by Emme Rollins
I venture off towards the forest without another word. I don’t know where I’m going, of course. All I know is that walking around barefoot is a bitch. Pebbles and twigs dig into my soles. My left shin hurts something silly.
“Wait!” she calls after me. She scrambles to her feet and runs after me. “I’m coming too. Don’t go off like that. We might get lost. We need some landmarks so that we can get back to the beach.”
She is right again, of course. I curse myself. She is right about a lot of things.
“I think I’ll know how to find the beach again,” I say in a huff. “It isn’t as if we left a boat full of supplies down there or something.”
I’m right too, of course.
She shoots me a glare. “Well, you certainly left your clothes behind. You want to bring those along or are you planning to walk around like Tarzan?”
Oh, right.
I open my mouth to retort that I am indeed going to walk around half-naked like Tarzan. But then I think of Rebecca’s disapproving gaze roaming all over my body, and my testicles sort of contract a little.
Holding my head as high as possible, I stalk towards the beach to gather the remnants of my clothes. I may not be able to wear the shirt again, but at least the cloth will come in handy for bandages, assuming that I would have soaked through the one Rebecca patched on me.
Then, jutting my chin forward, I pass her again in my way towards the forest, but not before catching the smirk on her face.
Damn!
*
Finding water somehow proves to be a bitch. We have been walking for hours, and this island – if it is indeed an island – is panning out to be larger than we thought.
“Where do you think we are?” Rebecca says.
She’s keeping up ably behind me although her breath is coming out in shorter and shorter bursts. I am not lessening the length of my strides just for her to keep up – that ingrate.
“I assume we’re somewhere in the Caribbean,” I say. “Maybe near the Bahamas. There are plenty of islands around this chain.”
Along the way, we hear birds and cicadas and many animal sounds that I have never heard in any zoo before this. Then of course, I don’t expect to see lions and tigers and bears.
Or do I?
Now and then, the undergrowth would rustle with the sounds of an escaping animal. I’m not even sure what sort of animals live here in these tropics. Would they be small or large? Would they be frightened by humans – whom they may never have glimpsed before – or curious? Would they be vegans . . . or carnivorous?
That last bit makes me queasy. I’m not sure I can fend off a charging wild boar or something as big and ferocious.
My mouth is now very dry, and I can’t remember the last time I took a leak. Rebecca hasn’t asked for any stops either, which means both of us must be very dehydrated.
“Maybe we should take a rest,” Rebecca says. “You know . . . to conserve water.”
Water? What water? I think my body capacity for water is only half full by now. My blood must be thicker than molasses.
“OK,” I concede. “But only for a while.”
“You’d think there would be plenty of water in the tropics,” she grumbles. “Do you think they realize we are missing?”
“Since it’s already morning, someone is bound to notice we’re missing. You have a cabin mate, don’t you?”
I fling myself under the shade of a particularly large rainforest tree. We are quite a distance up already, and I can no longer see the beach or the sea. Here, the trees form a tangled canopy so dense that the sunlight scarcely filters through. The ground is strewn with dead leaves and very little growth because nothing from above can seem to penetrate through.
My shin is throbbing. There is a patch of red seeping through my makeshift bandage.
Rebecca flings herself beside me.
“Here, let me take a look at that,” she says gruffly.
“It’s OK.” I brush her hand off.
“Hey!” She gives me an angry look. “I’m trying to help, OK? I’m sorry I seemed a tad ungrateful earlier – ”
“Just a tad,” I deadpan.
She purses her lips. “OK, I’m sorry, all right? It’s just that – ”
She is about to say something, and then appears to think the better of it.
“Just what?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Look, we may have had our differences, but now we have to work together if we are to find our way out of here.”
Agreed. As much as we both hate it.
“Now let me take a look at your wound,” she says a little more gently.
I acquiesce.
I am very aware of her warmth as she straightens out my leg. She takes my ripped shirt and tears another piece of cloth from it to replace the blood-sodden bandage.
I inspect the gash for the first time.
“It doesn’t look too bad,” I say.
“No,” she agrees. “At least it stopped bleeding.”
“We finally agreed on something. This is a cause for celebration.”
I expect her to lash out at me for making such a snarky remark, but instead, she smiles.
“I guess.”
I swallow the sudden lump which comes to my throat.
“Speaking of cabin mates,” I quickly say, “I’m sure yours would have noticed you were missing by now.”
She appears chagrined. “Actually, no. We, uh . . . or at least, she goes missing nights sometimes. On the first day we were on the ship, she didn’t come back the whole night. I can only assume she – ”
Rebecca shrugs.
“So you’re saying she might not have come back to your cabin to notice you’re missing today.”
“Um . . . ” She flushes. “That’s one way of looking at it. But she may also have come back last night and thought nothing of it if I were to go missing . . . ”
She trails off.
Right.
I grin. “Does she know you were out on a date with me?”
“It wasn’t a date!”
“Dinner with a guy. The two of us together . . . alone. Read like a date to me.” I’m saying all this just to needle her.
