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we found the wild bananas—which gave us hope that we were going to find lots of luxurious tropical fruits. This didn’t work out, but the thrill of thinking about mangoes and papayas was great while it lasted.
    On Day Seven, Arnie made up the “Prisoners in Paradise” song, with the catchy chorus about
Marvelous
Miranda, thinks we can eat sand-a
and
Semisighted
Semi, walks into a sharkey’s
belly
. . . and sang it until we seriously wanted to kill him.
    On Day Eight, Miranda accidentally speared an octopus, a biggish octopus with a body about the size of a baby’s head. It fought back, and made off with our precious, our only, pocketknife. We all chased it, splashing, screeching, forgetting about sharks. We caught and killed the octopus, and rescued the knife. Miranda cooked it, but none of us could eat it.
    Arnie says octopuses are very intelligent, and now we have committed murder.
    On Day Ten, Arnie reckoned he’d finished building his raft. Arnie’s raft had been the cause of a lot of arguments. He insisted he only wanted to use it to cross the lagoon and get to the wrecked plane (which we hoped was still there, hidden from us by the rocks), but we knew he secretly planned to set out on the open sea, which sounded like
suicide
in our opinion. For another thing, he kept stealing our supplies. He’d claimed the best of the salvaged fishing twine that we’d patiently knotted into rope. He’d removed the best palm branches from the improved shelter, and cut them up to make his decking. He’d been taking the stored expedition rations, on the grounds that he needed more food because he was doing the most important work. He took our coconut-shell water containers to use as floats, broke most of them, and lied about it. He half wrecked my reef sandals when he borrowed them to go into the thorniest bits of the forest, going after suitable saplings to cut for poles.
    Arnie could be fun, but he could be really annoying.
    If you said yes, Arnie had to say no. If you said up, he had to say down. If you were trying to be cheerful, he’d burst your bubble; if you were miserable, he’d laugh. If Miranda wanted to stay by the vehicle, he wanted to trek. If we wanted to prepare for the trek, he wanted to build his raft. Sometimes I enjoyed his sarcastic sense of humor. Sometimes I didn’t trust him. All the days I lived on that beach with Arnie, he was definitely my friend, but I never knew if I actually liked him or not.
    Anyway, on Day Ten we helped him carry his raft down to the sea and we launched it, on a tether. For a moment, it looked good. We were almost impressed. Then a wave got under it, and it immediately tipped over.
    “It’s not quite balanced yet,” said Arnie, with dignity. “It needs some fine-tuning.”
    “Arnie,” said Miranda, “I know you’ve put a lot of work into it, but frankly I wouldn’t care to paddle that thing across a swimming pool. Not with a team of life-guards on duty. I wouldn’t take it anywhere near a lagoon full of sharks.”
    “Have you ever
seen
a shark in the lagoon, Wonder Girl?”
    Miranda looked at him. “I’ve seen the bodies.”
    Arnie dragged his raft out of the water and stomped away, pulling it after him.
    “What do you want me do?” he yelled. “Stay here for the rest of my life? I’d rather die!”
    The day after that, Miranda and I went on a foraging expedition, leaving Arnie in charge of the camp and the signal fire. We took with us a coconut shell of fresh water each, some coconut strips to chew, some fire-hardened sharpened sticks, one of the rucksacks, and a net bag made from the fishing twine that we’d managed to preserve from Arnie.
    Miranda was wearing the reef sandals. (The three of us took turns using them, even though Arnie’s feet were too big. It was only fair.) I was wearing some elegant beach shoes, made of coconut husk and string, that didn’t really work, but they were better than bare feet. We headed north, along the edge of the trees.