Wiggy growled in anger and frustration, "Arrgh! ARRGH! I am going to KILL Belle Dubois! I'm going to kill her! I swear!"

---

 

26. Soap!
 

The next day we all slept late, waking up just before noon. The darkness and quiet of our cave dormitory played a big part, I'm sure. Boogers discovered that many of the emergency foods were self-heating, so we had a hot breakfast of styrofoam eggs, chewy sausage, and leathery toast, washed down with powdered orange juice.

Cakey quickly discovered that the "orange juice" was more palatable if you dumped the powder in your mouth first and chewed, and drank a glass of water as a chaser.

"Tomorrow we can try the oatmeal," Boogers declared.

"Whoo boy!" Donkey sneered.

"At least it's food," Knickers chided. "We won't starve before we're rescued."

And that was the extent of our public discussion of the situation. Given Mirina's phobia for mentioning bad news, we could only say that the adults were safe and sound "somewhere" and that they were no doubt working out our salvation.

After breakfast, Cakey, Ding-Dong, Wiggy, and I went to sit at the cave mouth. Wiggy retrieved her flashlight, and the four of us sat with our backs to the wall. It was still dark outside, as dark as night, even though it was only an hour past midday. The rain still fell heavily.

"It's like a tropical rain," Ding-Dong observed, without the slightest trace of irony.

"Damn it!" Wiggy said. "We can't even see if the ship's still there! I wish this rain would stop!"

"It can't rain forever," Cakey offered.

"No, but it can rain for days," Wiggy replied.

"I wish we could build a fire," Ding-Dong sighed. "It would make it seem more homey."

"In this heat?" Wiggy said. "We'd be roasted and boiled at the same time!"

"I wish I had my luggage," Ding-Dong went on, as if Wiggy hadn't spoken. "There are two things in there that I really want."

A long silence followed, and when at last I realized that Ding-Dong was finished speaking, I demanded, "Ding-Dong! What are the two things?"

"What two things?"

"The two things that you want from your luggage!"

"Oh! Well, the first thing is my book: Journey To The Center Of The Earth. I didn't get to finish it, so please don't tell me how it ends."

"Have no fear," I told her. "I haven't read it."

"Me, neither," Cakey and Wiggy added.

Another silence followed.

"Ding-Dong," I called.

"Who's there?" she replied, with a giggle.

"What's the second thing?"

"What's the second thing who?" she replied, as if it were a knock-knock joke.

I groaned, and to my astonishment, another silence followed.

"Ding-Dong, what's the second thing?" I asked, and to forestall the inevitable question, I added, "I mean, the second thing you want from your luggage?" I was beginning to understand Wiggy's impatience.

"Oh, well... the first thing is my book..."

"We know that!"

"And the second thing is my cell phone."

Cakey rolled her eyes. "Ding-Dong, you're not going to get a signal out here."

"How do you know?"

Wiggy sighed. "Because your cell phone is a regular, plain old cell phone. You have to be a near a tower for it to work. You'd have a chance if you had a satellite phone, but you don't."

"How do you know I don't have a satellite phone?"

Wiggy replied, "Do you know if you have a satellite phone?"

"No, but—"

"Then you don't. If you had a satellite phone, you'd know it."

"Hmmph," Ding-Dong said. "You don't need to be such a smarty-pants, Hedwig Wetherwax. If I had my cell phone, I would give it a try. And until I do, I'm going to keep thinking about it."

"You do that," Wiggy replied.

"I will," Ding-Dong told her, "and if we get rescued because of my cell phone, you will owe me a big apology."

"If we're rescued because of your cell phone," Wiggy declared, "I will kiss your feet and bleach your hair for you."

When she heard that, Ding-Dong's mouth fell open. "Oh, my God! I just thought! Cakey, if we're here long enough, you and I will turn brunette!"

Cakey smiled ruefully.

I said, "I don't think we'd be here that long. The ship must have sent a distress signal, right?"

Wiggy shrugged. "It should have. Nobody's going to find us — or the adults — in this rain, though."

We fell silent once more, this time at the thought of the adults adrift at sea in a little raft.
 

---

 

When we returned to the Great Room (which was how we dubbed the room with the tables and chairs), we found the other girls playing games. Graffy and Grooty were playing backgammon, and the other four were playing a card game. I noticed they weren't using all the cards in the deck, so I asked what they were playing.

"Klaverjassen," Donkey replied, "Do you know how to play?"

"No," I said, "I never heard of it."

"Ah," Donkey observed, as she fixed her gaze pointedly on Boogers, who was sitting across from her. "So you're not the ONLY ONE who doesn't know how to play!"

"Hey!" Boogers protested. "I know how to play!"

"Then why do you ignore my signals?"

