Scene 22 — Lindsey

Lindsey watched Cal leave with a lot of mixed emotions. Part of her was pleased she had ‘won’ the fight; he deserved to feel like a worm after what he had done. However, she also knew she was being ridiculous. Cal had apologized sincerely. Despite her frustration with him, she was confident he was genuinely sorry and understood his mistake. Although she had gotten a perverse pleasure from continuing to rub his nose in the dirt (not literally this time) as she calmed down she knew she was just being mean spirited and had long since made her point.

‘I have got to get better about forgiving people’ she thought to herself, understanding her weakness.

Pierre and Laurie returned from cleaning the cabin and sat back down at the table and re-opened their laptops.

“Feel free to come sit where you can see, Lindsey,” Laurie invited her. “There’s basically no way you can influence what happens from here so you’re welcome to watch with us and hang out.”

Lindsey moved her chair closer so she could see over Lindsey and the mystery woman’s shoulders. The picture on the laptop was impressively clear. The camp obviously hadn’t skimped on camera technology. It appeared there was no sound though.

“No sound, right?” Lindsey asked.

“Nope, we don’t want to be truly monitoring you. I think you know by now but we’re all about creative solutions, we just have to protect ourselves, you know?” Laurie explained.

On screen it wasn’t completely clear but it actually seemed like Stefan was taking charge and directing Annie. That was interesting to Lindsey; it had seemed like Annie was largely the one in their relationship to call the shots. Perhaps she had judged things incorrectly or perhaps cooking just happened to Stefan’s forte so he was leading this effort. The pair carefully washed their hands, looking at a camera meaningfully then got to work. The married couple had cleaned up a bit while Lindsey and Cal were attempting to cook but both still clearly showed stains of the previous challenge.

Stefan ran to the freezer and began filling a large pot with ice. Annie was sorting through cans looking for ingredients. Once Stefan’s pot was mostly full of ice he began filling it with water and once it was about half full he put it back in the freezer.

“I wonder what the heck they’re going to do with all that ice and water,” Laurie mused.

“Yeah, I’m not really following that logic,” the other woman answered. “How have they played so far this weekend?”

“I would say decently,” Laurie responded. “They’re in last place but only by a point. They’ve had some pretty creative strategies actually, just their execution isn’t great and they’re not the most gifted athletes. This game is better suited for their talents.”

On screen Stefan was warming something up in a saucepan and Annie was opening several large cans using the same technique Cal had.

“Is it normal for you guys to color commentate these competitions?” Lindsey asked. She was a bit surprised, she had been thinking of Laurie and Pierre as sort of all-knowing judges up until this point.

“Oh absolutely, honestly I think our favorite part of this camp is seeing all the ways teams come up with to solve our challenges. We see something new almost every week,” Lindsey said.

“Yeah, we love it when teams come up with a unique approach to a challenge,” Pierre said. “I think the most fun we have is when a team comes up with an approach that we never even considered. That probably happens once every two or three weeks, it’s always neat to watch.”

“That’s cool,” Lindsey said, “how are we stacking up so far?”