When you bump into two menacing hit men your first thought is to scream and run, if they gag you, you try to undo it with your mouth and scream or even (if possible) scream through it. If they tie you up, you try to scramble away or cut the ropes with some kind of device you just happen to have in your back pocket, but if the worst comes to the worst you scream, pop their eardrums and then run.
But no one has thought of what to do when they gag you, put you in a sack and strand you on a desert island apart from contact help, but what if this island isn't charted on any map. Or any normal map. This is pretty much all useless information for you but for Charlie and me, not so much.
Ok so basically what happened was that we got attacked by two really large men in dark suits (as you would expect them to be) that carried guns, daggers and other deadly devices, as any normal suits do. The next thing we know we're scrambling out of our sacks and staring into what seemed like an endless collection of trees, bushes, sand and bugs. Everything was completely still until Charlie turned to me and said "I'm scared"It's an obvious thing to hear from a ten year old, but from my younger brother it was hardly ever the case, he had never been afraid of anything in his life. Until now.
So, you are probably wondering why we were kidnapped in the first place, well we are not exactly regular kids, both our parents died in a car crash last week and we were kidnapped at their funeral (ok it's not the most original death story but whatever) and our dad was the head of a major recording studio, so we are kind of in high demand as his children. But we still had no idea why they sent us to a deserted island.
"There's nothing to be afraid of yet." I replied to his comment. "nothing to be afraid of? What about starving to death? Dying of dehydration? Being attacked by rabid animals or stung by scorpions, I wouldn't call that nothing!" "Oh my goodness you're turning into me!" I said trying to lighten the mood but Charlie just stared at me blankly and said "this is no time for jokes! We are on a random island somewhere but we have no idea where!" "Ok, ok, just wait, breathe and relax. We'll figure something out" at that moment we heard a screech and a thump. "ARGHH!!! THERE ARE KILLERS ON THE LOOSE AND THEY'RE COMING FOR US!" "Come on Charlie, be rational! How would they know we are here? Plus it might not be killers, let's explore and see what happened, it could just be an elephant giving birth or something" So it was settled, we decided to venture out into the centre of the island and find the source of the mysterious noises.
After we had been walking for at least an hour we spotted a bird with golden feathers as bright as the sun and a beak as long as a grown man's arm sprawling on the ground with an arrow in its chest. "Someone must have shot that bird!" Charlie said "oh really? Thanks for the news flash captain obvious!" I hated using sarcasm, it was the lowest form of wit, but at this point I didn't care about keeping a reputation, all I cared about was finding help and getting back home. "so, who shot it?" Charlie asked ignoring my remarks "I don't know but whoever did is probably going to look for it, unless they don't know they shot it" "so, what do we do?" We wait until we see someone and if we do hope that they'll help us"
We waited and waited and waited but no one came. It was getting dark and we were both tired so we decided to abandon the search and come back the next day. Just as we got up we heard voices. "I don't care, we're never going to get out so we might as well just create a hut or something" "with what genius? We had it all back home and now we're here looking in bushes for our food and we have no more clean water! How long will it be before we wither and die?" "We won't wither and die, there has to be plenty more water somewhere!" "wait a minute!" "what? I don't have time for your complaints" "Oh busy are you, Riley? Between the trees and the bushes and oh yeah It must be the flies keeping you! Did the scorpions have lunch with you yet, or is that tomorrow?" "Georgie, this is no time to be the class clown! What did you want to show me?"
We could hear footsteps coming towards us and the bush we were hiding behind suddenly parted and we were staring at two children in their early teens. The boy was wearing torn jeans and a shirt that was so muddy you couldn't even tell what colour it was supposed to be.The girl was wearing a floral dress down to her knees and the rest of her legs were covered by leopard skin patterned leggings. "who are you?" She said her voice quivering. "I'm Charlie Pine" Charlie said eager to meet two english speaking, civilized human beings.
"What about you?" She continued turning her head in my direction. "I'm Shelby Pine" I said meekly, I've never liked new people and now regarding the whole kidnapping thing I wasn't sure about how I felt about people in general. "Nice! I'm Georgie and this is my brother Riley" Georgie said pointing towards her brother casually like she had only been stuck with him an hour and she was already sick of him. "wait, you guys are also siblings? How did you end up here?" Charlie asked, ready to interrogate. "our mum worked at BMD TV studios but she died last week in a fire and we were kidnapped on her funeral." Riley explained "What about your dad?" I asked trying to fit the pieces of this very strange yet intriguing puzzle together. "Our dad died when we were really young, he worked in the military." "Ok this is really creepy!" Charlie said "How did you get here?" Georgie asked us, she was obviously interested in Charlie's reaction.
We told her our story and she and her brother were nodding at points they could relate to and their eyes lit up when they recognized details. "So you think there's some connection between our disappearances?" Riley said when we finished. "maybe, I mean I hardly think it's a coincidence that our stories are pretty much the same" Charlie answered his face filled with excitement at the thought of many more children with the same problems as them, children they could help. "But why would the kidnappers wait until our parents are dead, surely if they kidnapped us when they were alive they could have at least held us hostage then let us go when our parents paid a ransom" I said trying to get my brain to work in the heat.
"That's what we thought, but then we realized that afterwards any normal child would tell their parent what the kidnapper looked like and the parent would go to the police" Georgie stated "yeah, so?" "so, the kidnapper would be hunted down, whereas if there is no parent to go to then they can never be caught, plus no one would believe a kid if they went up to a policeman and said I've been kidnapped if there wasn't any proof." She explained "But what would they get out of the kidnap? They couldn't get money, could they?" Riley said contradicting their own point. "Oh, I did not think of that." His sister said, looking defeated. "So why would they strand us here? Wouldn't they want us dead too?" And ideas and theories just kept spurting out until our minds were completely worn out. "Ok, let's call it a night" Georgie said "maybe if we sleep on it something will come to us." So we all lay down in the sand and prepared ourselves for a cold, restless night.
