Before He Was Gone: Starstruck Book 2 by Becky Wicks Read Free Book Online Page B

camera guy off his kayak in her waves and it takes both Alyssa and I to hoist her up this time.
    ‘Great job everyone!’ Ed declares from the boat. ‘It’ll take even more teamwork to get to your island and start setting up camp. The sun sets approximately four hours from now. Remember, you have no watches, no clocks. You have to learn to read the sky.’
    I know how to read the sky. Do these people? I look on as the other raft holding five others, plus pots, pans and rice floats out from the other side of the boat. They hold their hands up to us and we all do the same.
    ‘We need to move fast,’ the Abercrombie jock yells, but the nerd is already distributing our paddles and laying the spear back down next to me. I meet his eyes through the lenses of his glasses. He’s giving me the spear like it’s mine, like he simply borrowed it. A moment passes between us. Some sort of hierarchy is establishing itself already and it’s only been less than three minutes. I try not to smile. I guess I know how to use it. May as well keep it close.
    ‘Everyone, pitch in,’ I say, picking up a paddle.
    ‘Not her, she needs to hold the goat,’ Alyssa tells me, grabbing my arm and motioning to the cheerleader, who’s still struggling with the animal. I contemplate taking the goat instead, or telling the mother-figure to hold it, as she’s clearly stronger. But we’ll reach the island faster if the biggest people paddle. Time is precious. We’ll be fighting the twilight before we know it.
    ‘I’m Stephanie, who’re you?’ the cheerleader asks me as I settle myself cross-legged on the bamboo at the front. Alyssa sits next to me, dunking her paddle, looking out at the island. Her wet, salty hair is dripping all over her skin and she’s shining. The beat of my heart is still hard on my ribs. I focus on the palm trees; the way the sand is so dazzling from here it’s almost blinding. There's no going back. I’m really doing this.
    ‘I’m Joshua,’ I reply.

9
Alyssa
    Joshua. It sounds wrong for him somehow. The way he moves, I noticed it on the boat and when he rowed with me on the raft. His movements are almost fluid, like he’s a hunter… maybe some kind of animal. I’m watching him now, strapping palm leaves to the top of the shelter he's basically shown us how to construct in the space of almost three hours.  He’s shirtless and sweaty under the hot sun, like all the guys, and apart from the tall one in the Abercrombie shirt called Jaxx - with a double X apparently - he’s got the biggest muscles here.
    ‘He’s so hot, right?’ Stephanie whispers as she wanders up to my side with more dried leaves to line the shelter with. I tear my eyes away .
    ‘I hadn’t noticed,’ I reply and she grins. She saw me staring. It’s pretty obvious that everyone here has been sizing up everyone else since the second we stepped on that boat. When our rafts pulled up on the shore we had to work together to unload everything onto the burning sand. My arms ache already from lifting that crate of chickens.
    As for my fellow castaways, the stereotypes are out in full swing. I know that’s how they planned it, but looking at them all is like looking at the cast of a grown-up Glee . I want to call Chloe already, just to share this. There’s the big black mother-figure, Mia, who’s already told us about her three kids and her house in Washington. Mia’s in her late-forties and she seems pretty proper… as in I can imagine her running a tight ship back home - maybe the kind of home with white carpet, where you have to wash every plate before putting it in the dishwater, you know?
    Then there’s Colin. Colin is twenty-three, like me; a white geek wearing black-rimmed glasses. He’s studying medicine at Stanford, but he looks like he could barely unscrew the cap from a jar of vitamins. His arms are like sticks. Colin has already asked us all to call him Punk.
    ‘Why Punk?’ Shan - a writer from New York - asked, as we all