After about three hours, we had a decent shelter. We would have finished quicker, but we didn’t have an axe. We had a pocketknife, and sawing through a bunch of sticks with a pocketknife starts to hurt your hand. The shelter was just a lean-to. It was pretty basic, but then again, it was built by a 15 year old and 53 year old! As long as it protected us from the wind, rain and snow, I figured that it would be okay.

“You know... after all of this time, you haven’t told me much about yourself...” I said as I gave him a look that showed that I was hoping that he’d tell me something interesting. As soon as I said it he kind of froze like he had to think about his answer. What? Does he seriously not know who he is?

“Oh,” he finally said. Really? That’s it!

“What’s your name?” I finally asked. I guess I had to get to the point with this guy. He had to pause and think. Seriously?

“Mike,” he told me.

“Mike. Cool. Is it short for Michael?” I asked.

“No!” he quickly replied. Funny. He had to thin about all of his other answers but not this one.

“Oh, well, what else can you tell me about yourself?” I asked.

“Oh, you wouldn’t be interested. I’m kind of boring,” Mike told me. I let out a snort.

“Look, I told you about myself, now you’ve got to tell me about yourself! C’mon! Spit it out! What are you hiding old man?” I asked. He laughed at my ‘old man’ comment. He knew by the tone I said it in that I was just joking around.

“Alright, alright, well, I worked in the music industry for as long as I can remember,” he told me.

“Used to? You don’t work in the music industry anymore? What were you? A singer? A guitar player?” I asked. He laughed.

“Oh no! No, not at all! I was just an assistant,” he told me.

“Did you work for big name stars?” I asked. He slowly nodded his head. My face lit up! And he said that he was boring! Liar!

“Like who!?” I asked excitedly. He hummed a little bit as he thought of who he had worked for.

“Oh you know lots of people! Like... Christina Aguilera, 50 cent, Madonna, Prince...”

“Did you ever work for Michael Jackson?” I asked very intrigued.

“Of course I did! I am Micha- I am Mike Johnson... Mike Johnson works for all music stars!” he stammered a little bit. I found it kind of funny how he continued mixing up his words like that all of the time.

“So that’s what you meant when you said that you had met Michael Jackson!” I exclaimed.

“I’m not Michael Jackson,” he said quickly. What the heck?

“Yeah... you’re Mike Johnson. You said you were Mike Johnson about ten seconds ago...” I told him. Maybe he had memory loss...

“Oh yeah, sorry! Like I told you before, sometimes I don’t even know what I’m talking about!” he apologized. I laughed.

“It’s okay, I don’t mind. My grandma does that a lot,” I told him.

“Oh really? Does she have an illness?” he asked me. I glared at him. “What?”

“Stop trying to change the subject. We’re talking about you not me!” I shouted. He laughed.

“You can’t blame me for trying!”

“How come you don’t like talking about yourself? You’re so cool!” I exclaimed. He blushed.

“I’m not cool...”

“Yes you are! You’re so cool! Your job is pretty cool! Who knows what other cool stuff you haven’t told me!” I screamed. He laughed.

“We should gather some food,” Michael started. I was about to protest, but I guess he was right. I looked around. This was obviously a tropical island. I had noticed some coconuts were hanging on some trees that I could probably climb. I have this feeling that I’m going to be gathering all of the food...

“Can you climb trees?” I asked him even though I was pretty sure he’d say no. Who knows! He sounded pretty cool and cool people like him could probably climb trees!

“Yeah, I can climb trees,”

“Really?!” I asked in disbelief. I covered my mouth. I probably offended him! He didn’t mind, he just laughed.

“You didn’t expect a 53 year old man like me to be able to climb trees did you?” he asked. I shook my head.

“No, I didn’t. Sorry! I didn’t mean to offend you!” I apologized. He chuckled.

“Don’t worry about it! I understand, c’mon, let’s go gather some fruit!” Mike said as he started walking back towards the beach. I followed him.

When I got there, he had already started climbing a coconut tree! I just stared in awe as it started raining coconuts!

“Heads up!” he called down to me. I ran out from under the tree and watched all of the coconuts fall. There were about six of them. He slowly came down the tree and brushed his hands off. He smiled.

“How was that?” he asked me. I smiled.

“That was so cool!” I exclaimed. He laughed.

After about two hours, we had accomplished a lot! We had some food and some wood for fire. In total, we had eleven coconuts, about six sundrop fruits (they tasted kind of like passion fruit but looked like oranges), we had four dragon fruits, tons of miracle fruit (they were really small red fruits and they grew on bushes, so there were lots of them! Mike told me that they alter your taste buds and make sweet things taste sour and sour things taste sweet! I was excited to try one) and we also had a bunch of bananas. I wasn’t worried about lack of Vitamin C at all! What I was worried about was meat! Mike had told me that he was vegetarian, but he said that he’d cheat since we were trying to survive out here. I didn’t know how we were going to catch any meat, but I figured that we’d somehow craft a spear and go spear fishing. I doubted that we’d catch a mammal here. Besides, who knows what kinds of dangerous animals were on this island, I did not want to go searching for food and find out that some jaguar is going to come and shred me to bits!

