by Wicks, Becky
'I was sick, and really bloated,' she says on an exhale. 'And I couldn't move for a long time, maybe a week. I kept trying to ask about my parents and Ben but nobody could understand me.'
Impulsively I kiss her fingers, reach for my water. My throat has dried up and the heat of the room is sticking to my face and the back of my neck. She's still talking.
'When I could walk, I went to a few other places with an American couple and some other British people. We looked on the wall, and in the temples, and on the lists but my mom and dad were identified by their wedding rings eventually,' she says. 'My godmother took me in when I got back to the UK, but I had to spend almost seven weeks in hospital.'
'Seven weeks?' I say, almost choking on the water. Jesus, I had no clue. I'm struggling hard not to let the tears fog up my vision right now. Sasi puts her hand out to Izzy's arm on the table and she twirls her fork again on the plate. 'They put me in the care of a lung specialist. I breathed in so much silt and mud that it was hard to breathe for a long time, it really hurt. They had to operate on my ears too, and they sent me to a tropical disease specialist. I was on about twenty drugs just to stop the bacterial infections. If I got infected I would've died. There was a point where I didn't really care either way.'
Holy shit. I rub my eyes. What she must have gone through. I was so lucky I wasn't even hurt.
'I did six months of physiotherapy,' she says now, looking at me this time. 'That's when I got into Pilates. I had a therapist too; she told me to find something every day to be grateful for. That helped a bit, still does, you know? I'm grateful for so much more since I got here.'
Sonthi's still translating. Lawan's pulling her into a big hug, crying too. 'What happened to you, did you find your husband?' Izzy asks her, sniffing self-consciously at the attention.
I want to leave, right now, before people ask about me; before Izzy has to go through any more of this, but I find myself talking anyway, maybe so I don't break down. 'Lawan's husband is OK,' I say. 'He's at work right now, but he was a fisherman at that time, so they struggled after the tsunami.'
Sonthi keeps translating. Lawan nods sadly, clears up the noodles Mali has dropped on the table. Sasi helps her gathers up our dishes. 'The trust in Mother Ocean was broken,' I continue. 'Those people who depended on it for their livelihood didn't know where to turn after that, 'cause they thought that eating the fish would be like eating their own loved ones. The fish ate so many of the bodies, you know?'
Izzy's hand flies over her mouth. I never say things like this out loud usually because all I see is Toby, like I'm seeing him now, eyes wide in terror under that ocean. Sonthi takes over. 'Lawan and her husband run a store now, in town. They're doing good.'
'And they have a great house,' Sasi says, gesturing around her, then blowing a kiss to Lawan, who laughs. 'Best food!'
'Best food,' Izzy says, but I can hear she's on the verge of tears, like I am. She's gripping my fingers so tightly now that her silver ring is digging into my flesh.
We talk more about their store. Sonthi and Sasi look more in love than they ever did before. I take all this for granted sometimes, I know I do - the fact that everyone knows and loves each other; the fact that we've all built such an accepting community out of nothing but total destruction, and the fact that we can laugh and cry openly about things that only we could ever understand.
I look down at Izzy's hand in mine. There's so much help and support and love around me. But for one reason or another it feels like walking away from that is all I've ever done.
*
It's a clear night by the time we get back to Shady Palms. Izzy promised to go see Lawan again soon and after seeing the way they hugged when we left, I know she sees her as some kind mother figure now. My heart bleeds for what she lost, what happened to her, going through hell in all those hospitals. She didn't want to live for a while. She said it. She actually said it. I felt the same way after losing Toby.
'I can't stop thinking about how your real name is Isla,' I tell her as we walk onto the beach in front of our huts, drop to the sand and gaze out at the glistening ocean. Her head rests on my shoulder and the hair that's come loose from her braids tickles my face.
'You're an island, Izzy,' I say. I say it out loud because I was thinking it, just now at Lawan's when I was watching her mouth move, the scars glistening on her arms in the lamplight. 'You rose above the waves to survive.'
