CHAPTER THREE

"What the hell happened to my bag?" Amber shrieked, holding the sodden article at arm's length; she dropped it to the beach after a second, the large bag too big and heavy for her to keep a grip on it in such a position for long. Her eyes found Hex, took in the smirk twitching on the corner of his lips, and she took several quick, aggressive steps towards him. "You think this is funny?"

"Well it is now." He nodded behind her, where the wet bag had come in contact with the sand and turned into something resembling a chicken schnitzel.

Amber groaned, momentarily forgetting about him while she turned back to her luggage. Yeah, that hadn't been a smart move.

Li was already there, standing the backpack up and attempting to brush the sand off it. "It'll be fine," she said cheerily, dusting away. "Little bit of a rinse in fresh water, hang the stuff out to dry, back to normal in no time."

"Why did it end up in the ocean in the first place?" Amber turned back to glare at Hex again but he hadn't hung around, shouldering his own- dry- pack and following the others up the beach. Her hands clenched in and out of tight fists.

"I don't think he did it on purpose," Li said, trying to help.

Amber's expression said she thought otherwise.

Li regarded her with something close to pity. "It could be worse," she offered up. "Could be at the bottom of the Coral Sea right now."

"Yeah, not exactly making me feel better, Li." She brushed past the other girl, lifting the pack up to settle the strap on her shoulder with a cringe; water instantly soaked through her shorts where the bag itself rested against her leg.

"You can borrow some of my stuff in the meantime," Li offered, jogging after Amber to catch up, the taller girl's long legs having pulled her away before Li even had a chance to lift her own bag up.

The suggestion was sweet enough and Amber felt a little bit of warmth for the other girl, but one look down at Li's very petite frame and she knew it was a rather misguided suggestion. Amber was slight herself, but the Anglo-Chinese girl was built like a pixie- and about a head and a half shorter than she was.

"Thanks, Li," Amber said, genuinely meaning it. "But don't know how that'd work out."

Li shrugged. "Offer's there if you want it."

They'd reached the top of the beach by this stage. Amber pointedly positioned herself in the group as far away from Hex as was possible, and Li, in an offer of solidarity, stood next to her. Allison waved past their heads, back down at the beach where Joe was pushing the inflatable off again, and they all turned to watch him depart. That was it. The so called 'opportunity' that they'd all found themselves in, one way or another, had officially begun.

"Home sweet home," Allison announced as they reached the edge of the sand. She spread her arms wide, indicating the two story wooden building in front of them. "Beach on your doorstep. Doesn't get better than that, hey?"

Well, yes, it did- in numerous ways, actually, that didn't include sandy feet, sandy hallways, sandy sheets- but there was no telling that to the blissful supervisor.

There were a mere matter of metres (of sandy, patchy grass to boot) between the top of the beach and the house- a very literal 'beach front' address. The building was in a serious need of a coat of paint; the one it had on currently was a flaking mess of indeterminate colour lain over a white base coat that seemed to have been applied via a toddler armed with a toothbrush. There was no front door, just a large hole smack bang in the middle of the building. Whether there had been a door there at some stage or not, none of them could guess, but the island's criminal fraternity mustn't have been too active if such a basic level of home security didn't strike Allison as a necessity.

Or, maybe, it was just that there wasn't anything inside worth stealing. Or even borrowing.

"Mess hall to the left," Allison announced with a flourish in said direction as the teenagers crowded into the building behind her. She sent an equally flamboyant wave to her right, nearly knocking Paulo across the back of the head. "Rec room."

The aforementioned areas took up one side each of the entire ground floor. With the 'mess hall'- a rather grand name for an average size room containing just two tables and a wooden bench running along each long side- to the left, they could deduce that the smaller, obviously newer building literally tacked onto that side of the exterior wall housed the kitchen. Li took a glance into the rec room as they passed it, Allison already hurrying up the steep staircase that rose up before them, leading to the second floor. The rec room was a simple space with a clunking box of a TV set on a low table up against the far wall, and a couple of couches that appeared to have just been tossed in after it with little regard for what people would actually be trying to see while they were sitting on them. A leaning row of shelves on the back wall held a few books and knickknacks, and an entire section was dedicated to a pile of board games.

At the top of the stairs, the group crowded awkwardly together on the small landing. Allison struggled with the sticky latch on the door to their left. "The dorms sleep twenty," she said as she finally got the door to cooperate, and swung it open onto a room that was- actually- quite nice, "so you've got plenty of space. Spread out as much as you wish. Girls on this side." She turned and nodded at the door behind Hex's back. "Boys over there. I'll leave you to get settled."

Hex showed the most enthusiasm Alex had seen so far, but as he, Paulo and Justin straggled in after the quickly moving Londoner, he realised why as he saw Hex scan the walls, find what he was looking for, and unceremoniously toss his bag onto the bottom bed of the bunk closest to one of the room's only power points. Justin put an equal amount of thought into his bed choice, picking a spot right next to the dorm's small bathroom; as he sifted through his bag, producing all manner of toiletries, it became clear that was something of a strategic plan on the Perth lad's part. Paulo didn't seem fussed, wandering about the dorm and casting his brown eyes over everything with a casual ease that Alex was quickly discovering seemed to be how the laid-back Latino operated ninety nine per cent of the time. He settled on a bed over by the far wall, testing the springs with one hand before he sat down. Alex, also, couldn't care less. He found the next available bottom bunk and set his bag beside it; they'd just be in the dorms to sleep, and with the sorts of activities they were supposed to be doing over the course of the program, that was going to come quickly and deeply every night.

