Chapter Thirty Two: I Hate You Too
~~~
"So..." Ben said.
"Hm?"
"What?"
"Kenji and Eva working together, guess Bumpster and I really did miss a lot."
"Shut up," they snapped, simultaneously.
Eva glared at Kenji, only to see him already glaring in her direction.
When they reached the garage, Kenji went for the quad bike while Eva went for the keys. She pulled the keys to the quad bike and the rover from the key box next to a side door.
As she approached the quad bike, she noted Kenji looking around, pouting. Eva jingled the keys, and his head snapped to her. He reached out his hand, doing the grabby motion. Instead of abiding, she withdrew her hand.
"No."
"I want the quad."
Kenji shook his head. "First come first serve."
"But do you have the keys?"
"Two days of no fighting?" Eva drew back her head, cackling in laughter. "Fine. Then get down on your knees and beg."
At this, Eva laughed harder.
"Guys—" Ben tried, but to no avail.
"Those are your two options, or you're giving me the keys."
"Yeah, I'm not doing either of those."
"We should really be hurrying—"
Kenji stood quickly and approached her. Eva backed up, a smile on her face.
"Give me the keys Evange— Angel."
Eva scrunched up her face. "Ugh, that's worse than Evangeline!"
Kenji smirked as he reached for the keys. "Angel," he taunted.
"Shut up!"
"Angel—"
Eva ran to the left. She pulled her shirt forward and dropped the quad keys into her bra just as Kenji's hand wrapped around her upper arm.
"Is this flirting, Bumpy?"
"Well, fuck— that's just cheating, Angel. You know I can't touch those."
Kenji dropped his hand.
"Stop calling me Angel," Eva snapped, but she couldn't stop smiling. "Why do you think I hid the keys there?"
Kenji made grabby hands again, and Eva calmly dropped the rover keys into his hand. "You're the worst."
"I get that a lot."
Kenji grumbled as he turned away, heading for the rover. Eva smirked triumphantly as she pulled the quad keys from her bra and sat down. Starting up the bike, she looked to Kenji, who immediately flipped her off.
Eva pointed down a few times, and Kenji reached over to roll down the window. "You should go for Dave's mixtape. Hook it up to the radio—"
"More noise," he finished. "You got that, Ben?"
"We'll follow behind!" he shouted back.
The rover turned on, but didn't move. Eva raised her eyebrows, watching Kenji.
He sighed, "Do you know the way back to camp from here?"
Eva snickered, "Let's go, Pretty Boy."
Pretty Boy. Kenji flushed in a deep red color, but Eva had already pulled ahead.
She led the way back to Camp Cretaceous, speeding along. If they wanted to get to the watering hole before Mitch and Tiff, they had to hurry. Ben and Kenji easily matched their pace. As they strolled up on camp, Kenji hopped out of the truck and climbed the ladder.
"You guys rebuilt Camp Cretaceous?" Ben asked in amazement.
"We'll give you the tour later, Ben. It's pretty snazzy, though. Oh! And we found your bag. Sanitizer for days in that thing," Eva laughed.
Instinctively, Ben pulled some sanitizer out of his fanny pack and applied it. He also tossed Eva two flashlights, holding up two himself. "Goes with uhhh, Dave's mixtapes?"
"Oh, they're so good, just you wait!"
Kenji returned and the trio continued to the lake.
~~~
"Are you ready, ready, ready? Dave Special! Music, music, music, music, music, music!"
The music, paired with the flashing lights off of everyone's flashlights, and the cheering and hollering of the campers, effectively drove the dinosaurs away from the watering hole.
"Whoo!"
"Yeah!"
"Yah! Keep it moving! Oh, yeah!"
"Yahoo!"
"Who are you, Mario?!" Kenji shouted out the window.
Eva cheeks flushed pink. "Shut up!"
The four stopped once it was obvious the dinosaurs were heading out for good.
"Whoo!"
"Ha ha!"
"Tastes like victory?"
"You know what else tastes like victory?"
Eva threw one of her flashlights at Kenji, sadly watching it bounce off the front windshield.
"Don't you throw balls all the time?"
I'm gonna shut up now. I'm gonna shut up.
"You're disgustang!"
"What are— oi! Stop making everything dirty!" He shouted, flustered.
For some inexplicable reason, she thought of his abs. And then him in a speedo. And then him not in—
She shook her head, letting blonde waves fall from underneath her hat. Disgusting. "Force of habit! ... Ew," she muttered, flushing red. "Ew, ew, ew."
The sound of distant rumbling pulled Eva's attention away from her unwanted thoughts. She looked up at the horizon to see the dinosaurs headed back their way, and Rexy at the back looking very hungry. "Oh, god."
