1 1. Waves

Tuesday, 5-28-22, 5:46 pm

A loud scream came from the distance. " Was that Ryan? Do you think we should go check on him?" i say with denial. " You can, I'm staying right here where it's safe." Jess' replies obviously shook out of her wits. " Fine, " I say, knowing this island probably isn't a good idea to go alone, but I go anyway. As I'm sprinting through the woods trying to find him through the brush and trees I can hear the sound of Ryan choking getting louder and louder, then out of nowhere it got more silent. "Did I pass him." I go back trying to listen for it but it stops. I look around wondering where he could be, I felt something drop on me and then I saw him.

Monday, 5-27-22, 7:20 am

"Alright class today is our school field trip, and as you all know we are going to the docks to see how fishermen catch fish." Yep you heard right today is my field trip but i'm not particularly excited about it. I mean come on who wants to listen to an old guy talk about nets and throwing it in the water. That's all fishing really is. I would rather be at home watching anime or something, "NOT GOING OUT ON THE WATER FOR NO FU…" "HEY, don't use that word Jason." "oh, I didn't notice you behind me Nat.." a small black haired girl stood behind me.

Nia has been my best friend since kindergarten, I call her Nat because she's so small and stubborn. "Sorry i must have said that last part out loud." "yeah you did and how many times have i told you to stop calling me that i'm fifteen i don't deserve to be treated like a five-year old." i laugh subtly "You're so stubborn Nat." After our little talk the teacher suddenly says, "Pay attention class, you will have a partner for on the bus and everything else, and you can choose your own." Nat and I both look at each other and nod in agreement, so I already have my partner. The thing is I'm like Nats only friend so i'm the only one she can pick out of the class. She's not the friendly type around anybody but me and it really confuses me. I don't ask her though because it's not my business.

Once everyone is paired up with a partner we head out onto the buses. We sit together, and I'm happy that we do because I've always kinda had a thing for her. I don't know why but I guess she's just my type. "Hey Jason how fun is this gonna be." she asks me with pure enthusiasm "i don't know i guess we'll have to see when we get there." "don't be so grumpy." she says, but how could I not be when I'm going to look at water and nets. But all I do is smile and nod at her. We continued with our conversation about how much fun it would be. I acted like I was excited so she felt good. And then all of a sudden I look over and she's sitting there just staring at the seat with a blank face. " is something wrong." I am curious about this weird behavior, but I get no answer. "hello , earth to Nat." i say while giving her a little pat on the head. "Huh. oh sorry must have spaced out." she says sleepy "did you get enough sleep last night?" she shakes her head in disagreement."well we have about 20 miles till we get there you can rest a bit." I told her "ok." she says dazed and then falls right on my shoulder. " I didn't mean on me!" but she's already out of it.

She must be having a good dream because she hasn't moved the whole ride. We have five miles till we get there, should I wake her up. I move my hand to wake her but then i resist "nah" i should let her get a little more sleep or she'll be cranky the whole time. And she's kinda cute when she sleeps. When we get to the docks the teacher yells for everyone to get out of the bus which wakes Nat up. "Huh we're here already." she looks over at me and realizes she was resting her head on me. "I'm so sorry i didn't mean to do that." i laugh a little "we're best friends i don't really care if you don't." she looks back at me with surprise. "Oh you don't?" "nah i don't mind one bit."she smiles with relief. By then it was our turn to get off the bus, and Nat wasn't as enthusiastic as she was on the ride here. I decided to just let her go and hope the trip cheers her up. There was a boat stationed at the dock waiting for us. Before we boarded the boat they gave us this whole speech about the history of the boat and fishing. If that doesn't make you wanna hang yourself nothing will. I look over at Nat. She still looks weird, like she's in a deep trans. I bump her to snap her out of it "hey what was that for." "It looked like you zoned out." she gives me a confused face like she doesn't even know what i'm talking about. "Whatever, just don't do it again alright." We board the ship not too long after. They go over all the equipment and stuff they use for fishing. After we set sail to try and catch some fish. I decided to give Nat a bit of space, so I fish on my own. They gave us all heavy duty fishing rods or whatever he called them and he said, " cast the lines out and fish until we get out to the really populated areas."

