Lost Girls

by Ann Kelley

  “Shouldn’t we clean it with hot water, Mrs. Campbell? Or disinfect it somehow?” I’m thinking of my first-aid course.

  “Oh, it’ll be fine, Bonnie.”

  Mom trained as a nurse and I’m not squeamish about blood and stuff, but the leg is red and swollen. Infections from coral cuts are common in the tropics. Some of that purple disinfectant we buy at the base shop would have been useful.

  “If you fuss you’ll only frighten her. We’ll be home tomorrow and she’ll get proper medical treatment. We’re doing fine for now.” This is the first time Mrs. Campbell has spoken to me since her outburst last night, and I’m relieved.

  I lead another search party to look for any other useful debris from last night’s storm. No luck, but I do find an amazing large empty shell. I think it’s a conch. I take it back with me. They had a conch in Lord of the Flies and used it to call everyone together for meetings. And whoever spoke in meetings got to hold the conch, and all the others had to listen. I tell the others that you can blow into it and make a loud trumpeting sound, but we all try and only Hope can do it.

  I suggest we tie rags over our noses and mouths to help keep the sand out. It helps.

  Then Hope has an idea. Somehow she’s managed to salvage her supply of those old-fashioned Kotex pads with loops at the end, and she gives each of us one to use as a mask. They really work! We put the loops over our ears. We look so ridiculous, like surgeons in a comedy movie. We laugh for the first time since the storm.

  The laughter stops when we return to the cave and realize we have lost the fire. As darkness falls we huddle together, the Thai barbecue at our feet, the juniors in our arms to keep them feeling safe. Sandy’s sister, Carly, still hasn’t spoken, and she’s pale and listless.

  “Let’s sing!” Mrs. Campbell smiles brightly at us.

  So we sing all the songs we can think of, from the Beatles to the Beach Boys. Mrs. Campbell, Arlene, and May know all the lyrics. We try to harmonize like the real bands do but we’re rubbish. It helps take our minds off our troubles, but I keep finding my thoughts drifting away, back to poor Sandy. Flashbacks—the sleeping bag blown through the air, wrapping itself around the palm tree. Sandy inside, alone, dead.

  My thoughts are almost noisy enough to drown out the sound of the songs and the wind and the rain.

  Natalie is still asleep but it’s not a natural sleep. I put my hand on her forehead like Mom does when I’m feeling ill, and she’s feverish.

  “What did I say about fussing?” Mrs. Campbell reminds me, but not unkindly. “You’ll only upset her, or Jody….” And she points at Jody, who is whispering to herself or to the invisible Mikey. But I think Natalie needs more care than we’re giving her.

  Mom should be here. She’d know how to help Natalie. She’s the most capable person I know. Most days when she drives into Pattaya to get the groceries there’s a line of sick Thais waiting for a lift to the local clinic. Mom’s become the local ambulance service, fitting in the clinic visits between shopping.

  A few weeks ago a U.S. Marine hammered at our door in the early hours of the morning. His yelling woke me. He was carrying his unconscious Thai girlfriend in his arms. She had bad head injuries. Robbers had fixed a trip wire across the road that had knocked them from his motorbike. His wallet and passport were gone.

  Mom wrapped a towel around the girl’s head and drove them to the all-night clinic in Pattaya. The doctor could do nothing for her and sent them by taxi to Bangkok, which is a two-hour drive away. Mom lent them the fare.

  Recently the Marine returned with the cash to thank Mom for her help. His girlfriend is fine, recovering from her injuries.

  I look around at us now, huddling, cranky and miserable. Mom would know what to do. She’s always on top of things. She would soon have us organized. I’ll be nicer to her when we get home.

  Not that I’m horrible to her exactly, but I suppose I don’t appreciate her enough. She hasn’t been able to work here (U.S. rules for alien service wives or something), and she says it’s boring being in the middle of a war but not taking part, and wishes we’d gone back to Scotland. But then I wouldn’t see Dad at all and that would be awful, even if he is moody when he is around. Anyway, it will all be over soon and we’ll go back to our old house in Edinburgh. I love waking up on really cold mornings and wrapping up in a scarf and woolly hat for a walk to Holyrood Park. Maybe we can get a dog. I’d love a dog. A golden retriever, or one of those mongrels with hairy faces and intelligent eyes, the ones who look like they can speak.

