The Raft (12 page)

Because they didn’t see me. They didn’t know the raft was there.

I set my arms on my head, elbows up, fingers clasped together at the back of my head. I breathed out.

I wasn’t getting saved. Not that night.

The C-130 disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.

Dropping my arms, I clutched myself.

Within a minute or so, the C-130’s drone faded out to nothing, returning my world to a soundless, lightless void.

I managed one halfhearted “come back!”

Then I curled up in the dark and cried.

thirty-eight

I awoke to a drizzle and rolled onto my back, letting what drops of rain there were fall into my open mouth. After the disaster of the night before, I had no energy to do more. Max hadn’t moved. I didn’t have the heart to tell him about the plane. Or how I’d failed to signal it.

After a while, I sat up. Directly in front of me, I thought I saw a line on the horizon.

It could have just been a low cloud bank. The day was overcast, so the lack of visibility and my own exhaustion could have been playing tricks on me.

As the day went on, the line got slightly bigger. There was definitely something there. I wanted Max to wake up so I could show him. See what he thought it might be.

And just then, he woke up. He took a few moments to orient himself, and then he clung to the side of the raft and looked skyward, opening his mouth and drinking. Water dripped down his face and he didn’t bother to wipe it away.

I didn’t tell him about the C-130. Instead, I pointed to the line on the horizon. “Do you think that’s an island?”

We both stared in that direction for a few minutes.

Max squinted. “Could be.” Exactly what I had been thinking.

The sun came out now and then. Near the end of the day, we drew ever nearer to the line, and it had become something real. I noticed the clouds above it were green, which meant they were reflecting the color of water, shallower water, which meant a reef and an island.

And then the birds came.

Fairy terns, sooty terns, a few brown noddies. This time, they weren’t part of a bait ball. This time, they were close to home.

The line was definitely an island. And we were getting nearer every minute.

I had a few ideas as to what island it could be. Or couldn’t be. Or hoped it wouldn’t be.

Laysan was a possibility. It was the time of year when researchers would be there, so that would be perfect. But I was pretty sure Laysan was too far to the east of where we probably were.

Pearl and Hermes Atoll, also probably too far.

The Gardner Pinnacles were a possibility, but they would suck. Basically just two pieces of tall rock, they were great for birds and insects, no place for humans. And I didn’t see anything of much height, so it couldn’t be that anyway.

As I strained my memory, trying to picture a map of the area, I kept coming back to the name of Lisianski Island. I was pretty sure it was in the area. And it wouldn’t be bad at all. Having spent the last few years in the company of adults, I’d learned to make myself a little more viable during long dinner conversations involving mainly biologists and other scientists. I had scoured the Internet and memorized a bunch of cool, gross, or amazing facts about some of the more obscure Northwest Hawaiian Islands, guaranteeing myself at least some attention at the dinner table.

And there were a few facts about Lisianski that I always remembered.

Sometime in the early 1900s rabbits had been introduced to the island, where they had multiplied, of course—they were rabbits. But the food supply eventually ran out and they become cannibals, the old devouring the young. A naturalist visiting the island from Honolulu reported seeing the last newborn rabbit being eaten alive by the last starving mother.

Hard to forget something like cannibal rabbits.

Plus my mom had a fit when I told that story at the dinner table. She sent me to my room right before she served my favorite dessert, Better than Anything cake.

I sighed just picturing it.

German chocolate cake, poked with holes that were then filled with an entire can of sweetened condensed milk. Then the whole cake was covered with caramel ice cream sauce, spread with Cool Whip, and topped off with crushed Heath bars. Even more of a reason not to forget the evening or the cannibal rabbits of Lisianski.

Lisianski was also pretty well known for bird poaching. About the same time as the rabbits, law enforcement raided the island and discovered poachers with the feathers of over 140,000 dead birds.

Sick.

I wondered if the women wearing feathered hats or people sleeping on feather beds, resting their heads on down pillows ever thought about where the filler came from. How many birds went extinct just so they could have a soft place to lay their head?

