I can’t believe that just a few weeks ago I was working at some minimum wage job with my best friend since I’ve known forever. Both of us were forced to work overtime every week just to have barely enough to scrape by each month to pay our bills and provide for ourselves. Now, we’re both millionaires living in a mansion. I know you’re probably wondering how we managed to do that in such a short amount of time. Well, let me tell you our story of how it happened. 

“All of our bills are paid off for the month,” Jack said, sounding tired and exhausted.

 “Yeah, thank god,” I said, relieved. I sat down on the black, old, torn couch next to him, the couch sinking almost to the ground as I did so. I turned to look at his face, his brown hair looked overgrown from not being able to afford a haircut and he had dark eye bags from overworking himself. “I just wish we didn’t have to live like this. Our lives would be so much easier if we were rich. Like I know money can’t buy happiness but I feel like I’d be so much happier if I didn’t have to worry about how we are going to survive every month,” I said. 

“I guess that’s what we get for not going to college or having a specialized skill,” Jack said. 

“Unfortunately, not everyone has the money to afford college. What we need is an impossible miracle. Especially with our luck.” I said, pessimistically. I looked over at Jack and he looked deep in thought. Then, his eyes suddenly lit up.

“Hey! What about that treasure hunt that your dad was obsessed with? Maybe it’s a real thing.” He exclaimed. It felt like a fist closed over my heart when he brought up my dad.

  “It’s not real!” I snapped. “Besides, even if it was, I don't think I would want to find it. My dad gave his life trying to find that stupid, fake treasure.” I said, my voice tinged with sadness now.

“Your dad is missing,” he corrected. “We don’t know what truly happened to him,” he said.

“Of course, my dad has been “missing” for eight years,” I said with an edge of sarcasm to my voice.

“Well, it’s worth a shot. I mean what do we have to lose now? It’s not like anyone would notice if we went missing,” Jack said. He looked over at me and I didn’t say anything but I knew he had a point. “We’ll start going through his research tomorrow. I really am sorry though for bringing up your dad. Will you forgive me, Sierra?” He said with genuine remorsefulness in his voice.

“Alright,” I said, giving in. “I forgive you.”

We spent the entire next day going through my dad’s research. We went through his files, videos, notes, and anything that would give us a clue as to where this treasure was located. By the end of the day, we were able to figure out the treasure was a couple of hundred years old and was located on an unknown, uninhabited island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. According to my father’s research, there was three million dollars worth of treasure there. The next day we went out to the store and bought some supplies that we would need for our trip.

“The only thing we need now is a boat. How are we going to afford to buy a boat? We’ve already used up all of our savings to buy all of our supplies.” I said.

“Who said anything about buying a boat?” Jack said, looking over at me with a cynical smile.

“Jack, we’re not going to become criminals over some treasure,” I said, concerned.

“Relax, Sierra. I have a cousin who owns a small boat. I can just ask to borrow it.” Jack said, calmly. 

“Alright, sounds good to me,” I said. 

We spend the next several days working day and night. Then, the day finally came when we would set out to find the treasure. We drove an hour to Miami beach where we met up with Jack’s cousin. He proceeded to give us a tour of his boat, telling us how everything worked and all of his rules that he wanted us to follow.

When he finally finished, he said, “All right you two lovebirds have fun in the Caribbean.”

“Oh, we’re not dating,” Jack and I both said at the same time. His cousin then smiled at us and walked away. Jack and I watched until he was out of sight. 

“The Caribbean? Really, Jack?” I asked.

“What? What else was I supposed to tell him about why we need his boat?” Jack said, innocently. I just rolled my eyes at him and walked over to untie the boat from the dock and we set sail. 

Several hours later I noticed the sky turning a dark gray color and I started to get concerned.

“Did you hear anything about a storm happening tonight?” I asked, worried.

“No, I didn’t hear anything about it. Could you come over here and navigate? It’s not going to do us any good if we get caught up in a storm and we don’t know where we are,” He said, politely but slightly demanding. 

