On the Island (9781101609095)

by Graves, Tracey Garvis

  Chapter 8

  —

  T.J.

  I woke up with a hard-on.

  I usually did, and it wasn’t like I had any control over it. Now that we weren’t almost dead, my body must have decided all systems were go. Sleeping so close to a girl, especially one who looked like Anna, pretty much guaranteed I’d wake up with a boner.

  She lay on her side facing me, still asleep. The cuts on her face were healing and lucky for her, none of them looked deep enough to leave a scar. She’d kicked off her blanket sometime during the night, and I checked out her legs, which was the wrong thing to do considering what was going on in my shorts. If she opened her eyes she’d catch me staring, so I crawled out of the life raft and thought about geometry until my hard-on went away.

  Anna woke up ten minutes later. We ate coconut and breadfruit for breakfast, and I brushed my teeth afterward, rinsing with rainwater.

  “Here,” I said, handing the toothbrush and toothpaste to her.

  “Thanks.” She squeezed some toothpaste on it and brushed her teeth.

  “Maybe there will be another plane today,” I said.

  “Maybe,” Anna said. But she didn’t look at me when she said it.

  “I want to look around some more. See what else is on this island.”

  “We’ll have to be careful,” she said. “We don’t have shoes.”

  I gave her a pair of my socks so her feet wouldn’t be completely bare. I ducked behind the lean-to and changed into my jeans, to protect my legs from the mosquitoes, and we walked into the woods.

  The humid air settled on my skin. I passed through a swarm of gnats, keeping my mouth closed and swatting them away with my hands. We walked farther inland and the smell of rotting plants grew stronger. The leaves overhead blocked almost all the sunlight and the only sound was the snapping of branches and our breathing as we inhaled the heavy air. Sweat drenched my clothes. We continued in silence, and I wondered how long it would take us to clear the trees and come out on the other side.

  We came upon it fifteen minutes later. Anna trailed slightly behind me, so I spotted it first. Stopping short, I turned around and motioned for her to hurry up.

  She caught up to me and whispered, “What is that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  A wooden shack, roughly the size of a single-wide mobile home, stood fifty feet ahead. Maybe someone else lived on the island. Someone who hadn’t bothered with an introduction. We walked toward it cautiously. The front door hung open on rusty hinges, and we peered inside.

  “Hello?” Anna said.

  No one answered, so we stepped over the threshold onto the wooden floor. There was another door on the far side of the windowless room, but it was closed. There wasn’t any furniture. I nudged a pile of blankets in the corner, and we jumped back when the bugs scattered.

  When my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I noticed a large metal toolbox on the floor. I bent down and opened it. It held a hammer, several packages of nails and screws, a tape measure, pliers, and a handsaw. Anna found some clothes. She picked up a shirt and the sleeve fell off.

  “I thought maybe we could use that, but never mind,” she said, making a face.

  I opened the door to a second room, and we crept in slowly. Empty potato chip bags and candy bar wrappers littered the floor. There was a wide-mouthed plastic container lying next to them. I picked it up and peered inside. Empty. Whoever lived here probably used it to collect water. Maybe if we’d explored the island a little more, walked farther and found the shack earlier, we wouldn’t have been forced to drink the pond water. Maybe we would have been on the beach when the plane flew overhead.

  Anna looked at the container in my hand. She must have made the same connection because she said, “What’s done is done, T.J. There’s nothing we can do about it now.”

  A moldy sleeping bag lay crumpled on the floor. In the corner, propped up against the wall, stood a black case. I flipped open the clasps and lifted the lid. Inside was an acoustic guitar in good condition.

  “That’s random,” Anna said.

  “Do you think someone lived here?”

  “It sort of looks that way.”

  “What were they doing?”

  “Besides channeling Jimmy Buffett?” Anna shook her head. “I have no idea. But whoever it was, they haven’t been home for a while.”

  “This isn’t scrap wood,” I said. “It’s been cut at a lumberyard. I don’t know how he got it here, boat or plane I guess, but this guy was serious. So where did he go?”

  “T.J.,” Anna said, her eyes growing wide. “Maybe he’ll come back.”

  “I hope so.”

  I put the guitar in the case and handed it to her. I picked up the toolbox, and we retraced our steps back to the beach.

  At lunchtime, Anna roasted breadfruit on a flat rock next to the fire while I cracked coconuts. We ate it all—the breadfruit still didn’t taste like bread to me—and washed it down with coconut water. The heat from the fire, plus a temperature that had to be near ninety, made it hard to sit inside the lean-to for very long. Sweat trickled down Anna’s red face, and her hair stuck to her neck.

  “Do you want to get in the water?” I regretted the words as soon as they came out of my mouth. She’d probably think I just wanted her to strip in front of me again.

  She hesitated, but she said, “Yes. I’m burning up.”

  We walked down to the shore. I hadn’t changed back into my shorts, so I took off my socks and T-shirt and stepped out of my jeans. I wore gray boxer briefs.

  “Pretend they’re my swim trunks,” I said to Anna.

  She glanced at my underwear and cracked a smile. “Okay.”

