by Dan Gutman
CHAPTER 19:
An Opportunity
It had been three or four days. We didn’t know exactly, because we didn’t know how long we had been unconscious after the crash.
We started keeping track of the days, carving a line to represent each day on a tree trunk near the campsite. It was Mrs. Herschel’s idea. That’s what prisoners in jails do, she told us. Otherwise they go crazy. After a while you forget what day of the week it is, and how long you’ve been locked up. Eventually you lose your mind.
We were beginning to settle into a routine, the six of us. Every morning, the first person awake would get the fire stoked up and throw some wet leaves on it to produce smoke in case a plane flew overhead. One by one we would go to the “bathroom.” Arcadia liked to pick berries for breakfast. Mrs. Herschel would lead us all in yoga and stretching exercises. Sleeping on the floor of the plane left us all achy in the morning.
Julia built a new deadfall so that maybe we could trap another rabbit or small animal. Once we had the taste of meat, we all wanted more.
We had seen no sign of rescue since that plane flew overhead a few days earlier. I, for one, was beginning to give up hope that anybody would find us out in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t tell the others, but I couldn’t stop thinking that maybe the world had stopped looking for us. Maybe everybody assumed we were dead. People don’t usually survive plane crashes. I know that after a certain amount of time, rescue teams give up because the chances of finding survivors becomes smaller and smaller. They can’t keep searching indefinitely. Rescue missions cost a lot of money.
I was getting depressed. I think we all were.
David suggested that maybe we should leave the campsite and start hiking south. We could use the sun to navigate, he said. If we could cover twenty or thirty miles a day, in ten days we would be 200-300 miles south. Eventually we’d have to stumble upon a town or some evidence of civilization.
We talked it over as a group. The rest of us were inclined to stay at our campsite, where we had shelter, fire, food, and water. Henry said one of the first rules of survival is to stay where you are. If you go wandering all over the place, it’s even harder for rescue teams to find you. And who knows what you might encounter in your travels?
We voted 5-1 to stay put. I thought David might go strike out on his own the way he did earlier, but he didn’t. After his experience with the snake, I guess he decided it would be safer to stick with the group.
After the morning chores were finished, there wasn’t a whole lot to do. Henry was sitting in one of the airplane seats and staring into the fire. He looked like he was lost in thought. I plopped down in the seat next to him.
I didn’t know what Henry was thinking about, but I was thinking about home and what was going on back there. If I was home, I could just skateboard into town and get an ice-cream cone. That would taste so good. What were my parents doing right now, I wondered? They were probably at work. If only I had a webcam or something and could see them on the screen. Did they miss me and Julia? Did they hold a memorial service for us? Did they already have a yard sale and sell all my things? They’d better not sell my skateboard stuff—the magazines, the posters, my old boards, wheels, and bearings.
“Man, I miss skating,” I said, and Henry nodded.
“Y’know, skaters look at the world differently,” Henry said, poking a stick absentmindedly into the fire. “To most people, a skateboard is just a piece of wood with wheels on it. It’s a toy. To me, it’s like an extension of my body.”
I knew exactly what he meant. When regular people look at a set of stairs, all they see is a way to get from one floor to the next one. But when you’re a skater, you look at a set of stairs and you see an opportunity. You wonder if it’s possible to jump those stairs. Is it possible to grind that banister? Every ledge, every curb, every rail is a potential skate spot. A challenge.
David parked himself in the seat next to Henry.
“Hey,” he said, “remember the time we tried to skate off the garage onto the roof of the old Cadillac that Henry’s dad was fixing up?”
Just thinking about it made me smile. We had been shooting our Woodpushers Gone Wild skate video. We were sure it would be so impressive that one of the skateboard companies would have to sponsor us. We got a big black umbrella that we were using like a parachute. David skateboarded off the garage holding the umbrella and tried to land on the car.
“You almost died, if I recall,” Henry said.
“Yeah,” David said, laughing. “It was great.”
“I’d give anything to skate right now,” I said.
“I’d cut off one of my fingers to skate right now,” Henry said.
“I’d cut off my ear,” David said. “That’s what Vincent van Gogh did.”
“He was insane,” I told them.
The sun had positioned itself right between two branches and it was shining in my eyes. I closed them so I wouldn’t be blinded. When I turned my head a little and opened them again, there was a bright yellow afterimage of the sun superimposed over our plane. It almost looked like the rays of the sun were shooting out of the plane itself. It was a startling image, and it seemed almost spiritual, or mystical, or something. It was like a higher power was trying to send me a message.
I thought about it for a moment or two, and then I realized something that I had never noticed before.
The shape of an airplane’s body is identical to the shape of a halfpipe.
CHAPTER 20:
The Halfpipe
It was like a vision, a bolt out of the blue! It was like that cornball moment in every movie when the hero suddenly has some brilliant idea or insight and you hear a choir of angels singing.
I looked at the plane again. If the top was cut off, it would be the shape of the letter U. I was sitting not more than ten yards from a perfect halfpipe! It had been right under our noses this whole time! How did I not see it before?
“Hey!” I said to the guys. “Does that look familiar to you?”
