Chapter 16: The Peak of Disaster

(Andy's POV)

"Can you not take a joke?" George fumed at me, with stormy grey eyes forcing to pierce through my unyielding stance. He broke out of character and lost his composure, a sight I had wanted to see but regretted causing. It created a foreign unpleasant feeling, more or less like a stress-induced diarrhea.

His anger was uncalled for, and it made mine shrink a little. Not because I was scared. I didn't want him to get mad. We were getting on each other's nerves over a childish quarrel when I expected a belittling joke in return. That would be better for once.

I gave him one last look and physically retreated. There was no use in getting into an argument with him. The knot in my chest wouldn't subside even if I punched him in the face. For some reason, my senses knew that this wasn't normal rivalry.

We proceeded with the jumping rope competition and came out fifth—our overall standing rose to sixth. Despite having a chaotic moment, other teams seemed to go through their own calamities, and none managed to finish quickly, except for the first two groups. No word was exchanged between us as we trod the sand to the next location for the water gun fight. Each of us wore a headband with a round-framed thin paper fabric extension vertical to our head, making everyone look like an idiot. Two teams were faced against each other to shoot water into the opponent team's circles until they broke to oust them. The last team standing would win.

As soon as the whistle went off, we dispersed to attack our opponents. Despite being laggy in the game of life, I was quite competitive in physical games where I had the chance to win. It was a matter of speed and stealth. I managed to oust five of them, and while the remaining two teamed up to oust the girls in my team with brute force, I gave them both headlocks from behind and broke their holes—didn't mean to sound wrong, but anyway, we won easily. Most of it was my contribution and I let it get to my head.

I gave all my team members high fives except for George who wasn't the most enthusiastic about hyping me up. Ignoring him made me feel fulfilled. I would gladly rub my triumph in his face through the power of neglection. He must feel conflicted inside, as his team won because of me.

Six of the winning teams were faced against each other, and again, our team won against our opponent.

The last three winning teams were designed to fight one another in one final round. On top of the additional points, the winner of this round would get to choose the means of transport for the relay race; we would go with the small boat, the most rational option. Regardless of how iconic a unicorn floatie was, it could only do so much to win a race in the sea.

During the final round, a fight broke out between our two opponents, which our team was silently grateful about. They were railing against each other because one of the team members hurt someone on the other team. The referee had to step in to mediate the fight but couldn't stop them from verbally and physically attacking each other. Our team ended up winning the first place for this game without doing much. The two groups attacked each other until all their circles had gaping holes, and even then, still carried on the offenses.

I realized that we had the opportunity to win from our sudden leap to third overall rank. We all high-fived each other cheerfully, collecting jealous glances from the other teams. This time, George was cheering and laughing with our team members . . . excluding me. What a very childish revenge! I joined the others who weren't currently engaging with him and casually interacted with them; my back facing George. Our group was split into two sub-groups, headed by George and me. Even though some noticed, none spoke a word. Our animosity was way louder.

The next competition, namely the blindfold challenges, was where all hell broke loose. It was a game of trust and teamwork when what I had toward George was distrust and disengagement. And apparently, it was mutual. Half of us was blindfolded to do tasks such as collecting coins buried in the sand and deciphering Morse codes made of stones with the instructions provided by the other half of the group.

I was being paired up with George with the hope of reuniting us. The idea crumbled as fast as it came when the tension between us increased even more due to a trivial mishap. According to me, George gave me an ambiguous instruction, but from his perspective, I was just too dense.

Out of anger, I removed my blindfold and went into a fighting stance.

"How do you not understand a simple instruction? I clearly told you that the coin was under your left foot, not behind," he insisted with veins popping out on the sides of his temples.

"We are on a slope, and under could literally mean behind  if you take into account my position. You could've said beneath for god's sake!"

"You would still say the same fucking thing if I said beneath! The problem is in your low level of comprehension and not my choice of word!"

My jaw clenched from indignation. Blood was rushing to my clenched fist, a natural preparation for fight. By now, the rest of our team had finished their tasks except for us and gathered around us to try to calm us down.

My voice went into a low growl, "I was fucking blindfolded. When you can't fucking see, words mean differently. Imagine being in my position."

He shouted furiously in return, "My comprehension level would still be much superior than yours even if I were fucking blind! And I'd rather be blind than ignorant like you!" 

