Stranded Read online

  “Which direction? Which way did Dexter alter his course, can you tell me?”

  “I don’t know!” Vanessa said. The tears were starting to come. She couldn’t help it.

  “Okay,” the commander said. “Okay. Just hold on one second.”

  “I don’t know if I have a second!” Vanessa told him.

  And then sure enough, she didn’t. There was no last beep, no click, no anything. The line just went dead.

  “Hello?” she said. “Hello? Please? Are you there?”

  But it was no good. The display on the phone had gone blank, and the people at the other end of the line—including their parents—were gone. All Vanessa could hear now was the wind outside, and the sound of waves breaking softly in the distance.

  CHAPTER 6

  Vanessa stared at the dead phone in her hand for a long time. She knew there was no way to get the commander back on the line, but that seemed unacceptable. There had to be a way, somehow.

  But, of course, there wasn’t.

  “So, what now?” Carter was the first to say.

  “I think we should stay put,” Buzz spoke up. “That’s what they always say you should do when you’re lost, right?”

  “We’re not at the mall, Buzz,” Carter said. “And they don’t even know where we are.”

  “We have to find Dexter and Joe,” Vanessa interrupted.

  Everyone stopped to look at her.

  “What do you mean?” Carter said. “How do you even know they’re here?”

  “They’ve got to be,” Vanessa said.

  If they weren’t, that meant she was the oldest one here. And that meant she was supposed to know what to do. It was one thing to be in charge of the house for a few hours on a Friday night or to watch over Jane while their parents went to a movie. This was something else entirely—as in, life and death.

  “They’re probably a hundred miles from here by now,” Carter insisted. “You didn’t see what I saw. That storm blew them away faster than—”

  Vanessa cut him off with a glare. “We’ll find them,” she said.

  She knew he wasn’t trying to scare Jane, but Carter did this kind of thing all the time—talking first and thinking later. Or not thinking at all. She looked him in the eye, then over at Jane, and back again.

  “Yeah, okay,” he said. “You’re right. Let’s start looking.”

  “Um . . .” Jane held up her hand as if they were at school. “I’m thirsty,” she said. “Like, super thirsty.”

  “Actually, me too,” Carter said.

  “Me three,” Buzz said. He was closest to the galley sink and tried the faucet. Nobody was too surprised when nothing came out. The crash had done a lot of damage to the boat.

  “There’s got to be water somewhere,” Vanessa said. “A tank or something.”

  “There is,” Carter said. He was already at the galley table, moving more junk out of the way. “Give me a hand here.”

  * * *

  Carter knew exactly what to do next. Uncle Dex had shown them practically everything there was to know about the boat on the first day.

  “The water’s right there,” he said. He went to the U-shaped bench around the table and lifted the long center seat straight off. A large, heavy-duty plastic tank took up most of the space underneath.

  “My brother’s a genius!” Jane crowed.

  “I don’t know about that,” Carter said, but he liked hearing it all the same. It wasn’t that often that someone called him smart.

  “Okay, genius, how do we get in there?” Vanessa asked.

  “It can’t be that hard,” he said. The tank was meant to be lightweight, for sailing. “We just need something to cut through that plastic. Like a big knife, or—”

  “Or an axe,” Buzz said. Already, he was unclipping the small axe that hung on the wall next to the fire extinguisher.

  “That’ll do.” Carter grinned as he took it in his hands. This was the kind of thing you’d get yelled at for even thinking about at home. Now there was no choice.

  “Be careful,” Vanessa said.

  “I’ll be okay,” he told her.

  “I meant, be careful with the tank. That’s our only water.”

  Carter nodded. He hadn’t thought about that. But if there was one thing he had, it was good aim. He wasn’t a two-time Little League all-star pitcher for nothing.

  He pointed the tip of the axe blade at the top middle of the big plastic container so he wouldn’t miss. Everyone seemed to hold their breath as he raised the axe halfway to his shoulder and brought it down—hard, but not too hard. The corner of the blade punctured the tank on the first swing.

  It didn’t take long after that. With half a dozen more chops, Carter opened up a triangle-shaped hole big enough to reach through. Soon, they were all dipping cups inside and drinking their fill. Buzz found a dry box of granola bars, too, and they all gobbled those down.

  As soon as they had, it was as if everyone’s thoughts turned back to Dex and Joe at the same time.

  “The sooner we can find them, the sooner we can get out of here,” Vanessa said. “Let’s get moving.”

  There were no arguments there. The four of them moved back up the galley steps as a group, ready to step off the deck of the Lucky Star for the first time in five days.

  CHAPTER 7

  The rocky shoreline where they’d crashed looked to Jane like something from an alien planet. As they climbed off the ruined front of the Lucky Star, she saw that all the rocks around them were rough, black, and covered with tiny holes. They looked like giant petrified sponges that someone had charred to a crisp.

  “I think this is lava,” she said. She’d read about this before, how a lot of South Pacific islands had grown out of the ocean from volcanic explosions, over millions of years.

  Nobody else seemed interested, though. The idea right now was to find Dex and Joe. As soon as they’d all jumped from the rocks down to the soft sand below, everyone shed their rain gear and started up the beach, shouting at the tops of their lungs.

