Disclaimer: I do not own Jimmy Neutron or any related characters.

Jimmy looked up at the night sky. He stared at the stars, cursing his rotten luck. He had been just a few seconds too late. If he had run a little faster, had his camp a few yards closer to the clearing, they all might be back home right now.

He looked to his right at his sleeping classmates. These people, they abandoned Nick and his group. They risked their lives in the jungle to come be with me. They thought I could help them. And I failed them. Especially Cindy.

He grabbed some nearby sticks and threw them into the fire. He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. He pulled something out of his pocket. It was a carton of cigarettes. He grabbed a nearby lighter and lit it. He put it in his mouth.

He sat there a second, not taking a puff. God, what the hell am I doing? he thought as he ripped the cigarette out of his mouth and threw it into the fire. He stood up and tossed the rest of the carton far into the jungle.

"Well, aren't you the little rebel," Cindy quietly said. Jimmy looked to his side and saw Cindy standing there, her arms crossed and a scowl on her face.

"Shut up. I put it out," he sadly told her. And since when am I the mean one?

Cindy sighed and sat down next to him. "Jimmy, it wasn't your fault. You did all that you could. Nobody here blames you for what happened."

"That was our chance, Cindy. Our ticket off of this damn island," Jimmy sadly said.

"So what? We'll stay here awhile. You didn't mind it last time," Cindy reminded him.

Jimmy chuckled a little. "You know that this is nothing like last time. Last time we had my inventions. We were rescued the next day. We were alone. And nobody got hurt. We're here because two hundred other people died. We barely have enough food to survive. I'm worried about those stupid animals at night and Nick's gang during the day. That island was paradise. This one is Hell."

Cindy sat in silence, not knowing how to respond to that. After a few moments passed Jimmy stood up and started putting some things in his backpack.

"If we had been on the beach we could have been rescued. We deserve that camp, not them. Tomorrow we're going back," he sternly told her.

"Jimmy, there are a lot of people over there who are really pissed at you," she reminded him.

Jimmy threw his backpack outside his small hut. "So what. I saved their lives that first day. I figured out how we could survive. I fixed the transmitter. I rooted around dead bodies so we could live. And I would have signaled that plane. Tomorrow we're going back," he said again before lying down and going to sleep.