Beginnings and Endings [complete]

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen

Where did I leave off? Ah. Here.

After the whole introductory session and all - I won't go through details because there is absolutely no point - we were divided into groups. I was in a different group from Mel, Daniella and Dominic, but I did know some people and thank god everyone in my group was social...wait, what? Why was I thinking about which group Dominic was in?

Oh, right. Because when we got separated, he wouldn't stop glancing over at me.

Too bad, boy, too bad.

Our first fun activity was a treasure hunt/amazing race thing. Each group was handed a slip of paper on which there was the most complicated bloody code I'd ever seen. We'd all grabbed it when we got it, but dropped it to the ground two seconds later in confusion.

"What in the hell..." Michelle began, but she was cut off when three boys from a different church deftly picked up the small slip of paper. The minute their pencils hit it, the code was suddenly perfectly deciphered.

"What in the hell..." I echoed, staring.

For a minute we were all so bewildered that they managed to solve it in three seconds flat. Then we got up and ran to the said place on the paper.

All through the way, we gave the Wonderboys to decipher the code, while Michelle held the map, and the rest of us got through whatever we needed to get through. We were in the lead when Jeremy, our group leader, climbed out of the lake holding a bag with a smaller slip of white paper in it.

All it had on it was a phrase from the Bible from which we had to find. Eight of us, one Bible, one phrase, and running out of time. Caught and dead.

When we finally found it and gave it to the supervisor stationed at the lake, four other groups out of five had caught up with us. She grinned at us and said, "Find the money."

It was all chaos as we pulled apart overgrowth, lifted rocks and branches, threw piles of leaves all over the grass floor and basically ruined the small clearing looking for two fifty dollar notes.

It wasn't until some idiot yelled and started pointing at the tallest tree with the highest branches. Neatly deposited between two branches were two green notes tightly wedged. As I cursed the idiot inwardly for being such an idiot as to reveal to all the six groups where the money was instead of solely his own, so began the fight of the boys.

Tall or short, fat or thin, they all clambered up the tree desperately for the money. It didn't help that they were in flip flops, or that the tree's brances were a good seven feet off the ground. As I - along with the rest of the girls - screamed encouragement and offered plain, good old, traditional moral support, Dominic came to stand next to me.

Wet, and shirtless.

Shit, I thought suddenly. Sure, stand next to the girl with emotional issues soaking wet and shirtless, why don't you.

I resisted the urge to stare, but at the corner of my eye I caught lean arms, straight shoulders and abs. Shit shit shit shit shit...I thought nervously, something stirring in my stomach. Oh my god, no, I wasn't getting turned on, but when you're not sure whether you like the guy, and he's standing so close to you in all his hotness shirtless, it messes you up.

Before awkward silence could settle, I said the only thing that came to mind that wasn't complimenting him or his body. "You swam, huh?"

"No," he said sarcastically, running a hand through his wet hair and flinging his shirt over his shoulder to hang. Damn, that was hot.