Savage Island

by Bryony Pearce

  “Carmen’s going to have to pull the tooth,” Will said. “She’s our medic. You can do it, can’t you, Car?”

  Carmen paled. “Si … probably.”

  “OK.” Grady wrapped his arms around his chest. “Me, you or Will, then? Straws?”

  I shook my head. “If Will comes back missing a tooth, Mum will lose it big time.”

  Lizzie looked up sharply. “Ben, that’s—”

  “Perfectly true,” Will said mildly.

  I looked at Grady. “So, it’s you … or me.”

  His eyes were frozen on mine. Then I picked up a stone, showed him and turned my back. I tucked the stone into one fist. “Choose a hand.” I turned back round. “Whoever ends up with the stone loses a tooth.”

  Grady reached out a finger and held it over first one fist, then the other. I could feel the stone digging into my palm. His hand was trembling.

  “Get on with it.” Will sounded bored.

  Grady smacked my right fist.

  My heart thudded. I slowly opened my left hand and tipped the stone from my palm.

  Grady whooped, Lizzie shushed him.

  “Are you all right, Ben?”

  “Sure. It’s only fair.” I forced a smile. “I did vote to keep going.”

  Carmen let out a tiny moan. “I don’t feel good about this, chico.”

  “Would it make everyone feel better if Ben had a financial incentive?” Will cocked his head. “How about if he does this, Ben gets a percentage of everyone’s winnings? Say, two and a half.”

  Grady frowned. “That’s twenty-five grand each.”

  “Ben gets another £100,000 and we all get £975,000.”

  Carmen’s lips curled upwards. “That does seem fair.”

  Lizzie nodded.

  Matthew was laughing at me. “Ben’s got to copy his answers off his little brother.” He was waving his arms around. “Ben’s a dumbo!”

  The oldest girl in our class marched across the playground. Her hair was long and she wore it in a dark plait that never stayed neat. Stray strands flew mesmerizingly around her face. Her glasses had blue Star Wars frames; she had campaigned for months to get the Disney ones replaced.

  She put her hands on her hips. “Matthew Harris, you are a complete idiot,” she said and then she kicked him as hard as she could in the shin.

  Lizzie stood beside me as Carmen held Grady’s pliers in a tin of boiling water.

  “We shouldn’t even be considering this,” Lizzie said again miserably. “What kind of people are we?”

  “It’s OK, Lizzie. How bad can it be?” I raised my torch to search for Will, hoping he’d tell me his own experience hadn’t been as terrible as I remembered.

  Will shrugged. “It’ll be bad, but it’ll be over fairly quickly. And there are things we can do to make it hurt less.”

  “Like what?” Lizzie demanded.

  “We’ve got painkillers – he can take some now.”

  Grady opened his medical kit. “Hold the torch here, Will. How about some Tramadol?”

  Lizzie stared. “That’s what Nan was taking after her operation. How do you have that?”

  “Dad.” Grady slid the packet out. “He filled the prescription – just in case.”

  “There you go, Ben,” Will said. “You’ll hardly feel a thing.”

  “What else?” Lizzie said.

  Will’s mouth twisted into his little smile. “The brain produces its own painkillers, but for that, Ben needs to be relaxed.”

  “The Tramadol should help with that too,” Grady said and I looked at the two pills I’d cracked into my palm.

  “I’ve got something else to relax him!” Carmen laid the pliers in a clean mess tin and pulled the magic mushrooms out of her jacket. “Here!”

  “I’m not sure about that.” I frowned.

  “You saw me take them. They’re fine.” She broke one in half. “Here, that should be plenty.”

  Lizzie put her arm around me and I leaned closer to her. “Take it, Ben,” she insisted.

  I took the mushroom with my other hand and examined it.

  “It’ll take a little while to kick in,” Carmen said. “Eat it now.”

  I ate the mushroom. It was the most disgusting thing I’d ever tasted. Carmen clapped her palm over my mouth. “Don’t spit it out.”

  “Yuck.” I retched and pulled away from her.

  “Quick, drink something.” Lizzie looked around for a water bottle, but Carmen had already produced her bottle of vodka. The label gleamed gold in the torchlight.

  “Have some of this.”