"Maybe you don't know how to signal! I said we should play Bonking, but you wouldn't!"

Donkey let out a soft raspberry, and Knickers said, "Let's just play, shall we?"

In the meanwhile, Cakey had begun unloading the bookcase. "Why are you doing that?" I asked her.

"It's a mess, and there's all kinds of papers and things stuffed in here," she replied. "It looks like a lot of it is trash, but they did find the cards and the backgammon set in here."

The four of us sat down and sorted through it all. We found another deck of cards and a tiny chess set, but the rest (apart from the books) was all trash, so we added it to the bag of breakfast remains.

"We'll have to figure out a system of trash disposal," Ding-Dong observed. "We don't want it to smell up the place, but at the same time we don't want to attract bears or raccoons."

"Yes, those tropical bears have a nasty bite," Wiggy observed, tongue in cheek. "Once the weather clears up we'll explore the island. I don't think it's very big."

"Oh, look!" I cried. "Here's one of your two things, Ding-Dong!" With that, I handed her a copy of Jules Verne's Journey To The Center Of The Earth.

"Thank you, Marcie!" she said, and gave me a hug. "Wishes do come true! Now let's see about the cell phone!"
 

---

 

We managed to occupy ourselves the rest of the day. We had lunch, we had a snack, we had dinner. Boogers informed us that there were 24 different kinds of emergency meals (not counting the breakfast varieties), so each of us tried a different one at lunch and dinner. They weren't horrible; no one complained. The meals that weren't self-heating required boiling water. For that, we carried a little propane stove to the entryway and boiled two pots of water for the meals and for tea.

Boogers began, "I figured how many days we can last, just living off this emergency stuff—" but Mirina cut her off.

"Boogers, don't court misfortune! All will be well: we're going to be rescued."

Boogers fell silent, and after a few moments Knickers changed the subject.

Mirina continued with the morning and evening stretching and exercise sessions. Wiggy and I joined in, and lasted for about a quarter of the aerobic part. I got pretty sweaty, and everyone was pretty stinky after the second session.

"We could wash in the rain," Ding-Dong proposed. "There are small bars of castile soap in the pantry. It's good for your skin, and — even if it's not great for your hair, it's mild enough to use as shampoo."

"That's a good idea," Donkey agreed, "but then we'd have to put the same stinky clothes back on."

"We could go naked," Ding-Dong offered with a shrug. "We're all girls here."

Cakey turned a deep red. "I'm sure the sailors will love that when they come to our rescue."

Donkey gave Cakey an impatient look. "Get over yourself, Cakey! We've all seen you in the shower. You have a nice body; you have nothing to be ashamed of!"

Cakey frowned. "I don't like people seeing me naked."

"Me neither," I put in.

"So? You two can keep your clothes on, then!" Donkey replied. "Be stinky if you want!"

"Girls!" Mirina said. "Cakey is right. Help is on the way. There's no need to go native. We'll be rescued as soon as the weather clears."

"Could we just jump fully clothed into the ocean?" I asked. "Then our bodies and clothes will get clean together."

"No," Wiggy said, "we'd be all salty. Our clothes will get stiff, and chafe us."

"We could wash in the ocean with that soap," I offered.

"No," Ding-Dong said. "Soap doesn't work in salty water."

"That's crazy," I scoffed. "How could it not?"

"She's right," Wiggy admitted. "Soap doesn't foam in salty water; you can't clean anything with soap and sea water. If there was some detergent, we could use that, but not soap."

"There's no detergent," Boogers announced. "I did a very thorough inventory."

Ding-Dong put her finger on her chin as a signal that she was thinking. After a few moments, she said, "Here's an idea: it's warm outside, even in the rain, and it's light and dark at the same time."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Wiggy demanded impatiently.

"I mean," Ding-Dong explained patiently, "that it's light enough that we don't need flashlights, but it's dark enough that no one could see us, even through a telescope."

"So?"

"So," Ding-Dong continued, "anyone who wants to get clean can take a bar of soap, go out in the rain, take a shower and wash your clothes. All you have to do is find a clean place to hang your stuff. Once everything's clean, we can carry it back here to dry, or put it back on, if we have privacy issues." At that last phrase, she looked at Cakey, Wiggy, and me.

"That's actually a good idea," Wiggy admitted.

"The are two things to add," Mirina said. "One is, keep together. The other is, keep in sight of the cave. We don't anyone getting lost."

Cakey slid on her butt over to Wiggy and me. "Can we three go together? We can change with our backs to each other, so we'll have privacy and not be alone at the same time."

"Works for me," Wiggy said with a shrug, and the two girls looked to me. I could see from Wiggy's expression that she understood my issue and my danger, and somehow she worked an it'll be fine into the way she raised her left eyebrow.

