Baby-Sitters' Island Adventure

  I dialed the Johanssens’ number. No answer.

  I wanted to call the Pikes next — they’d be good in an emergency — but next on Mom’s list of names and numbers was (gulp) my dreaded Aunt Cecelia. Aunt Cecelia is Daddy’s older sister.

  I can’t stand her.

  She wears smelly perfume and always looks as if she’s just been eating a lemon. Her lips are permanently pursed. She disapproves of everything and treats Becca and me like absolute infants. Aunt Cecelia used to live in New Jersey with the rest of our relatives, but recently her husband died and she decided she couldn’t live in their house anymore so she moved to Queenstown, Connecticut, which is much too nearby for my peace of mind.

  If I called her and told her what was going on, I had a feeling she’d be over here as fast as if someone had beamed her to Stoneybrook.

  I must have ESP. I was right about everything. In no time at all Aunt Cecelia zoomed up our driveway in her old Volkswagen, barged through the front door, and began saying (through pursed lips), “How could a couple of intelligent adults leave an eleven-year-old in charge of two younger children for three whole days? And how could you and your parents be irresponsible enough to let Rebecca go out on some sailboat?”

  “It wasn’t my fau —” I started to say, but Aunt Cecelia was already on the phone.

  First she called the community center. “No news,” she said curtly as she hung up. “I’ll have to call your parents.”

  “My parents!” I exclaimed. “No! You’ll ruin their vaca —”

  “This is a serious matter, Jessica. It worries me that you don’t understand that. Who knows what has happened to your sister? Your parents must be told what is going on.”

  Luckily, my parents were not in their hotel room, so Aunt Cecelia just left a message for them to call home. I had a reprieve.

  As soon as my aunt hung up, the phone rang. I grabbed for it and got it before she did. (I think I took her by surprise.) I knew I was being rude, but I didn’t care.

  The caller was Mallory.

  “Thank goodness it’s you!” I exclaimed.

  “Listen,” said Mal, without asking why I sounded so relieved, “I want you to know that we know what happened. Mom and Dad and my brothers and even Vanessa are helping to search. Nothing’s turned up yet. I thought you might like some company, though, so I arranged for Margo and Claire to go stay with Stacey’s mom and I’m coming to your house. Right now. Okay?”

  I was delighted, but I felt that it was only fair to warn Mal about Aunt Cecelia. Mallory said she didn’t care, and proceeded to ride her bike over here in the rain. I was especially grateful for her company. Aunt Cecelia had taken complete charge of Squirt, dinner, and everything else. Without Mal, there would be nothing for me to do but worry.

  Mal and I sat by the phone. At eight o’clock it rang. We jumped a mile. But it was only Kristy on the other end, saying that she was calling an emergency meeting of what was left of the BSC for the next morning — if no progress had been made in the search for the missing boaters.

  The first problem that got solved was the smallest one, and it got solved by accident. Haley, who had been to Greenpoint several times with her family, looked around as the sky continued to brighten, and said, “You know something? We’re on the wrong island!”

  “What do you mean?” asked Jeff, glancing suspiciously at me.

  “Well, um, she’s right,” I managed to say. “We blew off course.”

  “How much off course?” asked Jeff.

  I looked at Claud. She shrugged. Then she said, “It doesn’t matter. It won’t help us to know. Come on, you guys. First order of business” (she sounded like Kristy) “is to find some sort of shelter. Then we’ll build a fire and dry off and get nice and warm.”

  “Goody,” said Haley, and then she began to sing, “We’re off to find a shelter!” She sang it to the tune of “We’re Off to See the Wizard” from the movie The Wizard of Oz.

  “A wonderful shelter we’ll find,” added Haley.

  Jeff and I loaded all the supplies from the boat into our arms, handing a few to Haley and Becca, and Claudia picked up the shivering Jamie.

  We looked around. Where exactly were we off to? The island had a nice beach. And the inland part looked dark and green, like a forest. I wondered how big the island was.

  “Let’s head for the trees,” said Claudia.

