five
L ATER THAT AFTERNOON , we find the energy to venture into the tropical forest that’s covering most of the island.
As expected, we find coconut palm trees after no more than a three-minute walk.
Since searching for food is our primary priority at the moment, we don’t bother going any farther. We collect four brown coconuts that Edmund swears are ripe—I have absolutely no clue—and carry them back to the beach where we’re set up.
“Okay,” I say when we drop them onto the sand near the entrance to our newly established hut. “Since you’re the self-proclaimed coconut expert, how do you suggest we get these things open without any tools?”
He scratches his head, ruffling his hair, which is in wild disarray from getting dunked in salt water and drying without combing. He stares down at the four large, rough globes on the sand. “Crack them open on a rock?”
I shrug. “That’s probably our best option. Have you seen any rocks around here?”
I haven’t, but I also haven’t been looking. And I’m honestly not the most observant person in the world because so often I’m caught up in my own thoughts.
He rolls his eyes at me. “That’s my Autumn. Always getting in the way of my good ideas with her practicalities.”
I snort with amusement as I stand back up. “I’m not trying to be a downer. I figured you might have seen rocks.”
“Oh, by the stream,” he says, already turning in that direction with one of the coconuts in his hands. “There were some big ones over there.”
Now that he’s mentioned it, I can visualize the rocks too. I grab a coconut of my own and follow him.
There’s a whole collection of rocks around the stream. They’re mostly small smooth ones, but we find one large jagged one that we figure has the best chance of working.
I nod toward Edmund. “You get the honor of trying first.”
He makes a face and shifts his weight from foot to foot, moving the coconut in his hands like it’s a basketball he’s about to throw.
Then he leans over and bangs it hard against the rock.
It’s a hard impact. I can tell from the way it jars his body. But it doesn’t make a very loud noise, and it doesn’t break the thick husk of the coconut.
He’s frowning as he straightens up, peering at the coconut.
“Nothing?” I ask.
“It kind of dented it.”
“Maybe try throwing it at the rock. You might be able to get a harder impact that way.”
“Ah, smart.” He backs up a couple of steps. Winds up like he’s about to pitch a baseball.
I giggle since he’s hamming it up on purpose, and then I gasp with genuine surprise when he slams the coconut down against the rock and it smashes into pieces.
I jump up and clap my hands.
He blinks and stares like he’s startled by his own accomplishment. But it doesn’t take long for his mind to catch up. He grins and struts over to the broken pieces.
I help him gather them up. “The water all spilled out,” I say. “But the meat inside looks good.”
“Yeah. That water is supposed to be full of electrolytes, so once I figure out a more efficient way to open them, we can try to save the liquid.”
“We’ll have to have some sort of bowl or cup. Oh wait, if we can keep the coconut shell from breaking into so many pieces, we can clean out the halves and use them as bowls like you mentioned before.” I scrape out some of the meat in one piece with my fingers and try it.
It’s not the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten, but it tastes fresh and mild. And it’s food we definitely need.
We finish off the coconut quickly, and then Edmund tries throwing another one against the rock—this time with slightly less force. The half that hits the rock smashes, but the other half doesn’t.
He loses most of the water again, but we have an intact half that I work on cleaning out for a bowl.
On the third try, Edmund manages to crack the coconut but not smash it. He grabs it and tips the cracked side into my improvised bowl.
I laugh and clap my hands again, delighted by our accomplishment.
We split the water and eat as much of the coconut meat as we want. Having another source of food will help our protein bars last a lot longer.
By the time we’re finished, we’re basically full and we have two usable bowls that we fill with stream water so we can have it later this evening.
Pretty good for two city dwellers with no tools and no survival training.
“With your smarts and my creativity,” Edmund says as I place our bowls of water in our hut where they’re not as likely to get spilled, “we’re going to Robinson Crusoe the hell out of this island.”
I can’t help but giggle again. He might regularly drive me crazy, but it’s impossible to be gloomy in Edmund’s presence.
The sun is getting lower in the sky, and thick clouds have been blowing in. It gives me an idea. “Let’s get the stuff out of the tub and put it inside our shelter. Then we can leave the tub out with the top off and maybe collect rainwater whenever it rains.”
“What will we do with rainwater?”
“We can wash with it or whatever. It just seems like it might be convenient—so we won’t always have to be going over to the stream.”
