"Sunny! What's up, man?" Chris said. I said nothing, but did set down my luggage, open it, and pull out a notebook and pencil. The other campers were all quiet in the background. I paid them no mind, instead writing down "hello" and turning the notebook around to show them what it said.
"As expected, go stand over there with the others," Chris instructed. I did so. None of them tried talking to me, so I looked towards the new boat that was pulling up. I was still holding my notebook in front of me, just in case. The next camper stepped off of their boat.
"Cody, the Codester, The Codemeister!" Chris introduced the new contestant to the cameras. Seemed a little over the top, but then again this is a reality show mom signed me up for.
"Dude, psyched to be here, man. I see the ladies have already arrived." Gross. "All right." He joined us on the dock, walking weirdly as he talked. He doubled back to talk to one of the girls, but she quickly shut that down and he carried on. The next camper joined them a moment later, a stern looking girl that already reminded him a bit of Aubrey or Kim. He might be mixing up their personalities a bit, it had been a long time since he actually hung out with either of them.
"Eva, nice. Glad you could make it." She walked straight past Chris and Cody went to give her a high five, but instead she dropped her bag on his foot. I stopped paying attention to that when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and one of the boys who had arrived earlier, he had green glasses that was a little weird, was trying to sign to me. I quickly held my hand up to him in a stop motion, and wrote down "I don't know sign language, but I can hear you just fine." and showed it to him. He stopped signing and nodded in understanding.
"Woohoo!" I turned away from him. "Chris! What's happenin'?" He laughed a little after saying this. This guy seemed very enthusiastic. "This is awesome! Woohoo!" Way too much energy, in general.
"Owen, welcome!" It's going to take forever to learn the names of everyone who had shown up before me. Owen hugged Chris, lifting him up. There was an audible crunching sound.
"Awesome to be here, man! Yeah! Man, this is just so…" He trailed off.
"Awesome?" The goth girl interrupted him.
"Yes, awesome! Whoooo! Are you gonna be on my team?" Is he asking Chris or the goth girl?
"Oh, I sure hope so," the goth said sarcastically.
"Whoooo!" Owen didn't seem to care, or maybe he didn't notice.
"You about finished?" Chris asked him. Owen had been hugging him for a while now. Owen released him.
"Sorry, dude, I'm just so psyched!"
"Cool. And here comes Courtney." Owen started walking towards the group to make room for the camera shot as she stepped off the boat. Chris held out a hand for her to take as she stepped off of it and she took it.
"Thank you," Courtney said and started walking towards us, right behind Owen.
"Hi, you must be the other contestants," she introduced herself, waving. "It's really nice to meet you all." Owen had turned around when she started introducing herself and shook her hand.
"How's it going? I'm Owen."
"Nice to meet you, O," she turned around as the next boat pulled up. "Wow." The next boat had a pretty boy on it. He's a little too muscular for my tastes, but he got a lot of attention from the girls and one of them fell over, for some reason. I was standing a little too far away to help, but the girl with the matching outfit got her up as Chris introduced the pretty boy.
"This is Justin. Welcome to Total Drama Island." They fistbumped.
"Thanks, Chris, it's great to be here."
"Just so you know, we picked you based entirely on your looks." Acceptable reasoning, this was going on tv, but I don't think you're supposed to outright say this during the person's introduction on the show.
"I can deal with that," Justin shrugged it off easily and walked over. Some people were more flustered or excited than others.
"I like your pants!" Owen might be having some gay panic, but it's understandable. I felt a bit of a smile creep onto my face, maybe just a smirk.
"Thanks, man," Justin easily accepted the praise, walking past him.
"'Cause they look like they're all," Owen stepped himself for a second, but continued with, "Worn out." There is definitely gay panic going on here. I was definitely smirking now. And then Owen continued.
"Did you buy them like that?" he asked, crouching down as Justin walked past. I brought my right hand to my face, the one holding the pencil, and tried harder to conceal the laughter that was bubbling up. I think I failed.
"Uh, no, just had them for a while," Justin said as he started walking further down the dock. Girls were swooning at him as he walked by. Why is everyone here so over the top about this? I decided to stop paying attention and started drawing a cat in the top right corner of the notebook, but I didn't get too far before the next contestant fell onto the dock, having run straight off the boat and ending up in the water. The guy in the red tracksuit laughed at her as Courtney ran to help her out of the water. I went back to drawing the gray graphite cat. I should have brought out the colored pencils. I noticed the guy with the green glasses standing next to me was watching me draw. I didn't finish it before Chris asked us to join together for a group photo on the dock. He jumped onto the boat carrying a small camera. I put the pencil in the spiral bit of the notebook and held it at my side for the photo.
Chris started fiddling with the camera, having said something about the lens cap, but it was probably just so that we would have a second to get into position for the photo. I, being on the shorter site, was in the front row, next to a girl with braces.
