“Wow,” T.J. said when I finished sorting all the toiletries.
“The island we’re supposed to be on didn’t have a drugstore,” I explained. “I checked.”
I’d also packed a comb and brush, hair clips and ponytail holders, a deck of cards, my datebook and a pen, two pairs of sunglasses—Ray-Ban aviators and a pair with big black frames—and a straw cowboy hat I always wore to the pool.
I picked up each item of clothing, wringing the water out and spreading it on the sand to dry. Four swimsuits, cotton lounge pants, shorts, tank tops, T-shirts, and a sundress. My tennis shoes and several pairs of socks. A blue REO Speedwagon concert T-shirt, and a gray Nike one with a red swoosh that said JUST DO IT on the front. They were size large, and I wore them to sleep in.
I threw my underwear and bras back in the suitcase and closed the lid. I’d deal with those later.
“We’re lucky this is the suitcase that washed up,” I said.
“What was in the other one?”
“Your textbooks and assignments.” I’d made careful lesson plans, organizing all the work T.J. would need to complete. The novels I’d planned to read over the summer were in that suitcase, too, and I thought longingly of how much they would have helped pass the time. I looked at T.J., my expression hopeful. “Maybe we’ll find your suitcase, too.”
“Not a chance. My parents took it with them. That’s why I had some clothes and my toothbrush in my backpack. My mom wanted me to have something with me in case we got delayed and had to spend the night somewhere.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Huh. Imagine that.”
I gathered up everything I needed. “I’m going to take a bath,” I said. “You can never go down to the water when I’m down there. Are we clear on that?”
T.J. nodded his head. “I won’t. I promise. I’m gonna see if I can make a fishing pole while you’re gone. I’ll go when you get back.”
“Okay.”
When I reached the shore, I stripped off my clothes, walked into the water, and ducked my head under. I washed my filthy hair, rinsed, and washed it again. The shampoo smelled incredible, but maybe that was because I smelled so bad. After I put the conditioner on, I soaped myself from head to toe and sat on the shore, shaving my legs and underarms. I walked into the water to rinse and floated on my back for a while, content and clean.
I put on my yellow bikini, slicked on deodorant, and untangled my hair, putting it up in a twist and securing it with a hair clip. I chose the black sunglasses, deciding that T.J. should have the Ray-Bans.
He did a double take when I walked up. When I sat down beside him, he leaned over, sniffed me, and said, “The mosquitoes are going to eat you alive.”
“I feel so good I don’t even care.”
“What do you think?” he asked, holding up the fishing pole. He had made a hole at the end of a long stick and tied the guitar string to it. He threaded the other end through an open loop in the wire from my earring.
“Looks great. When you get back from cleaning up, let’s try it out. I left everything down by the water. Help yourself.”
When T.J. came back, he looked clean and smelled as good as I did. I gave him the Ray-Bans.
“Hey, thanks,” he said, putting them on. “These are cool.” He grabbed the fishing pole.
“What are we going to use for bait?” I asked.
“Worms, I guess.”
We dug in the ground under the trees until we found some. They looked more like large maggots than worms, white and wiggly, and I shuddered. T.J. scooped up a handful, and we went down to the water.
“The line isn’t very long,” T.J. said. “I didn’t want to use up all the guitar string in case it snapped or something happened to the pole.”
After wading in waist deep, he threw out his hook. We stayed still.
“Something’s nibbling,” T.J. said.
He jerked the pole back and pulled in the line. I cheered at the fish hanging off the end.
“Hey, it worked!” he said.
T.J. caught seven more fish in less than half an hour. When we got back to the lean-to, he left to collect firewood, and I started cleaning the fish with the knife.
“Where’d you learn to do that?” he asked when he came back. He emptied the backpack full of sticks onto the woodpile in the lean-to.
“My dad. He used to take my sister, Sarah, and me fishing with him all the time, at the lake house we had when we were growing up. He always wore this crazy bucket hat with fishing lures all over it. I helped him clean whatever we caught.”
T.J. watched as I scraped the scales off the last fish with the knife and then cut the head off. I ran the blade horizontally down the length of the fish, separating the fillet from the skin. I poured rainwater on my hands to wash off the blood and guts, then cooked the fish on the flat rock we used for roasting breadfruit. We ate all seven, one after the other. They tasted better than any fish I’d ever eaten.
“What kind of fish do you think this is?” I asked T.J.
“I don’t know. It’s pretty good though.”
We sat on the blanket after dinner, our stomachs full for the first time in weeks. I reached into my suitcase and pulled out my datebook, smoothing the warped pages.
“How many days have we been here?” I asked T.J.
He walked over to the tree and counted the tally marks he’d made with the knife. “Twenty-three.”
I circled the date on the calendar. It was almost July. “I’ll keep track from now on.” I thought of something then. “When are you supposed to go back to the doctor?”
“The end of August. I’m supposed to have a scan.”
“They’ll find us by then.”
I didn’t really think so. From the look on T.J.’s face, he didn’t either.
