“Monica, just relax. We’re going to take off your blindfold.”
“No, no, no.” I make my arm move and bat at their hands. “Blindfolds stay on. Rick said.”
A deep laugh rumbles by my other side. “You have permission to lose the blindfold.”
“Rick, it’s you.” I push the side of the mask up, and peek out at him with one eye. “I fell.”
“Yes, you did.”
He slowly pushes the mask up and off my face. Someone immediately swoops in, waving a light back and forth in front of me. I scrunch up my face, because it’s really annoying, but the person holds my eyelid open with a finger. Foiled again.
When the strobe-light wielding medic takes a break, Rick looks up at him. “Is she okay to keep playing?”
“Those are two different questions.” Everything about the man, from the way he tilts his head to the tone of his voice, makes me think he’s posturing for the camera. Sure enough, hunkered down a few feet away is my old buddy, Bruce.
I break out a big smile and wiggle my fingers at him. Even though I can tell he’s trying to stay serious, he lifts his pinky from the camera and wiggles it back at me.
The medic is still talking. “She may have a mild concussion, but I doubt it’s serious. We’ll need to watch her for the next few hours, keep her awake. But I wouldn’t recommend sending her out on this course again.”
“Can we move yet?” At the grumbled question, I notice that the other seven seekers are standing around the course. Rick yells back that they should sit down where they are and keep the blindfolds on.
I look at Rick. “That’s Bob,” I hiss at him. “He’s cranky.”
“Seems that way.”
“And he stole our machete.”
His eyebrow lifts. “We can talk about that later. Right now, we need to get you off the course.”
No, that won’t work. If anything happens to me, then Jessica can’t play. Jessica. There’s something important I need to remember.
“Wait.” I gasp and grab Rick’s wrist before he can stand. “Jessica. She called me Mom. Did you hear?”
An easy smile takes over his face, exposing his dimples and crinkling the skin around his luscious amber eyes. “I heard.”
A sigh puffs out of my lips. “You have such pretty eyes.”
Everybody in the vicinity laughs, including Rick. “Okay, time to get you out of here.”
He walks away and the medics move in. They keep up a constant chatter, telling me that they’re moving me to a stretcher, that they’ll give me fluids through an IV, yadda, yadda, yadda. Meanwhile, Rick is explaining what happened to everyone else, saying that the challenge will continue with the seven remaining teams.
“Sorry, Jess,” he says. “That means you’re out of this one.”
My heart sinks. I wanted to win for her, and instead, I got her thrown out of the challenge. No second place, no parting gifts, no nothing.
Day two on the island is shaping up to be worse than the first. I hate to think what will happen on day three.
15
The medics take me to what is essentially a tent with open sides. I’m propped up against a bed roll, then they get an IV going and give me a cold pack for my forehead. Jess comes over a few minutes later and plunks herself down on the ground beside me.
“I’m supposed to keep you talking so you don’t slip into a coma or something.”
She looks mad enough to spit fire, which would really come in handy back at camp, but right now it just makes me feel worse. “I’m so sorry, Jess.”
Her brows draw together. “For what?”
“For letting you down. If I wasn’t such a klutz, we might have won the challenge.”
She snorts and looks back at the course. “It wasn’t your fault. It was that big guy on the brother/sister team. He’s built like a linebacker. I can’t remember his name.”
“It’s something that sounds like it should be in a sci-fi novel. Ronan? Conan?”
“Payton!” She snaps her fingers. “That’s it. He ran right into you.”
What do you know? She doesn’t blame me. She may even have been worried when it happened, which is why she called me mom. On the other hand, she may have yelled out “Mon” and I misheard. I want to ask her, but I’m not quite sure how to bring it up. Then she starts laughing.
“What’s so funny?”
Jess covers her mouth with her hand until her giggles are under control. “You told Rick he has pretty eyes.”
