"Okay, I have a theory. Get ready for me to blow your mind today. We'll literally be picking up parts of your brain off the trees. Pieces of your mind will be blown to the other side of the beach."

"Lovely." I whispered under my breath, after I'd imagined the mind-blowing scene (no pun intended), then let Jason continue with whatever ludicrous thought he'd cooked up this time.

"Cut the dramatic crap and get to the point, Broadway." Kat said dismissively, having just woken up. She had this "don't even try to mess with me" aura around her, and paired with her piercing blue eyes and wild black hair, she was definitely not one you wanted to cross.

Needless to say, she wasn't a morning person. We all drew sticks on who had to wake her up, after Ben had advised us that she wasn't exactly pleasant before 12pm. I, unfortunately, drew the short stick, and as a result had to tiptoe into her tent and shake her awake at arms length, wincing every time she turned in case she planned a surprise attack. Charlie had said we needed her to help us sort out breakfast, because she was in charge of food.

It did not go down well with her, to say the least.

Basically, I was almost bitten by a rabid Kat with wild bed hair and bad breath.

That was not the highlight of the day.

Surprisingly, sleeping in a tent is not as uncomfortable as you would think. In fact, Alex and I only had to deal with about 5 bugs during the course of the night, which surprised me. Being on an unknown Island made me expect the worst, and to be honest, the worst for me would be a scorpion or a snake, not a beetle that was only trying to get back to it's family.

"Okay." Jason started readily. "Okay. Okay. Okay."

"Aanndd I've lost interest in 3, 2-" Kat said, putting the numbers up on her fingers as she spoke.

"Okay!" Jason interrupted. "I'm seriously proud of this one: The wardrobe from Narnia could have easily led to the mythical land of Westeros."

Jason waited in anticipation as a few seconds ticked by.

Alex, who looked just as confused as I felt, looked around in curiosity and hesitantly put her hand up.

"Uh, yeah, when does the mind blowing begin?"

"Hold on Blondie, this guy may have just said the first actually interesting thing I've heard any of you say since we got off that stupid boat." Said Kat, moving in front of Alex and a little closer to Jason. "Carry on, Broadway. You've got my attention so make it useful."

Jason seemed somewhat stunned by Kat's reaction, but soon smiled and continued to speak. "Think about it. Narnia and Westeros must belong to the same universe. Both mythical, both medieval, both have some sort of spiritual edge. I think those 4 kids could have easily found themselves in Westeros instead of Narnia."

"One thing you gotta love about Jason." Alex whispered to me. "He makes things interesting."

I chuckled at her remark as I continued to pick the berries off of some bushes that Kat had found. I had been instructed to only pick the pinkish- reddish ones, because she wasn't sure if the rest were poisonous. She also said I shouldn't eat any of them before she inspected them. We didn't need anyone lost because of indulgence or greed.

We'd been berry picking for breakfast for a long while, with myself, Jason, Kat and Alex divided across one area to pick all the bushes clean. Carrie had called dibs on Charlie and suggested they go fishing, and Ben was back at the camp trying to work out a schedule. He was planning to go exploring with Charlie and I so that we could map the island, and maybe find another way back home.

Jason had previously been fishing, but had said that he'd rather smash his head with a coconut than listen to Carrie shamelessly flirting with Charlie.

The only thing I could think was "Amen to that!"

Alex and I left Kat and Jason to talk about the possible resemblance of mythical kingdoms, and turned to our own bush, starting our own conversation.

"You think there's anything going on between them?" Alex immediately asked after they were out of earshot.

"What?" I asked. "Kat and Jason?"

"Yeah."

"Do you think so?"

"Yeah!" Alex said in excitement. "I dunno. I just feel something. Like when I predicted you and Charlie would shack up."

I blinked in what I felt was a mix of surprise and utter outrage. "There is and will never be any 'shacking up'. Why would you even think like that?"

Alex smiled at me knowingly. "What you forget, is that 1) I'm pretty sure I'm psychic, and 2) none of us were actually asleep when you were talking to Charlie last night on the boat."

The blood rushed to my cheeks before I could stop it. "You... Heard that?"

"Well it's pretty hard to sleep when you're worried about your life as you know it. Besides, that, like these berries, was some juicy stuff. All that stuff about you always making him feel better, and when he cried I almost lost it!"

I did not think it was possible, or healthy for that matter, for a human to have this much blood rushing to their cheeks. I probably looked like a tomato had a baby with a rag doll.

"And that thing with the confession? It was like the season finale of a reality show! I wonder when he'll tell you."

"I've decided that I don't need to know." I said conclusively, trying to sound independent and strong but my burning cheeks betraying me. "He thought we were gonna die, Alex. He was probably going to say anything because his emotions were probably all over the place."

Alex looked up at a tall branch and reached upwards, stretching with full power to reach a particularly ripe-looking berry that hung from it.

