The Girl On the Island By Aliyah Curtis

Chapter 10: Building

Chapter 10: Building
I woke up cold, but not as cold as when I didn't have a blanket. My mom and dad were already awake and working.
"Good morning Kalah!" said Dad on the boat. "I caught a salmon if you want some!" I turned around and saw a piece of salmon on a wood plank. It was fresh and warm, and so was the fire. I saw Mom come out from the woods with some more firewood and threw it into the blazing flame. I scooched forward with my blanket around me and grabbed my salmon. When I ate it it was delicious. Last night we ate tuna, it was good, but not as good as warm salmon.
"Enjoying your breakfast?" asked Mom.
"More than you can imagine!" I replied, putting more salmon in my mouth. "How did you learn to make such good food?"
"We've had a lot of practice." Said Dad, answering my question.
"Ready to get to work?" mom asked with a smile.
"Sure!" I replied, also smiling. "What will we do first?" Mom brought me to the boat and we went inside. We stepped down the steps, attempting to not slip on the sea weed, and she bent down near a small reddish box. It was rusty from all the water but it looked usable. She opened the box and inside were fish hooks, lots of fish hooks. Together, we walked back up the steps out of the wet and humid boat, and dumped all the stuff inside the box onto the sand.
"We will use these as sewing needles," she explained, as she grabbed a rock or two. She set one mossy rock on the sand, put a hook on the rock, and with the other stone, she smashed the hook. Hitting it, and hitting it until it was long, straight, and pointiy. Then, she lifted up the hook, and said, "This is the needle we will use to sew the sail."
"What will we use as the thread?" I asked, confused. I didn't understand what she was doing.
"We will use the fishing line," she clarified in a soothing voice. Oh, ya.... I knew that. Opening the rusty box once more she pulled out a ball of fishing line. It was tangled and tied up in all kinds of knots.
"You're job," she said, handing me the tangled up ball of string, "is untangling this." She looked at me with a smile. I didn't want to say no....
I struggled with the string, but I knew many different types of knots so I didn't struggle as much as I thought that I was going too. After about 15 minutes, I had untangled the knot and handed it to my mom. "Here you go," I said as she examined the string.
"I have to say, you did that fast!" She said, as she strung the fishing line through the needle.
"Thank you," I said, trying to be humble. "Dad! Look what I did?! I untangled this ball of fishing line! Didn't I do a good job?" Well, kind of humble.
"Thats cool!" Dad yelled from the top of the boat. I guess I just wanted to show them that I was cool. I wanted to show them that I was one of the cool kids and that I could do cool and amazing things. I wanted to impress them so they would be proud of me, I mean, I haven't known them all my life! Well for eight years anyway. I just thought that I should show them what I'm like. I sat up from my quote, quote "Bed" and took off my blanket/sail, and gave it to Mom. I felt a cold woosh of air on my skin, and the warmth that was on me before disappeared. I stood up, walking onto the beach, out of the giant shadow made by the tall trees of the forest, and the giant mountain above. In the shadow it was cold and breezy, but as I entered the bright, sunny beach, I felt warmth, and my eyes had to adjust to the light, even though I had already been in the sun today. I sighed as I looked out to the ocean. I turned back around and looked back at my mom. Her beautiful golden hair was flying in the wind as she sewed the sail. The sail looked a little patchy but it was going to work.
"Hey!" Dad yelled from the top of the boat, "I need some help pulling up the anchor! That's what caused the big hole over here! If we want to patch it up, we need to lift the anchor first!"
"Ok!" I yelled back, as I headed over to the boat. I slowly walked over to the big and rusty anchor.
"What should I do?" I yelled to my dad. It was pretty hard to hear him or him hear me when the ocean waves were so loud, and I had to cover my face with my hand so the sun wouldn't blind me. Of course it wouldn't but it felt like it.
"Just push it up as high as you can!" He yelled, so I did.
"Johna! Let her do something else! Kalah could get hurt!"
