Isle Be Seeing You (13 page)

“Check it out, you guys,” Josh said excitedly. “We're almost to the reef already. I think this is going to work!”

I almost reached down and knocked on the rough wooden floor of the raft. I knew a jinx when I heard one, and I was afraid he'd just jinxed us big-time. But I didn't want to lose my paddling rhythm, so I didn't knock on wood after all.

Big mistake.

We were only a few yards from the reef, but I hardly saw the craggy shapes of the coral sticking out of the
water. Instead I stared out past the reef, hypnotized by the rougher waves of the deep water beyond. Were they always that big? From the beach, the ocean looked as smooth as the average bathtub. But up close it was a different story.

“Pay attention, Dani,” Angela snapped at me as my rowing slowed slightly. “I'm not doing all the work here by myself.”

Josh squinted ahead, holding on to the rudder with one hand as he used the other to shade his eyes from the bright morning sun, which was reflecting off the tiny waves all around us. “Can you guys see how deep the coral is up there?” he asked. “We need to find a low spot so we won't—”

He was interrupted by an ugly scraping sound. The raft suddenly slowed dramatically on my side, sort of like a giant hand had reached out and grabbed it. Or more accurately, a giant chunk of coral.

“We have to move left!” Josh shouted, dragging hard on the rudder. “We're going to go aground on the reef!”

The water was already getting choppy there around the reef, not as crystal clear as the water in the lagoon, but it was still clear enough to see the gnarled, cauliflower-knobby
shape of the coral, washed over in muted blues and reds. It looked sort of like the stuff that had grown on the egg salad I'd left in the fridge for a month, only larger and sharper.

Jabbing at the coral with my paddle, I tried to push the raft free of it. The first time, my makeshift oar skidded off to the side, almost crushing my fingers between the handle and the raft, but I immediately tried again. This time I found a good, solid spot from which to push off. There was another sickening scrape, but then, finally, the raft came loose again, bobbing up and down and drifting slowly counterclockwise.

“We did it!” Angela cried. “We're—”

The rest of her words were swallowed up in a giant splash as the first real ocean wave caught us, slapping down violently on the raft and shooting spray everywhere. The world seemed to go topsy-turvy for a few seconds while the raft careened sickeningly, spinning first in one direction and then another.

“Whoa!” Josh yelled, sounding nervous.

After that everything happened fast. Josh was shouting something else, but I couldn't hear it through the water in my ears. I dug frantically into the water with
my paddle, but it felt like rowing through mud. The current grabbed at the bottom of the paddle and yanked at it, as if there was some kind of huge, nasty mermaid down there playing tug-of-war with me.

“Dani!” Angela screeched. “Don't lean over so far! You'll tip us over!”

I opened my mouth to respond, but another wave roared over the raft at that moment, and I wound up almost choking on a faceful of salty sea water. The raft spun around and around until I wasn't sure which direction was which. The paddle was ripped out of my hands, which was just as well, because I needed both hands to grip the edge of the raft so I wouldn't be tossed headfirst into the reef. Splinters dug into my palms as I coughed, trying to expel the water I'd accidentally swallowed.

But despite my best efforts to hold on, I lost my grip on the raft. My eyes were squeezed shut, and I was already drenched from the spray, so it took me a moment or two to realize that I was underwater. In fact, it wasn't until I tried to breathe in a mouthful of salty water that I really figured it out.

I opened my eyes and found myself looking through
a murky haze that shimmered when I coughed. My lungs were burning, my hands were burning, and now my eyes were burning. Kicking my feet as hard as I could, hardly feeling the pain as they connected with sharp bits of the reef, I shot upward and bobbed to the surface just in time to see the raft—well a largish chunk of it, anyway—sink out of sight beneath yet another wave. Gasping for breath, I coughed out about a gallon of water and spit, and then started sucking down the sweet, sweet air. The water was pretty choppy out there just beyond the reef, but I actually felt a little more secure treading water than I had on the raft. I'd grown up in Florida, so it wasn't like it was my first time in the ocean.