Unlike a more popular belief that someone louder would pose as the bigger threat, it was the other way around. When your body switched into fight mode, all your energy would be channeled to your limbs.

From people's standpoint, George appeared to be more dangerous because of how angry he appeared. Everyone gathered around him, ready to hold him back if he were to make a move on me. But instead, my unguarded position brought me to strike an unexpected blow that landed on his jaw. Immediately, a few people rushed to grab a hold of me. George tumbled backward from the force, but his pained eyes quickly turned to rage. He broke free from everyone and readied a punch. I quickly bent down to grab a fistful of sand. His fist weakly connected with my cheek while I threw the sand into his eyes. Losing his sight, he retreated in defeat.

The sand in his eyes must hurt like hell. I forcefully threw my sympathy out of the window when he started wincing and tearing up.

"Andy, what the hell!?" said someone who quickly attended to George to help him. People quickly rushed over to his side to join her.

Ignoring her and everyone's mad gazes, I gave a delayed response to George's last word before we fought, "You said you'd rather be blind. I'm just an ignorant asshole who granted your wish. Enjoy."

With that, I left them behind to seek solace. It was one of the rare occasions where I needed solitude.

***

"What did you do to George? Have you finally lost it?" Cassidy's lecture fell on deaf ears. My mood went down a notch when she managed to find me hugging my knees, under a short palm tree, smoking by myself.

"I need a beautiful release," I said, blowing a long puff of smoke out of my mouth.

"Where did you get the cigarettes?" She sat down next to me. "Um, care to share?"

I asked bluntly, "What? My part of the story or the cigs?"

"Both," she said. And I did.

As she lit her cigarette, I began, "There's nothing to tell, Cass. I'm just addicted to being an asshole, just like people are addicted to smoking."

"Liar," she made a sharp guess and exhaled her first puff of smoke. When I didn't respond, she added, "I know you, Andy. You're a goofy asshole who can execute some really stupid shit sometimes, but I know you don't have it in you to purposely hurt people like you just did. Now, tell me the truth. What happened between you and George?"

It could be the concern in her voice, but was most probably the calming effect of the cigarette that encouraged me to rant, "George started it. He tested my patience by calling me out and saying some inconsiderate shit. His head is screwed up. He practically begged for trouble since day one and now he got it from me. He deserved it . . . kinda."

It didn't take a lot of poking from Cassidy to make me blurt out my concern. I used to be super chill with anyone and anything before George started this weird drama with me. He would make me overthink every now and then. My brain didn't have the capacity to do a constructed mind-mapping and I ended up in even more frustration from being lost.

With him around, my mind could hardly stay at peace. It was either because his bipolar thoughts were impenetrable or of my fear that he had already known my secret somehow, or at least had suspicions about it. Apart from my ultimate secret, I let Cassidy in on a few ongoing things. I might regret it later but for now, I couldn't care less.

"Most of the times, I can discard people's unwanted opinions at will. In some rare occasions where I can't, I don't let it show. That's how I advance through life. But with George, things are different. I can't seem to suppress my anger when it comes to him. And he frequently makes me angry that I suspect it's a part of his to-do-list!"

Cassidy interpreted one of the main causes to be something that I had subconsciously known but refused to admit. "You actually care about his opinions, don't you?"

"I don't," I tried to convince myself.

"Anger doesn't build up from hatred. Real hatred leads up to indifference. On the other hand—" she made a dramatic pause to make sure that her eyes captured my expression. I showed none just to annoy her a little. "—anger is usually caused by disappointment. Or, failed expectations." Cassidy finished her sentence with a raised brow. She must have felt cool from saying some wise words and was waiting for my light-bulb moment, as if I finally found the light at the end of the tunnel because of her guidance.

She got a point. I wanted to hang out with George. Tommy's fondness of him and how he compared us made it harder for me to admit. I disliked being compared to George, but more so from not being the superior one in my assumption of everyone's mental image. The idea drove me into playing the role of George's rival. He was also at fault for messing around with me on my first day of school. That demon nudged awake my sense of rivalry and hatred of defeat.

Shit started ruining my head when I grew fonder of his company. It complicated things when I found myself starting to care, and, like Cassidy said, set some expectations. And hatred was the fruit of its unfulfillment. Hold on, does this mean I'm the emotional one here?