I drop the cold pack from my forehead because there’s no need for it anymore. Suddenly, my entire body is frozen. “I did what?”
“It’s okay.” She waves her hand as if she’s shooing away a mosquito. Then she slaps her arm, and I realize she really was shooing away a mosquito. “Everybody knows you were talking crazy from your knock on the head. I’m sure he’s already forgotten all about it.”
Except that now I remember Bruce was right there with the camera, which means my ramblings were caught on film forever. Without a doubt, that’s one bit that won’t end up on the cutting room floor.
“Hey, they’re starting again.”
Jess is pointing at the course. All the seekers are standing, the callers are poised and ready. When Rick gives the call to resume, they start yelling and scrambling. Being able to see the seven people stumbling and fumbling their way around the course makes me want to bury myself in the sand.
“Did I look like that?”
Jess purses her lips, then nods. “Pretty much.”
Two days in and I’ve already abandoned any dignity I might have had. I have to remind myself that it’s worth it. My daughter is counting on me and I can’t let a little thing like the fear of looking stupid stop me. After all, it can’t get much more embarrassing than this.
***
In the end, Evelyn and Jasmine win the challenge. They were the last team to collect all three bags, but as it turned out, that was less important than puzzle-solving skills, which they have in abundance.
The medics clear me to return to camp, so I walk along with the others. The Singletons are so ticked that none of them won, they leave as soon as Rick releases us, nearly race-walking away. Jess bounces up to Gracie and Layla, and the three of them start whispering and giggling. Evelyn and Jasmine laugh and talk about winning the first challenge. Right behind them, Sal and Malcolm carry the basket of prizes between them. I bring up the rear, taking it slow and steady.
“Who’d have thought the puzzle would have been the hardest part of that challenge?” Sal says. “Way to go, ladies.”
Evelyn gives a little bow as she walks. “Thank you very much. And thank you for carrying the basket.”
Malcolm smiles. “Our pleasure. Thank you for deciding to share it. Guess that’ll show the people who decided to go it on their own.”
“Did you see how fast they took off?” Jasmine huffs out a breath. “What are they rushing back to? It’s not like the beach is going anywhere.”
A terrible thought crosses my mind. “Does it bother anybody else that they’re alone at camp right now?”
There’s a quiet pause and everyone looks back at me. Then the three girls sprint ahead with Evelyn and Jasmine hot on their tails. Sal and Malcolm walk faster, but the basket is heavy and awkward, so they don’t get too far ahead of me.
When we come around the bend in the path and walk onto our beach, the scene is worse than I expected. With the exception of the floor and the crates, our shelter has been leveled. There’s more yelling going on now than there was during the challenge, and all the voices start to sound alike.
“How could you do something so awful?”
“We didn’t do anything. It was like that when we got back.”
“Oh sure, the wind came in and only knocked over our shelter.”
“You calling me a liar?”
“What does it sound like I’m calling you?”
My head throbs. No, no, no. This isn’t right. First the machete, now this. The Singletons
couldn’t really be that devious and underhanded . . . could they?
A high-pitched scream overhead brings a halt to the accusations and we all look up to see several lanky monkeys swinging from tree to tree.
“They did it.” A red-faced Trevor jabs his finger in the air toward them.
Sal takes a step closer. “Really? That’s your excuse? The monkeys did it?”
“Well, we sure didn’t do it.”
“Why would they mess with our shelter, but none of the others?”
Uh oh. “Bananas.”
Sal and Trevor turn to me and speak together. “What?”
“We had bananas. Maybe they were hungry.”
Sal grumbles what I think is something not very nice in Spanish. “There’s a whole jungle full of bananas. Why would they need ours?”
“No idea.” My shoulders lift in a shrug, which is immediately followed by a pain shooting through my head. “I need to sit.”
I go straight down, legs crossed, elbows on knees, head hanging like a bobble-head dog with a broken spring. All around me, the fight goes on, but now they all sound slightly muffled, and I’ve stopped caring about the outcome.
