“That’s a human tooth,” Grady said weakly. “It’s got a filling.”
“Well … it’s not a compass.” Will cocked his head to one side, then looked around. “Is someone pranking us?”
“It’s a tooth, Will. This isn’t a prank.” I wrapped my arms around my chest.
“It’s one of the other teams. They’re trying to make us give up,” Lizzie breathed.
“Dirty tricks!” Grady’s eyes flashed.
Carmen was shaking and mumbling “¡Dios mío!” under her breath.
“Someone’s taken out the original item and replaced it with something we’ll never be able to match.” Lizzie shut her eyes. “It’s the only explanation.”
“But who?” I felt numb. “Who’d pull out their own tooth to sabotage another team?”
“Someone we don’t want to run into.” Carmen rubbed her elbows as if she was cold.
“A team who really want to win,” Grady added.
“We really want to win, but we wouldn’t do this. It’s … cheating.” I clenched my fists impotently.
“Actually, it’s a pretty good plan,” Will said thoughtfully. “I mean, what do we do now? Either we have to do the same or give up. We’ve no idea what was in that box before they got to it, so we can’t put in something of equal value to the original item.”
“Can we guess what it was?” Lizzie pulled off her cap and started tugging at her hair. “I mean, it’s a small box – it might have been a compass.”
Grady rubbed his temples. “It could have been almost anything – a watch, food, jewellery, the map, an iPod, money, insect repellent … anything.”
Carmen sat down. “This was meant to be fun!”
“It still can be.” Lizzie crumpled her cap in one hand. “We just have to work this out – like another puzzle. Then we show we won’t be put off and move on to the next checkpoint – there are five more to go after this one.”
“This could even work in our favour,” Grady added. “Thin out the crowd a bit.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know, Lizzie, this has kind of ruined the game for me.”
“You want to give up?” Lizzie stared.
There was silence, broken only by the buzzing of the midges and the distant shush of the sea.
“If we’re not, then we have to follow the rules,” Will said eventually. “Replace the tooth with something of equal value.”
“But … what’s of equal value to a tooth?” Lizzie looked at him.
“Someone’s boots?” Grady suggested.
Lizzie rubbed her eyes. “What if the judges don’t agree – we could lose the money.”
“And how are you going to get boots in that box?” Will sneered.
“Money, then,” Carmen said.
“But how much?” Will tilted his head. “How many pounds for one tooth?”
“Fifty?” Grady offered.
“Did you bring fifty quid with you, Grady?” I asked. “I mean, the shopping opportunities here aren’t great.”
He glared. “I bet we all brought money for the airport. We should have enough between us.”
“I’ve got about a tenner.” Lizzie scratched her head. “But is fifty pounds going to do? Is that what they want?”
“I hate to say this, but it feels like money is an easy way out,” I mused. “It doesn’t have the feel of sacrifice that I think they’d be looking for.”
“You want sacrifice, chico?” Carmen stared. “You think Lizzie or I should have packed a white dress?”
“Funny.” I shook my head. “You know what I mean. Whatever was in that geocache, the Gold Foundation weren’t looking for money to replace it. This game doesn’t feel like the kind of set-up rich kids could just pay their way through.”
“So, we go home?” Carmen asked shakily.
“No!” Grady snapped. “We keep thinking.”
“There’s really only one thing we can leave in the box.” Will rubbed his chin again. “A tooth.”
Carmen surged to her feet. “That’s loco.”
“If we leave something else,” Will said, “we run the risk of getting it wrong and being disqualified at the end of the course. If we leave a tooth, we’re following the rules. We can argue that we left something of equal value to what we found. They can’t take us out of the running for that.”
“Then what if we say we found a compass or an earring?” Carmen said.
“Don’t you think they’re monitoring us?” Will asked. “They must know what’s in the box now.”
“I don’t care,” Carmen snapped. “They can’t expect us to—”
“Maybe we should vote on it,” I heard myself say. “Our choices are to give up and go home or leave a tooth … right?”
Carmen looked defiant. “I don’t like this.”
“How badly do you want to be a vet?” Lizzie asked her, and her shoulders sagged.
“How do we vote?” Grady asked.
I picked up some smaller stones from around the cairn and handed them out. Then I lifted the checkpoint box, empty of everything except its glued-in coin. “We all turn our backs and I’ll pass the box around. If you think we should leave a tooth, put your stone in the box. We’ll count the votes when the box gets back to me.”
I stared from the box to the stone in my hand. Give up, or go on? We were stuck on the island until the estuary cleared safely – another two days. But we could set up camp near the deck on the beach, chill out and then walk back the way we’d come. Not what we’d planned, but at least we’d have had a holiday.
