Echoes

by Alice Reeds

  “Remember the ‘call of the void’ cliff?”

  “Call of the void cliff?” He raised a brow. “Interesting name. And yes, I remember it.”

  “When we were there the first time, I thought I saw something, briefly, like water coming out of the cliffs farther down toward the ocean. We could look around there, see if there’s anything that could help or work for us, and if there isn’t, we’d at least have water,” I explained. “I know, it might turn out to be nothing, but it’s worth a try.”

  He nodded. “A steady source of drinking water would be nice.”

  Going through the jungle, taking the same route as we’d taken last time, would only lead us to the top of the cliff. Not ideal in this case, so I decided we’d take a different one. I just hoped I remembered the general direction well enough.

  We walked down the beach, along the perimeter of the island instead of going across it, which was surprisingly much longer than I anticipated it would be, until the beach ended and transformed into a rising cliff and rock formation, with more rocks and stone plateaus closer to the water. Some of them were still wet or half covered by some slippery moss type thing, making me wonder if the water had receded since last night. I thought we could see more of our beach as we walked along it, but hadn’t bothered to ask Miles about the beach, filed it up as unimportant side detail.

  I led as confidently as I could, feeling surer as we went farther, though dearly hoping we wouldn’t break our bones along the way. A few times Miles had to help me climb up some bigger rocks, or grab my arm to keep me from slipping and breaking my skull. I wasn’t sure if I’d always been this clumsy, or if this just really wasn’t my type of terrain, both likely options.

  I could keep my balance perfectly in various positions for a long time, could walk perfectly straight while balancing a tray with porcelain on my head, but walking across slippery rocks? I was out.

  Finally, after what felt like hours of staring at the cliff to our right as we went, I saw what I was looking for: a tiny waterfall emerged from a crack more or less halfway between the ocean and the top. “Over there,” I said and pointed toward a pile of rocks that almost seemed like stairs if you squinted just a little. “I knew it.” It was hard to see exactly where the water started, but as it fell it seemed to sparkle in the sunlight. In that moment I wished I could have snapped a picture of the view so I could remember it, show it to my parents or post it on Instagram. If only our phones weren’t dead. On the island, social media and the internet seemed like such abstract things, like some kind of crazy luxury, so different than at home where both were merely a click and a swipe away.

  Miles smiled at me, wide and bright. “Amazing! Not that I questioned your leading abilities at any point, of course.”

  I rolled my eyes and tried my best to not smile back but failed spectacularly. If asked, I smiled because I was proud of myself, not because I found his comment amusing, of course. “Let’s get some cold water, shall we?”

  Climbing along the rocks, jumping from one onto the other while being careful not to fall or slip, was hard work. We moved forward slowly with a lot of caution, even more than before, stopping periodically to assess the situation, the next steps, and which rocks seemed smartest to climb onto.

  Pearls of sweat formed and ran down my forehead and my back. I had the urge to furiously scratch myself—my body’s natural response to sweat, which was one of the more annoying features it had going on—but I resisted. The closer we got to the cliff itself, the bigger the distances, and height differences, were between the rocks. Sometimes Miles went first, for obvious reasons, and helped me climb onto them once again. His hands were gigantic, I noticed at some point, a fact I’d ignored somehow until then. They felt smooth and showed no scars, whereas mine were full of them, especially around my knuckles.

  Once we got to the cliff face, we saw something like a narrow ledge run up toward the waterfall and farther along. The ledge didn’t run continuously, but the gaps didn’t seem to be too wide, so getting over them shouldn’t be a problem. With our backs against the wall, we inched forward with our goal in sight. The farther we got, the happier I was that I wasn’t afraid of heights. One wrong step and I would’ve fallen and probably died, worst-case scenario, or at least broken a leg or an arm or both. Not very helpful when trying to survive.

  We reached the water and pulled out our bottles from the tote I’d taken along, then filled them up. I’d never appreciated access to fresh water more than in that moment. It felt like some kind of magical balm going down my throat, my body immediately feeling much better. Now that we knew where to get it from, we wouldn’t have to be so extremely frugal with it, which was a relief. Food and water issues solved. Covering long distances and training, both in high temperatures, in a state bordering on dehydration hadn’t seemed a good idea all along, but thankfully, now that wouldn’t be an issue.

  At least one thing had worked out in our favor.

  “I think there might be something like a cave farther along,” Miles said while handing me the third filled bottle, which I quickly packed away. “Let’s check it out.”

  I nodded and slowly followed him, but it didn’t take long until he stopped again, abruptly enough that I almost smacked into his back.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, confused and concerned.

  “Snakes,” he said. Immediately a shiver ran down my spine, my blood turning cold, my heart sinking.

  I loved animals as much as the next person, but snakes were among the creatures I was terrified of. I’d heard enough horror stories of snakebites and deaths caused by them to never want to encounter any snake ever in my life. Looking at where we were, chances of those snakes being poisonous were much too high for my liking.

  Quickly we retreated the way we’d come, back down the stairs and onto the stone plateau closest to them. It was as good a place to recollect and try to figure out what to do as any.

