Love Her Madly (16 page)

“I love you,” Cyn said to me in English. I looked at her over my shoulder. Her eyes were damp and glowing.

“I know,” I said in Spanish.

She got up from the log and lowered herself into the sand in front of my feet, gazing up at me. “You look so angelic in the firelight.”

I smiled at her and pulled her closer to the log, away from the fire. She seemed far enough gone that she might forget it was behind her. It felt like the guys had been away for ages. Jorge abruptly stopped playing music and was staring at the trees like a spooked watchdog.

“What's going on?” I asked, startling him.

“
Nada
,” he said, shaking his head. But he looked nervous. I wondered if it was the ghost thing. He snapped open his guitar case and placed the guitar inside.

“Don't you think they've been gone a long time?” I asked Cyn, dropping the Spanish.

“I don't care,” she said, her pupils wide as saucers. “I'm just so glad that we're here together.”

Cyn was too blasted for conversation, and now Jorge had clammed up, too. I thought looking at the man in the moon might be a nonthreatening diversion for myself, only I couldn't find the fat-cheeked face that was normally there. I could only see the silhouette of a rabbit that a Peruvian girl in our group had pointed out. The rabbit looked scraggly and feral, and I longed for the fat-faced man, with his expression of startled amazement. My eyes filled with tears. Now that I'd seen the rabbit, the man was probably gone forever.

A sudden cluster of loud pops rattled through the jungle. I locked eyes with Jorge, who now looked very frightened. He stood up and looked into the woods. I reached down and grabbed Cyn's wrist.

“What was that?” I asked.

Jorge shook his head. He picked up his guitar case and began walking toward the trees.

“Where are you going?” I demanded, my voice uncontrollably shrill.

He held up a hand and paused for a moment, listening. He looked over his shoulder at us. “I'm going to go check on something.” He walked quickly toward the trail where Marco and Hector had departed and vanished into the darkness.

We were alone.

“I'm worried,” I said. “He took his guitar case. Why?”

She smiled up at me. “Don't worry, Glo.”

She moved next to me on the log and put her arm around me. I felt her cold lips on my cheek. Then she kissed my chin bone, then the base of my neck. I sat there, frozen and confused. She put her hands on my stomach, and I captured them, holding them tightly in mine.

“Your hands are freezing.”

“Are you mad?” she whispered into my ear.

“No,” I said, barely breathing, the sensation of her kisses fading more slowly than I would have imagined.
Like magic
, I found myself thinking. I wondered if her kiss was so different than mine, her lips softer, or gentler. I wondered if Raj could tell us apart in the dark . . .

Another loud pop echoed through the trees, pulling me back to the reality of the fire and the sea and the cold, damp sand.

I felt panic waiting in the wings and fought to stave it off. My best friend making a pass at me somehow didn't even faze me. She wasn't in her right mind. My real concern was the
darkness behind those trees, and the mysterious noises, and the fact that we were now two women alone and fucked up. The part of me that could still manage logic told me that, best-case scenario, those noises came from other kids, partying and setting off fireworks. The worst-case scenario was that those were gunshots.

I stopped thinking about it because I knew it would freak me out and because it appeared that, between the two of us, I was by far the more sober. I'd have to take care of us somehow. The fire settled, logs collapsing like dominoes, sending a plume of sparks into the air. The fire was so low now. It hadn't been nearly that low when the guys left. Or when Jorge left. How long ago had that really been?

Cyn was rubbing my arm. “You'll have to tell Raj,” she said.

“I have to tell Raj what?” I murmured, grateful for the distraction.

“That I don't love him, silly. I love you.” She traced a heart shape in the sand with her toe, as if to offer my addled brain physical evidence that this conversation was really happening. “Are you mad?” she asked, again.

“I'm not mad,” I repeated.

Wind rushed in from over the water, shaking the jungle and chilling my flesh. I looked up and the sky was clear, the stars frozen in place. The sound of the palms thrashing in the wind rattled my frayed nerves. When I looked at the trees, they appeared as rows of ragged women tossing their hair in despair. My heart began to race, and the air seemed to thicken like gelatin. We were abandoned, and the jungle was full of shadowy dangers. I couldn't even ask Cyn what to do because her spaceship had blasted off for another planet entirely.

