by C. L. Taylor
‘It’s all right,’ Milo says, shooting me a look. ‘If you want a swim go and have one. Jeffers and I can cope. Can’t we, Jeffers?’
Jeffers looks up from the tree he’s splitting, a look of grim determination on his face. ‘Sure. Go have fun, Jessie.’
I pass a hand over my brow then push my fingers through my hair. It’s absolutely soaking with sweat. I feel hot and heavy in my long-sleeved linen top and cargo shorts and I can’t think of anything nicer than peeling off my clothes and jumping into the sea.
‘Jess,’ Milo lowers his voice. ‘You don’t have to be self-conscious here, it’s just us lot.’
‘I’m not self-conscious. I just don’t fancy a swim. OK?’ I glare at him then stalk off into the jungle, hot tears pricking at my eyes.
Come after me, I think as I continue to stomp away, annoyed, but not so angry that I don’t check the ground for snakes and spiders.
But of course he doesn’t and I feel like a dick for even hoping that he would. He’s not a mind reader. He was right. I am self-conscious. He knows it. I know it. We all know it. For the first couple of days of the holiday Mum needled at me, telling me that no one would be able to see my burns unless they were standing right next to me, and that as soon as I was in the pool I’d look just like the other kids. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I could imagine how they’d react – Danny would gawp, Honor’s blue eyes would grow big and round and Milo would look horrified. But more than that, I was afraid of sympathy, silence and awkwardness. I was afraid that, whenever they looked at me they wouldn’t see me anymore, they’d just see what I’d been through. I want to cut through all the bullshit and the softly-softly, the concerned looks and silence when Tom’s name is mentioned and face it straight on. I want to sit them all down and tell them, in my own words, what happened. But I can’t. I’m afraid that if I open the lid on my emotions I’ll never be able to close it again. Now two fat self-pitying tears roll down my cheeks and I choke back a sob.
I stop walking.
So much for staying in control. I may as well try and tame a whirlwind.
‘Stop it, Jessie,’ I say aloud.
A loud whooping noise, high in the treetops above me, makes me freeze. What the—
I press my hands to my chest as a grey-brown macaque monkey with pointy ears and a long, solemn face leaps from the top of one tree to another with its baby clinging to its belly. As it lands the air fills with the sound of beating wings as half a dozen multicoloured birds flutter out from the leaves and soar into the sky. It’s such a beautiful, breathtaking sight that I instantly forget all the crap that’s been bothering me and stare in wonder.
A hand on my shoulder makes me jump. It’s Jeffers, his baseball cap pulled low over his eyes and his axe resting on one shoulder.
‘You shouldn’t go wandering around on your own. It’s not safe.’
‘I know… I…’ I trail off and I turn to walk back the way I came but Jefferson touches my shoulder again.
‘Jessie.’ He gives me a searching look. ‘It isn’t my place to say this but I think you should keep away from Milo.’
‘What?’ I stare at him in surprise. Jeffers isn’t big on heart-to-hearts and he’s never commented on my friendship with Milo before. As kids they were as thick as thieves and, while they’re not as close as they used to be, they still get on. ‘What do you mean? Why?’
‘I know you like him, but I think you’ll get hurt.’
I’m so flabbergasted I don’t know what to say. It’s no secret to the others that Milo and I have a bit of a chequered history. Ever since we were twelve one of us has had a crush on the other – but never at the same time. I thought he was gross when he liked me – tall and gangly with bad skin, obsessed with computer games and sick jokes. I changed my mind on a group holiday the following year. He’d quietened down a bit and I found his aloofness really intriguing. Only he wasn’t interested anymore. According to Meg, he was obsessed with a girl at school. Then the next year we met I’d started seeing someone at my school. And so it’s continued. Milo and I aren’t so much star-crossed lovers as two planets in entirely different universes.
‘What makes you think that?’ I call after Jefferson, but he’s already disappeared into the thick green undergrowth.
Chapter 4
DANNY
Danny’s heart jumps as the spark from the flint and steel he’s rubbing together leaps onto the soft coconut matting and a tiny flame licks at one of the fibres.
