What Friends Are For

A Safe Place Indeed

"Beach house, sweet beach house." Lily muttered as Trevor helped her out of the boat.

"If memory serves, you love this place." Trevor said to her in a teasing and slightly confused tone of voice.

"I do Trev. Or at least I did. Last time I was here I was five."

"So explore a little. Play around with your friends. You're still a kid. I'll activate the alarm system for safety."

"You put in an alarm system? Do you know how that could affect the water life?"

"It was already installed when I was a kid. And it's a silent alarm. The lights will flash three times if the sonar picks up a boat or a submarine. Don't worry so much sis."

"Fish!" Sunny shouted in an excited whisper. Everyone turned to see a turtle sunning itself on a rock. The turtle looked at them, gave them what they could have sworn was a nod, then walked into the ocean. Sunny and Lily waved goodbye.

"I'll activate the alarm, you just enjoy this place, Lily. Show your friends around, fish for dinner, go swimming in the bay, have fun. I'll be in the cabin if you need me."

"Why aren't you going to have fun?" Lily asked, unable to get out of her Defensive mode.

"Because I assigned some Volunteers to a special mission and I told them if they needed me to contact me over radio." There was a noticeable twitch over his right eye. To everyone's surprise though, Lily ignored it and everyone followed suit, a term which here means they also said nothing about this twitchy eye.

"Alright then. We'll be somewhere on the island if you need us. Two beeps for dinner like always?"

"That's how we were raised. It's really nice to be around you Lily." Trevor gave her a quick hug then went into a cabin carved out of rock, with much resemblance to that of a cave.

"He's lying about the volunteers. Whether it's the mission or needing to be in radio contact with them, I don't know. But when his right eye twitches, I know there's something he isn't telling me." Lily said as soon as he was out of earshot.

"So he could be telling you the truth?"

"He could be telling me part of the truth. He isn't telling me everything though. He's always been a wonderful brother, but a terrible liar."

"Want to go swimming?" Sunny asked curiously to get everyone's minds off the secrets that still surrounded them.

"I want to get to the truth." Lily said in exasperation.

"I would like to invent something personally." Violet said as she began to tie her hair up in a ribbon.

"Researching this island sounds like a good idea, but it seems like I could get lost without a map." Duncan said.

"This would be perfect for some couplets, I haven't found any time to write some in a long while." Isadora admitted.

"I could make a map of this place." Quigley said, although his attention seemed diverted.

"No books!" Sunny said, almost happily. Lily seemed to understand.

"You wanted to learn how to swim, didn't you, Sunny?"