Lady of the Flies (part 1)

It was hard to focus.

The world kept spinning around and around and lurching drunkenly from
one tilted angle to another. To make it even harder to see, everything
was green, all different shades of green.

Andy gave up, closed her eyes and groaned.
" . . . shesawake . . ." she heard. It sounded like someone was
shouting at her through a wall.

" . . . knowwhattodo . . ."

" . . . cantseeany . . ."

" . . . everyoneshh . . ."

Snaps of sound bursting into her ears, not making any sense. There was
another sound, too. Not speech . . .
. . . crying. That was it. Someone was crying.

Andy opened her eyes again and the world swam into green focus.

"Who's . . . who's cryin'," she muttered.

"She IS awake!"

Andy felt hands on her shoulders, which pulled her up and away from the
green. More colours appeared, blues and pinks and browns and reds.
Slowly the colours sharpened into the outlines of people. A blob of
blue and brown - which later turned out to be a brown-haired girl in a
blue jumper - put her arm around Andy and squeezed her shoulder
comfortingly.

"You okay?"

Andy nodded. "Yeah - just dizzy . . ."

The brown and blue blob nodded. "Yeah, I think you bumped your head
pretty badly. It's bleeding, but I don't think you have concussion or
anything because if you did
your pupils would be all huge."

Andy squinted at the blob's face, which was gradually morphing
features, and tried to smile. She heard a sob from behind her, and
twisted round to see who it was from.

A little girl in a dirty pair of dungarees was crying into the shoulder
of the girl next to her. There were several girls around her, all
holding her hand or stroking her hair and exchanging worried looks over
her head.

"She hasn't stopped crying since we got here," explained one girl to
Andy.

"I think she's doing for attention," a voice said softly. The voice
belonged to a sharply pretty girl with blond hair and ice blue
eyes.

"She's NOT, Karen," said another girl, nudging Karen in the ribs and
earning herself a cold stare.

"She is," Karen asserted, louder this time, "There's nothing wrong with
her. She's not even bruised. I've got three broken ribs, but you don't
see me crying."

"They're not broken," said the girl with her arm around Andy. "You just
got winded. You're okay really. Everyone's okay really," she added, the
last directed to the group as a whole.

Looking around, Andy realised she was more or less in the centre of a
group of maybe thirty girls, ranging in ages from maybe six to her own
age of fifteen. All the girls were dirty, with dirt and smoke smudged
into their faces and clothes. They were all tired looking, with purple
rings under their eyes evident even under the grime. The little girl in
dungarees wasn't the only one crying, but the others who were crying
were doing it more quietly, and were generally only being comforted by
one or two other girls.

"What happened?" asked Andy. "Where's everyone else?"

"Everyone else is dead," said the dungareed little girl tonelessly, who
had suddenly stopped crying. She was staring down at her hands twisting
in her lap. "Everyone else is dead."

"We don't know that," said the girl hugging Andy.

"Well we've been here for ages now Shari," interjected Karen. "If
anyone was still alive we would have found them. We've been all around
this island."

"We're on an ISLAND?" said Andy.
Shari smiled at her reassuringly. "Yeah. Me and Karen and Justine and
Kaeira and Amy went all around it this morning. We're on an island, and
there's sea everywhere."

"What happened to the plane?"

"It's in the sea," said one of the other girls excitedly. "We saw it on
our walk. It's in the sea and there's just the front bit and the wing
sticking out, like this." She demonstrated, tilting her body and
holding one arm out above her head.

"Oh my God," said Andy. She was still having trouble thinking clearly,
but she tried to get all her thoughts lined up. She was almost sure
that she was one of, if not the, oldest girl here and that made her
responsible. "Do we know if everyone got off?"

"We shouted," said a girl helpfully. "We waded out as far as possible
and shouted, but no-one waved or anything. I don't think anyone's
there."

"They're all dead in there," said the dungareed girl tonelessly.

"You're obsessed with death," siad Karen.

"Karen! Don't be so nasty!"

"Well she is." Karen put on a high tone and mimicked the little girl
furiously. "They're all dead, everyone's dead, I think everyone's dead,
I'm obsessed with death, I'M dead . . ."

"Stop it!" shouted a girl as the dungareed child burst into fresh
tears. Karen started to shout back, but was cut off by Shari.

"Hey! Everyone calm down! We're all tired but that doesn't mean we can
be nasty so don't everyone be nasty, okay?" Shari stood up, pulling
Andy up with her. "What's your name?" she asked.

"Andy."

"Andy, right. Me and Andy are the oldest here so . . ."

"That doesn't mean you can decide everything," the girl who had told
Andy about the plane interuppted.

"No, right, of course not. I was just going to say we've got to look
after you all. But we'll decide everything together, by voting."

One girl with pigtails raised her hand.

"Yes?"

"I think we need to find a house," she said. There were murmers of
assent.

"Okay, but there might not be any houses," said Shari.

"Where do we sleep?"

"We'll have to build some houses," Andy said.