27. Adrian
TWENTY-SEVEN
ADRIAN
The next day, it feels like I’m sleepwalking. I don’t think I slept a wink. I couldn’t.
I tried.
I couldn’t.
Every time I closed my eyes, all I saw was?—
No.
Not going there.
Dylan, for his part, has been quiet the whole morning. And sort of jumpy. Whenever I touch him, he jerks, and then his cheeks flush.
It’s weird.
I think.
It might be me hallucinating from lack of sleep.
It rained early in the morning, so we have water, and we eat more coconut for breakfast. Once we’re done, Dylan takes the first aid kit and rummages around in it for a bit before he pulls out the pair of scissors. Then he peels off his pants and starts to cut off the pant legs.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“I’m making shorts,” he says distractedly. “And then you can use these”—he lifts one of the cut off legs up and shakes it—“as sleeves at night. That way you won’t be cold.”
“Aww. You care,” I say.
He smiles, but it’s forced. “I was thinking we should go see what else is out there today. Maybe find something else to eat and just get a better lay of the land.”
I nod. “Yeah. Good idea.”
He nods too. It’s tense. I don’t know why it’s tense.
It’ll pass.
I’m sure it will.
The shock of yesterday is probably catching up to Dylan as well. I’m a mess anyway, but up until this morning, he seemed to be handling the near-death experience better than I am, and it’s unfair for me to think he’d just shake it off.
We only have three shoes between the two of us.
My lone sneaker and Dylan’s loafers. That first day, when we hiked inland, Dylan was wearing my sneaker, and I took his loafers because he couldn’t properly put his weight on his foot and was leaning on the crutch.
Today we both take our own shoes because Dylan’s ankle is much better by now.
Considering how it looked that first day I’d been freaked out as fuck about it being broken, but once the swelling went down he only has a limp.
He gives me both his socks, and I put them on to protect my foot at least a little bit.
We make sure the fire has enough wood so it won’t burn out while we’re gone.
“Ready?” Dylan asks.
“Let’s go.”
The air is so humid it feels like we’re breathing water.
In less than a minute, my skin is slick with sweat.
The farther into the woods we go, the more mosquitoes emerge.
It’s like they have a signal network that announces there’s fresh meat.
Seems all of them got the message. The more I swat at them, the more there are.
You kill one, and in its place there are immediately three more.
“It smells like your mom’s greenhouse,” Dylan says from behind me.
I breathe in deeply, and for a moment, I consciously ignore the mosquitoes and the branches and twigs that cut into my feet and the fact that it feels like we’re hiking in a sauna.
It’s a mix of plants—dead and alive—soil, decaying leaves, and wood. It’s a dense, heady smell. It’s kind of nice.
“Shit.” Dylan lets out a hiss of pain. I whirl around and find him cradling his forearm. There’s a long gash in it that wasn’t there a minute ago.
“What happened?”
“Stupid thorns,” he grumbles, throwing a glare at the bush next to him. I reach for his arm, but he pulls it away as soon as my fingers make contact with his skin. “It’s fine. Just a flesh wound.”
His face is flushed again, but that’s not really a sign of anything since it’s so hot.
“We’ll put a Band-Aid on it when we get back,” I say.
“It’s just a scratch.” Dylan wipes the blood off. “Let’s move.”
I don’t listen because my thoughts are already spiraling out of control.
“How the fuck will we keep the wounds clean?” I ask. “If this gets infected…”
My breathing is picking up, and all the scenarios I see are worst case. I drag both my hands through my hair and try to think my quickening heartbeat back into a normal speed, but I’m not having much success. The last I-almost-lost-him moment is still too fresh.
This fucking island is trying to kill us both, and it’s clearly set its sights on Dylan first.
“Adrian!”
I startle. Judging by the sheer volume of Dylan’s voice, this wasn’t the first time he said my name.
My breathing is still more like panting than any kind of normal rhythm. I press my fist against my chest.
Dylan steps closer, a deep frown on his face as he gives me a worried look.
“I’m fine, I promise. Stay with me. Breathe with me,” Dylan says. His eyes lock on mine, his hand goes to my chest, and he pulls my fist away and presses it against his own chest.
He breathes in, deep and slow.
It takes me a moment to catch on, but then I breathe with him.
In and out.
In and out.
In and out.
On and on we go.
“We’re good,” Dylan says, calm and sure. “We’re good.”
“We’re not good,” I choke out.
“I mean, yeah, technically we’re fucked,” he says, and the casual tone makes me snort. “But there’s also a parallel universe where we’re even more fucked, so in that sense we’re good.”
“Compared to our parallel universe counterparts, we’re less fucked?”
“A heartwarming thought, isn’t it?” He grins at me.
I stare back. “Is it?”
“Just take the win.”
I laugh softly, and some of the tension leaves my rigid body.
“Come on,” Dylan says. “Let’s go see what else is out there.”
We continue walking. It’s the same mosquito-filled, sweat-drenched affair from before, and I honestly don’t even know where we are at this point. Maybe we’re just going in circles.
“What are those?” Dylan asks.
I stop and look around. “What are what?”
“That tree there. Those green things.”
I see it now. There’s a tall tree with large green leaves. It’s kind of a triangular shape, a bit like a Christmas tree, only with leaves instead of needles. There are some large, spiky… things on it I’ve never seen in my life.
We make our way to the tree and study the weird fruit.
“You think those are edible?” Dylan asks.
I shake my head. “Couldn’t even begin to guess.”
Dylan digests that for a second and then steps closer to the tree.
“They don’t look edible,” I say.
“They might if we peel them.”
“Or we just leave them be and find something we can actually identify.”
“Or we take some with us and test them.”
And he’s getting ready to climb the tree. Great.
I sigh and grab the back of his shirt.
“You fall down on that ankle, and we’re back to incredibly fucked.” I pull him back and resign myself to going after the fruit myself. “Why even bother? We’re not going to eat some funky-looking fruit,” I grumble. “That’s how people die.”
“I don’t mean we should start chomping on it right away. After we test it’s safe.”
“Or we search for something we know is edible,” I counter.
“Sure. If we find something. But this might be it, so we should at least take some with us.”
It makes sense, I have to admit it. And I also have to admit I’m overly cautious about this thing, and I have to get my nerves under control, so eventually, I nod.
“Yeah, okay. I’ll throw them to you.”
I pick a few and drop them into his hands before I climb back down.
“They came off the stem pretty easy, right? That’s a good sign, I think,” he says.
“They look like overgrown horse chestnuts. Which, by the way, are not edible.”
Dylan throws me a half-amused, half-exasperated look. He pulls off his shirt and puts the fruit inside it, wraps it up, and picks up the bundle.
“Let’s move,” he says.
It only takes us another fifteen minutes or so to reach the other side of the island after that.
The whole middle of the island is forest that covers a kind of hill. Our side of the island is a sandy beach, and the other side is mostly peppered with black rocks that look volcanic in origin.
Honestly, it would be just our luck to land on a dormant volcano after a plane crash and then have that volcano decide it’s time to wake up after thousands of years.
Dylan nudges one of the rocks with the toe of his shoe while he absently lets his eyes wander over the endless expanse of water in front of us.
He turns to me.
“Is it stupid that I kind of hoped there’d be something out there?”
“No,” I say. “I was hoping too.”
He nods and looks down at his feet for a second before he takes a deep breath and squares his shoulders.
“It doesn’t matter anyway. The rescue mission will be here sooner rather than later. In a way it’s good it’s just this one island here. We’ll be more visible like this.” He looks at me again and nods. “They’ll be here tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Tomorrow.”