Isle Be Seeing You (5 page)

Still, I couldn't quite relax and enjoy it. I wondered if I should try to bring up the whole secrecy issue, or if it was better to wait and see if he mentioned it first. Before I could make up my mind, we both heard the sound of someone crashing down the path behind us.

Josh instantly dropped my hand, and we leaped apart. I almost crashed into a tree trunk but stopped myself just in time.

“Dani!” Ryan rounded the corner, breathless and sweaty faced. “There you are. Your brother said you were around here somewhere.” He glanced at Josh, seeming surprised. “Oh, hey, dude,” he added. “What are you doing out here?”

“Nothing.” Josh shrugged. “Just out going for a run, and I ran into Dani.”

I knew he was only trying to hide our secret, but it still felt kind of weird to hear him say that. Weird enough that for just a second, I was almost fed up enough to blurt out the truth then and there.

Then Ryan bent down, resting his hands on his knees to catch his breath, and Josh shot me a pleading, worried sort of glance. He looked so pitiful that I bit my tongue, feeling a little guilty for my irritated thoughts.

“Anyway, guess I'll keep going,” Josh went on, his voice casual. “Want to get a couple of miles in before dinner'

Ryan's head was still down, so he didn't see Josh cast me another meaningful look and jerk his head in the direction of the ridge. Message sent and received. He was
going up without me. I wanted to protest, but I reluctantly nodded instead.

“Okay, bro.” Ryan finally straightened up, still unaware of the messages flying around over his head. “That's cool. I need to talk to Dani anyway.”

Josh gave a little wave and then jogged off without a backward glance. I watched him disappear into the trees, feeling frustrated by my own bad luck. At least it wasn't Angela interrupting this time….

Ryan was watching Josh leave too, but he looked a lot happier about it than I was. “Good, I'm glad he's gone.” Realizing how that sounded, he laughed sheepishly. “Okay, sorry. It's not that I don't like the dude, I just have something I want to talk to you about, and it's kind of private….Ã

I was barely listening. Maybe if I could ditch Ryan quickly enough, I could take a shortcut through the jungle and catch up to Josh before he reached the ridge. I scanned my mind for a good excuse.

Before I could come up with anything, Ryan mumbled a few words in Spanish, then took a deep breath. “Okay, here goes.” His voice was suddenly serious. “Look, Dani,
I could give you a whole big speech about your eyes and your hair and your smile and all that junk. But what I really want to say is this: Ever since we all got stuck on this island, I can't stop thinking about you and stuff.”

Huh?

I snapped back to attention, my mind struggling to keep up with this totally unexpected turn of events. “What?” I blurted out.

He grabbed one of my hands in both of his. His palms felt clammy and warm. “I like you, Dani,” he said as his face turned bright red. “I want you to, you know, be my girl!”

To say that I was stunned would be
the understatement of the year. My jaw dropped so hard it practically went subterranean.

“You wha—you wha—you huh?” I stammered stupidly.

Ryan grinned. “Hey, what can I say?” Aside from his bright red face, he seemed ridiculously unembarrassed by this whole conversation. “I have excellent taste in women.”

I had no idea how to react. None. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before.

Ryan was smiling hopefully at me. The tiny part of my
mind that wasn't completely frozen in shock was telling me that I had to say something. But what?

This isn't fair,
I told myself frantically.
I'm not the one who goes around flirting with boys and trying to get them to like me and stuff. That's the twins' department, or maybe Angela's. Anyway, I can't deal with this right now on top of everything else. I've just got to get rid of him
.

“Look, Ryan,” I said briskly. “I …”

My voice trailed off as he gazed back at me, looking as happy and adoring and anxious as a new puppy at Christmas. How could I just blow him off? It was so totally what Angela would do. First a secret boyfriend and now this—was I turning into an Angela clone? Could the girly-girlness sneak up on you just like that, take you over, and turn you evil like her?

