Текст книги "On the island"

Автор книги: Tracey garvis graves

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

Chapter 13 – Anna

The bright sunlight woke me, illuminating the interior of the life raft. T.J. was already gone, out gathering firewood or fishing. I yawned, stretched my arms and legs, and crawled out of bed. My suitcase was in the lean-to, and I reached in and grabbed a bikini, returning to the life raft to change. Dressed, I lifted the nylon flaps to let in some fresh air.

T.J. walked up with the fish he caught for breakfast. He smiled. “Hey.”

“Good morning.”

I checked the breadfruit and coconut trees, scooping up everything on the ground and bringing them back to the lean-to. T.J. cracked coconuts while I cleaned and cooked the fish.

After breakfast we brushed our teeth, rinsing with rainwater, and I marked off the date in my datebook. September already. Hard to believe.

“Want to go swimming?” T.J. asked.

“Sure.”

Last week, T.J. had spotted two fins, just outside the reef. We panicked and left the water, but as we watched they came all the way into the lagoon. Dolphins. We waded slowly into the water and they didn’t swim away, waiting patiently as we approached them.

“They almost act like they’re here to introduce themselves,” I said in amazement.

T.J. petted one and laughed when it blew water out its blowhole. I had never seen such social creatures. They swam with us for a while and then left abruptly, on some sort of marine schedule.

“Maybe the dolphins will come back today,” I said, as I followed T.J. down to the shore.

T.J. stripped off his shirt and waded into the lagoon. “That would be cool. I want to ride one.”

We entertained ourselves by using one of the collapsible plastic containers for a snorkel mask. There were schools of brightly colored fish – purple, blue, orange, and yellow and black striped. We spotted a sea turtle and an eel poking its head up from the ocean floor. I swam away fast when I saw that.

“No dolphins,” I said after T.J. and I had been swimming for at least an hour. “We must have missed them.”

“We can try again after our nap.” Suddenly, he pointed toward the shoreline. “Anna, look over there.”

A crab leg stuck out of the sand, the pincer opening, and closing. We ran out of the water.

“I’ll grab my sweatshirt,” he said.

“Hurry, it’s trying to bury itself.”

T.J. returned in record time, wrapped his sweatshirt around the crab, and pulled it out of the sand. We went back to the lean-to and T.J. shook it out onto the fire.

“Oh God,” I said, thinking for a second about the crab’s violent demise.

I got over it fast.

We cracked the legs with the pliers from the toolbox, gorging ourselves. The crabmeat – even without hot melted butter – tasted better than anything I’d eaten since we’d been on the island. Now that we knew where they buried themselves, T.J. and I would have to check the shoreline daily. I was so tired of fish, coconut, and breadfruit that I could hardly choke them down sometimes, and adding crabmeat would provide a little variety, something that was desperately lacking in our diet.

When the crab was nothing more than a pile of split shells, I took the blanket out of the life raft and spread it under the coconut tree. We stretched out next to each other. The shade from the tree helped keep us cool during the hottest part of the day, and it had become our favorite place to nap.

A big, creepy, hairy spider – its body the size of a quarter – crawled lazily across T.J.’s shoulder and I flicked it off him with my finger. “That one even freaked me out,” I said.

T.J shuddered. He hated spiders, always shaking our blanket out, checking for them before he put it back in the life raft. Personally, I hated snakes. I’d already stepped on one and the only thing that kept me from being completely traumatized was the fact that I was wearing my tennis shoes. I hated to think about stepping on one barefoot; whether or not they might be poisonous was too stressful to think about.

I thought T.J. had already fallen asleep, but then he said, “What do you think’s gonna happen to us, Anna?” His voice sounded drowsy.

“I don’t know. I think we just keep doing what we’re doing and try to hold on until someone finds us.”

“We’re not doing too bad,” T.J. said, rolling over onto his stomach. “I bet that would surprise a lot of people.”

“It surprises me.” My full stomach was making me drowsy, too. “It’s not like we had a choice, T.J. We either figured it out or we died.”

T.J. lifted his head off the blanket and looked at me with a contemplative expression. “Do you think they had funerals for us back home?”

“Yes.” The thought of our families holding memorials hurt so much that I squeezed my eyes shut and willed myself to sleep, hoping to escape the images of a crowded church, an empty altar, and my parents’ tear-stained faces.

After our nap we gathered firewood, an endless, tedious chore. We kept the fire burning constantly, partly so T.J. wouldn’t have to make a new one and partly because we both still held out hope that a plane would fly overhead. When it did, we’d be ready, our pile of green leaves sending up smoke signals as soon as we threw them on the flames.

