I lifted my head. We were close. Kicking frantically, my lungs on fire, I swam as hard I could.

We reached the calm water of the lagoon inside the reef, but I didn’t stop swimming until my feet touched the sandy bottom of the ocean floor. I had only enough energy to drag Anna out of the water and onto the shore before I collapsed next to her and passed out.

***

The blazing sun woke me. Stiff and sore, I could only see out of one of my eyes. I sat up and took off my life jacket, then looked over at Anna. Her face was swollen and bruised, and cuts crisscrossed her cheeks and forehead. She lay still.

My heart hammered in my chest, but I made myself reach over and touch her neck. Her skin felt warm and relief washed over me a second time when I felt her pulse beating under my fingers. She was alive but the only thing I knew about head injuries was that she probably had one. What if she never woke up?

I shook her carefully. “Anna, can you hear me?” She didn’t respond so I shook her again.

I waited for her to open her eyes. They were amazing, big and dark grayish-blue. They were the first thing I noticed when I met her. She had come to our apartment to interview with my parents, and I was embarrassed because she was beautiful and I was skinny and bald and looked like shit.

Come on Anna, let me see your eyes.

I shook her harder and it was only when she finally opened them that I slowly let out the breath I’d been holding.

Chapter 3 – Anna

Two blurry images of T.J. hovered above me, and I blinked until they merged into one. He had cuts on his face and his left eye was swollen shut.

“Where are we?” I asked. My voice sounded scratchy and my mouth tasted like salt.

“I don’t know. Some island.”

“What about Mick?” I asked.

T.J. shook his head. “What was left of the plane sank fast.”

“I can’t remember anything.”

“You passed out in the water, and when I couldn’t wake you up I thought you were dead.”

My head throbbed. I touched my forehead and winced when my fingers grazed a large bump. Something sticky coated the side of my face. “Am I bleeding?”

T.J. leaned toward me and combed through my hair with his fingers, looking for the source of the blood. I cried out when he found it.

“Sorry,” he said. “It’s a deep cut. It’s not bleeding as much now. It bled a lot more when we were in the water.”

Fear gripped me, traveling through my body like a wave. “Were there sharks?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see any, but I was worried about it.”

I took a deep breath and sat up. The beach spun. Placing my hands flat on the sand, I braced myself until the worst of the dizziness passed. “How did we get here?” I asked.

“I looped my arms through the straps of your life jacket, and we drifted with the current until I saw the shore. Then I dragged you up on the sand.”

The realization of what he’d done sank in. I looked out at the water and didn’t say anything for a minute. I thought about what might have happened if he’d let go of me or if the sharks had come or if there hadn’t been an island. “Thank you, T.J.”

“Sure,” he said, only meeting my gaze for a few seconds before looking away.

“Are you hurt?” I asked.

“I’m okay. I think I hit my face on the seat in front of me.”

I tried to stand and failed, overcome by dizziness. T.J. helped me back up and this time I stayed on my feet. I unbuckled my life jacket and let it drop on the sand.

I turned away from the shore and looked inland. The island looked just like the pictures I’d seen on the Internet except it didn’t have a luxury hotel or any vacation homes sitting on it. Barefoot, the pristine white sand felt like sugar under my feet; I had no idea what had happened to my shoes. The beach gave way to flowering shrubs and tropical vegetation and then finally a forested area where trees grew close together, their leaves forming a green canopy. The sun, high in the sky, burned with an intense heat. The ocean breeze failed to lower my rising body temperature, and sweat trickled down my face. My clothes clung to my damp skin.

“I have to sit back down.” My stomach churned, and I thought I might throw up. T.J. sat down next to me and when the nausea finally passed I said, “Don’t worry. They have to know we crashed and they’ll send a search plane.”

“Do you have any idea where we are?” he asked.

“Not really.”

I used my finger to draw in the sand. “The islands are grouped in a chain of twenty-six atolls running north to south. This is where we were headed.” I pointed to one of the marks I made. I dragged my finger through the sand and pointed at another. “This is Malé, where we started. We’re somewhere in between, I guess, unless the current took us east or west. I don’t know if Mick stayed on course, and I don’t know if seaplanes file a flight plan or if they’re tracked on radar.”

“My mom and dad have got to be freaking out.”

“Yes.” T.J.’s parents had undoubtedly tried to call my cell phone, but it was probably at the bottom of the ocean by now.

Should we build a signal fire? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do when you’re lost? Build a fire so they know where you are?

I had no idea how to build one. My survival skills were limited to what I had seen on T.V. or read in books. Neither of us wore glasses, otherwise we could have angled a lens toward the sun. We didn’t have any flint or steel either. That left friction, but did rubbing sticks together actually work? Maybe we didn’t need to worry about a fire, at least not yet. They’d see us if they were flying low and we stayed near the beach.

We tried to spell out SOS. First we used our feet to flatten the sand, but we didn’t think it would be visible from the air. Next, we tried to use leaves but the breeze scattered them before we could form letters. There weren’t any large rocks to hold the leaves down, only pebbles and fragments of what I thought were coral. Moving around made us hotter and the pain in my head worse. We gave up and sat down.

My face burned in the sun and T.J.’s arms and legs turned red. Soon we had no choice but to move away from the shore and take shelter under a coconut tree. Coconuts covered the ground, and I knew they contained water. We banged them against the trunk of the tree, but we couldn’t get them open.

Sweat ran down my face. I gathered my hair into a pile and held it on top of my head. My swollen tongue and dry mouth made it hard to swallow.

“I’m gonna take a look around,” T.J. said. “Maybe there’s water here somewhere.” He hadn’t been gone long when he came back to the coconut tree holding something in his hand.

“I didn’t see any water but I found this.”

It was the size of a grapefruit and green, spiny lumps covered its surface.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I don’t know, but maybe it’s got water inside, like the coconuts.”

T.J. peeled it, using his fingernails. Whatever it was, the bugs had gotten there first and he dropped it on the ground, kicking it away with his foot.

“I found it under a tree,” he said. “There were lots of them hanging but they were up too high for me to reach. If you get on my shoulders, you might be able to knock one down. Do you think you can walk?”

I nodded. “If we go slow.”

When we arrived at the tree, T.J. clasped my hand and helped me climb onto his shoulders. I stood five-six and weighed a hundred and twenty pounds. T.J. had at least four inches and probably thirty pounds on me, but he wobbled a bit trying to hold me steady. I reached up as high as I could, my fingers stretching toward the fruit. I couldn’t get a grip on it, so I hit it with my fist instead. The first two times it didn’t budge, but I hit it a little harder and it went flying. T.J. lowered me to the ground, and I picked it up.