Author's Note: Augh, I feel like I haven't updated in YEARS! I hope you all can forgive me (if you're actually interested enough in this story to CARE whether or not I update); I've been kind of busy lately. ((coughs))
Disclaimer: I own The Island and anybody who wears a lab coat. Any other characters belong to their respective owners, the newsies belong to Disney, and any song lyrics belong to their respective bands or artists.
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"You got something against sheep?" I asked, crumpling a piece of notebook paper up and making a basket in his trashcan.
"Only that sheep follow," said Ezra. "Never lead, just follow."
"It's a good thing for farmers when they do." I shifted positions, leaning back against his bed.
"I don't want to be a sheep anymore," Ezra said.
-Phoenix Rising by Karen Hesse
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Mush
"Come on, Mushie! We need your MANLY strength!" yelled Ershey, beckoning me over to where she and Scout, Snitch, Race, and Sapphy were trying to build some form of shelter.
"You need my manly strength to lift a couple of tree branches?" I asked skeptically.
"Well ... no. But you're the only other person here who knows the words to 'Anything Goes'."
I feel so loved.
I headed over to them, trying not to look too happy that Ershey wanted to sing with me. I guess they're right; girls really do go for the theater geek guys! HOORAY! I'm just her type! We're going to get married and have kids and star on Broadway together and make millions and—
"You know, Mush, we didn't invite you over here so that you could zone out with an odd smile on your face," said Sapphy, poking me in the stomach. "OWW! Shit, Mush, I didn't realize how frickin' hard your tummy is..." She put her finger into her mouth and turned back to the pathetic excuse for a hut. "Maybe we should just go for the teepee look instead..."
"I like teepees!" said Race happily.
"Ohh, have you seen that version of Peter Pan when Tiger Lily and her Indians do their funky dance??" Ershey squealed. She crossed her arms over her chest, bent her knees slightly, and started tilting from side to side. "Ugga-wugga-meatball!" she chanted and then toppled onto the sand, laughing. "Aw c'mon, Race, don't try to tell me you haven't seen that!"
"Can't say I have," said Race, looking positively terrified. I saw him mouth the words "Ugga-wugga-meatball" as if to test them out. He shook his head bemusedly and turned back to our pathetic excuse for a hut with a slight sigh.
"Why do we have to build this stupid thing, anyway?" Snitch asked as he tried to prop the branches up with his shirt.
"What do you have against teepees?!" Race demanded.
Snitch rolled his eyes at him. "That's not what I meant. I meant why do we need shelter now? We've been here for like a month or two and we never had any shelter. Why are we wasting our time on it now?"
"Two reasons," said Scout, standing up. She was, surprisingly, very good at being a leader. She had always struck me as kind of quiet, but apparently she could be very forceful when she wanted to be. "Firstly — it's gonna rain tonight. For some strange reason it hasn't rained at all since we got here, except for the first night, and I am under the impression that Ershey's gonna melt if she gets wet.
"Ding dong, the witch is dead!" sang Sapphy happily, and she bounced over to Ershey and poked her in the ribs. "Which old witch? The wicked witch! Ding dong, the wicked witch is deeeeaaaaaad!"
"Aw get off me, Sapph," Ershey grumbled.
"HA! She doesn't DENY that she's gonna melt!" yelled Race victoriously. He and Sapphy linked arms and hopped around on the sand singing "Ding dong, the wicked witch is deeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaad!", much to Ershey's annoyance.
"SECONDLY," said Scout loudly. I looked back at her, startled. I had forgotten she was making some sort of list. "Secondly," she repeated once Sapphy and Race had stopped dancing, "if you haven't noticed, we're on the opposite side of the island than we were before. And this side — well, it sucks."
"That's because it's the west side," said Snitch. We looked at him. "Someone told me a while ago that the east side of any island is the best one for some reason..."
Scout blinked. "Really?"
"Yeah, I think so."
"Sweet. ANYWAY, there aren't as many overhanging trees on this side to give us protection, and there's more prickly grass, and the waves come up higher. THEREFORE—"
She glared at Race and Sapphy, who were innocently humming "The Witch is Dead" behind Ershey, who looked close to tears. "Hey, it's not her fault that she melts when she gets wet!" I said.
"Yes it is!" Race insisted.
"Are people born Wicked? Or do they have Wickedness thrust upon them?" said Sapphy sagely. We all looked at her. She shrugged and started humming "No One Mourns the Wicked" under her breath.
Scout was obviously trying very hard not to be amused. "As I was saying—" She stopped. "I completely lost my train of thought."
