by Laura Bates
He turns to the other girls. ‘Were there any more of these?’
Shannon looks shocked as she shakes her head. ‘No, we just brought one back to try, we thought the others looked more promising.’ She points towards the fruits, and Elliot stoops to examine them, sorting through the pile carefully.
Hot tears spring to Hayley’s eyes. Tears of shock, fear and relief. The horrible sensation of lurching from good news to deadly danger in a split second. Wondering if she’ll ever feel properly safe again. Her hand sears, and she squeezes it angrily into a fist, letting the tears prickle her eyelids but brushing them quickly away before anyone else notices.
‘I think they’re okay,’ Elliot is saying. ‘I don’t know the names of them all but my dad taught me how to recognise anything poisonous when I was a kid. I don’t see anything here to worry about.’
So they fall on the pile of fruit greedily, ravenous hands tearing, lips sucking, tongues eagerly licking.
There are luscious mangoes, their honeyed flesh bursting through reddening skin, sticky juice running down fingers and arms. Round, firm guavas with pinkish hearts, their bitter skin yielding reluctantly to insistent teeth and offering a woolly, subtle sweetness within. There’s an earth-brown fruit the size of a small avocado with a thin wrinkled skin like a baked potato, its flesh soft yellows bleeding into crimson like a sunrise, its shining black seeds half the length of a thumb. The supple, pulpy flesh tastes sweet and malty and they quickly learn to eat only the softest of the crop after May bites into a firmer fruit but then sucks at her teeth, her mouth dried out by its sour shock. And, strangest of all, a squat green fruit like an overgrown tomato, its skin dark and bruised, a star-shaped circle of leaves standing up around its stalk. They pierce the skin, expecting a firm orange or green flesh, and recoil at the monstrous reality: a blackened, jellyish fruit with seeds the shape of large, shelled walnuts sticking out in a central circle like a sea-monster’s teeth, the flesh making an obscene sucking noise as it pulls apart. ‘Ugh, it’s bad,’ Jessa grunts, discarding it in the sand, but each one they open is the same, so, after Elliot has given it a cautious smell, they taste it and find it to be subtly sweet and silky smooth, like a heavy, slightly pumpkin-flavoured custard.
One of the coconuts has sprouted, its bright green shoot just developing leaves. When they open it, instead of water and flesh, it yields a spherical, spongy ball, wrinkled like a yellowish brain, filling the cavity of the shell. It is light and salty-sweet, the spongy texture giving way with a slight crunch.
They sit in a circle on the sand and eat their fill, scooping flesh from skins with plastic spoons left over from the airline meals, dragging teeth across fruit peel to strip the last scraps of flesh.
Suddenly, with a quiet rustling of leaves, a pair of shining eyes is watching them from the edge of the treeline. Hayley sees the creature first, scrambling to her feet with a sharp intake of breath, her mind whirling with tusks and claws and images of charging boars or pouncing wild cats. But as the others spin around in panic it creeps forwards, its pointed, triangular nose followed by a bushy, bulbous body and a fluffy, striped tail.
‘A racoon,’ Hayley breathes, collapsing back to the ground with relief. ‘Here, little guy. You hungry?’ She holds out a husk of fruit, expecting the creature to be wary of her, but it darts eagerly forward and seizes the morsel straight from her fingers, sitting up on its back legs to nibble it, black button nose twitching enthusiastically.
They laugh in delight and continue to feed it, though Shannon tuts that they should save their supplies and if they encourage it now, it’ll never leave them alone. But even she yields when the little creature darts over to pick up a piece of coconut flesh that’s fallen on her knee, gently putting its handlike claw on her leg first and looking up at her as if to ask permission.
There’s something deeply reassuring about it, somehow, a surprise that is pleasant instead of horrifying. It gives Hayley a welcome boost to realise that not every secret the island guards is potentially deadly.
After they’ve eaten their fill, there’s an exuberant mood of excess and celebration, and even Elliot, glancing at the glassy still sea, agrees that shelter construction can wait until tomorrow.
They keep the campfire burning and sit around it late into the evening. There is a camaraderie born of success that balloons almost into hysteria. Shannon and Jason, sitting on opposite sides of the campfire, both seem prepared to set aside what happened earlier, or at least to ignore it for the time being.