A flash of movement came from the trees where Jorge had departed, and I glimpsed Hector, the front of his white T-shirt dirty and his glasses flashing in the reflected firelight. He seemed
on the verge of shouting something, but in the next instant, he vanished. In that fleeting glimpse, I read something on his face that made my heart clench in fear. I stared at the place where I'd last seen him, holding my breath. When he didn't reappear, and nothing happened, I began to question whether I'd seen him at all, or if he was just a trick of the mind.

Cyn was facing the opposite direction, and she clamped her hand around my wrist and squeezed like hell. I turned to see what she saw and swallowed a scream. At the far end of the cove, three figures were climbing down the rocks and heading toward us. I didn't recognize their silhouettes. There must have been some signal in their gait or attitude that triggered an alarm in my reptile brain, because I instinctively knew these were predators. We needed to run.

“Let's go,” I said, pulling Cyn to her feet. Wordlessly, we ran in the opposite direction, toward the trees at the far side of the cove. They saw us, and I heard someone shout a command to follow.

We made it to the tree line in seconds, but the jungle was impenetrable. We fought our way in against the thorny brush, but got tangled in a waist-deep bog of vegetation only a few steps in. The jungle would rip us to shreds before we were even out of sight.

“Back! Back!” I stammered, breathless with fear. “Let's go in the water. We can hide out there, behind a rock.” Cyn nodded, her eyes wide and unblinking.

Over my shoulder, I saw one of the men pause by our campfire and empty our bags. The other two kept running toward us. I grabbed Cyn's arm, and we splashed into the shallow water. Cyn was tripping over the one flip-flop she was wearing. She kicked it off. I noticed as we fled that I had, at some point in the evening, strapped my sandals back on. They protected me from the broken coral and rocks in the shallows, but Cyn had
no such luck. She moved tentatively, stumbling, until I began to half drag her with me.

“Glo, wait,” she said, but I barely heard her.

We were knee-deep, and already the waves were strong. I saw some rocks not much farther out and made them our goal. If I'd been clearheaded, I would have realized that hiding in the water on the night of a full moon was a really shitty idea, but as things were, that realization came too late. The moon was bright enough to read by, and our retreat was plainly visible from shore.

They shouted for us to stop, but I kept powering forward. Cyn suddenly wasn't beside me. I spun around and saw her ten feet back, standing still, the only movement coming from her fingertips, which gently tickled the incoming waves at her sides.

“What's wrong?” I shouted. “Come on!”

She just stood there. “Go,” she said. “I'm not afraid. Go get help.”

I slogged back through the hip-deep water to get to her. I saw the two men on the shore untying their boots.

“Cyn, come on! This isn't a fucking joke!” I reached her and tried to pull her in with me, but she backed away. She had this creepy calm about her that made me wonder what she was seeing.

“I knew this would happen,” she said.

The men were splashing toward us. The waves were slowing them down and they didn't seem at home in the water, but even so, in thirty seconds, they would reach us. “Cyn, please,” I pleaded, “Those are bad guys. We have to swim right now!”

I grabbed her wrist and tried to pull her with me, but she yanked her arm away, and I fell back into the waves.

“Cyn!” I shrieked.

“Go.” She looked down at me, half smiling, like a graveyard statue. I sputtered in helpless disbelief, not understanding that
she wasn't going to come with me. I glimpsed the men approaching behind her.

“Come on!” I shouted.

“Go,” she repeated, and this time, I obeyed. I slipped beneath the waves and swam.

It was all darkness. I pumped my arms and legs as hard as I could, staying submerged. I tried to swim parallel to the shore, navigating by the pull of the tide. I had a hazy idea where the larger rocks were, and that was where I was going. I popped my head above water, gasping for air, trying to keep low. Two more breaths and my knee cracked against a submerged rock. Grimacing at the white-hot explosion of pain, I clutched onto the slick stone, crab-like. Raising my head, I heard Cyn screaming. I clung to the rock and swiveled to see what was happening. A wave rolled over me, bashing my cheek into the rock, but I felt no pain. The terror, or maybe the exertion of the swim, neutralized the effect of the mushrooms, because everything seemed shockingly clear and awful. Cyn shrieked again, a high-pitched siren, and I realized she was saying “No!” I peeked out from behind the rock and saw one of the men wading back toward shore, dragging Cyn with him. Cyn was reaching toward the water, shouting “No, no, no, no.”