Shaking my wet hair out of my face, I glanced around for the others. Josh was treading water nearby. Angela was clinging to a small fragment of the raft that was still floating.

“Help! Help!” she shrieked, coughing dramatically as a wave washed over her.

Even under those circumstances, I couldn't help noticing that she didn't appear to be in any danger of
actually drowning. In fact, her hair was barely wet. Plus I happened to know that she'd been on the swim team at her neighborhood pool since second grade.

I guess Josh wasn't willing to take any chances, though. He swam over to her. “Don't panic, Angela,” he cried. “You'll be okay. Just stick with me.”

I would have rolled my eyes, but it would have taken too much effort. Instead I focused on trying to get myself back to shore while Josh paddled along nearby, doing the same for himself and the giant blond parasite that had attached herself to him. It took some pretty strong swimming to get past the reef without getting ourselves smashed against it, but we managed. Well, Josh and I managed. Angela pretty much just whimpered and allowed Josh to drag her along with him. Once we made it back to the calm waters of the lagoon, it was just a matter of swimming back to shore. The others, who had watched the whole disaster, waded out to help us to dry land.

So much for the King of Rafts. “The King is dead, long live the King,” I muttered to myself as I collapsed onto the sand, feeling the burn of the coral cuts on my feet and the unpleasant itch of sand in my bathing suit.

“Sorry, Josh,” Chrissie said tentatively. “The raft looked really good for a while.”

Josh sighed, looking haggard. “No, I'm the one who's sorry,” he said, rubbing his head and making his wet hair stick up. “I really thought that slate rudder would be stronger, but it just snapped when we got out there in the rougher water. That's really why we got in trouble. Maybe if we rebuild, make the new rudder out of wood this time …”

At those words, I guess something inside of me snapped, just like the stupid rudder. Patience has never been my strongest virtue, so it was kind of amazing it hadn't happened sooner. “Are you nuts?” I exclaimed loudly.

Josh blinked at me. “Huh?”

“It wasn't just the rudder” Now that I'd gotten started, I couldn't seem to stop myself. My voice rose higher and higher, both in pitch and in volume, as I continued. “The raft was a total disaster. I knew it wasn't going to work from the beginning. I mean, who could possibly believe a bunch of twigs tied together is going to make it across two miles of ocean?” I glared at Josh, who just looked stunned.

“Shut up, Dani,” Angela cried fervently. “Josh knows
what he's doing—that's why we elected him our leader. If he wants to rebuild, I think we should totally support him.”

“Well you can waste your time trying again if you want,” I declared. “But I …”

My voice trailed off and my heart sank as Josh stood up, stared coldly at me, and stomped away without a word.

I took a few steps after him, not
sure whether to try to catch up and apologize. It wasn't that I was sorry about what I'd said, exactly. Now that it was out, I couldn't believe I'd ever kept it to myself for so long. But I knew I could have said it in a much nicer way.

“Nice going, McFeeney” Angela called sarcastically from behind me:. “Very sensitive.”

For once I didn't have a snappy response for her. I wandered a little farther down the beach, wondering exactly when I'd transformed into Tactfulina, Queen of the Big Mouths. Josh was still hurrying off along the
beach, his hands shoved deep into his pockets and his head hanging low.

I chewed my lower lip as I drifted to a stop and watched him go. I was pretty certain that I'd just blown it once and for all. Why hadn't I stopped to think before going off on him like that? The least I could have done was take him off in private to tell him his idea stunk. Then again, we all know how that worked out last time….

“Dani!” Kenny suddenly appeared at my side, panting and excited. He grabbed at my arm, accidentally scratching me with his fingernails. “C'mere!”

I yanked my arm free before he could draw blood. “Careful,” I snapped. “What's wrong with you? Leave me alone.”

“Come on!” he cried breathlessly, totally ignoring my testiness. “Macy and Ned are telling the others about our fire. They need your help to explain it!”

