“I need the nest.”

I set it down next to him and held my breath, watching as he blew gently on the notch in the wood. He used the stick to carefully dig out the glowing red ember and transfer it to the pile of dry leaves and lint. He picked the nest up and held it in front of his mouth, blowing softly, and it burst into flames in his hands. He dropped it on the ground.

“Oh my God,” I said. “You did it.”

We piled small pieces of tinder on top of it. It grew fast and we quickly used up the sticks I’d collected. We hurried to find more, and we were both running toward the fire with an armful when the sky opened up and poured. In seconds, the fire turned into a soggy pile of charred wood

We stared at what was left of it. I wanted to cry. T.J. sunk to his knees on the sand. I sat down next to him, and we lifted our heads to catch the raindrops in our mouths. It rained for a long time and at least some of it went down my throat, but all I could think about was the water soaking into the sand around us.

I didn’t know what to say to him. When it stopped raining, we lay down under the coconut tree, not talking. We couldn’t make another fire right away, because everything was too wet, so we dozed, lethargic and despondent.

When we woke up in the late afternoon, neither of us wanted breadfruit. T.J. didn’t have enough energy to make another fire and without some kind of shelter, we wouldn’t be able to keep it lit anyway. My heart pounded in my chest, and my limbs tingled. I’d stopped sweating.

When T.J. stood up and walked away, I followed. I knew where he was going, but I couldn’t make myself tell him to stop. I wanted to go there, too.

When we reached the pond, I knelt at the water’s edge, scooped some into my hand, and raised it to my mouth. It tasted horrible, hot and slightly brackish, but I immediately wanted more. T.J. knelt beside me and drank straight from the pond. Once we started, neither of us could stop. After drinking all we could, we collapsed on the ground, and I thought I might throw it all back up, but I held it down. The mosquitoes swarmed, and I slapped them away from my face.

We wandered back to the beach. It was almost dark by then so we stretched out next to each other on the sand, laying our heads on our life jackets. I thought everything would be okay. We’d bought a little time. They’d come tomorrow for sure.

“I’m sorry about the fire, T.J. You worked so hard, and you did a great job. I would never have been able to figure that out.”

“Thanks, Anna.”

We fell asleep, but I woke up a while later. The sky was black, and I thought it was probably the middle of the night. My stomach cramped. I ignored it and rolled onto my side. Another cramp hit me, this one more intense. I sat up and moaned. Sweat broke out on my forehead.

T.J. woke up. “What’s wrong?”

“My stomach hurts.” I prayed the cramping would stop but it only got worse, and I knew what was about to happen. “Don’t follow me,” I said. I stumbled into the woods, and I barely got my jeans and underwear down before my body purged everything in it. When there was nothing left, I writhed on the ground, the cramps continuing in waves, one after the other. Drenched in sweat, the pain radiated from my stomach down each leg. For a long time I lay still, afraid the slightest movement would cause more misery. The mosquitoes buzzed around my face.

Then the rats came.

Everywhere I looked, pairs of glowing eyes lurked in the darkness. One ran over my foot, and I screamed. I staggered to my feet and yanked my jeans and underwear back up, but the movement brought intense pain, and I collapsed again. I thought I might be dying, that whatever had contaminated the pond water wasn’t something you could survive. I stayed still after that. Exhausted and weak, with no idea where T.J. was, I passed out.

A buzzing noise woke me. Mosquitoes. But the sun was up and most of the bugs, and the rats, were gone. I struggled to lift my head while lying on my side with my knees pulled up to my chest.

It was the sound of a plane.

I pushed myself up on all fours and crawled toward the beach, screaming for T.J. Rising to my feet, I stumbled toward the shore, trying with the last of my strength to lift my arms above my head and wave them back and forth. I couldn’t see the plane, but I could hear it, the sound moving farther and farther away.

They’re looking for us. They’ll turn around any minute.

The sound of the plane grew fainter until I could no longer hear it. My legs buckled, and I fell onto the sand and cried until I hyperventilated. I lay on my side, my sobs tapering off, staring out at the water in a daze.

I had no idea how much time had passed, but when I looked over, T.J. was lying next to me.

“There was a plane,” I said.

“I heard it. I couldn’t move.”

“They’ll come back.”

But they didn’t.

I cried a lot that day. T.J. was silent. He kept his eyes closed, and I wasn’t sure if he was sleeping or just too weak to talk. We didn’t make another fire or eat any breadfruit. Neither of us moved out from underneath the coconut tree, except when it rained.

I didn’t want to be near the woods when it got dark so we moved back to the beach. As I lay on the sand next to T.J., there was only thing I knew for sure. If another plane didn’t come, or we couldn’t figure out a way to collect water, T.J. and I would die.

I dozed fitfully throughout the night and when I finally fell into a deeper sleep, I woke up screaming because I dreamed a rat was chewing on my foot.

Chapter 6 – T.J.

Day 4

When the sun came up, I could barely lift my head off the sand. Two seat cushions from the plane had washed up overnight, and something blue next to them caught my eye. I rolled toward Anna and shook her to wake her up. She looked at me with sunken eyes, her lips cracked and bleeding.

“What is that?” I pointed to the blue thing but the effort required to hold my hand up was too much, and I let my arm drop back onto the sand.

“Where?”

“Over there. By the seat cushions.”

“I don’t know,” she said.

I lifted my head up and shielded my eyes from the sun. It looked familiar and suddenly I realized what it was. “That’s my backpack. Anna, that’s my backpack.”

I stood up on wobbly legs, walked to the shore, and grabbed it. When I came back, I knelt down next to Anna, opened the backpack, and pulled out the bottle of water she’d given me at the Malé Airport.

She sat up. “Oh my God.”

I twisted the cap off and we passed the bottle back and forth, being careful not to drink it too fast. It held thirty-two ounces, and we drank it all, but it barely took the edge off my thirst.

Anna held up the empty bottle. “If we use a leaf for a funnel, we can collect rainwater in this.”

Shaky and weak, we walked to the breadfruit tree and plucked a large leaf from one of the lower branches. Anna tore it until it was the right size and stuffed it into the mouth of the empty water bottle, making the opening as wide as possible. There were four breadfruits on the ground, and we carried them back to the shore and ate them all.

I dumped everything out of my backpack. My Chicago Cubs baseball cap was soaking wet, but I put it on anyway. There was also a gray hooded sweatshirt, two T-shirts, two pairs of shorts, jeans, underwear and socks, a toothbrush and toothpaste, and my CD player. I picked up my toothbrush and toothpaste. The inside of my mouth tasted like something I couldn’t even begin to describe. I unscrewed the cap on the toothpaste, squeezed some onto my toothbrush, and held it out to Anna. “You can share my toothbrush if you don’t mind.”