by Sandy Beech
Cassie giggled. “Yeah. We also heard he looks kind of cute with his hair growing all long and his nose all sunburned.”
“No, he doesn’t” Chrissie wrinkled her nose distastefully.
“Yes, he does.”
I rolled my eyes. The twins could turn just about anything into an argument. Just that day at lunch they’d spent about twenty minutes arguing over which one of them had more choo-choo bites on her legs.
“Listen,” I said loudly, hoping to head them off before they really got rolling. “Ryan told me he likes me.”
That got their attention. “What?” Chrissie demanded. “You mean, like, like-like?”
“Tell us everything!” Cassie ordered.
I sighed. “It happened yesterday afternoon. He just sort of came up to me and was all, I like you, be my girl, let’s go on a picnic.”
“You know, I sort of thought he was acting weird around you lately,” Chrissie mused. “He was looking over at you a lot during breakfast. I kept checking to see if you had papaya on your face or something.”
“But wait,” Cassie said. “What does this mean? Do you like him back, Dani?”
“No!” I shook my head violently. “No way. I mean, he’s nice and all. But I dont like him that way. At all.”
“Duh.” Chrissie glared at her twin. “Get with the program. Dani likes Josh, remember?”
I winced. As far as the twins were supposed to know, I was just trying to be a good friend by saving Josh from Angela. Of course, they’d seemed a little skeptical of that all along….
Deciding to let it slide, I cleared my throat. “Look, I haven’t had a chance to talk to him yet,” I said. “I need to figure out what to say first, and meanwhile he keeps barging up when I’m trying to, like, talk to Josh and stuff. So I was hoping you guys could help me out. You know—”
“Say no more.” Chrissie held up one hand to stop me. “Were all over it. We’ll do whatever it takes to distract him. Right, Cass?”
“Right,” Cassie agreed promptly. “We’ll make sure you have plenty of space to work on Josh. Just leave Ryan to us.”
I actually felt a little better after my chat with the twins—like I had some allies, even if they didn’t know the whole story. Unfortunately the feeling didn’t last long. For one thing, I still had no idea what to do about Josh’s raft plan. The more I thought about it, the more doubtful I was that anything good would come of it. In fact, when I tried to take a nap before dinner, I wound up having a way-too-vivid nightmare in which we all set out on a giant raft made of cardboard and tin cans. We wound up lost at sea, with no food or water, faced with all kinds of horrible stuff like whirlpools, rainstorms, tidal waves, and sharks. Well, actually the shark thing was the good part of the dream, since one of the people it chomped was Angela. But that was sort of beside the point.
I woke up to the sound of someone banging on the bottom of a pan—our island version of a dinner bell. Staggering to my feet, I left the shelter and headed for the fire pit, not feeling very rested at all.
By the time I made it there, Angela had already shoehorned herself into the seat beside Josh. Ned was sitting on his other side, which left me out in the cold. As usual.
With a sigh I sat down next to Mr. Truskey. He glanced over at me with a smile. “Good evening, Pauline,” he said cheerfully. “How’s the umbrella business today?”
I didn’t even bother to try to figure that one out. “Just fine, Mr. T.” I stared blankly at Macy, who was stirring something in a big metal pot. Ned and Kenny were helping her by setting out enough bowls, tin cans, and coconut shells to serve everyone. So much for the work teams, I noted rather gloomily. Macy was the only one from the current food-and-water team working on dinner. Cassie was nowhere to be seen, and as previously noted, Angela was way too busy flirting with Josh to pay any attention to the meal preparations.
Just then Ryan came loping toward the fire pit. He jumped over the empty log next to me and swept into what I guess was supposed to be a gallant bow. “Greetings, Dani,” he said eagerly. “Is this seat free?”
I guess he took my blank stare to mean Why yes, certainly, please sit down, because he flopped down on the log. He immediately started babbling at me—I think it was something about the raft, though I wasn’t sure. I was too busy trying to kick-start my still-sleepy brain so I could figure out what to do.
Then, salvation. The twins appeared, took in the situation with one glance, and swooped down on Ryan.
