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"Well, I don't know what you want from me exactly." Riley said as she took a look at her agenda which unfortunately had every point crossed off due to a 'tragic lack of enthusiasm'.
"Umm..." Mattie shrugged. Being the youngest of the team, she had a little inch that required her to look more useful in a way. "Why don't we do a little team-building exercise?"
The girls who have been on the team prior could not believe the absolute audacity which earned a cacophony of odd sounds from the team.
"I don't see the issue here," Riley stated plainly. "I think that's a great idea. Thank you for contributing to the team, Mattie-"
"Last time that happened, we almost died!" Kate loudly stated, which slightly shook Riley.
"But we're not dead?" Anneleigh said. "We didn't quite die did we?"
"We could've," Kate spat. "We could've died and you know it."
"Alright," Riley said to herself as she lugged a largeish tote bag with her. "Glad to see everyone show up at the correct pre-determined meeting spot."
Cairo took the bag as she noticed Riley's general strain. "I don't think going to the beach would be too difficult."
"Well, we never know if unexpected issues may arise." Riley said before winking.
"Riley," Cairo said. "what did that wink mean?"
Riley ignored her and instead put her attention to the rest of the team who all seemed to be enjoying their individual ideas of unrestrained summer fun: Kate was showing Chess how her underwater handstand was definitely more stable even if she fell after one (1) light tap to her legs. On the other hand, closer to the sea, Farrah was building a wall to protect Annleigh's terribly constructed sandcastle.
"Guys!" Riley said loud enough so that everybody could hear. "Over here!" she waved, making everyone congregate into a shadier part of the beach.
"So, why are we all here?" Kate said, wringing the saltwater off her hair, trying to make it look like she was not having the time of her life.
"Well," Riley said. "we do have a competition coming up and I've read that a bit of team building would really boost morale and really give us that extra boost that we so clearly need!"
"So why the beach?" Chess asked. "We can't really do anything here, can we?"
"Funny you say that," Riley said. "Follow me."
She walked on over to a larger mound of sand a few feet away from where they were standing and started sweeping at it with her hands revealing a rowboat upside-down in the sand.
"Don't worry," Riley continued getting sand off the rowboat, "I put this here this morning."
"But you weren't here when I came-"
"A girl needed her egg McMuffin, Cai," Riley said. "Now, if some of you would help me with tipping this guy over."
Then the boat tipped over.
"How on earth did you get a rowboat on the beach on your own??" Eva asked. "Like, wouldn't it be, I don't know, big?"
"I came in early," Riley said as if she should have known. "It's not really that hard if you borrowed your parents’ car."
In the sea, there was water. In the sea as well, is a rowboat containing six teenagers and two oars. Inside the boat are only the deepest and important discussions.
"Let's play kiss marry kill!" Farrah said. "Kate,"
Kate rolled her eyes. "Does it really have to be-"
"Cairo, Annleigh, and me. Take your pick." Farrah said, ignoring the eye roll.
"Uhhh..." Kate suddenly trailed off. She was not going to make it look like she wanted to marry (or kiss) any of the girls. "Can't I kill them all?"
"Nope!" Farrah said, realizing that this question would be too difficult to answer. "Fine. Same people but snack, shack, or whack?"
"What does shack even mean?" Cairo said, getting invested. "Or snack even for that matter."
"You know what snack means." Farrah said, raising an eyebrow. "And as for shack, it means you end up living together-"
"-as friends, right?" Annleigh interrupted.
"You know what, I'm not doing this." Kate said.
"Where would you go then, the ocean?" Farrah said gesturing to the watery expanse that they all have ended up in.
"Can't we do anything else?"
"Same. People." Farrah said as the two cogs in her brain rotated until she could find three rhyming verbs. "Frick, lick, or kick?"
"Maybe the fishes need some friends!" Kate said as she stood up on the boat and turned to leave.
Some light yelling started to fill the boat until Chess pulled Kate back on the boat.
"You're not going anywhere." Chess said firmly even when Kate contorted her face to mock her. Chess turned to the rest of the team. "Why don't we just do something else?"
"I spy something blue!" Farrah yelled.
"The water?"
"No."
"The boat?"
"The boat's not blue?"
"The sky?"
"Did you know that the sky's not actually blue?" Kate said.
"What the fuck does this have to do with-"
"You know what?" Chess said. "Why don't we take a minute."
