CHAPTER NINE

Despite the reds not really getting too invested in the 'team building' aspect of the challenge, and the blue team's substantial loss (they only managed to find five of their ten boxes- and three of those were thanks to Stella alone- something that they didn't think was entirely down to their own inadequacies and probably had quite a bit to do with the sniggering American who was relaxing on a banana lounge when they straggled back to the house), the afternoon's activity seemed to have at least not had a negative impact on any of the teens. They mightn't have exactly been bonding, but the outright antagonism between certain individuals had been reduced to a below surface simmer, allowing a peaceful evening to reign over the house.

After dinner, and a going over of the kitchen by the clean up squad, Allison released them for some free time before bed, ushering them into the rec room while she got some peace and quiet in the mess hall to finish some accounts. Even the elusive Toby, Allison's nephew, had put in an appearance, even if he was only sulking in the corner over a towering pile of homework from his tutor that he was finally being forced to do; it was technically summer holidays, the end of the school year for Australian kids, but he was doing distance education correspondence and had missed so much to catch up on, it didn't look like he was getting reprieve from school work any time soon. He had been dumped on a friend while Allison focused on getting the teenagers settled in, but was now reluctantly back at the beach house full time.

Hex approached Li, one eyebrow raised and his arms folded as he eyed the Anglo-Chinese girl suspiciously. "Hey, Li," he said smoothly. "You wouldn't have happened to have seen my palmtop, would you?"

"No, Hex," she said. Her attempt at a serious tone was spoiled somewhat by the tiny twitch of a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. "I most certainly haven't. Is it missing?"

"Mhmm. Funny that."

"Missing?" Amber sounded surprised. "Isn't that thing, like, surgically attached to you?"

Hex ignored her in a gesture of the unspoken truce regarding politeness reigning over the entire group. "Something less funny will be what happens if my computer doesn't happen to turn up in the next couple of minutes."

"I will definitely keep a look out for it, for you," Li said, "but in the meantime…" She rummaged around behind her, producing an empty soft drink bottle that she brandished with a wicked grin. "I suggest a game!" When she didn't get the enthusiastic response she'd envisioned, and Hex looked like he was about to slink off completely, she added, "Who knows… Maybe certain missing items might turn up after a round or two… Hmm?"

Although he was visibly unhappy, Hex grudgingly sunk down onto the carpet; something told him it'd be a lot quicker to just go with what she was suggesting rather than fight it. With some insistence from Li, and a couple of diplomatically veiled threats, she got the other six teenagers to join the seated circle forming in front of the couch.

"Don't look so worried," she said as she carefully placed the bottle in the centre of the circle. "It's a mash up!" Another reach around behind her back had Allison's 'random generator' making an appearance with an assortment of scrunched up scraps of paper rattling around inside the Akubra.

Hex's frown got even more pronounced. She'd definitely planned things.

"You've got a choice," Li continued, then added with a laugh, "Well… Sort of." Rattling the hat, she sent the pieces of paper rolling about inside. "Three options are in here: no extra points if you guess what they are. Each person takes it in turn to spin the bottle and pull out a bit of paper. Whatever you pick out is your task, and whoever you land on sets it- or receives it. And then it's their turn to spin!" She grinned again. "Any takers for going first?"

No one volunteered- not surprisingly- so Li, with a good natured shrug at the lack of enthusiasm for her evening's plan, seized the bottle and gave it a twirl with enough gusto to make up for every reluctant participant. The bottle went round and round and round until watching it started to send some of them into a hypnotic daze, before finally settling on Ruby. Li dove her hand into the helmet and fished about with her tongue poking out the side of her mouth.

"And it's… A dare! Brilliant!" She blinked at Ruby, waiting. "Watcha got for me?"

"Ah…" Ruby glanced around, clearly out of ideas before she'd even formulated any.

Taking pity on her, Alex, to her left, went to whisper a suggestion, but Li stopped him mid lean with a pointed finger and a stern, "Ah ah, buddy. Ruby's dare, and Ruby's dare only. No helping."

Eventually Ruby requested that Li stand on her head and recite the alphabet backwards, the former coming far easier to the bouncing teenager than the latter. Her face screwed up in concentration, she made it almost halfway through before fumbling over the order of letters, proclaiming, "This is harder than I thought it'd be," which, considering she was hanging out upside down, supported by just her head and hands, and it was a comment only about the reverse alphabet portion, was weirder than anyone thought it might be. Another couple of blunders later, Li announced a triumphant, "A!" and straightened up again.

"Woo!" She grinned. "Head rush. Okay. Ruby: your spin."

To Li's obvious disappointment, pretty much the entire group was lacking in some serious creativity when it came to dares- and the truths were just as bad. It was something of a testament to how low to the bottom of the barrel everyone was scraping when there was actual relief whenever a scrap of paper with 'snog' on it was retrieved from the helmet; Li had either felt the option was perhaps a bit too much of an ask, or had held a far too great an expectation of their ability to come up with interesting truths and dares for each other, because it was a few and far between occurrence- a fact that served to make it even worse when Amber's spin landed on Hex and she ended up drawing one of the rare pieces of paper.