"Therefore we need to build a shelter to protect us from the elements," said Snitch helpfully.
"Exactly! Thank you, Snitch, now let's get BACK to work, and NO MORE singing 'The Wizard of Oz' from you two." Upon seeing the identical evil grins cracking across both of their faces, however, she said quickly, "No, scratch that, no more singing AT ALL from you two."
"...dammit."
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Emily
"Well I think the first thing we need to do is destroy all of these cameras," said Swifty, flicking his hair back out of his eyes.
"A good idea, considering we are talking directly in front of them and revealing all of our secret plans," said Irish, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.
"Point taken." Swifty motioned for us to move our little meeting over away from the heap of video cameras. "All right, as I was saying," he continued in a quieter voice, "I think we should destroy the cameras so that they can't watch us anymore. Otherwise, we can't be sure that they'll even notice that we're doing anything, and we'll never get out of this shithole."
"I wouldn't go so far as to call it a shithole," said Alaska reasonably. "I mean it has been a hell of a lot of fun here, but ... well, it just sucks that we're being used like this."
"Fine, just alter EVERYTHING I say!" cried Swifty in mock frustration, flinging himself back onto the sand. "David, take over."
David looked like a deer caught in headlights, unaccustomed to all this attention. Man, is that what I look like when I talk in front of crowds? I thought rather amusedly.
David cleared his throat. "Well I was thinking that we should keep one camera," he said.
"Why the hell would we want to keep one camera?" asked Swifty, still lying on his back and apparently counting the clouds.
"Because ... 'cause it could be useful." He ran a hand through his curly hair and licked his lips. "I mean, how are the people running this potential experiment supposed to know our demands if we don't communicate to them, you know?"
"So you mean we should keep one camera to kind of ... express our demands to?" said Irish slowly.
"Yeah, I guess."
"Sounds good to me." She got up and walked back over to the heap of cameras. "I officially dub this camera—" She picked one up. "—the Special Communication Camera! HOORAY! The rest are going to be destroyed in any ways we can think of."
"Man, that cloud looks like David's hair!" said Swifty. We all looked at him. "Sorry..." he said, grinning sheepishly.
Alaska carefully placed a camera under her foot and unceremoniously stepped on it. It crushed beneath her foot. "Well, that worked nicely," she said happily, picking it up and tossing it to the side.
"Let's have a camera-crushing party!!" Swifty exclaimed. He leapt up, grabbed a handful of cameras, and began to happily squish them one by one.
Alaska watched him, obviously trying not to smile. "Who the hell decided to put him into this group, anyway?" she asked sardonically as Swifty began to belt out his own rendition of "Twist and Shout" by the Beatles. "I think his energy would put to much better use if he were getting food or something."
"Well, squish all the cameras now! Squish all the cameras! Twist and shout! Twist and shout! C'mon, c'mon, c'mon, Davey now! C'mon Davey! And help me squish all the cameras! Squish all the cameraaaaaaaas!"
"I dunno," I said. "He's definitely making things a little more interesting, don't you think?"
We watched him grab Davey and try to get him to do the jitterbug on top of the cameras with him. Irish smiled. "I definitely agree," she laughed.
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Granny
"Today is gonna be the day that they're gonna throw it back to you!" sang Braids and Spot loudly. "By now you shoulda somehow realized what you gotta do! I don't believe that anybody feels the way I do about you nowwwwwwwww!"
"What the hell's a wonderwall, anyway?" asked Soaker.
"I don't know, but it sounds sexy," said Spot.
"Ew," said Braids.
"Guys!" Flare whispered. "Please try to be a little quieter, you're scaring all the bananas away!"
"Oh horrors!" said Spot blandly.
"Shut up, Spot, I heard you sleep-talking the other night about bananas running away from you," Braids laughed, hitting the back of his head.
Spot stopped dead in his tracks. "W-what did I say?"
Braids flung her arms out and cried, "NO! Come back, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend you! I don't think peaches taste better than you, I was just kidding! NOO! Come BACK, bananas!!"
"Aw shut up," Spot snapped, pouting.
The six of us — that is, Soaker, Spot, Braids, Cat, Flare, and me — were on a mission for tonight's dinner. Once we had broken off from the other twenty or so people who wanted to stay on the Island, Scout had been extremely organized and split us up into groups: one for building the shelter, one for planning our "battle strategies", as she liked to call them, and one for getting food.
I was beginning to think that we really were scaring all the bananas away; we had been in the forest for at least twenty minutes, and not one banana tree had manifested itself upon us.
