Trial by Fire (3 page)

A
fter their tiny breakfast, Vanessa sat on a fallen tree in the clearing outside the cave. It felt good to soak up some sun at the end of such a long, cold night.

Buzz and Jane flopped on their backs next to her. Carter stayed on his feet, leaning on the axe like a walking stick. Everyone looked exhausted. It was tempting to get some sleep finally, but they couldn't afford to waste the daylight. There was too much to do.

“Listen, you guys,” Vanessa said. “We need to start collecting firewood right away. We're going to have to get some water, too, and I think we should—”

“First of all, we need to get one thing straight,” Carter said. “You're not in charge here, Vanessa, okay?”

Vanessa glared back at him. Carter had been this way from the moment their parents had introduced the kids to one another. It was as if he was allergic to having anyone else tell him what to do.

“Don't be like that, Carter. We need to make a fire, we need to drink something. And we need to work together,” she said.

“That's what I'm talking about,” Carter answered. “
Work.
I want to get busy. All you ever want to do is
talk.
I say two of us should go get water while the other two hike up to Lookout Point, grab that signal flare, and bring it down here to make a fire.”

“Now who's giving orders?” Vanessa asked. “Besides, we need that flare to stay where it is.”

Three days earlier, the four of them had assembled a pyre of kindling and wood to use as a signal fire in case a plane or ship passed by the island. It sat in the highest place they could find, a rocky outcropping above their beach that Jane had named Lookout Point.

In the middle of that pyre, they'd left one of the flares from the
Lucky Star.
The flares were like small, self-igniting torches, but they could be used only once.

“If anyone comes looking for us, we're going to have one chance to get rescued,” Vanessa said. “Nothing's more important than that.”

“Except staying alive in the meantime,” Carter countered. “I was freezing last night, weren't you?”

“I wish we'd taken more of those flares off the boat,” Buzz said. “There were at least five of them in the cockpit.”

“Yeah, well, I wish we'd taken a lot of things. But we didn't, did we?” Carter asked impatiently.

Vanessa watched Buzz to see what he'd say. Sometimes she wished he'd stand up to Carter more. Besides being the same age, the two boys were nothing alike.

“Vanessa's right. If we can't start that signal fire quick when we need it, then it's not going to do us any good,” Buzz said.

But Carter wasn't buying it.

“Once we have a fire down here, we can use it to make a torch or something. We could use that instead of the flare.”

“Not if it rains and the fire goes out,” Vanessa said. “Besides, do you really think you can get a lit torch all the way up there?”

They'd been back and forth to Lookout Point several times now—up a steep gravel slope, along the narrow lip of a ravine, and across a fallen tree. The idea of trying to do all that with a burning stick in one hand seemed impossible to Vanessa.

“What about you, Jane?” Carter asked. “Do you want to try to sleep through another freezing cold night, or do you want a nice warm fire?”

Jane took a long time to answer. She looked at each of them, as if the gears in her brain were spinning even faster than usual. At home, she was the one who never got into arguments with the others. Jane's mother called her the Great Peacemaker, and said she'd probably win a Nobel Prize one day. Vanessa didn't doubt it.

Still, when Jane finally did answer, it wasn't what Vanessa expected to hear.

“I think we should elect a leader,” she said.

As soon as the words came out of her mouth, Jane could feel Carter's glare burning right into her.

“Elect a leader?”
he asked.

“Not like a boss,” she said. “Just someone who can decide what needs to happen, and how it's going to get done. Like . . . a manager.” She knew Carter wanted her to take his side about the flare, but this seemed like the fairest way to decide.

Carter shook his head. “You know what? You've been hanging around these two too much.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Vanessa asked.

“You Diazes are always trying to organize everyone else's life,” he told her.

“I don't do that,” Buzz said quietly, but Carter didn't seem to be listening.

“It's like there has to be a schedule for everything,” he went on. “That day we left, your dad made us get to the airport two hours early, just so we could sit around.”

“You're the one who never thinks five seconds ahead of time,” Vanessa told him. “Someone has to.”

“Wrong,” Carter said. “
Someone
has to get some water.
Someone
has to build a fire.”

Jane hated all the fighting. It was one thing when Carter and Vanessa were at home, locking each other out of the bathroom or seeing who could shout the loudest. But that's not what was at stake here. Why couldn't they see that?

