The Island

by Olivia Levez

  The howling I can hear won’t go away. I shrink my legs up well inside my plastic nest in case a bird hunter taps my skin with his bird beak. Just before he draws his knife.

  When I wake again, the wind is shrieking louder than the birds and I have to bury myself into the foot of One Tree and wrap the rubber sheeting of the raft around me to stop it from blowing away.

  Dark noises surround me:

  thud

  thud

  thud.

  One sounds just by my head and I scream.

  I dare not look, I dare not look

  at what it is that is making that noise.

  Stab

  My legs are on fire.

  It’s like a million ants have buried under my skin and are having a party. I scratch my ankle and it feels so good, but I don’t want to stop now I’ve started and my legs are crawling and there are hard little bumps all over my skin.

  This time it really is morning.

  The life raft has mostly blown away and I am buried into the base of the tree, clutching only the roof.

  My mouth is dry.

  I panic when I can’t see the water sachets but it’s OK – they’re still in the Red Nylon Bag where I left them. I stab one open with my knife and suck the water greedily and it’s lovely and plasticky and warm. I drink and drink and it takes only seconds to empty it.

  One left.

  Thud.

  I spin around but it’s only one of the green nuts falling from a palm tree into the sand. I always thought coconuts were brown and hairy but this one’s green and sort of smooth. I pick it up and shake it.

  Liquid.

  Heart thudding, I prise at it with my nails but it won’t split. The outer casing’s thick and smooth like leather. It doesn’t look like a coconut but I know I want what I can hear inside.

  I scrabble around for the knife but my hand’s so shaky it keeps slipping. Again and again I hack at the casing.

  A few chunks of hard-as-leather skin fly off.

  I’m drooling now, swearing. Nearly slice into my leg, I’m so mad.

  Eventually, I turn the nut thing on its end and grip it between my bare knees. Stab over and over again with the stupid knife. Every time the nut moves, the liquid inside mocks me.

  I lick my lips and try to calm down. The last water sachet I drank – Only one more left. Only one more left – has made no difference at all to the inside of my mouth, which feels full of sticks and stones and sand.

  I hold the nut tighter between my knees and grip the knife in both fists. If I slip, it’ll basically drive a spike straight into my thigh. I imagine the blood shooting up high and pretty like a flare.

  Thunk.

  The knife makes a tiny dent in the top of the could-be coconut.

  In the end, it takes thirty stabs to split the nut open and all the liquid spurts out over my hands and on to the sand.

  I. Am. Not. Going. To. Cry.

  When I try to put my leggings on, the fabric scratches and snags on my burning legs. Each of my bites has turned into a watery boil so that my legs look like bubble wrap. They throb so much I can hardly stand.

  I think of the spiky forest floor and rip off my T-shirt sleeves with the help of the knife. Then I bind them like socks over my feet.

  There’s a rock sticking out of the water that is curved just like a fang, so if I see it, I’ll know I’m home.

  One Tree Beach. Fang Rock.

  I pick up my knife, limp along the beach, then take a deep breath and turn left into the forest.

  I am going to find water.

  Flying Fish and Torture Chairs

  Children’s shrieks explode like fireworks.

  Two red howler monkeys bare their broken teeth.

  Wellied mummies push their darlings to see the dead dogs’ heads.

  There’s all sorts of stuff in here; you can never see it all because there’s always something you’ve not noticed, in the back of some display, or maybe there’s a different way of looking at something.

  Down in the basement gallery, in among the crocodile death masks and the African puppets and the Japanese merman, is an actual torture chair from the Spanish Inquisition. It’s made of iron and wood and stands by itself in its own display cabinet. Just in case you miss it.

  The torture chair does spiking, racking and skull-crushing, so I suppose you could say it multitasks.

  The people I’ve imagined being screwed into that chair include:

  Angela, my social worker.

  Miss Bright, my English teacher.

  Sally, the school counsellor.

  Big Wayne.

