In places, the water was dear enough that I could see to the bottom. Mostly, though, it was still cloudy because of the explosion. I turned away pretty quick—afraid that I might spot some leftover Wesley.
On the other side of the point, there’s a lot more beach and jungle. No docks, no houses, no roads, no telephone poles, nothing to indicate the island has inhabitants.
I studied the sky and ocean. No aircraft, no boats.
After a check of our beach to make sure nobody was coming my way, I found myself a nice, sheltered nook in the rocks, sat down and started to write.
It’s been very nice. No one can see me here. An overhang keeps the sun off me, and mere’s a wonderful breeze. All I can see is a bit of ocean and the sky.
Now, I’m caught up to the present.
I feel like I’ve been at it for at least an hour, maybe a lot longer. I didn’t keep track of the time. My butt’s a little sore. I’m about ready to head back down and see what’s going on.
Maybe I should leave my journal up here. Hide it in the rocks.
No, I’d better take it with me. If I leave it here, might be tough to retrieve it in case we suddenly get rescued. Also, something could happen. Some sort of wildlife might attack it—I don’t want my precious pages getting munched by an iguana or ending up as insulation for a bird nest. I’ll keep it in my book bag, and take it with me everywhere so nobody will have a chance to lay eyes on what’s written in here.
That’s all for now.
The First Supper
I’m back.
It’s early evening, and we’re still here. Looks like we probably won’t be going anyplace tonight.
Andrew and Keith spent most of the afternoon making trips to the scene of the explosion to salvage things. Keith even did some diving and brought up stuff that had sunk. They managed to retrieve quite a lot of items that should make our stay on the island more endurable: food and clothes and utensils, not to mention a few bottles of booze that had somehow survived the blast and some fresh fish that hadn’t. But they came back without anything really major—such as a flare gun or transmitter—that we could use to alert rescuers of our position.
Andrew, a great hand at everything, cleaned me fish. He is not only retired Navy, but an Eagle Scout. He is nothing if not prepared. Just as I never go anywhere without my writing implements and reading material, he is forever equipped with a slew of useful items, including a Swiss Army knife and a butane lighter for his pipe.
While Andrew gutted the catch of the day, the rest of us trooped over the beach and gathered driftwood for our fire. It is plentiful. In about ten minutes, we had a pile six feet high.
Done with the bloody work, Andrew built a tidy little fire about twenty feet from our huge stack of driftwood. He used his butane lighter to ignite it.
Keith had recovered a skillet during one of his dives.
Billie did the cooking. We didn’t have any grease for the skillet, so she opened one of the liquor bottles and cooked up the fish in bourbon. It wasn’t bad.
This is sort of like being on a camping trip. A trip where you messed up and left most of your supplies behind—a trip where you don’t necessarily have a way to get home. Those are the negatives. On the other side of the coin, this is better than any camping trip I ever went on because this one includes the gals.
I’ve had a hard time keeping my eyes off Kimberly in her white bikini. And Billie isn’t any slouch, either. Her black bikini is a lot bigger than Kimberly’s, but seems smaller because there’s so much of her that it doesn’t cover. She was really something to see, crouched beside the fire and shaking the skillet. The skillet wasn’t the only thing that shook. She seems to like showing off what she’s got. I try not to let Connie catch me looking at her.
I’d be looking at Connie, but there’s not much to see. She’s spent most of the day wearing an extra large T- shirt over her swimming suit. Also, even though she has a decent build, she looks scrawny compared to her mother. And unlike her mom, she doesn’t seem to have any tendencies toward exhibitionism.
As for Thelma, she’s sort of cute in a thick, blocky way, but nothing much to look at. I don’t mean to be unkind. She’s a pretty nice woman and I actually like her quite a lot most of the time. The whole trip, I haven’t once seen her in a bathing suit. She always wears a big floppy straw hat, a loose blouse that she doesn’t tuck in, baggy shorts, white socks and Reeboks.
I probably shouldn’t be writing this stuff about the women. It’ll be embarrassing if someone happens to read it. Also, it sort of makes me look shallow and creepy. As if all I care about is how a gal looks in her bikini.
That isn’t all I care about.
The thing is, it’s probably easy to be nonchalant about gorgeous, semi-nude babes if you’re a handsome, confident guy who has nailed about fifty of them. But I’m eighteen, short and skinny and zitty. My name is RUPERT, for Godsake. (I was named after Rupert Brooke, the poet. He was a great poet, and I love his stuff, but if my parents had to pick a poet’s name for me, why not Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, or Walt Whitman? Rupert? Please! I guess I should count my blessings; at least they didn’t name me Wilfred, Ezra or Sylvia.) Anyway, I’m basically a shrimp with a dumb name and an attitude. Connie goes for me—to the extent that she does—because I’m nonthreatening, she thinks she generally controls me, and she often finds me amusing. There might be other reasons, but those are the most obvious.
I think there are always other reasons for everything. Invisible reasons. Sometimes, they’re so well hidden that nobody knows about them at all.
There might be some deep, dark reason why I’ve been going out with Connie. I hope so. Otherwise, it’s just because she’s the only gal at school who has ever shown the slightest interest in me. It certainly isn’t her glamorous looks or her winning personality.
Among other things, she’s a real prude.
I mean, I’ve gotten nowhere with her in the romance department.
Which is about as far as I’ve gotten with most girls, which might explain why I’m so interested in looking at people like Kimberly and Billie.
Or maybe there are hidden reasons.
It’s almost too dark out here to see what I’m writing. I’ll quit now and go over to the campfire, where everyone else is.
DAY TWO
A Mysterious Disappearance
Keith is missing.
It must’ve happened while he was standing watch.
Right after I joined the bunch sitting around the campfire last night, we had a discussion about whether we ought to take turns on guard duty. Most of us were against it. Why bother, since we’d been on the beach since late morning and hadn’t found any reason to consider ourselves threatened? But then Andrew said that, even if we didn’t seem to be in any danger, it’s better to be safe than sorry. Also, he thought we shouldn’t let the fire go out.
“We ought to keep it going day and night till we’re picked up,” he said. He was packing tobacco into his briar pipe as he spoke. “Don’t need to get caught with a dead fire when a search plane comes along. Besides, we let it go out and we’ll wind up lighting new ones all the time. That’ll get a bit more difficult after my Bic runs out of juice. I’ve stopped using it to light my pipe, of course.” As he said that, he pulled a stick out of the fire and sucked its flame down onto the tobacco in his pipe. He puffed to get things stoked up. Then he explained that the men should