Luckily for the birds, Teddy Roosevelt declared the whole area the Hawaiian Island Bird Reservation. Since then it became protected in other ways, and under other names, and Lisianski was once again loaded with birds.

All in all, Lisianski wouldn’t be a bad place to end up. Certainly not the worst. And way better than being stuck in a raft.

The sun was close to setting when I heard waves crash. Since I’d been on the raft, the waves hadn’t made sound. Even the big ones, with deep troughs, were relatively quiet. So hearing those waves crash could only mean one thing: an island or reef close by.

My heart beat faster.

My only experience with a reef was at Midway. We would take the boat out there to see Hawaiian monk seals and spinner dolphins. All was calm and beautiful inside the reef, but outside, where the ocean crashed against it, was deadly. Midway had an opening in its reef where ships could go through. But the rest of it? Solid. Ships had been wrecked on the reef. Reefs are coral, which is sharp. The reef would rip the raft to pieces if it got smashed against it. Hell, the reef would rip
me
to pieces if I got smashed against it.

Could I decide what to do on my own?

I sighed and clasped my hands behind my head as I considered my options.
Option,
really. Because there wasn’t really any going around it. Our best chance of survival was to be out of the raft and on that island, whatever island it was.

My gaze went to Max. The raft would be lighter with neither of us in it, and might even just skim over the reef on one good wave. But we might not survive getting bashed against the reef on our own. We needed to go over with the raft if at all possible.

The line of the island was closer. I sat on my haunches, hands gripping the front of the raft, watching as a wave lifted us. I screamed as we headed straight for the reef.

thirty-nine

Up. I went up.

And then down.

I was out of the raft.

Falling.

So slow.

Was I flying?

There was green.

And then gray. And brown.

Gray and white and brown.

Reef.

Sudden pain.
My head!

And then nothing.

forty

Clack! Clack! Clack!

I moaned. My head felt split in two.

Clack! Clack!

I was lying facedown on the sand, my arms stretched out on either side. I tried to blink, and then scrunched my eyes as I realized my face, along with the rest of my body, was packed with sand. I brushed off my face, but cried out when I touched my left eye.

I couldn’t see on that side.

I tried again to blink. But only my right eye worked.

Clack! Clack! Clack!

Feeling gingerly with my fingers, I discovered my left eye was swollen. So swollen.

My mouth was all gritty and I spit, tried to work up some saliva, then spit again.

How had I gotten to shore?

A rough wave lifted me slightly, started to pull me back out, but my body stopped abruptly as I felt a pulling on my hair.

Turning a bit, I realized my hair had gotten entwined in the succulent green naupaka bushes lining the beach. I tried not to think about what would have happened if a wave had taken me back out when I was still unconscious on my belly.

I owed the naupaka a big thank-you.

Clack! Clack! Clack!

Without pulling on my hair, I turned my head so my right eye was aimed up the bank.

Several young gooneys stood there, black-and-white adult feathers peeking through their silvery baby down in spots. They glared at me, the clacking of their beaks the only way they had to let me know they were pissed off at my sudden intrusion on their beach.

Ignoring them, I got to work on freeing myself.

My fingers were wrinkled and wet and had cuts on them. I tried to untangle my hair. I must have been lying there for a while, because several of my cornrows were completely twisted in the plant. I tried to unbraid them, to no avail.

The raft.

Max.

I called for him, but as I tried to stand, the bushes held firm. So, grimacing at the pain, I started yanking until I was free. Feeling with my fingers, I found one decent-sized bald spot. It was just hair. A small price to pay for being alive and on an island.

On an island!

I needed to find Max.

My legs threatened to buckle beneath me. Weaving a bit, I staggered through the naupaka and up the bank, scattering the albatross, which retreated but continued their constant clacking.

Being blind on the left required me to move slowly, gain my balance. Having been on the raft for so long didn’t help either.

