Vanessa took the first shift that night, watching the campfire. While the others slept, she pulled out the sea charts they’d saved from the boat and tried to read them by firelight. It wasn’t easy. Most of the charts looked alike. So far, the closest they’d come to figuring out their location was a triangle of ocean, fifteen hundred miles on each side.
But maybe there was still some kind of answer here—any clue at all about what they should do next.
For the last three days, it had been impossible to think about anything beyond food, fire, and staying alive. The Coast Guard was out looking for them, that much they knew. But it was no guarantee. If they didn’t do everything they could to try to save themselves, they might very well regret it in the end.
Eventually, she put down the charts and picked up Jane’s journal. Before Jane took over the book, Uncle Dexter had filled its pages with entries about his different sailing trips. There were notes about weather and navigation, cloud formations and wildlife—but there didn’t seem to be anything they could really use.
She wasn’t giving up, though. She couldn’t. So she turned to page one and started reading all over again.
As the night wore on, Vanessa’s head drooped, and she jerked awake more than once. Each time, she threw extra wood on the fire and pulled up closer where the light was better. Still, her eyelids seem to get heavier no matter what she did.
The next time she snapped awake, Vanessa sensed right away that something was wrong. Looking down, she realized her lap was empty. Not only that, but something was blazing up extra brightly in the fire.
Jane’s journal! The open pages were in flames, blackened and curling at the edges. A good part of the book had already been destroyed.
Vanessa jumped up, looking around for a stick or anything to pull it out of the fire. The first thing she spotted was Buzz’s fishing spear. She snatched it up, hooked the tip under the journal, and gave the whole thing a fast, hard flick. By the time she’d realized her own mistake, it was too late. The flaming book arced up and out of the fire, then landed on the dry fronds that covered the shelter just a few feet away.
“NO!” Vanessa screamed.
It all went up faster than she would have thought possible. The fronds had been drying in the sun all day and couldn’t have been more flammable. With amazing speed, the fire jumped from one section of roof to the next, until the whole top of the shelter was in flames.
“Jane! Buzz! Carter!” she screamed. “Get out of there!”
She heard Buzz yell as he emerged from the lean-to, dragging a blanket and pillow behind him.
“Jane, wake up!” Carter shouted. Vanessa looked in to see him scooping her into his arms, and they rolled out onto the sand, where Buzz was there to help them get away. The flames themselves were falling like huge drops of fire onto the newly laid floor of the shelter. Vanessa managed to pull out two more blankets before it was too late. Already, the palm mats where they’d been sleeping had begun to burn.
“Stay back!” she screamed. She picked up the two cooking pots on the fly and raced down to the ocean. Buzz was right behind with the two plastic bottles. Carter and Jane were there now, too, tearing off the rain jackets they had been sleeping in and scooping them into the waves for any amount of water the material might allow them to carry back.
Vanessa’s breath seared her lungs as she tore back toward the shelter. The fire illuminated the whole beach now—it was an incredible sight. Large embers from the paper-thin palms floated on the updraft, like red-orange wings.
Even as she threw her pitiful amount of water at the fire, she looked up to see the tree above her starting to burn. Several dead brown fronds lit up just as easily as the ones on the shelter, until the tree itself was like a giant torch. There was nothing they could do about that. She turned and ran back to the shore to refill the pot.
They made trip after trip to the ocean, barely even speaking as they threw whatever water they could onto the blaze. The sand and rock around the shelter seemed to do as much as anything to keep it contained. Mostly, they had no choice but to let the whole thing run its course.
Slowly, the flames died out, and the whole shelter started to smoke and sizzle. The green bamboo had been slower to ignite, and still showed them the basic structure they’d built, like a charred black shadow of its former self. After working so hard to get the lean-to built, the fire had stolen it away from them with stunning swiftness.
For a long time, nobody said a word. Jane and Carter huddled together in a blanket, while Jane sobbed. Clearly, she was heartbroken about the journal. Everything in it was lost. That included all of Dexter’s old notes, Vanessa realized. Whether or not the book had held any secrets for them, they’d never know now.
Already, Buzz was using one of the pots to scoop orange embers into a pile. He poured them together in the fire pit, trying to get a campfire going again. Even now, that was something they had to worry about. Always, always, always.
On top of that, Vanessa noticed, none of the others were even looking at her. It was as if they couldn’t bring themselves to meet her gaze or say a word. And she couldn’t blame them, either. This was all her fault.
After a while, she stumbled away from camp and sank down on the beach, her mind reeling. How could this happen, on top of everything else? What were they doing wrong? What was she doing wrong?
How could she have made such a stupid mistake with the fire, and the shelter they’d worked so hard to build?
There were no answers, of course. It was as if her brain had gone numb. All she could do now was sit on the cold sand in the dark, staring at their burned-out lean-to—and wonder how she was ever going to face the others again.