“I still don’t know what this is,” he said, after I handed it to him.
“It might be breadfruit.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a fruit that’s supposed to taste like bread.”
T.J. peeled it, and the fragrant smell reminded me of guava. We divided it in half and sucked on the fruit, the juice flooding our dry mouths. We chewed and swallowed the pieces. The rubbery texture probably meant the breadfruit needed to ripen longer, but we ate it anyway.
“This doesn’t taste like bread to me,” T.J. said.
“Maybe it would if it was cooked.”
After we finished it, I climbed back on T.J.’s shoulders and knocked down two more, which we consumed immediately. Then we walked back to the coconut tree, sat down, and waited again.
Late in the afternoon, with no warning, the sky opened up and a torrential rain poured down on us. We got out from under the tree, turned our faces to the sky, and opened our mouths, but the rain ended ten minutes later.
“It’s the rainy season,” I said. “It should rain every day, probably more than once.” We didn’t have anything to collect the water in, and the drops I managed to catch on my tongue only made me want more.
“Where are they?” T.J. asked when the sun went down. The desperation in his voice matched my own emotional state.
“I don’t know.” For reasons I couldn’t fathom, a plane hadn’t come. “They’ll find us tomorrow.”
We moved back to the beach and stretched out on the sand, resting our heads on our life jackets. The air cooled and the wind blowing off the water made me shiver. I wrapped my arms around myself and curled into a ball, listening to the rhythmic crashing of the waves hitting the reef.
We heard them before we figured out what they were. A flapping sound filled the air, followed by the silhouettes of hundreds, maybe thousands, of bats. They blocked out the sliver of moonlight, and I wondered if they’d been hanging above us somewhere when we walked to the breadfruit tree.
T.J. sat up. “I’ve never seen so many bats.”
We watched them for a while and eventually they scattered, off to hunt elsewhere. A few minutes later, T.J. fell asleep. I stared up at the sky, knowing that no one was searching for us in the dark. Any rescue mission undertaken during the daylight hours wouldn’t resume until morning. I pictured T.J.’s distraught parents waiting for the sun to rise. The possibility of my family getting a call brought tears to my eyes.
I thought about my sister, Sarah, and a conversation I’d had with her a couple months ago. We’d met for dinner at a Mexican restaurant, and when the waiter brought our drinks I took a sip of my margarita and said, “I accepted that tutoring job I told you about. With the kid who had cancer.” I set my drink down, scooped some salsa onto a tortilla chip, and popped it in my mouth.
“The one where you have to go on vacation with them?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“You’ll be gone so long. What does John think about this?”
“John and I had the marriage talk again. But this time I told him I also wanted a baby.” I shrugged. “I figured, why not go for broke?”
“Oh, Anna,” Sarah said.
Until recently, I hadn’t really given much thought to having a baby. I was perfectly content being an aunt to Sarah’s kids—two-year-old Chloe and five-year-old Joe. But then everyone I knew started thrusting blanket-wrapped bundles at me to hold, and I realized I wanted one of my own. The intensity of my baby fever, and the subsequent ticking of my biological clock, surprised me. I always thought the desire to have a child was something that happened slowly, but one day it was just there.
“I can’t do this anymore, Sarah,” I continued. “How could he handle a baby when he can’t even commit to marriage?” I shook my head. “Other women make this look so easy. They meet someone, fall in love, and they get married. Maybe in a year or two they start a family. Simple, right? When John and I discuss our future, it’s about as romantic as a real estate transaction, with almost as much countering.” I grabbed my cocktail napkin and wiped my eyes.
“I’m sorry, Anna. Frankly, I don’t know how you’ve waited this long. Seven years seems like enough time for John to figure out what he wants.”
“Eight, Sarah. It’s been eight.” I picked up my drink and finished it in two big gulps.
“Oh. I missed a year in there somewhere.” Our waiter stopped by and asked if we wanted another round.
“You should probably just keep them coming,” Sarah told him. “So, how did the conversation end?”
“I told him I was leaving for the summer, that I needed to get away for a while to think about what I wanted.”
“What did he say?”
“The same thing he always says. That he loves me, but he’s just not ready. He’s always been honest, but I think for the first time he realized that maybe it’s not just his decision to make.”
“Did you talk to Mom about it?” Sarah asked.
“Yes. She told me to ask myself if my life was better with him or without him.”
Sarah and I were lucky. Our mother had perfected the art of giving simple, yet practical, advice. She stayed neutral, and she never judged. A parental anomaly, according to many of our girlfriends.
“Well, what’s your answer?”
“I’m not sure, Sarah. I love him, but I don’t think that’s going to be enough for me.” I needed time to think, to be sure, and Tom and Jane Callahan had given me the perfect opportunity to get some distance. Literal space to make my decision.
“He’ll see this as an ultimatum,” Sarah said.
“Of course he will.” I took a drink of my fresh margarita.
“You’re handling it pretty well.”
“That’s because I haven’t actually broken up with him yet.”
“Maybe it is a good idea for you to be alone for a while, Anna. Sort things out and decide what you want for the rest of your life.”