I sighed. “So much for keeping me out of it, like I asked,” I muttered.

Still, at this point I figured I had nothing to lose by coming clean about my involvement with Kenny's plan.
Especially since Getting the Heck Off This Stinking Island had just gone from #1 on my personal priority list to pretty much the
only
thing on the list. Kenny was already dashing back toward the rest of the group, and after one last glance at Josh's lonely figure, I turned and followed.

“Okay,” Brooke was saying cautiously as I rejoined the group. “So this fire you built—it's up on the mountain, or what? How do you know it'll be visible way out there at sea?”

“Yeah.” Cassie nodded, her eyes wide and worried. “Oh! And what if we set the whole island on fire by accident?”

“Hey, if the whole island was on fire, someone would definitely notice that!” Ryan joked.

Brooke rolled her eyes and frowned at him. “Be serious, Ryan,” she scolded in her best fourteen-going-on-forty voice. “This is no time for your goofy jokes.”

“Look, it's not going to set the island on fire, okay?” I spoke up. “Ned figured out exactly how to set it up so that wouldn't happen.”

The others glanced at Ned, several of them nodding thoughtfully. Before the trip I was sure most of the people on the island—myself included—had thought of
Ned as little more than a TV-obsessed dweeb. That is, if we thought about him at all.

But we'd all learned that there was a lot more to him than that. For one thing he had a photographic memory for every obscure factoid he'd ever seen on TV or read on the Internet, which had made our lives on the island easier and saved our butts a time or two.

Despite their respect for Ned, though, the others still seemed a bit skeptical about the whole fire plan. I guess after just getting burned by the raft disaster, they were a bit cautious about throwing their energy and enthusiasm behind another plan.

As I was trying to figure out how to convince them to give it a chance, Ryan stepped forward. “Hey,” he said, his voice more serious than usual. “If Dani thinks this plan will work—urn, and Macy and Ned and Ken too—I think we should at least talk about it. Right?”

I shot him a quick, grateful smile. Even if it was only his crush talking, it was nice to have some support.

“I suppose.” Brooke shrugged. “So let's—” She cut herself off. “Hi, Josh.”

I jumped in surprise. Josh had returned so quietly that
I hadn't even noticed him until Brooke said something. I stared at him so hard that it felt like my eyeballs would pop out of my head and tumble onto the sand. But he wasn't looking at me. He was sort of staring into space, his expression wavering somewhere between dejected and sheepish.

“What are you guys talking about?” he asked the group at large.

Macy Ned, and I exchanged a quick, anxious look. I guess none of us was quite ready to speak up and tell him all about the plan we'd been concocting behind his back. Least of all me.

Luckily Kenny had no such qualms. “We're talking about a new plan” he said eagerly. “See, we figured out that if we could build a big, huge fire up on the ridge …” He went on, explaining the whole thing.

Josh nodded along, his expression slowly changing from downcast to interested. “Cool,” he said when Kenny finished. “Let's do it.”

I goggled at him. Was he serious? Did he really think the fire plan would work, or was he just eager to take the attention off what had just happened?

Finally he glanced over at me, briefly meeting my eyes. But before I could figure out what he was thinking, Kenny let out a yelp.

“Hey!” he cried. “What time is it? We don't want to miss the boat!”

Everyone scrambled into action as we realized we didn't have much time. If that boat stayed true to schedule, it would be chugging into view of our island in less than an hour.

“Come on,” Chrissie cried. “Let's get up to the ridge!”

We all took off down the beach. As we passed close to camp on our way to the trail, Ryan raced on ahead and woke up Mr. Truskey to tell him what was going on. “What's this I hear about a campfire, Counselor Bob?” the teacher burbled, staggering out of the shelter and grinning at us. He was dressed in a pair of jeans so dirty and raggedy that they would have made a scarecrow look underdressed, topped off with what appeared to be one of Kenny's T-shirts.