So it looks like that's what i'll be doing for the next three hours. I grab my pole and cast it out leaning over the edge slightly. I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn around half asleep "oh hey Jess what do you need." she looks pissed, "what now?" I ask myself, "what did you do with Nia." ' what do you mean what did i do with Nia." i say a little worried "nobody has seen her for half an hour, where did she go, what have you done with her!" "Nothing. I just gave her some space because she was being weird, but i'll go look for her." god where could she be. "I'm coming obviously." she says with a smug look. "Fine but don't get in my way." I Say a little mad. We searched everywhere on the boat, still no sign of her. "Damn, where is she." (thud) suddenly the boat stops for a second. We all fall onto the ground. I get up slowly and help Jess up. "Hey you ok." she looks like she's in pain and then i realize the blood rushing out of her leg "oh shit we need to bandage that now!" i grab the closest rag i can find and wrap it around her leg "here keep pressure on it and you should be good until i get a bandage." I help her walk to the first aid pack "thanks Jase." I looked up to see if anyone got hurt. Doesn't look like it, but I have to search for Nia now who knows what could have happened to her. (gasp) "i know where she is, the kitchen." Nia loves food i know that she was probably looking for a treat." Then i think " wait if she's in the kitchen and we just crashed she may be in trouble." I sprint to the kitchen hoping to find her there and unharmed. I kick open the locked door to find Nia laying on the ground with a butcher's knife nearly skimming her head. "Oh shit that was a close one." i walk over to her and try to get her conscious again after about a half an hour she wakes up. " Jason, what happened." she says sleepy. "The ship crashed." she looks like she hit her head really hard.

There's blood running down the side of her neck. " What did you do to your head." I asked worried. "I don't know, I blacked out after the ship suddenly stopped. I looked around, everything was knocked over. Hell i'm just glad she didn't get impaled by a knife that's the size of her head."come on get up everyone's worried about where you are." "Why are they worried about me?" she's in pain i can tell. I help her back to the spot everyone else is at. I wrap her head with the leftover bandages. Jess starts walking towards me " hey Jase how are you so good at first aid." I looked up at her for a second and then continued wrapping Nat up "my mother was a doctor until she died from a car crash, so i kind of learned some stuff from that." " oh i'm sorry." i smile a bit "it's not your fault so don't feel bad for asking." Except for all that, what the hell happened to the boat. I ask the captain, and he says the boat hit a shallow point and they cant get it out until another ship comes past so we may be here for a while. "the captain said we may be stuck here for a while." Jess and Nia put their heads down "well if we're going to be stuck in the middle of nowhere at least i got my two best friends." Nia props her head up "you consider me your friend Jess." " we'll yeah why shouldn't i. You're a friend friend of Jase's so you're my friend too." she rushes over to me and hugs me. "Sorry i forgot to thank you for helping me back there." she's really tight on me "no problem Nat."

We stand around for about an hour and a half waiting for any sign of ships passing by. I picked up a sailor's conversation with someone saying there were heavy storms coming. "Well great" I think to myself then out of the corner of my eye I spot something large in the distance. I'm about to tell the captain when suddenly the boat starts to rock as huge waves bash up against the sides. "What's going on!" Jess screams in imminent fear " storms are coming in, so hold onto something tight." the boat finally after practically laying down capsizes. I grab both of them and yell "JUMP!" Nat jumps in immediately but Jess doesn't , so I take her and I jump with her. After that it was black and quiet, but somewhat peaceful.