“I don’t have to sit and wait for him, Sarah. I have plenty of time to find someone who wants the same things I do.”
“You do.” She finished her margarita and smiled at me. “And look at you, jetting off to exotic locations just because you can.” She sighed. “I wish I could go with you. The closest thing I’ve had to a vacation in the last year was when David and I took the kids to see the tropical fish at Shedd Aquarium.”
Sarah juggled marriage, parenting, and a full-time job. Flying solo to a tropical paradise probably sounded like nirvana to her.
We paid our bill and as we walked to the train I thought that maybe, just this once, my grass was a little greener. That if my situation had an upside, it was the freedom to spend the summer on a beautiful island if I felt like it.
So far, that plan hadn’t worked out very well.
My head ached, my stomach growled, and I’d never been so thirsty in my life. Shivering, my head resting on my life jacket, I tried not to think about how long it might take them to find us.
Chapter 4
—
T.J.
Day 2
I woke up as soon as it got light. Anna was already awake, sitting on the sand beside me looking up at the sky. My stomach growled, and I didn’t have any spit.
I sat up. “Hey. How’s your head?”
“Still pretty sore,” she said.
Her face was kind of a mess, too. Purple bruises covered her swollen cheeks and there was crusty, dried blood near her hairline.
We walked to the breadfruit tree and Anna climbed on my shoulders and knocked down two. I felt weak, unsteady, and it was hard to hold her. She got off and while we were standing there, a breadfruit fell off a branch and landed at our feet. We looked at each other.
“That will make things easier,” she said.
We clea
red away the rotten breadfruit under the tree so if we came back and found any on the ground, we’d know we could eat them. I picked up the one that fell and peeled it. The juice tasted sweeter and the fruit wasn’t so hard to chew.
We desperately needed something to collect water in, and we walked along the shoreline looking for empty cans, bottles, containers—anything that was watertight and would hold the rain. We spotted debris, which I thought might be wreckage from the plane, but nothing else. The lack of any human garbage made me wonder just where the hell we were.
We went inland. The trees blocked the light from the sun and mosquitoes swarmed us. I slapped at them and wiped the sweat off my forehead with my arm. We saw the pond when we came to a small clearing. More like a large puddle, it was full of murky water, and my thirst kicked into overdrive.
“Can we drink that?” I asked.
Anna knelt down and stuck her hand in. She swirled the water around and wrinkled her nose at the smell. “No, it’s stagnant. It’s probably not safe to drink.”
We kept walking, but we couldn’t find anything that would hold water so we went back to the coconut tree. I picked up one of the coconuts from the ground and smashed it against the trunk of the tree, then threw it when I couldn’t get it to crack. I kicked the tree, which hurt my foot. “Goddamn it!”
If I could get one coconut open, we could drink the coconut water, eat the meat, and collect rain in the empty shell.
Anna didn’t seem to notice my tantrum. She shook her head back and forth and said, “I just don’t understand why we haven’t seen a plane yet. Where are they?”
I sat down next to her, breathing hard and sweating. “I don’t know.” We didn’t say anything for a while, lost in our own thoughts. Finally, I said, “Do you think we should build a fire?”
“Do you know how?” she asked.
“No.” I’d lived in the city all my life, and I could count on one hand the number of times I’d been camping and still have fingers left over. And we’d lit our campfires with a lighter. “Do you?”
“No.”
“We could try to make one,” I said. “We seem to have the time.”
She smiled at my lame attempt at a joke. “Okay.”
We rubbed two sticks together for the next hour. Anna managed to get hers hot enough to burn her finger before she quit. I did a little better—I thought I saw some smoke—but no fire. My arms ached.
“I give up,” I said, dropping my sticks and using the bottom of my T-shirt to wipe the sweat before it dripped into my eyes.
It started raining. I concentrated on trying to catch the drops on my tongue, grateful for the small amount of water I swallowed. The rain ended after a few minutes.
Still sweating, I walked down to the shore, stripped off my T-shirt, and waded in wearing just my shorts. The temperature of the lagoon reminded me of bathwater, but I ducked my head under and felt a little cooler. Anna followed me, stopping before she reached the water. She sat down on the sand, holding her long hair off her neck with one hand. She had to be roasting in her long-sleeved shirt and jeans. A few minutes later she stood up, hesitated, and then pulled her T-shirt over her head. She unbuttoned and unzipped her jeans, stepped out of them, and walked toward me, wearing nothing but a black bra and matching underwear.
“Just pretend I’m in my swimsuit, okay?” she said when she joined me in the water. Her face was red, and she could hardly look at me.
“Sure.” I was so stunned I barely got the word out.
She had an awesome body. Long legs, flat stomach. Really nice rack. Checking her out should have been the last thing on my mind, but it wasn’t. You wouldn’t think I’d be able to get hard either, considering how thirsty and hungry I was and how seriously fucked up our situation had become, but you’d be wrong. I swam away from her until I got myself under control.
We stayed in the water for a long time and when we got out she turned her back to me and put her clothes on. We checked the breadfruit tree but there weren’t any on the ground. Anna climbed up on my shoulders and when I steadied her by pressing down on her thighs, the image of her bare legs flashed into my mind.
