A Map for Wrecked Girls

by Jessica Taylor

  “We need a longer break in the rain,” I said to Alex. “The signal fire—we have to relight it. Do you think it’ll stop for more than a few hours?”

  “It has to,” he said. “First morning it happens, first thing, we’ll get it going together.”

  I watched the water bubble, all the muscles in my body still feeling like liquid. I could still feel Alex’s phantom kisses on my lips, his arms around my legs, his skin warm beneath my hands.

  Nothing like Jesse.

  When I was with Alex, when he touched me, everything felt easy, natural. With Jesse, every word and touch was forced.

  Jesse was safe. Was that why I’d wanted him? Because he didn’t have the power to destroy me? Was that why Henri had wanted all those other boys?

  After the water cooled, Alex filled a fresh bottle. “Here, Hank. You take the first sip.” Henri closed her eyes as she drank. Her lips still damp, she said, “That’s the best water I’ve ever had. Where’d you get it?”

  Alex started to speak but I interrupted him. “A spring. A little spring out in the jungle. After everything, we found it, finally.”

  CHAPTER 20

  SIX WEEKS BEFORE

  I padded down the stairs in the navy-and-yellow polka-dot socks Henri had slipped into my stocking last Christmas. I couldn’t stay in my bedroom any longer—my room was now the room beside the room where my sister and Jesse had stripped off all their clothes and done something I didn’t want to think about.

  Henri didn’t want Jesse for herself. I knew my sister—she was only playing with him. Now he was ruined for me, gone from me, forever.

  Pots clanged in the kitchen and my heart beat a little faster. If Mom came home early and Jesse was still upstairs, a reign of terror was about to befall the Jones household.

  Jesse stood in front of the stove, dealing stacks of pancakes onto three plates and slicing up strawberries. “Morning.”

  I never heard him leave Henri’s room.

  My elbow connected with his side as I reached for a water glass.

  He grunted.

  “Sorry. Accident.”

  We both knew it wasn’t.

  “Hey, Em, I know you’re mad at me.”

  I held my breath and faced him.

  He braced his hands on the counter behind him and looked at the tile floor. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t.”

  “No, I have to. You didn’t go to that party because you knew I’d be there.” I couldn’t deny it—he’d read me too well. I didn’t go because I didn’t want to watch him lust after Henri and have nobody lusting after me. “You knew I’d be there to look out for Henri so you didn’t have to. And I did a real shitty job. So, yeah, I’m sorry.”

  He didn’t get it at all.

  “I forgive you,” I said.

  Jesse didn’t acknowledge me, though, because Henri stepped into the kitchen.

  She wore one of her oldest sweatshirts, those same yoga pants from last night, and a pair of socks with her big toe poking through. Not the kind of ensemble I’d expect for her to wear in front of a boy. Whatever spark had ignited between her and Jesse had turned to ash, or else she’d be showing a lot more skin.

  “Morning.” Jesse smiled in a toothy way that made me cringe. Between that grin and the breakfast, he wasn’t playing this cool. I started counting down to the moment when Henri’s words would kick his teeth in.

  “You cooked.” She smiled and smoothed her hands over her hair before she stepped past me and dropped into a chair at the breakfast nook table.

  Jesse poured us each a glass of orange juice. I shoveled forkfuls of pancakes into my mouth while I watched them shoot sly glances at each other. As Henri ate, she walked her fingers across the tabletop, right beside Jesse’s place mat.

  She let him take her hand.

  Jesse was at our house every moment of the rest of the three-day weekend.

  Under the table, between blankets on the couch, standing toe to toe on the front porch, their hands were magnets, finding their way to each other’s bodies.

  I thought I would die of discomfort before Mom came home. Or boredom. There was no nail painting or magazine reading, no jaunts to Chinatown; and that Sunday, no movie date. Only three long days of Henri and Jesse locked in her room.

  On Monday, I pretended to take a nap because I was tired of watching them groom and pet each other and find excuses to sneak off to her bedroom together.

