Isle Be Seeing You (15 page)

As I dropped my books on my desk, I saw that Ryan was capering in front of Cassie's seat while she giggled delightedly at his antics. If Macy and Brooke seemed like an odd pair, then Ryan and Cassie? Totally bizarre. But I guess as soon as Ryan realized I was out of the picture—which he handled with surprising maturity, by the way, especially considering how idiotically I'd handled the whole situation—he noticed that one of the cutest girls in school was right there giggling at every one of his goofy jokes. It was pretty strange to think that if we'd never been stranded, the two of them probably never would have realized they liked each other. I guess it was strange for poor Chrissie, too. She tended to stare at her twin these days as if she'd suddenly started dating a space alien.

Speaking of creatures from other planets, Mr. Truskey strode into the room at that moment. He was dressed in
his daily uniform of jeans, a T-shirt, and flip-flops. His shirt sported a slightly faded picture of a tree and the words “Plants are people too.” For Mr. T, our time as castaways had been just one more entry on his long list of adventures. Probably not even the weirdest one he'd had that decade.

“Listen up, people!” he cried, waving his arms over his head. “We have a lot of ground to cover today….”

I tuned out as he started in on one of his rambling lectures about biodiversity or bioethics or bio-something-or-other. Watching him pace back and forth at the front of the room, his wild black hair sticking up, his brown eyes wide with enthusiasm, and his flip-flops flapping against the tile floor, it would be pretty easy to believe that the trip had never happened at all. That I'd just fallen asleep during class and dreamed the whole thing.

But I knew that couldn't be true. Mr. Truskey aside, too much had changed. Brooke had stepped back enough from being Miss Everything Must Be Perfect to realize that she could have a friend like Macy. Macy had overcome her shyness enough to accept that friendship. Cassie had possibly suffered some kind of brain hemorrhage or mosquito-borne dementia that
made her think Ryan was cute. Well, okay, maybe that's kind of mean. But something had changed in both her and Ryan, at least a little, or their new relationship wouldn't have lasted past the trip home.

I thought about all that a bit more as Mr. Truskey's voice droned away in the background. Not only had most of the people from the island changed inside themselves, but my opinion of them had changed. I'd always considered Cassie and Chrissie friends, of course, but the others? Not so much. Yet now, even if I wasn't planning on spending much time discussing student government issues with Brooke or hanging out at Ned's house watching TV, I knew we were all sort of bonded by what we'd gone through together. Kind of like brothers and sisters or something.

Speaking of which, one of the biggest changes of all had to be me and Kenny. I guess it took being stranded on an island with him for me to realize that my little brother was actually sort of a cool person underneath the sniffles and the bugs and all the rest of it. I don't know why it took me so long to see that—after all, he was related to me! All I know is that my parents just about had a heart attack on our first night home when I
actually apologized to him—without them forcing me to—after I accidentally called him a dorky little loser. Hey old habits are hard to break.

We'd sort of slid back into some of those old habits since then, and we were back to arguing and name-calling most of the time. But I was careful now not to be quite so mean to him, and I think he was trying not to be quite so obnoxious to me. He'd even confessed to voting for Angela in that election for island leader way back at the beginning, though he said he'd only done it to make me mad.

Which meant, of course, that my last lingering, anxious question had been answered. Josh had voted for me.

I smiled dreamily as I thought about Josh. Things between us were better than ever, now that everything was out in the open. Not that I didn't still have my moments of doubt about the whole shebang, especially when I caught myself doing something girly like writing his initials in my notebook or taking extra time picking out my clothes in the morning. But I was trying to cut myself some slack on that. It wasn't every day that a girl had her first boyfriend, and I wanted to enjoy it.

Anyway, Josh admitted now that it had been stupid to try to keep things a secret. He said he just wasn't sure
how to handle it, and he figured it would be easier that way. That made me realize that he wasn't quite as perfect as he always seemed—he was just better at hiding it than most people. And somehow, knowing that he wasn't perfect only made me like him more.