"And if you find out he likes you? What happens then?" She queried, then sighed in disappointment when she  failed to reach the berry.

I decided to be clever. "Well, what about you and Ben, huh? Don't think I haven't noticed. That kiss on the boat, the way he freezes whenever you touch him, everything. What's going on there?"

Alex seemed to be ready for this. "So, the guy has a little crush on me. What's your point?" She stated, strategically avoiding my gaze.

I was ready for her. "Fair enough, but you didn't have to kiss him. Or touch him at all. And the fact that you can't look me in the eye right now says more than you think."

I smiled triumphantly when I heard her sigh in defeat, and I witnessed her lift up her head slowly and ever-so dramatically.

"Not everything is about love, you know." She scowled, obviously irritated.

"Oh come on short stack, you don't really believe that, do you?"

Before she could speak again we were interrupted by a continuous sound that seemed like it was fast approaching. It sounded like the soles of a foot slamming down on the leafy terrain, at a high speed and coming this way.

"Alex, do you hear that-"

At the completely wrong moment, Jason decided to take a step back to admire the bush that he had erased of any sign of fruit, and as a result collided with the creature that we had heard fast approaching.

The mismatched steps of Ben were to follow, and for a moment Jason lay on the ground with all the wind knocked out of him.

It was what had collided with him that was a surprise to us all.

Ben finally arrived at the clearing, grotesquely out of breath and trying to communicate through hand gestures. All his actions were pointing dangerously where Jason still laid, and where the girl he had bumped into had disappeared from.

Ben kicked a tree in muted rage, ignoring the pain and screamed with his head in his hands.

"Whoa, Whoa, what's wrong? What just happened here?" Kat asked hurriedly, immediately, instinctively, rushing to Ben's side.

We all dropped our berry baskets and advanced towards Ben, making a semi-circle so we could all hear him. Kat didn't even try to hide her anxious expression.

"Ben." Alex whispered, hoping to get through his closed body language. "Who was that?"

"I don't know." Ben finally informed us, and he slowly turned round back the way he came, the fight knocked out of him. He turned around once more, but this time the sadness had gone and his eyes were just boring into the direction the girl had fled to. "But she took our compass."

*

"Well, what are we meant to do?" Alex asked tiredly. "Was there only one compass?"

Ben retracted his fingers from his mouth to reply to Alex, probably deciding that he was done gnawing at his fingernails anyway.

"Yes." He stated matter of factly. "There's one compass per survival pack. I don't think the designers were anticipating the theft of one."

"It's okay, guys." Jason yawned, before leaning back onto a nearby tree. "Nature can be our compass."

We all ignored him.

We were back at where we had set up camp. The sun was telling me that it was around noon or so, and after Jason's collision with the thieving girl, we had collected the berry baskets and made our way back to the base.  Kat had made it obvious that she was to be second in command, so she instructed Alex to fetch Charlie and Carrie to update them on what had happened.

And Carrie obviously wasn't happy about it.

"You bumbling bonehead!" She shrieked. "How did she even manage to get her hands on it?"

"It happened too quickly for me to respond." Ben said in indignant defence. "There wasn't much I could do."

"What even happened?" I asked.

"I was working on a schedule so that when Charlie, Sierra and I started exploring, we could get all the ground covered as soon as possible. I had made a list of everything we needed, as we would have planned to be out as soon as the sun rose, and back just as the sun would set.

"So I laid out everything we would need, including a water bottle, a small penknife for dangerous animals, a few small items that we could put on trees as markers in case we got lost, and a compass so we could start mapping. I don't know, I didn't do it very secretively, because I thought I was alone. Maybe she was watching me, I'm not sure. All I know, is that one minute I'm noting down things and calculating things in my head, the next minute I see a flash of red hair and she's running out of the beach and into the jungle.

"So of course I bound after her but I'm not very athletic and she obviously was so she was miles ahead. I thought I could get it back when she bumped into Jason but you guys were too stunned to do anything. Just like I was."

There was silence after he finished.

"Wow, Mr Brainbox." Alex chuckled. "I think that's the most you've said at once in the past 5 days. You may collect your certificate at the office."

He smiled quickly.

Carrie sighed in exasperation. "I swear, me and Charlie leave you alone for one minute and everything's already falling apart."

"You know, I'm really starting to think we should have thrown you overboard when we had the chance." Kat sneered. "There's still a large body of water over there, ginger. Don't test me."

Carrie frowned at Kat, but seemed to have got the message.

My eyes flickered over to Charlie, who was sitting at the entrance of his tent and looking in the distance in thought.

"Charlie." I hollered, causing him to look at me. "You haven't said anything this whole time. What are you thinking about?"

Charlie glanced quickly at all of us in turn. " I think you guys are all missing the big picture." He pondered.

"What?" Carrie said irritatingly. Her squeaky voice just did that to me.

"Never mind the missing compass. If someone stole it." He took a small breath. "It means we're not alone on this island."