"Sit down with me?" she asked. I nodded and we ended up sitting back to back, but not touching, near the end of the dock. A lot of other people in the front row had the same idea. I put my notebook on my right side, hopefully out of view of the camera and waited, leaning forward slightly and hugging my knees.
"Got it!" Chris announced. Any remaining chatter ceased. "Okay, everyone say Wawanakwa!" I heard the dock start creaking under our collective weight.
"WawanakwAAA!" everyone else said, but it all ended in screams as the dock collapsed under us. I floundered for a bit, on account of never learning how to swim due to my previous fear of drowning. If I could stand here I would've been fine, but it all turned out okay because two of the other campers pulled me up.
"You okay?" one of them asked. I hadn't swallowed any water and they got me out pretty quickly, so I nodded. My notebook was probably ruined, but the rest of the dock looked okay and I had a few backups. The two campers brought me to shore and I ran to grab my luggage. I pulled out a new notebook, quickly wrote down "thank you" and showed it to them.
"No problem, man," the boy in the green shirt said. "Not like anyone knew that the dock was going to give out on us." The boy with the green glasses hadn't stayed to receive the thanks, but I could catch him later. Everyone started walking off somewhere and I realized I had missed something and started following them to the campfire. There were only twelve seats in front of the campfire, so half of us had to stay standing. Turns out the guy in the green glasses had saved a seat for me in the front row. I showed him my thank you note and sat down. He moved to go stand in the back and then we all just kinda sat there for a while. A few of the people who had arrived at the island earliest introduced themselves to us latecomers, so now I knew who Beth, DJ, Geoff, and Lindsay were. Still had to figure out eleven more names at some point. Chris started setting up something with the cameramen for a few minutes before the show seemed to continue.
"This is Camp Wawanakwa, your home for the next eight weeks. The campers sitting around you will be your cabinmates, your competition, and maybe even your friends. The camper who manages to stay on Total Drama Island the longest without getting voted off will win $100,000."
"'Excuse me," someone interrupted him "What will the sleeping arrangements be? Because I'd like to request a bunk under her." I didn't bother turning around to see who was talking or who he was pointing to.
"They're not co-ed are they?" presumably her asked.
"No," Chris answered. "Girls get one side of the cabin, dudes get the other."
"Excuse me, Kyle? Can I have a cabin with a lake view since I'm the prettiest?" someone else asked Chris. Unreasonable reasoning all around.
"That's not really how it works here, Lindsay, and it's Chris." Maybe he could match her name to her voice later.
"I have to live with Sadie or I'll die," someone else said. It sounded like it was coming from my right, but I couldn't see who it was.
"And I'll break out in hives, it's true," probably Sadie added. A few other people also started talking, but I decided to stop paying attention and just stared straight ahead for a bit.
"Alright, alright, let's simmer down. Let me get through this whole spiel please, you can get into the drama after we're done here," Chris corralled everyone's attention back to him and pulled out a piece of paper. "We're gonna split you into two teams. If I call your name out, go stand over there." Chris pointed to where they should stand and started reading out a list. "Gwen, Trent, Heather, Cody, Lindsay, Beth, Katie, Owen, Leshawna, Justin, and Noah." They all walked over and Chris threw their team flag to them, caught by Owen. "From this moment on you are officially known as the Screaming Gophers!"
"Yeah, I'm a gopher!" Owen yelled after unfurling the flag. "WHOOOO!"
"Wait, what about Sadie?" the same girl who had mentioned Sadie before asked.
"The rest of you over here," Chris spoke to the rest of the campers. "Geoff, Bridgette, DJ, Tyler, Sadie, Izzy, Courtney, Sunny, Duncan, Eva and Harold. Move, move, move, move!" I walked over with the rest of my team to where we had to stand.
"But Katie's a gopher!" that's definitely Sadie lamented. "I have to be a gopher!" Courtney, who was standing next to her, put her hand on her shoulder to get her attention.
"Sadie is it? Come on, it'll be ok." She started leading Sadie over to the rest of our team.
"This is so unfair, I miss you Katie!"
"I miss you, too!" Katie replied. They were the girls with the matching outfits. After everyone was finally where they were supposed to be, Chris proceeded to toss our flag to the punk guy. The flag rolled open on its own.
"You guys will be officially known as the Killer Bass!" Chris announced.
"Name's actually not that bad," the punk guy commented.
"All right, campers," Chris went on to explain how things in camp would work, that there would be cameras on them in all public areas and where the confessionals were. There were five on the island, one near the cabins and four stationed around the perimeter of the island. I'll check them out later, probably won't be using them too often.
