I was stuck back on the word “irresponsible.” I cleared my throat. “Excuse me? You think I’m being irresponsible? Because I want to help search for six missing people, two of whom are very close friends of mine, one of whom is a Krusher, and another of whom is a Krusher cheerleader? I’m a little confused. I’m missing the ‘irresponsibility’ part.”
“Don’t be sarcastic, Kristy.”
“Me? Sarcastic?”
“Look, I know your team probably isn’t ready for the game tomorrow, but that’s no reason to cancel it.”
“Is that what you think I’m trying to do? Worm my way out of the game?”
“Well —”
“Come on. Tell me. I can take it.”
“Okay. Yes, that is what I think you’re doing. Your team hasn’t beaten mine yet. I think you just don’t want to see the Krushers disappointed ag —”
Bart got cut off when I hung up on him.
That was Sunday morning. By early Monday afternoon I hadn’t heard from him, although I guess I hadn’t really expected to. I mean, I had hung up on him. Maybe that was childish, but Bart was being pretty childish himself. What was wrong with him? Hadn’t he ever had an emergency before?
Furthermore, didn’t he realize that he was making a miserable weekend even more miserable? How dare he pick a fight with me when six people I liked a lot were missing?
I soon found that after that awful phone call, Bart was always on my mind. Or at least at the back of my mind. He was there when the Pikes and I went out searching on Sunday afternoon. He was there all evening as I watched the stupid WATL coverage of the Connecticut Disaster, waiting for news that didn’t come. He was there the next day when the empty boat was discovered, and later when Stacey spotted the pieces of what was probably Dawn’s boat.
Would I, I wondered as Charlie drove me home from the center on Monday, ever speak to Bart again? Would the Krushers ever play Bart’s Bashers again, or had I ruined that?
I had no idea, and no extra energy to try to figure it out.
While Charlie was still parking the car at our house, I ran inside, crying. I still couldn’t get over the fact that we’d found actual wreckage of one of the boats.
“Kristy?” said Mom. She was surprised to see me in tears. “What’s the matter?” She paused. Then she put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, no,” she whispered. “It’s bad news, isn’t it?”
“No,” I said quickly, brushing away my tears. “It isn’t that. But Stacey found pieces of Dawn’s boat.”
“Are you sure it was Dawn’s boat?” asked Watson, my stepfather. The three of us sat down in the living room. Soon Charlie joined us.
“Well, pretty sure,” I answered. “Stacey saw numbers on one piece of wood, and they were three of the numbers on Dawn’s boat. In the right order,” I added.
“But not the whole number?” said Watson.
“Noooo,” I replied slowly.
“Then you can’t be sure it was Dawn’s boat,” Watson pointed out sensibly.
“That’s true.” I felt just a smidge better. Then Bart crept into my mind and I felt lousy again.
At that moment the phone rang. I know this is awful, but my first thought was, I hope it’s Bart. That was foolish, though. Things almost never work out the way you think they will.
“I’ll get it!” I cried anyway. I jumped up.
Watson put his hand out. “Resume yourself,” he said, which means, “Sit down.” He smiled. “Karen’s getting it, I’m sure.” (Karen and Andrew were spending the long weekend with us.) “Karen can’t get enough of the phone these days.”
I listened, but the phone didn’t ring again. A few seconds later, Karen bounced into the living room, calling, “Are you here, Kristy?”
“Yup. Is it for me?” I got to my feet.
“Mm-hmm.” Karen was grinning.
“Why are you smiling?”
“Because …” (Karen ran to me, and tugged at me. I leaned over.) “It’s your boyfriend! You told me not to announce that anymore,” she added.
So it was Bart after all.
I flew to the extension in Mom and Watson’s bedroom, which is the most private extension, calling for Karen to hang up in the kitchen.
“Bart?” I said breathlessly.
