Stranded Read online

  By the time he’d found a rhythm, Buzz realized he was more than halfway across. The far side of the ravine had somehow become the near side.

  “You got it!” Vanessa shouted.

  A few more pulls and he found himself climbing down through the fallen tree’s branches to where Carter and Jane were waiting for him. In a weird way, the whole thing had gone by quickly, like a fast nightmare.

  “See?” Jane said. “It wasn’t that bad, was it?”

  “Nah,” Buzz said, playing it off. The truth was, he felt incredible—and incredibly relieved.

  “Right here!” Carter reached out and gave him a rare high five. “You did it.”

  “Yeah,” Buzz said.

  “That was the hard part. Going back will be cake.”

  “Yeah . . . wait, what?”

  Buzz realized he hadn’t even thought about that. This was not a one-way trip. He was going to have to crawl back across that tree if he wanted to get back to the Lucky Star.

  Still, there was nothing to do about it now. He was going to enjoy some solid ground for a while and worry about everything else later.

  Either that, or the rescue plane could just pick him up here when it came.

  * * *

  As soon as Vanessa reached the others on the far side of the tree bridge, they all continued on together, up toward the rocky point Carter had spotted from the beach down below.

  Coming out onto the open ground of the summit, the view was almost exactly what she’d expected—like a whole world of water spread out around them.

  Straight down, she could see the Lucky Star where it sat, ruined on the rocks. And behind them, as Vanessa turned all the way around, the shape of the island itself came clear for the first time.

  The whole thing was a giant ring of land, encircling an enormous lagoon of the most brilliant aqua-blue water Vanessa had ever seen.

  “It’s just a big circle,” Buzz said.

  “It’s called an atoll,” Jane told them. “That circle used to be the top of a volcano. Now it’s sinking back into the ocean.”

  “How fast?” Buzz asked cautiously.

  “Not that fast,” Jane said.

  The ridge where they were standing seemed to be the tallest and widest part of the island. As the land arced around, it thinned out into a green and sandy-brown strip on the opposite side, divided in several places by bright blue stripes of water. From here, that part of the island looked like giant stepping-stones.

  The other thing that had become painfully clear was just how empty the ocean was, all around them. There was no sign of any other land. No sign of civilization, for that matter.

  And worst of all—no sign of Dex and Joe.

  “Anyone see them?” Vanessa asked. When nobody answered, it was like something breaking into a million pieces. She hadn’t realized how much she’d been counting on finding them until it became clear that it wasn’t going to happen. Now it seemed like she’d been fooling herself all along.

  “Maybe they’re in the woods or something,” Jane said. “And we just can’t see them.”

  “Maybe,” Vanessa said, but she didn’t believe it. She’d heard what Carter said earlier. That life raft had been blown clear away from the boat in seconds, and it hadn’t been traveling toward the island. Besides, if Dex and Joe were here, they would have found the Lucky Star by now, wouldn’t they? The island wasn’t that big.

  “Sorry, guys,” Carter said. “I guess we came all the way up here for nothing.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Vanessa said.

  “I didn’t say it was my fault,” he started up.

  “Relax,” she said. She’d already had enough of Carter for one day. “I was just saying—”

  But then it was Buzz who interrupted them.

  “Actually,” he said, “there is one other thing we could do.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Suddenly, Buzz had everyone looking at him. He even almost forgot what he was going to say for a second.

  “We need to build a signal fire,” he told the others.

  “A what?” Vanessa said.

  “I’ve seen it on TV. You know, those shows where they drop some guy off in the middle of nowhere and he has to survive by himself?”

  Carter looked over at him. “You watch survival shows?”

  “I watch a lot of stuff,” he said.

  That’s where his nickname had come from. His father was the first to use it, because he said that Benjamin was always watching something or playing some game that went crash, bang, or buzz.

  Buzz didn’t mind. It was better than being called Benjamin, for that matter. Jane and Carter had only ever known him as Buzz, and that was just fine with him.

  “The first thing those TV guys always do is build a fire, somewhere up high,” he went on.

  “Like right here,” Jane said.

  “Yeah. That way, if a plane or a boat comes around—”

  “When a plane or a boat comes around,” Vanessa interrupted.

  “Okay. When that happens, we’re going to be way too small to see. But a fire with a bunch of smoke can get their attention.”

  Carter was nodding the whole time and even seemed kind of impressed. “Boy, you do watch a lot of TV, don’t you?”

  Everyone seemed to be into the idea, so Buzz kept on talking.

  “We’re going to need some stuff from the boat,” he said. “Like one of those signal flares in the cockpit and some rope.”

  Dexter had made them all go through hours of safety drills before they left Hawaii, and the coolest part of that training was, by far, the emergency flares. When you pulled the cap off the top of a flare, it self-ignited into a super-intense mini-torch. On the ocean, they were for visual signaling, but you could also use them to set almost anything on fire.

  “I’ll go,” Carter said right away. “I’m the fastest.”

  “Of course you are,” Vanessa said.

  That sounded good to Buzz. “And get that axe, too,” he said. “We’re going to need to chop up some big branches.”

