Lost Part 3
After five months on an island, you'd have thought I would be used to eating nothing but fish and roots. But, of course, the fish are slimy, even if they're cooked, and the roots are dry.
"Hey Sophie, check this out!" Peter yells from the beach as he lifts a shiny rock from a reef area by the shore.
I walk over to him stretching.
"Morning," I say, looking at the rock as I approach him.
"It's an oyster!" he says, as if that means something.
"And?" I ask.
"Well, we can eat them. They are shell fish, not slimy fish," he says, picking up three at once from the little nook in the rocks.
"Mmm, anything but those slimy fish," I say, licking my lips.
"I hate to say it, but oysters are even slimier than fish," he says, cracking one opened with his rock he calls a knife.
"You... Uhhhgg!" I stomp off into the water to wash off the dirt from my feet and knees.
He falls over laughing in the sand.
"You... are literally... the only... person... I know... who doesn't... like... seafood!" he says, catching his breath.
"You look dry," I say, splashing him.
"It's on," he says, running into the water.
We have an all-out splash war and end up drenched.
I eventually swallow salt water up my nose and my mouth and have to stop because I'm coughing.
"Okay, I surrender, you win," I say laughing.
"That's what I like to hear!" he says triumphantly.
"How'd you get all wet?" Jason asks as he approaches us on the beach, taking off his shirt.
"I splashed Peter, and he had to prove how manly he was by winning a splash fight," I say, putting my hair up so it doesn't drip all over me.
"Ah," he says, washing his feet off in the water.
"Why did you take your shirt off if you were only washing your feet?" Peter asks.
I grin, sitting in the sand putting my make-shift leaf shoes on. They're actually pretty comfy.
"Well... I wouldn't want it to get wet," he says.
"Sure, that's why," Peter says rolling his eyes.
"Well then, while you two boys have a fight over who has a shirt on or off, I'll be getting my breakfast," I say.
They don't admit it, but Jason and Peter act like they're brothers.
"Get me an apple!" Jason yells after me.
"Me too!" Peter yells.
"If you want apples, then you should find them!" I tease.
"You won't show us where they are!" Peter complains.
"They're mine!" I tease, walking away.
"She doesn't like oysters, so she lives on apples," I hear Peter tell Jason as they begin laughing about it for the thousandth time since we got here.
I walk down the beach to find my favorite tree.
My apple tree is right on the edge of a flat hill near a deep bit of ocean.
I grab three apples and eat them in the little fork of leaves I've constructed over the past weeks.
After I've eaten, I climb to the top of the tree where it bends directly over the water. It's almost a twenty foot drop, but it's never scared me.
I run off the large, thick branch and fall down to the water foot first in a pencil dive.
I splash into the water and immediately start kicking, so I can surface.
As I push myself up, treading water quickly, another person splashes in the water after me.
Whoever that was, they just dug their toenail into my heel. I wait for them to surface. After ten seconds pass, I consider the probability of it having been a branch.
Just then Jason surfaces right behind me, tapping my shoulder, and just about scaring me to death.
"Don't do that! How'd you find my tree!" I yell at him, swimming to the beach.
"I followed you," he says, taking an apple out of his pocket and taking a bite out of it.
"You little..." I mutter at him, drying myself off with the dry rag I keep under some rocks near here. Oh great, he cut my heel.
"Little what?" he asks.
"Nothing," I say mysteriously.
"Oh, okay, you did this to yourself," he splashes me with full force.
"You... I'll get you for this!" I say jokingly, splashing him three times for the one time he splashed me.
"Oh, you're on!" he yells, shoving my head under water.
He lets me back up a second later.
"Not cool," I say, snorting out salt water.
"Okay, I'm disqualified for using my domineering man strength against you," he says, putting his hands up.
"Good boy," I say patting his head.
I walk back to my towel and dry off, then notice Jason slipped away from me and shrug, I guess he had somewhere to go. Then I walk back to the huts and see Eli with my Dad setting up a make-shift garden and putting roots and greens in it.
"Good job," my dad says as Eli puts a bright green seed in the ground, "now we can get food." He leads Eli over to the huts and asks me to take him down to the water to wash off all the mud and yuck he's gotten into in the garden.