  “As far as I could tell, there really is a cave, and it seems to be deep enough to be a good place for us to hide in.”

  “I’m sorry, but have you already forgotten the snakes guarding it? I don’t know about you, but I’d very much like to not sleep next to them, or just get bitten when trying to walk past.”

  “So, there is something the great Fiona Wolf is afraid of after all,” Miles teased and smirked, the bastard.

  “I wouldn’t call it fear. Rather, common fucking sense.”

  I thought the bear would be the worst thing on the island, our biggest threat besides whoever put us here in the first place, yet of course there had to be something else that was just as bad, smaller and way more quiet. Silent slithering killers. Disgusting. The farther we walked away from the cliff, the better I felt. Putting more distance between those creatures and us seemed like the only good solution, though it meant we’d have to find a different place.

  “What are we supposed to do now?” I asked. “Back to your version of the plan, walking around and hoping for the best?”

  “That cave is the best place, snakes or not. Thankfully, I know just how to get rid of them,” Miles said, sounding way too satisfied with himself. Was this yet another random piece of info he simply knew because of course he did? “We need to make a fire. The most likely place to find a lighter or some matches is the cockpit.”

  “You can’t be serious,” I practically groaned. I’d been ready to never go back to that godforsaken plane piece, never get near the pilot’s grave and the beast’s territory again, yet Miles wanted us to march right back in there. Was he crazy?

  “Would you rather try rubbing two sticks together?”

  “No.”

  “Then the cockpit is our only option. I looked through our plane and the cargo area and didn’t find anything we could use.” He shrugged and steadily continued walking. He was set on following through with that plan, and I had no other choice but to come along and help him. We’d promised each other to stick together, and going near the bear alone just seemed like a dumb id
ea. I would know.

  “Tell me, are you some kind of secret snake whisperer on top of everything else? How do you know that making a fire will scare them away?” I asked after we’d entered the jungle again. I could take the quiet and not talking while we were on the beach, but in the jungle, I sought the distraction, craved it, anything to keep myself from obsessively listening to everything around us.

  “My brother told me about it a few years ago,” he said, and I immediately looked up at him. It was as though someone had pressed a switch, the mood shifting the second the words passed his lips.

  “I didn’t know you had a brother.”

  “His name was Leon,” Miles said and reached for that necklace I’d seen him wear. He pulled it out from under his shirt and then softly and kind of absentmindedly ran his fingers across the dog tags that hung on the silver chain. “He was seven years older than me.”

  “Was? You mean he’s…”

  “Yeah.” The corners of his mouth that usually pointed upward now leaned downward, his eyes colored in with shades of sadness I’d never seen on him before. “He died four years ago.”

  “The dog tags…they’re his, aren’t they?” In a way, I already regretted asking, even though another part of me couldn’t help but want to know more, like some asshole. At least I stayed on brand. I wanted to get to know Miles, get to know the things he cared about and who he really was, and this seemed like an important piece in the puzzle.

  “Four, almost five, years ago, someone rang our door,” Miles began and looked straight ahead, avoided meeting my eyes as though that would make it harder. I quietly walked next to him and listened to anything he was willing to tell me, these memories that were so clearly important to him but also hard to share. “My father went to open it while I watched from the stairs. Behind the door stood one of my brother’s comrades, still dressed in his military attire. He handed my father Leon’s tags and informed him about his death. He told us as much about his final days as he could, praised him highly for how good of a friend and comrade he was, how valued he was to their regiment, and how many lives were saved because of him, and that Leon didn’t die for nothing.”

  “I’m sorry.” Those words didn’t seem nearly enough, but they were all I had.

  “I still remember how, after our mother died and my father turned into the useless piece of shit that he is, Leon took care of me even though we were both still kids. One day, when I was like four or five, Leon and I went to the store to buy groceries. He let me look for most of the things, place them in our cart and, even though I wasn’t nearly tall enough, place them in front of the cashier. When the lady said how much we needed to pay Leon pulled out the money, gave it to me and lifted me up so I could hand them to the lady.”

  Not only had he lost his brother, he also lost his mother? That explained why I’d never heard anything about her, only his father. I couldn’t, and didn’t even want to, imagine what it would be like if I lost my mom. She was my pillar, the one giving me strength whenever my father made me feel like I would simply never be good enough. She was the one who loved me unconditionally, always found a way to make me laugh and smile, with whom I could talk about everything. I’d be lost without her.

  I tried to muster up a smile. “It sounds like Leon was a really good brother.”

  “He was the best brother one could wish for.” A pained expression crossed his face, his eyes filled with deep sadness. My heart squeezed painfully.

  “What was his position in the army?” I asked, carefully, after a pause.

  “Leon used to be something like an IT specialist,” Miles told me. “He’s always been amazing with computers. As far as I remember, he always used to work on them. He learned how to program in no time after our parents bought him his first computer. Later he was known for programming all sorts of stuff, even small games. He was like a programming genius, a god almost. That’s also why the army recruited him the second he was done with high school.

