Jack cupped his hands around his eyes. Steep cliffs ran along the eastern side of the island, dropping into the sea. On the western side, where Jack had come ashore, a long, spotted lump floated outside the reef. Its heavy body dipped below the surface and came back up again. The whale shark.

Jack sank down on a flat rock. He was on a deserted island with a parrot. A whale shark cruised along the shore, waiting for him to put one toe in the water. His worst imaginings of what could go wrong while traveling with his parents had come true.

But somebody would come and get him. His parents had said “directly.” That was British for “right away.” Jack only hoped they would hire professionals instead of coming up with their own plan. Professionals could chart the course of the lost boat using mathematical formulas. They might even fly over the island with helicopters.

Jack stood up. He just had to survive long enough to get rescued. The most important thing was to find water. He had seen a show where a family adrift in the Pacific had been forced to drink their own urine to survive. That same night he had woken up shouting, “It does not taste okay!”

Jack walked parallel to the eastern cliffs, pausing every few feet. Then, over the breeze rustling through the bamboo, he heard something. A faint splashing sound.

Loco dug his claws in as Jack ducked into the brush. The splashing grew louder. Jack paused to listen again, then pushed aside a long, leafy branch.

A dark hole appeared in the side of the earth below him. Water dribbled over the edges of a large, flat rock. Jack scrambled down to the rock shelf and filled his soda bottle. When he had half a bottle, he drank it down.

He refilled his bottle and gulped until his stomach stuck out.

Loco stomped around in the shallow pool and threw water on his feathers. He shook them out, spraying water in Jack’s face.

“Thank you,” Jack said. “That was very considerate.”

Loco bobbed on his shoulder as Jack trudged back to the other side of the island. Jack wished he were more athletic. Aunt Julia used to tell him to go outside and exercise, but he had spent a lot of his free time reading or playing video games with Zack. Had he known his parents would abandon him at sea, he would have devised a year-round fitness program.

Jack was panting by the time he began the descent back to the beach. Loco hopped up and down on his shoulder. “Bad dog! Bad dog!”

“Why are you complaining?” Jack asked. “You haven’t done anything but ride along.”

Loco scrambled down his arm and marched toward a tree. The parrot poked at something on the ground.

Jack said, “What is that?”

The bird’s beak tore through the skin of a large purple fruit. It wasn’t anything Jack had seen before, but it smelled like mango.

Jack reached down to pick it up. The parrot nipped his hand.

“Ow,” Jack cried.

He looked up into the tree. Heavy fruit hung above him, like purple moons orbiting a leafy sky.

Jack grabbed one and peeled the skin back. It wasn’t like any mango he’d had before. The ones his aunt used to buy were yellow and stringy. But this fruit had that same perfumey taste.

“Hah,” Jack said, juice dribbling down his chin. “We have water and food. Finally, my luck is changing. Good eye, Loco.”

Jack pulled three more pieces of fruit from the tree. He cupped the mangoes and his water bottle in his T-shirt and picked his way down the slope to the beach. Loco followed him, chanting “Bad dog!”

Jack washed his shirt out in the surf and hung it on a tree branch to dry. He might be shipwrecked, but that didn’t mean he had to turn into a slob. He had water and food, and he had done the laundry. What next?

Somewhere to sleep. Somewhere away from rough weather and coconuts. Somewhere not so close to the water, where a certain sneaky whale shark might snatch him right off the sand. Jack had seen killer whales do that to seals on Animal Planet. One moment, a seal frolicked in the waves. The next, it was gone.

Jack scrambled up the rubbly slope to the hole partially shielded by the tree. He pushed aside the branches and saw a cavern the size of a single-car garage. A shaft of light from a hole in the roof lit up the back.

Jack ducked through the opening and stood up. It felt cool and dry inside.

“Perfect,” he said.

He snapped off the overhanging branches that screened the entrance until he could walk in and out without ducking.

Four trips later, Jack had hauled everything from the boat into the cave. He arranged his supplies and stood back to survey his effort.

On one side of the cave, Jack had spread the tarp out on the ground, laid the towels on top, and set a life jacket down as a pillow. He had made a nest for Loco by scrunching up another life jacket and tying it into a circle.

