Wicked Games
Page 18

Chip greeted the teams as we entered, and I could tell by the expressions on the faces of the others that they were equally wary of this unusual setup. The host raised his hand. “I need all the men to go and stand in a row on the red mat off to the side.”
As one, we all turned to look at the red mat. It was a long, single row off to the side with a bench behind it. That the men were moving over only gave me a bad feeling.
All around us, the other contestants were hugging their partners goodbye and separating. Dean turned and looked at me, and before he could say something or pretend to pick a fight, I reached out and gave him an awkward hand squeeze. For some reason, I really wanted to touch him before we got separated for good. He seemed a little surprised at my spontaneous gesture and didn’t hug me back, but looked as if he wanted to say something. The moment was broken too fast, though, and Dean moved away with the other male contestants, sitting in the midst of them like a king with his subjects.
“Ladies, if you’ll move toward one of the booths here, but do not remove the coverings until I instruct you to do so.”
We moved forward, picking our way across the sand toward the covered booths. The cameramen zoomed in on the outskirts, hovering nearby to catch a glimpse of our faces at the big reveal. Chip seemed in his element, wearing a battered straw hat and beaming down at us, hands on his hips. “Today is a very important day for the ladies of Endurance Island,” he began, launching into his host spiel. “On day one, the men chose their partners in a schoolyard pick. Today, however, Day Fifteen is Sadie Hawkins day. The ladies will fight for first place and the right to choose their partners.”
Around me, the women clapped and showed enthusiasm, high-fiving each other. I crossed my arms over my chest and glanced down at Lana. At least I wasn’t alone in my lack of enthusiasm. Lana’s plans were ruined too, and she looked twice as annoyed as me.
“Today’s challenge involves… fire!” Chip moved forward and leaned off his platform, yanking the covering off of the nearest booth and displaying it to us. The booth was set up with a wide table, wood stacked underneath a small painted stool. Tufts of tinder were stuck in a decorated box, and small sticks and bits of kindling were in a second box. On the table itself was a small knife and a flint. Across the table was a rope, which seemed to be attached to a pulley system and a big flag in front of the booth.
Chip pointed at each of the items and began to explain the rules to us. “The object of this competition is to build your fire high enough and hot enough to burn through the cord. When the cord snaps, this will raise your flag. The first flag to rise will win the challenge, get first pick of partners, and the special bonus envelope.” He held up a bright red square of paper in his hand. “The rest of the contestants will pick in the order that they finish. If you finish making your fire last, you pick last. Everyone understand?”
We moved forward to the booths we selected. I chose one in pale green, at the end of the contestants. I wouldn’t be able to see how the others were doing, and that would probably be for the best since it would just make me nervous. But this was a contest I could do well in. I knew how to make fire. I could do this.
But who would I pick if Dean didn’t want to be my partner any longer?
I sat down on the shiny lacquered wooden stool and immediately stood up again. The stool was still wet with prop paint, and I wiped off the back of my thighs in disgust. How cheap was the set? Ugh. I picked up the knife and flint and kicked the stool aside. I’d worked with flint to start a fire in my survival course. I could do this.
“Contestants ready?” Chip called, and I tensed over my table, thoughts racing. “Go!”
I grabbed a handful of tinder and then doubled it, making a huge mountain of it on my table. Tinder would burn fast and burn high, and I just needed to figure out how to get it to burn high enough to hit the rope that was at eye level. I grabbed my flint and knife again and scraped the edge of the blade against the flint. Nothing. I probably needed to strike fast and strike hard. With that in mind, I banged the two together and produced a tiny spark, but not enough to light my fluffy tinder pile. I banged again, slicing the edge of my finger in the process, but at least the spark was bigger.
It took four more bangs (and subsequent cuts on my fingers) before I managed to get a spark to land in the fluff pile. As soon as I saw a curl of smoke, I bent over and cupped the mound in my hands, blowing on it until smoke began to pour out.
“Someone’s got a flame,” Chip called over my head, and I hoped to God he was talking about me. I didn’t dare look up, just continued to blow on the tinder until the flames were licking and I could hold it no longer. Then I threw the entire box of tinder on top of my table and added the kindling sticks, waiting for the entire table to go up.
It did, and pretty soon I had a low mass of flames on my table—the key element being ‘low.’ For some reason, my fire wasn’t burning very high and my stuff was burning up entirely too fast, and I was nowhere near my string. Frustrated, I stared down at the wood underneath my table, trying to find small, dry logs to build my fire quickly. I picked up one, then two, but it was a slow lick, and it wouldn’t get me to where I wanted. I needed to win, and fast.
“We have three… four… five fires going,” Chip called behind me as I fed the final scrapings of my tinder-box contents to my fire, adding the last of the small sticks to it. My larger logs still hadn’t caught, and I began to get nervous and desperate. Could I burn something else? Was that against the rules?
I turned back to the host for a moment, feeding more logs at the edges of my fire to push it in. “What can we burn?” I cried at him. “Anything?” The fabric would be real handy right about now—I could drape one edge of it over the rope…
“Anything under the table,” he called back at me, dashing my hopes. The fabric lay behind me, nowhere close to my table.
What was flammable? My shirt? No—it was the only T-shirt I had while I was out here, and I wasn’t about to burn it. I rocked on my stool, thinking hard.
Wait, my stool. I stood up, jerking to my feet, and grabbed it. It was painted with a thick, glossy coat of paint, the exact same color as my light-green booth. It still gleamed wetly and when my hand touched it, it was sticky. The paint wasn’t dry. Wasn’t paint flammable? I grabbed it, flipped it upside down, and held it over the licking flames.
“What are you doing?” Chip yelled at me from behind the dais, and immediately the cameraman nearby zoomed in to my booth.
“You said I could use anything under my table,” I called, and a ripple of laughter emerged from the men’s row in the distance.
I held the stool over the licking flames, hoping the wet, sloppy prop paint would catch on fire. The actual wood of the stool felt light and cheap to me—lighter than plywood—and I wouldn’t be surprised if it burned faster than anything they’d given me in my woodpile. Sure enough, the bottom began to lick flames, and I set it down in the already burning fire. The flames began to flicker and dance over the surface, turning green and blue as the paint burned off, and I stepped backward slightly, using my log to shove the rest of the burning crap on my table over the stool.
It was burning like a beacon. Heh. One of the legs began to burn and I angled it so it was touching my rope and waited, glancing down the row at the others. Lana had noticed what I was doing and was using her stool as well, though with less success.