May teaches everyone a campfire game that involves spotting their foreheads with charcoal and they shriek with laughter as their graffitied faces become increasingly distorted in the twilight.
* * *
That night, Hayley is back on the plane again. Everybody is unbearably relaxed. The boys are joking around, throwing Jason’s signet ring back and forth between them, crowing and shouting as he stretches to catch it. May and Shannon are painting each other’s toenails, legs extended over the empty seat between theirs. And Hayley is screaming at them, shrieking that the plane is about to fall out of the sky, begging them to listen, to do something, but nobody can hear her. And they can’t seem to see the choking smoke that starts to fill the cabin, or smell the bitter reek of petrol. She forces her face in front of Elliot’s, tries to shake him by the shoulders, but he just smiles and carries on sketching, sketching. Only Jessa looks worried, frowning at her arm, and mouthing something, but Hayley can’t hear her, as the plane begins to shake and shatter around them, the lights flashing and fizzing and they plummet into darkness.
DAY 4
‘What are you doing?’ May tilts her head to one side and squints at Jason and the uneven mess of branches precariously propped next to him in a vague pyramid shape.
‘What does it look like?’ He huffs, squatting down and stretching up, as he attempts to heave a thick stick onto the top of the pile.
‘Like a constipated chicken in an aerobics class,’ May answers, without hesitation.
‘Ha ha,’ Jason pants, then swears loudly as the whole lot collapses around him with a clatter. ‘Stupid piece of—’ he kicks out, scattering wood everywhere. ‘Get over here, Brian, dammit!’
‘Tepees are too complicated,’ Elliot says, quietly, from behind him. ‘It has to be more of a lean-to.’
He waves the others over to a tree near the campfire, where he’s propped a sturdy, long, forked branch up against the trunk so it makes a sloping triangle with its right angle at the base of the tree.
‘Then prop thinner sticks against the central pole from both sides,’ he explains, demonstrating with a few supple, thin branches, balancing them in a triangle shape.
‘We can use palm leaves to make a kind of matting on top,’ Jessa suggests, seeing where Elliot’s plan is going. ‘Nothing fancy, but it’ll be big enough to keep one person dry if they lie down, and that’s better than nothing, especially if it rains or the wind picks up.’
‘And we can upgrade to a longhouse once we’ve been here a few years and had the chance to really hone our skills,’ May jokes, but it falls flat.
Elliot makes it look easy, but the others struggle. At first, the sticks slide repeatedly to the floor, but Jessa deftly starts weaving the palm leaves together with her one good hand, clamping the thick, rubbery stalks between her knees, the tip of her tongue poking out between her teeth in concentration. By weaving the ends of each leaf into the next, they create much longer mats, which they layer on top of each other until no sunlight penetrates into the small space below.
‘Ooh, pretty,’ Brian says, looking over from the shelter he and Jason have put together. ‘Glad you guys are focusing on aesthetics, because it’s super important for your island survival base to be properly styled.’
He pats the hulking structure Jason is piling with leaves and vines and it falls apart in a crashing tumble of foliage, leaving the others in fits of laughter.
‘Hmm.’ Jessa gently takes hold of one end of the palm matting, g
iving it a firm shake. It bends supply, the structure sturdy beneath the intricate weaving. ‘You were saying?’ She flashes her wide grin, tongue tip poking beneath the gap between her front teeth.
The inquisitive racoon makes another appearance, scuttling boldly down the beach to sit near them, ‘Judging the heck out of the boys’ construction attempts,’ May says. ‘He’d have that thing rigged up in no time, wouldn’t you, Rocket?’ she says, affectionately, throwing him a strip of coconut.
‘You’ve named the raccoon after the Marvel one?’ Elliot asks, and May nods. ‘Yup. Thought he might come in handy if we need a violent weapons expert who’s good with a machine gun.’ He grins and shakes his head, as the stripy creature scampers eagerly at May’s heels, hoping for more.
Next they collect thinner sticks, stripped of their leaves, and lie them in parallel rows, trying to create a kind of floor matting to lift them above the sand with its flies and irritants. But the sticks roll in all directions when May clambers awkwardly into the first shelter to test it, and she complains that they dig uncomfortably into her ribs and thighs.
