Island of Myths

My head shot up from my desk as the bell pealed in my ear. I took in a quick, short breath of surprise, but slowly relaxed when I realized I had fallen asleep- again- in math. I groaned and put my head back down, closing my eyes for a few more seconds before pushing myself up and out of the desk. I quickly draped my backpack over my shoulder, and looked around for one of my best friends, Amy. I brushed my chestnut hair out of my face- for the most part- and began walking towards the door. I spotted Amy along the way coming from her seat on the other side of the classroom. I began walking over to her, and she waved and jumped up and down before scurrying over to me. A smile was stretched across her elf-like face, and I couldn’t help but smile back. Even on my worst days, I couldn’t help but smile back.
“Hello!” she shouted, her voice chimed. She was the shortest in our group, and the cutest. She had big innocent brown eyes, and short brown hair to match. At four foot ten we considered her a midget, and I treated her like the little sister I never had. It was a sad thought to me that I was only two tiny inches taller.
“Hey Amy,” I laughed as we walked out of the classroom. “Dude, there was something I was going to tell you, but I can’t remember...” I drifted off into thought, trying to remember what it was.
“The lunar eclipse is tonight?” Amy tried to help, and she was dead on.
“Yes! The lunar eclipse is tonight! I heard it was going to be awesome!” I told her, waiting for an opportunity to pitch my idea.
“I know I can’t wait to watch!” Amy agreed, giving me a perfect opening.
“I hear the best spot to watch it is the cliffs on Phoenix Island.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, totally!”
“That would be so cool!”
“Yeah, you know... We should ask Julie and Lianna if they want to, and we could all take Lianna’s speed boat!”
“That’s perfect!” Amy jumped in the air as she said it, and I knew my plan had worked. We just needed to get at least Lianna to come so we could use her boat, though I had no doubt in my mind Julie would be up for the adventure.
“Cool, we should call now because we don’t want them to get all annoyed by the short notice thing.”
“Sure, I’ll call Julie and you call Lianna,” said Amy.
“Sweet.”
Amy called Julie on her cell phone, and she said (as I had expected) yes. Meanwhile I was calling Lianna on her cell. After a lot of talking and planning, all of us were going to meet each other at 6:30 at Lianna’s house, then go down to the beach to go to Phoenix Island. Lianna’s dad owned a small speed boat just big enough for us to drag down to the beach. Then after wards we were going to spend the night at her house.
I guess that I should tell you the story of how Phoenix Island got its name. Sometime in the late 1800s a fisherman from out of state didn’t know the little legend that Phoenix Island was supposedly haunted, and so he decided to go there on a foggy day thinking that it might be a good fishing spot. Once he got over there he thought that he saw something fall behind the mountains and decided to investigate. Once he was on the other side of the island, he saw it again, only this time it flew behind a rock that was right in front of him. When he walked over to look at what it was, he saw a bird that was on fire, but it was still alive. It didn’t seem at all phased by the fact that it was on fire.
That’s when he realized what it was, a phoenix. He tried to grab it, but it burned his hands. All of the sudden it flew away and he hunted it down for hours, but he never found it. He went back to the town and tried to tell everyone, but not everybody would listen; although, those who did listen named it Phoenix Island. None of us really believed the story, though we like to joke about it and like to think it’s true.

