Shipwrecked

1-Brooklyn

     Sometimes all I want to do is leave. Pack up my stuff and disappear into the woods with my bow.
      I didn't ask for this life.
   Well, actually I did...
      I hold on tightly to the sides of my cot, so tight that my knuckles turn white and I lose feeling in the tips of my slender fingers. The beds of my nails ache from chewing my fingernails to my skin.
      I hold my breath and try to shake myself out of this nightmare.
      The only difference between my nightmare and any other person's nightmare, like perhaps yours, is the fact that I'm not actually asleep.
      I am wide-awake; my eyes open, studying the ceiling over my head. They are well adjusted to the darkness in the room by now.
      I roll over and glance at the books arranged beside of me, their pages wrinkled and yellow. I wonder if I should grab one off of the long table crammed in between my cot and the bunk bed across the room, and read it in the moonlight.
      I toss and turn, glancing over at my two best friends across the room. One of them snores the other kicks the wall as she sleeps, her head dangling off the edge of the bed.
      My nightmares never seem to end. They go on and on and on, forever, until I can't take it any longer and I have no other choice but to fall into a deep, terrifying sleep.
      I shift back and forth for what seems like hours, moaning and groaning.
      "Brooklyn, would you keep it down!" Ryann finally shouts from her bunk on the other side of the room, "I'm trying to sleep. Stop acting like you're dying, it's not going to help anything."
      Ryann hates me for my nightmares. She is always complaining that I keep her up all night, every night. I just think she wants an excuse to be cranky and ornery all the time. So she blames me.
      I tried staying out late and sleeping up in a tree one time, but that didn't work. I just fell out. All the tossing and turning I guess.
      Ryann was furious after that incident. Broken body parts don't sit well with her.
      It was her fault. I slept out there for her.
      Ryann and Noa share the bunk bed that Ry made from bamboo and very strong ropes.
      I don't trust bunk beds, ever since I fell off of mine as a child. Kind of ironic I know, I don't like bunk beds, yet I decided sleeping in a tree would be a good idea. Not the smartest decision on my part.
      Anyways, I had to get Ryann to build me a cot as an alternative.
      "Leave her alone Ry," Noa says softly from the bottom bunk. "She isn't hurting anyone."
      "She's hurting my sleep Noa." Ryann retorts. "I need to sleep if I want to get anything accomplished tomorrow. You both know that." I hate the tone in her voice, conceited, bitchy, better than the world; like she's the only one that needs to sleep...I'm the one that hunts for our food. I could starve her. But I don't.
      Still I feel like she needs to go back to primary school, when all they taught us was to not bite the hand that feeds you, and to treat others the way you'd like to be treated.
      I stare at the wooden panels above me. They creak in the wind...lovely.
      I know Ryann calculated everything perfectly when building this hut, but it still worries me that it all came from scratch.
      Back home we slept in buildings made completely of concrete and metal. The windows were glass. They were sturdy to say at the least.
      I can see the level above us, the crack between the wooden panels and the spiral stair case that leads up towards the top level of our hut.
      Something scurries across the tin roof up above, probably just a squirrel. I still flinch.
      I hear a light whistling sound that I have grown way too familiar with: the breeze as it blows through the thin window covers made of the tightly laced strings of grass we wove together on our first day here to use as small shelters as we hiked to find a cave.
      The skies were dark and the wind tempestuous. We were desperate for something to just cover our heads as we walked. I swear we worked faster than we ever have in our lives that day.
      Even Ryann who normally would be shouting out orders was quiet as we wove the grass together, piece by piece.
      We knew what to do, they hadn't prepared us for anything like what happened that night, but we knew what to do.
      I listen to Noa and Ry quietly argue about me, and try to block them out of my head.
      I attempt to focus on the slight trickle of the rain outside.
      The faint light from the full moon shines through the opening that we call the window. I turn over and face the bright moon watching it intently.
      I can almost see it move, slightly, slowly. The moon has always been like this on the island. It moves...I mean, the moon is always moving I know that, most people know that, but here it is different. Here, we can tell that it's moving just by looking at it with a bare eye.
      A breeze blows by and some of the wet rain water hits my face.
      Ryann is yelling at Noa now, and of course, Noa is screaming right back. She has a temper like that: very aggressive, very protective over everything she loves. Pick a fight with her,  and she's going to get feisty.
      I listen to the rain again and all of the sudden I realize how bad I have to pee.
      I look down and pick at the dirt and grime underneath my hardly existing finger nails. Anything, anything, to distract me from the water pouring down outside, I'm desperate. I listen to Noa and Ryann argue.
      "She's always such a baby." Ryann says.
      "She just wants to get out of here." Noa defends me.
      "You think I don't want that too?" Ry shouts, "I want that just as bad as you two, probably more!"
      I can't take this anymore. Ryann always thinks she is superior to us, and she's not afraid to tell us that she feels that way either.
      I strain to see my bow in the dark. When I find it I think about aiming it at Ry. I could take her out in a millisecond...
      I know that. She knows that, everyone who has ever met me knows that.
      I decide against it.
      She screams as my arrow rushes by her head and catapults into the wall just beside her pretty little face.
      I sling my bow over my shoulder and say, "I'm going to the bathroom."
      They both stare at me in shock, their jaws dropped, and eyes wide.
      I pull on my boots and lace them up.
      Ryann finally finds some words as I push past the thin curtain that is supposed to separate our bedroom from the kitchen, and stomp down the front porch steps.
      "You could have killed me Brooklyn! You're such a fucking bitch!" she shouts.
      "So are you," I say under my breath.

***

     I sigh as I pull my pants up. I really miss indoor plumbing....toilet paper even. A girl gets sick of using leaves for three years.
     I shoot a squirrel that happens to scurry by. "Sorry little guy." I say as I pick him up by the tail and pull the arrow out of his gut, "You'll make a good breakfast...one that I don't plan on sharing with Ryann."
     I tie the squirrel to my hunting belt and continue to walk back to the hut.
     Ryann is just as furious now as she was when I left about fifteen minutes ago, "There you are!" she shouts, "Who do you think you are walking away from me after trying to shoot an arrow through my skull?"
     I don't respond. I just throw the squirrel in our game box that Ry created so that he won't rot and smell, and slip off my muddy boots.
     "Don't ignore me Brooklyn." she says sternly.
     "Ryann get over it. She's not gonna talk." Noa says.
     I take off my wet rain coat and hang it on the rack in the corner of the room.
     "Well, I'm not gonna leave her alone until she apologizes." Ryann says, deciding to be stubborn as usual. "You hear that Brooklyn?"
     "I sure do." I say, falling onto my bed and crawling under the covers, facing the wall.
     "You have to apologize eventually," she pesters.
     I sigh and cover my ears with my rabbit fur pillow stuffed with a variety of bird feathers, drowning out the sound of her nagging voice.