Page 111 of Adrift

“It needs more time.” I give the pot another stir. I don’t really know, but I don’t want to agree with him.

“Water needs one minute at a boil to kill anything in it.” Calvin crosses his arms over his chest.

“Cloth isn’t water,” I say, clamping down on the rest I want to say.

“It’s been long enough.”

“No. It hasn’t.” Somewhere in the back of my college training is the answer. “If that was the case, hospital linens would be done in five minutes.”

He grunts. I guess that’s enough for him. Damn, it’s weird how much I miss my phone for stupid shit like this. A timer, a camera, the fucking internet. We both stare at the pot and watch it boil. I can hear my mother––a watched pot never boils. Guess she was wrong.

Haley moans, and fuck if my cock doesn’t go immediately hard. I can’t look at Calvin. I don’t want to know if he has the same reaction I do. Instead, I stare at the pot, watching the rolling boil go on.

“Now,” Calvin snarls.

“Whatever.” I take a stick and fish the cloth out, draping it on the rope Dante is using for his kitchen roof.

Calvin takes the crutch Haley was using and pulls the Dutch oven out of the fire. We’re standing across the fire from each other. The rain has completely stopped. Calvin pushes theremaining logs around. I watch the water from the bandage drip onto the sand. It’s drilling little holes. Focusing on the dripping water is far better than straining to hear what Dante and Haley are saying and doing.

The crutch drops behind the kitchen, and Calvin takes the other poker. He moves the coals closer together and puts the large flat rock Dante’s been using as a griddle on top of the fire. It’s how we’ve saved embers in the rain before.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask. “Because Dante’s right. And I want to sleep in the raft.”

“Tell them we talked about it. I don’t fucking care.” Calvin drops sand around the rock, leaving little chimneys on either side. He turns and heads into the jungle.

I have to run to keep up with him. “Where the hell are you going?”

He doesn’t stop. I should just go back and leave him the fuck alone. Let him run into the wilderness by himself. Dante called him an animal, and he seems to be living up to that. And who am I to tell him anything? He’s an adult. An adult who had no qualms about punching me just a few hours ago. But the fact that he hasn’t stopped has me running after him like a little kid seeking approval. And maybe I am. Or maybe I’m just curious as to what he’s up to. He’s the one who found the derelict.

I’ve been giving him a lot of credit, some of it unwarranted, because he’s fucking human. One who is also stuck on a fucking island with not a lot of resources. “Did you find something else? Is that where you’re going?”

He stops and looks back at me. “Yeah. I can’t listen to Haley with Dante or Zane. And definitely not you, asshole. And I’m tired of getting rained on.” Calvin takes off again. At the big map tree, instead of going straight, he takes a left.

“Wait, where are you going?” I figured he was heading to the fishing boat. But that was straight past the stream, the clearing,and along the beach. Calvin takes the trail near the stream. The same one where the boar attacked Zane and Haley. The moon came out back on the beach, but here? Here it’s downright dark. “Can you see anything?”

“You can go back if you want.” It’s the same tone my biggest competitor on the team used with me when he was trying to get me to back out of a swim meet. Or not level up in a new type of stroke. But it only made me try harder, push through the water with more vigor, more determination.

“I’m good.” I keep up behind his giant legs, and the deeper we get into the jungle, the more my eyes adjust to the deep shadows.

It smells different here. Oh, I can still pick up traces of the ocean breeze, but there’s an unfamiliar scent with the whistling wind above the trees. It’s humid and oh so wet; with each palm frond or large leaf that touches my shirt, I’m a little more soaked. I’m starting to wonder if just getting pelted by rain while standing on the beach was a better idea. If I shouldn’t just turn and head back to the beach. But then I couldn’t help, and where is he heading if not to the derelict or the map tree?

With all the secrets he keeps, I trust him a little less, which isn’t much since Calvin has thrown his fist in my face not once but twice.

I’m not on his tail too closely. I’m close enough he knows I’m here, but not close enough the branches that slap back from his passing whip me. He pushes on and on. The stream turns to a dark pool on the side of the trail. Moonbeams now cross the trail, and I swear he’s trying to lose me. The pool gets larger as we round it.

I haven’t been this far from the beach yet. I’ve been finding dry driftwood in the scrub brush where the jungle and the beach meet. This pond is getting wider and wider. It’s unsettling. Why didn’t he mention finding this? I’m watching where I step on thelava rock. One misstep and I’ll have matching legs to my fucked-up face. We’re climbing up.

Fuck it. “Calvin, where in the hell are you going?”

He stops, and his shoulders drop. “There’s a cave. It’s really small. But it’s dry or almost dry.”

Yeah, I sure as fuck don’t trust him now. We climb for another ten minutes. It’s slow. And when the moon drifts behind storm clouds, it’s a lot harder to know where to step. But then I see something. That can’t be it. It’s not the classic kind of cave you expect a kid to draw. “Is that it?”

He grunts and scampers over to the opening. Even on the way up, there’s a path. And I can’t help but wonder what we’re going to find in it.

“How do you know there’s nothing in there?”

“What, like a bear or a sabertooth tiger? The most dangerous thing on this island is me.”

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