The best current solution seemed to be to play along with Isaac's delusion. There was no obvious harm in doing so and contradicting him was pointless. He did not often address us by our false names so we were mostly just refraining from correcting him.
Aside from a few outbursts over imagined creatures in or around the raft, Isaac was calm and quiet, busying himself spinning walnut shells on the surface of the raft. We left him to his own devices, figuring the less we interacted with him, the more collected he would remain. I steered as much as possible to keep my mind off of him and the others kept to themselves.
Several days into this arrangement, I was at the front of the raft, reflecting on how quiet everything had been lately when Isaac's sudden shout nearly made me jump out of my skin.
"Look!"
I turned from the front of the raft. He was pointing excitedly towards to the east. Following his finger, I saw nothing. "What?"
"Don't you see it?" His voice was incredulous.
"See what?"
"The island!"
I left my position, heart pounding, and knelt next to Isaac, squinting as hard as I could. All I saw was water. "I don't see anything."
"It's right in front of us! Don't any of you see it either?" He turned to the others.
Toby, Jessie, and Rita were staring to the east, their faces mixtures of excitement and confusion.
"Is it, like, really far out there?" Jessie asked, bringing a hand to shield her eyes. "I think I see a smudge of something, but it'd be a long shot to call it an island."
"It's literally RIGHT THERE! I can see the trees and everything."
My heart sank. It was just another hallucination after all.
"Well I'll take your word for it," Toby said finally. "I can't see anything."
He turned back to where he was stacking empty coconut shells and Jessie, Rita and I prepared to resume our various activities.
"Wait, what are you guys doing?" Isaac asked us in surprise.
I turned back to him. "What do you mean?"
"Aren't we going to stop there? I'm so sick of being in the raft."
Toby and I exchanged a look. "Well no," I answered slowly, searching my mind for a reason we weren't going to the fake island. "I mean, it's in the opposite direction that we need to be going."
Isaac gaped at me. "You've got to be kidding. We're looking for land, right?"
"Yes, but-"
"Well I found land! What's wrong with you, Ang?"
I broke. "Isaac, look at me! I'm not Angie, I'm Meg!! Remember me? Your best friend? And I'm telling you there is no island!"
Isaac's eyes flashed at me. "Angie stop it, why are you acting like this?"
"MEG! I'M MEG!" I was screaming and I couldn't stop.
He glared at me. "I can't believe this. My own sister won't save us. Give me that." He reached for the rod in my hands.
I wrenched it away from him but he got one hand on it and pulled.
"Isaac!" Toby grabbed his shoulder and yanked him backwards. The whole raft rocked violently.
"Let...go...of...me!" Isaac grunted, thrashing to try and free himself.
Toby held on. "If you don't calm down, we're all going to end up in the water!"
Isaac only struggled harder. "What's wrong with you guys? We're so close I can almost taste it! We need to turn around!"
"Isaac, please!" Rita tried to quiet his flailing hands. "We need to keep going!"
"Don't touch me, I don't even know you!" he yelped.
Rita retreated, her eyes glassy with tears.
"Jessie!" I held out the rod to her and she hurried to me and took it. I knelt in front of Isaac and looked him full in the face. "Please," I said low. "I'm sorry I yelled, but you need to trust me. Please."
Isaac's confused eyes met mine and his struggling slackened. "But it... But I found-"
"I know," I interrupted. "But that's not what where we're going. We need to go home."
He said nothing but his body slowly relaxed and Toby released him.
"Thank you," I said, carefully keeping my voice steady. "Are you okay now?"
He nodded but didn't look at me.
I looked up at Toby who grimaced at me and shrugged.
"Okay then." I backed away from him, still unconvinced. Perhaps if we just let it go, he would forget this particular hallucination like he forgot who we actually were. I was angry at myself for yelling at him like that. It wasn't his fault that he was thinking this way and it was cruel to take my grief out on him. My stomach was still twisted in painful knots, but freaking out at Isaac wasn't going to make that any better.
Still watching Isaac warily, Toby returned to the coconut shells. I turned back to my task and dipped the rod into the water again. Quiet settled over us. Slowly, the lap of the water against the wooden side of the raft soothed my heartbeat back to its normal pace. The tension in my muscles drained from my limbs only my arms were stiff as they continued to steer the raft. Dip, pull, dip, and pull. Over and over and over again. I hypnotized myself so thoroughly that it took me a moment to react to the sound of a huge splash from the back of the raft.
