A Sudden Crush Read online

  “All done!” I announce ten minutes later. “Your hand will be like new in a week or two. It shouldn’t get infected. You’ll just have to go easy on it, and use it only if it’s absolutely necessary.”

  He looks at my work and gives me a grunt of approval. We both stand up and look at each other, embarrassed.

  “Anna?”

  “Mmm?”

  “Please don’t apologize to me ever again,” Connor says with a grin, shaking away the awkwardness between us with a joke. “I don’t think I would make it next time.”

  “I won’t.” I smile at him. “I’d better go wash myself and these clothes,” I add, looking at my wet, smeared-in-sand pants and shirt. I also need a cool bath more than ever right now; it’s like his chest left a permanent impression burned onto mine.

  19

  Day 143

  “I saw something orange in the water,” I yell, running down from the hill.

  I had just begun my daily climb to the top when I looked at the ocean and saw a small orange dot pop above the horizon line.

  “Where?” Connor asks, getting up and shielding his eyes from the bright light with his left hand.

  It’s mid-afternoon, but the sun is still high in the sky.

  “Over there.” I point in the distance.

  “I don’t see anything,” he comments, still looking.

  “Here, take my glasses.” I pass him the sunglasses.

  “I still don’t see anything,” he repeats after carefully scrutinizing the water.

  We stare at the ocean some more before I say, “I know, it’s gone now. But there was something. I saw a flicker of orange, I’m sure.”

  “If you say so.” He doesn’t sound so sure.

  “Connor, don’t you see? They’re here. They’re finally here.” I beam, unable to contain my enthusiasm.

  “Who’s here?” he asks, perplexed.

  “The rescuers. They’ve come. They found us.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you? No one is coming for us. Our only option is to use that raft and take our chances with the ocean.”

  He’s been working at building a raft and testing it in deeper waters for a month now, and he has almost completed his design.

  “And I’ve told you a million other times that I’m not going anywhere on that thing,” I retort. “We need to build a fire,” I add, ignoring his argument.

  “A fire?”

  “Yep. Haven’t you seen Pirates of the Caribbean? We need smoke. A lot of smoke.”

  “You’re crazy. I give up.” He goes back to working on his useless raft.

  “You’ll see,” I yell after him. “When you’re sleeping in a bed tonight you’ll owe me one.”

  I stack the wood I collected this morning and use the coconut husk to start the flames. Once the smallest branches are happily burning, I move around to collect more wood. The fire starts without much problem, but it’s not very smoky. Smoke, how do you make smoke? I need to burn the palm leaves; they will make more smoke than simple wood. Some dried-out tree branches should do the trick. I simply need to harvest them.

  “I need the knife,” I say, approaching Connor.

  “I’m using it.”

  “The knife is mine. I found it, and I need it, so please give it to me.”

  “You sound like a petulant child. What are you going to do if I don’t give it to you? Call the teacher?”

  “Give. Me. The. Knife.”

  He does so wordlessly.

  Our relationship still needs some improvement, but I can genuinely say we’ve become friends. The sexual tension is still there, lingering below the surface. But after five months of only each other to talk to, we’ve reached a deeper level of bonding. He’s a good man, and I respect him. Okay, I still fantasize about what it would have been like if I’d let him kiss me on the beach that day. But I am married and I love my husband and Connor respects that. He’s been a perfect gentleman.

  Two hours later, I have a solid column of black and white smoke rising from my fire. I throw in new dried branches every now and then, but I mostly keep a constant vigil toward the sea. Another hour passes, and I don’t see anything. No orange dot, no nothing. Just un-speckled blue water. I stare at the sky, feeling desperate. The sun is setting. Even if there was a rescue team out there somewhere, they must be headed to shore by now.

  “Come on,” Connor says, wrapping one arm around my shoulders—one of his rare physical gestures—and steering me towards the camp. “I used the fire to cook us some dinner.”