  “He also used to teach me little tricks, you know. Things like, how to hack into someone else’s network or account, how to leave as few traces online as possible or how to access our father’s account, taking money and erasing our traces.”

  “How is it possible that you manage to do all those things while having straight As at school and maintaining that playboy reputation that you have going on?” I asked, because was there anything he wasn’t able to do, didn’t know how to do? At least this explained how he knew what to do with the board computer of the plane. But there was so much more.

  I had certainly underestimated him, had just seen him as this cocky rich boy, but he was so much more than that. I didn’t know why that both did and didn’t surprise me, though I was grateful and appreciated it a lot that he’d decided to share this with me, that he went into much more detail than I expected.

  “That was also something Leon taught me. He showed me how to get into our school’s system, how to access test results and end of term grades, how to change your number of missed days and detentions.”

  “So, what you’re essentially telling me is that you cheated your way to the top of the list?”

  “Of course not. I use my powers only for truth, justice, and fighting the tyranny of bad teachers.”

  Strangely enough, his words brought back a memory. “Wait,” I said and grabbed his arm to stop him, make him actually look at me. “Last year in November we wrote a test in chemistry and I was one hundred percent sure I failed miserably, yet suddenly instead of getting an F, I had a C… That wasn’t you, was it?”

  He smirked, and I had my answer.

  There was something in Miles’s voice as he spoke about Leon, the sound of pain and loss, anger and despair caused by the obvious wish to have him back.

  Something suddenly shifted in Miles, like something was about to break that had been sealed for years, like a dam holding back the waters that were his emotions and feelings for his brother.

  “I miss him,” Miles said in a pained tone that made my heart bleed. “Sometimes when I don’t know what to do, I wish he was still here. I wish I could ask him for advice because I know he knew everything, always had an answer for all the questions in life. But, that’s impossible. He will never come back, and I will never be able to ask him for advice again. It feels like since the day he died and we buried him, something inside me disappeared, like a part of me died with him. It’s strange, and I can’t really explain it.”

  A tear ran down Miles’s cheek. They say boys shouldn’t cry because it is a sign of weakness and, for reasons I didn’t understand, society thought that boys shouldn’t show their weaknesses, but I thought otherwise. I thought crying was a sign of strength, a sign of personality and the ability to really feel and care. Seeing Miles cry, the Miles who always acted as though he owned the entire world and nothing could bring him down, might have just made it on top of the list of the saddest things I’d ever seen.

  I took a step toward him, closing the distance between us, and pulled him into a hug. I had no idea if it was the right thing to do, but it seemed like something that people did when they saw another cry. A moment later, I felt his arms around my back, his head resting on top of my shoulder, slightly leaning against my head. Behind his persona, the easy jokes and charming smiles, hid a boy with feelings like everybody else, a boy that missed his brother and surely his mother, a boy who was sad and misunderstood, a boy who was more than just good looks and money.

  “This is the first time I’ve talked about Leon with anyone outside my family,” Miles whispered near my ear, causing the hairs on my neck to stand up. “I feel like such a weakling for crying.”

  He was so smart yet so stupid sometimes. “If you were weak you would have given up the moment we realized just how damned we are on this island. It’s okay to cry. Sometimes it feels good to just let it out. It helps deal with the things going on inside of us. That’s basically why so many people have therapists. I mean, you pay people for listening to you talk about yourself
and crying.”

  “Thank you.”

  I frowned, confused. “For what?”

  “For not laughing.”

  “I would never laugh when someone tells me things like what you just told me.”

  I realized that that moment right there might have been the first time in three years that I’d gotten an actual proper look at the real Miles, that I really saw the person in him and not the act he always played at school. “Also, thank you for sharing all of this with me,” I said and slowly pulled back. “It was easy to see how hard it was, yet you still did it.”

  “You said you didn’t know me, so I thought this was the least I could do, share something about myself. I didn’t expect it to be this, and that it would come with the whole crying part, but that’s fine. Besides, it felt good to talk about it, in a way, and telling you about it felt like the right choice.”

  “Really?”

  “Everyone else would’ve judged me for everything I said, for how Leon’s death affected me even though I never showed it to anyone, but you didn’t. You listened, and it just felt like you understood me.”

  His admission caught me off guard, but it also made me realize something. I’d always thought that his life was so perfect because he was rich and had seemingly everything, but maybe that wasn’t everything. Maybe I still had things he didn’t have and could never buy.

  I’d hated him for the way he judged me, called me pathetic and acted like he was above me, but maybe in my own way I hadn’t been any better. I judged him based on the superficial and never bothered to look any deeper. But now it was clear to me that he was so much more than met the eye, even more than I’d already thought.

  Maybe my initial impression of him had been right after all. Maybe he was a good guy, and maybe the way he acted back in Florida was exactly that, an act. Based on what he said, that he never spoke about his brother and his death because he feared judgment even from those he called friends, it seemed like he struggled with being understood just like me. For different reasons, but still. People placed expectations on the both of us, and what else could we do but follow or fight them. There was no middle ground. We’d made our choices, and I hated him for the one he made, without bothering to wonder why.