Pablo and I made it back to camp safe and sound. We were the last ones back. Immediately, I could see something else had gone wrong. Mel’s brow was furrowed. The camp was buzzing with news: Anne Marie had gotten hurt.
Mel explained what had gone down. She and Anne Marie had explored the caves but hadn’t found anything. On their way back, Anne Marie had fallen through a clump of palm fronds, straight into a hole in the ground.
“It was definitely man-made,” Mel said. “It was about eight feet deep, and totally disguised on the jungle floor. All Anne Marie did was take one wrong step. The ground gave way and she tumbled down.” She shook her head. “It was a trapping pit.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“It’s a classic hunting trap. They’ve been around since the Stone Age. All I can think about is what would have happened if she’d been alone. She hurt her leg pretty bad. It’s not broken, but it’s banged up. She wouldn’t have been able to climb out. She could have been stuck there for days. She could have died.”
“Well, that didn’t happen,” I said, hoping to make her feel better. I could tell she was shaken.
“Was anything in there?” Pablo asked.
“Yeah, some old bones,” she replied. “Animal bones.”
“What about people bones?” Chester asked.
“No—no human bones.”
“Was the trap meant for people?” I asked, feeling goose bumps rise on my skin.
“It’s hard to say. Trapping pits are usually for animals. They get trapped inside, and then they’re killed—for food, or trophies.” Mel paused, lost in thought. “But I can’t rule out that it was meant for us.”
“You think the enemy made it?” Chester said.
She shook her head. “I just don’t know.”
“Where is Anne Marie now?” I asked.
“She’s resting in the tent. She’s pretty freaked out.”
“No wonder.”
“She doesn’t want to see anyone.”
“I’m gonna go anyway,” I said, surprising myself.
Night was falling and the air inside the tent Betty had woven was murky and thick. I could barely make out the outline of Anne Marie’s body, curved like a comma on the ground.
“Can I come in?” I whispered.
When she didn’t say anything, I crawled inside and sat cross-legged beside her on the bare ground, the top of my head skimming the pitch of the roof. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I got a fix on Anne Marie’s face. Her eyes were wide open.
“I heard what happened,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. It wasn’t anyone’s fault—except for the person who made that trap.”
Her voice sounded flat and exhausted.
“How’s your leg?”
“I’m trying not to think about it. I’m trying not to think about anything.”
I got the sense that she still wanted to be alone. It wasn’t as if Anne Marie and I were good friends or anything. We had a few classes together, and of course we were both on the fencing team, but we didn’t talk much, and when we did, it was almost always about assignments or our fencing schedule. Polite conversation.
I didn’t want to leave, though. I liked Anne Marie—she’d always struck me as special. Maybe it was the fact that I’d seen so much of her art—paintings, sculptures, and photographs—and it had made an impression on me. Obviously, it had made an impression on other people, too, because a few galleries showcased her work and private collectors commissioned it. Once or twice I’d browsed her website. I didn’t get the meaning behind a lot of her stuff, but there was no denying her ability to make big statements and grab attention. Her huge watercolors of flowers were especially arresting: pansies, daisies, columbine, and violets blown up larger than life, on canvases six, eight, even ten feet tall.
Being so quiet, Anne Marie clearly expressed herself best through her art.
She touched a large bump, like a golf ball, on her shin. “It’s really hot. I don’t know why.”
“Your body is sending extra cells to repair the injury. All that cellular activity is generating warmth.”
“Oh,” she replied, surprised. “Are you going to be a doctor or something?”
“No. I just know that from Mel. I know all kinds of random stuff from her.”
She smiled, but it was a rueful kind of smile. “In a weird way, it’s good to have this to concentrate on. I’ve felt pretty out of it since the crash.”
“I think all of us have.”
“Yeah, but it’s a little different for me. I don’t have my meds with me.”
I felt relieved and nervous at the same time: relieved that she was sharing; nervous that she might be in real trouble.
“What happens if you don’t take them?”
“I guess the best way to put it is—I have a hard time figuring out what’s real and what’s not. The world, like, loses its structure.”
“Have you ever been off your meds before?”
“Yeah, and it didn’t go well. So to get off like this—cold turkey—it sucks.”
“Just try not to worry, okay? I’m sure we’ll be rescued soon. Who knows—maybe even tonight. You just have to hold on.”
“Yeah, but what if we’re here for weeks? Did you ever watch that old show—Gilligan’s Island? How long were those poor suckers stranded?”
Despite her earnestness, I cracked up. “I wish this was like Gilligan’s Island. To me, it’s more like The Hunger Games.”
“True,” she replied, rubbing her bruise.
