The Theory of Second Best (Cake #2)

by J. Bengtsson

  Of course, things rarely went as planned, and this was no exception. Our task was, as a team, to make our way through a series of ropes and ladders, all while bound together. We could only go as fast as our slowest guy, and that guy was Dale. He was not a nimble man to begin with, but his injuries made him even more of a liability. There were times where we were literally dragging him through the obstacle course. Despite our extensive efforts, we were handed a resounding loss.

  Dejected and exhausted, the moment we stumbled back into camp, the scheming began. Someone was going home tonight, and there were varying opinions on who it was going to be. It was as if the six of us had turned into rabid animals. Backed into corners, there was a lot of threatening and snarling going on. Alliances began to crumble. And much to my dismay, Dale’s name was the one being thrown out there the most. Marsha, Carl, and Bobby wanted him gone… and they wanted me to turn against him to make it happen. But in order for me to do that, I’d have to betray Kyle, knowing there was no way he would ever vote Dale out. The worst part was, I was actually considering it. The others weren’t wrong to want Dale gone. He’d lost that challenge for us. It was only fair that he be the one to take the fall for it.

  It should have been an easy decision to make. Dale’s game was dragging mine down. I’d sworn to myself before starting the show that I wouldn’t let emotion dictate my decisions. Winning meant staying strong and fierce and focused. No one I could meet on the show, I reasoned, could possibly mean more to me than my family. But then, I hadn’t been expecting the strong connections I’d made. This game was tough. Winning took so much more than just physical strength. You needed personal connections. And to get close to people, you needed to open yourself up to the possibility of friendship, all the while knowing you would eventually have to betray them.

  The bonds I’d made out here were real… and despite what I’d told Kyle, I felt more for him than just a silly crush. I didn’t know when or how, but somewhere along the way my heart had been stolen right out from under me. I had completely broken my promise. Not only had I let emotions get the best of me, I was now making decisions based on them. Dale was too important to Kyle. And Kyle was too important to me. The smart decision became the emotional one. Loyalty won out over strength. Bobby would be the next to go.

  TV Confessional

  “Imprinted? You know, when werewolves find the right person, they imprint on them. Twilight? No? Okay, never mind.”

  —Kenzie

  25

  Kyle: Never Have I Ever

  After my childish rant at Kenzie, I’d stalked off in search of food. I was hungry and pissed. My so-called allies were all so quick to write me off the minute my family connection came into play. So much for forging my own identity out here. Dale was always talking to me about finding my way, and I had been buying into all his bullshit rhetoric right up until everyone who meant anything to me in this game just shit all over me. What was the point of branching out on my own? When this show aired, I wouldn’t be introduced as Kyle McKallister. I was going to be Jake McKallister’s brother, nothing more and nothing less. I might as well have just stayed on tour.

  I came to the tree where Kenzie and I had foraged for fruit on the second day. We’d been back many times since, stripping the branches free of anything edible. But there was still a bundle higher up that I’d not been able to reach. Grabbing a long stalk of bamboo, I attempted to hoist myself up onto the first branch, but without Kenzie giving me a boost, I couldn’t reach.

  “You want a hand?” Carl asked, sneaking up from behind and nearly causing me to crap my pants in surprise. The guy actually had a ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill you’ look on his face. Oh, now he wanted to be friendly? And it didn’t have anything to do with the fact that he had a chubby for my brother?

  “I don’t know, Carl,” I replied in a snooty tone. “I’m just really not in the mood for company. You should understand that.”

  Carl raised his arms to concede defeat. “Say no more.”

  I watched him turn and walk away. My stomach growled in protest. My self-preservation outweighed my pride.

  “Maybe just a boost,” I called out to him. Carl turned his enormous body on a dime and strode back over to me. He cupped his hands and I stepped into the linked palms. He shot me in the air like a frickin’ cannon. My starting point was two branches higher than I’d ever been with one of Kenzie’s boosts. Carl handed me the bamboo stick, and I climbed my way up until I was able to poke down a few more fruits from the tree.