  I waited for her in the lagoon, trying not to stare while she took her clothes off. If she had the balls to undress in front of me, I wasn’t going to be a jackass about it.

  I got hard again, though, and hoped she didn’t notice.

  We swam for a while and when we got out of the water, we dressed and sat on the sand. Anna stared up at the sky.

  “I thought for sure that plane would make another pass,” she said.

  When we got back to the lean-to, I threw some wood on the fire. Anna took one of the blankets from the life raft, spread it on the ground, and sat down. I grabbed the guitar and sat down beside her.

  “Do you play?” she asked.

  “No. Well, one of my friends taught me part of a song.” I plucked at the strings and then played the opening notes of “Wish You Were Here.”

  Anna smiled. “Pink Floyd.”

  “You like Pink Floyd?”

  She nodded. “I love that song.”

  “Really? That’s awesome. I wouldn’t have thought that.”

  “Why, what kind of music do you think I listen to?”

  “I don’t know, like, Mariah Carey?”

  “No, I like the older stuff.” She shrugged. “What can I say? I was born in ’71.”

  I calculated her age. “You’re thirty?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought you were twenty-four or twenty-five.”

  “No.”

  “You don’t act thirty.”

  She shook her head and laughed softly. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”

  “I just meant that you’re easy to talk to.”

  She smiled at me. I strummed some more, playing the same Pink Floyd riff, but I had to stop because my hands ached from making the fire.

  “If we had something to use for a hook, I could turn this into a fishing pole,” I said. “The guitar string would probably make a decent line.” I thought about using a nail from the toolbox, but the fish weren’t very big, and I needed something smaller and lighter.

  Later, when we went to bed, she said, “I hope that
party you stayed behind for was worth it.”

  “It wasn’t a party. I just told my parents that.”

  “What was it?”

  “Ben’s parents were out of town. His cousin just got back from college for the summer, and he was supposed to come over with his girlfriend. She was going to bring two of her friends. Ben convinced himself he could score with one of them. I bet him twenty bucks that he couldn’t.” I didn’t tell Anna I had planned to try, too.

  “Did he?”

  “They never showed. We sat around all night drinking beer and playing video games instead. Two days later I got on the plane with you.”

  “Wow, T.J., I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Yeah.” I waited a minute and then I asked, “Who was that guy at the airport?”

  “My boyfriend, John.”

  I remembered the kiss he’d given her. It looked like he was trying to jam his tongue down her throat. “You must miss him.”

  She didn’t answer right away, but then she finally said, “Not as much as I probably should.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Nothing. It’s complicated.”

  I turned on my side and shoved my seat cushion under my head. “Why do you think that plane didn’t come back, Anna?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. But I thought she did.

  “They think we’re dead, don’t they?”

  “I hope not,” she said. “Because then they’ll stop looking.”

  Chapter 9

  —

  Anna

  The next morning, T.J. used the knife to whittle the ends of two long sticks into sharp points.

  “Ready to spear some fish?” he asked.

  “Definitely.”

  When we reached the shore, T.J. knelt down and picked something up.

  “This must be yours,” he said, handing me a dark blue ballet flat.

  “It is.” I looked out at the water. “Maybe the other one will wash up.”

  We waded into the lagoon, hip deep. The heat wasn’t as intolerable in the morning, so I wore T.J.’s T-shirt, instead of just my bra and underwear. The hem soaked up water like a sponge and clung to my thighs. We tried unsuccessfully for over an hour to spear a fish. Small and quick, they scattered as soon as we made any kind of movement.

  “Do you think we’d have better luck a little farther out?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. The fish are probably bigger, but it might be harder to use the spear.”

  I noticed something then, bobbing in the water. “What is that, T.J.?” I shielded my eyes with my hand.

  “Where?”

  “Straight ahead. Do you see it bobbing up and down?” I pointed at it.

  T.J. squinted into the distance. “Oh, fuck. Anna, don’t look.”

  Too late.

  Right before he told me not to look, I figured it out. I dropped my spear and threw up in the water.

  “He’s going to wash up, so let’s go back to the shore,” T.J. said.

  I followed him out of the water. When we reached the sand I threw up again.

  “Is he here yet?” I asked, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

  “Almost.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  T.J.’s voice sounded shaky and unsure. “We’re going to have to bury him somewhere. We could use one of our blankets, unless you don’t want to.”

  As much as I hated giving up one of our few possessions, wrapping him in a blanket seemed like the respectful thing to do. And if I was being honest with myself, I knew there was no way I could touch his body with my bare hands.

  “I’ll go get it,” I said, grateful for an excuse not to be there when he washed up.

  When I returned with the blanket, I handed it to T.J., and we rolled the body up in it by pushing it with our feet. The smell of decomposing, waterlogged flesh filled my nose, and I gagged and buried my face in the crook of my elbow.

  “We can’t bury him on the beach,” I said.

  T.J. shook his head. “No.”

  We picked a spot under a tree, far away from the lean-to, and started digging in the soft dirt with our hands.

  “Is that big enough?” T.J. asked, looking down into the hole.

  “I think so.”

  We didn’t need a large grave because the sharks had eaten Mick’s legs and part of his torso. And an arm. Something else had been working on his bloated white face. Scraps of the tie-dye T-shirt he’d been wearing hung from his neck.

