The final words came out in a spasm.
“I’m so sorry—I took a break. I guess I fell asleep,” whispered Anne Marie, tears streaming down her face.
Mel ignored her. “Are you sure it was a man?” she asked Avery. Unlike everyone else, Mel stood at a distance. “Could it have been a monkey? There are a bunch of them around …”
“It wasn’t a monkey,” Avery spat. “It was bigger than that.”
“You saw him?”
“I didn’t see him. I—I felt him.”
“Maybe it was a gorilla,” Betty suggested. “They’re big.”
Through the firelight we looked to Mel, who shook her head. “It wasn’t a gorilla. Gorillas live in Africa. I don’t know where we are, but I know it’s not Africa.”
“None of you are listening! I said it was a man!”
“I believe you,” Pablo told her gently.
“Listen, Avery,” Betty said. “You shouldn’t be scared. There are a lot of us. Nothing else is gonna happen”
“Yeah,” agreed Pablo. “We’ll take care of each other.”
Avery nodded dolefully, then crawled beside Rittika and laid her head on her lap. Rittika stroked her hair like she was petting a dog. Most of the others gathered around them, talking quietly.
Meanwhile, Mel pulled me aside. She and I whispered about who the man could have been—a native of wherever we were? Warren, stumbling blindly through the darkness?
“But if it was Warren,” Mel whispered, “why didn’t he stop?”
I didn’t sleep after that. I don’t think anyone else did either. We took turns feeding the fire, guarding the area, and comforting Avery. Teary and inconsolable, Anne Marie wandered off. Just as we resolved to go looking for her, she came back. I could tell something else was wrong—she was unfocused, her mind seemed far away. But she wouldn’t open up. The most she said was that she needed to be alone.
Mel, Pablo, Chester, and Rish took the fencing swords and circled Conch Lake, looking for signs of an intruder. They found nothing. By daybreak we were all nerves, keyed up and glassy-eyed. We should have been exhausted. Instead, we were high on adrenaline and fear.
I walked along the edge of the jungle as the sun began to rise. My bones felt brittle, as though I might break if pushed too hard. I started to think about my sister. I wondered if this was the way she felt at home: lost, scared, susceptible to things she couldn’t control.
The early morning light brought a riot of birds. Their fierce squawking sounded like shattering glass. They flapped and whirled overhead, a living rainbow of magenta, neon green, tangerine, and violet—nothing like the drab-colored sparrows, mourning doves, and wrens I was used to. Somehow, their alien beauty put me even more on edge.
I went over to Mel, who was by the side of the lake sucking on a mango skin. Some of the birds began diving into the water, grabbing fish with their beaks.
“Did you get any sleep?” I asked her.
She snorted. “What about you?”
“Not really. Hey, do you still think it was a monkey?”
Her lips, wet with mango juice, puckered. “I’m not sure, Rockwell.”
“So it’s possible it was a man?”
“I looked at the footprints on that little beach over there,” she said, pointing to the same place I’d sat yesterday. “Ours were there, but there was another set, too.”
“Another set?”
“They were so weird—kind of human, but the toes had—I don’t know—claws. Or talons. Tracking with my dad, I’ve never seen prints like that.”
“Maybe it was a yeti,” I said, hoping a joke would offset my fear.
“Maybe.”
“We could finally catch Big Foot.”
She snorted again, then said, “Honestly, it’s not just the prints I’m worried about. Something went missing last night. Chester’s shoes. He took them off after he lay down. But in the morning, they were gone.”
I felt the nausea of yesterday return with a vengeance. “You don’t think it was the monkeys?”
“Rockwell, we can’t blame the monkeys for everything.”
A bird plunged like a bullet into the water, impaling a fish with its beak. As it ascended, the fish was still flopping. I made out a blot of crimson on its gleaming, silvery scales. Mel tossed the mango peel into Conch Lake. It floated like a misshapen ship, drifting in slow circles.
“Rittika thinks we’ll be rescued this morning,” I said.
Mel shrugged noncommittally.
“Do you think we will?”