“Hi, Kristy.” Bart sounded funny. Kind of depressed or something.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yeah. It’s just that I’ve been watching WATL for hours now and I feel terrible about our phone conversation yesterday. I guess, um, I guess I want to apologize. I mean, I do want to apologize. I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay. I’m sorry I hung up on you.”
“That’s okay.”
There was a silence. Finally Bart said, “Maybe this isn’t the right time to tell you this, so stop me if you don’t want to hear it, but I really feel like I have to say something.”
“Okay.” Oh, no. What was he going to say? Was he dumping me?
“The thing is,” Bart began, “you exaggerate sometimes.”
I burst out laughing. “No kidding!” Then I added, “Sorry. It’s just that I know I have a big mouth. I’m always getting in trouble because of it.”
“Okay. But, see, I can’t always tell when you’re being straightforward and when you’re exaggerating. It would help me a lot if —”
“I won’t cry wolf anymore,” I told him. “That’s a promise.”
“Thank you.” Bart sounded as relieved as I felt. Then he said, “Listen, I want to help search, if there’s anything I can do. And once your friends are found — and I know they will be — then we’ll talk about rescheduling our game. Is that okay with you?”
Was it okay with me? Of course. In fact, it was great!
“Do you want to go to the community center —?”
Bart was interrupted by some strange clicks on the phone. At first I thought Karen was eavesdropping on us. I was about to let her have it, when a voice came on the line:
“This is the operator. Is Kristy Thomas there? I have an emergency call for her from a Jessi Ramsey.”
“This is Kristy!” I said excitedly. Wow. I had never gotten an emergency call.
“Kristy,” said the operator, “please have your party hang up so you can talk to Jessi.”
“Okay,” I replied. “Bart?”
“I’ll talk to you later,” he said instantly. He hung up.
And then Jessi was on the line. “Kristy! Kristy! I can’t talk long, but the community center just called here to say that they’ve been found. All of them. And they’re alive! They’re on a little island way up the coast.”
I couldn’t believe it. I was afraid to believe it. But that didn’t prevent me from spreading the news to everyone I could think of.
“Batman! Here we are, Batman!” yelled Becca.
“Yeah, here’s our bat signal!” shouted Haley, expertly aiming the mirror at the sun.
“Hey! What’s that?” exclaimed Jeff. “Be quiet, you guys,” he said impatiently to Haley and Becca.
“What is it?” I asked him.
“SHHH,” hissed Jeff. “Just listen.”
The four of us stopped and listened.
And we heard a plane.
“An airplane, an airplane! Oh, my lord, an airplane!” I shrieked.
“Where is it?” asked Haley.
The four of us craned our necks back. Haley was still holding the mirror.
“There it is!” I cried. “Haley, aim the mirror! Aim it at the plane.”
“I’ll do it!” said Jeff.
“No, I will!” We were all grabbing for the mirror.
“Well, somebody do it — quick!” shouted Becca. She was jumping up and down, waving her arms frantically.
In the end, I was the one who held the mirror and aimed. “I just hope they can see that,” I muttered.
And they could! The plane continued to fly straight ahead. Then slowly it circled back over the island and flew lower … and lower. It dipped its wings.
 
; Jeff, Haley, Becca, and I were screaming and running around. We stopped when the plane dipped its wings, though. We’d never seen a plane do that.
Then we heard a voice from the sky. “This is a search plane!”
“Aughh! It is Batman!” shrieked Becca.
“Shh. No, it isn’t,” I told her.
“Wave your arms if you are Claudia or Dawn.” The voice was deep. It was coming over a bullhorn.
I waved my arms.
“Wave again to let us know if you are all on the island.”
I waved.
“And wave again if you need a doctor.”
I waved.
“Okay. We’ll send a Coast Guard ship to you as fast as we can. It will come equipped with food, water, a doctor, and your parents.”
“And some Ring-Dings!” I hollered back, but I’m sure the pilot (or whoever was yelling) couldn’t hear me.
Another dip of the wings, and the plane headed off in the direction from which it had come.
“We’re saved! Oh, my lord, we’re saved!” I cried.