'I never thought about that before.' She drags a finger through the sand. 'Everyone always says I'm one of the lucky ones, but I always wondered why I was left out. Why did I survive when so many other people died?'
'Tell me about it.' I rest my head on hers. 'We both kind of died in it and lived at the same time, I think.'
'You've lived more than me,' she snaps back, almost angrily. 'Being alive is everything, Ben. It's all that matters - the now. I feel like I've been wasting my life so far! I don't want to go back that job, or London.'
'Then don't.'
Her head springs up and her eyes shoot up to mine. Something in her gaze draws me in again, right down those damn corridors into a place I always get lost. I know what she's thinking though, and my stomach knots till my breath shortens and I have to tear my eyes away. She's thinking this is the start of something and it's my fault. The thought is like a fork in a toaster, shooting out warning sparks now, not the good kind. What am I doing, with Izzy of all people?
Don't think about it.
She puts her hand to my cheek, turning me back to her. 'You OK?'
'I'm OK,' I tell her quickly, 'just having a hard time believing this is all happening.'
'Maybe it was supposed to,' she says, shuffling around to sit in front of me, cross-legged, covered in sand. 'Isn't that what you said, at the waterfall?'
'I don't know, Izzy.' I say it under my breath. Her eyebrows knit together but in a second I'm kissing the doubt away, willing the thoughts to stop colliding in my brain; the ones that scream how right she is, and this is, and the ones that scream this has to stop. I pull her back with me. She's in my head and my heart and my soul but I'll hurt her, like I hurt everyone. How could I not, in the end?
Don't think about it.
I kiss her harder and her arms wrap around me till she's on top of me on the sand and I'm swimming in the ocean of her, and not the thoughts that try to drown me every time I get my head above the water
She's good for you.
But Ben. She doesn't know the half of what you know.
ISLA
I wake up with a jump. What the hell was that? It sounded like a... I don't even know. I rush to the window and my eyes practically bulge out of my head. Oh my God.
A knock on my door. I almost jump out of my skin this time. I pull it open as my heart starts skipping like a kangaroo and Ben puts his hand on the doorframe. He's grinning, looking impossibly sexy in an open blue shirt and khaki shorts. His hair falls over his eyes as he leans in to kiss me. 'Happy birthday,' he says, 'you'd better get dressed, your ride won't wait for long. She's hungry.'
'You got an elephant!' I say now. I can't help the laugh coming out of my mouth, or the way my feet make me jump up and down on the spot like a child. I throw my arms around him and he picks me up for a moment, squeezes me tight. 'Where did you get that?' I say into his neck.
'Sonthi knows a guy,' he tells me, putting me down. 'Get some clothes on, Ghostbuster!'
My cheeks flame as I look down at my pajamas. 'I've been awake for three seconds,' I say, 'what time is it?'
'Just after seven. We have a long day ahead of us. Your classes are covered and so are my dives.'
'Really?'
'Really!'
'This is amazing, Ben!' I rush to the wardrobe, grab my shorts and my bikini, head to the bathroom to throw them on. Ben's sitting on my bed when I peek around the wall with my toothbrush hanging out of my mouth. 'How did you know it was my birthday?' I ask him around the toothpaste froth. I swear I haven't told anyone, have I?
He laughs, a bi
t sheepishly now. 'A little drunken British birdy told me.'
I frown. Then I cringe. 'Oh, right.'
When I walk back to the wardrobe for a shirt, I catch Ben's eyes on my body but he lowers them to the floor when he sees I've caught him looking. I walk up to him, pulling the shirt over my head. I stand between his legs, put my hands to his clean-shaven face. He looks younger when he's shaved; cuter, like the teenager who promised me my starfish, only far, far less innocent. 'What's wrong?'
'Nothing!' he says, putting his hands to my waist now, lifting the white cotton slightly to drop a kiss to my stomach. His lips shoot butterflies through me but he stands up straight away, heads for the door. I can't read him at all.
For more than a week now he's been so attentive, so amazing, but he still hasn't once tried to sleep with me, or even get me naked, and he does stuff like this all the time... treats me like I'm some china doll he can't really touch.
