The thirty-foot-high city wall may have kept warring tribes out of the city a thousand years ago, but the silent stone sentry could do nothing to keep out the jungle. It had found ingenious ways to climb over, crawl under, and sometimes just break straight through the guarding wall to swallow the ancient city inside. What the humans had carved out, the unrelenting jungle destroyed, claiming back the land. I could almost hear the trees say, Sure you can cut us down, but we’ll be here long after you will. We’ve got time.
And when you start thinking the jungle is talking to you, you know it is time for some rest.
After lowering ourselves into the city, we split up to find shelter. I volunteered to go alone. I surveyed the layout of the ruins, though only hints of its former grandeur were visible through the dense blanket of growth. Once-great houses reduced to vine-covered rubble crowded the paved walkways. Thatched roofs that had adorned the tops of homes had long since disintegrated, leaving bare stone walls sticking pointlessly out of the undergrowth. Some of the more fortunate houses still boasted all four walls and intact wooden doorframes.
My heavy footfalls sent unseen creatures scurrying for cover. Hopefully, I was the largest predator they had seen in a while.
Rain started to fall steadily from above. When it rains, it pours, I thought wryly, not having shaken off the misery from the last hour of wholesale lying to both Mateo and Savannah. I felt hollow, as though the storm winds and rain were passing straight through me.
The worst part of all this wasn’t the pain I was causing myself, though it was torturous. But I expected it and tried to take it in stride. The worst part of it all was the indecision in my decisions. In the past few weeks, I had made the absolute decision not to talk to Savannah, then not to touch her, and especially not to fall in love with her. And somehow, for all of my trying, they had all happened anyway, one right after the other. Like I had absolutely no choice in the matter.
I was getting very tired of the fight, especially because I kept losing every single battle. The only option I had left was to physically separate myself from her. As soon as we were safely out of the jungle, I would put her on a plane and get her as far away from me as possible. Even better, I’d make Claire do it so I wouldn’t know where she had gone, just in case my resolve broke and I tried to follow her.
There. Done. Decision made. And this one had to stick.
I took out my frustration on a particularly heavy hedge of vines, slashing them to confetti, and found what used to be a large gathering place, possibly a temple. Tall, sculpted steps led up to an empty stone platform. Only one of the walls was still standing straight. The opposite wall had fallen into it, leaving a triangular opening just large enough for all of us to sleep sheltered for the night. I entered the makeshift room to check for its sturdiness. The fallen wall still had much of its original painted stucco. The bright, beautifully colored pictures that ran the length of the slanted wall conveyed a scene of Mayan harvest. It was a priceless work of art lost in the depths of the jungle. My eyes were possibly the first to see it in millennia.
I called to the others, who came quickly to get out of the now torrential rain. We spent time unpacking our backpacks and setting up for the night. I made absolutely sure I kept myself as far away from Savannah as possible in the crowded space.
When the rain finally let up, Mateo and I, with a great deal of work, got a fire started just outside our shelter. For dinner, we feasted on granola bars, hotel sandwiches, and bottled water that Claire had fortuitously brought.
“Time for some fun!” Mateo said happily after swallowing a mouthful of granola. “As long as we are stuck here, we may as well make the most of it, right Savannah?”
That caught her off guard. “Sure …?” she said hesitantly.
“Excellent,” he said, winking at her. “Chase and I have been working on a little something for just such an occasion.”
“We have?” Chase asked, puzzled.
“You came prepared just in case we were left out in the jungle to die, huh?” Claire asked dubiously.
“We didn’t have this exact occasion in mind. But when you are stuck on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean for months with spotty access to electricity, you have to learn how to make your own fun. Here’s something the Tongans taught us.”
He took off his shirt and threw it at Savannah. The envy I felt over such a small thing was ridiculous. Somewhere deep down, I knew that. But it did nothing to dampen the fire.
