The change started around the time Rittika found a dead shark washed up on the beach. It was a little shark, no more than two feet long. It looked more pitiful than menacing, stinking there on the sand, its body rancid, a crab scuttling out of its empty eye socket. Rittika borrowed Mel’s switchblade to cut out the teeth. With these she made herself a jagged necklace. The rough triangles, black and gray, wreathed her slim neck and cast a pall over her beauty.
Around this same time, I got my period. I felt nauseated, listless, and mortified. I spent a long time squatting in the jungle and stuffing leaves into my underwear. When I complained to Mel about the cramps, she didn’t have much sympathy.
“I’m on the rag, too, Rockwell. Probably most of the girls are. It’s because we’ve been around each other so much. Our cycles are starting to line up.” An agitated expression appeared on her face. “Those idiots better not turn Conch Lake pink.”
“Gross, Mel!”
But the image stayed with me: Conch Lake sloshing and roiling with blood. It filled me with the same uneasiness as the razor-sharp teeth around Rittika’s neck. The feeling persisted when Mel said it was time to inflate the hot-air balloon. Betty and I had woven a huge basket and reinforced it with bamboo to make it sturdy and strong. We’d been optimistic it would do the job. But now that it was showtime, I had my doubts.
Everyone except Anne Marie came to help blow up the balloon. Maybe Rittika had come to mock Mel’s efforts, but at least she was there. As for me, I couldn’t hide my anxiety. I kept pacing and fidgeting, like I’d had too much caffeine. I scanned the faces of my classmates to see if anyone else was concerned. They didn’t appear to be. In fact, most looked excited and impressed when Mel showed them all the stitching we’d done. I even caught a glimmer of hope in their eyes.
Mel explained that the basket would hold only two people. She told them that those two people would get help once they landed. To my surprise, no one complained. I guess my classmates still had faith in Mel. Faith in her ability to get things done, even impossible things. At Drake Rosemont, all the awards, prizes, and honors she’d been given had rankled. Her permanent position atop the class rankings had inspired resentment, especially in Rittika. And her greatest achievement, the Amelia Earhart biography, had sent shock waves through the school, from the headmaster on down. But here on the island, Mel’s accomplishments meant something else: proof that she was the leader we needed. The leader who would take us home. All we had to do was trust her.
So why was I so worried?
Mel and I spread the nylon on the beach. She lashed the basket to a palm tree so the balloon wouldn’t float away once it was inflated. From our long hours of sewing and talking, I knew that hot-air balloons were normally inflated with industrial fans and burners. We, of course, would be using burning tar. In private, she had admitted the process would be risky. The heat could melt the nylon. Or our skin. There were a million ways for it to go wrong.
Mel positioned us so that we stood in a semicircle. We each held a portion of the nylon over our heads, stretching out the balloon as best we could. Ming and Avery were the ones closest to the hole at the base of the balloon—and to the basket containing the trough. This was no coincidence. There was a very real chance someone would get burned, and though they didn’t know it, Avery and Ming seemed to be the sacrificial lambs Mel had chosen.
Stationed between Rish and Chester, I watched breathlessly as Mel lit the tar in the trough. It started to burn instantly. Thick, hazy smoke curled and twisted from the sizzling vat. The smell was wretched, as always. My instinct was to put my hands over my mouth and nose, but I couldn’t. None of us could. We continued to hold the nylon over our heads, willing the balloon to inflate as quickly as possible.
Unfortunately, the process was slow. While the fire raged, Avery and Ming held open the mouth of the balloon at an angle, pointed toward the smoke. Meanwhile, Mel fanned hot air into the balloon’s opening, using palm fronds.
The minutes ticked by very slowly. My arms grew tired. My lungs felt like they were caked in soot. For a long time I suspected that we were making no progress. The yards of nylon were limp, gravity pulling them toward the ground even as we held them up. Most of the hot air seemed to be going around the hole rather than into it. But eventually, air pockets began to ripple inside the green fabric. Less effort was required to hold up all that nylon; the hot air was taking effect. I stood on my tiptoes, glancing over the edge of the basket to see if there were any leaks in the trough. So far, so good.
“Hands higher!” Mel called.
The balloon’s hole trembled like an open mouth. I could see Ming’s and Avery’s arms trembling, too. Their job was tricky as well as dangerous. Both girls had to be close enough to the smoke and flames to let in the hot air, but not so close that they hurt themselves or damaged the balloon.