“How many T-shirts?” I stared at Lizzie’s bed, where she was laying out her things ready to be packed.
“It’s August. It’ll probably be hot and we will need changes of clothes this time.” Lizzie raised her eyebrows, a reminder of the first time we went camping, when Will and I had brought only one shirt and one change of pants each. My argument that turning my boxers inside out was the same as putting clean ones on hadn’t gone down well.
“What else are you bringing?” I had the master list with me. It had taken almost a whole day to put together – all the things we thought we might need for the trip. So long as the whole list was ticked off, between us we’d have everything.
“Climbing gear, obviously.” Lizzie pointed to the pile. “We’ll each need the basics, but I’ll take my full kit: the carabiners, hexes and the rest.” She grabbed a stove and tucked it into her rucksack.
“You’re taking a stove?” I sat on the floor.
“We might not have time to make a campfire at every stop. Right, medical kit, spare socks, food, energy drink, mess tin, spork, cup, teabags, milk powder, phone, notebook and pencil, pack of cards.” She scanned the bed. “What am I missing?”
“Compass, torch, bedroll.”
“Under the bed from last time.” She pulled them out and added them to the pile. “What else?”
“Towel?” I asked.
“And toothbrush.” She made a note on a piece of paper. “I’ll add it to the medical kit once I’ve used it in the morning.” She bounced over to her dresser. “Deodorant, moisturiser.”
“Seriously?”
“It’s important.” She opened a drawer. “Swimsuit.”
“You think we’ll need one?”
“Maybe. One of the checkpoint boxes could be underwater.”
There was a crash as her door swung open. Carmen stood in the doorway, one hand on her hip.
“Your mami sent me up. You’re not done yet? I am all packed and I finished my last shift. Now we just need to win and I won’t need my terrible job back!” She raised her phone and made me take a selfie with her. I grimaced into the lens.
“Mrs Arnett let me dye her hair,” she said as she put a filter on the photo, then held it up to show me. “It came out very purple. She complained, but Rosa had warned her I was only learning. She was so ungrateful. I would have been happy with purple hair.” She smiled widely. “I will much prefer working with animals, who don’t complain.”
Lizzie laughed. “Did you pack a swimsuit, Car?”
Carmen shrugged. “No. If I need to swim, I have my underwear.”
Lizzie tucked her swimsuit into her rucksack firmly.
“I did pack vodka.” Carmen nudged me.
I rubbed my hands. “Cards, vodka, music on our phones… Plenty to keep us occupied around the campfire then. I can’t think of a better trip.”
Carmen looked around. “Where’s Will?”
“With Mum. She’s acting like she’s never going to see him again.”
“Seriously though.” Carmen leaned forwards. “This is going to be fun, right?”
“The best.” I looked at Lizzie.
“We could even get together with some of the other teams in the evenings,” Lizzie suggested. “Make a real party of it.”
“It’s a competition,” I reminded her.
“Yeah, but I’m sure they’ll all be good guys.” She finished rolling up her bivvy and attached it to the top of her rucksack. “There, something to sleep in, that’s everything.”
I ticked her items off on the master list. “Is there anything else you think we should take to help us with the riddles?”
“We’ve got our phones,” Carmen pointed out. “Wikipedia is our friend.”
Lizzie frowned. “You reckon we’ll have reception?”
“We could pack a dictionary and a calculator,” I suggested. “Just in case.”
“Good idea.” Lizzie found a little pocket dictionary in one of her desk drawers.
“Why do you have that?” Carmen stared.
“Won it in a school competition,” said Lizzie as she added her calculator. “Anything else?”
“Um … tools?” I said thoughtfully.
“Why would we need tools?” Carmen said. “You’re just adding weight for poor Lizzie, chico. You have your Swiss army knife, don’t you?”
“Yes. But we might have to build a raft or–”
Carmen snatched the list from me. “Look, Grady has a pick and pliers, Will has a shovel and axe, we’ve got rope that we can use for tying logs together. I have my own Swiss army knife. What else would we need? Stop worrying!” She returned the list. “We’ve thought of everything. We have our strategy – to keep moving and do as many checkpoints as possible each day. We know what to do. We can win this.”
“It feels a bit too much like we’re winging it.” I glanced at Lizzie.
“We can’t make much more of a plan.” She shrugged. “We don’t know what the checkpoints will be like or where they are. Our priority is getting to the last of those seven coordinates as fast as we can.”