  “He’s going to be tripping his nuts off,” Will remarked.

  I tipped the Tramadol on to my tongue, let the capsules sit for a second, then upended the cheap vodka.

  Lizzie looked at Will. “What else can we do?”

  “Distraction,” he said.

  “We can hold his hands,” Lizzie said and Carmen laughed.

  “Is that the best you can think of to distract a boy?” She began to pull her top and vest over her head. Her voice was muffled by her T-shirt. Will and Grady stared at the lacy bra that was revealed little by little. The torch, quickly aimed by Grady, showed that the bra was bright red. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. The colour glowed against her olive skin. Were the mushrooms starting to kick in?

  I stared between the bottle of vodka and the red lace. I started to feel light-headed and the world began to slide sideways.

  Carmen swallowed. “You’re sure you want me to do this? Wouldn’t you prefer it to be Will?”

  “You do it.” I found a wide, flat rock to sit on and thumped down.

  Carmen touched the pliers. “Which tooth, Ben?”

  “Not one of the front ones,” Lizzie said.

  “The ones at the very back will be hardest to get.” Grady frowned, shining the torch at me.

  “How about the third molar in?” Will pointed to his own mouth. “That one.”

  I took a deep breath, which made my head spin, and nodded. I handed the vodka to Grady, who took a long drink of his own. “See you on the other side.”

  Lizzie’s fingers were twisting like snakes. “I don’t like this.”

  I tried not to notice that Carmen’s hands were trembling as she picked up the pliers. “Will, you’ll have to hold his head still.”

  Will nodded and walked behind me. I gave an involuntary shudder as I felt Will’s hand on my shoulder. Not comforting me; pinning me down, preventing me from running.

  An insect, long and scuttling, raced across my hand, from one nook in the rock to another. I pulled my hand up and blinked at my fingers.

  Grady put my hand around the vodka bottle and guided it to my lips. “Drink up.”

  My head thumped like a drum as I suckled the bottle. The front of my shirt grew wet. I was spilling more from my numb lips than I was swallowing. I fixed my eyes on Carmen. Her black hair slid forwards to tickle my cheek, the pink tips grey in the darkness.

  I looked for Lizzie. She was shifting from foot to foot behind Carmen. I raised an arm towards her. “Hold my hand?” My words sounded odd to my ears, far away and blunt.

  Lizzie dropped to her knees on the damp grass and caught my fingers in hers.

  Finally, Carmen pulled the bottle from me. “How do you feel, chico?”

  “Pretty great.” My gaze shifted from Carmen’s bra to Lizzie’s blue eyes.

  “Sing to me?” I mumbled. Something I never would normally ask her. I had to be careful, my tongue was loosening. What if I said something even more stupid? Like I’ve always loved you, Lizzie. That’d be just brilliant. Quickly I opened my mouth and pointed with my free hand. Do it.

  Immediately Will’s hands caught my temples like a vice. I could no longer see Lizzie, but she began to sing, her low voice twining into my ears. An old song, one that she often sang along to in the car. We both knew all the words.

  Then Carmen inserted one hand to hold my mouth open and put the pliers in with the other.

  Bats
whizzed past, swift blurs against the sky. My stomach lurched and I began to feel sick. I tried to wrench my head around, but Will held me still. Vomit swelled in my oesophagus. Lizzie’s fingers in mine. I thought frantically. Carmen’s bra. The moon. The … pain!

  The pliers were clamped around my molar and Carmen was pulling. At first I’d felt nothing, as if she was tugging at a lump of food in there, then the nerve endings came alive and shrieked.

  I bucked like a bull and gagged on a scream.

  “Quick, Car!” Lizzie cried.

  Will pulled me back hard and I felt his knee on my chest, the rock against my back. I started to tremble, my heels drummed on the ground.

  “Hurry,” Lizzie cried again.

  I focused on Carmen’s face. She was sweating, wrinkles between her eyebrows, her eyes narrowed.

  “I … can’t,” she ground out. “It’s not … coming. Grady, I need you.”

  Grady moved into place and Carmen wrapped his fingers around the pliers. “Pull.”

  He braced himself on the rock and leaned back. I howled between his fingers. Thrashed.

