Chasing Danger

by Sara Grant

  My prison had shrunk from Indiana to a small island to a tiny bungalow. Mackenzie and I were banished to our rooms for the rest of the day. We were barred from the Aquatic Centre for life. Artie ranted and raved about theft and destruction of property. He lectured on how easy it was to get lost at sea. On and on he went, laying it on super thick. I understood that we shouldn’t have taken the Jet Ski, but seriously, he was going over the top. His face was glowing red. The man might have had a coronary from one harmless joy ride.

  Ariadne didn’t say one word. She stood there in a bright green kaftan over her hot pink bikini and shook her head from time to time. I didn’t know her well, but she looked extremely disappointed, as if we’d stolen the crown jewels or killed a puppy. When I had the chance to defend myself, I explained that it was all my fault.

  “I expected more from you, Mackenzie,” was Ariadne’s response. Apparently she didn’t expect anything from me. She didn’t know that I knew her daughter was a criminal. She probably thought I was simply fulfilling my destiny. Like mother, like daughter. Maybe that’s why she didn’t want anything to do with me.

  She walked us back to our bungalows. “I’ll have your meals delivered,” she told us. “I want you both to think about what you’ve done. Artie did me a favour and this is how we repay him. What were you thinking?”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but she raised her hand to silence me. “No excuses.”

  The afternoon was agony. I laid out on the deck pretending not to care that Ariadne was angry. If she wasn’t going to talk to me then I wasn’t going to talk to her. I was relieved when she changed into a bright yellow dress and left for dinner.

  I pounded on the wall I shared with Mackenzie. I felt horrible about dragging her into my craziness. She didn’t deserve to be grounded too.

  “Go away!” she shouted through the wall.

  “I’m really sorry!” I shouted back and pressed my hand on the wood as if I could shove my sincerity through the wall. I thought we’d had fun earlier. There was a glimmer in that moment when I’d thought we might be friends. Not the kind of friends I had at home, who were fun to hang out with, but a real friend with a connection to something that wasn’t just the same school or a love of bikes or swimming. What did my dad say about his two Navy buddies, the ones who’d been his best friends for thirty years? Friends help you move; your best friend will help you move … a body. I had loads of friends, but no partner in crime. And maybe this was the reason. I didn’t know how to be the kind of friend that moved bodies either.

  “Mackenzie?” I called again.

  “Leave me alone!” she shouted back.

  Well, that was pretty clear.

  I flicked through my graphic novels. Dad had got me hooked on superheroes. Today I wasn’t focusing on the heroes. My thoughts kept drifting to the baddies. Was my mom a super-villain like Lex Luthor, Cat Woman or Mystique?

  I kept thinking about the few details I knew about her. I remembered the picture hidden in Ariadne’s handbag. I looked like my mom. Same hair. Same eyes. Same round face and small nose. I wanted to look at that photo again, but when I came back to the room, Ariadne’s handbag was gone. I noticed she had locked her jewellery box in the safe. My own grandma was suspicious of me. You borrow one Jet Ski and nearly crash it into a million-dollar yacht and you’re the Maldives Most Wanted.

  Most wanted. That was funny. I was the most unwanted.

  But my mom hadn’t deserted me. The fact that she couldn’t have visited me made me feel better. People went to prison for lots of non-scary things. Didn’t they categorize crimes as white and blue collar? I wondered if there were also fuchsia, teal, coral and chartreuse crimes. Maybe Mom had committed one of the lesser-colour offenses.

  I watched an orangey-pink sun disappear at the horizon. My vacation had gone from awkward to awful. I’d never felt more lost and alone in my life. I wondered if this was what Mom felt like – stranded and lonely with no way to escape.

  Escape. Maybe that was my only answer. I checked my watch. It would be early morning in Indiana. Artie and Ariadne would be swooning over dessert about now so I could probably sneak into his office unnoticed, call Dad and tell him I wanted to come home.

