Trial by Fire (8 page)

W
hen Buzz woke up the next morning, he was relieved to smell the fire. It was still going.

He'd taken the first watch of the night. Then Carter had spelled him, and Vanessa had taken the last shift. When Buzz crawled out of the lean-to, he could see her sitting on a log by the fire, with her arms pulled inside her shirt against the chilly morning air.

“Where's Carter?” he asked.

“He's cutting more bamboo,” Vanessa told him. “We need a floor for that shelter.”

“I hear that,” Buzz said.

They'd laid a few fronds on the sand the night before, but several new pests had quickly found them. Small crabs had skittered over their bodies in the dark, and some kind of tiny insect had crawled in Buzz's ears and up his sleeves and shorts through the night. Now he was itching in all kinds of new places. He'd also seen at least a few rats sneaking around. The idea of getting off the ground while they slept seemed like a great idea.

So did catching those crabs. Or even a rat. He was
that
hungry.

“So I guess Carter's feeling better?” Buzz asked.

As if on cue, Carter's voice broke the morning air.

“I'm staaaaarving!” he said, walking into camp. He had two more pieces of bamboo trailing behind him. His hair was dripping, and his shirt was off. It looked as if he'd taken a morning swim.

“I've got an idea about how to get some of those coconuts down from the trees,” he said. “I'm going to need Jane, one of the ropes, the big knife, and the rain slicker.”

“The rain slicker?” Buzz asked. The idea of Carter wearing Vanessa's bright green jacket was kind of funny, but it also didn't make sense. The sky that morning was just as cloudless as it had been the day before.

“Come on, Jane,” Carter said, poking his head into the shelter. “Let's go do this.”

Meanwhile, Buzz had a few ideas of his own.

“I was thinking we could try to spear some crab or fish,” he said. “And I know this is gross, but I saw a ton of snails on the rocks yesterday.”

“Eww!” Jane stuck her head out of the shelter, looking horrified. “Are you serious?”

“You don't have to eat them,” Buzz said. “But technically, they're meat.”

“Yeah. Snail meat,” she said.

“New rule,” Vanessa said. “No whining.”

“New rule,” Carter said. “No more rules.”

“I'm not whining,” Jane protested. “It's just gross. That's a fact.”

“What about the fish?” Vanessa asked Buzz.

Buzz shrugged. “We can try.” He picked up the big knife and the long stick he'd been working on, then started shaving down the tip. It was like sharpening a giant pencil.

“Buzz, I need that knife,” Carter said. He already had the rope and the slicker over his arm.

“Just a second,” Buzz said.

“Do want me to get the coconut or not?” Carter demanded. He glared down at Buzz with his hand out. Buzz just stared back, and for several seconds, neither of them budged.

But then Buzz blinked and looked away. “Fine,” he said, and dropped the knife for Carter to pick up. “I'm done with it anyway.”

It was embarrassing—and infuriating. Buzz
always
looked away first. It was as if Carter was made of stone. One of these days, his new brother was going to push him too far. And then . . .

Well, Buzz thought, he had no idea
what then.
The fact was, he couldn't compete with Carter. He wasn't as strong, or as confident. He'd never even been in a real fight before.

But then again, Buzz thought, everyone had their breaking point.

Didn't they?

After a quick scout up and down the beach, Carter stood with Jane at the base of the shortest palm tree he could find. The bundle of green coconuts he'd been eyeing was at least twenty-five feet over their heads.

“What are we doing?” Jane asked.

“I'm going to get you up there,” he told her. “Stand up with your arms out.”

Jane had been sitting in the sand, writing in her journal. Now she got up and stood, making a T with her arms.

Carter slipped an end of rope through one sleeve of Vanessa's slicker and back out the other. Then he held the coat up for Jane to put on.

It was the bosun chair on the
Lucky Star
that had given him this idea. When they were sailing with Uncle Dexter, Carter had ridden straight up the mast wearing the special harness. It raised him fifty feet off the deck, just to change a lightbulb. It had also been the coolest ride of his life.

Now he looked at Jane in the rain slicker with the rope hanging out of her sleeves, and he tried to re-member how the harness had held his arms and legs.

