Chloe’s jaw clenched. She turned to stare at the makeshift coffin and launched into a passionate lament. ‘Cursed be the hand that made these fatal holes! Cursed be the heart that had the heart to do it!’ Her voice was pure hate.
‘It’s like she’s completely choked up with fury and grief,’ Cassie whispered.
Benjamin entered using two branches for crutches, his face twisted into an evil smirk. He’d brought a costume — a dark blue robe that fell to his feet, a frilled white shirt and doublet, and socks that stretched to the knee. He must have sourced the items from the school’s theatre wardrobe.
‘Wow, he’s actually made himself a hump,’ Lindsay said, staring at the back of his robe.
Chloe became hysterical as Benjamin approached, begging God to avenge her husband’s death. ‘Either heaven with lightning strike the murderer dead, or earth, gape open wide and eat him quick, as thou dost swallow up this good king’s blood, which his hell-govern’d arm hath butchered,’ she pleaded.
Benjamin looked bemused by Chloe’s curses. As she circled him, her eyes narrowed in fury, he flattered her, calling her the ‘divine perfection of a woman’.
‘And thou unfit for any place but hell,’ Chloe spat at him.
‘Yes, one place else, if you will hear me name it.’
‘Some dungeon,’ Chloe flung back.
‘Your bedchamber.’ Benjamin ran a finger across Chloe’s collarbone and down towards her breastbone.
Wolf whistles erupted round the campsite. Everyone leant forward, itching to hear more.
‘This is so good!’ Lindsay said. ‘I mean, I knew Benjamin was a great actor, but Chloe is amazing. Their chemistry is electric.’
I glanced at Hayden. The same could have been said of us only weeks ago. Had those fireworks fizzled out into a mere glow of friendship?
I tried to focus on the drama. Benjamin pressed behind Chloe, whispering in her ear, then moved his lips down the side of her neck.
‘Your beauty was the cause of that effect, your beauty: which did haunt me in my sleep to undertake the death of all the world, so I might live one hour in your sweet bosom.’
‘Mr Quinten, shouldn’t you have warned us about sexual references?’ Travis called out. ‘I’m filing a complaint. This trip has corrupted my mind.’
Benjamin and Chloe kept their focus, even with the enthusiastic shouts and off-colour comments. They finished to huge applause, the cheers for Chloe loudest of all. She was suddenly surrounded by students clapping her on the back and congratulating her. I felt so proud — talk about a turnaround from her position as social pariah.
Hayden turned towards me, smiling, but I couldn’t mask my uneasiness following his comment. What if he asked me what was wrong? Did I have the guts to ask him for his definition of ‘us’? There was no way that wasn’t going to be awkward. And if I got the answer I feared, I’d have to live with it for almost forty-eight hours of camp. I couldn’t do it. Before Hayden could open his mouth to speak, I made a dash for my cabin. I heard him call after me, but thankfully he didn’t try to follow.
Half an hour later, Scott was standing outside our cabin, giving Cassie a very extended goodnight kiss. The contrast between Cassie’s situation and mine really hit home. I’d been daydreaming about Hayden kissing me goodnight outside my cabin, and now here I was, hiding from him inside it!
‘He’s really giving it his all,’ Sara said, her body half-hanging over the edge of her bunk so she could peer out the door. I was slightly worried she’d fall to the floor.
‘You can kind of see the deep tongue-thrusting even from here,’ Jelena said dryly as she fastidiously cleansed, toned and moisturised her face.
She was sitting on her queen-sized mattress, her magnifying mirror balanced upon her knees. The mattress was so huge that she’d had to wait till we were in our bunks to inflate it. The thing took up all of the floor space leading to the door and its sides even edged up the walls slightly.
Lindsay, Sara and I all grabbed our pillows, and only just managed to stifle our laughter with them.
‘Jelena, he’ll hear you!’ I whispered frantically. ‘Shhh!’
‘Oh, he needs to hear it.’ Jelena didn’t lower her voice even fractionally. ‘That type of thing is akin to assault.’
‘Okay, move along, young man.’ Mr Quinten’s stern voice came floating into the cabin. ‘Boys in one cabin, girls in another. Anyone in violation of the rule will be suspended. You are dangerously close to the entrance of that cabin.’