  Carter took off like he was in some kind of race, while Jane, Vanessa, and Buzz started collecting materials. It felt good, but also kind of weird, to see everyone doing exactly what he told them to do. Buzz wasn’t usually the boss of anything in their family, especially not with Vanessa and Carter around.

  “We need a bunch of really dry grass,” he told the girls. “And then some little twigs, and then dry branches on top of that.”

  The fire was going to have to be tall, he knew, with room at the bottom for air to circulate. The bigger the stack, the bigger their signal would be when they set it on fire, and the better their chances of being spotted from far away.

  Jane ran around and found an amazing amount of stuff to put at the base—dry grass, sticks, and even some papery tree bark. Buzz had seen the TV guys use coconut husks before, but the only coconut trees they’d seen so far were all down at the beach.

  Carter was right about being fast, too. He got back with everything they needed just in time to start using the axe. He and Vanessa were also the strongest, so they took turns with it while the others carried twigs and dead branches over to where Buzz was putting it all together in a pile.

  It was slow going. A few times, the whole structure collapsed in on itself and Buzz had to start over. At home, with a pitcher of lemonade or even just some shade, it might not have been so hard. But out here in the open sun, it felt like he’d sweated about eight gallons by the time it was done.

  Just as the sun was heading down toward the horizon, the group put on some finishing touches. First, they wrapped the stack in the biggest, darkest palm fronds they could find. That was something else Buzz had remembered—that green leaves made bright white smoke when they burned, the kind tha
t was easy to see from a distance.

  After that, Carter cut up some pieces of rope with the axe, and they tied the whole thing up so the wind wouldn’t take it apart while they were gone. Last, Buzz stuck the emergency flare all the way inside, at the base of the structure, for safekeeping. He hoped he could be the one to set it ablaze when the time came.

  “There,” he said, and stood back to look at what they’d done. “We’re all set.”

  Now all they needed was a boat. Or a plane. Or a helicopter. Or anything at all to get them off this stupid island.

  * * *

  By the time they were all back down at the beach and climbing up onto the deck of the boat, Carter had exactly two things on his mind: food and water.

  “I’m staaaarving!” he said. “What do we have to eat?”

  They all moved straight down the stairs into the galley to start looking for whatever they could find. It was getting dark now, but Vanessa found a flashlight in the nav station, and that helped.

  “Hey, look—marshmallows!” Buzz said.

  “We’ve got some cans of beef stew,” Vanessa said. “Chili. Ravioli. Fruit cocktail.”

  “I’ll fill some cups,” Carter told them, and went straight for the water. He pulled away the bench seat covering the tank, picked up a coffee mug from the table, and dipped it down in through the hole he’d cut that morning.

  But instead of water, all Carter found inside was air.

  “Hey!” he shouted. “Where’d it go?”

  “Where’d what go?” Vanessa said.

  “The water!” he said. “It’s just . . . gone.”

  “It can’t be,” she said, coming over with the flashlight. She shone it inside the tank, then didn’t say anything for a long time.

  “What do you see?” Jane finally asked.

  Vanessa sat down slowly. “He’s right. There’s a big crack all along the bottom. And one of these pipes is hanging off.”

  The news settled silently over the group.

  “Maybe it broke when we cut it open with that axe,” Buzz said.

  “Don’t blame it on me!” Carter told him.

  “I’m not,” he said. “I’m just saying what might have happened.”

  Vanessa slammed her fist against the table. “We shouldn’t have been gone so long!” she said. “If we’d been here, we would have noticed, and we might have been able to do something about it.”

  Still, it felt a whole lot like blame to Carter. He also felt like he was suddenly three times thirstier than he’d been even a minute ago.

  “What else is there to drink?” he said.

  Jane and Buzz were already on it. They were opening cabinets and looking in the little refrigerator, but so far, they didn’t have anything.

  “One gallon of nasty-smelling milk,” Buzz said, taking it out. “And . . . not much else. Some carrots and a bunch of D batteries.”

  “What about outside? It’s not like we aren’t surrounded by water,” Carter said.

  “You can’t drink seawater,” Jane said. “It’s so salty, it just makes you thirstier. Or sick. I forget which. Maybe both.”

  “There were a bunch of juice boxes before. And some soda,” Vanessa said. “I’m positive.”

  “We finished the soda on the second day,” Buzz said.

  It was true. Dex had made a big deal about bringing soda at all, since it was so heavy and took up a lot of room. The juice boxes at least were lighter and you could crush them up when they were empty. But that also meant they could have easily been washed away in the crash and the flood.

  Carter looked around. A lot of provisions had been lost. He felt ready to start tearing the boat apart, piece by piece. He’d never cared about stupid juice boxes before, but he would have traded his BMX bike for just one of them right now.

  This was unbelievable. The longer the day went on, the worse it got. The whole thing was starting to seem like the world’s stupidest problem. Who got shipwrecked anymore? Dex was supposed to watch out for them. And where was he now?

  “How could they just leave us on our own like that?” he blurted out.

  “Who?” Vanessa said. “Dex and Joe?”

