Disclaimer: Twilight does not belong to me; that privilege is Stephenie Meyer's!

Previously...

There was a long chorus of good nights, and bit of scuffling around as we all got comfortable with the little bit of blanket we had, and soon enough it was silent. I thought it would take me a while to get to sleep, but in fact, it came quite quickly. I soon slipped into slumber-land. I didn't even take time to reflect on the absurdity of the situation, nor did I think that we should make the best of it. That was natural; that was survival.

Chapter 9 – What Now?

When I woke up the next morning, I was very stiff. Apparently sand wasn't the comfiest bed to sleep on, although I guessed that it would be better than rock or something.

I was also wet. There had been another storm in the night, but it was nowhere near as big as the one in which we got lost in, if that's what you could call it. However it had been more than enough to rain on us and get us soaking. It turned out that despite the boys' best efforts of the day before; the shelter they had constructed wasn't exactly waterproof.

"Oh my god!" Tanya squealed, having woken up at around the same time as I did. In fact, I had been the first to wake which was very strange because as everyone had all figured by now that I wasn't exactly a morning person. But then I remembered that I had slept the day before when the others hadn't, so it was only natural that I would wake up first.

"What?" Edward said, sounding sleepy, yet worried at the same time.

"My hair is ruined; it's just ahhh!" She cried, and I rolled my eyes. Seriously? Your hair?

"Tanya, don't worry; everyone's hair is ruined. We have just slept on a beach and it got wet in the storm. It's no biggie." Edward soothed, but he sounded a little annoyed at her shallowness in such a serious situation.

"But it is a biggie for me, Edward. You know how important my appearance is to me," she whined, putting on a girly babyish voice.

"I know, Tanya, but right now I think there are slightly more important things to worry about. Like what we are going to eat this morning." He replied, still trying to sooth her, "And if you ask me, I think your mussed up hair is kind of sexy." He grinned at her.

"Really?" She asked sounding hopeful. He nodded his assent.

"But still, it's all knotty. I need to sort it out." She whinged. Apparently Edward's appreciation of her hair wasn't enough.

"Come on Tanya, how about you and I go and sort our hair out now? I think we should have some time to ourselves for a bit. Let the others wake up properly and make our breakfast."

I felt slightly annoyed at Victoria's suggestion that we should be the ones making breakfast and not our very own beauty queen, but by that point I was so ready to get Tanya out of my face and to stop her whining that I would have made her breakfast, lunch and dinner just so that she would leave.

"Ok then," Tanya sniffled. Yes, sniffled. Because she had a small case of bed hair. Lord knows what mine was like, but I wasn't making the fuss she was.

And in all this fuss, Emmett still hadn't woken up. I also knew that he had had probably the best night's sleep here, as I had listened to his snores for part of the night until I had stuffed my fingers into my ears and drifted off.

Rosalie slapped him and he still didn't wake up.

"Leave him." Alice said, looking at him with a dismissive glance, "He won't wake up unless he wants to."

"Fine, but he will probably miss out on breakfast then," Rose grumbled.

"Are you kidding?" Nessie laughed, "His sense of smell is stronger than anyone I know! If you even think about eating without him, he will be awake before you finish saying 'Breakfast's up'!"

Rose laughed too, "Breakfast isn't going to be that interesting anyway is it?" She asked, wrinkling her nose, "Just fried fruit?"

"Well unless you can catch a fish or want to eat bugs, then yep." I said grimly, stoking the fire with a stick as it had all but died overnight. I found a few embers in the heart of the fire, and using the copious amounts of dried leaves that Jake and Nessie willingly brought over from the edge of the forest, I managed to get it going again.

Once we'd finished breakfast, which Emmett had woken up to just as Nessie had predicted, and was fried fruit, as Rose had guessed, I decided to broach the subject which I had been mulling over.

"Guys, I think we should move camp closer to the stream that you found yesterday. Water is probably going to be our most valuable resource here, and right now, it takes too long to fetch it."

"Good idea," Alice agreed, "That also might be a good place to start our other explorations from. I mean, we aren't just going to live on the beach right? I get that there might be animals that could hurt us in the forest, but they may also come to the beach too. And besides, we need to find out if this is actually an island or not. If it is somewhere like Hawaii, then we could get home, and we'd feel pretty stupid if we had stayed here for days without realising it."

Everyone else also agreed with my idea and without further ado we broke camp, Mike stamping out the fire, as he was a bit annoyed that I'd been the one to stoke it earlier, and nearly burning his foot; we all set out to the stream. Once we got there, Edward, Jake and Emmett began to make a new shelter, trying to improve from before. It was still difficult, as we still had very little equipment, and still less know how, but they were managing to improvise something. I wandered a little way up the stream with Rose and Alice, looking to see if there was a place we could bathe in, as we were all feeling like we could do with freshening up. Shortly we came to a rock face, with a large waterfall, and therefore a deep plunge pool, which would be perfect for washing in.

We literally whooped with joy and dived right in. It felt so good washing and getting the sand out of our lady bits, despite the fact that we knew it would just end up back there in a very short amount of time.

