Madison v.s The Travelling Exchange Students

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Under The Waterfall

Beware! The following content is cringy and full of teenage cuteness. This may be disturbing for some viewers as there is a lot of cringe and it is quite a long chapter. Will there be changes made? Is there hope for the viewers? Will the author ever get her shit together enough to stop living through her fictional characters? Nope!

Five minutes into the drive I was content. Ten minutes into the drive I was getting excited. Twenty minutes into the drive I was confused. After thirty minutes of driving, I was nervous.

Now forty minutes of driving later, I'm terrified!

Jack, who is driving, keeps making terrible Dad jokes and blasting his hideous music. I'm starting to wonder if this is his way of mentally preparing himself before killing me and leaving me in the bush somewhere. He was one of the people that hated me the most when everyone thought I kissed Alex and was the mastermind behind all of Elias's schemes.

And it would be very easy to hide a body out here.

I grip the passenger seat tighter and stare out the slightly dusty window. We are thundering down a skinny two-lane road that is trapped in between thick gumtrees and yellowing shrubs. No cars have driven past us and the thought that Jack is taking me to an isolated location for a bad reason keeps popping into my head.

Okay, just breathe Maddie. Focus on the Australian flora and breathe. Focus on the... ugly Australian bush... Oh hell!

"So, how did it go with Antonio?"

Jack's rough voice sends a jolt down my spine.

"Oh, what?" I ask, my voice slightly squeaking.

Jack smiles his goofy grin. "I asked how it went with Antonio. Lily said you got it pretty rough."

I force a laugh and grip my swimmer shorts tighter and stare out the windscreen. The SEC car Jack drives eats up the road. There seems to be no sign of our destination nor any sign of civilization. The gumtrees are thick and green and are growing firmly in the brown soil and the sky is perfect and blue as the sun beams down.

"Are you nervous?" asks Jack.

I look back up into the older boy's green eyes. I'm suddenly consious of the sweat forming on my back; now, whether or not that sweat is from the unbearable heat or the fact I might be getting murdered soon, is a fact we'll never know.

"Yeah, you could say that."

"About Antonio's punishment?"

Ah yes, good, play it off like you are worried about that and not about the dude driving you into the middle of nowhere.

"I suppose. It was pretty harsh."

Okay, pretty harsh, was understating it a little.

After Sienna was dragged out of the room by Justin, everyone else was sent away but me; Antonio wanted for him and I to have a talk.

"Now even though you were apparently a pawn in a larger game Elias, his father and apparently my niece were playing, you-Maddie-could have come to me at any time," Antonio had sighed. "You are still very guilty."

"I know," I replied.

And in that moment I knew what was coming. I was about to get kicked off the team and be sent back home to Cooma and be back at my small stables with Virgo. Antonio was going to send me home packing and all I could do was grit my teeth and hear him say it.

And I was ready, I swear.

But... the words never came. Instead he had said, "I've decided that though I should be kicking you off the team as punishment as that is what you deserve... I cannot bring myself to do it."