“Yes. I’m starving,” Missy says. She kneels, ducks her head under the base of our bunk bed, and reaches for the bulging bags that we placed there last night.
I do the same, not risking Missy opening my backpack. I stretch my hand out, feeling the strap of my bag and pull it toward me, surprised by how light it feels.
When we have our bags, our faces morph with confusion. The backpacks that were once as plump as grapes are now deflated raisins. Missy and I swiftly unzip our bags, and when we do, dread fills me from head to toe.
“No, no, no. This can’t be,” Missy says as a drone swoops closer, a witness to our sudden and painful realization—someone has stolen our food and supplies.
Chapter 9
COLTON
· DAY 2 ·
“I still can’t believe it. I should never have let our backpacks out of my sight,” Missy grounds out for the hundredth time since this morning.
“I can’t believe we were ranked sixth out of seven teams in America’s votes today,” I grumble, still dumbfounded by the results that were posted just over an hour ago.
Missy mumbles a strand of finely crafted Southern sayings, highlighting her frustrations, and I’m half tempted to borrow them. After the sabotage this morning and now the ranking, I can’t think of a worse way to start off this show.
Missy unties the sweat-soaked bandana from her neck and refolds it as we sit, waiting in our teal airplane seats for the first Black Box Meeting of the season to start. Our seats, along with the other teams’, sit atop a large circular platform. It’s on this platform that we’ll have the Black Box Meetings and the occasional team interviews with Niall. Fortunately for us, the platform is just a five-minute walk from the airplane bunk room and the beach we now call base camp.
“How in the Sam Hill did they get under our beds without us noticing?” Now that her bandana is refolded lengthwise, Missy reties it around her neck and yanks a little too hard, making her sputter and cough. She flaps her arms, resembling a pigeon that’s choked on a cheese puff in a parking lot. As an act of goodwill, I tell myself that I will not remember this moment for future ammo, but it’s sorted and filed in my brain before I can blink.
“Whoa, careful, Miss. Don’t want our team to forfeit on grounds of death by bandana.”
She looks at me the way I can only imagine a drenched cat looks at the rain. But as I watch her unsuccessfully pick at the knot at her neck, I flick off her fingers and do it myself.
“There, you’re free.” I pull the knot from her throat and drop the bandana in her lap.
“Thanks,” she says, speaking at a decibel only a mouse could hear.
Just then, we both look to stage left as Legend and Silver strut onto the set like well-fed peacocks. Well-fed peacocks that had happily stolen our food and supplies, leaving us with only our personal belongings, the items in the hygiene kit we’d already used, and, to Missy’s great relief, her lucky seashell.
They took everything else—even the coloring book.
Once we realized our belongings had been stolen this morning, it didn’t take long to spot the culprits. Team Fuschia had beenlying on the beach. Silver’s head was tilted toward the sun, lounging in her pink-and-black bathing suit while wearing the exact pair of sunglasses we’d collected from the first Mayday Challenge. Next to her, Legend was holding our coloring book, resting his back against their newly stuffed team backpacks, guarding them from any sticky hands. Apparently, Legend and Silver weren’t about to make the same mistake we did.
Catching us gawking, Legend had held up the coloring book for us to see, which featured several cartoon planes colored in with a fuchsia-pink crayon. I don’t even remember the last time I used a coloring book, but knowing our book was in his clutches made me want to wrestle him for it.
There was no subtlety to their actions. Theywantedus—and America—to know how clever they had been in managing to come in first last nightandget food and supplies. We had played right into their trap.
To my humiliation, Missy and I had spent the better part of the morning taking turns attempting to climb palm trees to get coconuts. Much easier said than done. In fact, we didn’t get it done. My arms were so tired from last night’s row and Missy’s hands were sore from her many slivers that we’d both settled for finding a fallen coconut. A coconut. As in one.
I’d walked out of the jungle with our little baby fruit in hand and a newfound appreciation for nomads. I’d never worked so hard in my life just to find subpar food. The coconut was crunchy and woody and refused to go down my throat. Despite the fact that I’d eaten it at noon, I’d been chewing on resilient little bits all day. I had no clue how Missy and I were going to survive two and a half weeks on coconuts.
We watch Team Fuchsia sit in their seats as if they are thrones and Legend and Silver are the sovereigns of the Black Box Meeting. I clench my hands, willing my frustration not to show.
I find that after a few steadying breaths, I start to feel more grounded. Keeping my positive momentum going, I move on from Legend and Silver, determined to focus on something less aggravating. I look at my surroundings and notice that the sun is just starting to set, casting brilliant hues of orange, yellow, and pink across the sky. With another deep breath, I inhale the ever-present scent of salty sea air mixed with tropical flowers, and I would love nothing more than to bottle the aroma and save it for years to come.
Now calm, I watch as more teams step onto the platform. The set we’re on now is similar to the set we’d been on for the opening interviews. There is a firepit in the center and fourteen airplane seats in the various team colors surround it in a crescent shape, except this time, the airplane seats we sit on are all beat up. Some have chunks of padding ripped out of them and others have springs exposed, making them look like they really had been part of an airplane that had crash-landed on the island.
And just like back at the beach, another airplane wing stands tall and imposing on set. It’s the sister-wing to the one at base camp, with its identical rectangular screen in the center, with a clock and each of our team names. But as opposed to this morning, this time, each of our teams is ranked for all to see.
“Hello!” Missy chirps. Her eyes light up as she sees Bill and Maria, the two tennis players from Team Amber, step onto the set and approach us.
Since there’s a lot of downtime on the show between challenges and Black Box Meetings, we are all given ample opportunity to get to know other teams, plan strategies, and form alliances. But since the show is all an immaculate head game, I find myself approaching every team with caution, especially after Legend and Silver’s theft this morning.
But then there are Bill and Maria. Earlier today, they’d found me and Missy struggling to open our coconut with a sharp rockwith no success. They took pity and let us borrow the machete they got from one of the crates they’d opened last night. Missy had instantly taken to them. And despite my reservations, Bill and Maria have a genuineness about them that makes it hard to think they are going to slash our mattresses when we aren’t looking.