“Like my dad says, ‘Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.’ ”
I, too, remembered Mr. Sharpe’s words. But I never thought they would apply to someone like me, in a situation like this.
“Get something to eat,” she told me, squeezing my wrist. “Who knows what this day’s gonna be like?”
When she left to attend to the fire, I scouted for a couple of bananas. Then I joined Pablo and Anne Marie. They were sitting on some big pink boulders, eating their own fruit. I was struck by how quiet they were, as if they were waiting. For rescuers? For someone to tell them what to do?
Anne Marie gave me a bashful smile when she saw me. When I returned her smile, though, she abruptly turned away and stared into the jungle. By the look on her face, I’d say she was mesmerized by it. Wordlessly, Pablo broke off pieces of a peeled mango and handed them to me. I offered him half a banana in return. Together, we gazed at Conch Lake.
“It’s kind of beautiful here,” he said, “if you don’t count the mosquitoes …”
“Or the madman on the loose,” I added.
He chuckled. “I can’t believe how untouched it is. I didn’t even know places like this existed.”
“Me neither.”
“It’s kind of reassuring, given how messed up the rest of the world is.”
I understood where he was coming from. Pablo was the guy on the fencing team who was always reminding us to recycle our soda cans and to stop buying plastic water bottles. Sometimes he handed us petitions to sign. Stop offshore drilling. Urge your legislators to outlaw pesticides. Save dolphins from being tangled to death in fishing nets. He was pretty intense when it came to environmental stuff. So it was surprising that he and Chester were good friends and roommates. Chester was all about having fun and goofing off, while Pablo was serious, someone who thought deeply about the world. Most of the time when I saw Pablo, he was reading, lost in information and the music coming out of his earbuds.
“I heard there isn’t a single place left in the world that hasn’t been touched by pollution,” he said. “But maybe Conch Lake is the exception.”
“Maybe,” I replied, eating another piece of mango.
We continued to chew and stare at our surroundings. I noticed the clouds above Conch Lake start to turn gray and fat. Minutes later, lightning crackled and the jungle grew curiously quiet. A raindrop fell on my knee, followed by ten more. The downpour that followed extinguished the fire in an instant. It drenched our hair, our clothes, our food, our voices. The storm had come on even faster than the one yesterday.
Mel scurried to tuck her backpack inside a horizontal crevice between the rocks. Anne Marie squeezed shut her eyes, as if she could will the storm away. Rittika and some of the other girls held their school jackets over their heads, but it didn’t matter. Wind lashed the rain in all directions. There was no way to stay dry. To be heard over the pelting wet, we had to scream.
“Number one priority is exploration—finding Warren, finding equipment, and finding out where the hell we are,” Mel yelled. “Number two is shelter. Dry shelter.”
“I think we should stay where we are,” Rittika screamed back. “All of us. When help comes, they’ll find Warren.”
“But when will help come? Yesterday, you were scared Rish might be injured. What if Warren is?”
They went back and forth like this for what felt like forever, until Rish intervened, siding with his sister, motioning to the sky, as if the
rain were a sign from heaven that we ought to stay put. Mel wouldn’t have it. She said she was going, even if no one else would.
“I agree with Mel,” Chester shouted, water ricocheting off his face. He wasn’t wearing his shirt, and drops flew off the hard planes of his body, too.
Pablo added, “I’m also with Mel. Warren could be hurt. What kind of friends are we if we don’t look for him?”
Rish and Rittika whispered to each other intensely. Finally, they agreed to go with Mel’s plan. But judging from Rittika’s sour face, she wasn’t happy about it.
Mel assigned search teams: Rish and Rittika would travel east, Mel and I west, and Chester and Pablo north, up a mountain in the distance. When Rittika complained that she didn’t know which way was east, Mel explained how we could inspect tree bark and look at the location of anthills. Rittika’s response was to roll her eyes. She didn’t understand—and neither did anybody else.
Fortunately, the rain began to ease up. When the sun was out again, Mel showed us how to tell direction with a “shadow stick.” My teammates observed her closely as she made a kind of natural compass with a long, straight stick stuck in the ground. I figured I didn’t have to pay much attention since Mel was my partner.