"Sure," I say, taking Eli's hand and leading him to the ocean.
I guide Eli down, at first holding his hand, but he eventually squirms his hand out of mine and starts barreling toward the beach.
A girl that looks to be about fifteen is washing her hair off in the water when Eli and I reach the edge of the beach.
"Hi," I venture.
"Oh," she stumbles backwards, not having noticed us, "Hello, I'm Courtney," she holds out her hand to me.
I lean over the water, wading in with Eli, and hold my hand out.
We shake for a strangely long time. She appears to be entranced with my face, so eventually I lean away and start to help Eli clean up.
"Do I... know you?" she asks me as if I should know her.
All the sudden her pale face, her perfect blond hair, the scar below her right eye, I do remember this girl... but from where?
"Where did you live before you came here?" I ask her.
"District twelve... You're Sophie that rebel face or whatever, but no... I know you from somewhere else..." she says.
"The necklace!" I yell, snapping my fingers.
"Oh yaa..." she says.
She's the girl who bought the necklace in town. Then Jason bribed her out of it with a hundred dollar bill.
I laugh, remembering how silly she looked running home, clutching the money, shrieking in delight.
"That was quite a day for me," she says.
Funny, that day I saw her as more of a woman, not a girl, when in reality she can't be more than sixteen.
"How old are you? I'm fourteen," I say.
"Fifteen," she answers, giggling, remembering the day she sold me the necklace. Her face hardens, "I remember watching your sister Maysilee in the games. I'm sorry about what happened to her," she says.
"Thank you, she was... stubborn. She had her mind made up to save Jason, so that's what she did," I say, reliving the nightmare.
"I have to go help my mother with the roof... that's her up there," she points to a woman with the same beautiful blond hair as her. She's putting up a roof over a small hut. She drops a piece of bamboo off the roof, and I see my dad go over to help her.
"She hasn't had puppy eyes like that since my dad died," Courtney says, watching them with me.
"That's my dad," I say quietly.
"I think they like each other," she says.
"Maybe," I say dismissing the thought, "Were you and your mother part of district thirteen?" I ask.
"No, we were from district twelve. But I helped to hide rebel plans from the guards... I was caught. They kept me and the other people involved in these disgusting gray cells. Then a while later I was sent here with my mother..."
"Oh, so that's why so many people are here. They aren't just from thirteen," I say.
I turn around to grab a towel for Eli.
"Here you go, let's get dry," I tell him.
"Sophie making mee dryyy," Eli runs out of the water toward the beach.
"He's cute," Courtney says, grabbing her towel and heading toward the huts.
"Thanks," I yell as she walks away.
I lead Eli back to our hut where my dad is cutting some plant up on the table in the corner.
"Hey, dad? Can you watch Eli? I'm gonna go find Jason and Peter," I ask, wiping my hands off on a rag.
"Ya, sure, go ahead. Be back before dark," he tells me.
"I always am," I say, walking off.
I walk along the shore for what feels like forever, knowing Jason and Peter probably went off in the jungle to find fruit or something.
I keep walking until the sun begins to set. I have to get back before my dad starts worrying...
When I get back my dad asks me how Peter and Jason were doing, but I never saw them.
"I never found them. Did they come back to the huts?" I ask.
"No, when Jason's mother asked me where he was, I said he was coming home with you." My father stops cutting fruit and looks right at me.
"Have you seen them today?" he asks.
"Ya, this morning, they were washing off in the water before breakfast. Then I came back here..." I say, equally puzzled.
"Is there any place they would go...?" he asks me.
"No, let me go over to Jason's hut. Maybe he got back and no one noticed," I say.
"Good idea," my dad says, throwing a stem of an apple in the little basket we use for garbage.
I wander through the camp until I come across Jason's mother talking with Courtney and some other men, women, and children.
"Has anyone seen them?" she asks everyone as I walk up to her.
She has a worried look on her face.
"Miss Woodland? Have you seen Jason or Peter? I couldn't find them earlier," I say, knowing the answer will be a big, fat no.
"Sweetie, I'm sure they'll turn up," she says, looking unsure of it herself.
"I know which beach they were on this morning. We could follow their tracks. Maybe they went into the jungle and got lost," I suggest.
