I was first around the table and out the door. Esme and Alana followed. The walkway was jammed with people. I jumped onto a smaller one to get past them. A flourish of angry Spanish followed my every step.
I spotted Jose on a walkway leading to the eastern side of the island. I skirted around a pair of women, then leaped over a bundle of bamboo stalks lying on the ground. The walkway veered out over the ocean. Beneath me, crabs scurried into hiding. I slowed down and checked to see if Esme and Alana were following me.
“Did he go this way?” Esme asked when she caught up.
“Yeah,” I said. “Where’d Alana go?”
“I don’t know. She was right behind me.”
“Come on, she’ll catch up.” We started running again, saying, “Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me” as we passed people.
At the eastern edge of the island, we headed south. The five-foot-high walkway stretched out over deeper water. Ahead, a group of people chatted and drank beer at a wide junction. I slowed down and searched for Jose’s face in the crowd. The walkway forked. One section cut back into the jungle, the other continued out over the water. I was about to take the jungle route when I saw Jose slink out from beside a hut. He had his head down and his hands in the pockets of his surfer shorts.
“There he is,” I said, pointing. We started running and got within twenty feet of him when a big guy in dark sunglasses ran out of a hut and barreled into us.
I tried to get my balance, but I slipped and fell headfirst into the water. I popped up just in time to see Esme hit the water.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
Esme felt along her leg. A bit of blood hazed the water.
“Yeah, just a scrape from the coral,” she said.
I looked up at the walkway. Jose and the big guy had disappeared. A bunch of people were laughing and shaking their heads at us. Someone yelled at us in Spanish. I think it was, “Go back where you came from, gringos.”
“Esme, over there,” I said, pointing to where the walkway led onto the beach. We swam out past the reef and into deeper water before cutting back to shore.
“Well,” Esme said once we were sitting on the beach. “That sucked.” She checked her cut knee. It was just a scrape, but coral scrapes were worse than pavement scrapes. Coral reefs are a living organism, like a giant animal. When you’re cut, part of the organism stays in the wound and makes it sting more than you could ever imagine a little cut stinging.
“Do you still think Jose is just a local who doesn’t like gringos on his island? He recognized us and ran away.”
“That’s odd,” Esme said. “But what would Kevin be doing with someone like Jose? If Kevin is even here.”
“He is,” I said. “I’m more sure of it now than ever.”
“But why would Kevin take off? If he knew we were here, he would come and find us, right? He would…” Esme stopped and touched her cut knee. “He would want to be with us.”
I put my hand on her shoulder. “I don’t know, Es. Maybe he’s in some kind of trouble. If he’s here, we’ll find him.”
She looked at me with watery eyes and a trembling chin. It would be heartbreaking to have come this far to find Kevin, only to have him disappear again.
“We have to go back and find Alana,” I said.
“No, you don’t.” Alana jumped off the end of the walkway. “Alana found herself.”
“You’re all right?” Esme asked.
“I am. I thought you guys had gone the other way. It took awhile to figure out you came this way. Um, why are you both soaked?”
“Some giant tossed us into the water,” I said.
“What?” Alana frowned. “I know Delgado said the locals can be unfriendly, but that unfriendly?”
“Someone doesn’t want us to find Kevin,” I said.
Alana sat down beside me in the sand. “And so you two are just going to go on home and forget any of this happened?”
“Um, no,” I said.
“Yeah, I didn’t think so.” She bumped me with her shoulder, then stood back up again. “Come on, there has to be a way back to the other side of the island from here. Unless you want to go back through the village.”