Once he'd zipped her in, he wound the rope in a figure eight several times around her shoulders, then her middle, and finally her legs. When it was done, he tied it off with a nautical knot that Uncle Dexter had taught him. Dex called it a Benson special, after Carter. The knot probably had some old seaman's name, too.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Sure. What next?” Jane said.

Carter picked up the opposite end of the rope and tied it to the craggy black rock he'd picked off the beach. It was big enough to have some weight, but small enough to throw.

Now he eyeballed the tree. Leaning back on one foot, he threw the rock straight up into the crown of greenery at the top, while the excess rope trailed behind. The rock whiffed a low-hanging frond and fell back down into the sand.

“A swing and a miss,” Carter said.

“Try again,” Jane told him.

This time, the rock got stuck in the foliage. Carter had to yank it free. “Don't give up!” Jane encouraged. Then he threw again. And again. And again. It was like some kind of endless carnival game.

Jane kept track, of course. On the eighteenth throw, he finally hooked the rope up and over one of the tree's big fronds.

“Yes!” Jane said, applauding.

He shimmied the rope back and forth, nestling it into the crook between the limb and the tree trunk itself. Then he pulled hard on both ends of the line to make sure it was strong enough. It was like a big pulley, with Jane at one end of the line.

“All right, Jane. You're up,” he said, and handed her the big knife. Jane had already wrapped it in a thick leaf from the woods. She tucked the sheathed blade into the rope around her middle and gave Carter a thumbs-up.

“Ready,” she said.

Carter got a good grip on the line and started hauling Jane into the air. She scrambled a little as she rose, but quickly found her balance, pressing her bare feet against the trunk. It was like watching her walk up the side of the tree.

“I've got you!” he said, pulling her higher, hand over hand on the rope. That part wasn't hard. Jane weighed about half an ounce compared to him.

When she reached the top, she grabbed hold of the nearest limb and scrambled up inside, like some kind of baby bird crawling into its nest.

“Jane?” Carter yelled. There was no more tension on the rope, and he couldn't see her at all. She'd just disappeared. “Jane!”

“I've got it!” she called back.

She popped out then, leaning down through the greenery, knife in hand. From there, she started sawing away at the stem holding the coconuts to the tree.

“Mom would kill me if she could see this,” Carter said.

“Probably,” Jane said. “But it's okay, Carter. I'm fine.”

She sawed a little harder, and the bundle of coconuts broke halfway free—but so did the limb that was holding most of Jane's weight.

“JANE!”

For a split second, she fell. On instinct, Carter dropped to the sand, sitting down hard to take up the slack in the rope. Jane jerked to a stop, bounced once, and stayed where she was. The frond above her was at a crazy angle, but it still seemed to hold her weight.

“I'm going to bring you down! Just hang on,” he said.

“Don't!” she said. “I've almost got it.”

It was typical. Jane was afraid of eating snails, but not hanging upside down, twenty-five feet in the air, on a homemade harness. She even let out a giggle.

“Stop laughing. You gave me a heart attack!” he yelled.

“I know. That's why I'm laughing,” Jane said. “Just hang on.”

She reached up, folding herself in half to get at the coconuts one more time. Carter braced himself, ready to catch her if he had to. But with a few quick strokes of the knife, the coconuts pulled free.

“Breakfast, lunch, and dinner, coming down,” Jane yelled, just as they thudded into the sand.

Their mother would have definitely killed Carter if she could see this, Carter thought.
No question.
But she might have also thought Jane was just as amazing as he did right now.

Vanessa used a spoon to pry another snail off a rock and dropped it into the pot. Buzz had been right. There were hundreds of them along the shore, if not thousands, each one about the size of her fingertip. Inside every half-open shell, she could see a slimy little black and white piece of snail. Also known as protein.

So far neither of them had tried eating one of the snails raw. Vanessa knew people ate them somewhere in the world. Maybe in France. But she was pretty sure those were cooked. For now, she could hold on until they got back to camp, where they could boil or fry them.

While Vanessa worked around the rocks, Buzz stood up to his knees in the ocean with his handmade fishing spear. He'd made several throws with it, but hadn't come up with anything so far.

