“Fair enough,” Chip said. He turned to us, seated on our benches across from them. “For the vote, each team will go to the voting booth. You will write on the slate which team you are choosing to save. The team with the least amount of votes will then go to the challenge round. We’ll go straight down the line. Team number three, you’re up.”
I studied the faces of both Sunnie and Jendan, then looked over at Alys and Chris. If I wanted to be a strong, take-no-prisoners bitch on wheels this game, I needed to vote to keep Alys and Chris. They were both returning players from an earlier season of Endurance Island, and if they didn’t have fire, they clearly weren’t paying much attention the first time around. Without fire, they’d be easier to beat, so it was smarter to keep them.
Still…Jendan had put his neck out for me. He’d rubbed the awful message off my back when everyone else had just laughed at me. And it had cost him. I wasn’t sure that I could vote him off, knowing that he had my back.
But how would it look that Annabelle the Slut was going to vote to save the hot guy on the island? I didn’t trust the cameras.
I didn’t know what to do.
When it came our time to vote, I walked to the booth with Kip. The ‘booth’ was actually just a curtained off area, the curtain a waterfall of beads and cowrie shells. On the table in front of us sat a basket of slates, and nearby, pieces of chalk were left in a coconut bowl.
Now we needed to make a team decision. I looked over at Kip, whispering. “Do you know who you want to save?”
“Do you?”
I bit my lip. Strategy or kindness? In the end, I couldn’t hang Jendan out to dry. Not when he was the only one to help me. “I think I want to keep Jendan and Sunnie.”
“Okay.”
I frowned at Kip. “Okay? You don’t want to discuss strategy or anything?”
“Nah. Sunnie’s hot. I don’t mind keeping her around. Plus, they sucked at the challenge.”
I must have been blinded by Kip’s flowing black curls the last time we were here. How had I fallen for this man? Or was I seeing the real side of Kip now that I refused to be impressed by him? Either way, at least we weren’t going to argue. I shrugged and gestured for him to take the chalk. He did so gleefully, writing down our vote, and then chucked the slate into the voting basket.
When the votes were tallied and read, I bit my lip the entire time, anxious. Team six — Alys and Chris. Team two — Sunnie and Jendan. Team six. Team two. The vote seesawed back and forth, and still our vote wasn’t read.
Jendan shifted on the bench, tense, and his gaze flicked to me.
I gave him a quick, almost imperceptible nod as Chip lifted the final slate. “The team that will be staying is…” He turned the slate, revealing Kip’s handwriting. “Sunnie and Jendan.”
Sunnie squealed and threw her arms around a relieved Jendan’s neck. Alys and Chris looked crushed.
Jendan’s mouth pulled up in an almost imperceptible smile as he looked over at me.
“Now,” Chip said, turning to the losing team. “It’s time for the Judgment challenge. Did either of you find Pandora’s Box?”
Ooo, now that was interesting. So Pandora’s Box was something to do for after the votes? I mentally filed that tidbit away.
Both Alys and Chris shook their heads.
“All right, then. On with the challenge. This will be a fire-making challenge. The first one to build a fire and snap a rope, stays!”
I looked over at Jendan as we got up from our benches to make room for the fire-making challenge. As I did, he looked over at me and smiled, the relief evident on his face. He knew like I did that I’d saved his butt just then.
And for some reason, I was absurdly pleased by that smile.
Chapter Seven
“I feel like Annabelle’s a kindred spirit here in the game. Neither one of us is particularly cut-throat. It’s rather refreshing.” — Jendan Abercrombie, Day 5, Endurance Island: Power Players
“We’re out of water again,” I complained to Kip. “And you’re lying on my bed.”
“Didn’t realize everything on this beach belonged to you,” he told me, but he didn’t get up.
It was day five of the game and I’d just about hit my limit with Kip. He did nothing around camp, and if I protested, he’d tell me that he was ‘saving his strength for the next challenge.’ Which drove me crazy. We wouldn’t win if I was exhausted and he was fresh, right? There had to be a little give and take.
Except one partner in this duo was doing a lot more ‘taking.’ Kip didn’t lift a finger to help. The only shelter we had was mine - I’d managed to erect a vague lean-to against a pair of trees growing close together, and used the box (that I’d now disassembled) as flooring. Along with some woven palm fronds, it…well, it sucked. It didn’t keep me warm, didn’t keep out the rain, but I didn’t wake up with sand in my hoo-ha, so that was a plus.
Of course, now that I’d made a shelter, Kip was determined to hog it at every turn. Right now he was lounging, eating a coconut that I’d put at camp for myself.
“I made the bed,” I told him. “Therefore, it’s mine.”
“Look, Annabelle,” he said in that dismissive tone of his that set my teeth on edge. “We both know that we’re due for a reward challenge of some kind. You need me in fighting shape for the challenge, because we both know that you won’t be able to handle anything athletic.”
“Is that so?”
“Yep,” he said, obviously missing my sarcasm. “So let me rest. And fill up my canteen while you’re getting water, will you?”
I seethed, and then I plucked his canteen from his hand and stomped into the jungle. I hated Kip - hated him fiercely - but I took the canteen anyhow. It wasn’t that I wanted to keep him hydrated so he could be strong in challenges - I didn’t care if he was or not. If we lost, I was counting on beating him in the loser challenge so I could boot his ass and be a team of one, like Alys had done to Chris.
But if I didn’t fill his canteen, he’d follow me into the jungle, and I wanted to be alone in the jungle, because I needed to find that forked tree.
The moment I had whatever was in Pandora’s Box, I’d feel safer. Chip had mentioned it when the team had been voted off, which told me that it had something to do with whoever lost Judgment. If it was some sort of ‘get out of jail free,’ I wanted to have it before I started throwing challenges to get rid of Kip.