"We don't know," Mirina countered weakly.

"This is like your mystery man," Grooty told her, and Mirina's cheeks reddened. "You find a coat and boots, and woo! a scary bad man is on the island! He's coming to get you!"

---

 

33. A Visit From The Tooth Fairy
 

Nobody could sleep late the next day, in spite of having the morning "off." Out came the bathing suits, the sunblock, the beach towels, and the sunglasses.

"All that we're missing are beach boys," Cakey commented.

Graffy added, "Cute little waiter-guys to bring us drinks," and Grooty continued, "and to rub sunblock on our backs and legs!"

Cakey lowered her voice so Mirina couldn't overhear. "Maybe we could get Mirina's mystery man to do it."

"Oh, Cakey!" Knickers cautioned. "He might be real! He might be dangerous!"

"Danger is my middle name," Cakey quipped.

Donkey said, "Katrien Danger Keese. It does have a ring to it."

"Seriously, girls," Knickers said, "Until we know we're the only ones here, we should be careful."

Cakey scoffed. "There is no man! It's only a pair of boots and a coat! There's no man!"

I turned to Wiggy, who was lying on her stomach. Squinting into the sun, she told me, "They can go on like this for days... and they probably will."

"In that case," I replied, "I'm going in the water."

The cove was shallow for a long way before it dropped off. As I waded out in the knee-depth water, I looked off to the end of the cove, where Graffy and Grooty were... treading water, or whatever they were doing. They weren't swimming. Their tiny blonde heads bobbed in the distance. How could they manage it? They were hanging out, chatting, with who knows how many feet of water below them. I'd never seen anyone so at ease in the water! Staying afloat is a constant effort for me; for those two it seems completely unconscious... as easy and simple as sitting in a chair.

As I watched, the twins turned and swam out of sight.

"I think they went to see what state the ship is in," Ding-Dong told me.

"What are you doing?" I asked her. She was kneeling in the water, sometimes on hands and knees. If she wasn't in the water, I'd think she was searching for a dropped contact lens.

"I'm looking for coral," she said. "I haven't found any though. You'd think with a reef all around, there'd be bits and pieces everywhere. There are a lot of pretty shells, but I'm leaving them where I find them."

"Maybe you need to look closer to the reef," I said. "If they're heavy, they're just going to drop straight down, right?"

"I guess," she agreed, straightening up. "Still, it helps pass the time."

I sat in the shallow water and splashed water on myself. "Can you imagine being able to swim the way Graffy and Grooty do?" I asked. "I can't believe they just go like that, not caring how deep it is. I'd be so afraid of sinking! Before they took off, the two of them were out there, just talking! Like they were sitting at a table on dry land — they didn't give a thought to how much ocean there is beneath them!"

"Yeah," Ding-Dong agreed. "They are pretty amazing. If you ask them, they could probably teach you while we're here. It will help pass the time, and it will make a great story after. You can tell people, Oh, yes, I learned how to swim when I was marooned on a desert island."

"With a pack of Amazons," I added. "Do you think this is this a desert island?"

"Oh, sure! Absolutely!" Ding-Dong answered. "If it isn't, it will be when I tell it!"

I laughed.

"Do you have any brothers or sisters?" Ding-Dong asked me.

"No. You?"

"No. You know, I feel like you could be my sister. I think you feel that way too."

"I do," I told her.

"Wiggy is your best friend, but I'm your sister," she said.

"Yeah," I agreed. "I like that."

Ding-Dong smiled, and dug her hand into the soft sand. "Ooh!" she said, startled. "What did I just find?" She felt her way around, wiggling her fingers, feeling out the edges of... whatever it was. Then she pulled it up. It appeared to be some kind of shell. She brushed it off at first, then washed the sand off in the water. Blinking in the sunlight, she studied the piece as she hobbled on her knees toward me. "Look at this," she said. "What do you think it is?"

"Some funny kind of shell," I guessed.

