"I'm freezing," Clarissa whined. She sidled up to Owen where he sat on the other end of the platform. "Can I come cuddle with you?"
"Of course," Owen said, and wrapped his arm around her.
She promptly unzipped the front of his jacket and shoved her hand down it. "Ooo, you're so warm," she cooed.
It’s all that hot air, I thought to myself.
"Well, let's try and see if we can't make a fire," Pat said to Patty.
After about twenty minutes of watching them fumble with the matches on some wet wood, I figured there was not going to be a fire. I wanted to try it myself, but that'd seem too aggressive, and the red team already thought I was pushy. So I dug into my pack to see what the good people of Endurance Island had provided for me to wear for the next month. A t-shirt, some panties, a pair of insulated pants that I'd be putting on in about two minutes flat, some water-shoes, and a small, crinkly little square package that I couldn't figure out. I held it up to the fading light, frowning at it.
What the heck was it?
"I think the fire's a bust," Patty eventually said, pulling me away from my contemplation of the mystery item.
No surprise there. I unwrapped the little square and began to unfold it. It crinkled and was made of a thin, flimsy sort of plastic, but it was big - like the size of a sheet. "Is this some sort of blanket?"
All eyes turned to me and my crinkly mess. A moment later, everyone was digging through their packs, looking for their own. "It's a thermal blanket," Owen told us all.
Thank you, Captain Obvious.
"Everyone get yours out and sleep in it tonight,” Owen told us, as if we couldn’t figure out how to use a blanket on our own. “We'll finish the shelter in the morning."
Obediently, the others crawled onto the platform and we all squished together to preserve body heat. One after another, blankets crinkled open, and then there was nothing to do but lay in the dark, shiver, and wait for dawn.
IT RAINED THAT NIGHT. OF course it did. We didn't have a roof, so God had to clearly be punishing us. You would think it would snow, but nope. Fat, drippy plops of rain with little icy cores flicked and spit on us all night, to the point that we wore our blankets over our heads and questioned why we'd ever signed up for this stupid show.
Why, oh why, couldn't they have taken us to Bora Bora?
When the sun came up, after a night of horrific sleep, I decided that I didn't care if the others got mad that I was pushy or not - I was going to make a damn fire. Patty seemed to have woken up with the same motto, and the two of us chatted and joked while we tried to get things going.
No sooner had we made a small fire than we put on a pot of water to boil (the pot the only thing they'd left at our campsite for us other than a team flag), than Clarissa came running up with a gaily wrapped Christmas present. "Santa's elves left us a gift!"
"Really?" I asked drily. "You think it was Santa's elves? Really?"
Clarissa froze at the sound of my sarcasm, and her lower lip began to quiver. Cameramen zoomed in, clearly smelling a fight.
"Oh, goddamn it," I muttered to myself.
"Be nice, Lunatic," Owen said in that ridiculous alpha-male voice of us. "We're here on the Christmas show, and Clarissa's just in the swing of things. It's not her fault you woke up on the wrong side of the bed."
"Oh, was there a bed?" I snarked, in a pissy mood after he'd called me 'lunatic' instead of my real name. "I must have missed it after that great night of sleep in our glorious shelter."
"Shh, Luna," Patty said in a soft voice. "Be nice."
I thought I was being pretty nice, all things considering. But I just shrugged and looked over at Clarissa, who was still staring at me with big, wounded eyes. "So what's in the box?"
Owen hugged Clarissa's shoulders. "It's okay. Why don't you show us?"
She tugged at the big ornate bow and pulled off the lid, peeking inside. Then, she lifted the object into the air. It was a gigantic puzzle piece that had "Challenge in One Hour" written on the front.
"What do you think it could be?" Clarissa asked.
Really? Patty shot me an incredulous look as well. Was Clarissa that stupid or just playing dumb?
I watched as Owen took the piece from Clarissa’s hand and studied it. "Clearly it's some kind of puzzle." He looked at all of us. "Anyone in the group an expert at puzzles?"
I raised my hand.
Owen ignored it. "Okay, well, if no one objects, I think I'll take charge in the puzzle challenge. I'm pretty good at them."
I put down my hand and rolled my eyes.
"But...Luna had her hand up," Patty said in a questioning voice.
"I know," Owen said. "But no one likes Luna."
This time when I put my hand up, I extended my middle finger at Owen.
"See?" he said.
TWO
Can I vote someone off already? Because the Boston Princess is getting on my last nerve. You’d think a girl as cute as her would know when to shut her damn yap. – Owen MacIntosh, Day 2, Endurance Island: Alaska
"IT'S A PUZZLE CHALLENGE ALL right," I murmured as the red team stepped onto the mat. I made sure I was at the front, which wasn't hard, considering I was a short girl.
"Your powers of observation are astounding, Luna," Owen said. "Whatever gave you that idea?"
I wanted to shoot him the bird again, but the cameras were zooming in on us. So I just put my hands on my hips and ignored him, trying to suss out the puzzle. There were large wooden blocks in weird Tetris shapes scattered all over the snow, stuffed into Christmas stockings and painted the color of each team. I immediately started mentally figuring stuff out. There were 3D puzzle pieces all over the snow, and at the far end of the challenge area, there was an enormous wall that Chip stood atop of. We'd clearly have to put together a ladder of some kind to get to him.