‘Sorry, sir.’ Scott sounded mortified. ‘Night, baby.’
‘We witnessed the atrocity,’ Jelena said to Cassie as she came into the cabin and shut the door behind her. ‘I’d wondered if you were exaggerating the extent of Señor Stabby’s roaming tongue, but it’s obvious that he’s not picking up on your subtle hints.’
Cass scrambled across Jelena’s mattress and sat down on her bunk, below Lindsay’s. She looked slightly depressed. ‘He’s wearing a T-shirt with our picture on it in front of all the guys! He’s amazing — except for that one thing.’
‘That one thing’s a pretty big part of a relationship,’ Lindsay said. She was lying on her stomach, her arms propped up on her pillow. ‘If you guys kiss three times a day, five days a week on average, that’s seven hundred and eighty kisses a year you have to deal with. If you aren’t enjoying them, that’s not a small problem.’
‘Can you endure seven hundred and eighty stabs of the tongue a year?’ Jelena gave her reflection careful examination. ‘Probably more, ’cause he likely stabs ten to fifteen times a kiss, right? Or am I overestimating?’
Cassie gave her a look. ‘So you’re saying I should be totally superficial and end it because Scott’s a bit off base technique-wise?’
This conversation was making me feel sick. It was too close to home. What if this was why Hayden was using the dreaded ‘f’ word? Now he’d got his stitches out, the likelihood of being lip-lashed by me again had dampened his desire? What if he was sitting in his cabin, asking his friends if he’d made the right choice, and they were responding like Jelena and Lindsay?
‘No-one’s ending anything.’ Jelena put her mirror back in her bag and reached for her body moisturiser. ‘Not Lindsay, and not you. Those T-shirts were expensive. Don’t make them out of date till I give the okay.’
Cassie looked totally exasperated. ‘I don’t want to break up with him. You’re the one saying it’s the only option.’
‘There are other options,’ Jelena said. ‘Just give me time to come up with something.’
Cass let out a sigh and crawled into bed.
‘Do you guys think that maybe Hayden just wants to be friends with me?’ I asked softly.
Part of me hadn’t even wanted to put my fear into actual words, but I needed to know what they thought.
‘What? No. Are you crazy?’ Cassie gave me a weird look. ‘Is this why you ran away earlier? Hayden wanted me to come get you, but I told him you were probably asleep.’
Lindsay frowned. ‘Why are you worried?’
‘She’s worried because he hasn’t spent more than two minutes with her since last week,’ Jelena said. ‘Any girl would be.’
My stomach dropped exactly like it had when I’d lost my footing on the ropes. You could always rely on the brutal truth from Jelena. If she thought I had reason to worry …
Sara snorted. ‘Jelena, you’re an idiot!’
‘Aurora, Mr Quinten’s had him virtually enslaved this entire trip,’ Cassie said quickly. ‘It’s not personal. Is there something else you’re worried about?’
‘Tonight, by the campfire, he said that if we hadn’t been cast opposite each other in the play, we’d probably have missed out on being friends. Friends!’ I burst out. ‘We’ve kissed! Twice! Is “friend” what a guy calls a girl after all of that?’
‘Some guys, yes,’ Jelena said.
Sara nodded her agreement. ‘The players.’
‘Hayden is not a player.’ Cassie tossed her pi
llow at Sara. ‘Don’t listen to them, Aurora. Would Hayden really give you a necklace worth hundreds of dollars if he wanted to keep things platonic?’
‘Maybe he’s a very generous friend.’
I honestly didn’t know what to think. The facts were: Hayden was stitch-free and he hadn’t made one move.
Cassie yanked her pillow back from Sara and threw it at me this time. ‘Stop being paranoid! He was probably saying, in muddled-up guy language, “Thank goodness we became friends so I was able to tell you how I feel after four years!”’
‘I don’t know. Maybe he’s changed his mind and is wishing he hadn’t rushed into giving me a little blue box.’
I touched the little x at my throat. It was a bit delicate for camp, but I hadn’t wanted to take it off since he’d given it to me.
Cassie looked around for another pillow.
‘Alright!’ I held up my hands in a surrender gesture. ‘I won’t lose hope. I’ll see what tomorrow brings.’
