28
Kenzie: The Betrayal
Marooned Rule #7
All players eliminatedafterthe merge will return for the final Council as members of the jury. The jury will decide which of the remaining three contestants deserves to be the overall winner.
Iteetered on the peg, my legs shaking, toes numb. I was holding a plate with ping-pong-sized balls, trying to keep them from falling. Lena was the only competition left, as the boys had fallen out of the challenge minutes ago. If I held on longer than Lena, I was guaranteed to be in the final three, so I concentrated on the balls as reminders of my family flashed through my mind. I would not let them down.
After a resounding win, feeling on top of the world, I took a victory swim with Kyle. He seemed different after the kiss, more attentive. In the water, he wrapped his arms around me and playfully dropped me into the waves, his body landing on top of mine. I took the opportunity to run my hands over his body, all in the name of our little game – or so he thought. Although I had to say, his hands weren’t staying in the safe zone either.
We laughed and flirted, and I was more confused than ever. He was definitely acting like a guy who was interested; or at least, that was how my biased brain interpreted it. At one point our eyes met, and his softened, small creases forming in the corners as he smiled seductively at me. He leaned in close, and I held my breath in anticipation. Hot damn, he was going in for a kiss! I’d assumed the sweet kisses from last night were just a fluke, but there was no mistaking Kyle’s lustful gaze now. Just then the scrambling of cameramen caught our attention, and we pulled apart immediately.
“Would you two mind repeating that scene, please?” one of the guys said.
“What scene?” Kyle asked, as he dove into the waves and swam out further into the ocean. I was not nearly the swimmer he was, and understanding that our moment had passed, I walked out of the water in disappointment and headed back to camp. Lena was waiting for me.
“You do realize you need to cut the cord, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you really think you can beat Kyle?”
“No one is going to give him the prize money, not with his brother being a multi-millionaire.”
“Well, see, that’s where you’re wrong. If it’s you, Kyle, and Carl left at the end, let’s just figure out your odds. Shall we?”
I really didn’t care for her condescending tone, but I heard her out anyway.
“Who’s going to be on the jury? First, you have Dale and Marsha. Of course they would vote for Kyle. They frickin’lovehim. Then you’ve got the four from my tribe. They don’t like Carl because he’s got the personality of a shoe. And you – sorry, Bambi, but people view you as weak. You follow Kyle and Carl. You haven’t made any big moves on your own. Who wants to vote for someone with no backbone? And then you have Kyle; good old likeable Kyle. Who did he rub the wrong way besides me? Nobody. And he was getting real friendly with my tribe at the end. Do you think that was by accident? The way I see it, you and Carl cancel each other out, and guess what? Kyle wins.”
“I don’t know,” I mumbled.
“Yes, you do, Kenzie. Use your damn head. Kyle’s dangerous and you know it. And that’s before he even plays his trump card. If he pulls that out…” Lena shook her head, as if to warn me of the potential devastation.
I looked at her in confusion.
“Oh, lord, Kenzie, do I need to spell it out for you? Kyle’s got a hell of a story to tell, and if he decides to share it, you… are… screwed.”
I just sat there, crestfallen. She was right. With Kyle in the game, I had no chance to win.
“Now, if you take Kyle out of the equation and you add me instead, now all the sudden you have a three-way fight. My tribe doesn’t like any of us. I betrayed them, so getting their vote will be next to impossible. It will come down to you and Carl, and my money is on you – if you can convince them that you’re the brains behind the operation. Tell them your big move was knocking out Kyle. I think they’d be impressed, considering how obvious your crush on him is.”
“I don’t… I… it’s not… I don’t like him.” I stumbled helplessly over my words.
“Oh, please. You’re like a grease stain on his shirt. You never go away.”
“We’re friends. We like hanging out, that’s all.”
“Okay, whatever you say. Just know that if you need that money, Kyle can’t be sitting beside you on that final day.”
* * *
It should have beenan easy decision: vote out Lena and take my chances in the finals. That had been the plan all along, only instead of Carl it should have been Dale. If he were here, he would have known what to do. Would he have turned on Kyle? And more pointedly, would Kyle turn on me? I knew the answer to both those questions. Neither one of them would have betrayed me. I just knew it. But Lena’s words played over and over in my mind. This was exactly what I didn’t want to happen. I told myself I wouldn’t let anyone derail my game, especially not a guy. I knew Kyle liked me-we were friends. Maybe we were more than that, but since he wouldn’t talk to me about it, I couldn’t be sure. He’d been emotional after the nightmare. Was the kiss just a reaction to that?
I was feeling sick, knowing the decision I had to make. Kyle’s fate in the game was in my hands. I could either vote with Carl and Lena and knock him out, or vote with Kyle and bring it to a tie. In that case, the two chosen contestants would compete to see who could build a fire fastest. And Kyle, over the course of the last month, had become quite skilled at starting fires. Chances were he’d win, and I’d be sitting next to him in the finals.
Dammit. If Kyle would just give me some sort of reassurance, so I knew where we were in our relationship, then I could make a more informed decision. As it stood now, if I kept him in the game solely because I was falling for him, there was no guarantee I’d get the outcome I was hoping for. In fact, there was a very real possibility that I would be walking away at the end of this without the guyorthe money.