Eva, Yaz, Sammy and Ben quickly turned around, heading back to the watering hole. However, Kenji's frantic screams tore her attention away.
"Come on, come on, come on!" he yelled.
"Kenji!" Sammy shouted.
"I got him!" Eva yelled, annoyed, to the trio.
She took a sharp right, headed straight for the rover. "Kenji!"
Kenji frantically took off his seatbelt and unplugged Dave's mixtapes. The truck door swung open, and he stumbled out and onto the back of the quad. The bike shot forward as the first of the stampede— some stegosauruses and triceratops— crashed into the rover.
"Lean right!"
"What—?"
"Right!"
Eva swerved left to avoid hitting a dinosaur, and the bike began to tilt. She forced herself to lean in the other direction, and Kenji followed.
"Oh god, oh god!"
His arms snaked around her stomach and she forced herself to breath through her nose.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
All around them, the stampede grew. The pair were right in the thick of it, on a tiny little bike.
"Go faster!"
"Fuck you, I'm trying!"
A dinosaur roared, and by now, Eva knew to recognize it as Rexy.
"Faster! She's—"
Eva swerved right, around an ankylosaurus that was thankfully not Ben and Bumpy.
Rexy's jaws snapped shut behind them. Kenji's grip tightened around Eva's waist as she moved the bike left and right, narrowly avoiding dinosaurs. They moved around the back of one more pachycephalosaurus until they were in the clear, headed perpendicular to the stampede.
"We're fine. We're fine," Eva realized as they continued on into the jungle.
"We are most definitely not fine!"
"Yeah, we're good. We're good. We didn't die."
"You and I have very different definitions of the term 'good'!"
Eva glanced down to the tight grip he still held. She glanced up just in time to nearly run into a tree.
Kenji screamed like a girl into her ear, meanwhile Eva blushed hard, her eyes wide.
"You didn't see that!"
"Get me off this bike," he mumbled into her hair.
"Meet up point," Eva said. "The others are probably gonna try and race Mitch and Tiff back to their boat. Darius had a headstart, but still, we should head to the docks."
"Get me off here right now."
"No." Eva held up her hands to make a heart.
Kenji panickedly moved his hands to the handlebars. "I hate this so much."
Eva laid her hands atop his. "Chill, we're good here."
"Angel, I think you've stressed me out more in the last two minutes than you have in the last two months."
Eva burst into giggles as they drove.
~~~
By the time Eva and Kenji made it to the dock, everyone else was already there. Ben and Darius were in a glorious embrace, and the girls were chatting off to the side.
"Eva!" Brooklynn shouted as she stopped the quad a dozen feet from the campers.
"Get me off!" Kenji shouted as he swung his leg over the back, collapsing onto the pavement, which he began to kiss.
Eva clicked her tongue, "You're so overdramatic, Pretty Boy."
"What did you just call him?!" Yaz yelled.
Eva shrugged as she took off her helmet. "He gave me the insufferable nickname of Angel, so I did him one better. Ladies, meet Pretty Boy—" Kenji was still kissing the pavement. "Pretty Boy, meet my ladies."
"Right..."
"... Cause those nicknames are totally insufferable." Yaz said sarcastically.
"You're annoying," Eva retorted.
Yasmina popped her lips. "You love me."
"Debatable."
"Awe, we're your ladies!" Sammy said, pulling Eva into a hug. Brooklynn and Yasmina joined in.
"Can we all agree—" Kenji stood, "— that Evangeline is crazy? I mean, fucking insane!" The girls pulled back, as did Darius and Ben. "She wanted to feed Mitch and Tiff to the mosasaurus, and don't even get me started on her driving skills!"
"She also kicked Tiff in the crotch and then broke her hand," Sammy pointed out. "I mean, Eva totally shattered it. I've never seen an adult woman want to murder a teenager more in my life before."
"Crazy! She's insane! You— you're insane, Evangeline!"
Eva scoffed.
Ben cleared his throat. "Uh, don't you guys remember last month when she was breaking the monorail's lights with her fist?"
Yaz added, "She was the first to take a shit in the latrines."
"Ugh—"
"Have you seen how many times she's willingly kicked a dinosaur in the face to escape?"
"Didn't you argue with Kenji despite having a concussion?"
"I hate all of you," she said, but she was still smiling.
"Is hate your always?"
"Did you just make a Harry Potter reference?"
Brooklynn sported a guilty look on her face. "At least we're both nerds here?"
"Well, technically, you would be a dork due to your social ineptitude and obsession, and I would be a geek for my intelligence— assuming academic— and obsession. Then again, I don't know what your grades are like, so theoretically, you could fall into the—"
"You're a fucking nerd for saying that," Kenji laughed.
"Yeah."
"My god, Eva."
"Ouchie," she deadpanned with an eyeroll.