"If they don't come back tonight, then yes, we'll go looking," Miss Woodland says, pushing at the younger boys and Sarah to go back in the hut and go to sleep.
"Mommy? Where did Jason go?" Sarah asks, clutching the doll she got when she moved into the new house in the victor's village.
"He went... on an adventure," she tells Sarah and then picks her up and carries her inside the hut.
"We should have three search parties, one goes along the beach, another into the jungle, and another the other way along the beach. We'll cover more ground that way. Sophie, you know where they were this morning?" Hagger asks me, motioning to the map someone made of the island estimating how large it is.
"Ya, I remember where we were. They probably went into the jungle if I had to guess," I say, trying to put myself in Jason's shoes, but wondering why he and Peter would all the sudden take off.
"All right, no one tell his mother, but let's start looking tonight," Hagger says, chewing on the tip of his pencil.
"You guys start here; the other group'll go this way. Sophie, are you up to coming with the third group into the jungle?" he asks me, "You'd know where they started," he finishes.
"Sure, let me tell my dad," I say, walking off.
After telling my dad I'm going out, and after many objections, I promise to be careful and to come home as soon as we find them.
"I'll be fine, Hagger'll be there the whole time," I say, trying to get him to stop worrying.
I join the group of three men and Hagger on the beach and guide them to the place Jason and Peter were washing off this morning.
"I found some tracks. They're big enough to be Peter's and Jason's, two sets!" one of the men in the group yells, examining the tracks leading into the jungle.
"All right, let's go!" Hagger yells to the rest of us.
We enter the big, dark, wet jungle and begin following the tracks.
"Soo… two sets of tracks," Hagger says, as if reminding himself.
After a while, the men find a spot where there appears to have been a struggle near an apple tree. A large rock lies on the ground next to it.
"What happened here?" Hagger says, looking at the torn up ground.
"Maybe someone encountered Peter? Someone he didn't like?" one man suggests.
"Or maybe they didn't like each other," Hagger says.
"So, there's two sets of tracks that went this way… They stopped here, and there's a rock and a scuffle." And then, I say, walking over to the larger tracks that lead into the jungle, "these look like Jason's."
I almost start crying right then and there. Why would Jason and Peter all the sudden start fighting in the middle of the jungle? I try to think about how Jason's track would look different than the tracks before me. Why would the winner drag the other off into the jungle? This can't be the answer... someone else did this. I mean, that can't be the answer. There aren't any drag marks... We follow another pair of tracks. This time my guess is that Jason made them, they're much larger.
After almost two hours of walking, stopping, and then walking some more, we come across something that makes my stomach drop.
"Was either of them wearing a shirt that had this on it?" A man from the group holds up a piece of cloth that was attached to a tree by a broken branch, probably ripped when it got caught. This is the same shirt fabric that Peter's shirt was made of... and on it there's a red streak of blood.
"Yes, that is... Peter's shirt," I say, looking at the cloth, stained bright red.
"Did they have any kind of argument this morning?" Hagger asks, tucking the cloth in his pocket.
"Not that I know about, they were... they acted like... They've never fought about anything before," I say.
We move on along following the footprints. Whoever made them was clearly not worried about covering them up. I keep thinking about how Jason's boots make the exact same imprint in the ground.
It would be completely pitch black if not for the flashlights and torches we brought, but the sun is beginning to rise a bit, though all you can currently see of it are bright rays of pink and orange coming over the horizon.
I'm exhausted, no longer able to stay awake. I move slowly along the jungle floor with the rest of the group. None of them even appear tired.
I shake my head to clear it, telling myself I have to stay awake whether I like it or not.
As we walk, I wonder why Freddy would have made such a difficult choice. Instead of just killing us, he left us to live on an island. It's true that we're probably millions of miles from any form of civilization. It feels like we're lost, but still people have been trying to convince others to build a raft.
All the people here were somehow related to the rebellion. Some of them were just people the Capitol wanted out of their way. There's this one man named Professor Simon, but everyone just calls him Simon. He tells us that he was an important part of the school in district three, and that he and a few others had been building up a rebel base there.
Some of the men here arrived in suits with clip-on ties that they were required to wear for whatever job they had while they lived in the Capitol.
