I briefly glimpse Teams Fuchsia and Amber in my peripheral vision. We’re all neck and neck, pushing against the wind that’s doing its best to keep us all at bay. But it doesn’t take long for Legend and Silver to fall behind. I can’t tell if it’s a problem with their raft, their paddling, or their constant bickering, but they’re having a difficult time keeping up. Maria and Bill get to the first coral buoy at the same time as Missy and me, pulling up on either side of it.
Bill and I grab onto the buoy while Maria and Missy get to work, unknotting the bags in our team colors. Just as Missy breaks our bag free, Silver and Legend bump Bill and Maria’s raft from behind, nearly causing Maria to drop the bag she’d just untied. Quickly, Bill shoves off of the buoy with his foot, pushingtheir raft farther away from Legend and Silver, whose erratic breathing and clenched jaws make them feel extra vicious today.
Once Missy is securely seated on our raft, I push off the buoy, giving us a jolt of momentum. As we comb through the water toward our next buoy, I’m just starting to think that this challenge might be easier than I anticipated when a burning sensation works its way up my biceps and grows hotter with every push against the waves. I glance at Missy, whose shaking arms show that she’s experiencing the same pain as I am.
Eventually, our speed starts to slow, and my initial adrenaline for this final leg of the challenge wanes. The next buoy is at least double the distance between Sabotage Island and the first buoy. That thought alone throws up a mental block, requiring every ounce of willpower I have left to keep paddling. “How you doing, Missy Jean?”
“I’m doing all right. We can do this, Colton. We can do this!” Missy forces out every word, but just like every other time she’s faced opposition in her life, I know she’ll keep going. She’s not going to give up. She’s going to push through the pain. Because that’s Missy. Unbreakable and strong.
I can feel Missy double down on her paddling, and I follow her lead, thrusting my paddle in the water while focusing on the two words that cycle through my brain in a constant loop. “Dig deep, dig deep, dig deep.”
The faint sounds of a motorboat interrupt my chanting, and I look over my shoulder to find Niall and a camera crew slicing through the waves and wind on a high-speed boat until they reach our ending location on the bigger island ahead of us. Oh, to be them right now.
When I refocus, I find we’re roughly twenty feet away from the second buoy. I glance at Missy, and she smiles at me. That’s when I hear a big splash followed by yells from Maria and Bill.
Missy and I quickly look behind us to find Team Amber in the water with their paddles in hand, while Legend and Silver take command of Bill and Maria’s raft. Just behind the amber-colored raft, thin logs of fuchsia-pink wood separate and float away from each other with each passing wave. Team Fuchsia’s raft is nothing but driftwood now.
Missy gasps. For a moment, I find myself in shock that Legend and Silver would stoop so low as to shove Bill and Maria off their own raft. Without remorse, Team Fuchsia surges forward, ignoring Bill and Maria’s struggle to grab onto the raft. Soon enough, Silver and Legend paddle beyond their reach, inching closer toward us and the second buoy.
Bill and Maria both attempt to swim after their raft, but wave after wave knocks them back. My heart twists inside of me seeing our allies and friends struggle to get back what was taken from them. I glance at Missy, who looks miserable, her eyes longing to help them. But when our eyes meet, I know that we’re aligned in our next move.
As fast as we can, Missy and I flip around and start paddling in the opposite direction from the big island. I hunker down, putting everything I have behind each stroke of my paddle. We pass Legend and Silver on their way to the second buoy and hear Bill and Maria shouting at us to go back and leave them. But we can’t. In so many ways, Bill and Maria have become our family. We are not leaving them.
It’s several minutes before we have Bill and Maria in tow. All of us huddle on our raft as we make our way to buoy two. By the time we get our bags untied from the buoy, Legend and Silver are in the lead by quite a few yards. And while that might as well be a million miles ahead of us for how breathless I feel and how my arms burn, what I hadn’t accounted for when we picked up Bill and Maria was that many hands make quickwork. Something Silver and Legend obviously didn’t account for either.
In what seems like no time at all, our little teal raft, with its four adults atop it, pulls right next to Legend and Silver. Silver’s mouth pops open in surprise when she sees the difference four paddles on one raft can make.
In a fit of anger, Silver twists her paddle, spraying Missy and Bill directly in the face.
“Listen here, you Tonto. I’m going to have a long talk with your mother,” Maria shouts against the wind.
“You do that,” Silver shouts back. “I’ll be having a long talk with my thousands.”
The short banter seems to put the right wind into our nonexistent sails, and suddenly our raft propels forward until we skim across the shallow waters of the big island and we all jump out.
Missy and I sprint up the beach and toward a pile of wood sitting next to a teal flag and a locked metal box. On our left, Maria and Bill run to a setup that looks identical to ours with the exception of an amber-colored flag at their station. Missy and Maria shout at each other, wishing each other luck and promising to be happy for whoever wins. Behind us, Team Fuchsia jumps off their raft, which makes me and Missy run even faster.
Reaching our pile of wood, Missy and I drop to our knees, sand plastering itself to our wet skin. I quickly arrange the wood before darting into the jungle, pulling up whatever dry kindling I can for our fire, and nearly running into Legend on my way back to our station. When I return, Missy’s emptied the bags we’d collected from the buoys and holds out flint and steel. We switch as she arranges the kindling and I strike the steel against the flint again and again. Each strike creates a spark, but with the constant ocean breeze, nothing lasts long enough to create fire.
I panic and find myself looking back and forth between our little sparks and Teams Amber and Fuchsia’s progress. From the looks of it, we are all having a difficult time getting a flame started, but when I see the faintest glow from Team Fuchsia’s kindling, my hands start to sweat. The reality of everything Missy and I have to lose comes barreling into me. Five years working for my dad. Missy’s dream. “C’mon, fire. C’mon.”
“Wait.” Missy’s up on her feet and rummaging through my backpack before I can even ask what she’s doing.
A moment later, a clear goo squirts from over my shoulder, dousing our wood and kindling in a pungent, familiar scent.
Hand sanitizer.
“Missy, you’re brilliant!”
Once more, I strike steel to flint, daring to hope. Then a nearly invisible flame bursts along the wood.
“Yes! Yes!” Missy and I yell in tandem.
But just as I can feel the victory at my fingertips, Team Fuchsia cheers and leaps to their metal box with a flaming piece of wood. Missy and I instantly reach for our sanitized log with its barely visible flame. Carefully and quickly we move it to our metal box with its wiry fuse, and light it.
In what feels like the tensest, slowest moments of my life, Missy and I glance back and forth between the fuse on our box and Team Fuchsia’s, watching as the moving sparks burn closer and closer to the locks. Soon, Bill and Maria run over to light their own metal box. All three of our fuses burn down at the same time.
Then there’s a pop, quickly followed by another. Our box bursts open, as does Team Fuchsia’s. Inside our box is a teal flare gun. Drones hover closer. Voices shout. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I register that Niall is here, he’s saying something, but I understand nothing. Then two guns go into the air. Twotriggers get pulled. And the sky bursts to life. An explosion of color and light.