So Elliot shows them how to make strong, thin cord from long strands of dead seagrass, pulled in great crackling handfuls from a patch along the beach, where the bushes peter out into scrubby grass. They soak the dead, sun-bleached grass in seawater, then take three strands, twisting and turning one at a time, over and over, until a fine rope begins to emerge. When they near the end of one strand, they twist another into the pattern, carrying on until the ‘rope’ is almost three metres long before starting a new piece.
When they’ve got enough rope, Elliot uses it to tie the floor poles into a flexible, flat mat, managing to only roll his eyes very slightly when Jessa exclaims that it looks exactly like a larger version of the one she uses at home to roll sushi.
‘Speaking of sushi.’ Brian grins, ‘who’s up for some spear fishing?’
Elliot looks doubtful, but doesn’t say anything; Hayley senses he knows there’s only so far the other boys will be willing to accept his authority and he’s picking his battles. He shrugs. ‘It might work, but you’ll need something really sharp.’
‘Yeah, obviously, dickweed.’ Brian rolls his eyes and pulls out a chunky stick from behind his back; one of the amateurishly sharpened branches they’d used for ‘protection’ that first night. The patrols have not resumed since the snoring failure of the first attempt, though everybody has tactfully avoided mentioning it.
Brian has split the tip of the stick and wedged a jagged piece of broken glass from the plane wreck firmly into the crack, making a kind of brutal-looking, primitive spear. Hayley isn’t convinced he’ll catch anything; the makeshift weapon looks heavy and she doubts Brian has either the delicacy or the patience for spear fishing, but she hopes she’s wrong. Fresh fish would make a welcome change.
After two meals, the novelty of an all-fruit diet is already beginning to wear off, the sweetness of the fruits becoming cloying and having an unwelcome effect on their bowels. (‘Step away from those bushes,’ Jessa had thundered, when she spotted Brian slinking off towards the treeline the previous night, armed with a few sheets of paper torn out of Elliot’s sketchbook. ‘New rule. Zero toilet activity within a five-hundred-metre radius of the camp,’ she’d ordered, sending a ripple of sniggers from around the campfire. ‘AND BURY YOUR BUSINESS AFTERWARDS’ she shouted, as they shuffled off down the beach.)
‘Want to share one?’
Hayley stops plaiting and looks up, half hidden by a clump of seagrass. Jason and Shannon are alone, standing by the nearest lean-to as Jason jerks his thumb towards it and grins at her. She tuts, turns her head away. Her hair falls over her face in a dark cloud, obscuring her expression.
‘What’s going on, Shan?’ Jason asks, his tone more gentle than Hayley has ever heard it. ‘I love you, babe, you know I do, why are you being like this?’
‘Like scared and panicked and constantly anxious?’ she retorts, still not looking at him. ‘Gee, I can’t imagine.’
‘I’m here. You’re my girl. You know I’ll take care of you like I always do.’ Jason moves closer, his hand circling Shannon’s waist and caressing her stomach, lifting the black strappy top she’s wearing above a white tennis skirt.
‘Jason.’ Shannon’s voice is careful, softer now, but Hayley can see her hand moving beneath his, gently pushing him away. He flinches, and Shannon quickly interlaces her fingers with his. She turns and leans into him briefly. ‘It’s just a lot, okay. I’m trying not to break down and freak out, same as everyone else.’ She takes a tiny step back, away from him. ‘And those shelters are built for one and one only. They’re tiny.’
He steps closer. ‘We could squeeze in…’ She holds up a hand, a fragile barrier between them. ‘C’mon, baby, we nearly died, isn’t that worth something?’ Hayley squints at Shannon. She seems to be holding her breath. ‘I know, I know you want to wait,’ Jason wheedles, ‘but there’s… other stuff we can do. No parents, no curfews…’
She looks up at him. ‘Not things that can be done in a tiny leaf-covered beach shack without getting sand in some extremely uncomfortable places,’ she says lightly, quickly side-stepping him. ‘Trust me, the only thing worse than being stuck on a desert island would be being stuck on a desert island with a sand-filled vagina.’
‘I deserve better than this, Shan, you know I do,’ Jason calls after her, a low warning in his voice, as she walks lightly back down the beach towards the others.