“I'm voting for Buzz!” Jane blurted out. Vanessa and Carter stopped to stare at her. Buzz only looked at the ground, poking the dirt with a long stick. “He knows more about this stuff than any of us.”

“You want Buzz to be the leader?” Carter asked. “Don't make me laugh.”

Now Buzz did look up. “First of all, I don't want to be the leader,” he said. “And second of all—shut up, Carter.”

“You going to make me?” Carter asked.

Jane stood up. “This is what I'm talking about, you guys! I'm the youngest, and even I can see how stupid you're being. Can't we just vote? Please?”

“Fine with me,” Vanessa said. “I vote for myself.”

“What a shock,” Carter said.

“Well, I am the oldest.”

“So what? I'm the strongest,” Carter said. “I vote for me.”

“I vote for Vanessa, too,” Buzz said. “And Jane, you should vote for someone else. I don't want it.”

“Yeah, Jane. Vote for someone else,” Carter said. She could feel that stare of his again, and she knew what it meant. But Vanessa
was
the oldest. She was also way more organized than Carter. That was just a fact.

“Well then . . . I vote for Vanessa,” she said softly.

“What?”

“I'm sorry, Carter.”

He'd probably expected her to vote for him since she was his “real” sister. But only Carter thought of it that way anymore. The Bensons and the Diazes were one family now, whether he liked it or not.

“Yeah, okay,” Carter said after a long pause. “Vanessa's the leader, but only on one condition. Anyone can change their vote anytime.”

“No way,” Vanessa said. “That's stupid.”

But Carter's hand was already in the air. “This is how we figure stuff out, right? We vote. Jane? Buzz? What do you think?”

“That seems fair,” Jane said, and raised her hand. It seemed like a good way for everyone to get something they wanted. “But it has to be three to one. If it's two to two, then nothing changes.”

“I can live with that,” Carter said.

Buzz seemed to think so, too. “Whatever,” he said, and raised his hand. “Can we just get on with this?”

For the first time, Carter sat down. “Yeah, go ahead, Vanessa,” he said. “You wanted to be the leader. How are we going to make this fire without a flare?”

Jane held her breath. She knew if Vanessa didn't have some kind of answer, the arguing was just going to start all over again.

But Vanessa didn't even hesitate. She looked right over at Buzz.

“Okay, Buzz,” she said. “What do you know about making fire from scratch?”

B
uzz knelt in the dirt, feeling ready to collapse, or scream, or both.

In front of him, he had a piece of bamboo, split in half like a long thin bowl. At one end was a ball of coconut husk. In his hand, he held a stick that he'd sharpened with Uncle Dexter's bowie knife. For the last hour, or however long it had been, he'd run the stick back and forth . . . and back and forth. . . . and back and forth . . . over the bamboo, trying to work up enough heat to get the husk to burn. So far, all he'd gotten was a giant blister on his palm and at least a dozen new mosquito bites.

There were other ways to make fire, he knew. They could use eyeglasses to refract the sunlight, if any of them wore glasses. Which they didn't. And there was a bow-and-arrow thing he'd seen on a show once, but the details wouldn't come back to him no matter how hard he tried to remember.

So it was down to this—friction and elbow grease. Buzz just wished he had a little bit more of both. The idea of another long cold night in the dark was almost too much to take.

“Anything?” Carter asked, coming out of the woods with another armload of branches. Behind him, Jane carried a bundle of smaller twigs for kindling. They'd gathered a good amount of firewood by now, but none of it was going to do them any good if they couldn't get a flame going.

“Not yet,” Vanessa said.

Buzz sat back, scratching at the bites on his legs. It was impossible
not
to scratch. The mosquitoes were like their own kind of torture up here in the jungle. He'd started to wish for repellent almost as much as food or fire.

Then he felt a tap on his shoulder. “Come on,” Carter said. “Let me give it a shot.”

He knew this was coming. Carter always had to put himself in the middle of everything.

“I've got it, Carter,” he said.

“Do you?” Carter asked, and put his hand out for the stick.

With Vanessa and Jane watching, there wasn't much choice. Fire was more important than anything right now, and the fact was, Carter could outmuscle him at this.

Still, Buzz burned just a little as he handed it over. This was
his
idea, after all.

