Angel Island

            by Amanda Eyges

 

        As the sailboat leaned far to one side, I concentrated on my bare toes gripping the corner of the large white, fiberglass bench opposite me.  “God I hope I didn’t call in sick to work for nothing,” I thought to myself.  It was cold.  I could feel the chill of the wind on my neck and legs, which made me pull my arms in quickly, close to my body.  I was tempted to hug my knees for warmth but removing my legs would cause me to tip straight into the water.  As the boys ran around the boat frantically, the girls (two friends and I) decided to take refuge below the deck to stay out of the way. 

 

        We rested on the queen sized bed inside the cabin of the yacht surrounded by the beautiful wooden walls and decorative satin fabric, dreaming of our Angel Island camping trip, hoping that reality might meet our expectations.  I thought of a warm, calm island with lots of busy tourists with packed schedules of tours and hiking.  There were seven of us altogether; four boys and three girls, all teenagers that were attempting this spontaneous trip on their own.  Besides the two parents that owned the boat and were sleeping on it rather than the “uncivilized” island, we were all roughing it in tents and sleeping bags under the dark night sky. It was Alaina, Clara, Jason, Tyler, Joe and David and me. 

 

        Alaina is my best friend who some might say is actually crazy.  She’s very outgoing and loves to pack a lot of fun into one weekend and therefore was obviously the planner of the entire trip.  Clara is a girl that Alaina and I have known since elementary school.  She is more reserved than Alaina or I but can always slap some sense into both of us.  Jason is my ex-boyfriend and Alaina’s best guy friend… awkward.  He either can find a solution to a problem or find some way to make it worse.  Joe is Jason’s best friend and Alaina’s ex-boyfriend… once again, awkward.  Joe and Jason have three passions in life: fire, alcohol, and cars, which is why they both either fix a problem or make it worse.  Tyler is our older gymnast friend from Cal.  He is very short, very strong, and always happy.  David used to go to Berkeley High and at this point had his eye on Alaina.  We all didn’t really know why he was there with us but he was excited so we didn’t really care.

 

        We had docked and started to unload our bags when we realized how long of a hike we really had up to the top of what then seemed more like a mountain than any sort of island.  We also soon realized that we were completely alone without so much as a ranger in sight.  Alaina and David grabbed their bags and began exploring first.  They came back with exciting and illegal news. Alaina explained excitedly and out of breath, “ there’s an electric car just like ours up by the ranger station and the keys are still in it and I was thinking about the long hike up to our site, and I thought that maybe…” but before she could even say what she thought her mom busted in with “STEAL IT”.  The shocked looks on all of our turning heads must not have surprised Alaina’s mom because she smiled back at us confidently. 

 

        Because we were with a bunch of determined boys, we soon concocted a huge lie about how our dear friend Alaina sprained her ankle while walking to the campground.  She could “barely walk” so naturally we saw the electric golf cart as an opportunity to get

her to safety quickly and efficiently. 

        Believing that this lie was foolproof, we loaded all seven of our backpacks, seven sleeping bags, a large tent, a cooler, and a couple of brightly colored sleeping pads into the back of the tiny cart, zipped down the plastic doors and sent “injured” Alaina on her way with David manning the wheel.

 

        Tyler, Joe, Jason, Clara, and I started hiking up the winding path toward the center of the top of the island, until we all reached a split in the path.  This made us realize that we had no idea which way to go, let alone which campsite was ours.  We waited for David to drop off Alaina with our bags and come back down the hill to pick us up.  It wasn’t until he got there that we noticed another problem, six people trying to squeeze into a four-seat golf cart was going to be a tight fit.  We some how fit ourselves in and drove up towards “our” campsite along the four-foot wide, winding dirt path at an insane speed of twenty-five miles per hour.  We arrived at the site and hid the cart on top of a high hill behind an old, dilapidated building, which I imagined had been used as an army base, just in time to find Alaina chatting with two older men with kayaks in their arms and angry looks on their faces.

 

        “This is our site,” said the older looking man in a raspy, tired voice. 