“How long will it be before you start feeling … the effects?”
“Oh, I’m already feeling them.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Find me a pharmacy?”
I reached for her hand and squeezed it. It was tiny, like a child’s hand.
“Anne Marie, we’re going to be fine.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if we will. But … it means a lot that you came to talk to me.”
“Oh—come on. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not being ridiculous. Not everyone cares, not everyone’s like you.”
Instantly, I thought of Rittika. To her, Anne Marie was probably more of a hindrance than anything else. What had she called her? The ultimate Pale. I forced a smile and hoped my discomfort didn’t show. I was treading unfamiliar territory here. Heart-to-hearts weren’t my thing. My family never had them, except the times Alexa and I broke down about our parents’ dysfunctional marriage. Most of my intimate conversations were with Mel, who wasn’t a particularly emotional person either. I wasn’t used to opening up or being someone’s sounding board.
Not surprisingly, a part of me wanted to flee the tent at that moment. But I didn’t. Even if it meant leaving my comfort zone, I wanted to be Anne Marie’s friend. I wanted to help her. She looked so skinny and small and weak. To be honest, she reminded me of my sister.
“Listen,” I said. “You should try to sleep—it’s late. Tomorrow will be a better day.”
“You promise?”
“I promise,” I said, smiling. But we both knew it was a promise I couldn’t necessarily keep.
Later on, after my shift had ended, I tried to get some sleep. But every time I closed my eyes, Warren would appear. I couldn’t get the image of him on the beach out of my head. Time and again, I saw his blank eyes. I smelled his putrid, decaying odor. The more I tried to forget him, the more stubbornly he returned. Without my consent, my imagination added gory details: snails sucking on his skin, seabirds picking him apart, hermit crabs crawling through his rotting guts.
The only way to forget him for good was to think about something almost as disturbing—the fact that the fake eye had disappeared. Mel told me it was gone from the forked tree. Like Chester’s shoes, it had simply vanished. Maybe there was a logical explanation for its absence. Maybe a strong gust of wind had dislodged it and it had rolled away. Maybe an animal had managed to move it. I came up with a bunch of possible explanations, but I didn’t believe any of them.
What I did believe, deep inside, was that the eye was still watching us, somehow. Still seeing everything we were doing. I sat up and looked all around, trying to gaze beyond the glowing fringes of the campfire, all the way into the pitch black of the jungle. But of course I couldn’t, and it was with a sense of failure that I finally fell asleep.
The next day, more paranoid than ever, we continued to search the island. We went over the same ground again, retracing our old steps, worried on top of everything else about traps in the earth. Just as yesterday, we came away with nothing to show for it. The day after that was the same. A sense of futility began to descend upon us. The more we searched, the more elusive the enemy seemed.
“He could be anywhere,” Mel said. “There’s no way to really comb this place. We’d have to burn it down.”
She was right. Even if we went over the island a thousand times, the enemy could still evade us. All he had to do was move around from one overgrown, leafy hideaway to the next. It would be easy. Child’s play. Yet frequently, I got an icy sensation, the feeling that he was nearby, right over my shoulder, watching everything we were doing.
Mel was convinced he spent at least some time in the caves. “It’s the best natural shelter on the island,” she told me. “The only reason we’re not there is because our fresh water is here, near Conch Lake.”
“But you searched the caves, and didn’t see him.”
“Maybe he knew we were there and hid.”
Several more times she returned to the caves. She took different partners—me, Chester, Pablo, even Rish. Mel made torches so we could see through the darkness. She drew a detailed map of the interior. The caves were more extensive than we’d thought, and included at least a dozen detours and dead ends. Still, we never found any sign of the person who had written the note on the sand or dug the trap that had hurt Anne Marie. We never found any sign of anyone.
When Mel made seven tallies on the forked tree—a full week on the island—we finally admitted aloud what we were all feeling: We wouldn’t find the enemy until he wanted to be found.
We stopped looking. We stayed closer to Camp Summerbliss and kept the fire burning. We wrote in giant letters along the beach MAYDAY and SOS in case a plane flew overhead. Each of us had daily chores. Like Betty said, it was better to stay busy. When we were idle, it was easy to fixate on the enemy. To imagine what he might do.
Avery foraged for fruit. On the beach, she collected seaweed, which was surprisingly tasty when washed in freshwater and dried in the sun. Ming assumed the role of cook. She dove for most of the conch, removed the meat from their shells, and cleaned it. She kept us from getting tired of the same old food by whipping up new recipes: conch and fruit salad, conch wrapped in banana leaves, conch soup with seaweed in halved coconut shells.