“Does what look familiar to us?” David asked.
“The plane!” I said excitedly. “The shape of the plane!”
“Yeah,” Henry said, “it’s shaped just like an airplane. Remarkable!”
“It’s shaped like something else too,” I told them. “Don’t you see it? It’s a halfpipe!”
“Zimmerman, you’re delirious because you never went this long without skating,” David said. “You’re starting to hallucinate.”
“No, he’s right!” Henry said, getting up to look at the plane more closely. “If we stripped off the outside shell, it would make a perfect halfpipe!”
Finally, even David saw what we were talking about. We all went to the plane and ran our hands over the surface.
“We could skate this thing!” the three of us said at the same time.
It would be simple. All we’d need to do would be to remove the outside layer of metal, turn it upside down, lay it on the ground, and prop both sides up to hold it in place. It shouldn’t take too long. We had already found the toolbox in the cockpit and used it to remove the seats.
There was just one problem. We were using the plane as a place to sleep. It was our shelter. The girls probably wouldn’t take too kindly to the idea of ripping it apart so we could build a halfpipe.
“No way they’ll go for it,” I said.
“Hey, there are three of us and three of them,” David whispered so the girls couldn’t hear. “All we have to do is convince one of them and we’ll have a majority.”
“Listen to Mr. Democracy,” Henry said. “Aren’t you the one who didn’t approve of voting?”
“Well, I changed my mind,” David said.
So we went over to the girls. Henry and David agreed that I should do the talking because, they said, I have “a way with words.”
“We were thinking,” I began, “that we only use the plane as a place to sleep. That’s a big waste. So, uh, you wouldn’t mind if we sort of…took it apart a
nd made it into a halfpipe, would you? All in favor, raise your hand.”
Me, David, and Henry raised our hands.
“What?!” my sister exclaimed. “Are you crazy?”
Right away, Julia and Arcadia started in whining and being all negative about my great idea.
“We have more important things to do…. What would shield us from the rain?…Where would we sleep?…How would you take off the metal?…You’ll fall down and get hurt…. We have no medical training….” And so on. Those two are no fun at all.
“May I ask one question?” said Mrs. Herschel.
“Shoot,” Henry said.
“What’s a halfpipe?”
We explained to Mrs. Herschel what a halfpipe was. At first she looked at us just like we must have looked to her when she was trying to explain cricket. But eventually, she seemed to grasp the idea that you skate up and down and up and down the halfpipe for no other reason than the thrill of it. After listening to our explanation, astonishingly, she raised her hand.
“I think it’s a smashing idea!” Mrs. Herschel said. “You boys have worked hard. You deserve to have a little fun.”
“All right!” we yelled, high-fiving each other. “Majority rules!”
Julia and Arcadia weren’t happy, but what could they do? We had voted on it.
David, Henry, and I hauled out the toolbox and got to work building the halfpipe right away. It wasn’t as hard as we thought it would be. There was a gadget in the toolbox that made it easy to loosen and tighten the rivets that held the metal skin on the body of the plane. We only had one, so David was assigned the job of peeling the metal plates off. While he did that, Henry and I built a simple ladder out of tree branches and vines so we would be able to climb up to the top of the halfpipe.
As it turned out, removing the metal from the plane wasn’t going to ruin our shelter after all. There was another layer underneath that would protect us from the rain. So Julia and Arcadia weren’t so upset about our little project. In fact, they started to help. Julia kept us going with berries and some nuts she found while we worked. Arcadia came up with the idea of making a helmet and kneepads for us out of the bark of a tree. She said she could use vines to strap them on.
“I’m not wearing some lame helmet made out of tree bark,” David complained when Arcadia suggested the idea.
“Hey, bark helmets are cool,” Henry said. “I bet in a couple of years everybody will be wearing bark helmets.”
David didn’t peel all the metal off the plane. He just took off enough to make a ten-foot halfpipe that was about six feet wide. We put the pieces together on the ground next to the plane and tightened the rivets as much as we could with our fingers. Then David used the tool to make each rivet good and tight.
Finally, as the sun was beginning to sink in the afternoon sky, our halfpipe was done. We were exhausted, but it was beautiful. We checked all the rivets to make sure none of them were loose. We slid the whole thing over until it was braced by the plane. We probably should have called it a day and tested out the halfpipe in the morning, but none of us wanted to wait. We had worked so hard building it. We wanted to skate.
I got out my trusty titanium skateboard. This board had already come in handy so many times, it occurred to me. I used it to bash that hijacker over the head so we could take control of the plane. The board saved my life when the plane crashed and I went flying through the windshield. We used it to help start the fire. David killed the snake with it. The girls used it to trap the rabbit. And now we were finally going to use it for the purpose it was intended. To skate.
The question was, who would go first? It was my board, of course. Obviously, I should get the first turn.
“Firsts!” David called. “I got dibs.”
“Why should you get to go first?” Henry said. “It’s Zimmerman’s board.”
“If it wasn’t for me, we never would have fought back when they hijacked the plane,” David said. “We’d all be dead right now.”
“Oh, yeah?” Henry said, “If it wasn’t for me we’d be dead right now too. I’m the one who landed the plane. Maybe I should go first.”