  DAY 3, AFTERNOON

  I am sitting on my own in the shelter of a fallen palm to write this. The barbecue’s gone out again and we’ve run out of charcoal. I’m beginning to think that Layla Campbell is useless.

  One bit of good news—Hope found Carly’s teddy bear sticking out of the sand. When Hope gave it to her it was like she didn’t recognize it.

  The gale isn’t as bad as it was. The waves are racing in and engulfing the narrow beach. The sea is brown from churned-up sand. There’s a new shelf of sand where it has been moved by the storm. This sea hasn’t finished with us yet.

  “Mrs. Campbell, don’t you think it would be better if we camped on higher ground?” I ask.

  “No, Bonnie, we can’t leave the body…. We can’t leave it unattended.”

  “But the tide is coming in, and with the wind behind it, it might be even higher than last night.”

  Jas supports me. “Yes, Mrs. Campbell, it doesn’t feel safe here anymore. The sea looks as if it will come crashing on top of us at any minute.”

  Mrs. Campbell looks flustered for a moment. “Okay, okay, but we better bury the remains properly first, and mark the grave, or we’ll never find it again.”

  How can she talk so coldly about Sandy?

  The burial upsets us all. Mrs. Campbell whispers a few words over the grave, something about Sandy being an unfortunate innocent child, but when she starts crying of course we all start. Jody wants us to chant the Amelia Earhart Cadet pledge.

  “Okay then, why not?” says Mrs. Campbell. “How does it go?”

  I am shocked. “You must know the pledge.”

  “No, Bonnie, I don’t know, actually. I only took the job as cadet leader because there was no one else qualified and I was persuaded to volunteer. So…”

  “Oh.” I feel deflated.

  We chant, without the benefit of Mrs. Campbell’s voice:

  I promise to always do my best.

  I promise to be honest and truthful.

  I promise to be loyal.

  I promise to be kind and thoughtful.

  I promise to obey my parents.

  I promise to be modest.

  I promise to help my fellow cadets whenever they need help.

  We stumble through the Lord’s Prayer and sing Sandy’s favorite hymn—“All Things Bright and Beautiful.” Carly and Jody make a cross pattern in shells on the mound. Mrs. Campbell hasn’t allowed us to make the grave very deep.

  “Somebody will have to dig up her body when the boat comes,” she explains.

  I look for Carly, hoping she hasn’t heard.

  “Now, nuts, everybody. We need to gather as many as we can—enough to keep us going until we go home.”

  We set off inland, away from the roaring sea, and I try not to think of that little body, broken and alone.

  There are loads of fallen coconuts all along the top of the beach, so we won’t be short of something to eat and drink, except that we are in competition with coconut crabs. They’re hideous and large, like shell-less hermit crabs—they split open the coconut shells with their powerful claws. They are so aggressive that we have to push them away with sticks.

  Natalie can’t walk, and we carry her between us, taking turns to make a seat with our arms. But she’s no good at holding on as she’s practically unconscious, so Hope ends up carrying her over her shoulder. Luckily Natalie’s small and not too heavy. Jody hangs on to Jas’s arm and cries incessantly. Carly drags behind M
rs. Campbell. The rest of us carry sleeping bags, the remaining backpacks, the water bottles, the waterproof bag, and the rest of our food.

  “Watch out for thorny bamboos and scorpions and biting ants,” Jas tells us. Mrs. Campbell looks alarmed, and Jas nods at her. “Yes. And there could be snakes. What am I saying? There are bound to be snakes.” May and Arlene leap to Mrs. Campbell’s side, shrieking stupidly. Jas smiles cheerfully at them and rolls her eyes at me.

  At least this trek will give me an opportunity to fill in more features on my map, and I try to take mental photographs so that it will be as accurate as possible. Dad will want to see it when I get home. We clamber over slippery rocks, helping the juniors and Hope where it’s steep. There are narrow paths and climbing vines to cling to, and we are now in a small jungle of palms, the high leaves clapping like wild applause in a football stadium. No birds, though. I wonder if they were all blown away in the storm. Or did I imagine that cloud of birds? No one else saw it. Steam rises from the forest floor and surrounds us like a fog, and when we stop for a rest I take out my map, quickly draw three palm trees, and label it the “Forest of Murk,” or the “Maze of Mosquitoes.”

