Chapter 7 - Browsing the Internet
I walked into the dining room with Iggy following me from behind and just as I had half expected, I saw Lemmy and Wendy sitting there. As ever, upon seeing me, Lemmy's face grew into a smile that ended all smiles and he gave me a friendly wave.
"Hey, Ludwig!" he said.
"Hey." I replied, smiling back, but after only a few seconds, my eyes darted like lightning over to what Wendy was doing. She had a notebook to her right with squiggles of writing on it, her face was illuminated by the screen of her laptop and she was tapping on the keyboard as if she only had thirty seconds left to live. Hmm… How was I going to prove to Iggy that I was telling the truth? Quite frankly, when I had said to him that I was going to prove my honesty, I had said that not quite knowing how I was going to do so.
Great. Now I had just made myself look like a complete moron, so now what was I going to do? It was when Iggy started asking me questions pertaining how I was going to explain everything when I started to sweat heavily.
"So, is it really true that you can take anybody with you to Australia?"
"Y-Yeah. It is." I replied, nodding and wiping a torrent of sweat off my forehead. "Just er…" Cursorily, I scanned the dining room and to my relief, something caught my eye. It seemed that Wendy had been so engrossed in getting on with her homework that she hadn't even noticed that I had been standing there and I looked on at her, gradually sensing an idea snaking into my mind.
"Almost there…" Wendy whispered to herself, typing away at the keyboard before finishing off her work and breathing a sigh of relief. She straightened up the paper inside her notebook, looked up at me and did a double take. "Oh, hey, Ludwig." After a moment, she gave me a look of confusion. "Um, why are you staring at me like that? Is something wrong?"
"N-No, nothing." I said, continuing to stare at her. "Um, Wendy…could we use your laptop quickly?" When this was said, Wendy raised an eyebrow and a look of worry crossed over her face briefly. "Just for a moment."
I had added that little bit at the end in a vain attempt to make her feel better, but by bad fortune, it had created the complete opposite effect. "You're not going to do anything on it, are you?" she asked.
I shook my head. "No. Well, obviously we're going to do something on it, but we're not doing anything immature on it."
"What? Like looking at my search history on Google and YouTube?"
"No, we're not." Iggy said, shaking his head. "We're…wait, what are we doing, Lud?"
"Oh…" I sighed heavily and facepalmed. For pete's sake. Now it seemed like I had to explain this to Wendy and Lemmy and as much as I cringed upon thinking that they would go around telling their other friends about my arrival on TV, I knew that they would never do such a thing, not to somebody who often experienced trepidation and was as painfully shy as me. "I'm going on I'm A Koopa next week, guys, and I feel that I have to show you all what I'm doing just to prevent you from worrying about me."
As I was speaking, I noticed Wendy and Lemmy's faces light up with realisation. "Ohhh…" Wendy said, moving her seat closer to mine. "That's why you need my laptop. Well, if that's the case, then shoot away."
"Thanks, Wen." I took a seat at the head of the table whilst Lemmy and Iggy moved their seats so that they could see the screen clearly. However, no sooner had I clicked onto the search bar when I heard Larry's voice from upstairs. It reverberated off the walls and snaked into the dining room.
"Come on, Lud! What are you doing?" As Larry shouted, his voice got louder as he came down the stairs and before I knew it, he was standing in the doorway of the dining room. "What's going-" Then he stopped.
I shook my head and smiled at his confused face. "Lar, just sit your arse down here."
"Why? What are you doing?"
Again, I raised an eyebrow and gave him the look that said, "Did you not just hear me?" and again, he did as he was told. Larry sat down in a seat next to mine and he looked at me which made me realise that I hadn't told him what I was doing. As I explained why I was doing this, I cringed because I felt pretty foolish stating the obvious, but I told myself not to feel like this since I was helping a friend. Most of all, Larry had said to me that he always got talked to like he was stupid and I was so aware of it that I just couldn't show that even I felt that way, so I maintained a straight face throughout my explanation and I was very patient with him and thankfully but eventually, his mouth opened in realisation.
"Oh…" he said, looking shamefully at the floor. "Sorry, man."
"It's fine, don't worry." I said. I directed my attention to the laptop and clicked onto the search bar, my hands vibrating due to the pressure of four other people watching my every move and I typed 'I'm A Koopa…Get Me Out of Here!' into the search bar, making doubly sure I didn't make any spelling mistakes because as anyone could probably tell, it would be horrendously embarrassing if I did.
Just as I expected, the icon for the show came up. I smiled upon seeing the icon which had the title of the show in a gold, jagged font and the letters were balancing on top of brilliant green jungle trees with a stunning blue sky and wispy, white clouds directly above those trees.
"Woah, that's the show?" Lemmy said, his eyes lighting up and scooting closer.
I nodded. "Yeah. That's where I'm going to be for the next three weeks. Well, I'm not going to be completely cut off from the rest of the world by trees, I'll still be open to many vast spaces."
