The sand rolls out to the water, most of it shrouded by the black night, with who knows what lurking beneath its surface. Crabs? Baby turtles? Countless species of insects?
I swallow hard. What was I thinking? I could probably handle crabs or turtles. And other than Lola’s worms, I haven’t seen any bugs on this island. Whatever magic is keeping the fish away must apply to insect life as well. And yet, it’s not like me to willingly lay my body—my face!—on the ground, even if they are protected by a sleeping bag.
I can’t… I can’t do this. I wanted to be brave. I wanted to sacrifice for Mama, like she’s done for me all of her life. But it’s dirty down in the sand. It doesn’t feel right down in that sand. The sand will knock me off the delicate, precarious balance that I spend my life building.
An overwhelming sense of paralysis floods me. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. My two favorite words of the English language. At least, that’s what Mama told me once in a moment of frustration, during one of my meltdowns.
It might’ve been when I refused to get on the airplane, right before my cousin’s wedding, because my OCD told me it wasn’t safe. Or maybe it was when I wouldn’t lay down on a hotel bed because I was certain the sheets were dirty.
Mama tries to be patient. I know that. She tries as much as humanly possible, but she has her limits, too. Her face swims in my vision: the kind, tapered eyes; her strong, flared nose. And a rush of love tries to push out the intrusive, meddling thoughts.
Do this for her. Get a handle on yourself, take charge of these obsessions, for Mama.
No. I can practically hear Mama shouting. Don’t do it for me. I won’t be here much longer. Do it for yourself.
If only I knew how.
“Alaia?”
I open my eyes, unclench my teeth. Bodin hovers near me, his cheeks pinched with concern. His head blocks most of the midnight sky, and the glow of the fire warms his face. Mateo plopped himself on the sand next to the shelter, where Lola was sleeping, and Bodin and I decided that the spot next to the fire was the best place to sleep. Me, because the flame would warm my cold extremities. Bodin, so that he can also keep the fire going throughout the night.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
I give him a shaky smile. “I, um, don’t like sleeping on the ground.” Understatement of the century. “But it should be okay, since I have the sleeping bag. That should protect me from all the, uh, sandiness. It’s almost like sleeping in a bed. Really.” The false reassurance is more for my benefit than his.
“But you did it before,” Bodin points out. “The first day we were here. We all woke up in the sand.”
Ah, that’s the crux of the problem. My OCD doesn’t respond to reason or logic. It’s a feeling, a compulsion, an urgent need inside me. It’s a black hole of emotion sucking me down its vortex, and I can’t control it until I claw and scratch my way out—
“If you’re that worried, you can always use my stomach as a pillow,” Bodin says.
The words are so outrageous that my swirling, repetitive, run-on thoughts screech to a halt.
“Wh—what?” I stutter.
“My abs. You can lay your head on them.” To demonstrate, Bodin stretches out his long frame directly onto the sand. No sleeping bag whatsoever. I don’t know how he can stand it.
He then lifts up his shirt and pats his stomach. Even in the moonlight, I can see the distinct lines of his six-pack.
“Um.” I try to string together a coherent thought. “No, thank you.”
“You’re right.” Bodin sits up, and his shirt slides back into place, thank goodness. Being this close to his bare skin is scrambling my brain. “I wouldn’t want to put my head on this slab of rock, either. It would be like trying to sleep on granite.”
He grins, and I can’t stop myself from mirroring his lips. That smile is infectious, even if I feel awkward standing here while he’s sitting.
Bodin furrows his brows, thinking hard. “I know. Maybe my chest can serve as your pillow.” As soon as the words leave his mouth, though, he’s shaking his head. “Nah, that would never work. Have you seen the size of these pecs?” Cartoonishly, he makes his pecs bounce. “I would never subject you to such torture.”
I giggle. Bodin’s got a lean, ropy frame with plenty of muscle—but a body builder, he is not.
He shakes his head mournfully. “I didn’t want it to come to this, but a guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do. Because I am a gentleman, and because it might be the only soft part of this well-honed body…” He pauses dramatically. “I will offer my butt as a pillow.”
I burst out laughing. If Bodin was trying to distract me from my emotions, mission accomplished. He pulled me out of myself and grounded me in the physical world. I carefully lay out my sleeping bag and sit down on it, making sure not a single grain of sand touches me.
“Gee, let me think.” I tilt my head, pretending to give his offer deep thought. “I’ll take my chances with my sleeping bag, thank you very much.”