  I’ll decide later.

  The air is full of biting insects, and we flap at them constantly as we walk. Thank goodness Mom packed a brand-new tube of insect-repellent cream. I share it with the others. It only has to last a day or so.

  Suddenly we come to a halt, almost crashing into one another.

  “Oh no!” Arlene has walked straight through a huge spiderweb and has bits of it stuck to her hair and clothes.

  “There’s the spider, Spider-eyes, it’s in your hair,” jokes May, and Arlene screams.

  “No it isn’t, don’t be silly, May.” Mrs. Campbell is hot and frustrated. We all are.

  “Look out for snakes.” May has the last word, as usual. Hope keeps tripping over lianas and roots of trees. She has taken off her one-eye specs and put them away, so now she is practically blind. She’s had to hand over the care of Natalie to Mrs. Campbell, but because she’s not very strong, we bigger girls take turns carrying the poor kid.

  We climb uphill for quite a while, resting every few minutes. It’s hard work and our shoulders are aching like crazy. Everyone has sores and cuts. I try wrapping large leaves around my ankles to protect them and it helps. Some of the others copy me. “You’re a genius,” Jas tells me, and we both wrap leaves around Hope’s ankles.

  All of a sudden, just as we’re beginning to think we’ll never stop climbing, we hear the sound of running water. It’s a rushing stream, where tall canes clatter and palm fronds whisper and we top up our water bottles. There are huge moths, I think, not butterflies; they’re enormous. Lizards dart under rocks. You know they are there but they disappear as soon as you look at them, like tiny green ghosts. Long spearlike leaves shiver and tremble.

  “Look, a hornbill!” Jas points to where the top-heavy bird is sitting high up in a tree. At least one has survived, then. Just then, with a whirr of wings, several hornbills appear, and go to roost in the same tree. They land with a loud zipping noise. Their wings look like hands of thick fingers spread wide. Scarlet hibiscus flowers glow like lamps from the dark shade of the foliage.

  Jas keeps up a running commentary on what we can see. I know she’s trying to keep our spirits up, but the juniors aren’t interested in anything.

  “Here’s our freshwater supply,” Jas tells us.

  “But we’ve got enough bottles to last.” May is unimpressed.

  “Let’s hope so,” Jas replies, so quietly that I think I am the only one to hear.

  The wind is less noisy under the shelter of the trees, but as we finally reach the top of the hill a terrific blast hits us and we can hardly speak. We look out at the windward side of the island, where huge waves are battering the shoreline. I can’t imagine anyone being brave enough to sail here to come get us if it’s still this rough tomorrow.

  We’re in a good place from which to view the island. I sit down and take out the map to make more drawings. There’s a thick jungle over toward the west, hidden by a low mist clinging to the mountaintop. The island is almost the shape of a circle, but with a long thin tail, like a tadpole—Dragon Point—and has only one big beach as far as we can see: our landing beach, Storm Beach, in the east. There are others, which make very thin white lines on the edges of the jungle. I try to draw them in the correct places.

  Nobody says much for a few minutes. We’re trying to catch our breath. “We better go back to the original cave, I think,” says Mrs. Campbell. “I don’t think we’ve seen anywhere better than that to shelter us from the wind.”

  May and Arlene explode.

  “No, no! I’m not going back!”

  “You gotta be joking! We climbed all this way and you want us to go back?”

  The juniors are silent, too exhausted to speak. Natalie is pale and sweating and her breath smells bad. Jas lays her down on the ground and rubs her sore arms.

  “Okay, okay, we’ll go a little way back and sleep by the stream.” Mrs. Campbell sets off back down the hill. She doesn’t even offer to help us carry Natalie.

  “I’ll carry her, Jas.”

  “Would you, for a while? I’m exhausted.” Her thick, dark hair sticks to her forehead and scalp like a helmet.

  An hour later we are lying uncomfortably in our sleeping bags on rocks or leaf litter near the stream. I don’t want to risk taking my journal out here, so I try to memorize the sights and sounds. I name this place the Gorge of Despondency, or, like A. A. Milne, I could call it Eeyore’s Gloomy Place. I know—the Gorge of Gloom.