Mateo, now shirtless, sauntered over to the other side of the fire. He said something in Tongan to Chase, who rolled his eyes but began singing a staccato melody while Mateo danced along to the rhythm. The girls clapped loudly when they finished. I didn’t.
Mateo settled himself back down close to Savannah and gave me an evil grin, which I pretended not to see. He was about to start whatever he had been planning on his climb up the wall. I braced myself.
“So, Savannah,” Mateo said, trying to sound casual.
“Yes?” she asked.
“Truth or dare?”
“Are you serious?” I asked hotly, beyond annoyed.
“Well, what I just did could definitely count as a dare, so now I get to pick someone. Savannah, truth or dare?”
“Uh, truth, I guess,” she said reluctantly, glancing at my cold, vacant expression.
“Well, we all know way too much about each other, but we don’t know anything about you. What’s up with that?”
“What do you want to know?” she asked bravely.
“Past romantic history. What’s your story?” Mateo asked, inching closer to her. I knew what he was doing. He was trying to force some kind of reaction out of me, to see whether I had been lying about my feelings for her. I would have stormed out, had I anywhere to go. But since I was stuck, I pretended to find the mural above my head fascinating.
“There’s nothing interesting, I can assure you. I’ve gone out with guys, had a few short-term boyfriends, but never anything serious.”
“That’s hard to believe, coming from such a pretty girl,” Mateo said flirtatiously, his eyes darting from hers to mine.
“Thanks,” she said a little nervously, leaning away from his advances. “My mother was, to put it mildly, overprotective. So when she finally decided I was old enough to be let out of her sight, she disapproved of any guy who came my way. Catch-twenty-two. I was allowed to date, but not any of the guys that asked me out.
“So, being a teenager, I went through a rebellious period where I chose guys based solely on how much my mom disliked them. Of course, she always disliked them for good reasons, so I never really got into any serious relationships.”
“No nasty breakups? No intrigues? Nothing?” Mateo pressed, leaning closer to her still.
“I am terminally boring, I promise. Hardly good company for the likes of you four. But if you are satisfied, I think it is my turn to pick someone,” she said.
“Now we’re getting somewhere!” Mateo exclaimed.
“Ryen,” she said stiffly. Everyone’s eyes shifted toward me.
“What?” I said, like I hadn’t been paying attention. Like I hadn’t been hanging on every single word she said.
“Same question. Romantic history. I assume you have a much more interesting story than I do,” she said. The boys hooted with laughter.
“Oh darling, this man’s got some stories!” Mateo roared and rolled onto his back, forgetting his mission to encroach on Savannah’s personal space.
“He could talk all night and not tell you half of it! This one’s a heartbreaker,” Chase laughed.
“I figured as much,” she said. The boys laughed even harder.
“He’s the biggest celebrity we have back in Zhim—” Mateo sputtered, then turned white as he stopped his tongue from finishing the word. Savannah heard the pause and watched Mateo more carefully. He pretended to cough and clear his throat. “Gym … gym class. High school. He was the biggest celebrity we had back in high school. All the girls loved him.”
I had to hand it to him. He covered well, but not perfectly. Everyone had fallen deathly silent. Savannah’s eyes searched each of us, trying to find the source of the change.
“Oh, come on, there’s nothing much,” I said, managing a chuckle through my tight jaw. I could have taken Mateo’s head off. “Just a couple of girlfriends.”
“That’s not what the boys just said,” she pressed, still looking around the circle at everyone’s forced smiles. “Chase said you were a heartbreaker, so tell me about her, or them,” she said sarcastically.
“They’re making a big deal out of nothing,” I said.
“Are you married?” Savannah asked grimly.
“No! Of course not!” I said fiercely. The group’s forced smiles turned genuine at Savannah’s accusation.
“Then tell me. Those are the rules of the game, right, guys?” Savannah asked, looking at the rest of them.
“Those are the rules,” Mateo said. Traitor.
“So heartbreaker, whose heart have you broken?” Savannah pressed.