  T.J. waited while I dry-heaved, and then I grabbed one edge of the blanket and helped him drag Mick to the grave and lower him into the hole. We covered him with dirt and stood up.

  Silent tears rolled down my face. “He was already dead when we hit the water.” I said it firmly, like a statement.

  “Yes,” T.J. agreed.

  It started to rain, so we went back to the life raft and crawled inside. The canopy kept us dry, but I shivered. I pulled the blanket over us—the one we’d now be sharing—and we slept.

  When we woke up, T.J. and I gathered breadfruit and coconut. Neither of us said much.

  “Here.” T.J. handed me a piece of coconut.

  I pushed his hand away. “No, I can’t. You eat it.” My stomach churned. I’d never get the image of Mick out of my head.

  “Is your stomach still upset?”

  “Yes.”

  “Try some of the coconut water,” he said, passing it to me.

  I lifted the plastic container to my lips and took a drink.

  “Did that go down okay?”

  I nodded. “Maybe I’ll just stick to this for a while.”

  “I’m going to get some firewood.”

  “Okay.”

  He had only been gone a few minutes when I felt the trickle.

  Oh God, no.

  Hoping for a false alarm, I walked in the opposite direction from where T.J. had gone and yanked my jeans down. There, on the white cotton crotch of my underwear, was the proof that I’d just gotten my period.

  I hurried to the lean-to and grabbed my long-sleeved T-shirt. Back in the woods, I tore off a strip, balled it up, and shoved it in my underwear.

  I need this miserable day to be over.

  When the sun went down, the mosquitoes feasted on my arms.

  “You must have decided being cooler was worth a few bites,” T.J. said, when he noticed me slapping at them. He had put on his sweatshirt and jeans as soon as the bugs came out.

  I thought of my long-sleeved shirt, hidden under a bush I only hoped I’d be able to find again.

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  Chapter 10

  —

  T.J.

  We ate nothing but coconut and breadfruit for the next eighteen days, and our clothes hung on us. Anna’s stomach growled in her sleep, and I had a constant ache in mine. I doubted the rescuers were still looking for us, and a hollow, empty feeling that had nothing to do with hunger joined the pain in my gut whenever I thought of my family and friends.

  I thought it would impress Anna if I could spear a fish. I managed to stab myself in the foot instead, which hurt like hell, not that I let her know.

  “I want to put antibiotic ointment on it,” Anna said. She dabbed it on the gash and covered it with a Band-Aid. She said the island humidity was perfect for germs and the thought of one of us getting an infection scared the crap out of her. “You’ll have to stay out of the water until that heals, T.J. I want to keep it dry.”

  Great. No fishing and no swimming.

  The days passed slowly. Anna got quiet. She slept more, and I caught her wiping her eyes when I came back from collecting firewood or exploring the island. I found her sitting on the beach one day, staring up at the sk
y.

  “It’s easier if you quit thinking they’re coming back,” I told her.

  She looked up at me. “So I should just wait for a plane to randomly fly overhead someday?”

  “I don’t know, Anna.”

  I sat down beside her. “We could leave on the life raft,” I said. “Load it with food and use the plastic containers to collect rainwater. Just start paddling.”

  “What if we ran out of food or something happened to the raft? It’d be suicide, T.J. We’re obviously not in the flight path for any of the inhabited islands, and there’s no guarantee a plane would fly over. These islands are spread over thousands of miles of water. I can’t be out there. Not after seeing Mick. I feel safer here, on land. And I know they’re not coming back, but saying it out loud seems like giving up.”

  “I used to feel that way, but I don’t anymore.”

  Anna studied me. “You’re very adaptable.”

  I nodded. “We live here now.”

  Chapter 11

  —

  Anna

  T.J. yelled my name. I was sitting next to the lean-to, staring off into space. He ran toward me, dragging a suitcase behind him.

  “Anna, is it yours?”

  I stood up and raced to meet him halfway. “Yes!”

  Please let it be the right one.

  I threw myself down on the sand in front of the suitcase and yanked on the zipper, then flipped open the lid and smiled.

  I pushed my wet clothes aside and searched for my jewelry. I found the Ziploc bag, opened it, and poured everything out. Sifting through it, my fingers closed around a chandelier earring, and I held it up triumphantly for T.J. to see.

  He smiled, studying the curved wire the earring hung on. “That will make an excellent fishhook, Anna.”

  I took everything out of the suitcase: toothbrush and two tubes of regular toothpaste, plus a tube of tooth-whitening Crest, four bars of soap, two bottles each of body wash, shampoo, and conditioner, lotion, shaving cream, and my razor and two packages of replacement blade cartridges. Three deodorants—two solids and one gel—baby oil and cotton balls for taking off my makeup, cherry ChapStick, and—thank you Jesus—two boxes of tampons. Nail polish and polish remover, tweezers, Q-tips, Kleenex, a bottle of Woolite for hand-washing my swimsuits, and two tubes of Coppertone with an SPF of 30. T.J. and I were already so dark, I didn’t think the sunscreen would make a difference.