  There’s no overhead shelter, but thankfully the rain has stopped, for now, though the trees drip on us still. We have eaten the rest of the tinned fish and beans, and some dried apricots. Mrs. Campbell said to chew them thoroughly before we swallow them or they’ll swell up in our stomachs. Who cares? That’s the least of our worries, I would have thought. Mosquitoes are tormenting us in spite of the repellent; Hope is particularly eaten up by them.

  “Is this really the best place to camp?” I ask nobody in particular. Jas is too busy trying to get comfortable to meet my eye, and the others ignore me.

  “Let’s just make the best of it, shall we?” Mrs. Campbell says after a few moments and I smile awkwardly at her.

  Every few minutes I watch her press a damp cloth to Natalie’s closed mouth. Jody sleeps. Carly still hasn’t spoken. Even Jas is rather quiet tonight. She has placed her sleeping bag near mine and is sharing it with Carly. Jody is tucked in close to Jas on the other side. Mrs. Campbell is next to Jody, and the other girls are farther down the slope, not happy, and complaining all the time about the damp and discomfort. But it’s suddenly dark and I’m so exhausted I could sleep for days. Somehow my toothbrush has gone missing. I would give anything to be able to brush my teeth.

  five

  The dark begins to dissolve. Another awful night. I was too uncomfortable to get much sleep, what with my headache and itchy legs, and the sound of Hope slapping herself and swearing, but mostly I was worried about the “explosions” we saw. What has been happening?

  And then, as we all climbed out of our sleeping bags, Arlene found a leech on her leg. Mrs. Campbell got it off with a lit match. All of us had to remove our clothes to see if we had any leeches. We all did. I had two on my stomach. Gross!

  It’s light enough now for me to write in my journal.

  DAY 4—HELL ISLAND (MIGHT NAME IT THAT)

  Boat comes today, thank God. I desperately need a shower.

  “You don’t need to waste matches, Mrs. Campbell. Look!” Jas points to an inch-long bloated leech on Mrs. Campbell’s leg. “They’re land leeches; they don’t suck as strongly as water leeches. You use your fingernail to push the end with the small oral sucker. That detaches it. Then flick the other end at the same time. See, it comes off easily.”

  Jas never fails to amaze me.

  I notice a raised angry rash all over my legs
. I shouldn’t scratch it—it’ll get infected—but it’s difficult not to.

  Mrs. Campbell insists we wash our hands and faces in the stream before breakfast—dried apricots and raisins, with cold freshwater. Thank goodness it’s stopped raining. Once we’ve eaten we set off.

  I’m worried about Natalie. She’s stopped moaning and is limp and pale now. There were six leeches on her neck this morning, like tiny vampires. Her sister, Jody, is almost as pale. The other girls are fine, except Hope, who can hardly see to walk down the hill. We have to help her, telling her when there’s a rock on the path or an overhanging spiky vine.

  “Didn’t you bring a spare pair of glasses, Hope?” Mrs. Campbell asks.

  “No, M-Mrs. Campbell, I broke them the d-day before we c-c-came. Dad says I’m c-c-c-congenitally c-c-c-clumsy.” Hope’s occasional stutter is getting worse.

  “W-w-w-what did you say?” mocks Arlene.

  “Hopeless Hope…” May shouts.

  “Don’t be so cruel,” I bark.

  “St-st-stutterer!” they shout together in unison.

  The Glossies are so ignorant. I kick sandy soil in their direction and they run away laughing.

  We head back to Storm Beach to wait for the boat. It seems like weeks ago that we landed here, not days.

  The sea is enormous; I’ve never seen such huge waves. We have all our belongings bundled up and ready. The sleeping bags are still damp, but it doesn’t matter, as we can wash and dry them at the Laundromat when we get home.

  I glance around at all of us and suddenly realize how awful we look. May and Arlene have mascara and red lipstick smudged all over their faces, and their hair looks like squashed bales of straw. Glossy no longer. Hope is, well, Hope, only more so—no glasses, so her poor eyesight makes her look like an angry pink giant. (She’s at least five foot ten.)