She knocked down two breadfruits. I wasn’t very hungry, which was weird since I should have been starving. Anna must not have been hungry either, because she didn’t eat the fruit after she sucked out all the juice.
When the sun went down, we stretched out near the shore and watched the bats fill the sky.
“My heart is beating really fast,” I said.
“It’s a sign of dehydration,” Anna said.
“What are the other signs?”
“Loss of appetite. Not having to pee. Dry mouth.”
“I have all those.”
“Me, too.”
“How long we can go without water?”
“Three days. Maybe less.”
I tried to remember the last time I drank anything. Maybe at the Sri Lanka airport? We were getting a little in our mouths when it rained, but it wouldn’t be enough to keep us alive. The realization that we were running out of time scared the shit out of me.
“What about the pond?”
“It’s a bad idea,” she said.
Neither of us said what we were thinking. If it came down to the pond water or no water, we might have to drink it anyway.
“They’ll come tomorrow,” she said, but she didn’t sound like she believed it.
“I hope so.”
“I’m scared,” she whispered.
“So am I.” I rolled over on my side, but it was a long time before I fell asleep.
Chapter 5
—
Anna
Day 3
When T.J. and I woke up, we both had headaches and felt nauseous. We ate some breadfruit, and I thought I might throw mine up, but I didn’t. Even though we had very little energy, we returned to the beach and decided to try building a fire again. I was convinced a plane would fly over that day, and I knew a fire was our best chance to make sure they spotted us.
“We did it all wrong yesterday,” T.J. said. “I was thinking about it last night, before I fell asleep, and I remember watching a show on TV where the guy had to make a fire. He spun the stick instead of rubbing two of them together. I have an idea. I’m going to see if I can find what I need.”
While he was gone, I gathered anything that would burn if we actually managed to produce a flame. The air was so humid, and the only thing on the island that was dry was the inside of my mouth. Everything I picked up felt damp, but I finally found some dry leaves on the underside of a flowering plant. I also pulled the pockets of my jeans inside out and found a bit of lint, which I added to the pile in my hand.
T.J. returned with a stick and a smaller chunk of wood.
“Do you have any lint in your pockets?” I asked him. He turned his pockets inside out, found some, and handed it to me.
“Thanks.” I formed the lint and leaves into a little nest. I also gathered small sticks and collected a mound of damp, green leaves we could add to make plenty of smoke.
T.J. sat down and held the stick upright, perpendicular to the chunk of wood it rested on.
“What are you doing?” I asked him.
“I’m trying to figure out a way to spin the stick.” He studied it for a minute. “I think the guy used a string. I wish I hadn’t kicked off my shoes; I could have used the laces.”
He twisted the stick back and forth with one hand but he couldn’t spin it fast enough to get any friction. Sweat ran down his face.
“This is fucking impossible,” he said, resting for a few minutes.
With renewed determination, he used both hands and rubbed them together, with the stick in between them. It spun much faster, and he quickly found a rhythm. After twenty minutes, the spinning stick produced a little pile of
black dust in the notch he’d worn in the chunk of wood.
“Look at that,” T.J. said, when a wisp of smoke drifted up.
Shortly after that, there was a lot more smoke. Sweat ran into his eyes but T.J. didn’t stop spinning the stick.
“I need the nest.”
I set it down next to him and held my breath, watching as he blew gently on the notch in the wood. He used the stick to carefully dig out the glowing red ember and transfer it to the pile of dry leaves and lint. He picked the nest up and held it in front of his mouth, blowing softly, and it burst into flames in his hands. He dropped it on the ground.
“Oh my God,” I said. “You did it.”
We piled small pieces of tinder on top of it. It grew fast and we quickly used up the sticks I’d collected. We hurried to find more, and we were both running toward the fire with an armful when the sky opened up and poured. In seconds, the fire turned into a soggy pile of charred wood.
We stared at what was left of it. I wanted to cry. T.J. sank to his knees on the sand. I sat down next to him, and we lifted our heads to catch the raindrops in our mouths. It rained for a long time and at least some of it went down my throat, but all I could think about was the water soaking into the sand around us.
I didn’t know what to say to him. When it stopped raining, we lay down under the coconut tree, not talking. We couldn’t make another fire right away, because everything was too wet, so we dozed, lethargic and despondent.
When we woke up in the late afternoon, neither of us wanted breadfruit. T.J. didn’t have enough energy to make another fire, and without some kind of shelter we wouldn’t be able to keep it lit anyway. My heart pounded in my chest and my limbs tingled. I’d stopped sweating.
When T.J. stood up and walked away, I followed. I knew where he was going, but I couldn’t make myself tell him to stop. I wanted to go there, too.
When we reached the pond, I knelt at the water’s edge, scooped some into my hand, and raised it to my mouth. It tasted horrible, hot and slightly brackish, but I immediately wanted more. T.J. knelt beside me and drank straight from the pond. Once we started, neither of us could stop. After drinking all we could, we collapsed on the ground, and I thought I might throw it all back up, but I held it down. The mosquitoes swarmed, and I slapped them away from my face.
On the Island (9781101609095) Page 3