  “You almost seem happy I was wrong,” I accuse him, pushing his arm away and running back toward the beach. Every bodily contact with him sets me on edge, but today will prove I was right. The rescuers are coming, I’ll be with Liam soon, and everything will have been for the best. We have another half an hour or forty-five minutes before twilight. I’m not about to abandon my lookout for a dinner of snappers.

  “Let’s eat here,” Connor says after a while, handing me a leaf with filleted snappers on top.

  We sit together on a dune and eat, watching the sun set below the water line.

  Then I see it again.

  “There.” I shoot up, throwing away my unfinished meal.

  “Anna, please…” He stands up next to me.

  “Look!” I take his chin in my right hand and turn his face toward the water. “There.”

  Now the orange dot is clearly visible, swaying on the waves in the distance.

  “Damn me, you’re right!”

  He cups my face in his hands, gives me a peck on each cheek, and then he lifts me up and runs in circles, howling like a mad man.

  When he puts me down I’m momentarily thrown by the kisses (innocent?) and the hugging. But as soon as I stare at the water I see the orange dot coming closer and realize that now it clearly has the shape of a boat hull. So I don’t have time to dwell on my feelings for Connor. Because an uncontrollable excitement grips me and I start jumping, screaming, and crying all at the same time.

  It takes another half an hour for the motorboat to reach the island. The orange soon becomes invisible as the last daylight fades in the distance. We follow the speedboat’s progress by staring at its yellow lights undulating on the water’s surface.

  When it gets about twenty yards from the shore, I can’t stand it anymore and run into the water, shouting and waving my arms. A male somebody shouts back from the deck, and I see a dark shape jump overboard, hit the water with a loud thump, and run toward me.

  “Jo, Jooaan.” He’s screaming at the top of his lungs.

  It’s my brother Matthew.

  “Maaatt, Maaatt. I’m heere.”

  We run into each other’s arms and he crushes me in a bear hug.

  “You’re alive,” he whispers in my ear.

  “You…iff…found me,” I say between sobs.

  “Of course I found you. I never gave up. I wouldn’t believe you were dead. Are you okay?” He breaks the hug and pats me as if to make sure nothing is broken.

  “I’m okay, Matt, I’m okay. I’ve never been better in my entire life.” I beam at him.

  “I have to tell mom and dad.” He runs back to the boat, which is now anchored in the low water close to the shore.

  “Why is the boat anchored?” I ask one of the crew guys as I reach them. “Aren’t we leaving right away?”

  “We can’t travel at night, señora,” he replies. “Not safe.”

  “…she’s fine, Mom. Yeah, I’ll tell her. Bye.” Matt’s voice drifts down from the boat’s cockpit.

  “Hey, wait. I want to talk to her,” I yell from below.

  “You’ll see them tomorrow,” Matt promises, jumping back into the low water. “The satellite phone’s battery is running low. We didn’t expect to be out this late, and I want to save it for the journey tomorrow in case something happens. Come here, Sis,” he adds, hugging me again. “You’re skin and bones.”

  “Matt?” I’m suddenly scared.

  “What’s wrong, Sis
?” He draws back and looks at me with concern.

  “Is…is…” I hesitate. “Is Liam all right?” I finally ask.

  I see a shadow pass over his face.

  “Is he dead?” I wail. “Please tell me he’s not dead.” I’m crying in hysterics.

  “No, he’s not dead.” His words are reassuring, but I don’t like his tone.

  “What’s wrong, Matt? Is he in a coma? Is he paralyzed, disfigured, crippled? What is it? Please tell me!”

  “No, no. He’s fine, I promise,” Matthew insists.

  I’m not convinced.

  “Did you tell him?” I ask, worried. “Can I at least talk to him?”

  He makes that wary expression again.

  “You didn’t call him? Matt!” I swat him lightly with my hand. “He must be worried sick. Was he on a different search boat? Don’t you have a charger or something for the phone?”

  “Um, no. We didn’t think we would spend the night out.”