Brooklynn pulled her into a hug. Then, Sammy and Yasmina joined, and finally the boys.
"Camp fam!"
"Hugging... too... long," Yaz strained.
Together, they let go.
"So... what now?" Kenji asked. "Try to find another distress beacon?"
Darius shook his head. "No. We're done waiting for someone else to rescue us. It's time we found our own way off the island."
Eva rubbed her eyes. "We're gonna sleep first, though, right? Cause I don't think any of us have slept in what, two days?"
"Yeah, I'm fucking exhausted."
"Plan, Get Off The Island starts next week," Sammy yawned.
Yasmina yawned, too. "Next month?"
"Stop yawn—" Brooklynn yawned. "Damn it."
Kenji yawned next.
Eva chuckled, fighting the urge to yawn herself.
Darius looked at the bike and the quad, which sat side by side.
Eva shook her head. "I shouldn't be operating a motor vehicle."
"Oh, you say that now."
"We can come back for them."
The campers turned, heading for the jungle.
"Wait!" Eva shouted.
Everyone paused, turning to look at Eva.
"We are forgetting a very monumentous moment here, guys! Darius... I think you owe me a little—" she cleared her throat, "—apology."
"I am sorry," he apologized with a sigh.
"And?" Eva probed.
"And for not believing you when you suspected Mitch, Tiff and Hap from the beginning."
"And?"
"And for not listening to you when you constantly told us that they were lying."
"And?"
"And for not... and for calling you crazy."
"And?"
"And what? And what? There's nothing else! Stop milking this."
"Fine. I accept your apology. And Kenji," the boy in question stopped picking at his cuticles to stare down at Eva. "I told you so. Actually, I told all of you so. I think we should remember these moments the next time we run into, well, anyone."
"Yes, you told us so," Yasmina said with an eyeroll. "Can we go now?"
Darius nodded, and they all slowly agreed— Eva included— and the campers began to walk in the direction of Camp Cretaceous.
Eva grew more and more tired the further she walked. At this point, she was barely keeping her eyes open, until—
"Hey Eva?"
"Hm?"
"What's 'Hypnotic'?" Yasmina asked.
Eva gasped loudly, stopping in her tracks. Her eyes widened and her sleepyness immediately diminished. "Kenji Aleksander Kon!"
Kenji laughed so hard he wheezed, falling to his knees as he gasped for air.
"I can't believe you'd fucking do this to me! On what grounds, asshole? Just to be a dick? Come over here, you're getting slapped!"
She walked towards him, rolling up her sleeves. He held out his hands in mock surrender.
"Stop, stop. Eva, stop." He turned to Yaz and offered a thumbs up, "Perfect. Good job. That's a well-deserved cup of peach juice, Yaz."
Eva's eyes narrowed. "You gotta be fucking kidding me. That's so mean!" She whacked his shoulder. "You're terrible!"
"Don't hit me, don't hit me!" He pleaded through another bout of laughter.
They walked silently, save for Yaz's soft laughter, and Kenji's wheezing. He eventually calmed down, leaving the group in silence.
"Hey, Kenji?" Darius asked.
"What's up?"
"What's a knife kink?"
"WHAT?!"
Eva shut her eyes as she cackled in laughter.
"Eva!"
"No, no, I swear I did not pay him to say that!" She stopped walking and gripped her stomach.
Sammy started howling in laughter, while Yaz grinned, chuckling at Kenji's flustered appearance. Ben and Brooklynn looked at them, clueless.
"Why are you blushing, Kenji?" Eva probed, grinning.
"Shut up! Shut the hell up!"
"Mm- mm- mm."
Darius furrowed his eyebrows and opened his mouth, but Eva quickly cut him off.
"You don't need to worry about it, Darius."
"But—"
"It's stupid and it doesn't matter!" Kenji yelled. Eva caught his eyes, and he mouthed, I hate you.
I hate you too, she mouthed back.
"Oh, thank god," Brooklynn said as they entered the clearing that held camp.
They hurriedly climbed the ladder, heading for their respective beds. Before anyone could offer theirs up to Ben, he settled into the dirt on the ground, beside Bumpy. "I'm good down here!"
Eva nodded, too tired to fight him on it. "Okay, can we all agree to shut the fuck up for twenty hours?"
"Deal."
"Yep."
"No complaints from me."
"Goodnight, camp fam!"
"Goodnight!"
"Goodnight..."
"Nighty night!"
And despite it barely being midday, the second Eva's head hit her pillow, she was out like a light.
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BYE I LOVE THIS CHAPTER
end of season two!!! Guys, I think Part two, aka Hidden Adventure + S3, is, like, the best part of the book 😌 so y'all are in for it at the end of the week.
hope y'all enjoyed! Don't forget to comment your thoughts and vote <333
- Atha