I turned just in time to see Isaac's feet disappear into the water. The rod in my hands dropped to the floor and I raced towards the still-bobbing edge. Isaac resurfaced, paddling madly in the opposite direction of the raft.
Jessie shrieked and scrambled towards the side closest to him. "Isaac what are you doing? Get back in the raft!"
"Quick, find something to throw to him!" Rita cried.
I whirled, my eyes darting over our supplies. "Nothing's big enough!"
"Hold the rod out to him!" Toby snatched it and ran to the edge. "Someone hold onto me!"
Jessie grabbed him around the knees as he leaned forward as far as he dared. The raft swayed wickedly, causing a wave that soaked the half of Toby that hung over the water.
"Come on Isaac, grab on!" He shouted, waving the rod.
Isaac didn't even look back. He was making steady progress en-route to his imagined island.
Toby whacked the edge of the raft with a cry of frustration. He reached out a hand to Jessie and she helped drag him back up over the edge. Water ran off of his face and t-shirt and when he shook his head, droplets scattered onto Rita, Jessie, and I. "It's no use," he panted. "I'm sorry."
I couldn't believe my ears. He was giving up. My incredulous gaze traveled from Toby's sodden form to the despondent faces of Jessie and Rita. They couldn't be serious! Everyone was acting as though Isaac was- I swallowed-like he was...
"I'm going after him." I was at the edge, preparing to dive when Toby caught me around the waist.
"No."
"Let go of me!"
"Meg, stop." Jessie's voice was soft.
"He's right there! I need to go get him!"
Rita's eyes were full of tears. "Meg..."
"YOU'RE JUST GIVING UP ON HIM?? ALL OF YOU??"
Toby's voice was low. "Meg listen to me. He's too far out now. You wouldn't be able to reach him. And even if you did, he wouldn't come with you. You'd both drown out there."
I shook my head. "No... No you're wrong. I could talk to him. I'm his best friend! I could-"
"Meg, he's not himself!" Jessie was crying now. "He doesn't know you, he doesn't know any of us! He might try to hurt you."
Tears began to spill down my cheeks. "That's not true!" I yelled at her. "He would never do that to me! I need to save him!" I struggled violently against Toby's arms, but his grip was steady and Isaac was slipping farther and farther away.
"PLEASE!" I was screaming. "LET GO OF ME, PLEASE! I HAVE TO SAVE HIM! ISAAC!"
Rita's gentle hands landed on my shoulders. "Be still," she said firmly.
My whole body was shaking. As I watched, the disturbances in the water where Isaac swam grew smaller and smaller until he was out of sight. "No," I whispered. "No..."
He was gone.
"No. NO. ISAAC!!"
Silence.
"ISAAC!"
Toby closed his eyes and looked away. His hands fell to his sides and I collapsed to my knees.
Isaac, my best friend, my partner in crime. Isaac, my confidant, my comfort.
I watched the horizon the entire rest of the day, convinced that I would see him come swimming back in a wave of glory. He was coming back, he had to be.
The others wisely left me alone and only moved to switch steering positions. No one ate or drank. No one spoke. There was nothing to be said. Night swept over us and still I looked to the east. He was coming, I knew he was. I just had to keep watching and waiting and hoping and praying.
It wasn't until the next morning that it started to sink in; the eastern horizon was still empty and always would be. Who cared about the sun rising? I wanted to scream at it, to tell it to stop. I wanted to scream at everything, at everyone. How could everything just keep going as though nothing was wrong? Instead I was silent.
I steadily hated the others for the next several days. They had killed Isaac, this was their fault. If they had let me go to him, none of this would have happened. I took my turns steering and I did my share of fishing, but I would have nothing more to do with these murderers.
The few actions I was forced to make were removed from me somehow. I felt less than human, like a robot with so many stored up emotions it is malfunctioning. Life-sustaining tasks were the only ones I performed but I didn't even want to stay alive. What was there to live for anyways? Even if we did make it home, nothing would ever be the same again.
