gold rush [the wilds, toni shalifoe]

chapter 11

Day Nine

The rest of the afternoon passed without much drama. The same, however, couldn't be said for the evening.

It had started as a joke from Fatin, which had lead into a challenge by Toni and curated into a full-scale competition by Leah who was desperate to try and take her mind off of the paranoid that was beginning to fester in her head.

"Hey," Fatin said to all the eight other girls as they all sat around the small camp fire, the sun slowing starting to go down. They probably had an hour or so until it started to set, and it didn't exactly feel like rescue was coming anytime soon. "Who do you think is the most athletic: Toni, Hunter or Rachel?"

That's when it truly started.

Rachel, naturally, had immediately scoffed before answering herself. Toni had abstained from voting, declaring that while she was fit she certainly wasn't as athletic as Hunter and Rachel were. Sure, Toni liked to go on runs as a way of working her anger out but Hunter had ran for at least an hour every day since the crash and Rachel was always doing sit ups or planks when she had time free.

These answers would have been fine of course, had Hunter not declared that she probably could give Rachel a run for her money. Cheer meets weren't just pom-poms and chants, but rather extreme amount of skill that required not just power and precision but the upmost flexibility and dedication. Rachel had immediately brushed her to the side thinking that she was joking, and while Hunter didn't necessarily take offence to that, she wanted the girl to take her seriously. Sure, Hunter wasn't going on to win any gold medals anytime soon but she wasn't going to let all of her hard work get shoved aside.

"You could always battle royale it out," Toni said, everyone shooting her a look to shut up. Their last battle royale event that Toni had participated in had ended up with her smashing up the second shelter, but the girl knew that they'd all get over it soon enough. Did it hurt that Martha seemingly wanted nothing to do with her? Of fucking course it did, but she knew Marty would come around. She had to.

"Actually, that's not a bad idea," Leah said, looking between the girls with a slight fire in her eyes. "Guess we can't believe either of you until we've seen it with our own eyes."

Rachel had instantly rose to the challenge, feeling the need to win coursing through her veins from the second Leah opened her mouth. Hunter was just looking for a way to pass the time, something that would help take her mind off her life before the island. Admitting to Toni had taken a weight off of her shoulders, but she still felt like she was suffocating in some weird sense. Hunter knew exactly how to make the weight on her shoulders lighter, but she just didn't know if she was ready to do it yet.

Shelby and Martha had devised the rules of their challenge, with the help of Dot who made sure that everything was strictly safe for them. Nora had made the good point that they wouldn't be able to judge it based on one thing, so they had devised a small mini-triathlon for the two girls to complete. Hunter was sure herself and Rachel could have done a much bigger task but since they only had an hour maximum before the sun began to set, she figured it was probably for the best.

The first part was what she knew she would excel in: running from one marker (a broken heel that Fatin found at the bottom of her case) to the other (the burnt remains of Leah's once beloved book, RIP). Hunter was almost on the track team before she decided to cheer instead, and she knew from having watched Rachel run over the past 9 days that the girl simply didn't have the technique that she had. The second task was more of a fair field: 30 push-ups. Hunter knew she was good at push-ups, but after having seen Rachel do them all the time she knew that it would be a hard competition to beat.