  Haley wanted to continue the song. “We’re off to find a shelter! A wonderful shelter we’ll find. We hear there is a wonderful place, a wonderful, wonderful place. If ever a, ever a shelter there was, this island … um … this island …”

  That was as far as she got with her song. Becca didn’t help her. She’s too shy to sing in front of a bunch of people.

  We headed into the trees but immediately backed out. The ground was drier in there, but the trees dripped on us and we didn’t like the darkness at all. So we wandered along at the edge of the trees. All I could see behind me and ahead of me were beach and trees.

  “Is this a desert island?” asked Haley, wide-eyed.

  “I hope not,” replied Claudia. “If it is, we’re way off course. There are no desert islands off the coast of Connecticut.”

  “Deserted ones,” I added, “but not actual desert islands.”

  “Gosh, well, anyway this is sort of like a book I read called Baby Island.” Haley proceeded to tell us all about it.

  That was when Jeff told us about The Cay.

  And that was when Becca stopped in her tracks and said, “Hey, what’s that? That hole over there?”

  “That hole” turned out to be a cave. We’d come to a huge pile of boulders. That was the only way to describe them. They were the biggest rocks I’d ever seen. Great slabs of something (granite, maybe) all piled on top of each other. And three of them had formed a gigantic triangular space. It was high enough to walk into without bending over, and definitely wide enough and deep enough for six people.

  Jeff and I set our supplies in the sand and turned on the flashlights.

  “I guess we have to check this out, don’t we?” I said nervously to Claudia. I was afraid of what we might find in the cave.

  “Yeah,” she said, looking at the sky, which was now growing dark again, and not just because evening was approaching. The sky was dark with clouds.

  Cautiously, Jeff and I approached the cave. I glanced back once at Claudia, and she said, “Do you want me to go instead, Dawn?” I did — badly — but Jamie had laid his head on her shoulder and looked miserable, so I just said, “That’s okay.”

  Jeff and I entered the cave. We shined our flashlights around as if we were expecting to find pirates guarding their treasure. Instead we found — nothing! Just the space between the boulders. And it was warm and dry.

  “Hey, Claud! Come here!” I called to her.

  Claudia, holding Jamie, ran to us, followed by Becca and Haley. They peered curiously inside, watching as Jeff and I aimed our flashlights into every nook and cranny.

  “Do you think it’s safe?” I asked Claudia.

  She nodded. “These rocks have probably been here forever. I bet they’re more solid than our houses back home.”

  So we unpacked our supplies, and then Jeff, Becca, and Haley looked around in the woods (but not too far away) for some dry sticks and leaves so we could start a fire. This was not easy, considering all the rain, and they were gone for quite awhile.

  “I’m hungry,” whined Jamie, so Claudia found him a still-dry peanut butter sandwich. (Thank goodness for Baggies.)

  While he was eating it, Claud and I held a whispered, harried conversation at the other end of the cave.

  “What are we going to do now?” I asked.

  “Well, the boat’s still in good condition,” Claud replied.

  “Yeah, but there’s only one boat and there are six of us.”

  “I know. I was thinking that tomorrow, or whenever the weather clears, you and Jeff, or maybe Jeff and I, could take the boat, sail back to shore, and
send the Coast Guard out here to rescue the others.”

  “Oh, Claud. I don’t know. I mean, we don’t know how far out we are, or if we can see the shore from here. And since we’ve walked partway around the island, we don’t know which direction the shore is in. Whoever goes out in that boat could easily get lost at sea.” I was nearly in tears. All I could really think about were the last words Mary Anne had spoken to me: “I wish I never had to see you again. I wish you would get out of my life — forever.” Well … maybe I would.

  Claudia put her arm around me. Then she whispered, “I know you’re scared. I’m scared, too. But we don’t want to frighten the kids.” (She glanced over her shoulder at Jamie.) “So let’s just pretend everything is okay. We’ll talk about this later.”

  It began to rain again then, and just as I went to the cave entrance to call Jeff and the girls, they appeared, grinning broadly. Their arms were full of dry sticks, twigs, and leaves.

