A Map for Wrecked Girls

by Jessica Taylor

  CHAPTER 31

  Alex and I bound pieces of bamboo together with cordage we made from the strongest plants we could find—palm fronds with long fibrous leaves I could strip and weave into ropes. Knowing what we were doing, we put our second raft together so much faster than the first.

  Henri brought three coconuts down to the water and called up to us, “Are you hungry?”

  With the ocean lapping against her feet, she tugged her sweatshirt tight and stared at the pieces of the raft fitted together. She hadn’t offered to help. All morning, she’d kept to herself, her intensity replaced with something else, a listlessness.

  I didn’t get it.

  “Just a minute!” I tied together two bamboo stalks and said to Alex, “How’s this?”

  He came behind me and reached around. “Looks good.” As he gave the cordage one last tug and cut off the loose ends, his lips brushed the side of my neck. It was all I could do not to pull him down in the sand right there. “You okay today?”

  I didn’t know if he meant physically or emotionally.

  As if he read my mind, he whispered, “I meant, do you regret it?”

  I turned around and kissed him, breathing in his sun and sand and salt smell. “Not at all.”

  I didn’t. Touching Alex, letting him touch me didn’t mean letting him save me. They were two different things.

  Alex slept on his stomach with his face against his backpack beside the fire. I put on more water to boil, took a seat on the driftwood, and tilted my chin to the sky. The full moon glowed through a space in the tree canopy above the clearing, yellow in the spinning sea of white stars. If our raft worked, this full moon would be the last I’d see on our island.

  The driftwood beneath me jarred as Henri sat and rested her head on my shoulder. “I’ve decided I’m not going.”

  “Where? What do you mean?”

  “On the raft.”

  “What? No. Come on, Henri. I know it’s scary. But we’re using stronger vines. I’m the one tying them, double tying them. With his hand, Alex couldn’t really tighten. I’m on it.”

  “Double tying them?” She smiled down at her naked nails. All the polish had grown out. “With an airtight plan like that, of course I’m ready to head into the middle of the ocean.”

  “If we stay put, Henri, we don’t have a chance. Out there, we’ve got something.”

  “Don’t you remember what it was like that first day, Em? Bobbing in the ocean, hoping to see land or something solid. Anything solid. You want to give this up? You want to die clinging to Alex’s bamboo raft?”

  “There are ships out there. We see them every other day. Out there, we have a chance. Here we have—”

  “Land.” She picked up a handful of loose dirt, let it flow through her fingers. “This stuff is pretty fantastic when you think about it.”

  “What about the storms?”

  She scooted down the driftwood. “I’m not afraid of a little rain.”

  I reached for her shoulder and she dodged my grip. “I’m sorry, Em. Nothing you can say could convince me.”

  We’d never be old ladies together—that was my first thought as she walked away. I thought I’d already let that dream go, outgrown it. It was different when the dream let you go. Henri had never been clairvoyant. She’d never see the age of eighty. She’d never even see the age of eighteen. Dreaming about a future with a house by the sea couldn’t make it true.

  “Emma! Alex!”

  I woke up that morning to Henri’s voice. Shoving past Alex, I scrambled out the door first.

  Flames shot up the side of the shelter. I yanked the tarp off the doorway and Alex helped me spread it across the fire to smother out the flames.

  “What happened?” he said.

  Henri shrugged. “I guess the wind caught the fire.”

  I surveyed the damage. The side of our shelter was blackened but still standing—we could replace those palm fronds before nightfall.

  The tarp, on the other hand, had melted in places, which meant our shelter would never be the same. Alex pulled it off the flames before it completely melted. The taste of burning plastic in the air and the smoke in my lungs made me cough into the neck of my shirt.

  “You fucking did this on purpose,” he said.

  At the center of the smoking pile was Alex’s half-charred success manual.

  “What are you talking about?” Henri said. “I was trying to put out the fire. I threw on everything I could find. Why’d you leave it out here anyway?”

  “That’s such bullshit. You threw it on to stop the fire? You burned this because it was mine.”

  But I knew better. Henri didn’t do it to hurt Alex—not after everything—our peace, her guilt over Alex’s hand. I didn’t think so, at least.

  “Alex,” I said quietly. “The plans for the raft were in there.”

  “Whatever,” he said, glaring at Henri. “We don’t need them anyway. We’re far enough along.”

  The look of defeat that came over Henri’s face told me everything I needed to know.

  My sister recovered quickly, stretching her arms over her head and yawning. “It’s really smoky. I’m going to take a walk.”

  As Alex and I began clearing the debris and patching our shelter wall with fresh palm fronds, I wondered what else Henri had done. She wasn’t just planning to stay on the island; she was actually sabotaging our plans to get home.

  “Henri says she’s not going,” I blurted. “That she’s staying on this island.”

  “What? I thought you guys were fine.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  Alex slipped down to the driftwood and kneaded his neck. “Why in hell would she want to stay? She can’t mean it.” I was silent. He looked up when I didn’t reply, his eyes grim. “You know it doesn’t have anything to do with that sprawling ocean out there. It’s all about this game with you.”

