Lost Girls (3 page)

“Oh, no, Jasmine.” Suddenly her laugh has no humor. “My husband…” Her voice cracks. “My husband was a real musician.” She strums a few chords and bends her head, a curtain of auburn hair covering her face. Without saying any more we follow the juniors away down the beach into the shadows, to leave her to her thoughts.

We play tag, running in and out of the darkness, chasing one another and squealing with pretend terror. The wind sweeps our voices away. Hope gives the juniors towel rides. They love it, even Natalie. They are like little
monkeys climbing all over her. I look back and watch the Duchess as she lies by the fire, smoking, drinking from a bottle. She looks so romantic in her ankle-length antique petticoat with lace around the hem. It’s dyed a bright crimson, and with it she wears an embroidered white peasant blouse with ribbon threaded around the loose neck. She has such style, the Duchess; she looks so unusual, so individual.

“Have you noticed she isn’t wearing a bra?” Arlene whispers loudly to May.

“Yeah, so what? Her tits are bigger and perkier than yours.”

“Are not.”

“Are too.”

“Are not!”

Arlene pushes May over sideways and May pushes her back and they both giggle. Jody’s pleading voice interrupts their bickering. “Mikey says can we stay here forever?”

“Who the hell’s Mikey?” Arlene asks.

“Her imaginary friend. Yes, Jody, if you like. We’ll join the monkeys and gibbons in the trees and eat fruit and leaves.” I could get used to living on a desert island. Though I could do without Arlene and May.

There are no stars tonight and the wind has picked up.

I’m dizzy on cola and fresh air and excitement. The juniors are rubbing their eyes from tiredness. The
occasional bright star exposes itself between clouds, but then the sky descends, dropping rain from its blackness. It drives toward us in sheets across the sea and we flee, laughing, to our tents.

Tucked into our sleeping bags I read aloud to Jas from the book I brought with me—
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
, by Robert M. Pirsig. Mom’s just finished it and says it’s interesting and adult, and it’s a cult favorite and it’s about time I read something intelligent and challenging.

“Give it a shot—you’ll like it,” she said. So I’m trying to read it, but it’s hard work. I find it’s easier to understand if I read it out loud.

“Everything gets written down, formally, so that you know at all times where you are, where you’ve been, where you’re going and where you want to get…. Sometimes just the act of writing down the problems straightens out your head as to what they really are.”
In the book the author’s talking about fixing the bike, but I think his advice applies to lots of problems. I’m always writing down my problems—like, if Lan Kua wanted to kiss me, would I say yes? My journal knows all my secrets.

“Do you think Lan Kua is serious about me?” I ask Jas. She knows how much I like him.

“Yeah, sure he is. And he’s cute.” She beams and makes a kissing shape with her lips.

“Hey. Keep off. I saw him first,” I joke. “Anyway, he’s going to be a monk soon,” I tell her.

“I thought he wanted to be a kickboxer.”

“Yeah, he does, but it’s something most Thai boys do, you know? Like a rite of passage or something. He was ordained last year, and he has to spend time as a monk to gain merit for his family.”

The canvas tent billows like a sail on a yacht.

“Weird. Will he be allowed to have sex?”

“Jas! Stop it.” We hit each other, giggling.

“Time to settle down now,” Mrs. Campbell calls to us above the noise of the wind and the tents. “It’s been a long day for us all.”

I take out my journal and write in it quickly. I couldn’t possibly stay awake long enough to write about everything that’s happened today.

DAY 1, 11 PM

Wonderful day, wonderful island—THE WRONG ISLAND, but who cares! Paradise.

But it sure is windy!

I slip the book and journal back inside my waterproof folder and tuck it inside my sleeping bag against my leg. Jas is breathing as if she’s already asleep. I check that my
sneakers are nearby—have to wear them so we don’t get the dreaded chigger bites (pesky critters; they’re such small mites you can hardly see them, but their bites can make you so uncomfortable!)—before I switch off my flashlight, which I’ve looped around my wrist.

Help! Help! Oh my God!
What’s happening? Help!”