Riley had been going at it with the two oars for quite some time now yet the others have not noticed the out of character reckless rowing that Riley seems to be doing.
"Where are you taking us?" Chess asked after the previously mentioned 'minute'.
"Funny you should say that," Riley said before stopping. "My arms are quite sore now..." she trailed off slightly to word her next sentence correctly. "...so I think I've-" she paused. "we've made it to where I planned us to be."
"In the middle of the ocean?"
"Right you are!" she said. "This is exactly where we need to be." she shifted her seating on the boat to get a better angle of something. "So now, we are going to find a way back!"
And with that, she threw the oars like one would throw javelins. Everyone on the boat (including Riley) gasped at the absolute distance that the oars traveled despite her sore arms. They flew off leaving the boat empty save for the six teenagers inside it.
"Riley, are you out of your mind!?" Cairo shouted. "Why would you do that?!"
"I just said, this is a team-building exercise," Riley said as if this was common knowledge. "I thought of all people you'd be listening to."
"Wait," Annleigh asked. "are you sure that was all of the oars?"
"Yes, those were all the oars I had. That's why we have to find our way back home." Riley said.
Cairo reflected on the situation and tried to see all they had aboard. "So you mean to tell me, we have nothing but this boat and my cellphone-"
"You brought your phone?" Riley said, almost offended.
"Call someone!" Kate said.
"Exactly, call the police!" Annleigh said.
"And what address would we give them?" Cairo said while scrolling through her contacts for someone to call. "Next to a green fish, in the middle of the ocean?"
"Where's the fish?" Farrah asked, looking around.
"Call Clark!" Annleigh said. "He'd always pick up on the first ring!"
"I have barely a bar of signal given how far from land we are," Cairo said. "I'll give it a shot."
She tapped on his number and her phone passed the first ring without an answer, leaving the team sadder. It rang a few more times before a very muffled, choppy voice entered the phone.
"Mmm?" Clark might have said on the phone. But with a mixture of the terrible signal and the cacophony of yelling from the boat no one could have understood a word.
"We need some hel-"
"WE’RE GONNA DIE-"
"Clark!! Call my parents! They need to know th-"
"WE’RE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE OCEA-"
"CAN YOU PLEAS-"
"Clark, we're all actually okay, everyone is just overreacting, right?"
Cairo, whose ear was still on the phone suddenly looked at her phone in disbelief. "He hung up."
"Clark hung up?!" Annleigh said. "He would never hang up!"
"He just did. Look at it."
"Oh no, he really did." Annleigh's breathing started to quicken as she saw the call’s status on Cairo’s phone.
“You’re panicking,” Cairo said. “I think he’ll call us back.”
“I don’t think he will,” Annleigh said, deflated. “We have a curfew and the sun’s gonna set anytime soon and my mom’s gonna kill me and it's gonna be my fault again.”
“Why don’t we just text him, he never forgets to answer, right, Annleigh?” Farrah said as if to imply something else.
“The texts automatically send if we have the signal anyways so, why don’t we give it a shot!” Cairo said before passing her phone around to the other girls. “Remember, you can only send one message.”
The phone was passed around until all but Chess had sent a message. When she received the phone, she scrolled a little to see what the other girls had put.
*Clark*
- 💀💀💀🩸!!CLARK WE ARE DYIGN SEND HELP!1! 🩸💀💀💀
- CLARK we are in teh SEA and riLEY THREW THE OARSS!!
- We need your help clark, please call back!
- 🐟🐠🐟🐠 we’re ✨stranded✨ in the sea 🏊🏊
- Clark👦, we are currently in a pickle 🤷🤷. But everything is going okay 🙆💯🙆! The girls are just overreacting🤷🤷. We’re just working together as a 🔥🔥🔥TEAM🔥🔥🔥!💪
“The messages are too long.” Chess said. “This is why they’re not getting to him. Give it to me.”
- sos clark we are asea
She gave her phone back to Cairo who began to think.
“We can always just paddle back to shore, right?” Cairo said, trying the girls back on track. “I think if we start sooner, we could be home as soon as possible. I mean, we can still see the shore way over there.”
“Yes, because our arms are all long enough to reach the water.” Kate said.
“Now’s not the time to be sarcastic.” Chess said. “I mean, Farrah can reach the water, you’re just not trying.”
“I am!” Kate protested before finding out that she can reach the water if she tried a little bit more.
