Page 95 of Totally Wrecked
I’ve built shelters on a river beach before, but this isn’t Overlook Bluff Trailer Park.
“You need to stay out tonight, kid,” Mom would tell me. “I’ve got company.”
Winter was hard, but summers were OK. I’d put a mattress on top of Mrs. Kennedy’s trailer. She was deaf as a post. Every night I’d climb onto her roof and sleep under the stars. I felt safe there, away from my parents and their ‘company’.
I’d lay on my back and look up at the night sky.
I spent so many nights looking up that I ended up getting a star book from the school library. Now I can name every celestial object up there.
Venus is my favorite planet.
Why?
Because it spins slow. If you walked along venus’ equator, you’d only have to go four miles an hour to keep the night from ever falling on you. I like that. Constantly walking in the light.
So much of my childhood was spent in the dark.
“Breakfast, Gray?” Killian calls to me from beside the fire. I can smell fish and coconut cooking in the cast iron. I sit up quickly and it makes my head spin.
Slow and steady, Gray.
Paroxysmal vertigo is so fucking weird, I’ll be fine for days, then bam! Sometimes it’s so bad I can hardly move, and it makes me puke. Other times I’m just a bit dizzy. What is it today?
I slowly move my eyes around the clearing; Killian is cooking, and Daisy and Key are weaving palm fronds. Beyond them, there’s the pile of plane wreckage.
Right, I need to get to it. It’s shelter building day.
The spell passes and I head towards breakfast.
“We are making more hats, Uncle Gray,” Keyara tells me as I join the group at the fire.
“You’d better make an extra large one for Leander. You know what a big head he has,” I reply, making her giggle. “Talk of the devil.”
Leander wanders out of the jungle holding a container full of fruit. Key’s face clouds over.
“What’s up, little chickadee?” I ask her.
“How do we know that fruit isn’t poisonous?”
Leander puts a hand in the tub and pulls out a lychee. “What this? I’ve learned my lesson, Key. From now on I’m not harvesting any more mystery fruits.”
We are all learning lessons, because there is a lot to learn.
“How’s your foot?” I ask Rex. He’d cut it a while back, and the sole now had an oozing wound.
He shrugs. “The aloe is helping.”
I grab the sun hat that the girl’s made for me yesterday. It’s really a case of “horse already bolted”. I got badly sunburned a few days ago. Again, the aloe vera plant is a life saver.
“Where’s Harvey?” I ask. “Fishing?’
“Yeah,” Rex says.
Turns out Harvey has the touch. He’s caught more fish than the rest of us put together. Now the initial shock and despair of the shipwreck is wearing off, we are making progress as a unit, Harvey included. I’ve been impressed by how much he’s stepped up over the last couple of weeks.
But still, I don’t one hundred percent trust him. That protein bar incident? Some real bullshit behavior.
“Breakfast, ladies?” Killian says.
