It was our first okay night in a while, huddled around the fire and watching the embers flurry to the night time air. We managed to build it, scavenging for dry wood for bigger flames and small rocks as a border.
Though our excitement dwindled as quickly as the sun set behind the trees. It didn’t take us long to wonder how permanent this could be, if cheering over an open flame is our new normal. “What if it rains?” Aria asked no one in particular, “Isn’t it hurricane season?”
I sighed deeply, turning my gaze to Dallas next to me. He took a similar position, hugging his knees and staring at the flames that cut his angular face. “We gotta build something to put on top.” My brother answered from across the fire and I noticed how Dallas’s eyes sunk further, how defeated he must feel, how defeated we all feel.
“I can start work on braiding fronds in the morning.” Gem said.
Aria added, “Me too.”
But it wasn’t so much the fire going out that I was worried about. We all needed to drink, the last sip of water any of us had was on that boat. We found three coconuts washed ashore when we took that perimeter around the island, but all of them were molded and rotten. I suppose that’s what Gem intended to find earlier today, some source of food or hydration.
I’m sure there has to be something out there– anything. We’ve seen a few lizards, so they must have a predator right? Or are they the kings of the island? After we got fire, my brother and Zack attempted to spring a fish or two, but without a net or a spear– it was useless.
And even with the turning of my stomach, I knew well enough that we could survive without food. But water… that’s a necessity, and we’re running out of time to find it.
It’s funny isn’t it? How just several hours ago I was willing to lie flat on my back and die, I was willing to let nature run its course on us– on me. It’s funny how all it took was Dallas to do one stupid thing, for him to put himself in the slightest bit of danger, and I folded. It was he who held me on that boat when I hit my breaking point, it was he who comforted me in my time of need. So of course I’d help him– of course I’d risk my own safety for his on those damn rocks…
The rocks. Those giant fucking rocks.
I stood from my seat, wiped my hands on my shorts and followed the moon towards them, towards the boulders that tore at my skin. And I heard someone lift from their spot to follow me, I smiled at the thought of it being Dallas. But as I neared the rocks, far enough away from any voices, I turned– and my smile faded.
“What do you want?” I stared at my brother, glared at him as he continued further. “I asked you a ques–”
But he only wrapped me in a hug, a tender hug as he placed his hands deliberately not to touch my injured back. I stood rigid, feeling the soft murmur of his heart that thumped in his chest. “I want you to stop hating me.” He whispered in such a child-like tone that I didn’t recognize.
My jaw tensed, “I don’t hate you.” He squeezed and a shudder bellowed through him, like his emotions had finally gotten the better of him.
“You do.” He choked, “Everyone does.” I couldn’t argue. “I’m sorry man– I’m just so so sorry.”
The discomfort hit me like the crashing of those waves, the twinge of sorrow I held for him. Yes, this was all his fault. Yes, we wouldn’t be stuck here if it weren’t for him. But he’s my brother, and I’ve done nothing to make him feel better. And on that boat, that day…
He leaned back and stared into my eyes, his hands on my shoulders; “I’m sorry that I ever invited you on the boat.” Tears streamed down his golden face, “I’m sorry that I’m an idiot and didn’t know what I was doing.” My lips pulled from their tight line, “I can’t go back in time man, I can’t… I don’t expect the others to forgive me.” And my heart broke for him.
I wrapped him back into that warm embrace, “I forgive you” I half-lied. Maybe I hadn’t completely forgiven him or completely trusted him, but it’s what he needed to hear. It didn’t matter right now, whether or not his face reminded me of how awful our situation is. He’s my brother and he needed a second to breathe. “I’m sorry for what I said out there.”
He squeezed me hard, “I deserved it.”
“No, Shawn. You didn’t.” I admitted, “I was pissed and I think you’re terribly irresponsible, but I don’t hate you and I should’ve never said the things I said.”
He cried through a breathy laugh, “I want to make this right.”
“Don’t we all?” I added, letting him empty those emotions in my shoulder. “I have an idea, I need your help.” He pulled away, nodded and wiped his eyes. “These rocks…” I turned and surveyed the options, “I think if we can carve one into a pot of some kind, we could boil water to drink.” I bent down, squinting through the moonlight that didn’t offer much assistance.