“What is it? Flashlight! Where’s the flashlight? Got it!”

Screams. Breath torn from my chest.

“Oh God, the tent! The tent!”

“Grab it, hang on!”

“Too strong!”

The wind, like some fierce horned beast, rips our tent to shreds. Its vicious roar deafens us as we’re blasted awake. One moment we’re snug in our sleeping bags and the next we’re totally exposed to the elements. Jas and I laugh at first, then realize the enormity of what’s happening. It’s not just us. All the other tents are blowing away, too. We grab at the flimsy stuff and try to hold it
down, but it’s useless; torn canvas flies away like a huge freed bird, high into the furious sky. We’re immediately soaked and chilled. We hang on to each other, buffeted by gusts that take away my breath. It feels as if my eyes are being torn out.

“Girls, where are you? Oh God…”

Then there’s an enormous terrifying blast of air, an explosion that takes the last of our tents, leaving us like hermit crabs without our shells. A livid, full red moon briefly illuminates them, turning them into dragons as they are whisked away to disappear into the terrible night. Cries are whipped away from our lips. The wind snarls and tall waves crash close. Sheet lightning illuminates the sky around us. In one flash I see girls etched against the white surf, heads forward, bodies leaning, tilted into the teeth of the wind as if frozen. I see a sleeping bag rolling along the top of the beach and wrapping itself around a palm tree.

“Help! No, no, no!”

“Teddy, my tedd—”

“We’re going to die. Mommy, Mommy… Mommy. Please…”

Screams. Moans. Screams. Soundless sobbing and wailing and calls for help lost in the awesome howl of the wind. It must be a hurricane. It’s chaotic, a disaster. Like a terrible dream. Jas and I try to move toward the others.
Sand in my eyes, mouth, I’m breathing sand. I’m choking. My hair feels as though it’s being ripped from my scalp. The wind is attacking us.

“Hang… to… the little ones, hang on… sleeping bags,” shouts Mrs. Campbell, her words whisked away into the night as soon as they leave her lips, and we do, except that we can’t see who’s who unless lightning flashes. I crawl on all fours with Carly, I think, in my grasp, away from the waves, toward the trees, which are being flung and torn as we are. The wind snatches at our sleeping bags, but we hang on, grimly.

A sudden racket of cawing and screeching, and I see in another flash a black mass of birds—like a flock of mad witches, upside down, flying backwards, inside out, in a dense, fast-moving cloud. A fork of lightning strikes a tall tree only twenty feet away and it explodes before our eyes: twelve-foot splinters, like flamethrowers, are hurled into the sea and all around us. We throw ourselves onto the sand and instinctively cover our heads. Nearby on the sand a burning splinter glows and blackens. A huge gleaming branch gallops along the beach, spitting blue flames. I can’t stop shaking.
It’s like war
, I think, like being a Vietnamese peasant when a bomb drops, maybe dropped by someone I know.

I cling to the trunk of the nearest palm with one arm, the other curled around Carly, who is hit so hard by the
wind that I have difficulty keeping hold of her. She loses her sleeping bag; it is torn from her grip and bounces along the shore like a fat acrobat, eventually disappearing into the forest. We crouch together, blinded by sand and wind. The sea is too close but I dare not let go to move farther back into the trees. The palm that is our anchor is blown so far over that the feathered branches are furiously sweeping the sand like a mad robotic broom. In the brief instances of intense light I can see the fringe of palms all along the beach bent almost horizontal.

It’s three
AM
, my watch tells me, glowing in the dark, and still the wind moans and screeches.

It feels like the end of the world.

“Bon…? Bonnie…?”

“Here, Jas, with Carly,” I yell to her—I can’t see her, but she’s somewhere close. I can’t let go of either the trunk or Carly to switch on my flashlight. I hear the low wail of children, helpless and frail: Or is it me, my own terror?

In a lull, which is somehow terrifying, as if the wind is taking a big breath to blow even harder, we manage to crawl along the beach, moving from tree to tree, rock to rock, and stumbling over fallen trunks and the tumbling branches. Rain and sea spray whip me; snot smears my hair; my legs are clawed and spat at by sand and flying debris.