The night was long. I couldn’t get comfortable on the canvas bed (which was no surprise considering it was pretty much a sling) and despite Cassie’s reassurances, I had hypothetical situations running around my head like a group of joggers doing laps. Not to mention I was obsessing over the fact that the NAD and Ms DeForest were sharing a cabin, along with the other adult volunteers. Obviously you’d assume there’d be no funny business with Mr Quinten around, but you never knew. Ms DeForest was crafty.
I finally dozed off at what felt like two in the morning. At about three, I heard mosquitoes buzzing round my head. I took my pillowcase off my pillow and put it over my head to stop them biting me. At four, I woke up sweating from a nightmare about a minuscule NAD screaming for his life while a giant velvety spider bore down on him. The air in the cabin was stifling; somehow the temperature had gone up since we’d gone to bed. I finally fell asleep as the birds started their dawn chorus.
I woke up to Jelena screaming.
‘My eye!’ she howled, clutching her make-up mirror.
Lindsay sat up in a panic and swung herself out of her bunk. Being half-asleep, she didn’t place her feet properly and landed sprawled on Jelena’s mattress.
‘My beauty is ruined!’ Jelena sounded like the Evil Queen from ‘Snow White’. Her right eye was red and the eyelid swollen. ‘Ruined!’
‘Let me see.’ Sara made Jelena close her eye. ‘It’s a mosquito bite.’
‘I had repellent all over me!’
‘Not on your eyelids, obviously,’ Sara said. ‘They found the one vulnerable spot.’
Jelena burst out crying. ‘No-one’s going to take me seriously. I look like Quasimodo!’
‘Crying will only increase the swelling,’ Sara warned. ‘You need ice.’
‘Fat chance of that in this forsaken place.’ Jelena furiously wiped her eyes. ‘It’s seven in the morning and it’s what, thirty degrees? It’s a joke.’
‘Put this on it.’ Cassie handed Jelena some anti-itch ointment from her pack.
I passed her my medical kit. ‘And take an antihistamine.’
Jelena swallowed the tablet shakily. I’d never seen her like this. She hardly ever cried.
By the time we headed to breakfast at 7.30 am, the temperature gauge on my watch said thirty-four degrees. Jelena was wearing an oversized floppy hat positioned artfully over her swollen eye. I could see she was struggling to pour the long-life milk onto her cereal with half of her vision obscured, so I took the carton from her.
‘Aurora, can I talk to you for a moment?’ Chloe, wearing a floral playsuit, a denim cap and a serious expression, appeared at my side.
Jelena took the carton back from me and waved me away. I led Chloe towards one of the cabins so no-one could overhear.
‘Is everything okay?’ I asked. ‘Don’t you like Benjamin? Has he said something to put you off?’
‘Oh no, I really like him.’ Chloe looked embarrassed now. ‘He was so lovely helping me with the scene last night. It’s like I was transformed into a different person afterwards. Do you know how many people came up to chat to me? I can’t believe it.’
‘Aren’t you attracted to him?’ I was trying to figure out the problem.
Chloe beamed. ‘He’s gorgeous. His eyes and that voice — plus I get tingly whenever he brushes by me.’
‘Well, that’s great.’ Maybe she just wanted to debrief. ‘I can tell he really likes you too.’
‘Well, that’s it.’ She looked worried again. ‘I thought so too. But he’s been totally weird around me since last night. After our performance, when everyone was congratulating us, he wasn’t smiling. And then this morning when I got my cereal and headed over to sit next to him, he was totally silent the whole time. The crunch of my cornflakes was deafening.’ Chloe’s eyes resembled bruised pansies.
‘Maybe he’s tired,’ I said. ‘It was a pretty big day — plus he usually puts a hundred and ten per cent into his performances.’
‘Can you check?’ Chloe asked. ‘I’d hate to think I did something wrong.’
‘No worries.’
This was part and parcel of my role as matchmaker. I headed over to where Benjamin was sitting. His head was in Richard III again.
‘Hey,’ I said as I sat down next to him.
‘Aurora, good timing. This thing with Chloe and me isn’t going to work out, so I need you to break it to her. I don’t want to deal with any uncomfortable discussions.’
‘What?’ I’d understood his words but not where they were coming from. ‘But everyone’s talking about your amazing chemistry after last night!’
‘I’ve just realised she’s not really my type.’
‘But she’s gorgeous. And artistic. And intelligent. And talented.’