“I’ll tell her if you don’t,” Mateo warned.
“Okay, fine. I had an ex-girlfriend who took our breakup … badly,” I said curtly, shifting my eyes up toward the ceiling again. The very last thing on Earth I wanted to talk about was her. I didn’t even like thinking about her. She still made me nervous, even from billions of miles away.
“Badly doesn’t quite cover it. He’s trying to be nice. She is totally obsessed with Ryen. Too bad she is certifiably insane,” Mateo said.
“Amen,” Claire said under her breath.
“She’s not insane. She had it tough growing up so she turned to drugs. She was already kind of imbalanced to begin with. I ended it when I found out how bad her habit was. It’s been over for a long time now. It’s nothing.”
Savannah watched me, measuring me carefully.
“What’s her name?” she asked, her tone warming a little.
“Emani,” I said, refusing to volunteer anything else. I was done. Tired, frustrated, and desperate for the girl who sat five feet away from me that I couldn’t have.
“So Ryen was popular in high school? I could see that,” Savannah said to Claire, drawing everyone’s attention away from me. They launched into a conversation about a made-up high school full of made-up people. Claire wove the stories effortlessly as she went.
The talking thankfully died out as they all became more tired.
“One of us is going to have to stay up to keep watch tonight,” I said, staring into the fire.
“Not it!” Mateo said quickly.
“We’ll all take turns,” Chase said, throwing a pebble at his brother.
“I’ll take first shift. I’m not tired, yet,” I lied. Truthfully, I was completely exhausted. But even if I did lie down right now, I wouldn’t be able to sleep. “I’ll take from now till one. Mateo, do you want the one-to-four shift?”
“Yeah, sounds good.”
“I’ll take four till whenever you guys wake up,” Chase volunteered.
Our little makeshift camp finally settled down, as evidenced by Mateo’s quiet snores a few feet away from me. Claire was nestled comfortably into Chase’s chest, wrapped in his arms. Savannah lay close to the fire on the opposite side of me, using her backpack as a pillow. I watched as her breathing changed from quick, rhythmic breaths to slower, deeper ones as she fell asleep.
I stoked the small fire, sending embers popping into the dense jungle air, the smoke marring the priceless paintings above. But I was much more worried about staying alive than preserving artifacts at the moment.
I stared into the hypnotic flames and let my frustrated mind wander. Of course, it ended up where it always did: Savannah. Like being trapped in a bed of seaweed, the more I tried to fight, the more I became tangled up in her.
Again, my mind begged the question, why fight it? But I knew very well why I had to fight it.
I watched her breathe. I watched her sleep. I watched her dream. So I dreamed along with her.
I imagined telling her every single one of my secrets here by the fire. And after all that, when she knew everything about me, she wanted me anyway. She had told Dr. Mora that nothing is impossible. Could she extend that logic to include me? I imagined bringing her back to Zhimeya, showing her my home, my life, my family. We could be happy there.
I stared deeper into the blaze, watching the yellow and red flames dance in harmony. My pent-up desire, kept under lock and key, refused to be fettered anymore. I let down my guard and focused on the aching physical hunger I felt for her. I tried never to entertain these maddening thoughts, because it made my unmet need so much harder to bear. But in this moment, I didn’t care how much it would hurt later. As the fire twisted and spiraled around itself, I let myself imagine it, our bodies entwined, her mouth pressed to mine, the taste of her on my tongue. Her body burning on mine … like fire.
The vision shifted slightly as my head conjured up the perfect image of her angelic face in the smoky light, her gold-green eyes lit by the yellow flames, her hair catching the red glow. It stunned me. I involuntarily leaned forward toward the smoldering mirage, my fiery angel burning brightly.
It was when the image moved abruptly that I realized that this wasn’t a vision at all. Savannah actually was watching me. She had a puzzled look on her face, probably wondering why I was staring so unrepentantly at her. I shook my head hard to break my concentration.