We added the firewood to the pile in the lean-to. Then I filled the container that had held the life raft with seawater, added a capful of Woolite, and swished our dirty clothes around in it.

“It must be laundry day,” T.J. said.

“Yep.”

We strung a rope between two trees and hung the clothes to dry. We didn’t have much; T.J. wore shorts and nothing else. I spent my days in a bikini, sleeping in his T-shirt and a pair of shorts at night.

Later that night, after dinner, T.J. asked if I wanted to play cards.

“Poker?”

He laughed. “What, you didn’t get your ass kicked enough last time?”

T.J. had taught me how to play, but I wasn’t very good. At least, that’s what he thought. I was starting to get the hang of it, and I was about to take him down.

Six hands later – I won four – he said, “Huh, I must be having an off night. Want to play checkers instead?”

“Okay.”

He drew a checkerboard in the sand. We used pebbles for the checkers and played three games.

“One more?” T.J. asked.

“No, I’m going to take a bath.”

I was already worried about our soap and shampoo supply. I’d packed a lot of each, but T.J. and I had agreed to only bathe every other day. Just in case. We stayed somewhat clean since we swam a lot, but we didn’t always smell the greatest.

“Your turn,” I said, when I returned from the shore.

“I miss showering,” T.J. said.

After he bathed, we went to bed. T.J. closed the roll-down door of the life raft and lay down next to me.

“I’d give anything for a Coke,” he said.

“Me too. A big one, with lots of ice.”

“And I want some bread. Not breadfruit. Bread. Like a big sandwich, with potato chips and a pickle.”

“Pizza, Chicago style,” I said.

“A big sloppy cheeseburger.”

“Steak,” I said. “And a baked potato with cheese and sour cream.”

“Chocolate pie for dessert.”

“I know how to make chocolate pie. My mom taught me.”

“The kind with the chocolate shavings on top?”

“Yes. When we get off this island, I’ll make you one.” I sighed. “We’re just torturing ourselves.”

“I know. Now I’m hungry. Well, I was already kinda hungry.”

I turned onto my side and got comfortable. “Good night, T.J.”

“Good night.”

***

T.J. laid the fish he’d caught on the ground next to me and sat down.

“School’s been in session for a couple weeks,” I said. I made an X on the calendar, put the datebook away, and started cleaning our breakfast.

T.J. must have noticed my expression because he said, “You seem sad.”

I nodded. “It’s hard for me, knowing another teacher is standing in front of my students right now.”

I taught sophomore English, and I loved shopping for school supplies and selecting books for my bookshelves. I always filled a big mug on my desk with pens and there wouldn’t be any left by the end of the year.

“So you like your job?”

“I love it. My mom was a teacher – she retired last year – and I always knew I’d be one, too. When I was little I wanted to play school all the time and she used to give me gold stars so I could grade my stuffed animal’s homework.”

“I bet you’re a really good teacher.”

I smiled. “I try to be.” I placed the cleaned fish on my cooking rock and positioned it close to the flames. “Can you believe you’d be starting your junior year?”

“No. It seems like I haven’t been to school in a long time.”

“Do you like school? Your mom told me you were a good student.”

“It’s okay. I wanted to catch up with my class. I had hoped to get back on the football team, too. I had to quit when I got sick.”

“So you like sports?” I asked.

He nodded. “Especially football and basketball. Do you?”

“Sure.”

“Do you play any?”

“Well, I run. I ran two half-marathons last year, and I ran track and played basketball in high school. Sometimes I do yoga.” I checked the fish and pulled the rock away from the fire so it could cool. “I miss exercising.”

I couldn’t imagine running now. Even if we had enough food to justify it, running around the island would remind me of a hamster on a wheel. Moving forward but getting absolutely nowhere.

***

T.J. walked up with a backpack full of firewood. “Happy birthday,” I said.

“It’s September 20th?” He threw a log on the fire and sat down next to me.

I nodded. “I’m sorry, I didn’t get you a present. The island mall sucks.”

T.J. laughed. “That’s okay, I don’t need a present.”

“Maybe you can have a big party when we get off this island.”

T.J. shrugged. “Yeah, maybe.”

T.J. seemed older than seventeen. Reserved almost. Maybe facing serious health problems eliminated some of the immature behavior that presented itself when you had nothing more to worry about than getting your driver’s license, cutting class, or breaking curfew.

“I can’t believe it will be October soon,” I said. “The leaves are probably starting to change back home.”

