Chapter 12: Quicksand

Somebody shook me awake. I blinked the sleep out of my eyes and woke to the scene of everybody looking at me like I was a ghost. Except Thalia. She was getting scolded.

“Uh what’s happening?” I asked.

“Well, you’re alive for one, which is great,” Beth perked up. “But we AGREED we’d rescue you today. But then Thalia rescued you anyway, and she went alone.”

“Do you realize how dangerous that was?” Demi was saying.

“Yes,” Thalia replied. “But we got Jaxx back, no harm, no foul.”

Demi opened her mouth to talk but then something floated out from the top of the big lamp. Beth gasped softly. She grabbed the paper, crumpled it and stuffed it in her pocket.

We stared.

Thalia shrugged, walked out, got us breakfast and came in. She wasn’t talking or swinging her club or making jokes with Demi. She was just quiet.

We ate in silence. So much for a nice OMG YOU’RE ALIVEEEE welcome home. Or tent. Whatever. Home was technically 234565434565434567654345654323456543 something, something feet away.

Everybody seemed pretty fine with Demi’s bionic leg by now.

“Hey, I got an idea. Maybe Thalia can show us how to make our own clubs,” I said, trying to lighten up the mood.

Thalia looked up from her sandwich. Her eyes were shining.

“Sure,” she said, stumbling out of the tent and pulling everybody out with her. “Okay, you need something sharp. I used a wrench earlier. Usually, I just used the wrench as a weapon, but I realized I needed some back-up weapons too.” Thalia rambled on and we followed her steps and everything. Eventually, we’d made ourselves clubs, bows and weird stake-spear things. We were exhausted.

But Thalia seemed really happy. I guess that was worth it. The sun was going down so we decided to take a walk in the forest before dark.

The leaves kept whacking my face and the monkeys apparently thought it was funny to land on my head and scream. Beth had a monkey on her head. Demi was swatting mosquitoes. Zac looked ready to sit in the mud and Tom was still limping from his screw wound.

The only person who was actually enjoying herself was Thalia. She was swinging from vine to vine, peacefully ignoring the monkeys that looked at her like she was a big orangutan in the middle of a snake party that somehow managed to blend in.

Fart, pfft, went something below my foot. Thalia burst out laughing. The others caught up and tried to wade through the mud. Fart, pfft, BLECH, fart, squirted the mud. Everybody burst out laughing. I was laughing too hard to realize I was sinking but suddenly everybody was knee-deep in mud.

“QUICK SAND!” Demi shouted.

Fart, pfft, squelch, went the mud again, but it wasn’t funny anymore. It was terrifying. The monkey on Beth’s head grabbed a vine and swung off to safety. Lucky monkey, I thought, struggling in the mud.

“EVERYBODY, STOP MOVING!” Tom and Demi shouted simultaneously.

“The quicksand will swallow us quicker,” Beth explained. “Slow movements. No jerking. Slowly grab the vine and haul yourself out.” I smushed my panic and slowly grabbed the closest vine. Everybody else did the same.

I hauled myself out slowly and soon everybody was clinging to a vine five feet in the air with mud dripping off them.

“Okay, now what?” I asked.

“Climb onto a tree and slide down to solid ground,” Thalia said softly, like she was afraid of making the quicksand wake up.

I swung to a tree and landed on it. I slid down to solid ground. Soon everybody was next to me.

“I hate this stupid island,” Thalia whispered.

“Me too,” Demi said. “But we’ll go home. One day. I’m sure of it.”

We morosely walked back to the tent. “Night,” I said gloomily and fell asleep on my sleeping bag.