Page 30 of Reckless Girls
“I’m sweaty!” Eliza objects, but he only grins and kisses her again, on the cheek this time.
“We’re all sweaty,” he reminds her, then gestures up to the sun overhead, already beating down on us even though it’s barely nine in the morning. “And we’re gonna get a lot sweatier before the day is out.”
He’s not lying. Jake and Nico take turns cutting through the underbrush, and I pull at stray vines and branches with my hands, Brittany, Amma, and Eliza all doing the same. It still seems like it takes us ages to make any real progress, and I’m just about to suggest we take a break, when suddenly, the vegetation opens up a little more, and we’re in a clearing.
It’s so humid in the jungle that I feel like I can’t breathe, and the air that enters my lungs is thick and heavy. Underneath my rash guard, my skin has grown prickly and itchy, and even the backs of my knees are sweating.
But there’s something beautiful here, too. Beautiful and wild and strange.
“It’s so quiet,” Amma says. There’s a low drone of insects, and the rustling of the leaves overhead as the trees sway in the breeze, but other than that, there’s no sound, not even the waves from the beach, as if the jungle has closed around us, sealing us in.
“It’s like church,” Brittany adds, then reaches for Amma’s hand. “Like that church in Italy, remember?”
I see Amma’s throat move as she swallows, the way she squeezes Brittany’s hand, and I think back to that photo of them on Brittany’s phone. In moments like this, it’s easy to see why their friendship works even though they’re so different. Shared experiences do that to people, and I wonder if when we leave Meroe, we’ll have this kind of bond, too.
I like that idea.
Nico points up ahead with the tip of his machete. “Come on. That looks like a path.”
It is a path—not a great one, and we definitely have to do more hacking through the jungle, but it’s easier now, and after just a few minutes, the greenery clears again, leaving us in a vast open space, no trees overhead, the ocean pulsing against the shore just a few yards away.
We’ve reached the other side of the island. The surf is stronger here, the waves bigger outside the protected lagoon where we’re harbored. When I step forward, my foot catches the edge of something.
I look down and see cracked asphalt, grass and vines pushing through the black cement. “Guess this is your airstrip!” I call to Nico, and he looks around, clearly a little disappointed.
“Man,” he says, reaching back to ruffle the long hair at the back of his neck, his machete still in hand. “I thought it would be… I don’t know. Not so fucked up, I guess.”
Jake pushes his sunglasses up his nose with one finger, his other arm loosely looped around Eliza’s waist. “That’s the jungle for you, mate. Takes everything back in a flash.”
He snaps his fingers in emphasis. There’s something eerie about this part of the island, something unsettling. Maybe it’s the reminder that this place has a history, a dark history, at that. That there were other people here once, and this isn’t some paradise completely free from all the bullshit of the modern world. Or maybe it’s just how loud, how violent the sea sounds here.
Suddenly, all I want to do is go back to our beach, our safe little harbor.
But Nico is already pushing at the vines along the airstrip with the tip of his machete, squatting down to take a closer look.
“You said they used this during World War II?” Amma asks, crouching down next to him.
“Yeah, it was a quick refueling station,” Nico says, then gestures with his blade. “Kept tanks over there according to some of the pictures I saw.”
“Where did you see pictures?” I call, and he squints at me.
“I looked it up before we came.”
News to me, but Amma smiles at him, laying a hand on his arm. “That’s so cool that you did some research.”
There’s nothing offside about the way she’s touching him or her words, and I like Amma now, I genuinely do, but there’s something about the way the two of them look, crouched there together, that makes my stomach twist, just the littlest bit. Maybe it’s because I remember that moment before we left Maui, seeing the two of them on the deck of theSusannah,looking like they belonged there.
Or maybe it’s because Amma looks like her, the real Susannah.
But whatever this feeling is, it’s stupid and irrational, and I push it down.
“You okay?” Brittany asks in a low voice, appearing at my side.
“Yeah, fine,” I say. “Just hot and tired and not that interested in World War II, I guess.”
She can tell it’s more than that, I think, but she just smiles and gives me a quick squeeze. Eliza walks over to me then, somehow still looking pretty and put-together despite the humidity. “Why exactly are we doing this instead of drinking on the beach?”
I shake my head. “Boys.”