Lemmy giggled. "Oh, I should hope so. You seriously can't be expected to be imprisoned by trees for three weeks."
I chuckled and scrolled further through all the images. Eventually, I found a picture of the clothes I was going to wear. That picture consisted of a model dressed up in a navy blue T-Shirt, a bright red pair of shorts, a beige denim jacket with a red waistcoat, a pair of brown hiking boots with bright red socks overlapping the tops of the boots and a river hat atop her head.
Wow. Now that I was watching this model in these clothes, I was starting to feel ecstatic because even when I was in casual clothes, I thought my appearance was exceedingly pleasant, but when I was in the jungle, I would look even more so. Most of all, it would evoke a sense of style I never realised I had. Hmm… This was all coming together now, and I loved it. I remembered that there were many combinations of clothing that were used on the show such as vest tops and trousers just in case the contestants ever got cold, but the only problem was that they only had one each of those pieces of clothing to last three weeks.
That would be a massive issue because the thing that mostly made up who I was was my successful talent of being hygienic. Oh! Suddenly, something clung onto my mind. I perked up and began typing into the search bar.
"What are you looking up this time?" Larry asked.
I smiled. "You'll see." I carried on typing, 'In I'm A Koopa, can contestants wash properly?' and I pressed the enter button. When I did so, I heard Wendy chuckling.
"Oh, you and your cleanliness obsession, Ludwig!" she said, which made me smile wider. "Well, I guess you would have one, wouldn't you? Especially at our ages."
Just then, I found a link to a website and I clicked on it. Immediately, it came up with lots of questions that members of the Public had asked previous contestants who had been on the show. There were so many of them, such as, 'Do you get to know what the time is?' and 'What happens if you ruin a meal?' and 'Are you allowed deodorant?'
"Right, okay." I said slowly. "This should get the answer." Even from staring at the screen, I could tell that Larry was cringing.
"Well, since you're in the jungle, I don't think you'll have many opportunities to wash." he replied.
"Possibly." I tilted my head to one side. "But one can only hope." I clicked onto the question, which was in bold and underlined and the answer was underneath it in italics. The answer was written by a contestant called Isabella Blossom and I felt a little bit of a spark form in my brain. "Oh, Isabella! I remember her, she was on the show in 2017!" I exclaimed. "Shame she's a grown up now." I read the whole answer aloud.
It said:
"We were allowed deodorant, but apparently contestants weren't allowed it in the very first series in 2002. On the whole, the hygiene was decent, I would say, but not as successful as many of us would've liked it. The reason for this is that the trials we had to complete were absolutely vile and disgusting and after, many of us came back to camp covered and smothered in gunk, but unfortunately, there was no source of hot water anywhere in camp and we were only given one small bottle of shampoo that didn't smell of anything, which I, in particular, hated with a burning passion.
Funnily enough, only shampoo was allowed, but no shower gel and to make matters worse, we were never allowed to shower stark naked, we had to put on swimming gear, which was both pleasant (to an extent) and unpleasant at the same time. The reason why it was pleasant was because our underwear kept us at least a little bit warm whilst we showered in cold water, but also, it was unpleasant because there was never an opportunity to make doubly sure that we had gotten rid of all the dirt."
"Oh dear." I said, looking around at my friends. "That's not good."
Iggy nodded. "Yeah, I can imagine. Larry told me that apparently, you get an itchy scalp when your hair isn't washed often enough."
"That's true." I replied. "The longest I can go is two and a half days."
"Oh dear indeed." Larry said. "That won't do you any good at all." His eyes suddenly moved up to a question I had previously read that was, 'Are you allowed to know the time?' and he said, "Hey Lud, go up to that one up there."
I did as I was told and I saw that the answer was written by Isabella as well. It read:
"Great question. I truly understand why you would want to know since you would probably imagine that we were allowed to know the time, but as a matter of fact, we weren't! It might be difficult to believe, but it's the truth, and trust me, it is definitely as bad as you'll think.
I got very disoriented at times, but after a while, I got used to feeling that way. In addition, time goes much, much slower when there isn't a clock nearby and it made my other campmates very stressed and it made them want to leave camp. Speaking of which, the rules of I'm A Koopa are that you are only allowed to be in camp for a minimum of three days before you can decide whether to stay or leave."
I stared blankly at the screen. "Oh, wow. That's actually quite a lot." I remarked.
"I know." Larry said. "And that's a challenge just for you. I don't know if you'll get through a week."
I sighed, clicked the shutdown button in the corner of the screen and closed it up. "Well, guys," I said. "I guess those are risks I'm going to have to take…"
AN: Hey everyone! Sorry it's taken me so long to do this chapter, it's just recently, I have chosen to not spend any longer than an hour on writing a day because I have to aid my poor eyesight. Oopsie, was that a bit personal…? Anyway, hope you enjoyed the chapter!
