I woke up with a massive headache pulsing through my skull from my temples to my tonsils. Everything ached. I was wet from the knee down, but I was luckily wearing shorts. Though apparently, my sneakers had the cheek to float off when I hit my head against the metal door. There was a smell that was like wet dogs at a rotten egg party. I realized that the smell was coming from my socks.

“Ugh,” I groaned removing them.

I was knee-deep in water. Odd. Had I crashed somewhere? I hastily dropped my repulsive socks into the water and forced my body to wade toward the deck. The deck was seriously slippery. I had to be careful.

I realized where I had crashed. It was the island my father had tried to swim to. There was no sign of the captain anywhere. I hopped off the side of the boat and onto the sand. The stuff felt sticky in between my toes. I limped over to the nearest tree and bonked it in the “gut” with my foot. A banana fell at my feet.

After eating the yellow monstrosity of a fruit, I turned around and saw an observatory. Great, I thought. Now I can defeat the thing with a telescope.

I walked over to the dome-like structure. It was made of marble with a solid oak door and big blue plastic letters over it that said ‘MTO OBSERVATORY’. I tried pushing open the door, but the oak cracked when I applied more pressure. The right side of the door fell off. There was no hope of pushing the thing because, I wasn’t skinny, but that piece of wood needed some seriously strong lumberjacks or something.

Anyway, I stalked into the building. Dust flew all over the place. There was a looming statue right in the middle of the dome. It was an old man holding up a little trophy-like figure that looked exactly like the MTO Observatory. The inscription said ‘MTO: Mariana Trench Oakwood’. The place gave me a sad feeling, like somebody died here. Statue Dude over there wasn’t making me feel any better. There was a pair of stairs next to the statue, Jurassic Park style.

I ran up the stairs and saw four rooms: one next to a staircase, another next to the other stair and two in the middle. I entered room 2.

There was classic astronomer stuff in there. But the odd thing was that the telescope was facing the ocean, not the stars. The sun shone in my eyes as I walked over to room 4. Room 4 had weird stuff about the Megalodon. DNA stuff. I made a face at it and decided not to pry.

I moved onto room 1. Room 1 was gigantic. There was a 70-feet pool smack-dab in the middle of it and there was a bunch of science-y stuff circling it. I was too flabbergasted to make anything of it.

Room 3 was locked but there was a note on the outside. It said,

“To Martha Oakwood, the loveliest woman I ever met

Born:1969

Died: 1982”

The place made me sad. Like somebody had died here. I thought about the feeling I had when I entered MTO. I didn’t feel so curious about room 3 now. I’d lost my appetite by the time I reached the bottom of the stairs. It was sunset when I left the dome. I didn’t know why but I wanted to clobber whomever or whatever had killed Martha Oakwood.

I set a campfire in a small cave I found somewhere near the observatory. I took two mangoes and ate them for dinner. I blew out the campfire and made a bed out of banana leaves. The cave wasn’t clean but hey, at least no bugs.

“Goodnight, ma,” I said to the “ceiling.” I could almost imagine her saying goodnight to me too from heaven.