“Yeah, that’s a good idea.” He drags the tub farther away from the trees and leans over to pull out the contents. “After all, we have all this good shampoo. Be a shame for it to go to waste.”
I giggle again, and I’m not even sure why. Maybe I’m going hysterical. When we have the stuff situated inside our shelter, there’s really nothing else to do.
It’s too late to try to explore more on the island. We’ve got enough food and water for the night. We’ve already agreed on how to handle bathroom issues—go far enough away from our camp to not risk any contamination and bury any waste—so there’s not much else to figure out.
We have no phones or computers or televisions or books to entertain us. It’s a very odd feeling.
“You okay?” Edmund asks after a while in a different tone.
“Yeah. I’m fine.” I give him a half smile. “As fine as anyone would be marooned on an uninhabited island with Edmund Worthing.”
He chuckles. “Hey, there are worse people you could be shipwrecked with.”
“That I know.”
***
T HE EVENING PASSES slowly. We sit on towels out on the beach and watch the waves and the sunset.
The island really is like paradise, and in a different situation I would thoroughly enjoy it. But it’s hard for it to feel like a vacation when there’s a very real chance of being stuck here for the rest of our lives.
I don’t say any of that, however. No reason to pull Edmund into my own worries. Instead, we chat about when folks at home might realize that something happened to us and how long it will take for them to come looking.
Edmund thinks it will be just a few days, and the most I’m willing to counter his belief is to say it might be a couple of weeks.
It might be never. They might locate the GPS beacon at the bottom of the ocean and make a very reasonable assumption about our being lost at sea.
When the sun goes down, I start to get nervous about creepy-crawlies that might be lurking in the forest. So Edmund suggests we just go to bed, and I immediately agree.
I spread out two towels in our hut with the heads toward the back and the feet toward the entrance. Then I fold up two more towels so we can use them as pillows.
We don’t have any sort of covers, but it’s so warm we’re not likely to need them. After I go behind the tree I’ve identified as my bathroom site, I sip some of the water from my bowl and then climb all the way inside our shelter and lie down on the right side.
I always sleep on the right side, and Edmund doesn’t question it.
He’s gone to the bathroom like I have, and he settles onto his towel shortly after me. When he contorts his body strangely, I see that he’s taking off his shorts.
“I hate sleeping in clothes,” he explains. “But I’ll leave the T-shirt on if you want me to.”
“I don’t care as long as you leave your underwear on.”
“Sounds like a deal.”
“I wish we had an air conditioner.”
“I wish we had some toothpaste.”
“I wish we had pillows.”
“I wish we had a shower.”
“I wish we had a flashlight.”
“I wish we had my sleep sound machine.”
I snicker at his last comment but then twitch when I feel a random itch on my foot. “I wish we had bug spray.” When I feel that same tickle, I bend my legs up with a jerk and slap at my ankles.
“What’s the matter?” Edmund asks, sounding intrigued.
“Nothing. Just imagining bugs. I wish our feet weren’t right at the entrance.”
“Would you rather it be your head?”
“No way. I’d rather none of me be exposed to the night air.”
He pauses for a minute, then rolls on his side to face me. “We can rearrange if you want.”
“In what way?” My eyes have adjusted to the dark, but I can still only see the general shape of him.
“We can sleep in the other direction, and you can be on the inside. I don’t mind sleeping on the outside.”
“But you’ll be the one swarmed with creepy-crawlies.”
He chuckles and has already sat up and scooted his towels. “I’ll risk it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure, Autumn. I really don’t care.”
I wish I could see his face so I could assess how genuine his declaration is, but his voice at least sounds sincere. So I scoot farther into the interior of our little hut and lay out my towel in the other direction. Edmund arranges his beside me, blocking me from the entrance and anything that’s lurking out there in the dark.
I sigh as I lie back down. The bottom of our room is polished wood, so it’s hard and unyielding. The towel does almost nothing to soften it.
But we have a cover over our heads, and Edmund’s body is blocking me from everything outside.
It’s better than nothing. It’s better than it could be.
“You okay?” he asks very softly.
“Yeah. What about you?”
“I’m sorry I dragged you into this whole thing.”
“This isn’t your fault. You have nothing to be sorry about.”
We don’t speak after that. I occasionally hear Edmund shifting. His slow breathing.