I loved fall – football games, taking Joe and Chloe to the pumpkin patch, and feeling a chill in the air. Those were some of my favorite things.

I stared at the palm trees, their green leaves rippling in the breeze. Sweat trickled slowly down the side of my face, and the constant smell of coconut on my hands reminded me of suntan lotion.

It would always be summer on the island.

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter 14 – T.J.

The rain came down sideways. Thunder crashed, and lightning lit up the sky. The wind shook the life raft, and I worried it might relocate us halfway down the beach. I made a mental note: anchor life raft to something tomorrow.

“Are you awake?” I asked Anna.

“Yes.”

The storm raged for hours. We huddled together with the blanket pulled over our heads. The thin nylon covering the roof and hanging down the sides of the life raft was all that protected us from the lightning, which was like having no protection at all. We didn’t say much, just waited for it to end and when it finally did, we went back to sleep, exhausted.

The next morning, Anna brought back several small green coconuts blown off the tree by the storm. We split them open. The meat tasted sweet, and the water wasn’t bitter like the brown coconuts.

“These are so good,” Anna said.

The lean-to had fallen apart and our fire had gone out so I made another one, this time using my shoelace. I tied it to the opposite ends of a curved stick. Making a loop in the string, I threaded another stick through so that it stood perpendicular to the chunk of wood I rested it on.

“What are you doing?” Anna asked.

“I’m going to use this to spin the stick. That’s what the guy on T.V. did.”

I adjusted the tension on the string and held the stick at different angles. It took a while before I could get the stick to spin fast enough, but once it did, I got smoke in about fifteen minutes, and flames pretty soon after that.

“Hey,” Anna said. “That was a great idea.”

“Thanks.” I piled on tinder and watched the fire grow. Anna and I put the lean-to back together.

I wiped the sweat out of my eyes and said, “I hope that’s the worst storm we ever have.” I leaned the last stick up against the lean-to. “Because I don’t know what we’re going to do for shelter if it’s not.”

***

Anna left to take a bath. I looked through her suitcase, trying to find her REO Speedwagon T-shirt. She told me I could wear it – and the Nike one too – since they both fit me. I didn’t see the shirt, so I dug a little deeper.

There were two boxes of tampons shoved under some shorts.

What’s she going to do when those run out?

I moved some things around and noticed her bras, folded and tucked into a neat pile. The black one was on top. I picked up a bottle of vanilla lotion, flipped open the cap, and sniffed.

That’s why she sometimes smells like cupcakes.

I opened a round plastic container. It had tiny pills inside, in a circle marked with days of the week. Five pills remained. It took me a while to figure out they were birth control pills. I found two more unopened packages.

Anna wouldn’t mind that I was looking through her suitcase – I kept my clothes in there too because we used my backpack to carry firewood – but she probably wouldn’t want me touching all her stuff. I started to shut the lid but then I spotted her underwear. They were at the bottom of the suitcase, next to her tennis shoes. I looked over my shoulder, then grabbed a pink pair and held them up.

I wonder if you can see through these when she’s wearing them.

I put them back and picked up a black thong.

Very sexy. But I bet it’s totally uncomfortable.

I touched a red pair, and looked closer at the little black bow in the center of the waistband.

Wow. Now that would be a hot present.

Then I scooped up five or six pairs at once, buried my face in them, and inhaled.

“What are you doing?” Anna asked.

I whipped around. “Jesus, you scared the crap out of me!” My heart pounded and my face burned.

How long has she been standing there?

“I’m looking for your REO Speedwagon T-shirt.” I still held a pair of her underwear in my hand, and I dropped them back in her suitcase.

“Really?” she asked. “Because it kind of looks like you’re playing with my underwear.” She put the soap and shampoo away in her suitcase.

She didn’t seem mad though, so I pulled out the thong, held it up, and said, “This looks totally uncomfortable.”

“Give me that.” She snatched it out of my hand and shoved it back in her suitcase, pressing her lips together and trying not to laugh.

When I realized she wasn’t pissed at me, I smiled and said, “You know what, Anna? You’re all right.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

“I really was looking for your REO Speedwagon T-shirt, but I can’t find it.”

“It’s hanging on the line. It should be dry.”

“Thanks.”

“Sure. Just don’t smell my underwear anymore, okay?”

“You saw that, huh?”

“Yeah.”

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter 15 – Anna

The dolphins swam alongside me in the lagoon. They dove under my body and surfaced on the other side. They made the funniest squeaking noises, and when I talked to them, they acted like they understood me. T.J. and I liked to grab their fins, laughing as they let us ride them. I could play with them for hours.

