28. Dylan
TWENTY-EIGHT
DYLAN
I drop the fruit we found on the sand next to the fire once we get back to the campsite and sit down. Adrian adds a few more branches to the fire and sits down too.
I glance toward him. He looks tired. And he keeps yawning and rubbing his eyes.
I tilt my head to the side. “Did you sleep at all last night?”
He jerks like he was dozing off and I’ve woken him up, then rubs his face again. “Yeah. Pretty well.”
If he did, he doesn’t look it.
I’m pretty sure he’s lying.
I’m not sure why he would.
“You don’t look that well rested,” I say.
He takes a handful of sand and pours it from one palm to the other, gaze stuck on the horizon.
“There’s plenty of fish,” he says, seemingly out of nowhere.
I’m caught off guard for a moment.
“What if we made a fishhook out of wood,” he says thoughtfully, raising his brows at me. “Worth a shot?”
I blink, surprised and impressed.
“I mean, yeah,” I say. “Definitely worth a shot.”
“And the coconut husk. If we gather enough, I bet we can fashion it into a rope. For the fishhook. And we can use it to try and make a fishing net maybe.”
“When did you become a survival expert?”
He laughs, but even that sounds tired. “I’m just really sick of coconuts.”
“That’s a kind of motivation I’ve never heard before.”
“It’s a desert island special.” He blows out a breath and gets up. “Can you get me the knife? I’ll go see if I can find some branches.”
I go and get the knife, and while I’m standing by our makeshift camp, my gaze lands on a tree next to our life raft tent.
I weigh the knife in my palm for a while.
The thing I plan to do… it’s the smart thing to do. But it also kind of feels like I’m jinxing it.
Why do we need to keep track of how many days we’ve been here?
The rescue plane will show up any minute now.
Right?
I tap the side of my fist against my forehead.
Look up to the sky.
Nothing.
But surely any minute now.
I stand still and wait.
And then, when nothing happens, I take the knife and carve the date we arrived into the bark of the tree and add five straight lines underneath it.
It takes Adrian and me a few days to perfect our fishhook crafting skills. The first hooks are way too big. Unless we’re trying to reel in the great white whale, those things are useless.
We get better at it, though. Learn some lessons along the way.
The wood has to be from a fresh branch, or it’ll be too brittle and break easily, for example.
We manage to get the size down too, so now it doesn’t look like we’re trying to create a sustainably sourced replacement for Captain Hook’s arm.
It’s still too big until Adrian figures out that we don’t need the hook to be an actual hook.
A small stick that’s been sharpened on both ends will do the job just as well.
The first fish we catch is so small there’s barely anything to eat there, but we diligently bake it over the fire and then eat what little there is.
I manage to stab myself with the tip of the knife once, and Adrian tries to use all the Neosporin we have on that small cut and doesn’t calm down before I’ve agreed to sacrifice one of the Band-Aids.
Despite Adrian’s glares and continuous protests, I test the spiky green fruit we found.
I take every precaution I can think of, since Adrian’s hovering and glaring the whole time, so it takes me almost a week, complete with rubbing the juice on the inside of my arm and then testing it on my lip, to work up to the point where I can actually taste the thing.
It’s surprisingly good. Tastes a bit like strawberries mixed with apple juice. Mildly sweet with a hint of tang to it.
Would I give all my earthly possessions for a steak right about now? Yes. Is it still a much-needed change from coconuts? Without a doubt.
Adrian glowers and glares but finally relents and tries a piece. He gives a short nod of approval then glowers and glares some more like he’s disappointed the stuff turned out to be edible.
He’s been moody as fuck forever by now—and trying to hide it from me—because he’s still not sleeping, and when he does, he’s restless, tossing and turning on the floor of the life raft.
“Are you okay?” I ask when he’s checking the knife cut on my thumb. This question is becoming a staple lately.
“Good.” He glances up at me and smiles. It doesn’t reach his eyes. I suppose he’s forgetting that I know him too well for those kinds of lies to work, because he keeps insisting that he’s fine and everything is peachy, and we both pretend I believe him.
I’d call him out, but what am I gonna say?
“Hey, I know we’re stranded on a deserted island after our plane crashed into the ocean, and we don’t know if anybody’s going to come and get us, and we’re starving and sleep deprived and not sure we’ll make it out alive…
but cheer up a bit, for fuck’s sake, huh? ”
And anyway, he’s most likely thinking about Freya and his family. By now they absolutely know we’re missing.
I can’t even begin to imagine what they all must be feeling.
No wonder he can’t sleep.
I’d leave him be, but then he also gets into the habit of sitting on the beach and flashing with the signal mirror for hours on end.
It quickly turns into something like an obsession for him—the kind of nonnegotiable priority that takes precedence over everything else because what if there’s a ship or a plane somewhere out there, and they pass us just as he’s not signaling, and that can’t happen.
I try to reason with myself about why I should leave him be, but after a week I figure it’s time for an intervention. So I take the mirror away from him.
It doesn’t go down well.
“Have you seen the signal mirror?” he asks me after he’s searched the life raft.
I feel bad about how panicked he sounds.
“I have it,” I say.
He stops rummaging around, stands up, and looks at me expectantly.
“Well, give it to me, then.”
There’s a nervous swirling in the bottom of my stomach. I don’t think he’s going to be happy with me.
“No.”
He stares at me. “What?”
I take a deep breath. “I think you need to calm down with the signaling.”
He keeps staring at me like he’s not comprehending what I’m saying.
“What?” he repeats.
“Look, we both want to get out of here more than anything, but…”
He raises his brows and gives a questioning look.
I don’t want to say it, but it’ll be a pretty shitty intervention if I don’t.
“You’re driving yourself insane like this,” I blurt. “You can’t just sit on the beach and signal the whole day and then be scared you’re missing something while you’re away. It’s not healthy.”
“Oh? Should I maybe just rely on my luck?” he asks. “Because if you haven’t noticed, so far it hasn’t really been working!”
A lot of that last sentence comes out through gritted teeth.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I just know that whatever you’re doing right now isn’t sustainable in the long run.”
“I don’t give a fuck about the long run!” he snaps. “I need to get us off this island.”
He looks pissed, but he sounds scared more than anything else.
“Adrian…”
“Give me the mirror!”
“I think I’m gonna cover the signaling myself for now,” I say as calmly as I can.
He stares at me for so long, twitching all the while, that I’m almost sure he’s going to tackle me to get the mirror, but in the end, he whirls around and stomps away.