“Ugh, Lennox! If you don’t want him, can I please have him?”
“He’s all yours,” I say.
My fingertips tingle and I fist my hands into the sand, squeezing tightly to make it go away.
Of course I don’t want Weston. I want Dane. But giving permission to Stassia doesn’t sit right, and I don’t want to think about what that means. Maybe it would get Weston off my back and loosen him up a little if they were together. I’d finally get to sleep in my own bed.
Stassia makes a dissatisfied sound and I try to hide my smile, but it disappears quickly as shouts, unlike the earlier playful ones, erupt from the larger pool. My eyes fly open and I sit up, peering over at the commotion in the water.
Something is wrong.
All of us rise quickly and scramble across the beach, trying to see what is causing the frenzy, when Weston and Ryum burst through the surface of the water, hurrying toward the beach.
“Move!” Weston shouts, and the crowd of Castaways parts, giving them a straight shot to the sand. They bound up it, and it’s only then that I see what they are dragging, or rather, who.
“Jorn!” Sig screams and pushes past us, sprinting toward them.
Small arms wrap around my leg and I look down to find Fin, pale and wide eyed.
“It’s alright,” I tell him, and squeeze him closer to me.
Once they’re on the beach, they drop him into the sand. He lies completely motionless, his eyes closed and lips blue, and my stomach falls at the sight. Sig drops to her knees when she reaches them, pushing Weston out of the way.
The silence is deafening as everyone watches with bated breath.
“Do you know what happened?” I whisper to Fern standing next to me.
“They were holding their breath, trying to see who could stay under the longest.”
I look back at them and watch, feeling like time has slowed. Weston moved to his other side, kneeling next to Jorn’s lifelessbody the same as Sig, but she is not still. She pushes into his chest, repeatedly, before pressing her mouth to his, breathing her air into him. She repeats the pattern over and over again, and Weston watches, his eyes hard and his face grim.
The moments feel like an eternity as I watch Sig never let up. I’ve never truly seen death before, and despite my life being threatened multiple times on the island, I haven’t known it. My mother doesn’t count, not yet anyway.
But Jorn… Jorn would.
My eyes well with tears at the thoughts of what the ship would be like without his presence, his crow echoing through the sails, his laughter and joking nature lightening any conversation.
How will Sig handle his loss?
I cover my mouth, trying to hold in this fear that I’ll never speak to Jorn again, wondering how I’m going to help Fin through the loss of his friend, when a gurgling sound breaks the silence.
Jorn moves, his body expelling the water. His coughs and gasps eliciting startled reactions among everyone on the beach.
The tension breaks, and my tears fall as relief floods my body.
He’s alive. He wasn’t, and now he is.
Coughing, gasping for air, burning.
Nothing.
Is that what happened to me, back when Weston saved me?
Sig throws her arms around him as he tries to sit up, tackling him back to the ground.
He wraps an arm around her weakly, still coughing.
“I knew you’d save me, babe,” he says, his voice creaking with a small chuckle.
