“How do you know that?” Obviously someone from my side couldn’t wait to blab to the other team about my lineage.
Sensing my confusion as to who ratted me out, Lena clarified by making her hand into a talking puppet: “You’ve got yourself a little chatterbug in your tribe. Good lord, can that woman talk! How on earth did you put up with her for so long?”
I cringed.Dammit, Marsha!Had my brother and I become one of her interesting facts? “And everyone in the tribe knows who I am?”
“They do now. And just so you know, you’ve been the subject of many a discussion.”
“I’m sure I have.”
“And if you think anyone in their right mind is going to hand you a million dollars, you’ve got another thing coming, dude.”
Well, shit. This was going even worse than I’d imagined. Every word she spoke to me dripped with condemnation. I had done nothing more than be related to a superstar, but that was apparently enough in her book to be a total bitch to me. But, unluckily for Lena, I was an expert at dealing with prickly personalities. It was really just a matter of figuring out what annoyed her and making sure I did lots of that infuriating behavior.
“Tell me, Lena, how come you aren’t over there with the rest of your tribe wooing Dale?”
“I was busy with the fire.”
“Uh huh, ’cause they sure don’t seem interested in your opinion. Seems to me you weren’t invited to eat at the cool kids’ table.”
Her eyes narrowed into laser beams of hate.
“Don’t be embarrassed.”
“You think I’m embarrassed?” she scoffed, smashing a bug on her arm and then flicking it in my direction. “If you must know, I had a tribe. We fought many battles together, but then my troops got gunned down one by one. Now I’m the last of my kind… a dying breed.”
“Is that an analogy?”
“What? I don’t know. You aren’t the brightest, are you?”
“No, not really. It helps when people explain things slowly to me.”
Lena sighed, and then actually spoke deliberately as she responded. “My alliance was picked off one by one… until they were all gone. Poof. Vanished. Do you get it now, Dumbass?”
Jesus. She went right for the insulting nicknames. I wasn’t sure what I’d done to invite such scorn, but I knew I would have to watch my back around her.
“So, then, you’re not loyal to them?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Why would you want to stick with people who picked your friends off one by one?”
“Because I’d rather play with the enemies I know than take a chance on you morons.”
“What would it take for you to flip?”
“Depends,” Lena said, looking bored as she picked dirt out of her fingernails. “How loyal are you to Larry Bird, the four-eyed nerd, your little groupie girl, and the braless conversationalist?”
I ignored Lena’s dig and answered her question of my loyalty. “They’re my troops.”
“I figured,” she said rolling her eyes. “So predictable. Sounds like we’re going to have a stalemate… unless they get to your computer geek.”
“Dale.”
“Huh?”
“His name is Dale, and they aren’t going to get to him.”
“That’s what you think. See the black guy with the 70’s ‘stache over there?” she said, flicking her eyes in his direction.
