Man Trip Read Free Page B

“Just use your head.”
    Five minutes later I was only beginning number three.
    Shayla slapped down her pencil. “Done.”
    Show-off.
    She took out a piece of paper and started drawing another frog. If she likes frogs so much, I thought, she should come over and dig the bufos out of my grass.
    My pencil still hung over question number three.
    Shayla sighed, like, It’s so hard being smart and finishing my test before everyone else.
    I turned in my seat so my back was to her. Saturday’s man trip couldn’t come soon enough.

W hen Saturday finally arrived, Ledward picked me up in the dark before sunrise. I stumbled into my shorts and T-shirt. Ledward had told me not to bring anything. Bill would take care of it.
    “My favorite time of day,” Ledward said aswe headed down our deserted street in his jeep. “Got the whole world to yourself.”
    He was right about that. The only other person we saw was a kid on a bike delivering papers.
    Mom, Darci, and Stella were still asleep.
    Dang. I hadn’t asked anyone to feed Streak. I hope you’re a good beggar, girl.
    Ledward drove up and over the mountains that split the island in half. On the other side, we headed down a green valley with high thin waterfalls that flowed up instead of down. They were hard to see in the dark, but I knew they were there. They flowed upside down because when the water fell, the wind blew it back up.
    I sat hunched forward in the open jeep with my arms crossed in the cool morning air. Heat from the engine warmed my feet. Like Ledward, I was only wearing my rubber slippers, shorts, and a T-shirt.
    I could hardly wait to get out on that boat.
    “I forgot the guy’s name who has the boat,” I said. “Is it Bad Bill?”
    Ledward laughed. “No, but that would work. Everyone calls him Baja. But I like to add the Bill part. Baja Bill sounds more like a sea captain. Anyway, we went to high school together. He’s got a head full of stories, so hang on to your hat. Got a head full of knowledge, too.” Ledward chuckled. “He’ll tell you it’s useless knowledge, but it’s not. You’ll like him.”
    Cool name. Baja Bill.
    We headed down into Honolulu, and finally, to the airport.
    The airplane was like a giant tube. We made our way down the aisle to the back. I scooted in next to a window. Ledward sat next to me.
    “Does this plane go fast?” I asked.
    “Sure does, but when we’re up in the air it won’t feel like it. It’ll be a nice, smooth ride.”
    We took off as the sun began to lighten the sky. The plane shot up and turned toward theocean, pressing me into my seat. I squeezed my eyes shut. But when Ledward elbowed me, I slowly peeked out the window.
    Ho …
    Below, I could see the gray-blue morning ocean, and reefs, and big patches of underwater sand, and fishing boats heading out of the harbor, and the edge of the island with all the house lights and roads and buildings and ballparks and rivers.
    Man oh man.

    I
loved
flying on airplanes! “Look,” I said. “We’re going higher than the clouds!”
    “Yup.”
    I stared out the window at the ocean until we dropped down out of the sky and landed on the moon.

W ell, it sure
looked
like the moon.
    What we really landed on was miles and miles of black rock, with hardly any trees or bushes anywhere. “Is all this rock an old lava flow?” I asked.
    “Yep. From back in the eighteen hundreds, I think. Everything you see once flowed redhot down the mountainside. Then it cooled and dried. This island still has an active volcano, but that’s way down on the south end. This part is inactive. Or so they say.”
    The airport sat at the edge of the ocean on all that rock.
    Everyone climbed down a stairway that some guys rolled up to the plane. “Wow.” I stood at the top looking around. The airport was small compared to the one in Honolulu. And nothing was around it but black rock.
    Ledward put on his sunglasses. “A different world here, huh?”
    “It’s so quiet.”
    “Who needs