"All right, any questions about what I've already talked about?" Chris asked everyone, but then continued without leaving time for anyone to ask anything. "Cool, let's find your cabins." He proceeded to lead them to the cabins. "Gophers, you're in the east cabin. Bass, you're in the west. There's two doors on each cabin, you guys can choose which gender gets which side." I walked towards the Killer Bass cabin and waited for someone else to choose which side they were going into. Courtney ended up choosing the girls' side and I walked through the other door, somehow the first one inside. There were three bunk beds and I claimed the bottom bunk on the side of the cabin with only one bunk bed, next to the fireplace, for myself. I layed down, set my bag down at the end of the bed, and started writing a little introduction in the notebook, since some of my teammates didn't know my name. The guy in green glasses approached me as I was writing.
"Hi, I'm Harold." I acknowledged his presence by nodding and finished writing, tearing the page out when I was done. I set it on the stool nearby and expanded on my thank you message from before. I showed it to Harold and he read it aloud, for some reason.
"Thank you for the help earlier and for saving me a seat." You're welcome, Sunny." And then he went off to pick out his own bunk. I went back to drawing a new cat, since I didn't finish my other one. There was some screaming, which a few guys left to go investigate, but I stayed in the cabin.
A noise that sounded like a staticky intercom turned on somewhere outside, it was pretty loud.
"I'd like to announce, to everyone that didn't hear me outside five minutes ago, that you've all got half an hour to unpack and meet me back at the main lodge, starting five minutes ago," Chris announced. Plenty of time for me to finish Concrete the cat, this time with a dark gray colored pencil instead of a regular graphite one. I think she turned out pretty well.
No one else really tried to talk to me, so I went to the mess hall a little early with my notebook and the introduction page. I didn't say anything as I got my food and sat down at the end of the table next to the counter, notebook in my lap and introduction in the middle of the table for anyone to read if they wanted to. Everyone else arrived at pretty much the same time.
"I serve it three times a day, and you'll eat it three times a day!" Chef announced. "Grab your tray, get your food, and sit your butts down now!" Everyone else quickly formed a line to get their food.
"Excuse me, will we be getting all of the major food groups?" Beth asked Chef as she walked up.
"Yeah, 'cause I get hypoglycemic real bad if I don't get enough sugar," Harold added.
"You'll get a lot of shut the heck up, sit your butts down!" Chef yelled at them and they ran over to the tables. Owen must have whispered something to the guy next to him because Chef went off on him next.
"What was that?! Come closer, big guy, I didn't hear you!"
"Uh, I didn't really say anything important," Owen quickly replied.
"I'm sure you didn't!" Chef shouted before looking towards the next person in line. "You, scrawny kid, give me your plate." There were other various mini conversations that people had going on, but I stopped paying attention to them after Harold sat next to me at the table.
"So you really don't know any sign?" I shook my head.
"It just seems kind of inconvenient if you don't talk, you know?" I started writing down my reasoning for not learning sign language, which was mostly because it required a lot of facial expressions, but also letting him know that I knew how to sign letters. He read it, not out loud this time, as I was writing. The stern looking girl who reminded me of Aubrey and/or Kim was the first person to look at my introduction paper, the next two people ignored it, and everyone else were the last people in line, so I gave it to Harold and wrote a separate note asking for it to be passed around the table after everyone else was seated. Most of our team was near the end of the line, so it took a while. Harold passed it to the guy in the cowboy hat sitting next to him and it quickly went around the table, until it got to the guy in the red tracksuit. He seemed to be having a little trouble reading it, but he passed it across eventually and I took it from him. I had already finished eating at this point, so I left the mess hall and went back to the cabin to avoid socialization.
Chris made a new announcement over the intercom about half an hour later.
"Hey campers, just letting you know that this first challenge is going to result in most of you getting a little wet. Make sure you bring your bathing suits, the challenge is in half an hour. Good luck!" Ugh, I had been hoping that the swimsuit mom had forced into my pack wouldn't actually be necessary.
Most of us went to the communal washrooms to change into oursuits, though there weren't enough stalls for all of us to change at once. There were a lot of people who just had to stand around and wait for stalls to become available, including me because I had stalled for a while and was one of the last people in line. At least the eyepatch was waterproof.
A lot of boys were getting in and out of the washroom pretty quickly, especially since half of them left their shirts at the cabin since they were going to walk around without them anyway. I put on my wetsuit with little trouble, but I was still the last person out of the washroom.
"Dude, are you a surfer too like that Bridgette chick?" cowboy hat guy asked after I walked out. I shook my head and headed back towards the cabin to put my clothes away. The wetsuit didn't come with shoes at all, so I kept my eyes mostly on the ground to make sure I didn't step on anything other than the inevitable pine needles. I dropped off my clothes and walked out of the cabin, without my notebook because of the near-future water, just in time to see Chris pull up on a fourwheeler, wielding a megaphone.
"Howdy campers, please follow me and Chef to the site of your first challenge!" This wasn't going to be fun.