As I think about these things, we spot a red and orange glow coming through the trees, with the hint of smoke looming in the air.
"When you wake up, you'll probably want to kill me. You know that, right?" I overhear Jason talking to someone, is he talking to Peter?!
"You guys go around that way," Hagger whispers to two of the men.
I follow Hagger and the other man. We spread out around the perimeter of the camp.
I spot Peter lying on the ground next to Jason. He's cut right where his shirt ripped and has a big red bump on his head.
I snap a twig, "Crap..." I think to myself.
"Whose there!?" Jason yells in the direction the twig snapped.
"Just me," I say, revealing myself to him, shooting a calm look at Hagger.
The men stay concealed in the bushes and trees around us while I try to form some sort of plan.
"What are you doing out here?" Jason asks.
"I could ask you the same thing," I say.
"This isn't what it looks like. I didn't do that to Peter," Jason says, trying to defend himself.
"Then who did?" I ask him, "and why is he gonna want to kill you when he wakes up?" I walk over to Peter and look at his head, a large bump on the top, but not much blood, so I stand back up and glare at Jason.
"Because he told me to go back to the beach and get help. A man, one who came from district four, I think, found Peter and me on the beach this morning. He told us he needed help getting apples off a tree he'd found earlier near the tree line," Jason tells me, "Then when we got there, he went up the tree and told Peter to stand underneath him and catch the apples he threw down," Jason stops to take a breath.
"What happened?" I ask.
"The man had a rock up in the tree. He tossed it down right at Peter, hit him in the head. Peter passed out. Then the man jumped off the tree, pinned me against the tree, and told me to get lost and take Peter, or he'd kill Peter. I don't know why, so don't ask," Jason finishes.
"So you ran off carrying Peter to protect him from that man? Someone said a man from district four didn't come back this morning after going to get fruit. His wife said she was positive he would come back. We didn't go after him because she told us she knew he'd come back," I tell Jason.
Jason stands there for a moment, thinking.
"Oh, and whoever Hagger brought with you guys can come out. I'm not stupid," Jason says.
Hagger and the other three men step out of the jungle.
"I never thought you were stupid. I just wanted to make sure you..." Hagger stops himself.
"Didn't kill Peter? Oh, that's fine, my friend Sophie here thought I killed him too," Jason says, slamming his fist into a tree trunk.
"Jason, I never thought you killed Peter. I was confused... I'm sorry. I never wanted to blame you," I say, trying to calm him down.
"Whatever, I'll be dead soon enough with that district four murderer after me," he says, throwing himself down onto the jungle floor in anger.
"Let's go back to the beach, please Jason," I beg him.
"I don't want him to hurt anyone else!" Jason seems confused at what he's saying.
"Come on, if we're on the beach, it's everyone against him. Out here, it's you and Peter against him, and that didn't work out so great this morning," I say.
"All right, fine," he says, standing up and walking in the direction of the beach with Peter slung over his shoulder.
Is it just me or is Jason angry at someone other than this creepy district four guy?
"There weren't any tracks from a third person anywhere near the tree line. Keep an eye on Jason," Hagger says, following Jason and the rest of the men.
I follow them. I don't know if I've ever been this tired in my entire life...
Eventually we make it back to beach as the bright yellow sun is just rising.
"I have to get some sleep," I say to Hagger as we get into the area we have our huts set up.
"Go for it. When Peter wakes up I'll let you know," Hagger says, following the rest of the men through the tangle of fire pits and huts.
I guess I found my way back to my hut, because when I wake up Eli is sitting next to me, patiently waiting for my eyelids to rise.
"Daddy daddy daddy!" he shrieks.
"What?" My dad's face appears in the doorway, "Oh, good morning Sophie," he says, reaching back outside to put the poker from our fire pit back on the sand.
"Hi, I thought Hagger said he would wake me when..." I sit up, rubbing my eyes, strangely enough, I'm no longer tired...
"What time is it...?" I say, walking out of the hut, looking up at the sun.
"About noon," my dad says, roasting something green over the fire.
"Oh, did Hagger come last night? He was supposed to tell me if Peter umm... woke up," I say, as nervous butterflies dance in my throat.
"I suppose he never woke up," my dad says, carefully arranging the green roasted things on a leaf and taking them inside to Eli.