“I’m burning up!” Avery complained, not for the first time.
“Hold steady. It’ll get better. Once it’s more inflated, you can step back.”
“I’m burning. Seriously.”
“Hold steady,” Mel repeated sternly.
“I can’t!” Avery snapped. There was genuine anguish in her eyes. Both girls looked downright sick, coughing and lurching, tears streaming down their faces as they repositioned their arms. Meanwhile, Mel waved the palm fronds frantically, like a bad cheerleader. I almost couldn’t bear to watch.
I knew there had to be a better way to do the job. Maybe we could make a funnel from the top of the trough to the base of the balloon? Maybe we could make a huge, hollow tube connecting the two? Mel’s fanning just wasn’t cutting it. She knew it, too. I could tell by her eyes, which were teary from the smoke, but also panicked.
Finally, the small air pockets inside the nylon began to coalesce, forming one giant pocket, which pulled the balloon up and into the sky. Avery and Ming, red-faced and soaked with sweat, at last let go. One by one, the rest of us did, too. The balloon rose dramatically. Ten ropes secured it to the basket, which was still on the ground, weighted down by the burning trough.
With the open mouth now directly above the smoking tar, the balloon inflated to full capacity. It was one of the most exciting things I’d seen on the island. One of the most exciting things I’d seen, period. As the nylon swelled, so, too, did our hope. Our chances of getting home—and escaping the enemy—suddenly seemed pretty good. I could sense a new optimism on the faces of my classmates. We stared above in silence, beguiled by the sight of Mel’s latest and perhaps greatest creation.
Soon the whole contraption—basket, connecting ropes, and balloon—was aloft, tethered by only one thing: the rope attached to the palm tree. If that snapped, Mel’s brainchild would float away forever. Maybe that was on her mind when she decided to board the basket. A test ride on the balloon hadn’t been part of the plan. It was too early for that—and too dangerous. But there she was, demanding a boost from Chester. He lifted her and she scrambled aboard, descending headfirst into the basket and nearly brushing against the side of the trough. The basket began to sway dangerously. Though I couldn’t see inside it anymore, I suspected some of the tar had spilled out. She must have come into contact with it, or the vat, for she cried out and took a big, tottering step back.
“Be careful!” I yelled, as baffled as I was frightened. Why had my best friend climbed aboard? Why was she being so reckless?
The basket continued to swing back and forth perilously, straining against its leash. Meanwhile, the trough churned out thick, noxious clouds of smoke, making it difficult to see. Mel, off balance, craned her head in the direction of my voice. She wasn’t paying attention when the vat began to slide toward her. It must have burned her legs. Grimacing, she bent backward over the edge of the basket and for a second was suspended there, half in and half out. Then she fell.
She landed hard on the ground, her right arm absorbing both weight and momentum. I winced when I heard an unmistakable sound, the soft, sickening crack of bone. I cringed when I heard her cry out.
Everything happened so fast, I could barely register it. Mel’s arm breaking, Chester rushing to her side and dragging her away, Ming doubling over in a hysterical fit, the basket falling to the ground, only to flare up in flames. In seconds, yards and yards of precious nylon melted into olive-green Silly Putty. Everything happened so fast, I couldn’t even recognize it for the disaster that it was.
I just stood there, immobile and idiotic, repeating Mel’s name.
Even when Chester and Betty managed to put out the fire, and we abandoned the damaged balloon to head back to camp, the full impact of the accident didn’t hit me. I don’t know why—maybe I was in denial. Betty found the first-aid kit and pried it open with Mel’s knife, only to see that the bandages and dressings had disintegrated. The scissors were rusty, and we couldn’t read the labels on the various bottles and tubes. Betty gave up on the kit and went about weaving a sling.
Chester carried Mel into the tent and laid her down inside. Dazed with pain, she passed out. It was the first time I’d ever seen her sleep during the day. Normally, she was averse to even the shortest of naps. “A waste of time,” she’d said. “I’ll sleep when I die.” Even when she’d had mono last year, she’d stubbornly refused to go to bed before ten o’clock at night. She’d stuck to her normal schedule. But now she slept. She slept so deeply that I checked on her frequently to make sure she wasn’t unconscious, or worse. The rest of the gang spoke in hushed tones around camp. They tried to go about their normal business, but couldn’t.
As for me, I started to wake up from my stupor. As Mel slumbered, I stewed, turning over the accident in my head. But no matter how many times I rehashed it, still I couldn’t quite believe how quickly Mel’s project had gone from dream to nightmare.
