“Why did you do that?” Raine asked. She had finally calmed down enough that she was no longer sniffing, and her breathing was steady again. I still didn’t understand why she freaked out on me, but at least she seemed okay now.
“It will help keep the bugs away,” I told her. “It’s good for keeping other animals away as well, though I don’t think there is much here besides those tiny little lizards. They aren’t even big enough to eat. We should still always keep the fire going, especially at night.”
“I thought I’d never eat cooked food again,” Raine said with her mouth full. “I can’t believe how much better it tastes!”
She was right; it did taste a thousand times better. It would be easier to digest, and maybe she’d get a little weight back. I didn’t like how thin she was and wished I knew how to cook better so she would eat more. After we made some progress with shelter and water, I’d have to find something more carbohydrate-rich for her to consume.
“I’m a pretty shitty cook,” I said with a shrug. “Too bad Alejandro didn’t get stranded with us. He could make most anything taste good.”
I considered how life on the raft might have been different had Alejandro been there and decided I could put up with my own cooking. For starters, there hadn’t been enough water for two. We’d all be dead by now if he had been there. I had more selfish reasons as well and realized I was not at all sorry to have been put in this particular situation with Raine alone.
“What do you think happened to them?” Raine asked softly.
“No way to know,” I responded. “It’s best to assume they got on the lifeboats and were picked up. All of the boats had been launched,” or were lost, I thought but didn’t say, “by the time I got topside. There wasn’t anyone else on the ship but me by then. At least, I couldn’t find anyone else.”
“What are we going to do now?” she asked. “I mean, do you have any idea where we are?”
“I have a guess,” I said. “There’s a decent sized island chain north of Venezuela. I think we’re somewhere along there, just given currents and how long we’ve been in the open water.”
“Are any of them populated?”
“Lots of them,” I confirmed. “This island looks pretty small, but once we get a little more settled in, I can explore a bit. There might be a settlement or at least some evidence that people come here sometimes.”
“What if you find someone?”
“I’ll hope that they speak Spanish,” I said. “I don’t know any of the island dialects.”
“What if you don’t find anyone?”
“We’ll be okay here,” I assured her. “There’s probably a decent variety of things to eat, and as long as we find a reliable water source we won’t have any problems at all. If there isn’t any fresh water, there are still enough options between rain, the coconuts, and the still. It won’t be great, but it’s enough to live on.”
“Do you know what kinds of plants are edible?” she asked.
“Yes, I know a lot of them. There are some ways to figure out if something is edible, too, but testing stuff isn’t always safe. As long as I can find plants I recognize, I wouldn’t bother with it.”
“So we could look for those tomorrow?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head, “shelter and water first, then food.”
“Why?”
“Survival 101,” I responded. “You can live three minutes without air, three hours without shelter, three days without water, and three weeks without food. It’s not exact, obviously, but it tells you where to put your priorities. We have some shelter, but it isn’t going to last long if there’s a storm. It’s good enough that we’ll look for a water source tomorrow and then work on building a stronger shelter. After that, we’ll find better food sources.”
“Lindsay always told me she couldn’t live without a shopping mall within five miles of her,” Raine said. “It’s kind of funny how little you really need to live. I wish I had a toothbrush, though.”
“We can make those,” I said. I jumped up and went to a shrub with woody stems. I pulled off a relatively green one and stripped the leaves down so there was nothing but stem. I cut a piece of it off about six inches long and stuck one end in my mouth and started chewing on it. I handed a second one to Raine. After a minute, I pulled it out and showed her the frayed ends. “It works pretty well, actually.”
Raine did the same and was pretty delighted with how well it worked.
“Can you get one of these in mint flavor?” she laughed.
“I doubt it,” I said, “but you really don’t need the toothpaste as much as toothpaste manufacturers want you to believe. It’s the bristles that really do all the work.”
I drank a little more of the water we had collected on the raft and handed the container over to Raine. She drank as well and then looked up at me. She had a strange expression on her face, which I didn’t understand at all.