How Many Days Until Tomorrow?

CHAPTER - One

Josh knew his mother was crying. She stood alone on the dock and blew her nose into a tissue. Waving her red bandanna in the stiff, cold wind, she yelled across the water, "Have fun!"

"How can I possibly have fun?" Josh muttered under his breath. He could barely hear his mother's voice over the putt-putt sound of the lobster boat's engine. Spending a month on an island in Maine with his teasing older brother and grandparents he hardly knew was not his idea of a good time. He wanted to stay home in New Jersey, play All Star baseball, and hang out with his friends.

Josh stood up and waved with both arms.

"Sit down!" his grandfather shouted over the roar of the engine. The boat hit a swell. Josh felt the icy, salt spray of the wave on his cheek. He wondered if he'd get seasick. Once he had visited a cruise ship in New York Harbor. He'd felt seasick even though the boat was still tied up to the pier. "Can I ride in the front of the boat?" Josh yelled to his grandfather.

"Stay where you are," his grandfather barked without taking his eyes off the blackening horizon. "Don't you know the front of a boat is called the bow?" Simon shouted. Simon was thirteen. Just because he was in the Gifted and Talented Program in school, his brother thought he knew everything. Josh had one aim in life. That aim was to do something, anything, better than his brother Josh snapped up the front of his yellow rain slicker. He was glad his mother had forced him to wear his NY Jets sweatshirt. He shivered as the boat plunged up and down in the choppy waves. Josh glanced at his grandmother to see if she looked worried. She sat in a worn, yellow rain slicker on the opposite side of the boat, surrounded by canvas bags full of groceries. A seagull skimmed across the water. It flew into the wind with a flapping fish in its beak. "He's having the same dinner we are!" Nana cried cheerfully.

Josh felt knots in his stomach. He hated fish. He hugged his arms around his chest as his teeth began to chatter. Looking through the motor's smelly exhaust, he could no longer see his mother standing on the dock in Moxie Cove. She was probably already driving back to New Jersey. She was in a warm car. She could stop at a restaurant and order anything she wanted for supper, like a double cheese burger and French fries.

"How much longer 'til we get to the island?" Josh called to his grandmother.

"Don't you remember? Seal Island is four miles out to sea," Simon yelled back. "Mom said it takes thirty minutes to get out there."

"So how much longer?" Josh cried. His grandmother cupped her hand over her eyes. Josh noticed that she had green paint underneath her fingernails. Her wide, square face looked like his mom's face but with more lines around her eyes and mouth. Her saggy skin was as wrinkled as tissue paper.

"Cranberry Island is off to port," she said. "In this wind, the island must be another twenty minutes out to sea."

Josh saw rain drops smacking the water. Lightning zigzagged in the distance across the black sky.

"Looks like a thunder squall," Gramps yelled. "Cover the suitcases and groceries." He threw a large plastic bundle into his wife's lap. With a fierce look, he bent over the steering wheel and pointed the bow of...