"What kind of shell could it be?" she wondered. It was triangular, a little less than an inch long, and very rough and irregular at the bottom. "I don't think it's a shell," she told me. "There's no place for something to live inside it." She dropped the thing in my hand, and shoved her hands back under the soft, wet sand. I turned it over and studied it from every side.

"For some reason it makes me think of dinosaurs," I said. "Maybe it's a dinosaur tooth."

Ding-Dong gave a little cry of excitement. "Hey, there's a whole bunch of them! Look!" She pulled up more of the triangular shapes. Some were smaller, but none where bigger than the first one she'd found. Their color varied: some were bone white, others gray, and some had yellow or golden patches encrusted on them. The rough base of the triangle was bigger on some, and some of the triangles had a slight curve.

"These aren't teeth," Ding-Dong said. "I think they're scales."

"Scales?" I repeated. "What kind of animal would have scales like that?"

"A turtle— a tortoise! A sea-tortoise. I think these are scales that fell off its, uh, shell!"

"No," I said.

Wiggy was too far away to hear what we were saying, but she must have known we were talking. She rolled on her back and sat up. Since she wasn't wearing her glasses, she squinted at me and Ding-Dong. Then she stood up and came splashing over, stooping a bit because she couldn't see.

"What are you girls arguing about?"

"We're not arguing," I said.

"I found all these," Ding-Dong said, proudly spreading some of her prizes across Wiggy's palm. "Marcie thinks they're dinosaur teeth." Wiggy picked one up and held it close to her eyes as Ding-Dong continued, "But *I* say they're tortoise scales. Sea-tortoise scales."

Wiggy snorted dismissively.

"Be nice, Wiggy," I cautioned.

"What are they?" Ding-Dong asked. "Do you know what they are?"

Wiggy bit her lip and fought off the smirk that was trying to come over her face. She held a few of the other samples very close to her eyes and looked them over carefully. "You can't guess what these are?" she asked. "It should be obvious."

"Obvious to you," I said.

"Okay, in the first place, they are teeth, but they aren't dinosaur teeth..."

"Why not?"

"What would they be doing in the sand? In the shallow sand? Do you think a T-Rex passed through here yesterday to visit his dentist?"

"Be nice," I reminded her.

She rolled her eyes. "I am being nice. In the second place, they can't be tortoise scales, because there's no such thing. Tortoises don't have scales."

"So what are they, Miss Hedwig Smarty-Pants Wetherwax?" Ding-Dong asked.

"They're shark teeth, hello!" Wiggy laughed. "You can find them on beaches all over the world. I never saw them in New Jersey, but my dad has some he got in California..."

"Shark teeth!?" Ding-Dong and I cried out together, and leaped from the water as if it was boiling.

"Calm down," Wiggy said. She was still standing in the shallows, not excited in the least. "Just because there are sharks' teeth doesn't mean there are sharks nearby. I don't think they could swim in this shallow water anyway."

"But Graffy and Grooty are out there!" Ding-Dong cried.

"Out where?" Wiggy asked.

"They swam out to the ship!"

"Oh, the idiots!" Wiggy said.

"What 'idiots'?" I asked her. "They didn't know."

Wiggy fell silent. Mirina came walking over, looking as if she'd stepped off the cover of a teen fashion magazine. Her bikini was a brilliant lime-green, and her blonde hair floated and flowed behind her. "What's going on?" she asked.

We quickly filled her in. Mirina gave an exclamation of dismay and covered her cheeks with her hands. "Oh, who is the fastest runner?" she asked, glancing around. "Cakey, oh, Cakey," Mirina called, "Get up, get up! You must run to the top of the hill and signal Graffy and Grooty to come back now! They swam to the ship, but there are sharks in the water!"

"There might be sharks," Wiggy added, in a low voice. Everyone ignored it. In any case, by the time she'd finished speaking, Cakey was gone. Her long legs carried her up the hill as her blonde ponytail bounced behind her.

