He could still remember the picture in the brochure for this fancy field trip that he and the other kids were on. It had showed all these happy, grinning kids sitting around a campfire drinking sodas, their plates piled with all this great-looking food that had just been cooked over an open flame. The brochure had kinda left out a few crucial bits, though. For instance: the storm that smashed up their plane, forcing it to crash-land on this desolate, isolated little island. That storm had made a few changes in their itinerary. Like we don’t know where we are, or how long we’re going to be stuck here.

It was the third day after the crash of charter plane 29 DWN on this crummy uninhabited island somewhere in the South Pacific. At least they thought it was uninhabited—although they hadn’t explored very much of it. That job was up to their pilot, this sweaty bald guy named Captain Robert Russell, and the three students who had marched off with him. Jory, Ian, and Abby. Wasn’t that their names?

Maybe I should have gone with them, thought Jackson, instead of babysitting this car pool of spoiled brats. But Captain Russell and the others have been gone for three days. If there’s a resort hotel just beyond the treetops, they should have found it by now.

Seven of us left. And everyone’s big solution to survival is to elect me leader? Okay, it isn’t their fault. They had to elect somebody, and they’re competing against one another. They probably figured he was the unknown quantity, so they might as well dump the thankless job on him. The perfect one to lead them blindly into the unknown.

Which probably explained his dream. The lives of seven kids felt like way too much responsibility for a fifteen-year-old kid. It was his subconscious telling him . . . well, who really cared what his subconscious was telling him? If he couldn’t find some food for the group pretty soon, they’d all starve to death.

Most of the survivors were sitting on the sand around the wrecked DeHavilland Heron airplane. Jackson remembered how they had fought the tide to save the battered plane on that first wild day. They always came back to the hulk, even though it was useless except for storage. Somehow it made them feel a little closer to civilization, a little less cut off, a little less abandoned in the wilderness.