24. Dylan
TWENTY-FOUR
DYLAN
It starts to rain the next afternoon.
We’ve been lying in the shade of the trees the whole morning.
The headache that was still manageable yesterday has gotten more vicious.
The bright sunshine makes my eyes water, and I’m so thirsty that it makes my breaths come out short and shallow.
I keep dozing off and waking up with a jerk, too exhausted to stay awake, but also unable to sleep.
“Oh, thank fuck,” Adrian says as the first drops hit our skin. He grabs the three coconut shells we’ve managed to salvage so far and lays them out on the beach, and then we tilt our heads back and try to catch as much water in our wide-open mouths as possible.
It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing.
The rain ends too soon, but it fills the coconut shells, at least.
“We need more of these,” Adrian says. I can already see his brain working. Adrian is always happiest when he can do something with his hands. Solve a problem. He keeps saying he’s not book smart, but he’s got one of the most resourceful brains I’ve ever seen.
“How’s your foot?” He nods toward my ankle.
“Better.” My ankle throbs. I ignore it. “I barely notice it anymore.”
He nods wordlessly. He knows I’m lying, but he doesn’t call me out on it.
“We need to get better at cracking these open to get more shells.” He weighs one of the coconuts in his palm.
“And we still need to figure out a shelter. If it rains during the night, it’d be good to have a roof over our heads.
And the signal fire. Food, too. We should map the island.
See what’s out there. There’s probably fish we could try and catch.
A coconut diet isn’t that appealing, even if it’s only short term. ”
My head is starting to spin from all the information he’s throwing at me.
He’s not done yet.
“You said something about a dry season, right?” He looks at me for confirmation. I try to remember. These conversations feel like they happened years ago. Researching Fiji. Buying tickets. Arranging our stay. It was all in another lifetime, organized by some other Dylan.
“There was a weather site I was looking at, and it said it was dry season. And it’ll rain six out of ten days, or something like that?” I mutter. My thoughts are slow and sluggish.
Adrian nods. “That’s not too bad. And hey, we still have coconuts.
” He purses his lips. “We should go check out how many coconut trees we’re dealing with here, though.
If it’s just the one, we’re still a bit fucked.
And we should check the beach for debris.
Either from the plane or maybe just random trash.
Oceans are full of trash, so maybe something useful has been swept onto the shore. ”
“Okay,” I say, still a bit dazed from all the words he just aimed at me.
While I was sleeping, he’s been keeping his brain busy.
The short bout of rain has given him a frantic energy that I can’t match.
Instead, I feel like I’m walking through a dream.
Like nothing here is real. It’s all some fucked up thing my brain is cooking up, and soon I’ll wake up and be back in my own home, in my own bed.
My thoughts feel sluggish, and I can’t seem to muster up any enthusiasm for anything. I halfheartedly listen to Adrian, nodding every once in a while.
“Dyl? Did you hear me?” Adrian asks.
I look around and try to remember what he said last.
“No?” I finally say. “Sorry. I’m… Sorry.”
“You okay?” He frowns.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m good. Just got lost in thought. What were you saying?”
He studies me for a bit, gauging my state of mind. I force a smile. The last thing he needs is to worry about me.
“I think we should collect some of those rocks down the beach and write a message on the sand. Like SOS? That way, when somebody flies past here they’ll see it. What do you think?”
“It’s a good plan,” I say. “A really good plan.”
It takes us most of the afternoon to find rocks.
Adrian does most of the work while I try to balance myself on the crutch and pick up rocks.
There aren’t many that are big enough, and it’s slow going because we have to take frequent breaks since there’s still no water other than what we get out of coconuts.
The initial plan is to go big, but we have to lower our expectations after some time.
I’m not sure what we come up with in the end will be that visible, but at least it’s something.
Adrian’s skin is sunburned, and so is mine. It’ll be painful, and we have nothing to put on the burns. I’m sure somebody better prepared would know of a plant that could help, but I’m dumb enough that I have no idea what kind of natural remedies there might be.
The sun sets much earlier here than at home, and then swarms of mosquitoes appear, and it quickly starts to feel like elaborate torture while they eat us alive. I’m pretty sure I once read mosquitoes have been used as a torture method. I believe it now.
