Brinkley sat at the edge of her log in anticipation. She had her hands clasped in front of her, ready to dart out into the jungle as soon as the challenge started.
Dammit. She was going to have to follow Brinkley and figure out where she was going to find food. That wasn’t necessarily cheating. It was more like protecting the group from some toxic grub that she was likely to find and attempt to cook for their midday meal.
Ky ignored Harper and replied, “Well? What are you waiting for? May the best woman win!”
Brinkley took off like someone had lit a fire under her ass. But instead of heading for the more obvious place, the jungle behind the barn, Brinkley sprinted toward the small, stagnant pond behind their cabin.
Morgan trailed her by a good ten feet, but she didn’t let her out of her sight. She watched from behind a tree as Brinkley waded into the pond up to her knees, then stood still for several minutes.
She wondered if Brinkley had completely lost her mind. Maybe she wasn’t hunting for food at all. Maybe she had waded out into the pond to contemplate life, or to cool off her feet, or to take a leak.
Suddenly, in one swift motion, Brinkley reached down into the water. She pulled her hand out and held up a fish the size of her forearm. Holy shit! Brinkley was like Bear Grylls in an adorable Midwesterner’s body. Give her a few more minutes, and she was going to be drinking her own purified urine for survival.
Brinkley held her flopping fish up like a trophy and raced back toward the campfire. Presumably to cook up a delicious meal in under three minutes that would win Ky over and guarantee her a spot in the finale. She was so screwed. There was no way she was going to be able to copy Brinkley’s parlor trick and pull a fish out of a pond.
Behind her, she heard a twig snap. She looked back and saw Harper crouched behind a tree gathering berries into the hem of her soiled Chanel halter-top.
“Harper!” She called to her in a loud stage whisper. “What are you doing?” She was desperate for any advice at that point, even if it came from the most citified girl in the competition.
Harper glared back at her. “Obvy, I can’t tell you that. We can’t work in teams, remember?”
Okay, so Harper wasn’t over the little altercation they’d had at the campfire the night before. But who cared? Who needed her input anyway? The odds were that she was taking her sweet time picking poisonous berries that were going to give her an unsightly rash and make Ky retch for the rest of the afternoon.
She made a mental note not to eat anything Harper laid a finger on in the food challenge.
She took a moment to scan her surroundings. There was the pond in front of her, which obviously wasn’t going to do her any good since she couldn’t fish with her bare hands, like some people she knew. There were the berry bushes to her right, but it looked like Harper had already picked them clean.
And there were quite a few squirrel-like rodents in the trees, but she didn’t think that she was ready to kill anything for food just yet. Don’t get her wrong. It wasn’t like she was a vegetarian or anything, but she didn’t normally have to see a face on her food before she ate it. It would be way too creepy to kill and skin some kind of exotic squirrel just to win the food challenge for the day.
Then she remembered something she had seen on a Discovery Channel special at two in the morning a few months ago when she couldn’t sleep. If you dug at the roots of trees, you could normally find some soft, sweet roots to cook and mash up like potatoes. It was worth a shot. At the very least, whatever she cooked wasn’t going to kill anybody.
“Mmm!” Ky nodded with encouragement as he tried to choke down another bite of the “earth salad” that Sarah M. had prepared for him. From what Morgan could see, it looked like a bunch of grass and twigs mixed together on a plate.
But Ky was a trouper. He’d tried one of the berries that Harper had brought him, and amazingly enough, he didn’t drop dead on the spot. And, of course, Ky had raved about how delicious the fish that Brinkley cooked was. And he’d even made a few lame jokes about the fishing date they’d gone on the night before.
Morgan noted that Ky was nice enough to take a few bites of the watery, cooked roots that she had served to him, and now there he was, eating a pile of dirt and leaves just so he wouldn’t hurt Sarah M.’s feelings. The guy could be a little too cheesy at times, but his heart was in the right place.
Cori, Kendra, and Lindsay stood sheepishly at the sidelines. They were the only women that hadn’t been able to pull something or other out of the ground to serve to Ky for lunch. So there they stood. Waiting for the competition to be over so that their fate would be announced.
Ky stood to address the group. “Ladies, you always surprise me. All of those island delicacies were absolutely delicious. And Brinkley, I think that the award definitely goes to you. You made a really great dish that I’d expect to eat in a restaurant! We’re not doing a one-on-one date again tonight, but I do have a special surprise for you later on.”
Brinkley jumped forward to give Ky a hug and kiss him on the cheek. Then Ky turned to the three women standing at the edge of the campfire.
“Ladies, I’m sorry to say this, but since you weren’t able to meet the challenge, you’re out of the competition. I’ll let you take a moment to say goodbye, but then you’re going to have to pack your things and leave. I’m sorry.”
Maybe she had imagined it, but Cori looked like she was trying to hold back a smile and Kendra looked like she didn’t care one way or another if she stayed or left this godforsaken island.
“Thank God!” Lindsay exclaimed. “No offense, honey, but if I didn’t get a good meal in the next few days, I was going to go absolutely bat shit crazy!”