  Upstairs was abandoned after I woke up. I headed down the stairs, wearing my Snoopy pajama bottoms and Woodstock T-shirt—the bird, not the concert.

  Moaning dragged my attention to the kitchen. I stood at the bottom of the stairs, silently watching Henri and Jesse. They were both fully clothed—I wasn’t some kind of pervert.

  She draped her arms over his shoulders and hooked her turquoise-painted toes against the back of his jeans to keep him close. Henri didn’t know how to love anyone without making sure they couldn’t get away.

  She wore a top with a boat neckline that stretched wide and exposed her shoulders. She tipped her head back, and with her eyes closed, let Jesse kiss the hollow of her throat and stretch the cotton fabric so he could get to all those covered-yet-innocent parts of her—collarbone, shoulders, a strawberry-shaped birthmark she usually covered with concealer.

  Henri sighed and stroked her hand up the back of Jesse’s neck. I touched my fingertips to the place between my neck and my collarbone, the place where Jesse was kissing my sister. No matter how hard I concentrated, I couldn’t imagine his lips feeling as good as Henri acted like they felt.

  Her eyelashes fluttered open. She blinked twice. “Emma!”

  She hopped off the counter. As Jesse pulled away, she adjusted her drooping neckline to no avail.

  Something about Jesse had marked a change in Henri. One I’d wanted for months, but now that it was here, I’d trade in all her good behavior if it meant I could keep Jesse for myself.

  Henri sat on the edge of her window seat with the phone against her ear. Out the window, Jesse was in his room, on his own phone looking in.

  I paused in the hall outside her doorway.

  An arrangement of lilies dwarfed the dusty printer on her desk. A mesh red ribbon wrapped around the glass vase. The lilies themselves drooped and had scattered petals over her collection of nail polish. He’d sent them the week before and she hadn’t watered them once.

  I knew big bouquets of flowers like that cost a lot of money because I’d heard my dad complain about sending flowers. Before our dad had chosen a different life for himself, he sent arrangements like those to my mother for every anniversary and every Valentine’s Day.

  Jesse was making an absolute fool of himself over a girl who could never love him back.

  She popped a chocolate into her mouth from a heart-shaped box and licked her fingers—the motion was part childlike and part sex. I didn’t know how to be like that.

  Jesse noticed me standing behind her and waved.

  She followed his wave to where I stood in the shadows. “Oh, hey.” Into the phone, she said, “I’ll call you back.” She paused while he said something, and smiled out the window. “Ditto.”

  After she hung up, she tossed her phone onto the carpet and pointed to the space on the window seat beside her. “Come here, Em. Let me look at those nails.”

  I sank into the paisley cushions and followed the darkness to Jesse’s window. He was already gone.

  She buffed my fingernails to a high shine. “Your toenails are a disaster.”

  I curled my toes so she couldn’t see my chipped polish. “What’s going on, Henri? Tell me the truth.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” She yanked a box of nail polish remover pads off her desk and dissolved the green polish from one nail at a time.

  “Jesse. You told me you thought he was boring.”
/>   “It turns out he’s rather entertaining.” She shrugged. “I’m having fun.”

  “It’s not fair to him.”

  Henri’s lips moved into the most unreadable frown and faded away as she focused on my nails again. “I’d never hurt him.”

  “But you will hurt him. As soon as you move on to someone else.”

  She threw a glance outside, into the now darkened window of Jesse’s room. “He’s a big boy. He’ll get over it. They always do.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Henri’s bag bulged with the shape of coconuts as I pulled back the tarp and blinked against the morning light. I breathed deep, and for the first time in days, dry air hit my throat instead of humidity. Through the spaces in the leaves above, the sky wasn’t gray but bluer than the ocean.

  “Where’s Alex?”

  He and I had planned to rebuild our signal fire the first morning it wasn’t raining.

  She dumped the coconuts, sticking out her foot to stop one from rolling into the fire. “Tarzan was already gone when I woke up. Maybe he’s at the spring getting more water.”

