“Okay, I’m going to lower this stick down to you, and you’re going to take it and use it to pull yourself up to me.”
“It won’t work, Sarah! I’ll pull you over the rock with me, and we’ll both die!”
“No, you won’t! I have two spots for my heels to hold on. I’m not going anywhere. Now grab the damn stick before I hit you with it and knock you down off this rock myself!”
Jonathan risked a look up at Sarah. She was staring at him determinedly. “Shit, Sarah, you sure are bossy.”
Sarah smiled. “You just said ‘shit’. I’m telling everyone when we get back.”
“Okay,” he said breathlessly, “here I go.”
Jonathan grunted as he used what little momentum he could create by swinging his lower body out and then towards the rock, to transfer his right hand to the stick Sarah was holding.
His hand made contact.
He grabbed on as hard as he could.
Her body lurched forward with the weight of Jonathan now holding onto the stick, but her heels dug in and she didn’t let go.
“You sure about this, Sarah?”
“Sure as I’m gonna be. Now shut up and grab the stick with your other hand. My heels are killing me.” She could feel her bare feet bruising with the pressure.
Jonathan took one last look at Sarah’s face and said, “Try not to let me go.”
“Not a chance.” She gritted her teeth, ready for the pull of Jonathan’s full bodyweight.
***
Jonathan let go of the tree root and grabbed onto the stick with his other hand. He felt the stick go down, as his weight pulled Sarah forward even more. He couldn’t risk looking at her face. He focused on using the leverage she provided to get a foothold on the side of the rock.
Finding a small bump with the edge of his sneaker, he used it to push himself up a foot. He moved his lower hand up the stick, above his other hand. He tried not to think about how his lower hand was being crushed between the stick and the rock. There was blood dripping down his wrist.
He felt around for another foothold with his other sneaker. He touched another bump on the rock and secured his toe to it as best he could. He pushed up and was able to transfer his left hand to a place on the stick above his right, scraping the skin off his knuckles and the back of his hand.
He risked a glance at Sarah, and it gave him renewed energy.
Her face was bright pink, sweat running off her in rivers. She was focusing all of her energy onto holding that stick. For him. For the first time since he’d met her, she had nothing to say.
He knew if he didn’t get up there in the next few seconds, one of them was going to see what it felt like to fall from a very great height – very possibly it would be both of them. By now, he knew that look on Sarah’s face. It meant she wasn’t going to let go, even if it meant she was going down too.
Damn stubborn woman.
The rock started to curve to a more flat surface, just a few inches above Jonathan’s face. If he could just get one more foothold, he could probably get his arm on top of it and use it to bring himself the rest of the way up. He felt around with his foot, looking for another bump on the rock.
Just then the stick slid down. Sarah’s hands were sweaty; she was losing her grip on the bamboo.
“Holy shit, Jonathan, the stick is slipping!” she screamed. “Grab my hand!”
“Do
not
let go of the stick, Sarah! You can’t hold me with one hand!”
“I can’t hang onto the stick anymore, you have to grab my hand. On three. You pull on the stick as hard as you can for leverage and then let go; then I let go and grab your hand at the same time.”
“It’s never going to work, Sarah! It’s physically impossible!”
“DON’T GIVE ME ANY OF YOUR PHYSICS SHIT! IT’S GOING TO WORK! Now grab my right hand with your left hand on the count of three. One–two–
three!!”
In that split second, when Jonathan pulled up on the stick and let go of it, using whatever grip he had on the rock to launch his hand up in the air, he knew that he had never been so vulnerable, never counted on another human being like he was in this moment, ever in his life. God help him, Sarah Peterson was going to determine his destiny.
He felt her hand in his before he saw it. The smack of their palms meeting jolted his fingers into action. He closed them around hers in a kung fu grip. Even if he had wanted to let go, it would have been impossible. He was on survival autopilot.
Sarah dropped the pole and leaned over as far as she could. She was folded completely in half. She stretched her open hand out towards the still prone and dangling Jonathan.
She grunted out, “Now grab my other hand.
Hurry!”
