On the Island

  “Well, what’s your answer?”

  “I’m not sure, Sarah. I love him, but I don’t think that’s going to be enough for me.” I needed time to think, to be sure, and Tom and Jane Callahan had given me the perfect opportunity to get some distance. Literal space to make my decision.

  “He’ll see this as an ultimatum,” Sarah said.

  “Of course he will.” I took another drink of my margarita.

  “You’re handling it pretty well.”

  “That’s because I haven’t actually broken up with him yet.”

  “Maybe it is a good idea for you to be alone for a while, Anna. Sort things out and decide what you want for the rest of your life.”

  “I don’t have to sit and wait for him, Sarah. I have plenty of time to find someone who wants the same things I do.”

  “You do.” She finished her margarita and smiled at me. “And look at you, jetting off to exotic locations just because you can.” She sighed. “I wish I could go with you. The closest thing I’ve had to a vacation in the last year was when David and I took the kids to see the tropical fish at Shedd Aquarium.”

  Sarah juggled marriage, parenting, and a full-time job. Flying solo to a tropical paradise probably sounded like nirvana to her.

  We paid our bill and as we walked to the train I thought that maybe, just this once, my grass was a little greener. That if my situation had an upside, it was the freedom to spend the summer on a beautiful island if I felt like it.

  So far, that plan hadn’t worked out very well.

  My head ached, my stomach growled, and I’d never been so thirsty in my life. Shivering, my head resting on my life jacket, I tried not to think about how long it might take them to find us.

  Chapter 4 – T.J.

  Day 2

  I woke up as soon as it got light. Anna was already awake, sitting on the sand beside me looking up at the sky. My stomach growled, and I didn’t have any spit.

  I sat up. “Hey. How’s your head?”

  “Still pretty sore,” she said.

  Her face was kind of a mess, too. Purple bruises covered her swollen cheeks and there was crusty, dried blood near her hairline.

  We walked to the breadfruit tree and Anna climbed on my shoulders and knocked down two. I felt weak, unsteady, and it was hard to hold her. She got off and while we were standing there, a breadfruit fell off a branch and landed at our feet. We looked at each other.

  “That will make things easier,” she said.

  We cleared away the rotten breadfruit under the tree so if we came back and found any on the ground, we’d know we could eat them. I picked up the one that fell and peeled it. The juice tasted sweeter and the fruit wasn’t so hard to chew.

  We desperately needed something to collect water in, and we walked along the shoreline looking for empty cans, bottles, containers – anything that was watertight and would hold the rain. We spotted debris, which I thought might be wreckage from the plane, but nothing else. The lack of any human garbage made me wonder just where the hell we were.

  We went inland. The trees blocked the light from the sun and mosquitoes swarmed us. I slapped at them and wiped the sweat off my forehead with my arm. We saw the pond when we came to a small clearing. More like a large puddle, it was full of murky water, and my thirst kicked into overdrive.

  “Can we drink that?” I asked.

  Anna knelt down and stuck her hand in. She swirled the water around and wrinkled her nose at the smell. “No, it’s stagnant. It’s probably not safe to drink.”

  We kept walking but we couldn’t find anything that would hold water so we went back to the coconut tree. I picked up one of the coconuts from the ground and smashed it against the trunk of the tree, then threw it when I couldn’t get it to crack. I kicked the tree, which hurt my foot. “Goddamn it!”

  If I could get one coconut open, we could drink the coconut water, eat the meat, and collect rain in the empty shell.

  Anna didn’t seem to notice my tantrum. She shook her head back and forth and said, “I just don’t understand why we haven’t seen a plane yet. Where are they?”

  I sat down next to her, breathing hard and sweating. “I don’t know.” We didn’t say anything for a while, lost in our own thoughts. Finally, I said, “Do you think we should build a fire?”

  “Do you know how?” she asked.

  “No.” I’d lived in the city all my life, and I could count on one hand the number of times I’d been camping and still have fingers left over. And we’d lit our campfires with a lighter. “Do you?”

  “No.”

