Trial by Fire (7 page)

“We have to try,” Vanessa said. “I'm going to go down.”

She didn't wait for an answer. A second later, she dove in and started swimming away from the shore.

While they waited, Buzz looked around at the bits of wreckage strewn on the rocks. If he couldn't dive, maybe he could at least gather some of it and make himself useful that way. The scrap of teakwood he'd seen before was something they could burn, once they had a fire. Or it could be a shelf. Or even a kind of short spear, with its jagged edge where the wood had broken off.

The twisted piece of steel railing didn't look like much, but you never knew. With so little to work with here, there was no such thing as trash. He pulled the steel free, too, and put it with the wood.

The only other nearby thing was a pile of shattered glass. It sat at the bottom of a small tidal pool carved into the rocks. He reached down and carefully took out one of the larger shards, turning it around in the light to see what it might become. A knife blade, maybe, if he could figure out a way to fasten it to a stick.

The next shard he took out was curved, like a tiny cup. Buzz scooped it back into the water and held it up. It was too small to drink out of, really, and too sharp around the edges.

But then something caught his eye. A small refraction of light was coming through the glass. It showed up as a single white dot, shining on the rocks.

Buzz tilted the little cup, and the dot jumped. It was on his leg now. He left it there, staring at it, while the germ of an idea started to grow.

Sure enough, it wasn't long before the bright white dot started to heat up on his skin.

“Um . . . Jane?” he said.

“Just a second,” she said without turning around. Vanessa was just resurfacing, shaking her head no. She hadn't had any luck, either.

“I'm going to try again!” she yelled, and disappeared beneath the water.

Buzz didn't move. He held the glass perfectly still, even as the heat from the little dot grew into a burning sensation on his knee. He kept it there for as long as he could stand, then moved it away, grinning like crazy.

This wasn't just a piece of glass in his hand. It was a makeshift magnifier—the next best thing to a box of matches out here in the wild.

Maybe it wasn't worth getting
too
excited about. Not yet. But it was also possible that Buzz was going to have some very, very good news to share with the others.

C
arter d
ug his toes into the sand with every step, dragging a long pole of freshly cut bamboo under each arm. When he reached the new campsite, he let them drop next to the four others he'd already harvested with the axe. Then he plopped himself down, lying back and squinting into the bright sun.

He felt empty. That was the word for it. This dizzy, hungry feeling had been bad enough before he got sick. Now it was twice as bad. Just staying upright was a challenge.

Don't stop, Benson. Get up! Keep going!

He'd worked plenty hard before, every day at football practice. Coach Bingham was a maniac, in a good way.
“You boys'll thank me for this.”
That's what he'd said so many times it became a joke—but a true one. All Carter wanted to do right now was get up and keep working.

And he would. Just as soon as his head stopped spinning.

“Carter!” Jane called out.

He looked up to see his sister climbing down to the beach from the rocks. The only thing in her hands was a scrap of wood. That seemed like a bad sign, but she was excited about something.

Vanessa and Buzz were close behind. Vanessa had a mangled piece of steel tubing. Whatever Buzz was carrying cupped in his hand, it was too small to see. But he was smiling, too.

“I thought I told you to rest,” Vanessa said, looking at the bamboo.

“You did,” he said. “And then I remembered that this shelter wasn't going to build itself. So I guess you didn't find the flares, huh?”

“No,” Jane said, jumping excitedly from one foot to the other. “That's the bad news.”

“What's the good news?”

“This,” Buzz said. He held out his hand and showed Carter a few random pieces of broken glass.

“That's the good news?” Carter asked.

Buzz quickly explained his idea. With a little water, some sunlight, and a blank page from Jane's journal, they might actually be able to get a fire going.

“I mean, it's no guarantee,” Buzz said, “but—”

“What are we waiting for?” Carter asked. “Let's do this.”

Just like everything else, it seemed to take forever before they could actually get started. Buzz dug a shallow fire pit in the dirt while Vanessa and Jane ran up to the cave for a few armloads of wood. It was the one thing they'd left behind, to keep dry just in case of rain.

Carter used the time to open a few of the coconuts he'd gathered so everyone could have something to eat and drink. He set the husk aside, then piled it next to the wood the girls brought down.

Finally, all four of them knelt around the new pit while Jane carefully tore a single white page from the back of her journal. She'd grown as attached to that little book as she'd been to her camera, taking careful notes about everything they did. If they ever got home, she'd probably sell their story for a million dollars, Carter thought. Leave it to Jane.

Buzz built a tiny pyramid of twigs around a ball of coconut husk in the middle of their circle. Vanessa, the only one who had been wearing a jacket on the night they'd abandoned the
Lucky Star,
held her rain slicker up as a windshield. It was much breezier here than it had been up by the cave.

Next, Buzz crumpled up the page from Jane's journal and set it on the ground. He held out the homemade magnifier while Jane squeezed a few drops of water from her long hair, still wet from the ocean.

Finally, he checked over his shoulder for the sun and started tilting the little glass cup back and forth.

“Please let this work,” Jane said, in a whisper. “Please, please—”

“There!” Vanessa said, as a speck of white light jumped into view. “Don't lose it!”

“I won't,” Buzz answered. His voice was faint, like he was in some kind of trance. The last time Carter had seen him this focused was when he had reached the final level in FarQuest
,
his favorite game of all time.