I wander over to Peter's tent. Hagger and some man are arguing outside in front of the doorway rather loudly. They don't notice me, so I crouch behind some clothes hanging on a vine that was used as a drying rack.
"So in your opinion it doesn't matter?! There's a man out there, willing to kill any one of us!" Hagger whispers quite loudly to the man.
"I never said it didn't matter, but if we tell everyone about this, they'll all freak out," the man whispers sternly.
"Well, we have to tell them!" Hagger replies.
"Fine, you do it," the other man walks away.
"Did you hear?" Hagger asks as I reveal myself and walk toward the hut.
"If you mean the argument about whether to tell the rebel people about how there's an insane murderer out in the jungle trying to kill Peter and Jason and probably me next, then no," I say optimistically.
"So you did hear," Hagger says, flinging himself down on a log.
"What am I supposed to do? I can't even try to make friends with anyone, or Freddy and the others might trap me in a jet and fly me to the Capitol and send me into an arena as they try to kill me," I say.
"You know you can trust Peter, don't you? And Jason, me, your father... You're not the only one being targeted by all this," he replies.
"I trust Peter. I just... this is killing me. I wish I could go back in time and fix all of this, be at home helping Maysilee cleaning rabbits and squirrels! Not here on an island, banished forever from all of humanity!" I say.
I feel like I'm gonna cry, but I stop myself.
"You can go see him if you want," Hagger says with a sad look on his face. He walks away into the cluster of huts.
I walk into the hut, sit on the sand floor and start sobbing, really crying. My eyes become red and sore, so I eventually stop, catching my breath, wiping my face off on a piece of moss someone must've brought in here.
I'm still a complete mess when Peter's eyelashes flutter open.
"Peter," I say with a shaky voice.
"I saw this guy, the rock, he threw it on me, he... Wait, where's Jason, where is he? Is Jason okay?" Peter says with a hopeful voice.
"Ya, he's fine," I say, wiping my nose, "What'd the man look like?"
"Jason saw him. Why didn't you ask him?"
"Jason said he didn't see him," I say curiously.
"Oh, I thought he did, maybe he didn't. The man had a hood on, it fell off. His hair was blond, bright blond, kind of like Jason's. Jason asked me to help a man that was in the jungle with some apples. Jason stayed on the beach... Then a few minutes later, I found the man in the jungle, and he dropped that rock on me. I saw him, then all the sudden I was here. I guess I went out. He had a mustache that fell off. I guess it was fake. And... there was a..." he struggles to remember something, "A tattoo! He had a tattoo, it was a black rose... It was a dying rose... The rose was on his wrist," Peter says.
"You should get some rest, or at least change out of your dirty clothes," I say, grabbing his second pair of pants and shirt off the stool he has next to his cot.
I walk out of the hut toward the beach to wash all the sand off my knees.
As I approach the beach, I see Jason sitting by the water, watching the waves crash against the smooth sand next to the ocean.
"It was you, wasn't it? The one that dropped the rock on Peter, it was you," I say, sitting down next to him.
"Took you long enough," is all he says.
"Why? Why did you do that to him?" I say.
"He had a knife this morning, a real one, not a rock. When you guys were on the beach, it was tucked in his shorts. I grabbed it. He was furious, but since you were there... He waited until you left, then he jumped on me, tried to take the knife off me and kill me. Dumb kid, I'm twice his size.
I told him to get lost... I grabbed a hoodie, saw him going into the jungle, and... I was worried he was coming after you, so I went after him. I went into a tree near him and dropped a rock on him. Then I came and talked to you by the apple tree, so I could have an alibi in case someone blamed me...
But later, I realized when he went missing people were gonna ask questions. So I went out to the jungle and took him way back into the trees. I didn't think anyone would believe me if I told the truth, and I thought you'd bring Peter, who was trying to kill us all, back either way, so I made something up," Jason says.
"Why wouldn't you just tell us the truth?" I say.
"You would've still brought Peter back here," Jason says, looking out at the water.
"So there isn't anyone out there trying to kill us?" I ask to make sure we're still on the same page.
"Just Peter," Jason says.
"He's been lying this entire time?" I ask.
"I know, unbelievable," Jason says with real hurt in his voice.
