Angry Floatees

By Julian (Age 10.5, ISF Academy)

One day, I was in a cargo ship heading for America from Hong Kong. I was a two-headed rubber duck. I didn't know I was unusual until all the ducks started laughing at me. "Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!" I started crying. I hid in a corner of the container. Before I knew it, I fell asleep.

When I woke up, the container was violently shaking. "Ouch!" "Ooh!" "My head!" I heard someone shouting, "It's a huge tsunami!" The container flew into the air and fell into the ocean. I tumbled out. Suddenly, I saw the ship tip over and millions of rubber ducks, rubber frogs, rubber boats, rubber fish, rubber sharks, rubber starfish, rubber toy cars and rubber octopi flew into the sea. I started to float toward a faint outline of an island. Twenty days later, I got to the island. It was nice, but there was no one else there!

Suddenly, the ground started shaking. The volcano was erupting! Lava started pouring out of the volcano. The lava started burning me! It made me flip over. Then one of my heads burned right off! At first I was shocked... suddenly I noticed something. I looked normal now! Yay!

The lava pushed me into the sea. It started cooling down. Then, I was floating in plain old seawater again. I floated further and further away from the island. Suddenly, I saw another island. It looked cool. It was of lots of different shapes and sizes, and it was very colorful. As I floated nearer, it started looking very creepy. In fact, it started not looking like an island at all! It looked like... a garbage patch! It was a garbage patch after all!

I really wanted to get away from it, but the current was pushing me there. When I got really close, I saw candy wrappers, chocolates, orange peels, old clothes, old toothpaste tubes, old toothbrushes, old bags,and even old tables and old chairs. The thought of having to go through it was utterly horrifying. As I went through it, I felt all the garbage under me. It felt slimy and slippery. I felt sick. I looked ahead. There were MILES of garbage ahead of me! I closed my eyes and tried not to think about it, but the more I tried, the more I felt sick. Finally, I decided to go to sleep. When I woke up, I was almost at the end of the garbage patch. Then I saw a newspaper floating in the water near me. The headline read: "Giant Garbage Patch Floating in the Middle of the Sea." I read the article. Then I understood. The garbage patch I ran into was the one on the newspaper.

Then I saw land. Real land. As I crept closer and closer, I saw the shops along the waterfront. There was a bakery, a pizza parlor, an electronics store, a supermarket, and a garbage collection point. After half a day, I finally got to the land. I got washed up on a beach. Then, I saw a man walking toward me. He looked at me, picked me up, and then brought me to a silver round thing with garbage in it. The label on it said "Garbage Bin." The man threw me inside. After a few days passed, a man wearing gloves and a mask picked up the black bag I was in. Suddenly, I started getting really squished. I let out a loud squeak. The squishing stopped. The man looked inside the black bag and took me out. He looked at me for a moment then put me in his pocket. A while later, the man took me out of his pocket. I turned to see a little boy staring at me. "Here's your new bath toy!" the man said. A month later, while I was sitting on the shelf in the boy's room, I heard a surprised gasp come from outside. I heard the man whisper, "Rubber duck... worth lots... sell... auction..."

Next day, I was put in a box and taken to a weird place. When I was taken out of the box, I was in a place with lots of people. I was on a stage, and everyone was looking at me. A man on stage said, "Very previous rubber duck. From the cargo accident five years ago."

"Five thousand dollars!"

"Ten thousand!"

"Twenty!"

"Fifty!"

"Hundred!"

Then, a man wearing gold clothes said, "One million!" A long time later, the man put me in his car. He drove to a mansion, and then went inside.