Zoke Week, Prompt 1: First Impression

Happy Zoke Week, everyone! This is a counterpart to "It's Not So Bad", a fic I wrote a few months ago. It's not required reading for this one, but I think you'll get more out of both if you read it after this!

After taking a second to straighten out her hair flower, Zoey stepped on the ship, smiling as widely as her nerves would allow. She'd been watching Total Drama since its inception, but never did she believe that she'd someday head for Camp Wawanakwa herself. When they opened auditions again, she recorded hers on a whim; she wasn't sure whether they'd actually pick her, but it wasn't as if she had anything exciting lined up that summer, so it was worth a shot. Besides, she'd always been told that the best way to make friends was to seek people with shared interests. She was a Total Drama fan, and what better place to meet other Total Drama fans than on the set for the show itself?

However, a quick scan of the people on the ship made her realize something she didn't consider when she came up with that plan; "Total Drama fan" covered a wide range of people, from fashionistas to jocks to some kid who, for reasons Zoey didn't want to know, was busy savoring the scent of his armpit.

Zoey very quickly averted her eyes from that.

Not only did liking the same show as someone not guarantee that they'd get along, as Zoey grew to suspect, but she also remembered another hitch. Most people signed up for Total Drama for the chance at fortune and fame. Friendship would be the furthest from their minds. Why bother trying to befriend someone who you're going to have to knock out of the game anyway?

But she'd seen friendships form on the show, even if she doubted that anyone had signed up specifically for that purpose, so maybe it was still worth a shot.

She raised her arm and gave a quick wave. "Um... hi, everyone!" she greeted, smiling in a way that she hoped looked friendly, but not desperate. A few people looked up to find the source of the sound, but most of them just as quickly lost interest and returned to flexing their muscles and admiring their reflection in the lake, playing with their video game, or deeply sniffing their other pit.

Only one person didn't take his eyes off of her, from what she could tell. A lanky, messy-haired boy stood leaning against the ship's guard rail and watched her quietly. Unlike some others who wore their potential interests on their sleeves, Zoey couldn't tell anything about him at first glance. His t-shirt and jeans were too plain for her to pin him down into one subculture, and it wasn't as if he was doing anything telling about his personality.

She knew she could sometimes make snap judgments about people and try to sort them into specific groups based simply on the way they looked, whether or not that was something she should have been doing. But she couldn't tell anything about this boy at all. All she could do was wonder why he kept staring at her. Was her flower crooked? Was she wearing too much jewelry? Was she being too forward when she greeted everyone? Did she look desperate? She looked desperate, didn't she?

After a few seconds of silence, she lowered her hand and frowned at her cold reception. She considered trying to approach someone specific, but if she already looked like an attention seeker, going up and practically begging someone to notice her would have only made things worse. Resigned to the prospect of a lonely boat ride, she walked over to lean against the rail. It wasn't hopeless yet; they'd be split into teams once they got there, and surely sharing a cabin with people would make it impossible for them to ignore her forever. Still, it would have been nice to have someone to talk to during the ride.

Zoey leaned over the rail and peered out at the lake. This was the same lake she'd watched on TV;. if someone had told her when Total Drama started that she'd be standing on this ship someday, she never would have believed it, but here she stood. She gazed at her reflection, clouded by the grime that floated in the lake, and absent-mindedly fiddled with her flower. She wondered if she should take it off; maybe with all her other accessories, it was overkill...

Without any indication beforehand, the ship slowly pulled away from the dock. This wasn't enough to break Zoey's concentration on her own thoughts and worries. What did bring her back to reality, though, was the quiet thump she heard behind her.

Zoey turned around to see the scrawny boy from earlier laying face down on the deck. Several other contestants murmured amongst themselves, but no one else made a move, so Zoey swiftly walked over to him, crouched down, and extended her hand. "Are you okay?" she asked.

Instead of responding in words, the boy lifted his head to look up at her, leaving the rest of his body flat against the floor. Perhaps he was too dazed to hear her the first time? Zoey tried again to get his attention. "Do you need help?"

"I'm fine, just lost balance," he answered as he wrapped one large hand around hers and pulled himself up. Zoey didn't realize just how tall he was until he stood up straight. If she had to guess, she'd easily believe he hit six feet, and that wasn't counting the thick spikes of hair that stuck out every which way. His skinny build combined with his height gave him the look of someone who was once of average height and weight before getting stretched out by a taffy puller.

"My name's Zoey," she said, still trying to find that balance of a smile where she wouldn't look ridiculous. It wasn't desperate to keep talking to someone after they responded, right? "What's yours?"

"Mike," he replied with a smile of his own. That smile set Zoey a little more at ease. It felt warm and genuine to her, as if he honestly enjoyed speaking with her and wasn't simply trying to be polite. "So, um..." he stammered as he walked over to the rail, close to where she just stood. "Is this spot taken, or...?" He spoke hesitantly, with a slight quiver in his voice. Zoey thought she spoke nervously, but she didn't feel as if she came off as uneasily as Mike did.