‘Gently, gently,’ Anuman urges as he gathers the tiny bundle in his hands and blows on the flame. ‘Too hard will kill it.’
Come on, come on, Danny prays as he blows softly. Apart from Jefferson, none of the others has managed to get a fire started and he can feel their eyes on him, urging him to fail. But he won’t let that happen. He doesn’t give up.
‘Yes, yes,’ Anuman says as the flames grow and spread. Danny looks at Honor victoriously as he gently places the tiny fire on top of the pile of sticks and kindling that sits between the sleeping shelter and the cooking shelter.
‘Good man!’ Jefferson slaps him on the back and Danny basks in his own sense of achievement.
‘Proud of me?’ He hooks an arm around Honor’s shoulders and pulls her close.
‘’Course.’ She turns her face up to his and closes her eyes as he kisses her.
Life, Danny thinks, as the sun slowly sinks over the sea, striping the sky orange, pink and red, couldn’t get much better than this.
Danny dips his fingers into his metal dish then grimaces as he shovels piping hot fish into his mouth. It’s full of bones, and each time he plucks one out of his mouth it makes him gag. His friends eat their fish too, only their murmurs of appreciation fill the air, cutting through the pop and crackle of the fire. It’s dark and, other than the fire, the only light is from two flaming torches – one on either side of the shelters – that Anuman fashioned from coconut shells and thin tree trunks. The only thing slightly spoiling Danny’s pleasure is the fact that he didn’t manage to catch the fish they’re all eating. He, Honor, Meg, Milo and Jessie dangled their rods off the rocks at the edge of the beach for what felt like hours but, despite a few nibbles, none of them landed a fish. Thank God then for Anuman and his net. He and Jefferson took the boat out and returned with a haul big enough for a feast.
‘I’ve got a ghost story,’ Danny says, swallowing his mouthful. ‘Do you know the one about the hitch-hiker and the…’
‘Yes,’ the others groan.
They’ve been telling ghost stories since Anuman put the fish on tree-branch skewers above the fire, dropping their voices at the tense bits then shouting the punchlines to make each other jump.
‘I know,’ Honor says. ‘Let’s tell each other the scariest things that have ever happened to us.’
‘Isn’t that the same as a ghost story?’ Meg asks.
‘Well, no. You can be scared without ghosts being involved,’ Jessie pipes up. Unlike Danny, who’s sitting so close to the fire he feels as though his cheeks are glowing, Jessie is far away, practically sitting in the entrance to the sleeping shelter.
‘We could go for a walk in the jungle,’ Milo suggests, but he’s immediately shouted down by Jefferson who only has to say the word ‘dangerous’ before the others all boo and then burst into laughter.
Anuman, sitting apart from the group, and sorting through the contents of his bag under the light of the food shelter torch, laughs too.
‘So what do we talk about next?’ Danny asks.
The air rings with suggestions as they all shout over each other, then Honor’s voice rings out clear and loud.
‘Let’s talk about our worst phobias.’
‘Are you kidding?’ Meg, sitting on one side of Danny with her knees pulled up to her chest, shivers theatrically. ‘Most of them are on this bloody island!’
They all laugh.
‘Come on,’ Honor cajoles. ‘It’ll be fun. We’ll find out which one of us is the biggest weirdo.�
� She pauses for effect. ‘Jeffers?’
Everyone, including Jefferson, laughs.
‘Fine.’ Jefferson shrugs. ‘I’ve got a phobia of heights.’
‘You do not!’ Danny scoffs. ‘I sat next to you on the flight over here and you were fine.’
‘Not that kind of height. I’m OK when I’m sitting down surrounded by a metal box. It’s sharp drops that freak me out. You know, when it’s really steep?’ He presses his fingertips together, one hand horizontal, the other vertical. ‘If I get to the edge I get this really weird compulsion to throw myself off.’
‘Why don’t you?’ Milo says and everyone laughs again. There’s nothing malicious in Milo’s comment, or our reaction. It’s light-hearted banter, an easy togetherness formed over seventeen years of friendship.
‘Be a bit weird if you were afraid of heights, Milo,’ Jeffers banters back. ‘You’d be scared every time you stood up!’