Heh heh ... manifesting banana trees ... It sounds so intimidating!
"All right," said Cat impatiently as we waited for Spot to take a piss a few yards away. "This is getting ridiculous. If we don't find a banana tree soon, I'm heading back over to the other side of the island and uprooting one of their trees."
"I really don't think that's a good idea..." I said. "They'll probably throw fish skeletons at you or something."
"I'll bring Spot," she said simply, shrugging.
"I heard that!" Spot yelled as he zipped up his pants. He came back over to us, trying to look pissed off.
"Glad you could join us," said Soaker. She wrinkled her nose as the faint smell of urine hit her. "Never mind, please go back over to your little toilet and spare us the smell."
Spot grinned. "Hey, it's not my fault that the people who made this goddamn island didn't give us toilet paper."
"You must admit, however, that you do have a sadly overactive bladder," said Braids, linking her arm through his.
We all started to walk again (except Soaker, who skipped.) "Let us gaily tread the measure! Make the most of fleeting leisure! Though the moments quickly die, greet them gaily as they fly! Greet them gaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiily—" Here she hit a spectacular high note that made Spot pretend to start crying. "—as they fly!"
"Soprano I?" I asked.
"All the way, baby."
Suddenly there was a rustling of leaves directly behind us. We all whipped around to find ourselves face to face with a wall of trees and creepers — nothing out of the ordinary. "What do you think that was?" Flare asked nervously after a minute of silence.
"Chipmunk," said Cat.
"Don't be ridiculous, that sounded a LOT bigger than a chipmunk," said Spot, his voice cracking.
"A squirrel then. C'mon, let's get out of here, I'm starving." Cat seemed to be trying to calm everyone down, but it wasn't working very well. I was definitely rather on edge; I almost broke my neck when Flare sneezed and I jumped...
About five minutes passed and the noise came again, closer this time. We froze. It came again, even closer. Whatever it was couldn't be more than five feet away. "I don't want to turn around," said Soaker quietly, her small form very tense. "I really don't want to know what's making that noise."
"All right, on the count of three we're all gonna turn around," said Flare. "I mean, how bad can it be?"
"Don't SAY that!" Braids gasped.
Flare almost laughed. "Ok — one, two, THREE."
We turned slowly around, in time to see a large, dark figure slinking away into the shadows. This time, our reaction was not quite so calm. "IT'S GONNA EAT ME!" Spot shrieked, leaping into Braids' arms. Braids herself screamed and ran behind Soaker (not a good choice, considering she looked to be about 5'2), who screamed and ran behind Cat, who latched onto my leg, trembling.
I hate being tall.
I covered my eyes with my hands. Think lovely thoughts, think lovely thoughts, think lovely thoughts... I'm too YOUNG to die!!
"Braids?" I heart Spot say behind me. "If I die, I want you to know that I think you're pretty cool."
"You're cool too, Spot," said Braids, sniffing.
"We're ALL cool!" said Cat happily, apparently forgetting her fear for a minute. She remembered after a few seconds, however, and latched back onto my leg.
"...Thank you," said Soaker.
"All right, screw this," I said after a minute. "Who needs bananas anyway? We'll just get fish or something. I want to GET OUT OF HERE."
"Amen, sister," Spot murmured, and he climbed down from Braids' arms then. "I think I'm gonna hurl..."
Soaker reached into the pocket of her skirt. "Hey Spot—if you have to spew—" She pulled out a tiny paper bag and carefully unfolded it. "—spew into this." [1]
Spot looked at her, eyebrow raised. "I don't even WANT to know where you got that thing," he said slowly. He turned back to the rest of us. "All right, let's go back to the beach. ONWARD, I SAY!"
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Shoutouts!!
tinydanceremily: I meant to get in some action with Davey in this chapter, I really did! I guess I kind of lost track of things with the whole camera-squishing incident... :-) Anyway, thanks for reviewing, I love you!
ershey: ((looks back over chapter)) I really picked on you in this chapter, didn't I? Sorry about that, I couldn't resist. I only do it because I love you, lol. :-D Cameras in the school hallways?? That's sick and wrong, I'm glad they didn't do it! Thanks for reviewing!