  I dressed in a pair of cut-off jean shorts and shirt that I tied at my waist. It was the closest I could get to super stealth mode being the only short, blonde, white kid on the island. I decided to stroll along the beach that separated the bungalows and the Aquatic Centre. Everyone would be in the dining hall, so I’d approach the lobby from the back.

  The sand warmed my feet as I walked along the shore. Away from the lights of the bungalows, the sky came alive with stars. At home the night sky was dotted with faint stars. Here there were more stars than sky. And not only that, they sparkled brighter, as if my home-grown stars were made of glass and these diamonds. I never knew there were so many stars in the universe.

  Something furry brushed my leg and I jumped. It was only a cat. I scratched behind its ears. The night was so quiet that the cat’s purring surrounded me.

  “You are much better company than that stupid ol’ Mackenzie,” I told the cat, which made her purr louder.

  I wished I could go back to yesterday and start again. I wouldn’t snoop or ask too many questions. I was happier thinking my mom could be a fairy princess or simply a donated egg. I would be on my best behaviour and then maybe my grandma wouldn’t completely hate me.

  My pity party ended with a bang.

  Actually a series of ear-splitting bangs.

  The cat bolted, and I lunged for a nearby palm tree.

  Screams erupted from the direction of the dining hall.

  Was that gunfire? I’d only heard guns on TV and movies.

  I must have imagined it. My stupid imagination was in overdrive. Maybe it was movie night, and they were showing a gangster movie.

  More shots. More screaming.

  That wasn’t a movie. I dived face down into the shrubs.

  The island was under attack!

  I’d been scared before. When I was four and got lost in a cornfield. That time a snake slithered across my sandals when I went on a nature walk with my Brownie troupe. We had a tornado touch down two blocks from our house, but that wasn’t really scary because Dad was with me. He had constructed a cosy and architecturally sound bunker in our basement. He also sang One Direction songs badly to distract me when it sounded like a train was passing over our house.

  Bang! Bang!

  There it was again. The blasts shattered the silence and rippled around the island. I crouched behind a palm tree and squeezed my eyes shut tightly.

  More screams.

  I wasn’t scared; I was terrified. I thought it might be an earthquake until I realized that my body – not the earth below me – was shaking.

  The island was deadly quiet. My brain flashed to every horror movie I’d ever watched – zombies, vampires, slashers with butcher knives, clowns with sledge hammers … a slideshow of horrors zoomed by in freakish fast-forward.

  Think. WWDD. What Would Dad Do? Fear had whipped my mind into a big gooey marshmallow.

  Breathe. That’s what he told me when I wrecked my bike and broke my wrist. I inhaled and exhaled. But I was doing it too quickly. My breath was crashing into itself coming and going. Just breathe. I calmed my panting into big gulping breaths.

  I remembered Dad’s advice in case of an intruder: hide. We had determined the best hiding places in every room of our house. The best way to survive was to avoid confrontation. I could do that. I opened my eyes. I slithered through the sand and tunnelled further into the mini rainforest that separated the lobby from the beach. I found a cluster of ferns and flowers and burrowed into the sand as deep as I could. I swept leaves and twigs over me. I clawed at the dirt and ground it into my glow-in-the-dark white skin. I smeared it in on my face and muddied my blonde hair. Dad and Hunger Games had taught me about camouflage.

  And then I waited.

  And waited.

  For
what seemed like hours.

  I checked my watch. Only fifteen minutes had passed.

  This waiting wasn’t easy. Every nanosecond my brain was making up weird and terrible scenarios. Plain ol’ bad guys. Mass murderers. A mutant octopus with a machine-gun for each tentacle. Aliens with blasters that would liquidize human flesh. My body sort of itched and twitched. It wanted to run. I thought of Ariadne, Mackenzie, Luke and Artie. The faces of the old people on the island kept flashing into my mind. I hoped they were hiding too.

  My dad told me to hide, but I forgot one important fact: my dad didn’t hide. I’d found his Navy medals. I’d seen pictures of him accepting an honour from the President of the United States. If my dad was here – and oh, how I wished he was – he would do something.