‘Heights I can take.’ He uncrosses his long legs and stretches them out towards the fire. ‘Snakes, on the other hand…’ He glances at Meg, sitting beside him. ‘I blame you. When I was four she put a worm in my mouth when I was sleeping.’
‘Didn’t happen! You dreamed it.’
‘I did not!’
‘OK, OK,’ Honor holds out her hands. ‘Enough bickering or I’ll put you both on the naughty step! Jessie, how about you?’
There’s an awkward pause as all eyes turn to Jessie.
‘I’ll go next,’ Meg says quickly. ‘I’m afraid of—’
‘No, no.’ Jessie’s voice cuts across her like a knife. ‘Let me take my turn. I don’t mind. I’ve got a phobia of vomiting. There, I said it.’
No one says a word.
‘Seriously,’ Jessie continues. ‘It freaks me out. I can’t stand the smell of it, the sound of it, the way people retch and I’m shit-scared of puking myself. I haven’t been able to eat prawns for three years since I had a dodgy takeaway.’
There’s a beat then Jeffers says, ‘Don’t blame you, vomit stinks! Did I tell you about the time that I—’
Honor holds up a hand. ‘Yes, we know and we don’t need to hear it again.’
Everyone laughs and Danny feels the tension ease from between his shoulder blades. Jefferson might be a know-it-all but, for once, he picked the right time to launch into one of his stories. Everyone sitting around the fire knows that Jessie just lied about her phobia. When Anuman asked for volunteers to use the flint and steel to start the fire she couldn’t get away fast enough. She wanted to go beachcombing to find stuff that might be useful, she said. They all know what happened last summer – their parents told them and they’ve discussed it in a private WhatsApp group – but Jessie hasn’t mentioned it once since she arrived and none of them has had the guts to bring it up. Danny wasn’t sure who was more uncomfortable when she walked into the hotel lobby with her parents on the first night in Thailand – her or him. While Jessie’s parents stood hand in hand, she stood apart. You could have fitted another person in the gap between Jessie and her dad. Her older brother hadn’t been on one of the NCT holidays for years – preferring to stay at home instead – but he was there, in the mental scrapbook of Danny’s memories: sitting at the head of the kids’ table, deliberately swimming out to a buoy when they’d all been told it was too far out, laughing at Danny and calling him ‘a little kid’ when he was too scared to attempt a zipwire. And now there was a Tom-shaped space in the hotel lobby that would never be filled. Danny stared at it for a very long time.
‘Anyway,’ Meg huffs. ‘My phobia’s blood. No big deal, apart from to me. Honor?’
Danny glances at his girlfriend. He knows what her phobia is and she knows his. They’ve had this conversation before. There isn’t a single thing they don’t know about each other.
‘I’m not going to say,’ Honor says, giggling nervously, ‘because I wouldn’t put it past one of you bastards to try and scare me.’
‘We wouldn’t,’ Jeffers says.
Milo laughs. ‘I would.’
‘You try it,’ Honor says to him and Danny picks up on her flirty tone.
‘No one’s going to be trying anything,’ he says pointedly.
‘Dude.’ Milo raises an eyebrow. ‘I was joking.’
‘As long as that’s all it is.’
‘Seriously, Danny?’ Honor glares at him. ‘You’re going to do this now?’
‘I’m not doing anything.’
‘And I am?’
Danny tips his head to one side and mimes flicking long hair over his shoulders. ‘You try it,’ he mimics.
‘Dan—’ Meg stops tracing her finger through the sand and looks up at him. ‘Leave it out.’
‘Yeah, can we just get this done?’ Jessie asks. ‘It’s getting boring now.’
‘Well, sorry to bore everyone,’ Honor says irritably. ‘I was trying to share my phobia but someone wouldn’t let me speak. Anyway, it’s spiders.’ She holds up her hands, palms face out. ‘There, done.’
Danny watches as she crosses her arms over her chest and stares, sullenly, into the fire. He can’t keep up with her mood swings this holiday. One minute she’s playful and fun and the next she’s quiet and prickly. Maybe he shouldn’t have called her out on being flirty with Milo but she’s never flirted with anyone in the group before and it creeps him out. He’s going have to take her to one side for a chat. Find out what the hell is going on.
