"Rise and shine!" Isaac shouted in my ear.
I rose, limbs flailing. "Seriously?! I'm going to kill you!"
"Good morning to you too, sunshine," he cackled, prancing out of reach as I took a swing at him.
Grumbling to myself, I grabbed two bananas from the freshly stocked pile and stalked out of the clearing. Irritated as I was with my wake up call, I should have been up earlier.
Sure enough when I reached the cave, the others were already immersed in raft plans.
"Nice of you to join us," Joe teased as he walked past balancing a log on his shoulder.
"I hate mornings."
"Mornings are the best time of the day!" Chris refuted, coming to stand beside me. "You're on the lead raft team," he added, pointing.
I followed his finger to where Anna, Toby, and Rita were drawing their plan out in the sand. I was relieved to see I would not be sharing a raft with Alex or Jessie. Looking around, I spotted them about a hundred feet to my left, already busy in their work. A twinge of irritation shot through me as I thought of what Kate had said yesterday.
"You don't have time to worry about that," I reminded myself. With a deep breath, I turned away from them and walked towards my work area.
"We'll need at least fifteen logs for the outer rim," Toby was saying as I approached. "The last raft we made would be way too small for five of us."
I was tempted to remark on Toby's excess of knowledge about the raft, but I held my tongue since, for the time being, I didn't hate him.
"So how do make the logs stay together?" Isaac came up behind me.
"Manihot esculenta," Rita said.
We all stared blankly at her until Toby translated. "It's a type of root adhesive, generally used for infection, but very thick and sticky. When left to dry, it hardens into a durable and waterproof substance that can easily hold our logs together."
"That sounds too good to be true," Anna said, frowning. "How do you know it will work?"
"It is an old housewife's trick passed down through generations by my ancestors," Rita answered. "At first it was only used to patch up small household items, such as bowls. Then the people discovered that it was useful for larger projects as well. Now it is a common remedy for a hole in the roof or in a boat. We used it on the raft Toby and I took to come to the island."
"But do we even know if it grows on the island?" Isaiah wanted to know.
Rita nodded. "It does. I spotted some when we first arrived here, and there should be plenty of it."
I pondered this information. Part of me agreed with Anna that it seemed too good to be true, but at the same time, I thought about how long Rita and Toby had lasted at sea in their own raft. Even if it only lasted a few weeks, that should be enough time for us to find land. We would probably have run out of food and water by then anyways.
How had Rita and Toby done it? Both had described weeks at sea, but time, I suppose, was hard to keep track of after a while. Maybe they had counted the days by marking the raft or something.
Thoughtfully, I pulled my pocket knife out of my ragged shorts and brought the blade to the surface of a log. The wood was harder to carve than I had expected and I pushed harder. All of a sudden, the knife slid rapidly across the log's smooth surface and into my opposite hand which was bracing the whole frame. Blood began to flow from the knuckle of ring finger.
"Are you okay?" Toby came up beside me.
"I'm fine," I said quickly, obliging to hold out my wound at Rita's request.
"You'll need a bandage to stop the bleeding and keep out infection," she told me, taking the afflicted hand. "But it doesn't look deep."
"We've got some bandages from the first aid kit back at camp," Anna spoke up. "I can bring her back to grab something."
Rita nodded. "Yes that is a good idea, thank you. And take your time," She looked at me. "You need your strength."
I nodded.
Anna tore off a piece of a nearby fern and handed it to me. "To slow the bleeding," she explained.
I took it. "Thanks."
"Okay so we need to talk," she murmured when we were out of earshot of the others.
"About what?"
She raised her eyebrows at me. "Toby."
"Toby...?" I repeated.
"The other day on the beach? The way he freaked out about you almost drowning?"
I shrugged. "I dunno, maybe he was just having an off day."
"Uh huh. And how about just now when he acted like you were bleeding out?"
I shot her a glare. "If you're trying to say something, just say it."
"Are you sure there's not something still going on between you two?"
"Wha-? Psh! Please." My excessive amount of protesting rendered me transparent.
Anna's eyes widened. "Oh my gosh there is!" she gasped.