“And winning five million pounds,” Carmen said.
“Three days to set us up for the rest of our lives.” I held out a fist, beaming, and Carmen knocked it with hers.
Now, if we went on, someone would have to lose a tooth.
When Will was seven, he developed an abscess. The dentist said he needed the tooth out and Mum insisted we both had to be in the room with him to make sure he wasn’t frightened.
The dentist told Will that the numbing injection would hurt more than the extraction itself and that even then he’d only feel a little prick. The dentist’s smile was very wide and blindingly white, and his hair was rigidly slicked back. Will cried out when the needle went into his gum. After the dentist removed the syringe, he poked Will with his gloved finger to make sure that the area was numb. Will bit him as hard as he could.
When the dentist’s partner came in to complete the operation, I sat on the chair at the back of the room and watched Mum hold his hand as Will shuddered and shook and finally screamed – a high-pitched note that shivered through my whole body.
“It isn’t hurting him,” the new dentist insisted. “It just feels weird. A lot of kids don’t like the sensation.” She gave a twist and a yank and held Will’s tooth up for him to see before turning to put it in an envelope so he could take it home.
The look Will gave her…
I’d never forgotten that look. Having that tooth out had hurt Will. If we decided to keep going, someone would have to go through the same experience with no anaesthetic. Maybe it would even be me.
Did I need the money that badly?
Or rather, did I want to fix cars my whole life?
If we kept going and won, I could study civil engineering, Carmen could go to vet school, Lizzie could pay off her parents’ mortgage and her own uni fees, Will could start his working life without debt and Grady … well, he could entertain the trolls by exposing the world’s conspiracies.
OK, I didn’t much care about Grady’s ambition, but everyone else’s felt important.
Part of me wanted to keep going just to show the team that left the tooth that we wouldn’t give up so easily. I thought about the other teams. How many of them would go back when they saw a tooth in the box?
Right now, our chances of winning were one in nine. If some of the other groups dropped out and we kept going, then our odds would go up.
Quietly I put my stone in the box and passed it to the next person.
How would everyone else vote?
I tried to listen for stones going in. The box was rattling as it went around the circle. At least one other person must have voted to keep going. What would Will do?
Finally, Carmen put the box back in my hands. I swallowed.
“Everyone turn back round.” I shook the box. There was more than one stone inside. If there were only two, we were giving up.
I opened the lid so we could all see at once.
Three stones. I gasped in a mix of relief and fear. Keep going.
I tipped the box so that the stones fell on the floor. “OK, then.” I rubbed my face. “We’ve got another decision to make.”
Eventually Grady spoke. “We could draw straws.”
Lizzie straightened. “I’m the team leader. It should be me.”
“No,” I insisted. “Not you. You are our team leader, so we need you to be at the top of your game and you’ve already hurt your ankle.”
“Carmen’s going to have to pull the tooth,” Will said. “She’s our medic. You can do it, can’t you, Car?”
Carmen paled. “Si … probably.”
“OK.” Grady wrapped his arms around his chest. “Me, you or Will, then? Straws?”
I shook my head. “If Will comes back missing a tooth, Mum will lose it big time.”
Lizzie looked up sharply. “Ben, that’s—”
“Perfectly true,” Will said mildly.
I looked at Grady. “So, it’s you … or me.”
His eyes were frozen on mine. Then I picked up a stone, showed him and turned my back. I tucked the stone into one fist. “Choose a hand.” I turned back round. “Whoever ends up with the stone loses a tooth.”
Grady reached out a finger and held it over first one fist, then the other. I could feel the stone digging into my palm. His hand was trembling.
“Get on with it.” Will sounded bored.
Grady smacked my right fist.
My heart thudded. I slowly opened my left hand and tipped the stone from my palm.
Grady whooped, Lizzie shushed him.
“Are you all right, Ben?”
“Sure. It’s only fair.” I forced a smile. “I did vote to keep going.”
Carmen let out a tiny moan. “I don’t feel good about this, chico.”
“Would it make everyone feel better if Ben had a financial incentive?” Will cocked his head. “How about if he does this, Ben gets a percentage of everyone’s winnings? Say, two and a half.”
Grady frowned. “That’s twenty-five grand each.”
“Ben gets another £100,000 and we all get £975,000.”
Carmen’s lips curled upwards. “That does seem fair.”
Lizzie nodded.
Matthew was laughing at me. “Ben’s got to copy his answers off his little brother.” He was waving his arms around. “Ben’s a dumbo!”