“You wound me.” Bodin clutches at his heart. “What’s the problem? Is my butt not big enough? I demand a critique.”
This is the most ridiculous conversation I’ve ever had. “Your butt’s fine.”
He grins slyly. “Why, Alaia. Is this your way of telling me that you’ve been checking out my backside?”
This sends me into another fit of giggles. “No. Of course not.” I barely get out, and he just sits in the sand, beaming at me.
“You feeling better?” he asks when I finally stop laughing.
Now that I’m more relaxed, I can actually follow the three-step process for dismantling an OCD thought: identify it, label the thought distortion, and disprove the thought with counterarguments.
This is just sand. It can’t hurt me. I slept on it yesterday morning, and nothing happened. More importantly: my sleeping bag acts as a protective barrier.
Tentatively, I lay back, making sure there’s a few inches of sleeping bag above my head, and it’s not bad. I curl up on my side, safety established.
“Yes, I do feel better. Thank you,” I say.
“Anytime.” He turns toward me, mimicking my form—curled up, with a hand tucked under my chin. Intentionally or not, he remains a good five or six feet away, for which I’m grateful. I don’t think I could handle his proximity if he were any closer.
I should be nervous right now. I should not know what to do with my hands. I should be worrying about my breath, even though I used some of my toothpaste earlier, since Xander had bequeathed us with more.
And I am all of those things—but more than anything, I feel comfortable.
The faint murmur of conversation drifting from the shelter has died down. The only things we can hear are the wind rustling the leaves and the occasional grunt of someone shifting.
“Can I ask you something?” Bodin’s voice is hardly more than a whisper. “Do you feel the same way as Rae?”
“Doubtful,” I say wryly, “since she and I are pretty much opposites. She’s brave, I’m meek. And so on and so on.”
“I mean, do you agree with her about not playing Xander’s game?”
“It doesn’t bother me too much to be a pawn,” I say slowly. “If it gets Mama and me home safely, I’ll happily be manipulated by him. But I can’t play Xander’s game for another reason.”
My throat thickens, my eyes sting—the classic signs that I’m about to cry. But I’ve already freaked out once during this conversation. If I’m striving to be strong and independent, I need to get my easily triggered tears under control.
“Mama’s pills,” I blurt out. “She only has two days left. Even if Xander is telling the truth, I doubt we’re getting out of here before they run out.” I rise up on my elbow and twist around. The shadowed bodies under the shelter remain still. I can’t tell which one is Mama, but no movement is a good thing. No movement hopefully means that she’s resting.
“She’s already fading fast,” I continue in a low voice. “Without her medication, she’ll get even sicker.” I squeeze my hands into fists, my nails digging into my palms. “All Mama wants is to die in peace. That’s why we’re in Koh Samui. She didn’t want to waste away in some hospice. She wants to pass with beauty all around her, surrounded by the people she loves best—Papa and me.” I take a deep breath. “If three of us come into our abilities every two days, then it will be another six days before we can expect to go home. We’ve got to get off this island sooner.”
Bodin nods, and then it’s his turn to roll onto his back. He laces his fingers behind his head and stares up at the stars.
“It’s possible that I’ve been to this island before, on another charter with the captain,” he says and then stops. “Some of the foliage, the vegetation, seems familiar. So does the view: miles of water in every direction, with no land in sight.” He stops again. I want to reach into his throat and drag out the words, but Bodin is relaying this revelation on his own time.
“If I have been here, we must have visited the other side of the island, because that’s where the people were. Pop-up stands serving smoothies and fresh coconuts. Vendors selling meat on skewers and bamboo baskets of sticky rice.”
“Civilization,” I say in an awed voice. “Wifi. Help.”
Bodin gestures toward the mountain range that rises majestically behind the forest of trees. “I think our way off the island is on the other side of that mountain range.”
My pulse leaps. “Let’s go wake the others, gather up our supplies. We have to try to get around that wall again—”
A loud snort cuts me off. A bear? That reptile-like animal I saw earlier? But no. It’s just Preston rolling onto his other side. The bamboo poles rattle as though they might break, but a few seconds later, he starts snoring—loud, guttural growls that sound like a broken engine.
At least his pinhole mouth hasn’t returned.
“It’s too late to set out now,” Bodin says gently, and my shoulders droop. He’s right, of course. “If we head west, we might be able to find a section of the mountain that’s not walled off. But we’re not doing that in the dark, and we’ll need our rest. We’ll head out first thing tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” I echo. It’s the most promising thing I’ve heard since I woke up on this hellish paradise a day and a half ago.