It provided more of a reason for her to keep talking to him. It made sense for the shy, awkward people to stick together, right?

"I don't mind if you stand with me," she told him. "I was hoping to make some new friends here." She regretted the words as soon as they left her mouth. There she was, acting desperate again, assuming that anyone who did so much as speak with her was willing to befriend her. With a gasp of realization, she went straight to trying to salvage the situation. "Not... not that you HAVE to be my friend or anything!" she clarified. "I know we just met! But... but I do want someone to talk to. You know, if that's okay with you."

"Of course it's okay!" he insisted. A wave of relief washed over Zoey. Good, he still wanted to talk to her. She racked her brain in search of a good conversation topic. She was the one who said she wanted to talk, so it was up to her to start things. She just needed the perfect thing to talk about, something that would last them the whole trip. But what was there? Before she could think of anything, Mike spoke first.

"So... the lake's nice."

Zoey laughed in surprise; that wasn't at all the subject she expected. She hoped he didn't take her laughter as an insult, but the toothy grin he gave her in response assured her that he'd taken it well.

"It is," she answered. Unsure of what else to say about the lake, Zoey finally found a subject that she felt could last them a while. "So, have you been watching Total Drama long?"

"Since the first season," Mike responded.

Having found some common ground with this boy, Zoey's face lit up. "Me too! What made you sign up?" she asked.

"Just... something to do over the summer, I guess," he said, an uneasy laugh entwined with his words. "I mean, hey, a million dollars, a chance to get famous... who wouldn't, right? Not like I had other plans."

His eyes scrunched up as he spoke and his smile grew even wider as he nervously laughed again. Zoey may have known social nervousness all too well, but she'd gotten so used to putting on a happy face and trying to look approachable that she forgot that not everyone had that skill. Mike's jittery demeanor while they spoke encouraged her to want to put him at as much ease as possible. He seemed so nice, and already she felt he deserved much better from his emotions than this. Anyone would deserve better, really.

"So, how about you?" he asked.

"Well, the money, like you said," Zoey said. She could couch her reasons for signing up in friendliness all she wanted, but that didn't change the fact that a million dollars could get her the best sewing machine on the market and all the records she could ever want. "Plus, I wanted to get out of the house. I grew up in a small town, and there's really nothing to do there. I figured I could get out, meet some new people... are you into indie stuff?" she asked hopefully. While she still struggled to place his most likely subculture, she could have seen him as the sort of guy who would visit an independent café to listen to a guitarist and drink imported coffee with her.

Unfortunately, Mike's only response was a shake of his head.

"Oh..." Zoey didn't mean to make her disappointment apparent, but she'd already gotten attached to the image of listening to old indie-label records with him and comparing techniques from different decades.

She had to stop making things up like that with this guy she just met. For all she knew, they'd step off the boat, get sorted into different teams, and never speak to each other again.

"But we don't need to like all the same things to be friends, right?" he asked.

Zoey had to admit, he had a point. Not that she judged him for not being interested in her subculture, but she'd gotten so used to people calling her 'hipster' and making sarcastic comments about the 'mainstream' that she'd forgotten that not everyone outside the culture considered it a huge joke.

"You said you've been watching since the start?" he continued, still showing an interest in speaking with her, much to her surprise. "What was your favorite season?"

Zoey lost track of time as she got lost in her conversation with Mike. The two discussed various aspects of Total Drama, gave their opinions on other unrelated things, and cracked jokes with each other all the way to the island. Already he made her feel comfortable with him, as if he was an old friend and not someone she'd barely met. Most of what she knew about him right now was related to his feelings about a single TV show. And yet, if the boat never got to Wawanakwa and she got to keep talking to him forever, she was sure they could have kept this conversation interesting for a very long time.

The subject of what they expected living on the island would be like trailed off, and Zoey tried to come up with the next question to ask. But before she could, her eyes widened as Camp Wawanakwa steadily approached.

After watching this show for so long, she had finally arrived to where it all started.

She nudged Mike in the arm with her elbow, eager to know that she wasn't the only one excited by this. "Can you believe we're here?" she asked.

"Yeah, it's... beautiful," he answered.

Beautiful wasn't the first word Zoey would have used to describe the island, but before she could question that out loud, she realized – he wasn't looking at the island when he said that at all.

He was looking at her.

He thought she was beautiful? He just met her!

But she had to admit, he was pretty handsome himself. He might not have matched any of pop culture's standards of beauty, but years of following independent rock bands had given her a taste for boys with his awkward build...

Mike was funny, Mike was good at paying attention to her and making her feel like he actually wanted to talk to her, Mike had so many interesting things to say (even with his sometimes strange way of wording them; he'd never be a poet), and now, Zoey could add 'Mike is cute' to the list she'd unconsciously built in her mind during the whole trip.

She truly hoped he'd allow her to know him better over the course of the game.