The oldest girl in our class marched across the playground. Her hair was long and she wore it in a dark plait that never stayed neat. Stray strands flew mesmerizingly around her face. Her glasses had blue Star Wars frames; she had campaigned for months to get the Disney ones replaced.
She put her hands on her hips. “Matthew Harris, you are a complete idiot,” she said and then she kicked him as hard as she could in the shin.
Lizzie stood beside me as Carmen held Grady’s pliers in a tin of boiling water.
“We shouldn’t even be considering this,” Lizzie said again miserably. “What kind of people are we?”
“It’s OK, Lizzie. How bad can it be?” I raised my torch to search for Will, hoping he’d tell me his own experience hadn’t been as terrible as I remembered.
Will shrugged. “It’ll be bad, but it’ll be over fairly quickly. And there are things we can do to make it hurt less.”
“Like what?” Lizzie demanded.
“We’ve got painkillers – he can take some now.”
Grady opened his medical kit. “Hold the torch here, Will. How about some Tramadol?”
Lizzie stared. “That’s what Nan was taking after her operation. How do you have that?”
“Dad.” Grady slid the packet out. “He filled the prescription – just in case.”
“There you go, Ben,” Will said. “You’ll hardly feel a thing.”
“What else?” Lizzie said.
Will’s mouth twisted into his little smile. “The brain produces its own painkillers, but for that, Ben needs to be relaxed.”
“The Tramadol should help with that too,” Grady said and I looked at the two pills I’d cracked into my palm.
“I’ve got something else to relax him!” Carmen laid the pliers in a clean mess tin and pulled the magic mushrooms out of her jacket. “Here!”
“I’m not sure about that.” I frowned.
“You saw me take them. They’re fine.” She broke one in half. “Here, that should be plenty.”
Lizzie put her arm around me and I leaned closer to her. “Take it, Ben,” she insisted.
I took the mushroom with my other hand and examined it.
“It’ll take a little while to kick in,” Carmen said. “Eat it now.”
I ate the mushroom. It was the most disgusting thing I’d ever tasted. Carmen clapped her palm over my mouth. “Don’t spit it out.”
“Yuck.” I retched and pulled away from her.
“Quick, drink something.” Lizzie looked around for a water bottle, but Carmen had already produced her bottle of vodka. The label gleamed gold in the torchlight.
“Have some of this.”
“He’s going to be tripping his nuts off,” Will remarked.
I tipped the Tramadol on to my tongue, let the capsules sit for a second, then upended the cheap vodka.
Lizzie looked at Will. “What else can we do?”
“Distraction,” he said.
“We can hold his hands,” Lizzie said and Carmen laughed.
“Is that the best you can think of to distract a boy?” She began to pull her top and vest over her head. Her voice was muffled by her T-shirt. Will and Grady stared at the lacy bra that was revealed little by little. The torch, quickly aimed by Grady, showed that the bra was bright red. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. The colour glowed against her olive skin. Were the mushrooms starting to kick in?
I stared between the bottle of vodka and the red lace. I started to feel light-headed and the world began to slide sideways.
Carmen swallowed. “You’re sure you want me to do this? Wouldn’t you prefer it to be Will?”
“You do it.” I found a wide, flat rock to sit on and thumped down.
Carmen touched the pliers. “Which tooth, Ben?”
“Not one of the front ones,” Lizzie said.
“The ones at the very back will be hardest to get.” Grady frowned, shining the torch at me.
“How about the third molar in?” Will pointed to his own mouth. “That one.”
I took a deep breath, which made my head spin, and nodded. I handed the vodka to Grady, who took a long drink of his own. “See you on the other side.”
Lizzie’s fingers were twisting like snakes. “I don’t like this.”
I tried not to notice that Carmen’s hands were trembling as she picked up the pliers. “Will, you’ll have to hold his head still.”
Will nodded and walked behind me. I gave an involuntary shudder as I felt Will’s hand on my shoulder. Not comforting me; pinning me down, preventing me from running.
An insect, long and scuttling, raced across my hand, from one nook in the rock to another. I pulled my hand up and blinked at my fingers.
Grady put my hand around the vodka bottle and guided it to my lips. “Drink up.”
My head thumped like a drum as I suckled the bottle. The front of my shirt grew wet. I was spilling more from my numb lips than I was swallowing. I fixed my eyes on Carmen. Her black hair slid forwards to tickle my cheek, the pink tips grey in the darkness.
I looked for Lizzie. She was shifting from foot to foot behind Carmen. I raised an arm towards her. “Hold my hand?” My words sounded odd to my ears, far away and blunt.