I open my eyes as little as possible, only to keep track of the crawling bodies ahead of us. I notice, like a fussing mother, that most of us have managed to save our shoes. Thank God. Finally, at the far end of the beach, clambering over and above the rocks where the dragon’s tail curves out into the sea, we find shelter in the shallow cave Hope saw yesterday. It’s more like the armpit of an overhanging rock. Too exhausted to speak, we shiver and tremble in a terrified huddle. The terrible rage and whine of the storm is inside my head, in my brain, cutting out all rational thought. Soaked through, cold, frightened beyond anything in my experience, sand literally everywhere, I give up and simply endure.

We huddle in wet, sandy sleeping bags. Carly shares mine, sobbing against me. The juniors are beyond comforting, curled up like caterpillars. They stink of urine and wet hair. Jas nudges at me and points to where we can see waves reaching right up beyond the tree line.

I have no sense of the passage of time, but eventually a faint streak of sickly saffron light appears on the horizon. Low dark clouds hang ragged in a lurid green sky. Mrs. Campbell crawls around us, checking to see if there are any injuries. We begin to talk to one another, hushed and shocked. Mrs. Campbell does a roll call.

“Jasmine?”

“Yes, I’m here. Wish I wasn’t, but I am.”

“Bonnie?”

“Yes.” I am attempting to get rid of the sand in my ears and my nose and the corners of my eyes.

“May?”

“Here, Mrs. Campbell, and I’m covered in cuts and scratches.”

“Hope?”

Hope snivels and mumbles, “Yeah.”

“Arlene?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Natalie?”

“My leg, my leg.” She’s been whimpering all night, come to think of it.

“We’ll have a look at it in a minute, dear.”

“Jody?”

“Yes, Mrs. Campbell.”

“Carly?”

Carly sobs a small “Yes,” then wails, “Teddy, teddy!” But Mrs. Campbell doesn’t respond.

“Sandy?” she calls next.

Silence.

“Sandy? Sandy? Where’s Sandy?”

We look around us.

“Carly, where’s your sister, honey?”

Carly cries, low and persistently.

“What is it, dear? Where is Sandy?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know.”

“What do you mean? You haven’t seen her?”

“I don’t know.” Carly sobs loudly into my arms, snot streaking her pale little moon face. I shake my head at Mrs. Campbell.

“Sandy! Sandy! Sandy!”

“You had her, didn’t you?” Arlene asks May.

“No, I thought you had her.”

A memory jolts me into words.

“Sleeping bag. Saw it over there, blown along. Empty… thought it was empty.” The image of the windblown bag is as clear to me as if it were happening now. I pass Carly’s limp body to Hope, who draws her close.

Three of us—Mrs. Campbell, Jas, and I—crawl along the top of the beach, from tree to tree, our eyes half closed against the flying sand, to where the sleeping bag is practically buried at the foot of a palm.

“Is she alive? Oh my God, is she breathing?”

“I don’t know, give me room,” Mrs. Campbell says.

“Her head, the blood…”

“Oh no, oh God!” Mrs. Campbell lays her fingers against Sandy’s neck. “She’s dead. She must have hit her head on the tree trunk.”

I can’t believe it. It’s not happening. It can’t be happening.
Jasmine and I cling to each other in horror. Mrs. Campbell is crying and breathing strangely.

“What are we going to do, Mrs. Campbell?”

“I don’t know, I really don’t know.”

Sand is creeping over the little girl’s face as we watch. Mrs. Campbell suddenly pulls the zip up over Sandy’s bloody head and gestures to us to follow her back to the shelter. She gathers the older girls together and tells them what we already know.

“She’s dead, she’s dead!” May starts screaming, and Mrs. Campbell slaps her on the cheek, but not before Carly gets the message.

The little girl tries to run to where her sister lies but Mrs. Campbell grabs her and hugs her tightly.

“No, don’t look, don’t look.”

Carly doesn’t cry. She just closes her eyes, her mouth a thin straight line, and curls up in Mrs. Campbell’s arms.