"He was the only person I thought would really try to help me," I say.
"Oh, thanks, that makes me feel so loved," Jason says making a heart with his hands.
"Mmm, you're more like a semi-annoying older brother," I tease.
"Wonderful," he says, examining a seashell that washed up next to him.
"Nice rose," I say.
"Thanks," he says, rolling his sleeve down to cover it.
"Who do you trust?" I ask.
"You, Hagger, my family, and yours," he says.
"So should we tell Hagger everything?" I ask.
"Everything?" He says uncertain.
"Everything," I confirm.
We stay on the beach well past midnight, just sitting there watching the waves roll up onto the beach, then back into the light blue water.
Without saying a word, Jason gets up and starts toward Hagger's hut. I follow him through the twist of tents, huts, and fires until we reach a hut with only half a roof.
Hagger says he doesn't want a full roof, but we all know he's just too lazy to finish it.
"Hagger, come on, now," Jason whispers sternly into the hut.
"Whaa... Five more minutes... I don't want any pancakes, blueberry are yummier..." Hagger continues snoring until Jason nudges his arm with the toe of his boot.
"Wha! The third stove is burning!" Hagger says, waking himself with his own screaming.
"Would you shush!" I say, covering his mouth.
"Come on," Jason says, walking over to Peter's hut as Hagger and I follow him.
"All right, so what's all this about?" Hagger says, finally awake.
Jason passes Peter's hut and heads a few yards into the jungle.
"We have something to tell you," I turn to Hagger.
We tell him everything, from how Peter gained our trust, to how Jason was the one who threw that rock on him. We finish with Jason pulling a knife out of his belt and showing it to Hagger.
"So this is what he was going to try and kill you with this morning?" Hagger asks, obviously not impressed by the small knife.
"More deadly than it looks," Jason says, pulling the bottom of his shirt down to cover it, once again in his belt.
"That son of a... I can't believe that boy, he... He was so convincing," Hagger finishes, pounding his fist against a tree.
Before I'm aware of what's going through Hagger's mind, he's stomping through the sand and into Peter's hut.
Hagger grabs Peter by the arm and pins him to the wall.
"You tried to kill them?! You lied to every single one of us! I didn't know you could be such a good multi-tasker. You were gaining our trust and a good liar at the same time!" Hagger yells as Peter becomes fully alert, having been asleep moments ago.
"Hagger! Stop it!" I yell trying to shove him off of Peter.
"He tried to kill you! What's your problem!" Jason yells at me.
"Both of you, just go!" I yell at Hagger and Jason, closing the flap behind them.
I don't care if Peter's dangerous, I don't care if he wants to kill me, I'm going to yell at him whether I live through it or not. Although if worse comes to worse, I can easily out-run him.
"You liar, you lied to me for all this time," I say in a quiet voice to Peter.
"What can I say? I guess Freddy and I are more alike than not, we both do things that pay," he says angrily.
"So you were never really my friend. We survived in the arena. I FORCED Freddy to bring you here! And you still don't care about me, not at all. I'm just a stupid little girl who fell for your trick!" I yell.
"I wasn't pretending until Freddy came to me just before he shipped us here and told me if I'd kill you, then I could go home," he said. "I didn't want to, but my family is far more important than you in my book," he finishes, taking a breath.
"Well then, that just proves my point, you don't care about me enough to even tell me what's going on. You were just planning to shove a knife in my back!" I yell slamming my fist into his face.
I stumble backward for a moment, then rip open the tent flap and run to the beach, but I don't stop. I dive right into the ocean.
At first the water feels good. Nice and warm, just like the fancy bathtubs in Jason's house in the Victor's Village.
Then I feel myself being ripped from side to side, being pulled out deeper and deeper, until I can't see the bottom anymore.
I'm so mad at Peter that I try to just swim back to shore, but the tide is fighting against me. I keep kicking my feet until they feel like noodles, but eventually I realize the water is ten times stronger than me and give up.
Maybe if I swim to the side? I could swim down the beach and get away from the rip-tide... I think to myself.
But my arms and legs are so tired, and I can barely see shore... then the waves start coming in. They're ginormous. Huge waves crash onto my head, pushing me underwater. Every few seconds I get a small window to take a quick breath before another wave comes crashing down.