  “We could try to make one,” I said. “We seem to have the time.”

  She smiled at my lame attempt at a joke. “Okay.”

  We rubbed two sticks together for the next hour. Anna managed to get hers hot enough to burn her finger before she quit. I did a little better – I thought I saw some smoke – but no fire. My arms ached.

  “I give up,” I said, dropping my sticks and using the bottom of my T-shirt to wipe the sweat before it dripped into my eyes.

  It started raining. I concentrated on trying to catch the drops on my tongue, grateful for the small amount of water I swallowed. The rain ended after a few minutes.

  Still sweating, I walked down to the shore, stripped off my T-shirt, and waded in wearing just my shorts. The temperature of the lagoon reminded me of bathwater, but I ducked my head under and felt a little cooler. Anna followed me, stopping before she reached the water. She sat down on the sand, holding her long hair off her neck with one hand. She had to be roasting in her long-sleeved shirt and jeans. A few minutes later she stood up, hesitated, and then pulled her T-shirt over her head. She unbuttoned and unzipped her jeans, stepped out of them, and walked toward me, wearing nothing but a black bra and matching underwear.

  “Just pretend I’m in my swimsuit, okay?” she said when she joined me in the water. Her face was red, and she could hardly look at me.

  “Sure.” I was so stunned I barely got the word out.

  She had an awesome body. Long legs, flat stomach. Really nice rack. Checking her out should have been the last thing on my mind, but it wasn’t. You wouldn’t think I’d be able to get hard either, considering how thirsty and hungry I was and how seriously fucked up our situation had become, but you’d be wrong. I swam away from her until I got myself under control.

  We stayed in the water for a long time and when we got out she turned her back to me and put her clothes on. We checked the breadfruit tree but there weren’t any on the ground. Anna climbed up on my shoulders and when I steadied her by pressing down on her thighs, the image of her bare legs flashed into my mind.

  She knocked down two breadfruits. I wasn’t very hungry, which was weird since I should have been starving. Anna must not have been hungry either because she didn’t eat the fruit after she sucked out all the juice.

  When the sun went down, we stretched out near the shore and watched the bats fill the sky.

  “My heart is beating really fast,” I said.

  “It’s a sign of dehydration,” Anna said.

  “What are the other signs?”

  “Loss of appetite. Not having to pee. Dry mouth.”

  “I have all those.”

  “Me, too.”

  “How long we can go without water?”

  “Three days. Maybe less.”

  I tried to remember the last time I drank anything. Maybe at the Sri Lanka airport? We were getting a little in our mouths when it rained but it wouldn’t be enough to keep us alive. The realization that we were running out of time scared the shit out of me.

  “What about the pond?”

  “It’s a bad idea,” she said.

  Neither of us said what we were thinking. If it came down to the pond water or no water, we might have to drink it anyway.

  “They’ll come tomorrow,” she said, but she didn’t sound like she believed it.

  “I hope so.”

  “I’m scared,” she whispered.

/>   “So am I.” I rolled over on my side, but it was a long time before I fell asleep.

  Chapter 5 – Anna

  Day 3

  When T.J. and I woke up, we both had a headache and felt nauseous. We ate some breadfruit, and I thought I might throw mine up, but I didn’t. Even though we had very little energy, we returned to the beach and decided to try building a fire again. I was convinced a plane would fly over that day, and I knew a fire was our best chance to make sure they spotted us.

  “We did it all wrong yesterday,” T.J. said. “I was thinking about it last night, before I fell asleep, and I remember watching a show on TV where the guy had to make a fire. He spun the stick instead of rubbing two of them together. I have an idea. I’m going to see if I can find what I need.”

  While he was gone, I gathered anything that would burn if we actually managed to produce a flame. The air was so humid, and the only thing on the island that was dry was the inside of my mouth. Everything I picked up felt damp, but I finally found some dry leaves on the underside of a flowering plant. I also pulled the pockets of my jeans inside out and found a bit of lint which I added to the pile in my hand.

  T.J. returned with a stick and a smaller chunk of wood.

