The end!

     Viewing Needles comfort towards Jett made Brooklynne awestruck but Grace was more. “Needles is growing towards Jett,” Grace wondered . “I have never seen Needles caring for an animal-hater.”

     Though not enjoying his first day, Jett kept on coming to take care of Needles. Needles had made him feel home. He wanted to enjoy the ecstasy of someone — or rather something — caring for him and not the people despising him like before. In return for Needles' selfless act, he wanted to also show care to the tiny reptile. Feeding, running at the park, lying under the starry night was a daily affair for both of them. From time to time, Brooklynne and Grace didn’t have to watch over Needles. The care team thought Jett was the closest towards Needles, but Grace was skeptical.

     One day, when Jett, Needles, and Brooklynne were eating bagels spread with chocolate spread at Grace’s house, Grace demolished Needles’ large pet house which was specially made by Brooklynne in her backyard. She charged into the house and framed Jett for destroying Needles’ house. Brooklynne was in shock. Jett tried to defend himself but was unsuccessful. He bolted out of the house, sobbing.

     The departure of Jett affected Needles daily life. It was like the joyous reptile turned into a spiritless, dull creature. It also made Grace more guilty day by day. She had to tell the truth. She confronted Jett the truth that Sunday.

     “Even though he was closer to me, he still cares for you too,” said Jett. Grace burst into tears and asked him to rejoin. He smiled in agreement.

 
300 words exactly.
Please mind my unfinished version. Thank you!

“This is the place,” he confirms. “Your dad set the whole thing up.”

How do I even describe it? A lot of words come to mind, none of them resort. It’s decently large, surrounded by woods, with small neat cottages dotted all over the property. There are a few bigger buildings too, but none higher than a single story. It isn’t a dump. Nothing is falling apart, and it’s all freshly painted and well maintained. It isn’t totally un-fun. There’s a pool at least—the kind any crummy motel would have. No waterslides or anything cool like that. There are people on bikes and, in the distance, kayaking and pedal boating on a lake. What can I say? It’s sort of okay, but it’s definitely not the kind of high-end destination where you get your own chef. My father picked this place? No way!

The driver takes us to the welcome center so we can check in.

I tug on Matt’s arm. “I don’t get it. Why would Vlad send me clear across the country and hours into the wilderness to a place that doesn’t have anything half as good as the stuff at our own house?”

“Take it easy—”

“And what’s this whole ‘wellness’ thing? I’m not sick!”

“We’re all sick,” comes a rich female voice, smooth as melted caramel, from behind the counter. “In fact, the moment we’re born, we immediately begin dying.”

Picture the most intimidating woman you’ve ever seen—like a supermodel on the body of one of those female wrestlers in WWE. The figure who stands up from her chair must be six foot four, yet she carries herself with a catlike ease and grace. She has huge pale gray eyes that are closer to silver. Her hair is almost silver too—what there is of it. It’s close cropped—I swear it’s shorter than mine. I’m so tempted to stare at her that I have to look away.

“Uh—hi,” Matt says, clearly thrown. “I’m Matt Louganis and this is Jett Baranov. Checking in.”

“I envy you,” the lady informs us in that almost musical tone. “No part of the journey is ever quite so eye-opening as the first step. I’m Ivory Novis. I’m in charge of meditation here.”

“Meditation?” I echo.

“This is the Oasis of Mind and Body Wellness. We heal the body through diet and exercise. The mind, on the other hand, is a more complicated instrument. The valves of a trumpet can be oiled. Only meditation can tune the mind.”

Huh? “I’ve heard of math teachers and English teachers,” I tell her. “But meditation teachers? That’s a new one.”

“Here at the Oasis we say ‘pathfinder,’ not ‘teacher.’ I cannot plant information inside your head. I can merely show you the path to understanding.”

Every time Ivory Novis opens her mouth, a lot of serious weirdness comes out. I blurt, “You know that waiting list? Is it to get in, or get out?”

Ivory laughs and then holds out her hand. Matt moves to shake it, but that’s not what she has in mind.

“Your phones, gentlemen,” she tells us.

A great fear clutches at my heart. “What about them?”

“You have to turn them in,” Ivory explains like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “It’s the one strict rule of the Oasis—no electronics. On the path to wellness, the only screen you need is the vast blank slate of your imagination.”

I’m psyched. Finally we come to the part where Matt tells this Wonder Woman on steroids where she can stick her Oasis. So it’s a blow when I see him hand over his beloved F-phone like it’s nothing.

“You knew about this?” I accuse him.

He nods grimly. “And so did your father.”

That’s when it dawns on me. “Vlad didn’t send me here to lie low. He sent me here for revenge! Just because he had to pay back the air force for scrambling those fighter planes.”

Matt shakes his head solemnly. “Your father loves you. He sent you here because you need this. Silicon Valley’s Number One Spoiled Brat—that looks cute in a magazine. But these stunts of yours are getting out of hand. What if a piece of that drone had gone through somebody’s skull instead of just their windshield? One of these days, you’re going to do something that your father can’t buy you out of. He’s trying to save your life, Jett. And so am I.” And he plucks my phone out of my pocket and hands it to Ms. Meditation.

I fold my arms across my chest. “I’m not staying.”

In answer, he reaches into my bag and pulls out my F-pad and my laptop and surrenders those too. Then he takes the smartwatch right off my wrist and tosses it across the counter.

“You’re fired,” I snarl.

He’s patient. “Remember Liam Reardon?”

A kid in my school. His dad owns, like, half of Google. “What about him?”

“He was a zombie. He never looked away from a screen long enough to make eye contact with a real human. He was hostile. Antisocial. He’d gone through every therapist in the Bay Area and half of the ones in LA. Then his parents sent him here.”