  Henri didn’t know that without me, Alex wouldn’t be getting water, that Alex and I had made excuses to follow each other back to the waterfall for the short breaks between storms the last two days, telling her it took both of us to carry the water back and counting on her aversion to helping.

  I wondered if Alex had got up early to rebuild the signal fire himself, but the lighter sat on the driftwood beside the fire.

  I put it in my pocket and headed toward the beach.

  The ocean was stiller than it had been in days, silent except for the gentle crash of waves, and flat enough to see for miles. Those cargo ships, they had to be just on the other side of the faraway horizon.

  With or without Alex, I had to get the fire going again.

  The water-soaked branches were heavy as I hauled them out of the pit. Searching for dry leaves and brush took longer after the storm, but inside hollow logs, I found some the rain hadn’t touched.

  Flames rippled across the kindling. I added enough bigger branches until the fire ignited and then greens for smoke. But the trickles disappeared as they climbed toward the cloudless sky.

  It wasn’t enough. I needed something that wouldn’t burn clear.

  From the last of the boat wreckage we’d left piled on the beach, I lifted the largest piece of cracked fiberglass and threw it onto the flames.

  Black clouds pumped toward the sky. As I backed away, my arm covering my mouth, bitter vapors flooded the beach. If anything would help someone see us, this was it.

  Late afternoon, under the shade of the palm trees, I watched the wind whip the dark smoke into a frenzy.

  “Jones.” Alex dropped his fishing spear in the sand in front of me. He coughed and lifted his shirt over his chin and mouth. “What did you do?”

  “Built—” My voice was hoarse after spending hours near the fire. I cleared my throat. “Built the fire back.”

  “No, what did you add to it?”

  “Fiberglass. So it would smoke more.”

  He lowered his shirt and gave me a weak smile. “And suffocate us in the process?”

  “It’s not that bad,” I said as my throat constricted. “Okay, it is. But if it means they’re going to find us faster, I’m willing to burn our lungs a little.”

  “Fair enough.” The hollows under his eyes were cut a little deeper in the sunlight. He was thinner—we all were—but that wasn’t it.

  “Alex, where’ve you been all day? We said we’d light the signal fire first thing.”

  “I just went for a walk.” He closed his eyes and rubbed his face, looked at the sand, the sky, everything but me. “I couldn’t sleep last night. I was thinking about what your sister said about the signal fire. Maybe we are just throwing away the last of our lighter fluid.”

  “You’re listening to Henri?”

  He snapped his attention to me then. But it only lasted a second before he grabbed his spear from the sand and backed down the beach toward the rocky peninsula. “Look, I’m not saying you did anything wrong—but if it goes out again—maybe we shouldn’t relight it.”

  I hugged my arms around myself after Alex was out on the rocks over the ocean. The waterfall—it hadn’t felt like a mistake to me. But I hadn’t confessed the things Alex had.

  Now, in the empty space he’d shoved between us, I could sense his regret.

  The next afternoon, I walked down the beach to feed more wood onto the signal fire.

  A windstorm had whipped through our island the night before, thrashing through the high-up tops of the trees. Our clearing had been mostly protected from the currents, but our signal fire was out.

  A few gray coals smoked at the bottom of the pit. I grabbed handfuls of dry brush and a long stick. I stoked the coals, trying to get a spark. The coals went cold.

  Since Alex said we shouldn’t waste the lighter restarting the fire, we hadn’t discussed it more. Now our fire was dead and so was my patience.

  I walked to the waterfall first. He wasn’t there. I went to the north side of the beach next, the rocks jutting far across the waves where we fished, but he wasn’t fishing.

  The last two days had been full of his absence. The closest I could get to touching him was remembering the palms of his hands, warm as they slipped under my shirt. My lips grazing the few freckles across his cheeks and nose. The tips of my toes lifting off the rocky bottom as he pulled me against him, like he needed me closer than skin could allow.

