Had to get away from Dad last night, so I went with Sophie and Brian over to the island. Brian’s getting on my nerves. First he had to ask a zillion questions like was he wearing the right clothes and should he take a jacket, and then the next minute he was telling us how to paddle and how to tie up the dinghy and all that jazz. Next thing he’s going to be telling me is how to breathe.
Brian gets on Sophie’s case, too. She said something about how her mother wouldn’t like hearing me call girls wildlife or babes, and Brian stopped in his tracks and said her mother wasn’t here, so tough beans. Then, to rub it in more, he added, “And which mother are you talking about, anyway?”
Sophie didn’t miss a beat. She picked up a rock and sailed it out across the water. “Look at that!” she said. “Can you throw that far?” I couldn’t tell whether she hadn’t heard him or whether she was ignoring him.
I told him to shut his yap. He said, “I don’t have to if I don’t want to.” What a dolt.
Today Sophie and I escaped without Brian and went back to the island. Sophie’s a lot easier to be around than anyone else on the boat. She’s always taking deep breaths and smiling at the wind and the sun and the waves. She doesn’t get on your case about stuff.
I almost put my foot in it though. We found one little chick stumbling along by itself in the brush and I said, “Hey, it’s an orphan!”
Sophie said, “It is not!” and she scooped it up and took it back to a nest we’d seen.
I wish I hadn’t said the thing about the orphan.
Sophie also went up in the bosun’s chair today. Uncle Dock had been standing around staring up at the light thingy at the top of the mast, wondering how we were going to change it.
“Want me to go up there?” Sophie asked.
“Maybe Brian ought to do it,” he said. “Brian? Go up in that bosun’s chair and change that thing, okay?”
“No way!” Brian said. He looked green. That mast is a tall, tall, spire.
“Cody! How about you?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. Okay, so I wasn’t thrilled about it. I don’t much like heights.
Sophie said, “Listen! I’m the lightest and the smallest. It makes sense for me to go. I’d love to go!”
“I just don’t want you getting hurt, that’s all,” Uncle Dock said.
I guess that meant he didn’t mind if Brian or I got hurt. Geez.
Sophie said, “Hey! Are you going to treat me like that the whole trip? Aren’t you going to let me do anything?”
So Uncle Dock reluctantly let her go up, and you should have seen her! She was laughing and shouting “Whoopeeee!” She scurried up there in no time, and got that bulb changed, and said, “Let me swing up here a bit, okay? It’s brilliant up here!”
“She’d better not get hurt up there,” Uncle Dock said.
Last night we all had to say what we were going to teach everyone else on our voyage. That’s one of Uncle Stew’s big ideas. Uncle Dock is teaching us how to read charts, Brian is teaching points of sail (whatever that is), Uncle Stew is teaching us how to use the sextant thingy, my dad is teaching us radio code or something like that, and I’m teaching juggling. That really ticked some of them off, that I was teaching something “dumb” like juggling. But I don’t care. Juggling is cool.
It got a little weird when Sophie said what she was teaching. She said she was going to teach us Bompie’s stories.
“And how do you know Bompie’s stories?” Brian asked.
“’Cause he told them to me.”
Nobody said a word.
Later, Brian said to me, “What the heck is she talking about? She’s never even met Bompie!”
“Leave her alone,” I said.