It’s far too dangerous.
Staring up at the stars, I hear him settle in on his own pallet across the fire. He sighs and shifts every few moments, evidently as restless as I am. The phrase out of sight, out of mind does not apply when it comes to us. I can’t see him, but he’s all I can think about.
My earlier words replay in my head on an unending loop.
What is it about me being seventeen that’s got you so tangled up inside, Beck?
I torture myself for hours, speculating what would’ve happened between us if Ian hadn’t interrupted at the last moment. I’m still wide awake when the temperature drops and the breeze off the water sweeps through our camp, cold enough to give me goosebumps. Light rain begins to fall and I shiver silently in the dark, trying not to remember how much warmer it was to sleep in the curve of Beck’s body, sharing his heat.
He tosses and turns again, clearly uncomfortable. I can’t help wondering if his thoughts are aligned with mine.
If they are, he doesn’t act on them.
Neither do I.
We shake in the dark on our separate pallets, looking up at the same night sky from opposite sides of a hissing fire. Bound together by invisible strings. Without a single spoken word or stolen glance, I can feel him like an extension of my own body.
I don’t see what the big deal is, I hear myself telling him. This doesn’t change anything.
His sharp scoff still echoes off the walls of my whirling mind.
It changes everything, Violet.
The following days pass in a blur of activity. If not for the small notches I’ve started making in the beached driftwood tree trunk at the end of each day, I’d have no concept of how much time has passed since we first arrived on the island. Ian’s newfound presence in our camp is a welcome distraction from the strange intensity brewing between Beck and me. I spend my days tending to him in the ever-lengthening periods when he’s able to stay awake, monitoring his temperature and checking his wounds. The stump seems to be healing well enough, all things considered. It’s swollen and red, but I don’t see any signs of sepsis creeping back.
It’s beyond frustrating to know that there are probably many plants with medicinal properties in the forest all around us. On our many camping trips back home, Mom used to point out different herbs and trees as we’d walk through the mountains, noting their homeopathic uses with reverence. She had great respect mother nature’s natural remedies, and healthy skepticism for big pharmaceutical companies’ exorbitantly-priced, mass-produced pills.
Nature provides, she used to say, smiling. We’ve just forgotten how to use the things she offers.
If we were in New Hampshire, it would be as simple as finding a willow tree — making a boiled tea from its bark to reduce his fever, a salve to lessen inflammation. I could use White Pine to treat a cold. Birch for an upset stomach. Comfrey for burns and bruises. Witch hazel as an antiseptic.
I could actually help, instead of sitting on my hands, praying for a miracle.
But here, the plants are as foreign to me as their uses. I have no way of differentiating those which would heal from those that would do more harm. So, I sit on my hands. I watch and wait as Ian’s broken body attempts to put itself back together unaided.
He must be in an unfathomable amount of pain, but he never complains. His short bursts of lucidity are peppered with inappropriate jokes and personal anecdotes. Over the course of our first three days together, I learn more about him than I have about Beck in triple that time — his childhood growing up in Oklahoma, the hometown honey who broke his heart two days after high school graduation, and the flight attendant program he applied for two days after that, lured by the promise of exotic locations and far-flung destinations.
“It started as a way to escape,” he confides as I wipe his forehead with a wet cloth. “When you get your heart broken in a small town, there’s no outrunning the gossip.”
“So you picked a career that would take you as far from home as humanly possible?”
“Pretty much.” He blows a puff of air from his hollow cheeks, gaunt from lack of proper nourishment. He still can’t manage any food without choking. “I thought I’d do it for a few months, see the sights, then go back for my degree. I didn’t expect to love it so much. But the people were nice, the pay was great, and the places I’ve been… amazing.” He glances around the island. “Then again, I certainly didn’t expect I’d end up here when I lit out of town like a firecracker.”
“Trust me, I know the feeling.”
His brows lift.
“The need to get out,” I clarify. “To escape a small town where everyone knows everyone, where the future seems as set in stone as the past. It can be…”
“Suffocating,” Ian finishes.
“Exactly.”
I’m surprised by how much we have in common. At twenty-two, he’s far closer to me in age than the third member of our trio. There’s also the matter of his cheerful disposition and — it must be noted — those charming dimples that flash at me every time I say something even the slightest bit amusing. He never scowls or sneers or mocks me. In his company, I don’t feel like I can’t catch my breath because the air between us is made of sparks and sexual tension. I don’t struggle to control my emotions, or keep myself in check. I don’t worry my heart is going to burst from the confines of my chest and leap into his hands if we get too close.
He’s the anti-Beck. The cure for a poison that’s been slowly killing me.
But if dying is what I’ve been doing…
Why have I never felt so alive?
“So, what were you running from?” Ian asks, pulling me out of my head. “Or, more importantly, who were you running from?”
“Myself, mostly. The girl I didn’t want to be anymore; the woman I didn’t want to become. I knew if I stayed in that little town, I’d wind up stuck there for the rest of my life.”
“Hence the summer in paradise.”
I nod slowly. “I thought, at the very least, I’d see something different. Something exciting, before flying back home and starting classes at the same community college half the kids from my high school attend.” I’m so immersed in my own story, I don’t hear the muffled footfalls approaching from the beach behind me. “I have this crystal clear memory of my graduation — you know that moment, when you stand on the stage and shake the principal’s hand and flip your tassel from one side to the other while the whole crowd claps?”