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CHAPTER 17

“LAND HO!” I felt a little silly shouting it.

But there it was.

We’d been sailing for days since leaving the Bahamas behind. And still no hint from Kira about where we were going. I’m not sure she even knew where we were headed herself. But now there was a dot of land on the horizon.

I hustled back to the cockpit. “Island! Dead ahead.”

Kira peered over the wheel and smiled.

“So where are we?” I asked.

“Exactly where we want to be,” said Kira. “In the absolute middle of nowhere.”

The sea was calm and the wind was favorable, blowing us straight toward the dot in the distance. As we got closer, I could see that a dot was pretty much all it was—a tiny speck of land, too small to be on any map. Maybe the tip of some extinct volcano or the last remains of a sinking atoll.

We anchored about thirty yards off the beach and took the dinghy ashore. When I first sighted land, I was worried we’d stumbled onto some pirate hideout. But as soon as we slogged onto the beach, I could tell that there was nobody else there. The island was just two thick arms of sand curled around a tiny lagoon. End to end, the whole thing was about twenty yards long. It looked like an island in a New Yorker cartoon.

“I think we’ve officially reached the end of the world,” I said.

“Perfect,” said Kira. She stabbed the handle of her paddle into the sand. “Civilization is overrated.”

I walked to the high point of the island and turned in a full 360. Other than the Albatross , there was nothing in sight but blue water. At some point in the past, a breeze or a bird must have carried some seeds over from somewhere, because the island had a small stand of palms and a few scraggly bushes. There were clusters of green-jacketed coconuts high in the trees and piles of greenish-brown fronds on the ground.

Kira leaned up against one of the trunks and tipped her face up toward the sky. She looked relaxed and at peace. A few seconds later, she snapped into action.

“We need shelter,” she said, clapping her hands together.

“Hold on. We’re actually staying here?”

“Why not?”

“Because this whole island could be underwater tomorrow.”

Kira slapped me on the shoulder. “Then live for the moment!” I hadn’t seen her this cheerful in a while—maybe ever.

She ran back to the dinghy and pulled out a supply bag. I didn’t even know she’d packed it. She dumped the contents out on the sand. A survival knife, flint, some parachute cord, and a piece of canvas about ten feet square.

“Is this our roof?” I asked, lifting a corner.

“Our floor. Unless you want sand fleas in your shorts.”

Kira started cutting off sections of cord. She tied two long ends to a couple of the palm trees, about five feet off the ground, then stretched the other ends out and tied them to the branches on two low bushes.

“Don’t just stand there,” she said. “Do what I do.” She tossed me a bunch of cord. I watched as she made a cross-laced pattern between the two long lengths. Then she started gathering palm fronds from the ground and weaving them through the lattice. I got to work, but I was all thumbs.

“Weren’t you ever in the Boy Scouts?” Kira asked.

“Sorry.”

“Of course. I forgot. You went to science camp.”

In about ten minutes, we had a substantial lean-to with a canvas sleep mat. I realized that Kira had angled the structure so that the opening faced west. We slipped inside and lay down on our backs, propped up on our elbows. The scene outside looked like paradise. The Albatross bobbed on the waves in the distance, and the sun was a burnt-orange ball on the horizon.

“It doesn’t get any better than this,” said Kira.

I rolled toward her and kissed her. She kissed me back. I felt her hands on my belt.

She smiled at me. “Or maybe it does.”