“Yes, Dani?” Ryan prompted me eagerly. “What do you think? Look, I know I didn't give you any warning. You don't have to decide anything right away How about if we just, you know, go on a date or something? We could do a picnic up on the ridge maybe. What do you say?”

I opened my mouth and closed it a few times, my stomach sinking in my gut like a rock as I realized I'd just missed my chance to cut him off cleanly. It was as if I'd
been playing basketball, hoping to sink a shot, and ended up dribbling right past the basket, under the scoreboard, and out the gym doors into the parking lot.

Snapping my mouth shut, I smiled tightly. “Um,” I mumbled intelligently. “Uh, let me think about it, okay?”

It seemed the best I could do under the circumstances. Unfortunately Ryan seemed thrilled.

“Cool!” he cried, his limbs twitching slightly as his grin stretched from ear to ear. Come to think of it, those few minutes during our conversation were the longest I'd seen him hold more-or-less still since arriving on the island. Or possibly ever. “Take all the time you need,” he added. “You know where to find me when you make up your mind. See you, Dani! ‘Bye! Catch you later!” The twitching turned into actual movement, and he danced off down the path.

I sighed as I watched him go. Okay. What was I supposed to do now?

An hour later I had made up my mind. I had to find Ryan and let him down easy. It wasn't fair to let him get his hopes up. It wasn't fair to me, either. Thanks to Ryan's little announcement, I'd totally missed yet another
chance to spend time alone with Josh, and I didn't want that to happen again.

But finding Ryan was turning out to be harder than expected. He normally spent the afternoon fishing or bodysurfing, but that day there was no sign of him anywhere on the beach. “Hey” I said, sticking my head into the shelter. “Anybody in here?”

Brooke opened her eyes and looked up at me sleepily. “What?” she demanded. “Can't you see I'm trying to take a nap?”

“Sorry I—”

A shout interrupted my response. Pulling my head out of the shelter, I saw Josh running down the beach waving his hands over his head.

Brooke sat up and rubbed her eyes. “What's all the yelling about now?” she mumbled grumpily.

“I'm not sure.”

All over the beach, other people were looking over to see what was happening. Ned, who was reading one of the twins' fashion magazines in the shade of a palm tree, squinted curiously as Josh ran past him. The twins stopped splashing around in the surf and stared. Angela wandered out of the supply cave holding a beach towel.
Macy glanced up from chopping something on the food-prep table. Even Ryan finally appeared at the edge of the jungle carrying an armload of firewood.

Josh raced over to the fire pit and jumped up on one of the logs we used as seats. “Hey, everyone!” he called. “Over here! I have something important to tell you.”

We all drifted toward him. Since I was the closest to the fire pit other than Macy I was one of the first to arrive. Josh grinned at me. “Guess what, Dani?” he exclaimed breathlessly. “Kenny was right! There's definitely a fire on that other island—and I don't think its a wildfire, either. There's got to be people over there!”

“What?” Brooke was right behind me, still rubbing her eyes and yawning. But at Josh's words, she suddenly looked fully awake. “What did you say, Josh? Did you say you saw people?”

“Huh?” Cassie cried, running the last few steps to the fire pit. “Did someone say we're being rescued?”

“Rescued? What?”

All of a sudden everyone was talking at once. “Wait!” Josh waved his hands desperately over his head. “Listen!”

“Shut up, people!” I shouted helpfully. “Let him talk!”

Angela wrinkled her nose at me. “Gee, this is a first.
McFeeney the motormouth telling other people to shut up.”

“Gee, Barnes the butthead acting like a total snot,” I tossed back. That's a first too. Only not.”

