Wicked Games (5 page)

“Team Four.”

I clenched my gut, and then took a breath in surprise. Wait, that was the other team. Why was someone voting for them? We were terrible.

Chip pulled out the next slate, then turned it around so we could all see it. “Team Four.”

It didn’t make sense...did it? I watched Shanna’s impassive face, Ginger’s, Jody’s...and they all wore the same inexpressive look.

“Team Four.”

Someone’s mouth curled up slightly, and it struck me. Of course. It was blindingly obvious now. They wanted to keep us here because we sucked. We couldn’t work together – which made us no threat. And Team Four, because they were marginally more competent than us, would go home.

“Team Four,” Chip continued, flipping over another slate, and then another. “Team Four. Team Four. Five out of nine votes...that’s enough.” He nodded at Team Four’s shocked faces and banged a gavel against a coconut. “Endurance Island has passed Judgment. Your time here is over.” He turned and glanced over at myself and Dean. “You are safe for one more round. Head back to camp.”

Stunned, I glanced over at Dean to see his expression. He seemed just as shocked as I was.

And here I’d thought we’d get voted out first because we were the worst team out there. The worst team possible. Just the opposite was true – we were going to be kept around as dead weight, as a safe bet.

Even though I wasn’t supposed to, I smiled a little. I’m pretty sure Dean did too.

You know, if I didn’t want to wring her neck on a constant basis, I’d say Abby is a really cute girl. More of a Mary Ann than a Ginger, but I’ve always had a thing for Mary Ann. – Dean Woodall, Day 3

~*~

As soon as we got back to camp, Dean tossed his bag onto the sand. “I’m going to take a walk,” he said, and turned away before I had a chance to answer.

I sat down my bag and relaxed in the warm sand for a few minutes, wiggling my toes in the grains. I glanced backward at our small camp, and my spirits deflated. We had a fire pit, but no fire. I had a makeshift platform for a bed, but no cover. We didn’t have anything to eat, or drink.

Some paradise.

I found a couple of coconuts by trekking through the woods, but discovered that Dean had taken the axe with him. Stomach grumbling, throat dry, I realized I didn’t even know where the well was. With no way to eat the meager food, and not quite ready to delve into my peanut butter stash yet, I decided to work on my shelter.

All I really needed to make my small shelter complete was some sort of cover to protect from the wind (and rain, if I should be so unlucky). I decided on a small A-frame, since that seemed the easiest to make, and set about to creating it. The wood was easy enough to find, though I didn’t have anything to lash it together with...I ended up using my pink string bikini to hold the frame together. Like I was going to wear that. Shelter was far more important. I dove into my task with single-minded determination.

By the time I glanced up, the sun was going down, I was covered in sweat and bug bites, and I hadn’t given a single thought to making fire. But my small shelter was done! I felt a sense of pride as I looked at the small thing, and glanced over at the blanket that stuck out of Dean’s pack with a smug sense of pride. One of us would be sleeping well tonight, and even though he had a blanket, I had a shelter.

I gathered some wood and tinder to make a fire, but the sun was too low into the sky and I couldn’t see what I was doing – I was mostly guessing at this point anyhow. Dean was still nowhere to be seen, and I stared longingly at my coconuts, still covered in the tough green casing. I could try and split one against a fallen tree, but if I busted it, I’d lose all the good milk inside it. Even though I was trembling with hunger, I forced myself to wait, cradling it in my arms and sliding into my shelter with my backpack to wait for Dean’s return.

I must have fallen asleep at some point – I started awake when I felt something warm and heavy touch my feet. “What—“

“Take my blanket,” Dean said in a gruff voice, shoving it onto my legs. “Your teeth are chattering so hard I can’t sleep.”

I hadn’t realized how cold I was until he’d tossed the blanket over me, and I snuggled under it gratefully. “What about you?” I asked sleepily. “My shelter isn’t big enough for both of us.”

“Don’t worry about me. I can’t sleep anyhow,” Dean said, and I heard him walking away.

Morning came when I could no longer deny the gnawing hollow of my stomach with sleep. I crawled out of my shelter, coconut in hand, staring blearily up at the sky. Still morning, but not early. The sun was high.

