33. Dylan
THIRTY-THREE
DYLAN
We’re lying by the fire. It’s dark, and the sky is filled with stars. It’s the one thing I’m willing to give this place props for. The views of the night sky are magnificent. I’ve never seen so many stars in my life, so close it feels like I can touch them if I reach out my hand.
Adrian gets up from his spot next to mine and throws another branch on the fire. We don’t have anything to cut wood with, so we’re limited to gathering branches and whatever pieces of wood there are on the ground. It’s a jungle, so there’s no real shortage of firewood there or on the beach.
Sparks fly up when the branch lands in the fire.
Adrian lies back down, but instead of going back to his own spot, he puts his head on my stomach and settles in.
For a moment, I stop breathing.
His dark hair tickles the bare skin of my stomach.
What fresh hell is this?
“Enjoying your pillow?” To my credit, I only sound mildly choked.
He looks up from where he was staring into the fire. “You don’t mind, do you?”
Yes .
“You’re fine.” I try to breathe. Slow. Normal. Is this how people breathe? Is it too fast? Can he tell?
“Thanks. I was getting all that sand in my hair.”
“Oh nice,” I say. “Fuck my hair though, right?”
He grins at me. “You were already lying down anyway.” He takes a strand of his hair and pulls at it. The usual dirty blond has turned lighter from all the sun and has grown almost to his shoulders.
“It’s getting long,” I say.
I don’t know what makes me do it, but I lift my hand and rake my fingers through his hair once, then again.
Then I kind of realize what I’m doing and quickly pull my hand back.
Everything seems to go very quiet, or maybe it’s just my own stupidity ringing in my ears.
“Why’d you stop?” Adrian mutters sleepily. “Felt good.”
This is what torture feels like.
I lift my hand up again. My fingers tremble a bit when I move them through his hair. He makes a contented noise in the back of his throat and leans into my touch.
What the fuck am I doing?
I don’t stop, though.
It’s so soft. His hair.
“Do you think they held a funeral?” Adrian suddenly asks.
My hand stops.
“What?”
“Freya. Mom. Dad. Do you think they held a funeral for us?” He considers it for a second. “Or a memorial service.”
I haven’t really thought about that. I haven’t really considered that to the rest of the world we’re dead.
“Oh,” I say slowly and lick my lips. “I guess… maybe? I suppose they’ve called off the search by now, so it makes sense that they would have.”
Adrian nods. His eyes are on the fire, but I don’t think that’s what he’s seeing right now. He’s probably thinking about home. And Freya.
He doesn’t bring them up much.
For once, I don’t feel jealous.
Just sad.
Adrian clears his throat. “I hope they picked a good song to send me off,” he says lightly.
“That’s your biggest worry?”
“I want to leave a good last impression.”
My lips twitch. “Of course you do. Seriously, is this something you’ve thought about?”
“You can’t leave these things to chance.”
“Okay. What’s your song, then?”
He makes a thoughtful face. “I’m currently deciding between ‘Highway to Hell’ and ‘Another One Bites the Dust.’”
His expression is dead serious.
I flick his nose, and he starts to laugh.
“Inappropriate?” he asks innocently.
“No, no. Assuming that ‘Baby Shark’ was taken, those two are the next best options.”
“Those are my top choices. ‘I Will Survive’ is also a classic.”
“Or maybe something like ‘Let’s Get It On.’”
He makes a face. “I’m not sure I want to encourage anybody to get it on with me once I’m gone.”
“Not you,” I scoff and tug on his earlobe. “Other people. Let them get on with each other.”
“Huh. Kind of like one life ends and another begins, sort of thing.”
I tap the tip of his nose. “Exactly.”
“Nice of you to leave that legacy.”
“I’m a nice person.”
He laughs softly.
We both fall silent. His eyes are on the fire, and I’m sneaking looks at him and hoping he doesn’t notice.
Flames paint swathes of orange on his skin, and his eyes have a lazy look in them. He almost looks content.
The brain is a weird thing. It takes something abnormal, and when you give it enough time, it turns it into something normal.
Because nothing about this situation we’re in is normal, but after all this time my brain has just sort of jumped on board, so in the morning, when I wake up, it’s not with a start and the crazy beating of my heart anymore.
It’s all familiar already, and I think about chores.
And I don’t think about them in a we-have-to-do-this-or-we-won’t-survive way.
I think about the chores on the island like I think about doing the dishes at home. Ugh! Boring.
Adrian moves. A little twitch. Then he goes still.
Slowly, very slowly, he pushes himself up into a sitting position, eyes on the ocean that stretches out in front of us.
Then he’s on his feet.
“What?” I get up too.
“That,” he says slowly and points toward the horizon. “Is that a star?”
It takes me a moment to figure out what he’s pointing at, but then… I see the light. A blinking light.
There are a lot of stars above us and around us.
Stars don’t blink.
“What do you think—” I whisper as if I’m afraid to scare it away.
“A ship,” he says. “I think it might be a ship.”
He’s on the move then, and I rush after him.
“What—”
“The fire. We need to build it bigger.” His voice is all tight.
I glance at the blinking light. How far away is it? It’s impossible to say in the darkness. I try to listen to the sounds, straining to hear anything that resembles an engine.
There’s nothing, but it’s noisy here. The jungle is always noisy. The ocean is always noisy. It doesn’t mean there isn’t something out there.
We scream anyway. Scream and shout and jump up and down and wave our hands. On the off chance somebody is out there right this very second.
We empty the lean-to of wood and kick away the shelter we built above our fire to protect it.
Everything goes in to feed the flames, until the fire is big enough that I get just a bit nervous that we’re going to set fire to the island. Although… That’d definitely attract attention, wouldn’t it? Maybe we should burn down the island!
I tell myself to calm down.
This is just insanity speaking now.
Adrian is off toward the jungle to find more wood. It’s an insane mission in complete darkness, and he’s barefoot and shirtless. I still follow him.
Like two madmen, we gather anything we can get our hands on that will burn and throw that into the fire too.
I’m sweaty and panting. Branches scrape my skin bloody, and the soles of my feet sting and burn.
“More,” Adrian shouts as he sprints back toward the jungle.
It’s then that something wet lands on the tip of my nose.
I look up.
There’s almost no time to react before the skies open above us. The rain pours down. Not in drops, but in sheets.
It barely seems to take a second before the fire is out.
Adrian comes running out of the jungle and drops the branches he was carrying.
He’s on his knees in front of the fire.
“No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” he chants desperately, but the rain is so thick I can barely make out the lines of his body.
It’s then that I remember. I’m off toward the life raft. My hands shake when I rummage around our stuff. Why didn’t I remember earlier? How could I forget? I swallow down tears of frustration.
I’m so fucking stupid!
I sprint back out to Adrian and wordlessly pass him the hand flares we found in the life raft kit. I can’t light it myself. My hands are shaking too badly.
It takes him a few seconds to figure out what I’m giving him.
“Fuck!” he bellows when he understands.
His hands shake as he twists the cap off and pushes the scratch surface of the cap against the igniter like the instructions say.
He holds the flare up. If there’s a distress signal we have to use, neither of us knows it.
Please , I think. Please, somebody see this is. See us. Please.
I don’t see the light anymore, but it doesn’t mean it’s not there. There’s so much water coming down that I can’t see anything.
The flare burns for some time.
They’ll see it. Somebody will see it.
“Now what?” I ask when the flare has gone out. “We have one more.”
“Now we wait.” He sits down almost defiantly.
I sit down next to him.
And we wait.
A little bit later, Adrian wraps his arm around me and pulls me against his side.
“They’ll come back,” he says.
But they don’t.