"No way." Her fist bunched around the paper, unceremoniously squashing the idea. "Absolutely not. I'm drawing again."

Hex shrugged. "Your loss."

He actually looked smug, the smarmy little weasel, and Amber's eyes narrowed. As much as the idea absolutely repulsed her, the smirk on Hex's face struck her as an even worse outcome and so, with Hex still basking in the misguided glow that he'd somehow 'won' that particular round in their ongoing feud, she lunged across the circle, seized the front of his shirt and planted a chaste kiss right on his lips, shoving him back and returning to her own seat before anyone really had any idea what was happening.

"Your turn, gadget boy," she said sweetly, flicking the bottle across to him.

He glared at her, but spun without comment, landing on Alex. He reached for the Akubra. "Truth," he said, reading off his selected piece of paper without enthusiasm. "Goody."

Alex only had to think for a moment, his head full of Hex's general lack of interest in everything on the program thus far- apart from arguing with Amber and generally making the whole group feel tense. "Why are you even here?" he asked, dishing out the first serious question of the game.

All eyes turned to Hex; like Alex, everyone was keen to see what the Londoner had to say.

"Kind of an odd question."

Alex shook his head. "No, it's not. You clearly don't want to be here, so why are you?"

"I said already. My school insisted."

"Why?"

"I thought this was just the one truth?" He turned to Li, but she waved his concern away and, with a sigh, Hex relented. "Don't know," he said. "They just did."

"But there has to be a reason. Didn't you say they were punishing you for something?"

"If there is a reason, I'm not privy to it." Ignoring the second sentence, Hex stared at Alex, daring him to keep the subject going, and when he got no resistance there, he swung the same look around to Li, figuring that if anyone else was going to press the point it'd be her.

She didn't, not because she felt intimidated or was picking up on some sort of sensitivity over the subject, but she was just rapidly finding the whole topic a bit boring. Hex clearly wasn't the chatty, 'tell everyone all of your business' sort of guy. Nothing wrong with that, not at all, but she wasn't going to waste time trying to talk to someone who really didn't want to have a conversation with her- or anyone.

Half recalling the shortened version of events they'd passed around on the boat on the trip over to the island, Li asked the group as a whole, "I can't be the only one who actually wanted to come on this trip, can I?"

"I did," Alex piped up, but he was the only other. He had scrimped and saved, shovelling endless amounts of snow over a freezing Northumbrian winter to pay his way onto the program as well.

Li turned to Paulo, remembering their conversation on the reef the day before. "Paulo?"

"I was… er…" He struggled for the words and failed to find them in anything but Spanish. "No me importaba de ninguna manera."

Everyone blinked at him, except for Amber who waited several beats then sighed and translated. "He didn't care either way."

Paulo looked at her in surprise. "Tú hablas Español?"

"Si," Amber responded flatly.

"Hmm." Li looked thoughtful. "What about you, Stella?"

She avoided everyone's eyes, staring somewhat mournfully at the bottle, twitching the lid end of it back and forth with her fingers. "I'm at boarding school for the majority of the year. I barely see my dad as it is. The one time he'd actually be at home, and we could have actually spent time together, he sticks me on this trip instead, because he's one of the backers and it helps publicity if I'm involved and on one of the first camps. What do you think?"

Li wasn't sure what she thought, except that it was sad. She couldn't even imagine what it would be like to be in Stella's situation, and although she never took for granted how wonderful it was that her parents included her in their work, and took her along with them instead of sending her off to a boarding school somewhere, she felt an even greater sense of appreciation for them well up; she learnt more out and about with them than she ever did doing her correspondence lessons. It was a different sort of education, one that she'd never have to sit an exam on to test her understanding of, and one that made her life a far more enriched and exciting one. And missing out on that? Not seeing them for months at a time? That really would suck. She was starting to get a bit of a more rounded idea of why Stella could come across as a bit withdrawn and morose sometimes; the poor kid could hardly catch a break.

Amber was sitting beside Stella and, as Li's eyes travelled the circle, she noticed an odd expression on the American girl's face. "Amber?" she asked.

"What?"

"You don't want to be here?"

The only response she would give was, "Do you think I'd choose to spend time stuck here with you lot?" which although could have been classed as open for interpretation, definitely wasn't. Odd, unreadable expression still on her face, she added a brisk, "Can we get this stupid game over with? Whose go is it anyway?"

It was Alex's, and his spin landed on Li. She was given another half hearted dare, partly because he was out of ideas and partly because it seemed that whatever anyone gave to Li she was both capable of performing it, and more than eager to do so. It took a lot of the fun- and some of the point- out of the whole idea of assigning a dare. Li's spin landed on Hex, and for the first time of the whole evening, her ensuing announcement that she'd pulled a 'truth' option out of the dwindling pieces of paper in the helmet earned a genuine grin from him.

Staring her straight in the eye, he said, "Where's my palmtop?"

"Dammit!" Li's own grin was tinged with disappointment that he'd ended up turning her own game into something that worked to his ultimate advantage and would spell the end of his participation (as well as probably every other unwilling participating playing only out of a feeling of obligation), but she was a good sport and willing gave up the hiding spot where she'd stowed the hacker's precious computer.