"Oh ya, good point." My dad calmly said to himself. "Change of plans, Kalah, come up here,"
Mom scoffed. "What is he doing now?" I climbed up the ladder and stepped over the whole that led to the bottom of the boat. It was high tide so it had some water in it. And since it was high tide, it would be easier to lift the old, rusty anchor.
The water had come up and the whole anchor was under water. Dad and I grabbed the scratchy rope, and it was covered in sea water so it hurt both of our hands.
"Pull!" Dad yelled, as me and him pulled at the rope. It hurt my hands to pull at it, because the friction of my hands on the rope felt like fire! "Pull!" Dad yelled again, and I did. We pulled as hard as we could but it was slightly harder, with the waves pushing the anchor toward the sea, and gravity pulling it down, and us trying to pull it up. I felt the sweat running down my face, like a small stream. The anchor was getting closer and closer until it reached the top. When me and Dad saw the tip of it over the edge of the boat, me and him slowly walked toward it, pulling the rope as we walked forward. When we got to the edge of the boat, we quickly grabbed the loop of rusty old metal that was at the top of the anchor. We pulled it up, and onto the boat deck. It hit the deck floor with a thunk, then we stood there for a second, staring at it. Dad stayed in the same spot but I walked over to the edge of the boat in search of a towel. My face was very sweaty and I needed something to wipe it off. I found a torn piece of the sail on the ground and wiped the sweat off my face. The wind blew in my face, cooling it off. Then, I heard my dad scream!
"Kalah!" I heard him say as I turned around. "Help!" I ran over to him and tried to get him out. The anchor had broken through the ground and he fell in with it! The bottom of the boat was filling with water and I needed to get him out quick before he drowned!
"My arm!" he said, "It's stuck under the anchor!" quickly, using every ounce of my strength, I grabbed the anchor and pulled! I tugged at it with both hands, sweat again running down my face. I squinted using all my might! My whole body felt tense and my muscles hurt! I opened my eyes and saw my dad, exiting the horrid whole in the boat. He pushed himself onto the edge of the hole and got onto the deck. He quickly came over to me and we pulled the anchor onto the strongest part of the deck, then me and my dad, scoured back to the ladder, and jumped onto the sand. I thought that Dad's arm was going to be hurt, but he was ok. He just got it a little bruised.
"Oh my-" Mom said gasping, as she quickly ran to us. "What happened?"
"I just got a little bruised is all." Dad replied, sighing.
"Well, let me see," Mom said as she grabbed his arm.
"It's been worse," Dad said, "ouch!"
"That is true," Mom replied.
"Remember that one time when I was on top of that really tall oak tree and I fell off and sprained my wrist?" Dad said with a smile on his face.
"Yes," Mom said, also laughing, "you couldn't go fishing for two weeks!" They laughed and I smiled. My aunt and uncle don't usually tell me stories, so I'm not used to it, but I liked it. It was nice.
"Let's rap up your arm with some leftover sail pieces," Mom said, as she brought Dad over to the shade. We sat down on the leaf rugs that we made to sleep on and Mom rapped up his arm. She took the red rusty tool box that she had been collecting things in and she took out a plant.
"When I was in the forest, I found some chickweed, a plant that can heal sore muscles, scrapes, and wounds." She said, and she took the plant and crushed it up with some rocks, then, she mixed it up with water and applied it on the rap. She put the rap over Dad's arm and he sighed with relief.
"Hey Mom," I asked, "can you tell me more stories of you guys on the island?" I was really curious.
"Ok," Mom replied with a chuckle. Dad also laughed, as he sat up.
"I have to work on the boat some more," he said, "It won't fix itself."
"Yes," Mom chimed in, "But your wound needs to be fixed first. Here, I'll fix the boat some more while you two work on the sail." She handed me the sail and needle and walked over to the boat.
"I like to sew back at home," I said, trying to reassure Dad into knowing that I know what I'm doing. "And I've been working on a blanket so I know how to do it pretty well,"
"So I guess you're a pro at it," he replied to me.