Lizzie dropped to her knees on the damp grass and caught my fingers in hers.
Finally, Carmen pulled the bottle from me. “How do you feel, chico?”
“Pretty great.” My gaze shifted from Carmen’s bra to Lizzie’s blue eyes.
“Sing to me?” I mumbled. Something I never would normally ask her. I had to be careful, my tongue was loosening. What if I said something even more stupid? Like I’ve always loved you, Lizzie. That’d be just brilliant. Quickly I opened my mouth and pointed with my free hand. Do it.
Immediately Will’s hands caught my temples like a vice. I could no longer see Lizzie, but she began to sing, her low voice twining into my ears. An old song, one that she often sang along to in the car. We both knew all the words.
Then Carmen inserted one hand to hold my mouth open and put the pliers in with the other.
Bats whizzed past, swift blurs against the sky. My stomach lurched and I began to feel sick. I tried to wrench my head around, but Will held me still. Vomit swelled in my oesophagus. Lizzie’s fingers in mine. I thought frantically. Carmen’s bra. The moon. The … pain!
The pliers were clamped around my molar and Carmen was pulling. At first I’d felt nothing, as if she was tugging at a lump of food in there, then the nerve endings came alive and shrieked.
I bucked like a bull and gagged on a scream.
“Quick, Car!” Lizzie cried.
Will pulled me back hard and I felt his knee on my chest, the rock against my back. I started to tremble, my heels drummed on the ground.
“Hurry,” Lizzie cried again.
I focused on Carmen’s face. She was sweating, wrinkles between her eyebrows, her eyes narrowed.
“I … can’t,” she ground out. “It’s not … coming. Grady, I need you.”
Grady moved into place and Carmen wrapped his fingers around the pliers. “Pull.”
He braced himself on the rock and leaned back. I howled between his fingers. Thrashed.
“Not good, not good,” Lizzie was repeating like a mantra. Her hand was crushing mine.
My eyes bulged and Grady yanked again, rotated this time. I felt something come loose and blood filled my throat, coppery and thick. I choked.
“Almost there.” Grady twisted once more and I wailed.
Grady grew horns. His skin turned crimson and his teeth elongated. Blood filled his eyes, black veins traced his forehead.
Midges crawled over Carmen’s naked chest and blood began to run down her throat from a thousand bites. I tried to turn my head. Only my eyes went to Lizzie.
Her blue eyes had gone white all over, the glaze of death. Water ran down her face; tears that turned into an ocean. Her clothes soaked, everything wet. Ice-cold water running from her hand to mine. I shrieked and Will’s face appeared above mine. Impassive. Normal Will, his eyes cold and dark, his mouth warped into that small smile that didn’t know what to make of itself.
“I think he’s hallucinating,” Carmen cried.
Will’s eyes bored into mine. “Not surprising with everything he’s taken.”
Grady gave a final yell of effort and my tooth tore from my mouth by its roots. He fell backwards, still gripping the pliers and blood flew in an arc, spattering Lizzie’s shocked face and Carmen’s chest.
Will released me and I rolled on to my side, thudding from the rock to the ground, spitting blood into the mud and vomiting on to the grass. My gut uncoiled and I vaguely felt Lizzie’s hands on my back, stroking me. Vodka, blood and shreds of mushroom spilled around my knees, hot and acidic.
“It’s all over, Ben.” Lizzie’s words were soothing.
I tried to stand up, but my limbs weren’t my own. I fell back, my mouth filling with the taste of blood and an aching void where my molar had been. I spat again.
“Here.” Carmen’s T-shirt, still warm from her skin, wadded up, shoved into my mouth.
“Hey, look at that.” Grady staggered to his feet, holding up my tooth. The roots were long, like legs, and blood and gristle clung to the branches. “I did it.”
“Well done, Grady,” Lizzie said without looking at him. “Put Ben’s tooth in the box and take out the other one. Wrap it in my glasses cloth – it’s in the case in one of the side pockets of my bag – and leave it there for safekeeping.”
“Will.” Carmen’s voice was worried, and her hands, which had been holding her T-shirt in my mouth, looked as if they had been dipped in ink. “Why is Ben still bleeding?”
Will narrowed his eyes. “Uh-oh.”
“What?” Lizzie snapped, turning on him.
“How much vodka did he have?”
Carmen held up the bottle. “About a third.”
“It’s a blood thinner,” Will said. “I should have thought of it before.”
Lizzie looked at Carmen’s blood-soaked T-shirt, then at Grady’s medical kit. “Haven’t you got anything in there to stop the bleeding?”
Grady shook his head.