He agreed and helped me look. We needed a rock that we could carry, big enough to hold water but small enough to prop above the flame. I expect we could chip at it with another smaller rock, chip away until a divot is big enough to contain some salt water.
“What about this one?” He heaved a rock to its side, its length about the size of his shin and thick enough to break into. I raised my brows and shrugged, it actually looked perfect to me. We agreed to roll it out of the sand until we could both fit our hands underneath, and soon we had it in our grasp and carried it as a team back to the fire.
Our steady walk turned into more of a hobble as our energy depleted, dropping it by the fire and catching our breath. “A rock?” Zack asked.
“A pot.” I added, “We can boil water in it if we carve out a bowl.”
Dallas jumped to his feet, “Fuck yeah, that’s genius.” And he ruffled his large hand through my hair. But I looked at my brother who picked out the rock, my brother who got us into this mess to begin with.
I sighed, “Thank Shawn,” I dropped to the sand, laid flat on my back despite the cuts; “It was all his idea.”
: : : : :
That night we all slept by the fire, finally not needing to curl into someone for heat– not that I was able to. But to my surprise, I woke up to someone's arm around me, a thick and heavy arm around me. It was Dallas.
I knew that we fell asleep next to each other, but it seems he turned in the night and spooned me. I grinned but lifted his arm off of me, checking the fire to see how it was doing. It reduced to embers overnight, but still hot enough to add more wood to. Speaking of wood, I couldn’t help but notice the obvious length inside Dallas’s boxers, and the obvious strain it held inside.
Surveying the others, I blushed in amusement. Everyone was asleep, everyone with their person, everyone but me and him. Yet somehow he managed to roll over and press our bodies together, something I knew he didn’t mean and certainly something I wouldn’t be bringing up. But despite this terrible situation, despite the brink of survival we all stood on, I found that glimmer of happiness through him. And that was irreplaceable.
Eventually people started to wake up as the sun rose above the shore line, pouring bright light onto the beach and sand. There was work to be done today, a plan we all agreed to the night before over the fire. The girls would be working on braiding fronds, curating a lid for the fire and a roof for our shelter. I gave my brother credit for the stone work, after all I think he needed it most, so his job was to chip away at that rock– however long that would take him. Zack deemed it necessary to travel into the woods again, a new fire struck within him to find some source of food. And that left Dallas and I with cuts and bruises from the day before.
We decided to follow Zack into the trees, maybe help the girls later and maybe help my brother if he couldn’t figure that one out either. This was my first venture through the woods and I’ve got to say that I understood why the others felt that something had to be out here. Despite the overall perimeter, there was more than what meets the eye within.
Zack pointed out a tree that grew in a zig-zag, curling around another and shooting for the sky. “We turned left at this tree yesterday, let’s go right.” He ordered, leading us around the base of its trunk.
But I stared up at its winding bark, “Why not up?” I asked, pulling on the branches and evaluating their strength. I could sense their eyes traveling to the canopy of leaves and fronds, to the clear opening that this tree shot through.
“Yes.” Dallas whispered, giddy in his tone as he didn’t give a second thought before mounting the twisted limbs and pulling himself higher and higher. “I need a lift.” He shouted, at a crossroads in the tree.
I didn’t think twice before mounting the tree myself, not giving Zack the chance to. It’s not that I was weak in general, just weak in comparison to say, Dallas and my brother. They were strong and fit and packed with muscle, where Zack and I managed fine– but we were no hercules. Either way, I urged through the branches, following the same steps Dallas took until I came face to face with him.
“Hi.” I smiled, forgetting for a split second of the emergent situation we were in, forgetting for a moment that this wasn’t some tree climbing vacation.
He smiled back, “Hi.” And we looked upwards, just a few feet from where the fronds cascaded together. “If I can–” he met my eyes, glazed over my shoulders and toned frame, “Actually, you get on my shoulders.” He ordered and bent down to allow my feet to climb on to him. And when he lifted, my vision broke through the leaves– and suddenly the island in its entirety was visible, only a few other trees poked above the one I was perched in. “Do you see anything?” He asked.
