A moldy sleeping bag lay crumpled on the floor. In the corner, propped up against the wall, stood a black case. I flipped open the clasps and lifted the lid. Inside was an acoustic guitar in good condition.

“That’s random,” Anna said.

“Do you think someone lived here?”

“It sort of looks that way.”

“What were they doing?”

“Besides channeling Jimmy Buffet?” Anna shook her head. “I have no idea. But whoever it was, they haven’t been home for a while.”

“This isn’t scrap wood,” I said. “It’s been cut at a lumber yard. I don’t know how he got it here, boat or plane I guess, but this guy was serious. So where did he go?”

“T.J.,” Anna said, her eyes growing wide. “Maybe he’ll come back.”

“I hope so.”

I put the guitar in the case and handed it to her. I picked up the toolbox, and we retraced our steps back to the beach.

At lunchtime, Anna roasted breadfruit on a flat rock next to the fire while I cracked coconuts. We ate it all – the breadfruit still didn’t taste like bread to me – and washed it down with coconut water. The heat from the fire, plus a temperature that had to be near ninety, made it hard to sit inside the lean-to for very long. Sweat trickled down Anna’s red face, and her hair stuck to her neck.

“Do you want to get in the water?” I regretted the words as soon as they came out of my mouth. She’d probably think I just wanted her to strip in front of me again.

She hesitated, but she said, “Yes. I’m burning up.”

We walked down to the shore. I hadn’t changed back into my shorts, so I took off my socks and T-shirt, and stepped out of my jeans. I wore gray boxer briefs.

“Pretend they’re my swim trunks,” I said to Anna.

She glanced at my underwear and cracked a smile. “Okay.”

I waited for her in the lagoon, trying not to stare while she took her clothes off. If she had the balls to undress in front of me, I wasn’t going to be a jackass about it.

I got hard again, though, and hoped she didn’t notice.

We swam for a while and when we got out of the water, we dressed and sat on the sand. Anna stared up at the sky.

“I thought for sure that plane would make another pass,” she said.

When we got back to the lean-to, I threw some wood on the fire. Anna took one of the blankets from the life raft, spread it on the ground, and sat down. I grabbed the guitar and sat down beside her.

“Do you play?” she asked.

“No. Well, one of my friends taught me part of a song.” I plucked at the strings and then played the opening notes of “Wish You Were Here.”

Anna smiled. “Pink Floyd.”

“You like Pink Floyd?”

She nodded. “I love that song.”

“Really? That’s awesome. I wouldn’t have thought that.”

“Why, what kind of music do you think I listen to?”

“I don’t know, like, Mariah Carey?”

“No, I like the older stuff.” She shrugged. “What can I say? I was born in ’71.”

I calculated her age. “You’re thirty?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you were twenty-four or twenty-five.”

“No.”

“You don’t act thirty.”

She shook her head and laughed softly. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”

“I just meant that you’re easy to talk to.”

She smiled at me. I strummed some more, playing the same Pink Floyd riff, but I had to stop because my hands ached from making the fire.

“If we had something to use for a hook, I could turn this into a fishing pole,” I said. “The guitar string would probably make a decent line.” I thought about using a nail from the tool box, but the fish weren’t very big, and I needed something smaller and lighter.

Later, when we went to bed, she said, “I hope that party you stayed behind for was worth it.”

“It wasn’t a party. I just told my parents that.”

“What was it?”

“Ben’s parents were out of town. His cousin just got back from college for the summer, and he was supposed to come over with his girlfriend. She was going to bring two of her friends. Ben convinced himself he could score with one of them. I bet him twenty bucks that he couldn’t.” I didn’t tell Anna I had planned to try, too.

“Did he?”

“They never showed. We sat around all night, drinking beer and playing video games instead. Two days later I got on the plane with you.”

“Wow, T.J. I’m sorry,” she said.

“Yeah.” I waited a minute and then I asked, “Who was that guy at the airport?”

“My boyfriend, John.”

I remembered the kiss he’d given her. It looked like he was trying to jam his tongue down her throat. “You must miss him.”

She didn’t answer right away, but then she finally said, “Not as much as I probably should.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Nothing. It’s complicated.”

I turned on my side and shoved my seat cushion under my head. “Why do you think that plane didn’t come back, Anna?”

“I don’t know,” she said. But I thought she did.

“They think we’re dead, don’t they?”

“I hope not,” she said. “Because then they’ll stop looking.”

Chapter 9 – Anna

The next morning, T.J. used the knife to whittle the ends of two long sticks into sharp points.

“Ready to spear some fish?” he asked.

“Definitely.”

When we reached the shore, T.J. knelt down and picked something up.

“This must be yours,” he said, handing me a dark blue ballet flat.

“It is.” I looked out at the water. “Maybe the other one will wash up.”

We waded into the lagoon, hip deep. The heat wasn’t as intolerable in the morning, so I wore T.J.’s T-shirt, instead of just my bra and underwear. The hem soaked up water like a sponge and clung to my thighs. We tried unsuccessfully for over an hour to spear a fish. Small and quick, they scattered as soon as we made any kind of movement.

“Do you think we’d have better luck a little farther out?” I asked.

“I don’t know. The fish are probably bigger, but it might be harder to use the spear.”

I noticed something then, bobbing in the water. “What is that, T.J.?” I shielded my eyes with my hand.

“Where?”

“Straight ahead. Do you see it bobbing up and down?” I pointed at it.

T.J. squinted into the distance. “Oh, fuck. Anna, don’t look.”

Too late.

Right before he told me not to look, I figured it out. I dropped my spear and threw up in the water.

“He’s going to wash up, so let’s go back to the shore,” T.J. said.

I followed him out of the water. When we reached the sand I threw up again.

“Is he here yet?” I asked, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

“Almost.”

“What are we going to do?”

T.J.’s voice sounded shaky and unsure. “We’re going to have to bury him somewhere. We could use one of our blankets, unless you don’t want to.”

As much as I hated giving up one of our few possessions, wrapping him in a blanket seemed like the respectful thing to do. And if I was being honest with myself, I knew there was no way I could touch his body with my bare hands.

“I’ll go get it,” I said, grateful for an excuse not to be there when he washed up.

When I returned with the blanket, I handed it to T.J., and we rolled the body up in it by pushing it with our feet. The smell of decomposing, waterlogged flesh filled my nose, and I gagged and buried my face in the crook of my elbow.

“We can’t bury him on the beach,” I said.

T.J. shook his head. “No.”

We picked a spot under a tree, far away from the lean-to, and started digging in the soft dirt with our hands.

“Is that big enough?” T.J. asked, looking down into the hole.

“I think so.”

We didn’t need a large grave because the sharks had eaten Mick’s legs and part of his torso. And an arm. Something else had been working on his bloated, white face. Scraps of the tie-die T-shirt he’d been wearing hung from his neck.