  And, of course, Cassie.

  Me and Johnny used to come here all the time. That’s where the would-you-rather? game started.

  ‘Would you rather: sit in the torture chair or swim with piranhas?’

  ‘Would you rather: sit in the torture chair or have a shark eat all your toes?’

  Me and Johnny sit by the entrance to the aquarium, waiting for the guide to look away so we can get in without a ticket. We reckon he just pretends he doesn’t see. He’s nice; hums a cheerful song as he does his walkabout and helps the schoolkids cheat on their worksheets.

  ‘See this here: it’s a merman, see? Except it’s not really. It’s just a monkey’s head stuck to a fish’s body with little rat-claw front legs.’

  The kids ooh and aah and we pretend we’re with them for a bit till Johnny gets bored.

  ‘Hungry,’ he whines.

  I give him half my Snickers. ‘Shush. You can’t be hungry already. Look at the ostrich, Johnny.’

  He likes the baby ostrich best. This frozen baby gazes up at us with its Disney lashes. The stuffed bloodhound in the dog cabinet looks worried sick at all the attention he’s getting.

  I turn to show Johnny but he’s gone.

  He went a long time ago.

  The Horniman Museum’s only a train stop and a bus ride away. The main reason we came was because most of it’s free to get into and they don’t check your tickets at Sydenham Hill. But now I often come by myself and sit in the Natural History room and the African room and the Centenary room instead of going to school. Learning’s learning, isn’t it?

  And, just for a moment, I smell smoke again.

  I wonder if Miss has seen what I’ve done. I wonder if they’ve sent everyone home. All those teachers, getting an extra day off away from the kids. They should thank me, really.

  Wish my heart wasn’t still hammering.

  Wish my stomach would stop flipping every time I think of it.

  I take out the chocolate I’ve nicked from the gift shop and sit and watch the flying fish pretend to fly and the howler monkeys pretend to howl. And it’s peaceful here because half-term was over ages ago and all the screaming babies have gone home.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’

  The guide’s standing next to me, looking over my shoulder.

  ‘Left school, haven’t I?’

  ‘How old are you then?’

  ‘Seventeen,’ I lie.

  ‘Don’t look it.’

  ‘What’s it to you, grandad?’ I scowl at him and move away, deliberately dropping my Fairtrade chocolate wrapper on the floor.

  He finds me in the Centenary room, staring at the jars full of stuffed birds.

  ‘Old Freddie Horniman couldn’t stop collecting things,’ he says.

  I ignore him and turn my attention to the brass hunting dogs’ collars. They’ve got them on the pit bulls in Brixton, to make their owners look hard.

  ‘In the end his house was so full that he and his family were forced to move out and live somewhere else. Christmas Eve, it was.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ I say.

  He chuckles. ‘Turned his house into a museum, but still he wouldn’t stop collecting, so in 1898 they pulled it all down and started building this place.’

  I make myself look bored. ‘What’s this, a history lesson?’

  The guide shakes his head. ‘Cross little thing, are
n’t you?’ He leans forward and whispers. ‘I think, that if you’re going to steal chocolate from our shop, the least you can do is listen to an old man give his guided tour. Haven’t spoken to a soul all day.’ He gestures towards my pockets. ‘Come on, what else you got in there?’

  I roll my eyes, but something about his manner makes me turn out my pockets. I have:

  A walrus key ring.

  A sachet of basil and strawberry bath salts.

  A postcard with a photo of the baby ostrich on it.

  The old man sighs. ‘I think I’d better take these, don’t you?’

  I scowl, but my heart is beating African drumbeats bangbangbang. I don’t want him to call Security. If I take the fire exit, I can be out of here in a blink.

  ‘Used to be a policeman, didn’t I?’ the man is saying. He puts my stolen goods carefully on his chair. ‘So, shall we start with the hunters’ headdresses?’

  And I stand there like a kid in a classroom as he tells me all about the African bird hunters and their beaded masks.

