“Okay, so talk.”
“It wasn’t right, what you did. Anne Marie is having trouble right now. She’s kind of—sick.”
“I think she has enough defenders, Sam.”
“Anne Marie’s different here. She’s not like she was at school.”
“Seriously—if she has a problem with me, she should talk to me.”
“The thing is, I don’t know if she can.”
Effortlessly treading water, Rittika rolled her eyes. “I made my point last night. I’m sick and tired of hearing about what a fragile little snowflake she is. For once in her life, she needs to stand on her own two feet.” Rittika looked me in the eye and shrugged. “I’m not trying to be a bitch. I’m just saying it like it is.”
Without waiting for me to respond, she swam to the shore and climbed out onto the rocks. She sat there, face toward the rising sun, waiting for the early heat to dry her off. I scrabbled out after her, stubbing my toe and feeling more awkward than ever.
Still, I was determined not to let her off the hook. I sat beside her, wondering how to proceed. How do you teach someone compassion? Can you? In that silence, Rittika raised a finger and pointed at the birthmark on my shoulder. The blemish, the size of a fist, was a patch of hypopigmented skin—ivory white. Until I was eleven or twelve, I didn’t care about it. But once I’d become more aware of my body, in the way teenagers do, I’d started to hate that birthmark. I thought twice about wearing tank tops or strapless dresses, fearing people would make fun of me. I got so self-conscious about it that I asked my mother if I could get it removed.
I figured she would be receptive. After all, looks were important to her. Superficial things were important. We hadn’t had a real conversation in years, but my mom was always ready to discuss the state of my cuticles or whether I’d look good with bangs.
Yet when I’d asked her about the birthmark, she’d shaken her head.
“I don’t want you to get rid of that,” she’d said. “It’s the only part of you that’s like me!”
Maybe she’d been joking. But I was bothered by the comment. After that, I started to think of the birthmark as more than a blemish. It was a bona fide defect. Evidence of my mother’s bad judgment. Evidence of my father’s transgressions. Evidence of a mistake: two people who should never have gotten together, not because their skin didn’t match or because they’d grown up on different continents, but because they had absolutely nothing in common. Nothing except the same two daughters.
Casually, Rittika ran her finger over the birthmark and pressed it like a button. Her touch felt hot and penetrating. I felt a shame so pure I wanted to cry.
“Why are you so self-conscious, Sam?” she asked. “Remember, you’re better than that. You’re gold.”
There came a moment when waiting didn’t make sense anymore. I think we all felt it at the same time. Mel called a meeting. She had our attention. We were jumpy, uncertain, restless.
“Listen,” she said, “until we contain the enemy, we have two options. Live with him, always on guard, always paranoid. Or get off the island.”
We responded to this pronouncement with silence. I think most of us still believed rescuers would come. I think most of us couldn’t believe they hadn’t come already.
“It’s up to us to rescue ourselves. We can’t afford to wait any longer.”
“You’re being hasty,” Rish replied. “There are people looking for us right this second. My father has access to an entire fleet of ships. I know he’ll find us. He just needs more time.”
“I’m sure all our parents are looking,” Mel replied. “But that doesn’t mean they’ll find us. There are thousands of uninhabited islands in this world, and we seem to be on one of them.”
“Mel’s right,” I said. “We need to be self-sufficient.”
She nodded at me appreciatively. “Right. There’s a big difference between waiting and doing.”
Rittika frowned, but the rest of our classmates were willing to listen.
“We need to start by tapping into our creativity,” Mel continued. “I want to show you guys an exercise my father once showed me. He wanted me to understand that sometimes all the tools you need are right in front of you.”
Mel told us to spread out and find a little plot of ground. Each of us was to study a space the size of one cubic foot.
“What are we looking for?” Betty asked.
“We don’t know. That’s the point. Just find a little piece of ground that speaks to you.”
We did as instructed, dispersing and claiming little plots within camp.
“Now look down,” Mel said. “What do you see? Not much, right? But there’s more here than you realize.”