  “Do you have any lint in your pockets?” I asked him. He turned his pockets inside out, found some, and handed it to me.

  “Thanks.” I formed the lint and leaves into a little nest. I also gathered small sticks and collected a mound of damp, green leaves we could add to make plenty of smoke.

  T.J. sat down and held the stick upright, perpendicular to the chunk of wood it rested on.

  “What are you doing?” I asked him.

  “I’m trying to figure out a way to spin the stick.” He studied it for a minute. “I think the guy used a string. I wish I hadn’t kicked off my shoes; I could have used the laces.”

  He twisted the stick back and forth with one hand but he couldn’t spin it fast enough to get any friction. Sweat ran down his face.

  “This is fucking impossible,” he said, resting for a few minutes.

  With renewed determination, he used both hands and rubbed them together, with the stick in between them. It spun much faster, and he quickly found a rhythm. After twenty minutes, the spinning stick produced a little pile of black dust in the notch he’d worn in the chunk of wood.

  “Look at that,” T.J. said, when a wisp of smoke drifted up.

  Shortly after that, there was a lot more smoke. Sweat ran into his eyes but T.J. didn’t stop spinning the stick.

  “I need the nest.”

  I set it down next to him and held my breath, watching as he blew gently on the notch in the wood. He used the stick to carefully dig out the glowing red ember and transfer it to the pile of dry leaves and lint. He picked the nest up and held it in front of his mouth, blowing softly, and it burst into flames in his hands. He dropped it on the ground.

  “Oh my God,” I said. “You did it.”

  We piled small pieces of tinder on top of it. It grew fast and we quickly used up the sticks I’d collected. We hurried to find more, and we were both running toward the fire with an armful when the sky opened up and poured. In seconds, the fire turned into a soggy pile of charred wood

  We stared at what was left of it. I wanted to cry. T.J. sunk to his knees on the sand. I sat down next to him, and we lifted our heads to catch the raindrops in our mouths. It rained for a long time and at least some of it went down my throat, but all I could think about was the water soaking into the sand around us.

  I didn’t know what to say to him. When it stopped raining, we lay down under the coconut tree, not talking. We couldn’t make another fire right away, because everything was too wet, so we dozed, lethargic and despondent.

  When we woke up in the late afternoon, neither of us wanted breadfruit. T.J. didn’t have enough energy to make another fire and without some kind of shelter, we wouldn’t be able to keep it lit anyway. My heart pounded in my chest, and my limbs tingled. I’d stopped sweating.

  When T.J. stood up and walked away, I followed. I knew where he was going, but I couldn’t make myself tell him to stop. I wanted to go there, too.

  When we reached the pond, I knelt at the water’s edge, scooped some into my hand, and raised it to my mouth. It tasted horrible, hot and slightly brackish, but I immediately wanted more. T.J. knelt beside me and drank straight from the pond. Once we started, neither of us could stop. After drinking all we could, we collapsed on the ground, and I thought I might throw it all back up, but I held it down. The mosquitoes swarmed, and I slapped them away from my face.

  We wandered back to the beach. It was almost dark by then so we stretched out next to each other on the sand, laying our heads on our life jackets. I thought everything would be okay. We’d bought a little time. They’d come tomorrow for sure.

  “I’m sorry about the fire, T.J. You worked so hard, and you did a great job. I would never have been able to figure that out.”

  “Thanks, Anna.”

  We fell asleep, but I woke up a while later. The sky was black, and I thought it was probably the middle of the night. My stomach cramped. I ignored it and rolled onto my side. Another cramp hit me, this one more intense. I sat up and moaned. Sweat broke out on my forehead.

  T.J. woke up. “What’s wrong?”

  “My stomach hurts.” I prayed the cramping would stop but it only got worse, and I knew what was about to happen. “Don’t follow me,” I said. I stumbled into the woods, and I barely got my jeans and underwear down before my body purged everything in it. When there was nothing left, I writhed on the ground, the cramps continuing in waves, one after the other. Drenched in sweat, the pain radiated from my stomach down each leg. For a long time I lay still, afraid the slightest movement would cause more misery. The mosquitoes buzzed around my face.

