On the Island (12 page)

Chapter 24

—

T.J.

I watched Anna walk away after I brushed her hair. I thought about the other day, when she made that sound when I ran my hand up her leg. I wondered what kind of noise she’d make if I did something else with my hand. The urge to slip it inside her bikini bottom and find out had been almost uncontrollable. If we were in Chicago, I wouldn’t stand a chance with her. But I was starting to wonder if, here on the island, I might.

Anna and I swam back and forth in the lagoon, waiting for the dolphins. “I’m bored,” I said.

“Me, too,” she said, floating on her back. “Hey, let’s see if we can do that lift like Johnny and Baby.”

“I seriously have no clue what you’re talking about.”

“You’ve never seen
Dirty Dancing
?”

“No.” The title didn’t sound half bad, though.

“It’s a great movie. I saw it in high school—1987, I think.”

“I was two years old.”

“Oh. Sometimes I forget how young you are.”

T.J. shook his head. “I’m not that young.”

“Well anyway, Patrick Swayze played this dance instructor named Johnny Castle at a resort in the Catskills. Jennifer Grey played Baby Houseman, and she was there with her family.” Anna paused for a second and then said, “Hey, I just thought of something. Baby and her family were spending
their
whole summer vacation away from home, just like you.”

“Was she pissed about it, too?” I asked.

Anna shook her head and laughed. “I don’t think so. She got together with Johnny and they spent
a lot
of time in bed.”

Why have I never seen this movie? It sounds awesome.

“But then Penny, Johnny’s dance partner, got pregnant, and Baby had to fill in. There was this tricky lift, and Baby couldn’t do it at first, so they practiced in the water.”

“And that’s what you want to do?” If it meant touching her, I was all for it.

“I’ve always wanted to try it. It can’t be that hard.”

She stood in front of me and said, “Okay, I’m going to run toward you, and when I jump, put your hands here.” She took my hands and put them on her hips. “Then lift me straight up over your head. Do you think you can lift me?”

I rolled my eyes at her. “Of course I can lift you.”

“For some reason, Baby wore pants in the water when she did this, which I never understood. Okay, are you ready?”

I said yes, and Anna ran toward me and jumped. The minute my hands touched her hips, she collapsed on me because she said it tickled. My face ended up in her crotch.

We untangled ourselves and she said, “Don’t tickle me next time.”

I laughed. “I didn’t tickle you. I put my hands where you told me to.”

“Okay, let’s do it again.” She backed up to get a running start. “Here I come.”

This time, when I lifted her, the water was too deep and I couldn’t stay on my feet. I fell backward and she landed on top of me, which didn’t suck.

“Shit, that was my fault,” I said. “We need to move into shallower water. Try again.”

This time we did it perfectly. I lifted her up and she stretched out her arms and legs and arched her back.

“We did it,” she yelled.

I held her as long as I could, and then lowered my arms. I had taken a few steps backward beyond a slight drop-off, and as soon as her feet touched the bottom, her head went under. I reached down and lifted her up. She took a breath and put her arms around my neck. A few seconds later, she wrapped her legs around my waist and held on.

She looked surprised, maybe because she didn’t expect the water to be over her head, or maybe because I had her ass in my hands.

“I’m not bored at all now, Anna.” In fact, if I moved her a little lower, she’d feel exactly how not bored I was getting.

“Good.” She still had her arms and legs wrapped around me, and I was thinking about kissing her when she said, “We have company.”

I looked behind me as four dolphins swam into the lagoon, poking us with their snouts and begging us to play with them. Disappointed, I moved into shallower water and set her down, making sure she had her footing on the ocean floor.

I liked playing with the dolphins, but I liked playing with Anna a whole lot more.

Chapter 25

—

Anna

We sat under the awning playing poker, watching the storm roll in. Lightning zigzagged across the sky, and the humid air pressed down on me like a blanket. The wind picked up and scattered our cards.

“We better go in,” T.J. said.

Once inside, I stretched out beside him in the life raft and watched the interior of the house light up with each lightning strike.

“We won’t get much sleep tonight,” I said.

“Probably not.”

We lay next to each other, listening to the rain beat against the house. Only a few seconds separated the crashes of thunder.

“There’s never been so much lightning before,” I said. Even more unsettling, the hair on my arms and the back of my neck stood on end from the electrically charged air. I told myself the storm would end soon, but as the hours passed, it only intensified.

When the walls started shaking, T.J. climbed out of the life raft and reached into my suitcase. He turned around and threw my jeans at me. “Put these on.” He grabbed his own jeans and stepped into them. Then he shoved the fishing pole into the guitar case.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t think we can ride this out here.”

I got out of bed and pulled my jeans on over my shorts. “Where else would we go?” As soon as I asked, I knew. “No! There’s no way I’m going in there. We’ve made it through other storms okay. We can stay here.”

T.J. grabbed his backpack and stuffed the knife, rope, and first-aid kit inside. He tossed me my tennis shoes and jammed his feet into his Nikes without untying the laces first. “There’s never been one this bad,” he said. “And you know it.”

