Colton pulls the oars once more, thrusting us forward so our boat skims next to the large floating crate. He tosses the oars in the boat and plants his hands on top of the wooden box, pulling us flush against its side. “Crowbar.”
I pass Colton the crowbar and reach over the boat’s ledge to stabilize the bobbing crate with both of my hands while Colton starts prying it open. The box is nearly as long as one of my arms and keeps shifting with every wave the ocean sends our way. The constant movement makes it difficult for Colton to wedge the crowbar in between the narrow slit of the opening, so I double down my efforts to stabilize and wrap both my arms around the crate in a bear hug.
The wooden crate is rough under my fingertips, and I can feel a tree’s worth of slivers shoot into my skin. I turn my head, wincing, when my face brushes against Colton’s chest. Without pause, he works awkwardly around my body that’s wrangling the silver demon. That’s when I smell something fresh and expensive. Colton. The aroma coming from his shirt is somewhere between a musk and a scent that is unfairly part of his genetics. It’s the same scent I imagine moths smelling before they get zapped to death by one of those electric lanterns— alluring and deadly.
I try to reangle my head, but there are not many places for my face to go since we’re knotted up in some weird game of crate Twister. “Colton, how’s it coming?”
“This”—he grunts, attempting to jimmy the crate open—“is a little more difficult than I thought.” He grunts again. “It’s not even nailed on the same. What did they do to this thing?”
I hear the paddles of a boat splashing past us, and I’m tempted to call it quits and be satisfied with what we have when I hear the snap of wood shards and the top of the crate bursts off.
“Yes!” Colton says in victory while leaning over the crate, only for his face to fall a half a breath later. “What?”
“What do you mean, ‘what’?”
“It’s empty.”
“What?” I say, mystified.
Colton looks down at me and eases his weight from the crate. I inhale a dose of salty sea air, letting it clear his scent from my nose.
“Too bad, Team Teal,” Team Lime, Colton’s baseball idols, yells victoriously from ahead of us. We can barely hear Team Lime due to the distance that separates us, but it’s clear from how Team Lime raises their fists triumphantly over their heads that we’ve been sabotaged. They must have a hammer or heavy object that they used to reattach the top of the crate to its bottom, making us think it had something inside it.
Colton’s speechless, and it’s clear that he’s rethinking getting their autographs.
“They’re brilliant,” Colton says as he reaches for the oars once more.
Okay, or maybe not. Why do I even try to guess what’s going on inside of his head?
It’s then that I notice the sweat trailing from Colton’s mussed hairline. His arms and body are likely running on fumes from all the rowing. I start to reach for the oars in his hands and suggest we switch when my hands screech out in slivered protest. If I start rowing, we’re as good as last place. So instead I sit down and helplessly watch as Colton crouches back in his seat andsinks into rhythmic strokes. Not but a moment later, I see a fuchsia flare shoot high into the sky, arching over the beach, and fizzling out over the water.
My stomach drops—Team Fuchsia has already made it to Sabotage Island.
Though I didn’t expect us to come in first during this Mayday Challenge, watching Legend and Silver drag their boat onto the shore of the island brings me face-to-face with the reality that if we come in last tonight, we’ll be on the chopping block.
I do an immediate surveillance check, noting our spot among the remaining boats. Panic seeps deep into my chest, my breathing coming out ragged. We must have taken too long on that last crate because now we are nearly level with the boats that were previously behind us. With even more motive, Colton leans into every stroke as we race neck and neck with three other teams that are likely thinking exactly what I am:We cannot come in last.
Chapter 8
COLTON
· DAY 2 ·
My eyes fling open, glimpsing the metal interior of an airplane. I instantly sort through last night’s memories, recalling where I am. Sabotage Island. I blink and shift to my side, the teal mattress of my bunk bed squeaking as I do. Reacquainting myself with the strange scene around me, I scan the airplane’s interior and see the long row of colored bunk beds filled with restless and waking contestants.
Unlike any flyable airplane, the one we’re in is cut in half lengthwise from the cockpit to the aft. It reminds me of a toy dollhouse—sliced right down the center so that everyone and every camera can see what is going on inside at all times,allowing for zero privacy and hardly any coverage from the elements. Other than the bunk beds that are literally fused to the interior shell of the plane, the core is completely gutted, giving it an open-concept feel with beachfront access. From the top bunk, I can see every crystal wave that laps onto shore along with the fiery oranges that are just starting to ignite the early-morning sky. Not too bad.
Still tired, I rub my eyes and flop onto my back, regretting my late-night decision to sleep with my contacts in. But even though my eyes feel like sandpaper, that’s low on the list of things I regret about last night, or really the past couple of months.
Not ready to greet reality, I slam my eyes shut and tug my thin sheet up to my chin, the same sheet I would have kicked off immediately last night had it not been for the incessant bugs sizing me up. I forgot how humidity can make eighty-five-degree weather feel like a sauna. Regardless of the sweat beading on my forehead, I try to fall back into an exhausted sleep, but my mind refuses. Instead, it decides to rehash my recent life-altering decision.
On the backdrop of my eyelids, I rewatch a night from a couple months ago. Dad sits in his high-back leather chair in his in-home office, his expression bordering on giddy as I sit across his desk from him. He tells me that the constitutional law firm that he was a partner at for fifteen years before he became senator has decided to offer me a job as a junior associate.
I grip the armrest of my seat, fighting off the desire to retreat, to smile, to act like the job he offers is exactly what I want. But it’s not, and I can’t pretend I didn’t receive another job offer that brought me the same type of excitement I see on his face.
So instead, I tell him.
I tell him about Parson & Watts, the sports law firm in Denver that offered me a job as a junior associate starting at the end of the summer.