Jess kneels next to me and hands me a canteen. “You need to stay hydrated.”
“I had fluids.” I hold up my hand, showing off the band aid and the bruise that bear evidence to the IV they stuck in me. “I’m the most hydrated person here.”
“Maybe, but nobody else just fell headfirst into a big wooden pole. Now drink.”
She waves the canteen under my nose, and I can hear the water sloshing inside. “Okay.” Turns out I was thirstier than I thought. After taking a few swigs, I swipe the back of my hand across my mouth. “What do you think?”
“About the fight?” She makes a face that tells me exactly what she thinks. “We’re wasting time arguing about it. There’s no way to know what really happened.”
“There is one way.” I jerk my thumb to the camp perimeter. “You know a camera guy was here the whole time. One of them knows exactly what happened.”
Jess’s eyes narrow. “You’re right. But they won’t tell us anything.”
“True. Guess we’ll have to wait till the show airs to find out what really happened. Come on.” I try to stand, but my legs are a little wobbly, so I end up moving to my hands and knees and pushing myself up from there.
“What are you doing?”
That’s a loaded question. In the grand scheme of things, I have no idea what I’m doing. All I know is that I want to have a semi-dry place to sleep tonight, and not monkeys or the Singletons or anything else is going to keep that from happening.
“You and I are going to start repairing the shelter.” My hope is that, once the others in our alliance see us working, they’ll abandon the argument and join us. At the very least, it will give us something to do other than take part in a screaming match.
As we pull away the scattered palm fronds that used to be the roof, I make two interesting discoveries. One, the bananas truly are gone. And two, the missing machete is back. Either those are some super-smart monkeys, or the Singletons are lying.
The old adage “cheaters never prosper” goes through my head. They may not prosper, but they can sure make life miserable while they’re trying.
***
It’s amazing how much easier it is to start a fire when you have flint. It only takes Evelyn five minutes of striking it with the blunt side of a machete to produce a little shower of sparks that catches in the dry kindling. A cheer goes up as she blows on it and adds more fuel until it becomes a respectable blaze.
Because I’m the chef, everyone thinks I should be in charge of cooking. “It’s not like we have lots of choices.” I hold up two bags. “Beans or rice?”
Rice receives the majority vote. I set up a cooking pot and put on some water to boil. Sal and Malcolm are working together to stretch the tarp over our newly repaired roof.
Gracie sighs. “It will be so nice to stay dry tonight.”
“And warm,” Layla agrees. “If we can keep the fire going.”
“Unless we get another storm, it’ll keep going. But if it does go out, we can always start a new one.” Evelyn holds up the flint before stuffing it into the pocket of her shorts. “Nobody’s getting their hands on this baby.”
I’m trying to decide how much rice to make. Yes, we’d all like a big portion, but we only have four pounds. Even with the beans, that isn’t going to last for thirty days. The idea is for us to find our own food—like fish, coconuts, the infamous bananas, or possibly a wild island chicken, which isn’t a real thing except in my imagination.
A commotion on the other side of the beach catches my attention. Payton stands with his feet planted and arms crossed tightly in front of him, which emphasizes muscles that look like they were carved from granite. That’s the body that ran into little old me. It’s a miracle I was able to maintain consciousness.
Bob is standing opposite Payton, poking his finger toward his face. Bob is about a head shorter than Payton and not nearly as well built. The fact that he’s being so confrontational speaks to his bravery. Or his stupidity.
“I don’t know how anybody so big can be so clumsy. You run into her,” Bob waves his hand vaguely in my direction. “Then you run through my fire. You’re a menace.”
Payton glares at him. “You didn’t have a fire, you had smoke.”
“That would have turned into a fire if you hadn’t stomped on it.”
“Look, I said I was sorry.”
“You’re sorry, all right.”
“What does that mean?”