My smile faded to nothing as I focused on the incredible view. To some, this looked like paradise, but to us– this was purgatory. “No.” I answered him, craning my head to view every angle of the island until soon I saw a waft of smoke, our fire. “I see camp.” I stated, “And a million trees.” He sighed and bent down, sliding me off of him and back into the tree. I met his eyes, filled with disappointment; “You’re taller than me.” I bent down, “I can handle it, just get on.”
He muttered an okay before planting his feet on my bare skin, pressing into them and lifting himself higher. I raised to a stand and couldn’t help but look up to him, up to his shorts that he finally put on. “Fuck man.” He sighed, “There isn’t a damn thing on this island.” I sighed too, hanging my head and shaking it, losing that grasp of hope that sparked within me last night. “Wait…” I peered up to him, he was staring not at the view, but the husk at the crown of the tree. “Watch yourself.” He stated before tearing at the bark, sending particles down to my face.
I closed my eyes and waited, “What did you find?” I asked through clenched eyes, feeling the debris of bark landed atop my head. “Food, I hope?”
“Nope, bend down.” And I did so, freeing my grip to wipe at my eyes and see the grin that took over his face, “String.” He held it in view, a bundle of string-like threading in his hands. I furrowed my brows, “This can catch fish, I know it can, but we need more– a lot more.” I smiled at his hands, met his eyes and felt the heat radiating between us.
But we cut our moment short, climbing back down and showing Zack what he found. We devised a plan to climb every tree we could, ripping at the husks until we had enough of this stuff to weave a net. And as we neared camp, a steady clank of stone on stone grew louder and louder as we approached the beach. “Please tell us that’s food.” Aria whined, dropping her weaving fingers.
I let Zack take the brunt of Aria and Gem’s whines as I dropped the supplies I carried to the ground and followed the incessant noise. Breaking through the tree line, I saw him, my brother– sweating over the stone as he brought a rock above his head and slammed it down. He brought it up again, slammed it down. A repeated motion, for who knows how long he’d been doing. The stone was cracked in the center, marks scattering where he drilled the rock into it.
He had another swing in line before he saw me, startling him as he looked back at the stone. “How’s it going?” I could tell he hadn’t made a lot of progress, but I still felt it necessary to ask.
He shook his head, wiped sweat from his brow, “Not good.” His hands smoothed over debris of sediment, showing off how shallow of a dip was in the stone. “It’s taking forever.”
I nodded as he peered across the water, “Do you need a break?”
“No.” He whipped his head back and took a long inhale, lifting the rock in his hand and slamming it down once again. “No.” I could tell this was his way of making it up to me– to everyone. If he could supply us with water to drink, if it could be his muscle and strength that provided for us… that’s all he wanted right now. And I wasn’t going to take that away from him.
So I fled for the shade, past the fire and inside our camp that now had a proper canopy of draped fronds and partially weaved mats to lay on. The girls were showing Zack how to weave while Dallas sat under a tree and picked apart the separate strands of string. I couldn’t think straight with the constant wacking of stone on stone, so I knelt beside Dallas and asked; “Do you wanna do this down the beach? I’ll help.”
He nodded and we collected everything in his shirt, bundled up so that he could carry it one hand as we walked as far as we needed to be free of the clanking of rocks. We settled far past the boulders of yesterday where we found that bottle, the bottle that sparked hope. And we took a solace under a thick palm that protruded from a small hill, giving us a ledge to sit on and overlook the orangeing clouds.
I picked at the threads, separating them while he started braiding them together. “You wanted to talk about the boat?” I resurfaced that question he asked me last night after tending to the wounds that have since scabbed over. He didn’t look away from his braiding, though a crease in his eyebrow gave me enough to continue talking. “I’m not proud of it, if that’s what you needed to know.”
And his eyes snapped to mine which were already looking, “Don’t be.” My eyes sunk as he continued, “We all have our… things.”
My mind drifted back to that boat, drifted back to us drifting…
I’d kept it together for the most part, rallying everyone to stay calm, rallying hope. I was convinced that we’d be saved. We had to be. We weathered two storms back to back, survived them by some sort of ethereal luck. But our food was gone, our coolers emptied, most of the supplies lost to the ocean as we endured several attacks from the water. It’s a miracle we lived, it’s a miracle we made it this far.