  Still, at least it kills time because I really can’t

  I really can’t

  go home yet.

  Are You Listening?

  Sometimes I imagine talking to her.

  I imagine that I’ve done what Angela asks and have visited her.

  The way I picture it, there’ll be a glass partition, because of the risk of infection. There’s always a glass partition in the films.

  ‘Miss,’ I’d say. ‘Are you listening? Do you want to know why I did it?

  ‘Well. It was you. You started it. You. Started. It.

  ‘When they sent Angela round, that first time, I knew it was you. I knew what you’d gone and done.

  ‘It was in your eyes, that last time I went to your stupid writing club. Your lying, purple-shadowed, traitor’s eyes.’

  I imagine her looking back at me, and, because of the bandages, there’ll just be her lips moving, forming those words.

  ‘What’s that you’re saying, Miss?

  ‘Magnum frickin opus?

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  Pool

  I’m glad I have a knife.

  The trees and creepers claw so thickly that often I can’t get through and have to turn round. The whole time, I’m twitchy, waiting for something to come galloping out of the thicket or land on my head.

  The forest floor is a rustle of dead leaves and, as I watch, a rat shoots out from behind some bushes. There must be snakes and spiders and frogs.

  Crazy sounds, screeches and booms.

  Somewhere, a bird is calling, over and over again. Oh dear me, it seems to say. Oh dear me.

  Even though it’s early, the heat presses in and sweat dribbles behind my neck and down my sides. I’ve passed the same log three times and am beginning to think I’m in that scene in The Blair Witch Project when the guy goes crazy and chucks the map away and the girl screams at him ’cause really, that’s when she knows they’re all going to die.

  A muddy pool.

  It shines dully through the trees like a badly cleaned mirror.

  Water.

  I hack at the few remaining creepers and slide down into the clearing. Run to the pool and crouch down. It’s definitely water but I stop still when I see what’s lying in it:

  One dead rat, its mouth pulled back to show its little brown teeth.

  Something nasty wrapped up in a spider’s web.

  Lots of murky brown stuff, which I suppose must be snake crap and worse.

  But the water’s still in my scooped hands and, even though it’s warm and brown and smelly, I’m so thirsty after my trek that I nearly –

  ‘If you drink dirty water, you die, plain and simple. You get sickness and diarrhoea, you lose any fluids your body has…’

  Hi I’m Steve!’s sneering voice nearly makes me down it, just to show him.

  Show him what? He’s not here – nobody’s here.

  So I stand up again. Hold on to a tree when my head swims. I can’t think clearly; my thoughts are all muddy, like the pond.

  There’s something niggling me; something that Steve said. Something about water. At least I can collect some, I think. I can take it back with me. But I can’t even do that, can I? Because I haven’t brought a bottle.

  After a long time, I get up and wipe my eyes. It’s steaming hot in the jungle.

  Sweat runs down my bra and trickles into my armpits. I retie my torn-up T-shirt shoes, which are bloody and filthy.

  There’s nothing for it but to trek my way back to One Tree Beach.

  Loser

  I can’t find One Tree Beach.

  I break through the trees after what seems like hours of walking, only to find that there’s a strange sucking swamp of tangled roots instead of the sea.

  No Fang Rock. No One Tree.

  I hiss in my breath. Wonder if I can somehow climb through the swamp and make my way through the roots to the sea. But when I put my foot in the mud, it squelches and bubbles and then I’m in up to my waist, arms flailing.

  ‘Help,’ I cry, but what a stupid thing to be calling, here in this gulping, sucking swamp. Of course there’s no one to help me.

  I crawl out of the mud myself, arms trembling. I’ve lost both of my T-shirt shoes.

  This is a hateful place.

  I think of Joker during survival training:

  ‘So will there be crocodiles then or what?’

  Steve smirking as he nods. ‘There’ll be crocs so big they’ll kill a man quicker than he can grab his knife.’