Speaking of allegedly perfect people … As Mr. Truskey started scribbling on the board, my mind wandered back to that delicious, delightful moment when Angela had first realized that Josh and I were a couple. She was so freaked out about it that she didn't say a single word to either of us during the entire trip back to the mainland and then home again. Since we'd been back at school, she hadn't spoken to me or voluntarily come within about five feet. Not that that was so unusual or anything.

When the bell finally rang to release us from Mr. Truskey's class, I was the first one out the door. It was lunchtime, which was the only time I got to hang out with Josh all day. That was the one bad thing about going with a seventh grader—we didn't have a single class together. But he'd started sitting with me and my friends on our first day back, and by now it almost felt like it had always been that way.

I was halfway down the hall when Angela stepped out
in front of me. I put on the brakes, planning to dodge her and keep going.

“Hey, Dani,” she called out. “Hold up.”

I skidded to a halt so fast that if I'd been a cartoon character my tracks would be smoking. “Huh?”

Angela reached out and grabbed my arm just above the elbow. I stared down at her hand, too confused to react. As far as I could recall, Angela had never actually touched me before. Well, not unless you counted the time she'd kicked me in the shins back in second grade. Or the time a year or two later when she'd pinched me hard enough to leave a bruise. Or—

“Come on,” she commanded impatiently, interrupting my little trip down Memories-of-Evil Lane. “I want to talk to you. Over here.”

Still a little in shock, I allowed her to drag me off to a quiet spot behind the water fountain. She dropped my arm and turned to face me, taking a deep breath. I braced myself, preparing for whatever new level of evil she had in mind.

“Look,” she said. “I just wanted to say, like, good for you. You know, for getting together with Josh. That's kind of cool, you know?”

I was astonished. Was this just the setup for some kind of dastardly plan, or had Angela Barnes actually just … congratulated me?

“Um …,” I said blankly.

“Anyway,” she continued, “I was sort of annoyed about it at first….”

Yeah. Sort of annoyed the way the United States was sort of annoyed after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

“But then I thought about it, and now I think you're kind of a cute couple,” she finished.

I smiled cautiously, waiting for the punchline. When none seemed forthcoming, I ventured a response. “Oh,” I said.

Angela stared at me. “By the way, you have something stuck in your teeth,” she said with a ghost of a smirk. “Did you have, like, spinach or something for breakfast?”

With that, she strode off down the hall, quickly becoming lost in the crowds of kids pushing and shoving their way toward the cafeteria. Picking absentmindedly at my teeth, I headed in that direction myself.

“What was that all about?” I muttered.

At first I speculated about various complex and reprehensible plots to make me look stupid. But then I realized
the truth might be simpler than that—but much, much stranger to contemplate. Could it be that Angela was a little bit nicer than I'd thought? Or at least not completely, utterly, and irredeemably evil?

It was a bizarre thought. Even if it was true, I was pretty sure that Not-So-Evil Angela and I weren't about to suddenly become the best of pals or anything. But maybe we'd both learned something about each other during our time on the island together.

That didn't seem so strange. After all, I knew I'd certainly learned a lot about myself. For instance, I'd learned that it was possible and even sort of okay for me to act like a girly-girl sometimes, just as long as it didn't stop me from being true to myself and speaking my mind. See, I'd finally realized that was exactly what a good girlfriend should do—speak up and say what she was thinking, even if she wasn't sure it was what the other person wanted to hear. If I'd done that in the first place, maybe we would have skipped the raft fiasco and been rescued earlier.

Anyway, I guess it was true that being castaways had changed all of us. Maybe even Evil Angela Barnes.

Just then I turned the corner at the end of the hall and
spotted Josh waiting for me outside the cafeteria doors. His whole face broke into a huge grin when he saw me, and he lifted one hand in a casual sort of wave. I waved back, dodging around a little cluster of people in my way. It wasn't until I heard a certain high-pitched, familiar, totally girly giggle that I realized one of those people was Angela. Glancing over, I saw her fluttering her eyelashes at the trio of cute seventh-grade boys surrounding her.

I rolled my eyes. Then again, some things never change.

The End

Don't get stranded!

Read all the books in the Castaways trilogy:

#1 Worst Class Trip Ever

#2 Weather's Here, Wish You Were Great

#3 Isle Be Seeing You

From Aladdin Paperbacks

Published by Simon & Schuster

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