Hard Times

III

Yasmina entires the living room where everyone waited patiently. They all looked at her worriedly.

"Why's everyone staring at me like that?" She asks rubbing her arm uncomfortably.

"You've just not really been yourself recently is all, and we wanted to make sure that you were okay." Sammy answers.

She looks between her friends who all nodded. Her eyes fell to an awestricken Kenji, who just stared at her open-mouthed.

"What's his problem?" Yaz asked, nervously. She hates unnecessary attention, and the way he was staring made her incredibly nervous.

"Kenji." Brooklyn waved her hands in his face. "H-Huh?" He slowly turned his attention to Brooklyn who was next to him.

"Are you good?" She asked raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah I'm fine." He clears his throat, embarrassed.

Mae stood up "Have a seat, Yaz" she says to her pointing the spot to the left of Darius. She sat next to him, she caught eye contact with Kenji as she sat.

Her checks heating up as she tried to hide it.

"How on earth did you kids wind up out here?" She questioned, her Australian accent took Yaz by surprise.

Until now she hadn't heard Mae speak.

"Long story short we were at the adventure camp, Camp Cretaceous when this dinosaur broke out causing the camp to shut down, while they were evacuating we were lost and so we were stranded for six months." Darius began.

"We found a Yacht and we're taking it to Costa Rica when the mosasaurus crashed our boat and we washed up here." Sammy continued.

She raised an eyebrow at them.

"You don't have to believe us, but it's true. We survived out there all on our own." Ben informed her, pridefully.

"It's a crazy story but I do believe you. It's unfortunate." She says.

"You don't happen to have a phone do you or just any way of contacting the outside world?" Brooklyn asked.

"No. Sorry, whole islands off gird, everything's solar paneled." She says regretfully.

Yaz sucks in one shaky breath before exhaling deeply.

"Dr. Turner, we have a question, if you don't mind." Ben says.

"Please, call me Mae." She says.

"Okay, why do you have an entire clothing store in your back room?" Ben asks.

"Oh that." She starts solemnly. "This entire island was originally set up to be an amusement park. Much like Camp Cretaceous, me and my Husband planned on setting it up. We had a vision, everything would've been perfect." Her voice got shaky.

"This would've been kind of like a clothing shop. But before we could even completely set the place up, my husband one day suddenly stopped breathing. I had to call somebody to take his body away. It turns out his lungs were failing and no one  ever noticed til it was too late." She blinked away a tear.

The group of teens stared back taking in the new knowledge.

"I'm-we're sorry to hear that." Darius said softly .

"It's alright It was a couple of years ago, maybe more. I stayed here and never left. I just can't. It's the last place he was alive in." She states before walking toward the hall.

"I'm gonna go whip up some sandwiches, I'll be back." She says lowly.

They sat there in silence. Brooklyn stood up, "guys she could be lying what if there's something important that she's not telling us about and she's just trying to keep us here?"