Withering Hope

by Hagen, Layla

  My stomach begins to grumble after we're done. "We could've used a few more of those fruits," I say, rubbing my stomach.

  "I can go get more."

  "No. It's almost dark. You said the forest is more dangerous when it's dark."

  Tristan frowns as he looks through the trees, making the hair at the nape of my neck stand on end. Not because he's hesitant or frightened. On the contrary. It frightens me because he isn't frightened. Not one bit. People without fear are a danger to themselves. My parents weren't frightened of anything. That's how they got themselves killed.

  "Don't go in, Tristan," I urge, gripped by panic. "Please don't."

  His eyebrows shoot up. He’s puzzled by my reaction, obviously. Realizing my fists are clenched, I hide my hands behind my back.

  "I'm not that hungry.” A loud stomach grumble follows my statement. "I can wait until tomorrow."

  "Okay," Tristan says, scrutinizing me. I breathe relieved.

  A bird soars above us. Even though it's almost dark, I recognize it by the bright yellow plumage on top of its head. "Look, that's a yellow-crowned Amazon parrot. I have a friend who's had one for years." The bird descends in circles, until it lands on Tristan's arm. "Hey, it seems to like you. I thought wild birds would avoid humans."

  "So did I. Can you look away?"

  "What?"

  What happens next stuns me. He opens his mouth, no doubt to explain himself, just as the bird opens its wings to take off. Tristan turns to the bird, raising his free hand. I think he’s going to caress the bird or stop it from flying away.

  Instead, he breaks its neck.

  I scream, covering my mouth with both hands, buckling forward, and throwing up. Tristan's saying something but I just signal him not to come close to me. I back off, sitting on the airstairs, refusing to look up.

  "Sorry. I meant to warn you," Tristan says. "It's just—”

  "That was brutal," I cry.

  "We need to eat," Tristan retorts.

  "Just give me five minutes."

  But it takes me more than five minutes to pull myself together. By the time I get up from the airstairs, the now featherless bird is roasting above the fire, speared with a makeshift skewer Tristan built from a piece of metal salvaged from the wrecked wing. The sight sickens me.

  "I'm sorry," Tristan says when I approach the fire.

  "It's… you just blindsided me."

  "I didn't mean to. It should be cooked in about an hour."

  "No edibility test?" I inquire.

  "None needed. We both recognized the bird."

  "I won't be able to eat anyway." I pace around until Tristan says it's ready. Hunger gets the better of me, and I force myself to take a few bites, though I feel sick afterward.

  "Go inside," Tristan says. "I'll clean up around here."

  "Thanks." I glance up at the sky. "Why are search missions carried out intensively just in the first forty-eight hours, Tristan?"

  "After forty-eight hours they don’t expect to find anyone alive. But it doesn't mean they will stop looking for us, Aimee," he says. "Tomorrow morning we'll light the signal fire again. We'll be fine. They'll find us." His tone appears firm and steady, but I detect a tinge of uneasiness under the layers of his reassurance. He doesn't believe they will find us. Fear bites into me hard, but I will myself to remain calm like Tristan. His calmness and fearlessness awe me. And I'm convinced he's not faking. As I watch his well-built frame and heavily muscled arms move in the shadows, I can partly understand why he's not afraid. If I were that strong, I'd feel more courageous… or not. Who am I kidding, I've always been a coward. Still, watching him, I fear a little less.

  Lying on my reclined seat inside, I hug the pillow under my head and try to decide which sleep-inducing technique to use. Since I only sleep four or five hours a night, I rely on these techniques to be able to fall asleep; otherwise it can take up to hours for that to happen. But tonight, none of the techniques help. I fall asleep long after Tristan has gone into the cockpit, and when I do, I dream of a helicopter rescuing us in the morning.

  No rescue helicopter arrives. Not the following morning, or any morning after it. I expect Aimee to break down, but she doesn’t. It shouldn’t surprise me, though. I’ve suspected she is strong since I first met her.