  Do something.

  Do something.

  Do something.

  I had to do something. But what?

  What was really going on? I didn’t know for sure. And a teeny tiny part of me kept hoping that I’d got it wrong. The island wasn’t really under attack. That was insane.

  The first step in my stellar do something plan had to be gathering information. As hard as waiting was, moving proved to be even harder. I told myself that I was going to stay out of sight and figure out what was happening. That’s it.

  When I used to be scared or worried, my dad would ask: what’s the worst that could happen? My answers went something like this: I would fail my math test, which would tank my grade point average, and my low grade point average would mean I couldn’t go to college or find a job and Dad would be so disgusted with me that he would disown me and I would end up penniless and dead in the gutter.

  Dad promised he would never ever disown me, but he stopped asking about the worst.

  What’s the worst that could happen?

  The short answer was that they would find me and shoot me. But there were simply too many worst things that could happen next – and not just to me. I erased them all from my mind.

  I peeked over the floppy, leafy green plants and slowly swivelled. I scanned high and low. No one was around. I strained to hear any sounds. Nothing.

  I inched forward, crawling on my belly. I pretended it was one of Dad’s obstacle courses. He sometimes used to criss-cross string at knee height up and down our backyard. He’d tie jingle bells to each string then I’d have to make my way to the fence and back without ringing any bells. I never made a sound.

  I brushed dried leaves and twigs out of my way so there wasn’t a crunch or crack as I moved forward. I stayed hidden in the shrubs while scanning my surroundings.

  I crawled until I could see the open-air dining hall. So far so good. I re-camouflaged myself. Slowly I eased up so my eyes were barely above the shrubs. Several masked gunmen were pacing back and forth across the hall. The guests and staff were lying spreadeagle on the floor. I spotted Ariadne’s yellow dress. Artie was lying next to her. I ducked back down.

  I couldn’t deny it any more. This was really happening. Whatever is beyond terrified, that’s what I was. Every cell was overwhelmed with it.

  “I want wallets, handbags, jewellery and any other valuables on your person.” The voice was low and harsh. “My colleague will walk around. Drop your valuables in the bag. Do as we say and no one gets hurt. Don’t be a hero.”

  These were modern-day pirates. They had stormed the island and were looting its treasures. Maybe they would take what they wanted and leave. I found a line of sight through the shrubs. The masked men snatched rings and watches from terrified hostages. They plucked diamond earrings from ears and patted down each person to make sure they weren’t hiding anything valuable.

  One of the masked men walked straight towards Ariadne. “You!” he barked.

  I clapped my hands over my mouth to smother my cry.

  Please not her, I silently begged. Please not my grandma.

  The man pointed his gun at Ariadne. I wanted to look away but I couldn’t. Then he shifted his aim, directing it at Artie, who was lying next to her. “You’re the manager here, aren’t you?” the man shouted.

  Artie didn’t move.

  The gunman kicked Artie’s side. Artie flinched.

  “Get up!” The man hauled Artie to his feet.

  “Please,” Artie begged. “You’ve got what you came for. Just go.”

  The man slapped Artie hard across the face. “Shut up!”

  The whole island seemed to gasp.

  “Shut up! All of you!” The man waved his gun in a wide arc. “You are going to open the safety deposit boxes and the main resort safe. Then we are going to call everyone in one-by-one. You will help me transfer funds from their bank accounts. If you do as you’re told, no one will get hurt.”

  The man led Artie through the dining hall. They were heading my way. I slowly eased down to the ground until I was lying flat. I closed my eyes wanting to believe that if I couldn’t see them, they couldn’t see me.

  “I can’t,” I heard Artie say. “These people trust me. I won’t betray them,” he was shouting now, shouting very loudly.

  What was he doing?

  I heard a scuffle and what I thought were fists hitting bodies. More shouting, but I couldn’t make out words, just anger and fear and…

  Thud!

  The unmistakable sound of something hard hitting the ground.

  Screams erupted again. My eyelids sprang open.