"Nuh uh!" I said in a voice that wouldn't have convinced me or the five year old I sounded like.
Anna ignored this and I could hardly blame her. "So how long has this been a thing? Ever since he got back? Wait." She stopped walking suddenly and stepped in front of me so we were face to face. "Does Rita like him?"
"Jeez, Anna, are we in middle school?"
She backtracked. "Sorry, I'm sorry. If you say there's nothing going on between you two I believe you."
I sighed. "I don't know Anna, I honestly don't know."
She scoffed. "I know what that's like!"
I looked at her.
"I never had any idea what was going on with Isaac," she confessed. "I mean, he's so confusing sometimes. One minute he was flirting with me and carrying on and then next, he was arguing with me about something." She shook her head. "I'm glad that's over."
"Are you?" I asked.
"Definitely." She spoke with conviction.
My hand sought my opposite arm and I rubbed it. "I feel the same way about Toby and me."
Her brown eyes scrutinized me. "No you don't."
"How would you know?"
"Because you guys are different."
I raised my eyebrows. "Care to elaborate?"
Anna shrugged. "The reason you guys work is the same reason that Isaac and I don't. We had the kind of chemistry that was so off again on again neither of us knew what was going on or what the other was thinking."
I was genuinely confused. "And you think that Toby and I aren't like that?"
"You aren't. Sure you have your differences, but you know each other. Even when you're mad at each other, you know why and what to do to fix it, even if you don't necessarily do it right away. You just...get each other."
I didn't say anything. She was right, of course, but frankly, I was tired of talking about it. "We must be almost back to camp by now," I said, blatantly changing the subject.
Anna exhaled exasperatedly but she let it go. "Yeah, I think so. These trees look familiar."
"All of these trees look familiar," I thought condescendingly, but I figured if she was going to let the whole Toby thing go, I could be nice too.
"Are you okay on your own?" Anna asked me when we made it back to camp a short while later. Her hair was plastered to her head with sweat and sand.
"Definitely," I said firmly. "Go rest."
"You too," she ordered before releasing me and walking over to her mat.
I located the first aid kit and quickly bandaged my cut. Rita was right, it wasn't deep, but infection was just as deadly as a disease in this kind of climate. I had to take all the precautions I could.
With my wound taken care of, I had a short while to myself before we had to head back. The sand felt pleasantly warm beneath my feet and I sank to the ground with a sigh, caressing the tiny grains with my fingers. I was relieved that the others were still at the cove working on raft plans. Now I had some time to think of what I was going to say to Toby. Anna had been right about one thing; clearly there was unfinished business between us, and it was time to end it.
I had to be gentle but firm in telling him that we couldn't be together. That whatever he might think still existed between us was over and we couldn't get it back. Even though he had come back and tried to make things right, we weren't going to start up again. We had far too many other things to focus on at the moment; like surviving the inevitable flood of the island that would be happening in several weeks.
"Toby, I know you came back thinking there was still something between us, but its over." No way. That sounded too soap opera-y.
"Toby, I regret to inform you.." Not that either, no one had died in a war.
"Look Toby, I.."
"Uh.. Yeah?"
I whirled around to see Toby looking at me in confusion. My face turned some shade of scarlet as I realized I had been practicing my rejection speech out loud. "Um, hey, what are you doing here?"
He raised an eyebrow at me. "Looking for you. I wanted to see if you were okay, you guys were gone a while."
"Right," I said, scrambling to my feet. "Um, yeah, I'm fine. Thanks."
He nodded slowly. "And what was it that you were going to tell me?"
"Huh?"
His lips twitched in amusement. "You were saying "Look, Toby" or something when I came up."
I wanted to disappear. "Oh yeah, that was nothing. I was just.. um.. saying that I was going to look FOR you." To myself... right.
It was probably the lamest lie I'd ever told and he knew it. "Okay," was all he said. "Well, see you later."
He walked away, leaving me to stew in my embarrassment.
"Just get over it," I instructed myself (actually in my head this time). "You still have to figure out what you're going to say to him."
And he was right, Anna and I had been gone for too long. I rose and brushed the sand off of myself before going to wake her.