To tell you the truth, it was always this way—Mel talking, me taking a backseat.
Once the teams knew where to go, Mel advised Avery, Betty, Ming, and Anne Marie to stay behind and get the fire going again. She handed one of Chester’s swords to each of them.
“Gather more food and whatever else might be of use nearby. Do your best to build a basic shelter.”
Avery and Ming nodded skeptically. I could tell they didn’t feel up to the challenge.
“Are we clear?” Mel asked.
“We’ll do our best,” Betty replied, raising her chin.
“Good. We’ll meet you back here before sundown,” Mel said.
“Back here at Camp Summerbliss,” Rittika said with a sniff.
Camp Summerbliss.
I couldn’t help but smile. Obviously, Rittika was being ironic—bliss was hardly a word that jumped to mind under our circumstances. Even so, the name stuck in my head, the same way Conch Lake had.
One by one, we took long drinks from the outcrop, then set off. I followed Mel as she charged into the jungle. She kept a brisk pace but, after a few minutes, stopped in front of a tree. It had a distinctive double trunk, forking into a V. Mel gestured to a mark carved neatly in the bark.
“Who made that? You?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“To keep a tally of the days we’re here.”
“Is that really necessary? I mean, we’re going to be rescued …”
“I’m keeping it just in case.”
“In case of what?”
“In case no rescuers show up. Days can start to blend together when there’s no record of them.”
That wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear.
Mel took the fake eye from her sock and dropped it carefully between the tree’s forked limbs. It sat there comfortably in a little indentation in the bark. I don’t know why Mel decided to put it there. I wished she hadn’t. Out in the open, that eye gave me the creeps. I’d never admit it to Mel, but I wondered if it could see us somehow, if it was full of magic, or worse, bad luck.
We kept going, calling out for Warren. Our westward journey seemed to be taking us up. I sensed the perpetual, gradual elevation in my hamstrings and calf muscles. After a couple of hours, we began to leave the jungle behind. The trees and canopy thinned, and the air tasted different—less chokingly muggy. Here and there, pink crags poked out of the earth like stalagmites. Like the rocks around Conch Lake, they were a mishmash of minerals.
“Mica, quartz, and feldspar,” Mel said knowledgeably. I remembered the rock and mineral collection in her father’s study.
Threaded around the crags were thickly knitted creepers. Mel and I moved carefully. We had to stop frequently to untangle our feet. After a few stumbles, I tripped, scraping my knee. On the ground, I was face-to-face with the impossibly dense undergrowth, a labyrinth of roots and stems.
Mel crouched beside me. She touched a bead of blood on my skin with her finger and wiped it on her blouse.
“I wish we had hiking boots.”
“I’d rather have a machete,” I said.
“Maybe time for a break?”
“Definitely.”
We ate some fruit she’d put in her backpack. We weren’t really hungry, though, just thirsty. The rain already felt like a distant memory. The sun sizzled through the last wispy clouds. Today would be another scorcher.
When we continued, we kept our eyes focused on the ground to avoid further stumbles. Here and there, we noticed narrow paths in the undergrowth. These were neat and tidy, as if made by a miniature plow. They were just large enough for Mel and me to eel through, but most didn’t extend very far. They seemed to start and end at random points, without planning or purpose. I couldn’t make sense of them.
I walked more confidently in the paths, without fear of stumbling, but Mel looked uncertain. When she stopped in front of a small brown mound, her uncertainty turned to worry.
“What is it?” I asked her.
“Scat.”
“What?”
“Scat. It’s another word for poop.” She gestured toward the mound.
“I blame the monkeys.”
“You always blame the monkeys.”
“ ’Cause I don’t want to think of the alternative.”
“Whatever made this was bigger than a monkey, Rockwell. Way bigger.” She kicked at the scat with the toe of her shoe. “It’s fresh,” she added.
I didn’t know what to do with this information. All I knew was that it was bad, and that Mel was concerned. She was no longer marching, but treading slowly. Watchfully. The mystery animal was still on our minds when we came to a bluff. Before us was a spectacular view of water glistening in the sunlight.
