AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It had to be a bitch carrying a heavy camera through the jungle on your shoulder.
“Take a break, Linda,” I said. “We promise not to say anything interesting.”
She nodded and sat down on the ground. “Thanks.”
I approached Lauren and pulled the strap of a fresh canteen over my shoulder, offering it to her.
“Thanks,” she said, taking a sip. “Hey, do you know how to get back to our camp? If we got close to Neil and Shayla’s camp, we must be far from ours.”
“Yeah, I’m tracking.”
She nodded. As she drank more water, I opened my mouth to speak, then closed it. I should really leave it alone. I knew that. But I couldn’t.
“Hey, did you want to finish our conversation from earlier?” I asked.
She shrugged. “There’s no point. We broke up. Rehashing it won’t help anything.”
Just a few minutes ago, she’d had tears shining in her eyes as she asked me whether I thought we would have lasted. Now she sounded disinterested.
“I’m not trying to rehash anything,” I said. “But I’m not going to lie and say I would have broken up with you if you had come. I wanted you with me.”
She scoffed. “As your eternal girlfriend.”
“You don’t know that.” I lowered my brows, irritated. “You were a hothead who broke things off when you shouldn’t have and you want some justification to make it feel right, but there is none.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
I locked gazes with her. “Did it fucking sound like a joke?”
“A lot of what comes out of your mouth—” She stopped midsentence as her eyes focused on something behind me. “Oh my God.”
“What?”
I looked in the direction she pointed. Just off the path about ten yards ahead, there was an X painted on the ground.
“Holy shit, you found one,” I said.
I’d forgotten all about Linda. We’d have to replay finding the chest with the camera rolling if she’d missed it. I turned and she gave a me a thumbs up, camera back on her shoulder.
“Do we have anything to dig with?” Lauren asked me.
“I’ll use a stick if I have to.”
I charged toward the X, dying to know what was inside of it. We’d spent countless hours getting eaten alive by mosquitoes while searching for chests, and finally we had a win. If there was a bottle of booze in this one, I planned to crack it open and take a swig immediately.
So far, I’d only had a single shot from the first bottle we’d dug up. Any more than that would draw the ire of the Fun Police, aka Lauren. But after our argument, I didn’t give a shit about her ire.
I was prepared to dig that fucking chest up with my bare hands if I had to, but when I got to the X, I found a small shovel leaning against a tree nearby. A few seconds later, I was digging.
“How can I help?” Lauren asked from nearby.
“Just stay back while I dig.”
She looked on hopefully. “What are you hoping for the most?”
“An ice-cold beer.”
“If only. It’s been getting so cold at night, though. I hope there are blankets in there.”
Sweat rolled off my skin as I dug, slapping away bugs regularly. And finally, I’d uncovered enough of the chest to pull it out of the ground.
Lauren looked over my shoulder as I unlatched the top and threw it open. She gave a cry that sounded more satisfied than anything that had come from Shayla’s mouth earlier.
“Mac and cheese! I can’t!” She sounded like she was about to cry with happiness. “Just rip the box open and pour that powdered cheese packet in my mouth. And gummy bears!”
The chest was loaded with goodies. There was candy, a huge bag of trail mix, four boxes of mac and cheese, two more canteens, a tarp, two toothbrushes, and a tube of toothpaste.
“Hell yeah.” I grinned up at Lauren. “We’re gonna have mac and cheese and candy with dinner, and we get to brush our teeth.”
She bounced on her feet with excitement. “I take back every awful comment I made about these treasure chests.” She looked toward the sky, which was covered by the forest canopy. “I’m sorry, Island gods. You delivered.”
“Now we have to carry it all back to camp,” I reminded her.
“Look!” She reached beneath the lid of the chest and pulled out something that was wedged inside it.
It was a small backpack. We were able to fit almost everything from the chest inside it and then I put it on my back. Lauren carried the bag of trail mix.
“Ready to head back to camp?” she asked.
“Yep.” I met her eyes. “Hey, nice job staying with it. I know you wanted to quit, but you didn’t.”
“I did not want to quit,” she said indignantly.
Which was absolute bullshit. She’d said no less than four times today that looking for chests was a waste of time. I was debating whether to call her out on it when a voice called out from nearby.
“Hey Archer, what the fuck are you doing here?”
Lauren and I both turned to find Neil and Shayla approaching us, both fully clothed now.
I tipped my chin at Neil. “Treasure hunting. What are you guys doing?”
Shayla immediately looked guilty, but Neil looked pissed off.
“This is our area. Our camp is less than a half mile from here. Whatever you just dug up is ours.”
“Oh, hell no,” Lauren muttered. “He’s not taking my gummy bears.”
“We’re allowed to look anywhere on the island,” I said.
“Whatever’s in that backpack, you better hand it over.” Neil stalked toward me with his hand out.
I shrugged off the pack and passed it to Lauren. “Stay behind me.”
“Fuck off,” I said to Neil as he stopped in front of me. “We dug it up and it’s ours.”
“The fuck it is.”
He stared me down for a few seconds before taking a swing at me that I easily saw coming. I ducked to the side.
“Try it again and I’ll put you on the ground,” I said.
Neil wasn’t the smartest player in the league. His expression twisted with fury, and he charged toward me. He was met with a punch to the stomach, and he slapped me in return.
“Did you just slap me?” I shoved him and shook my head. “Not so tough without your enforcer fighting your battles, are you?”
He growled and charged me again. We rolled to the ground together, Shayla wailing about Neil getting hurt and Lauren clutching our backpack.
After exchanging a few punches, I had a fat lip and he had a black eye. I stood up, panting, and he rolled into a ball on the ground.
“We’re taking our shit back to camp,” I said. “You come at me again and I swear I’ll knock your last three teeth out.”
I motioned for Lauren to start walking the path back to camp ahead of me.
Neil groaned and tried to get up, but then dropped back down to the ground again, muttering, “I have eight teeth left, asshole.”