“How are we going to make a spear?” I asked. Mike shrugged.

“How am I supposed to know?” he asked. I gave him this look of stupidity.

“Your 53 years old! You can’t honestly say that after all of these years you haven’t got the slightest clue on how to make a spear!” I told him.

“Hey! I worked in the music business! I know how to put up with a bunch of different people! Don’t make me add you to that list...” he warned. I couldn’t help but laugh. He was quick as a whip. I liked that. I’m glad I wasn’t going to be stuck here with some deadbeat 53 year old guy. I wish his oldest son was here. That would have been really nice!

“Fine, I’ll give you that one, but still! You have to know something!” I whined. He shrugged his shoulders again.

“Okay, how about this... I build a fire, then we crack open a coconut, eat the inside of it and drink the milk and then we’ll fill the halves up with water and I’ll boil the water so that we have clean water,” he suggested. Whoa. I didn’t even think about clean water! I’m glad he did though because I completely forgot!

“Okay, sounds good to me,”

“But while I start the fire, you have to figure out a way to build a spear!” He added. I knew there would be a catch. I sat there pondering for a few moments. I sighed.

“Fine, but I better get the bigger half of the coconut...” I said. He laughed.

“If one was bigger then it wouldn’t be a half!” He told me. I glared at him.

“Look, school’s out, I don’t need to turn this ‘adventure’ into a math class! I’ve had enough of those!” I told him. He laughed and then I started to walk over towards the plane. There has to be some sort of sharp thing here. I could use glass or metal to make a hook. Then, I just had to attach it to a stick. I could use the shoelaces for that job and then bam! I’ve got a half decent spear. Okay, simple enough.

I rummaged through the remaining bodies. Most of them had washed out to sea. Just my luck, I couldn’t find one sharp piece of metal that was thin enough to use as a hook! Maybe if I could find a nail... where would I find a nail? Ugh! This was hopeless! I was never going to find a stupid nail in all of this wreckage! To people even use nails to build planes? Don’t they use screws instead? I don’t know... I’m definitely not a pilot! I decided that I should still continue searching. If I was going to find a nail, the best place to find it would be here! As I was searching I found this bag. I could make out the word: Dance. It was sewn onto the front in what I guessed used to be white thread, but now it’s a grey-ish black. I opened up the bag and found a half burnt leotard, some pointe ballet slippers (I decided to keep those. Who knows! They could be useful!), some tights that was now just one leg! The other leg had been burnt. There were some ruined tap shoes and then one jazz shoe. I don’t know where the other one was. This person sure liked dance!

I examined the shoes again, and then realized that the point shoes had a wooden toe! Nails were used in wood... maybe... just maybe...

I sprinted back to where Mike was with the shoes in my hand. He was trying to start the fire. I stopped when I realized what he was doing. He was kind of stupid.

“You know the plane is still burning right?” I asked.

“Yup,” he said as he continued trying to light the fire by using the sunglasses. It took him about a moment to register everything. He scrambled to his feet.

“I’ll be right back!” he said as I watched him run to the burning plane. He came back with some hot coals. He could have just torched a stick, but he just has to do it the hard way!

He placed the coals on the coconut husk and continued trying to make fire. I just watched him and silently laughed to myself. If I was in charge of the fire, it would b roaring by now!

“Did you find a way to make a spear yet?” he asked me.

“Maybe, I need to pocketknife though,” I replied. He smiled and then handed me the pocketknife.

“You should hold onto it. I might lose it,” he told me. I grinned mischievously. My mom never let me handle knives. Look at me now! Okay, never mind, don’t. I’m stranded on an island with no way off, now isn’t the time to be bragging!

I started to cut up the pointe shoe and got to the wooden bit. I studied it and threw my fists up in victory!

“Yes! Yes!” I screamed. Mike looked at me and just started laughing.

“What is it? What’s so funny?” he asked me. I smiled at him.

“I found a nail! Now I have a hook for our spear! Finally! Yes! I could even make two spears because I have two of these shoes!” I exclaimed. Michael cheered.

“Great! We can work on that later. You should relax now. It’s the first day; let’s not waste all of our energy, c’mon! Take a seat and we can share this coconut,” Mike said as a small flame sprouted. Mike eventual got it to grow bigger and we eventually boiled some water in the coconut shells.

Maybe this little adventure wouldn’t be so bad after all! Well, it would be better if Mike took his stupid mask off! Come to think of it... I've never seen him without it!

Not for long...