No, no, no. There's no way any serious feelings were involved on my part.

"So, how's the competition going?" I ran away from the issue at hand before it evoked more weird thoughts.

Cassidy fell for the distraction and answered, "I think your team came out fifth or something."

"We weren't disqualified yet?" I uttered in shock.

Cassidy giggled. "You're one lucky b-tch . . . even though your team isn't, because you're in it."

"Fuck you." I nudged her side playfully. "So, how's your team going?"

"Hopeless. I didn't do anything, just followed them around everywhere, hoping that this would end soon." I laughed at the image of her passive rebellion. She reminded me of Callie. Even their names were quite similar. She added, "It's lunch time now. We'll carry on with the last individual game after this."

I rubbed my gut. "No wonder my stomach's grumbling."

"By the way," Cassidy's eyes widened when she suddenly remembered to ask, "Did George hurt you too? I heard from the others that he managed to hit you back."

"A very feeble punch on my left cheek, but I didn't feel it at all," I answered while rubbing the area of impact to scan for any swell.

"Do you think you're the shit or something?" She teased me in sarcasm. "You're not superman. No need to act all tough. Even superman got hurt."

I shook my head. "I'm serious. It's like he didn't put any effort in it. Perhaps, he's just that weak. Or I'm used to harder punches."

Cassidy pointed out the subtle, dimentionless mark on my left cheek that I had missed. In contrast to the present that George left on me, my butthole hurt much more for some reason. Did I have an intense wet dream or something? Why couldn't I remember it?

"Let's head to the restaurant and get some lunch," said my female friend as she put out her cigarette in the sand, "—before the teacher spots us here smoking."

I followed her action and uttered in a laid back smirk, "I'll offer them some if they find us."

We went for lunch with Tommy, Jade, and a few others at a huge circular table. I was bombarded with curious questions concerning the one and only you-know-who. Tommy's questions were like a personal attack on me, making me laugh dryly from how much he cared about George, that it made me a little bit mad.

I mean, he was my friend. He was supposed to care more about me instead of him, right?

From where I sat, I could see that George was—as usual—surrounded by his faithful followers who didn't have any problem showing him that they cared about him. I cared too, especially when I was the one who hurt him. Suddenly, guilt override my other feelings. For the first time, I felt upset with myself. It was the gnawing regret after hurting someone you didn't mean to hurt, if you know what I mean.

George had irritated eyes. The sand that I had thrown in his eyes was damp with seawater. It must have doubled the pain and required more effort to clean those grey marbles. I swallowed my food, feeling it travel down my dry pipe. I watched him engaging happily with his friends as if he was never hurt. His jaw was visibly swollen. I think I did manage to hold myself back from going full power, even though I still ended up injuring him.

To think that he was the one who saved my life yesterday.

Oh, what an asshole I truly was.

Our eyes met for a second. I didn't look away, but he did in a timely manner.

As soon as we were done, we were gathered back outdoor on the sand, under the scorching sun. My skin was burning as opposed to my dying out desire to win. Some of my team members eyed me but didn't talk to me. Guess I must have frightened, or worse, disappointed them.

I took a deep breath to clear my mind from my negative assumption.

"What's our current standing?" I piped up.

"We're ranked fourth," a team member answered, "Thanks to Gina and Lauren for covering yours and George's parts." Honestly, I didn't care less about the ranks anymore. I just wanted to ease the tension between us as well as to ensure that they were still willing to talk to me. Fortunately, none was an asshole like I was.

"Thank you," I smiled a little. I decided to stay under the radar after the incident to not spark any more anger and difficulty than I already did.

The last individual game was the pose game. A draw had been made before lunch break and we were expected to see the results. In the slides, we were shown the weird combined poses that we had to create with our bodies. Some of the poses were very difficult, making up difficult words, some were ridiculous group yoga poses, others were symbols. All ten members of each group must participate, regardless of how complex the pose was or redundant some of the students would be from its simplicity.

The girls in our group squealed out of joy when we got pyramid as our pose.

"We won the draw! We won!"

Sure, it would be easy. Four people as the foundation, three people atop of them, followed by two girls, and one lightest girl on top. Done.

