Vanilla

Eighteen

"What that will do is give them either an advantage or disadvantage, head start or handicap cooking outdoors depending on the number, with four being the one provided with most aid and equipment, and one being provided with only... an axe."

I should have known right then and there; our captain had to have used up all his luck drawing a wild as his final card. All that remained were the leftover bits of misfortune that no author above would be so kind to rid at once. Yet, I continued to harbour some form of hope that we wouldn't draw anything with a handicap—which was honestly a fifty-fifty chance come to think of it.

"This year, we're taking a leap of faith," Keith started out slowly, reading off a document handed to him by one of the instructors. Presumably the Dean's statement. "Encouraging our students to step out of their comfort zone has always been one of our primary educational goals and with four days in the Amazonas for the first time, it is only logical to make full use of this adventure and push your abilities farther than you've ever imagined it can go.

"That will, particularly, apply to the team that needs to forage ninety-five percent of their ingredients for the cross-segment on their own," Keith lowered the note in his hands, blinking hard and in disbelief. Joining him in this was the rest of us on-stage—completely lost at the extent to which they wished to put our teamwork to the test and squeeze every bit of knowledge we had in our minds, condensing it into a single instance which was now.

Clearly, ninety-five percent was a severe underestimation. An axe wasn't going to make up the remaining five percent of ingredients and thankfully, the rest of the room seemed to have that bit of common sense to figure this out.

"Uh, so," Keith cleared his throat, returning the papers he'd been reading from to the instructor beside him. "I guess we could start with, uh, Tenner?" He snapped his fingers to catch the stage assistant's attention, who then scrambled over to the school's number one with a box. "Pick a card."

Not once did she stop to think. Her hand: in it went and out it came, card between her thumb and index. Two.

"Well at least it wasn't the worst." Si Yin had probably meant for this to be heard by no one but herself. Unfortunately for her, heads turned and thankfully, Chen's draw was enough to distract them from her comments. A three. "Aaand at least he didn't get the best."

"It's a make or break, Cox." Rosi hissed at our captain's back, cupping her hands around her lips for extra measure. "Fifty-fifty. You can't screw this up."

Already, I could imagine the kind of curses he was muttering under his breath, hoping that we wouldn't have to suffer the handicap of foraging all night while Birchwood had to herself a personal hunter and an entire grill set. This time, for real—we were picking between extremes.

In he reached. Out he pulled.

He took a single glance at it and had the very word on the tip of his tongue.

====================

Eight was admittedly a less-than-conservative number for a truck as small as the one we pied onto: shoulder-to-shoulder, knee-to-knee. Not the most comfortable distance I preferred to have between me and another human being, especially Leroy Cox. The vehicle jerked one before seemingly running into a ditch, causing most of us to fall over and into the personal space of whoever it was to our right.

Twenty to thirty feet in front of us sat, in contrast, Birchwood's team on the back of a larger truck—happily chatting away despite the equipment and additional helpers they had on board. Among them was a native man, rather built, and a woman who seemed to be sharing something about the plant in her hand. Bay leaves.