‘Danny. Danny. Dan. Hello, Dan, is there anyone there?’ He turns his head sharply as Meg shouts at him from across the fire.
‘Your turn,’ she says. ‘You’re the last one.’
‘OK, OK.’ He forces a laugh. ‘If I must. I’ve got a massive phobia about small spaces. When I was little I got stuck in a bucket at nursery. You can all laugh and take the piss now.’
And they do. Everyone apart from Honor, who gives him a suspicious sideways look. She knows Jessie wasn’t the only one who lied about her phobia. He did too.
Chapter 5
JESSIE
Day two on the island
Danny and Honor are arguing. They’re pretending they’re not, doing that low-pitched hissing thing my parents do when they don’t want to cause a scene in front of me, but whenever the fire lights up their faces you can see how irritated they are with each other. I’m not sure what they’re arguing about. It seemed to kick off after the discussion about phobias. That was awkward – the phobias topic. I could have told the truth about mine; it did cross my mind but I didn’t want the others to pull sad faces at me or for there to be a weird silence. As it was there was an awkward silence but Jeffers broke it with his vomit story. I know Danny is wary of Jeffers – there’s always been a bit of a weird tension between those two, even when we were younger – but he’s clever and he tells it like it is. And he’s more empathetic than he lets on. He didn’t chime in with his vomit story because he likes the sound of his own voice, he just didn’t want me to feel awkward.
It’s so ridiculously dark now that the sea has become a long black strip of satin shimmering in the moonlight. There’s no chance I’m going anywhere near the jungle. The birds have stopped singing but I can still hear the low whooping of the monkeys. There are other sounds too: clicks and whistles and buzzing. I can tell that they’re freaking Milo out. He keeps twisting round and looking behind him as though he’s expecting a huge great snake to slither out from the trees. His confession surprised me. I thought he’d say he had a phobia of something more physical like deep water or being buried alive. Snakes, no.
Maybe I don’t know him as well as I thought I did. Why else would Jeffers warn me off him earlier? It’s not because Jeffers has any kind of ulterior motive. He came out the summer we all turned fifteen. Milo and Danny were surprised, but it wasn’t a shock to any of the girls. The boys held back while we all hugged Jeffers and, for a second, I wondered if things were going to be a bit weird between us all, but then Milo said something that made everyone laugh, Jeffers pretended to punch him round the head, and we we
re all back to normal. That was the summer that Danny and Honor got together. It had been on the cards for ages. They’d been really flirty in our WhatsApp group chats and Danny hadn’t held back on commenting on Honor’s Instagram photos. He blatantly fancied her and, when I took Honor to one side to ask if she felt the same, she admitted that she did. All we had to do then was set them up in the most unsubtle fashion ever. We were on holiday in Croyde. It was Danny’s birthday and Milo arranged for us all to go to the beach one evening, to watch the sunset. One by one we made excuses to be somewhere else, leaving Danny and Honor sitting on the beach together. Next time we saw them they were holding hands and grinning like idiots.
They’re not smiling now, though. They’ve given up the pretence that they’re not arguing and Honor’s voice cuts through the jungle sounds like a knife.
‘Danny!’ She twists away from him and throws her hands up in the air in frustration. ‘I’ve been sitting next to you for the last two hours. How is that being off with you?’
‘You’ve barely touched me!’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. Did I miss the rule where we have to have our hands locked together, twenty-four hours a day?’
‘No, but you did miss the rule about flirting with other people.’
‘Who?’ Honor physically recoils, anger lighting up her face as she gets to her feet. ‘Who have I flirted with? Anuman? Jeffers?’ She stares across the fire. ‘Milo? You seriously think I’ve been flirting with Milo?’
Milo raises his eyebrows but doesn’t say a word. Is this what Jeffers was warning me about earlier? Has something been going on between him and Honor?
‘Sit down!’ Danny grabs Honor by the wrist. ‘You’re overreacting.’
‘I’m overreacting? You’re the one acting all needy for no reason.’ She yanks her hand from him and turns to face us. ‘Am I right? Guys? Tell me I’m right.’