Mel had us cordon off our plots with sticks and vines. She told us to kneel down and study the area carefully. “Memorize every single thing you see. Every bug, plant, animal, blade of grass. Everything. Your plot might look small, but you’ll be astounded by its biodiversity.”
We obliged, compliant if bewildered. That lasted about five minutes before Avery rubbed her neck and complained, “Why are we doing this again? It’s boring.”
“Don’t let that fool you!” Mel said. “Boredom can be useful. Galileo made one of his most important discoveries while bored out of his mind. He was in church, watching a chandelier swaying above him. He started measuring the sways with his pulse. He realized that time can be measured that way—by the swinging of a pendulum. We still use this principle today.”
Avery looked unimpressed. “How old was he? Galileo? Thirty, at least. A lot older than us.”
“He was twenty. Listen, we’re not too young to do important things. In fact, being young is a bonus. Young minds aren’t constrained like old ones. Mozart composed some of his best work in his teens. Chopin, too.”
Avery didn’t appear moved by what Mel was saying, but I was. We might not be prodigies, but we had potential. And so did this island. We just had to open our eyes a little wider.
I left to get a pen and pad out of the supplies tent, then returned to my plot. I began to write down everything I could find in my cubic foot. I didn’t know what to call most of the specimens—the purple-shelled beetle, the nubby-leafed plant, or the white butterfly that briefly flitted through—so I sketched and numbered each one. I was startled when I reached fifty and still wasn’t done. I wouldn’t have guessed so much life was crammed into so small a world.
Pablo, whose plot was nearby, saluted me playfully when I showed him what I’d written.
“What if something crawls into my space?” Betty asked. “A lizard just visited.”
“He counts, too,” Mel replied. “Notice how the plots are not static. They are constantly changing, full of surprises.”
Rittika groaned in annoyance. She and Anne Marie were the only ones not participating. Anne Marie was lingering at the edge of camp, gazing into the jungle. Rittika was sunbathing on the ground in her underwear. After a while, she flipped onto her stomach and unsnapped her bra.
Ignoring her, Mel reminded us to be observant. When she stopped in front of my patch, I felt the dim of her shadow. “Look, Sam has already found fifty species. I bet she’ll find a hundred if she looks hard enough. A hundred creatures—that’s a whole universe of life.”
“I still don’t get the point of this,” Avery muttered.
“The island, you could say, is our factory, our workshop. We have to understand all of the resources available here. If we know what we have to work with, we can devise a way home.”
I looked around to see how the others were faring. Ming seemed to be enjoying herself, nose pressed to the ground, fingers busily searching. Betty was looking at my paper and pen, perhaps deciding whether to get her own. Anne Marie was still staring off into the jungle. Chester and Pablo, not surprisingly, were sneaking peaks at Rittika.
Mel continued to monitor us. She had piled her hair atop her head in a messy bun, stuck through with a twig. She wielded a long branch like a pointing stick. For a tim
e, everyone was quiet. Then Ming mentioned that a tiny yellow frog had hopped into her plot.
Mel turned on her heels and dashed over to her. “Don’t touch it,” she warned.
“Why?”
“Did you touch it? The frog?”
“No.”
“Let me see.”
Ming pointed at the animal at the corner of her plot. It was as bright as a jewel, no bigger than a quarter.
“That’s what I thought. A Phyllobates terribilis,” Mel said.
“Elementary, my dear Watson, a Phyllobates terribilis,” Rittika quipped, deepening her British accent.
Mel ignored her, continuing, “It’s also called a poison dart frog. My father brought one back from Colombia once. When he touched it, he always wore gloves. If you have contact with it, you could die.”
“I didn’t touch it,” Ming swore. All of us got up and gathered around Ming’s plot. Even Rittika put on her bra and came over.
“Why is it called a poison dart frog?” I asked.
“Good question, Rockwell. The indigenous people of South America use the poison on the tips of blow darts. For hunting.” Mel gazed at the frog admiringly. “It’s an astonishing animal.”