Dean sat a distance away on the sand, his shoulders rolled slightly as he hunched over something. He looked...tired. Even from this angle. It gave me a twinge of guilt to see that, and I approached slowly with my coconut in hand. Part of me wanted to hide it, but he’d been generous enough to share his blanket with me – the least I could do is offer to share my food.

If I had to.

He didn’t glance over at me as I approached, fixated on his task, and I peered over his shoulder. He had sticks in hand, his shoelaces tied to a bowed stick and was trying to rub them together to make fire. He was doing it completely wrong. Judging from the sweat on his forehead, he’d also been at it for a while.

My stomach growled and I decided to skip pointing out the obvious, moving around him and looking for the axe. It sat on the far side of his left leg, half covered in sand a few feet away, and I moved to pick it up. “Morning.”

He grunted something that might have been a hello, not looking up from his task. With the bow and string, he sawed back and forth on another stick of wood, obviously trying to make fire. Doing a damned pitiful job of it too.

I hefted the axe and examined my coconut, trying to determine the best way to open it. I had no friggin clue. After a moment, my hunger won out and I simply dropped it on the ground a fair distance away and lifted the axe.

“You’re going to hurt yourself,” Dean said behind me. “Especially if you hold the axe like that.”

I bristled at that and turned to glare at him. “I’m starving and this coconut is going into my stomach in the next five minutes, or I am going to have to go after small woodland creatures with this axe. Got it?”

I could have sworn that his mouth twitched at that. “I saw the other coconut you left out for me last night – thanks.” He stood up and brushed the sand off of his swim trunks and moved over to stand beside me, his hand out for the axe. “Let me do it.”

A scowl touched my face, and I glared at him even harder, hugging the axe to me. “Is this some sort of macho bullshit?”

“No, this is a I-really-don’t-want-to-have-to-bandage-you-up sort of bullshit. It took me forever to figure out how to crack mine open, and your hands are shaking. Now give it to me or you’re going to hurt yourself.”

Reluctantly, I handed over the axe. He had a point, and my hands were indeed shaking like leaves. I moved back a couple of feet so he could split open my coconut for me, but still hovered nearby, watching closely. I didn’t want to take my eyes from it, for fear that this was a trick and he’d run off and eat my food.

But it seemed that I was more suspicious than he was. With easy, sure movements, he peeled the green husk from the coconut and used one tip of the axe to chop a hole at the top of the coconut, and then held it out to me. “Drink that. When you’re done drinking it, I’ll crack it open for you.”

With overjoyed fingers, I snatched the nut from his hands and raised it to my mouth. The first sweet mouthful touched my lips and I wanted to pass out at the sheer heaven of it. Wet and sugary, it was the best thing I’d ever tasted. I took another thirsty gulp and then glanced over guiltily at Dean. It took everything I had to hold out the coconut and offer him a drink. “Did you want some?”

He waved me off. “Nah. I had three of them this morning.”

“Three?” I sputtered, anger surging past my guilt. “Where did you get three?”

Dean gave me an odd look, the I’m-stuck-here-with-the-crazy-girl glance I’d come to recognize so well in the past two days. “We’re on a tropical island. They’re everywhere. You can have three for breakfast if you want, too.”

Right. I hadn’t realized. Hunger was making me faint – and stupid. Of course there were coconuts on the island. I didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me to look for more. Exhaustion, I supposed. We had rice, too – once we figured out how to boil it.

I tipped my head back and finished draining the coconut, disappointed when it was empty and I had to hand it back. A moment later, Dean split it with an easy crack of the axe, and handed the two halves back to me. I crammed the thick white meat into my mouth as fast as I could. Oh god, it was so good and my stomach was so empty.

Dean moved back to his fire building supplies and took up the bow again, his shoulders setting in the same resigned stance that I’d seen before. I said nothing as I scooped and ate, scooped and ate. He picked up the bow and begin to saw at the wood again, the sticks twisting back and forth with great speed...and little results.

When I’d pried the last ounce of coconut from the empty husk and licked my fingers clean – gritty sand and all – I watched Dean for a moment more. His face was dripping with sweat, his movements exhausted but steady.

“You’re doing it wrong,” I decided to blurt out despite my better judgment.