  Every bit of my being wanted to believe Alex was wrong, that we were past that, that deep down inside Henri, in the tucked-away corners where her love for me still hid, all of this wasn’t a game.

  I sat beside him, pressed my lips against the warm skin of his shoulder as he tried to clench his fist and uncurl his fingers. He was losing range of motion—he needed a doctor.

  Alex didn’t say a word for a long time and then squeezed me close. I relaxed into him, feeling his heartbeat against my chest, feeling his breath on my hair.

  “What if we’d met in a normal way?” I said as he moved away from me to stoke the fire. “Do you think this would have happened? Us?”

  “Obviously. But not the same way. I would’ve taken you to the movies, opened doors, dropped you off before curfew.”

  “So gentlemanly.”

  “Not always. I’ve done the sneaking-into-a-girl’s-window thing.”

  “Really? That happened, like, a lot?” I tried to make my voice light.

  He smiled down to the fire, swept his hair back as he met my eyes. “Not a lot. It wasn’t like this—I didn’t love them.” Alex went back to stoking the coals, casually, as if he’d just told me he thought it was going to be sunny out today. “We’ll eat soon.” He put the metal pot over the flames, allowing enough air for oxygen. “I’m starving.”

  Henri craved those words from boys, treated their I-love-yous like prizes from carnivals, beautiful orange goldfish she’d let suffocate in plastic bags.

  He loved me. I felt it back. But it was something more than just me. Bigger than that. Like we were greater than the sum of our parts. Is that what he felt too?

  Alex tossed the lighter into the air and caught it in his shirt pocket.

  Something about the trick made me sit up. “Where did you learn that?”

  “Um, Casey.”

  On the boat before the crash—Casey had lit a cigarette for Henri and did that same trick.
But Henri grabbed him by his shirt collar and pulled out the lighter.

  I think I’ll keep it, she’d said.

  So much happened that day, I didn’t remember it until right then.

  Casey never had the lighter in his backpack. Henri did.

  Henri from before she started hating me.

  The way our hands would brush inside a bag of buttery popcorn.

  My sister painting delicate flowers onto my fingernails.

  Us dancing on her bed with the Christmas lights in her room twinkling along the walls.

  My dreams of our house by the sea.

  Maybe she’d always been this horrible, and I couldn’t see it. Or maybe I’d created a monster. Or maybe she’d simply become one.

  In the clearing where Henri built her shelter, she stood in a little alcove made by the trees outside her canoe. She’d strung ropes of shells the same way she draped her walls back home in Christmas tree lights. Her clothes were hung from the tree as if they were behind her mirrored closet doors. She ran her hands over the fabric. It wasn’t much to hold on to, whatever she was trying to re-create, but it was something.

  She turned, revealing her faint smile. It faded as soon as she saw my expression. “Em, what’s up?”

  “Why are you doing this? Why are you trying to ruin our chances of getting home?”

  She scowled. “What makes you think going home is such a great idea?”

  I tried to keep my voice level. “By stopping us from getting home, Henri, you could literally kill us. One of us is already dead.”

  “And you don’t think we’ll die for sure on that piece-of-shit raft?”

  “I know we’ll die here. What do we do when the lighter runs out? What do we do when hurricane season hits? At least we have a chance on the raft.”

  Henri began stringing shells. “I know what you did,” I said.

  She shrugged. “So I threw his book on the fire. What good was it to him here?”

  “I know what you did with the lighter, Henri.”

  My sister smiled at me. She brought her hands together in a slow clap. “Good for you, Em. You finally figured it out.”

  “I haven’t, though, Henri. I really haven’t. Why? Why would you hide the lighter?”

  She looked back at me—a cool appraisal. “That first day—you were going to use it to build a signal fire. I told you I didn’t want to go home. Not yet.”

  All the rage I’d managed to hold back, I let it knife through me. It tore into my veins, my arteries, my helplessness, my frustration, but I didn’t bleed out. I just screamed. I worked my hands into my hair and screamed and screamed and screamed. “What could possibly be worse than this island?” I shouted. “What are you so afraid of facing?”

  Henri looked at me steadily. “You really don’t know?” She dropped her head back, eyes on the fading sky. “The math? The tampons?”

  A coldness settled over me, all my hairs rising. “Henri, you are not pregnant.”

  My sister looked at me with eyes full of tears.

  CHAPTER 32

  “You were on the Pill, though,” I said as I paced around the outside of Henri’s shelter. “I saw them in your drawer. I heard Mom and Dad talking about them.”

  “You have to take them right.” Not making eye contact, she fidgeted with her shell necklace. “I think I missed one. Maybe two.”

  I cringed. “With Mr. Flynn?”

  “No, Em. Jesse.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “But that’s what everyone would think, right?”

  Jesse, who I thought I’d loved before I understood anything. But it wasn’t that—it was thinking of Jesse as a father. Jesse, who couldn’t eat anything without dropping it across his shirt. He was a boy. And Henri was just seventeen.

  I stared at my sister’s stomach. It was still lingerie-model flat. “How many periods have you missed?”