  Chris Moore hired me as his pilot two and a half years ago, giving me the chance for a

  fresh start I so desperately needed. I was grateful to him, and even liked him. Despite his wealth and success, he was grounded and unpretentious. When I first met Aimee, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that she was just as unassuming.

  And so much more.

  She went out of her way to be friendly, making it easy to adjust to my side job as her driver when Chris didn’t need me as a pilot. I suppose I came off as cold to her, because I only acknowledged her effort with a curt thank you. But I wasn’t used to anyone being friendly to me. Over the past years people had either shown me pity or feared me. Not Aimee. Of course, she didn’t know anything about my past—Chris kept his word and never told her.

  When first I drove Aimee to Chris’s parents’ mansion, I realized Aimee hadn’t given me any special treatment. She was genuinely friendly to everyone on the staff. They all liked to be around her.

  So did I.

  I liked it a little too much.

  She had a way of growing on people without even trying. She was warm and eager to get to really know people. A bit too eager… and the secrets I carried were best left buried. So I was content with being around her, or observing her from a distance.

  From where it was safe.

  Here, where our lifeline depends on working and sticking together, where I’m prepared to do just about anything to keep her safe, it will be hard to keep that distance, but I will do my best.

  We fall into a good routine in the weeks following the crash. One of the first things Tristan teaches me is how to start a fire without a lighter, insisting we keep the lighter for emergencies. I don't ask what those cases might be. I catch on quickly and soon enough, I can start a fire from scratch without problems, so I take on that task and make sure I build a signal fire every day. Mostly because it keeps me occupied, because I soon lose hope that it will attract rescuers. If Tristan shares my opinion, he doesn't voice it, nor does he make any attempt to stop me.

  During our first week, our top priority is searching for familiar plants and fruit. We stumble upon a tree Tristan recognizes: the andiroba tree—the Brazilian mahogany. Tristan claims it's used to treat insect and spider bites. I vaguely recall standing in a pharmacy smelling like a bouquet of freesias in Manaus with Chris and looking at anti-insect creams. Some of them had the andiroba tree drawn on them. The other thing I know about the tree is that most of the furniture in Chris's ranch is made out of it. Since no parts of the tree are digestible, as far as we know, we don't inspect it further.

  We don’t find any other familiar plants or fruit, so we resort to trying out new ones. I become an excellent monkey spy. At first I watch them from below, then I gather the courage to climb higher in the trees and watch them from there. That's how I discover that high up the trees all sorts of wonders await. Edible wonders. Like eggs and fruit. After my discovery, I start searching for eggs every day, though I don’t manage to walk very long distances. The tendrils of heat and humidity pirouetting in the dense air have an exhausting effect on me. We start gorging on the colorful assembly of fruits the monkeys eat. Tristan insists we perform the edibility test on every single new fruit (I managed to convince him to take turns in testing the food), but I don't complain. That's how we discover one of the fruits is not fit for human consumption, despite the monkeys eating it by the bucketful. I was the one testing it, and I had an upset stomach for two days—an experience made doubly dreadful by the fact that nature is our bathroom. Tristan's testing everything himself now. Thanks to his excellent knife skill, we have a meat meal almost every other day. We use the shell of a fruit as a container to boil the eggs. The shell is a
s hard as stone, and relatively fireproof. Tristan made more skewers from salvaged wreckage to roast the meat.

  I knew Tristan wasn’t much of a talker, but since it’s just the two of us here, I thought he might open up a bit, that he would need to talk. I know I do. But Tristan meets all my attempts at making conversation with monosyllabic answers. He's more talkative when he explains how to do a particular task. So I do most of the talking. I talk about home a lot, but mostly about the wedding.

  “I think I may have crossed the line with having twelve bridesmaids,” I tell him one day, while we roast a bird. “But every time I tried to take one of the girls off the list, I felt incredibly guilty.” Tristan frowns, a sign that bridesmaid talk isn’t really something he wants to listen to. So I talk about the music. The cake. At some point I realize all the wedding talk makes him uncomfortable. I guess I should have expected it… this is a beloved topic with women, not really a winner with men. Chris himself phased out whenever I talked more than half an hour straight about the wedding. So I resort to talking about home.