He lifted his head, squinted at me and swiped at his forehead with one hand. His mouth set in a hard line. “What do you mean, I’m doing it wrong?”

I crawled over in the sand, moving to the other side, and pushed his hands away from the fire-making implements so I could study them easier. It was obvious to me where he’d gone wrong. “Here,” I said, and pointed at his bottom stick, where he’d carved a small hole to catch the spark. “You need some tinder and then cut a notch here for the ember.”

Dean tried to take it back from me. “Listen, I have—“

I held it away from him. “Can you just trust me and do it, already?”

We glared at each other for a few moments, and then he got up and headed down the beach to get a palm leaf. By the time he returned, I had a notch cut into the wood and began to set everything back up again – wood, coconut fluff for tinder, and the leaf itself. I set everything in place and then handed him the bow again. “You want to do it, or do you want me to?”

“By all means,” he said with a gesture. “Go ahead.”

Clearly he expected me to fail. I snorted at that and positioned the bow, then set to work.

If you’ve ever made a fire out of sticks, well, you know it’s not an easy task. You have to get the friction going really well, and that means sawing very hard, which also means sawing very fast. My arm was screaming after about thirty seconds, but I wasn’t about to give up. Instead, I ignored the sweat beading on my brow, bit my lip, and continued to continually move the bow back and forth, trying to coax a spark from the implements.

And after what seemed like eternity, a small plume of smoke rose. “You got it!” Dean yelled in my ear, and leaned in to blow on the small kernel of fire. It flared and we hastily shoved the fire-making sticks aside, adding more bits of dried coconut husks to try and keep it going. And when it was a real flame, Dean wrapped the entire thing in the palm leaf and carried it back to our fire pit, placing the smoking bit at the bottom of the wood pile with delicate hands. I followed behind him, wiping my brow.

“How did you know?” He glanced over at me, then turned back to blow on the flame some more.

“Know what?” I said. “How to build the fire?”

He shook his head, not taking his eyes off the firepit as he fed the flickering flame more and more tinder, and small sticks of wood. “I’ve been trying since last night. I rubbed those sticks for so long and so hard I thought my arms would fall off, and you managed to do it in twenty minutes.”

I moved closer to the building fire, pleased that he’d been so struck by my efforts. “I reviewed a book for a celebrity survivalist once. Very big deal for the publisher, and the guy was a total asshole. He wrote it himself instead of having his ghostwriter do it, or so he told me. Anyhow, he was a real jerk, so I hired a wilderness survival guide and we went through each ‘survival’ tip in the guide. And I gave him an “F”.” I nodded at the fire, my mouth curving into a smile in remembrance. “He got the whole fire-making thing wrong too. Same reason – that stupid notch at the bottom.”

Dean shook his head at me, his mouth not quite curving into a smile. “You just love proving people wrong, don’t you Abby?”

I didn’t respond, but I didn’t need to. The smile on my face was enough. It felt good to smile after three days of complete and utter misery, and I got a funny, warm feeling in my stomach when Dean smiled back, his own mouth moving into a slow and devastating curve.

God, why did I have to get stuck with such a beautiful – and arrogant – man?

To distract him from the look he was casting in my direction, I nodded at the fire. “I can take care of it.”

Dean glanced over at the stump with our Tribal Summons. “We have mail, you know.”

I groaned at that. “Again today?”

He nodded. “Probably some sort of reward challenge. The boat should be here soon.” He glanced over at me, blue eyes focused on my face, so vivid against his dark tan. “I think we need to have a serious talk before we go, however.”

I wanted to groan at that. We were being civil adults for the moment, and it was a nice change. I didn’t want to go back to hating him just yet. It was far too exhausting. “Do we have to?”

“Look. We’re both here because we want to win. I think we need to reconsider our...tactics.”

I had to smile reluctantly at that. “What, you mean screaming at each other is not exactly going to get us to the end?”

A hint of a smile tugged at his mouth as well. “Something like that. We need to work together if we’re going to make it to the very end. If we keep ending up at the bottom of the heap, we’re going to get knocked off, no matter how much of a train wreck we seem to be.”

I nodded at that. He had a very good point.