Ms. Meditation nods. “Liam. Wonderful boy. The Oasis made such a difference for him. As it will for you.” The silver eyes bore into me at high intensity until I have to study my sneakers to avoid the onslaught. “The coming weeks will be the turning point of your spiritual life.”

“I don’t have a spiritual life,” I reply stubbornly. “Some crazy lady stole it along with my phone.”

If Ivory is offended by that, she doesn’t let on. “Hostility is the byproduct of a mind out of balance,” she says understandingly.

“At least I have a mind,” I mumble under my breath.

“Don’t be rude.” Matt puts an arm around my shoulders in an attempt to calm me down. “Take it easy, kid. You’re not in California anymore.”

I shrug him off violently. “Yeah, really? What tipped you off? The swamp gas? The possum BO? The fact that we haven’t seen an In-N-Out Burger for two hundred miles?”

“You must be starving,” Ivory says smoothly. “I’ve got some good news for you there. Early dinner is being served right now. You have to try our burgers. They’re world renowned.”

I struggle to get my whirling mind under control. If this was San Francisco, I’d tell everybody to stick it and Uber home. But I don’t know if Uber comes way out to the sticks. And even if they do, I no longer have a phone to call them on. It goes without saying that I’m not spending the next six weeks of my life in this freak-show wellness camp. But for right now, I accept the fact that I’m stuck. The Range Rover belongs to the Oasis, not me, so there’s no way back to Little Rock and the Gulfstream if Ms. Meditation doesn’t approve. For all I know, the plane isn’t there anymore. Vlad probably had them fly it back to California, so he can go all over the place. I can tell you where he won’t go, that’s for sure. To a wellness oasis.

First thing tomorrow, I’m out of here if I have to walk. But right now, if I don’t get some food, I’m going to face-plant in the pine needles. I might as well check out these famous burgers Ivory’s hyping.

She points through the double doors. “The dining hall is the larger building at the center of the cluster of cottages. Leave your bags—I’ll have them brought to your cottage. Bon appétit. And be whole.”

“Hole?” What now?

“Whole,” she amends, emphasizing the wh sound. “As in entire. Your mind, body, and spirit. Be your whole self.”

Like I could be anybody else. The only hole I want is a place to crawl into until this nightmare is over.

So Matt and I go to the dining hall. The sign over the entrance reads NOURISHMENT FOR THE BODY. There’s another building close by with a NOURISHMENT FOR THE SOUL sign. That must be where Ivory and her meditation hang out. I’m definitely history before anybody makes me go there.

The dining hall is nicer than a school cafeteria, but it’s basically a school cafeteria. They give you a tray; you pick out what you want; you go find a seat at one of the long communal tables. The private chefs from the good resort would probably drop dead if they had to work here.

They won’t let me take two burgers. The server explains—like she’s talking to a five-year-old—that if I’m still hungry after I finish the first one, I can come back for seconds.

“Oh, I’ll be hungry enough,” I assure her. I’m so hungry I can barely focus on what a downer it is to be here.

Because it’s still early, there are only a few diners scattered around the big room. I wonder how long it took them to get to the top of the waiting list. No offense, but I have zero respect for anybody who comes here on purpose instead of being tricked into it by their dad.

Matt waves me over to a spot by a big picture window. It has a view of the lake, which I can now see is a side pool of a long river.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” he offers.

I don’t answer. On an empty stomach, I can’t muster enough sarcasm to come up with the vicious reply he deserves.

I plop myself in the chair, grab my burger with both hands, take a gigantic bite . . .

. . . and spit it out so hard that it decorates the picture window.

“That’s not a burger!” I choke.

“Sure it is,” Matt replies airily. “A veggie burger.”

“A what?”

“The Oasis is one hundred percent vegetarian,” he informs me like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

I reach for my pocket, determined to call Vlad and demand to be taken out of this backwoods torture chamber or else.

That when I remember: my phone and all my electronics are locked away at the welcome center.

All this wellness is going to kill me.

But one night he tried to get his phone and he saw Ivory googling what creatures can be found in the area and to Jett’s surprise he saw a picture of Needles on Google. Soon Ivory pressed on the link and Jett read the paragraph about Needles from his hiding spot just out of Ivory’s sight. Jett’s eyes widened in horror as it turns out that Needles is a baby crocodile and the girls are in danger cause if Needles grows bigger, he could bite their heads off! “I better go warn the girls”, Jett said to himself as he ran back to the girls room.

              The girls laughed at him and continued grooming Needles. Jett tried to convince them but they didn’t care and would not believe him. Jett chose to give up.

              A few months had past and one morning, Jett heard a blood curdling scream coming from the girls room. He immediately rushed there and found blood on the floor and Brooklynne with a huge wound on her arm and Grace comforting her. After that incident the girls finally decided to release Needles into the wild, after all Needles is a wild animal. 

(286 words)

They quickly scrambled and ran all he way looking for Jett. The moment they found him crouched under a bush, they jumped on him and Grace grabbed his collar. She then started scolding Jett.

“ You took him, didn’t you. You took him just for meat!” accused Grace

Jett was too stunned to speak.

“Ewwww! I would never do that! That is disgusting!” Hollered Jett.

Suddenly, in the corner, they heard something rustling in the bushes. Jett peeped through the bushes and whipped out a penknife when he spotted Needles was tangled. Grace’s head hung Low in shame and apologised to Jett. The truth was, Jett was the 1st person to feed Needles but he forgot to lock the cage. 

Jett realised, his actions made people think the worst of him after this incident. Jett promised to be a better person