  “Doesn’t the boat have at least a radio?” I press him.

  “The radio doesn’t reach this far out,” he says.

  “But—”

  “Mom and Dad will tell him,” Matt says, cutting me off. “He…he had to be back in Chicago. He couldn’t be here.”

  “Oh,” I sigh, staring at the water. “I hope he’ll be able to catch a late flight and be here tomorrow.”

  Matt shrugs.

  What sort of response is that?

  “Matt, what is it you’re not telling me?” I ask pointedly. “If Liam was injured in the crash, I want to know. Now.”

  “Sis, Liam is perfectly healthy. He didn’t get injured,” he repeats, but his jaw remains tight. “You and another passenger were the only missing persons from the flight.”

  “That would be me.” Connor chooses this moment to introduce himself. “Connor Duffield, and I’ve never been happier to meet someone.”

  “Matthew Price. Nice to meet you too, and thank you for taking care of my little sis.”

  “Oh, she can take care of herself, and she took care of me too,” Connor says with a fond smile.

  Mathew eyebrows shoot way too high into his forehead.

  “That’s not what he meant,” I explain, blushing and moving out of the water. We still are calf-deep in it.

  Ashore, I give my bother a brief tour of our compound. When I show him our rudimental survival gear, he laughs with incredulity. He knows how much of a city girl I am. Manny chooses this moment to appear at my feet and stretch his arms to be picked up like a toddler would do. I promptly oblige him, and he perches himself in his favorite position with his arms around my neck and his legs circling my waist.

  “You made friends?” my brother asks, amused.

  “This is Manny—when I found him, he was an orphaned baby. I adopted him. Say hi to Uncle Matthew.” I take one of his monkey hands in mine and wave it towards my brother.

  “Hoo.” Manny acknowledges Matt.

  “Good boy.” I pat his head.

  My brother stares at me in silence.

  “What?” I ask self-consciously.

  “You’re different,” he says simply.

  “How so?”

  “You remind me of yourself when you were eleven or twelve, before you became too cool for the Girl Scouts.”

  I roll my eyes. “Let’s go sit by the fire with the others. And please tell me you brought some heavily processed food.”

  Matt throws his head back and roars with laughter. “What happened to your organic diet?”

  “I’ve had enough all-natural food to last me a lifetime.”

  20

  One Last Night

  “How did you find us? Do they know what happened to the plane?” I ask when I’m finished stuffing my mouth with as much junk food as my body can physically contain.

  “Ah, Sis. You’ll go down in history as another of the unsolved mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle.”

  “Oh, that’s totally right!” I exclaim. “How did we never think of that?” I add, looking at Connor.

  He shrugs in response, so I turn my attention back to my brother. “There was a storm, a pretty big one, though.”

  “That’s one of the weird things,” Matt says. “All one-hundred-fifty-seven passengers of Flight 4568, the captain, co-pilot, and crew declared there was a storm raging that night. But it didn’t register on any meteorological chart in any lab of the twenty countries that monitor the area. If there was a storm, no instrument anywhere was able to register it.”

  I snort loudly. “Big bro, I’m pretty sure there was a storm. The plane was shufflin’ worse than Redfoo in Party Rock.”

  “You agree?” Matthew turns to Connor.

  He grunts affirmatively.

  “That’s a yes,” I translate.

  “So your version is concordant with that of the other passengers,” he notes, interested.

  “Why, you didn’t believe it?”

  “I’m a science geek, Sis. It’s hard for me to come to terms with superstitions.”

  “Doesn’t the Bermuda Triangle have some sort of scientific explanation?” I ask, curious.

  “There are many theories, some less far-fetched than others,” Matt agrees, staring at the fire. “But none of them can explain why one-hundred-sixty-eight people swear to have been caught in the perfect storm, while the turbulence didn’t register on any monitor, satellite image, or meteorological chart.”

  “Did everybody else survive the crash?” I ask, a bit choked, thinking of Liam. Another night before I can see him seems like an eternity.