As we were walking to our designated area of competition, I paced my steps to match with George's and piped up awkwardly, "Hey man, are you okay?" George didn't respond and instead, walked faster to leave me behind. But I refused to let him go. "Don't ignore me . . . please!"

My mustered courage to apologize was slowly turned to another chapter of anger when he clearly ignored me. Taking a deep breath, I forced to suppress it and rearranged my expression. As much as I expected his stubbornness, and even though hurting him was wrong, I could only tolerate so much of his passive-aggressive attitude. It wasn't like I was entirely in the wrong. He played his part too.

We arrived at our spot before I could make George talk to me. There goes my opportunity to apologize. Everyone was busy positioning themselves to steal a start, something I would run the extra miles for if I weren't so occupied with reconciliation strategies. Instead, I just stood there, thinking hard, staring at George's back who seemed to face me a lot these days.

"Is everyone ready?" The referee counted down, "Three . . . two . . . one!" As soon as the whistle blew, we made frantic moves. Our team consisted of five guys and five girls. I voluntarily positioned myself to be one of the four guys as the base of the pyramid. Three of the other guys joined me, including George.

"George, you should be on the third tier of the pyramid. You're injured!" One of the girls casually reminded me of my guilt.

The others agreed, but the prideful gentleman insisted otherwise, "I'm fine. I'll be supporting from the bottom."

My tongue itched to make a snarky comment from his cocky response. 'Sure, be a tough guy and hurt yourself even more', but I let the urge subside. If I traced down the source, I'd find it deep in my heart that I was, uh, concerned.

"We're losing time. Let George do what he wants," implied one of the guys. It was ultimately decided that George would be at the bottom edge of the pyramid. The burden that he had to endure was lighter than that of the two guys in the middle, namely me and a big guy called Phillip. On top of us were two girls and a smaller guy in between them. It was a real challenge for the next two girls to climb to the second tier. Droplets of my sweat that seeped into the sand represented their relentless failed attempts. Phillip and I had to endure the biggest impacts from each of their moves. We had neither a tool nor helper. It didn't turn out to be that easy.

Nearing the ten-minute stamp, my body was quivering from the ache on my back. George didn't say anything, but I could hear the heaviness of his breath. It seemed he was nearing his limit too. The last girl took less than a minute to climb to the top of the human mountain. Lucky for us, she was a talented cheerleader. We were saved.

"DONE!!!" She shouted to get the attention of the referee to check out our shaky pyramid.

We were the third fastest group to finish, but the second group couldn't hold their positions for ten seconds and had to start over. I almost broke our stance from my empathetic laughter directed at the other group—maybe not so empathetic after all. It must be super frustrating for them, but I was glad we won second place.

If climbing up the human pyramid was a grade ten's chemistry test, getting down was grade twelve's math final exam without calculator. In short, we managed to avoid cracked bones and ripped clothes. As soon as everyone was down, I broke out of my position and lay down with my back against the sand, staying still to catch a much-needed breath. Now I knew how mom felt when she complained about crampy backs and forced me to do house chores. Must be my karma for ditching.

I peered over at George who sat close to me, straightening his legs.

"Hey," I uttered. He turned around to see who I was talking to, and when he realized that it was him, he gave me the cold shoulder. "The fuck, George? Care to explain why you turned around if it's only to ignore me?"

After a moment of his silence and some back slaps from me, he retorted in annoyance, "I don't feel like talking. My jaw hurts when I do because a lunatic asshole punched me earlier."

I sat up from my position and crawled beside him. "I'm sorry, man," I apologized. "I—"

For once, George was half-listening to me. But my speech was cut short by the referee's shrieking whistle. I cursed her but mostly my luck. She was announcing that the last individual game was over and would be followed by the most anticipated—according to them—relay race.

Our accumulated points brought us to the third rank, with a mere two-point difference with the second rank. My eyes widened at the margins of the top three scores. We had the chance to win! Just as I was about to mention this newly processed information to George, he got up from beside me and went to talk to someone else.

I let out a defeated sigh. How could this be so complicated? I had never even fought with Callie, a teenage girl with raging estrogen, like I did with George. Despite his tough front, he was just a sensitive boy probably going through late emotional puberty!

