The first thing I heard was the sea. This made no sense to me as the city that I lived in was landlocked by approximately 700 miles on all sides. Fuzzily I opened my eyes to an incredibly bright blue sky. It was a blue that I only saw in the dreaded Advanced Art. I got up moaning at the pain in my head. It seemed the glass had hit a place above my eye as there was dried blood on my face. I looked around and noticed I was on a deserted beach. Sand and an aqua blue sea surrounded me; the inland of the island lead to some tropical jungle. There was not a soul in sight.

A brief admiration filled me then panic sat in. Wait, what? I'm staring at a beach, when not just a few moments ago, I was in my chemistry classroom. For a moment ,my mind went blank. The word "beach" just repeated in my head and I internally freaked for a while until my logical and reasonable side took over. I knew that I had never stayed in the outdoors for long. I didn't even know how to create a fire. I was an electricity dependent freak. I'd never even gone camping for God's sake. The only thing that I could do that didn't involve science or math was hurdles, and a good lot that helped me with. It wasn't like I could jump over a few logs and then survive.

I got up wincing at my head wound. It throbbed painfully, so I took it that it was still open. According to my tentative finger experiment it just seemed a big enough cut for a single stitch. I sighed and began walking towards the jungle. Hopefully I could find a big enough tree to sleep in or maybe some fruit to munch. At least my legs and arms were strong enough from hurdles to climb a tree.

The jungle was wet and loud. It was also very dense I wasn't even dressed for a jaunt in a jungle. I had on light blue jeans and black pumps with my favorite t-shirt, which said 'May the mass times acceleration be with you.' I didn't stray too far into the jungle, as I knew logically the beach would be the best rendezvous point. So far I had come across no animals. But that was good and bad. Good because I didn't want to be supper, but bad because I had no animals to follow for a viable food source.

After an hour of searching I finally came across an animal. Lucky for me it seemed like a monkey of some sort. It inquisitively regarded me as I regarded it. And it had a banana in its hand. Success! At this point I was exhausted. I was never a long distance person. I was a hurdler for God's sake – 400m at a dead sprint was my best distance. I carefully approached the monkey, hoping that because it had never seen a human it wouldn't be scared. It kept up its silent vigil as I came closer, but as soon as I was about a meter away from it, it cheerfully chattered and retreated further into the jungle. I cursed at it. The stupid thing didn't understand. I was tired, hungry, and hot. And this stupid unknown variable of a monkey kept on retreating further the minute I grew closer than 1 meter to it.

I briefly wondered if it was a mathematician. Surely no monkey would know how to calculate an instant distance of 1 meter. Finally my relentless pursuit led me to a tree. But this tree was very weird. It appeared to be a banana tree, easily identified by its leaves, but the single banana attached to it was fairly large – easily greater than the span of both my hands. However, that wasn't the weirdest thing about it. It was covered with large dots. It looked like a polka dot banana.

I looked at it and the monkey that was staring at me. Its gaze almost seemed to say, "You wanted a banana. So here's one. Are you going to eat it?"

The weird thing was the banana in his hand had no patterns on it and appeared to be quite a normal size. I shrugged. Surely the animal led me to the fruit so that meant that it was safe. I was no expert of animal behavior though. Biology for me was secretly doing my physics or math homework in it. But what the heck? People said I should live a little, so I'd start in small steps. Eating unknown fruit today, skydiving tomorrow. I climbed up the tree and slowly leaned to the branch holding the fruit. The monkey below me grinned up at me. I found this to be a little suspicious, but I'd come too far to fall back now – literally.

I grabbed the fruit and climbed down the tree carefully. I tried to peel the banana, but couldn't. By now I was ravenously hungry and threw away any caution I had. I took a huge bite out of the banana, skin and all. I consumed the fruit in less than a minute when the taste hit me. I gagged and fell to the floor. I tried to retch out the awful tasting fruit but my tummy was refusing to let go of what little sustenance it gained.

I got up and still the monkey was there, watching me. If its grin was big before now it was huge, blinding even, as if it knew what awful tasting experience I had gone through. I threw it a hateful glance and turned to walk back to the beach leaving behind me the tree of the awful tasting banana and the grinning monkey.

At the beach I found a tree that was high enough to rest in. My adventure in the forest took what seemed to be the whole day, so I sat in my tree and watched the nightfall. I decided tomorrow to see how big the island was by following the beach, or to see if I could find any people.

I woke up to the sound of people talking. I was so surprised that I nearly fell down the tree, but I caught myself at the last moment. I looked over the branches and saw two people walking. It was a young boy about 12 years old with an old man who, despite his age, looked quite sturdy. They were human beings. Actual human beings. I dropped down from my tree and ran towards them hoping against hope they could give me some help to go back home. As you can imagine both the boy and old man look surprised to see a young girl dropping from a tree.

"You have no idea how glad I am to see some actual people," I babbled to the boys, my relief making my voice rushed.

"Oh hello young miss. I wasn't aware there was anyone on this island. I didn't see your boat, how did you come here?" the old man asked.

"I don't know. At one moment I was in school and the next I was on this beach in the middle of nowhere. Can you please take me to a town or something? My parents will be worried sick," I replied.

The old man looked troubled but nodded. "Of course young miss, we can take you back to our home town Olgia. You can call me Frank, and this young man is Tommy."

"Thank you, thank you so much. My name is Desdemona but please call me Des," I babbled to them once more.

I followed the old man and the young boy back to their boat. It was quite far from the place where I slept. All the way the young man Tommy told me how, when he got older, he would join the marines and help fight pirates. I nodded at his words, my mind whirring faster than the speed of sound. Where was I? On another continent? To my knowledge there were no pirates surrounding the USA in any form. Our Navy was one of the strongest in the world. And the word "marine" hadn't been used to describe the navy since the Cold War. But the most worrying thing was the way the boy talked as if the pirates were an enormous influence here. Almost as if they were another government or country. In the world that I knew Piracy was nearly extinct. They couldn't hide anywhere with satellite tracking. And our weapons and navy had evolved from canons to automatic guns and tracking missiles. For heaven's sake, the only sort of pirates I knew were Somali pirates. That was just one kind, but the boy talked as if there were hundreds upon hundreds of them.

Finally we reached Frank and Tommy's boat. It was in shallow water and clearly was a simple fishing vessel. I walked into the water and fell to my knees at the sudden weakness that filled my body. It felt as if I couldn't move. I struggled through this feeling knowing it was because my body for 24 hours no had no sort of full sustenance and only a fitful sleep. I finally reached the boat and collapsed inside.

Frank gave me a look of pity and told me I could rest until we reached the island. He then proceeded to take both oars and row us out to sea. I was surprised. No wonder this old man looked sturdy despite his age. The paddle strokes were strong and fell into an automatic rhythm. Frank had spent his whole life at sea so his body was strong. With the lulling waves and the soothing sound of the paddles hitting the water, I fell asleep just three hours after waking up.

A/N: Hey everyone. So I decided to update today as a special treat for those who read my story yesterday. But be warned after this it's an update every 7 days. Thank you to every one who Favourited or followed. Do read and review.

Eiko