Page 40 of Totally Wrecked
“No, you stay, it’s fine.”
Killian is swaying with exhaustion and doesn’t have it in him to argue. He just collapses into the shade. “Take care,” he says. I look back at him—he has his eyes closed but he is obsessively spinning a ring on his pinky around and around.
Killian may seem like he has it together, but he’s as close to cracking as the rest of us.
“Get some rest.”
I’m quickly up the rocks, but only a few feet from the jungle when I hear the yelling.
The fuck?
I drop the containers and run.
LEANDER
“Coconut trees and an aloe vera plant!” I yell out my discoveries, and turn to look at Daisy. She gives me a thumbs up.
“We’ve got coconuts, Key,” I let my passenger know. She doesn’t verbally reply, but her little arms squeeze around my neck. “Yeah, I know you like coconut.”
“We’ll come back for them,” Brooke—no, I mean Daisy, responds. “First we need to make our inventory.”
Inventory? Cute! We have nothing!
Back on the beach, Keyara curls up on her side and closes her eyes, using one of the buoyancy rings as a pillow. I stroke her hair, and my heart hurts. She looks so tiny and vulnerable. Fuck.
Daisy starts digging into the many pockets of her cargo shorts. She first pulls out a passport, sunscreen, and some crumpled banknotes from one pocket. “Come on, come on…” she mumbles as she opens the next pocket, then extracts something I don’t recognize. “Flint stone! We can make fire.”
The third pocket is empty. “Damn, that’s the pocket that held my knife.”
“Don’t be too down, Princess.” I wave my small multi-purpose tool in her face.
“Thank goodness!”
“Thank Malcolm Westhall,” I tell her. “This is what my big bro gave me when I went off to be a firefighter. I always have it on me.”
She gives a serious nod. “Malcolm, wherever you are, I thank you. So what do you think we should do first?”
I’ve made a small pile of coconuts. “Open one of these bad boys. I’m starving.”
“Why don’t you work on that and I’ll start gathering wood for a fire.”
We separate to go about our tasks. It doesn’t take me long to get into the nut, using the pocket knife and a rock. The liquid inside is bitter, but it’s packed with electrolytes. I persuade Keyara to sit up and drink the juice, then I pry the nut fully open and cut out chunks of coconut meat. Between the two of us, we finish it in under a minute. I could eat the whole pile by myself, but instead open another and leave it to one side for Daisy. I can see her a little further up the beach pulling branches from the tree line.
Fuck, she is so sweet. Definitely glad I got marooned with her and not that plastic dude from the TV show.
I carry her over a coconut and she eats it while I finish piling up dry leaves and branches. “I just strike this together and it makes sparks, right?” I ask. I’ve seen these fire starters around, but never handled one myself.
She nods, still chewing on a mouthful of coconut.
Amazingly, it works on the first try; the dry grass catches easily. I look at the jungle. It’s a damp rainforest, but it could still go up. We’ll have to watch the wind. Don’t want to set light to the whole island.
I shudder at the thought, and for a minute I can hear the roar, smell the smoke…screams.
The media had called it the Tragedy of Buckletop Mountain.
I called it Hell.
“...Leander?”