Her screams were devastating to hear. I wanted to cry out to her, or swim back and join her in her fate, but I kept silent. It wasn't because I had heroic notions that by staying hidden I could get help, as she'd suggested. I was just paralyzed with fear. The other man was still in the water, searching for me. Cyn was dropped onto the sand at the feet of the man who was giving orders. She sprang up, and he grabbed her arms. She struggled to face the water, looking for me.

“She can't swim,” I heard her scream in Spanish. She screamed it three times, fighting the man who was trying to restrain her as she thrashed like a wild animal. Then her words
were muffled. I didn't see what happened, because the man in the water shone a flashlight in my direction. I clung tightly to the rock, getting slammed repeatedly against its rough, slimy surface by waves I had forgotten were coming. When I dared to look again, he was swinging the beam across the water in the other direction. He turned around and raised his arms in a “beats me” gesture. The man on the beach, the leader, waved him back in. Cyn was sitting on the sand, eerily quiet.

I watched as Cyn was pulled to her feet, the leader speaking to her. I couldn't hear a thing, but I could see she was hanging her head and shaking it back and forth, as if answering questions. They pointed to the fire. She shook her head. One of them pulled out something that produced a light, and they showed it to Cyn. I realized it was my camera. They were looking through the photos. She kept shaking her head. The leader shouted something at Cyn, and I saw her cower. He strode away from the beach toward the trees, and the other two followed, pulling her along with them. She tried to resist, but the leader took her by the arm and dragged her into the darkness.

I waited a long count to ten after the beach was empty before I dared to swim back in. My thoughts were chaotic, but I was feeling hopeful. I hadn't heard any more popping sounds, and the men hadn't been violent with Cyn. I didn't have even a clue who these men were. They might have been park rangers, for all I knew. But even if they were bad guys, she was the smartest girl I knew. If anyone could outwit a horde of potential criminals, it was Cyn.

From where I exited the water, I could see that the bags we had brought were spread out over the ground by the dying fire. It wasn't the smartest move to run out into the open, but I thought there was a chance one of the brothers had brought a phone. A phone meant instant help. I had to try.

I raced across the beach, staying as low as possible. The wind
had picked up, and as I rummaged frantically through the items scattered in the sand, I began to shiver. I found my flashlight, half buried, but no phones. I cursed, thinking of my own cell phone tucked into my desk drawer in Florida. I'd thought leaving it behind was the shrewd choice; just one more fuckup to add to the ever-expanding list.

Suddenly I froze. Another cue from my reptile brain told me that someone was watching. I whipped my head around and saw . . . nothing. I stood there dumbfounded, too numb even to cry. I watched a huge jungle ant totter across a wide patch of sand by my toes, my mind a hopeless blank of pure fear.

I had left her. It didn't matter that she'd wanted me to go. I should never have left her.

I sank to my knees in the sand, no longer mindful of being discovered, and wrapped my arms around myself, rocking slowly back and forth. I don't know how long I stayed that way, submerged in misery, but at some point, a better thought burst through my self-recriminations: maybe it wasn't too late.

She'd asked me to get help. Hell, she'd ordered me to. I had to live up to her sacrifice. I had to save her.

I snatched my flashlight out of the sand and hurried to the edge of the beach. I didn't even know what I was searching for, but my adrenaline was racing and I needed to move. Cyn's pink flip-flop was washing in and out with the tide. I saw the footprints of the men who'd taken her. I snapped on the flashlight to see them better, like fucking Nancy Drew. I had no idea what I should be doing. Crabs scurried away from me in all directions, mirroring my disordered wits. Then my flashlight hit something that made my heart climb into my throat. Etched clearly into the sand, among the chaos of footprints, was another heart shape. She had left a message for me. She was counting on me.