As we had no soap or anything, the water was just a rinse so we were finished very quickly and walked back to the camp. I was very surprised when I arrived. The boys had constructed a much better shelter with larger logs; it looked good and a lot better constructed. It still wasn't perfect, as it seemed like it was only half built. The boys had found four large logs which they'd hammered into the sand and there were smaller sticks covering the roof which they'd then rested waterproof leaves on and they had set up a number of large logs around the fire pit for sitting on and presumably to help with the cooking.

"Where did you find the logs?" I asked in awe at their handiwork.

"In the forest," Jake replied, "We thought that if you were brave enough to go in there to shower we should man up a bit and look in there too. And it was a good thing we did; there are actually loads of fallen logs in there. The only hard bit was getting them back here."

"Wow," Rose said succinctly.

"Yeah, well, you know," Jake said blushing and rubbing the back of his neck as he ducked his head in embarrassment.

"Aw! Is Jakey embarrassed that a pretty girl like Rosalie is complimenting you on your work?" I teased him as soon as Rose was out of earshot.

"Is she pretty?" he asked, sounding genuinely interested.

"What? How can you not think her pretty?" I asked confused.

"Um, I don't really see her. I don't really see any girls other than Nessie," he admitted, "Is that weird? It's just; I feel that Nessie is it. You know; the one. But it scares me too, because I'm only fifteen and so is she. Are we too young? Should we be too young?"

"Um, wow, I wasn't expecting that. Erm well I guess that if that's how you feel, then for you, Rose isn't pretty. And about thinking she is the one at this age; who knows if you are too young or not. Only you can say that. If you're scared, maybe you should talk to her about it. See how she feels?" I suggested, a little taken aback by his outpouring, but I also felt strangely privileged to be privy to this information and to be the person that he came too. I felt like a sister giving advice to her little brother and I really liked it. Even if my advice wasn't great.

"Jasper?" Alice said flirtatiously, sitting down next to him, where he was intently whittling a stick. He was making a point on one of the ends and I looked at it intrigued.

"Mmm?" He said, distractedly.

"What are you doing?" She asked, proving my suspicions as to what she was doing correct.

"What?" He asked, still focused on his work, "Oh right, I'm trying to make a spear type thing. We don't have much to do so I thought I'd try fishing with it," he explained.

"You'd be good at that," I butted in, unashamed at my eavesdropping, "You have the patience for it."

"That's what I thought. Dad always said that I was a really patient, quiet, calm kid, so I thought I should maybe use those abilities today. There, it's done!" He held up the new spear and I prayed as he did so that he would be able to catch some fish with it, as I was already getting bored with fruit.

"Let's go and try it out!" Alice cried excitedly.

"Alice, you do know that for spear fishing, you have to be really calm and quiet for long periods of time so the fish overcome their fear and come close enough for you to strike?" Jasper asked, amused. Alice pouted at him and the implication that she couldn't do it.

"I'll have you know I can be calm if I want. I just don't normally want." She declared and smiled when Jasper consented to let her come and watch him while he fished.

"Yay!" She squealed in excitement, "I'll just go and change..." She trailed off at the sudden thought that she had nothing to change into. Right now she was just wearing her bikini, as we all were, having dumped her clothes. We were all in as little as possible, because it was very hot, and anyway our clothes were starting to smell as well as being caked in salt from being sprayed in the first storm.

The boys were all in their boxers, except for Mike who turned out to be a tighty-whitey's guy, and was firmly sticking to his shorts because of that. However as they were all incredibly fit people (I noticed Edward was in particular) it was quite distracting.

"I have no clothes!" Alice cried in dismay, "Oh my god, Bella, I have nothing to wear. I actually have nothing to wear!" She wailed, "What am I going to do?"

"Wear nothing?" I suggested, at a loss. I didn't know. I would have been perfectly happy staying in my bikini and maybe the clothes I came in for as long as they still looked like clothes, but I understood that for fashion conscious Alice, that was a big no-no.

"Ew! Bella!" She said, looking at me in disbelief.

"What?" I said, faux-innocently, "If you have nothing to wear, you can't wear it. However, you're resourceful. Find a fig leaf or something." Ok, so I wasn't being the most supporting friend, but Alice knew better than that from me.

But suddenly her face lit up, "Oh my gosh; Bella you're right! I can design clothes! They'll be made from leaves and stuff but it'll be better than nothing! You're amazing Bella!" She rushed off, presumably to get leaves. I stared after her, nonplussed at her enthusiasm. I still wasn't quite sure how she would design these island clothes or make them, but I guessed that she would find a way. Like I'd said, she was resourceful.

"Right," Rose said, soon after, as I was cleaning up the area that we would soon be living in permanently, sweeping it of leaves and such forth, "I think I will go and look for lunch. Care to join me Bella?"

"Actually, Rose, if you don't mind I'd quite like to keep cleaning up here. There is, if you look had enough, quite a lot of work to do here. Maybe Emmett would like to join you instead?"