I nodded. "Works for me, too," I said. "But no peeking!" They laughed, as if I was joking, but I sensed that in some way the three of us were in the same boat.
 

---

 

We each took a bar of soap and stepped into the entryway, where all our shoes stood neatly lined up at the far wall. Outside, the rain was still falling heavily. A few seconds out there would be equal to an hour under a normal shower.

Ding-Dong brought along one of the wool blankets. She folded it into a long, narrow rectangle, which she set on the floor to the far left of the cave opening, at the very edge between wet and dry. "Don't step on this," she warned everyone.

"What's it for?" Cakey asked.

"Here's how it will work," Ding-Dong explained. "First, we walk fully clothed into the rain, so we and our clothes get soaked. Then we come inside, soap up the clothes and take them off. Then we soap up our bodies and heads, walk back into the rain and rinse off. We come back in, work the soap into our clothes, take them outside and rinse them off."

"That's a little complicated," Donkey observed, blinking.

"Just follow me," Ding-Dong replied.

"And the blanket?" Cakey prompted.

"Oh! Once we're all washed, we can sit on that and wash our feet."

Everyone nodded in approval. Mirina said, "I think we'll have to do this in two or three shifts."

"How did you figure all this out?" Wiggy asked Ding-Dong in an amazed tone.

"You're not the only one who's had outdoor adventures, Hedwig Wetherwax," Ding-Dong replied, with a smug smile.

"I have to say, I'm impressed," Wiggy admitted.

"Yeah, way to go, Ding-Dong," I added.

Cakey announced, "Wiggy, Marcie, and I are going to find a more private place to clean up."

"Don't forget to wash your feet before you come back in," Mirina cautioned.

"You know we will," Cakey replied in an irritated tone.

Wiggy, Cakey, and I made our way out of the cave. We were utterly soaked, through and through, the instant we set foot in the rain. Wiggy turned left, following a path that sloped gently upward. Soon we came to a cleared area where there were picnic tables. We gathered under a tree, out of the rain.

"How are we going to work this?" I asked.

"We can do a modified Ding-Dong method," Wiggy proposed. "Let's soap up our clothes now. We can strip to our underwear, work the soap into the clothes, and lay them out on the tables. We're all okay with underwear, right?"

Cakey and I nodded hesitantly.

It seemed like the stupidest thing to do, rub the bar of soap all over our tops and shorts, but we did it, and soon our clothes were lying in the rain on the picnic tables. Cakey and I stood in the shelter of the tree as Wiggy took her shower first. We heard her fumbling quickly and swearing lightly as she soaped. Then, when she stepped into the rain to rinse off, she growled in anger and frustration, "Arrgh! ARRGH! I am going to KILL Belle Dubois! I'm going to kill her! I swear!"

"What's wrong?" Cakey called.

"Can we turn?" I asked.

"Wait!" Wiggy said. A moment later, she added, "Wait." Then at last she said, "Okay, look. Look at my hair!"

We turned, and Wiggy, dressed only in her underwear, pointed to her head. Her hair looked like a wet rat's nest. "Castile soap," she explained. "It's still SOAP! Do you know why you don't wash your hair with soap?"

"No, why?" I asked.

"Oh!" she growled. "Look, Ding-Dong Two, look! This is why! It ties your hair up in knots." Then, relenting a bit, she told me, "Sorry. I'm sorry I called you Ding-Dong... again. I'm just so MAD at her!"

"Yeah, but Wiggy," Cakey said. "We're all going to have hair like that, and it's going to be worse for the girls with really long hair, like Boogers and Mirina."

I pictured Boogers — who was beyond doubt the prettiest of the Amazons — her perfect, shiny hair turned into a single unmanageable knot. "Whoa!" I breathed.

"Besides," Cakey continued, "it's better than being stinky."

That stopped Wiggy cold. "Oh, did I stink?" she asked shyly.

"Do you want to smell mine?" Cakey offered, lifting a tress toward Wiggy.

"No thanks!"

It had been difficult to take off our wet clothes, but it was much worse putting them back on. Instead of sliding smoothly up our legs or down our backs, they clung and bunched and felt icky and wrong. Still, no one complained: we were all doing the same icky thing.

"Man!" Wiggy said, "I don't know if I'll be able to deal with this for days or weeks or months."

"Or years," Cakey threw in. We all glanced at each other.

"So you don't think we'll be rescued soon, either?" Wiggy asked her.

"No, but I think I have that feeling because I read that stupid book for school on the plane..."

"Lord Of The Flies," they said together, disgustedly.

"What a crappy book," Cakey commented.

"A total waste," Wiggy agreed.

"And you know what else?" Cakey asked.

"What?"

"If we *do* get stuck on this island, Mirina will say it's our fault, because we read that stupid book!"

© 2008 by Kaleigh Way

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