The Little Pink Fish by Rachel Johnson (best summer books TXT) 📕

been living in. And it was also much warmer.
“Hi!” Sydney heard someone call from behind her. She turned around and saw a tall, thin boy looking down at her. He seemed about her age, friendly, and nice.
“Hi,” she responded.
“I thought I would be bored stiff on this trip, it will be nice to be able to talk to someone. I’m Charlie, Dr. George’s son. My dad told me Dr. Smith had a daughter.” Charlie said in a cheerful tone. The cheerfulness seemed to rub off on Sydney and she lost a little bit of her shyness.
“I’m Sydney, nice to meet you. Did you just arrive today?”
“Yeah. How long have you been here?”
“About two weeks,” she replied.
“Two weeks! Oh wow! I think I would be frozen stiff if I were here that long. You must be brave to have stayed for two weeks. I leave in a few days, I live in California and I’m not used to this kind of extreme weather.”
“Hey Syd! I see you’ve met Charlie. George, you remember my daughter, Sydney,” said Dr. Smith as he approached with Dr. George.
“Pleasure to see you again, Sydney,” said Dr. George.
“You too sir,” Sydney replied.
“Syd, I don’t think its good for you to be here in the cold this long, I’m not leaving for another two weeks, but Dr. George and Charlie are leaving in couple days. George has suggested that you go back with them to California until I get back, you wouldn’t mind, would you?” asked her father. “I would come get you on my way back.”
“Um, sure,” she replied.
“Good, it’s all settled then.”
Sydney’s dad and Dr. George then left to get some food and continue their discussion about the mysterious pink fish.
“So you’ll be coming with us. You’ll like California, have you ever been there?” Charlie asked.
“No, can’t say that I have.”
Over the next two days Charlie and Sydney became good friends. And Sydney surprised herself at her ability to talk to someone freely that wasn’t her father. So when it was time to leave, Sydney didn’t mind so much about leaving her father.