“Okay everybody ready to go!” shouted Julie over the roar of the starting motor. We all shook our heads yes. Everyone was in the boat and ready to go, and Julie loved driving the boat. Julie looked somewhat like me, only smaller and daintier. Her hair had an eerie red glow to it in the moonlight, even though it was only a tiny bit redder than my own. You could barely even tell she had freckles, even though she had a ton, possibly more than I did. I used to have a lot of freckles, but they gradually began to fade as I stopped going outside in the sun so much. I stared down at the murky, black water as the boat sped. It was cool to think that there were little creatures swimming beneath the dark surface. After about five minutes we looked ahead and saw Phoenix Island. It had a flat beach, but after that were nothing but cliffs dropping straight down. There was an easy (well easier) slanted way, and the side of the cliff. We were going the easier way. It only made a slight difference- we would still have to climb with our hands and feet- but this way if we fell, at least we wouldn’t hit the ground very hard. We would have climbed the other way up, but Lianna was the only one who had ever done that before, so she got out voted.
We drug our boat up onto the beach (making sure it was high enough so the high tide wouldn’t get it), and left it there. Then we started to climb the steep slope to the top of the cliff. It was miserable. After only three minutes my legs could barely move, and the worst part was that I was only half way there.
“Come on slow pokes! We’re almost there.” Lianna shouted down to the rest of us, her light brown hair swirling around her face. There was a lot of wind tonight, and I hoped that didn’t mean a storm because they can come fast. We needed clear weather to get back to the coast, or else-I shuddered at the thought- we would be stuck on the island all night, in the storm, without shelter, until somebody came and got us.
“No Lianna,” I shouted up to her, “you’re almost there.” She was the fastest climber out of all of us. In the fourth grade she took rock climbing lessons three times a week. Now, she was like a spider crawling up its web. I was the second fastest, Julie was third, and poor Amy was last.
“Ah!” I heard a voice below me shriek. I immediately looked down and saw Amy sliding rapidly down the steep slope. She had lost her grip, and it looked like she was having trouble getting a good hold on the rocks. I watched in terror and she kept falling, praying she wouldn’t hit a rock. If she did it would knock her completely off balance and instead of sliding she would tumble down the cliff probably hitting rocks on the way down. Finally after sliding about forty to fifty feet, she got a good grip on the rocks and caught her breath.
“That was a close one!” I yelled after a sigh of relief.
“A little too close!” Lianna and Amy shouted in unison.
“A little?!” Julie asked. Then we all laughed and kept climbing, and after about five minutes or so we made it. It would have taken us less time, but we all decided to group together and go at a slower pace in case someone slipped again.
“OKAY everybody, let’s lay out the blankets.” I told everyone after we finally got to the top. The lunar eclipse was beginning, and for a minute I couldn’t help but stare. It looked amazing. A dark light seemed to illuminate the surrounding area, and I watched in wonder and amazement. I looked back down at my friends. They had finished laying out the blankets, and were now sitting down. I almost felt bad for not helping, but I decided since I was in charge that was my only job. I walked over and sat down in between Julie and Amy.
We put on our sun glasses, and then watched the sky. It was truly amazing, and I couldn’t think of a better spot to watch. The moon was almost completely covering the sun. Then finally it was there, a full eclipse. The dark light still illuminated and shimmered around us. It seemed to get brighter, but at the same time it was still dark. All of the sudden a strange mist seeped from out of nowhere and encircled us. Then a dim beam of dark, shimmering light from the eclipse came down on us.
“Guys,” Lianna whispered in a frightened and hushed tone. “This is really creepy.” We all nodded our heads, definitely. I looked around at the mist seeping in from the depths of the sea, and the dark light that seemed to glimmer around us. Lianna started to get up to leave, but something pushed her back down. “That’s not funny.”
“That wasn’t any of us,” I told her, and she looked at us like we thought she was stupid. Then, right at that very moment, the light and fog all faded away, and when I looked up the full eclipse was over. It disappeared as quickly as it had come. We all got up, put away the blankets, and descended the mountain. None of us made a sound except for the occasional sigh. The trip seemed to go on forever. I stared down at the black ocean, just thinking. We were all just thinking. When we got to Lianna’s house I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to say something.
“Okay guys, we have to talk about what happened. We can’t just ignore it; we all know that that wasn’t nothing.” I told my friends exactly what they wanted to avoid. They looked down at the floor like they knew I was right. Julie was sitting on the bed, Amy was at the computer desk, and Lianna and I were leaning against the wall.
“First I’ll go get some water,” Lianna said as she left the room. I guess she just needed a little more time to go over what to say since she was now certain that we were going to talk about it. We all waited, and looked at each other. We were probably all thinking about what to say.
Lianna walked back into the room with a tray with four glasses and a pitcher of water on it, but, In a moment of unusual clumsiness, she tripped over a pillow and spilled everything. “Ah!” We all screamed in unison. I instantly got up to help, and brushed against Lianna. The water spilled on Julie’s legs. I looked, and what I saw shocked me. The pitcher and the glasses were frozen in mid-air with Lianna’s hands up, as if she had tried to catch them, Julie had a dark blood red fish tail, and Amy... Amy was gone and then she appeared to fade back into existence, almost like a ghost turning solid. At first we were all shocked, but then all eyes landed on Julie.
“Why didn’t anything happen to you?” Lianna asked me. I moved my hand to shrug, but once again brushed against Lianna and suddenly the glasses unfroze and hit the floor. Fortunately they landed on the soft pillows, and didn’t break. “I take that back, Nat.” We were all astonished.
“Okay, we all know when and where this happened, but the only thing we don’t why.” I said unsteadily after a few minutes. My voice was shaky because I was still a little freaked out. Something had happened when we went to Phoenix Island, but why? What was the secret that made this happen? Was it a curse, a spell, or something way more supernatural? Hopefully this was just a dream. Now I know what you’re thinking, “if I suddenly got magic powers I would be I would be all like `awesome!’”, well that just wasn’t the case for us. And trust me, though you like to think otherwise, it wouldn’t be the case for you either.
“We can talk about that later, but first we need to make this tail go away.” Julie said as she slapped her tail, as if trying to see if that would help.
“I don’t think that slapping it will work,” Amy joked, or at least attempted a joke to lighten up the mood along with the seemingly heavy air. “Let’s try drying you off.” We grabbed towels, and begun to dry her off, making sure we didn’t hurt her scales. The water droplets shined on her crimson scales, and I was a little jealous. They were a deep blood red, a perfect complement to her red tinted hair. Once she was completely dry her tail disappeared, leaving in its place her legs, tattered jeans and all.
“I think we should talk about how we use these powers.” Lianna advised. Surprisingly we were all pretty calm considering what just happened. I think that was probably because we were hoping it was all just a dream, but unfortunately it wasn’t.
“I think that we should watch some T.V., go to sleep, and forget any of this ever happened.” Amy said as she turned on the television. She was right, it was getting late, and I don’t think any of us could take any more surprises. Next thing you know Lianna’s mom will turn into a goblin or her dad would turn into the Loch Ness Monster. I think he would look better that way anyway. Her father had tons of zits, badly cut red hair, and what looked similar to a French mustache that you would see on TV. He has an overly large nose, and is always mean to us. Nobody likes him.
“I don’t know about any of you, but I’m just going to sleep,”I smirked as I lay down.
“Me too.”
“Ditto.”
“Whatever.” So Julie turned out the lights, and I went to sleep after about an hour of just laying there, thinking about what had just happened.

“I had the weirdest dream last night.” I said sleepily when we woke up. The sunlight was shining in my eyes, so I got under the blanket before trying to open them.
“Let me guess, Julie sprouted a tail?” Lianna said in an annoyed voice.
“That wasn’t a dream, was it?” I asked, praying the answer was “yes, it was all just a dream, and you didn’t get magical powers”. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the answer.
“Not even a little.”
“Ah man,” Julie, Amy, and I groaned as we lay back down. That was just great.