  “Not good, not good,” Lizzie was repeating like a mantra. Her hand was crushing mine.

  My eyes bulged and Grady yanked again, rotated this time. I felt something come loose and blood filled my throat, coppery and thick. I choked.

  “Almost there.” Grady twisted once more and I wailed.

  Grady grew horns. His skin turned crimson and his teeth elongated. Blood filled his eyes, black veins traced his forehead.

  Midges crawled over Carmen’s naked chest and blood began to run down her throat from a thousand bites. I tried to turn my head. Only my eyes went to Lizzie.

  Her blue eyes had gone white all over, the glaze of death. Water ran down her face; tears that turned into an ocean. Her clothes soaked, everything wet. Ice-cold water running from her hand to mine. I shrieked and Will’s face appeared above mine. Impassive. Normal Will, his eyes cold and dark, his mouth warped into that small smile that didn’t know what to make of itself.

  “I think he’s hallucinating,” Carmen cried.

  Will’s eyes bored into mine. “Not surprising with everything he’s taken.”

  Grady gave a final yell of effort and my tooth tore from my mouth by its roots. He fell backwards, still gripping the pliers and blood flew in an arc, spattering Lizzie’s shocked face and Carmen’s chest.

  Will released me and I rolled on to my side, thudding from the rock to the ground, spitting blood into the mud and vomiting on to the grass. My gut uncoiled and I vaguely felt Lizzie’s hands on my back, stroking me. Vodka, blood and shreds of mushroom spilled around my knees, hot and acidic.

  “It’s all over, Ben.” Lizzie’s words were soothing.

  I tried to stand up, but my limbs weren’t my own. I fell back, my mouth filling with the taste of blood and an aching void where my molar had been. I spat again.

  “Here.” Carmen’s T-shirt, still warm from her skin, wadded up, shoved into my mouth.

  “Hey, look at that.” Grady staggered to his feet, holding up my tooth. The roots were long, like legs, and blood and gristle clung to the branches. “I did it.”

  “Well done, Grady,” Lizzie said without looking at him. “Put Ben’s tooth in the box and take out the other one. Wrap it in my glasses cloth – it’s in the case in one of the side pockets of my bag – and leave it there for safekeeping.”

  “Will.” Carmen’s voice was worried, and her hands, which had been holding her T-shirt in my mouth, looked as if they had been dipped in ink. “Why is Ben still bleeding?”

  Will narrowed his eyes. “Uh-oh.”

  “What?” Lizzie snapped, turning on him.

  “How much vodka did he have?”

  Carmen held up the bottle. “About a third.”

  “It’s a blood thinner,” Will said. “I should have thought of it before.”

  Lizzie looked at Carmen’s blood-soaked T-shirt, then at Grady’s medical kit. “Haven’t you got anything in there to stop the bleeding?”

  Grady shook his head.

  Chapter Nine

  “Ben needs to eat, drink and rest.” Lizzie took control. “We can’t set up camp right here – other teams could be arriving any time. Will, Grady, can you guys go to the bottom of the hill and pitch somewhere on the east slope? Light a fire and get some food started. Carmen and I will bring Ben.”

  Will and Grady shouldered their packs, then hung mine and Lizzie’s on their fronts, sandwiching themselves in equipment.

  “We can’t take Carmen’s,” Will warned as Grady grunted and bent his knees.

  Carmen put her own rucksack on. “That’s fine, querido amigo, I am not walking wounded. I’ll set up my own bivvy when we get down.”

  Will nodded and turned away. “Don’t forget to relock the box,” he called as they started downhill.

  I watched through foggy eyes as Lizzie picked up the small box that now contained my tooth. She dropped it back inside the checkpoint box and closed the lid. Then she pressed her thumb down on the screen. The lock clicked.

  “I feel bad,” she said after a moment. “We’re leaving the next group with the same problem.”

  “What do you think they’ll do?” Carmen asked. She was wearing a green jumper. When had she dressed?

  “Hopefully they’ll give up.”

  I pictured other people pulling out their teeth because of one stupid dirty trick. I swallowed and the taste of more blood made me retch.

  “Poor baby.” Lizzie stroked my forehead and I leaned towards her.