“Finally,” said Jeff.
“Yeah, it took them long enough,” added Haley.
We looked at her and began to laugh.
“Come on. We’ve got to tell Dawn,” I said. “We’ll have to get Jamie ready to go, and put out our fire, and you guys make sure we have all our stuff with us. I don’t want anyone getting home and complaining, ‘Claudia, I left my T-shirt on the island.’”
We ran back to the cave in high spirits.
“Dawn! Dawn! The mirror worked!” Becca cried as soon as we reached the cave entrance. “A plane flew over and a man is sending a boat and our parents will be on it!”
“Quit kidding,” said Dawn sulkily.
“She isn’t kidding,” I said. “It just happened. Didn’t you hear the guy on the bullhorn?”
“No,” replied Dawn. Then she added, “You aren’t kidding, are you? That would be much too mean.”
“It’s the truth. Batman’s honor,” Jeff told his sister.
Dawn jumped up then and hugged first her brother, then me. And soon we were all hugging, except for Jamie. But a few minutes later, he woke up; groggily, though.
“What are you doing?” he mumbled.
“Celebrating!” replied Dawn. “We’re going to be rescued. A plane saw us and a ship will be on its way. Your mommy and daddy will be on the ship.”
“A doctor, too,” I added. “I’m sure he —”
“Or she —” chimed in Haley.
“— will help you to start feeling better right away.”
“Goody,” said Jamie, and he fell asleep again.
The wait for the Coast Guard boat seemed endless. Actually, it did take a couple of hours to reach us. But it seemed more like a couple of days. While we waited, we gathered up our belongings. (That took about five minutes.) We decided, though, not to put out our fire or take down our water collector until the Coast Guard ship had actually arrived. We had learned the hard way that you never know what to expect.
Dawn and I were in the cave watching Jamie, whose breathing had become sort of funny, and the kids were outside near the cave entrance, when Jeff shouted, “I see it! I think I see it!”
I was on my feet in a flash. Sure enough, way off in the distance was what looked like a boat. Becca, Haley, Jeff, and I ran to the water’s edge and began screaming and waving our arms again. We were afraid the ship would pass us by.
It didn’t, though. But since it was huge (well, big) it had to dock offshore. A smaller boat was lowered into the water and a couple of men and a woman were sent to meet us. I guessed that one of them was the doctor.
You know what was the most frustrating thing about our rescue? We could see our parents on the boat — they were all waving and leaning over the railing so far that I was afraid they’d fall into the water, or tip the boat over — but they couldn’t come to us and we couldn’t go to them. At least, not yet. The doctor would probably check Jamie first, and then we’d go out to the ship on lifeboats. All we could do was wave.
When that first lifeboat came ashore, a man in a sailor’s uniform stepped out and waded in to meet us. He and the other man were from the Coast Guard. The woman was the doctor.
“See? I told you,” hissed Haley. “The doctor’s a woman.”
We didn’t know those three people from a hole in the wall (as Kristy’s stepfather would say) but as soon as they were standing on the beach, we hugged them. I even cried a little, but they were happy tears. You know what? The three of them cried, too.
One of the men even said, “You don’t know how glad we are to see you.”
“Wrong,” I replied. “You don’t know how glad we are to see you!”
Everyone laughed. Then the woman, whose name was Dr. Weber, said briskly, “Now, who needs a doctor? All of you look pretty healthy.”
“It’s Jamie Newton,” I told her. “He’s four. He got sick late yesterday afternoon. We’re not sure what he’s got, but he’s running a high fever. Well, it was higher yesterday before we began forcing water on him. And he aches all over, his throat is sore, he has an earache, and now his breathing is funny.”
“Okay. I’ll take a look at him. He could have a strep throat, or maybe a nice case of the flu. Where is he?”
“In our cave, with Dawn,” I replied.
“Yeah, come on,” said Becca. “We’ll show you.”
We walked up the beach with the doctor and the Coast Guard guys.