Astonishing or not, we kept our distance.
“Phyllobates terribilis come in a few colors—orange, green, white. But most are like this one: bright yellow, like gold,” Mel continued. “The color’s a warning sign to its enemies.”
“I was already paranoid about where to walk,” Ming said, bringing my mind back to the trapping pit. “Now it’s going to be even worse.”
We stood around Ming’s plot until the frog hopped away and disappeared into a thicket. When Ming exhaled and knelt beside her plot again, we followed suit, but warily.
I was still roused by Mel’s belief we could get ourselves off the island. But the poison dart frog had made me realize there might be more obstacles in our way, things we hadn’t even imagined.
“Keep an eye out,” Mel said. “He could be back.”
I wasn’t sure if she was talking about the frog or our enemy.
Later that same day, Mel and I notched off another mark in the tree. I had turned around to head back to Camp Summerbliss when she tugged my arm. “This way,” she said. “I want to show you something.” She put her finger to her lips. “Shh—don’t tell anyone.”
She led me deeper into the jungle. Following behind her, I saw that she was wearing her backpack. Beneath the riot of tangled tree limbs above, she found a small clearing on the jungle floor.
“Here’s good,” she said, stopping abruptly. She had a pensive, slightly disturbed look on her face. I watched her take off her backpack and sort through it. She took out a bamboo pole about a foot long. Holding the pole vertically, she shook it carefully and pulled out some moss from the top end. After she peered inside, she told me to have a look. There, sitting on a clump of moss at the bottom end of the hollow pole, was the little yellow frog. Mel quickly plugged the top end again so it couldn’t jump out.
“Oh my god. How did you get it? Why did you get it?” Even though the frog was trapped inside the cane, I couldn’t help panicking.
“I don’t want to do what I’m about to do, but I feel like I have to. Spears and swords might not be enough,” she said. She set the cane on the ground and searched nearby. It took her about a minute to find what she was looking for—a long, thin, straight twig. “Sorry, little guy,” she whispered, taking the pole again. I watched her remove the pad of moss from the top and slide the twig into the cane.
“What are you doing?”
“Hurting it,” she said simply.
“Why? Don’t do that!”
“I have to. It could be a matter of our survival.”
“Mel …”
“This little critter has enough poison in his body to kill ten people. Chances are,” she said grimly, maneuvering the stick, “we’ll need only enough for one.”
I was repulsed by what she was doing. The last thing I wanted to know was how she was doing it, but she told me anyway. “I stuck the stick in his throat and out the back of his body. He’s still alive, barely, and he’s sweating poison. That’s just what I need him to do.”
“Oh god, that’s revolting.”
“The poison’s white. Kind of frothy—like the foam on a cappuccino.”
“Mel!”
“Here, hold this,” she replied, handing me the cane. I held it as far away from my body as I could. She dug through her backpack again until she found a few syringes. “Thank you, Rittika,” she said. “For once you were a help rather than a pain in the ass.” She took the cane back and poked the stick inside until some of the poison stuck to the end. Then, ever so carefully, she scraped the poison into the syringes.
“Is that enough?” I asked her. There was only a drop or so in each one.
“Oh, yeah. It’s potent stuff. My dad said it’s stronger than cobra venom. If even a tiny bit enters the bloodstream, boom—you’re dead.”
She wrapped the syringes in several layers of leaves and put them back into her backpack.
“Where are you going to put that?” I asked.
“In the back of the supplies tent. I’ll show you where, just in case.”
We proceeded to dig a shallow grave for the frog. Covering up the bamboo cane with dirt, I wondered if we should say a prayer. But that would be ridiculous. After all, we’d never said one for Jeremiah, Warren, or the pilot. They hadn’t even gotten a burial.
Shortly after the cubic-foot exercise, Mel asked the twins to take us to the tar pit. She was curious about it—and so were the rest of us.