The girls all resorted to the two sides of the boat with their arms out to paddle their way back to shore.
But the left side, which had Riley, Cairo, and Farrah seemed to be pulling a little less weight than they should have been pulling. At least Riley was pulling some motivational weight that nobody seemed to have asked for.
“Alright team, this is an interesting approach,” Riley said. “But while we’re doing this, don’t you think we could be doing a more interesting and faster method?”
“Why don’t you think of something. I mean, you’re the captain.” Kate said.
“Now, that’s not very constructive,” Riley said. “What if we sing a little song to pass the time. We’d be ashore in no time!” she started singing accompanied with some light swaying appropriate to the song.
”Sit down sit down/ You’re rocking the boat/ Sit down sit down/ You’re rocking the boat!”
Farrah started following suit to fit in but given that she sat on Riley’s side, their synchronized motivational swaying was too powerful.
Then the boat tipped over.
Helpless flailing and screams began from the girls as they fell into the water. They could all swim (probably) but the sheer shock of falling into the water forced the girls to impersonate baby birds pushed off a branch for the first time.
“Guys!”
“What?”
“My phone’s not wet!” Cairo called out as she held her hand high in triumph. “It’s dry! My phone’s fine!”
“How are we tipping the boat over now?” Chess asked, still treading water.
“What if we just don’t?” Kate said desperately clinging onto the flipped boat’s side.
The girls all gripped the edge of the boat to support their weight and decided to continue pushing the boat (and hopefully themselves) to shore. Until they were so graciously interrupted.
“Um... guys?” Farrah sheepishly piped in.
“Is this another interesting idea to pass the time?” Kate said, preparing to again say that she surely would not kiss, marry, (or maybe), kill anyone on the team.
“Shut up. I wasn’t gonna say that.” Farrah said. “I just wanted to say that I need to pee.”
Cairo let out a little chuckle at that despite Riley’s glare. “You can pee if you want. We’re in the ocean.”
“But you’re laughing,” Farrah said. “Now I can’t pee because you’re all looking at me.”
“My eyes are shut,” Annleigh said. “Pee all you want.”
“You know what? I’m going under the boat so you can’t see.” Farrah said before going underwater to go inside the boat.
The team treaded water until Farrah resurfaced looking proud of herself.
“You have peed before, right?” Annleigh asked.
“Not like you would know,” Farrah said as she rejoined the girls on kicking their way back to shore.
As the sun continued setting, the boat slowly made its way closer to shore with thankfully fewer obstacles and only a few bits of motivational speaking and singing involved.
Annleigh’s legs touched down first and her eyes lit up. “We’re here!” she beamed as the rest of the girls flopped down on the sand as the muscular strain of kicking a boat for a long time started to kick in. By the time they reached land, the sun had actually set, making it quite dark at the beach. Once they recuperated, they scrambled for their towels and change of clothes they left on the beach before embarking.
“I hope my car wasn’t towed.” Chess said as she helped lug the boat to wherever they parked outside of the beach and hitched the boat to the car.
The girls got in, still slightly wet in their clothes, not saying a word as Chess took off to Riley’s house to pick up their phones.
To kill the silence, Riley suddenly said. “That wasn’t so hard, was it? We did it together, as a team!”
The glare from four girls (Chess was driving) was enough to get her to shut up.
Farrah was the one who broke the silence again.
“Guys, look!” Farrah said, pointing out the window. “Let’s get McDonald’s!”
“I mean, I am kinda hungry,” Kate said. “Can you pull over?”
Then she did, letting the girls get some dinner.
Inside, while Cairo and Riley were ordering, Cairo’s phone started ringing.
“Oh shoot. It’s Clark.”
“Pick it up!”
“Cairo?” Clark said over the phone with a hint of concern in his voice. “Is that you?”
“Yeah?”
“I just got all your texts. Do you need any help or anything? It seemed quite urgent.”
Cairo looked around and mentally did a headcount. “No, I think we’re fine.”
“Is Annleigh okay?”
“We’re having dinner.”
“Tell her I love her.”
“I’m sure she knows.”
“Did that really happen?” Mattie asked. The whole situation seemed to be a bit much even considering the dedication Riley had on the team.
“I ask myself that every day,” Kate said deadpan. “It still feels like a collective hallucination.”
“Yes, we did. And it was tons of fun.” Riley said as if to convince herself that what she did was okay.