  “Yes, everyone. You were the only two missing persons. And that’s another riddle.”

  “How so?” Connor asks.

  “The black box of the plane didn’t register anything. They’re still studying it. There’s a team of top scientists obsessing over it, but after the captain’s announcement ordering passengers and crew to sit down and fasten their seatbelts there’s nothing else. It’s another black hole.”

  “I thought black boxes were supposed to register everything that happened on a plane,” I say, puzzled.

  “They are,” Matt confirms. “This particular one didn’t.”

  “So nobody knows what happened?” I ask, astonished.

  “From the account of the other passengers and the physical examination of the plane, it seems an electrical short caused the emergency door to suddenly open. You were sitting right next to it, if I’m not wrong?”

  “Mmm-hmm,” I confirm. “But I don’t remember it happening.” I look at Connor.

  “I remember the door being blown away, but after that I was out too,” he agrees.

  “After the door blew open, the cabin experienced an explosive decompression,” Matt continues. “That’s when you two were sucked out. And two of the engines lost power.”

  “And the plane made it anyway?” I ask, shocked.

  “That’s not so surprising. Planes are made in a way so that they can function even after they sustain all different kinds of damage. The plane was already low and about to land. It didn’t have much farther to go, at least as far as planes are concerned. It landed safely in Santo Domingo. The truly unbelievable part is you two survived and are pretty much unscathed, from what I can see.”

  “I thought nobody would look for us,” Connor chips in. “I was making a raft.”

  “It was hard to keep going after a while,” Matt admits. “Everyone was saying I was mad with grief. I don’t deny it—I had my doubts and moments of despair.”

  For the first time I can feel how hard these months must have been on him and my family. Not knowing is a torture.

  “How did you find us?” I ask again.

  “Do you have your phone?”

  I fish it out of my bag. I got used to carrying it around wherever I go, and show it to him.

  “I thought as much,” he says with an amused wink. “When we first heard of the crash it was bad…” He pauses briefly, and a shade of worry passes over his face again. It makes him
look much older. “I flew here the same day, mom and dad too. It was bad.”

  “How so?”

  “The local authorities refused to send search teams out; they said there was no chance of survival after being sucked out of a plane.”

  “If I wasn’t standing right here, I wouldn’t have believed it myself,” Connor says.

  “He’s been my Jiminy Cricket realism conscience this whole time,” I comment smugly. He has a long list of I-told-you-sos to hear from me.

  “But we wouldn’t give up hope, so we assembled a research team of our own. Emilio and his brothers have been with me from the start.” Matt jerks his head toward one of the other guys.

  Emilio nods in acknowledgment.

  “And you tracked my phone here? Why did it take you so long?”

  “Ah, Sis, your signal wasn’t exactly loud and clear. The first month it was so feeble we could only narrow the search to a four-hundred nautical mile radius. It wasn’t constant either—we would get a flicker of it every now and then, and sometimes it disappeared altogether for days at a time…”

  “That must have been when it rained. I wasn’t able to charge it,” I chip in.

  “That’s what I told myself to keep going. However, I had a guy in front of a screen twenty-four-seven looking for your signal, until after a month and a half your transmission became regular and stronger. Did you change something?” Matthew asks.

  “That’s when I started going up the hill,” I exclaim, excited. “It was Connor’s idea—he thought it might help.”

  My brother looks at him with newfound respect.

  “It did, and it gave us all hope. I knew it couldn’t be a coincidence. The strong signal periods were too regular.”

  “But that was months ago,” I protest again.

  “The ocean is still pretty big, little Sis. This island is too small to be on any map, and we had to search nautical mile by nautical mile.”

  “But you didn’t give up,” I say, proud.

  “Never.” He smiles at me.

  I suppress a yawn. I feel so tired. This day has been so full of emotions, they could last me for a lifetime.

  “What do you say we go to sleep? That way we can leave at the first light of dawn tomorrow,” my brother suggests.