Ky didn’t say a word. He was probably thinking the same thing. Lindsay, Kendra, and Cori took a moment to say goodbye to Ky and the rest of the women. Morgan didn’t know if she should have felt relieved or jealous.
On the one hand, she was in the final four with Harper, Brinkley, and Sarah M., a place she’d never imagined she would be. On the other hand, their living conditions didn’t seem like they would be getting better anytime soon. How she was going to live on white rice and pond water for another two weeks?
Chapter 11
Harper
Harper’s Confessional: I’m just really glad those other bitches are gone, you know? What? It’s true. Cori was totally weak sauce, and Kendra had no personality. I thought that maybe Lindsay was going to give me a run for my money, but she’d already given up by the time she figured out we had to starve on a white rice diet. I don’t know about these other girls, but I’m totally in my element, as far as the food goes. Don’t get me wrong. I hate this shitty campsite, but I could live on, like, 300 calories a day for at least two weeks.
Harper smoothed down her stringy, sweaty, greasy hair, and straightened her bandanna.
“So what do you think this group date tonight is all about? God, I’d kill for a hot shower right now. I’m thinking of taking a dip in the pond behind the cabin just to get a little bit of this grime off. But that may actually make the problem worse because then I’ll smell like fish,” Harper mused.
She was talking to Sarah M., who didn’t seem to be listening. She had moved out of her original cabin with Cori, may she rest in peace. Harper couldn’t help the grin spreading across her face. To tell the truth, she was more than happy to see all of those weak bitches pack their bags and go. They were a total waste of space.
Sure, Cori was exotic and beautiful and all, but she never contributed anything to the group’s conversations. And Kendra had totally given up on life over the past few days. Maybe the starvation was affecting her brain, but she was like a shell of her former self. She kept going on and on about how she wished she could sleep in a normal bed, take a shower, and go out for drinks with her friends. She definitely couldn’t hack it.
&nb
sp; It was pretty easy to say goodbye to Lindsay since Harper had never liked her. Sure, she had confided in Lindsay a few times about their strategy for the competition. But she only did it to stay on her good side and get any dirt that she could about what Ky was doing and thinking at any given moment.
And clearly, it had paid off. She was one of the final four in the competition. Not like she was surprised. And look at who she was up against: Brinkley, Morgan, and Sarah M., her new, ultra-boring roommate who apparently had a hearing problem.
“Sarah, did you hear what I said? What are you doing over there?” Harper drummed her nails impatiently.
Sarah M. had all of her clothes spread out on her saggy twin bed in front of her. She was tying pieces of clothing into little bundles and putting them in various places throughout the cabin.
“Oh, this? I’m just hiding all my valuables so that the camp workers don’t steal them or try to mug me or something.” The paranoid look in her eyes made Harper squirm.
“Valuables? What the hell are you talking about?” This girl is losing her fucking mind!
Harper knew for a fact that Sarah M. hadn’t brought anything valuable with her. Unless she was under the impression that her cheap, gold costume jewelry that she wore on group dates could be pawned for more than $20.
And what was with her paranoid act, anyway? Sarah M. was acting like the campsite was being run by a gang of terrorists, when really it was two middle-aged Balinese men with smiles as friendly as Santa Claus’s. The thought of the camp workers breaking into their cabins to steal their “valuables” was laughable.
But Sarah M. wasn’t convinced. “I saw the same thing on 20/20 right before I left. You have to take this seriously, Harper,” Sarah M. said in defense when Harper smirked back at her.
Sarah M. continued. “Okay, listen to this. On 20/20, there was a group of girls that decided to go to some rustic campsite in Asia for their spring break. They wanted to do something different than the usual Mexico resort vacation, you know? So these girls thought that they were in really good hands. They researched the campsite, they read Google reviews, and they told all of their friends and family exactly where they were.”
Sarah M. paused dramatically. Harper rolled her eyes. “So, when the girls’ families hadn’t heard from them in over two weeks, they started to panic. One of the parents flew down to Asia himself to exactly where the campsite was supposed to be, and there was no sign of it. Like not even a trace. It was like it never existed. And the worst part was, the authorities in that little country didn’t even care and wouldn’t do anything about it.”
Seriously? Harper felt fed-up with Sarah M.’s paranoia. “Have you even considered the fact that everything we do is being filmed? If you want to know the honest truth, I think you’re kind of delusional.”
Sarah M.’s face fell. She finished packing up the last few bundles of her clothing in silence and threw them under her bed.
Harper added, “By the way, under the bed isn’t really that good of a hiding place. That’s probably the first place I’d look if I wanted to steal your shitty costume jewelry.” She laughed unkindly.
“God, Harper, sometimes you can be such a bitch.”
Sarah M. stormed out of the cabin and slammed the flimsy screen door behind her. Which still didn’t answer Harper’s original question. How was she supposed to prepare for the group adventure date that night if she couldn’t take a shower? Pond it was.