        “We kayaked all the way out here and I think that we were the ones that reserved this specific campground,” said the other man in a higher, less angry voice.  We exclaimed our apologies and asked how they knew this campsite was theirs.  They impatiently gave us a map and pointed us as far away as possible.  We then trudged back up the hill, reloaded the cart and watched Alaina and David leave us once again.  This time we had found a stock of maps in the glove box of the ranger’s cart and armed ourselves with one each.  We finally found our way to the largest campsite of them all with a right turn, then a left and past a beautiful view of the entire bay.

 

        We arrived at the site and immediately started assigning jobs.  The boys’ job was to set up the tent and the sleeping bags inside.  The girls’ job was to grill some burgers for dinner.  Since the boys were no help when it came to organization and the girls had no matches for the grill, no knives to cut the cheese and onions with, and only one of us really knew how to grill, the jobs were not getting done.  After we switched jobs and started drinking, the work seemed to get done a lot faster.  We all sat at the long, wooden picnic table eating and drinking like one big, dysfunctional family. 

 

        The darker the night sky got, the drunker we all got.  Because of this, our problem solving skills soon turned irrational when a gang of wild raccoons invaded our camp.  As the girls screamed loud enough for all of our parents to hear from all the way across the bay, the boys decided that the two things that we wanted gone should go out together: empty beer bottles and ravenous raccoons.  “Get the ‘coons” we all yelled half in anger and half in terror.  Twenty-seven beer bottles, some that probably still had liquor in them, an empty Smirnoff bottle, and two wine bottles were thrown at the masked faced creatures that were trying to get at our leftovers.  The raccoons were also interested in our cash as it turns out because when Jason and Joe went back to the tent to zip down the door, Jason’s backpack had been raided and his wallet was sitting out on the ground with claw marks all over it. 

 

        At this point in the night, we all decided that it would be fun to pack ourselves into the golf cart and go out on a midnight drive along the winding cliffs of Angel Island.  Since none of us were completely sober, we decided that breathalyzing each one of us to determine who was closest to the limit and good to drive would be the most responsible solution.  Jason brought out his brand new breathalyzer that he had gotten for his birthday and individually tested every one of us.  David got the best reading and was then deemed driver.

 

        We piled into the car by sitting on each other’s laps and shoving multiple limbs out the sides of the open vehicle.  Due to the openness of the car and the fact that I was an intoxicated teenager with her leg out the door of a moving car, I managed to lose one of my flip-flops right off my foot, which also happened to be a friend of-mine’s sandal.  “We have to go back for my flip-flop,” I said drunkenly through a hazy grin and happily squinting eyes.  My friends all reassured my by saying, “We’ll never find it, its gone forever!!”  After our jerky ride, on our way back, we came across the dust-covered sandal with the imprint of a small tire down the middle of it. 

 

        We got back to camp and played our favorite game to play when we’re all drunk: Shocker. It consists of four hand grips with large, red buttons at the top of each, one for each player, all connected to a silver dome with a round, glowing button in the middle.  Each player holds a grip in their hand with their thumb on the red button, one player pushes the glowing button in the middle which causes music to play that sounds like the scariest part in a horror movie, then when the light in the middle turns green all of the players are supposed to press their red button.  If they press it too late, too early, or don’t press it at all then they get a small electric shock sent right to their hand.  Although the “shock” is actually just a mild vibration, if you’re drunk enough it feels more like a painful, shocking jolt.  We all played for about thirty minutes until the raccoons started coming back.  This time, we threw a flashlight and a bunch of rocks toward the running raccoons and celebrated our victory by drinking some more. 

 

        After we were all feeling a buzz again, a buzz that was not from Shocker, we retreated back towards our tent where Joe, Jason, and I proceeded to rest outside the tent, where Clara and Tyler were now sleeping, and look up at the stars.  Alaina and David soon came upon all of us lying down.  As Alaina walked towards us, stumbling on the concrete incline, she yelled, “Amanda, where did you go?”  I stood up and held out my arms to her, into the blinding darkness.  As we embraced, I held her back, which felt unusually cold.  I slowly, curiously touched her back up and down with my fingers until I realized that I wasn’t feeling any clothing.  I let out a tiny yelp, as not to alarm the others, and pushed her out in front of me.  Barely, drunkenly standing in front of me was the naked body of my crazy best friend.  Obviously we were feeling pretty crazy so we both decided to strip down, me in my underwear and Alaina in all of her glory, and run around the campsite scaring everyone like crazed Amazon women.

