Chapter Twenty-One
I’m a miserable lousy failure.
A collection of football-sized rocks circles the stack of driftwood I collected. The more I stare at my terribly built fire pit in the moonlight, the angrier I get. My hand tightens around the lighter in my palm.
Jackson was right. The lighter came right back to life after it dried, but it turns out, even the best lighter isn’t much help to an incompetent fire builder.
Time and time again, the flame licked along the withered leaves and small branches I collected from the forest, only to smoke itself out rather than catch on the main pieces of wood.
I used every last bit of daylight and still couldn’t get it going.
I had all the gumption and absolutely none of the skills.
Jackson and Emmy have been out like a light in the raft for hours, but I can’t bring myself to wind down enough to actually fall asleep.
It’s so much darker here than back home.
The moon casts weak light along the beach, but I’ve been leaning against the outside of the raft half the night, and my eyes are no closer to adjusting to the dark than when the sun first disappeared.
And the jungle won’t shut up.
Can you overdose on adrenaline? I feel like I might.
The bugs I thought were so loud during the day are screaming now. Every buzz, every rustle of leaves becomes some kind of animal ready to jump out and rip my face off. The adrenaline feels like sludge moving through my veins while I wait for something to jump out at me.
So instead of sleeping, I sit motionlessly and wait for the sun to rise again.
How long can we survive out here by ourselves? I’m already hyperaware of what little food we have left. Just one can of tomato soup, one more can of peaches, and some mangoes from the beach.
Emmy woke up in the middle of my bonfire failure, and I made her to eat half a can of tuna before she passed out again.
I had to smash the can between two rocks to get to the fish inside.
It was the first protein any of us has seen in days.
I tried to split the other half with Jackson, but he argued with me until I caved and ate it.
I don’t even like tuna, but I inhaled it, and when the fish was gone, I dipped my finger in the bits of oil left in the broken can and spread it on my lips to sooth the cracked sunburned skin.
It was the closest to content I’ve been since we left the resort.
I can still taste the fish and the oil on my lips, and I sigh.
If we’re here for more than another day, I’m going to have to find us another source of protein, and that means going back in the water to catch some unsuspecting fish. One I’ll have no way of cooking because I can’t even manage to light a simple fire.
I fight the impulse to throw the lighter into the ocean and tuck it into my bathing suit top instead. Tomorrow is a new day. I just have to get through tonight, and then I can figure out where I went wrong with the fire in the morning.
The raft rustles, and Jackson steps out. Without saying a word, he comes to sit beside me, his thigh pressed against mine as he leans back against the raft.
“Why aren’t you sleeping?” he whispers.
I shrug. “Someone has to keep watch.”
“In that case, it’s my turn.”
I sigh. “I don’t think I can sleep.”
Without a word he puts his arm around my shoulders. “If you don’t want to sleep, neither will I. The least I can do is keep you company.”
Warmth spreads through my chest, and I turn to look at his profile in the dark. “You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Saying the exact thing I want to hear.”
He laughs and stretches his legs out in front of him. “I don’t think that’s entirely true. I’m sure there’re are lots of things I should have said to you that I never did.”
Well. He has me there.
“Maybe.”
He’s quiet for so long, I wonder if he fell asleep sitting up. A heaviness settles into the back of my head, and I wonder if him sitting here is all I needed.
Jackson’s arm tightens around my bare shoulder. “I’m really hating how everything played out on this vacation, but I have to say, there’s nobody I’d rather be stranded with on a deserted island than you.”
My laugh seems too loud across the dark beach. “We’re not on a deserted island.”
“Semantics.”
I smile and close my eyes. “Yeah, well, you’re a pretty good castaway companion yourself.”
He’s quiet again. It’s no less dark, the jungle no less scary, but it feels more manageable when I’m not sitting here by myself.
“I shouldn’t have ended things the way I did,” he says.
I’m unprepared for the change in subject and sit in shocked silence for a few seconds.
When I say nothing, he must get nervous because he starts talking faster than before. “I just…wanted you to know that. ‘The one that got away’ should know she’s ‘the one that got away.’”
The one that got away.
I don’t know if I want to cry or roll my eyes. Why does it take us almost dying in the middle of nowhere for him to finally tell me what I’ve wanted to hear all this time?
He removes his arm from my shoulder, and I wonder if he thinks I’m upset. I take his hand and interlock our fingers in the sand between us. It’s still warm from the hot day.
“Do me a favor?”
“Anything,” he says, without hesitation.
“Tell me all this again when we’re back home.”
Translation: tell me I mean something to you when the threat of death is no longer coloring every single thing we do. Even our kiss on the boat was in the midst of a catastrophe.
He shifts beside me. “Whatever you need, Hannah. I’m here.”