  “HELLO?”

  “DEX?”

  “JOE?”

  “ANYONE HERE?”

  Without talking about it, they spread out as they went. Buzz moved down toward the water’s edge. Vanessa stuck closer to the tree line, peering up into the jungle. And Carter and Jane walked straight up the middle of the wide beach.

  “Do you think those Coast Guard people will know where we are?” she asked Carter.

  “No doubt,” he said, sounding sure of himself. “There’s probably, like, a hundred people out looking for us right now.”

  “That’s good,” Jane said. She hoped it was true, but she’d also seen the way Carter and Vanessa had looked at each other on the boat. Everyone was always trying to protect her, whether she needed it or not.

  As the beach started to curve around a bend, Jane stopped and looked back. She was surprised to see how far they’d come already. From here, the Lucky Star looked like a broken toy sitting on a stone shelf. The sight of it brought memories of the crash flooding back into her mind, and she couldn’t help the tears that started down her cheeks.

  As Vanessa and Buzz wandered over, Jane could see Buzz was crying, too. It only made her feel worse.

  “What if something terrible happened?” she said with a sob. “What if Dex and Joe aren’t . . . coming back?”

  Vanessa took Jane by one hand and Buzz by the other. “Everyone sit down,” she said. “Right here.”

  Her dark brown eyes were red around the edges, maybe from the salt air, but maybe from trying not to cry herself. Only Carter looked the same. His jaw was set hard, and his eyes were even harder.

  “We’re going to find them,” Vanessa said. “They’ll know what to do. And then they’ll do it. I’ll bet
we’ll be on a helicopter before lunchtime.” She squeezed Jane’s hand. “Okay, Jane?”

  Jane nodded. She was glad Vanessa was here right now. She’d been like the big sister Jane had always wanted, even before their parents got married.

  “Okay, Buzz?”

  “Yeah,” he said, and scrubbed his eyes with the backs of his hands.

  “Okay, Carter?” Vanessa said.

  Carter didn’t answer. He was looking back toward the rocky shelf but higher up, above the boat.

  “That’s totally where we should go,” he said.

  Jane turned to see. “Where?” she said.

  He pointed at a flat rocky outcropping at the top of the cliffs where they’d crashed. From here, it looked like the very ceiling of the island. “I’ll bet the view is crazy from up there. That’s the place to look for them.”

  “What do you mean?” Buzz asked. “Like, walk up there, through the jungle?”

  “How do you even know you can get there?” Vanessa said.

  Carter shrugged. “One way to find out. Who’s in?”

  Instead of waiting for an answer, he got up and started walking back the way they’d come.

  Jane looked at Vanessa to see what she’d do. After a moment’s hesitation, Vanessa shrugged, too.

  “He’s kind of right,” she said, and then yelled at Carter’s back, “Thanks for waiting!”

  Carter didn’t even slow down. Their mother always said he was part beagle, the way he liked to be at the front of the pack, no matter what he was doing. In any case, it was better than sitting around crying, Jane thought.

  She got up, brushed the sand off her legs, and started following him up the beach. “Come on, you guys,” she called back to the other two. “Let’s go!”

  * * *

  Carter liked being in the lead. As soon as he’d gotten nearly all the way back to the boat, he looked toward the cliffs to get his bearings, then headed straight up into the jungle.

  It was a strange feeling, leaving the beach behind, like moving from one world into another. The trees grew thickly here, in layer after layer of vegetation. Some of them towered over his head, others lay in a random crisscross on the ground, turning the whole forest into one giant obstacle course.

  And then there were the mosquitoes—zillions of them, like a tiny army just waiting to attack as soon as someone entered their territory. Carter could hear Vanessa, Jane, and Buzz behind him, slapping at their arms and legs as he led the way.

  Not far up the hill, the ground flattened out a bit. As Carter came around a large stone formation, he saw the black hole of a cave, straight ahead.

  “Wow,” Vanessa said quietly.

  “Yeah,” Carter agreed. “You could drive a semi truck through there.”

  The cave’s opening was huge and extended farther back than any of them could see.

  “Hello?” Carter’s voice bounced off the rock walls. “Anyone home?”

  “Do you think there are any wild animals around here? Like . . . predators?” Buzz asked tentatively.

  “Probably,” Jane said. “But not like bears or cougars or anything. More like wild boars.”

  It was kind of amazing, the way Jane could remember almost everything she ever read. And Jane read a lot. Sometimes Carter called her Chip, because her brain was like one big microchip.

  “What’s a wild boar?” Buzz said.

  “Like a pig,” Jane said. “With tusks.”

  “Oh, like the Minotaurs in Lost Temple 3?”

  “I guess.”

  “Let’s keep moving,” Vanessa said, slapping another mosquito. “I’m going to run out of blood in a second.”

  There wasn’t anything to see, anyway, so Carter pushed on. Soon, the ground sloped up again, into more woods. Before long, though, several patches of blue sky started to show through the trees overhead.