“There’s our water collector,” said Jeff, as we approached the cave. “Claudia invented it. It really works.”
“Pretty clever,” said one of the men. “So you had shelter and water the last couple of days. That’s good. What about food?”
“Fish and candy bars,” Haley told him, looking disgusted. “I hope you’ve got good food on your boat.”
“Plenty,” replied the man. “Water and juice, too.”
The four of us sighed with relief — and hunger.
We entered the cave then, introduced Dawn to our rescuers, and let the doctor examine Jamie. The doctor looked sort of concerned, but managed to get some Tylenol into him. Then she said, “The sooner we get him to a hospital the better. Oh,” she went on, seeing our stricken faces, “he’s not that sick, but I need to run a few tests, get his fever down, and just watch him for awhile. He’s lucky he had such good care here. You did the right things for him.”
Dawn and I smiled.
One of the men picked up Jamie then, Jeff doused our fire with rainwater, we gathered our trash and belongings, and before we knew it, we were standing on the shore, where two more lifeboats had been sent in.
“Good-bye, Nine O’Clock Island,” whispered Becca as we were rowed out to the ship.
We were still approaching the ship when the screaming and cheering began.
What a reunion. There have been times when I was so angry at my parents that I wanted to divorce them. But when I finally stepped onto the Coast Guard ship, there were no faces I wanted to see more than Mom’s and Dad’s.
We hugged practically forever.
And Dawn and Jeff were hugging their mom and stepfather, Becca and Haley were hugging their parents, and Jamie was being fussed over by his parents. I think everybody on board that boat was crying.
And eating. Boy, us castaways set into the food and wolfed it down. While I ate, I tried to tell Mom and Dad about the last 48 hours — how we had wound up on the island and how I, Claudia Kishi, had gotten us off the island. I told them about the water collector, too.
“You know,” I finished up, “I do promise to study harder in school, but I have to admit, I don’t feel nearly so bad about my report card now. I may not be school-smart or book-smart, but I’m practical. I think I’m pretty good at solving problems, aren’t I?”
Mom’s and Dad’s answers? More hugs and tears.
I smiled at them. The boat was halfway to Stoneybrook by then. In a little while we would be back with our friends and brothers a
nd sisters. Home sweet home.
My mother could barely stop hugging Jeff and me as the Coast Guard ship sailed us home. It was as if she couldn’t believe we were really safe and alive unless she could touch us. She told us how worried she and Richard had been, and that they’d tried all weekend to get in touch with Dad, but hadn’t reached him until just after they received the news that we’d been found.
“Mom?” I said at one point when she’d managed to let go of Jeff, who had run off. “I have to tell you something.”
“What is it? This sounds like a confession.”
“I guess it is, sort of.”
“Okay.”
“Well, the thing is, um, the thing is …” Mom was watching me seriously. “The thing is, I wasn’t much help on the island. I sort of fell apart. I took care of Jamie, but Claudia was the one who did all the thinking. She figured out how to collect rainwater, instead of going without water. And she figured out how to attract attention to ourselves so we could be rescued. She really kept things going.”
“Honey, everyone reacts differently in an emergency.”
“I know, but I feel like I failed everyone. Or maybe I just feel like I failed myself. I mean, my friends always tell me what a clear head I have. They say I don’t let things get me down. But this did get me down. I was just another person for Claudia to take care of.”
“I don’t know, honey,” said Mom. “Maybe you didn’t come through quite the way you would have expected, but you did know how to nurse Jamie. And I don’t think you really fell apart. Let’s say the fire in your cave had started burning out of control. Would you have rescued the kids?”
“Of course!”
“If somebody had been injured, would you have tried to give them first aid?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. So you didn’t fall apart. But maybe you learned something about yourself.”
“That I’m a worrier?”
Mom laughed. “No. That you can’t always be the strong one. And by not being the strong one for once, I think you helped Claudia learn something about herself.”
“That she can be the strong one? That she can figure out problems?”