A few hours later it was nighttime and the wind was starting to pick up.

“I don’t know if I want to do this anymore, Jack,” I said, slightly scared. The wind was blowing our hair all over the place making it hard to see what was in front of us and making a rustling noise in our ears.

Jack hesitated and then said, “We’re closer to the island than we are to anything else. It’s best if we just try to make it to the island in one piece.” It didn’t take long for it to start sprinkling and the wind was blowing even harder now.

“I’m going to strap everything down just in case we crash,” I said.

“I hope you didn’t jinx us,” he said with a dry smile. It took me 10 minutes to strap down all of our supplies and food down below. 

When I came back up the wind almost swept me off my feet and it was pouring rain. The rain mixed in with the wind made it feel like we were getting hit with tiny rocks. The waves were starting to become unpredictable and big. It felt like we were on a roller coaster with constant up and down.

“I think we just might crash,” he said smiling, trying to hide his concern with humor. I smiled back at him the same. A couple of minutes later there was a 20 foot wave coming straight at us. I looked at Jack with terror in my eyes to find he was already looking at me the same way. I tried to use the radio before the wave hit us to call for help but it was dead. Jack came up to me and tightly embraced me with a warm hug. I hugged him back. We both accepted our fate as the wave hit us and caused the whole boat to flip.

I woke up face down in the sand, water in my lungs and the water on the shore pushing and pulling my whole body. I sat up and coughed out a whole bunch of salty water. I looked around to see that Jack was also face down in the sand, the boat was on its side with half of it in the water and the other half on the sand. Jack was a few feet away from me and as I crawled over to him I felt my head and body throb. I sat him up and lightly hit his back to get the water out. He woke up and coughed out the water. I looked up and instantly got blinded by the sun. Despite everything that happened this place was absolutely beautiful. The water glittered in the sun and was a clear, blue color. Deeper inland I could see tall, green palm trees and grass. I looked back at Jack to see that he was also observing our current situation. 

“I told you not to jinx us,” he said, clearly exhausted. 

“Come on,” I said, standing up ignoring his comment.

“Let’s go get our supplies out of the boat and see if our boat still works.” We got all of our supplies out of the boat and we managed to flip the boat up right by using the rope we bought and our weight combined with some leverage but had no luck starting it. We went for a walk around the island and on the other side of the island from where we crashed, there was another shipwrecked boat. It was rusted and decayed as if it had been here a long time. My first thought was that it could be my dad who had been stuck here this entire time. I ran to the boat but there was no one. My earlier wishful thinking now shattered into a thousand pieces. We made our way back to where we were shipwrecked, collecting sticks as we did so. When we got there we made a fire and set up our tents. 

We were eating some canned food that we bought and we were sitting around our campfire. When I heard a twig snap. I quickly twisted around to see a silhouette of a man in the tree line. Jack immediately stood up and got in front of me. 

“Stay behind me,” Jack quietly ordered. The man cautiously made his way over to us. The closer he got the more that I thought he looked familiar. The man seemed to think the same.

“Sierra?” The man said, surprised looking at me in disbelief. Jack and I looked at each other confused.

“Dad?” I asked in return, unsure. He started running toward us with his arms open. Jack stepped to the side. When he reached me, he looked at my face for a second and then wrapped his arms tightly around me with a big smile on his face and tears in his eyes. He looked and smelled somewhat dirty but overall looked pretty good considering his living conditions. We spent the next couple of hours catching up about everything that has happened, our lives, how he was able to survive these past eight years, and how he also got stranded the same way we did. 

We spend the next couple of days working hard on getting our boat running again. I considered it a miracle that we were able to get it running again.

“Tonight we rest up. Tomorrow we go after the treasure. Hopefully, we can be back in Florida within a few days.” My father said, looking around the campfire at Jack and I. Jack and I nodded in agreement with him.

