The Island's Secret - 1. Wednesday

I picked up my ringing phone, looked at it, and saw it was my school alarm. I had it set to go on weekdays, and today was a Wednesday. I grinned as I realized I could turn that alarm off now, but the damage was done. I was far too excited to go back to sleep, but it was six thirty in the morning, and everybody else would sleep in until eight. I got out of bed, being quiet, and started to work out. I worked out for half an hour, and then went for a run. I came back, and saw it was now seven thirty.

Fuck. I thought it was later than that.

I had a cold shower, getting all the sweat off me, and started to make breakfast. I made pancakes, and I finished right as my phone told me it was eight. I put the pancakes on the table as everyone began to file in, and we all ate.

“Why were you up already?” My mom asked me.

“I forgot to turn my alarm off,” I laughed. “I was too excited to go back to sleep.”

My mom nodded, and the banter continued until we were all done.

“So,” Uncle Tommy said, grinning at me. “I think there was something special about today, but I can’t remember what.”

My mom and dad scratched their heads, and I glared at them until they all laughed and put their hands up.

“OK, OK, happy birthday,” Tommy said, and we all laughed. “So I guess you want to open your presents now?” he asked, grinning.

“Presents?” I asked, emphasising the ‘S’.

“I only got you one,” Tommy said. “The other is from your parents.”

I was pleasantly surprised, wondering what they’d gotten me. I’d told everyone that I had everything that I wanted and I didn’t need gifts. I’d rather they donate the money to a charity or something, but if my parent’s hadn’t listened it must be because they’d found something I’d love.

“Here you go,” my dad told me, holding out a tiny box. I unwrapped it carefully, wondering what was so small, and inside I found a SIM card. I looked up, confused, and my parents grinned.

“Tommy’s cottage doesn’t have internet,” my mom explained. “That’s a new plan for your phone, with unlimited data so you can have internet on your laptop to upload all your photos.”

I grinned, hugging them both. “Thank you guys so much!” I said, almost shaking from excitement. My parents knew how much I loved to take pictures, and this was their way of saying they wanted to see them. I saw Uncle Tommy laughing, and I turned to him, wondering why. He grinned at me before answering.

“I swear we didn’t plan this,” he told me, holding out a box. “I didn’t know what they were getting you, and they didn’t know what I was.”

I opened the box, confused, and saw it was a high quality camera. My eyes shot open, disbelieving.

“This must be worth over two thousand dollars!” I protested. Tommy began to laugh at the look on my face.

“It’s waterproof to half a kilometer underwater,” he explained. “That way you don’t have to worry about how deep you go when we scuba dive.”

I gaped at him, and he laughed harder.

“I guess I picked the right one then, huh?”

I hugged him so hard he groaned in pain. “Thank you so much!” I told him, easing up.

“It’s not meant to overshadow your parent’s gift, though,” he told me seriously, and I nodded.

“I know,” I said. “These are the two best gifts anyone could have given me!”

Tommy and my parents grinned. “They did coordinate well,” my dad said, and I hugged them all again.

We spent the rest of the day talking about this summer, and Tommy said he’d leave tomorrow for his cottage.

“You can call me whenever you’re ready to come down,” he said. “I’ll come down and pick you up.”

I shook my head. “You don’t need to do all that driving. I’ll be ready to leave when you are.”

Tommy grinned. “Excited, are we?” he asked, teasing.

“I can call my friends whenever I want, thanks to Mom and Dad’s gift, so I only need to pack my stuff. That won’t take me long.”

We all went out for dinner to my favorite local restaurant, and when we got back we had ice cream cake. I took a lot of pictures, and I saw my camera had a feature to upload the photos to my phone immediately. I used it to put the pictures online without having to use my laptop, and I laughed at how my parents and Tommy were amazed by technology. To be fair, I was pretty amazed too. This camera was like a dream come true, and spending the summer at Tommy’s cottage was even better. My parents’ gift just made everything so perfect that I was almost waiting for something bad to happen. That made getting my licence even more stressful, but it went well anyway. I got my G1, and I never stopped grinning until everybody went to bed, when I began to pack for the summer.

I was too excited to sleep, so I might as well make use of the time. When I had everything packed, I brought out my new camera, examining it thoroughly. I saw it still had three quarters of its battery, and I grinned. I’d been using it all day, so this was a good sign. I took out the battery, replacing it with the spare, and charged it so it would be at one hundred percent again tomorrow. I wanted to be ready for my first sight of Tommy’s cottage. Finally, when everything was ready, I looked at today’s pictures on my phone, trying to decide which one was my favorite.

After looking at all of them, I decided it was the one with all of us gathered around the cake. All the pictures had been crisp, but this one was on another level. It had turned out beautifully, and it hadn’t been posed, either. We had been sitting at the table around the cake and I’d turned the camera around and taken a photo of all of us, hoping it had been centered right. It had worked really well. The centering was good, and we were all smiling genuinely. I looked at myself, curious about what other people saw. I tried to evaluate myself like I would another person. I had blond hair, kept short. I had smooth skin, with no blemishes, and I was clean-shaven. My face was tanned, and my lips were a light pink, just revealing my white teeth. My eyes were green, almost startlingly so. My nose was straight, and my teeth were too. My shirt’s collar dipped slightly to reveal a flat, tanned chest, muscular but not bulky. Overall, I looked good. I’m a modest person, and saying good things about myself makes me uncomfortable, but it’s true. I’m good looking. I repeated that to myself a few times, trying to get myself to believe it a little bit. I don’t want to be a douchebag, but a little more confidence would be nice.

I looked at myself again, this time looking at the similarities between the others in the picture and me. My uncle, dad, and I all looked similar, but you could see where I looked more like my mom. My eyes, for example. The color was all my mom’s. Everybody in my dad’s family had brown eyes, but mine were the green of wet grass. Still, I guessed that lots of people would mistake me for the son Tommy had never had this summer. It would be easy to do, if my dad weren’t there; I looked far more like my dad than I did Tommy. My mind wandered onto the subject of this summer, and I wondered about what wildlife there was. Nature has always fascinated me, particularly animals. I knew that Muskoka had a lot more snakes than where I lived, so I thought about what types there would be.

I’d love to get a photo of a Massasauga Rattlesnake, I thought, picturing it. They were the only really poisonous snake in Ontario, and they were pretty poisonous. If you were bitten, you’d die after two hours lacking proper medicine. They weren’t aggressive, though. They didn’t bite unless you provoked them, and only two people in Ontario had ever died from a bite. I finally got to sleep, smiling to myself about how fun this would be.