T.J. ran down to the lagoon. “Anna, guess what I found.”

T.J.’s other tennis shoe had washed up, and since he didn’t have to worry about injuring his feet anymore, he spent hours in the woods, searching for something interesting. So far, he’d found nothing but mosquito bites, but he kept looking anyway. It gave him something to do.

“What did you find?” I asked, petting one of the dolphins.

“Put your tennis shoes on and come see.”

I said good-bye to the dolphins, followed him back to the lean-to, and put on my shoes and socks.

“Okay, now I’m curious. What is it?”

“A cave. I went to grab a pile of sticks, and when I pulled them away, I saw the opening. I want to see what’s in it.”

It only took a few minutes to get to the cave. T.J. knelt at the entrance and crawled through on his hands and knees.

“It’s narrower than I thought,” he yelled. “Lie on the ground and army crawl on your stomach. It’s tight, but there’s room. Come on in.”

“No way,” I yelled back. “I am never going in that cave.”

My heart beat faster, and I started sweating just thinking about it.

“I’m feeling around. I can’t see anything.”

“Why would you do that? What if there are rats, or a big scary spider?”

“What? You think there might be spiders?”

“No, never mind.”

“I don’t think there’s anything in here but rocks and sticks. I can’t tell though.”

“If the sticks are dry bring them out. We can add them to the woodpile.”

“Okay.”

T.J. crawled out of the cave and stood up with something that looked like a shinbone in one hand and something that was definitely a skull in the other. He dropped them and said, “Holy shit!”

“Oh my God,” I said. “I don’t know who that is, but it did not end well for them.”

“Do you think it’s the person who built the shack?” T.J. asked. We stared down at the skull.

I nodded. “That would be my guess.”

We walked back to the lean-to and grabbed a burning log from the fire to use for a torch. We hurried back to the cave and T.J. got down on his hands and knees and crawled inside, holding the torch in front of him.

“Don’t burn yourself,” I called after him.

“I won’t.”

“Are you in?”

“Yes.”

“What do you see?”

“It’s definitely a skeleton. But there’s nothing else in here.” T.J. came out and handed me the torch. “I’m going to put the bones back in the cave with the rest of it.”

“Good idea.”

T.J. and I walked back to the lean-to. “Well that was horrifying,” I said

“How long does it take a body to become a skeleton?” T.J. asked.

“In this heat and humidity? Probably not long.”

“I definitely think it’s the guy from the shack.”

“You’re probably right. And if it is him, there goes one of our chances for rescue.” I shook my head. “He’s not coming back because he never left. But what killed him?”

“I don’t know.” T.J. threw some wood on the fire and sat down beside me. “Why wouldn’t you go in the cave? Before we knew about the skeleton, I mean.”

“I can’t stand small, enclosed spaces. They freak me out. You know that lake house I told you about? The one where my dad and I went fishing?”

“Yeah.”

“Sarah and I always played with the other kids who vacationed there with their families. There was a road that went around the whole lake, and it had a long drainage pipe under it. Kids were always daring each other to crawl through it to the other side. One time, Sarah and I decided to do it, and we convinced everyone else to come along. We got halfway in, and I panicked. I couldn’t breathe and the person in front of me wouldn’t move forward. I couldn’t back up because there were kids behind me, too. I was probably seven, and not very big, but the pipe was tiny. We finally made it out the other side, and Sarah had to go find our mom because I wouldn’t stop crying. I remember it like it was yesterday.

“No wonder you wouldn’t go in.”

“What I can’t understand is why Bones would crawl in there to die.”

“Bones?”

“I feel like he should have a name. Bones sounds better than ‘guy from the shack.’”

“Works for me.” T.J. said.

***

I sat by the lean-to playing Solitaire. When T.J. walked up, I knew instantly that something was wrong because he held his arm close to his body, and supported it with his other hand. His shoulder slumped downward.

I stood up. “What happened?”

“I fell out of the coconut tree.”

“Come on.” I put my arm around his waist and led him slowly to the life raft. He winced at the slightest movement, and he tried, unsuccessfully, to suppress a moan when I helped him lay down. The strong, sudden urge to take care of him, to ease his pain, surprised me.

“I’ll be right back; I’m going to get the Tylenol.”

I shook two Tylenol into my palm and grabbed the water bottle, filling it at the water collector. I put the pills in T.J.’s mouth and lifted his head so he could take a drink. He swallowed and breathed slowly in and out.

“Why were you climbing the tree?”