“Hi, Ry!” Cassie exclaimed with a giggle. To look at her, you would think she’d never been so happy to see someone in her life. “Can I sit here by you?”
She immediately squeezed herself onto the end of the log beside him. Meanwhile Chrissie pushed her way to his other side, bumping me down my own log in the process. “Hey dont hog him, Cass!” she exclaimed with a pout. “I want to sit by Ryan too.”
“Its okay’ Ryan sounded kind of confused. “There’s plenty of room for all of us.”
“Oh, good.” Cassie giggled again, tilting her head to one side as she gazed at Ryan adoringly. “I’m really glad.”
“Yeah, me too, I guess.” Ryan still seemed kind of perplexed by all the sudden attention, but he also looked as if he was maybe starting to enjoy himself a little. And no wonder. There were plenty of boys back at Tweedale Middle School who would’ve killed—or, at least, maimed—to have both Saunders twins fawning over them like that.
Meanwhile I just sat there, too tired to move or react or even think very much. All I could seem to do was stare across the fire at Josh and Angela and ponder the eternal question of how some girls seemed to be born knowing how to flirt. The twins were definitely among that group. And as much as; I hated to admit it, so was Angela.
I, on the other hand, was in Group B. B as in Baffled. Bewildered. And most of all, Bad at acting like a flirty little girly-girl. For a second I was tempted to Barge over there and Boot Angela in the Butt until she got away from my Boyfriend.
But I couldn’t. Josh still hadn’t given me the go-ahead to tell anyone about us, and that meant I had to just sit there, Bite my tongue, and watch as Angela giggled and slimed all over him. It was pretty depressing.
I sighed, almost wishing I could go back to the shark dream. So far, having a boyfriend wasn’t really turning out to be much fun at all.
“Dani! Hey, Dani! Wait up!”
I winced. After sitting through an entire dinner watching Angela act like an adoring moon revolving around planet Josh, I was still feeling pretty low. Too low to be in the mood for dealing with Kenny.
However, I also didn’t have the energy to try to escape, now that he’d followed me down the trail toward the stream. So I just stopped and waited for him to catch up.
“What?” I asked dully.
Kenny squinted at me suspiciously. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing. Now, what do you want? I’m busy.’
That wasn’t exactly true. The only thing I was busy doing at the moment was removing myself from Angela’s presence before I summoned up the energy to murder her.
“I still need to talk to you about my plan.” Kenny’s voice almost immediately ramped up to maximum whining velocity. “You keep leaving before I can finish.”
I shrugged and sighed. I so wasn’t in the mood for this.
Clearly taking my obvious depression to mean Why yes, Kenny, please expound upon your lamebrain idea immediately, he started babbling excitedly, repeating all the stuff he’d already told me about the boat and the other island.
“Yeah?” I interrupted after a moment. “So do you have anything to add? Because so far this isn’t exactly breaking news, you know!’
“Hold your horses. I was just getting to the new part.” He frowned at me. “See, I thought of a way easier way to get rescued than building some stupid raft. We could build a giant fire up in that flat clearing where my zoo is. It’s more than halfway to the top of the mountain, so if we make enough flames and smoke, they should be a
ble to see it from that boat—”
“And on the other island too,” I finished for him, sort of intrigued in spite of myself. Surprised, too. It wasn’t every day that Kenny came up with a decent plan that didn’t involve humiliating me or getting out of chores.
“Yeah.” Kenny looked pleased with himself. “That way we have twice as much chance of getting rescued. See?”
I hesitated, trying to come up with a flaw in Kenny’s plan. But it actually made a lot of sense. A lot more sense than floating out to sea on some bloated, cobbledtogether raft …
That thought jolted me back to reality. What was I doing? Kenny’s idea might seem logical, but that was no reason to start running around like a chicken with my head cut off, changing plans willy-nilly. I might as well stick with Josh’s raft for now—what did I have to lose, after all? If it worked, we’d be rescued and I wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore. Even if it didn’t work and we ended up trying the fire thing, at least I wouldn’t have had to go against Josh. That seemed like win-win to me.
