Chapter 13
MISSY
“Are you going to finish those, Mija?” Maria points to the two mussels that lie at my feet.
“They’re all yours,” I say, grateful that the food Colton, Bill, Heartbreaker, and I had gathered for breakfast this morning isn’t going to waste.
We’re a little more than a week into this game, and already most of the teams, including Bill and Maria from Team Amber and Tearjerker and Heartbreaker from Team Ruby, have run out of the airplane meals they received from the various challenges and rewards.
Lucky for them, they now get to slum it with Colton and I as we live off the island and ocean.
I look up at Tearjerker who is nursing a bandaged hand from burning his fingers by the fire last night.
Both he and Heartbreaker sit across from me, Maria, and Bill as we sit on one of the dead tree trunks we’d positioned around the campfire on the first night of the show.
We talk about last night’s Reward Challenge that happened just before midnight and how this morning we’d all been woken up before the crack of dawn to compete in yet another Reward Challenge.
The show clearly has all sorts of ways to keep us on our toes, including sleep deprivation.
“I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised if Lime or Fuchsia got the game booster,” Heartbreaker grumbles, adding his two cents about our most recent Reward Challenge.
This morning, each of the five remaining teams were taken to various points of the island by the Sunsets and Sabotage crew.
All teams had to complete a riddle that would lead us to the general location of a game booster.
And since there was only one booster up for grabs, it was a race to see who could find it first. This was a big reward considering it had the ability to aid us in Mayday Challenge Three.
Fortunately, Colton and I were quick to decipher the riddle, which led us to a rock formation half submerged in the ocean and half arced over the sand.
We knew from the solved riddle that what we were looking for was a pilot’s wings.
We, along with the other teams, searched around the rocky formation for nearly two hours without any luck.
And since Colton and I hadn’t found the wings, it meant that one of the other teams must have found it and stashed it away before anyone could see, making themselves less of a target.
If I had to guess, I’d say Team Lime found the booster. They might be amazing baseball players, but neither Joseph nor Tyrone were blessed with the gift of acting. Partway through the booster search, they went from laughing and teasing to awkwardly silent.
“I doubt Team Fuchsia has it. They might be clever, but they’re the laziest clever people I know,” Tearjerker says, taking a surprising dig at his allies, who are currently snoozing on their bunks in the airplane.
The moment Team Fuchsia had reached the arched rock during today’s Reward Challenge, they found a spot under the shade of a tree and watched everyone else search.
Heartbreaker laughs. I look over at him just in time to see him use a finger to strip the fleshy mussel from its shell.
The blood drains from my face. I wasn’t a fan of seafood to begin with, and now I’m convinced I might never be.
Not too long ago, I’d taken my first bite of a mussel, only to walk in the jungle and dry heave.
Needless to say, I’ve lost my appetite, despite being consumed with hunger.
I look away from the fleshy feast and across the beach, spotting Joseph and Tyrone as they walk through the sand toward the airplane, dripping with saltwater.
Huh? I thought Colton was with them. Joseph and Tyrone had convinced Colton to do swimming sprints with them halfway through breakfast this morning.
I scan my view of the beach, seeing everyone but him.
Thoughts of Colton make my stomach knot unpleasantly. We’d had our team interview a day and a half ago, and since then, I’ve managed to do a thorough job of bringing back my middle school dating tactics—staring at Colton when he’s not looking and ignoring him when he is.
I know I’m doing a poor job of keeping up my end of our “relationship,” and I know I need to step up my game, but I can’t bring myself to look him in the eyes after what I said about him on live television. Though the words I said were simple and kind, they left me feeling completely vulnerable.
I shift uncomfortably on the log and try to feign interest in a story Heartbreaker is telling us about a time he’d stolen seven Fruit Roll-Ups from a vending machine; all the while, the Team Teal interview with Niall plays on repeat in my mind.
What was I thinking? “Give me a compliment,” Colton had said.
“Let them think things are changing between us,” he’d said.
And that’s what I’d planned to do up until the very last moment when I panicked, thinking that if I really wanted to show America that our partnership was turning into something more, then I should probably say something better than how I appreciated Colton’s wardrobe choices.
And suddenly, the well-crafted words I’d practiced before the interview committed treason, leaving me with something so raw and real, I barely had time to process it myself.
The night Colton had opened up to me about his dad’s lack of faith in him was the night I lay awake in my bunk, feeling the tectonic plates of my mind reconfigure themselves into a new landscape.
We weren’t so different after all, he and I.
We’ve both spent so much of our lives trying to be loved by a parent, only to be denied in the ways that mattered. I knew that heartache.
For so long, all I wanted was for Mama to want me, and if not my mama, then at least my aunt.
But they’d both turned away from me, leaving me to wonder what I’d done wrong.
Yet, Colton, who I am undoubtedly my worst self with, is still here.
We fight and argue, yes, but more often than not, I enjoy it, knowing that I can be snarky Missy and he’s still going to be there—even if I ruin his chance at Student Council President or jump into the ocean when I don’t agree with him.
He sees me at my worst, but he hasn’t abandoned me yet.
And I have every reason to be thankful for that, even if he’s still a pain in my backside.
My fingers stroke the lucky seashell in my pocket—the same pocket I’d stashed it in when I ran from the interview set and onto the beach.
I remember how Colton had run after me. He’d been so gentle, soft in ways I’d never seen him before.