Before that, he'd tried chasing down the crabs on the beach. That hadn't gone too well, either. It looked as if lunch was going to be snails and whatever coconuts Carter and Jane were able to get.

As she worked, Vanessa also kept her eyes moving, all the time. She looked back toward camp to make sure the fire was still burning. She watched the horizon for any signs of rescue. And she also peered several times up the rocky shore that extended away from their beach.

“What do you think is over that way?” she asked.

“I don't know,” Buzz said, sounding distracted. He stood perfectly still in the water, waiting for another fish to go by. “More cliffs, I guess.”

It was one of the few parts of the island they hadn't explored yet. So far, it hadn't seemed worth trying. The black volcanic rocks were rough to the touch, and even sharp in some places. You could lose a lot of skin if you went down hard.

All at once, Buzz hurled the spear. It made a small splash and floated away in the direction he'd thrown it. He cursed under his breath as he ran to pick it up again.

“You want to pick snails?” Vanessa asked. “Maybe Carter could try that spear later—”

“I can do it!” he snapped. When she looked down, his face was red, and not just from the sun. “We don't need Carter for everything, okay?”

“I didn't say that, Buzz. I just said—”

“Yeah, I heard you the first time,” he said.

Vanessa took a deep breath. “Fine. Keep trying,” she told him, and turned away. She dropped another few snails into the pot. Checked the fire. Looked at the horizon. And then she looked up along the rocky part of the shore again.

A few days earlier, Jane and Carter had gone more than halfway around the island in the opposite direction, searching for water. The high tide had trapped them on that side overnight. Ever since, they'd all been reluctant to wander too far.

Still, Vanessa thought, she would have given anything for an hour of privacy right about now. Never mind having a bedroom with a door and a lock. Or a hot shower. Or a simple conversation with someone her own age. Just to have some space, where she didn't have to worry about what everyone else was doing, or what they were going to eat—or, for that matter, where she wasn't getting yelled at for trying to help. . . .

Right now, that sounded a whole lot like heaven.

J
an
e sat with her back against the shelter wall, trying to stay out of the breeze. The wind had definitely kicked up this afternoon. Looking out at the ocean, she could see small whitecaps where the waves were breaking, maybe a hundred yards offshore. If they were going back down to the
Lucky Star
,
she thought, they should probably go soon.

While she waited for the others to get ready, she opened the journal on her lap to a new page at the back. She pulled one of her pens out from the crevice in the rocks where she'd stashed it. And she started to write.

July 4. Day 10 since we left Hawaii. Day 6 on Nowhere Island.

I can't believe it. We've been here for six days! It feels like forever, but it also feels like we just got here.

We're missing the Fourth of July, too. I keep thinking about the fireworks back home, and wondering what Amelia and Becca are doing. Also hot dogs, popcorn, chocolate-chip milkshakes, and food, food, FOOD!

Speaking of food, guess what I ate today? SNAILS. It was Buzz's idea. Once you cook them, they get all tough, but I still don't really know what they taste like. The best way to eat them is to hold your breath and swallow without chewing. And even then—HORRIBLE. Snails are my new most-hated thing about being here.

It also takes FOREVER to get them ready. We spent practically half the day using rocks to crack open these teeny-tiny shells and then taking out the snails inside to cook in the pot with water from the ocean. Now everything smells like SNAILS SNAILS SNAILS.

Vanessa, Buzz, and Carter keep talking about fishing, or catching crabs, but so far nobody knows how to do it. What we need is a fishing pole, or a net, or SOMETHING. Fingers crossed that we can figure it out because here is everything we've had to eat and drink in the last THREE DAYS:

Water

Coconut water

Coconut meat

Snails

Later, we're going to try to get down to the
Lucky Star
again. Buzz said he had an idea about it. Hopefully, the next time I write something, I'll have some GOOD news to share for a change.

Fingers crossed. (Toes, too!)

Buzz carried one of the ropes up onto Dead Man's Shelf that afternoon. It was a simple enough idea for reaching the
Lucky Star.
As for whether or not this would work, it was like everything else. The only way to find out was by trying.