“Whatever,” I muttered in my brother’s general direction. “I still think you’re making up this whole boat story anyway.’
He rolled his eyes. “Don’t be a ditz, Dani elle,” he said. “Why would I make up something like that?”
“Why do you do anything?” Not giving him much of a chance to ponder that philosophical gem, I turned away. “Anyway, I’ve got to go.”
I hurried off into the jungle, not looking back until he was well out of sight among the trees.
The next day it was my work team’s turn on food-and-water duty. That meant we had to get up early—with a little help from Ned’s super-deluxe wristwatch alarm—to haul water from the stream, boil it so it would be safe to drink, and prepare something to eat for the whole group. Back home, cooking wasn’t one of my top ten favorite activities. But since being on the island, I’d found that it was actually sort of fun. Well, not the getting-up-early part or the water hauling. But it was sort of cool to try to figure out new ways to serve the same old ingredients.
“What do you think?” Brooke peered at the bright green leaf Ned was holding.
Ned nibbled at the edges of the leaf, looking thoughtful. “I’m pretty sure this is the stuff,” he said. “It tastes pretty good. Sort of spicy, almost.”
“Cool!” I was doing my best not to think about Josh, Angela, Ryan, or Kenny. It wasn’t easy, since together they made up more than a third of the population of the island. “Maybe we can cook the papaya in some water like the other group did yesterday and season it with this stuff and some salt from the lagoon.”
“Good idea.” Brooke glanced at the pile of similar leaves on the food-prep table. “But we’ll need a lot more of the greens than that. Is this all you picked, Ned?”
He shrugged, looking sheepish. “It seemed like more at the time.”
“That’s okay.” I gave Ned a reassuring smile. “I’ll run and get some more if you tell me where it is.” Maybe Brooke was annoyed that Ned hadn’t been aggressive enough with the hunting and gathering, but I was just impressed that he’d been able to identify the ordinary-looking leaves as edible. I’m no health-food nut or anything—when I order a vegetable in a restaurant, it’s usually French fries. But after more than a week on the island most of us, myself most definitely included, were craving some variety in our diets.
Ned explained that the greens were growing in a little clearing just past the stream. I was heading toward the jungle, toting a large, empty duffel bag to use for carrying my haul, when I heard a soft voice calling my name.
Turning my head, I saw Macy hurrying toward me. It was no surprise to see her up at that hour—she’s totally one of those early-to-rise types. However, I was a little surprised when she said she wanted to talk to me. Macy and I had become better friends during our stay on the island, but that was sort of like saying that food gets better digested after you eat it. Its not that I disliked her before. To do that, she would’ve had to have been on my radar in the first place. Actually, though, getting to know her was one of the few positive things that had happened since crashing into that coral reef. Other than Josh, of course. And sometimes I wasn’t even sure how positive that was.
Still, it wasn’t as if Macy and I spent tons of time sharing heart-to-hearts about every detail of our lives. So I had no clue why she was looking all serious and begging for a few minutes of my time. “Okay,” I said. “Can we walk while you talk?” I explained my errand.
Macy nodded and fell into step beside me as we entered the jungle, following the wide trail pounded flat in the underbrush by dozens of feet passing over it every day. She cleared her throat, shooting me a shy sidelong glance. “So Kenny came to talk to me last night …,” she began.
I groaned. “Don’t tell me. He wanted to tell you all about his brilliant fire plan, right?”
“It really does seem like a good idea.” Macy’s voice got even softer, almost disappearing into the continuous hum-buzz-drip of the jungle. “We could make a really big fire pile up there if we all worked together. Especially with all the wood that came down during the hurricane. It wouldn’t take long at all.”
I could almost; hear the rest of her thought: Not nearly as long as building the raft.
“Hmm,” I responded noncommittally. “Maybe.”
She was silent for a moment, probably waiting for more. But I wasn’t about to hand her Josh’s pride and dignity on a silver platter. Even if I had a few doubts about the raft myself, I had more loyalty than that.