  “I think we’re getting there,” he said. Straight ahead, he could see a steep, gravelly slope leading up to what looked like another patch of open ground.

  “Are you sure this is the right way?” Vanessa asked.

  “Totally,” Carter said. He wasn’t, exactly, but he knew if he admitted it, Vanessa would just try to take over.

  He made a running start to get as high up the slope as he could, the shale and gravel sliding away under his feet. Fortunately, there were enough tree roots and larger rocks to give him a few handholds on the way up.

  The others came behind. He saw Buzz slide all the way back on his first try, but Vanessa put out a hand to help him up. Jane’s small size seemed to work for her, and she made steady progress, keeping low to the ground. She could be a little monkey when she wanted to. At home, she was practically as fast on the climbing wall at their mom’s gym as Carter was.

  But there was no way Carter was going to let Jane or anyone beat him to the top. He dug his toes into the ground and made it the rest of the way in one last, ragged sprint.

  “This way!” he shouted back. “We’re almost—AUGH!”

  Carter stopped short, pinwheeling his arms to keep from falling over the edge of a sheer drop-off. It had only just shown itself as he reached the summit. His stomach flip-flopped, and he took a quick step back, kneeling down to steady himself on the ground.

  “What is it?” Vanessa called up.

  “Be careful,” he shouted. “There’s, like, a gorge or something up here.”

  What was in front of him now was a deep ravine that seemed to split the island’s cliffs right in half. All he saw way down at the bottom was a jumble of brush and more rocks.

  And straight across, Carter could see the rocky outcropping he’d spotted from the beach—so close now but completely beyond their reach.

  CHAPTER 8

  By the time Buzz got to the top of the gravel slope, Carter, Jane, and Vanessa already had a plan for what to do next. So much for taking a break and catching his breath.

  “We’re going to head over there,” Carter said, pointing along the edge of the ravine.

  Maybe fifty feet to the right, there was a stand of tall trees clumped together. One of them had come down—recently, from the look of it. Now it stretched across the gap like a natural bridge.

  Buzz looked down into the ravine. It was like looking off the roof of a ten-story building, and it gave him a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  “You want to cross that thing?” Buzz said.

  “Do you see a better way?” Carter asked. Already, they were on the move, hiking laterally along the edge of the chasm.

  It didn’t take long to reach the base of the tree. Dirt clods hung off the exposed roots, and the leaves on the branches at the far side were still green.

  “I bet it came down in that storm last night,” Jane said. She looked nervous but ready to go.

  Buzz took a deep breath. “Shouldn’t we vote on this or something?” he said.

  “What is it with you guys and voting?” Carter asked.

  “That’s what we always used to do at home,” Vanessa told him. She meant before their parents had married each other. “Like when we’d rent a movie and couldn’t decide what to watch.”

  “Yeah, well, we’d just rent both movies. That way, everyone gets what they want,” Carter said. “I’m not turning around now.”

  “I think I’m going, too,” Vanessa said, and put a hand on Buzz’s shoulder. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want. You can keep watch.”

  Buzz was already dripping with sweat, but he felt his face go a little warmer still. Keep watch? that was what the popular kids always told the fat kid when they didn’t want him around. And he wasn’t even that fat.

  “I’m coming,” he said before he could think about it too much. “Just . . . go.”

  Carter went first and climbed right up thr
ough the roots to stand at the very base of the trunk. The whole tree was huge, at least three feet thick.

  “Feels solid to me,” he said. Then he dropped onto his belly, straddled the trunk with his legs, and started pulling himself across.

  Buzz watched what he did, trying to memorize every move. The only time he’d done anything even close to this, it had been with a game controller, an avatar, and a couple of spare lives.

  He couldn’t help feeling a little jealous of Carter. This kind of stuff was always so easy for him. In about three seconds, it seemed, Carter had made it across and was dropping to the ground on the far side.

  “No sweat!” he shouted back. “Come on!”

  Jane scrambled up next and started right across. Once she was out of earshot, Vanessa turned to Buzz.

  “You really don’t have to,” she said.

  “I know,” he answered. But he was still going to do it. There were probably worse ways to die—not that he could think of any right now.

  As soon as Jane had made it across, Buzz gritted his teeth and climbed up onto the base of the trunk.

  “Stay low,” Vanessa said softly. “And don’t look down.”

  “Stay low. Don’t look down,” he repeated.

  “And keep moving.”

  Buzz nodded, took one more deep breath, and then inched his way out over the edge of the ravine. This was like a platform game, only real. There was nothing to be afraid of, right?

  “Nothing to be afraid of,” he muttered to himself. “Nothing to be afraid of. Nothing to be—”

  That’s when he looked down. The only thing between him and the rocky bottom was ten stories of empty air. His stomach swooped, and his heart started thumping even faster. One false move, he knew, and he was boulder meat.

  That’s why you don’t look down, Buzz thought.

  “Keep going!” Vanessa yelled somewhere behind him. Always the cheerleader, his sister.

  “Okay,” he mumbled again. “Okay, okay, okay. I can do this.”

  He reached out, got a grip on the trunk in front of him, and pulled himself a little farther along. Then he did it again. And then again.