“Keep the pressure steady,” he said. “And keep the stick moving. If it starts to smoke—”

“Yeah, I saw what you were doing,” Carter said. He knelt down and started running the stick back and forth with more force than Buzz had been able to muster.

Buzz gritted his teeth. There wasn't anything to say, anyway. If they got fire out of this—great. Nothing else would matter, including who had done it.

In the meantime, he just had to be patient. They all did.

For a long time, Jane watched Carter work in silence. It was hard to tear her eyes away from the stick and bamboo, even without any signs of fire.

Finally, Carter sat back, dripping sweat into the dirt. He looked more than a little annoyed by now.

“You know, it's not like we need four people to do this,” he said.

“He's right,” Vanessa said. “What we really need is water. Jane, do you think you can get back to the falls if you take the camera for a light?”

Jane knew the question was coming. Besides Carter, she was the only one who knew the way. But she wasn't too excited about it.

Going for water meant heading straight back into the caves. They cut like a huge spiderweb of trails through the island's cliffs and ridges. At the far end of one of those caves was a freshwater falls, the only source of drinking water they'd found so far. With a real flashlight, it might take fifteen minutes to get there. But the camera barely gave enough light to let them take one step at a time. It was going to be a long, slow walk through the dark.

“Buzz, will you come with me?” Jane asked. “I don't want to go alone.”

“I don't want you to, either,” Vanessa said. “In fact—new rule, you guys. Nobody leaves camp by themselves, okay? It's too dangerous.”

While Buzz packed their two plastic bottles into the backpack, Jane went to get the camera. It sat on a little rock shelf at the side of the cave, where Vanessa had organized all of their provisions.

It was reassuring to see the camera's little screen glow to life when she turned it on. The battery wouldn't last forever, but hopefully it would last long enough to get them to the falls and back.

“You ready?” Buzz asked. He had the pack on now, and was peering into the dark ahead of them.

“I guess so,” Jane said. It wasn't like they had much choice. She flipped the camera to video mode and pressed Play. The she held it out in front of her to light the way. As they started off, she could hear her own voice coming over the camera's tiny speaker.

“Hi, everyone, this is Jane B, reporting for Evanston Elementary. Today is June twenty-fifth, and it's the first day of our trip. We're just a minute away from setting sail on the
Lucky Star
.”

It was the first video she'd made, Jane remembered. Her own introduction was followed quickly by a second voice that stopped her short not far from the cave entrance. Buzz stopped next to her.

“Bon voyage, my little video artist.”

It was her mother. When Jane turned the camera around to see the image, there was Beth Benson. She was standing on the dock in Hawaii with Jane's new dad, Eric Diaz.

“Have a great time,”
Eric said into the lens.
“And here. Take this for good luck.”

He'd given her the Chicago Cubs hat right off his head. It seemed like forever ago. Now, that cap was somewhere on the bottom of the ocean, along with everything else.

“Go on,”
her mother said.
“You have to get on board. And sweetie, don't spend the whole time behind that camera. I don't want you to miss out.”

“I won't,”
Jane heard herself say.

The image on the screen jostled and blurred. The next thing Jane saw was their parents again, as she filmed them from the back of the boat. In the background, Uncle Dexter was ringing a bell.

“Here we go!”
he shouted.
“
Stand by to set sail!”

“Have fun!”
her mother called.

“See you in a week!”
Eric yelled, and the two of them waved like crazy as the image slowly faded to black.

When the video was done, Jane had tears running down her cheeks. It hurt, like an ache in her bones, not knowing when she was going to see her mother again. Not knowing when she was going to get her next hug from Eric.

Vanessa and Carter were there, too. She hadn't even realized they'd come into the cave from outside. They'd all seen the video, and everyone was crying, including Carter, though he tried to hide it.

“I miss them,” Jane said. Even the words were hard to say. “I just want to go home.”

“I know. Me, too,” Vanessa said, and put her arm around Jane. Both of the boys stayed silent. “But Janie, don't run the video again, okay? Use a still image for the light. It'll eat up less juice that way.”

Jane nodded and swallowed hard, trying not to cry anymore. She couldn't afford to be a baby here.

She took a deep breath. “Come on, Buzz,” she said. Buzz put a hand on her shoulder, and they set off again, straight back into the darkness.