Rittika was hesitant at first—she didn’t see the point. But Rish talked her into it. And once Rittika agreed, everybody else jumped on the bandwagon. We proceeded in a snaky train, armed with our weapons, pushing through brush, stomping over vines. Though small, the tar pit wasn’t hard to find. The stink was unmistakable—a trail that started out faint twenty yards away and became increasingly noxious the closer we got. At the edge of the pit, I gagged. The stench was worse than sewage, worse than diesel truck exhaust, almost worse than the smell of Warren’s decomposing body. I wished I hadn’t torn off the collar of my blouse. I wished I had something to press against my mouth and nose, anything to lessen the reek.
The smell was the only thing that gave the tar away. Coated with water and scattered with leaves, the pit looked like an ordinary pond. Mel knelt on the bank and dragged a stick through the black sludge beneath the water. When she pulled it out, sticky, stringy tar stretched from it like taffy. The sight of the tar was both exciting and disgusting. Chester and Rish found their own sticks and mimicked Mel. After a while they started to behave the way they had around the campfire the night they’d arrived. Like hoodlums. I watched them throw things into the pit: vines, branches, wadded-up leaves. These lay on the surface for a moment, then began a slow descent into oblivion. This is what must happen to animals, too, I realized, my stomach in knots.
I wondered how deep the pit was. Did the things that fell in, or were thrown in, travel ten feet down, twenty, all the way to the bowels of the earth? It was impossible to tell. The only thing I felt sure of was that they were gone forever. I didn’t know how fossils were retrieved from La Brea Tar Pits, but I doubted anything could be fished out of this, our own private waste station.
As Chester and Rish continued to lob things into the pit, Rittika walked along the very edge. Avery urged her to step back, but her pleas only egged Rittika on. She smiled and pirouetted like a ballerina, her arms long and graceful above her head. I don’t know why, but seeing her there, risking life and limb, I felt more envy than concern.
My attention switched back and forth between Rittika and the boys, who had hauled a huge branch out of the jungle. They swung it back and forth, gaining momentum. The queasy feeling in my stomach gained momentum, too.
“One. Two. Three!” they shouted euphorically, hurling the branch as far as they could. It landed with a col
ossal splash. Water droplets blasted into the air, then rained down. The tar swallowed the branch almost immediately, water rippling concentrically from the point of impact, then gradually going flat, as if nothing had happened.
Rittika laughed, pirouetted again, then dashed off to get her own branch. In silent collusion, Rish helped her drag it toward the pit.
“Step aside,” Rittika snapped. She was talking to Anne Marie, who was standing in her way.
Everyone expected Anne Marie to oblige. So when she held her ground, we stared at her, bug-eyed.
“Please put that down,” she told Rittika.
“What?”
“Don’t throw it. We’ve already made too much noise.”
“Oh-ho, look who finally put on her big-girl panties!” Rittika exclaimed, exchanging a titillated look with Rish.
“You don’t understand—he might hear us.” Panicked, Anne Marie turned 360 degrees as she scanned the jungle.
“Who might?” Rittika asked, setting down her side of the branch.
“The enemy—he’s close. That’s why you have to be quiet. The more noise you make, the more hungry he gets.”
Rittika raised an eyebrow. I couldn’t help but think that Anne Marie was doing exactly what she had wanted her to do. Stand up for herself. Make herself heard. Maybe the tough love had worked after all. But I don’t think it had worked in the way Rittika had intended.
Head cocked to the side, she took a step toward Anne Marie. “How do you know he’s around here?”
“I can feel him,” Anne Marie whispered, stepping back in the direction of the pit. Again, she scanned the jungle urgently, attuned to an imminent danger only she could sense.
“I think you might be right,” Rititka said, following the trajectory of her eyes. As if in a dance, she took another step forward, and Anne Marie another step back. “I think he’s coming for us.”
“Then let’s go! What are we waiting for?”
“Where are we going to go, Anne Marie? There’s no safe place. Not here.”
Anne Marie got a pained look on her face. She raked her fingers through her dirty, snarled hair.
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