I really can’t believe this is happening. What on earth has become of my life?
Edmund falls asleep after a while. I can tell when he does because he stops shifting and his breathing gets slower and heavier.
It takes a lot longer for my mind to settle. It keeps whirling with fears and ideas and plans and daydreams of rescue. But finally the swirling thoughts fade into a restless haze and then into sleep.
So I guess we’ve made it through our first day on the island.
***
O NCE I DRIFT OFF, I sleep better than I would have expected. I wake up a couple of times in a hazy panic, jerking my eyes open and one time sitting up abruptly. Each time, I manage to orient myself, assure myself of Edmund still sleeping beside me, and relax back into position.
Eventually I roll onto my side facing him, folding my arms against my chest. Then I can just barely squint and still see the shape of him there.
I honestly have no sense of how effectively he could protect me if we were attacked. He’s not a fighter, and we have no weapons of any kind. But still... I feel safer and more secure with him sleeping beside me.
***
W HEN I SENSE HIM MOVING , I wake up to discover it’s light outside.
I sit up, wincing when my back and thigh muscles ache. No doubt from all the physical exertion yesterday and sleeping on a hard surface. Edmund is sitting up too, and he blinks at me groggily.
If possible, his hair is even more wildly disarrayed than it was yesterday. It’s kinking and tangled and sticking out in odd places all over his head. He’s got three days’ worth of beard now, and it gives him a sexy rakishness that I’m not used to associating with him.
“Mornin’,” he mumbles. “Did you sleep at all?”
“Yeah. Some.”
“You seemed kind of restless.”
“Woke up now and then. Just nerves, I think. Did I disturb you?”
“Nah. Wasn’t exactly sleeping like a baby anyway.” He stretches his arms, crossing them one by one in front of his chest, and then groans. “Ugh. Guess we weren’t miraculously rescued overnight.”
“Doesn’t look like it. Actually, that makes me think of something. Maybe we should put some sort of sign on the beach in case someone passes by and we’re not around. So they’ll know we’re here.”
“What kind of sign? Writing on the beach will just get washed away.”
“I know. Maybe with rocks or shells or something? We could write out a big SOS.”
He chuckles. “That would work. That can be a project for today.”
“Okay. We can add it to our list.”
“What other projects do we have?”
“We’ve got to look farther into the forest and see if we can find anything other than coconut to eat and make sure there aren’t any dangers in there that we need to know about.”
“Oh. Yeah. We should probably do that.”
“So we can start with the SOS in case anyone is already looking and then do some exploring later in the morning.”
“Sounds like a plan.” He’s smiling with a familiar, amused warmth as he crawls out of our hut. “Nice to know you’re still trying to schedule my whole day.”
I huff, but it’s mostly for show since he’s obviously not annoyed with me.
At least he wakes up in a decent mood. This whole ordeal would be a lot worse with a grumpy downer.
Hopefully he doesn’t think that’s what I am.
***
I T RAINED FOR A WHILE last night but not enough to provide any workable amount of water in our tub, so after we go to the bathroom, we walk over to wash up in the stream and refill our coconut bowls with water.
Our breakfast is another coconut, and then we spend over two hours searching for enough shells and rocks to shape out a very large SOS on the top of the beach where it’s not likely to be washed away by the surf.
We’re both quite pleased with this accomplishment, and we’re newly invigorated as we once again brave the forest to see what we can see.
There are more bugs—flies and mosquitoes and spiders and other crawly things—than on the beach, so I immediately do a lot of slapping and swatting. Edmund doesn’t even have any shoes, so he’s trying to traverse the uneven ground full of tree roots and branches and rocks without ripping open the soles of his feet.
We find a ton of coconut palms and a lot of other palms. There are other taller trees that look almost like pines and a lot of vines and brushy shrubs. We’ve been walking for about twenty minutes when we come across a spot where the taller trees thin out so there’s more sun.
There, we find a spring surrounded by big rocks. It looks almost like a cultivated water feature in a garden. The spring is clearly the start of the stream we’ve been using for water. And all around it are flowering plants—big blooms in purple, white, and yellow.
It’s like something out of a fantasy. I’m delighted as we move closer.
“This is definitely the island Jon told me about. He said it was like the Garden of Eden in the middle of it.”