  Joker fist-punches the air.

  ‘And can they climb trees?’ Tiny asks, standing close to Trish, arms folded.

  Steve nods. ‘Sure they can. And they’re fast too. Faster than a horse at full gallop.’

  I trip barefoot back through the jungle. Everything looks the same. Something bars my way and it’s a grove of fallen trees, criss-crossed crazily across my path. Have I been here before? I don’t know if I have or haven’t.

  Panting and cursing, I clamber through the netted branches. Try another direction.

  All the time, I’m listening for the sounds of galloping behind me.

  Shall I?

  Shall I? Shall I? Shall I?

  I trail my finger over the sharp edges of my last water sachet; squelch its contents; hold it to my cheek.

  Big mistake to lose my way and get tired and thirsty; stupid to go trekking in the forest and sweat out the rest of the water that was in my body.

  I’m scratched and torn. My mouth burns.

  Slumped under One Tree, I realise that I’ve done everything wrong.

  I trace my finger over the plastic. It feels plump in my hands, smooth against my cheek.

  Whatever happens, I will not drink that water till I’ve found more.

  I drink that water with my eyes.

  Countdown

  • No. of water sachets left: 0

  • No. of attempts to break into could-be coconuts: 8

  • No. of times switched torch on in the night: 17

  Thirst

  I lick the condensation from the underside of the life raft, drop by drop.

  It’s over my head, bright and yellow. The sun is burning through it, into my head, into my brain.

  I thirst.

  I think about going back to the muddy pool. But I can’t drink that. If I do, I will die.

  I think about drinking seawater, just a little. But Steve’s voice screams at me, ‘Don’t do it. Don’t do it.’

  I look down at the green kernel in my hand. All around me are the broken shells of those that have split before I could get out the liquid. I don’t think they can be coconuts because coconut flesh is hard and white – this stuff is green and wet and stringy. I decide to call them could-be nuts.

  At least their flesh is wet. I sit surrounded by their skin as I’ve been scooping out the mush inside with my fingers. But I need their liquid.

  Painfully, I reach again for the knife.

  If I
breathe through my nose, the heat is fiercer but at least I don’t feel dry air sucking through the dry sawdust that is my mouth.

  I sit gazing at the sea as it laps and licks at the sand. One Tree is against my back and the wind has blown the life raft on to the rocks.

  I suppose I should wade in and drag it back to make my shelter.

  I suppose I should find a way of pinning it down for the night.

  I suppose, I suppose.

  I’m staring at the sea, holding my torch and my knife, when I see a small, dark object in the shallows. It can’t be a could-be nut because they’re round and this is square.

  After a million years, I get up the energy to stick my knife into the sand, make my legs stand up and walk across to the sea’s edge. Each step is like wading through syrup; the heat pushes against me and my legs are treacle. I stop when I feel the warm water seep through my toes; kneel down and pick up the object.

  It’s a package.

  It’s wrapped tightly in white plastic and is the size of a shoebox.

  I carry it carefully back to my tree and sink back down in the sand.

  It takes for ever to get inside, almost as bad as getting into the could-be nuts.

  I hack at the tape with the knife and tug and pull until all the tape is off and the package is exposed.

  A small cardboard box with a picture of a sailing ship on the side. SEVEN SEAS, it says, stamped all over in blue and green. I pull away the perforated flap and lift the lid.

  Inside it’s crammed full with small white sachets, like a box of After Eight mints. I pull one out and look at it.

  Seven Seas Eezi-Meal, it says, Chili Mac with Beef.

  My stomach starts to growl. I haven’t eaten anything but scoopfuls of mushy could-be nut flesh since I’ve been on the island. I pull out another packet. Tear it open. Sniff.

  It smells faintly of cheesy-puff crisps.

  Instructions for Cheesy Fish Pie, I read. Simply mix contents with 150 ml boiling water and serve.

  I pour the contents into my mouth.