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't surprised, and a bit confused. What he said before keeps running circles in my head, the more he distances himself: I manage to form friendships, usually, not relationships. If that's still his philosophy then maybe he remembers the look that must have been written on my face when I called him out on his meaningless sexual friendships. He knows I wouldn't want that.
But is that all he wants?
Does he even want me?
'Ready?' he asks as I slip on my shoes and pick up my day bag. 'Sunscreen, water, camera...'
'Check,' I say, shoving the nagging paranoia aside as I put my iPhone into my bag. It's the only camera I have. When he opens the door and the elephant is still there, I have to blink in case I'm dreaming. A bare-chested Thai guy's sitting on its head, carrying what looks like a bamboo pole. There's a wooden box on its back with room for two on top of bright red blankets and it's decorated with frangipanis on strings.
Ben takes my hand, leads me down the steps. 'I can't believe you did this,' I say.
'You never got to ride an elephant,' he replies. 'We had to do something about that.'
His words send a rush of something that feels a lot like love from my brain, to my heart, to my fingertips. He did this for me because he remembered. He remembered I was about to ride one that morning, remembered it was my birthday. Today's gratitude is Ben, without question. It was Ben yesterday and the day before.
I realize I'm holding my breath as we approach the creature. She's huge and so majestic with the morning sunlight falling over her leathery skin in wrinkles. 'This is Khalua.'
'Like the drink?'
'Exactly!' Ben strokes her huge trunk and puts my hand on it, too. She snorts through it suddenly and her breath sends the sand flying around us in a swirl.
'Hello,' I say into her huge, kind-looking eye. It's crinkly round the edges, like a giant old lady's. 'You look so clever, and you're so beautiful,' I tell her softly and I swear she almost smiles. Khalua is browny-gray. She feels like a wiry brush to the touch. She flaps her ginormous ears as we stroke her cheeks and front leg. Just one of her legs is as big as my entire body.
'Ready to get on?' Ben says, leading me backwards a step. The Thai guy shouts something. Straight away Khalua bends her big knees in front of us and kneels on the sand, sending up more swirls. Ben guides my foot into a wooden strap so I can pull myself up, then follows me, sitting next to me in the box. 'Hold on!' he says and he wraps his arms around me, laughing as Khalua gets back up again. I lean into him, grip the front of the box as Khalua starts plodding with us down the beach. 'Where are we going?!'
'Patience, grasshopper,' he grins. Then he sweeps a hand behind my head, bunches up my hair and kisses me like he means it, like I'm the only person in the world who exists except him. I hate myself for over-analysing his reluctance to go too far, too soon. Of course he wants me. This is Ben. Ben would never hurt me. I've never felt this safe with anyone.
The sun is climbing higher in the sky by the time we start heading inland, but thankfully there's shade under the thick trees of the jungle. When we head up a track and into a clearing I note the white sheet spread out on the ground and what looks like a wicker hamper in the middle of it.
'I hope you're hungry,' Ben says, dropping a kiss on my temple. Khalua kneels down again and the Thai guy, who hasn't said a word to us so far, gets down to help us off. 'Birthday breakfast for the birthday girl,' he grins, leading me to the sheet by the hand and sitting me down.
The breeze lifts up my hair. The frogs croak in the trees and bushes all around us. The hot air smells like warm peat and I'm strangely aware of a million unseen eyes on me as I watch him get plates and cups and containers out of the hamper. The feeling that feels a lot like love is still booming through my body, threatening to turn into some kind of song.
My love, my love, my love, my endless love...
'You're amazing,' I tell him now, reaching for his hand. 'I don't know what to say.'
He kisses my fingers and smiles. I'm so shocked at what he's done. No one's ever done anything this amazing for me before. On my last birthday Colin ordered takeaway from his favorite Chinese place in Clapham, but they were an hour late delivering it and then he spent ten minutes on the phone shouting at someone after he found a hair in his chop suey. It wasn't very romantic, really.