I can’t stand it. The yelling and the near certainty that one of them is going to slug the other are making me so tense I want to scream at nobody and everybody. Instead, I call Evelyn and Jasmine over, and tell them what I want to do. They aren’t crazy about the idea at first, but as the Bob/Payton fight escalates, they start to see it my way. Finally, they give me their blessing, and I ask Jasmine to keep an eye on the rice.
With a broken tree branch clutched in one hand, I stomp over to the quarreling men.
“Here.” I thrust it at them, making the flame on the end dance and quiver.
Their eyes widen to the point that I can see the fire’s reflection flickering against the irises.
Payton speaks first. “What’s this about?”
“It’s fire. It keeps you warm. You can cook with it.” I move closer to him. “Take it.”
He reaches for the piece of wood, but Bob stops him. “Wait. This could be a trick.”
My eyes roll skyward before I can stop them. “You caught me. This is my special piece of exploding wood.”
Bob and Payton look at each other. It’s as if this simple act of kindness has short-circuited their brains.
“Look, I can’t take all the strife wafting from this side of the camp. If it takes the gift of fire to make the arguing stop, then so be it.” I look Payton in the eye, because he seems the more reasonable of the two. “But if your fire goes out and you start arguing again, don’t come looking for more. This is a one-time thing.”
“Okay.” Payton takes the fire. Bob snorts and says thanks in a decidedly unthankful tone.
As I march back to my side of the beach, seven sets of eyes stare at me. Their expressions run the gamut from shocked to angry to pleased. Before anyone else has a chance, I start talking.
“I had to do something to stop the arguing. Anyway, the fire came from the flint Evelyn and Jasmine won, and they said it was okay.”
The faces start to relax, coming closer to calm resignation. No one really wants to argue. After all, we’re the good alliance. If they handed out hats in this game, ours would be white.
Malcolm nods. “It was the right thing to do.”
“They’re going to get flint tomorrow, anyway,” Layla says. “What’s one day early?”
The crisis is over. I go to the fire and thank Jasmine for keeping the rice from sticking to the bottom of the pot. On the oth
er side of the shelter, Jess and Gracie are gathering canteens to make the final water run of the day. They head to the path, but Jess stops and looks at me. She smiles, not the Mona Lisa smile but a genuine, unmistakable, lifts the corners of her mouth and makes her eyes crinkle kind of smile. Then she turns and she and Gracie move into the jungle.
That smile could have meant a lot of things: I’m proud of you. Thanks for stopping the fighting. Man, you are one naïve woman. How could I have come from such stupid stock? The possibilities go on and on. But with the mood I’m in, I need to believe it meant something positive. Naïve or not, I assign a meaning to my daughter’s beautiful smile.
And as I stir the rice, I smile, too. Because right now, if nowhere else than in my head, my daughter is proud of me.
16
The rain starts again overnight and it puts out the fires on both sides of the beach. But this time, the roof on our community shelter doesn’t leak, thanks to the new tarp. The mood in camp overall is much better than yesterday. Even the Singletons seem a bit mellower. Of course that could be because they just don’t have the strength to be feisty. They couldn’t have gotten much sleep last night, and without fire, they’re heading to the next challenge without any breakfast.
We’re having beans for breakfast, just to mix things up. Jess hunkers down beside me where I’m doing my best to scoop equal portions onto big, green, semi-clean leaves.
“How are you feeling?”
“Other than the ice pick jabbed between my eyes, I feel great.”
“I’m not surprised you have a headache.” She pushes my bangs back with one finger and grimaces. “That is one nasty bruise.”
The notion that my daughter just touched me, even in such an innocuous way, overwhelms me. Rather than say something ultra-mushy and embarrass us both, I turn my attention back to the beans, putting an extra scoop on Jess’s leaf. I’ll balance it out by taking less for myself.
“Thanks.” She takes the leaf and starts eating with her fingers. “Will you be up to competing today?”
Last Family Standing Page 9