“I’m the one who thought of building a halfpipe,” I chimed in.
“And it’s my brother’s board,” added Julia.
We had a pretty good argument going when Henry suddenly stopped talking. I looked at him. His face was pale and his mouth was open. He was looking over my shoulder. I turned around to see what he was looking at.
Arcadia let out a scream. There was a guy standing there!
CHAPTER 21:
Heroes
“Who are you?”
He was a big guy, even taller than my dad. He was wearing a uniform and one of those hats that Dudley Do-Right wore in those old cartoons.
“James Cavanaugh, Royal Canadian Mounted Police,” the guy said, sticking out his hand.
“What are you doing out here?” I asked.
“Well, I believe I’m rescuing you,” he said. “Sorry we weren’t here sooner. It’s quite remote. The roads were blocked…had a heck-uva time getting here.”
At first we couldn’t comprehend this stranger in our midst. It had been so long since we’d seen another human being, we didn’t quite know what to make of him. But that only lasted a few seconds.
“We’re saved!” everybody started screaming. “Yipee! We’re going home!”
The six of us were all jumping up and down and hugging each other as if we had won the Super Bowl or something.
“We just about gave up hope of finding you folks alive,” the officer told us once we had calmed down. “We’ve been looking high and low for you.”
“Maybe you should have looked in the middle,” said Henry.
“Say, if you don’t mind my asking,” the officer said, “why are you fellows dressed in women’s clothes?”
“It’s a long story,” we all said.
We were thrilled to be rescued, of course. Soon we’d be back home with our parents, our pets, our stuff. I could sleep in my own bed without worrying about a bear attacking me. I could eat a pizza. I could eat a real chocolate cake. Life would return to normal. Even going back to school in September would be great.
But something was bothering me. Something wasn’t right. I guess we all felt it.
“Uh, officer,” Henry asked, “would you mind giving us a little more time here?”
“You don’t want to be rescued yet?”
“First we need to skate our halfpipe,” David told him.
“Yeah!” Henry and I agreed.
The officer said he understood, and told us to take all the time we needed.
“Okay,” I said. “Now as I was saying, I should get to go first. I started the Woodpushers, remember? It’s my board and it was my idea and all.”
“Oh, give it a rest, Zimmerman!” David said. “I’m way better at skating vert than you.”
“I’m better than both of you,” said Henry.
“How about I go first?”
We turned around. It was Mrs. Herschel.
“You?” We looked at her like she was from another planet. Like Uranus.
“In my day I was quite the roller skater,” she said. “I even won a trophy when I was a girl.”
“You boys should give Mrs. Herschel the first turn,” my sister said.
“Yeah,” agreed Arcadia, “as a birthday present.”
“Uh…okay,” the three of us agreed. I had never seen an eighty-year-old lady drop into a halfpipe before. But then, in the last three days I had seen a lot of stuff I never thought I’d see.
Julia helped Mrs. Herschel strap on the wooden pads and helmet. I handed her my board.
“Are you goofy or regular?” I asked her.
“I must be goofy to do this!” she replied.
As she climbed the ladder up to the top of the halfpipe, the rest of us shouted advice and encouragement.
“You can do it, Mildred!”
“Mrs. Herschel, you are an awesome skater
chick!”
“We’re going to make you an honorary Woodpusher!”
“Lean forward! Always lean forward!”
Mrs. Herschel positioned the board on the edge of the halfpipe the way we told her to. Then she put a foot on the board and gave us a thumbs-up.
“What is it you Yanks holler before doing something extremely daft?” she asked. “Geronimo?”
“Cowabunga!” suggested Julia, whose skateboarding knowledge comes almost entirely from old episodes of The Simpsons. Skating is the only thing I know more about than her.
“Cowabunga!” Mrs. Herschel yelled it as she leaned into the halfpipe.
In a perfect world, Mrs. Herschel would have dropped into the halfpipe, done a 360 flip-to-tailgrab and landed fakie, tearing that thing up like Tony Hawk in his prime. Then we’d give her a standing ovation.
Well, what actually happened was that she fell on her ass.
“Oh, my bum!” she hollered after a spectacular face-plant.
We all came running over, terrified that Mrs. Herschel might have broken her hip or something. But she just dusted herself off and told us we were all a bunch of crybabies.
“Okay,” she said, “let’s get out of here.”
Me and Henry and David took turns skating the halfpipe for about an hour, and it was awesome. Believe me, if you haven’t skated the inside shell of a jet plane, you haven’t skated. The Canadian police guy was so impressed that he pulled a video camera out of his backpack and filmed us.
We said one last good-bye to our campsite that had been our home. Officer Cavanaugh told us it had been nearly a week since the crash. Somewhere along the way, we had lost track of time. He led us about a mile through the woods to a clearing where a helicopter was waiting to airlift us back to civilization.
That’s when things got really strange.
I thought our lives were going to return to normal when we got home, but it was just the opposite. When we stepped off the helicopter at the airport, there was a marching band playing and thousands of people cheering. I figured somebody famous must be coming through, but then we realized that somebody was us!