At the look on both of their face, I had just made their day, and as they went off Emmett whispered something into Rosalie's ear and she giggled. Yes, Rosalie Hale; aloof, distant Rosalie who found it hard to make friends giggled. Emmett was a seriously lucky guy, and he seemed to be treating her right too, if he could make her giggle like that.

Edward meanwhile was still tinkering with things in the shelter; straightening the roof and adding more leaves and palm fronds and whatever else it was made of. Every so often he would look over to where Tanya and Victoria were sunbathing, with an exasperated expression on his face. I felt exactly the same. Everyone was working in some way to improve what we had; no matter how little it was, while they lay around doing nothing. Granted, there was very little for them to do, but the point was that if they looked hard enough there would be something for them to do to help us.

"Here you go Bella," Jake said grunting slightly, as he dumped a load of logs on the floor, "More firewood."

"Jake, does the firewood live there?" I asked, overly aware that I sounded a bit like my mother at that point, as that was the kind of thing she used to say to me.

Jake noticed the likeness too. Grinning at me he said, "Sorry Renee, I'll just move it to where it does live. Which is...?"

"Well," I said, thinking, as I hadn't actually decided where to put the wood yet, "Lay it down, stacking it up so that it makes a kind of wall on the forest side. We may have to change it if it turns out that the prevailing wind comes from another direction, but right now that seems to be the best place, as that appears to be what we are all scared of."

"Cool," Jake replied, starting to stack it up there, "Do you reckon we'll need any more?"

"Um, best to be on the safe side, right? I'd say it's better to have too much than not enough. But if you don't want to go back in the forest, you don't have to get any more."

"Nah, it's cool. I don't mind it in there. It feels a bit like home. You know; all green and wet. The only difference is that it's a bit hotter." I laughed at his comparison and when he left I went to the stream with everyone's clothes and started to attempt to get the salt out of them. I had tried to think of some way to save it, as it could be useful for seasoning the food, but I couldn't see any realistic way of doing that; besides some of the salt could have been from people's sweat which was just disgusting. Shortly after, Nessie came to help me and we spent about an hour just having fun while washing. Paradoxical, maybe but that's just how it was.

"So, Nessie, you and Jake huh?" I asked. Normally I wasn't one to gossip but when it concerned my cousin, I wanted to know what was happening.

Nessie gave me a sidelong glance with her green eyes, exactly the same shade as Edward's and I was struck at how similar they were, again.

"I wouldn't have pegged you as someone to gossip, Bella." She said shrewdly, hitting the nail on the head.

"He's my cousin," I shrugged, "I'm interested in his welfare. I wouldn't be surprised if Edward had a similar conversation with Jake at some point."

"Although his would probably involve a whole lot more threatening to do painful things to Jake's private parts if he hurt me!" Nessie laughed.

"Yes, well, there is that." I agreed, "He does seem rather overprotective doesn't he?"

"It's 'cause we look so alike," Nessie explained, "Everyone else looks so different to the other. None of us resemble our parents at all. Genetics is a wonderful thing isn't it?"

"Yeah. I mean look at Jake and me. You could hardly tell we were related, even if it isn't directly."

"Exactly," she agreed.

"Anyway, back to the point," I said, not easily put off, "You and Jake. Spill."

She sighed, "Well, I think he likes me. I mean I really like him. He's soo gorgeous and really fit. And he's so generous and kind and everything. I think he might be the one. I can't imagine being with anyone else in any case."

"Apart from the fact that everyone except Mike is already coupled up here?" I teased gently.

"Yeah, there's that!" She laughed, "But I don't know. It feels like we are a bit young. I mean we haven't actually done anything yet."

"Well that's a relief," I remarked dryly.

"Yeah, well, we want to take it slowly and get to know each other better. And it doesn't help that Edward finds every opportunity he can to break us apart if we even just kiss. I thought he would have a coronary last night, when he heard about what we were doing at night."

"Filthy hypocrite."

"Quite," she smiled, "But still, I get it. I mean we are only fifteen. Jake will be sixteen in a few months and my birthday is in August, but is it still too soon?"

"Only you can decide that," I said, wishing that they'd ask someone other than me. I guess I started it both times, but I wasn't exactly the best at relationships to be honest. I hadn't had any of note and Nessie herself had done more with my cousin than I had ever done with any boy. I wasn't going to tell anyone unless it was forced out of me but I hadn't yet had my first kiss. I wasn't gagging for it, but it did make me feel a bit inadequate when Nessie was talking about it.

"But I will say this," I continued, "You guys need to talk about it. Tell each other how you really feel. Tell Jake what you have said to me and take it from there. For what it's worth, I think you guys are really sweet together. It's like you're made for each other. So ignore everything that Edward has said and will say, and do what you feel is right. Besides, as I've already said, Edward is a hypocrite, which makes everything he says and does null and void."

"Thanks Bella. You really know you're stuff." Nessie said, and from there the conversation turned to less serious things that didn't involve feelings or any other awkward things.

AN: Aw; Bella's giving love advice! Jake/Bella and Nessie/Bella bonding time! Sweet!

Many thanks again to my beta, although she has been very busy at the moment!

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