  Luckily Carl stayed by the trunk, and I got out of the tree with way fewer cuts and bruises than normal. Kenzie always seemed to lose track of my existence the moment those fruit pods started tumbling down. Carl appeared less interested in piggybacking off my effort. He watched as I hoarded my bounty like a cagey, wounded animal. Surprisingly, he didn’t try to take any for himself, although with the mood I was in, I probably would have bit off his fucking hand if he’d tried.

  “You need my help with anything else?”

  I eyed him suspiciously. “Why are you being nice to me all of the sudden?”

  “I was hoping you could get me backstage at one of Jake’s concerts.”

  Stunned, I glared up at Carl. That was never going to happen. If it were up to me, I’d have him thrown out of the damn venue. What an asshole! Then I realized he was smiling.

  “Was that a joke?” I asked, confused at the scene playing out in front of me.

  “My attempt at one, anyway. You looked like you were having a bad day. I just wanted to help. I’ll leave you be now.”

  Three long strides already had the dude a half a block away. “Hey,” I called out to him.

  Carl turned just as I tossed him a fruit. He caught it in one hand, held it up as if to say thanks, and walked away.

  He wasn’t so bad after all.

  The last of the Fab Five to get the boot was Bobby, and he went out kicking and screaming. Good riddance, if you asked me. The dickwad dumped our rice in the ocean when he realized nothing would save him. And now we hadn’t eaten more than crabs, mollusks, and worms in the past thirty-six hours.

  The merge with the East couldn’t come soon enough. Without carbs, we were bodies without bones. Most of the last two days had been spent in a state of lethargy. Even walking to the poophole was a challenge. When we weren’t foraging for food, we were sprawled out in the shelter, trying to escape the sweltering heat or floating listlessly in the warm ocean water.

  Kenzie and I had decided not to talk about our spat. It seemed easier to pretend like nothing happened than to deal with the larger issue at hand; and honestly, I had no idea what that was or why we had been arguing in the first place. The fun, flirty side of our conversations returned, but I sensed a level of tension coming from her end. She was more restrained when I got playful with her, removing my hands from places she hadn’t minded them being before.

  Sometimes when she thought I wasn’t looking, I’d catch Kenzie staring at me with that dreamy far-off look in her eyes. Clearly she felt something for me, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why. This was a girl who had her shit together. I was the complete opposite: immature, lazy, essentially unemployed, and suffering from serious abandonment issues. I’d never had a relationship last more than six hours.

  The quick (and obvious) answer would be that Kenzie liked me for my DNA, but that argument didn’t hold true, seeing as she fell for my slacker act well before knowing my connection to Jake. Nope, as far as I could tell, she liked me for me. What the hell? If Kenzie were smart, she’d run as fast as possible in the opposite direction. Warning her seemed the responsible thing to do; yet the selfish asshole in me wasn’t ready for her to leave. I liked having someone devoted to me for a change. Maybe I was leading her on, like Dale said… or maybe… I wasn’t. Could it be that I actually liked this girl? Certainly, I wasn’t immune to her earthy charms. Kenzie was a pretty girl, and I’d have been lying if I said some of her flirty antics didn’t ge
t a rise out of me. And strangely enough, even though neither one of us was becoming more eye-catching as the show went on, I was inexplicably finding myself more drawn to her every day.

  It was midday, and the sun was beating down upon the shelter, trapping us all under a blanket of humidity. We’d been lounging around for over an hour doing nothing more than bemoaning our lack of food and feeling sorry for ourselves, when I saw something scurry through Kenzie’s hair.

  “Kenz?” I murmured in a low and emotionless tone of voice.

  “Yeah?” she answered back, with even less enthusiasm than I’d just managed to muster.

  “There’s a bug in your hair.”

  No response.

  “There’s a bug in your hair,” I repeated a little louder.

  “I heard you the first time. Could you take it out, please?”

  I could, but that would require exerting energy, of which I had very little.

  “It’s probably just going to scamper away on its own,” I offered feebly.