  “We found them under this big rock that stuck out,” announced Haley proudly. “Everything under it was dry!”

  The kids piled their findings in the center of the cave. Then we looked at each other. The same thought had occurred to all of us.

  “How are we going to light it?” asked Becca.

  “Rubbing two sticks together could take all night,” added Jeff.

  “I guess nobody has matches,” I said unnecessarily.

  For some reason, Jeff brightened at that.

  “What? You’ve got matches on you?” I asked.

  “Nope. But I bet there are some in the survival kit I found when you and I were taking all the stuff out of Claudia’s boat.”

  We made a dash for our stash. Sure enough, there was a survival kit, containing exactly seven matches — and not much else. (“I’ll have to speak to the people at the center about this,” muttered Claudia.) But at least we got a fire going.

  “Okay. Everyone dry out,” I ordered.

  We sat around the fire until we felt more comfortable.

  “Now we better see about our food,” said Claud. “Just in case we’re here awhile, we’ve got to see how much of it can be saved, and then we better ration it — you know, eat a little at a time to make it last as long as possible.” Jeff hauled the picnic baskets nearer to the fire, where we could see better. The baskets were soaked, of course, but he opened them up and found that we weren’t in bad shape. The bottles of water, the big bottle of Coke, and the juice boxes were fine, of course. Warm, but fine. We set them in the coolest spot in the cave that we could find. The granola bars were soaked and had to be thrown out. The sandwiches in their Baggies were okay, but we decided to eat all of them for dinner, since we didn’t know how long all-natural peanut butter and (ugh) bologna would last outside of a refrigerator. We decided to eat the salad for the same reason, and the yogurt, too, but we saved the bananas, apples, and candy bars.

  “What if we ate all this food and had to start eating clams?” said Becca.

  “Or grubs and worms?” said Haley, giggling.

  “Snakes!” shrieked Jamie, and we laughed nervously.

  Then Jeff said, “You know what? That Coke has been tossed around all day. Imagine what would happen if we opened it now!”

  Nobody could stop laughing.

  Then Jeff said, “I’ve changed my mind. This isn’t like The Cay. It’s like Gilligan’s Island. We’re castaways!”

  When we calmed down, we ate our dinner. I knew it was the last big meal we would have. We didn’t even drink anything with it because I thought we should save our liquids as long as possible.

  We sat around the fire. It was cozy — like camping out — and everyone seemed relaxed, except me. Mary Anne’s words kept running through my head. I hoped she hadn’t meant what she’d said. Whether she had or not, I promised myself that in the future I would try to be more responsible. Was this disaster a punishment for not being responsible? I wondered. Then I began to feel bad that I hadn’t spoken to Mary Anne for so long. When (if?) I saw her again, I told myself that I would hug her, apologize, and never “not speak to her” again.

  Ring, ring! My note-keeping was interrupted by the telephone. I made a leap for it (my bedroom in Dad’s new apartment is on the small side, so it wasn’t much of a leap) and got to it before the third ring.

  “Hello?” I said, hoping it was my New York best friend, Laine Cummings.

  “Stacey? Hi, it’s Kristy.”

  Kristy! She was about the last person I’d expected to hear on the other end of the line. In the first place, I wasn’t expecting a long-distance call. In the second place, Kristy and I are good friends and all that, but we don’t usually talk on the phone when I’m in New York.

  “Hi,” I said. “Is anything —”

  “Stacey, I have bad news,” Kristy interrupted me. “I thought you should hear about it right away.”

  A thousand thoughts ran through my mind. If Kristy was calling me, that meant that Claudia couldn’t. Even though Kristy is the president of the BSC — and I assumed this had something to do with our friends and the club — Claudia would call me with bad news. Was Claudia sick or hurt?

  “What happened?” I asked Kristy tightly, and I realized that her voice sounded just as tight as mine.

  “Claud and Dawn and the kids haven’t come back from their race yet.”

