Finding Family Chapter 4

Mark woke up to the sound of John trying to quietly get out of his tent. John finally untangled himself from the flap, and ran over to Mark’s tent.

“Come on, Mark! I wanna go swimming”

“Okay, just a second. I’m coming out.”

Mark climbed out of his tent and went over to his backpack. He grabbed his swimming suit and climbed back into his tent to change. By the time he came back out, John was already changed and waiting by the beginning of the path that led to the lake.

“Come on, hurry up!” John called to Mark. “I’ll wait for you at the lake!”

Mark ran after his quickly shrinking brother, and was out of breath by the time he reached the lake. John was already running around looking for a log to float out to the island with.

“Hey John,” Mark called out. “Maybe we should build a raft instead. I don’t see many logs that we could push to the lake on our own. The ones that we could push aren’t even big enough to support one of us.”

“Okay, I guess we could do that,” John replied. “But I want to finish the gliders before we build anything else. Let’s just swim around the shore today. Maybe we can finish the gliders today and build a raft tomorrow!”

Mark and John swam for a few hours before going back to their camp to rest and build the gliders. They finished the first glider and built the frame of the second glider before sun started to set.

“Hey Mark,” John said. “Can we try out the glider tomorrow? I saw a huge rock that we could jump off that’s close to the path. We could see if we could glide to the lake!”

“Sure,” Mark replied. “You can go first if you want to, because you’re lighter. If it works, it will probably work better for you than for me.”

“Okay,” John excitedly replied. After a few minutes, John said, “Are you scared to try the glider?”

Mark scoffed, “Scared? Of course not. We should go to bed. Goodnight.”

Mark quickly climbed into bed. John followed after a few minutes.

“Hey Mark,” John called. “I wasn’t trying to be mean. Goodnight.”

Mark sighed. “I know, I just don’t like heights. Goodnight.”

Mark and John quickly fell asleep, excited and scared for tomorrow to come.