Mel was in charge of keeping us hydrated. After several false starts, she’d found a way to store water. In the jungle, she’d happened across wild gourds, which she’d picked and laid on the beach. On the sun-scorched sand, the gourds dried up in no time. Their green stripes faded to brown. Their skins turned parched as baked clay. Mel cut off the tops with her knife and emptied out the guts. When cleaned, each of the gourds could hold several pints of freshwater. Betty tied handmade string around the waists of their pear shape. We wore the gourds like canteens around our necks.
Impressed, I asked Mel where she’d learned to make them. “From some remote indigenous tribe your father met?”
“No. From The Swiss Family Robinson,” she replied.
As her leg healed, Anne Marie spent most of her time on the far side of the island, the part Mel identified as the “tail end.” She liked to sit on the outcrop, which was like a natural lookout tower, and stare at the ocean. I was worried about her being all alone and far away. But Mel was happy someone was stationed there, should a ship sail by. Mel had shown Anne Marie how to build a fire and make smoke signals, but when I visited her at the lookout tower, the fire was always out.
I worried that her lack of medication was taking a major toll on her health. She was even more detached lately, her eyes dreamy, her thoughts locked away. When I visited her, I tried to draw her out a little. But she wasn’t as open as she’d been that night in the tent. While I tried to make conversation, she would just watch the lapping waves, as mesmerized as she’d been when I’d caught her staring into the jungle. And when she did speak, it wasn’t in response to what I was saying. She complained, instead, about tricks the clouds were playing on her eyes. How they were conspiring with the waves to make a submarine bobbing in the water, or a giant ocean liner, or a fleet of white sailboats.
“Mirages,” she said. “There for a few seconds, then lost.”
That was the same way I was beginning to feel about her.
The boys kept watch over Camp Summerbliss, patrolling. But at least once a day they went fishing. Though they were scared of sharks, they loved to swim in the shallows inside the reef. Using fencing swords, they tried to spear any fish that looked edible. If that didn’t work, they used the fishhooks or dragged for fish with a net Betty wove for them. Whenever they caught something, they returned giddy and charged up. We would roast succulent white fish or speckled crabs and have a feast.
Rittika occupied herself with beachcombing. She looked for shells, coral, and sea glass. But she also sorted through the garbage that washed up on our island. I secretly found this amusing. At Drake Rosemont, Rittika would have scoffed at anyone touching trash. But here, she had no issues—maybe because trash was one of the few visible reminders of our past. On her outings, she usually found plastic water bottles. She also found straws, milk jugs, soda cans and rings, unraveling pieces of rope, cigarette filters, garbage bags, even condoms and syringes. All that trash—it was disgusting. It made me realize that Pablo was right to be worried about the state of our planet.
As for Betty, she was the most industrious of all of us. She wove more tents, as well as baskets, sun hats, mats, even a hammock. The supplies tent was one of her most useful creations. Rittika put the water bottles and other assorted odds and ends from the beach inside the tent. We also stowed the items from the parachute there, as well as the contents of our backpacks and pockets: books, pens, a deck of cards, wallets, pocket change, and dead cell phones.
More days passed. I realized something when I woke up in the new tent I shared with Mel, watching bits of light dancing through the weft. It felt almost normal to be here. Roles had been more or less established. Life had already taken on a certain rhythm, a certain beat.
But this life wasn’t anything like the one we’d led at Drake Rosemont. In fact, we were even beginning to look different. Gone were the sleeves and collars of our school uniforms. We wore as little fabric as possible to stay cool in the island heat. The Pales turned pink, the Golds ever darker.
Free of Drake Rosemont’s restrictions, the girls wore their hair wild and tangled. We put on jewelry we’d made ourselves: necklaces, earrings, and bracelets constructed from cowrie shells, abalone, coral, feathers, and mother-of-pearl. Betty made a whole necklace from chips of white and blue china she’d found in a tidal pool. She wondered aloud if they’d been part of an old English tea set. Pablo retorted that they were probably remnants of a dollar-store plate made in China, washed out to sea by sewage runoff.
Rittika rubbed her teeth with crushed shells until they turned blindingly white, especially against her dark skin. We followed her lead, as we always did. Our smiles gleamed lupine and dangerous. I didn’t want to admit it, but I liked the animal look of myself in the reflection of Conch Lake.
As for the boys, they looked different, too. The khaki fabric of their torn shorts had faded from sunlight and salt water. Waistbands slung low on their hips, revealing pelvic bones, happy trails, waists made leaner from our Spartan diet. At Drake Rosemont, I wouldn’t have stared at their new bodies. Now I did.