“First, someone swims down and ties it to the rail on the boat,” he told the others. “Then the next person can use it to get down there. Hopefully, you can pull yourself faster than you can swim.”

“Like an underwater zip line,” Jane said. “Cool.”

“That means extra time to get inside the cabin,” Vanessa added. “I like it.”

Jane volunteered to swim down first and tie off the rope. She slipped easily into the water, carrying one end with her while Carter held the other end on the rocks. Buzz watched carefully as the rope unspooled, making sure it didn't get tangled. The ocean wasn't as calm today. The wind was creating a choppy current that might slow them down. Then again, it might make the rope that much more useful.

It didn't take long to find out. Within a minute, Jane was back at the surface, smiling up at them. “I did it!” she said, climbing onto the rocks. “I think this might work.”

When Buzz pulled up the slack, the line was nice and secure. But the boat itself seemed to be shifting with the current—just enough to pull and give, then pull and give again on the rope. It was going to be tricky, but not impossible, for one of them to keep it taut up top while someone else dove down.

“Who's next?” he asked.

Carter had his shirt, shoes, and socks off before there could be any argument.

“Are you sure you feel okay?” Vanessa asked him. His only answer was to dive into the water and take hold of the line.

“Wait!” Jane called. She handed him the empty backpack they'd brought from camp. “Bring back something good.”

“You got it, Janie,” he said.

“Don't try to grab everything on the first time,” Vanessa said. “Just do what you can.”

“I always do,” Carter said with a grin. “Benson's on the job.”

He had a familiar cocky look in his eye. Buzz had seen it before. It was Carter's game face—the one he wore most of the time. Or at least, anytime he wanted to
win
something.

Buzz hoped so, anyway. Because this time, if Carter won, they all won.

Carter took three deep breaths, in and out. On the third breath, he held it, grabbed hold of the line, and started pulling himself down toward the boat.

Buzz's idea actually worked pretty well. He skimmed through the water much faster than he could have swum it. It got him down to the
Lucky Star
in less than half a minute.

The boat sat perched near the edge of a steep drop-off. Beyond that, all Carter could see was open blue ocean. He could hear a muted groan, too. It was coming from the
Lucky Star
as it shifted and listed there on the coral ledge.

Carter stopped long enough to squeeze his nose and release the pressure in his head, then kept going.

Moving quickly, he swam down the galley stairway and into the cabin belowdecks. It was bizarre, swimming through this space where they'd lived for four days before the shipwreck—and three days after. Now the inside of the cabin was more like a giant aquarium. A small school of fish darted out through the opposite hatch as Carter came in.

The fish could have it, he thought. Just as long as they left the canned goods alone.

He turned one-eighty at the bottom of the stairs and went straight for the cooking area in the galley. Everything was even more wrecked than the last time he'd seen it. Most of the cabinets sat at odd angles where they'd pulled away from the walls. Several drawers lay smashed on the floor. Carter started opening whatever compartment doors he could get to, feeling around inside for any signs of food.

In no time at all, it seemed, his lungs started to tighten up and beg for air. He tried to ignore the feeling. He kept his body moving through the water, his hands reaching for the next cabinet door.

It was on the cabinet farthest from the galley entrance that he hit the jackpot. As he reached into a dark corner, his hand landed on something smooth and cool. When he pulled it out, he saw it was a can of some kind. The label had already washed off, but it didn't even matter what was inside. This was real food! Their first in days.

He shoved the can into his pack and quickly swam back outside. When he reached the rope again, he started pulling himself toward the surface as fast as he could go. The need to breathe was everything now. The best he could do was distract himself with a play-by-play inside his head.

Benson's got the ball . . . he's past the sixty-yard line . . . the fifty . . . the forty . . .

His throat pulsed, trying to force new air down into his lungs. His vision swirled, but the white-bright light at the surface showed him which way to go. It wasn't even the sky he saw. It was the lights of Soldier Field, egging him on.

He's passing the thirty . . . the twenty . . . the ten . . . he's got this!

Carter broke the surface like a shot, and gasped a desperate, much-needed lungful of air before he pulled out the silver can and held it over his head with a yell.

“And Benson scooooores!”