  Then the rats came.

  Everywhere I looked, pairs of glowing eyes lurked in the darkness. One ran over my foot, and I screamed. I staggered to my feet and yanked my jeans and underwear back up, but the movement brought intense pain, and I collapsed again. I thought I might be dying, that whatever had contaminated the pond water wasn’t something you could survive. I stayed still after that. Exhausted and weak, with no idea where T.J. was, I passed out.

  A buzzing noise woke me. Mosquitoes. But the sun was up and most of the bugs, and the rats, were gone. I struggled to lift my head while lying on my side with my knees pulled up to my chest.

  It was the sound of a plane.

  I pushed myself up on all fours and crawled toward the beach, screaming for T.J. Rising to my feet, I stumbled toward the shore, trying with the last of my strength to lift my arms above my head and wave them back and forth. I couldn’t see the plane, but I could hear it, the sound moving farther and farther away.

  They’re looking for us. They’ll turn around any minute.

  The sound of the plane grew fainter until I could no longer hear it. My legs buckled, and I fell onto the sand and cried until I hyperventilated. I lay on my side, my sobs tapering off, staring out at the water in a daze.

  I had no idea how much time had passed, but when I looked over, T.J. was lying next to me.

  “There was a plane,” I said.

  “I heard it. I couldn’t move.”

  “They’ll come back.”

  But they didn’t.

  I cried a lot that day. T.J. was silent. He kept his eyes closed, and I wasn’t sure if he was sleeping or just too weak to talk. We didn’t make another fire or eat any breadfruit. Neither of us moved out from underneath the coconut tree, except when it rained.

  I didn’t want to be near the woods when it got dark so we moved back to the beach. As I lay on the sand next to T.J., there was only thing I knew for sure. If another plane didn’t come, or we couldn’t figure out a way to collect water, T.J. and I would die.

  I dozed fitfully throughout the night and when I finally fell into a deeper sleep, I woke up screaming because I dreamed a rat was chewing on my foot
.

  Chapter 6 – T.J.

  Day 4

  When the sun came up, I could barely lift my head off the sand. Two seat cushions from the plane had washed up overnight, and something blue next to them caught my eye. I rolled toward Anna and shook her to wake her up. She looked at me with sunken eyes, her lips cracked and bleeding.

  “What is that?” I pointed to the blue thing but the effort required to hold my hand up was too much, and I let my arm drop back onto the sand.

  “Where?”

  “Over there. By the seat cushions.”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  I lifted my head up and shielded my eyes from the sun. It looked familiar and suddenly I realized what it was. “That’s my backpack. Anna, that’s my backpack.”

  I stood up on wobbly legs, walked to the shore, and grabbed it. When I came back, I knelt down next to Anna, opened the backpack, and pulled out the bottle of water she’d given me at the Malé Airport.

  She sat up. “Oh my God.”

  I twisted the cap off and we passed the bottle back and forth, being careful not to drink it too fast. It held thirty-two ounces, and we drank it all, but it barely took the edge off my thirst.

  Anna held up the empty bottle. “If we use a leaf for a funnel, we can collect rainwater in this.”

  Shaky and weak, we walked to the breadfruit tree and plucked a large leaf from one of the lower branches. Anna tore it until it was the right size and stuffed it into the mouth of the empty water bottle, making the opening as wide as possible. There were four breadfruits on the ground, and we carried them back to the shore and ate them all.

  I dumped everything out of my backpack. My Chicago Cubs baseball cap was soaking wet, but I put it on anyway. There was also a gray hooded sweatshirt, two T-shirts, two pairs of shorts, jeans, underwear and socks, a toothbrush and toothpaste, and my CD player. I picked up my toothbrush and toothpaste. The inside of my mouth tasted like something I couldn’t even begin to describe. I unscrewed the cap on the toothpaste, squeezed some onto my toothbrush, and held it out to Anna. “You can share my toothbrush if you don’t mind.”