When we’d arrived on the island, we’d been neat, respectable, obedient, bland. Now we were creatures of our habitat— feral and unpredictable. It seemed to me only Mel remained the same. Maybe that was because she was more resilient than the rest of us. Or maybe it was because Mel had been a child of nature long before we ever got here.
Another night, another girl screaming. I sat bolt upright and grabbed for Mel’s hand. She wasn’t there.
Terrified, I crawled out of the tent to a disconcerting sight. By the light of the fire, I saw Mel swatting and kicking at a swarm of monkeys. She bared her teeth, then leaned her head toward them aggressively, like a bull about to charge. They backed off for a few seconds, but soon began another attack.
There were a dozen of them—all near Anne Marie’s tent, which was half-collapsed. And Anne Marie, she was the one who was screaming. She looked bleary-eyed and terrified, hopping from one foot to the next, trying to avoid one monkey’s claws and teeth. She cried out as it scratched her still-tender leg in a fit of rage.
Betty and I locked eyes, then dashed toward the chaos. Imitating the monkeys, we yelled and jumped wildly. We’d hoped to scare them off, but our tactic only made them more enraged. One of the bigger ones came close and screeched maniacally, its eyes ablaze with frenzied wrath. The barbaric noise it made—that was the worst thing. Because it sounded so human.
Instinctively, I reached down, scooped up a handful of dirt, and threw it at the creature’s face. Bull’s-eye. With a yelp, it scampered away. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw pieces of food scattered around the edge of what remained of Anne Marie’s tent. It dawned on me what must have happened: The monkeys had come for that food. In their enthusiasm, they’d knocked down Anne Marie’s tent. They’d probably thought Anne Marie was their competition for the meal. Now they were defending their claim.
Waving swords and fists, Pablo and Chester came running. They tipped the balance in our favor. One by one, the other monkeys began to disperse, realizing they were outnumbered and overpowered. Two lingered, hissing at us, but when Mel hissed back, they slowly retreated into the jungle.
My heart was pounding so loud I wondered if everyone around me could hear it. I’d never known monkeys could be like this—like demons.
“How did this happen?” Mel asked Anne Marie, who was huddled on the ground, whimpering. She looked smaller and more helpless than ever.
“I don’t know,” she sobbed. “I was in my tent. Sleeping. Then I started hearing noises. The next thing I knew, my tent came down, and there were monkeys everywhere.”
“Why did you leave food near your tent?”
Anne Marie looked at the bits of conch and fruit still scattered nearby. “I didn’t leave it. It wasn’t there when I went to bed.”
“So who the hell put it there?” Mel demanded, looking around.
“I did,” Rittika said, out of nowhere. She came walking over, her face strangely serene. “It was for her own good. I thought it would help her.”
“Why on earth would you think that?” asked Mel.
“You know perfectly well why, Mel. Tell me—when we were hunting the enemy, did you like having Anne Marie as your partner? It was like hauling bricks on your back, right? She’s deadweight. And for some reason, everyone pretends that’s okay. It’s not. She’s gotta learn to stand on her own two feet. To protect herself. We’ve all got to do our share.”
Mel shook her head. “I can’t even believe what I’m hearing. It’s crazy. You honestly think you were doing her a favor by siccing wild animals on her?”
“It’s called tough love. I wanted her to see that she’s capable of defending herself. I figured if she could fend off some animals, maybe there’s hope for her. Otherwise, let’s face it, she’s just bait for the enemy.”
Rittika looked at Anne Marie not unkindly. I couldn’t swear on it, but I think she believed every word she said.
As her anger flared, Mel’s red face turned even redder.
“Look at that,” she demanded, motioning to Anne Marie’s bleeding legs. “You are personally responsible for that. You made it happen.”
“It didn’t have to happen,” Rittika insisted. “If she would have put up a fight, for once in her life.”
“Monkeys, like all wild animals, are unpredictable. She could have died. Even now, she could have herpes B or rabies—thanks to you.” As Mel scolded her, I knew she was also deliberating. Rittika had crossed a dangerous line. She’d taken someone else’s life into her own hands. How she’d be judged for that was going to be up to us.
“She’ll be fine,” Rittika said, “because other people rescued her. As usual.”
“Give it a rest!” Pablo snapped. “What happened is simple—you put her life on the line. For no reason. And now you’re criticizing her. Again for no reason. It’s unforgivable.”
“I’m just trying to make a point.”
“Oh, really? If the same thing happened to you, you would have gone berserk! But things like that don’t happen to people like you, do they? The walls of that ivory tower you live in must be pretty thick.”
“Hey, back off, man,” Rish said, stepping in.