“Hey, I thought you were asleep,” I said, rubbing my eyes, trying to dispel the hypnosis of lust.
“I was,” she said, pointing over to Mateo, snoring raucously now. “I couldn’t sleep through that,” she said. She crawled toward me and came to rest by my side.
“What time is it?” she asked, yawning.
“Almost eleven. It’s gonna be a long night.”
“Yes, but comfortable at least. I feel very safe, all things considered.”
“Hmm,” I mumbled stupidly. I wanted to beg her to keep her distance, to spare me the torture of being this close to her without being able to get closer.
“That must be nice,” she whispered, pointing toward Claire and Chase cuddled in the corner. She leaned and nudged my shoulder softly with hers.
Oh, why the hell was she tormenting me like this?
I employed my only defense mechanism. Silence. If I tried to talk, I would either tell her to get lost or ask her to lie down with me here in front of the fire. And I was pretty darn sure which would win. But any misstep on my part would only push us closer to that invisible line we couldn’t come back from. So, at this absolutely critical moment, the moment that could change everything …
I didn’t say a word.
“So where are you headed after your adventure here in Mexico?” she asked, pulling me from the painful fight with myself.
“You mean, if we live through the night?” I quipped. Ah, sarcasm, another tried and true defense mechanism of mine.
“Yes, if we don’t get killed by a jaguar or devoured slowly by mosquitoes, where are you going to go?”
“I haven’t gotten my next assignment yet.”
“Oh,” she said quietly. “Will you get your assignment soon?”
“Very soon,” I said stoically.
My decision was made. She was getting on a plane. Maybe talking about the inevitable departure would help keep me firm in my decision.
“How about you? What are your plans when we get out of here?” I asked, though I shouldn’t have. I didn’t want the temptation of knowing where she was headed in case my resolve broke.
“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll head south. Learn to tango in Argentina. Tierra Del Fuego is supposed to be beautiful too. I’ve always wanted to see the Antarctic, so that’s another option.”
“Be serious, Savannah,” I said, angered by her flippant response.
“I am being serious. I don’t know where I’m going to go.”
“You are going back home,” I ordered. “Somewhere permanent. Somewhere safe.”
“You’ll be off to your next assignment soon enough. Why do you care where I go next?”
“Why do I care? I care about you!”
“Do you?” she whispered plaintively.
“Of course I do,” I said softly. My own anger was losing its edge. Her sadness disarmed me. “I just … want you to be safe. I thought going home would—”
“I don’t have a home, Ryen! Haven’t you been paying any attention? I don’t have relatives or friends. I have no one!” she whispered furiously.
“That can’t be true.”
“You can’t send me home, Ryen. I don’t have one.” She leaned away from me, though we weren’t even touching.
“Savannah, what happened to you?” I asked, her sadness steadily sapping away my determination to keep my distance. “Won’t you tell me? Maybe I can help,” I urged.
“Why would I want to talk about a life I am trying so hard to forget?” she asked, finally looking at me with a shockingly pained expression.
“Sorry. I was just trying to help. You don’t have to tell me anything,” I said, barely above a whisper.
She breathed in deeply and blew out all her air, clenching her eyes tightly. When she opened them, her expression had changed.
“No, you know what? I am going to tell you. I don’t want to run from this, anymore,” she said.
She absentmindedly reached for my hand and wound her fingers tightly through mine. She then gathered my free hand too. Even though the moment was all wrong—her sadness, my indecision—the heat that flowed from her touch warmed every inch of me, burning away every thought that wasn’t about her.
“My mother spent six months falling in love with a man she barely knew—and twenty years running away from him.”
I opened my mouth to question her, but she freed one of her hands and held her finger to my lips.
“She was orphaned at seventeen. Her parents died in a car accident. Her two uncles took the little money her parents had left behind. The bank took the house when the money ran out, so she left Louisiana and headed for New York City to become an artist.