 

        After our work out, our eyes became droopy and our bodies too tired to keep running.  One by one, we all crawled in the tent and soon fell asleep, forming a large pile near the middle of the tent.  We all slept soundly through loud snoring, kicking and prodding. 

 

        As the sun rose the next morning, so did our hangovers.  We emerged from our tent with squinted, scrunched faces from the bright sunlight combining itself with our piercing headaches.  We all were packing up and loading the electric car when we realized that what we were loading was a stolen cart that we had taken from people who would now be just down the hill.  We feared for the worst, thinking up more lies to back our original lie about Alaina’s injured leg, which was soon changed to Clara’s injured leg because Alaina needed to drive down with her to get in contact with her parents, who were still on the boat.  We thought that the only way to prove the injury was to make her leg look badly hurt by putting dark colored makeup on one side of her ankle and two metal pipes on each side from the tent supplies and rope wrapped around the pipes to form a supporting cast of some sort.  The “cast” was crude and primitive to say the least but good enough to convince the ranger… we hoped. 

 

        Alaina and Clara set off down the hill as the boys and I descended on foot.  Along a shortcut down the cliff, we could see the ranger station with the electric car in front.  We all prayed for the best while creeping towards the station adjacent to the dock.  Alaina was walking back from the yacht while talking to a man in full ranger uniform but Clara was nowhere to be found.  I was nervous as we approached the small building and lagged behind the rest of the group. 

            “That’s them… they’re the rest of my group!!” Alaina said to the ranger, pointing at us.  None of us knew whether to wave or run. 

            “Where’s Clara?” I asked. 

             “She’s around the corner, behind that shack over there.”  As the rest of the group stayed with Alaina to talk with the ranger, I briskly walked toward the building and around the corner to find Clara hunched over in a wheelchair.  As soon as we saw each other, we both giggled at how far this lie had gone. 

            “You poor thing, is it getting any better?” I said with a smile, holding back laughter as I stepped behind her to push the chair towards the dock. 

            “I’m managing the pain… somehow.”  I wheeled her into the circle of people, most of them with looks of shock on their faces. 

            “Well, we should be on our way and taking her to the hospital soon,” said Alaina. 

             “Are you sure that you don’t want our EMT to look at her?” asked the ranger kindly, “It could really do some good.” 

            “No, she wants a private doctor, right Clara?” Alaina said while staring at Clara with harsh eyes. 

            “Yes, I most definitely want a private doctor,” said Clara, nodding. 

            “Ok, well you folks have a good day now, and again, you were truly a hero Alaina.  That was brilliant thinking to take the cart up with you for your dear friend… we do hope you feel better.” 

 

        As we walked towards the boat we tried not to say a word to each other but there was too much excitement to keep silent. 

        “A hero, huh?” Jason asked. 

        “Yeah, and you all should thank me for it,” she said with a smirk on her face. 

        We got to the boat, took a couple of group photos on the dock with Clara in her wheelchair, loaded up the boat while helping Clara limp aboard, and began preparing for our departure. We couldn’t believe what we had just gotten away with until…

        “Not so fast!”  A different ranger with a more stern face approached us.  "That girl has to be checked out before she leaves the island, not to mention your twenty-dollar renting fee must be paid.”

        “Clara is okay for the time being, or at least until we get back to the East Bay.  She needs to see her own doctor anyway,” said Mac, Alaina’s step dad. 

        “I don’t think that it is a good idea, we could have a lawsuit on our hands.  I can’t allow you folks to leave,” said the ranger, trying to take control of the conversation again. 

        “We will pay the fee but if you don’t kindly step off my boat, you will have a lawsuit of a different kind on your hands.”  The ranger took his foot off of the boat with a look of anger and frustration on his face.  We paid our dues and left, letting out a sigh of relief.

       

        As soon as the boat was no longer in site of the island, Clara undid her bindings and joined the rest of us on top of the cabin in the open, icy air.  We all huddled close to one another for warmth as we sailed home all the while watching the water, the hills and the horizon, making fun of what an Abercrombie and Fitch commercial we all must have looked like: riding on a yacht, wearing brightly colored summer clothes, staring blankly into the distance.   We joked about how close the trip had really made all of us in such a short amount of time.  The trip had brought us together as more than just friends… as family.