“I’m deducting another star from One Season’s rating,” I say once I’ve killed approximately a thousand of the bastards already and they still keep buzzing around me.
“Shh. Those are our mascots. They’re easily offended,” Adrian says in the darkness.
“Couldn’t you have gotten someone who’s not a bug?”
“We had auditions. They did a big coordinated dance number. It was incredible.”
“You could’ve gotten a dog, is all I’m saying.”
He scoffs. “A dog. Could you be more pedestrian?”
I laugh. In the darkness, lying right next to Adrian, I feel lighter. I try and imagine we’re in Lynn and Eric’s backyard. I need that right now. I’ll gladly fool myself into thinking I’m somewhere else. Somehow, even the thirst and hunger seem to lessen a bit.
Through the leaves above our heads, I can see glimpses of the night sky. It’s mostly cloudy tonight, with only the occasional star here and there.
I turn my head toward Adrian and watch his profile in the darkness.
“How come you guys never had a dog?” I ask. “You had the cats, the turtle, and the chickens, but never a dog, and a dog is a pretty common pet.”
“We had a dog once,” he says.
“You did?”
“Mm-hmm. Scout. It was back when we still lived in Philly. Mom and Dad adopted him when they first moved in together. I mean, we all loved him, but that dog was crazy. You wouldn’t believe what kind of chaos he got up to.
He ate the seats in Mom’s car once. Literally ate them.
In, like, five minutes. She’d left the door open to carry the groceries in.
Scout jumped in the back seat and went to town.
” His voice is full of melancholy and laughter. “I loved that dog.”
I smile too, in the darkness. “What happened to him?”
“Old age. Went to sleep one day and never woke up again. Best way to die, I figure.”
“There’s a best way to die?”
“Of course there is. Come on. It’s basic logic. Don’t tell me you’ve never thought about that.”
“I one hundred percent have not contemplated the best way to die. Ever.”
Adrian pushes himself up on one elbow and turns his body toward me. “I’m not saying you’re supposed to make a list, I’m just saying some ways are more favorable than others. Would you rather die of old age, surrounded by your loved ones, or be buried under hot lava?”
“That’s a gruesome game of would you rather.”
He flops back down on his back and laughs out loud.
“I like to think about things,” he says, still laughing. “Sue me.”
I smile into the darkness. In my head, I’m still in the Olsens’ backyard, and I’m staying here for the foreseeable future. The murmur of the waves rolling onto the shore becomes the distant noise of cars. The occasional screech of a bird is cicadas. The sand is grass.
“Hey, Dylan?” Adrian’s voice says in the darkness.
“Mm-hmm?”
He’s silent for a bit, and I turn my head to look at him.
“Why does a chicken coop have two doors?” he asks.
It takes me a moment to register what he’s asking. That he’s making a joke.
I close my eyes and breathe in the rapidly cooling breeze and try and act normal, even though I’m so grateful for him right now I could probably cry.
“I don’t know, Adrian. Why does a chicken coop have two doors?”
There’s a faint flash of his teeth when he grins. “Because if it had four doors it would be a chicken sedan.”
The corners of my lips twitch. “Is that mechanic humor?”
“The elite kind. Hey, did you know I can jump higher than a two-story building?”
I’m full-on smiling now. “Can you?”
“It’s thanks to my superior leg muscles and the fact that buildings can’t jump.”
I start to laugh, and then I can’t seem to stop. “That is a terrible joke.”
“Don’t even. We both know you like those the best. It’s why I make them. I have a slew of sophisticated jokes I never get to tell because you like the crappy ones.”
“You don’t have any sophisticated jokes,” I scoff.
“So many I’ll never get to tell,” he says in a forlorn voice.
“Okay, let’s hear one of those sophisticated jokes of yours, then.”
“I don’t want to make you feel bad when it goes right over your head.”
“That’s so considerate of you,” I say dryly.
“That’s just the kind of person I am.”
I laugh again. He moves closer until he’s pressed up against my side.
“They’ll be here tomorrow,” he says.
“Absolutely,” I say. “Tomorrow.”