At first, I’d thought it was for the sake of our strategy, but then he’d held me, protecting me from the camera operators until I could finally compose myself.
“We’ll have to do that again,” Bill says, snapping me from my mental replay of Colton with his arms around me.
“Yes, maybe tonight.” Maria turns from Bill to me. “Have you been to the north side of the island yet?” she asks as she stacks her empty mussel shells on top of each other and places them by the fire.
“I haven’t,” I say.
“Oh, you’re missing out. Bill and I took a little stroll over there a couple nights ago, and it was incredible. There were all these beautiful little tide pools, and the stars were reflecting off them—it was bello.”
“That sounds dreamy,” I say, mentally painting the image.
“Tide pools?” Tearjerker chimes in. Meanwhile, Heartbreaker stands up and heads down to the ocean, apparently bored with the conversation.
“Yes, dozens of them,” Maria says.
“Did you see any sea life in the tide pools?” Tearjerker perks up like a Labrador in a tennis ball store.
“No, it was too dark, unfortunately.” Maria frowns.
“Oh, well, I’d love to go with you guys next time. I was a marine biology major in college. I ended up going into sales, but I’ve always had a passion for exploring tide pools.”
A soft spot for tide pools? Since when does Tearjerker have a personality? Somehow this new fact makes him seem less like the strategic butthead I know and more like someone with a beating heart.
“Marine biology? That’s neat. Well then, we’ll definitely have to take you over there sometime,” Maria says.
Tearjerker smiles, making it evident how he’s managed to jerk so many tears in his lifetime.
When Bill and Maria excuse themselves to get in a mid-morning catnap, Tearjerker and I are left alone with nothing but a dying fire between us.
I take this awkward moment to scan once more for Colton, but in the few seconds my eyes are turned away, Tearjerker plants himself right next to me, making the dead-tree bench shift under his added weight.
“Hey,” he says in a friendly enough tone, but his body is too close to mine.
Uneasy, I subtly scoot a few inches down the tree trunk.
“Hi,” I say back, telling myself that some people’s personal bubbles are smaller than others and that it’s not that weird that he’s this close.
“So, I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry about the second Mayday Challenge.”
The second Mayday Challenge? I think back, trying to remember if I had any interaction with him at all during the coconut challenge, but I can’t remember him.
I narrow my eyes, confused. “The second Mayday Challenge?”
“Heartbreaker and Legend—they threw some of your team’s coconuts under some bushes.
I told them not to do it, but then, under the pressure of the challenge, they went ahead.
I love my teammate, but he’s not exactly the most levelheaded when it comes time for competition, and apparently, neither is Legend. ”
I look away and toward the shore, spotting Heartbreaker with his feet in the water.
When I turn back, I find Tearjerker has bridged the gap between us once more.
I look down, noting that his thigh is almost pressed against mine, and his unbandaged hand is resting on the knee closest to me.
He makes small talk, but I can’t shake the feeling that he wants to get even closer to me, or rather to my backpack that is strapped around my ankle.
Is he trying to get something from my backpack or maybe put something in?
Feeling increasingly uneasy, I, once again, scoot over, this time making it clear that I am not comfortable with his nearness. Fortunately, he gets the hint and stands up, walking over to a coconut shell full of water and dousing the dying fire.
“Well, see you around.” With a small wave, he leaves to join Heartbreaker, and I watch him walk away, questioning his motives.
While his words were kind enough and his actions likely harmless, I still check my backpack to see if he’s taken anything or left something in there.
To my surprise, I find nothing’s been tampered with, and Tearjerker was simply being friendly.
I make a mental note to be less stiff in our next conversation.
I swear, my mind gets less trusting of people and their motives the longer I’m on this island.
“Hey, Missy.”
I feel a delightful zing hearing my name in Colton’s familiar voice.
Now, I know my mind is playing games with me.
I swivel so that I’m facing Colton, finding him in his swim trunks with his teal bandana tied around his firm bicep. He holds a net with a couple of silver fish inside. He smiles at me as tendrils of his dark-brown hair curl against his forehead, dripping ocean water onto his skin.
Stop it, heart. Stop it.
Unfortunately for me, my heart doesn’t stop; it’s sprinting for gold as Colton sits next to me on the bench, his muscles distracting me from all sensible thought.
But when I flee to find Hairy the mole, it’s looking at me all attractive-like.
Why is his mole looking at me all attractive-like?
Moles have no business looking that way.
Thankfully, Colton pulls me from my thoughts, holding the bag of fish between us. “For you,” he says, his smile sheepish. “I noticed that you had some trouble this morning with the mussels.”
The word mussels makes my eyes malfunction again.
Colton laughs. “Not those muscles.”
I shift my head toward the bag of fish in embarrassment, knowing I was caught red-handed, or really red-faced. But then I remember that’s exactly what I’m supposed to be doing. Flirting with Colton. I need to be weaving the narrative that things are blossoming between us.
Colton places the fish next to me, and I realize what he’s done.
“You got these fish for me?” I look at him, mouth ajar. He got these fish for me! Suddenly, these dead fish in a bag manage to put a bouquet of roses to shame.
As I grab my future breakfast from off the log, I remember the words Mrs. Downing said to me at the airport.
There is a big caring heart in there. You’ll see.
Maybe this is what she was talking about, or maybe this is very literally all for show, but regardless, Colton is making an effort to step up his game, and I need to do the same.