It was the end of our third night. Had so much really happened in such a short time? Being on this island had simultaneously been the most boring and the most wildly eventful time of my life.

I was the first to wake, and lay still for a long time in our little pit, bundled with the others in our usual order: Livvy, Carl, Anthony, Ellie, Me and Todd …on the end. He had insisted.

My plan had failed spectacularly. Really, it had failed long ago; the first moment Todd had informed me that he wasn’t interested in anything more with me.

I don’t know when I became so obsessed. I don’t know why. When you see those crazy people in those serial killer documentaries, or you hear about creepy stalkers shaping their whole lives around someone else, it all seems so bizarre. How could they do such a thing? What unhooked in their mind and came loose to make them pursue such a life path, and how did they get so far down that path without stopping to think about what they were doing?

Well, now I knew. They did it slowly.

Todd had been my secret, shameful obsession for almost as long as I could remember. I could trace my preoccupation with him back into the past like an archaeologist looks at the stripes in rocks. It all rested on that original hook that grabbed me: those words he spoke to me that night. He had said he loved me. He had said it. It was like having a spell cast over me. Had anybody in my entire life ever said those sweet words to me? He claimed they were a mistake, but I swiftly discounted that. He was mistaken. That brief moment of surrender I saw in him all those years ago was the real thing, the real truth I had been trying to get him to admit to ever since. All his protests otherwise had fallen on deaf ears, I guess.

But something about this place …something about having everything of your life stripped away from you makes it so much harder to cling to flimsy illusions. When I saw it, it felt like someone had ripped away a blanket I had been holding onto forever. But once I saw it I couldn’t not see it. Ellie was a sweet woman. And Todd cared for her. And, as much as it pained me, he didn’t care for me. At all. I saw the way they looked at each other, and it was something I didn’t have the strength to ignore anymore.

Everyone woke up soon after me and we all stirred, getting up early to see Todd and Ellie off. Anthony remained in the pit. It was creepy how little he moved. But he was coming back into consciousness here and there, and at least seemed calm. I knew that a single bottle of vodka could easily kill a person, so I had to admit, for a guy as intoxicated as he was, he still put up a pretty good fight. I wanted to think of him as a crazy idiot, but I soon realized I was nobody to talk.

I straightened my clothes, re-braided my hair and quietly rekindled the fire. The night before, we had tried with some success to smoke some mussels for Todd and Ellie to take on board. After we discovered a few bags of mysterious peanuts in Anthony’s trouser pockets, we packed that in the boat as well. Ellie put the finishing touches on her makeshift parasol, and the second she woke up she started looking for a way to attach it to the canoe so it hung over to form an enclosure.

For the next hour, we all worked on our own little projects in silence. The mood was heavy but hopeful. We were all exhausted, hungry and sick of one another, but it felt like the only option we hadn’t tried yet was working together. They were our last chance at rescue. I didn’t even want to think about what life would be like here once they were gone. So instead I put my mind to sorting out the fire and tried to forget about everything else.

The sky went faintly yellow at the horizon. It would be sunrise soon. I didn’t know where we were, but they’d have to give their all with a full day on that canoe if they didn’t want to be floating in the middle of nowhere when night fell.

There was a strange tension in the air as the boat was pulled out into the water and everyone started to load it up with what little we had: peanuts, a vodka bottle filled with stream water and some leftovers from last night’s dinner. Livvy had wrapped the tough little mussels and some crab meat in a broad leaf and folded it up, tucking it into the foot of the boat. All that remained was to attach the canopy.

But Ellie was having trouble. She tried at first to just prop each leg against the inside edge of the boat to create an arc overhead, but it wasn’t stable, and kept sliding out. Carl stepped in to help, and we all battled with it for a while, trying to figure out a way to keep the surface both anchored but high enough that they could sit inside and be shaded. The sun peeked out menacingly, letting us know that the clock was ticking.

“We need some kind of rope or string,” Ellie said. “These leaf strips aren’t strong enough to attach over here. Don’t we have anything else?”

We had already used up Carl’s leather belt, had torn off six inches from Livvy’s sundress as well as poached a few threads from her buttons. There really was nothing else. I thought carefully for a moment.

“Wait, I’ll get my knife,” I said and ran off. When I came back, Carl and Ellie looked at me with curiosity. I grabbed one of my braids in my hand and positioned the knife high up on it, close to the scalp.

“Charlie! What are you doing?”

Before they could say any more, I brought the knife forward and it sliced through my hair with a zing. The braided cord came loose in my hands, and I handed it over to her, then hacked the other one off in the same way. They were both wide wide-eyed, holding the limp braids in their hands.

“Don’t look at me like that, it’s a rope, isn’t it? And human hair is strong.”

I grabbed it back from them and started to immediately show them how to knot the unstable edges of the palm frond roof, hoping they didn’t see the wetness growing in my eyes. They said nothing, but both jumped in to help and in a matter of minutes we had firmly bound the rickety canopy to create what looked like a floating ox wagon.

Ellie tried to catch my eye, and I could tell she wanted to say something, to thank me, maybe, but I couldn’t look at her. Not yet.

“You all ready to go?” I said, voice crackly.

Carl, Livvy and I waded outside in the water and held onto the smooth boat edges while Todd helped Ellie climb in. She had woken up with a foot that had turned from red to a disturbing purple color. I tried not to stare as she lowered herself in, her flimsy cocktail dress basically nothing but a memory at this point.

It was a solemn moment.

Todd settled up front with his improvised stump oar and Ellie took up her own, smaller oar, not much more than a flat enough slab of wood. They both looked so small and vulnerable in there. We waded out slowly, the refreshing blue water lapping up till our navels. Todd was able to dig down into the sand with his oar and push the boat along. With all we could muster, we three shoved hard and sent the boat floating smoothly off into the distance. Livvy put her hands to her mouth and cried a little, and blew them kisses. Carl put his arm around her and we all watched them bob and glide away.

They waved.

We all shared the same thoughts at that moment. Would they ever come back? What would happen when they did? What would we do without them, now? They had barely floated off fifty yards when my mind started to race off with ideas of what could happen when they returned. To my surprise, one thought popped up that never had before: I would quit the military.

We all three turned around and went back to the shore. I wanted to tell someone. Tell them that if I got out of here alive, I’d turn over a new leaf. That I saw now, clear as day, every mistake I had ever made, and now I was hungry to get back to the real world and do the work of putting everything right again. The military wasn’t for me anymore. I couldn’t say exactly why yet. But it was so. I thought about telling Livvy and Carl. About trying to explain some of this to them, to tell them that I was sorry, that I had been wrong, that I really had never meant to do any harm… but before I could speak Carl was already talking.

“Livvy, you want to go and check up on Anthony? I think Charlie and I had better get busy finding today’s food as soon as possible. Right, Charlie?”

I nodded quickly.

Of course. Food. Maybe Todd and Ellie would find land and send us help soon. Or maybe they’d be hit by another storm and we’d never see them again. In any case, it was all out of my hands now. The only thing I could do was look for food.

The thought was strangely soothing.