“See what I mean?” Fiery-eyed, Pablo pointed at Rish, but looked at his sister. “No one is allowed to criticize you. Even when you almost kill someone. The least you could do is apologize.”
“This has nothing to do with you,” Rish said, blocking Pablo’s chest with his hand. “Butt out.”
“Hey, someone needs to teach her right from wrong. Clearly, she never learned it.”
Rittika glanced from her brother to Pablo, and then back again. She looked unflustered, even amused.
“Forget about it, Rish. He’s not worth it.”
“I could say the same about you,” Pablo spat.
Rittika ignored him. “Let’s go. You too, Avery. Let’s let the riffraff cool off.”
Dutifully, Avery followed behind as they left. When they’d gone, Mel dipped a piece of torn cloth into Conch Lake. Pensively, she cleaned Anne Marie’s scratches, then poured some whiskey from the parachute bundle over them. Anne Marie didn’t complain. She didn’t even flinch. She’d stopped crying, but I couldn’t say she looked any better. Her face was expressionless—even catatonic.
Betty invited her to sleep the rest of the night in her tent. In the morning, she promised, she’d make Anne Marie a new one. Anne Marie nodded mutely. As she bent down to get inside, I watched her ridged backbone practically saw through her blouse. If she didn’t eat more soon, she was going to turn into a skeleton.
I lay wide awake after that. The episode had fired me up. I felt angry at Rittika for her cruelty, and angry at Mel for not being able to stop it. But mainly I felt angry at myself because I hadn’t done a thing. Talk about deadweight. With a sigh, I got up and tended to the fire.
At dawn, I was the only one still awake. One by one, my classmates crawled out of their tents to a new day. Nonchalantly, Rittika doffed her clothes and went for a swim in Conch Lake. Never mind that the boys were watching. She’d been comfortable with her body at Drake Rosemont, but here, she flaunted it. As if we didn’t already see her superiority.
As for me, I waited for the boys to go patrolling before I bathed. I needed to feel the soothing weight of water. But even more important, I needed to gather my courage before speaking to Rittika.
In the water, she swam over to me and smiled brightly, as if last night had never happened. I wondered if she felt even remotely guilty, or if being Rittika meant never second-guessing yourself.
“Hi,” she said, floating on the water.
“I want to talk to you,” I told her.
“Okay, so talk.”
“It wasn’t right, what you did. Anne Marie is having trouble right now. She’s kind of—sick.”
“I think she has enough defenders, Sam.”
“Anne Marie’s different here. She’s not like she was at school.”
“Seriously—if she has a problem with me, she should talk to me.”
“The thing is, I don’t know if she can.”
Effortlessly treading water, Rittika rolled her eyes. “I made my point last night. I’m sick and tired of hearing about what a fragile little snowflake she is. For once in her life, she needs to stand on her own two feet.” Rittika looked me in the eye and shrugged. “I’m not trying to be a bitch. I’m just saying it like it is.”
Without waiting for me to respond, she swam to the shore and climbed out onto the rocks. She sat there, face toward the rising sun, waiting for the early heat to dry her off. I scrabbled out after her, stubbing my toe and feeling more awkward than ever.
Still, I was determined not to let her off the hook. I sat beside her, wondering how to proceed. How do you teach someone compassion? Can you? In that silence, Rittika raised a finger and pointed at the birthmark on my shoulder. The blemish, the size of a fist, was a patch of hypopigmented skin—ivory white. Until I was eleven or twelve, I didn’t care about it. But once I’d become more aware of my body, in the way teenagers do, I’d started to hate that birthmark. I thought twice about wearing tank tops or strapless dresses, fearing people would make fun of me. I got so self-conscious about it that I asked my mother if I could get it removed.
I figured she would be receptive. After all, looks were important to her. Superficial things were important. We hadn’t had a real conversation in years, but my mom was always ready to discuss the state of my cuticles or whether I’d look good with bangs.
Yet when I’d asked her about the birthmark, she’d shaken her head.
“I don’t want you to get rid of that,” she’d said. “It’s the only part of you that’s like me!”
Maybe she’d been joking. But I was bothered by the comment. After that, I started to think of the birthmark as more than a blemish. It was a bona fide defect. Evidence of my mother’s bad judgment. Evidence of my father’s transgressions. Evidence of a mistake: two people who should never have gotten together, not because their skin didn’t match or because they’d grown up on different continents, but because they had absolutely nothing in common. Nothing except the same two daughters.
Casually, Rittika ran her finger over the birthmark and pressed it like a button. Her touch felt hot and penetrating. I felt a shame so pure I wanted to cry.
“Why are you so self-conscious, Sam?” she asked. “Remember, you’re better than that. You’re gold.”