  “I miss the beach,” I say on another occasion, while we search for wood. “Sometimes after work I went to the beach and took long walks on my own. The sound of waves was so relaxing.” I stop because talking and carrying an armful of wood at the same time is too much effort.

  Survival keeps us so busy I have no time during the day to feel sorry about our situation or ponder over how much I fear that we will never be found. But when the dark sets in, things change. We go inside the plane almost the second the sun sets, because the mosquitos are such pests. We use the insect repellent wipes in our survival supplies sparingly. They don’t seem very effective anyway. With the diseases mosquitoes can carry, all we can do is hope for the best. And the forest terrifies me at night. The night reeks of danger, and splinters of fear cling to my senses long after I am in the safety of the plane.

  We brainstorm for about an hour about what else we can do to improve our situation. Afterward, Tristan goes in the cockpit to sleep.

  Though I appreciate having privacy at night, there is an undeniable sense of loss when Tristan leaves me alone. In the short time we’ve been here, I’ve gotten used to him being by my side at all times. This whole thing could be unbearable, but Tristan makes it better. His presence is like an anchor. His gaze, which is watchful and something more I can’t quite identify, is heart-warmingly reassuring. I hope I bring him some comfort too.

  But at night, there is no escaping my thoughts. They grow darker with every day. The fact that there hasn't been any sign of a rescue plane doesn't help. Neither does my inability to sleep for more than five hours. It gives me too much time with my thoughts. Every night of this first week I fall asleep crying, clutching my wedding dress. Thinking of how desperate Chris must be physically hurts.

  Chris and I have been best friends since we were toddlers; our parents were very close. He became my lifeline after my parents died. He became my boyfriend a few months before that happened. I remember worrying that it might be a mistake, that our relationship would be short-lived, and we'd lose our friendship too. We had just started college. Chris was handsome, smart, and the heir to his father's business empire. But Chris remained faithful and loving as the years went by. He remained my best friend as well as my boyfriend. Always by my side. Always up for a good laugh or a meaningful conversation. He knew how to listen to me, and entertain me, no matter what—usually by cracking one of his epic jokes. I swear if he'd failed as a businessman, he would've made a fine living as a comedian. That's what I miss most. His infallible methods of making me laugh. Ironically, I don't miss intimacy that much. But Chris and I never had fireworks cracking between us. Our closest friends used to joke that Chris and I seemed more like brother and sister than a couple. I guess that's true, because we knew each other in ways others didn't. I wouldn't have had it any other way.

  At the end of the first week, the day the wedding was supposed to take place, I put the dress away, the sight of it too much to bear.

  Tristan and I spend our second week trying to make the place habitable. We build a makeshift shower using the bamboo-like trees as framework and covering them with leaves, placing one of the tightly woven baskets with water above. Tristan, who must have been some sort of magic plumber in his former life, adds a hollow branch as a pipe with some sort of mechanism inside that, by pulling a string, lets water comes out. Since it rains regularly and richly, and we've woven so many baskets to collect water, we have plenty to take up to four showers a day. It's the thing that makes the humidity and sweating bearable. We try to be careful and use as little shampoo or shower gel as possible when we shower or wash clothes, but we're burning through our supplies quickly. Aside from frequent showers, personal hygiene is an issue. Tristan shaves with the pocket knife, and when I get my period, I use whatever strip of fabric I can spare, since I don't have one single tampon with me. I wear my hair in a bun all the time, because otherwise the sweat might drive me to do something crazy like cutting all my hair off. We build a table next to where we usually light the fire, and use fallen tree trunks as benches. The place looks like a very rustic camp, if you overlook the wrecked plane.

  I don’t talk about the wedding anymore. Thinking of Chris and the wedding depresses me, so I try to avoid it, filling the silence with mindless chatter.

  I listen intently to a bird chirping somewhere high above us as I help Trist shape a hollow tree into something we can use.

  “This sounds like Vivaldi’s Four Seasons,” I say.

  Tristan’s head snaps up. “What?” he asks, confused.