I was going to the bathroom behind a tree when I heard it. The fluttering, flapping sound startled me, and I almost fell into my puddle of pee. I stood and yanked my underwear and shorts up, then listened, but I didn’t hear the noise again.
“I think I heard an animal,” I said to T.J. when I got back.
“What kind of animal?”
“I don’t know. It made a flapping, fluttering noise. Have you heard anything?”
“Yes, I’ve heard that, too.”
We walked back to where I heard the noise, but didn’t find anything. We gathered all the firewood we could hold on the way back and deposited it on our woodpile.
“Do you want to go swimming?” T.J. asked.
“Sure.”
Now that I had a swimsuit, swimming sounded like a great idea.
The clear water in the lagoon would have been perfect for snorkeling. We swam for about a half hour, and right before we got out of the water, T.J. stepped on something. He dove under the surface. When he came up, he held a tennis shoe in his hand.
“Is that yours?” I asked.
“Yep. I figured it would wash up eventually,” he said.
We sat on the beach, the ocean breeze drying our bodies.
“Why did your parents choose these islands?” I asked. “They’re so far away.”
“The scuba diving. It’s supposed to be some of the best diving in the world. My dad and I are both certified,” T.J. said, digging his toes into the white sand. “When I was really sick, he made a big deal out of telling everyone that as soon as I got better, we’d take this major vacation. Like I gave a shit.”
“You didn’t want to come here?”
T.J. shook his head.
“Why not?”
“Nobody wants to spend the whole summer with their family. I wanted to stay home and hang out with my friends. Then they told me you were coming and I had to make up all the work I missed or I’d have to do tenth grade over.
That really pissed me off.” He looked at me apologetically. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
“They didn’t listen to me, though. My mom and dad convinced themselves that this trip would be the greatest thing ever for our family. But even my sisters were mad. They wanted to go to Disney World.”
“I’m sorry, T.J.”
“It’s okay.”
“How old are your sisters?”
“Alexis is nine and Grace is eleven. They drive me nuts sometimes—they never stop talking—but they’re okay,” he said. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“I have one sister, Sarah. She’s three years older than I am and she’s married to a guy named David. They have two kids—Joe’s five and Chloe’s two. I miss everyone so much. I can’t imagine what they’re going through, especially my mom and dad.”
“I miss my family, too,” T.J. said.
I scanned the brilliant blue sky and stared out at the turquoise water, listening to the calming sound of the waves hitting the reef.
“It’s actually very beautiful here,” I said.
“Yeah,” T.J. agreed. “It is.”
Chapter 12
—
T.J.
One of the hardest things about being on the island was the boredom. It took time to gather food and firewood, and go fishing two or three times a day, but we still had too many hours left over. We explored and we swam, but we also talked, and it didn’t take long before I felt almost as comfortable with Anna as I did with my friends; she listened to what I had to say.
She asked how I was doing emotionally. Guys are supposed to be tough, and Ben and I sure as hell never sat around talking about how we felt, but I admitted to Anna that I got a weird feeling in my stomach whenever I thought about whether they’d ever find us. I told her I got scared sometimes. I said I didn’t always sleep well. She said she didn’t either.
I liked sharing a bed with Anna, though. Sometimes she curled up right next to me, with her head on my shoulder, and once when I slept on my side, she pressed her chest against my back and tucked her knees into the space behind mine. She did it in her sleep, and it didn’t mean anything, but it felt good. I’d never spent the whole night with a girl before. Emma and I had only slept together for a few hours and that was mostly because she was so sick.
I liked Anna. A lot. Without her, the island would have really sucked.
No one rescued us, so I missed my follow-up appointment with the oncologist at the end of August. Anna mentioned it at breakfast one morning.
“I’m worried about you not being able to go to the doctor,” she said, handing me a piece of cooked fish. “Careful, it’s hot.”
“I feel fine,” I told her, blowing on the fish to cool it before putting it in my mouth.
“Yes, but you were pretty sick, right?”
“Yeah.”
She handed me the water bottle. I took a drink and set it down.
“Tell me about it,” she said.
“My mom thought I had the flu. I had a fever, and I started sweating at night. I lost some weight. Then the doctor found a lump on my neck that turned out to be a swollen lymph node. They ran some tests after that: X-rays, biopsy, MRI, and a PET scan. Then they told me I had stage-three Hodgkin’s lymphoma.”
“Did you start chemo right away?”
“Yeah. It didn’t work though. They also found a mass in my chest, so I had to have radiation, too.”
“That sounds awful.”
She cut off a piece of breadfruit, and handed the rest to me.
“It wasn’t fun. I was in and out of the hospital a lot.”
“How long were you sick?”
“About a year and a half, I guess. For a while, I wasn’t doing very well. The doctors didn’t know what to think.”
“That had to be really scary, T.J.”
“Well, they tried to keep me in the dark, which I hated. I only knew it was bad because suddenly no one would look me in the eye when I asked questions. Or they’d change the subject. That scared me.”