I opened my mouth to argue with him, and the roof blew off.

T.J. knew he had won. “Let’s go,” he said, barely audible over the howling wind. He slipped his arms through the backpack and handed me the guitar case. “You’ll have to carry this.” He picked up the toolbox in one hand and my suitcase in the other, and we hurried through the woods to the cave. The rain pelted us and the wind blew so violently, I thought it might knock me off my feet.

I hesitated at the entrance of the cave.

“Get in, Anna,” he yelled.

I bent down, trying to work up the courage to crawl inside. The sudden cracking of a tree branch sounded like a gunshot, and T.J. put his hand on my butt and shoved. He pushed the guitar case, toolbox, and suitcase in after me, and followed behind right before a tree fell, blocking the entrance to the cave and plunging us into darkness.

I collided with Bones like a bowling ball into tenpins. The skeleton scattered across the floor of the cave, and a few seconds later, T.J. landed in a heap beside me.

The two of us—and everything we owned—barely fit in the small space. We had to lie flat on our backs, shoulder to shoulder, and if I stretched my arm out, I could touch the cave wall, inches to my right; T.J. could have done the same on his left. The cave smelled like dirt, decaying plants, and animals I hoped weren’t bats. Grateful to be wearing jeans, I crossed my feet at the ankles to prevent anything from crawling up my pant legs. The ceiling was less than two feet above our heads. It was like being in a coffin with the lid closed, and I panicked, heartbeat thundering, gasping, feeling like I couldn’t get enough air.

“Slow down your breathing, Anna,” T.J. said. “As soon as it stops, we’re out of here.”

I closed my eyes and concentrated on inhaling and exhaling.
Just block everything out. Leaving the cave now is not an option.

T.J. took my hand and laced his fingers through mine, squeezing gently. I squeezed back, holding on to his hand like a lifeline.

“Don’t let go,” I whispered.

“I wasn’t going to.”

We stayed in the cave for hours, listening as the storm raged outside. When it finally stopped, T.J. shoved the tree branches away from the entrance. The sun was up and we crawled out, gazing in shock at the devastation.

The storm toppled so many trees it was like picking our way through a maze to get back to the beach. When we finally made it out of the woods, we both stared.

The house was gone.

T.J. looked at the ground where it once stood. I hugged him and said, “I’m sorry.” He didn’t respond, but he put his arms around me and we stayed like that for a long time.

We scoured the area and found the life raft shoved against a tree. We checked it carefully for holes, and I listened for the hiss of escaping air, but didn’t hear anything. The water collector floated in the ocean several yards offshore, and the tarp and roof canopy lay tangled amid the piles of wood that were once our home.

The seat cushions, life jackets, and blanket were scattered across the sand. We left them to dry in the sun. We attached the roof canopy to the life raft, but T.J. had cut away the nylon sides and the roll-down door to use on the house. The canopy would shield us from rain, but we no longer had any protection from the mosquitoes.

We spent the rest of the day constructing another lean-to and gathering firewood, piling it inside so it could dry. T.J. went fishing, and I collected coconut and breadfruit.

Later, we sat by the fire eating fish, barely keeping our eyes open. Thankfully, the life raft continued to hold air, and when the sun went down T.J. and I went to bed. I fell asleep instantly, my head resting on my slightly damp seat cushion.

I swam back and forth in the lagoon. T.J. was working on rebuilding the house, but he promised to join me as soon as he finished nailing a few more boards.

His desire to get a roof over our heads again consumed him, and in the six weeks since the storm, he’d made remarkable progress. He’d finished the framing and shifted his focus to putting up the walls. Having already built the house once his pace was faster this time around, and he would have worked around the clock if I didn’t convince him to take a break.

I was treading water when he appeared on the beach. Suddenly, he ran toward the shore, yelling and motioning for me to get out. I couldn’t figure out why he was so upset, so I turned around.

I spotted the fin seconds before it disappeared below the surface. I knew by the size and shape of it that it wasn’t a dolphin.

T.J. ran into the water yelling, “Swim, Anna, swim!”

Afraid to look over my shoulder, I swam faster than I thought possible. I still couldn’t touch the ocean floor, but T.J. reached me, yanked me by the arm, and pulled me to shallower water. I found my footing, and we ran.

I shook all over. T.J. grabbed me by my shoulders and said, “You’re okay.”

“How long do you think that’s been swimming around in our lagoon?” I asked.

T.J. scanned the turquoise water. “I don’t know.”

“What kind do you think it was?”

“Reef maybe?”

“You can’t go fishing, T.J.” He often stood in waist-deep water, since our fishing line wasn’t very long.

“I’d get out if I saw the fin.”

“Unless you didn’t see it.”

We spent the next few days by the shore, watching for the shark. The surface of the lagoon remained unbroken, and the water stayed calm and still. The dolphins came, but I wouldn’t go in. We took turns bathing, but we agreed to stay near the shore, only going in a few feet to rinse ourselves.

A full week passed without either of us seeing the shark. We thought it had gone away for good, that its appearance in the lagoon had been an anomaly, like the jellyfish.