“Well, this seems to be that.” I brush my hand lightly over the leaves of a plant with gorgeous purple flowers.
Edmund plucks one of the flowers and teasingly secures it behind my right ear.
I shake my head at him.
“What? Now you look like an appropriate tropical-island girl.”
I snort. “Maybe. But I draw the line at wearing a coconut-shell bra.”
Maybe it’s my imagination, but I swear his eyes dart down to my chest briefly before returning to my face. “Understood. No coconut bra for you. What about a grass skirt?”
“Only if we’re here for so long that our clothes fall apart. Then you’ll be wearing a grass skirt too.”
He laughs as we wander through the plants. I squeak when I see familiar shapes in the center of a plant with huge leaves.
Edmund comes over immediately. “Did you find something?”
“Bananas!”
I’m right. We inspect the fruit, and it is undeniably banana. Most of them are still green, but we find a couple that are almost yellow and break them off to try them.
Not quite ripe but definitely banana-tasting.
We find more banana plants and pick out a small bunch from one that’s closest to ripe to bring back with us. Farther in, we find what looks like fruit on another tree. We break it open to taste it, and it’s light green, bland, and faintly sweet.
Certainly edible.
“Well, we’ll be in good shape for food except for protein. Those bars should last us a while, but after they’re gone, we’ll need to find another source. Maybe some sort of shellfish or something? Crabs? I’d rather not eat bugs or the pretty birds.”
“Hopefully we’ll be found before we need to resort to bug or bird eating.” He sounds relaxed and amused.
He’s clearly not troubled by the clench of nerves that’s tightened in my gut and won’t go away.
No matter how he’s acted in his life, Edmund isn’t empty-headed or even particularly shallow. But he’s confident that we’ll be rescued.
A lot more confident than me.
***
W E EXPLORE FOR A COUPLE of hours and find absolutely no sign of inhabitants. Nothing but vegetation, odd rock formations, a wide variety of birds, and some small lizards that dart away from us immediately. We come across no mammals of any kind.
I’ve lost track of direction in the thickness of the trees, but Edmund seems to know which way to go to get back, so I follow his lead and am pleased to discover that he’s right.
When we return to our hut, we eat an early lunch of protein bar and banana. Then I suggest a dip in the ocean because I still feel sweaty and kind of itchy from our explorations.
I get out of the water before Edmund does, and while I’m drying off, I see him limping as he makes his way back up the sand. “What’s the matter?” I ask, immediately worried. “Did you twist an ankle?”
“Nah. I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not. You’re limping.”
After setting down my towel, I hurry over and crouch down to inspect his feet. There are a few cuts around the ankles like I have, but when I get him to lift up his left foot, I gasp when I see the underside.
He’s been going barefoot all this time, and the bottom of his foot is covered in gashes and abrasions.
“Edmund!”
“It’s fine.”
“No, it’s not. It’s terrible, and it’s going to get infected.”
“Well, we don’t have many options here. I don’t have shoes or bandages or antibiotics.”
“I know that, but at least we need to keep all these cuts clean and dry. These must be hurting you like hell.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“Liar.” I peer up at him and am surprised by how stiffly he’s standing. He’s not even looking down at me. He’s staring over at the beach toward his right. “You have to let me clean them up, Edmund.”
“Fine,” he grumbles, still not looking at me. “But you’ve got to put on your shirt first.”
I freeze, startled by the words. Then I glance down at myself self-consciously. I’m wearing nothing but my wet tank top and panties, and I was so distracted by his injured feet that I completely forgot.
“Oh. Sorry.” I’m flushed as I stand back up. “Of course.” I step over to pull on my loose top. “Okay. Done. Sorry about that.”
“Thanks,” he mumbles, finally looking back over at me. “No worries.”
He’s smiling again as he agrees to stretch out on a towel so I can clean and tend to his feet, but I’m still deeply uncomfortable.
Edmund has never been remotely conscious of my body before. He’s almost never appeared to notice I have one.
But then I’ve never been crouching at his feet almost naked, so that probably explains it.
I clean and dry all the cuts on his feet as well as I can with our current resources, and I tell him he’s going to have to stay out of the forest until they’ve started to heal.
He’s lying back like he’s taking a nap, and he mumbles out a relaxed agreement to my directions. He’s clearly forgotten about his response to my body.
But I haven’t.