"i don't give up easily,
'specially when there's
a real pretty girl involved."
"cute, merridew.
that's real cute."
When the pilot's daughter crash-lands on a desert island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, all she wants to do is survive long eno...
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Perhaps the only good thing about my argument with Jack was that he kept the fire going, and got the rest of the choir to rotate in shifts. The next time I came up the mountain, Maurice said I was fine, I didn't need to worry about "fire duty" anymore, as he called it, on account of Jack thinking I would get bored up there all by myself.
"And besides," he said as he turned to go back up the mountain, "I think he's worried about worsening your arm." Jack's reasoning had "sexism" written all over it, seeing as my arm felt perfectly fine, but at least I had one less thing to worry about.
It also allowed me to spend time with Ralph and Simon, who were busy building shelters. Piggy was supposed to be helping as well, but got distracted by the little kids.
"...but one day I forgot to keep an eye on the cat, and it knocked over the pot of boiling water." Ralph was telling me and Simon a story about his cat while we collected various branches and leaves to create a shelter. "And my mom got a little mad at me because she had to boil it all over again. But it was okay, because we still got to the party on time." I laughed.
"Cats have their own agendas sometimes," I said wisely. "And sometimes we'd stand not to question it."
"Unless they make chaos for fun," Simon mused. "Then maybe we should?" Huh. I was never a pet owner, but that didn't seem like the worst idea.
"Good point, Simon," I replied. Then I saw the shelter and frowned. It leaned to one side, and seemed on the brink of collapsing in on itself. Ralph noticed it too and frowned as well.
"Good gosh," he muttered, rubbing his eyes. "Simon, get in there and maybe we can try and support it from the inside."
"Yes, Ralph," Simon said, grabbing some branches and crawling inside.
"Y/n, could you get more branches?" Ralph asked. I studied the shelter critically.
"I think it needs to be rebuilt," I said thoughtfully. "But I'll get some more just to be sure."
"Thanks, Y/n," Ralph said gratefully, smiling. "You and Simon both, you-you help. You don't just mess around, y'know?" I gave him a sort of ironic smile and headed into the forest.
In a way, we were all sort of messing around, dabbling in things we were kind of young to deal with. I saw Ralph rubbing his eyes in a tired sort of way, as if the problems of the world were starting to wear him down. I felt sort of sorry for him-he was only sixteen, one year older than me.
"Y/n?" I jumped and looked behind me. I relaxed when I saw it was Jack-and then narrowed my eyes once I realized it was Jack.
"What do you want?" I asked, turning away to collect more branches. "Here to snub my father again?"
"No, look, I-walk with me?" he asked.
"No," I said stubbornly, heading back to the shelters. "Leave me alone, Jack."
