We desperately needed something to collect water in, and we walked along the shoreline looking for empty cans, bottles, containers – anything that was watertight and would hold the rain. We spotted debris, which I thought might be wreckage from the plane, but nothing else. The lack of any human garbage made me wonder just where the hell we were.

We went inland. The trees blocked the light from the sun and mosquitoes swarmed us. I slapped at them and wiped the sweat off my forehead with my arm. We saw the pond when we came to a small clearing. More like a large puddle, it was full of murky water, and my thirst kicked into overdrive.

“Can we drink that?” I asked.

Anna knelt down and stuck her hand in. She swirled the water around and wrinkled her nose at the smell. “No, it’s stagnant. It’s probably not safe to drink.”

We kept walking but we couldn’t find anything that would hold water so we went back to the coconut tree. I picked up one of the coconuts from the ground and smashed it against the trunk of the tree, then threw it when I couldn’t get it to crack. I kicked the tree, which hurt my foot. “Goddamn it!”

If I could get one coconut open, we could drink the coconut water, eat the meat, and collect rain in the empty shell.

Anna didn’t seem to notice my tantrum. She shook her head back and forth and said, “I just don’t understand why we haven’t seen a plane yet. Where are they?”

I sat down next to her, breathing hard and sweating. “I don’t know.” We didn’t say anything for a while, lost in our own thoughts. Finally, I said, “Do you think we should build a fire?”

“Do you know how?” she asked.

“No.” I’d lived in the city all my life, and I could count on one hand the number of times I’d been camping and still have fingers left over. And we’d lit our campfires with a lighter. “Do you?”

“No.”

“We could try to make one,” I said. “We seem to have the time.”

She smiled at my lame attempt at a joke. “Okay.”

We rubbed two sticks together for the next hour. Anna managed to get hers hot enough to burn her finger before she quit. I did a little better – I thought I saw some smoke – but no fire. My arms ached.

“I give up,” I said, dropping my sticks and using the bottom of my T-shirt to wipe the sweat before it dripped into my eyes.

It started raining. I concentrated on trying to catch the drops on my tongue, grateful for the small amount of water I swallowed. The rain ended after a few minutes.

Still sweating, I walked down to the shore, stripped off my T-shirt, and waded in wearing just my shorts. The temperature of the lagoon reminded me of bathwater, but I ducked my head under and felt a little cooler. Anna followed me, stopping before she reached the water. She sat down on the sand, holding her long hair off her neck with one hand. She had to be roasting in her long-sleeved shirt and jeans. A few minutes later she stood up, hesitated, and then pulled her T-shirt over her head. She unbuttoned and unzipped her jeans, stepped out of them, and walked toward me, wearing nothing but a black bra and matching underwear.

“Just pretend I’m in my swimsuit, okay?” she said when she joined me in the water. Her face was red, and she could hardly look at me.

“Sure.” I was so stunned I barely got the word out.

She had an awesome body. Long legs, flat stomach. Really nice rack. Checking her out should have been the last thing on my mind, but it wasn’t. You wouldn’t think I’d be able to get hard either, considering how thirsty and hungry I was and how seriously fucked up our situation had become, but you’d be wrong. I swam away from her until I got myself under control.

We stayed in the water for a long time and when we got out she turned her back to me and put her clothes on. We checked the breadfruit tree but there weren’t any on the ground. Anna climbed up on my shoulders and when I steadied her by pressing down on her thighs, the image of her bare legs flashed into my mind.

She knocked down two breadfruits. I wasn’t very hungry, which was weird since I should have been starving. Anna must not have been hungry either because she didn’t eat the fruit after she sucked out all the juice.

When the sun went down, we stretched out near the shore and watched the bats fill the sky.

“My heart is beating really fast,” I said.

“It’s a sign of dehydration,” Anna said.

“What are the other signs?”

“Loss of appetite. Not having to pee. Dry mouth.”

“I have all those.”

“Me, too.”

“How long we can go without water?”

“Three days. Maybe less.”

I tried to remember the last time I drank anything. Maybe at the Sri Lanka airport? We were getting a little in our mouths when it rained but it wouldn’t be enough to keep us alive. The realization that we were running out of time scared the shit out of me.

“What about the pond?”

“It’s a bad idea,” she said.

Neither of us said what we were thinking. If it came down to the pond water or no water, we might have to drink it anyway.

“They’ll come tomorrow,” she said, but she didn’t sound like she believed it.

“I hope so.”

“I’m scared,” she whispered.

“So am I.” I rolled over on my side, but it was a long time before I fell asleep.

Chapter 5 – Anna

Day 3

When T.J. and I woke up, we both had a headache and felt nauseous. We ate some breadfruit, and I thought I might throw mine up, but I didn’t. Even though we had very little energy, we returned to the beach and decided to try building a fire again. I was convinced a plane would fly over that day, and I knew a fire was our best chance to make sure they spotted us.

“We did it all wrong yesterday,” T.J. said. “I was thinking about it last night, before I fell asleep, and I remember watching a show on TV where the guy had to make a fire. He spun the stick instead of rubbing two of them together. I have an idea. I’m going to see if I can find what I need.”

While he was gone, I gathered anything that would burn if we actually managed to produce a flame. The air was so humid, and the only thing on the island that was dry was the inside of my mouth. Everything I picked up felt damp, but I finally found some dry leaves on the underside of a flowering plant. I also pulled the pockets of my jeans inside out and found a bit of lint which I added to the pile in my hand.

T.J. returned with a stick and a smaller chunk of wood.

“Do you have any lint in your pockets?” I asked him. He turned his pockets inside out, found some, and handed it to me.

“Thanks.” I formed the lint and leaves into a little nest. I also gathered small sticks and collected a mound of damp, green leaves we could add to make plenty of smoke.

T.J. sat down and held the stick upright, perpendicular to the chunk of wood it rested on.

“What are you doing?” I asked him.

“I’m trying to figure out a way to spin the stick.” He studied it for a minute. “I think the guy used a string. I wish I hadn’t kicked off my shoes; I could have used the laces.”

He twisted the stick back and forth with one hand but he couldn’t spin it fast enough to get any friction. Sweat ran down his face.

“This is fucking impossible,” he said, resting for a few minutes.

With renewed determination, he used both hands and rubbed them together, with the stick in between them. It spun much faster, and he quickly found a rhythm. After twenty minutes, the spinning stick produced a little pile of black dust in the notch he’d worn in the chunk of wood.

“Look at that,” T.J. said, when a wisp of smoke drifted up.

Shortly after that, there was a lot more smoke. Sweat ran into his eyes but T.J. didn’t stop spinning the stick.