Page 31 of Sweet Surrender
There was a moment when neither said anything. Allie moved to sit on one of the flatter rocks. She tucked one leg beneath her and circled her arms around it. The way she looked at Barra made Barra’s toes tingle. However, that could easily just be a sugar rush. After days without sugar, her body was probably reacting to the sudden spike.
“You know, between the two of us, we hold all the power,” Allie said after a minute.
“And with great power comes great responsibility,” Barra said, quoting Uncle Ben.
“Is that a line from a movie?”
Barra laughed. “It’s from Spider-Man. Don’t you remember? It’s when Uncle Ben has a heartfelt conversation with Peter about consequences. It’s only one of the most famous scenes in movie history.”
“I never watched Spider-Man,” Allie said, shaking her head. “Nor do I ever intend to.”
“I don’t think we can be friends,” Barra replied. Who hasn’t watched Spider-Man? But Barra didn’t get the chance to ask because a gust of wind swept across the beach and caught Barra’s hair, throwing it across her face. Barra tucked the strands behind her ears and looked up at the sky. A bank of clouds had begun to roll in. Where the sky had been blue just a few moments ago, it was now a blanket of charcoal grey. “We should head back to camp,” she said reluctantly, even though she didn’t want to. All she really wanted to do was bask in this moment with Allie. “I think a storm’s coming.”
Allie picked up the bag of leftover brownies and flipped them in her hands. The envelope holding the advantage was folded up into the smallest slip of paper Barra could manage before being shoved into the side tie of her wet bikini bottoms, where it sat against her hip.
“Where should we hide the brownies?” Allie asked.
Barra smiled. “I have just the spot.”
Chapter Sixteen
Life at camp had become increasingly miserable as the rain settled in. It didn’t fall so much as hammer down in thick sheets. Their shelter’s roof had caved in twice. Barra had figured out how to reinforce it. Something about lashing a second beam across the top and wedging a flat slab of rock beneath one corner, but it hadn’t interested Allie so much as cowering under a palm tree while rainwater dripped down her back.
Even the next reward challenge had been postponed until the weather cleared up.
Apparently, after Season Five’s incident where Isla Stone had sustained a concussion and a broken bone during one of the challenges, safety was of the utmost importance.
But Allie could understand why. The ground was a slick muddy mess that had actually swallowed Allie’s Gucci Ace trainers last night on the way to Moon Pit. She’d only left them because the rain had come down so hard she’d been blinded. She could only imagine what the mud would do if one tried to run through it. And then there was the ocean, now rough and violent, all churning grey and white foam, far too dangerous for any challenges.
Allie shuddered at the thought of wading into it and pulled her knees closer to her chest. A drop slid through a weak point in the roof and landed cold on her knee.
Allie used to love the rain.
Winters on the East Coast were cold, grey, and damp. But back then, bad weather meant something entirely different. Itmeant staying inside her parents’ townhouse where all three fireplaces were always going out while Mara drifted from room to room to coax them back to life before they even thought of dying out. It meant curling up in the window seat of her bedroom with a book face down on her lap, watching droplets race down the glass while Mara brought her hot chocolate smothered in Jet-Puffed mini marshmallows. It meant binge-watching TV in the living room under layers of wool blankets while her parents were still at Mount Sinai Hospital. It meant a long bath with steam fogging up the mirrors and a self-made avocado and honey treatment mask clinging to her face while Stacie Orrico pondered that there should be more to life through Allie’s iPod Nano earphones.
Rain had been a luxury then.
“How long is this still going to go on?” Tilly asked, dragging her fingers down her cheeks. Her skin had that tight, puffy look of someone who hadn’t slept a wink last night. No one had. Not with the very real threat that the shelter was going to succumb to the rain.
“It can end today,” Toph said, pulling the sleeves of her hoodie down over her hands. “Or it could go on for another few days. Storms are relatively common here this time of year. I’m not quite sure of the statistics, but I do recall reading up—”
“I don’t care about your statistics, Toph,” Tilly groaned, hanging her head between her knees. “No offence,” she added quickly, not that Toph looked offended. “But I just don’t think I can take it anymore.”
“It’s not that bad,” Valerie said. She had a few strips of palm fronds spread out across her lap and was braiding them together. Into what, Allie had absolutely no idea.
“That’s easy for you to say,” Tilly snapped, her head snapping with it. “Didn’t you say you grew up in Alaska? The weather’s always miserable there. You must be used to it.”
“That’s an exaggeration,” Valerie said, not rising to it the way she usually would. Ever since Sutton had gone home, something about her had softened. Something Allie couldn’t quite figure out, but she didn’t prod. It was best to let sleeping dogs lie. Anyway, Valerie had actually begun to grow on Allie. Just yesterday, when the rain had come down at its hardest, Valerie had broken intoIt’s Raining Menbut swapped the lyrics to It’s Raining Women, Hallelujah. The Weather Girls should seriously consider the update.
“Alaska can be very pleasant,” Valerie went on. “Especially in Anchorage. In the summer it barely gets dark. We used to go hiking at midnight and paddle out onto the lake when the water was glassy. In winter, we’d go cross-country skiing and ice fishing, and sometimes we’d all get in a car and drive for hours chasing the northern lights.” She tightened a knot in the strip of palm frond she was working with. “I’ve been in Florida since I was twenty, so no, I’m not used to this kind of weather.”
Tilly only huffed.
Elodie, who had been silently staring at the sky, stuck her hand out from under the shelter and faced her palm upward. Rain immediately flattened against her skin.
Everyone watched it in mild despair.
“When I was twenty-three,” she said, her voice just loud enough to be heard over the rain. “I spent my entire life savings hiking Machu Picchu. At that time in my life, I couldn’t even afford a coffee at the airport. I just had enough for the flights and the permits and the local guide and his donkey.” She paused, and Allie could already tell where this was going. Poor Elodie. “It poured. Like biblical flooding. I saw exactly five feet in front of me the entire time. And I mean, the entire time.”