Reaching the top of the bank, I stood above the beach, scanning for any sign of Max. “Max?” I called for him, and then noticed something yellow down the beach, about a hundred yards. The raft. “Max!”

Jumping back down to the beach, my legs gave out and I landed on my belly, knocking my breath into the sand. I lay there for a second and summoned any strength I had left.

Getting slowly back up on my feet, I moved unsteadily. The raft was there, shredded by the coral reef, but still in one piece, more or less. There was no chance it would ever hold air again, that was for sure. The left side had been ripped away and the Coastal Commander was gone. The ditty bag was nowhere to be seen either. I struggled to pull the raft up off the beach.

Shading my one good eye, I looked out in the water. Nothing.

My legs buckled and I fell to the sand. It didn’t mean anything. Max could still be okay. I made it. He could too. Crawling onto what was left of the raft, I lay down and slept.

When I woke, I felt better, although my left eye was still swollen shut and my head throbbed. I sat up slowly, and felt on my way to getting used to being on solid land again. My body still felt like it was swaying though, as if I was still on the water.

I looked around.

The island was small, that’s for sure, and if I had to guess, I’d say it was probably Lisianski. Which meant at least I had gone from being in the middle of nowhere to a place that was actually on the map. Definitely an improvement.

Some of the smaller islands in the area didn’t have scientists on them during the summer, but they did get checked on periodically by research ships as they passed. So there was a pretty good chance someone would pass by this island. And I intended to be ready when they did.

My stomach growled. I had to find something to eat.

Sooty terns flew overhead, their cries raucous and their bellies green from the reflection of the sun off the water. More Internet trivia popped into my head: The soundtrack of the birds from Alfred Hitchcock’s movie
The Birds
was actually sooty terns recorded on Eastern Island at Midway. It was nice to hear life around me after all those days and nights of quiet.

My stomach growled again.

With all the birds, there had to be eggs on the island. But even if I did get the nerve up to eat one, there was no way to cook them.

I stubbed my toe and reached down to pick up the blue culprit. A plastic cigarette lighter. I opened my hand and let it drop back to the sand. There were thousands of them on the beaches at Midway, and looking around, I saw them everywhere. Useless.

Although hungry and thirsty, I needed to prioritize. In case a plane flew over or a ship went by, I needed to be able to signal them. And I didn’t have any flares. I headed unsteadily toward the center of the island where two dunes rose in a V-shape about thirty feet high.

I climbed to the top and plopped down, breathing hard. Water as far as I could see around the island. The breeze lifted my hair a bit as the sun stung my sunburned face. Green sea turtles dozed on the beach and an involuntary smile crept upon my face as I wiped the sand off my ankle. The tattoo was still visible. The fact that it looked so good, the henna so dark, the drawing so pristine, made it seem completely out of place on my wreck of a body. I sighed and looked down the beach. Another sea turtle had joined the rest.

Sea turtles spent a lot of time on Midway, but they didn’t lay eggs there. I wondered if this island was one where they did. The turtles looked huge, even from as far away as I was. They were a species that had my respect, to even be able to survive. The females sometimes went to sea for twenty-five years before laying eggs.

I slid down the sand to the bottom, landing near a small pile of driftwood. A signal fire made the most sense, except there was no way for me to light it.

I pushed a small log over and it rolled down the small incline.

Another cigarette lighter, orange this time, lay there. I picked it up. How easy would that be, to have a cigarette lighter to light my signal fire?

With my thumb, I flicked the wheel. Nothing. The mechanism was so rusty, it didn’t budge even a tad. I shook the lighter, and the liquid inside sloshed.

Lighter fluid? Or seawater?

Another lighter, blue, lay within reach, and I picked it up. Again there was liquid inside. If I found enough of them with lighter fluid, I could break them open and pour all the fluid on a pile of wood. Then I would only need to find one that actually worked. It was like buying a lottery ticket. Eventually I had to win something, right?