On the other side, Jack had placed two stones a few feet apart and rested a piece of driftwood on top. He tore off the plastic cover of Snorkel Now! Caribbean Edition. The book came with a waterproof slate and a pencil. He set the book and the dive slate on the shelf. Then he lined up his packs of M&M’s, bags of potato chips, and bottles of soda, and put the box of Spider-Man Band-Aids and tubes of Neosporin next to them. Across from the library-kitchen-medical area, he stacked the snorkel fins, masks, the mesh bag, and the rope.

It would be good enough until someone came. Jack could watch the sea right from the entrance of his cave. That seemed strange. His cave. It wasn’t his cave. He wouldn’t be stranded long enough for that.

Loco marched in and perched himself on the driftwood shelf. The parrot didn’t seem that impressed.

“Really?” Jack said. “And you could do better? I even made you a bed. A thank-you would be nice.”

Jack picked up the dive slate and wrote:

Name of castaway: Jack Berenson

Things trying to kill Jack:

parents (as usual)

coconuts

whale shark

He lay down on the tarp, put his hands behind his head, and stared at the ceiling of the cave. His muscles ached. Jack supposed he hadn’t exercised so much in his whole life. His face felt hot from so much time in the sun.

If Diana could see him now, what would she think? She would probably be impressed. When Jack told her the story of what happened, it wouldn’t be necessary to mention anything he hadn’t done exactly right. Like forgetting to put gas on the checklist.

He might become a celebrity. Who else at Henderson Middle School had ever been shipwrecked? If he got interviewed for the news, Jack could show the reporters how he got water and food and set up a shelter. He would be humble and say, “I’m not a hero. I just did what anybody would do.”

Jack sat up and took Snorkel Now! Caribbean Edition to the entrance of the cave. Popping M&M’s in his mouth, he flipped through the pages. The introduction was about snorkel equipment and how it worked. The rest was about sea creatures.

Coral: Looks like a plant but is actually an animal. Touching coral could kill it. Meanwhile, people who accidentally touched fire coral would feel as if their skin had burst into flames.

Stingrays: People should shuffle their feet on the sand so the ray doesn’t get surprised and sting them.

Barracuda: People should not wear shiny jewelry that the barracuda might think is a small fish. That way, the barracuda won’t bite off the body part the jewelry is attached to.

There were a lot of misunderstandings in the ocean.

Whale shark: The whale shark is known as the gentle giant of the sea. It can grow to lengths of forty feet and reach nearly fifteen tons. It is a filter feeder, primarily subsisting on plankton. It is friendly to divers and snorkelers. The country of Belize knows it as “Sapodilla Tom” because of its regular appearances near the Sapodilla Cayes.

Jack dropped the book.

“Um, Loco,” he said, walking into the cave and picking up the dive slate, “we made a slight mistake about whale sharks. It turns out we are not actually being stalked.”

Loco said, “Whatever.”

Jack crossed whale shark off his list of things trying to kill him. “I think that whale shark pushed us to land,” Jack said. “We could have floated right by this island. He didn’t accidentally push us into the channel—he did it on purpose. He was trying to help us. I think.”

The next day, Jack attempted to open coconuts while keeping one eye out for boats and helicopters. He chipped at the coconuts with the sharp end of a bamboo pole. He banged them on rocks. He soaked them in seawater to see if they would soften up. They were indestructible.

The whale shark cruised along Jack’s side of the island, its mouth opening wide to scoop in plankton. Jack decided to call him Tom, like people from Belize did. He figured the whale shark was already used to that name.

Jack took the cooler up to the waterfall and hauled it back half full of water. Loco had gotten sick of all the running around the island and stayed in the cave where it was cool.

Hauling himself up the ridge for the last rescue boat check of the day, Jack realized the climb had gotten harder each time. He knew it was because he hadn’t had proper food. Mangoes, potato chips, and chocolate were not exactly a balanced diet. His home economics teacher would be disgusted. At least he had fruit so he wouldn’t get scurvy.

Tom glided by the channel, looking like he didn’t have a care in the world. Which, Jack supposed, he didn’t.

“Hi, Tom,” Jack shouted. “Sorry for the mix-up earlier. It’s just that you look … and you know, with a name like whale shark … it was easy to think … Well, anyway, sorry about that.”

Tom’s tail fin slapped the surface.

A low hum rumbled in the distance. Jack jerked around to see a boat cruising along the coastline, toward his beach.