DAY 7
Cried myself to sleep last night. Mrs. Campbell’s useless as a cadet leader, useless as a caretaker, useless as a friend. I hate her.
Rain all night, and we didn’t get much sleep, what with the hooting of the gibbons and the unidentified screams and coughs.
This morning the rain’s stopped and the wind has dropped, thank goodness. Little spots of silver dance on the sea and it almost makes me forget the awfulness of the past few days, though I’m worn out from crying.
“You okay, Bonz?” Jas looks worriedly at me. “You don’t look so good this morning.”
“Think you’re a better sight, do you?” I snap. Don’t know what’s the matter with me. I never yell at Jas. She wanders off to wash. I ought to run after her. Apologize. But I’m too tired and sore and miserable. I sit on a tall rock at the water’s edge. On my own.
The lagoon has all the colors of a peacock’s feather. Pink coral heads are visible, and red and purple seaweed swirls, lifts, and falls on the gentle waves. The palms’ feathery heads quiver in the breeze, and huge butterflies flutter on the suddenly brilliant flowers at the top of the beach. It is paradise, I tell myself. Or it would be, if it weren’t for the dead birds rotting on the tide line, hundreds of them. Fat flies swarm over the broken gulls, parakeets, bush turkeys, even peacocks. I catch sight of a rat moving among the carcasses. That’ll freak out the Glossies.
Hope and Jas come down the beach armed with plastic bags.
“We can’t let anyone swim until we’ve cleared the birds,” Jas calls over to me, a kind of Can we be friends again? tone to her voice, and I’m glad. I swing down from my rock and make enough of a commotion to send the marauding rats back to where they came from.
Hope, Jas, and I spend the whole morning gathering the corpses in a stinking heap, intending to bury them at the other end of the beach, but it’s a disgusting job. We bind the plastic bags around our hands and wrap T-shirts over our mouths and noses.
Once the beach is mostly clear of rotting creatures, Carly and Jody paddle around. They have taken off all their clothes and seem happy enough, though Carly still hasn’t spoken as far as I know. Hope and I are washing their things in a freshwater spring that Jas and I found on the way back from the burial site. It was only a matter of searching along the top of the beach. It bubbles up by rocks just inside the bordering trees, and then disappears again under the sand.
“It’s a happy coincidence that the stream is well away from the latrine,” I told Mrs. Campbell, but she didn’t respond.
“Do you think w-we are going to get r-r-r-r-rescued, Bonnie?” Hope looks vulnerable without her glasses, like a blind owl.
“Yeah, sure we are, Hope. Now that the wind has dropped they’ll send a boat.”
Hope doesn’t look convinced. “I wish I hadn’t b-broken m-my glasses,” she says. “I can’t see a thing. It’s like living in a thick m-mist.”
“Have you always worn them?”
“Since I was very little. M-m-mom says she’s going to get m-me contact lenses soon. And she’s going to get m-my t-t-t-t-teeth fixed. But Dad says why b-b-b-b-bother? It w-w-w-w-won’t make me look any m-m-m-more human. Is this shirt clean enough, do you think?”
We hang the clothes across a fallen palm trunk and turn when we hear happy shrieking.
I can’t believe my eyes. May, Arlene, and Mrs. Campbell are skinny-dipping in the fishing pool. They’ve done nothing to help all morning. And then I realize there’s no fire—they’ve allowed it to go out. They come up the beach, naked. I’m embarrassed but also very angry.
“Mrs. Campbell, shouldn’t we keep the fire burning as a marker for anyone coming to rescue us?”
She throws herself down on the sand, ignoring me once again. I march over to her and stand with my hands on my hips, looking down at her.
“Shut up, Bonnie MacDonald. You’re so bossy,” May says, stretching out close to Mrs. Campbell.
“Oh, they’ll find us now that the weather’s improved,” Mrs. Campbell mumbles and rolls a cigarette. I can’t remember ever feeling this angry before: She’s wasting matches now.
“Your cigarette smells funny, Mrs. Campbell.”
“Herbal,” she says, sucking in deeply.
Oh yeah, right, herbal. Pull the other one. I don’t trust myself to speak and walk away. Jas looks at me, her eyes asking me what’s happened, but I shake my head and drop cross-legged onto the sand, my head in my hands.
The day crawls on. No one comes. We don’t see any boats, planes, or helicopters. When I suggest a hunt for more provisions, only Jas says yes. No one else wants to come. All the others do is swim and muck about. It’s as if they are on holiday. It’s as if Sandy hasn’t died, or the boatman. As if Natalie isn’t seriously sick. As if we aren’t stuck here until someone finds us.
Hope mopes on her own, the only girl with all her clothes on, though she looks far too hot.
“Coming?” I ask, but she shakes her head.
“Then keep an eye on Natalie, will you?”
Hope nods and moves closer to where Natalie is lying.
“It’s one thing the juniors acting as if nothing’s happened, but you’d expect Mrs. Campbell and the others to act responsibly,” I grumble.
“In denial,” says Jas. “All in denial.” (Her mother’s a psychologist.)
“But think about it, Jas. Who knows we’re here? No one. If the boatman had made it home it would be different, but there are hundreds, well, dozens of islands. How will they know where to find us?”
“We haven’t seen any boats or planes today.” For once Jas can’t look on the bright side. “Why? Why aren’t they even looking for us? Something awful must have happened at the base.”
We look at each other. Has there been an air strike?
Or was the storm so bad the base was flooded or destroyed?
“What’s that tree? Is it a mango?” I ask.
“Yes, look, fresh fruit!” Jas responds.
We gather the fallen fruit, braving the wasps and flies, and eat. Sweetness explodes in my mouth. I suddenly start crying; I don’t know why. Jas puts her arm around me and we sob together.
I’ve found out why Mrs. Campbell has given up any pretense of being responsible. For a start, she had two bottles of whiskey with her, not one, and she’s nearly finished the second one. I add this information to the list in my journal. I don’t know what made me look in her backpack. Well, that’s not true. I was suspicious because she’s been acting so strangely—staggering around and laughing too much, and then skinny-dipping with the Glossies as if she’s one of us instead of an adult who is supposed to be looking after us. It’s not right. Not natural. There’s something wrapped in silver foil—marijuana, I think.
I have poured most of the remains of the whiskey into the peanut tin and hidden it near Natalie’s sleeping bag. I’ve diluted the rest with water. I should have peed in it.
“Why don’t we send a message in a bottle?” Jas knows that I need to keep busy.
“Brilliant, Jas. Why didn’t we think of it before?”
The sea’s still running like a tap—a bottle might be thrown onto the beach at home in a matter of hours.
On a page from my journal I draw a map of the island and show the other islands we floated past, including Koh Chang, the inhabited one, and the mainland, and I write a short message:
I add our names, the dead and the survivors.
Jas, Hope, and I sign it, roll it up in a plastic bag, and push it into an empty Mekong bottle. Hope thumps the stopper in with the palm of her hand, and as the tide is still on the ebb she throws it as far as she can out to sea from Dragon Point.