Monday, 7:05 pm

When i regained consciousness i realized i was holding onto Jess who was also unconscious. I look around, the thing in the ocean I saw earlier is much closer now. I could see now that it was an island. I swam with one arm and carried Jess in the other. "Man for a skinny girl you're pretty heavy." half way there i feel Jess moving around. I stop and look back to see her opening her eyes. "What the hell." her eyes widen noticing the situation we're in. she goes crazy flailing her arms and screaming "calm down what's the problem." " I CANT SWIM ASSHOLE!" "Well, stop moving and i can help." she stops all of a sudden "ok fine but don't make this weird or anything." 'this already is weird' i think to myself. "Ok i won't make it weird just stay still and let me do the swimming."She has a bad leg, so she isn't really much use at this point. i hope Nia made it to the island safe too. "Where are we headed exactly." she asks "to an island I saw from the boat we're about a quarter of the way there." "oh , well, why didn't you say anything on the boat." I was about to, but then the ship capsized and we fell off. I grabbed you because i thought with your leg it would be hard to swim, but now i know you can't swim at all." I look forward, we're almost nearing the island. It looks like there's debris from the shipwreck, maybe Nia swam to the island after all. "Hey we're almost there." she sighs with relief "good i don't want to be in this water any longer." her leg may need re-wrapped when we get there but what would we wrap it with on an island. I guess we'll have to see when we get there.

10 minutes have passed and we finally make it " we're here."I start to walk on the beach and I drag Jess up on shore. "ouch" "are you ok." "my leg really hurts Jase." it's bleeding stopped a bit from the salt water. "I'll try and find something to wrap it again ok, stay right here." I looked along the shore at the wreckage that washed up. I found another first aid kit " looks like god is on my side today." I rush back to Jess, take off the old bandage and put on a new one. "There now you should heal up fine.Well we're gonna be here for a while, so we might as we'll make some sort of shelter." "Yeah i'm sorry, but i don't think i'll be able to help." Obviously she won't be able to help ¨its fine i can manage.¨ I say that but I know nothing about this kind of stuff, Nia did teach me a few things back when we were in middle school. I could probably use some of those ideas. Maybe a low level tree fort will do just to get her off the ground. This is gonna be hard without a machete or an axe or something. "Guess I'm gonna have to use dead trees with a lot of structures." I start breaking down small trees to try and build the "fort" if that's even what it is.

"hey Jase did you hear something." to be honest i didn't hear anything.¨like what?¨ i say confused ¨like a scream or something.¨ i look around left to right but i don't see anyone ¨what are you talking about.¨ i say even more confused. ¨listen there's nothi….¨ I pause as I hear a faint scream in the distance. She wasn't lying, there was a scream, but where from?" I look around once more left then right, but when I turn right I see a figure that looks similar to a human, then realize it is a human. I'd notice that short stack anywhere, it was Nia running on the beach towards me screaming "JASE, JASE, JASE!" "I hear from the distance. I wave back at her "who is that Jase." "its Nia she made it to the island too." With the sun finally starting to set she finally reached us and hugged me really tight "Jase your here i thought id never see you again." She doesn't release much tension until she notices Jess. "oh i didn't notice you there Jess." Nia backs up and looks at me "hey Nia maybe you didn't notice but it's turning into night, and we don't have shelter." she smiles at me with a big grin. "oh we got that covered." We?" think to myself. "Who's we?" i ask questioningly "duh the other students, we built a shelter over that way." "Nice job we'll stay there tonight, but tomorrow we have to find a way to get out of here, the only thing is, where is here." We look out to the ocean for a split second, We then proceed to go to the campsite that Nia and the others built. Finally after an hour we reached the site, "hey guys look who i found." they all looked at us, their faces muddy and sweaty. "i see you've put them all to work." she laughs a little "yep, that's the key to survival, teamwork." I look around at the progress they've gotten to. There's several forts, three fires cooking food, and a big one in the middle with logs around them for people to sit at and chat. I mean there's still a lot of work to do, but they've got the majority of it done. "could I help at all Nat." "of course there's always some work to do, but for now we're just gonna rest until morning." that's a relief. I take Jess to one of the forts and set her down in a makeshift bed. "make sure you get some rest. It'll help heal your leg." she nods her head in agreement.

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