-2-

The plane ride was different from any other one Sydney had ever gone on. On her way to Antarctica, she had flown to Australia in a normal plane, and then took a boat over to the camp. But here she took a very small plane that looked fifty years old.
“Are you sure this thing is safe?” she asked Charlie as they were boarding the plane.
“Oh yeah, it’s fine, I flew this same plane coming over here.”
But Charlie’s reassuring words later proved to be wrong.
“We’re about to cross the South Magnetic Pole,” Charlie told Sydney.
Then, all of a sudden, the plane began to jerk and sway. Down it plunged toward the icy water below. Then, slowly, the plane filled with water and Charlie and Sydney searched everywhere for an escape. They came upon the door and thrust it open. Out they swam as fast as they could. And then it seemed as thought they were in a whirlpool. Around and around they spun until suddenly, it stopped. They looked around but the plane was nowhere to be seen. They considered the idea that it might have sunk, but not enough time had passed for that to happen.
“How do you loose a plane?” Charlie cried out. “My dad was on that plane, he could be dead for all I know.”
“I just don’t understand,” `Sydney said.
“It doesn’t make any sense.”
“No, I didn’t mean the plane, I meant the island,” she said as she pointed toward the direction of a shore. “We weren’t flying over any islands, yet there is one right there.”
“Oh my gosh you’re right! That is spooky.”
“Well, all I know is that we need to get ashore, and that island seems like our best bet. It isn’t too far off, we can swim there,” Sydney determined.
So they swam to island, only to find that it was deserted.
“What are we going to do now?” asked Sydney.
“We better start a fire. I’m freezing.”
They then collected whatever wood they could find and piled it on the frozen sand.
“It’s lucky I have some matches. I just hope they’re not wet,” said Charlie. And magically, they happened to still be wrapped in plastic, never opened, so they were dry as a bone. Once they got the fire going, they fell fast asleep. All the swimming and shock made them more tired then had ever been before.
Charlie, however, woke much earlier than Sydney. He got up and looked around the island. “I just don’t understand how this all happened,” Charlie thought to himself. Then he saw, not too far inland, something he hadn’t seen before, it was a tall tower, very old fashioned looking, with no windows.
“Wake up Sydney!” he called. “I found something!”
Soon they were walking towards the tower, hoping that there might be a phone or radio with which they could contact the people back at the camp. But when they got there a large brick wall guarded the tower. They went around the wall but couldn’t find an entrance. They did find, however, a place where one of the bricks had come loose from the wall. In they peered, but only to find the base of a brick tower with no appearing entrance or windows.
“There you are! You little rats thought you could escape me again, well you thought wrong. Get in there, you’re gonna get the whipping of your life!” said a large man who appeared beside them.
“But we…” they cried.
“Shut your mouths! Get along now!”
They were lead into the tower which they learned from the man was a prison. Once inside, they were thrown into a small cell.
“Why are you putting us here? We did nothing wrong!” screamed Sydney as though she were being murdered.
“Tell that to the warden, he might disagree,” replied the guard in a sneering smile.
“They must think we’re prisoners that ran away,” said Charlie. “It would explain a lot.”
“Yeah, I still don’t get it though. We can’t be anywhere near where we should be. No one would set up a prison here.”
“I have a theory. It’s kind of crazy, but it makes sense.”
“What?’ asked Sydney.
“Nothing seems right, the place, not even the time. When we went through that whirlpool, I think it might have whisked us back in time, maybe even to a different part of the planet,” suggested Charlie.
“Ha ha, very funny. I don’t think we could have traveled through time and space.”
“Well do you have a better explanation for what’s going on? Remember when I said we were traveling over the South Magnetic Pole, well maybe it pulled us to the North Magnetic Pole.”
“Listen, I know how we can clear this up, when the guard comes around again I’ll ask him what year it is and where we are.”
The guard didn’t come around again for some time, and when he did come around he wasn’t in a good mood and didn’t feel like talking. So Sydney didn’t find out the truth immediately. But she did start to wonder, to half-believe, and sort of fear, that what Charlie was saying was true. And soon she would have her confirmation.
“Hey, Sydney. Come over here,” Charlie called her from across the cell.
“What is it?”
“I found a loose brick in the wall.”
“Can you take it out?”
“I think so… Got it! Hello! I wonder if there is someone in the next cell! Hello! Anybody there?”
For what seemed like hours, there was no response. Then…
“Hello! Did someone call?” A strange and crackled voice responded. “I believe you woke me from a nice little nap.”
“Hello, sir? I am Charlie Peterson and this is Sydney Smith.”
“Mind if you’d bust another brick or so, so I can see your faces. You don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve seen a human face.”
After a while enough bricks had been taken out so that it formed a nice little window between the cells.
“Ah! Much better, that’s a pretty little girl you have there,” said what appeared to be a very, very old man.
“Oh, she’s not my girl…” replied Charlie in an embarrassed tone.
“Is that so? Huh… So what are you two in here for anyways?”
“We were mistaken for runaways, we didn’t do anything wrong,” Sydney spoke for the first time since she saw the old man. She wasn’t sure what to make of it all, whether to believe if they were back in time or not.
“I see,” said the old man.
“You wouldn’t happen to know what year it is, would you?” asked Charlie with a wink at Sydney.
“Well, I haven’t thought about that in quite some time. Let’s see, I came here in 1769, and I’ve been here about 11 years, so it should be about 1780.”
“What did I tell you?” sneered Charlie.
“Whatever.”
They grew to like the old man and the old man grew to like them. But after a month of conversations through the window in the wall, he died.
“I sure will miss his company,” Sydney said after she and Charlie had played a million games of tic-tac-toe.
“Me too.” replied Charlie. “He was a better tic-tac-toe player than you are.”
“True, you beat me two times and you beat him only once.” Sydney said with a smile.
And soon enough after their only friend was taken away, the real runaways were found and Charlie and Sydney were set free. Since the island was used merely to hold prisoners, there was nowhere for them to go. The warden said that he would let them stay at the prison tower for the rest of the week, a ship of prisoners was arriving then and they could get a ride back to the mainland.
“Might I ask one question?” inquired the warden.
“Sure,” they replied.
“How did you come to be on this island in the first place?”
“Um… Our boat sunk and we swam here,” Charlie quickly lied.
“I see. Well, I tried to find accommodations for you, but I’m afraid all we have are prison cells. I had my men clean out one of the cells and put blankets in it though, I am truly sorry for what happened.”
“Thank you, and its all right, anyone could have made the mistake,” said Charlie.
So after another week of living in the frozen prison cell, they departed. It was now perfectly clear to Sydney that Charlie was right. They were in a different time and place. Once they were settled on the boat, they were given the first real meal they had had in over a month. They had been feed nothing but watery soup in the prison, but here on the boat, the sailors were able to give them bread and dried fruit, which on an empty stomach can work miracles.
“Sydney, do you want to go back up to the deck and look around.” Charlie asked.
“Sure. Is that alright?” she asked the sailors.
“Go ahead.”
Up they went to the above level of the ship. They decided to look