She gathered up a few of her least expensive toiletries to take down to the pond with her. There was no point in wasting her $200 body butter with flakes of actual gold (used by Cindy Crawford) in some murky pond in the middle of the wilderness.
As she approached the stagnant pond behind the cabins, she realized that Morgan had already beaten her to the punch. Her former roommate, good riddance, was submerged up to her neck in the murky water and appeared to be combing her hair with a branch.
“So you decided to go for a bath au natural, too, huh?” Harper said.
Morgan turned around, startled. “Uh, yeah, but I don’t know if you want to come in here. This doesn’t really seem like your kind of thing, unless you want to get covered in a layer of algae and get a branch stuck in your hair.”
“Oh, I thought you were brushing your hair with a twig. It seemed like something you would do,” Harper couldn’t resist. Morgan just made it too easy.
Morgan forced a smile, clearly not amused. “Right, I seem like the type of person that brushes my hair with branches because I have absolutely no clue about personal hygiene?” She stared back and waited for an answer.
What? How had this conversation already gotten out of control? It seemed like everything she said was misinterpreted. But, whatever. She had nothing to prove to Morgan.
And the girl was clearly clueless about makeup, hair care, and especially how to dress. If Morgan wore one more grungy pair of cut-off shorts, she would rip them off her body as a tough love intervention.
She shrugged. She started to peel off her ragged clothing down to nothing more than her black lace La Perla demi bra and matching panty set.
Morgan laughed. “Seriously? Are you seriously wearing ridiculous matching lingerie in the jungle?”
“What? I have to at least put a little effort into my appearance, you know, in case things move even further with Ky.”
Morgan raised an eyebrow and gave her a sly smile in return.
Morgan didn’t need to know that she and Ky hadn’t done anything more than kiss. As long as Morgan thought that Ky was desperately trying to get in her pants, she’d respect her place in the competition.
Harper carefully took off her bandanna and laid it on a rock next to the pond. Her hair was flat and plastered against the side of her head. She felt completely naked. Not because she actually was naked, since she was only wearing lingerie, but because she hadn’t gone without her $1200 extensions in over three years.
Without her hair, she felt lost. Like a little girl whose parents had dropped her off on the first day of school without any clue about where to go.
“Um, so should I just, like, get in the water?” Her voice shook, even though the water was as warm as a bath.
Morgan stared back at her. “Yeah, that’s usually what you do if you want to bathe.”
“Hey, give me a break here. I’ve never even gone camping before. I just want to clean up a little bit before our group date tonight.” She ran a finger under her eye to check that her mascara hadn’t smudged.
The two women sat in silence, submerged up to their necks in the water. Harper finally decided to speak, “So what do you think the date tonight is all about?”
“You know, I really have no idea. I’m dying to find out. It seems like this competition is getting stranger and stranger. I wouldn’t be surprised if they took all of us out even farther into the jungle and made us try to survive on our own.” Morgan barked as she attempted to laugh.
Harper felt her jaw drop. She hadn’t even considered that. If things got any worse than they were, she didn’t know if she could hack it.
After seeing what she suspected was horror on her face, Morgan backpedaled. “But really, there’s probably nothing to worry about. I don’t see how things could get any worse than they actually are. So we’ll probably all go down to the beach to have dinner together or something.”
Harper nodded, feeling a little better. She scooped up a handful of slimy water and splashed it into her hair. There. She’d done it. It was like ripping off a Band-Aid.
After a few more splashes of green water, she began to feel more comfortable. Surprisingly, stagnant pond water that reeked of old fish was pretty refreshing when she hadn’t bathed in more than four days.
The women met around the campfire just as the sun was setting.
Harper felt more relaxed after was
hing off the sweat that had accumulated over the past few days. And she was pleasantly surprised to find that even her snuggest miniskirt was now much looser. It was probably thanks to the massive quantities of white rice that she’d been eating. An excellent diet, if she did say so herself.
She plopped down onto a log next to the campfire. If they had some time to kill before Ky arrived, she might as well make herself comfortable. Brinkley took a seat next to her. She almost had to do a double take.
Brinkley looked . . . terrible. But she had a huge smile plastered across her dirty face.
“What’s with you?” Harper asked. “You look like you’ve just been mud wrestling. Didn’t you go to the pond and try to clean up today?”
Brinkley smiled back. “Actually, I didn’t have time. I spent the afternoon hiking by myself on the little path that leads down to the ocean. Would you believe that I actually saw spider monkeys in the trees? Or at least I think they were spider monkeys. I’m going to have to look up exactly what they were as soon as I go home and get on my computer.”
“That’s interesting,” Harper said unconvincingly.
Brinkley was an anomaly. She was always happy, she didn’t give a shit about what she looked like, and, still, here she was in the final four. Harper still had no doubt in her mind that she was going to win the competition. But when she thought about the fact that Ky had kept Brinkley around for one reason or another, it really threw her off her game.
Was he looking for that raw, natural, outdoorsy type of girl that walked around with mud smeared across her face? Was that the angle that she needed to play to secure the top spot as the winner?
Adventure to Love Page 13