  “I swear, Kyle. If you don’t take it out, the next time you get stung by a jellyfish, you’re peeing on it yourself.”

  “That was on the back of my leg. I couldn’t have reached it and you know it.”

  “The point is I did it. Now you owe me.”

  “Uggghh,” I huffed. “Fine.”

  I maneuvered my body up and rested on my elbow as I started picking through her hair for the offending insect. This is what we’d been reduced to… a family of orangutans, lazing around all day, foraging through each other’s hair for bugs.

  “If Kenzie’s hair bug is big and meaty, I call it,” Dale announced.

  “Dammit,” Carl exclaimed. “I wanted it.”

  “Yeah, well, I called shotgun.”

  “I thought you didn’t kill living things, Carl,” Kenzie called him out.

  “That was before I was starving to death. Now I’m not ruling out cannibalism.”

  We all chuckled, but it was a pathetic sound. It was as if our voices couldn’t muster the enthusiasm required for a genuine laugh. My eyes followed the bug’s path through Kenzie’s hair. He was a quick sucker, much quicker than my shaky fingers could catch. I made a quick movement and jabbed Kenzie in the back of the head.

  “Ow!” she protested.

  “My bad. He’s a slippery sucker. Oh, wait.” I captured the bug between my thumb and pointer finger. “Got it,” I called out proudly, holding up my creepy crawly treasure.

  “You got a size or species?” Dale asked, sounding incredibly apathetic.

  “I don’t know. It looks like a beetle.”

  “Gross,” Kenzie complained.

  “It’s dime size and impressively plump. Probably got a good greasy meal in Kenzie’s hair before I caught it.”

  Kenzie reached back to smack me, but her hand hit air and she just gave up.

  The bug wiggled in my fingers. I tried to hold on but he had other plans and made an impressive escape. “Oh, shit. It jumped. Sorry, Dale.”

  “Yeah, it’s okay. I wasn’t all that invested in it anyway.”

  “Did you know that one in every four animals on earth are beetles?” Marsha piped up.

  “Yes,” Carl said, barely able to control his frustration. “And do you know why we know, Marsha? Because you’ve said it over one hundred times.”

  Once we’d figured out that Marsha’s knowledge wasn’t limitless, just on a loop, it was tough to have the patience to deal with her repetitiveness.

  “Hardly,” she answered with a wave of her hand, completely brushing Carl off.

  “Here’s one for you Marsha,” Dale challenged. “Did you know the Rubik’s cube can always be solved in twenty moves or less?”

  “Of course,” she rolled her eyes. “Sometimes you act like I’m two.”

  “That wasn’t my intention.”

  “Do you know what the world record is?” she parried, an air of superiority in her question.

  “Six seconds,” Dale answered confidently.

  “Wrong. The world record is 5.55 seconds.”

  “Too bad I don’t have the Internet so I can fact check you.”

  “You don’t need it. I’m a walking encyclopedia,” Marsha answered smugly.

  “Of regurgitated facts,” Carl mumbled. “I can’t believe there even is a website to fact check stupid shit like that.”

  “They have videos of cats licking their asses, Carl,” I answered helpfully. “Why not geek trivia sites?”

  “Really? Cats licking their butts?” Marsha asked, seemingly intrigued. I got a visual of her going home and googling it.

  “Well, did you know the Rubik’s cube was invented to help explain three dimensional geometry?” Dale said, not ready to give up on his incredibly stimulating conversation.

  “Dale, please don’t insult my intelligence.”

  Kenzie, Carl, and I looked at each other in amusement. Dale and Marsha could do this all day if we let them, and sometimes they did. I wondered if when I was old and decrepit like them I’d have as much useless information floating around in my head. Somehow I didn’t think I would.

  In an attempt to break up their incredibly nerdy pissing contest, I said, “Hey Dale, how is that hill on your leg coming along?”

  “It’s swollen to twice its size.”

  “Any whitehead yet?”

  “You know there isn’t, Kyle,” Dale replied, with just enough edge in his voice to make it funny. “You ask me every few hours. When it’s ready to pop, you’ll be the first to know.”