Justin had disappeared into the bathroom and Hex was, once again, engrossed in his palmtop. Alex held little interest to whatever it was that the other teen was doing, but Paulo's curiosity was piqued.

He peered at Hex across the main walkway separating the two rows of bunks. "What exactly is that thing for?" he asked.

Hex took a moment to realise he was being asked a question, but even then it warranted only the tiniest flick of his eyes in Paulo's direction before they zoned back in on the screen. "It's a computer," he said flatly, like that answered the question completely. When Paulo and Alex just continued to stare at him, expecting more of an explanation, he sighed and relented; anything for peace. "It's a challenge," he said, and for the first time there was the tiniest bit of excitement in his voice. "Getting past firewalls. Cracking code. Designing programs that can do that better than before. Staying under the radar."

"So you…." Paulo looked to Alex for help with the word he was struggling to grasp in his non-native language.

"Hack. He's a hacker."

Hex frowned at Alex. "You don't have to sound like I just clubbed a baby seal to death in front of you."

"I wasn't. I didn't."

"Whatever."

Alex and Paulo exchanged a glance, shared a shrug, and silently agreed that trying to understand Hex was about as hard as communicating with him was- and worth about as much of the effort. Justin was still in one of the shower cubicles in the bathroom, the water running at such volume and longevity that it had Alex quietly hoping that the house used mains water rather than from a tank. Considering themselves 'settled in', they left the boys' dorm and went to see how the girls were getting on.

The girls, too, had opted to spread out. Li was the only one who'd claimed a top bunk. She'd obviously needed to retrieve something from her luggage because the entire contents of her backpack were spread across the bottom bed of her bunk, a couple of items of clothing spilling over onto the floor. Stella was on the lower bed of the bunk next door, lying on her back and staring up at the boards above her head; she didn't even glance over at the doorway as Alex and Paulo hovered in the open space. Ruby was cross legged on her bed, searching through her bag, but with a lot more care than Li had apparently taken when rifling through her own luggage as there was little in the way of items spread around her. She glanced up at the squeaking floorboards out in the hall and gave a little wave before turning her attention back to the task at hand.

A muttered round of grumbling coming from the girls' bathroom solved the mystery of where Amber was. Unlike Justin, though, she was more concerned with sorting out her saturated luggage.

Hearing her complaints, Alex stuck his head around the frame. "Can I help with anything?" he asked.

"Unless you happen to have a clothing store, or a time machine, no." She lost a bit of the snappiness as she realised he was being genuinely nice. "Thanks, but I'll just have to rinse it and hang it everywhere."

"That lot done?"

"Yeah."

"Here." He extended his arms and Amber dumped the pile of rinsed and wrung out clothing into them. Alex cringed as the wet material clung to his skin, and he backed out of the bathroom to find somewhere to hang them out. He didn't mention to Amber that the clothing still smelled vaguely of the ocean. That would have been neither welcome nor helpful feedback.

Paulo got passed another armful of clothing and they left Amber to finish the final couple of loads with Li's help. As they carefully picked their way down the staircase, the view of the steps in front of them completely obscured thanks to the mounds of washing, Alex had to ask, "How many clothes does she need? We're here for two weeks."

"I think it is a girl thing," Paulo said. "My little sisters are the same. They go to stay at a friend's house and they pack a different outfit for each day, then another one in case they change their mind, and then spare clothes, just in case. They go for one night and the bag is bigger than they are."

Alex laughed. An only child, he didn't have any sisters to correlate Paulo's deductions with, but looking at Amber's luggage, as well as Stella and Ruby's, he had to admit there did seem to be a pattern. Li was the only one who had travelled light, but he wasn't sure if that was by choice or the fact that she'd just brought what she had on her for the stint in Russia. "Although," he added, recalling the amount of stuff that Justin had brought with him, "I don't know if it's just a girl thing."

They found a washing line out around the back of the building, but with nothing to put the sodden pile of clothing on while they were hanging them up, one at a time, they had to improvise. Paulo's arms became a makeshift washing basket, and took the full pile of saturated materials as Alex hung them out, one at a time. Li staggered out to join them not long after, with an equal amount of washing and a message from Allison that they were all to get their arses into gear and meet her in the mess hall. With two pairs of hands, they knocked over the last bit of washing hanging and headed back inside, plucking at their respective t-shirts which had turned as wet as the ones Amber had handed them to put on the line.

Allison was at the head of the closest table to the doorway, drumming her fingers on the wood. Amber appeared from upstairs as Alex, Paulo and Li slipped onto one of the benches; she took the closest seat next to Ruby, and the now completely assembled group watched their supervisor expectantly.

"Figured we'd get our feet wet before a late lunch," she announced, bending down out of sight for a moment before she straightened up, a heavy box in her hands that she dumped onto the tabletop in front of her. She pulled out a snorkel and brandished it at Paulo, closest to her left. "Who's up for a dip?"