Stranded on Kailo Island: An English Project

Stranded on Kailo Island: A Short Story

4/9/15
English 10
Island Narrative

Stranded on Kailo Island: A Short Story

Day 1 & 2

April 20th, 2014, 2:00am
    What has happened is like something out of a crappy tv show.  On the way to Sydney, Australia to visit the opera house over April vacation, the plane I was on went down.  I suppose I can thank my parents for letting me go to Australia. 
    It all started with some rough turbulence on the plane.  The pilot called one of the stewardesses into the cabin over the intercom and a few minutes later she came back out pale as a sheet.  She talked to the other stewardess and they announced that we should fasten our seat belts because the turbulence was sort of intense.  The plane moved suddenly and we were tossed out of our seats violently.  I smelled someone puking in a seat near me.  A few minutes later the lights turned off and someone screamed to look out the window.  Some of us did just that and I'm sure the color drained out of my face when I saw that one of the wings was coming off.  I'm still not sure how it happened, but the wing opposite of where I was sitting was bending and bending until it snapped- creating a large hole as it flew off. 
    The sound of whooshing air was deafening, although I'm sure everyone was either screaming, crying, or a mixture of the two.  Dozens of bodies were ripped from their seats and sucked out of the hole.  I grabbed the seat in front of me and seconds later the plane hit water.  I was jolted forward and smashed my face into the seat in front of me, breaking my nose.  I cursed and began fumbling with my seatbelt to get it open.  After what seemed like hours of prying at the belt, I got it unbuckled and stumbled out of my seat.  At this point, the plane had taken in a foot of water and the level kept rising by the second.  The floor was at an angle, so I grabbed a seat on either side of me and climbed until I was out of the hole and into the water.  I looked out into the dark and couldn't make out anything more than a couple years away.  However, I was surrounded by a lot of floating plane pieces, bodies, and fire on the water. 
    "Hey!" I heard someone yell from my left. I turned and saw the shape of a person floating on a yellow raft waving his arms at me a dozen yards away.  My eyes widened and I tried to swim over to the raft.  My clunky black boots were weighing me down, so I kicked them off and let them sink down in the water.  Well, there goes one hundred bucks.  I awkwardly swam my way over to the raft.  The boy pulled me into the raft and I saw another person in the raft; a girl about my age who was ghostly pale.  I looked down at my clothes and noticed my gray shirt was intact, and miraculously, as were my glasses.  However my navy jeans were ripped up one of the legs to the knee.  As I tried to catch my breath, the girl retched over the side of the raft.  I grimaced and turned to the guy who was shaking slightly.
    "Let's try to get away from that," I said breathlessly, pointing to the flames and sinking shrapnel to the right of us.  He nodded silently and began to use his hands to paddle in the opposite direction.  I followed suit.  I studied him in the light of the flames as we drifted.  He had sandy brown hair and an average build.  He was dressed in a navy blue tee shirt and a pair of khakis held up by a black belt with a gold buckle. On his head was a slightly singed baseball hat.  I looked back at the vomiting girl and studied her as well.  Like myself, she had dyed black hair, but she was dressed in a black sweatshirt and a pair of dark red jeans.
    "So, who are you?" asked Blue Shirt.  I looked over at him and raised my eyebrows.
    "Sophie.  Sophie Lee.  And you?" I replied, looking back towards the water.
    "Austin Friend," he said shortly.  "I think she said her name was something Bennett," he said, gesturing to the girl. "I'm not sure.  I think she swallowed a bit of seawater, she keeps vomiting, but nothing is coming out now.  It's just a lot of retching."
    "She's probably dehydrated then.  We should get her some freshwater soon," I said, leaning against the edge of the raft.  I closed my eyes and shook my head.  "This is going to take forever to find land," I said frustratedly, opening my eyes again.
    "We should at least try," Austin muttered, pressing his lips into a thin line.  "What happened to your nose?" he asked slowly.
    "I smashed it into a seat when the plane hit the water.  I think it's broken or something," I replied, wiping a bit of blood from my face and tilting my head back to try to stop the bleeding.  There goes my strait nose.
    "Help!  Anyone?!  Please!" I jumped slightly in the raft, looking around to find the source of the hoarse voice. 
    "There!" Austin pointed to our left at the shape of a person waving one of their arms in the air two dozen yards away.  "Hey!  Over here!" yelled Austin, trying to paddle the raft closer to the person.  They slowly began to move towards us in the dark water.  As they came closer I saw that they were pulling another person with them.  As they got to the edge of the raft, Austin pulled them in one at a time.  The person pulling the other was a small girl, about my own age.  She had puffy eyes that suggested that she'd been crying.  I can't blame her.  The girl had long dark hair and wore a purple long sleeved tee shirt, light shorts, and had a single sock on her right foot.  The person who she had been supporting in the water was a teenage boy.  The boy appeared to be either dead or unconscious.  I hoped for the latter.  His left arm was a gruesome sight.  His entire upper arm was burnt, probably second degree.  Even through the darkness, I could tell that his face was ghostly pale.  
    "Is he..." Austin asked, looking to the boy. 
    "No, no.  He passed out in the water while we were swimming away from the wreckage.  He got burned when he surfaced in the water after the plane went down," muttered the girl, her voice hoarse.  We were all quiet for a few minutes.  I was the one to break the silence.
    "We are trying to get as far away from the wreck as we can.  Maybe then we can sleep and look for land in the morning," I told the girl as the wreck grew father away behind us. 
    "Let's paddle then," said the girl lowly, reaching over the side of the raft and beginning to paddle with her hands.  Austin and I did the same.  With the combination of the minimal paddling and the water moving in our favor, we thankfully drifted away from the wreckage.  Slowly.  It'd take hours to get a safe distance away.  We were all silent, continuing to paddle.  The girl sniffled and I looked over to see her wiping her eyes.  
    "So, who are you?" I asked, the question coming out more bluntly than I'd intended.  She sighed.
    "Rachal Peatman," she replied, looking forwards.
    "I'm Sophie.  He's Austin.  We aren't positive on her name, but we're pretty sure she drank a fair amount of sea water.  She kept barfing," I wrinkled my nose and nodded my head at the Bennett girl, who was now groaning and half asleep.  For the next few hours, we continued to paddle.