd said to me – they'd return Harold's stuff when he admitted he'd been leaving the stuff on the floor.

Our pastries were soon cooked, and both Duncan and I were squirting custard into them. "You're both total slobs!" Courtney whined. "They all have to have the same amount of custard."

"Shut up." I muttered.

"Oh, relax, they're fine." Duncan said over me. He paused. "You know, you'd be a lot more fun without that pole up your butt."

"I'm like the most easygoing person I know!" Courtney protested.

"Oh, yeah, you're totally laid back." Duncan squirted some custard at her. In response, she threw a bowl of it on him, and then started giggling.

I laughed too. "Oh, you are going to pay for that one, girl." I picked up the bowl she'd just dumped on Duncan and tipped what was left over her. In reply, she picked up one of the things I'd been using to put the custard in the pastries and squirted it at me. By the end, the three of us had about as much custard over us as the pastries did, but who cared? At least Courtney had loosened up a little bit.

I went to the confessional before we served our meal. "At least Courtney knows how to have fun. She just refuses to, most of the time. I think I'll make another bet with Duncan – if he gets her dating him before the post merge, I'll pay an extra two bucks if he can make her break a law and turn bad girl on everyone. Anyone who's as much of a 'good girl' as her cannot be good."

Chris praised our antipasto happily, and liked our spaghetti even more. But the thing was – with the Gophers...Owen ate most of their ribs, and Chris only had a tiny piece left. And they got two points for that, at least.

Finally, it was dessert time. He tried ours first, and Courtney looked terrified. Duncan put a hand on her shoulder, and they exchanged a smile.

Chris finished tasting. "Eeh...six." he rated. Well, we did spend most of the time making it fighting, But we were very lucky. We'd have had to go to a tiebreaker if their flambe had tasted as good as it looked. But it deflated, and then Chris choked on it. "What the heck is this?"

"It's Heather's recipe!" Lindsay spoke up. Then she gasped. "Omigosh, she's still in the fridge!"

Leshawna had locked their head chef in the fridge, and although I hadn't heard everything, it was Heather after all. I assumed she deserved it. She was furious when they heard they'd lost. "Great! That's just great. Why do we keep losing, people?" Then she complained about the decoration. But then again, it turned out it was a tiki statue from Boney Island. Beth hadn't heard the warning about not taking anything from it.

"I didn't know! I'll put it back!" she said. But the damage for today was done. We had won a five-star meal outside that night.

We all cheered, and Duncan even picked up Courtney, hugging her until she ordered him to put her down. While we headed off to dinner, the Gophers voted off Beth. Apparently, they thought that the tiki statue had cursed them, and the only way to reverse it was to kick Beth off the island.

The dinner was fantastic, as we expected. But just as we went back to the cabins, Duncan pulled me aside and whispered "All girls on the beach tomorrow morning. Tell the others."

I raised an eyebrow. "And this is because..."

Duncan just smirked. "Oh, you'll find out."

So the next morning, all the girls, Bass and Gophers alike, all went for a swim on the beach. There was a bunk on the beach – with Harold asleep in one of them. The other boys on our team were sitting in a canoe.

We didn't have to wait long for Harold to wake up. All of us started giggling as he got up...wearing nothing.

"Good morning, Harold!" me and a couple of others called out.

Well, this time, the boys seemed to have gotten through to him. He swore he'd never leave his briefs out again, and they returned everything they'd taken. "Pleasure doing business with you!"

The third week at camp is nearly over! Wow...