“September 23, 2016: Pilot Arrested in Crash Investigation Involving Local Students” read the large black print at the top of the newspaper. I sat at my kitchen table, sipping coffee and reading the morning paper as I always did. I guess my hometown news station had heard of what happened this summer. Although, not much happens to people from a town in Wisconsin with a population of only 5000 people. So, I shouldn’t really be surprised that it had made front page news.
It had all started one average afternoon in the middle of June. “Hey guys! Come check this out, I may have found us the perfect vacation.” Ella and I had scoured the internet looking for the best place. It couldn’t have been too luxurious as we had just graduated college. But, we had saved our paychecks for a while and wanted to go on an adventure. We hadn’t found anything that we really loved until the day we stumbled upon a contest. It was being hosted by a local travel agency and it was perfect. A remote island getaway that was just up for grabs. All we had to do was send in a statement of why we wanted the trip. Simple as that, so we did it. What could go wrong? We wrote the statement and mailed it in all in the same day.
About a month later, we received a call from the travel agency. “Jess Miller? We’re calling to let you know that you and your friends have won the vacation!” We thought that moment was the best of our lives. Flash forward to now, though, and I think we all would take back that statement.
We ended up stranded, sitting on burning sand, waiting for the rain to stop beating down on us. Our plane had malfunctioned on the way to the island, and we had to have an emergency landing on some random deserted island in the middle of the ocean. The flight had been fine for the first few hours, and we were so excited to begin our island adventure. Then, suddenly, the plane had shook violently, falling lower in the sky. We had all looked to the pilot for reassurance, maybe it was just turbulence. However, he had begun to panic, rapidly pressing many buttons as he yelled for an emergency landing. We eventually landed, my friends and I were lost and miserable and the pilot was no longer in sight.
There was a decent supply of food through the sea life and various fruits growing on the trees, and luckily there was what appeared to be a freshwater stream through the middle of the island. While maintaining nutrition wasn’t really an issue, getting off the island was. And that minimal supply of fruit wouldn’t last us forever. We told our family and friends that we wouldn’t be using our phones on the trip as we didn’t want the distraction. So, not only did we not get service, but no one would even notice that anything was wrong during a few weeks of no contact. The pilot had tried to send a distress message before the plane had completely malfunctioned, but we had no way of knowing if it was successful.
So, we were stuck. We just had to wait and hope that it had managed to go through. The fear and realization had begun to set in for a few of us and it slowly began to tear us apart.
“You know Jess, when I said I wanted to get out of the midwest this isn’t really what I meant!” said Ella. We had gone to both high school and college together and had dreams of seeing the world outside of our minuscule hometown.
The arguments between the others grew as their anger intensified. I had finally had enough and went for a walk along an open path on the sand. The rain had finally stopped, and I knew they wouldn’t listen to me anyway. So, I took advantage of the situation and left them to cool down. As I was walking, I spotted a dark figure in the distance. I was too far away to tell what it was, and I almost turned around; until I spotted the torn leather jacket the pilot had been wearing. He was just laying in the bare sand, a few sparse trees providing shade over him. He had been separated from us early on, and we had all wondered what had happened to him.
“What are you doing?” I asked as I approached. The man startled and stared up at me. His eyes were wide and he didn’t say anything as I noticed a radio in his hand. He quickly tried to hide it from my view, but it was too late. “Where did you get that?!” I shouted as I frowned at him, confused.
“They were in a box of supplies on the back of the plane; I’ve messaged a friend for help” he said. I then looked around and noticed what appeared to be a campsite in a clear portion of the forest. There was a tent, sleeping bag and other supplies that were definitely more than enough for a few people to share.
“You found all of those supplies and didn’t tell any of us? What is wrong with you?!” I was furious as I ran through his camp and gathered a few supplies for us on the other side of the beach. I couldn’t believe that he would keep that from us. I then ran back to my friends as fast as I could with my arms full, the supplies slipping and weighing me down as I did so. When I returned, my friends were all lying quietly together on the sand. I guess they had made up from earlier. “You guys will never believe what I just found out!” I said as I threw down the supplies. They all turned to stare up at me, confusion on their faces when they spotted the sleeping bags and food I had thrown.
“You found supplies? And that’s a bad thing why?...” asked Ella.
“It’s bad because I found them with the pilot. And this isn’t even everything- he’s had all of these supplies and more for the whole time we’ve been stuck here.” They all looked up, eyes wide, mouths hung open.
“What!? No..no that’s not okay, we’re going to talk to him right now.” said Melanie. The four of us then took off, as I lead the way back to the spot where I had found him. As we ran there was a loud humming noise not too far from us. When we got closer, we could see a helicopter taking off in the distance. We frantically waved and ran, shouting for help, but they couldn’t see us. The pilots help had come, but it couldn’t have fit us no matter how hard we tried. He hadn’t even mentioned us when he radioed his friend for help. Eventually, we made it back to the location of his camp. Luckily, he had left whatever supplies that still remained after I had gone through them.  However, the radio was dead and we were left to wait and see if the distress call had gone through. I sighed and ran my hands down my face, angry and confused at the pilot's actions.
That night we all had some of the best sleep since arriving at the island. It was almost noon when the last of us finally awoke, and we recalled the events of the previous day. It was nearing two weeks that we had been here and we were starting to wonder if they would ever find us even if the call had worked. To make matters worse, it was the hottest day of the year so far. It got to the point where we didn’t care if we ruined our clothes, or had to stay in them while they were soaking wet, we were going in the ocean. We had been swimming for an hour or so when Rose noticed something far out into the water.
“Hey guys, what’s that?” She said, pointing at something in the distance. We all turned to look out at the horizon, squinting and shielding our eyes from the sun.
“I don’t know, but it looks like it’s moving!” I replied. All four of us began rushing out further into the water to get a better look. “I’m pretty sure it’s a boat!” We began splashing and waving, screaming for attention as the boat pulled closer. As it continued to approach, we could see that it was a local Coast Guard ship. We then began to run and hug each other, knowing we would finally be able to go home safe and sound. As we were pulled onto the boat, we asked the captain if he had heard the distress call. We learned that no call was ever made, successfully at least, and he had only been in the area on a routine check. I suppose that had been our lucky day.
After being home for about a week, we learned there had been an investigation into the cause of our crash. Apparently, there had been nothing wrong with our plane, and it was due to an error by the pilot. They had questioned him and after many hours of brutal interrogation,  he confessed to purposely crashing and leaving us on the island. He would be going to jail for everything that he had done. We’ll never know why he did what he did, but I do know one thing: we all had experienced more than enough adventure this summer.