Dakki: I love Coldplay. And I love you. I've been in a little euphoria (ooh, big word for Izzy!) for the past few days from reading "Chinese Lantern", that story just made me so goshdarn happy. :-D You really must contact me (wow, I sound so SOPHISTICATED) about our fic-to-be at some point or else this is never gonna happen ... 'cause I have issues E-mailing and IMing people first, lol. Anyway, thanks for reviewing, I love you! (And no, I have no idea what that song is about. I've given up trying to discern Coldplay lyrics loooooong ago...)
uninvisible: ((dies)) A newsies fanfiction writer sleepover. Would that not be the coolest thing IMAGINABLE?? ((gives you a cookie)) I hope your head feels better now, lol! ((gives you a hot water bottle)) Thanks for reviewing!! :-D
nani at 12 o'clock: "i couldent catch a ball if you put it in my hand" HAHAHA! Story of my life ... I'm kind of known with my friends for having NO hand-eye coordination whatsoever. It's really quite sad. Anyway, thanks for reviewing, I love ya!
Written Sparks: Saturapphyarks Island! Ohh I'm so clever!! Yeah, there's really nothing more heartbreaking than seeing your favorite newsie turning gay. No, scratch that, seeing him fall for a Mary Sue is the most heartbreaking thing of all. Which, I assure you, is never going to happen in THIS story. :-D Thanks for reviewing, I love you! See you on the Island! :-D
Sapphy: I actually just started reading "Lord of the Flies", and it's turning out to be INSANELY like my story. I swear I hadn't the vaguest idea what that book was about AT ALL, and then here I am reading it and it's following almost the exact same plotline as mine. Except not. In any case, nobody's turning cannibal on MY island and there should be a happy ending. :-D :-D Thanks for reviewing, I love you!
SpotLover421: Oh no! I just realized ... did you know any of the lyrics in this chapter?? Wait, you MUST have known "Wonderwall", right? I don't expect anyone to know "Pirates of Penzance", though, that's just me being a Gilbert and Sullivan freak. :-D Anyway, thanks for reviewing, I love you! (Oh and by the way, I'm not going for the Sprace. If you didn't already figure that out. So Spot's all yours, baby.)
Hotshot: HAHAHAHA! Omg you have no idea how freaked out I was when I read your review — yes, I live smack-dab in the middle of Massachusetts, and I use the word "wicked" far too much for my own good. :-D No, I haven't read "The Price of Friendship"...Is it any good? (I'd HOPE so, if my story reminds you of it, lol) :-) Thanks for the review!
Soaker: More lines, this chapter. That good? :-D
Ccatt: Libraries do NOT suck!
ShortAtntionSpaz: You're reading this story despite the slash?? ((tackles you)) I feel so loved! ...Now what's that you're quoting at me? It looks awfully familiar ... but at the same time, I don't think I've read it before. It just looks an awful lot like my six-year-old sister trying to spell stuff ... I guess I can't get a gold star. ((bursts into tears and runs away))
Erin Go Bragh: I'm really heartbroken over the disappearance of the asterisks. I mean, now I'm reduced to using PARENTHESIS to show actions!! Ohh the SHAME!! Ah well—thanks for reviewing!!
KyrielF: Well, ah ... you're not really bathing that much when you're stuck on a deserted island, are you? ... Whatever, it matters not. DOWN WITH THE CAMERAS, INDEED! ((takes out a mop)) Thanks for reviewing, I love you! (Nice eerie music, by the way. Very effective.)
singin'-newsies-goil: I love your little Dutchy fetish. :-D OMG!! My mom just told me to come downstairs—she's watching Empire of the Sun, and Christian Bale is SO CUTE! ((dies)) Thanks for reviewing, I love you!
Coin: OH. MY. GOD. ((dies laughing)) HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! No, Lex Luther isn't a pro-wrestler, he's Superman's archenemy. I'm sorry, I don't mean to be laughing at you, that was just really great. I'll still take the action figure! :-D Anyway, thanks for reviewing, I love you!
Lady of Tir Na Nog: Brave Sir Robin, WOO HOO! :-D
Scout: Yeah, I've got at least one person pissed at me over every newsie I've turned gay. Except Bumlets; I have to be pissed my MYSELF for turning him gay, 'cause nobody else cares about the little sweetie-pie... ((tackles him in a hug)) Thanks for reviewing, I love you!
Repeat: "The Young and Trapped on An Island as Part of An Evil Experiment". ((dies laughing)) I love you, reps...
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[1] Tell me what movie that's from and Bumlets will give you a free make-out session! (Bumlets: WHAT??)
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Author's Note: PHEW! ((wipes sweat of forehead)) I think it took me longer to write the shoutouts than it did to write the entire chapter! Not to say that I don't love your wonderful reviews, lol. KEEP 'EM COMIN', BABY!
-Saturday