Ocean. It surrounded us on all sides. We were on an island.
“Crappity crap crap,” Mel gasped.
My jaw dropped as I stared. Along the shoreline, the water was crystal clear. I could make out pearly, rippled dunes on the ocean floor. Farther out, a shadow, probably a reef, encircled much of the island, and at the outer edges of that shadow, long fingers of sea foam tapered into deeper water. The South Pacific. It was endless, inching to the horizon.
The view was one of the most beautiful I’d ever seen. And one of the most terrifying.
“We’d better be rescued, Rockwell,” Mel whispered. “Otherwise, I don’t know how we’ll get out of this one.”
“We won’t be able to walk home, that’s for sure,” I replied.
“We won’t be able to swim there either. There’s no other land in sight.”
We stared at the vast ocean for a long time before turning our attention to the island. It was both scary and fascinating to take stock of it from this vantage point. We were at a high elevation, though not as high as what lay to the north: the mountain Chester and Pablo must by now be climbing. From where we stood, we could make out the island’s major features: pink granite along the mountainside, an emerald forest that dominated its interior, Conch Lake studding its center like a peacock-colored jewel. Mel said the shape of the island reminded her of a fish’s shape: blunt on the “head” end with the curve of the beach, thin on the “tail” end with two forked points. Just beyond those points, a separate outcrop poked up out of the water.
I began to feel dizzy. Maybe the lack of sleep was catching up with me. Or maybe I had gone physically and mentally beyond my limits. I touched the top of my head, surprised at how hot my hair felt. Then again, the sun had been beating on it all morning. My face, too, felt alarmingly warm. As for Mel, she was a walking reminder to wear sunscreen. Her face was the color of a tomato.
We decided to return to Camp Summerbliss. It was hard to say what time it was, but we’d been walking for a long time.
It was definitely past noon. Mel suggested taking a different route home. It might be faster. And even if it wasn’t, the scat had spooked her.
I’d hoped the journey back, on a decline, would be easier. It wasn’t. Although my leg muscles no longer throbbed, loose rocks rolled out from underneath my feet, creating miniature avalanches. I had to watch every step. Carefully, Mel and I wended our way through more creepers. To our dismay, we soon encountered more paths. I walked ahead of my friend down a particularly long one. I was staring at the ground, so I didn’t see at first that we had company.
A pig.
Ungainly and wild, it looked both frightened and frightening. It was a bulky, bristly, mangy thing, with curved tusks at the corners of its mouth. Its head was narrow, its pebbly eyes too close together. I froze. The pig let out an unhappy squeal and scratched its hooves fretfully against the ground. As it came closer, I could smell it. Manure mingled with wet dog.
I turned my head toward Mel, looking for help. That’s when it charged at me, hard, hurling its weight into my right leg. For an instant, I felt the squishy, spongy wet of its snout against my bare skin. Then my knee buckled, and the pain seared. I careened to the ground, falling into the spiky creepers. I didn’t know if I’d broken a bone, twisted an ankle. I wished I’d had time to think, but the pig was ready for more. It scuttled back onto the path and scratched at the dirt, aggressively now, sending little puffs of dust into the air. Its eyes were trained on me. Between shock, the pain in my knee, and the way the creepers entangled me, I struggled to move. The best I could do was shield my face.
Through a chink in my fingers, I watched Mel react. She fished around in her sock, producing a switchblade. She clicked it open and whipped it through the air. The steel blade caught the sunlight, and flashed. Then she tore after the creature, squealing and hoofing as it had. It looked up at her in dismay, and I partially pitied it, pitied the terror on its homely face. She swiped the blade across its side as it attempted to turn around, its legs scrabbling, its pudgy body squirming and twitching, trying in vain to push through the dense tangle. Mel had a chance to knife it again—I could see her debating whether she should, but she wiped the bloody blade against her sock instead. The injured creature finally made headway into the creepers. Another squeal, and then its backside and tufted tail disappeared into the undergrowth.
Damselfly Page 5