Now Buzz was adjusting the glass in tiny, almost imperceptible movements. Slowly, the white light shrank down from a dot to an even smaller pinpoint.

Nobody spoke.

The seconds ticked by, and turned to minutes. Endless minutes. It was almost like time stopped, with everyone frozen in one position.

Even when the tiny spot on the paper finally turned black and started to smoke, Carter didn't let himself get too excited. They'd had smoke before, with the stick and bamboo. All that had gotten him was frustration.

But then, as if out of nowhere, a little yellow tongue of flame appeared. It popped up from inside the ball of paper, and quickly started to spread.

“YES!” Carter shouted.

“Omigosh!”

“I don't believe it!”

Jane jumped up and hugged him. Even Vanessa hugged him.

This was it. Actual fire! Carter could hardly believe his eyes. The whole idea of getting this far had started to seem so difficult—so
impossible—
that it was almost like looking at some kind of miracle now.

And he hadn't even done it.

Buzz had!

While the others jumped up and started celebrating, Buzz stayed right where he was. He could feel the blood pumping in his ears. It was an amazing feeling, just to get this little flame. But they weren't done yet.

Moving carefully, he pinched the ball of burning paper between his thumb and forefinger. Then he slid it closer to the pile of husk and twigs. Right away, the husk lit up and flamed brightly.

“More husk!” he said. He stuck out his hand like a surgeon on TV, waiting for a scalpel.

Carter grabbed a fistful of the dry stringy material from their reserve and gave it to him. Slowly, Buzz fed it in, bit by bit, as the paper burned down. He blew softly into the base of the fire. He gave it some more husk.

Soon, the smallest twigs started to spark and pop, then burn. Buzz arranged a few more on top of those, and the flames grew a little higher still.

It took some time, but with every step, he could feel a balloon of excitement in his chest, growing bigger . . . and bigger . . . until finally, they had an actual fire blazing in the middle of camp. It was just about the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

Vanessa pulled him up off the ground and spun him around in a crazy dance. For a few sweet moments, nobody was hungry anymore. Nobody was miserable. Nobody was even tired. It was as if they'd invented electricity or something.

And nothing had ever made Buzz prouder in his life than this little fire of his, out here in the middle of nowhere, thousands of miles away from the nearest match.

Suddenly, everyone had a whole new energy for the million things that needed doing. They had to gather lots more firewood. More bamboo. More coconuts. More palm fronds.

The shelter—some kind of shelter—had to be built before the sun went down. And the fire would need nonstop tending, like the world's most precious baby. That was going to mean overnight watches, but they'd take turns.

Vanessa didn't put anything to a vote this time. She just thought about who was capable of what and started handing out assignments. If it meant stepping on a few toes, that couldn't be helped. They were finally getting somewhere.

For her own part, she spent the afternoon hacking at the grove of bamboo they'd found up the beach. There was plenty of it for the shelter, but it was hard work, chopping it all down and hauling it back to camp.

If Carter had been fully well, he probably would have grabbed the axe right out of her hand. Instead, he started cutting palm fronds. Jane picked up the very last of the fallen coconuts, and then switched over to gathering more wood.

Buzz was on fire duty—tending it, watching it, feeding it, and even trying to figure out how to make some kind of torch. Without any flares, a torch might be their only option for lighting the signal fire up on Lookout Point. A torch might also get them through the caves to the freshwater falls. The whole day felt like it was filled with new possibilities.

Besides the fire, Buzz was also the brains behind their new shelter. He wasn't strong enough to hoist the long sections of bamboo by himself, but he did know how the whole thing might come together.

They built the sloped roof first, with a long row of the bamboo poles. Each one had to be shoved into the sand, as deep as possible, and then wedged diagonally up against the wall of their alcove.

Jane came up with the idea of lashing the bamboo together with vines from the jungle, and Carter showed her how to knot them so the thick strands wouldn't come undone.

Finally, as the sun started to drop behind the cliffs, they layered several dozen palm fronds over the top, tucking the leaves in and shoving them between the bamboo to keep them in place.

The whole thing was still pretty shaky. Another big storm would knock it right back down. The roof wouldn't keep out much rain either, and they still needed a floor.

But it was a start. A great one, in fact—made even better by their brand-new fire.

As Vanessa sat there that evening, slowly chewing her coconut, she was as close to comfortable as she'd been since they'd gotten to Nowhere Island. Watching the flames dance, and thinking about the light and warmth they were going to give through the night, she felt as if she and Buzz and Carter and Jane were finally coming back to life.

I'm not the same person anymore
,
she thought.

It wasn't exactly a news flash, but the realization was a sudden one all the same. She'd made it through a shipwreck. She'd lived for nearly a week on next to nothing. She'd
survived.

Before all this, her most prized possession in the world was the diamond pendant her father and Beth had given her on their wedding day. Now nothing meant more than that little curved piece of glass, tucked away between the rocks for safekeeping. Anywhere else and it would have been a piece of garbage—something to be thrown away. But here, it was going to help keep them alive.

If she ever made it home again, Vanessa thought, she wasn't going to be the same girl who had gotten on that sailboat in Hawaii nine days ago. That much was clear. Something inside her had definitely changed.

Or maybe everything had.