The relay race was very intense. We were to run alongside a teammate with tied legs back and forth to transport pails of seawater, shoot plastic balls into nets, climb fortresses, crawl through obstacles, getting buried in the sand, and many more torturous trials they called games. The fact that we got the boat was the only fortunate thing. It was to be used during the final race where we had to move through a series of liquid tracks to find the treasure.

And as always, shit was about to go down.

Although prepared by the game crews, none of the students decided to wear life jackets since we were in the shallow part of the sea with a depth no taller than our heights. I was on the boat with Gina, and behind us were other teams ridiculously trying to swim in tires and worse, paddle unicorn floaties in vain. The latter struggled to move forward, and I had lost a good portion of my energy from cracking up.

"Andy, help me paddle this thing!" Gina complained every once in a while. "The guys in tires are catching up!"

My overconfidence that our team would win since we were ahead of everyone crumbled at the sight of the guys in tires, laughing and giggling in a victorious vibe. Gina and I observed them. They were pointing at a spot in the transparent seawater. It wasn't impossible to make out what was underneath the surface. I gasped in envy when I realized that they were pointing at an object resembling the box of treasure we were hunting.

As one of them was readying himself to dive, I became agitated from not wanting to lose. "Gina, can you see the treasure box? I think it's there, underwater! He's diving to get it! They're going to win if I stay still and not steal it from them!" I said as I was readying myself to jump into the water.

"Hold on! I don't think so," Gina disagreed, making me pause, "We were given life jackets that we just happen to not wear, but if supposedly we did, we couldn't dive. They won't risk our safety. It doesn't make sense if the treasure is underwater."

"What is that box then?" I pointed at the direction of the object in question. We stayed afloat and waited for the guy to resurface and say that he was mistaken, that the box was just a random box laying on the sea floor.

But he never came back up.

His teammate who was holding on to the guy's swim tire was starting to worry.

"Why hasn't he resurfaced yet?" Gina asked in confusion, to which I gave her a shrug. Afraid that he might be drowning, we decided to paddle closer to where he dived, and that was when we were all surprised by a muffled scream, churned by the strength of the water.

Tens of feet away from us and the shore, and going even further at a rapid speed, the poor guy was desperately cuing for help. He was nowhere near his initial diving point.

More people had started to become conscious of the situation, which resulted in one of them shouting, "Hey! Why are you swimming so far away? Come back here!"

"What an uneducated moron," I cursed under my breath, surprising Gina. "He's not casually swimming into the deep to showcase his skill. He is caught in a rip current and doesn't know how to escape it."

"A rip what?" Gina asked frantically.

"Google it later. I'll try to get to him. Else, he might drown and die." I jumped into the water without giving Gina the opportunity to hold me back. "And just in case, please inform the others and especially the lifeguard."

I swam toward the area where he submerged and disappeared. My prediction was right, unfortunately. Near the mysterious box, resting idly on the seabed, the water churned and dragged me away from everyone, far into the deeper sea.

I had seen life guards saving people from rip currents and possessed ample knowledge about it. Theoretically, in order to break the grip of the rip, one must either swim parallel to the shoreline or stay calm and let the current bring you wherever, until it ultimately stopped, leaving you stranded several hundred feet away from the beach. Then, you swam parallel to the shoreline for some distance and back to the beach.

However, reality started to sink in—notice the pun? Ha! If anything, it could be my destiny in the next few minutes. The rip current was becoming stronger and my lack of practical skill outweighed my knowledge. Worsened by the increasing size of waves, my body was rolling and moving in all directions but not straight. I was quickly losing awareness of my surroundings. Saltwater attacked me from every angle, blocking my airway.

My heart raced in terror as water filled my mouth and nose, and got into my lungs.

The powerful patterns of the tides annihilated what was left of my sense of dimension, much less was I able to locate or save the guy.

For the first time in my life, I could picture my own death in front of my eyes.

This was my ultimate punishment for always underestimating the situation. A gush of regret for jumping in overtook me for a hazy while, but at least mine would be a heroic death, though quite meaningless.

My last wish was that the guy in the other team would be alive and returned to his swim tire somehow, while thinking about me who died for him.

And I hoped George would drown in endless tears of regret at my funeral!

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Hi! It's me~

As some of you guys might have known, I was locked out of my account after Wattpad breach. Thankfully I managed to get my account back and update this book! *=* I almost gave up writing entirely because of it! ><

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Thank you for reading this book. See you on the next update!~