  “Three. I think it’s three. I missed one right after we got here—I thought it was just stress or something. But I remembered. What I did back home, the month before we left. I threw out my placebos to skip my period—my Winter Ball dress was white, for fuck’s sake. And I realized. Oh my god, Em, I realized I probably wouldn’t have gotten one at all. I was already pregnant by then. Then I missed the next one too, and my last one. Three periods, I’m sure, Em.”

  “Henri.” I squeezed her shoulders and made her look at me. “If you are actually pregnant, this island is the worst place you can be. You need to see a doctor. You—”

  She knocked my arms away. “I’m not going. There’s nothing you can say to convince me. Stop trying.”

  We finished the raft after dinner. Before the sun set over the water, Alex pushed off and the two of us sailed far into the sea. The bamboo was solid and sturdy beneath me—it worked. We reached the breakers and turned the raft toward the island. I scanned the shoreline, hoping maybe Henri had a change of heart and was taking some interest in all this.

  The beach was empty.

  As we walked back into the jungle toward the shelter, my fingers intertwined with Alex’s. I couldn’t stop thinking about Henri being pregnant and not wanting to leave the island. There always seemed to be a method to Henri’s madness, but there was no logic to this.

  With my back to Alex, I watched our fire long after the sky turned dark. My coconut was full of my uneaten dinner. Even though only a light breeze wafted over our island, I slipped my arms inside my jacket.

  Alex pressed close to my back and rested his chin on my shoulder. “I thought it would feel better, being done. Jones, aren’t you excited to get off this island?”

  “No, I am. Just give me a day or two. To convince Henri.”

  “Okay.” He kissed my neck in a way that made me shiver. I turned, sliding my arms over his shoulders. “A few days is good,” he said, looking down between us, at my halfway unzipped jacket, the gap where the center of my bikini top didn’t quite meet my skin. “We’ll need to gather supplies—as much water and food as we can carry.” He slowly dragged my zipper open, the warmth of his palms slipping around my waist and pressing against the dip of my back. “Are you ready to go inside?”

  “Are you tired?”

  He grinned. “Not even a little.”

  My teeth tugged against his bottom lip. Until I remembered. “You know we can’t.”

  He pushed his forehead against mine, smiling. “There are other things.”

  I wanted right then for us to lose ourselves in discovering more of each other—the sweet distances between the places that felt good, better, best. But I couldn’t put off talking to Henri.

  I kissed his jaw, his freckles, the small bump on his nose. “I’ll come in soon.”

  The tarp flap closed behind Alex, and I tiptoed through the trees to Henri’s shelter. She sat beside her own small fire, wearing only her bikini and the necklace made out of little blue shells. Sixty-five blue shells, if I remembered right. Henri would know exactly how many—she always did.

  “What are you doing with this? You know our shelter is more comfortable.”

  Her hair was knotted high on her head, and she folded her sweatshirt as if she had a drawer to tuck it inside. “Maybe I just want to know what it’s going to feel like. Being here. Alone.”

  I sat cross-legged in front of her and sighed.

  “What?”

  “The raft is done, Henri. Alex and I are leaving in a few days. You’re coming with me. You have to.”

  “Wanna bet?”

  “This makes zero sense. Zero. How would you even deliver a baby on your own? You could have complications. You could die.”

  “I’m—I’m not ready for home.”

  “But you’re ready for the alternative? You have choices at home. Lots of them. And anything you choose, anything under the sun, I’ll support you.”

  She made a sound between a huff and a laugh. “How
charitable of you, Em.”

  To make myself small, I wrapped my arms around my knees. “Are we not okay?”

  She lifted her still perfectly shaped eyebrows. I didn’t have a mirror, but I knew mine had probably grown together. “We are. Really. It’s just . . . I told you I wasn’t going and you didn’t . . .”

  “I didn’t what?”

  “Say you’d stay with me.” Henri rubbed a fingertip across her bottom lip and took my hand. “Promise me, Em. Promise you’ll stay with me.”

  Everything I thought I wanted before we left for Puerto Rico, she was giving to me—a home with my sister by the sea. Staying meant dying, though, and I didn’t know how to promise her I’d die with her. It was the one thing I couldn’t do. I’d wanted her back more than anything. And now that I had her, I was losing her again. I couldn’t live for my sister. I almost couldn’t believe she wanted me to.

  Her face fell. She understood my silence.

  Henri used the heel of her hand to wipe tears from her cheeks before she closed herself inside her shelter.

  A life for myself had to be built. But doing that meant leaving Henri.

  I didn’t know how to stay with her, and I didn’t know how to leave her behind.

  Alex watched me as I crawled into our shelter and never climbed up beside him. “Are you going to tell me what’s up?”

  I wouldn’t tell him Henri was pregnant—that was her secret to tell, if she ever wanted to. “Henri wants me to stay.”

  He draped a long arm over the edge of the hammock and gave me a hand I wouldn’t take. “Jones, if I make it to one of those ships, I don’t know if I’ll be able to lead them back to you. It’s disorienting out there on the water.”

  “They’ll get a search-and-rescue team going, though. They won’t stop searching until they find us.”

  He turned away and coughed into his sleeve. “But we don’t know how long that’ll take. Or if you two can survive until they do, especially once storm season hits.”