“Well,” she went on at last, “I was just thinking about it, that’s all. If you said something to Josh—”
“No way.” This time I didn’t hesitate before answering. “Josh is our leader, and he’s totally into this raft plan. I think we should all support that.”
“Oh.” Macy sounded disappointed, but not particularly surprised. “Well, maybe you’re right.”
She paused for so long after that that I thought she’d dropped it. In fact, my mind was wandering back to my own multitude of problems by the time she spoke again.
“But maybe we could do both.”
“Huh?” I snapped back to the here and now. “Like I said, I’m not going to go against Josh on this. And I don’t think anyone else should either. He’s our leader, remember?”
“I know. And I’m not saying we have to oppose the raft plan or anything. But maybe the three of us—you, me, and Kenny, I mean—could, you know, work on the fire, too. Secretly. Just in case.”
I tried to muster up some indignation at Macy’s lack of faith in Josh. But I couldn’t really pull it off. How could I blame her for doubting Josh’s plan when I’d been doubting it like crazy myself since it first came out of his mouth?
Of course, that didn’t mean I was going to let anyone know that. “No, thanks,” I told Macy wearily, wishing that Ms. Watson would just hurry up and find us already so I wouldn’t have to worry about either of the rescue plans. “You can waste your time believing in Kenny’s little fantasy boat if you want. But leave me out of it, okay?”
Macy sighed softly. “All right. I just thought I’d ask.”
We located the greens, picked a whole bagful of them, and returned to camp in near silence. I thought that was going to be the end of that.
I was wrong.
Breakfast was another teeth-clencher of a meal. I was treated to the sight of Angela making goo-goo eyes at Josh almost nonstop. I did my best to distract myself from that repulsive sight by fantasizing about how great it would be when we finally got rescued and everything was out in the open. Would Angela freak out and cry when she heard about me and Josh, or get spitting mad, or maybe just spontaneously combust? I couldn’t decide which of those options would be more satisfying—maybe she would do all three at once!
I was so busy with such deep thoughts that I wound up sitting around the: fire pit longer than anyone else except Mr. Truskey, who had fallen asleep leaning back against one of the seating logs with his bow
l of papaya porridge resting on his scrawny, sunburned chest. Finally becoming aware of the morning sun beating down on me, I got up, stepped carefully over the teacher’s sprawled-out legs, and headed for the shade of the shelter.
I stuck my head inside, absentmindedly wondering if it was too early for a nap. Seeing Mr. T snoozing peacefully away out there had given me ideas.
“Hi, Dani!” an eager voice greeted me.
I gulped. I’d almost forgotten about Ryan.
“Hi, Ryan,” I said weakly. “Er, I have to go and—”
“Wait!”
Ryan leaped to his feet. Unfortunately he’d just been applying sunscreen to his legs, and the sudden movement sent the open bottle flying, splattering gooey white lotion everywhere. I jumped back just in time to avoid getting slimed.
“Oops, sorry” he said sheepishly, dabbing awkwardly at a creamy white blob on the shelter’s rough wooden ceiling. “I just didn’t want you to run off before I could talk to you. Did you have a chance to think about, you know, what I was saying the other day?”
My mouth opened and closed a few times; I’m sure I looked like some kind of clueless fish. My brain seemed to be working on about a fish level too. Staring into his eager face, I couldn’t even imagine what I was supposed to say now. Somehow I figured “glub glub” wasn’t going to cut it.
“Dani! Hey, sister-dork!”
I’d never been so glad to hear my little brother’s voice in my life. Oops! Excuse me,” I told Ryan with what I hoped wasn’t too obviously major big-time relief. I’d better see what Kenny wants.”
I ducked back out of the shelter. Kenny was standing there scratching his stomach, which was sticking out through a big hole in the front of his grubby T-shirt.
“Are you ever planning to change clothes during this whole trip?” I asked him. “There’s a reason Mom and Dad packed you more than one outfit, you know.”
He ignored the comment. “Listen, Dani,” he said urgently “Josh sent me to find you. He wants you to go meet him right now.”