  And as sad and pathetic as it was, I genuinely felt that witnessing the eruption of Dale’s pus-filled abscess would be one of the highlights of my time on the island. Just the fact that Dale would allow me to share in his special moment made me love him even more.

  “Who’s up for a little team bonding?” Kenzie asked.

  Without bothering to open my eyes, I raised my hand. As hungry and exhausted as I was, if possible I was even more bored. And since Kenzie was willing to put forth the effort to entertain me, I was all for it.

  “Good. Kyle. Anyone else?”

  “As long as the bonding doesn’t require standing up,” Carl whined. “I get lightheaded.”

  “Nothing physical,” she agreed. “Dale? Marsha?”

  “I guess.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Great. I love the enthusiasm. Okay, everyone up and sit in a circle.”

  Groans went up louder than I would have expected, but then the most vocal of them probably came from me. I had hoped we could bond lying down.

  Once we were all in an upright position, Kenzie explained the game. “This is a team bonding exercise called Ten Fingers. Everyone hold up your hands.” We all did as instructed except Dale, who had sustained an injury to his pinky finger a few days earlier, and it now appeared to be hanging limply.

  “Jesus, Dale.” I shook my head. “Is there any part of you that isn’t injured?”

  “I can’t help it. I didn’t know I would be required to raise all ten fingers today, or I might have been doing some physical therapy in preparation,” he spat back.

  “Quiet, boys. I’m trying to explain the rules. So I’m going to say something like ‘I’ve never kissed a dog,’ and if you have kissed a dog, you put one finger down. In Dale’s case… we’ll just assume he’s kissed a dog.”

  A low rumble of amusement burst forth from the five of us.

  “So this is ‘Never have I ever’?” I asked. “The drinking game?”

  “Yes, but we’ll be playing the kid’s version.”

  “Ooh, I’m in,” I said, suddenly getting a new wind. Nothing I wanted more than to dig out a little filth from these people. “How dirty can we get?”

  Kenzie glanced at the cameras. “Depends on how much you want your mom to know about you, I guess.”

  I winced. “So PG-13?”

  “That’s probably smart. Okay, so I’ll start. For Dale’s sake, we’ll get this one out of the way right now. Never have I e
ver broken a bone.”

  Everyone but Kenzie lowered a finger. Dale’s limp, pathetic one stayed where it was. She gestured for Dale to go next.

  “Never have I ever peed in a public pool.”

  All fingers went down except Carl’s. He wrinkled his nose, flinching away from us. “Really? All of you? That’s absolutely repulsive.”

  “Come on. You can’t tell me you haven’t peed in the ocean,” I pressed, honestly not understanding how someone could go through life without committing such an act.

  His head snapped in my direction. “Never. Why? Have you?”

  “Of course. Sometimes standing right next to you.”

  Carl’s face turned hard and angry. Clearly he was not finding the fun in the game.

  “Carl,” Kenzie soothed. “Why don’t you go next?”

  “Never have I ever strangled someone who peed on me,” Carl barked, all the while glowering at me. He then lowered one finger in an attempt to intimidate me. Kenzie grabbed his hand and scolded him with her eyes.

  “Okay, Carl. Not helpful. Next.”

  “I’ve got one,” I offered. “Never have I ever had sex in the back of a cop car.”

  Marsha lowered a finger. I gaped at her. She never ceased to amaze me.

  “Okay, I just want to be clear that you understand the game, Marsha.”

  “I understand the game, Kyle. You think you’re so young and hip, but I was running wild years before you were even born. So close your mouth and move on.”

  “Actually, it’s your turn,” Kenzie directed.

  Marsha took a moment to think about her contribution to the game, and then, with her eyes fixed on Kenzie, said, “Never have I ever fallen in love with someone who only thinks of me as a friend.”

  Silence flooded the stale, humid air around us. Kenzie’s face dropped in horror. I saw her hands actually shake. Carl seemed to pick up on her distress and he lowered a finger. She caught his eye, and I saw tears in hers.