I swallow so much salt water that I start coughing into the water.
I keep fighting against the waves. Then for a moment everything is fine, the water is clear, I come up for a breath.
But only then do I see the huge, terribly tall monster wave building up.
I start paddling away, but it's no use. It's already coming down.
I'm shoved so far down that when I try to get a breath, I can barely tell which way is up and which way is down.
My chest gets tight. I start seeing little black spots... Then I see a tan, white figure above me.
There are hands around mine leading me in the direction I thought was the bottom of the ocean.
After swimming for a long time, having not breathed in air for almost a full minute, whoever came down after me surfaced and lifted me into the night air.
"Sophie, what were you doing! Are you crazy! Didn't anyone tell you no one can swim out here today? There's some sort of rip-tide... I don't know. I'm no water scientist," Jason says, laughing a little.
By now the water's dying down and becoming still once more.
"Crap, I pick the worst times to swim. The first time, there was a lightning storm that somehow, NO ONE MENTIONED to me!" I say, paddling slowly back to shore.
Finally I can once again feel the ocean floor and all the little seashells underneath my toes.
"So what happened to Peter's face?" he asks.
"How do you know about that...?" I say.
"Was it a secret? I personally wish you would've done it sooner," he tells me.
I laugh a little. "Well next time I promise to leave it to you," I say, realizing how tired my arms and legs are.
"I'm looking forward to it already," he teases, punching the air.
"I'll see you in the morning," I say, heading back to my family's hut.
"See ya," he says, heading back to his own.
I wake up in the morning and a chorus of complaints from my arms and legs are begging me to go back to sleep.
I slap my arm.
"Wake up!" I yell at my arm. Dumb arm...
"I'm awake! I'm awake!" Courtney says, walking into the hut with her hands above her head.
"Put um' where I can see um'!" I say, pretending to use my fingers as a gun.
We both laugh.
"So, what happened to your friend's face?" she asks.
How in the world does everyone know about that?! "Huh?" I say, playing stupid.
"Peter... The guy that is trying to kill you... and your friend, what's his name? Oh ya, Jason," she says.
"How do you know that?!" I ask her, amazed at the fact that she knows this.
"Well, Peter's in a tent chained to a cement post with a pair of handcuffs some guy stole from a guard before he came here," she says.
"Oh, well how do you know about it...?" I still don't understand how she could know about it.
"I have a hut right next to his. It's pretty hard not to hear the chains while he pounds them against his wooden chair all night long trying to break them," she says yawning.
"I could help you build a hut near mine. Sorry he's keeping you up," I say.
"Not your fault," she says, dismissing it. "That sounds cool. I've never had a friend that was my age and a girl. I had a lot of friends that were boys, but I've never really hung out with girls. Ya, sure, I'd love to build a hut over here," she finishes.
"You want some fish?" I ask her, smelling the fish my dad is cooking out on the fire.
"My mom's already here, she's cooking with him!" she says, whispering. "They've been together all morning! What if they get married?! Then we'll be sisters!" she shrieks.
I laugh, "I've never had a friend who was a girl either, always boys. Maybe that's because I never had any interest in make-up, clothes, or anything girls talk about," I tell her.
"Oh my gosh! You were the um... The girl who always played on the boys' soccer team in second grade," she says, remembering.
My cheeks become bright red remembering how the other girls would laugh at me for being so athletic and wanting to hang out with boys instead of them.
"I never really had an interest in boys, just the games they played. Once third grade ended, the boys kinda... forgot I existed and stopped inviting me to play soccer after school," I say, remembering how left-out I had felt when they had forgotten all about the girl who was better than at least HALF of the team.
"Mmhmm, suuurrreeee," she says sarcastically.
"I didn't! Not in elementary school!" I say laughing.
"Okay, sure. Whatever you say!" she says, still not convinced.
I roll my eyes jokingly. We walk out of the hut into the damp morning air.
"I have to go, but I'll be back later," I say. "Could you tell my dad if he asks? I think he's preoccupied at the moment," I finish, motioning to my father, who's laughing along with Courtney's mother.
"Okay, see ya later," she says, folding up a sheet that had been hanging up to dry.