Mel awoke from her nap with a screech so terrifying and raw I felt her pain. I helped her sit up and sip water from a gourd canteen. Betty and I had applied aloe vera to the burns on her legs, but we hadn’t touched her elbow, fearing that she’d wake up. Now it had swollen to twice its normal size. The skin was bright pink and hot to the touch.
“What can I do?” I asked her. “Tell me how I can help.”
Gritting her teeth, Mel told me to search the island for specific plants. She said there were all sorts of things growing here that could relieve pain. But the names she spoke—goat weed, thespesia, pennywort, candlenut, sorrel, mile-a-minute, arrowroot—meant nothing to me. The only ones I recognized were wild cabbage and mint. Mel tried to sketch the desired leaves, bark, flowers, and roots with her left hand, but the doodles were so messy I had to go by her descriptions alone. The search took a couple of hours, and the whole time I worried for Mel. My mind raced from one awful hypothetical to the next.
What if her arm never healed?
What if she died?
I returned to the tent with a slew of plants that may or may not have been what Mel wanted. She sorted through them, took a few bits and pieces, and tossed the rest aside. She handed me the sprigs and told me to steep them in hot water. When the tea was brewed inside one of the gourds, she drank it. Then she fell into a deep sleep again, her brow furrowed.
When she awoke a second time, she asked me to apply more aloe to her arm and legs. By then her whole body was flushed and sweating. Although she was doing her best to endure the pain, I would have preferred crying and screaming to the quiet agony in her eyes.
“Crappity crap crap,” she whispered. “It’s bad, Rockwell. Really bad. I’m done.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Do you think Amelia Earhart gave up when she was running out of fuel over the South Pacific?”
Normally, the mention of Earhart would have cheered her up. But not today.
“No doctor, sterilization, antibiotics,” she said. “God, I really am done.”
“At least you’ve found religion,” I tried to joke, rubbing aloe vera gel between my hands to warm it. I applied the gel as gently as I could to the swollen flesh of her arm. Though I touched her lightly, I could feel why she was in such distress. Just beneath her skin was a jagged spear of bone.
This wasn’t just a crack, I realized. It was a break, clean and final.
“What?” she asked, studying my face.
“Nothing.”
“It’s broken, right?”
I bit my lip.
“What good am I going to be like this?” she said. “I won’t be able to feed myself, or go to the bathroom, never mind get off the island.”
“Listen, just concentrate on resting—that’s all. You’ll get through this. We’ll get through this.”
I wrapped the burns on her legs with wild cabbage leaves and told her I was going to make more tea. I was eager to relieve her pain, but the truth was, I was even more eager to get out of the tent. I needed to be away from her so I could compose myself. The feel of that sharp bone had terrified me.
At the campfire, Betty intercepted me as I tore more vegetation to boil.
“How’s she doing?” she asked.
“Not good.”
I told her how I’d touched the broken bone. How I was surprised it hadn’t punctured her skin already.
“Can a break like that heal on its own?” she asked.
“You mean, like, without a doctor?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know. I think we have to at least set the bone.”
“How do we do that?”
I shrugged. “Look, I don’t know what I’m talking about. I just remember reading about bone setting once in a novel.”
“What did you read?”
“You have to, sort of, manipulate the bone back into place, which is really painful. And then when it’s aligned, you have to bind it against something solid, like a stick. Something that will keep it straight.”
“You think that’s what we have to do?”
“I don’t know!” I was on the verge of tears.
When Betty put her hand on my shoulder, the tears spilled.
“Let’s wait for now,” she said. “No need to rush into anything.”
“All right.”
I stuffed the shredded vegetation into one of the gourd canteens. Then I poured in fresh water and let the brew simmer over the campfire. When it was ready, Mel drank the whole thing and asked for more. As daylight faded, I brewed a lot of tea and stored it in multiple gourds.
It was a good thing I did because that evening Mel sobbed for hours. The pain kept her awake. She guzzled all of the tea. It helped a little, but not enough. In desperation, I got out a bottle of whiskey from the supplies tent. By firelight, the amber bottle glowed. I unscrewed the cap, sniffed, and took a swig. Not bad. I doubted it could make her feel any worse.
Crawling into her tent, I handed her the bottle. “Drink,” I ordered.
To my surprise, she obliged. Then she wiped her mouth, lay down, and finally slept.