"She could have been on the track team," Ding-Dong said.

"Someone should go after her," Mirina said, so I started running, too.

By the time I reached the top of the hill, panting and out of breath, Cakey was dangling over the precipice, clutching a tree limb with one arm as she strained to get a better view. "They were already on the way back," she told me. "They wouldn't have seen me anyway. As soon as they enter the cove, I'm going back down."

"Hokay," I huffed.

"I don't see any sharks, though," she said. "Who saw them?"

I held up a finger to signal that I needed a minute.

"Straighten up," Cakey said. "You'll get your breath back faster if you stand up straight."
 

---

 

"This is ridiculous!" Graffy protested. "We're on a tropical island and we can't swim? Isn't this supposed to be a vacation? What's the point of being here, then?"

"The point?" Mirina echoed. "The point is staying alive!"

"Och!" scoffed Grooty. "If we see a shark, we come out of the water! It's as simple as that!"

"Nobody actually saw a shark," Graffy pointed out. She grabbed a shark tooth from Ding-Dong's hand and pretended it was attacking her. "Help! Help! Shark-tooth attack! Shark-tooth attack!"

"It's not funny," Mirina told her.

"No, it's not!" Graffy said. "It's stupid! That's what it is! It's idiotic! And I'm tell you, we will go swimming! Every day!"

"If we see a shark, we'll get out," Grooty repeated.

"You can't outswim a shark," Mirina stated, and looked to Wiggy for confirmation.

Instead, Wiggy shrugged. "We haven't seen any sharks," she said.

"Thank you, Wiggy!" Grooty said.

"Look at these teeth!" Graffy continued. "They could be thousands of years old! They probably came from a *dead* shark."

"We don't know," Mirina countered weakly.

"This is like your mystery man," Grooty told her, and Mirina's cheeks reddened. "You find a coat and boots, and woo! a scary bad man is on the island! He's coming to get you!"

"We don't know," Mirina lamely repeated. "It could be."

"*I* haven't seen a shark," Graffy declared. "And I've been out there."

"Me, too," Grooty agreed. "Not a one!"

Mirina looked at them in silence. I hadn't seen her authority challenged before, and wondered what she would do.

What could she do? She stood there, at a loss. She had no power. She had no authority, other than her personality. Her position as Head Cheerleader... well, it meant *something*, but not enough for this situation. She had no way to stop them from swimming, no way to compel them or punish them.

So, she didn't try to dominate. In a small voice, like the voice of reason, she told them, "I just want to keep us safe. I want us all to get home alive and in one piece."

The twins looked at their feet and kicked a bit of sand. Mirina glanced at Wiggy, who thought for a moment.

"We could post a lookout when we swim," Wiggy proposed. The twins brightened up at that, and Mirina relaxed a little.

"We could make a big pool up by the spring," Ding-Dong offered. "It wouldn't be hard. All we have to do is move a few rocks and some sand. We could set up a shower, too."

That stopped everything. We all looked at each other, until Boogers asked, "Could we really? A shower?"
 

---

 

Ding-Dong had figured it out while she was up there before: there wasn't a lot of water coming out of the spring, but it collected in the pool. "So we already have a reservoir," she said.

Moving to the edge of the hill, she pointed to a dry area about ten feet below us. "That spot is dry right now, but it's a great big natural basin. What we need to do is direct the water this way," she walked to show us where it would go. "It doesn't need to be a lot of water, or have any pressure at all. Time will fill the basin. The water will run all night and all day.

"And that rock down there is the same soft rock as the cave, so it won't cut our feet. Once the water fills it up, we'll have a swimming pool."

"A kiddy pool," Grooty scoffed, but the others looked interested.

"So why isn't it full right now?" Knickers asked. "The rain should have filled it."

"Because there's a crack over there," Ding-Dong explained. "See it? We need to fill that crack... patch it, and then it will hold water."

"But look, Ding-Dong: the water runs that way," Boogers objected, pointing to runoff that disappeared into the shrubbery.