  “The bird. Listen.” For a few seconds, he does. Then his lip curves into a smile. “I think you’re right. You’re an expert on Vivaldi after all.” I can tell he’s humouring me, and my cheeks fill with warmth. I often listened to Vivaldi while he was driving me around. Too often, it seems.

  “You don’t like it? Why didn’t you say something whenever I asked you to play that CD in the car? I did ask if it bothered you.”

  “It didn’t bother me at all,” he says. “And it seemed to make you happy, so why not listen to it? You always had a blissful smile when Four Seasons was playing.” Then he bites his lip, as if he said something he wasn’t supposed to. Before I get the chance to figure out what, he continues, “What do you like about that song in particular?”

  “It’s invigorating, like pure energy. I always feel full of life after listening to it.”

  He nods and then we concentrate on the piece of wood again. My eyes fall involuntarily on the engagement ring on my finger. I try very hard not to think about the wedding ring that I should now also wear. Thinking about how my wedding ring would look on me, I notice something on Tristan's ring finger for the first time. A thin line of skin is lighter than the rest, as if he'd been wearing a ring for a long time.

  The words are out of my mouth before I have time to get them through my brain filter. "You were married."

  Tristan goes rigid. He follows my gaze to his finger and answers in a measured tone, "Yes, a few years ago, before I started working for Chris."

  "What happened?"

  Still staring at his finger, he says, deception coloring his tone, "She fell out of love with me." The idea that someone hurt him revolts me. He deserves better. A bizarre wish to protect him so no one hurts him again blooms inside me. Of course, here in the rainforest, the challenge is to ensure that nothing, not no one, hurts him.

  "And in love with someone else?" When he doesn’t answer I ask, “Are you seeing someone back in L.A.?”

  “No.”

  I see a torrent of emotions in his eyes—most prominently the plea to drop the issue.

  I drop it, but this talk of falling in love with someone else tugs at a fear that has sprung up inside me since we crashed. I find myself blurting out, "If you feared you might never see the woman you love again, would you try to forget her in someone else's arms?"

  Tristan straightens up. "Chris loves you. Loneliness and pain
might drive some people to do things they wouldn't otherwise do, but I doubt Chris is one of those people."

  "I wouldn't hold it against him, if he did… something," I whisper. His eyes scrutinize me with an intensity they never have before. When I can't hold his gaze anymore, I look down at my hands.

  "You wouldn't?" he asks incredulously.

  "I can't imagine how much pain he's in if he believes I’m dead. If being with someone else can lessen that pain…" I brush away a tear. "I just don't think I'll ever see him again."

  "Sure you do. Why do you keep building that fire everyday if not for hoping someone will see it and rescue us?"

  "So I don't go crazy," I admit. "I know no one will come."

  "Even if no one comes, as soon as the water subsides, we'll be able to walk away from here."

  “That will take months. And who knows if we’ll make it out of the forest alive anyway?” I shake my head, trying to forget I ever said that. I am a positive person, but apparently allowing one dark thought in opened the door to all of them, tormenting me. Tristan puts his arms around me comfortingly, and I sink into them, taking in his wonderful strength.

  Each night during this second week I try to think of anything but Chris. I forbid myself to cry. The first few days I fail. When I manage to stop crying, I forbid myself to think of him at all. Memories of Chris—of us—don't belong in this alien place. They belong in our splendid apartment in L.A. and our favorite restaurant on the beach. Or in my old apartment and car. But not here. I can't keep the memories safe here. I can't allow myself to miss him. Missing him is debilitating. And I need all my strength to be able to survive.

  The third week, my conscious efforts to distract myself from thinking of Chris pay off, and I find myself thinking of him less often. My constant reminder is my beautiful engagement ring, but I can't bring myself to take it off. There is one moment when the thought of Chris is inevitable. In the morning, when I make the signal fire and look up at the sky. Though there has been no sign of a plane, I still hold the dwindling hope that we will be rescued. Since the chance of that happening is near zero, we walk down the hill regularly to check the water level. It's as high as ever. Tristan says it'll be a little over three months before it recedes enough to try to walk back to civilization. We have to survive until then.