  I stifled a gasp as Artie’s lifeless body came into focus.

  My brain sort of switched off. I couldn’t think, couldn’t face what had happened. I curled in a tight ball and wished that I could fall asleep and make this go away.

  I’d been wrong about Artie. He may not have been the nicest, but standing up to the bad guys was super brave. I was the worst judge of character ever.

  “Let that be a lesson to anyone who wants to be a hero,” one of the pirates was shouting. “Do as you’re told and no one else has to get hurt.”

  He didn’t have to worry about me. I didn’t want to end up like Artie. This wasn’t some action movie. The bad guys weren’t messing around.

  I begged my body not to move, not to twitch. The pirates walked away, dragging Artie between them. I heard a snatch of conversation as they passed only a few feet away.

  “We’ve got to make sure the guests are accounted for.”

  “I’ll check the guest registry and the staff list.”

  I remembered seeing those lists on Artie’s desk. I wasn’t on any of them. They wouldn’t be looking for me. If I stayed out of sight, maybe I would survive. Then I remembered – I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t technically supposed to be here. I’d nearly forgotten about Mackenzie. I hoped Artie hadn’t included her on any of those official lists either. The pirates might never know we were here. They wouldn’t be looking for either of us. We were secret weapons. I liked the sound of that.

  “Shut up!” one of the pirates yelled.

  My ears were sort of ringing. The sound was more like static. No, that wasn’t right either. It reminded me of crickets on a summer night. Back in Indiana, that sound was my lullaby. I found it comforting to think of those creatures out there making music for me. At home their chirping bounced from field to forest and surrounded me.

  But this sound wasn’t crickets. It was the sound of people sobbing.

  That sound shifted something in me. That’s when I decided.

  They were helpless. I wasn’t. I could stay curled up like a baby and hope and pray that everyone would be OK. I could close my eyes and pretend this wasn’t happening. That wouldn’t make my dad proud. Or I could be a secret weapon. I was going to find Mackenzie and then together we would figure out a way to get help.

  When the coast was clear, I crawled through the jungle, ducking behind palm trees. When I reached the beach, I charted a course from sunlounger to cabana. Four dinghies were lined up on the beach. Those had to be the bad guys.

  I searched for pirates and then darted to my next hiding place, until I reached the pier whi
ch led to the water bungalows. Tiny twinkle lights lined the elevated walkway. Once I’d climbed up on to the pier, there would be nowhere to hide. Mackenzie’s bungalow was at the end. I would have to make a run for it. I would be completely exposed. What other choice did I have?

  I wasn’t the fastest runner on my best day in track, but I wasn’t the worst. I swallowed hard. I had to do it. I bounced to warm up. I’d pretend this was a race.

  Every minute I wasted might cost Mackenzie her life. I pictured her sitting in front of those computers with her headphones on unaware of any danger. What was I waiting for?

  I scanned the island one last time and then I had to move. There were no pirates in sight.

  On your mark… I told myself.

  Get set… This was probably the stupidest thing I had ever done.

  Go! I bolted down the pier as fast as my legs would take me. I looked left and right for any signs of the bad guys. The coast was still clear. I might have said the island looked peaceful. But I knew gunmen were lurking in the shadows, and I’d seen what they did to Artie.

  I lunged for Mackenzie’s bungalow as if it was finish line tape and I was going for a world record. I leaned against the front door and panted.

  CRASH!

  I froze.

  The sound came from behind me. I crouched down and checked out the pier. Two masked men burst out of the first bungalow. They were stuffing things in big duffle bags. My body collapsed to the deck with fear. I didn’t know they were in there. I shuddered at the realization of how close I’d come to being caught. I was alive thanks to nothing but luck. I prayed my stupid, dumb, unbelievable luck would hold. While half the bad guys were forcing the hostages to drain their bank accounts, the other half were robbing the guest rooms – and they were heading this way.

  I gently eased the door open until there was a Chase-sized gap, and I slipped in. I’d made it. I sighed as I closed the door behind me.