  Slowly, I climbed up through the bamboo to the top of the cliff.

  Wind thrashed my curls against my eyes at the peak. I gathered my hair at my neck, and stared out.

  The force of the wind made the sea rough that day, waves tall and fierce. Over the rocky western side of the ocean, the part of the island hidden from everywhere except the very top of the cliffs, a spot of orange hurtled across the surface.

  I stepped toward the edge to get a better look, got dizzy at the shock of the height, moved back. I focused on the water—and I found him.

  Careening across the waves, Alex was on his stomach with Casey’s backpack strapped to his back.

  He was inside the life raft. The one he’d told me he’d destroyed.

  Rocks jutted from the water along the coastline, and he was headed right for them. I yelled out, but even if he heard me, there was nothing he could do. The raft hit the rocks just as a swell came down over him. The ocean peeled back, and the mangled raft tossed against the churn of the ocean. I couldn’t see him.

  Through the brush and bamboo, the jagged paths we’d carved through the jungle, I ran without thinking.

  At the shore, leaking air whistled out of the plastic. The rolling waves tugged at the raft wedged into the rocks, inching it free with each swell. I grabbed the handles, dragged it farther onto land, stared into the water. If Alex was knocked out, it wouldn’t take long to drown.

  “Emma.”

  He moved from the shadows of the cliff with the backpack swinging from his hand. His shirt was open and torn. Between the white cotton, his ribs were already purple.

  “I’m okay.” He pressed two fingers to his split lip, pulled them back, and stared at the spot of blood. “I’m kind of beat-up, but okay.”

  There he was, on the beach and above water. I wanted to touch him, to feel his chest expanding and constricting and know, really know, he was fine. But when he reached for me, I jumped back. “What are you even doing?” I managed to choke out.

  His lips moved as he processed my words. The dazed look on his face shifted into something harder. “What I’m even doing is trying to get us home.”

  “By lying? You said the raft was destroyed.”

  He sighed. “It wasn’t a lie.” The tide came in and splashed against our legs and the raft. Alex wrenched it farther up the
sand, partly off the rocks. Pieces of woven-together bamboo stuck out of one side. “When I tore through it, I only ripped one air chamber. I tied some bamboo to the deflated part to make it float.”

  “To go where?”

  He pointed to the horizon, his shoulders relaxing as if the ocean calmed him. “If the ships out there won’t come to us, I thought we’d go to them. Like those guys who escaped from Alcatraz. We’d have to make it twenty miles. Twenty miles out and we’d be right in the path of those cargo ships. We’d get their attention and we’d be as good as home. But the ocean’s too rough today, and what I did made the raft unbalanced. Thought I could handle it.” He shrugged and reached toward me, then hissed, crushing both hands into his ribs.

  I lurched forward and stepped back. He’d brought this on himself.

  “Anything could have happened to you, Alex. Anything. You could’ve cracked your head open on the rocks. Knocked yourself unconscious. Drowned.”

  He gritted his teeth, swallowed hard. The wetness of his eyes, I wasn’t sure if it was pain or anger. “I fucking didn’t.”

  I looked to the ocean. If I saw him wince again, I didn’t know how to stay put. “All the sneaking off, I thought it was about us.”

  “Us?” He tossed the backpack onto the rocks.

  “The waterfall. What we’ve been doing there.” His lips, his hands, my skin. My lips, my hands, his skin. “You regretting it.”

  “That wasn’t it. Not at all.” He moved closer. “I care about you. And not just touching you, kissing you. Not just you’re here, I’m here, so why not? It’s not like that.” He bent closer, but I put up my arms. Gently, he tried to take my hands, but I broke free.

  Alex, with his logic, his problem-solving, and his ability to see past all the messy parts and focus on surviving, he’d almost fooled me into thinking he wasn’t just as reckless as Henri.

  “What you did today, what you’ve been doing in secret, makes you not only dangerous to yourself but to me and to Henri. It’s reckless.”