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And then, suddenly, she was slithering down, fast enough to take the skin off her palms, yelling something that I couldn’t make out.
“What? What are you saying?” Angel cried plaintively. “Please enunciate!”
“It’s a ship!” Zana shouted. She almost fell the last six feet, crashing to the sandy ground with her feet still tangled in her torn-up T-shirt. “I saw a ship.”
It took a minute for all of us to understand, and then Santana let out a shriek like a steam engine.
“Fuck! The beacon!”
We dropped everything and began running towards the beach, only for Angel to remember halfway that her lighter was up at the cabana. She doubled back, and the rest of us ran on, ripping pages out of a copy of The Woman in Cabin 10 that Santana had snatched up as we ran past our villa.
We were panting and out of breath by the time we reached the ruins of Ocean Bluff and the beacon we’d made. I saw that Zana’s feet were bleeding from her hasty descent down the tree. Santana began stuffing the torn pages into the center of the beacon, her hands shaking.
“Where’s Angel?” she yelled, and I looked back down at the beach, shading my eyes against the glare of the sun. No Angel, but Conor was there, still knee-deep in the ocean in front of the water villa, his fishing spear in his hand. He was looking up at us, frowning.
“There’s a ship!” I yelled down to him, stabbing my finger towards the misty shape, far out to sea. “There’s a ship, help us get the beacon lit!”
He didn’t respond, but then I saw Angel appear from the forest, waving a lighter, running through the dunes towards us. She crested the little hill and then dropped to her knees in front of the beacon and began frantically clicking at the lighter.
“Light. Light! Allume-toi, espèce de merde!” she was begging it. And then, suddenly, the lighter flared into life, and she was holding it out to the paperback pages Santana had scattered across the debris. First one caught… and then another… and then the whole mass was burning, the flames licking at the straw roof that was beginning to sullenly smoke.
We all began waving our arms, shrieking even though it was impossible that the ship would hear us. It was almost at the horizon, and I wasn’t even sure if we would have been able to make it out, if Zana hadn’t spotted it from her forest perch.
“Come on!” Santana was yelling. “Come on you, fucking piece of shit, turn around. Turn around!”
The bonfire was really smoking now. A great plume of white smoke was rising into the still air. It seemed impossible that the ship wouldn’t spot it.
Down below on the beach, Conor was standing, looking out to sea, shading his eyes, but he wasn’t dancing and screaming like the four of us on the headland. He was standing stock-still, staring intently at the horizon as if trying to make out what the ship was doing.
“It’s turning,” Santana said, her voice pleading, breathless. “Is it? It’s turning, I really think it’s turning.”
But as we watched, it became increasingly clear that it wasn’t. It wasn’t turning. It was continuing along the horizon, until at last it disappeared completely.
PART THREE THE RECKONING
CHAPTER 27
“FUCK.” IT WAS Santana who kept moaning it. She was on her knees beside the now-roaring beacon, her sunburnt face turned to the sky, and now she screamed it to the endless blue as if to God himself. “FUUUUUUUCK!”
“It didn’t turn.” Zana was still staring out at the blank horizon as if she couldn’t believe it. “It didn’t see us.”
“Look,” I said, trying to hold on to the shreds of the positivity we’d all felt a few moments ago. “Look, this ship didn’t see us—but the point is, there was a ship. That probably means fishermen are getting out and about after the storm. This might even be a shipping route, for all we know. It’s only a matter of time before another ship comes past.”
“Yes, but how much time?” Santana said desperately, rounding on me. “How much time, Lyla? We’ll be dead in a few weeks. If Conor doesn’t give me my fucking insulin, I’ll be dead in a few days. We don’t have time.”
“Santana!” Angel hissed, flicking her eyes at Zana, and I remembered that we had agreed not to talk about this today—agreed not to antagonize Conor by forcing him to admit he’d stolen the insulin.
But the mention of Conor’s name had made me realize something. What about Conor? Why hadn’t he come running up the beach to help us light the bonfire? Why had he just stood there, staring at the horizon? Didn’t he want to be rescued?
The question nagged at me all the rest of the day, long after we had pulled ourselves out of the slough of despond caused by the ship and forced ourselves to stand side by side with Conor as he grilled fish over the barbecue with the last vestiges of Angel’s lighter.
It lasted all through supper, though I didn’t have the courage to bring up the question then. It continued as we took our water allowance from Conor, and then watched Zana screwing up her courage to cross the rickety bridge to the water villa, Conor holding her wrist in a grip that no longer looked protective, but simply controlling.
It continued to nag at me as Santana, Angel, and I traipsed up the hill in the growing darkness, and the fact of Joel’s absence settled around us like a cloud.
We were sitting around in the fast-darkening villa, the ever-present thirst creeping gradually back, and chewing on the flesh of the green coconuts to try to keep it at bay, when I realized that I couldn’t keep it to myself any longer. I had to say something.
I swallowed and cleared my throat.