'It's nothing special,' Ben says. 'This is just how we do birthdays in Thailand.' He winks and holds a strawberry out for me to bite. The sweet juice fills up my mouth as he eats the rest of it and kisses my juicy lips. I register how weak my knees are in a heartbeat. He scoops fresh fruit salad onto a plate for me, pulls out a flask off coffee and pours it into two cups. Then he leans against a tree as Khalua sniffs around us with her trunk. I throw her a chunk of pineapple and she snuffles it up and spoons it into her mouth. I swear I see her smiling again.
'She's so awesome,' I say to Ben in his accent as we eat. He nods, thoughtfully. The sun is throwing patches of light on us and his hair looks more golden than brown today. His eyes look yet a different shade of blue under those thick brows; the ones that give him a different expression every second.
'It's like you can see what she's thinking, right?' he says.
I realize I'm still looking at him and not the elephant. Jesus. 'Exactly.'
'They're so smart. Did you hear about those two elephants who broke free from their chains and ran up the hill right before the tsunami?'
I nod around my forkful of papaya.
'No animals died that day,' he continues, pouring us more coffee, 'none that weren't chained up or caged, anyway.'
'I know,' I say, remembering. 'They all ran away. I read that elephants at least have some kind of seismic-vibration detectors in their feet, but I don't know about the others.'
'Neither do I. If only they could talk,' he says, looking to Khalua again. I throw her some papaya and she eats it gratefully, looking into my eyes with her own.
After breakfast we carry on trekking through the lush green forest. We stop to watch some howler monkeys jumping about in the trees just above us. Khalua rips leaves from nearby plants with ease and shovels them into her mouth. She's like a machine, eating, pooping, plodding along. I can't help thinking of how my mom and dad never got to do this. They would have loved it. The image of them in another box on the back of another elephant flashes into my head. They're laughing from the path ahead of us, taking photos of us. Dad has his stupid video camera.
Ben winds his arm around me and I sigh in contentment. I think my parents really are here, somehow. They're happy I'm happy, and they're happy I came back. Every time I look at that photo now, I can feel them radiating out of it, all around me. They're becoming a feeling. Love.
'Are you hot?' Ben asks now. The sound of another waterfall is getting closer and closer.
'Not as hot as you,' I flirt and he growls jokingly and pretends to bite at my ear as I pretend to fight him off.
Khalua stops at the waterfall. This time our guide leaves us in the box on her back and takes a running jump into the deep, shimmering pool.
White butterflies are flitting in the shafts of sunlight over the water. Birds are singing a tuneful song for us from the palms hanging above, creating a natural shady spot to one side. This waterfall is smaller than the one we jumped into before, but it doesn't stop our guide coming back five minutes later and guiding Khalua into the water.
'Woah!' My hand lands on Ben's knee.
'Hold tight, I think she's hotter than us,' he tells me. We're shaken around in our seat as Khalua plods further and further into the rocky-bottomed pool until it's halfway up her middle. Ben's arm pulls me closer to him and before I know what's happening he's yelling: 'Close your eyes!'
I'm drenched in an instant; then even wetter as Khalua showers us with water from her trunk. It's cold and I scream and Ben shrieks as we huddle into each other laughing our heads off. Our clothes are soaked and my hair is dripping, but Ben stands up now, peels off his shirt, stands over me with his full six-pack gleaming.
'Good idea.' I copy him, ripping off my shirt, slipping out of my shorts. Together, we jump from the box into the pool, start swimming towards the falls.
Ben's ahead of me. His head disappears as he reaches the gushing flow, coming down from a rocky wall about ten meters above us. I follow, pinch my nose and come up on the other side, right next to him. Every breath is an echo in the chamber. He rakes his hair back from his hair, stands with his back to the wall. I do the same, shoulder-to-shoulder.
'Wow,' I say. There's six or seven inches between us and the pounding waterfall. I can see rainbows dancing in the misty haze but the blue of Ben's eyes when I turn to him is suddenly the only color I care about.
'Ever been kissed in a waterfall, hot cross bun?' he says, reaching for my waist.