  “Haven’t come back,” I repeated. “But it’s almost seven o’clock! Shouldn’t they have been home hours ago?”

  “Well, awhile ago, that’s for sure,” said Kristy.

  “Don’t you think it’s a good sign that neither boat has come back?” I asked. “I mean, if one boat sank, the other could still have returned. So wherever they are, they’re together. I bet they’re on the island.”

  “Maybe,” replied Kristy doubtfully. “Someone will check that out soon. They could have crashed into each other, though. But the really scary thing is the weather we’ve been having. I don’t know what it’s like in New York —”

  “Cloudy, but not bad,” I told her.

  “Oh. Well, here it started off nice, as you know, but we’ve been having showers and storms all afternoon. And we had one huge thunderstorm. If Claud and Dawn ran into that storm out on the water …”

  Kristy didn’t finish her sentence and she didn’t need to.

  “Oh, no,” was all I managed to say.

  “I know. It’s awful. But the community center is starting a search, even though it’s raining again, and the sky is almost as dark as nighttime. They’re sending out boats and they’ve called the Coast Guard. Tomorrow, the Coast Guard will send out boats. They’ll also send up helicopters and other small planes to search from the air. Mal’s family is probably going to take some big boats out and look, and the people at the center say that if Claud and everyone haven’t been found by tomorrow, then anyone who wants to can help by walking along the shore, looking for wreckage.”

  “Ew!” I said. “That’s awful. I don’t even want to think about wreckage.”

  “Listen,” Kristy went on, “one reason I’m calling is to let you know that if they haven’t been found by tomorrow, I’m calling an emergency BSC meeting for the morning. We’ll hold it at Mallory’s house. Do you think you’d like to come back for it? I know meetings are for discussing sitting problems, but to me, this —”

  “They’re also for club problems, aren’t they?” I didn’t wait for Kristy to answer. I just rushed on. “And this is a club problem. Two of our members are missing. I’ll definitely try to be there. But I’ll have to ask Dad first. And anyway, let’s hope they’re found and we won’t need meetings or search planes or anything tomorrow.”

  “Right,” said Kristy, still sounding grim.

  Then a thought struck me. “How are Jessi and the Braddocks and the Kishis and everyone doing?”

  “I guess as well as can be expected. Jessi’ll probably have to call that aunt of hers, and her parents will probably come home. I haven’t talked to her yet, though. It was Mrs. Kishi who called me with the
news, and she sounded awful. She was crying over the phone.” (Ooh, I hate it when adults cry.) “She’s worried about Claud, of course, but I think she also feels responsible for Jamie and Becca, since they were in Claudia’s boat. But mostly she just sounded as if she were in shock.

  “Then,” Kristy continued, “I called the Newtons to see if they needed me to come stay with Lucy if they wanted to be at the center. Lucy’s too little to be hanging around there all night, and none of the BSC members are available except me. You’re in New York, Claud and Dawn are, well, wherever, Jessi’s stuck at home, Mal’s keeping her company, and Mary Anne is keeping her father and stepmother company. That leaves me.”

  “How did the Newtons sound?” I asked. “Who did you talk to?”

  “I couldn’t reach them. I guess they’re already at the center.”

  I sighed, thinking of all those distraught families — the Kishis; Dawn’s new family, especially Mary Anne; the Braddocks; the Newtons; and the Ramseys.

  “Oh, I wish Dawn and Mary Anne had been speaking to each other,” I was saying, when a knock sounded at my door. “Hang on a second,” I told Kristy. “Come in!” I called. Dad entered my room. He tapped his watch to remind me of the time. We had theater tickets for eight o’clock that night. “Kristy, I have to go, but I’ll call you back in a little while, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  I hated to hang up. It was like cutting off my last tie with Stoneybrook … and with Claudia.

  “Honey,” said Dad, sitting on my bed, “it’s after seven and you’re not dressed yet. We have to leave in less than half an hour.”

  “I can’t go,” I told my father flatly. “I have to get back to Stoneybrook tonight. It’s really important.” I told him what had happened.