“I bet it did.”
“At first, my friends visited me all the time, but when I didn’t get better, some of them stopped coming around.” I took another drink of water and handed the bottle to Anna. “You know my friend Ben?”
“Yes.”
“He came every single day. He spent hours watching TV with me, or just sitting in a chair by my hospital bed when I felt too sick to move or talk. My parents and the doctor would have these long conversations, out in the hall or whatever, and I’d ask Ben to try and listen. He’d tell me everything they said, no matter what. He knew I just wanted to hear it straight up, you know?”
“Of course,” she said. “He sounds like a great friend, T.J.”
“Yeah, he is. Do you have a best friend?”
“Yes, her name is Stefani. We’ve known each other since kindergarten.”
“That’s a long time.”
She nodded. “Friends are important. I understand why you wanted to spend your summer with them.”
“Yeah,” I said, thinking about everyone back home in Chicago. They probably thought I was dead.
Anna stood up and walked to the woodpile. “Will you tell me if you notice any symptoms?” She grabbed some wood and threw it on the fire.
“Sure. Just don’t ask me if I feel okay all the time. My mom did, and it drove me nuts.”
“I won’t. But I’ll worry a little.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
Chapter 13
—
Anna
The bright sunlight woke me, illuminating the interior of the life raft. T.J. was already gone, out gathering firewood or fishing. I yawned, stretched my arms and legs, and crawled out of bed. My suitcase was in the lean-to, and I reached in and grabbed a bikini, returning to the life raft to change. Dressed, I lifted the nylon flaps to let in some fresh air.
T.J. walked up with the fish he caught for breakfast. He smiled. “Hey.”
“Good morning.”
I checked the breadfruit and coconut trees, scooping up everything on the ground and bringing it all back to the lean-to. T.J. cracked coconuts while I cleaned and cooked the fish.
After breakfast we brushed our teeth, rinsing with rainwater, and I marked off the date in my datebook. September already. Hard to believe.
“Want to go swimming?” T.J. asked.
“Sure.”
Last week, T.J. had spotted two fins just outside the reef. We panicked and left the water, but as we watched they came all the way into the lagoon. Dolphins. We waded slowly into the water and they didn’t swim away, waiting patiently as we approached them.
“They almost act like they’re here to introduce themselves,” I said in amazement.
T.J. petted one and laughed when it blew water out its blowhole. I had never seen such social creatures. They swam with us for a while and then left abruptly, on some sort of marine schedule.
“Maybe the dolphins will come back today,” I said, as I followed T.J. down to the shore.
T.J. stripped off his shirt and waded into the lagoon. “That would be cool. I want to ride one.”
We entertained ourselves by using one of the collapsible plastic containers as a snorkel mask. There were schools of brightly colored fish—purple, blue, orange, and yellow and black striped. We spotted a sea turtle and an eel poking its head up from the ocean floor. I swam away fast when I saw that.
“No dolphins,” I said after T.J. and I had been swimming for at least an hour. “We must have missed them.”
“We can try again after our nap.” Suddenly, he pointed toward the shoreline. “Anna, look over there.”
A crab leg stuck out of the sand, the pincer opening and closing. We ran out of the water
.
“I’ll grab my sweatshirt,” he said.
“Hurry, it’s trying to bury itself.”
T.J. returned in record time, wrapped his sweatshirt around the crab, and pulled it out of the sand. We went back to the lean-to and T.J. shook it out onto the fire.
“Oh God,” I said, thinking for a second about the crab’s violent demise.
I got over it fast.
We cracked the legs with the pliers from the toolbox, gorging ourselves. The crabmeat—even without hot melted butter—tasted better than anything I’d eaten since we’d been on the island. Now that we knew where they buried themselves, T.J. and I would have to check the shoreline daily. I was so tired of fish, coconut, and breadfruit that I could hardly choke them down sometimes, and adding crabmeat would provide a little variety, something that was desperately lacking in our diet.
When the crab was nothing more than a pile of split shells, I took the blanket out of the life raft and spread it under the coconut tree. We stretched out next to each other. The shade from the tree helped keep us cool during the hottest part of the day, and it had become our favorite place to nap.
A big, creepy, hairy spider—its body the size of a quarter—crawled lazily across T.J.’s shoulder and I flicked it off him with my finger. “That one even freaked me out,” I said.
T.J. shuddered. He hated spiders, always shaking our blanket out, checking for them before he put it back in the life raft. Personally, I hated snakes. I’d already stepped on one and the only thing that kept me from being completely traumatized was the fact that I was wearing my tennis shoes. I hated to think about stepping on one barefoot; whether or not they might be poisonous was too stressful to think about.
I thought T.J. had already fallen asleep, but then he said, “What do you think’s gonna happen to us, Anna?” His voice sounded drowsy.
“I don’t know. I think we just keep doing what we’re doing and try to hold on until someone finds us.”
On the Island (9781101609095) Page 6