“Nay.” I clutch her forearm. “I need a minute.” My hand is shaking.
She wraps her arms around me in a tight hug and lets me sob on her shoulder until we’re both covered in salt water and snot. “I’m so scared,” I say when I can finally choke the words out.
“Don’t tell anyone else, but me too.” She laughs at herself as she wipes tears off her cheeks. “I’m trying to stay optimistic, but… you know.”
“I know,” I say. I reach down to stroke Comet’s head. He immediately twists himself between my legs and nudges me with the stick he must have stolen from the firewood pile. I cock my arm back and give it a ride. He tears off in a frenzy.
Naomi and I both turn our eyes to the water. The cloud cover has finally broken and the sun sits on the edge of the horizon; the ocean is stained a vibrant orange that ripples gently in the breeze. It looks like a scene from a movie, a romantic one, where there’s not a plane crash and no one needs emergency medical attention. Once upon a time, I would have wanted to take a picture of Naomi with the wind in her hair. Now, I wish I could close my eyes and forget this ever happened.
“I made the call to Henry’s ex-girlfriend,” I confess as Comet drops his stick at my feet and waits for praise. I scratch him behind the ear and throw it again. “It wasn’t Theo. It was me, and if anyone dies before rescue arrives, it’s my fault.” I picture Winston gritting his teeth against the pain of his broken leg and Victoria’s pale face as she insists she’s fine. I’ll never forgive myself if anything happens to either of them.
“A plane will see our fire tonight. I think we’re going to be rescued,” Naomi says, and I’m grateful for the lie. She takes a deep breath. “This was my plan. Cliff jumping in the sunset.” She gestures (with jazz hands!) to a slope of climbable rocks leading to a large flat one that juts out over the water’s edge. “Also, I have to pee.”
We quickly shed our pants and Naomi helps me undo the buttons on my ripped blouse because my arm is too sore to do it myself. She clasps my hand and then my best friend and I scream “Cannonball!” on three and jump into the salt water under a twilight sky. Comet leaps down the rocky path to the shore, splashing in behind us. Naomi and I are both shaking and shivering and laughing when we come up for air, and I feel alive again. I’d almost forgotten what that was like.
I float on my back while Comet paddles circles around me and we wait for Naomi to do her business. Soon my teeth are chattering, and Comet has pulled himself out of the water. It’s fully dark now and the breeze has picked up. “Hurry up!”
“I’m coming back.”
I climb onto the flat rock in my bra and underwear, and I’m reaching my hand out to help her up when she screams.
My heart spasms. “What’s wrong?”
“Something stung me!” she gasps.
I grasp her with my right hand and haul her onto the rocks. Blue tentacles are wrapped around her foot, and she’s writhing in pain. Without thinking, I reach out to pull the creature off her, but she grabs my hand to stop me.
“Don’t! It will sting you too!”
I pick up a rock. Naomi and I both scream as I try to nudge the squishy creature off her leg.
“Why are you screaming?” she yells.
“Because it’s gross!” My body shudders involuntarily.
She presses her forehead into the rock. “Get it off me!”
I use the rock to scrape it off her. We both scurry away as it lands with a squelch.
Theo crashes quickly over the edge of the cliff, nearly colliding into me. “What’s happening? I heard screams.”
“Careful!” I grab his biceps and pull him out of the way before he steps on the blob. “That thing stung her.”
“Is it a jellyfish?” she gasps, eyes screwed tightly shut against the pain.
Theo bends to inspect the creature in the dark and swears loudly. “It’s a man o’ war. The ‘floating terror.’”
“Is it deadly?” Naomi cries.
“No,” I insist, before throwing a questioning look at Theo.
He shakes his head. “Rarely.”
My stomach drops. Rarely isn’t never. I needed the answer to be never.
He continues. “The stings are excruciatingly painful, though. One of my mates at school said it was the worst pain he’d ever experienced.”
“I could’ve told you that,” Naomi says through clenched teeth.