"It's no big deal to redirect it," Ding-Dong told her. "We do it up here, by the pool. We block that outlet, and unblock the way we want the water to go."

She made it all sound so simple and reasonable. Everyone, even Wiggy, nodded or voiced their approval.

"And the shower?" Boogers reminded her.

"Oh, yeah, right! The shower!" Ding-Dong enthused. "Come on down below, you have to see!"

Nimbly picking her way along the rocky slope, Ding-Dong led us down and around the back of the hill. "Look it!" she exclaimed. "Isn't it perfect? You can put your clothes over here. And for those girls who need their privacy, once you pass this rock, no one can see you, not even the man in the jungle."

Mirina cleared her throat.

"And here," she said, with the air of a real-estate agent selling a home, "is this tiny niche. It's the perfect place to set your soap! Your shampoo and conditioner, your razor and what-have-you can all go down here." She spread her palms as if to say, And that's it! then mimed taking a shower and shaving her legs.

"Where is the water supposed to come from?" Graffy asked.

"Up there," Ding-Dong said, pointing straight up to a pair of rocks that jutted out like a spout. "We only need to guide the water by making a little channel."

Ding-Dong brought us up back to the pool and showed us what work needed to be done. "If we don't take too much water for the swimming pool, we should have plenty of pressure for the shower. We can close off one or the other as needed, just by setting a rock in the proper channel, here or here!"

"It doesn't look so hard," Mirina commented. "Good thinking, Ding-Dong. We can work on this tomorrow. Today we still have some exploring that we must do."

"Wow, Ding-Dong!" Cakey said, "I'm seriously impressed! On this trip you've turned into a combination Robinson Crusoe and McGuyver!"

The other girls began to murmur their assent when Boogers let out a startled shriek.

"Ooh!" she shrieked, her eyes wide. "I accidentally stepped in the pool! The water's like ice!"

"I guess it's going to be a cold shower," Graffy smirked.

"I have an idea about that, too," Ding-Dong countered.

"I'm *so* sure!" Graffy scoffed.

"Give her a chance," Wiggy said. "She's been right on the money so far."

"Oh, Wiggy, you should talk!" Grooty countered. "When have you ever given Belle a chance?"

Wiggy reddened and didn't reply. Mirina clapped her hands and said, "Come on now, girls! Let's hear Ding-Dong's idea."

"We brought some black garbage bags from the ship," Ding-Dong said. "We can line the bottom of this pool with the bags."

"That's ridiculous," Graffy said. "What good will that do?"

"The black will absorb heat from the sun," Wiggy said. "It will heat up the water. Some, anyway. It's a good idea."

"We can line the channels with the bags, too," Ding-Dong continued. "It might make the work of redirecting easier, too."

Graffy and Grooty looked around, frowning, searching for a problem to point out or something to criticize. They didn't find any. Ding-Dong mouthed a silent thank you to Wiggy for her support. Wiggy smiled and shrugged.

"I guess that's it," Ding-Dong said.

"Maybe we should go have lunch," Boogers suggested.

"Before we go, girls, listen up!" Mirina called, craning her neck a bit so she could see everyone's faces. "We're all going to have our moments before this little adventure is over, when we get cranky or testy or irritable."

"Oh, no!" Knickers moaned. "I didn't think about that!"

Mirina glanced at her. "I'm just talking about the stress of being here and the difficulty of waiting to be rescued. The thing is, we have to stick together. Our biggest asset is each other, so we can't afford to snipe at each other and find fault. We all need to help, to do our part. Okay? So let's go to lunch!" She turned and led the way back down to the beach.

"I'm still going to swim," Graffy declared. "I don't care."

"Me, too," Grooty agreed. "What's the point of being shipwrecked if you can't eat coconuts and swim in a blue lagoon?"

© 2008 by Kaleigh Way

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Once again, thanks to Annette for help with the tropical background.