For answer, she secures the new bandage a little extra tightly.
“Ouch,” I say.
“Touche.”
“So your roommate was expecting you to vanish all night.” I grin, flexing my leg.
I am still half-naked, of course, and I am aware of Rebecca surreptitiously eyeing my sweaty and gleaming body. I have a great body and I don’t mind flaunting it just to embarrass her. Besides, over two hundred million people have seen this body if you go by the amount of YouTube hits my videos have, though I concede some of those may not be unique users.
“I told her there was no way in hell I was going to do anything but have dinner,” she retorts.
Is she coloring even more than ever?
“What did she say?” I say slyly.
It’s her turn to smile. “She thought I was having dinner with the hunky Captain.”
“Huh?”
“You heard it right.” Her smile is smug. “My roommate, Natasha, thought I was going out with the hunky Captain.”
The Captain! I am aghast. That old guy? What does Rebecca see in him?
“Did he ask you out?” I demand.
“Why? You jealous?” she shoots back.
Actually, I am. Just a little. But there is no way in hell I’m ever going to let Rebecca know that.
“I think he’d be good for you,” I say. “Considering his age and your maturity level.”
Her chin drops.
“Oh!”
She swats at me and I put my arms up in mock defense.
“I’m kidding, OK? I’m just kidding,” I say. “Seriously, though, you can date whomever you like. I won’t care.”
“You won’t?” She sounds a little disappointed, although she is trying hard to conceal it.
“I won’t,” I say firmly, although
I know it is a lie.
The awkward pause between us sits like a pregnant lady, choked with unresolved longings. I have always known and realized the attraction between Rebecca and myself. It was present that night four or five years ago, and it is present now, though we’d rather swallow hobnails than to acknowledge it.
The plop of something falling into the undergrowth arrests us. We look up.
“What is it?” she whispers.
I can see the pulse hammering in her pretty throat. Tic-tic-tic. Lifting the warm artery beneath her soft skin.
I swivel my head to the direction of the sound. Upward.
“Look,” I say in a low voice, pointing to the trees. “Monkeys.”
Indeed, there are monkeys in the trees. These are brown and small, with long tails they use for swinging from one branch to the next with alacrity. Their faces are streaked with white fur, and they carry their cute babies around their shoulders. Some are bigger than others, denoting males. They chatter to one another in their gibberish. Occasionally, a couple would dart glances in our direction. They are very aware of our presence all right.
“Do you think they would hurt us?” Rebecca says worriedly.
“Monkeys? Nah.”
“But these are wild monkeys. You know the HIV virus came from a monkey.”
“That’s Africa. We are in the Caribbean.”
“It might be worse. We might be the first to be bitten by a monkey infected with a new virus strain.”
“Haha.”
“I’m serious!”
“Relax, Rebecca. I don’t think the monkeys will hurt us. But look at what they are eating.”
She looks.
The monkeys are plucking coconuts off the coconut trees and having a right blast of a feast on the tall branches.
“God, I could do with a coconut,” she says longingly. “I’m not sure whether I’m thirstier or hungrier.”
My growling stomach and shriveled leather of a tongue suggest that I feel the same way.
“I wish they’d drop us a coconut,” she says.
“If we wait here long enough, maybe they might.”
We wait.
And wait.
Then, finally, a monkey drops an empty coconut. It falls to the ground with a loud thud near us.
“Quick, get it!” I say.
We scurry to the dropped coconut. But it was empty of all water. The monkey had scooped out most of the white coconut flesh and left us with just bits and pieces.
Still, we cored it out hungrily and ate every bit we can.
“It’s not enough,” Rebecca complains. “So what do we do? Wait till another monkey throws us some shreds?”
Indeed, the monkeys seem to be contemptuous of us. They jabber shrilly on their perches, plucking more coconuts and taking their leisurely time. They seem to be taunting us.
They have to know we are starving.
“How do we get them to throw us some fresh coconuts?” Rebecca asks.
I stare at the moneys, and then at the undergrowth, and back at the monkeys again.
“I think I’ve got an idea,” I say.
REBECCA
I watch in amazement as Kurt uncurls himself and picks up a rock.
“What’re you doing?” I say.
“Annoying a lot of somebodies.”
He aims the rock at a cluster of coconuts high up in the tree nearest to us, and flings it with all his might.
For a moment, I thought he was trying to wing down a coconut or two. His aim is not that accurate, is it? But then, I remember that he was a basketball player.
The stone strikes a coconut with a loud ‘thuck!’. And then it falls to the ground.
No coconuts were unhinged in the process.
“Okayyyyy,” I say. I am about to make a sarcastic remark like ‘Planning to single-handedly boomerang down those coconuts, Taylor?’ when I remember I’m supposed to be on my best behavior for the enhancement of our survival.
Yeah, right.
He grins at me. “No. Watch.”
The monkeys go into a cacophony of agitated screeching. There is a lot of jumping from one branch to the next and a lot of leaf rustling and tail swinging. They jabber at us wildly.
“Uh oh,” I say, “I think you’ve made them mad.”