But I remember laying out on the deck, not caring of the sun that burned at my skin. The sky had become stagnant, the water unmoving as we drifted in directions we couldn’t decipher. I just needed peace, I needed a second to myself, but of course my brother intervened.
He asked me one last question that day, a simple question that threw me over the edge. I broke that day on the water, leaving every last image of hope or being saved shattered to the wind as I screamed at him, as I laid into him like I’d never done before. I let him know of every little thing I envied him for, every little thing he’s ever done to piss me off– but it wasn’t enough. I blamed him for our parents separation, from before they got back together. Blamed him for my pressures, for having to be the smart one. I blamed him for things that weren’t his fault, I just didn’t care at that moment.
Everyone fell silent as he took my words without a fight. He handled them like a beast, like he’d known one day I’d break. There was nothing in his eyes meanwhile mine surged in tears, angry and jealous tears. I cursed him, wished death upon him– said things I should’ve never said to anyone, especially my brother. And no one stopped me.
The only person to come to my side after my brother and I sat at opposite ends of the boat, was Dallas. He didn’t say much of anything but wrap an assuring arm around my shoulder, didn’t agree with me or berate me. He was just there for me.
“I apologized to him for that.” I admitted, not realizing the single tear that already streamed down my face. “But, thank you.” I looked back at his eyes that never left mine, “You were the only one who tried.”
And we sat in a long pause, long enough for him to reach his thumb to my cheek and wipe away my tear, “It looked like you needed it.” That’s what was so incredible about him, that he didn’t need a particular reason to do the things he did. He did them because he knows it’s right.
I couldn’t help but notice the flash of something in his green eyes, in those orbs of emerald that shook lightly in the evening sun. He was my brother’s friend, not mine. I was the replacement for his girlfriend on that boat day, but he treated me with such kindness and warmth, something I never thought to return until we landed here. I took a sharp breath, “Those pictures you paint in the dirt…” I started, “Are they of Krista?”
He withdrew his hand at the mention of her name, diverted his eyes as he took his own long inhale. “Yeah.” He muttered, “I guess I miss her, huh?”
“Do you love her?” I wasn’t sure why I asked that, or why I suddenly cared. But I’d be lying to say I didn’t feel a throbbing blow to my gut as he nodded. “What happened between you two?”
He sighed, telling me the story of them while we continued with our project, leaving the tears and my turmoil in the past. He met Krista at a party, “love at first sight” he called it. But things between them soured when they moved in together, as their conflicting opinions drove them in separate directions, while their work schedules allotted them virtually no time together. The boat day was supposed to be their first outing in weeks, something he was planning on using to get back in her good graces. But they fought the day before, she screamed at him and he screamed at her and one thing led to another and…
Me. I was the replacement.
I hadn’t even noticed how our knees touched throughout the story, didn’t notice the way I subtly grew closer to him as I felt his words become harder to speak. “I wonder if she’s even thought about me, ya know?” His eyes met mine, “Or if she’s just happy I’m gone.”
“Don’t say that.” I grabbed his shoulder, “Anyone would be lucky to have you.” I squeezed, meaning it. “I mean, look at you.” I smiled, trying to turn the tides on this suddenly deep moment between the two of us.
He broke a laugh and looked at me, really looked at me. “Can I tell you a secret?”
I smiled even wider, “Shoot.”
“Out of everyone on this island… for some reason I like spending time with you the most.” And I laughed, both of us laughed.
I shoved his shoulder, “Was that supposed to be nice?” I teased him.
“No, it was a secret.” He teased back, shoving my shoulder too. Would it be wrong for me to be feeling anything other than a budding friendship? Would it be terribly wrong that something told me that maybe he did too?
I didn’t know the answer, nor did I need the answer. All I knew was that I felt the same way he did, that out of everyone on this island… I liked spending time with him the most too. And yeah, that could stem from what happened on the boat, or the way we woke up this morning, it didn’t matter really– where it came from– I just knew that it was the truth, my truth at least.
I sighed through a stifle of laughter and resumed my separation of threads, “And why is it a secret?” Because I’m gay? I thought to add, but instead I let him smile through my question and not answer it, let him get away with the nonchalance of it all. Maybe it was just a way of telling me that he liked being around me, and that’s all it was.
Though I could feel something underneath, something threatening to surface.
But I kept tight-lipped.
For now.