An odd expression came over Benjamin’s face at the last word. ‘Yes. Exactly. Very talented. The thing is, I’ve done some hard thinking overnight. My career’s about to take off with this Mr Bubbly thing, and there’s really only room for one dramatic talent in a relationship. I need someone who’s happy to hang in the background while I’m mid-shoot. Someone who’ll run me a bath when I’ve had a long day, and stand to the side when photographers want to take solo shots at a red-carpet event. I don’t think Chloe’s that girl.’
Now it all made sense to me. Benjamin felt threatened after Chloe’s amazing performance. He wasn’t used to sharing the spotlight or the applause. In his eyes, the most desirable woman was a supporting act, not a leading lady.
‘Alright, Benjamin, if that’s what you feel, and you’re a hundred per cent sure you’re happy to lose the chance with Chloe, I’ll have her cross you off the list.’
Benjamin nodded and picked up the play again. I turned away, rolling my eyes. I’d been hoping he’d realise how self-involved he was being, but sadly my original assumptions about his character had been proved right. I headed back to where Chloe was waiting.
She wasn’t alone. Hunter was with her. Wow. I’d told him about Chloe when we first met, and here he was, so keen he hadn’t even waited for an official introduction. I stopped shy of them, not wanting to interrupt.
‘Promise you’ll be my buddy?’ I heard Hunter say. ‘I overheard Mr Quinten saying it’s a three-hour walk. Only first-rate conversation’s going to keep my legs moving for that long.’
Hunter gave me a wink as he went by. Chloe came over to talk to me.
‘Did you find out what’s going on with Benjamin?’
‘He’s not feeling well,’ I said. ‘Bad stomach. He’s worried it’s contagious, so he’s asked you to steer clear for a few days. He’d hate to give it to you.’
He was ill with envy, so the explanation did hold a shade of truth.
‘Oh, okay.’ Chloe looked concerned. ‘It wouldn’t bother me, you know. If I get sick, I get sick. Benjamin helped me yesterday, and I’d be happy to help him if he’s feeling bad.’
‘It’s more male ego,’ I said quickly. ‘He doesn’t want you to see him at less than his best. He begged me to keep you away for
a few days. It’s silly, I know, but maybe we should indulge him. Plus, it seems like Hunter’s set on making you his partner for today.’
Chloe hesitated. ‘I guess so. I mean, I’ve always thought if you care about someone, you stand by them even when they aren’t at their best, but if Benjamin’s really set on riding his bug out alone, I don’t want to be a pest. I’ll go tell Hunter I’ll buddy up with him today.’
After she’d gone, I let out a sigh of relief. I hoped Hunter would prove enough of a distraction to make Chloe lose interest in Benjamin. If she didn’t, I’d have to come up with a nice way to tell her he just wasn’t that into her.
CHAPTER 20
The three-hour walk to our next camp was mostly uphill. An hour in, my watch read thirty-nine degrees and the backs of our shirts were soaked with sweat.
Thankfully Chloe and Hunter didn’t seem too bothered by the heat or the track. Or by Benjamin, who was just ahead of them and muttering about how the dirt and sweat were ruining his complexion for next week’s callback. With the objective of winning a girl gone, Benjamin wasn’t enjoying being trapped in an extreme survival experience.
Chloe and Hunter were completely engrossed in conversation. I couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but judging by their expressions it was deep stuff. Hunter spoke for long periods while Chloe nodded as if her life depended on it. I turned around to check on Jeffrey. He was pulling both Jemima and Ruby up a steep hill.
‘This is like Kokoda,’ Jelena said. The part of her face that wasn’t covered by the hat looked outraged. ‘Their website is seriously misleading. I’m taking it up with Rudy’s superior the moment we get home.’
‘Why don’t you think of it like a really intense cardio class?’ Sara was holding her battery-powered fan in one hand and her face was completely sweat-free.
‘At least there’s music and air conditioning in cardio class,’ Jelena puffed.
‘You plan wisely, I see,’ Johannes said, appearing at Sara’s side. ‘You bring all of the useful things out here into the bush. Many of the other girls were not so sensible.’
Jelena’s jaw tensed. Sara’s refusal to share the hand-held fan with her had proved a sore point already.
How to Convince a Boy to Kiss You Page 25