“That’s exactly the point.”
Kurt picks up another stone and begins flinging this one into a bunch of monkeys instead.
“What are you doing?” I cry, alarmed. “Do you want to bring them all down on our heads?”
The monkeys start to furiously pluck off the coconuts and they are now flinging them back at us.
“Run!” Kurt says.
We run.
We duck and dive for cover under lower lying trees. I find a particularly nice spot beneath a ledge made by earth and a huge tree root to seek shelter in. It smells of leafy moss in here and the soil is damp and loamy.
“Kurt!” I call to him.
He scoots in with me under the ledge. It’s a tight fit, but we push against each other’s bodies. Kurt’s arms go around my shoulders and he crushes me in a bear embrace. His long hair worms into my nostrils and mouth. I blow a tendril of it out.
“Sssssh,” he whispers.
His body is sticky and as warm as a furnace. His breath is coming out in heaves. My heart pounds so hard in excitement that I am sure he must have felt its vibration through my tits. Speaking of my tits, they are smashed against his hard chest. I’m sure he must have felt my nipples poking beneath my dress.
Something else is sticking into me lower down. Something hard. I am aware of what it is.
My blood is electric in my veins.
Surely he can’t be – ?
He is listening very hard to the sounds above us. The pandemonium continues for a while. Many things are dropped onto the ground, and there is a constant chittering and squawking that makes me think of gremlins.
Meanwhile, Kurt continues to hold me, and I continue to breathe in his sweaty, manly scent. He smells very masculine to me, especially since he’s covered in grime.
When the sounds have died down, Kurt relaxes his hold on me.
“I think they have gone now,” he says in my ear.
We slowly peel ourselves off each other. My limbs are cramped, but I make myself straighten out. I need to get myself straight about a lot of things, and not just my body.
Don’t, don’t, don’t be attracted to him . . . fight it! Hard!
“Come on,” Kurt says, dusting himself. I wonder if he is trying to erase my lingering traces off him. “Let’s see what the harvest brings us.”
When we go back to the monkey spot, the ground is littered with fresh coconuts. A couple of monkeys still swing from the trees, but when they screech at us and bare their teeth, Kurt bares his teeth back.
“Grrrrr!” he yells, shaking his fist, and they vanish into the overgrowth.
We fall onto the coconuts in frenzy. Soon, with the help of a couple of splitting rocks, we have a veritable feast of sweet coconut water and succulent white coconut flesh.
When we are finally replete, our tummies full to bloating, I swear I will never have another coconut served to me at the poolside again when we are out of here.
If we ever get out of here.
KURT
Our quest for water continues long into the afternoon.
The coconuts nourished us some, but we know that we will need water and more sustenance before long.
“There’s water nearby,” Rebecca insists. “The earth was damp.”
“It could have been from the last rainfall.”
Speaking of rain, where the hell is it? We are supposed to be in the tropics, aren’t we? Isn’t there supposed to be a thunderstorm every afternoon?
And just how big is this island anyway, assuming it is an island?
“Do you think anyone is looking for us?” Rebecca says.
She has started to straggle a bit, and I slow down to let her keep up.
“Someon
e is bound to notice I am missing from my janitorial duties,” I say wryly. “So I reckon . . . yeah.”
“You think they have mounted search parties for us?”
“I’m sure they have.”
“We need to make some sort of sign on the beach so that any airplane flying by will see it and know we are here.”
“Sure. But let’s find water first.”
I’m not even sure where the beach is anymore. We seem to be walking around in circles.
Just when we think we are going to need another coconut refresher with another bunch of monkeys, we hear it. In the distance.
The sure sound of merry water trickling.
“Water!” we both shriek as we plunge into its direction.
Our bare feet slap against twigs and crunchy leaves and goodness knows what else when we finally arrive at the edge of the stream. It is an honest-to-goodness stream, with bubbling and silvery tinkling water running merrily over smooth rocks without a care in the world.
We are delirious with joy.
We dive into the stream immediately, soaking our bodies in it as we gulp down the cool, cleansing water. The water is as fresh as natural water can be without the taste of contaminants we sometimes find in small town streams back where we lived. We dance in the water. We sprinkle silvery drops all over our hair and bodies.
We are happy, happy, happy and laughing with euphoria.
When we have drunk our fill, we claw back to the banks of the stream to lie there on our backs contentedly. I am exhausted. I don’t know about Rebecca, but her limbs are sprawled on the ground like a ragdoll and she is not moving.
I turn my head.
“Rebecca?”
Her mouth is open and her eyes are closed. She is snoring slightly.
I lean back and smile. I watch her for a long while, still smiling, as the sun sinks.
REBECCA
When I wake up, it is dawn.
I sit up, flabbergasted. Gad, did I sleep for more than sixteen hours straight? I could have sworn it was twilight when I fell asleep.
Kurt is curled up next to me. He has his pants on, but he is still shirtless. In the wan light, he resembles a Boticelli angel. I pause to admire the way his long eyelashes dust his cheeks and the way his hair fans across the ground.