“She met my father when she was twenty years old at a club where she was waitressing. She was beautiful, naïve, and completely broke. He was a handsome, successful lawyer. Quite the combination. Maybe he loved her at first, I don’t know. She got pregnant with me soon after they met, and they moved in together. He refused to marry her, but he did put a roof over her head.
“He started working late, going on longer business trips, and never answering his phone. He was distant, controlling, and abusive.” Savannah’s unfocused eyes stared into the darkness beyond the fire.
“He cheated on her all the time. Sometimes women would call the house looking for him. He didn’t even care enough to hide the affairs.
“I was just a baby and she had no one to turn to, so she stayed, even as he became more violent. He threatened to hurt me if she left the house or called anyone, though she had no one to call.
“She started to suspect him of criminal activity because of what she heard whispered over phone conversations. He was involved in a cartel that was smuggling drugs into the U.S. from South America. His job was to keep his friends out of jail, and he was good at it. She knew she had to get me away from him and the dangerous people he was involved with. We would have to disappear. To do that, we needed money.
“My father wasn’t careful about his phone conversations around her. She heard him talking about a deal that was going to take place at his office, where a lot of money would be exchanging hands. On the night of the deal, she made it inside his office through the back entrance and stole one of the duffel bags filled with money. I was already packed and waiting in a car she stole from him. We drove for three days straight.
“We lived off the money in that bag for as long as we could. Sometimes we would settle down somewhere for a few months if we found a small, quiet town we liked. She’d work as a waitress or in grocery stores, small things like that. But she always felt like we were being watched or followed. When she got that feeling, I knew we’d be leaving. I couldn’t talk her out of it. Running away was her obsession.
“Living like that changed me. I never made friends. What was the point when you were leaving?” She stopped talking abruptly. When she did, I noticed the silent tears escaping her eyes. I freed one of my hands and lightly dragged it across her jaw line, wiping them away. She rested her head on my shoulder and continued.
“She started to get sick two years ago. She wanted to keep moving, just like we always had. I never knew how progressed the cancer was until …” I felt her jaw clamp shut.
“The pictures, in your sketch book, was that your mother?”
“Yes.”
“All of them?”
“She barely looked like herself at the end.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“She is buried in Twin Falls, Idaho. That was where we finally stayed when she was too sick to keep going. I have lost my mother, my only friend. Now you know why I can’t go home. I don’t have one.”
There was nothing I could say, so I put my arm around her and pulled her close. After a few moments, she picked her head up off my shoulder and looked at me. Her expression was a heartbreaking mix of loss and confusion, a despair and sadness I couldn’t fathom.
Then, as our eyes held, her gaze shifted into a vulnerable longing that mirrored my own. I wanted nothing more fervently than to lean down and meet my lips to hers. I had to do it. I needed to.
But I didn’t.
I knew myself too well. If I kissed her, I wouldn’t be able to leave her. And I would leave her. Soon.
Instead, I pulled her onto my lap and cradled her there, wishing for a miracle that would allow us to be together. I held her tight, trying to hold the pieces of her firmly together as she fell apart in my arms.
When she finally fell asleep, I laid her down, resting her head in my lap. I passed the rest of my shift lightly tracing the contours of her face with trembling fingers, memorizing it. While I sat there, I realized two fundamental truths. First, I would never be able to forget this girl. Second, I would never be able to get over her.
Mateo’s wristwatch alarm sounded at one. When he found us together, he opened his mouth to start firing questions at me but I shook my head. He rolled his eyes and left the shelter to stretch his legs.
Ignoring my better judgment, which was lying in shreds somewhere by the fire, I lay down next to Savannah, wrapping my arms around her protectively.
A piece of a Hemingway quote came to mind as I lay there with her. I leaned my head close to hers, wishing she could hear me, wishing she could understand.
“‘The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for, and I hate very much to leave it,’” I quoted quietly as she slept. It was the best I could do at a goodbye.