  “Yes, Dex and Joe!”

  “They didn’t do it on purpose,” Buzz said. “It was just an accident.”

  But Carter didn’t want to hear it, especially not from Buzz, sitting there with his bag of marsh-mallows like this was some kind of camping trip.

  “You’re not much help, either,” he said. “Where were you when the boat crashed last night?”

  “I was trying to steer!” Buzz yelled back at him.

  “Yeah. ‘Trying.’ Exactly,” he said. “And when you were crashing the boat, I was saving your sister from going overboard!”

  He was starting to say stuff he knew he shouldn’t. But sometimes it was hard to stop once he got going.

  “Vanessa’s your sister now, too,” Jane told Carter.

  “Yeah,” Buzz said. “And it wasn’t me who crashed the stupid boat!”

  “Have another marshmallow, Buzz.” Carter felt ready to hit something, or explode, or both. It seemed like everyone was ganging up on him, even Jane.

  “Don’t talk to him like that,” Vanessa said. “And stop acting like a little kid. You want to have a temper tantrum? Go do it somewhere else.”

  He glared over at her. She wanted him to go somewhere else? Fine with him. His mother was always telling him to count to ten when he got mad. So he counted his steps—right out of the galley and up onto the deck. When he got to the bow of the boat, he just kept going, onto the rocks, then down to the beach.

  That’s when he started running. Vanessa and the others were calling after him, but he didn’t care. He just needed to get away, as fast and as far as he could.

  He was crying now, too. Like a baby. He hadn’t cried all day, not even once. But he couldn’t hold back anymore. The tears just kept coming, streaking across his cheeks as he sprinted farther and farther up the beach. At least there wasn’t anyone to see it.

  Finally, he couldn’t run anymore. His knees buckled as he rolled to a stop right there in the sand, panting and catching his breath. And thinking about the others.

  Sometimes, he wasn’t sure why he got so mad. He just did. One thing piled on top of the next, and then he lashed out. Usually at Buzz—he was too easy a target. But this wasn’t Buzz’s fault, he knew. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was just bad luck, the same as he’d been having all year long.

  A week ago, it seemed like his biggest problem was moving away from his old house, changing schools, and dealing with Vanessa’s know-it-all attitude 24/7. Now all of that seemed like a joke in comparison to being stranded in the middle of nowhere.

  There were no adults here to help, and someone had to take charge. There was so much they needed to do. They needed to find water if they were going to last. They needed to start keeping watch for rescue planes. They needed—

  A sudden, loud rustling noise from the woods pulled Carter right out of his thoughts.

  His heart jumped back up to full speed as he listened. Something was there. Something big, from the sound of it. He heard twigs breaking and underbrush being pushed aside.

  In fact, it wasn’t just one thing, he realized. It was a group of them. A group of . . . something. And they were right there, maybe twenty feet away, in the woods.

  Carter stayed low in the sand and as still as possible. What was it Jane had said about wild animals? He couldn’t remember. He hadn’t really been listening, but now he wished he had.

  The next sound he heard was a soft snorting—or a sniffing, like maybe one of them had just picked up his scent. Almost right away, the others joined in.

  Without a weapon, or even a flashlight, Carter started to feel like a giant target, si
tting there in the dark. Who knew how many of them there were? How outnumbered he might be? Maybe this place was full of predators—or whatever they were—roaming the island at night.

  As the rustling in the woods grew louder, and then closer, one clear thought rose above the rest: Time to go.

  The words went off in his mind like a starter pistol. Carter sprang to his feet, ducked his chin, and ran. He didn’t look over his shoulder once. He just sprinted all the way back to the boat like his life depended on it. Which maybe it did, and maybe it didn’t.

  But this was no place to take chances.

  CHAPTER 10

  “Hi, everyone, it’s Jane B. again, reporting for Evanston Elementary.”

  Jane stood on the rocks next to the Lucky Star, holding her camera out in front of her. The sun was just coming up, and the others were all still asleep. But she’d been awake for hours, scratching her bug bites and trying not to think about how thirsty she was.

  It was a surprise when she’d found the camera in one piece after the crash. Jane knew it was waterproof, but apparently, this one was shipwreck-proof, too. The battery still had most of its charge, so there was plenty of time to work on her report, if she wanted.

  “Today is June thirtieth, and it was supposed to be the sixth day of our trip,” she continued. “I kind of skipped a day yesterday, but let me show you why.”

  She moved the camera sideways now, to take in the huge hole in the side of the boat. It looked like a giant had taken a bite right out of it.

  “That’s the boat we were sailing on, until we crashed here,” she said. “We don’t even know where we are, exactly. I’m just calling it Nowhere Island for now. These rocks where I’m standing are Dead Man’s Shelf. And up there . . .”

  She leaned way back to show the place at the top of the cliffs where they’d built the signal fire.

  “That’s Lookout Point. Oh, and over here is Benson-Diaz Beach. See?”

  The names were just something she’d thought up lying in her bunk, wide awake most of the night. Later, if she could find some dry paper and a pen, she’d start making a real map, too.