On the island, I had been able to hide the majority of my feelings. Even when things got really bad, even when someone had died, I had been able to stomp down my feelings and bounce back. There had been times when I had been overwhelmed, when I had cracked, but I had never broken this way. This felt beyond repair.
The week came to an end and another began. Fish, sleep, steer, eat, drink. Days were empty and silent. Jessie and Rita tried talk every once in a while, but eventually the silence would smother them again. There was nothing to talk about anyways. Isaac was dead and we were likely to follow. It had been fifteen days since we had started following the path of the Cnidarian and Rita had told me we should be ten days from shore. There was no land in sight in any direction.
Slowly, my anger towards Toby, Rita, and Jessie ebbed away. Deep down, I knew it wasn't really their fault. I needed someone to blame for ripping my heart out. I didn't want to be angry. I was just tired; so tired.
Days blurred together until I had no idea how long we had been at sea. We were surviving, eating fish and walnuts and it rained enough that we managed to keep dehydration at bay. Now we only moved to take turns steering or to fish. Conversations were few and far between. I spoke to no one. Sometimes I wondered what had become of the others. Considering our own situation, there was little doubt in my mind that they too must be in desperate shape, if they were still alive at all. When we had lost them in the storm the night of our escape, I had sometimes imagined us arriving at Rita's village and sending out a rescue team to find them. Now I had no such hope at all.
In fact, hope of anything but looming death had abandoned me. I was sick, I knew I was. I was burning up constantly, even in the chill of the night time. Rita tried wetting my face with the cold seawater, but it was no use. She was sick too. Her skin was always flushed and her eyes were too bright. Jessie and Toby cared for the two of us as best they could, but they were exhausted and there was little they could do.
I allowed them to tend to me, but I could not understand why. Couldn't they see I was past help? We were all going to die soon. Why put off the inevitable? Death was a welcome option for me now. I was past the point of feeling anyways.
Everything was like a dream; fleeting and distant. Toby's face swam before me, then Jessie's, then Isaac's. So he wasn't dead after all! I was so happy. Rita's flushed face. Noelle stared sorrowfully at me. I tried to tell her that everything was going to be okay, that I was going to die soon and then we would get to see each other again. But then she was replaced with Toby's anxious face. His mouth was moving, but the words he spoke were so far away I didn't know what he was saying.
Before I could ask him what he was talking about, he slipped out of my blurred view and was replaced by a man I had never seen before. I smiled; I was dreaming again. Eagerly, I looked around for Isaac. If I was dreaming, he would surely be around here somewhere. Instead, I saw about half a dozen men climbing onto our raft from another boat that bobbed in the water close by. They were dressed identically in blue uniforms and moved very quickly and with purpose. I had no idea who they were, but they didn't seem to be doing any damage so I watched them passively until I saw one of them pick up Rita and give her to another man waiting in the ship next to us. Blind panic set in as she disappeared from my view. These men were taking Rita! A hibernating animal awoke inside me with a screech and I launched my pitifully shrunken self at the nearest blue uniformed enemy.
After the initial shock of my assault, the man quickly overpowered me. But instead of being angry, his weathered face was sympathetic. Gentle hands draped warmth over me and held my shoulders. Then the strangest thing of all happened. The man in front of me reached down and held out a clear plastic bottle filled with water to me. I could not remember the last time I had seen so much fresh water in one place. Did he really mean for me to have it? All of it? I took it automatically but then frowned. What about Rita? Did she get water too? And why were these people who were stealing my friend being so nice to me? Before I could get any of my questions answered, I found myself being nudged forward towards the other boat. More sturdy hands helped me aboard the other vessel and the murmur of many voices together made my head spin. It had been so long since I had heard a bunch of people talking at once that I had forgotten what it sounded like.
Once aboard the other ship, I was steered into a tiny white room where more people in different uniforms stared at me and poked at me. Rita was there too but she was lying, un-moving, on a bed across the room. I tried several times to go to her, but the hands would hold me back. My panic level was consistently rising. The one thing I knew for certain was that I needed to get to Rita and then find Toby and Jessie and get out of here. Almost just as I was planning my escape, a tiny prick to my arm suddenly made the entire room wobble crazily and then begin to shrink before my eyes. Everything began to blur together as the edges of my vision began to go dark. The last thing I saw before I went under was a blur of white moving quickly towards me.