I blushed slightly as I saw Josh shoot me a surprised glance. Normally I tried to control my Angela-insulting when he was around. I'm not sure why, since I'm usually quite proud of the wittiness and creativity of my barbs. But Josh is one of those people who's nice to everyone. I mean
everyone
—jocks, computer nerds, teachers, little kids, cranky old people, even Angela herself. Its one of the things that makes him who he is. I guess I was worried about what he'd think of me if he saw me at my most withering. Not that he was likely to have any delusions about how I felt about Angela. I mean, everyone who'd spent more than thirty seconds at Tweedale Middle School knew that Dani McFeeney + Angela Barnes = happy-happy-friendship-time.

The hubbub continued for a moment or two, but finally everyone quieted down except the twins, who couldn't quite seem to control their excited squealing. That was still quiet enough to allow Josh to continue.

“Anyway,” he began, “I just ran up to the ridge, because of something Kenny—wait. Where's Ken?”

We all looked around for Kenny. I was a little surprised he wasn't right up there next to Josh doing a little victory dance. He isn't the type to be modest about taking credit for things; once after he got an A on his spelling test, Dad caught him on the phone with the editor of the local newspaper. He was trying to take out a full-page ad congratulating himself.

But my little brother was nowhere to be seen. “He's probably out trapping more helpless slugs and lizards for his zoo or something,” I commented.

“Never mind.” Brooke was staring at Josh intently. She hates being out of the loop. “Go on, Josh.”

Josh explained what Kenny had seen, then what he'd just told me about going up there himself. “Anyway,” he finished, his voice sounding sort of vibratey with excitement. “I watched the smoke for a while, and I'm almost positive it's a campfire.”

“Wow!' Brooke rubbed her hands together so rapidly I was afraid her palms might start to smoke. “Now that we know that other island is inhabited, maybe we should
think about trying to get ourselves rescued.”

Josh nodded. ‘I've already been thinking about that,” he said eagerly. “And I have the perfect plan. We can build a raft!”

“A raft?” Brooke sounded dubious. “Well I guess that's one option.”

Everyone else seemed equally underwhelmed by Josh's perfect plan. I guess it wasn't the reaction he had expected, because he looked surprised and slightly wounded.

“But wait.” Cassie sounded a little confused. “Why are we even worrying about this? What difference does it make? Ms. Watson will probably find us any second now.'

“Yeah,” Macy put in quietly. “That's what we thought a week ago.”

Josh nodded. “That's the point” he said. “We can keep waiting around for Ms. Watson, but there's no telling when she'll actually find us. So that's why I thought of a raft. We can take it over to that other island and ask the people over there for help. They probably have some way of contacting the mainland—they can tell the rescuers exactly where we are.”

There was a moment of silence as everyone digested that. I'm sure I'm not the only one who was flashing back
to the pair of rough-and-ready rafts we'd used to transport our luggage and the other supplies from the wreckage of our boat. Josh and Ryan had thrown them together using a couple of wooden doors and some random bits of wood and twine.

“Come on,” Josh urged, breaking the silence. “We can totally build a raft. We did it before, remember?”

“Yeah, but those rafts only had to make it across the lagoon.” Brooke glanced out toward the glassy stretch of water nestled between the beach and the coral reef. “Going out into the open sea is probably going to be a whole different story.”

“It's not really the open sea,” Angela commented. “It's more like a channel.”

“Thanks, Dictionario.” I rolled my eyes.

The others ignored me. “I think Brooke is right,” Ned spoke up. “It might not be the middle of the ocean, but there are waves out there. Serious waves. And currents. And maybe sharks …”

“Sharks?” Cassie cried, one hand flying to her mouth in horror. “I didn't even think of that!”

Josh flapped his hands as if waving away everyone's objections. “Okay, okay,” he said. “I hear you. But listen,
I'm not saying we should use those same rafts. Not even close. I'm saying we should build a bigger, better raft. An awesome, oceanworthy raft. The King of Rafts!”

I traded a skeptical glance with the twins. Its not that I didn't want to support Josh. Its just that I wasn't sure that floating off over the ocean on a raft—even the King of Rafts—sounded like the world's best idea. Sharks or no sharks.