And Hayley watches as Jason frowns and sets off to meet Brian, kicking up sand as he goes.
* * *
Elliot and the girls work steadily on through the day, heaving the biggest branches into position, propped as securely as possible against a sturdy tree. They learn as they go along that the branches are most stable if driven into the ground, wet sand and mud swathing the bottom of each in the hope it’ll shore them up against the wind. They work their way along the beach, a few metres between each shelter, building up the sides of each one with sticks and then covering them with plaited leaves. There’s a strange satisfaction in watching each one look a little straighter and sturdier than the one before, the sleeping mats neater and firmer. Jessa and May soon fall into a rhythm, May placing the leaves Jessa has painstakingly plaited, quietly humming as she works. It’s the same smooth cooperation that makes them so effective on the team; Jessa providing a stable base as May catapults into a backflip from her shoulders, knowing exactly where her best friend’s palms will be as her pointed feet plummet down to land on them. Their connection is so fluid they give the impression of a single body moving to the music. Not that anybody is going to be climbing on Jessa’s shoulders any time soon, Hayley realises, watching the stiffness in her movements, the way she automatically twists her body to protect her damaged arm.
Once the trunks are all in position, Elliot disappears to fetch more firewood and so Hayley finds herself paired once more with Shannon, their awkward silence noticeable in contrast with the others’ easy companionship. She glances at Shannon between the palm fronds, dark eyebrows drawn together in a sharp frown of concentration, black curls, greasier now, swept back in a ponytail. Hayley wants to ask her about Jason, check if she’s okay, but she doesn’t know how. It’s not like she and Shannon have ever exactly been friends, even over all the weeks of practice and their time on tour.
In the distance behind her, Hayley can see Brian, still lumbering about in the shallows, stabbing excitably at the surf. He shouts something to Jason, who seems to be bent double, examining something near his foot.
She doesn’t know what it is, exactly, that makes her feel sort of on edge around Shannon. Maybe it’s that she sees more of a reflection of herself in the cheer captain than she’d like to admit. When she first joined the squad, Hayley had a pretty clear idea of what it would be like, or rather, what they would be like. And she definitely didn’t expect to find that they’d have anything in common.
May, Jessa and Shannon had been on the squad fu
ll time since their freshman year, and they weren’t so much students who happened to cheer, as cheerleaders who went to school. But if they were the headline-hitting A-listers of Oak Ridge, then Hayley wasn’t even on the same page. In fact, she was usually the one who wrote it: on the side lines clutching her notebook while the three of them struck a pose for the camera.
So it was a shock, actually spending time with them. Take Jessa, who seemed so achingly cool from a distance with her funky twists and designer sunglasses, perfect toe-touches and crowd-pleasing splits. Hayley had barely dared to breathe around her when she’d turned up at her first practice. But it had been Jessa who’d approached her, sweeping her into a hug, all ‘call me Jessa’ and ‘don’t worry, Shannon’s bark is worse than her bite’. Jessa, who only ever drank soda and lime when they partied after the games on tour, who drove everyone safely home and quietly disappeared for two and a half hours on Sunday morning to find a local church while the others were still too hungover to get out of bed.
May had been less accommodating. She’d frowned when Jessa took pity on Hayley at that first practice and Hayley had found herself on the sharp end of May’s tongue several times since. But who hadn’t? It felt like you had to earn your way into May’s good graces, and Hayley was about a decade behind the other girls.
But the biggest surprise was Shannon. It was hard to put her finger on what was so different to Hayley’s expectations. Shannon was beautiful, popular and talented up close, just like she seemed from afar. But it was as if she didn’t enjoy it, like it was all a job. Shannon didn’t just drill the team at practice, she turned up with pages and pages of detailed, complex notes; she’d call at nine o’clock on a Friday night to discuss your dismount; her knowledge of other cheerleading squads and their routines was encyclopaedic. On the first Saturday of the tour, when the team had no games scheduled, she’d insisted on dragging them all to a local competition, silencing May’s loud objections with a single look, while the guys used their day off to head to a local arcade. Hayley didn’t only admire Shannon’s conscientious approach, she recognised it. Shannon was just as driven in her pursuit of cheerleading excellence as Hayley was in her quest for an Ivy League entry ticket.