The day finally came that we would go on our treasure hunt. It was a long, tiring, and dreadful, but beautiful hike through the wilderness. It looked like something you only saw in movies. All around me everything was green, luscious, and bright with lots of colorful birds in the treetops whistling a beautiful tune. However, the air was very humid, moist and thick. It felt as though we were walking through a cloud. The treasure was hidden in a secret passage underground according to my dad and his research. 

My dad abruptly stopped walking and started looking all around at the ground.

“Do you guys see an entrance anywhere or like a hatch or anything?” My father asked, frantically looking around.

“No, I don’t see any of that anywhere. Are you sure it’s here?” I asked. Before my dad could answer, I looked at Jack who was walking around and then he suddenly fell through the ground as if the ground ate him. “JACK!” I yelled after him as the ground swallowed him whole. My dad and I ran over to where he fell, got down on our stomachs when we reached the hole and looked down to see if he was okay. “Jack, are you okay?” I asked concerned.

“I think I found what we were looking for. Come down here but carefully,” Jack yelled back. My dad and I lowered ourselves down the hole with rope. I touched the ground and looked all around. There were six tunnels that went in all directions and we were in the middle of it.

“So, which way do we go now?” Jack asked.

“Well, if my research is accurate, we should go down that tunnel over there,” my dad said pointing to one of the tunnels. Jack and I exchanged concerned glances but knew we had nothing better to go off of so we went along with it. 

It felt like we were walking down this wet, muddy, narrow tunnel forever when we finally reached the end of the tunnel that looked like a throne room. The ceiling of the tunnel opened up, the walls were decorated with shiny jewels and gold and there was a golden chair centered in the very back of the room.

“Be careful, we don’t know if this place is boobied trap. Start collecting as many jewels and gold as we can and put them in the bags,” my father ordered. We had collected almost all of it, when I saw my father walk over to the throne. I instantly got a bad feeling in my gut as if I just gotten stabbed when he reached his hand out.

“DON’T TOUCH THAT!” I yelled at him. But I spoke too late, his hand was already on the throne. I clenched with anticipation of something bad happening but nothing happened. My worries started to fade away as did everyone else’s.

“See there’s nothing to worry about,” my father said, soothingly. He finished admiring it and stepped away from it. As did so his foot stepped on a tile in the floor and the tile sunk and locked in place with a clicking sound. He froze for a second and then started running as the ceiling started collapsing on us. We all ran as fast as we could as the collapsing ceiling was close behind us. The bags of gold that we were carrying weighed us down. We ran single file through the narrow tunnel. The mud was thick and sticking to our boots also slowing us down and making it that much harder for us to escape. 

We thankfully made it to the entrance. We jumped and climbed up the rope. We all barely made it out before the entire thing collapsed. We laid on the ground exhausted and panting like dogs. We laid like that for five minutes before we started our long hike back to the boat. By the time we made it back to the boat it was already nightfall. We loaded our treasure and supplies onto the boat and set sail. 

Once we got far enough out to the point where we couldn’t see the island anymore, we all broke out into laughter simultaneously.

“We actually did it!” I said, excited and relieved that our nightmare and blessing wrapped in one was over. We spent the rest of the boat ride in silence as we were all tired from the past couple days we had. 

It had been a week since we left Florida and now we were back. I never thought I’d be so happy to see home. We unloaded all of our stuff out of the boat and started walking towards my car. We loaded everything into my 20 year old car that barely worked and drove home to get some rest. I slept for 12 hours that day. The next day we traded in our gold and jewels for cash. The clerk gave us a suspicious look and was undoubtedly wondering where we got all this treasure from but didn’t ask any questions. We collected all three million dollars worth of treasure and we divided it evenly between the three of us. The first thing we did with that money bought ourselves a house and a new car. We also bought new furniture. Jack finally got a haircut. Jack also had to pay to fix his cousin’s boat. I put the other half of my money in savings. After I moved into my new house, I went out onto my deck that overlooked the ocean. The scenery reminded me of that unknown island and I realized that miracles do exist but are very rare. I felt lucky and grateful that I was someone that was able to experience such an amazing miracle.