T.J. started fishing again.

A few days later, I sat near the shore shaving my legs. T.J. walked up with the fish he’d caught, watching as I dragged the razor slowly up my leg, nicking my knee and drawing blood. He winced.

“The blade is dull,” I explained.

He sat down next to me. “You can’t go near the water right now, Anna.” And that’s how I knew the shark was back.

He told me he had just pulled the last fish in when he spotted it. “It swam back and forth parallel to the shore, with just the tip of its fin sticking out of the water. It looked like it was hunting.”

“Don’t fish anymore, T.J. Please.”

There were days I could hardly choke down the fish that made up the bulk of our diet. We checked the shore daily for crab, hoping for a little variety, but we almost never found them and neither of us could figure out why. The breadfruit and coconut would sustain us, but I realized how hungry we would be as long as the shark lurked in the lagoon.

Another two weeks passed without either of us seeing it. I still wouldn’t go near the water, except to bathe and then only up to my knees. Our stomachs growled constantly. T.J. wanted to fish, but I begged him not to.

I pictured the shark, waiting patiently for one of us to venture in too far. T.J. believed the shark had moved on, that it had finally decided there was nothing in the lagoon it wanted. Our conflicting theories caused more than one disagreement between us.

I had long since abandoned the notion that I held any kind of rank over T.J. I may have been older and had more life experience, but that didn’t matter on the island. We took each day as it came, addressing and solving problems together. But placing yourself in the natural habitat of an animal that could eat you struck me as the epitome of stupid, and I told T.J. so, which is probably why, when I saw him fishing near dinnertime two days later, in waist-deep water, I went ballistic.

I waved my arms back and forth to get his attention, jumping up and down on the sand. “Get out right now!”

He took his time getting out of the water, walked up to me, and said, “What is your deal?”

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m fishing. I’m hungry, and so are you.”

“Hungry is not dead, T.J., and you are not invincible!” I poked him hard in the chest after each word, and he grabbed my hand to stop me from poking him again.

“Jesus Christ, calm down!”

“You told me not to go in the water the other day and now you’re standing in it up to your waist like it’s no big deal.”

“You were bleeding, Anna! And you wouldn’t go near the water now if I begged you to, so don’t act like you need my permission,” he yelled.

“Why are you so determined to put yourself in danger, even after I asked you not to?”

“Because whether or not I get in the water is
my
decision, Anna, not yours.”

“Your decisions have a direct effect on me, T.J., so I think I have every right to weigh in when those decisions are asinine!” Tears sprang to my eyes, and my lip quivered. I turned my back on him and stomped away. He didn’t follow.

T.J. had finished rebuilding the house the week before. I walked in the door and lay down in the life raft. When I was done crying, I took deep, calming breaths, and I must have dozed because when I opened my eyes, T.J. was lying on his back beside me, awake.

“I’m sorry,” we both said at the same time.

“Jinx. You owe me a Coke,” I said. “I want a big one, with extra ice.”

He smiled. “It’s the first thing I’ll do when we get off this island.”

I propped myself up on one elbow, facing him. “I freaked out. I’m just so scared.”

“I really do think the shark is gone.”

“It’s not just the shark, T.J.” I took a deep breath. “I care about you, very much, and I can’t bear the thought of you getting hurt, or dying. I can only handle being here because you’re with me.”

“You could survive, Anna. You can do everything I can, and you’d be okay.”

“I would not be okay. I’m fine being on my own back home, but not here, T.J. Not on this island.” Tears welled up in my eyes as I imagined the isolation and pain I would feel if T.J. were gone. “I don’t know if you can die of loneliness, but after a while I might want to,” I whispered.

He sat up a little and put his hand on my forearm. “Don’t ever say that.”

“It’s true. Don’t tell me you’ve never thought about it.”

He didn’t say anything at first, but he wouldn’t look directly at me. Finally, he nodded and said, “After the bat bit you.”

Tears poured from my eyes and ran down my face. T.J. pulled me down onto his chest and held me while I cried, rubbing my back and waiting for me to finish. Neither of us wore much—a pair of shorts for him and a swimsuit for me—and the skin-on-skin contact soothed me in a way I didn’t expect. He smelled like the ocean, and that was a scent I’d forever associate with him.

I sighed, content in the release that came with a good cry. It had been so long since anyone held me I didn’t want to move. Finally, I raised my head. He cupped my face in his hands and wiped my tears with his thumbs.

“Better?”

“Yes.”

He looked into my eyes and said, “I’ll never leave you alone, Anna. Not if I can help it.”

“Then please don’t go in the water.”

“Okay.” He wiped a few more tears. “Don’t worry. We’ll figure something out. We always do.”

“I’m just so tired, T.J.”

“Then close your eyes.”

He misunderstood me. I meant tired in general, from always having a new problem to solve and constantly worrying about one of us getting sick or hurt. It would be dark soon, though, and it felt so good being in his arms. I put my head back down and shut my eyes.

He tightened his hold on me. One of his hands stroked from my shoulder down to the small of my back, and the other rested on my arm.