Jonathan flailed around for a second before they could make contact. Then they were together, hand in hand – Jonathan hanging over the edge, Sarah bent in half, her bruised and bleeding heels stuck into grooves that kept her tethered to the top of the rock.
Jonathan dug his elbows into the unforgiving hard surface, instantly feeling excruciating pain. Blood begin to drip from his elbows now too. He had to ignore it. His feet kicked around in the air, looking for purchase.
***
Sarah strained her already nearly exhausted biceps, trying to manhandle Jonathan back up to the top of the rock.
Inch by painstaking inch, Sarah’s power and Jonathan’s elbows and abdominal muscles pulled him closer and closer to their joined hands. Finally, he was able to throw one leg up, allowing the heel of his sneaker to grab hold of a bump on the top part of the rock. He used this leg to pull the rest of his body over.
Now that his full weight wasn’t resting on her heels, Sarah was able to use her upper body strength to pull on him. She pulled one more time using all the strength she had left, at the same time Jonathan rose up on his knees, apparently intending to release her hands and crawl the rest of the way up.
His body flew forward and landed on top of Sarah. They both fell over, Sarah’s back against the rock and Jonathan lying prone on top of her. Both of them were too stunned and in pain to move.
Sarah laid her head back against the rock, first feeling the burning numbness and then the pain that was shooting up from her heels. Next, she felt sweat dripping down her face and neck. Then she noticed her heartbeat and Jonathan’s heartbeat mingling together to create a frantic melody. Last, she smelled Jonathan’s B.O. as it quickly threatened to overwhelm her completely.
“Holy crap, Jonathan, you smell. Get off me.”
Jonathan didn’t move. His face was buried in her chest. His words came out muffled. “I’m sorry, but I can’t move. Every ounce of energy I had is now gone. Wake me up in five minutes.” Then he began to snore.
Sarah sat still for a second trying to figure out if he was really sleeping. “Jonathan? Are you seriously sleeping in my boobs?” she asked tentatively.
Then she felt his body shaking with laughter.
“Get off me, you idiot!” She pushed him to the side. He rolled over to lie next to her.
“Ah, that was awesome. I got you.”
Sarah feigned brushing off his smell from her body. “Whatever. I knew you weren’t sleeping.” She sat up and tried to stand, immediately stopping and reaching for her feet. “Oh shit, that hurts. Holy crap, I think my feet are broken.”
Jonathan sat up, quickly, all signs of mirth disappearing as his concern for her pain came to the fore. “Let me see them.”
“No, get away, Stinky McSmellypits.” She slapped at his hands.
“Seriously, Sarah, let me take a look. I’ll sit downwind from you.”
Sarah relented out of sheer desperation, she was in so much pain, letting him pick up her legs by the calves so he could look at her heels. His sharp intake of breath told her that it wasn’t good.
“Well, they’re pretty banged up. Cut and bruised too.” He didn’t let go of her leg – he set it down gently in his lap.
“Sarah.”
“What.” She was refusing to look at him.
“Sarah, look at me.”
“Fine. What.”
“Thank you. Thank you for destroying your heels to save my life. I’ll never forget it.”
“Whatever. You’re welcome.”
“Ever.”
“Ever, what?”
“Never ever.”
“Never ever, what?” Sarah was getting frustrated. He looked so earnest.
“I will never, ever forget, or let you forget, that you saved my life.” Jonathan flashed her a huge grin.
Sarah smiled back, despite herself. “Don’t make me come over there.”
“Give it your best shot.” He issued the challenge, and it hung in the air between them.
She gave him her best cocky girl smile. “Maybe another time, when I’m not on the injured list.”
“Whenever. Wherever.”
Sarah laughed; she couldn’t help it. “Since when did you get so big and bad anyway?”
“Since I nearly lost my ass over that rock, that’s when.”
Sarah grimaced as she tried to stand again. “You just said ‘ass’. I’m telling.”
“Don’t you dare, or I won’t help you walk back to the waterfall where you can have a shower.”
“Oh, so now you play dirty, too. Okay, fine, I’ll remember that. By the way, did you notice the breeze up here? It’s amazing.”
Jonathan stood, reaching his hand down to help Sarah up.