“So I could reach those little green coconuts you like.”

I smiled. “That was very sweet of you, but I think your collarbone is broken. I’m going to wait for the Tylenol to kick in, and then I’ll try to rig some kind of sling.”

“Okay,” he said, closing his eyes.

I looked in my suitcase and found a long white tank top. After twenty minutes, I helped him sit up.

“I’m sorry, I know it hurts.”

I bent his arm at the elbow and tucked the sling underneath, tying it gently at his shoulder. Easing him back down, I brushed the hair out of his face and kissed his forehead. “Try not to move around.”

“Okay, Anna.”

Maybe it didn’t hurt that bad though, because when I glanced back at him before leaving the life raft, he had a smile on his face.

I woke up that night to put wood on the fire.

“Anna?”

T.J.’s voice startled me. “Yes?”

“Can you help me out of here? I have to pee.”

“Sure.”

I helped him through the doorway of the life raft and then built up the fire. When he returned, I gave him more Tylenol.

“Have you been able to sleep at all?” I asked.

“Not really.”

The next morning, a lump and purple bruise showed where the bone had snapped. He grimaced when I tightened the sling, and I gave him a third dose of Tylenol.

He wouldn’t let me give him any more pills after that. “I don’t want to take too much, Anna. We might need it again.”

He felt better after three days, and he followed me around like a puppy. He came down to the beach when I was fishing, he tagged along when I went to get breadfruit, and he wanted to help empty the water collector. When he tried to go with me to gather firewood, I sent him back to the blanket under the coconut tree.

“You aren’t going to heal if you don’t stop moving around, T.J.”

“I’m bored. And I really need a bath. Will you help me when you get back?”

“What? No, I’m not giving you a bath.”

Awkward.

”Anna, you can help me, or you can smell me.”

I sniffed him. “You’ve smelled better. Okay, I’ll help you, but I’m only washing certain areas and only because you stink.”

He grinned. “Thanks.”

We went down to the lagoon as soon as I got back with the firewood. T.J. left his shorts on and sat down in water that covered his lower body. I knelt beside him and rubbed the bar of soap in my hands.

“Hold this for me,” I said, handing it to him.

I started by gently washing his face with my soapy hands and then scooped up water in my palm to rinse it off, my fingers touching the stubble on his cheeks and jaw and above his lip.

“That feels good,” he said.

I filled up the plastic container I brought and dumped it on his head, then washed his hair. It had grown a lot, and he constantly flicked it out of his eyes. He preferred my straw cowboy hat for keeping it out of his way which suited me fine; I had long since claimed his baseball cap as my own.

“I wish we had scissors,” I said. “I’d give you a haircut.”

He handed me the soap, and I lathered up my hands again. I washed his neck and moved down to his chest, my fingers gliding over his hardened nipples. He watched me silently.

I washed under his good arm, and his back. He couldn’t raise the other arm so I did the best I could, touching him gently near the bruise.

“I’m sorry,” I said, when he winced.

I made the mistake of looking down when I got ready to wash his legs. The water in the lagoon was clear enough to see that he had a hard-on sticking up in his shorts. “T.J.!”

“Sorry.” He looked at me sheepishly. “I can’t hide this one.”

Wait, how many have there been?

I suddenly didn’t know where to look. It wasn’t his fault though; I had forgotten what would happen if you rubbed a seventeen-year-old all over with your hands.

Or any man, actually.

“No, it’s okay. It just caught me off guard, that’s all. I thought you were in pain.”

Appearing genuinely confused, he said, “Well I didn’t break that.”

Okay, moving on.

I washed his legs, and when I got to his feet, I discovered he was ticklish. He jerked his foot away, and then said, “ow” when the movement jostled his upper body.

“Sorry. Okay, you’re sorta clean.”

“You’re not gonna dry me off?” He gave me a hopeful smile.

“Ha. That’s funny. You must be confusing us with people who have towels.”

“Thanks, Anna.”

“Sure.”

I helped him bathe for the next two weeks, until he healed enough to do it on his own. Each time, it got a bit less embarrassing for me. I never glanced down again, to see how it affected him.

“This doesn’t totally suck for you, does it?” I asked one day while washing his hair.

“Not at all,” he said, with a big smile on his face. “But don’t worry,” he added with mock seriousness. “I’ll pay you back someday. If you ever get hurt, I will definitely give you a bath.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

I made a mental note to be extra careful. Bathing him might have been awkward, but it was nothing compared to how I’d feel if it were his soapy hands moving over my skin.

OceanofPDF.com