“What should we do now? Where are we?” I asked.
No response. I turned. “Marina?”
She was curled in a ball where I’d left her. “Need warm” is all she said.
I helped her lean against a clump of bushes so she looked more comfortable. What had she said out on the water? We needed to start a fire and make a shelter. But how? “Marina, tell me again what to do.”
She looked at me and shivered.
I scanned up and down the shoreline. Rock walls on either side. We were lucky to have drifted to this spot; otherwise, we’d have been smashed against the cliff face. Waves crashed brutally onto the beach, flinging water high into the air. The rest of the water went on beyond the fog. How was there fog and wind?
There was a narrow strip of dirt and seaweed in a line about midway between the waves and a flat section of tall, swaying grasses. The forest loomed behind the grass.
I thought of all the times I wished my mom would leave me alone, stop babying me. All the times I wished my older sister hadn’t been around. Now I wished so badly there were a grownup here. Anyone who would know what to do.
I looked at Marina again. I did know what to do. She had to get warm.
I yanked open the snaps on the front pockets of my suit. Nothing but an empty candy bar wrapper and a Ziploc bag with crumbs in it.
“Marina, do you have a lighter?”
“No.” She trembled.
“Do you have anything we can use besides your knife?”
She gazed ahead, eyes unfocused. She had something in her pocket, but I couldn’t clamp my thumb and fingers together hard enough to pull the zipper open. I realized I was shivering. My feet felt like blocks of ice. Both of us needed to get warm.
Coach used to make us do burpees to warm up. I dropped to the ground, my hands in the wet gravel as I did a pushup, then leaped up with my hands in the air. Again, down to the ground, push up, jump.
My heart started to pump; my breathing came faster. I hadn’t done burpees since I quit the team. They were harder than I remembered. But it worked. I could feel and move my fingers. I yanked my zipper down and peeled off my suit. Kneeling next to Marina again, I pulled off the little vest she was wearing and helped her into my suit. It was wet, but still warm from my body heat.
She yelled when I tried to stuff her right arm into the sleeve. “M-my wrist!”
It looked swollen and sort of purple under the skin as she cradled it to her chest. When my friend Chad sprained his wrist breaking a fall on the mats, Coach wrapped it so it wouldn’t move during the trip to the hospital.
Searching the ground next to us, I found two straight sticks and held them up next to her arm.
“Hold these,” I said. “You don’t have any tape, do you?”
Then I got an idea. I ripped the lace out of my right shoe and tied the sticks with that. Marina still had her bandanna around her neck. I reached under her hair. The knot was wet and hard to undo, but I got the bandanna free and laid it out in a triangle like Coach had done with a piece of cloth from the first-aid kit. I cradled Marina’s arm in that and tied the bandanna around her neck so that her fingers pointed up next to her collarbone. “Does that feel better?”
“Fire,” she mumbled.
I searched through the pocket of her vest. My hand pulled out a plastic bag with a lighter and a small box of matches in it.
“Yes!” I cheered, until I took a closer look at what I had thought was a lighter. It was just a black rectangular block the size and weight of a lighter.
What was this thing? Why couldn’t this be a lighter? I hated matches. I could never work them.
The little box of matches was dry from being in the bag, but it stuck when I tried to slide it open. The box slipped from my fingers and most of the matches fell into the mud.
“No!” I lunged for the box and collected the few matches that weren’t wet. More carefully, I pulled out one of the matches that were still in the box. “The box says they’re waterproof, so it should work, right?”
I tried to rub the match head along the side of the box. The thin matchstick broke in my fingers. I threw it to the ground and tried another one. Again.
There weren’t that many dry matches left. I crouched on the ground and carefully laid the match along my finger so it wouldn’t break, but when I dragged it along the strike strip nothing happened. I had never understood the coordination it takes to make matches work.
“Argh!” I yelled in frustration.
I looked up in surprise when I felt a splash. I’d been so focused on the matches, I hadn’t noticed what was going on around me. My attention now traveled along the line of seaweed and sticks. The ground above that line was a lighter color than the side closer to the ocean. Now I understood that this was how high the tide came up. And we weren’t on the right side of the line.
Calm down. I had to concentrate. And I had to get ready to light the fire. I didn’t have anything prepared to burn. I needed to stop panicking and think. What had Marina said about how much time we had before we’d get hypothermia? If I didn’t get this fire started, we were both going to die.
I helped her crawl above the seaweed line to an area that was level with some boulders. Then I crouched behind the biggest boulder and scraped a bare patch in the dirt. I piled some twigs and driftwood that I found lying between the rocks and then I crouched over the pile and pulled out another match. I flicked it quick across the box and it made a snapping sound like when Dad lit matches. It worked!
The wind blew behind me and puffed it out.
I could feel myself starting to panic again. We needed to get warm right now. I tried again and again until I had one match left.
I focused on the match. Pressed my lips together, lined up the matchstick against my finger.
This was it.
This one would work. I had the hang of it now.
I flicked it across the matchbox. The match head flared up bright. And then died. I was left with nothing but a smoking match and darkness falling fast.