"Yep!" I said smiling. Well, that wasn't all true. I mean, I just started sewing the blanket about two weeks ago, and I'm only about 20% into finishing it. But at least I had some experience. I grabbed the sail with one hand, and with the other, held the sewing needle, sewing the two pieces of cloth together. It was kinda satisfying.
"So you wanted to hear a story?" Dad asked me. I smiled and turned toward him. "Ok, I have a good story for you," he said, as he came closer. "My story begins around the time that we got stranded here," He began, "I told your mother that it might be a good idea to set up camp on the beach, closer to fish and food, away from the forest and predators, and if someone was out on the water, they would see us, it seemed like a good idea right?" I nodded. I mean, what could go wrong? How was camping on the beach a bad thing? Well I'm about to find out.
"Well, after we set up camp on the beach, we started to get cold so your mother volunteered to go get some leaves for blankets, or you know, anything that she could find that could keep us warm. After she went into the forest, I forgot to tell her that on this island there are leaves that look like giant maple leaves, but they aren't. They're actually poisonous. I left the camp sight and into the forest looking for her but I couldn't find her for like forty five minutes," I had been listening and not sewing so I quickly started sewing again. "I eventually found her and she said that she hadn't encountered any maple-like leaves and was ok."
"Well that's good," I said.
"Ya, so we were all chill on the way back, talking about how we'd get back to our home in california, taking our time, but we shouldn't have."
"Why?" I said. Even though I said why I didn't mean it because I think I know why. I'll give you a hint, it happened to me.
"Well," he went on, "when we got back to our camp, there was no camp."
"Why?" I said again, slightly in a whisper.
"Because, we took our sweet time and the tide had come up and washed away all our stuff. The fishing supplies, our food, everything." he paused. "We had to recreate our beds, fishing supplies, and food all from the wilderness, and not our boat, which we had lost." I had again paused my sewing and Mom noticed it.
"Kalah honey," she said from the boat, "have you finished sewing the sail?" I had dozed off and just realized she was talking to me.
"Oh! Yes!" I yelled back as I finished up the patch of cloth I was sewing. I stood up folding the sail, then ran over to the boat. I handed up the sail to my mom then she grabbed it and tied it to a rope then tied the rope to the pole. She made a whole bunch of weird knots but then when she pulled the last one, the whole sail came up, and blew in the wind very gracefully.
"Cool!" I said, "What kind of knot is this?" she looked at me with a very happy smile.
"Oh no." Dad said from the ground. He looked at me as if he was saying, what have you gotten yourself into.
"Well," Mom began, "the knot I used to tie the sail to the rope was an "overhand knot", usually used to make a knot on a string, when I was a kid, I used to use it to use it to make friendship bracelets with my friends, but I tweaked it a little so I can tie it to cloth. But the knot that I used to tie it to the pole was a "fisherman's bend", which was for tying things to poles. If you want I can show you how to do it!" She looked as if she hadn't talked about knots in a bazillion years, and she was finally talking about it. I didn't want to seem rude and I was about to say "sure" when I saw Dad looking at me. His face looked worried, concerned, and kinda like a videogame character. He was trying to mouth something but all that I could make out was "No! Put don't! You mom will not sto talk til yu now ow to" I know that the words that I could make out weren't words, but I understood perfectly what he was saying.
"Actually Mom, I understand your very good at knots," I looked over at Dad and he looked back, mouthing to me what I should say. "But you don't have to teeth me. I mean teach me." I looked back at Dad and then Mom saw me do it. She didn't know that I was looking at him.
"What are you looking at?" She asked. I quickly said the first thing that came to my head.
"I think I saw a cool-cool bird!" She looked at me with suspicion.
"Ok?"
"Anyway, maybe you can teach me later?" Mom sighed and then smiled.
"Ok." Then, she went back to working on the boat. Dad gave me a thumbs up as if that's exactly what he would have said. I kinda felt bad not letting Mom teach me but Dad had probably known a thing or two.
We worked on the boat for a couple more hours, then we ate, then we worked on the boat some more, then we went to sleep.