  “Can’t rest here, chico.” Carmen pulled me on to my feet. I staggered and Lizzie steadied me. She had her crutch under her arm. “We just need to walk downhill,” she murmured encouragingly. “One step at a time.”

  The ground beneath me appeared spongy and I staggered and sat down hard, almost pulling Lizzie off her feet.

  “We’re going to have to leave it a little while,” I heard Lizzie say. “He’s off his face and losing blood. We’ll be lucky to get him moving in a straight line.”

  “He threw up most of what he took,” Carmen replied seriously.

  “But how much got into his bloodstream before that?”

  Lizzie sat next to me and put her arm around my shoulders. “I think the bleeding’s slowing,” she said. “Come on, Ben.”

  “Water,” I whispered hoarsely. I wanted my mouth cleaned out.

  “Not yet.” Carmen squeezed my hand. “Your gum has to clot first.”

  Lizzie and Carmen hauled me back to my feet. I swayed. Little lights burst all around me and I held my hand in front of my face; it left a trail of lights like fibre optics.

  Carmen sighed and put her shoulder underneath mine. “I know you did this partly for me, chico.” Her voice was low. “I’m going to make sure we win this.”

  “He did it for me, too,” Lizzie said. “He knows I want to pay off our mortgage.”

  Carmen stared at Lizzie over my head. “Why do you want to do that? Your parents aren’t short on money, are they?”

  Lizzie looked at me and then at Carmen. “Don’t tell the others, but Dad’s not well. It’s his prostate.” She swallowed. “He needs to give up work, but he won’t until the mortgage is paid off.”

  “Chica! I didn’t know. Your poor papi.”

  “It’s OK.” Lizzie shrugged. “Mum’s looking for a full-time job, but at her age… All the interviews she’s got have been for low-paid positions.”

  “And you haven’t even told Ben?”

  Lizzie shook her head. “I didn’t want him to worry … and…”

  I tried to lift my hand to comfort her, but my arm felt like spaghetti and there were moths flying around our torches. They looked like fluff, leaving puffs of dust in the air. When I looked back at Lizzie, she was talking again. What had I missed?

  “…our relationship isn’t like that. I mean, he’s my best friend. Apart from you, of course. But we don’t talk about family stuff. He’s had something g
oing on at home since before his dad left, but he’s never talked to me about it – he shuts me out every time I try to mention it.”

  “So you don’t talk to him?”

  “Not about Dad’s illness, no.”

  “Well, he knows now.”

  Lizzie laughed. “I don’t think he’ll remember much about this at all.” She caught my hand. “Come on, Ben. We’ll try to get a bit further this time.”

  At first each step seemed like a huge effort, the three of us half-walking, half-reeling through the darkness. Carmen held the torch so that we could see the ground, Lizzie tested the footing with her crutch.

  Her dad was sick and she hadn’t told me. She felt like I didn’t confide in her, so she didn’t confide in me. I hadn’t known that by holding back my own problems, it would hurt us. But it had.

  After a while my movements started to blur, as if the ground were flying under me. Then the slope evened out and it was as though all the stones wanted to trap my feet.

  Carmen and Lizzie were panting; Carmen lurched under my weight, but I couldn’t move without her guidance. “Sorry,” I said. “Sorry, sorry, s—”

  “It’s not your fault, chico.” Carmen grunted as my foot caught on another rock. “You’ll feel better in the morning.”

  A fire glowed in front of us.

  “Will?” Lizzie called. “Come and help.”

  Mum was shrieking. “Have you seen this?”

  I looked up from my spellings. She was holding Will’s bag in one hand and a letter in the other.

  “Dean, have you seen this?” Mum was still yelling.

  There was a thumping upstairs as Dad left his study. He glanced at me as he came into the kitchen, then at Will, who was standing in a corner by the door.

  “What’s up?”

  “What’s up? What’s up?” Mum mocked. “That interfering cow at the school.” She shook the paper. “She made Will see –” her voice lowered – “a counsellor.” Like it was a dirty word.

  “Without our permission?” Dad frowned.

  “It’s a school thing,” I said cautiously. “Miss Clark comes in every Wednesday and does Nurture Group with some of the…” I trailed off.