“Yep, it’s awesome. And no bugs at all. Must be the breeze keeping them away.”
“No bugs, holy crap. I wanna live on this rock.”
“Well, first we have to get you
off
this rock and back into those flip-flops.”
The two of them working together eventually located her shoes, which made walking around a bit easier, but not much.
Sarah stood under the trickle of water and shivered in delight at the feeling it gave her, working its way through her tangled, salty hair.
“Did you figure out where the water is coming from?”
“Nope. I couldn’t see anything; of course, my exploration was cut short by my, well, you know, little mishap. It could be some sort of artesian well, but I thought those things had to be dug by someone. I guess it makes sense that there’s fresh water under this island. I mean, how would anyone have ever settled in these places in the first place without fresh water?”
“Yeah, well, I hope it’s a permanent thing and not just a rainwater thing.”
“Me too, but I’m glad you said that. Just in case, we need to have other ways to collect water so we don’t run out completely during the dry season, whenever that is.”
Sarah nodded her head in agreement, but was too preoccupied to actually respond. She was looking at something just past the stand of bamboo next to the water. She finished her mini shower and walked over to check it out.
“Get a load of this tree, Jonathan. Is it a tree? What
is
this thing?” She was pointing at what looked like a large, gray elephant leg. It was a big, above-ground root that was connected to several others just like it, all part of a very large tree that had thousands of small, dark green leaves on it. The whole trunk was as big around as a car, but the roots spread out even farther than that. It was almost prehistoric looking.
“Pretty cool, huh?” Jonathan ran his hands over the smooth, gray bark. His eyes followed the path of the root. “Look how the root is part of this huge network that’s all above the ground. It makes all kinds of small caves and tunnels under the tree.”
“That is cool,” agreed Sarah.
“And the branches above the root system are pretty substantial too. Wow.”
“Yeah, and look! Some of them actually have roots coming down from branches, which have dug themselves into the ground below. I’ve never seen a tree this big before in person – only in photographs.”
“Man, I would have killed to have a tree like this in my back yard when I was a kid. I mean, what kind of killer treehouse could you make in one of these babies?” said Jonathan, as if he were daydreaming.
“Hey, Jonathan, that’s a
great
idea!”
“What’s a great idea?”
“Building a treehouse here. Could we do it? In this tree, I mean?”
Jonathan thought about it for a second. He studied the roots and the branches above. “I don’t know for sure, but maybe. I mean, we have all kinds of bamboo here, which is a pretty good building material, really. I know they make floors and tiki huts with it. This root system seems pretty solid. The branches up there are in pretty good positions to support floor joists … ” he trailed off thinking of the possibilities.
“Okay, well, I don’t know what a floor joist is, but I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Let’s go back and tell Kevin and Candi what we found.”
She moved to take a couple of steps. “Ooh, ah, shit. My heels are killing me.”
“Here, lean on me.” Jonathan came up next to her and offered his shoulder. “Sorry I stink.”
“Don’t worry about it, I need the crutch more than I care about your pits.”
They worked together, slowly making their way back to the beach where Kevin and Candi were waiting, eager to share their discoveries with their siblings.
***
“Oh, you’re awake. How do you feel?” Candi set down the bits of wood she had been gathering for a fire and reached over to feel Kevin’s forehead. “You’re not as warm as you were.”
“I feel weak, but better, actually.”
“Let me see your hand.”
Kevin held up his bandaged hand for Candi’s inspection.
“It looks better. I think this sickness that you’ve had has been some sort of … ”
Kevin put his hand on his stomach and moaned, “Oh god, don’t say it, please!”
“ … sort of bad tummy thing, that I’m sure will be gone soon,” Candi finished with a smile.
Kevin rested the back of his hand on his forehead. “Bad tummy thing. That’s good, I hope you’re right.”
After a minute, Kevin sat up slowly, taking his time in case he felt dizzy or queasy again. “Where is everybody?”
“Well, Jonathan and Sarah left a couple hours ago to see if they could find some water or more food. I expected them back already, but I’m not worried. Not yet anyway.”
“Probably the only thing we need to worry about is them killing each other. No biggie.”